Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [138]
“Go on, get it done, execute him now! I want to see his blood run! I deserve to see it!” When the guard hesitated, Simna pushed the other one forward, shoving insistently. “Show me his head rolling on the floor.”
“Simna ibn Sind, you are a faithless and unprincipled man!” Belying the swordsman’s accusations, Ehomba’s face contorted in a rictus of anger and betrayal. “You will die a lonely and miserable death that fully reflects your worthless life!”
“Probably,” the swordsman retorted, “but not just yet.” Whereupon he bolted, quick as a cobra, in the opposite direction. Both guards turned and grabbed for him, but having been shoved several steps forward, the wily Simna had put them just out of reach.
Half-somnolent troops instantly scrambled to block the nearest exits. Others rushed to protect the Count. Startled by all the sudden activity, decorative drifting fish darted confusedly to and fro. Another dozen soldiers rushed the agile swordsman. They lowered or drew their own weapons as the frantic Simna scrabbled madly at his and Ehomba’s pile of personal belongings. His fingers wrapping around a sword hilt, he pulled it free and threw it not at the grim-faced, oncoming soldiers, but toward his companion.
“Hoy, bruther! Bring down a piece of the sky on this ungrateful place! Conjure forth the wind that rushes between the stars and blow these knaves through their precious walls! Litter the floor with their skeletons as the star wind tears the flesh from their bones!”
Slipping free of the ropes that had restrained him, which Simna’s supple fingers had astutely undone in between beating the herdsman madly about the head and body, Ehomba rose in time to catch the tumbling sword by its haft. There was only one problem with the swordsman’s bold and bloodthirsty admonitions.
It was the wrong sword.
Instead of the sharp blade fashioned of gray sky metal, in his haste and confusion Simna had snatched up the herdsman’s other sword, the one made of bone lined with serrated, triangular sharks’ teeth. A fearsome and efficacious weapon to be sure, but not one that could by any stretch of anyone’s imagination bring down so much as an errant rain cloud. It was a thing of the sea, not of the sky.
Having taken up his own sword subsequent to flinging the weapon to Ehomba, the rueful swordsman realized his mistake. “Hoy, I’m sorry, bruther.” Sword held in both hands, he was backing away from the advancing semicircle of soldiers. A sword was not of much use against pikes, but he was determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. If naught else, at least he would go down with a weapon in his hand and no shackles on his wrists and ankles. They would die like men and not like mad dogs.
“Nothing to be sorry for, friend Simna.” Ehomba held the tooth-lined sword high overhead, its sharpened tip pointed at the tense but unconcerned soldiers. “There are fish everywhere in this place, so what better weapon to fight with than one that owes its edge to the sea?”
“Kill them!” It was the curt voice of Haramos bin Grue, declaiming from behind a line of blue-coated troops. “Kill them now, before he . . . !”
Hidden on his throne, Bewaryn Beckwith could be heard responding querulously, and for the first time, with a hint of suspicion in his voice. “Before he—what, Haramos?”
It was a question Simna ibn Sind was asking silently. Nearby, Ahlitah was awake and roaring, adding to the sense of incipient chaos. Emerging from his gloom, Hunkapa Aub had straightened and was shaking the metal mesh of his netting with terrifying violence.
A blue aurora had enveloped the blade of the sea-bone sword. It was dark as the deep ocean, tinged with green, and smelled of salt. At the sight of it the advancing soldiers halted momentarily. From the dais, their liege’s voice urged them on.
“What are you waiting for?” Bewaryn Beckwith bellowed. “They are only two and you are many. Take them! Alive if possible—otherwise if not.”
One of the two thickly muscled guards who had been duped by Simna stepped forward, holding his heavy sword threateningly out