The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [95]
“Who are you?” It was the Bardekian, whispering under his breath, his dark face gray.
“You know.”
She said it as a portentous bluff and nothing more, but Gwin stepped back sharply. Not in fear—she realized suddenly that his mouth was working in honest effort, as if he were desperately trying to remember, that he seemed, in fact, close to tears, as if she had piled shock onto some private grief until he could stand the weight no more. The Bardekian kept looking back and forth between them, his eyes narrow with confusion.
“Gwin, what is all this?” he snarled, and ever so slightly he raised his sword, ever so slightly his shoulders tensed. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve told us the truth, or …”
The Bardekian had his sword in hand, and Gwin’s was in his scabbard, but all at once Gwin moved, steel flashed, there was a grunt and a spurt of blood. The Bardekian swayed, took one step, dropped his sword, and fell face-forward onto the floor. A long dagger smeared with blood in his hand, Gwin spun on his heel and caught Jill’s glance, swung up the dagger, and glared at her over the tip. She went stone-still and stared back into madness.
“I could kill you without half-trying,” he whispered.
“You could—easier than that.”
He smiled and lowered the dagger, but only by a few inches. She felt a trickle of cold sweat run between her breasts and another down her back. Behind him materialized her gray gnome and two purple-and-green fellows, all three of them grinning and dancing as they pointed at the world outside the window. With a wrench of will she looked only at Gwin’s face, but this time he refused to let her look into his eyes.
“You’re beautiful, for a witch,” he remarked, and his voice was so casual it was frightening. “But I know a trick or two against female magicks. You won’t ensorcel me again.”
She heard a sound, a scuff of a boot, maybe, that came from beyond the window, and spoke hurriedly to cover it.
“I never ensorceled you at all. I don’t even know what happened when I looked into your eyes, truly I don’t.”
“Oh, now you’re going to whine and weasel, are you, when I’ve got the better of you?” His grin was terrifying, as cold and rigid as the smirk on a corpse, but he did lower the dagger, holding it about waist-high in a relaxed hand.
“I’m telling you the simple truth. All I know is that I recognized you somehow, from somewhere.”
He threw up his head like a startled horse, the mad grin gone.
“I felt that way about Rhodry, when first I saw him. Do you know where that was? In a stinking tavern in the Bilge in Cerrmor, where Merryc and Baruma had him trapped, like a stag at bay with half a dozen rowdies round him, and he was laughing. One swordsman against six, and he laughed like it was the best jest in the world.” His voice had turned very soft. “It wrung my heart, somehow. Just like you said—somehow, and from somewhere.” Then he shook himself, the dagger flashing up, and grinned again as he took two steps toward her. “Don’t you think I hear them coming, too, girl? Do you think I’m stupid? You’re going to be my shield.”
With his free hand he made a grab toward her shoulder, intending, no doubt, to clutch her in front of him with the knife at her throat. Jill ducked, dropped, twisted as she came up and kicked him full in the stomach. As she came down, she grabbed his free wrist, dropped again, and flung him backwards over her shoulder to slam hard against the wall. His dagger went spinning out of reach. She pulled her own from her shirt, stripped it of the sheath, and dropped her weight to a fighting crouch as he scrambled up, out of breath but not in the least dazed from blows that would have left an ordinary man numb and gasping on the floor. To cover her sudden fear Jill laughed at him.
“I’m not a witch, Gwin, but I could have been an assassin like you.”
He laughed in return, a berserker