“Oh, quit whining, paladin. I’m hardly the first person you’ll have killed.”
“If you’re trying to annoy me, you’re succeeding.”
“Aww.”
They closed again. Rather, Brenner closed, and Caliban dodged backward and swung his sword in an easily avoidable arc.
“Surely you can do better than that.”
“Yes, but I’d rather leave you both legs.”
Brenner was getting bold now, realizing that the knight didn’t dare hit him. Caliban gritted his teeth and watched for an opening.
“So which is it for our knight, eh? Do you think you’re going to live, like me, or are you waiting for your death, like our Slate?”
Caliban kept his eyes on the man’s hands. Another knife had joined the first.
“Hoping for a heroic death to wash away all those sins?”
“Spare me the assassin’s psychology,” muttered Caliban, practically without hearing himself. There had to be an opening, he knew just what it would look like…
It came. Brenner lunged again, a knife in each hand. Caliban slapped the leading blade away with a blow to his wrist, wished badly for gauntlets—I’d crush his bloody fingers if I had some decent gauntlets—and the assassin was coming up beside him now, hip to hip, and that was a bad place for a man with a knife to be, and if he turned, he could take his head right off with the sword, but not before he got a knife in the kidneys—
“What inhellare you people doing?” Slate snarled from the doorway.
Both men froze. Since there was quite a lot of momentum going on at the moment, this meant that Brenner, ducking under the sword, actually fell to one knee, arms extended around Caliban’s waist in a sort of lethal hug. Caliban tried to pull the sword up short one-handed. His wrist laughed at him. Somethingwentpoing!inside his arm, and his fingers opened. The sword jerked, wavered, fell, and landed—flat first, thank the gods—on Brenner’s shoulder.
“Oof,” said the assassin.
“Are you killing him or knighting him?” asked Slate, emerging from the door and pacing around the two of them as if they were a peculiar bit of statuary she’d discovered in the courtyard.
“Um,” said Brenner. “We were sparring.”
“Yes,” said Caliban. “Sparring.”
They exchanged a brief look, unified in the face of a common enemy.
“Isthatwhat they call it? Do you need to get a room? Do you want me to go away, come back with a bucket of water, maybe?”
“I think we’re good,” said Caliban, picking his sword off the assassin’s shoulder, very carefully.
“I think so,” said Brenner, moving his knives delicately away from Caliban’s kidneys.
“Good to know.” She glared at both of them. “I realize we’re all going to die, but I’d just as soon we do it there and not here.”
“Awww….”
Caliban saluted her with the sword. She snorted and stalked off.
The men looked at each other.
“Next time, maybe.”
“Oh, yes.”
As truces went, it wasn’t much, but Caliban figured he’d take what he could get.
“I don’t suppose you could find some armor as easily as you found a blade?”
