The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

“Clear a space! Stevanas—make some room!” Isen swung his sword in wide and dangerous circles.

“Wait! Get this thing off me first!” I tugged ineffectually at the mask, the words emerging as gurgles. A moment later I realized I was holding a sharp edge and with great relief turned it against the straps. Unfortunately it didn’t seem possible to hold the sword far enough away to get the point to my face. I tried instead to saw at the straps with the length of the blade but they were so tight I couldn’t get fingers beneath them, and so bedded into my flesh that cutting away at them blind and clumsy would inflict horrible wounds. Seeing Isen turn my way and knowing he intended to inflict rather more fatal injuries on me I started to cut at the most prominent strap, albeit somewhat tentatively. It hurt.

The highborn, barking as highborn are trained to, made a hole in the crowd quick enough. The onlookers were eager to see a show in any event and keen to help.

“Defend yourself, man!” Isen stepped toward me, his sword leading the way, point held steady and level with my heart.

“Stop!” I yelled. “I’m being held prisoner!” Or more accurately, “Gogh! Mmm meen meld mimimer!” My fingers were slick with blood or sweat or both but the strap seemed to be giving.

“It’s better I don’t have to listen to your lies, Prince Jalan, and better you don’t have to shame yourself before these witnesses with excuses for your cowardice.” The count’s eyes burned with an insanity I couldn’t quite place . . . perhaps three parts homicide and two parts absolute certainty that every word ever to pass his lips was God’s own truth. “Have at you!”

“I’m not going to fight you!”—“Mmm mot mowing moo migh moo!” I resolved to make no move to defend myself and to rely instead on the count’s honour to save me, or at least his fear of having his honour called into question.

The first strap gave. And with that he lunged.

Despite my conviction that I wasn’t going to react I found myself leaping back and swinging my sword to deflect his. Whether it had been an earnest attempt on my life or a ruse to goad me into action I couldn’t tell, but my body had made the decision for me and now he attacked with a flurry of blows very definitely intended to disembowel me.

My sword arm moved instinctively, following the patterns beaten into it over the course of so many long and miserable hours training in the weaponmaster’s halls at Grandmother’s insistence. The clash of steel on steel is always frighteningly loud and a helpful hint of the agony that being hit will involve is transmitted through the hilt, driving shards of pain through palm and wrist and making you want nothing more than to drop the damn sword.

For the first . . . well it felt like an hour but must have been considerably less than a minute, the tempo of Isen’s attack left no fragment of a second spare for thinking. Instinct and training actually served me pretty well. I defended well though made no counter-attacks. The idea of deliberately slicing my sword into flesh—even the flesh of an odious dwarf like Count Isen—turned my stomach. It’s not any sort of compassion—I’m just squeamish. I couldn’t even contemplate it. Like sticking a needle into my own eye I found it something I just couldn’t bring myself to try. Besides—I was busy.

We clashed our way in mostly one direction, me backing, scattering the crowd. Isen advancing with a small grimace of satisfaction on his face as he cut and thrust. It felt like battling someone standing in a hole, an uncomfortable sensation that left me worrying about a different set of vital organs than usual. I left the road, nearly tripping in the ditch and retreated across uneven ground, scrub catching at my feet.

All this for Sharal DeVeer’s honour? For bedroom antics that happened long before he’d laid an eye on her . . . or perhaps the old goat had laid both eyes on her years back and had simply been waiting for her hand to be old enough for his ring, or maybe he’d had to wait for her over-protective father to die before forging a marriage deal with the new and less scrupulous Lord DeVeer?

Instinct and training served me well and it wasn’t until the raw terror of it all caught up with me that my mind started interjecting and causing mistakes. The tip of Isen’s blade scored a hot red line across my shoulder. It wasn’t pain so much as shock . . . and horror. I knocked his sword up, sprang back, turned on a heel and ran flat out for the trees.

The surprise of it gave me a good head-start. I’d opened a lead of twenty yards before Count Isen’s roar of disbelief caught up with me. I could hear the pursuit begin before I made it halfway to the tree-line but few men are gifted with my particular turn of speed and none of those I’d venture to say stood eye to eye with little Isen.