Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

concentrating on a large branch that stretched out and away from the others. The only one that might do him any good. He tried to calculate angle and distance as best he could, given an almost total lack of experience at this particular manoeuvre. What he was about to try was not a thing one did for practice, anywhere.

He checked the hang of the dagger in his belt, wiped his hands one last time, and stood up. Absurdly, the flash of memory that came to him then was of the day his brothers had surprised him hanging upside down from a tree, trying to stretch his height.

Devin smiled tightly and stepped to the edge of the cliff. The branch looked absurdly far away, and it was only half of the way down to the level of the pass. He swore an inward oath that if he survived this Baerd was going to teach him how to use a bow properly.

From the path below he heard the ragged voices swirling erratically towards the climax of the ballad:

Gan Burdash ruled in the mountain heights

And with his band he ranged from crag to glen,

But seventy brave men tracked him to his lair

And when the moons had set the peaks were free again!

Devin jumped. Air whistled past his face. The branch flew up to meet him, blurred, very fast. He stretched his hands, clutched it, swung. Only a little. Only enough to change his angle of descent, cut his momentum. Bring him directly down upon the killer behind the rock.

The branch held, but the leaves crackled loudly as he pivoted. He’d known they would. The Quileian flung a startled glance skyward and grappled for the bow.

Not nearly fast enough. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Devin plummeted like some hunting bird of these high places. By the time his target began to move Devin was already there.

Our kick-drop from the twenty-seven tree, he thought.

Falling, he tilted his torso so that it angled sideways across the upper body of the Quileian and he kicked out hard with both feet as he did. The impact was sickening. He felt his legs make jarring contact, even as he crashed into the other, driving all the air from his own lungs.

They smashed into the ground together, tumbling and rolling away from the base of the boulder. Devin gasped agonizingly for breath, he felt the world sway and rock wildly in his sight. He gritted his teeth and groped for his dagger.

Then he realized it was not necessary.

Dead before we both hit the ground, Marius had said. With a shuddering heave Devin forced air into his tortured lungs. There was an odd, knifing pain running up his right leg. He forced himself to ignore it. He rolled free of the unconscious Quileian and struggled, gasping and wheezing, for another breath of precious air. And then he looked.

The assassin was a woman. Under all the circumstances, not a great surprise. She was not dead. Her forehead appeared to have glanced off the rock under the impact of his sprawling descent. She was lying on her side, bleeding heavily from a scalp wound. He had probably broken a number of her ribs with his kick. She had a profusion of cuts and scrapes from their tumble down the slope.

So, Devin noted, did he. His shirt was torn and he was badly scratched again, for the second time in half a day. There was a joke, something that ought to be amusing in that, but he couldn’t reach to it. Not yet.

He seemed to have survived though. And to have done what he’d been asked to do. He managed to draw one full, steadying breath just as Alessan and one of the Quileian soldiers came sprinting up the path. Erlein was just behind them, Devin saw with surprise.

He started to stand, but the world spun erratically and he had to be braced by Alessan. The Quileian guard flipped the assassin over on her back. He stood staring down upon her and then spat, very deliberately, into her bleeding face.

Devin looked away.

His eyes met Alessan’s. ‘We saw you jump from down there. You’re really supposed to have wings before trying that sort of thing,’ the Prince said. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you?’

The expression in the grey eyes belied the lightness of his tone. ‘I feared for you,’ he added softly.

‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do,’ Devin said apologetically. He was aware of a deep pride beginning to well up within him. He shrugged. ‘The singing was driving me mad. I had to do something to stop it.’

Alessan’s smile widened. ‘He reached an arm around and squeezed Devin’s shoulder. Baerd had done that too, in the Nievolene barn.

It was Erlein who laughed at the joke. ‘Come back down,’ the wizard said. ‘I’ll have to clean out those cuts for you.’

They helped him descend the slope. The Quileian carried the woman and her bow. Devin saw that it was made of a very dark wood, almost black, and was carved into a semblance of a crescent moon. From one end of it there hung a gathered and twisted lock of greying hair. He shivered. He had a fair idea of whose it would be.

Marius was on his feet, one hand on the back of his chair, as he watched them come down. His eyes barely flicked over the four men and the carried assassin. They locked, cold and grim, on the black curve of the moon bow. He looked frightening.

And the more so, Devin thought, because not at all afraid.

‘I THINK WE ARE past the need to dance in words around each other,’ Alessan said. ‘I would like to tell you what I need and you will tell me if you can do it and that will be all we need say.’

Marius held up a hand to stop him.

He had now joined the three of them among the cushions on the golden cloth. The dishes and baskets had been cleared