Three down—two, at least, and the third was tangled up—five to go. The problem now, of course, was disentangling the whip. Normally I can accomplish that with a flick of the wrist, but in this instance the whip was enmeshed with two bodies, one of which was writhing on the floor with a corpse and a table on top of him.
I gave a quick glance at the five men at the other table and decided I had time to kill two birds with one stone. As it were. All five retainers at the far table were still seated, like so many statues. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape, their faces pale. Clearly enough, they had no doubt at all that the ghost of the Sieur was present. If they even noticed the fine spray of flour I was shedding all about, they were too dull-witted to understand what it signified. Or mistook the flour mist, in the flickering light from the fireplace, as a ghostly aura.
I dropped the handle of the whip, knelt, and smote the other lieutenant a mighty blow of my fist. I suspect I broke his jaw. Even if I hadn’t, he’d play no role in the ensuing events—other than being a witness when the servants needed one.
That done, it was the work of only a few seconds to retrieve the whip. By the time I advanced upon the remaining five men, they were finally scrambling to their feet. As I had counted on, their state of drunkenness was impeding their reactions as well as compounding their superstitious horror. One of them, I saw with delight—no, two!—had urinated in their trousers.
There seemed no purpose to varying a successful tune. “Revenge is mine!” I cried, springing toward them. “The Sieur Henri!”
The one closest to me, at my end of the long table, spilled his chair in rising. “Have mercy!” he shrieked, fumbling at his sword.
By then, I had the whip handle in my left hand and the poignard in my right—held by the blade, ready for throwing. For an instant, I hesitated. The man’s throat was unprotected, but made a chancy target. The chest—
I decided that his mangy “armor”—lacquered leather strips, with only a scrap of iron here and there—would pose no obstacle to my heavy and finely-made poignard. Neither would the sternum beyond. Not for someone like me, trained by my uncles.
Nor did it. The poignard’s blade went right through the lot as neatly as you could ask, piercing the heart and not stopping until the hilt struck what was left of the armor. The impact knocked the man flat on his posterior. He sat there, staring at me in shock for a moment. Then, coughed a great deal of blood and collapsed altogether.
Four down, four to go. From here, of course, the enterprise ascended in difficulty. The four survivors were now on their feet, swords in hand. All of them were bellowing with fear, true, but men such as those will react with violence to almost anything. I was counting on their superstitious terror to lessen the odds, and the liquor they’d consumed to dull their alertness—which, judging from the large amounts of said liquids spilling all over the table and floor from upended flagons, was none too “alert.”
Still, there were four of them, one of me, and they were armed and armored. Two of them even had the presence of mind to seize the table and upend it, clearing an open space in which to fight. The girl atop the table leapt off nimbly just as it went over, landing on her feet and scampering aside. I heard her shouting something at her younger sister, but didn’t catch the words.
The first thing to do, needless to say, was to break up the rough “formation” which the four men were taking. As drunk and terrified as they were, they had enough fighting instinct to form a line.
“A maneuver!” I shouted. “Against de Pouilleux? Useless! Revenge is mine!”
To be successful, “maneuvers” presuppose a certain amount of celerity and nimbleness. Neither of which was a strong suit of such fellows—and both of which were a strong suit of mine. (Again, you will recognize, the result of my uncles’ rigorous regimen.)