Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [139]
Jill leaped back just as Ogwern began to scream, “Help! Murder!” at the top of his lungs. Like a trapped animal, the stranger charged. He was no clumsy bandit, but her equal, and he fought in a way she’d never seen before, using the knives alternately to slash and parry. Jill was fighting for her life, the steel ringing, blade on blade, as they danced and dodged around the tiny chamber.
Footsteps came pounding up the stairs. “Open in the gwerbret’s name!”
The stranger made a desperate strike, but for one brief moment his concentration broke. Jill dodged in and cut him hard on the right shoulder, then swung back and up, catching one blade and sailing that knife out of his limp hand. With a yelp the stranger threw himself back against the wall. Jill knocked his second knife free on her back swing just as six wardens, tabarded in red and gold, threw open the door and shoved their way into the room.
“Ah, by the gods, good Cinvan,” Ogwern said. “Never has an honest citizen been gladder to see you than I am.”
“Indeed?” The leader, a stout man with graying dark hair, allowed himself a contemptuous smile. “What is all this? Here, it’s that wretched silver dagger who’s a lass!”
“So I am, and I beg you, take us to the gwerbret straightaway.”
“You needn’t worry on that account,” Cinvan said.
Panting for breath, the stranger leaned against the wall. He laid his left hand over the wound and pressed hard, trying to stanch the blood running down his arm. When he glanced Jill’s way, his eyes burned with rage.
“Stanch that man’s wound,” Cinvan barked. “And disarm the silver dagger, too.”
Jill handed over her sword and dagger to one warden while another started looking around Ogwern’s chamber for a rag. The stranger never took his eyes from her face. All at once he smiled, as if he’d made some decision. He took his hand away from his wound, dragged it across his shirt as if to wipe it, then raised it to his mouth.
“Stop him!” Jill lunged forward.
Too late—he’d swallowed whatever poison it was. Rigid in a half circle he fell back, slammed his head against the wall, then twisted, still tight as a strung bow, and fell to the floor. His heels drummed on the wood; then he lay still, a trickle of bitter-smelling gray foam running from his mouth.
“By all the gods!” Cinvan whispered.
Gouts of sweat running into his jowls, Ogwern lumbered into the bedchamber. They all heard him retching into a chamber pot and let him be. The youngest warden looked as if he wished he could do the same.
“Come along, lads,” Cinvan said, a trifle too loudly. “Two of you carry his body. We’ll hustle our innkeep here along to see his grace.”
“By your leave!” Ogwern returned in trembling indignation. “Is this how an honest citizen gets treated when he’s nobly called the gwerbret’s wardens?”
“Hold your tongue,” Jill hissed. “For your own sake, Ogwern, you’d best pray that his grace can come to the bottom of this little matter.”
Ogwern looked at her, shuddered, then nodded agreement. Jill felt sick. What had he been afraid of, that he would smile when he made up his mind to die?
It was a grisly little procession that filed into the torch-lit guard room behind Blaen’s broch. While Cinvan went to fetch the gwerbret, his men dumped the still-rigid corpse onto a table and made Jill and Ogwern kneel nearby. In a few minutes Blaen strolled in, a goblet of mead in hand. He glanced at the corpse, had a good swallow of the drink, then listened while Cinvan made his report.
“Very well,” Blaen said when he’d done. “Now, silver dagger,