“Stehfahnos!” he finally panted. “Help me!”
But Stehfahnos’ sword stayed in its scabbard and Stehfahnos himself was dead on the marble floor. The youngest Morguhn left the tabletop to engage the butcher and the fop, who were trying to unbar the doors.
Cursing, the fop left the butcher to tug at the tightly wedged pikeshaft alone. Drawing a slender, ornate thrustingsword, he extended his arm to jab at the armored man’s unprotected face. Djehf’s powerful upswing shattered the fop’s brittle weapon and his downstroke severed the swordarm, just above the wrist. The fop fell to his knees, staring in horrified fascination at his hand lying before him on the floor, slowly releasing its grip on the hilt of the broken sword.
Djehf stalked purposefully toward the butcher. Unarmed, that man backed along the wall, his hands held before him. His fear-filled eyes locked on that broad, bloody blade.
Kooreeos Skiros stood at the table, alternately calling for the guards and vainly shouting a command for all combat to cease. Klairuhnz stood close by the cleric, watching his every move. All at once, he leaned close and spoke a few words. Bili failed to hear the Bard’s words, for they came at the same time as the butcher’s death cries, and also because someone in the corridor had collected his wits and brought up something to use as a ram. The doors were groaning and the two-inch pikeshaft beginning to crack.
Whatever was said, it clearly startled the Kooreeos. His bushy black eyebrows shot up and his right hand dived under his robes, to reemerge holding what Bili assumed was a throwing club-a thick, L-shaped piece of greyish metal. Grasping one arm of it, he pointed the other at Klairuhnz’s middle.
But Klairuhnz clamped both hands around the club and twisted it out of the Kooreeos’s hands, then slammed the side of it against its owner’s temple. Skiros’s boneless collapse set the subpriest to shrieking in harmony with the moneylender, who shared his haven under the table.
Shoulderblades pressed to the wall, Myros could retreat no further. He had not again been blooded, but his right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, was a tingling, fiery agony, bespeaking the force of the blows his blade had turned. He knew that he could not turn another, so he opened his trembling hand and the saber clattered to the floor.
“Mercy, please, mercy,” he gasped. “Spare my life, sir, I… I beg you.”
Hardly had the words left his lips, when the much-abused pikeshaft finally snapped and the doors burst open before a wave of pikemen. Behind them were ranged a half-dozen archers with arrows nocked; behind the archers were two Ehleenoee officers, another subpriest, and Djaimos the carter, who had arrived too late to “partici-pate” in this Council meeting.
“Heathen barbarians,” shouted the subpriest. “Surrender!”
“Yes, surrender!” echoed one of the officers. “Surrender or we’ll slay you all!”
Fast as a snake, Ahlee dropped his yataghan, jerked Myros close, and gave him a good look of the wavy blade of his second dagger, before poising it at the Vahrohnos’s throat.
“Cowardly dog,” he hissed. “As you see, this blade is envenomed. If but a single bow is drawn or one spearman advances, I shall inflict the tiniest of cuts in your flesh, following which you will die slowly and in unimaginable agony. Now, speak to your hounds!”
Drehkos flatly refused to accompany them, answering his brother’s entreaties with words which staggered the master of Horse Hall. So they left him in the gory Council Chamber, along with the dead and the wounded, the disarmed soldiers and officers, the two subpriests and the moneylender, who had swooned of fright. Myros and the unconscious Kooreeos they took with them.
The heavy manacles, brought by one of the officers, had been intended to chain such of them as were taken alive. Now they were adapted to secure the battered doors. The Council Chamber had no windows, the visitors’ bench was bolted to the floor, and the table could not have been lifted by twice the number of Ehleens present. Consequently, the Kindred hoped to be out of the city ere the prisoners could break out and spread the alarm.