01 - Honour of the Grave (34 page)

Benno manoeuvred Gelfrat into turning his back on Angelika. She cut across
Gelfrat’s shoulder, tearing a gash below his neck and notching the leather strap
that held his breastplate in place. He roared and swung at her with his sword.
The blow went wide. While he was off-stride, she dashed around him and out onto
the steps. He turned to deflect a blow from Benno’s sabre. She had a good
opportunity to strike at the back of his neck, but declined to take it. She ran.

Nino came at her, grabbing at her ankles. She turned to kick him. He pulled
her off her feet. She went down, shuddering as her tailbone landed on a stair
edge. She ground her heel in Nino’s eye. He whimpered and let himself slide away
from her. She hopped to her feet and resumed her upstairs run.

Franziskus had lost track of his rapier. Renald was lying on it, as well as
his own. Franziskus got up and seized him by the armour straps. Renald dug
fingers into his leg. Franziskus kneed him in the temple. The guard rolled off
the weapons and tottered up. Franziskus kicked his knife out of reach, then
ducked to grab the hilt. Renald kicked at his throat, scoring only a glancing
blow, but which prevented Franziskus from rearming. Franziskus launched himself
at Renald, grabbing his wrists and pinning him against the wall.

Benno and Gelfrat traded swooshing sabre swings; none came sufficiently close
to so much as
ting
against the other sword. Gelfrat backed Benno against
a wall. He lunged in, sabre slashing. Benno tripped him. He fell into the wall.
His sabre-blade landed on Renald’s left hand—Franziskus still held it by the
wrist—chopping through his middle, ring and little fingers. Severed digits hit
the floor at Franziskus’ feet. Renald only realised what had happened when he
saw Franziskus’ horror and followed his eye-line. He saw his shattered hand
just as the gore began to spurt from it. He sank to his knees and, cradling his
hand in his good one, crawled on his knees into the corner, to scream hideously.

Franziskus’ first thought was to go to the poor fellow’s side, but he
cleared his head of this ridiculousness and rushed for the door. Gelfrat stepped
free of his duel with Benno long enough to smash Franziskus in the throat with
his forearm. An airless gasp issued from Franziskus’ gaping mouth. He staggered
back, hitting the support beam.

Gelfrat glanced back at Franziskus for the merest moment, checking the
results of his handiwork. This gave Benno an opening. Benno brought his sabre
ringing down on Gelfrat’s steel helmet, pounding a pronounced dent into it, and
knocking it off-kilter. The force of his strike sent him reeling off balance,
erasing the chance for a follow-up blow.

Franziskus dashed at Gelfrat, spearing the back of his calf with his rapier’s
sharp tip. He saw his hit draw blood but Gelfrat paid it no heed. Instead, the
big man prepared for a heaving swing at his half-brother’s legs. Benno leapt
over the blow, then fell far short with an ill-timed overhead chop with his own
sabre. Gelfrat bashed his weapon into the side of Benno’s breastplate.
Franziskus saw Benno’s eyes widen from the impact, then dashed for the open
doorway. He pelted up the stairs.

Lukas hit the top of the stone stairs. They terminated in a small stone room,
scarcely bigger than his cell. A set of rough wooden steps led up into open air.
Through this opening, he saw starlight. He hesitated. Battle sounds clattered up
from below. He eked his way up the steps.

He’d clambered his way to the top of the watchtower. The observation deck was
square: about twenty feet on each side. Crenellated battlements surmounted its
walls, embrasures alternating with merlons. Four men stood watch there, manning
a ballista. There was a cannon, too, but none of them attended it. They wore
Averlandish uniforms, though not the Black Field crest. Several glass lanterns,
mounted on metal poles, spread orange light on their startled faces. Three of
them reached to their belts for long swords, thicker than Franziskus’ rapier,
but lighter than von Kopf sabres. The fourth pulled a matchlock pistol from his
sack, and knelt to load it. The others scolded him as they charged the escaped
prisoner.

