Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  The knifeman ignored the flurry of blows and thudding sounds from behind him. He wrenched the knife free and came over the bed in a silent rush, the blade held low and reversed with his thumb on the pommel and the blade jutting out from the right side of the fist.

  Somewhere in the Cutter lands there’s a school not entirely unlike the one I attended, she thought as she backed easily, moving with soft sure strides, the weight on the balls of her feet.

  He didn’t waste time; this wasn’t a duel, not even the ghastly slashing frenzy of a knife fight, where the winner went to the healers for six months. The two knights would be on his back in instants. A feint high, a backhand slash to the face, and then a stab towards her thigh, aiming for the great vessel that ran up the inside towards the groin.

  Fast, she thought. But he’s relying on it and I’ve got a third of a second on him.

  Her body sank and turned before the thought was complete, her hips swaying aside. Her own knife cut, upward, under the armpit, she couldn’t chance whether he wore a mail vest. Cloth parted, and something else between; a spray of blood went up in the night, black drops in blackness. The arm went limp and the knife fell from it. The man hissed with a gobbling undertone and snatched at the weapon with his left, his fingertips touching the dimpled bone hilt before it struck the floor.

  He never grasped it. She fell across him in a diving body check, and the breath wheezed out of him as his ribs hit the floor with her on his back. She drove her left elbow down into the base of his skull as they landed, the hard thud sending a shooting pain up her arm.

  “Light,” she said, shaking her hand and working the fingers.

  The man wasn’t quite limp, but he was twitching and moving with the vague undersea slowness of someone who’d had his bell truly rung. The lamps flared. Both the other assassins were down and bound, ankles and wrists lashed together and good thick gags in their mouths; she wanted no more fanatics biting out their tongues and drowning in their own blood before they had every scrap of information wrung out of them.

  “See to this one,” she said as she rose, kicking his knife aside and wiping hers on the man’s hair. “Don’t let him bleed out. Pity about the rug.”

  She slipped her blade into the sheath along the inside of her left forearm as she walked through the doors into the other room. That one looked considerably messier; there was a triad of assassins lying just inside the windows. Two had been struck as they climbed over the sills—one had a leg still on his, with that spilled awkwardness that only the suddenly and violently dead could show. Both those two were riddled with crossbow bolts. At this range the armor-smashers buried themselves to the fletching, and one of the men had been pitched back and pinned upright to the wall like a butterfly in a display case. His body, limp and leaking on the tiles, slid off the shaft and struck the floor with a thump as she came in.

  The third was three paces into the room, lying on his side with the killdagger just beyond his twitching fingertips, and, unfortunately from his point of view, still alive. The human body was astonishingly resilient sometimes. A single bolt had struck him, and his face was like a contorted carving of hardwood with blood seeping past his clenched teeth and out his nostrils in bubbles. Sound trickled out as well.

  The sergeant of the crossbowmen saluted. “That one was clever, my lady,” he said admiringly. “He backflipped into the room, must’ve dropped straight down and caught the sill and bounced in like a rubber ball. We missed him clean, everyone except young master . . . except Squire Lioncel de Stafford, I mean, my lady. He nailed him good, right in the brisket, which ain’t easy when things go south and it’s all noisy and confusing, like.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said; it was astonishing how many bolts were used per hit in a combat situation. “Thank you, Sergeant. A very creditable job. A week’s pay bonus to your and your squad for losing a night’s sleep.”

  The man grinned, and she nodded again. She’d meant it. Missing number three hadn’t been serious. A man with a knife wasn’t going to do much against eight with swords and bucklers and wearing three-quarter armor, no matter how good he was with a blade. Assassination and straight-up fighting were quite different things. And one thing she’d learned from Sandra was never to stint praise or reward where they were really due. Being a cheapskate that way always left you with the bill coming due at the worst possible time.

  Norman was a bit of a niggard now and then. Sandra, I note, is still alive and still in power long after he’s dead.

