have heard them till it was too late. Even the thunder of their boots on the gallery, running toward him, was drowned. He caught the railing in both hands, swung himself over, felt their bodies blunder and slam against the rail as he let go and dropped.
He heard one say "Tarnation!" in a heavy Irish brogue, as he ducked through the kitchen door and by touch in the dark found where Bella kept the iron spits, and the woodbox with its short, heavy logs.
There was no time to search for anything more-Bella's knives were in a drawer someplace, but the building was already shaking with the descending boots, and he knew he had to take them when they came off the stairs, when they'd still be single file.
He made it, barely, driving the spit in pure darkness out of the abyssal night beneath the gallery, hearing and smelling the assassin as he reached the bottom of the stairs and knowing by touch, because he had ascended those stairs himself a thousand thousand times, where the man had to be. He felt the sharpened end of the iron plow into meat; he heard the man scream, a dreadful animal sound.
Feet blundered, then more shrieking as the second man fell over the first. January swung his makeshift club like Samson smiting the Philistines and felt it connect with something, but a hand grabbed his arm, and he twisted out of the way of the foot-long knife he'd glimpsed on the gallery. The blade opened his sleeve and the arm beneath in a long mouth of shocking pain. He grabbed where he guessed the man's head had to be and drove his knee up hard. Metal rattled on the brick underfoot, then the two of them fell outward, landing in the oozing muck and sluicing rain of the yard.
Hands groped and fumbled at his throat. He saw the silvery flash of eyes. With his forearm he smashed away the man's hands, grabbed for him again and dragged him bodily up to slam him into one of the gallery posts, but the marauder slithered free. An instant later, above the hammering of the rain, January heard the yard-gate rumble as heavy weight clambered over it.
He turned back, flung himself into the kitchen again and grabbed another spit, then, when there was no pursuit, groped, shivering and dripping, for the tinderbox and striker always kept in a tin holder above it, Bella not holding with new-fangled stinking lucifers in her kitchen. Wedged into a corner, listening with what felt like his entire body and unable to hear a thing over the rain, January kindled the tinder. By the flickery light, he found candles and a lamp.
The man he'd stabbed with the spit lay facedown in the mud of the yard. The metal had pierced the thorax just under the rib cage. January suspected, by the strong smell of the blood as he dragged him back under the shelter of the gallery, that he'd gone into shock and subsequently drowned and suffocated in ooze. In addition to the skinning knife he found at the foot of the steps-and the one the second man had dropped in the gallery-the first man had a slung-shot-a lump of lead on the end of a leather thong-at his belt, and a pistol wrapped in greased leather under his shirt.
January brought the lamp close, and dipped a cup of rainwater from the nearby barrel to wash off the man's face.
It was the gotch-eyed bartender from the Jolly Boatman Saloon.
Chapter Fifteen
The Jolly Boatman's lights burned through the rain like a scattering of rusty jackstraws. From the weed-grown alley January listened. The bass rumble of men's voices carried easily through the thin plank walls. The shutters were closed against the storm, and here in the Swamp no street lamps burned. In his rough corduroy jacket and dark trousers, January blended with the night.
Curiously, though it was past curfew, he felt safe. The City Guards avoided the Swamp. Should he be attacked or murdered himself, he could look for neither protection nor vengeance, but he was too angry now for that to matter, and in any case he was coming to understand that the Swamp was not the only place where that was true. In his belt, against every law of the state of Louisiana, he wore both knives he'd taken from his would-be killers. He carried the dead man's slungshot rolled up in his pocket. The only reason he hadn't added the pistol