Kleesp followed relentlessly. "You'll pay for that," he snarled. Another flurry of lunges and parries—alas, all lunges by Kleesp and parries by Pausert. What else could he do with a tipped sword?
Steadily, the captain was forced back towards the wings. He stumbled over the fallen prop pillar again, and rolled backstage under the curtains.
Kleesp followed instantly, sensing the kill, using his free hand to thrust aside the curtains. He arrived backstage so quickly that the captain was just getting back onto his feet. Kleesp lunged at Pausert. Hard.
Knowing it was useless, Pausert tried to hold him off with the foil, but Kleesp's blade struck the captain neatly on the middle of the left breast.
His powerful lunge also carried Kleesp forward with his full weight pressed against Pausert's foil, which the captain had held up stiffly in that last futile gesture.
The buttoned tip bent, as intended.
The other blade, carefully weakened with an acute-angled cut so it would snap to a sharp point, did not bend at all. It slid with sickening ease right through the ribs and into the chest cavity.
Kleesp looked down, gaping. Blood suddenly gushed out of his open mouth. "You've killed me!" he coughed. The words were spoken more in chagrin than anger.
That was quite understandable, Pausert thought wildly. He didn't know much about the mentality involved, but he was quite sure that dying because you'd grabbed the wrong blade . . . was not going to make for bragging rights in whatever afterlife pirates enjoyed.
Or didn't.
Another cough; another gush of blood. It was obvious the sword had pierced the assassin's heart. Kleesp clawed at the blade, but his eyes were already rolling. Horrified, Pausert released the hilt of the sword.
Some strange last surge of effort kept Kleesp on his feet for a few stumbling backwards steps—just long enough for him to collapse through the curtains and back onto the stage. His impromptu and quite unplanned reentrance produced a veritable hurricane of applause.
Pausert shook his head. And then realized that his troubles were far from over. Something hard and narrow was now pressing into his lower spine. The way something presses which is being made to do so.
"That's an M9 blaster you're feeling," growled a voice in his ear. "Now move—slowly—back onto the stage."
Seeing no alternative, Pausert obeyed.
* * *
As soon as he came through the curtains, Pausert realized that his earlier premonition was quite correct—Kleesp had been no madman, suddenly unhinged. He'd planned everything as part of a coordinated effort. There were three men standing on the stage who constituted no part of the thespian troupe. The captain vaguely recognized two of them—some of the locals hired on by the showboat during its stop at Tornam, the same planet where Vonard Kleesp had joined the company. Four men, in all, counting the one still prodding Pausert forward. And all of them were armed with M9s. Not a handgun any military force would favor, due to its short range, but one that was quite in demand in criminal circles. Whatever that model blaster lacked in range, it made up for in destructive power.
The actors were also on the stage, but they all had their hands raised. And it wasn't just the actors, either. However they'd managed it, Kleesp's cohorts had rounded up Vezzarn as well—along with one of the Sedmons.
"No funny stuff, Pausert," growled the voice in his ear, "or we'll kill all the actors. Starting with the women. Don't think we won't. We're the Agandar's pirates and you know our reputation. Now. We need those two kids also, and then we're all out of here. You figure out how to get them, or we start the killing."
In the odd way that one notices details at this sort of time, Pausert's eyes fell on one of the blaster-holding men on the stage. The one nearest to him, except for the one at his back that he still hadn't seen. Something about the man's stance made it clear that he was now the one in charge. The burly pirate grinned sardonically. "You might have killed the boss, but I guess that just means more money for the rest of us once we get our hands on the Agandar's account. So where are the two witch kids?"
"I really have no idea," said Pausert slowly. His arm was now beginning to hurt. He needed time to think.
He wasn't going to get it.
The pirate turned to one of his associates, and pointed at Hulik. "Shoot her in the head. It'll help his memory."
And then things started happening very fast, and all at once.
Somebody kicked the backstage door off its hinges.
A flat came hissing down onto one of the assassins, knocking him off his feet. Unseen hands—or vatch ones—had apparently untied a rope.
A whistle like a punch on the jaw felled another, the pirate leader.
One Sedmon came through the door he'd just kicked in. The other, the one already on the stage, dove at the pirate who was bringing his blaster to bear on Hulik. He never would have made it in time, except that something—a pen? Pausert couldn't quite tell—went sailing from Vezzarn's hand and struck the assassin. Whatever it was, it was sharp enough to gash the man's face and completely distract him. An instant later, the Sedmon's tackle had the pirate on the floor and the two of them fell to wrestling for control of the weapon.
That left the still-unseen man holding the blaster against Pausert's spine. Old naval training came back to the captain. Holding a weapon pressed directly against a trained fighter is the trick of an amateur—or a thug grown overconfident. A quick twist and an elbow strike knocked the weapon aside. The same elbow came back up in a forearm smash to the jaw that drove the man backward. The captain followed, raising his hand for a very nasty strike at the throat.
The strike never landed. The fellow, already staggering, flipped onto his back as if he'd tripped over something unseen. The unseen something emitted a very Goth-like "Ow!" and the assassin's head made an even louder "thunk!" as it smashed against the floor of the stage.
Pausert pounced on him. He hit the man once, with his fist. A nasty temple smash. But he did so more out of anger and general principle than from any real need. The fellow had obviously been knocked cold from the impact of his head against the stage.
The captain pried the blaster out of a limp hand and rose to his feet, ready to use it. But—
There was no need.
Vezzarn had apparently joined the Sedmon's tackle on the man who started to shoot Hulik. Between the two of them . . . especially since Vezzarn had retrieved whatever missile he'd thrown so accurately and had then used it to . . .
Pausert winced. He winced again when he caught sight of the pirate who'd been floored by the falling flat. In and of itself, the flat hadn't done much more than knock the man down. What had kept him down thereafter was Pul's jaws, clamped on his leg.
Well. At one time, clamped on his leg. Right now the leg itself was no longer attached. Mentally, the captain shrugged. If the thug didn't bleed to death before medical help arrived, modern prosthetics were quite miraculous. And although Pausert wasn't any more familiar with the ethos of maximum security prisons than he was of the pecking order in the pirate afterworld, he suspected that "Stumpy" was a better monicker than "the Goof Who Picked Up The Wrong Sword."
Not that he cared anyway. Live by the growl, die by the growl. So be it.
Besides, Pausert had other problems that were far more pressing.
First, the applause from the audience was so deafening he could hardly think. The exuberant miners still thought it was all part of the act. Apparently, they ascribed such minor details as a severed leg and several quarts of spilled blood to "smoke and mirrors."
Secondly, the accolades now showering the stage—no, raining on it—were a positive menace. Gold is heavy, even in small pouches. Pausert found himself wondering for a moment if he and his fellow thespians were about to undergo an ancient form of death by torture. "Stoning," he thought it was called.