The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,100

Fasset to his left—were protected.

When the fury abated, and his heart, that had been threatening to break the bounds of his ribcage, slowed down enough for Athos to stop fighting, he found himself standing with his back against D’Artagnan’s wall. D’Artagnan was still to his right, and still in his nightshirt. Fasset was still to his left, bent double, clutching his sword, while breathing so hard that Athos thought the man must be wounded.

But it didn’t matter if he was, because they’d carried the day. In front of them, in various positions of death, lay six guards of the Cardinal.

“Are you wounded, Fasset?” Athos asked.

Fasset shook his head, while still drawing deep, chest-straining breaths. “No, curse you, but I’m also not a demon, like you.”

Athos nodded. He might be a demon, for all he knew. “We must go to Porthos’s place now,” he said, as much to D’Artagnan as to Fasset. “I don’t see any reason to go by Aramis’s lodging because he wouldn’t be so stupid as to go there and they must know it. But they’ll be at Porthos’s. Porthos will need our help.” He thought of his capable, giant friend, who bragged of being able to take three duelers at once, and usually could.

But could he stand alone against determined killers who didn’t care for the rules of war?

“Will you come with me?” he asked both of them.

“Yes,” D’Artagnan said.

“In your nightshirt?”

D’Artagnan grinned, and kicked up his foot. “It’s warm and I have my boots on.”

Athos nodded. “And you, Fasset?”

Fasset shook his head. “I don’t think I could. The two of you aren’t human.”

“Better, perhaps,” Athos said. “These six are dead, but we don’t need the guards, as a whole to know you’ve betrayed them. Thank you, my friend. I owe you my life.”

Without delaying, Athos took off running, following D’Artagnan who ran like a demon, taking every possible shortcut between his house and Porthos’s.

What To Do with a Fugitive; Where the Cardinal’s Guilt Is Agreed Upon, but Guilt of What Is Strenuously Argued

D’ARTAGNAN arrived at Porthos’s house before Athos, just in time to join the melee.

As he arrived, Porthos and Aramis were close to carrying the day, with three of their opponents lying dead. As D’Artagnan started fighting the fourth, he dropped his sword, turned and ran away.

He was shortly followed by number five, while the sixth fell to the ground, Porthos’s sword having neatly speared him through the chest.

Athos arrived just in time to see the three friends standing there, looking at their dead foes. With immediate and complete composure, Athos stopped and slid his sword into its scabbard. He looked down at the foes, and crossed his arms on his chest, while he frowned at them, as though holding them responsible for cutting his fun short.

D’Artagnan became aware of being very informally attired. Even in the warm evening air, his legs felt naked and cold, as the breeze ruffled his nightshirt’s hem.

And he became aware that Aramis was looking at him, and frowning vaguely in his direction.

“I was in bed,” D’Artagnan said. “And I heard men talking, beneath my window. They were going to force the door open.”

“So he jumped down from his window, scrambled down the trellis and gave battle,” Athos said.

“And then Athos and . . . was that Fasset?” D’Artagnan asked, and Athos nodded. “Joined, and Athos killed three of them, I killed two, and Fasset killed one.”

“But why?” Porthos asked. He cleaned his sword on the clothes of a fallen opponent, and slid it back into its scabbard. “Why were they trying to kill us? Because that was not a simple challenge for a duel. They wanted to kill us.”

“They thought—” Athos started.

“No,” D’Artagnan said. It occurred to him that in the dark, with darker doorways all around, there was a very good chance of being overheard if they stood here, in the middle of the street. And, D’Artagnan thought, looking at the corpses at their feet, if this was not secret matter, it should be. “Porthos, may we go inside?”

The redhead’s face fell. He looked guilty, immediately, of lack of hospitality. “Of course, of course,” he said. “Do come in. I’m a boar. I should have invited you in sooner.” And, as he spoke, he started unlocking his door.

“Hardly,” Aramis said, his voice dry and humorous. “If you had invited us inside sooner, we’d only have got blood all over your stairway.”

Porthos’s stairway was very grand, as was indeed, his entire lodging. The rooms had been subdivided from a