Ken Hood - Demon Knight

Calm! Stay calm! There must be a way out of this situation. All it needed was a little thought. (So why were her teeth rattling?) She still had her ring. No harm could come to her while she wore her ring, but it could not help her find her way home. Even if she knew no Italian, there must be someone around who understood one of the languages she could speak. But she did not know the name of the street she wanted, nor what the house looked like from the front. Fool, fool, fool! Shivering in the cool air, she left the piazza and plunged into the ants' nest of alleys — smelly, deserted, and pitch-black. She had come downhill, so she went uphill, half-running, half-staggering, heart thumping in her throat. Every road looked like every other. Here and there, a public-spirited householder maintained a lantern beside his door, but the gaps between were long and dark.

Hearing a movement behind her, she glanced back, saw nothing, and began to run anyway. There was a lantern ahead, but before she reached it three men emerged out of the shadows, obviously menacing. She turned on the spot, saw three more coming behind her. She screamed. Rough hands grabbed her. She scratched, kicked, and bit down on a set of foultasting fingers. Their owner said, "Bitch!" and backhanded her across the mouth. Very hard. Her head shot back as if it had been knocked right off, and she sagged and fell limply into thick, powerful arms. She tasted blood. She was giddy. She was about to vomit from terror. The ring? What had gone wrong with her ring?

Feet flailing on the greasy cobbles, she was dragged along to the light. Nails clawed away her mask.

"That's her!"

"Sure?"

"Yes! Bring her."

She opened her mouth to scream again, and the cloth of her mask was thrust into it. Two of her captors began running her along the road, back the way she had come, each pulling an arm. She stumbled, lost a shoe, and they held her up, still running. Six men, all masked for Carnival, but not true merrymakers, not drunk. There had to be some mistake! How could it possibly be she they wanted? But they had spoken in English.

A voice shouted: "Stop!"

Another man came running after them, and when he passed under the lantern, its light flashed on a drawn sword. The kidnappers dragged blades out of scabbards. Her left wrist was released as that man jumped into the fray. One against five.

A terrible scream. Four.

"Kill him!" shouted the man holding her, his fingers digging into her arm.

She kicked, squirmed, and beat at him with her free hand. He shook her until she fell to her knees, expecting her shoulder to break. Metal rang and clashed in the night. The newcomer whirled like smoke between the swords, living a charmed life, dancing with death. A howl of pain meant another one down — three left! But the odds were too great. He was retreating before the assault.

Then… it wasn't possible! The stranger lit up with a golden glow of his own, brighter than the lantern, illuminating the shuttered windows and doorways, the staircases and balconies. He blazed like a golden sun, and the kidnappers wailed as they realized that they were fighting gramarye. The one holding her threw her to the ground and began waving his arms and shouting. His companions fled from the man of fire with the molten blade. Was her ring working at last? It hadn't saved her from the punch that still throbbed through her head, puffing out her lip like a melon. She pulled the rag from her mouth and began to rise, hoping she could make a run for it, even with only one shoe…

More gramarye, more conjuration! A thing like an ape or a bear — something huge and pale-furred — loomed up at the rescuer's back, twice his height. His own light reflected in its eyes, on great fangs, on claws like daggers. Sensing it, he glanced back and ducked just in time as it swung a taloned paw at his head. Then he sprinted toward Lisa, sweeping the last two assailants aside with his sword. Roaring, the demon lumbered after him.

Her rescuer jabbered some Italian and grabbed her wrist with a hand that should have been fiery hot but instead felt cool and dry. He turned to face the monster, raising his sword in hopeless defiance.

Flick!

The street, the demon, the attackers, the dark… all gone.

She was standing on a thick rug in a room lit by three or four candles. Her savior was still holding her arm and extending his blood-streaked sword to meet a danger that had now vanished. He no longer glowed. He said, "Ha!" in a satisfied tone and turned to her, lowering his sword. Only a very potent hexer could burn in the dark with cold fire and evade demons and conjure her here to this palatial chamber of gilt furniture, frescoes on the walls, crystal and fine porcelain, thick rugs underfoot, and an enormous bed with its curtains open — and now his dark eyes glittered through the holes in his mask as he inspected his catch.

Lisa fainted into his arms.

Back in Florence, Toby Longdirk was attending the Marradi Carnival Ball, although he would rather have fought a squadron of landsknechte single-handed. A man who had been reared in a one-room hovel did not belong amid such grandeur. Standing beside Don Ramon in a reception line that wound among statues of bronze and marble across the grand courtyard, a hundred guests, with more still arriving, lined up to meet their host and hostess, he fidgeted and squirmed and kept wondering if he had forgotten to lace up his hose.

Yet his gilt-edged invitation would have fetched a hundred florins at public auction, because Pietro Marradi's hospitality was legendary, and this was the first grand function he had sponsored since the death of his wife. The Magnificent was the richest man in Italy — probably in all Europe since Nevil had devastated most of it — a celebrated patron of the arts and a major poet in his own right. His palace was a treasure chest.

More than the grandeur was bothering Toby. Florence was a very beautiful city, but all cities were dangerous for him. In some dark corner of his mind he was conscious of the tutelary in its great sanctuary, only two streets away, and also of many lesser spirits in lesser sanctuaries. They were watching him, ready to strike if the hob escaped from his control for an instant.

The line shuffled forward, ever closer to the Magnificent.

"A moneylender!" the don sneered, not quite quietly enough. "A common draper! One inflicts irreparable injury upon one's honor by gracing his board." Don Ramon de Nuñez y Pardo could trace his excruciatingly elongated pedigree from the Emperor Romulus Augustulus. Toby Longdirk had been fathered by a committee of English fusiliers.

"Lunch is lunch," he said philosophically.

"It will be a miracle if we complete the evening without anyone being hexed, poisoned, or stilettoed."

True enough. And although Don Ramon thoroughly despised the likes of the Magnificent, he was quite willing to enjoy his party. Toby would endure it only because he knew something important was going to happen during the course of the night.

He shivered, for the air was cool, and he felt naked without cloak or jerkin. His multicolored hose clung tight as paint, but his waist-length doublet hung open at the neck to display the embroidery on his shirt. His face was razored smooth as porcelain, his hair hung to his shoulders under a hat like a mixing bowl with a brim. This was fashion. His tastes in clothes — now that he could afford to have taste — was naturally conservative, for no one his size needed to draw attention to himself, and yet this outrageous outfit had cost more money than an honest man earned in a year. Over the tailor's tears, Toby had insisted on subdued greens and grays instead of reds and mauves, but he had lost the rest of the arguments. Hip-length tunics were for the middle-aged and cloaks for the elderly, the tailor had maintained, and messer must not conceal such magnificent thighs, for which most young gallants would cheerfully execute their grandmothers with blunt spades. He had gone on to enthuse about Toby's calves and shoulders until Toby threatened to ram a bolt of Genoese silk down his throat.