“Not Ebou Dar, if that’s what you’re thinking, Precious. If one army is out to kill you, then they probably all are, and there are too many soldiers between here and Ebou Dar. But don’t worry: I’ll find some way to get you back safely.”
“So you always. …” Her eyes went past him, widening, and he looked over his shoulder to see seven or eight men round the last bend in the street. Every man had an unsheathed sword in his hand. Their steps quickened at sight of him.
“Run, Tuon!” he shouted, spinning to face their attackers. “Thom, get her away from here!” A knife came into either hand from his sleeves, and he threw them almost as one. The left-hand blade took a graying man in the eye, the right-hand a skinny fellow in the throat. They dropped as if their bones had melted, but before their swords clattered on the paving stones, he had already snatched another pair of knives from his boot tops and was sprinting toward them.
It took them by surprise, losing two of their number so quickly, and him closing the distance instead of trying to flee. But with him so close so quickly, and them jamming against one another on that narrow street, they lost most of the advantage that swords gave them over his knives. Not all, unfortunately. His blades could deflect a sword, but he only bothered when someone drew back for a thrust. In short order he had a fine collection of gashes, across his ribs, on his left thigh, along the right side of his jaw, a cut that would have laid open his throat had he not jerked aside in time. But had he tried to flee, they would have run him through from behind. Alive and bleeding was better than dead.
His hands moved as fast as ever they had, short moves, almost delicate. Flamboyance would have killed him. One knife slipped into a fat man’s heart and out again before the fellow’s knees began to crumple. He sliced inside the elbow of a man built like a blacksmith, who dropped his sword and awkwardly drew his belt knife with his left hand. Mat ignored him; the fellow was already staggering from blood loss before his blade cleared the scabbard. A square-faced man gasped as Mat sliced open the side of his neck. He clapped a hand to the wound, but he only managed to totter back two steps before he fell. As men died, the others gained room, but Mat moved faster still, dancing so that a falling man shielded him from another’s sword while he closed inside the sword-arc of a third. To him, the world consisted of his two knives and the men crowding each other to get at him, and his knives sought the places where men bleed most heavily. Some of those ancient memories came from men who had not been very nice at all.
And then, miracle of miracles, bleeding profusely, but his blood too hot to let him feel the full pain yet, he was facing the last, one he had not noticed before. She was young and slim in a ragged dress, and she might have been pretty had her face been clean, had her teeth not been showing in a rictus snarl. The dagger she was tossing from hand to hand had a double-edged blade twice the length of his hand.
“You can’t hope to finish alone what the others failed in together,” he told her. “Run. I’ll let you go unharmed.”
With a cry like a feral cat, she rushed at him slashing and stabbing wildly. All he could do was dance backwards awkwardly, trying to fend her off. His boot slid in a patch of blood, and as he staggered, he knew he was about to die.
Abruptly Tuon was there, left hand seizing the young woman’s wrist—not the wrist of her knife hand, worse luck—twisting so the arm went stiff and the girl was forced to double over. And then it mattered not at all which hand held her knife, because Tuon’s right hand swept across, bladed like an axe, and struck her throat so hard that he heard the cartilage cracking. Choking, she clutched her ruined throat and sagged to her knees, then fell over still sucking hoarsely for breath.
“I told you to run,” Mat said, not sure which of the two he was addressing.
“You very nearly let her kill you, Toy,” Tuon said severely. “Why?”
“I promised myself I’d never kill another woman,” he said wearily. His blood was beginning to cool, and Light, he hurt! “Looks like I’ve ruined this coat,” he muttered, fingering one of the blood-soaked slashes. The motion brought a wince. When had he been gashed on the left arm?
Her gaze seemed to bore into his skull, and she nodded as if she had come to some conclusion.
Thom and Selucia were standing a little down the street, in front of the reason Tuon was still there, better than half a dozen bodies sprawled on the paving stones. Thom had a knife in either hand and was allowing Selucia to examine a wound on his ribs through the rent in his coat. Oddly, by evidence of the dark glistening patches on his coat, he seemed to have fewer injuries than Mat. Mat wondered whether Tuon had taken part there, too, but he could not see a spot of blood on her anywhere. Selucia had a bloody gash down her left arm, though it appeared not to hinder her.
“I’m an old man,” Thom said suddenly, “and sometimes I imagine I see things that can’t be, but luckily, I always forget them.”
Selucia paused to look up at him coolly. Lady’s maid she might be, but blood seemed not to faze her at all. “And what might you be trying to forget?”
“I can’t recall,” Thom replied. Selucia nodded and went back to examining his wounds.
Mat shook his head. Sometimes he was not entirely sure Thom still had all his wits. For that matter, Selucia seemed a shovel shy of a full load now and then, too.
“This one can’t live to be put to the question.” Tuon drawled, frowning at the woman choking and twitching at her feet, “and she can’t talk if she somehow managed to.” Bending fluidly, she scooped up the woman’s knife and drove it hard beneath the woman’s breastbone. That rasping fight for air went silent; glazing eyes stared up at the narrow strip of sky overhead. “A mercy she did not deserve, but I see no point to needless suffering. I won, Toy.”
“You won? What are you talking about?”
“You used my name before I used yours, so I won.”
Mat whistled faintly through his teeth. Whenever he thought he knew how tough she was, she found a way to show him he did not know the half. If anybody happened to be looking out a window, that stabbing might raise questions with the local magistrate, probably Lord Nathin himself. But there were no faces at any window he could see. People avoided getting embroiled in this sort of thing if they could. For all he knew, any number of porters or barrow-men might have come along during the fight. For a certainty, they would have turned right around again as quickly as they could. Whether any might have gone for Lord Nathin’s guards was another question. Still, he had no fear of Nathin or his magistrate. A pair of men escorting two women did not decide to attack more than a dozen carrying swords. Likely these fellows, and the unfortunate young woman, were
