The giant came on, swinging his club from side to side. The nails and blades were darkly caked with dried blood.
He backed me towards the rear of the rent dwelling and made to swing again.
No\ I commanded, using the will. He stopped dead. The rain of abuse and excrement from above stopped too.
It would take him a moment to reconfigure his mind and find his anger again. I moved right at him, punching a knuckle-curved fist at the place where his nose should have been. There was a crack of bone and a spray of blood.
The giant went down hard on his back, his nasal bone slammed back into his brain.
Nayl seemed to be enjoying his uneven duel. He was jeering at his attackers, deflecting the sickles with his sword and blocking the strenuous attacks of the mace with his knife. I saw him spin and belly-kick the male away, then turn to give the ghastly, snorting female his full attention.
But more figures were emerging from the night.
Ugly, abhuman scum dressed in rags. Three, four of them.
I called a warning out to Nayl and pulled out my blackpowder pistol. It was a clumsy antique I'd acquired from the black market on Front's Planet, but even so I'd dumbed it down to Eechan tech levels by replacing the engraved furniture with a shaped piece of packet-wood.
The flintlock mechanism was in good order, though. It cracked loudly with a fizz and a flash, the recoil punishing my wrist, and the ball went point-blank through the forehead of the nearest twist, exploding the rear of his cranium in a surprisingly messy fountain.
But it was a one-shot piece and there was no time for reloading.
Two of the remaining outlaws came right at me, the other turning to come in on Nayl's flank.
I broke the teeth of the first one to reach me with the rounded butt of the pistol, and ducked the second's poorly judged slice with a rapier.
Backing away, I drew my own blade. Also a rapier. Shorter by a good ten centimetres than my opponent's but balanced and guarded with a hand-net of articulated metal struts.
Our blades clashed. He was good, trained to his skill by a life of slaughter in the underhive. But I… I had me on my side.
I dazzled him with the ulsar and the uin ulsar, and then drove him back with a four-stroke combination of pel ighan and uin pel ihnarr before ripping the blade out of his dazed fingers with a swift tahn asaf wyla.
Then the ewl caer. My blade transfixed his torso. He looked confused for a second and then fell down, sliding dead off my blade.
His broken-faced accomplice, blood spilling from my pistol whipping, flew at me and I span, decapitating him with the edge of my blade. The Carthaens believe side-blade work is lazy, and stress the use of the point.
But what the hell.
Nayl had killed the third attacker with a bodypunch, and as I turned, he locked both of the female's sickles around his twisting knife and ran her through with his main blade.
He turned to me and raised his bloody shortsword to his nose in a salute. I returned it with my rapier.
The siren of an arbites groundcar was wailing along the alley. Time to be gone/ I said to Nayl.
'I thought you were dead!' Bequin cursed as Nayl and I burst in to the room in the Twist and Sleep.
We had some fun on the way home/ Nayl said. 'Don't worry, Lizzie, I brought the boss back safe/
I smiled and fixed myself a small amasec from the bureau. Bequin hated to be called 'Lizzie'. Only Nayl had the balls to do it.
Aemos was hovering by the window. Somehow, the rags of his twist disguise suited him.
'Most perturbatory… the arbites are coming this way/
'What?'
Nayl moved to the window.
'Aemos is right. Three land cruisers pulled up outside. Officers coming in/
'Hide yourselves, now!' I ordered.
Aemos hurried through the communicating door into the other bedchamber and threw himself down on the cot. Nayl blundered into the adjoining bathroom and used a tooth mug and loud groans to suggest he was busy throwing up.
Alizebeth looked at me frantically.
'Into bed! Hurry!' I ordered.
The arbites kicked open the door and played their flashlights over the bed. 'Hive arbites! Who's in here?'
