Rebellion

CHAPTER 66

Smack! It came out of nowhere, the unpleasant, pulpy sound of metal pounding into flesh and breaking bone. Blathy went over backwards, the tip of the knife raking across Rix’s left cheek as she fell.

His paralysis had eased enough for him to roll over, though not enough to get up. Behind him, Blathy was on hands and knees, blood streaming from her broken nose, holding the steel gauntlet that had done the damage. But who had thrown it? She tossed it aside and crawled towards Rix’s exposed throat.

Glynnie came out from under the bed, on her knees, swinging Maloch in both hands. She swiped at Blathy, the blade passing so low over Rix’s head that he felt the wind. He tried to bury himself in the carpet.

Blathy lurched to her feet, her proud nose dripping blood, and blood running down her arm from the bandaged shoulder wound. Glynnie sprang to her feet and struck upwards, aiming a ferocious blow at the older woman’s neck. Blathy leaned backwards to avoid it, then laughed mockingly.

She was almost a foot taller, twice Glynnie’s weight, and with the long knife in her hand she had the same reach as Glynnie swinging Maloch two-handed. And Rix could tell she had fought many a battle with that knife. She was fast, skilled and driven by malice.

He groaned and tried to get to his feet. Blathy kicked him in the back of the head, knocking him flat and renewing the paralysis. Clearly, she knew all there was to know about dirty fighting.

Blathy slashed at Glynnie, who avoided the blow with a dexterity Rix would not have thought possible. Blathy struck again; again Glynnie wove aside. They danced their way around the room, past the end of the bed and down the other side.

“No,” cried Rix. “She’ll pin you in the corner.”

Blathy drove Glynnie backwards with a furious set of blows, only ending when Glynnie, with a wild slash, almost took her opponent’s knife hand off at the elbow. Blathy drew back. Glynnie leapt up onto the vast bed, rolled across it and landed on her feet beside Rix. She ran around the end and now Blathy was pinned against the wall, though only for a minute. She drove Glynnie backwards again.

They fought up and back, up and back again. Blathy was tiring now, her movements slower. It was always the legs that went first, and she was much older.

The big woman tensed, and Rix could read her plan. Blathy was going to attack in a furious onslaught that would drive her small opponent backwards against the bed, and then she would cut her open.

Glynnie went backwards until her back came up against the side of the bed. Blathy rushed her. Glynnie ducked a savage slash to the throat, raised her sword at the perfect moment and Blathy drove herself onto it, all the way to the heart.

Blathy’s eyes were wet. She reached out, as if to her dead lover, and smiled a sweet smile. “Arkyz,” she whispered. “At last.”

It was over.

Glynnie left Maloch in her opponent’s chest, stepped around the body and came across to Rix, wobbly in the knees. Sweat was running down her cheeks, her face was scarlet and blood dripped from her elbow from a gash on her upper arm. He got to his knees, tried to pull himself up on the bed, but failed.

Glynnie’s breast was heaving. She looked him up and down.

“Help me up,” said Rix, his voice hoarse and crackly.

She put a small hand on each shoulder, holding him down.

“What is it?” A sudden terror struck him; had she joined the mutineers? No, the thought was preposterous.

“Anything you want to say while you’re on your knees?”

He swallowed. “Only how desperately ashamed I am. I’ve treated you badly.”

“Abom — ” She stumbled over the word. “Abominably.”

“Yes. Abominably. I’m deeply sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I have to think about it. Can you get up?”

“I don’t think so. My neck — ”

She went around behind him. Her damp fingers probed the back of his neck, down the vertebrae. The little hairs stirred there. She shoved hard with her thumbs, he heard a small crack and the numbness faded. He lumbered to his feet, looking down at Blathy. “You were right.”

“What about?” said Glynnie.

“The day we came, you said Blathy was one of those women who would only ever have one man. Now death has reunited them.”

Distantly, he could hear the sounds of fighting now. “Glynnie, it’s mutiny.”

“I know.”

She jerked the sword from Blathy’s chest and handed it to him, then the steel gauntlet, which was covered in Blathy’s blood.

His hand shook as he drew it on. “Stay here.”

Rix ran out and down, towards the yelling and the sound of blade on blade, which seemed to be coming from the dining hall. Glynnie followed, carrying Blathy’s knife. He burst in. The hall was lit only by a couple of lanterns and it took a while to make things out.

