Even as this was happening, the third woman charged straight for Reccanto. He shrieked and executed his lunge from the knees, which naturally wasn’t a lunge at all. More like a fleche, a forward flinging of his upper body, arm and point extended, and as he overbalanced and landed with a bone-creaking thump on the floorboards the rapier’s point snagged on something and the blade bowed alarmingly and so he let go, so that it sprang up, then back down, the pommel” crunching the top of Reccanto’s head, not once, but twice, each time driving his face into the floor, nose crackling in a swirl of stinging tears and bursting into his brain the horrid stench of mouse droppings and greasy dirt-immediately replaced by a whole lot of flowing blood.
It was strangely quiet, and, moaning, Reccanto rolled on to his side and lifted himself up on one elbow.
And found himself staring into the blank, horrible eyes of the woman who’d charged him. The rapier point had driven in between her eyes, straight in, so far that he should be able to see it coming back out from somewhere beneath the back of her skull-but it wasn’t there. Meaning-
‘She broke it!’ he raged, clambering on to his feet. ‘She broke my damned rapier!’
The demonic woman was on her knees, head thrust forward, mouth still stretched open, the weight of her upper body resting on the knocked-over chair that had served as pathetic barricade. The other two, headless, still thrashed on the floor as green goo flowed. Gruntle was studying that ichor where it slathered the broad blades of his cutlasses.
Mappo, the Boles and Faint were slowly regaining their feet.
Sweetest Sufferance, clutching a clay bottle, staggered up to lean against Rec-canto. ‘Too bad about your rapier,’ she said, ‘but damn me, Ilk, that was the neatest fleche I ever did see.’
Reccanto squinted, wiped blood from his streaming nose and lacerated lips, and then grinned. ‘It was, wasn’t it. The timing of a master-’
‘I mean, how could you have guessed she’d trip on one of them rolling heads and go down on her knees skidding like that, straight into your thrust?’
Tripped? Skidded? ‘Yes, well, like I said, I’m a master duellist.’
‘I could kiss you,’ she continued, her breath rank with sour wine, ‘except you went and pissed yourself and there’s limits t’decency, if you know what I mean.’
‘That ain’t piss-we’re all still sopping wet!’
‘But we don’t quite smell the way you do, Ilk.’
Snarling, he lurched away. Damned overly sensitive woman! ‘My rapier,’ he moaned.
‘Shattered inside her skull, I’d wager,’ said Gruntle, ‘which couldn’t have done her brain any good. Nicely done, Reccanto.’