‘Except his money’s still sitting there right beside him,’ Brasti shouted back, giving me a dirty look.
‘Hmm? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trattari,’ the senior constable said, smiling. ‘There’s no money here – none at all.’
The men in front of us laughed. Evidently thievery was only a problem in Solat when it was someone other than the constables doing it.
‘You’re doing it again, Falcio,’ Kest said quietly.
‘What’s that?’
‘Talking when you should be fighting.’
I pulled my rapier from its sheath and raised the collar of my greatcoat, hoping the bone plates sewn inside would protect my neck. Kest was right; there wasn’t anything we could say now that was likely to get us out of this mess.
‘How would you rate our chances?’ I asked him.
‘We’ll win,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll get wounded, probably in the back. You’ll get hit by one of the crossbow bolts and likely die. Brasti will almost certainly be killed by one of the pikemen, once they get past the weak defence he puts up with his sword.’
‘You’ve been a real joy to work with, Kest, you know that?’ Brasti said, shifting his guard.
Kest rolled his right shoulder, preparing for the first attack. ‘Blame them – they’re the ones planning to kill you.’
Brasti gave me a look that indicated it wasn’t the constables he blamed. ‘I don’t suppose you have a better plan than just dying?’ he asked as he brought his sword in line with the belly of the guard closest to him.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We teach them the first rule of the sword.’
One of the guards, the one closest to Kest, tightened his grip on his pike in preparation for the attack and said jeeringly, ‘And what’s that supposed to be, tatter-cloak? Lay down and die, like the traitors you are?’
He was a big man, well-muscled, his broad shoulders perfectly suited to using a pike.
‘No,’ Kest said. ‘The first rule of the sword is—’
His words were cut off as the guard jabbed his pike with the speed of a metal ball flying from the end of a pistol.
‘—put the pointy end into the other man,’ Kest finished.
No one else moved or spoke. The exchange had been so fast that only the final result was visible. The back of Kest’s left hand was now pressed against the haft of the pike, and the point was deflected safely behind him. His body was extended in a tight forward lunge and the point of his sword was six inches deep into the constable’s stomach.
With a gentleness that belied the nature of the encounter, Kest slid his blade from the guard’s belly and watched as he slumped to the ground.
For a moment – just a moment – the constables in front of us looked so shocked that I thought they might actually back away. But then I heard the metallic twang of a crossbow firing and felt the impact against my back. As the sting spread throughout my body I thanked Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears that the bone plates had kept the bolt from piercing my body. It still hurt like the red death, though.
‘Damned coats,’ I heard the senior constable mutter from the second-floor window.
‘Under the awning,’ I shouted, and the three of us took up positions beneath the wide cloth awning above the back door of the tavern.
‘This won’t stop crossbow bolts,’ Brasti pointed out.
‘I know, but it’ll make it harder for them to aim.’
The two constables nearest me started jabbing at me with their pikes. The one on the left, the smaller of the two, had a face like an angry ferret. The one on the right was taller and stocky, reminding me more of a bear than a man. I parried the point of Ferret’s pike and grabbed onto the shaft with my free hand as I swung my blade back to block Big Bear’s weapon half a second later. Ferret tried to pull his pike back, but I grounded myself and used my greater weight to prevent him from recovering it. The frustration on his face would have been rewarding if another crossbow bolt hadn’t shot just past my ear, landing just between us. I used the momentary confusion to knock the shaft of Big Bear’s pike downwards with the hilt of my rapier, then stepped on the shaft, driving the point to the ground. When Ferret tried pulling again I leapt towards them both, using the momentum of Ferret’s efforts to help me bridge the gap between the tip of my sword and Big Bear’s throat. As the big man fell to the ground, detaching himself from my blade, I drove the point into Ferret’s shoulder and he too fell to the ground, but with considerably more screaming.
Another bolt forced me back under the dubious protection of the awning, and I took the opportunity to see what else was waiting for me. Fortunately, the other guards closest to me were a little warier now, so I took advantage of their hesitation to see how Brasti was doing. I never bother checking on Kest – watching him fight just makes me feel like an awkward teenager fumbling his first kiss.
Brasti was trying to edge away from the constables, but there wasn’t much room to move without leaving the cover of the awning and becoming a target for the crossbows.
‘Damn it, Falcio, this is all your fault,’ he grumbled.
‘If we die now, Brasti, I’m going to order Kest to tell everyone you went to your death poor, hated and rated a lousy lover by women everywhere.’
‘You know I can’t fight pikes with this damned thing,’ Brasti shouted back as he swung his sword in an awkward arc in front of him. He was a good enough swordsman, considering he almost never practised, but fighting two or three men with pikes is hard for anyone. Of course, if he’d had his bow, it would have been a different matter entirely …
‘Kest!’ I shouted, ‘help Brasti get clear.’
Kest glanced at me as he parried a frantic attack from the constable in front of him and I knew he’d understood. But, ‘Crossbows, Falcio,’ he reminded me as he slipped under the attack of the man in front of him to join Brasti.
Damn it, I thought, he’s right. If Brasti made a run for the horses, the men on the second floor would aim straight for him. They needed a more attractive target.
‘Fine. Do it – now!’ And with that, I pulled a throwing knife from the bracer inside my coat, stepped out from the awning and threw it straight at the senior constable on the second floor. The blade jammed into the windowsill not six inches from his face and I cursed whichever Saint was supposed to be helping my aim.
The senior constable was an experienced man; he ignored the knife and took aim. I jumped to my left just as the bolt hit the ground between my feet. Without hesitating, he put down the crossbow and took the loaded one from the guard next to him, but something in the middle of the courtyard caught his attention – it must have been Brasti – and I saw him reposition his weapon. I threw another knife at him, making it clear that I was the more pressing threat, and this knife did a better job than the first and hit him in the shoulder. Unfortunately for me, he stumbled and let loose the bolt. I had my coat open so that I could reach my knives, and with the luck afforded me by Gods and Saints alike, the wayward bolt stuck into my exposed thigh.
‘Got you, Trattari bastard,’ the senior constable cried as he fell backwards into Tremondi’s room.
There was a yell behind me and I turned, cursing at the pain shooting through my leg, to find one of the remaining constables had his pike aimed squarely at my chest and was ready to strike. I swung my sword arm towards the pike, knowing it wouldn’t be fast enough, only to see the shaft of an arrow appear through the man’s neck. He fell to the ground in front of me and I looked around to see where the next attack would come from – but there was no next attack. There were two other bodies on the ground with arrows in them next to the two I had slain, and the three remaining men were lying dead or wounded by Kest’s blade.