So it was no great feat to scamper around them to the left, double up the whip, and then use it two-handed as something of a flexible club to hammer the man closest to me into a state which approximated senselessness. “Turning their flank,” as it were.
My victim seemed a bit shocked by my tactics. Hard to tell, of course. I suspect the man was so stupid that the tactics of a tortoise would have shocked him. In any event, his sentiments were short-lived. A doubled-up bullwhip lashing a man’s arms and face—knocking his sorry excuse for a helmet askew in the process—will daze even a genius. His neck then exposed, I danced back two steps, unfurled the full length of the whip, and cracked it once. The armored tip of the weapon opened his jugular vein as well as a razor could have done it.
From there I was expecting the affair to turn desperate. A whip is a dazzling weapon, true enough, but not really very practical in a melee facing determined opponents. It simply requires too much room, either on a battlefield or—more to the point—in a feasting hall. So I abandoned it, but not before one final lash coiled around one of the retainer’s legs and, with a jerk, upended him on the floor.
Two left, now, and a third out of the action for at least a moment or so. That left me, wearing nothing but tattered clothes and a coating of flour, unarmed, facing two armored and sword-wielding opponents. As I said, a desperate affair.
Except—
“Facing determined opponents” proved to be a misnomer. The two surviving retainers, as brutal as they might be, were not the stuff of heroes. They ogled me, ogled the carnage—blood and wine and ale and shattered furniture everywhere—ogled their cursing fellow rolling around on the floor frantically trying to disentangle the whip from his knees . . .
Then dropped their swords and raced for the entrance to the feasting hall, shrieking with terror. I stared after them, too astonished to react immediately.
Along the way, the ruffians passed the two sisters huddled against the wall. The older girl stuck out her leg. A little leg, it was, but it was enough to send the first of them sprawling onto the stone steps. His companion trampled him under on his way up the stairs.
That callous disregard for comradeship proved to be fruitless. When the man reached the stop of the stairs there was a sudden flurry of motion in the darkness of the corridor bend beyond. I saw him stiffen, his head jerking, and heard what sounded like a little gasp. Then he turned and staggered back down, clutching his throat. Blood gushed from between his fingers.
Again, when he reached his still-prostrate fellow trying to rise, he trampled him under. That effort seemed to use up his strength, however, and he collapsed in a heap. His fellow was just getting to his knees, shaking his head to clear the daze, when Gwendolyn came down the stairs and used that great cleaver of hers to sever his spine with one blow. She then stalked over to the man still trying to disentangle the whip from his legs, dropped to one knee, jerked his head back, and practically cut his throat to the bone. All this, somehow, without getting a drop of blood on her.
I stared at her. She stared at me. Then she burst into laughter.
“God, you look ridiculous!”
I spread my arms and studied myself ruefully. “I don’t suppose there’d be a laundry anywhere in this castle?” I complained. “What’s left of my clothes looks like a butcher’s apron. Between the flour and the blood . . .”
Gwendolyn began cleaning her blade on the corpse’s clothing. “A laundry?” she chuckled. “Not likely.”
She sheathed the cleaver, rose, and pointed to the corpse. “You’ll have to make do with odds and ends of their clothing. Your own’s pretty well ruined.”
I studied the garments in question with considerable distaste, foreseeing a problem with lice. “I’m not giving up my shoes,” I grumbled. “Not for those things.”
Again, she chuckled. The sound seemed oddly forced. When I looked at her, she was shaking her head and her eyes seemed even darker than usual.