Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [290]
For a second only, Lymond hesitated. Then, a moment before the other man reached him, Lymond also lifted his sword aside quietly and dropped it behind the overturned table at his side. Behind him, Alec Guthrie’s voice said sharply, ‘Crawford! Let him go!’ and Archie Abernethy called out.
Jerott paid no attention. He saw Lymond standing in the open entrance to the hut, his hands gripping the overturned edge of the board at his back, and the dimmer figures of Guthrie and Abernethy against the storm-dark sky behind. Then he jumped.
They were the same age, of the same build, and they both knew all the possible grips which would throw a man down and keep him down, and also if possible ward off outside interference as well. Lymond, his eyes wide and dark, sidestepped as Jerott thought he would, and so instead of crashing at full pelt into the dark bulk of the table, Jerott heeled off it; got clear, all but a glancing blow, when Lymond from behind it jerked it on to him; and was already round and behind Lymond before he had straightened, and finding a purchase, with knee and two toughened hands, to twist his leader’s arms back with all the strength he possessed and throw him in Abernethy’s face.
He might have done it, despite a kick in the ankle that made him gasp, if Lymond had not chosen precisely the right moment to bend sharply and, using his trapped hands as leverage, to somersault the other man to the ground.
His breathing soft and quick, as it should be, Jerott bounced to his feet like a cat. Bit by bit, he was losing his anger, in the sheer artistry of what they were doing. He crouched, ready to engage, just as the candle went out.
And Lymond, he realized, was prepared for it: had in the last second of light already marked his next grip, and from the force of the onslaught Jerott now received, hurling him back willy-nilly into the far corner of the hut, had determined to subjugate him, with the darkness as his ally, here and now.
Then Jerott was down, as he had so often been down, suddenly, in the days of training. He answered it properly. He used his strength, which was suddenly invincible, to free the one hand that could chop, with its cast-iron edge, at the throat rising from the open-necked shirt above him; and as Lymond rolled sideways to go with the impact of the blow, Jerott surged up, kicking, and with all the force he possessed, flung himself on top of his commander and then, his hands hard in his shoulders, propelled him over and over the uneven ground until Lymond crashed back, under Jerott’s passionate thrust, straight into the spiked bulk of the table. As his back took the full force of the blow, he exclaimed aloud.
There followed absolute silence, ringing with the reverberations of someone’s shouting, abruptly cut off. From Lymond, spreadeagled under his hands, there was no further sound and Jerott, kneeling back abruptly, pushing the hair from habit out of his eyes, was able to review what he had done. It had been deliberate. He was, after all, an homme de métier.
A dark figure dropped from outside over the table edge and thrusting past Jerott, still kneeling, got out a candle and lit it. In the new light under his fingers, Archie Abernethy’s face was a demonaic mask: Koshchei the Deathless. ‘I wad flense ye here for the gulls, gin there was time,’ said Archie. ‘But there’s nane. Get ye gone.’
‘Now. Not so hasty, Archie.’ Alec Guthrie’s admonishing voice from the doorway struck cold into the little hut. ‘We were told that the Chevalier was not to be let go back to St Mary’s, whatever happened. It’s just Mr Blyth’s good luck that you’re lighting the candle and I’m standing here gaping with my chaft-blade in the air, all fit to be walloped.