XI

“So how did things progress?” Yahan asked.

“Arlian tried not to scowl too deeply. “About as well as you’d expect,” he said, looking out of the coach as they headed back to headquarters.

“Maybe next time.”

“Please,” Arlian said. He knew he was being negative, but he felt very negative about this. “If nothing has come of these inquests by now, nothing will. The king’s time is limited. Our only hopes rest on council woman Jorrissiana.”

“We should watch her closely, then.”

“My thoughts exactly. When we get back I want you to fill out an order for more guards and I’ll sign it as soon as you give it to me.”

Yahan, nodded. She was a pretty woman, but not something Arlian mused on, as he was happily married to Mariel, but that didn’t mean he never noticed.

“Are you married?”

Her eyebrows raised. “No, my lord. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “No reason. I just wish to know you better. We do have the time after all.”

“It just hasn’t happened yet. My father has a few eligible bachelor’s in his sights. I’m sure he’ll ask me which one I like best, assuming they pass his measures.”

“I see.”

They turned onto another street. It was the fast street. Here the roads were much wider, to give those on foot extra safety while they walked or came out of their residences.

Arlian almost regretted that they were on this street. He hadn’t had proper rest in days. As if in response to his thoughts and physical state, Yahan said, “You’re tired.”

He nodded quietly.

“My lord, you should go home.”

“I cannot. Too much to do. You know that. You know how bad things are.”

“Yes, but we’ve had a recent spate of good luck, despite Watchman Jorlyn’s death. The fires, Captain Lech’s company, the fires and the council woman.”

“All the more reason to work harder, to take advantages of this situation for the better good.”

“Except for when you collapse and then need three days of bed rest and careful supervision to make sure you don’t run off before you’re fit enough to do so.”

Arlian couldn’t help but smile. “Is that a threat?”

She smiled too. “Absolutely, my lord.”

Sniffing in amusement, Arlian nodded. “Fine. I’ll sort the reports when we get back and then take the night off.”

“You’ll go home,” she insisted.

“Yes.”

He did want to see Mariel. It had been four or five days now. He was so tired he’d lost count. But on each of the mornings, he scratched a few quick words in a letter to her, usually two or three lines, and gave that to a runner. Not a runner from the City Watch. They were indispensible right now.

The coach slowed suddenly, so much so that Mariel fell out of her seat. She’d have smashed into Arlian, but he caught her.

“Whoa!” Koladar called loudly.

“Koladar! What is the matter, man?”

He stepped off the coach.

“What’s happening?”

He leaned toward the window and his eyes widened. It was Koladar. He was lying face down on the street, a hole through his head and a puddle of blood forming.

That was a crossbow bolt wound.

“Shit!”

Yahan glanced about wildly. “What is it?”

“We’re under attack!”

“WHAT?”

Arlian grabbed the shield off the back wall above the leather-cushioned seat and then opened the door. “Stay here!”

He charged out, and a bolt ricocheted off his shield. The man ahead of him lowered his weapon, looked at him, then put it to the ground to crank for another shot.

Arlian charged him and drew his sword with a metallic rasp of crusty blood. When the crossbowman realized what was happened, he dropped the projectile weapon and drew for his short sword, but Arlian was already on him, bringing his blade down over his shoulder, leaving a grouting wound.

The man cried out briefly and collapsed, his leather vest giving him not protection against the razor sharpness of Arlian’s blade.

A woman screamed from the coach.

It was Yahan! Whirling, he found her being pulled out and thrown on the ground by an armored assailant. She tried to get up, but he backhanded her so hard her lip broke and blood spurted onto the street.

Completely stunned, she hardly moved now as Arlian came up short. The man before him was much like the other two mercenaries he had fought and killed in Jorrissiana’s apartments in the High City.

He smirked, looked down at Yahan.

Gods—no!

He brought the point of his sword down—almost casually. Yahan screeched, crying in what Arlian knew was pure agony.

“STOP!”

The bastard before him narrowed his eyes, pulled his blade free, causing Yahan to erupt in new cries.

