Free Unclean by Richard Lee Byers Page A

jerked himself around to confront the new threat. The lower half of his face masked by a scarf, a huge man in dark clothing stood poised to cut down at him with a broadsword. The weapon had a slimy look, as if its owner had smeared it with something other than the usual rust-resisting oil. Poison, like as not.
    With only a knife in his hand, and his new assailant manifestly a man of exceptional strength, Bareris very much doubted his ability to parry the heavier blade. The stroke flashed at him, and he twisted aside, simultaneously thrusting with the dagger.
    He was aiming for the big man’s groin. He missed, but at least the knife drove into his adversary’s thigh, and the masked man froze with the shock of it. The bard pulled the weapon free for a second attack, then something slammed into his back. Arms and legs wrapped around him. Teeth tore at the high collar of his brigandine, and cold white fingers groped for his eyes.
    The child-thing had jumped onto his shoulders. He reared halfway up then immediately threw himself on his back. The jolt loosened the little horrors grip. He wrenched partially free of it and pounded elbow strikes into its torso, snapping ribs. The punishment made it falter, and he heaved himself entirely clear.
    By then, though blood soaked the leg of his breeches, the big man was rushing in again. Bareris bellowed a battle cry infused with the magic of his voice. Vitality surged through his limbs,
    and his mind grew calm and clear. Even more importantly, the masked ruffian hesitated, giving him time to spring to his feet, switch his dagger to his left hand, and draw his sword.
    “I’m not the easy mark you expected, am I?” he panted. “Why don’t you go waylay someone else?”
    He thought they might heed him. He’d hurt them, after all, but instead, apparently confident that the advantages conferred by superior numbers and a poisoned blade would prevail, they spread out to flank him. The masked man whispered words of power and sketched a mystic figure with his off hand. For a moment, an acrid smell stung Bareris’s nose, and a prickling danced across his skin, warning signs of some magical effect coming into being.
    Wonderful. On top of everything else, the whoreson was a spellcaster. That explained how he’d concealed himself until he was ready to strike.
    For all Bareris knew, the masked man’s next effort might kill or incapacitate him. He had to distupt the casting if possible, and so, even though it meant turning his back on the child-thing, he screamed and sprang at the larger of his adversaries.
    He thought he had a good chance of scoring. He was using an indirect attack that, in his experience, few adversaries could parry, and with a wounded leg, the masked man ought not to be able to defend by retreating out of the distance.
    Yet that was exactly what he did. Bareris’s attack fell short by a finger length. The masked man beat his blade aside and lunged in his turn.
    The riposte streaked at Bareris’s torso, driving in with dazzling speed. Evidently the big man had cast an enchantment to quicken his next attack, and with Bareris still in the lunge, it only had a short distance to travel. The bard was sure, with that bleak certainty every fencer knows, that the stroke was going to hit him.
    Yet even if his intellect had resigned itself, his reflexes, honed
    in countless battles and skirmishes, had not. He recovered out of the lunge. It didn’t carry him beyond the range of the big man’s weapon, but it obliged it to travel a little farther, buying him the time and space at least to attempt a parry. He swept his blade across his body and somehow intercepted his adversary’s sword. Steel rang, and the impact almost broke his grip on his hilt, but he kept the poisoned edge from slashing his flesh.
    Eyes glaring above the scarf, the big man bulled forward, rendering both their swords useless at such close quarters, evidently intending to use his superior strength and size to shove