  Lioncel was staring at the dying Cutter, his crossbow still in his hands, motionless.

  “Lioncel!” she said, and he started and seemed to come to himself.

  Well, it is his first, I think . . . yes, definitely. About the same age I was, at that. Of course, these Cutters didn’t intend to rape him before they killed him and eat his flesh afterwards. Still, it’s traumatic.

  “We . . . caught them by surprise, my lady,” he said. “It all happened just like you said it would.”

  “Good. And Lioncel?”

  He looked at her, his blue eyes a little wild.

  “They came to kill us in our sleep. If your mother or little sister were here, they’d have killed them. We were defending them. Fight knights like knights, and stamp on a weasel.”

  He took a deep breath. “Yes, my lady.”

  “And he’s too far gone for questioning. Finish it quickly. That’s your responsibility, whether it’s a beast or a man.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The boy was pale but steady as he drew his knife and did what was needful, and followed her back into the bedroom. The two knights had the Cutter she’d disabled in a chair, finishing up a field dressing and binding his arm before tying him up.

  “Good,” she said; the Cutter was reviving, a vicious clarity in his eyes. “We’ll need this one for questioning. I think he’s one of the leaders on this mission, and we’ll have a nice little talk.”

  The Cutter laughed, and then opened his mouth at her. Lioncel crossed himself, Armand swore, and even Tiphaine blinked. Only the stub of a tongue remained in the man’s mouth, and he laughed again, a thick odd sound. The wound was healed, but recent; this had been done deliberately by a surgeon and by the man’s own choice, to keep him from talking if he was taken.

  Then Tiphaine smiled. At first because she was trying to imagine torturing a man into writing out his answers. And then because of another thought.

  “Keep him very safe,” she said coolly. “Keep him for the High King. I think the Sword of the Lady can get secrets even from a tongueless man.”

  The mad glee dropped off the assassin’s face, and he began to struggle and scream wordlessly. They were equipped for that; Rodard twisted open a metal canister, and held the damp pad of cloth within over the man’s face. The struggles died away as his eyes rolled up in his head.

  Lioncel was looking revolted, but he had her sword belt ready. She buckled it on as they walked out into the hallway, twice around her unarmored waist; the corridor was dim, with only a few lanterns gleaming on the armor and weapons. Rigobert had just arrived, with blood on his naked sword and a scratch down the front of the breastplate lames of his full suit.

  “We didn’t take any alive, and I lost a man, dammit,” he said, handing his blade to a squire for cleaning without looking around. “You, my lady ninjette?”

  “Killed three, took three prisoners, no losses. You are so depressingly straightforward sometimes, de Stafford.”

  Though my methods had substantially more downside risk. You roll the dice ...

  The nobleman made a disgusted sound as he took the blade again and sheathed it, before replying, “The ones who attacked us all had their tongues cut out. Which would render them useless for interrogation, and even more so on dates. I doubt even the Lady Regent’s experts could do much with interrogation via sign language. Or in epistolary form.”

  “Ours had oral circumcision too. But remember who we work for now, Rigobert. Matti’s guy? The one w
ith the magic sword?”

  “Ah!” A slow smile, and one which echoed hers. “Yes, there is a point to that observation. A point with an edge to it.”

  “I mentioned it to him, and he seemed rather upset.”

  “Good. I’m not looking forward to telling Jurian’s family how he died.”

  “Dead’s dead, Rigobert, tonight or next week from an arrow or a lance head. And”—she poked a finger at the scratch on his armor—“I don’t think you were leading from behind.”

  He shook his head. “I still don’t like it, we shouldn’t have had losses when we were expecting them. Let’s go call on our host.”

  They clattered down the staircase towards the family quarters—though in fact the Countess was now in a hidden safe room, not the chamber she usually shared with her husband. Apparently the Count’s father had been a firm believer in having a secret passage out, of which Tiphaine heartily approved; Todenangst was riddled with them. A household knight met them before they reached the landing, panting and looking a little wild-eyed.

