“What is the matter?” I said.
“Brand,” he replied. “He is no longer in his quarters. At least, most of him isn’t. He left some blood behind. The place is also broken up enough to show there had been a fight.”
I glanced down at my shirt front and trousers.
“And you are looking for bloodstains? As you can see, these are the same things I had on earlier. They may be dirty and wrinkled, but that’s all.”
“That does not really prove anything,” he said.
“It was your idea to look. Not mine. What makes you think I-“
“You were the last one to see him,” he said.
“Except for the person be had a fight with-if he really did.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know his temper, his moods. We had a small argument. He might have started breaking things up after I left, maybe cut himself, gotten disgusted, trumped out for a change of scene-Wait! His rug! Was there any blood on that small, fancy rug before his door?”
“I am not sure-no, I don’t think so. Why?”
“Circumstantial evidence that he did it himself. He was very fond of that rug. He avoided messing it.”
“I don’t buy it,” Gerard said, “and Caine’s death still looks peculiar-and Benedict’s servants, who could have found out you wanted gunpowder. Now Brand-“
“This could well be another attempt to frame me,” I said, “and Benedict and I have come to better terms.”
He turned toward Benedict, who had not moved from where he stood a dozen paces away, regarding us without expression, listening.
“Has he explained away those deaths?” Gerard asked him.
“Not directly,” Benedict answered, “but much of the rest of the story now stands in a better light. So much so, that I am inclined to believe all of it.”
Gerard shook his head and glared down at me again.
“Still unsettled,” he said. “What were you and Brand arguing about?”
“Gerard,” I said, “that is our business, till Brand and I decide otherwise.”
“I dragged him back to life and watched over him, Corwin. I didn’t do it just to see him killed in a squabble.”
“Use your brains,” I told him. “Whose idea was it to search for him the way that we did? To bring him back?”
“You wanted something from him,” he said. “You finally got it. Then he became an impediment.”
“No. But even if that were the case, do you think I would be so damned obvious about it? If he has been killed, then it is on the same order as Caine’s death-an attempt to frame me.”
“You used the obviousness excuse with Caine, too. It seems to me it could be a kind of subtlety-a thing you are good at.”
“We have been through this before, Gerard. . .”
“. . . And you know what I told you then.”
“It would be difficult to have forgotten.”
He reached forward and seized my right shoulder. I immediately drove my left hand into his stomach and pulled away. It occurred to me then that perhaps I should have told him what Brand and I had been talking about. But I didn’t like the way he had asked me.
He came at me again. I side-stepped and caught him with a light left near the right eye. I kept jabbing after that, mainly to keep his head back. I was in no real shape to fight him again, and Grayswandir was back in the tent. I had no other weapon with me.
I kept circling him. My side hurt if I kicked with my left leg. I caught him once on the thigh with my right, but I was slow and off-balance and could not really follow through. I continued to jab.
Finally, he blocked my left and managed to drop his hand on my biceps. I should have pulled away then, but he was open. I stepped in with a heavy right to his stomach, all of my strength behind it. It bent him forward with a gasp, but his grip tightened on my arm. He blocked my attempted uppercut with his left, continuing its forward motion until the heel of his hand slammed against my chest, at the same time jerking my left arm backward and to the side with such force that I was thrown to the ground. If he came down on me, that was it.