Gaunt had ducked to the right, just inside the doorway. Maggs only saw him at the very last moment. Gaunt had found a workman’s mop, and swung it like a bat of his own. It caught Maggs across the shoulder blades, and the old handle snapped in half, but the force of the blow was sufficient to knock Maggs sprawling onto his hands and knees. The fat plank of wood clattered out of his grip. Maggs tried to grab for it, but Gaunt struck it out of reach with the splintered end of his mop handle. Gaunt brought the mop handle around as a baton, aiming it at Maggs’s head, but Maggs, still on his knees, intercepted it with his right hand, and stopped it dead.
The fever had bred an astonishing power inside Wes Maggs. He only had one hand on the broken handle compared to Gaunt’s two, and he was kneeling where Gaunt was better braced on both feet. With a grunt of exertion, he tore the handle out of Gaunt’s hands.
He rose. Gaunt backed away.
Gaunt expected Maggs to attack him with the mop handle, but Maggs threw the broken shaft aside.
Gaunt saw why. On his hands and knees, Maggs had found a better weapon. He had found the damogaur’s soot-caked rite knife. It had fallen out of Gaunt’s coat pocket.
Maggs took a step forwards, holding the jagged knife low and ready. His breathing had become really laboured. He lunged, and Gaunt jumped back. Maggs lunged again, sweeping the knife around. Gaunt barely avoided the second blow.
The third blow – a vicious, front-on stab – came closest of all. Gaunt had almost run out of space to back up. There was a wall close behind him. Maggs was boxing him in. The ground was uneven. There was no space in which to turn. Gaunt wondered if he could feint left or right. He was fairly certain that the panting, sweating, blood-shot Belladon would be too quick.
He had run out of choices. The only option remaining was the one he wanted to avoid most of all.
He drew his bolt pistol and aimed it at Maggs.
‘Stop it,’ he warned. ‘Stop it, Maggs. Drop the blade and stop this.’
Maggs growled.
‘Don’t make me finish it this way, Wes,’ Gaunt whispered. His finger tensed on the hard curve of the trigger. He wasn’t getting through. He could feel another lunge about to come his way.
There was a loud and dull metallic impact. Maggs swayed, and then collapsed sideways. He hit the ground bonelessly and lay still.
There was an ugly bruise on Doctor Kolding’s temple. He lowered the dented metal bucket he’d swung into the back of Maggs’s head.
‘Are you all right?’ Gaunt asked him.
Kolding didn’t answer.
Gaunt ducked forward and plucked the rite knife out of Maggs’s limp fingers. Maggs was deeply unconscious.
‘We need to tie him up,’ said Gaunt. ‘Throw me that bolt of twine. Over there, doctor.’
As if slightly dazed, Kolding put the dented bucket down, and fetched the twine. Gaunt quickly began to bind Maggs’s wrists together.
‘I thought he’d killed you,’ Gaunt said.
‘He hit me,’ said Kolding. ‘He hit me hard. I’m not a soldier. I don’t know how to fight. Once I went down I decided to stay down for my own good.’
‘That was probably very wise,’ said Gaunt.
‘It doesn’t feel very courageous,’ said Kolding. ‘Not now, and not when I was sixteen.’
‘You saved my life,’ said Gaunt, ‘and for that, and more besides, you have my thanks.’
Kolding pointed at Maggs. ‘He is running an awful fever. I think that may have driven him to this. He was seeing things. They were things that he was evidently scared of.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.
The prisoner looked like an upright corpse. The fever was still upon him, and his breathing was as laboured as Maggs’s. He was leaning in the doorway behind them, holding onto both the torn work curtain and the doorpost for support.
‘You should not be on your feet,’ said Kolding, striding towards him. ‘Help me get him settled again,’ he added, over his shoulder, to Gaunt.
They supported the prisoner and walked him back to the bed that Kolding had set up for him in the adjoining room. The prisoner was leaden and unsteady. There was a sort of diseased smell coming off him that Gaunt did not like at all.
‘He woke me,’ said Mabbon. ‘He woke me from my fever dream, tearing at my throat. He was trying to break my neck.’
‘Don’t waste your strength,’ said Gaunt.
They settled him back. ‘I tried to move. To call out.’
He looked at Kolding, who was preparing another shot from his case.
‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked.
‘You were wounded. We found a doctor to help us,’ said Gaunt.
‘I would have died,’ Mabbon said to Kolding.
‘You may still die,’ Kolding replied tersely. ‘I’ve treated your wound, but you have developed a secondary infection, probably due to the less than ideal circumstances of your post-operative recovery. The fever–’
‘My wound isn’t causing the fever,’ said Mabbon quietly. ‘It’s them.’
Gaunt looked at him.
‘It’s the work of the ones who have been sent to silence me,’ said Mabbon. The spaces between his words were getting longer. ‘They’ve got warpcraft into my blood. Into your man’s blood too, I think.’
‘How?’ Gaunt asked.
‘They have a witch with them,’ Mabbon wheezed, ‘a strong one. She is upon my soul, and she’s calling out to me in my dreams, commanding me to die. I can hear her. She’ll have been in your friend’s dreams too, urging him to kill.’
‘How do we fight this witch?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Do you know?’
‘You must let him rest,’ Kolding insisted.
‘Do you know how to fight the witch?’ Gaunt demanded.
Mabbon Etogaur’s eyes closed, and then flicked back open.
‘She’s wickedly strong,’ he breathed, ‘but I know a trick or two. I was an etogaur in the Pact. Give me that rite knife.’
‘Now wait a minute!’ Kolding exclaimed.
‘Listen to me,’ Mabbon hissed. ‘She’s in my blood. She’s upon my soul. That means this game is close to being over. They know where we are. All the while she’s in my blood, they’ll be able to find us. I need to break that tie, and then we must move to another place.’
‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt asked.
‘I cannot believe you’re even listening to this,’ Kolding exclaimed. ‘The man’s feverish. He’s delusional. What’s more, he–’
‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt snapped.
Mabbon held out his hand. ‘I have to bleed her out of me, and then I have to bleed her out of your friend.’
‘I’m not going to be part of any barbaric ritual,’ Kolding said, but he handed Gaunt a small medicine basin.
Gaunt took the stainless steel bowl from the doctor and walked back to the prisoner. He’d carried Maggs’s bound body through from the other side of the curtain and laid him down beside the etogaur. Maggs was still unconscious, and twitching deliriously in the embrace of a dream that Gaunt had no desire to share.
Gaunt put the basin down and, after a final, thoughtful pause, handed Mabbon the rite knife, handle first.
‘Keep the basin ready,’ said Mabbon, his breath rasping in and out. ‘We mustn’t spill a drop, or leave any they can use.’
Gaunt nodded.
‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’
Gaunt held the basin close. Mabbon opened one of Maggs’s bound hands, held it firmly, and sliced the rite knife’s blade across the palm. Maggs shook.
‘It won’t take much,’ said Mabbon. ‘The witch, she’s monstrously powerful, but to bind into our blood, she has to make a link, you see? For us to be tied to her, she has to be tied to us.’