Читаем The Anubis Gates полностью

In the ensuing melee this proved to be the way to deal with the things, and though Stowell was knocked unconscious by a blow from one of them and Doyle’s right arm was nearly paralyzed by a blow on the point of the shoulder, in a couple of minutes of leaping, ducking and lunging they’d reduced all of the things except one to inert lumber—the exception was the last one which, when it had found itself alone facing four swords, had in a remarkably human display of dismayed panic, run out the open front door.

Though the purple fireballs had started a small fire or two among the tossed and scattered kindling, the chandeliers had subsided to their normal radiance and the acrid smoke had largely dissipated. “He’s on the premises somewhere,” Burghard gasped. “Let’s try the kitchen—and stay together.” He started forward.

“Wait,” came a chorus of flat voices, followed by a shuffling and knocking as Boaz and a dozen of his luckless patrons were drawn erect by the ectoplasmic umbilicus attached to their heads. Several of them drew swords and daggers, and the rest—including a couple of matronly ladies—picked up heavy, club-length pieces of lumber.

Doyle looked up at the intersection of all the white funnels, and saw that the lump that had grown on the ceiling there was now formed into a huge eyeless face, and the puppet-string tentacles all trailed out of its gaping, flap-lipped mouth.

“Doyle,” said all of the people in weird unison, “gather the remnants of your men and try to find a retreat so obscure that my wrath can’t follow.”

“Right, Burghard,” said Doyle, trying hard to keep hysteria from shrilling his voice, “a wizard in a hurry would head for the kitchen—where there’d be fire and boiling water and whatnot all just waiting for him.”

Doyle, Burghard, Longwell and the other remaining member, a short, stocky fellow, made a dash for the kitchen, but were instantly blocked by the innkeeper and diners.

Doyle ducked under a fat lady’s swing and managed to rap the board out of her hands with his sword pommel a moment before parrying a sword point that was rushing at his chest. His body automatically lunged forward in a riposte, and only at the last possible instant did he override the reflex and turn his sword to drive the knuckle guard, rather than the lethal point, into the belly of his puppet attacker.

The old lady had danced around behind him, and with a crabapple fist gave Doyle a hard punch in the kidney. He roared with pain and spun, kicking her legs out from under her, and as she tumbled he whirled his blade in a horizontal arc that snicked right through the white snake attached to her head—both ends shrivelled away, and the long end snapped up elastically and slapped the ceiling before being slurped like disgusting spaghetti into the now-grinning mouth. The fallen lady began snoring.

Though attacking with concentrated skill and attention, the erstwhile diners were muttering like sleep-walkers; one man who backed Doyle into a corner with a fast and deceptive series of sword thrusts—the instinctive parrying of which made Doyle profoundly thankful that Steerforth Benner had studied fencing—was saying in the most reasonable conversational tone, “… Might simply have asked before throwing it away, that’s all I’m claiming, and it seems to me if either of us has a right to be peeved… “

Peeved, he says, thought Doyle desperately as he finally got a bind on the elusive blade and twisted it out of the bemused man’s grip.

“… Why it’s me, my dear,” the man went on calmly, aiming a jackhammer kick which Doyle leaped over, “for it was my most treasured doublet… “

Two more jabbering, placid-faced men were rushing at him with bared swords, and not caring to have an enemy at his rear, Doyle lashed out backhanded at the trolley wire of the man who felt he had a right to be peeved; the blow had no force to it, and rebounded from the white cord, but the man screeched, leaped like a wounded rabbit and then dropped to the floor. Doyle whipped his sword back into line just as the two attackers made their final bounds, swords up and points aimed at Doyle’s chest.

Doyle flung himself to the right, parrying that man’s blade in a low quinte, and let himself keep falling forward into a sort of three-point crouch, catching himself with the fingertips of his right hand spread on the floor as he let his sword rebound from the parry back up into line, the point over his head; and he’d no sooner got the point up than the other man ran onto it, his own sword transfixing the empty air where Doyle’s torso had been a second ago.

The first man had recovered and stepped back, ready to drive his point into Doyle’s face—”If the damnable cat would just decide whether she wants to be inside,” he was saying quietly—and Doyle pulled hard sideways on his sword, toppling the dying man into the way of the thrust. “… or outside,” the first man continued as his sword chugged deep into his companion’s back.

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