“Where is she?” he said. “I knew she was here as soon as I went up to the room and found her gone!”
“Look,” Hansen said, “there’s nobody here. Let’s move back and discuss this—”
Taddeusz thrust the lance past Hansen, into the furs piled on the bed. The bed platform splintered. Taddeusz was a strong bastard, no mistake.
“Where is—” the warchief said as he stabbed again, a horizontal stroke that pinned the furs against the far wall of the cubicle.
“What’s going on here?” Golsingh demanded from somewhere back in the crowd. “Taddeusz?”
“Keep back!” Taddeusz snapped. “This is for me.”
He scowled, then brightened with surmise. “In the armor, is—”
Hansen stood with his back against the battlesuit. “If you touch my armor without permission, warrior,” he said with terrible distinctness, “I will kill you here and now.”
He pointed the end of the pry-bar between Taddeusz’ eyes, only a hand’s breadth away.
Malcolm forced his way through the doorway. He gripped the warchief’s right elbow with both hands. Taddeusz shook himself free with contemptuous ease.
“I’ll break your neck anyway,” Taddeusz snarled.
His muscles bunched, then froze as a voice crackled from the hollow of the hall saying, “Father! What’s the matter with you? Are you mad?”
“Look,” said the freeman holding the lamp. He pointed toward the thatch that Hansen’s desperate efforts had torn.
Taddeusz turned slowly, then burst out of the bed cubicle like a boar charging hounds.
Malcolm exhaled in relief. Hansen was too focused to feel anything. He pushed his friend from the cubicle behind Taddeusz and followed, pulling the broken door closed behind him.
A dozen animal-fat lamps supplemented the dull glow of the hearth. Krita stood near Golsingh. She wore boots and a fur cape on which the snow was melting.
“Where were you, you whore?” Taddeusz demanded in a thick voice.
“Outside, walking with Unn,” his daughter blazed. “If it’s any concern to a drunken pig like you!”
“You were not, you slut!” Taddeusz roar as he lurched forward.
Golsingh stepped between father and daughter, saying, “Fos—” and Taddeusz stiff-armed him out of the way.
Never hit a man with your bare hand, a man had once told Hansen. An old man, too old to live but too tough to die.
Hansen raised the pry-bar, measuring the distance to the back of the warchief’s skull which wasn’t as hard as iron whatever he might think—
A figure in a battlesuit stepped into Taddeusz’ path. The warchief crashed into the armor, bounced back, and raised his fist in a gesture so vain that even he understood its absurdity.
Taddeusz twined the fingers of both hands around themselves. He squeezed as though choking a dragon.
The battlesuit was Hansen’s own.
Had been Hansen’s. He’d claimed Tooley’s armor after the battle, and his own suit went to—
Maharg’s voice boomed from the battlesuit’s amplifier, “Excellency? Are you all right?”
The suit’s great steel arm extended toward Golsingh, who was already picking himself up from the floor.
If Krita was here, fully dressed—and she was—then who in hell had he been fucking?
Taddeusz knelt before Golsingh.
“Excellency,” he said in a voice choked by emotion. “I don’t deserve to live. Slay me, but grant my spirit forgiveness for the insult to which my whore of a daughter drove me.”
“Don’t—here, get up, foster father,” Golsingh said uncomfortably. “Come on, we’ve all been drinking, and we’ve imagined things tonight, I’m sure.”
The warchief arose. He looked even more like a bear when the lamps woke amber highlights from his beard and moustache. “No imagining, Excellency,” he said.
Taddeusz turned and pointed to Hansen. “A joke for you, was it? Drag my name through the cesspit?”
“Father!”
“I wish you no disrespect, Lord Taddeusz,” Hansen said carefully. The warchief had lost his lance at some time during the scuffling, but he could still break a man’s neck with his hands.
“You’ll do me none after tomorrow,” Taddeusz said heavily. “Lord Hansen, I challenge you. We’ll meet tomorrow at midday.”
“Foster father, this is not a thing I wish!” the king said sharply.
The big man glanced at him.
“I regret that, Excellency,” he said. “But it happens nonetheless. It’s a matter of my honor.”