A Bad Night - Part 4 of the Castamerian Vignettes
The worst part was that he'd seen it coming.
The serrated edge of his sword caught another slash of the knife, turned it, threw it aside. It should have provided an opening, an end to this dance, but he had no room to maneuver. As he drew back with the long blade, his hand again slammed against the far wall of the cramped, dim tunnel.
Another knife to his opponent's hand -- another reversion to the same bad position he'd been in a blink before. Gods, how many did he carry?
Hiram hadn't seen it coming. He was a good fighter, certainly, but his real talent was an affable nature - for what he was, anyway - that had made it easy for the pair to make connections, find work. For thieves and sometimes assassins, that was vital, and Hiram's way of smiling his way out of bad situations had saved them more than once.
But he'd been too confident, and now his smile had a twin, a yawning gash in his throat.
He gripped the sweat-stained leather hilt of his sword, swinging it brutally down overhead, trying to drive the man back, but found himself sidestepped, easily. Too damn fast, everything was going too damn fast--
The knife caught him in the shoulder, then, a quick, forward lunge that felt like the prick of a bee at first blush. Then came the rest, the kick of the pain like too much liquor, searing in his brain and sending him staggering back, stumbling against the far wall.
There should have been little reason to fear this sort of double-cross. It was always at least a slight risk, humming in the background, but people with his reputation, with Hiram's, didn't usually have to pay it much heed. They had a solid reputation: they never asked questions, they didn't talk about past employers or past missions, and - above all - they always completed their contracts.
So, even though he'd felt a tickling at the back of his mind, some notion that something about this job didn't quite make sense, he'd gone down into the old sewers alongside Hiram with nothing but his sword on his hip, figuring that it was nothing, surely. Just paranoia.
His sword dropped from slack fingers, pain from his bloody shoulder leaving them numb and throbbing. A guttural cry wrenched itself from his throat, and he flung himself forward inside the smaller man's reach, tackling him hard with his full weight. The two fell to the ground together, knife clattering on the ground. He saw stars as his shoulder banged harshly against the wet stone floor, vision swimming between darkness and the harsh dim, but he held on, gritting his teeth and butting his head forward hard into the man's face.
He really should have said something. He really should have done something, or skipped this meet, or this job, or something. He and Hiram had been close. Friendship was rare in this line of work, and he wasn't likely to find another like him.
He opened his eyes again some time later, staring down at the bloody ruin of his assailant's face. His entire body ached, his shoulder the thrumming, throbbing center of his consciousness, and he was vaguely aware that he must have broken his nose. He tried to shove back, push himself up, but only managed to roll over, wheezing for breath through blood-sticky lips.
"...You've made one hell of a mess." Came a nearby voice, cold, with a tone trying to sound detached, but mostly coming across nauseated.
He tried to push himself up, to reach for his sword, wherever it might have fallen, but only really managed to flex his fingers and lie there, gasping like a fish.
The last thing he saw, before he went unconscious again, was the horribly burn-scarred face of a man in a black coat standing over him.
