Steven Brust - Jhereg

And, at that moment, Cawti, my wife, who had once been called “The Dagger of the Jhereg,” struck. Silently, swiftly, and with perfect accuracy.

I don’t think anyone else in the room would have seen it even if they hadn’t all been busy staring at Aliera, who was waving Pathfinder around drunkenly over her head. But one of the two fallen bodyguards, as he tried to pick himself up, tried to cry out, found that he no longer had a larynx to do it with, and fell back.

And then I felt a tingling sensation as Daymar’s spell took effect. Daymar threw his second spell just as quickly, and the dead bodyguard became invisible.

I stood up in his place. I matched paces with my “partner,” but we saw we couldn’t get there in time. I strongly suspect that the other fellow was a great deal more disturbed by this than I was.

Mellar also realized that we would be too late to save him. He now had two choices: he could allow Aliera to kill him, thus dying amid the ruins of three hundred or more years of planning, or he could fight Aliera.

His sword was out in a flash, and he took his guard position as Aliera swayed toward him. He certainly knew by now that he was going to have to kill her, if he could. His mind, I knew, would be working hard now; planning his blow, estimating her timing, and realizing gratefully that he could kill her without making it permanent if he was careful. He had to make sure that she died, but he must avoid any blow to the head.

He fell back a step. “My lady, you’re drunk—” he began, but Aliera struck before he could finish. Pathfinder swung in a tight arc, straight for the right side of his head. If he’d been any slower, or the attack had been any more difficult to parry, it would have all been over for Mellar right there. But he made the obvious parry, and Aliera stepped in to bind.

He was too good a swordsman to miss the obvious opening, and he didn’t. The back of my mind noted that he did, indeed, have a spring mechanism for his left sleeve dagger.

There was a flash of motion by his left hand, and his dagger caught her in the abdomen.

He must have realized, even before it struck her, that something was wrong. As it hit, I could feel within my mind the sentience that identifies a Morganti weapon.

Aliera screamed. It may or may not have been genuine, but it was one of the most horrendous screams I have ever heard. I shuddered to hear it, and to see the look on her face as the soul-eating blade entered her body. Mellar moved forward and tried vainly to draw it out, but its own power held it in as Aliera slumped to the floor, her screams dying away. The blade came free in Mellar’s hand.

There was a moment of silence, and lack of motion. Mellar stared down at the knife. The other bodyguard and I stood next to him, frozen, as everyone else. Realization grew in Mellar that he had just thrown away any claim to protection he could have had from Morrolan. Anyone could kill him now, with no recriminations. He would be feeling his whole plan falling into pieces, and, no doubt, could only think of one thing: escape. Try to get out of this mess and come up with something else.

And, in this moment of weakness, of near panic, the final stroke came, administered by Daymar, to complete his feeling of disorientation and push him over the edge.

Mellar felt the mind-probe hit and cried out. I didn’t know at that time whether he was sufficiently disoriented that his mental defenses were down. The mind-probe might have worked, or might have failed, but it worked as far as I was concerned: Mellar turned to me. “Get us out of here!” he yelled. It was unfortunate that he chose to look at me instead of the other bodyguard, but I had known that it could happen.

I didn’t look back at him; just stared straight ahead. He saw, no doubt, the stunned and stupefied expression I was wearing. I heard the unmistakable note of panic in his voice, now, as he turned to the other bodyguard. The crowd was beginning to react, and I sincerely hoped that Sethra the Younger or the Necromancer didn’t get to him before we were able to get out of here.

“Move!” he said to the other bodyguard. “Get us out!”

At that moment, I think, something must have clicked in him, and he turned back to me, his eyes growing wider still. Either Daymar’s spell was fading so I no longer looked like the bodyguard I was imitating, or he noticed a mannerism that I didn’t perform right. He was backing away from me as the walls vanished around us.

As best I could, I ignored the nausea that accompanied the teleport and made a fast decision.

If he hadn’t realized that something was wrong, if he had happened to turn to the other one first, there would have been no problem. I would have simply killed him and finished off the bodyguard as best I could. Now, however, it was different.

I had time to take out either Mellar, or the other bodyguard, but I couldn’t get both before they got in a cut or two at me. Which one should I go for?

The bodyguard would be setting up a teleport block and a spell to prevent tracing, while Mellar had already drawn his blade. Also, Mellar was closer.

However, I had to make sure that Mellar was killed permanently. As I’ve said, it is no easy thing to kill someone in such a way that he can’t be revivified. With him ready and facing me, it wouldn’t be as easy as it would have been if I’d had a free shot at the back of his head. What if I took him out, but wasn’t able to make it permanent? And then the bodyguard were to nail me? The latter would just teleport again with Mellar’s body, and get him brought back at his leisure. If I went for the guard, I could take the time and do a thorough job on Mellar, and not have to worry about Mellar skipping off on me.

What decided me, however, was the fact that the bodyguard was a sorcerer. That gave him a bigger advantage over me in this situation than I liked.

I didn’t stop to think about any of this; it just flashed through my mind as I moved.

I threw myself backward, and, as my right hand went for my blade, my left hand found three poison darts. I flipped them toward the bodyguard and mentally recited a short prayer to Verra.

Mellar’s first swing, which occurred just about then, missed; I had managed to get just out of range. Gods! He was strong! I was on the ground by then, but I had my rapier out. I rolled to my left and came up . . .

. . . in time to parry, just barely, a cut that would have split my skull open. My arm rang from the blow of his heavier sword, and I heard the welcome sound of a body falling off to my left. The bodyguard was out of it, at least. Thank you, Verra.

At that point I first became aware of my surroundings. We were outside, in a jungle area. That would put us somewhere to the west of Adrilankha, which meant at least three hundred miles from Castle Black. They weren’t going to be able to trace the teleport in time to help me, then; not if the sorcerer/bodyguard had been able to get his spell off. I would have to assume that I was on my own.

Mellar struck again. I fell back as fast as I could, hoping like Hell that there was no obstruction behind me. At the best of times, I was nowhere near as good a fighter as Mellar, and at this moment my stomach was churning and it was taking a great deal of effort just to keep my eyes focused on him. On the other hand, an inferior swordsman can hold off a superior swordsman for quite a while, as long as he can keep retreating. I could only hope that he would let up enough to give me a chance to throw my dagger at him, and that I was able to hit him with it—without being nailed at the same time. At that moment, I would have let him get through to me if I could have been sure of doing a complete job on him in exchange. I looked for the chance, in fact.