Wirikidor, now that it was free again, seemed to be enjoying itself. It flashed brilliantly in the lamplight as it swept back and forth, parrying attacks from both thieves. Valder made no attempt to direct it; his hand went where the sword chose to go.
The character of the fight quickly altered; rather than two swordsmen bearing down on a mere innkeeper, it became two swordsmen fighting for their lives against a supernatural fury.
Hanner’s guard slipped for an instant; Wirikidor cut his throat open. A return slice removed his head entirely, spraying blood in all directions.
With that, Wirikidor lost all interest, and Valder found himself in a duel to the death with a swordsman smaller than himself but far more skilled and obviously much more practiced, not to mention partly armored. Realization of his peril helped him to ignore the intense pain in his side as he concentrated on parrying a new attack.
The small thief, noticing a change, grinned. “You’re getting tired, innkeeper — or has the sword’s magic been used up?”
Valder tried a bluff. “Nothing’s used up, thief,” he said. “I just thought you might prefer to live. Go now, and I won’t kill you. Your partner’s dead; isn’t that enough?”
“Hanner’s dead?” In the intensity of his concentration on the fight the thief had failed to comprehend that. He glanced at his comrade’s headless corpse and was obviously shaken by what he saw.
Valder seized the opportunity and swept Wirikidor in under the other man’s guard, aiming just below the breastplate.
What should have been a killing stroke was easily deflected as the man recovered himself and made a swift downward parry. Still, the attack disconcerted him, and he stepped back.
Valder pressed his advantage, but the thief met his onslaught easily. Even so, Valder noticed that the man was no longer taking the offensive, but only defending himself.
“I’m holding the sword back,” Valder lied. “But the demon in the steel is getting stronger. I don’t like feeding it more than one soul at a time; it might get too strong someday. Go now, while I can still control it.” He was grateful for the popularity of legends about vampiric swords.
The thief glanced at Wirikidor, then at the body on the floor, and his nerve broke. “Keep it away from me!” he screamed as he turned and ran for the door.
Valder let him go, but quickly wiped Wirikidor’s blade on Hanner’s tunic, then picked the scabbard up off the floor and sheathed the weapon. If the thief returned, he wanted to be able to draw the sword again and use its magic.
The thief showed no sign of returning. The pain in his side was growing with every movement, but Valder made it across the room and slammed the door that the fleeing man had left standing open. He leaned against it, tempted just to slide down into oblivion on the floor, but he forced imself to pull off his tunic and wrap it around himself, forming a makeshift bandage over the wound. That done, he looked around the room, at the broken wires on the pegs above the mantel, at the severed head rolled into one corner, at the lifeless corpse by the kitchen door, and at the blood, Hanner’s and his own, that was spattered everywhere. He looked down at the sheathed sword he held.
“Damn that hermit,” he said.
Then he fainted.
CHAPTER 24
The door hit him in the side and he awoke in agony. He rolled over, groaning, away from the door and whatever was pushing in against it.
Tandellin slipped through the opening and looked down to see what was blocking him.
“Gods!” he said. “What happened?” He bent down to try and help.
Valder looked up at him and feebly waved him away. “I’ll be all right, I think,” he said. “I need something to drink.”
“Right,” Tandellin said, “I’ll get you some ale.” He looked up to see where the nearest keg might be, and for the first time noticed the rest of the room.
“Gods!” he said again and then decided that that wasn’t strong enough. “By all the gods in the sky, sea, and earth, Valder, what happened here?”
“Ale,” Valder said. He did not feel up to explaining yet.
“Oh, yes,” Tandellin agreed. He stood and headed for the kitchen, making a careful detour around Hanner’s corpse and the surrounding pool of blood. Valder sank back and closed his eyes until he heard footsteps returning. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up, with his back to the wall. After a brief struggle, he managed it and accepted the mug Tandellin offered.
The ale helped. After he drank it, his throat no longer seemed to be stuffed with felt and his breath was no longer actively painful, if he kept it shallow. His side was still roaring with pain, and his head throbbed, but he felt better.
“More,” he said, holding out the mug.
Tandellin fetched more.
After that, Valder felt almost human again. He arranged himself more comfortably against the wall. “Know any healing spells?” he asked.
Tandellin shook his head.
“Know any good wizards who might? Or witches, or theurgists?”
“I can find someone — but healing spells are expensive.”
“I have money,” Valder said. “That’s not a problem.”
“You weren’t robbed? There was just the one man?”
“There were two, but the other one ran. I don’t think he took anything, unless he sneaked in the back way while I was unconscious, and I doubt that he did that, because, in that case, he would have tried to finish me off.”
“Oh. Well, you certainly took care of that one; his head’s clean off. Was he the one who wounded you?”
“I know his head is off, Tan; I’m the one who took it off, remember? And it was the other one who cut me; they both attacked at once.”
“Oh,” Tandellin said again. “How sporting. What should we do with this one? We can’t just leave him there.”
“Of course not. Look, get me another mug of ale and see if there’s something I can eat cold, and then you can start cleaning up. I think we can bury him out back; I don’t want to take the trouble and the wood to build a proper pyre. I’m not very concerned about seeing that his soul is freed to the gods, if you see what I mean.” He glanced down at Wirikidor, lying innocuously at his side, and a thought struck him.
“Leave the head, though. I think we’ll put that on a pike out front, to discourage any other thieves who get ideas about this place.” He had not seen a head on a pike in years, not since he was a boy, but he thought it would make for a fine warning.
“We’ll probably have to sand down that floor to get the bloodstains off,” Tandellin remarked.
“Might be easier just to replace the boards, or paint over them,” Valder suggested.
The door behind him opened again, admitting Sarai. As was her custom, she had arrived later than Tandellin because she took charge of feeding their daughter, Sarai the Younger, before leaving home.
She looked down at Valder, sitting on the floor bare-chested with the bloodstained remnants of his tunic wrapped about his middle, then looked around the room, taking in the headless corpse, the spattered blood, and the general mess.
“I take it you had a rough night,” she said.
Valder stared up at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. The laughter was cut short by renewed pain in his side, but he smiled up at her and said, “You could say that, yes.”
After that, his problems somehow seemed less serious. He pulled himself up into a chair and supervised the cleaning up, the disposal of Hanner’s body, and the disposition of the head. No pikes could be found anywhere in the inn, but Tandellin improvised one from a boathook from the landing and set it up outside, near enough that its connection with the inn would be apparent, but far enough away that odor would not be a problem. Below the head he tacked up a sign that read, “THIEF,” in large black runes, in case anyone might miss the point.