The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [76]
“Hercule—” The blades rang louder behind her.
“Do it.”
She pushed under him. It was very difficult, with her whole body shivering so violently. Her fingers felt the grip of the pistol, but she could not make them close. Something else seemed to snap in her, and she fell across him.
His eyes had a mild look. “It doesn't hurt,” he said wonderingly. “You remember when we first met? I remember when I first saw you. You don't, I know. It was when you first came to Versailles, as the queen's secretary. You were so beautiful and, I remember thinking, alive. A secret sort of life, a hidden life, that I fancied only I could see.” His eyes went wide. “That hurt,” he murmured. She couldn't tell if he meant the memory or the heart she felt slowing in his breast.
“Have you got the gun?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied.
“Shoot the bastard, then, for he'll beat Crecy.”
She turned her head and saw it was the truth. Crecy was still going, but she bled from assorted cuts, and the point of her weapon kept dropping. Oliver, on the other hand, looked warily confident. She tried for the gun again.
“My children will need taking care of,” Hercule said.
“Live and care for them, then.”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course, that is the perfect solution. But if I do not, will you?”
“Yes. But you will not abandon me, Hercule d'Argenson. I forbid it.”
“I remain yours, of course,” he said. Then his eyes went dull, and he quivered, and was dead.
She may have shrieked or cried. Afterward, she could never remember—she would remember only the feel of his heart's last feeble thump, of knowing that once again, nothing would ever be the same.
And then she remembered the cold, like a breath of Siberian air. Hercule was dead, and she would follow him soon, for the little strength she had was leaking away. She remembered them saying she had lost much blood. Veronique was going to die for nothing. Hercule had died for nothing.
Crecy cursed as her feet sucked from the mud too slowly. Oliver's saber hammered down, and though she parried, the force of his vicious moulinet drove her own sword into her forehead. She ducked and cut viciously at his legs, but he leapt back.
Crecy straightened, and they circled each other warily, Crecy wiping blood away from her eyes. In the near darkness, her forehead looked black with it.
“Yes, you've gotten slower, and weaker,” Oliver remarked. “Time was you might have beaten me.”
Crecy didn't answer, but lurched forward. Oliver parried the attack easily, feinted a cut at her head, followed with a slash at her sword wrist. The basket hilt caught it, but she grunted and retreated, her weapon arm hanging at her side.
Then Oliver did something strange. His eyes flashed red, and a malakus appeared over his shoulder; with a snarl he turned his back on Crecy and leapt at Adrienne.
It caught Crecy by surprise. With a choked curse of dismay she sprang to interpose herself. It was clear she would never make it.
Adrienne watched the blade descend as if in a dream.
A musket roared from a few yards away, and Oliver gasped and spun, then recovered. With what momentum he had left, he lunged into the woods, followed by three more bullets, and an instant later by the dark figures of men. She had an impression of painted faces, of hard, dark bodies. Then they were gone, too.
Crecy pointed her sword at something behind Adrienne. “Stay away from her.”
“Lay down your sword or die,” someone said in oddly accented but comprehensible French.
“I have to sit down.” Franklin grunted. “I really do.”
Lenka drew a pistol from her belt with her free hand. Aiming it carefully at the Russian, she then sheathed her sword.
“Won't you introduce me to your wife, Benjamin?” Vasilisa asked, her voice perfectly composed.
“It appears to me,” Franklin said, aware that his voice was rather strained, “that you have already met.”
“I met a Roberto de Tomole,” Vasilisa noted.
“Ah, Vasilisa Karevna,