The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [65]
He dodged my blade, laughed at me and caught me with the dagger, this time on the face.
“Pig!” I growled before I could stop myself. I hadn’t known I was so completely vain. My face, no less. He’d cut it. My face. I felt the blood gushing as it does from face wounds, and I rushed at him again, this time forgetting all the rules of the encounter and thrashing the air with my sword in a fierce crazy series of circles. Then as he parried frantically left and right, I ducked and caught him with the dagger in the belly and ripped upward, stopped by the thick gold-encrusted leather of his belt.
I backed up as he sought to slaughter me with both his weapons, and then he dropped them and grabbed, as men do, for the belching wound.
He fell down on his knees.
“Finish him!” shouted Riccardo. He stood back, a man of honor already. “Finish him now, Amadeo, or I do it. Think what he’s done under this roof.”
I lifted my sword.
The man suddenly grabbed up his own with his bloody hand and flashed it at me, even as he groaned and winced with his pain. He rose up and ran at me in one gesture. I jumped back. He fell to his knees. He was sick and shivering. He dropped the sword, feeling again for his wounded belly. He didn’t die, but he couldn’t fight on.
“Oh, God,” said Riccardo. He clutched his dagger. But he obviously couldn’t bring himself to hack away at the unarmed man.
The Englishman went over on his side. He drew his knees up. He grimaced and he laid his head down on the stone, his face formal as he took a deep breath. He fought terrible pain and the certainty that he would die.
Riccardo stepped forward and laid the tip of his sword on Lord Harlech’s cheek.
“He’s dying, let him die,” I said. But the man continued to breathe.
I wanted to kill him, I really wanted to, but it was impossible to kill someone who lay there so placid and so brave.
His eyes took on a wise, poetical expression. “And so it ends here,” he said in a small voice that perhaps Riccardo didn’t even hear.
“Yes, it ends,” I said. “End it nobly.”
“Amadeo, he slew the two children!” said Riccardo.
“Pick up your dagger, Lord Harlech!” I said. I kicked the weapon at him. I pushed it right at his hand. “Pick it up, Lord Harlech,” I said. The blood was running down my face and down my neck, tickling and sticky. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted more to wipe my own wounds than to bother with him.
He turned over on his back. The blood came out of his mouth and out of his gut. His face was wet and shiny, and his breathing became very labored. He seemed young again, young as he had when he threatened me, an overgrown boy with a big mop of flaming curls.
“Think about me when you begin to sweat, Amadeo,” he said, his voice still small, and now hoarse. “Think about me when you realize that your life, too, is finished.”
“Run him through,” said Riccardo in a whisper. “He could take two days to die with that wound.”
“And you won’t have two days,” said Lord Harlech from the floor, panting, “with the poisoned cuts I gave you. Feel it in your eyes? Your eyes burn, don’t they, Amadeo? The poison goes into the blood, and it strikes the eyes first. Are you dizzy?”
“You bastard,” said Riccardo. He stabbed the man with his rapier right through his tunic, once, twice, then three times. Lord Harlech grimaced. His eyelids fluttered, and out of his mouth came a final gout of blood. He was dead.
“Poison?” I whispered. “Poison on the blade?” Instinctively, I felt my arm where he had cut me. My face, however, bore the deeper wound. “Don’t touch his sword or dagger. Poison!”
“He was lying, come, let me wash you,” said Riccardo. “There’s no time to waste.”
He tried to pull me from the room.
“What are we going to do with him, Riccardo! What can we do! We’re here alone without the Master. There are three dead in this house, maybe more.”
As I spoke I heard steps at both ends of the great room. The little boys were coming