Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [107]
"Well, my boy," Greyt said. "It's been a good couple two and a half decades. I always admired your knack for promoting yourself higher in my esteem-and your dashing looks." He held up the golden rapier and inspected the tip. Giving it a snap, the metal vibrated back and forth. "I always saw such potential in you, but I see I was doomed to disappointment."
Meris moaned, his tongue still thick. Greyt tapped Meris on the cheek with the rapier.
"What a shame-I see so much of that Amnian strumpet in you, too. Poor girl, killed by beasts in the woods. An 'accident.' " Something dawned on him and Greyt smiled. "Ah yes, thank you for reminding me-I had almost forgotten her fate."
Meris's only reply was to stifle a cough. Blood ran through his fingers.
Greyt grimaced. Meris was bleeding all over the carpet, creating stains that would take tendays to get out. No sense making Claudir do extra work.
He drew the rapier back.
* * * * *
I'll grind his bones an' tear his flesh with me teeth!
The words cut to Walker soul and, once there, made it hard and cold as ice. Screaming power filled his body, imbuing him with fifteen years of hatred and pain.
Walker leaped, stepped on the dagger in Bilgren's thigh, kicked off the one in his stomach, and flew over the barbarian's head, turning a forward somersault but flying backward, as though borne aloft on the wind of ghosts.
Barely nicking his trailing cloak, the flail came down and splashed into the water. There it stuck, much to Bilgren's surprise. The big man roared and strained, but he could not pull out the flail-the water had turned to ice around the spiked ball, thanks to Talthaliel's magic and Walker's timing.
Bilgren looked at the gyrspike in shock, then up at Walker, perched atop the fountain, his cloak billowing around him in the wind.
"Ye little rat, I'll be killin' ye!" slobbered the barbarian.
"And I'll be remembering you," said Walker, feeling at his chest. There was steel in his voice, and resolve shone so coldly from his eyes that Bilgren shivered despite himself.
As Bilgren strained to wrench the gyrspike free, Walker pounced, head over heels, his cloak flying. The chain on the flail snapped, Bilgren lurched forward, reversed, and brought the sword down as the ghostwalker landed behind him.
Walker parried the blow and threw Bilgren back as though the barbarian possessed all the strength of a child. Walker strolled a little ways away and beckoned the barbarian to attack. Bilgren slashed again, but again Walker parried, pushing the blade up and over, creating an opening for him to stick a third dagger in the barbarian's torso.
Bilgren blinked, his berserk fury shaken, then roared all the louder. With both hands on the gyrspike's handle, he slashed the blade at Walker as though it were a two-handed sword, but the ghostwalker dodged or parried each attack, slashing Bilgren slightly here and there, wearing him down. As the barbarian lost more and more blood, his fury increased to greater and greater heights. Regardless, though, of how much strength Bilgren gained from pumping adrenaline, Walker always slipped, snakelike, in and out of his reach, knocking the broken gyrspike aside with no more than a scratch on his cloak to show for it.
Finally, as Bilgren foamed and raved beyond the realm of sanity, Walker staggered back over a rock, bending down. The barbarian roared, thinking his triumph coming, and hammered his sword down, once, twice, then up on Walker's blade. The final blow tore the sword from Walker's hand and sent it flying away, and the ghostwalker spun to the right with the force.
Bilgren lifted his blade high, salivating at the thought of the death to come…
Then