Holm had been backed up against the wall. He had a sword in his hand and was fighting two men at once, the brothers Hox. Rix could tell them from behind by their stubby legs and long, rectangular torsos. They weren’t skilled swordsmen, though they were tough and tenacious. They ought to be able to take down one old man.

Yet they were the ones flailing away, their wild blows striking sparks out of the wall, while Holm was moving back and forth like a fencing instructor. He was light on his feet for an old coot, using no more energy than he had to and defending effortlessly, though he had passed up several opportunities to kill his opponents. Surely he wasn’t a pacifist?

But he hadn’t seen the whippet-thin fellow with the strangler’s fingers sidling along the wall in the shadows. The long, greasy hair told Rix that he was the aptly named Rancid.

“Holm! Beware on your right.”

The brothers Hox turned in identical movements and rushed Rix as though glad of an excuse to get away. Had they ever seen him fight, they would not have been so eager to take him on.

“Rix?” Glynnie choked. “Please be careful.”

He did not propose to give any sword-fighting lessons, nor take any prisoners. Mutineers threatened the whole fortress. They were worse than murderers.

He slashed the left-hand brother, Rasti Hox, across the throat, then danced sideways so the dying man would not fall on him. The other brother, Narli Hox, howled like a beast and threw himself at Rix, who killed him with a blow through the chest.

As he turned to scan the hall, Rancid sprang at Holm, six feet into the air, a manoeuvre Rix had never seen before. He had a dagger in each hand and was stabbing downwards, intending to drive them through the top of Holm’s head.

But Holm wasn’t where he should have been. He ducked low under the flying man, spun on his feet and put his blade in through both of Rancid’s kidneys.

“I thought you were never going to move,” said Rix. “What took you so long?”

“Used to be a surgeon,” said Holm. “It’s decades since I practised, but I still prefer patching wounds to making them.”

“You don’t fight like a healer.”

“I had a good instructor.”

“You fight as though you were an instructor.”

“I’ve done a bit in my time.”

“Anything you haven’t done in your time?”

“Not much.”

“Rix, Holm?” Tali shouting. “We need help.”

They ran downstairs and into the main hall, swords at the ready. Glynnie followed, still carrying Blathy’s long knife. Tali and half a dozen of the kitchen women were barricaded behind a wall of tumbled tables and chairs. Four mutineers, three men and a woman, were flinging kitchen knives at them. Five bodies were scattered about.

Rix picked up a fallen chair and hurled it at the mutineers, cracking a short, nuggetty man over his shaven head and bringing him to his knees. The others whirled, and their hopeful looks turned to blank despair when they recognised Rix.

“Blathy is dead,” said Rix. “Also the brothers Hox. And Rancid. The mutiny is over. Surrender or die.”

“Going to die either way,” said a giant of a man with biceps the size of Rix’s thighs — the blacksmith, Tiddler. “Might as well take you with me, you shifter-loving swine.”

He lumbered forwards, swinging a monstrous double-headed war hammer, a terrible weapon in the hands of a strong man. A direct hit would smash Rix to pulp. He dared not take the risk that he might slip on the bloody floor, or stumble over a piece of broken furniture and allow Tiddler to get in a lucky blow.

The war hammer had a major weakness, however. It was so heavy that a blow could not be changed in mid-swing, and it took a long time between swings. Rix watched his opponent, followed his first blow until it had gone past, then killed him the way he had cut down Leatherhead.

The body went one way, the head another, and it took the fight out of the remaining mutineers. They knew they were going to die traitors’ deaths but they surrendered anyway. It was over.

“I’m so sick of killing,” said Rix, the sleepless nights suddenly catching up with him. “How much longer is it going to go on?”

No one answered. Too damn long, he thought. Until one side or the other is no more.

Glynnie put an arm around his waist. He looked down at her gratefully. “Did I thank you for saving my life?”

“Not adequately, but you will.”

“What’s the toll down here?” said Rix.

“At least three of the servants were murdered in their bunks,” said Holm, “and another four, maybe five, died in the fighting. And I don’t think poor old Swelt is going to make it.”

“What happened to Swelt?” cried Rix.

“He took up a sword. Said he wasn’t going to stand back and see innocent people die. He knew how to use it, too. He fought bravely and gashed Blathy on the shoulder…”

“I saw the wound. That must have been the cry Tali heard.”

“But he was a fat, tired old man,” said Holm.

