Page 47 of Paladin's Faith

It wasn’t quite enough to avoid the blow completely. Instead of landing square, the club clipped the left side of his head, scraping along his scalp and smacking hard into his left ear. Stars exploded in his vision and he staggered, but didn’t go down.

Hitting the enemy in the head is usually a good idea. Even if you don’t knock them out, frequently they’re stunned and groggy. But it was very unwise to try this on a berserker unless you were very, very certain that you could put them down with one blow.

The black tide poured through Shane. Spin around, but not toward the blow, they expect you to turn toward the blow, so go the other way, so if they’ve got a knife in their off-hand, you’re not throwing yourself onto it—His vision was still full of pinprick flashes, but that was fine, he could hear that there were at least two of them. No point in drawing his sword, the ceilings here were much too low to use it. The tide told him that his assailant was here and he reached out and grabbed someone’s upper arm in his left hand and that was perfect—finish the turn, you’ve got their arm now, right hand slides downward, closes over the wrist, they try to wrench away, good, good, let them, that means your left hand is down by the elbow and all you have to do is push up with one hand and down with the other…

The crack of bone echoed through the corridor, followed by a hoarse yell of pain. Someone else yelled, “Shit!” The owner of the arm sagged, and Shane didn’t feel the need to hold them upright. He heard scrabbling at his feet, then “Come on, come on!” and running footsteps.

The tide hissed that he could catch them, break some necks as well as arms, but Shane forced it down. He still couldn’t see well. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision, but a wave of darkness obscured it. Had he been hurt worse than he thought?

No, his left eye was burning as if there was something in it. He wiped it clear. His fingers came away black in the moonlight. Blood. Ah, yes.

Scalp wounds, he thought, annoyed. Always so dramatic. All the epics about people being stabbed in the heart and “the blood gushing forth, as a river in full flood” should have been about being hit in the head.

Although it’s probably not as epic a tale of heroism if the noble knight makes a heroic last stand and the enemy just dings him behind the ear.

He sighed heavily, found a handkerchief, held it to his head, and went to go wake Wren and Marguerite.

“Sweet blithering gods!” Marguerite said, when she entered the common room. “What the hell happened?”

“Someone hit me over the head,” said Shane. He sounded almost tranquil about it. Seeing the bloodstained towels strewn about the table, Marguerite was not nearly so calm. It looked as if someone had butchered a hog in the middle of the room.

“What?”

“The head,” he repeated patiently. “Someone hit me on it. I’m fine,” he added.

Marguerite clutched her own head. “Who? Where? Why?”

“I don’t know, the outer corridor two floors down, and I don’t know.”

Wren, who had dipped a cloth in water and was dabbing the wound said, “It’s not that bad. Scraped you all along the side, which is why it’s such a spectacular bleeder, but nothing that actually needs stitching up.”

Marguerite dropped into her own chair, appalled. “Start at the beginning,” she said. “Tell me the whole story.”

Unfortunately the whole story didn’t shed much light on the matter. Marguerite massaged her temples. “It’s not impossible that they were trying to mug you,” she said. “That sort of thing does happen occasionally, which is why there are court guards. But if they were trying to lift someone’s purse, why go after someone your size?”

Shane shrugged. “Some people think that big men must be slow.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say that you disabused them of that notion.”

“Just bad luck?” asked Wren. “Or someone trying to take out your bodyguard?”

Marguerite shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. It could be either.” She mistrusted coincidence, but she also knew that her own fears were more likely to have her jumping at shadows and seeing conspiracies under every bush. They didn’t succeed. That’s the important thing. Shane is fine.

“Shall we report this to the guard, then?” asked Shane. Wren had managed to get the bleeding stopped and was wrapping a bandage around his skull.

“I suppose we’d better. Not that I expect them to be much help, but if something else happens, I don’t want to be left trying to explain why we didn’t report it.” She snatched up a cloak to cover the dressing gown that she had thrown on when she heard the commotion in the outer room. “Can you walk?”

Wren snorted. Shane looked vaguely offended. “I could jog the whole way in full plate, if you like.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes. “We’re not all paladins! Most of us would want to go to bed with brandy and sympathy after something like this!”

“Do we have any brandy?” Wren wondered.

“I’ll send a page for some.”

“And the sympathy?” Shane asked.

“I’ll send a page for that too.”