Erik heard Manfred, standing next to him, draw a deep breath. He waited for the bull-like bellow. It didn’t come.
Sachs had paused, as if he too had been waiting for something. Then he continued. “Knight-Proctors. Step forward and collect your orders. Squads are to remain together, at their assigned posts, until the tocsin bell rings. Then you will move out, with your assigned group of Servants of the Holy Trinity, to protect you from whatever magic these ungodly ones may attempt to unleash at you. Fear not! God and the holy Saint Paul are with us!”
Erik and Manfred found themselves assembled in a front salon along with some twenty knights, under the command of Knight-Proctors Von Welf and Von Stublau. Many of the other knights had been kept back in the courtyard.
He and Manfred walked up to the two knight-proctors.
“Who said you could break ranks?” snapped Von Welf.
Manfred took a deep breath. “We need to take you to see Count Von Stemitz, Von Welf. There is something he’s got to tell you.”
Von Welf smiled a particularly unpleasant smile. “We’ll be seeing him soon enough. As soon as the bell in Saint Mark’s Square begins to ring continuously. His name is on the top of our list.”
There was a moment’s silence. Erik heard footsteps shuffling behind him; quietly, as if heavily armored men were trying to move stealthily across a tile floor. Two or three of the knights in the salon were coming up behind him and Manfred.
He was quite certain of their purpose, and had to fight down a savage smile.
In the distance a bell began to ring. “That’s early,” said Von Stublau, quietly, almost conversationally. “But it’s the signal. Such a pity that Petro Dorma ordered you killed. The evidence and report are on their way to the Brenner pass right now.”
But Erik was moving before the Prussian had finished the last sentence. He knocked Manfred aside with a thrust of his right arm and spun to the left, dropping to one knee as he did so. The poignard in the hand of the knight assigned to stab him in the back passed overhead harmlessly. An instant later, the Algonquian hatchet sheared through the knee joint in the knight’s armor.
The knight screamed and toppled forward. Erik rose up beneath him and added his own thrust to the topple, sending the armored man crashing into the two Prussian knight-proctors.
Erik glanced at Manfred. The prince had been expecting treachery also, of course. And if Manfred did not have Erik’s lightning reflexes, he could move much faster than anyone would expect. Erik’s shove had sent him out of immediate danger, and by the time the knight assigned to murder Manfred had reached him . . .
The prince had his sword out. A sword he had learned to use extremely well over the past year. His assailant attempted a feint, which Manfred countered by the simple expedient of lopping his arm off. The knight went one way, the arm another. Blood poured over the tiles.
For a moment, Erik studied the remaining knights in the salon. They were still frozen in place, immobilized by the sudden and unexpected violence. Clearly enough, none of them except two had been directly involved in Von Stublau’s plot.
Von Stublau and Von Welf were struggling back onto their feet—no easy task for heavily armored men sent sprawling to the ground. Von Stublau was on Erik’s side, Von Welf nearer to Manfred.
Von Welf never made it up at all. Manfred’s sword, in a backswing, shattered his helmet and the skull inside it. Von Welf sprawled back onto the floor and lay there motionless.
Erik disarmed Von Stublau with a quick hooking motion of the hatchet, a maneuver the Prussian neither expected nor had ever encountered before. He was still looking more puzzled than anything, when his attention was riveted by the razor edge of the hatchet—three inches in front of his eyes.
“Make any move and I’ll take off your face,” said Erik cheerfully. “That nose guard might as well be a lady’s veil, as much good as it’ll do you.”
Von Stublau froze. The Icelander’s thin smile was as friendly as a wolf’s.