  The freckle-faced young man stopped and started to salute with fist to breastplate, then realized he was holding a red-running long sword in that hand and brought the hilt up before his face instead.

  “My lady Grand Constable, my lord de Stafford.”

  “Is the Count your master unharmed?” she snapped.

  “Yes. That is . . . this way, please!”

  She exchanged a glance with her second-in-command. Their own swords came out, and sped up to a trot; silent with her party, and a ramming clank from de Stafford’s, there was no way to move fast and quietly in armor. They went past the guard detail, who, she was pleased to see, were keeping their eyes front, and not turning around to look behind them except for a designated cover man—there were any number of classic misdirection ploys which relied on the natural impulse to focus on the place the noise was coming from.

  The family quarters of the Counts were splendid but not ostentatious by the upper nobility’s standards. Subtle signs showed recent modifications, including more locally made post-Change work, including several small elegant bronzes of wildlife, probably to mark the switch from the first count to his son—or to his son’s wife, which was often the case. A library-study full of wood paneling and leather furniture and glass-fronted bookcases showed the first signs of the attack; bodies being carried away, blood, furniture overturned and scorch marks where fires started by overset lanterns had been hastily stamped out. The broad windows needed for light were probably why the enemy had picked this room for entry.

  Tiphaine pursed her lips. “I’m glad I advised him to go overboard on numbers,” she said, absently rubbing the back of her right hand.

  Rigobert jerked his blond head in agreement. “I can think of a lot of operations which failed because not enough force was used,” he said. “But other things being equal—timing mainly, and concealment—I can’t think of a single damned one that failed because too much force was used. Subtle buys no bread.”

  Tiphaine nodded. A pair of crossbowmen were being given emergency care near the big doors from the library into the rest of the suite, and another lying on his back looked as if someone had grabbed his helmeted head and twisted until he was looking out over his shoulder blades. She bared her teeth.

  Heard about that before, she thought.

  Through a corridor, with two dead Cutters in it; these ones had shetes, the broad-tipped slashing swords favored in the far interior, and they were wearing cloth masks that covered everything but the eyes. Next was a door with firing loopholes that had been hit so hard that it sagged on one hinge; she bent slightly to check as she went by. The pattern of splintering around the lock confirmed what she’d thought; someone had slammed their hand into it.

  “They thought they could pin them in this corridor and shoot them down,” Rigobert said thoughtfully. “Didn’t work, for some reason.”

  “Their point man broke the trap open from the inside,” Tiphaine said.

  Rigobert’s fair brows went up. The chamber beyond was some sort of social space. Probably mainly a ballroom, judging from the superb parquet floor and the mirrors and spindly tables around the edge and the brilliantly lit crystal gas-chandeliers above. This was where the killing had mainly been, pitilessly illuminated by the lights designed to bring out jewels and bright cloth; her nostrils flared at the familiar scents, and the floors were never going to be the same. The local dead had been dragged out and laid in a row with their arms folded, and she saw stretchers disappearing out the other side of the big chamber as she entered.

  Count Felipe was sitting on one of the chairs near the three-deep pile of enemy fallen. The spindly seat creaked dangerously under his armored weight. Two men with bolt cutters were working on the bevoir of his suit of plate, which had been bent so badly beneath his chin that the usual hinges and clasps were all irredeemably stuck; it came free with a clang, and another got the equally damaged gauntlet off his left hand.

  Felipe swore again, his handsome swarthy young face showing as much chagrin and anger as pain. A chirurgeon began to work on the hand. By then the two western nobles were close enough to see that the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb there was mangled, besides the bruising where the little overlapping plates had been bent; the doctor was examining it carefully, and then got to work with tweezers and a small very sharp pair of scissors, and a spray of disinfectant.