The first to reach him was Thomas Steinhauer, who was tall and lanky and, at
the age of sixty, was considered ancient by his fellow soldiers. He was far too
old, they persisted in telling him, to be breaking his back lugging his weapons
and armour about, or to be wearing out his feet marching from one battle to the
next or even to be straining his eyes peering out from his watch post here on
top of the south wall. Secretly, he agreed with them, but his pride did not let
him make any such admission. He had served in Averland’s army when both Jurgen
and Count Marius were mere infants. Now, after the failure of his masonry firm,
he was back in it again, cursing fortune’s fickle gods. He threw himself at
Lukas and clouted the spindly lad across the side of the head with the guard of his sword-hilt,
sending him crashing to the stone floor. His mouth leaking spittle, he kicked at
Lukas’ throat, until the boy rolled over to protect it. Then Thomas kicked at
his ribs.

The gunner, whose name was Werther Weiss, who had yet to do anything of
interest to anyone, including himself, fumbled in his pack, looking for his
tinderbox. He had never had a chance to fire his pistol, except at targets, and
he was determined not to lose this opportunity, even though his mates were
yelling at him.

The second to reach Lukas was Sebastian Arzt, who was short, with cheeks like
a forest rodent puffed up with nuts. Sebastian was young and wished to become a
field medic, and from there, when he had completely his military duties, a real
physician. This would enable him, he reckoned, to quickly enrich himself, so
that he could marry into a family with a good name. He kicked at Lukas’ hands,
which the boy had put out to protect his face.

Werther Weiss found his tinderbox. He teased the fuse from his matchlock
between its steel and flint.

Theophilus Ruprecht, bow-legged and irritable, was the third to reach Lukas.
When he was annoyed, which was frequently, he showed it by hunching his
shoulders back and forth, in a curious lateral motion that any of his comrades
could distinguish from up to half a mile away. He was about thirty years old, or
so his mother told him. He wanted to die a soldier, though he did not care who
he fought for. By his reckoning, he’d killed four orcs, sixteen goblins, two
elves, and three people, over the course of his career. Two of those goblins,
he’d killed with the same blow. He was proud of that. He took his sword,
reversed it, clasped mail-gloved hands around the blade, and used the hilt as a
bat, to smash down on Lukas’ vertebrae.

Werther Weiss struck his flint.

A knife flew into Theophilus Ruprecht’s eye. He fell to his hands and knees
and bellowed out his pain and fear.

Angelika had appeared at the top of the wooden stairs.

Weiss’ flint failed to light his fuse.

Arzt and Steinhauer looked at each other as they each kicked at Lukas. Both
hoped the other would run to engage the lithe, black-clad woman who now sprinted at them. Steinhauer turned to
meet her charge, gripping his longsword tightly. She ran at him headlong.
Ruprecht briefly stopped his moaning, and for a prolonged moment the only sound
came from her soles scuffing lightly on the stone flooring. Arzt paused his
kicking and watched her. Abruptly she altered her trajectory and curved toward
him, leaving Steinhauer stupidly braced for a nonexistent impact.

Lukas crawled away from him. He put his foot on the back of the boy’s neck.

Arzt swung his sword at Angelika. She dived at his legs.

Weiss had finally got an ember going on the end of his fuse.

Angelika landed on Arzt, slashing with her knife, cutting a hole in his
trousers, and injuring his leg. He caught her in the face with the flat of his
sword.

Weiss’ fuse sparked into life.

“Not now you stinking fool!” Steinhauer shouted at him. “You’ll hit
Sebastian!” Lukas was motionless under Steinhauer’s boot.

Weiss smiled. He did not like Sebastian Arzt well enough to give up such an
excellently good chance to try his gun. He took aim at the two figures wrestling
on the floor. He was reasonably sure he could hit the woman in the head.

Arzt knocked the knife from Angelika’s hand. It skidded into the middle of
the deck.

Cutting it close, Weiss watched his fuse burn down.

Angelika seized Arzt’s wrist and twisted; the sword slid from his hand. She
rose up, straddling him. She balled twin fists and pummelled his face with them.

Weiss followed her movement with the barrel of his gun. By sucking her head
up, she’d removed any chance of his hitting Arzt. He pulled the trigger.

The burning fuse slammed down onto the firing pan. It extinguished itself. No
bullet flew.

Weiss had forgotten to load his pistol.

He cursed and leapt for his pack, for his box of shot and powder.

Blood, cascading from Angelika’s nose, mingled with Arzt’s own, and dripped
into his eyes. He punched out; she weaved so he only hit her shoulder. The blow was powerful, though, and knocked her
off him and to the side.

Steinhauer left Lukas to lie on the stone floor. He stepped to Angelika and
stood over her with sword upraised. He couldn’t bring it down without the risk
of hitting Arzt if he missed her. He dropped the sword at his side.