“Where is he?”

“In the rear corridor where he fell,” said Holm. “We couldn’t move him.”

Rix turned and ran across the bloody hall, out the rear door, then stopped, looking left and right.

Down to the right in the shadowed corridor he made out a still, arching mound. He raced down and went to his knees beside the old man. Swelt’s eyes were closed, his flesh sagging.

“Swelt?” whispered Rix. “Don’t die. Please.”

A small breath sighed out of the old man. He wasn’t dead.

“Healer! Light!” Rix yelled. “Quick!”

“No… use,” said Swelt.

“Where are you hurt?” Rix couldn’t see any blood, any wound.

“Stabbed in the back. Noth — nothing anyone can do.”

Tali came running with a lantern. Glynnie followed.

“You can’t die,” said Rix, choking. “How can I ever do without you?”

Swelt smiled, and for a moment he was again the handsome young man he had been so very long ago. “Nicest thing — anyone’s ever — said…”

“They say you fought like a hero.”

“Fought — for my house. What anyone — would do.” Swelt’s right hand rose. “Come — must pass — secret.”

“It’s all right,” said Rix. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

The pudgy hand caught Rix’s shirt and pulled him down. Swelt’s slitted eyes were fixed on Rix’s face. “No one knows — you must.”

“Knows what?”

“Passed down — great dame — me — now you.”

“What is it?” said Rix.

“Grandys — sterile. Daughter — not his. Adopted.”

“Why is that important?” said Rix.

Swelt’s fingers slipped free. His hand hit the floor with a small thud. He was dead.

Rix took the old man’s hand and knelt beside him, remembering all Swelt had done for him and for his beloved Garramide. Had he not marshalled the support of its people behind Rix, he would not have been here now.

“Why did he waste his last breath telling me that?” he said, rising wearily.

“Maybe he wanted you to know that Grandys wasn’t your ancestor,” Glynnie said quietly.

“No, for such a secret to have been passed down for two thousand years,” said Tali, “it must be important — and not just to you.”

Rix could not focus. “Poor old Swelt. No more loyal man has ever been. And to think I judged him, when we first met, on his appearance.”

“He’s at peace now,” said Glynnie.

“And will be buried with the highest honour,” said Rix, “next to the great dame herself.”

“He killed that swine Porfry,” said Tali. “And died a contented man, knowing he’d always done his duty.” She looked around. “Where’s Tobry?”

“I haven’t seen him. I thought he’d be with you.”

She blanched, then bolted for the door. Rix plodded after her, down the steps to the basement level and along to the black hole. She burst through Tobry’s door and stopped, staring at the blood-covered bed and floor, the bed clothes in disarray and the knocked-over table.

“No!” she whispered. “No, no, no!”

“They were all against him,” said Glynnie, from the door. “They must have killed him first, in his sleep.”

“But where is he?” said Rix. “Where’s the… the body?”

“Maybe they took it out and burned it,” said Glynnie.

Tali looked as though she was going to faint. “And I gave him the sleeping potion. Everything that’s happened to Tobry since I met him is my fault.”

“They’d hardly burn bodies in the middle of a mutiny,” said Rix.

“He was a shifter,” Glynnie pointed out.

Holm pushed past. “You’re taking on more than your due, Tali. And you’ve got a short memory. The blood is yours and his, from when you tried to heal him.”

She looked up at him. “But where’s the body?”

Holm sauntered across, flipped the hanging bedclothes up onto the bed and said, “Right here.”

Tali looked down. “Why would they dump his body under the bed?”

“They didn’t,” said Holm. “I did.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” said Rix.

“He was sleeping so soundly after Tali’s failed healing that I knew he’d be helpless if there was a mutiny. I shoved him under the bed and pulled the bedclothes down so he couldn’t be seen. It must have fooled the mutineers, too. Guess they thought someone else had killed him first.”

“You mean he’s not dead?” Tali scrambled under the bed and took Tobry in her arms. He let out a great snore, but did not wake.

“No,” said Holm, “but he’s going to murder you when he wakes up.”

Rix chuckled. “Serves her right. I think we’ll leave them to each other. Come on.”

He walked up with Glynnie. “Rix?” she said.

“Yes?”

“If we survive the war, will you come with me to Caulderon and find out what happened to Benn?”

“Yes, I will,” said Rix. After this night, he could refuse her nothing. “No matter what.”