“Damn you!” Arlian cried. He sprinted forward, and the mercenary stepped over Yahan as two others came out from behind the coach, which was blocked by a wagon.

Arlian saw them, but his sights were on the lead man. “You,” he called, raising his sword and pointing at the man with his finger. “You die for that.”

Chuckling, the mercenary raised his blade, ready for their duel. As his friends fanned out, Arlian walked toward him, at ease, his sword and shield resting at his sides.

When he came close enough for the mercenary to take his first swing, Arlian brought his shield up, deflecting the blow as he simultaneously brought his fist into the mercenaries’ face. The man’s head whipped back, and he stumbled.

Sword fighters rarely expected a punch, and almost let their guard down when you were so close you couldn’t probably get a swing or a stab in.

That’s when the two others came in, one with a shield and short sword, the other with a long sword like the first man Arlian had just gotten a good hit on. He blocked the blow from the man with the shield, came in for a strike, but the man raised his shield in defense. Arlian’s sword glanced off the side, a metallic screech issuing from the contact.

Being close to the man with the shield who had just blocked his attack, Arlian spun on his heal and took several steps back.

The first man came in from his left. Arlian dodged the blow altogether by sidestepping him. Being at his rear side, Arlian hit him on the back of the head with the flat of his sword and he sprawled into the grass.

This seemed to force the other two men to take stock of Arlian’s skills in a fight. They came together, staying abreast of one another so Arlian couldn’t attack just one of them at a time.

This fight just got harder.

But instead of doing what his opponents thought he would, and that would be to back away—to be careful, he lunged forward in an aggressive attack toward the man on the left. His enemy parried the blow, but before the other man could strike with his sword, Arlian lunged toward him, raising his armored vambrace and deflecting the slight attack. Due to Arlian’s close proximity, the force behind the man’s strike was not as powerful as it could have been, and he with his sword arm deflected to the side, Arlian brought his forehead down into the man’s face, his nose making a painful-sounding crack.

As the man who parried his first attack came in for another strike, he sidestepped that blow, the blade lightly glancing of off his shield as Arlian swung his blade high in a horizontal arc that connected with the side of the man’s head. He went to the street in a spray of blood.

“You fucker!”

It was the first man. The one Arlian had hit on the back of the head with the flat of his sword.

“I’m not done killing your fellows yet,” Arlian snarled. He backed toward Yahan, who was moaning with the pain of her stabbed calf. She held her leg and it seemed she was trying to stifle the blood with her sash that she was using as a makeshift tourniquet.

Two down. Two to go.

The man he had cracked against the face had blood dribbling down his chin, his eyes half glazed.

Hearing Arlian’s promise of death, he must have been dishearten, because he shook his head and backed away.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the other man growled. “You run, and you’re dead!”

“No,” he said, touching his chin with his hand, then looking at the blood, his eyes dragging about their little battlefield. “No, to the hells with this.” He turned and ran down the alley where Arlian had killed the crossbowman.

Growling, the mercenary who was still left, the man who had stabbed Yahan, lunged for Arlian with his two-handed sword.

Arlian parried the blade, tried to hit the man with the edge of his shield, which would surely have put a gash through his lip, but he pulled his head back in the last instant, and Arlian missed.

Pain shot through his knee and Arlian stumbled, realizing he had been kicked. Grunting, and wincing against that pain—it hurt, but it wouldn’t put him out of commission—he backed away.

“I’m gonna kill you,” the mercenary said, and then with particular vindictiveness, he added with a jerk of his chin, “And then I’m going to kill her.”

“Then what are you waiting for, fool?”

This seemed to incense the man, and he screamed in rage, raised his sword and charged Arlian. With a quick overhand strike, he came at Arlian with a deathblow, but he parried with his shield and side stepped.

“Fight me, coward!”

Lunging forward again, the mercenary tried a horizontal slash.

That was a mistake.

Arlian bowed below the strike then brought his sword up in a quick half-cut arc that put a small slice on the underside of his opponent’s upper arm. He cried out and staggered forward, turned and gripped the wound with his hand.