Weiss found his tin box and fumbled with its lid.

Steinhauer grabbed Angelika from behind, wrapping both hands around her neck.
He dug his fingers into her windpipe; she flailed her arms. Arzt punched her in
the stomach. Steinhauer tightened his grip on her throat, making her sputter.

Ruprecht, the knife still buried in his eye, collapsed. He rolled over on his
back. He resumed his pitiful groaning.

Franziskus made it to the top of the steps. Without breaking stride, he
pounded toward Arzt and Steinhauer. Ruprecht’s cries masked the sound of his
approach.

From his box, Weiss took a paper cartridge of gunpowder.

Franziskus wheeled his sword at Steinhauer. He laid a crimson slash across
the side of the old man’s face and neck. Franziskus tried to reprise his move,
but his opponent got his forearms up and in the way. Franziskus’ rapier cut
open a yellow sleeve and a black sleeve, as well as a little bit of flesh
beneath.

Lukas struggled to his feet, looked about for a weapon. His mouth dropped
open in horror as he watched the fight.

Angelika, released from Steinhauer’s grip, jammed the heel of her hand into
Arzt’s codpiece. He huffed and cursed but recovered and trapped her between his
legs.

Ruprecht flopped himself over on his back, chest heaving. Blood bubbled from
his mouth.

Steinhauer looked at his sword, lying on the floor. “You’d run through an
unarmed man?” he demanded of Franziskus.

Franziskus stepped back and gestured to the sword. Steinhauer stooped to
sweep up his blade. He grinned. “Stupid sack of dung,” he said.

Weiss stuffed his cartridge down the muzzle of his pistol.

Ruprecht died.

Arzt squeezed Angelika between his legs and rolled, smashing her into the
floor.

Steinhauer came in hard and fast to hack at Franziskus. Franziskus parried,
his wrist twisting from the blow. Steinhauer followed up with a surprise
underhand; Franziskus danced back. He hit the battlement and ducked fast to miss
a third blow.

Angelika wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the dagger that jutted out of
Ruprecht’s dead eye.

Franziskus elbowed Steinhauer in the side. Steinhauer turned to interpose his
breastplate between himself and the blow. Franziskus suffered the force of his
own strike; lightning pain reached all the way up into the bones of his hand.
Steinhauer pressed his advantage; Franziskus put up his left forearm, and got it
badly cut.

Weiss loaded shot into the muzzle of his gun.

Angelika drove the dagger deep into Arzt’s thigh. He jerked, freeing her. She
seized him by the helmet straps and smashed his head down on the floor. Again,
and again.

Steinhauer forced Franziskus backwards. He scraped his back on the
battlements as he bobbed and twisted to duck or parry the older man’s blows. He
saw that Steinhauer’s breaths were laboured.

“You’re tiring,” he said.

Weiss sparked his tinder.

“Don’t make me kill an old man,” Franziskus told Steinhauer.

Steinhauer’s face went white with fury. He dived at Franziskus.

A mottled dove flapped above them.

Arzt shuddered and went limp. Angelika stopped pummelling his head.

Weiss lit his fuse.

Franziskus braced for Steinhauer’s charge and smashed him in the jaw, visibly
unmooring it from its hinges.

Angelika stood up.

Weiss aimed at her.

Steinhauer crumpled.

Weiss pulled his trigger.

At the head of the stairs, Gelfrat appeared, breastplate wet with blood.

The mechanism of Weiss’ matchlock drove the fuse into the firing pan,
lighting the powder. It sent a ball of shot cutting through the air.

Angelika ducked.

The shot hit Gelfrat.

It fell, flattened, from a dent in the big man’s breastplate.

Weiss gulped.

“Bastard!” Gelfrat screamed. “You shot me!”

Weiss stammered out a denial.

Gelfrat ran at him.

Weiss pulled his useless trigger.

“You shot me!” Gelfrat said.

He closed the distance between them. Weiss quivered. Gelfrat seized him by
the belt and collar. Groaning, he heaved the begging, burbling soldier over his
head.

Angelika and Franziskus ran to Lukas.

“What’s your name?” Gelfrat demanded of Weiss, but gave him no time to
answer. “I just killed one brother. This is his blood on me! I’m about to kill
another! What makes you think you can shoot me, and not have me kill you, too?”
Dried tears marked Gelfrat’s cheeks, like snail’s trails.