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terrible agony and fear. In the few seconds after the scream, things happened
very quickly.
The officer rose to his feet with a curse. "Damn Durkas! His games " He turned
toward the bush where Blade lay.
In the house voices shouted and feet pounded. Another scream came, then a
window flew open with a crash.
Yellow lamplight flooded out into the garden through the open window.
By that light, the officer saw Blade crouching under the bush.
In the next few seconds, Blade made several more things happen.
In a single snap of trained muscles, he was on his feet. His arm jerked once,
and a throwing knife slipped down into his right hand. His arm rose and jerked
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a second time. The knife flashed once in the air, then flashed a second time
as it buried itself in the officer's chest. Blade beard a solid chunk as the
hilt slammed hard up against the ribs and knew that it was in more than deep
enough to kill. The ambush party had lost a leader and Stipors had lost a
henchman.
But nine more men were too many to fight in the dark on unknown ground. Before
the officer had hit the ground, Blade was sprinting along the hedge, away from
the house. The hedge was just too high for
Blade to leap with this much armor and weaponry on his body. Instead he
covered fifty feet in a matter of seconds, ducked behind a tree, and hauled
himself up into its branches. Pushing off with arms and legs together, he
sailed down over the thick hedge. He landed lightly on his feet on the walk,
facing the house.
It was blazing with lights now, but there was no sign of anyone coming out the
bronze-shod door. Blade didn't wait. He spun about and headed for the gate.
He went down the path like a lion running down a fat buck, and came pelting up
to the gate.
It was unlocked but not unguarded. A man stood on either side of it, one armed
with a bow, one with a sword. The archer backed away and the swordsman came
forward, so that Blade had to defend himself against the second man first. He
would rather have taken out the man with the long-range weapon, but there
was no way to manage that.
His own sword flew clear of its scabbard and up under the thrust of the guard.
It struck the other's sword up with a clang. Before the man could bring it
down again to restore his guard, Blade thrust upward. His point went up into
the man's chin and kept on going until it rammed into the brain. The man's
mouth and eyes opened and gushed blood. Blade jerked his sword from the
falling body and a smoke pot from his pouch.
He was a little too slow. As the green smoke rolled up around the gate and hid
him from the archer, the crossbow went spung. Sharp steel tore through the
flesh of Blade's thigh, clattering on the stones behind him. Blade winced but
kept moving. His second wrist dagger dropped into his left hand as he closed
with the dim shape of the archer. The other was still backing away, struggling
to reload his bow, when Blade's dagger drove up into him below the ribs. Blade
left the dagger in the body and bolted out of the gate.
He did not stop to examine his wound. There wasn't time to do anything but run
as fast as he could for as long as he could. If he could lose himself in the
darkness before Durkas's bravos started combing the streets
But as he ran, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to keep going that fast
for that long. It was only a flesh wound the bolt had given him, but it was a
flesh wound deep enough to be costing him a lot of blood. He could not run on
too long without stopping to bandage the wound. Even after that, it would give
him a stiff leg before too long.
He would have to go to earth somewhere among the villas, under the bushes in
somebody's garden, and stay there for a while. Certainly until the immediate
hue and cry had died down; perhaps until daybreak increased traffic on the
streets enough that he might slip along unnoticed. He would have to move fast
and hope that Durkas would balk at searching the villas of all his
neighbors or they would balk him.
Blade kept on without slowing or looking back for a good five minutes,
ignoring the burning flame in his thigh. He turned each time he came to a
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