Face reddening, he grunted and spittle flew out of his mouth.

Arlian tossed his shield away, made a show of grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands and raising his blade high.

The mercenary, further enraged by his wound, lunged forward—the fool didn’t know when to quit—and came at Arlian with an under-sided arc.

Their blades met and Arlian shunted the other man’s strike to the side, then brought his sword down. He parried, but Arlian didn’t desist his attack, and came at the man with another slash to his side.

That too he parried, but then took Arlian’s boot to his midsection, staggering him. When Arlian came at him with another overhead strike, his enemy shunted his arms to protect himself in a sloppy block that resulted in his inability to stop Arlian from flicking his sword back upward toward his face, his cold steel passing through the man’s cheek.

It was bloody, which resulted in the end of this fight, as the mercenary dropped his sword and grasped his face in a high pitched wail of pain.

After a moment, he managed to flick his eyes up toward Arlian as he held his face with a gloved hand, blood dripping profusely from that wound. With his other hand raised, he called, “Stop! I surrender.”

Arlian raised his blade.

“No, please!”

“Arlian!” Yahan called out to him. “Commander.” The tone in her voice told him he knew better than to execute the man.

Shit.

He flipped his blade to the flat and brought it down on the mercenary’s head, knocking him unconscious. Yahan moaned again, and Arlian ran to her side. “Are you all right?”

“I’m—well I don’t know, my lord.”

Tears were still streaming down her face, but Yahan was doing well not to cry out and sob, which surprised him.

He looked at the wound. It was bad, but didn’t seem like a wound that would prevent her from walking normally again. “We need to get you back to headquarters so Erruna can have a look at you.”

“I didn’t know you could fight like that, my lord,” she said through a grunt of pain. “That was—“

“Hush.”

He looked about. There were some people in the area, shouting and calling for help. One woman peered out her window at what had happened, but otherwise there were no more mercenaries in the area, so he got up and told Yahan to wait while he lead one of the mercenary’s horses to her.

“How did they know to find us here?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

It baffled Arlian.

Unless…

Had it been Sennica? The thought was mad. But who else?

“Here,” he took her under her arms. “Put your hands around my neck.” She did as he instructed and Arlian lifted Yahan up, whereupon she lowered her good leg and stood on it.

“Owe.”

“It’s okay. Now I’m going to lift you, and you need to put your foot in the stirrup.”

She nodded, her tears wet on his cheek.

It was awkward, and after two failed tries, she finally succeeded, and Arlian helped push her into the saddle by way of her backside. There was nothing inappropriate about what he was doing, he reminded himself, then he told her to scoot forward so he could mount the animal behind her.

Thankfully she was a tame horse and not overly large. Once he was atop, Yahan said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Saving me, of course.”

“I saved us both, and I would save you again thanks or not.”

“Still,” she said, “thank you. Now what about him?” She jutted her chin in the direction of the unconscious mercenary.

Yahan’s wound was no simple thing. They didn’t have time to find something to tie up that last mercenary with, and he didn’t want to wait for the Watch, which would be far from here, busy with other matters. “Well I wanted to kill him.”

“My lord! You know that’s not right.”

Indeed, but he had wanted to—for wondering her. And in his haste to get her back to headquarters and a healer, he had forgotten a vital piece of information. “Damn. We need him for questioning.”

It was slow and took a lot of time, but Arlian helped Yahan back off the hose and into the coach. He backed the animals up and turned them around, then went to check on the mercenary.

The man was awake, made to flee, but Arlian put a knick in his calf. Their would-be killer howled as he fell on his knees.

“That will keep you from running off. Now to the coach.”

The mercenary obeyed, crawling on his hands and knees the whole way. Arlian had to hit him a few times with the flat of his sword to get him to obey, and mounting one of the horses took even longer.

They made it back to headquarters without incident.

But what, Arlian wondered, standing in his office study, will they throw at us next? Someone wanted them dead—wanted him dead.

And surely they wanted other important figures in support of Prince Kandrion dead as well.

Perhaps even the prince himself.