The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [84]
The fourth man announced himself in a huff of breath; Aspar spun to find him charging, wielding a broadsword. Aspar’s knees went wobbly, and he felt as if there were nettles in his lungs. The feeling was familiar, like when the greffyn had looked at him the first time.
Answers that, he thought. Poison.
A smart man with a sword ought to be able to kill a man with a dirk. This one, fortunately, didn’t seem too smart. He had his weapon lifted for an overhead cut; Aspar feinted as if he were desperately leaping inside—an impossibility given the distance—and the fellow obliged by slashing hard and fast.
Aspar checked back, however, not actually coming into range, and as the whirling sword swept past on its way to the ground with too much momentum to reverse, he did leap in, catching the wielding arm with his left hand and driving his dirk deep into the man’s groin, just to the left of his iron codpiece. The man gagged and stumbled backward, rowing the air with his arms to keep from falling, color draining from his face.
Aspar heard a choking sound at his back and spun unsteadily, only to find the first Sefry who had taken a shot at him staring in surprise. He had a short sword, but even as Aspar watched, it dropped from his fingers and he sank to his knees.
About ten kingsyards behind him, Winna grimly lowered her bow. She was looking pale, whether from poison or from nerves he wasn’t sure.
Wonderful.
He could feel the fever burning in him now. Already he was nearly too weak to hold the dirk.
He forced himself to walk the round, though, making sure his foes were dead—all but one, the first one he had shot. The man was crawling across the ground, holding his arm and whimpering. When he saw Aspar coming, he tried to crawl faster. He already was weeping, and now his tears began to flow more freely.
“Please,” he gasped, “please.”
“Winna,” Aspar called. “Search the other bodies for anything unusual. Remember the stuff Mother Gastya gave me? Anything like that.”
He put his boot on the man’s neck.
“Good morning,” he said, trying to sound steadier than he was.
“I don’t want to die,” the man whimpered.
“Raiht,” Aspar said. “Neither do I, yah? An’ more, I don’t want my lovely lass here to die. But we’re going to, aren’t we, because we’ve stepped in the path of this damned thing Fend conjured up. Now, all of your friends, I’ve sent them to Grim for his morning meal, and they’re callin’ for you, across the river. I can pitch you over there good and quick just by pushing this knife up into the bottom of your head.” He knelt and thrust his fingers into the place where spine met skull. The man screamed, and Aspar smelled something foul.
“Feel that?” he said. “There’s a hole there. Knife goes in as easy as into butter. But I don’t have to do that. That wound in your arm isn’t serious, and you could crawl off to the Midenlands, find a nice woman, and churn butter for the rest of your life. But first you have to make sure I don’t die and my friend doesn’t die.”
“Fend will kill me.”
Aspar laughed. “Now that’s just silly. You don’t help me, and you’ll be mostly maggots before Fend even knows what happened to you.”
“Yah,” the man said miserably. “There is some medicine. Raff has it on him, in a blue bottle. One drink a day, as much as would go in a little spoon. But you have to leave me some.”
“Do I?”
“Because I’ll die, anyway,” the man explained. “The medicine doesn’t stop the poison; it just slows it down. Stop taking it for a few days and you’re just as dead as you would have been.”
“Really. And what kind of fool—hah. I see it now. Fend didn’t tell you that until it was too late, did he?”
“No. But he has the antidote. When we’re finished, he was going to give it to us.”
“I see.” He lifted his head with great difficulty. “Winna? It’s in a blue bottle.”
“I’ve got that,” she called back.
“Bring it here.”
He set the point of his knife against the man’s head.
A moment later Winna fell to her knees beside him. Her eyes were red, and her