< previous page page_389 next page >

Page 389
struggling for life. Even as the skin and flesh of his back tightened against the expected pain, Walter's foot was pushing Heribert's body off his blade and he was turning to try to face his opponents. He succeeded just in time to see Sybelle appear in the doorway. Eyes and mouth both opened, but further action was impossible. Walter was paralyzed by surprise. At that moment any assassin could have cut his throat slowly with a dull knife, and he would not have made the smallest objection.
Sybelle was not inhibited by surprise. She pushed past one of her men, who was just straightening up after cutting the throat of the last living assassin, leapt lightly over the bodies, and clutched at Walter, crying, ''Beloved, are you sore hurt?"
And Walter said, "I did not break my collarbone again." He then blinked at the words that had come out of his mouth and roared, "What are you doing here?"
The volume of his voice, despite the trickle of red that was running from his side under his left arm, assured Sybelle that her husband was essentially intact. She was much tempted to say Saving the life of an idiot, but she was aware of the troop outside the gate, which Walter was not, and knew this was no time to start an argument.
"We are beset," she said, instead of answering Walter's question. "I brought twenty men, but there is a larger troop outside trying to fight their way in."
"We need not fear them," Walter began, guessing they were Heribert's men and that, their contract and all hope of future gain being terminated by their master's death, they would go quietly away when informed of that fact.
However, as he said it he became aware that both Sybelle and he had been shouting to make themselves heard over a woman's hysterical shrieks. Sybelle seemed to come to the same realization at the same moment, and both their heads turned in the direction that the men-at-arms were already looking.
"Shut that accursed bitch's mouth for me," Walter said to Sybelle, "while I go out and tell those men Sir Heribert is dead." He started out, then turned back, recalling the expression on Sybelle's face when she looked at Marie. "Do not kill her," he warned. "Just stop her screeching."
Sybelle went over to Marie, who was backed against the wall, staring at the dead bodies and the sea of blood on the

 
< previous page page_389 next page >