  At mere pain the Count’s face went impassive, though a film of sweat covered it. He started to speak, and then something gripped Tiphaine’s left ankle with crushing force and jerked.

  Reflex saved her; she had the sword coming down before she hit the ground, curling up and using the grip that anchored her leg as a brace to strike. The edge of the long sword hit and bit, and the fingers started to relax as tendons cut. Another slash and she was free, rising in a flickering shoulder roll. Half-free at least; it took a stamp and the use of her point to get the hand off her ankle. Blades were rising and falling, amid half-hysterical shouts of loathing. She tested the ankle and found it only a little sore.

  She looked up. A man had risen from the pile of bodies, half-risen at least. Six crossbow bolts studded his torso, and one eye was dangling down his cheek, and an arm ended in an oozing stump. The sole remaining eye looked at her.

  “I . . . see . . . you . . . forever. . . .”

  The voice was a rasping guttural, and air wheezed out of the chest from the other openings as well. If cinders could speak, they would use that tone. For a moment it was as if she were locked in endless hot stone, and then there was a dry wind and a rustle that might have been broad wings hunting in the night or the wind in narrow olive leaves of silver-gray, and the world returned.

  Rigobert’s long sword was up in the two-handed grip with the hilt beside his face. He stepped and struck, pivoting his torso in a beautiful suihei horizontal cut and follow-through. The head toppled away from the body, and the torso fell back with a thud.

  Thank you, Lady of the Owl! Tiphaine thought.

  Men were crossing themselves all around her, touching their crucifixes or saint’s amulets. Her own hand had gone to her throat, for the owl medallion hidden there, and she grinned for an instant at the tinge of scorn she’d have felt for the others only a few years ago.

  I’m finally a full-fledged Changeling, not caught betwixt and between, she thought. Poor Sandra! She got the world of her dreams and she’ll never really be at home here.

  Aloud she went on: “You men! Get that head and body, wrap them in mats and blankets, and take them away. Wear gauntlets. Burn the body and everything that’s touched it, somewhere where you’re upwind of the smoke. Don’t touch it if you can help it. Wash afterwards. Wash thoroughly and discard your clothes and gloves. Have the floor here ripped up, cautiously. Scrub everything with lye and bleach, burn the wood. And get a priest to do an exorcism. Do it all now.”

  The Walla Walla men hesitated, looking at their lord. He flushed and snapped, “She’s the Grand Con
stable, you fools, do what you’re told! Do it all, do it right! Sir Budic, take charge and see that the Grand Constable’s instructions are followed to the letter. Now! And get the rest of this carrion out of the palace.”

  A little more gently: “You’ve all done well and bravely, and I will not forget who stood with me this night. Now show good vassalage once more, and keep your mouths shut about this until I give out what’s happened. We don’t want a panic.”

  The men scattered about their tasks, though Tiphaine doubted any secrecy would last more than about fifteen minutes. When they had some small degree of privacy Felipe looked at her and ducked his head.

  “I am in your debt, my lady. I and my House. But for you, I and my wife and our unborn child might have been caught by surprise by that . . . that thing and its minions. Even as it was—”

  He looked around.

  “I thought you were being overcautious when you recommended so many men waiting. Remind me not to doubt you again.”

  Lioncel silently returned her sword, clean once more, dropped a cloth into the pile that the Count’s men were getting ready to burn, and then stripped off his gloves and added them as well.

  She nodded, sheathed the weapon and went on to her host. “I don’t claim to be infallible, but I’ve had some experience with this. With those creatures in particular, and I’ve made it my business to investigate. And the High King told me more.”

  “What was it? I . . . I had my sword through its belly, I swear I did, and then it put its hands around the bevoir of my suit and started to squeeze as if it were trying to throttle me through the metal, and I could feel the steel begin to buckle! I was holding it off with one hand against its face and stabbing it, and it chewed through the bison hide on the palm of my gauntlet!”