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Thump.
Surprise almost slowed her as the half-seen opponent managed to get forearms up for a cross-block, riding the bone-shattering force of the blow backward, falling to the asphalt floor of the warehouse.
Fast, that one. Be careful!
Tiphaine let her feet fall back just in time for the man she'd leg-punched to topple back on top of her. The weight drove an ufffff! from between her teeth, but she made her arms and legs springs to push back at him, tossing him headforemost with his spine to the stairs. With a strangled yell he went hurtling down the stairs behind her, even as she turned and crouched and leapt again; he landed hard, and yelled again, this time in pain.
The ground floor of the warehouse gave her space to move. The man was tangled up with the one she'd kicked. A corner of her mind registered moon-pale hair: Astrid Larsson. The door was temptingly open:
Instead she turned and ran down an alleyway between towering piles of full, sixty-pound sacks of oats, the layout flashing through her mind as she moved. A deep bass voice swore outside the doorway, and the floor thudded as a man came through; he'd been waiting outside. John Hordle. Every bit as big as she remembered him but astonishingly quick, right on her heels. If those hands closed on her, she was doomed. It would be like trying to fight a grizzly.
No choice.
She sprang again, landed halfway up a fourteen-foot stack of bagged grain and scrambled to the top like a squirrel ru
Crash.
Glass shattered, and the thin laths broke and twisted. Tiphaine's belly drew up of itself-she had a fifty-fifty chance of carving her own guts out and spilling them on the ground, with a crazy stunt like this. At least she wouldn't have to try and explain to Lady Sandra how she'd missed four people lying in wait Then she was rolling on the asphalt in the cold darkness; only superficial cuts. They stung, but no tendons were severed, no muscle deeply gashed. Rolling, up on her feet again, and another figure was coming around the corner of the warehouse, clearing a stack of boxes with a raking stride and landing smoothly, beautifully fluent. A woman, as tall as she, black hair-Eilir Mackenzie. The others would be seconds behind her.
Tiphaine turned and leapt again, her foot hitting the top of a wheelbarrow leaned against the cinderblock outer wall of the Hatfield property and giving her a brace for another scrabbling jump. The top of the wall had a coil of barbed wire on it, bad but better than spikes or broken glass. She grabbed, heedless of the sharp iron punching into her palms, wrenched, pulled, flung her body up sideways and rolled across it, pulling with desperate strength as cloth and skin tore.
Whump. The sidewalk outside struck her, nearly knocking out her wind. That wouldn't do.
She was up and ru
"Help! Police! Murder! Help!" and for good measure added a scream pure and simple, a shriek of fear and pain. Summoning one wasn't all that difficult.
There weren't many houses in this neighborhood, but there were some, and night-watchmen as well. Lights flared, and doors opened, spilling yellow flame-light onto the pavement. A whistle sounded sharply not far away, and a clatter of hooves. The grapnel buzzed over her head and flew out, and the thin, strong rope snaked behind it. The tines came down on the peak of a roof, and she hit the side of the building ru
No time to stop on the roof, though her lungs burned and the cold air was like some hot, thin gas rasping her lungs. She snatched up the rope behind her as she ran, heedless of the risk of tripping, gathered it into a rough bundle and jerked the grapnel free as she passed. An alleyway beyond, another roof past it she pumped arms and legs to gather momentum, leapt outward Behind her a great bass voice shouted: "What a sodding balls-up!"
Corvallis, Oregon
January 12th, 2008/Change Year 9
Michael Havel stirred the body with a boot, carefully avoiding the tacky red-brown trickle of blood from the death-wound and the corpse's mouth and nose, still congealing in the cold air of a winter dawn. He was thankful there weren't any flies; a few tiny footprints indicated that the rats had been nosing around, though they hadn't had peace enough to settle in for a snack.
"Three guesses as to the cause of death," he said dryly, touching a toe to the staghorn hilt of the knife whose blade had been driven up under the ribs.
"Gee, that's a toughie," Signe said, her tone as pawky as his.
We've been married going on ten years and we're starting to think alike, Havel thought. Apparently that old saying is true.
Signe wrinkled her nose at the smell, but stooped over the tumbled corpse, which lay in a tangle of limbs and the collapsed cot. The others were out in the open space that made up most of the upper story of the warehouse, apart from Bill Hatfield, who was apparently still reaming out his unfortunate guards down below, near where they'd been found. In between times, he yelled at the police, who were shouting back. The gray light was gradually swelling, as the sun rose behind the clouds.
And am I glad I'm not those guards! the lord of the Bearkillers thought. Assuming it wasn't what it looked like, they're still never going to live it down.
"Look," his wife said, and pulled back the padded gambeson the dead man wore-they made passable winter coats-and the shirt beneath. "Someone broke his collarbone before they killed him. I thought the way his arm was lying was a bit strange."
Havel grunted and leaned over, his hands on his knees. There was a little blood where the skin had been broken, and the bone gave under his probing fingertip. Someone had done exactly that-good sharp fracture, but not enough damage to have been done by a blade. At a guess, something metal and with an edge, but a blunt one.
"Whoever it was did it quick," Signe went on. "One thrust and they left the knife in to cork him."
Havel nodded agreement. Killing with a knife was messy unless carefully managed; but then, anyone who'd butchered pigs or sheep knew that.
"Get Aaron-" he began, when someone cleared his throat behind him. "Oh, hi, Aaron. We need your expertise here."
"My expertise as a theatre critic?" Aaron Rothman said.
Havel straightened and courteously stepped aside as the physician limped into the room; he had a pair of rubber gloves still on, and they went rather oddly with the rumpled elegance of his jacket and turtleneck and trench coat. Wherever he'd slept, the slim Jewish doctor hadn't been at the Bearkiller consulate houses last night, and the circles under his eyes beneath the glasses suggested he'd been burning the candle at both ends. He was all professionalism now, his intelligent brown eyes narrowed in a pleasantly ugly fortysomething face shadowed with heavy morning stubble.
"Theatre critic?" Havel asked.
"Well, that was an inspired little piece of bitchery with the guards, but it was all put on, you know," Rothman said, a little New York still detectable in his voice though he'd been living in Lewiston, Idaho, at the time of the Change.