The Sea Peoples(76)
Some peripheral part of her consciousness was aware of feet passing by outside in the building’s hallway. Whoever it was didn’t care that a young woman sounded as if she was being brutally murdered.
Vance was doing his best to live up to that brutal murder definition. Constance Hawberk was falling back before him, screaming and giving every evidence of being a hysterical snowflake . . . except that she was keeping her face to the would-be murderer and holding up a piece of lobster-tail armor between her and the supernaturally keen edge of the knife with a quickness that was very creditable in someone who’d never done anything of the sort before. It clattered and clanged as the madman’s blurring slashes landed, leaving deep bright scratches through the black and gold enamel of the Renaissance-style cuirassier’s armor, and it could be only instants until the knife found flesh.
Her father had a war-hammer in his hands, snatched up from one of the exhibition suits, and he swung it at Vance with desperate speed. Things seemed to twist, and somehow the shaft bounced off Vance’s shoulder.
Deor made an odd gesture, as if throwing something at the lunatic. Thora touched her chest, where the Hammer hung from a cord around her neck, tucked beneath the dress. The single lamp in the room cast her outline behind her on the wall hung with pieces of armor, and the shadow was of a hump-backed bear.
“Thor with me!” she shouted; and there was a roar in it, as of the great shadow that stood over her. “Tyr hold us! Ye Tyr, ye Odhinn!”
Vance gave a slobbering, gobbling cry, and his hand jerked at Constance as if invisible cords were pulling it towards her heart. Deor was standing with hands upraised, murmuring, with sweat running down his face as if he struggled with a weight greater than mountains. Pip drew and loosed once more as the dagger went bang on the armor . . . and Constance went backward over one of the low benches that were scattered about the workroom.
Vance threw himself forward in the full-body leap as if he were diving into water with the knife cocked back for an overarm stab, a move that few ever made in reality—whatever was driving him had finally managed to banish all thought of self-preservation. Constance screamed, which didn’t stop her trying to jerk the set of tassets back into position.
Toa abandoned all efforts at his usual surgeon’s precision and simply swung his long shovel as if it were a giant flyswatter. Perhaps Thora’s prayer had worked, or perhaps whatever was puppeting Vance was so concentrated on its target that it ignored protecting its tool. Enough of the head of the shovel hit him to send him spinning and crashing into more of Hawberk’s stock-in-trade, falling with a clangor like scrap-iron . . . which of course was precisely what it was. Pip drew and shot three times, and at least one of them hit from the hoarse scream of bewildered pain, though another peened off Toa’s shovel.
I don’t think he knows what he’s doing—bloody literally doesn’t know, Pip thought.
She surprised herself by feeling a sort of remote flash of sympathy for the man; Philippa Balwyn-Abercrombie didn’t consider herself in the least squeamish or sentimental.
“The knife!” Deor shouted. “Get the knife!”
Pip drew again; hastily, and not all the way, but the ball thumped into Vance’s middle as he struggled up onto his knees, teeth showing and wet with blood. It thudded into his stomach, the impact a little muffled by wool jacket and vest and making him jackknife forward. Constance got a good look at him then, and screamed again: Pip couldn’t really blame her.
Something or someone else was looking out through the mad accountant.
Constance scrambled backward with feet and elbows, still clutching the scored and dinted tassets. Thora called on the Thunderer again and struck with the battle knife in her hand, one that Pip saw was graven with the Hammer, the steel clashing on the one in Vance’s hand and then the blades locking at the guard. Thora used her weight and position to push with all her strength; in the same instant Vance’s eyes darted towards Constance and her efforts to put some distance between her and the madman.
Hawberk stepped between his daughter and the struggle on the floor, a bulldog grimness on his face and the war-hammer in his hands.
Pip took a long breath, drawing it down into the bottom of her lungs, letting it out. Letting tension flow away as the slingshot came up, motion flowing into motion with a calm detachment that was also a focus like a spearpoint.
Thack!
The steel ball smashed into Vance’s forearm just below the wrist. His hand spasmed open uncontrollably. Deor jumped forward and stamped his foot down on the haft of the knife as it skittered across the battered hardwood floor.
“The King!” Vance screamed. “Oh, the yellow tatters of the King! Dog-headed Uoht comes, and He stirs beneath the waves of Hali, and even death shall die!”
Pip blanched at the sheer shrilling malice in the voice, and Thora seemed to be locked for a moment by a blow as real as it was invisible. Vance scrambled away on hands and knees, dodging Hawberk’s strong but clumsy blow with the war-hammer—which forced Thora to dodge as well, lest it land on her foot—and went across the floor like a huge awkward spider. Then he came halfway to his feet, diving out the door in a shambling lunge with his arms swinging like an ape’s, grunting gutturally.
Silence fell. Deor reached out quickly and took a black-and-orange armored gauntlet, slid it onto his hand, and picked up the knife. He held it up before his face, studying the glyphs along the steel and grimacing slightly.