Honor Among Thieves (15 page)
H
elstrow burned for days. The barbarians were too busy celebrating to notice. A great carousing went on in whatever houses remained spared by the flames, an orgy of drinking and debauchery. Out in the streets, men of Skrae hung by their necks from every eave and standard, or lay stinking and bloody on the cobbles. Inside the houses, berserkers danced and reavers gambled for the spoils of war, while drunken thralls made sport in the elegant mansions, stealing what they could carry, smashing anything too big to be moved.
Of all that horde, one man stayed sober on the night of the victory—Mörget, now called Mountainslayer, who never touched spirits. Nor did he exult or crow in victory. Instead he roamed the alleys and lanes of Helstrow, looking for something he could not find.
This place, this fortress city, belonged to him and his people now. As it should be. As it always should have been. Mörget knew the story of this land, having heard it repeated by scolds since he was just a boy.
Once, Mörget’s people and the people of Skrae had been cut from the same cloth. When they first arrived on this continent, fleeing from the decadence and bureaucracy of the Old Empire, they had all been warriors, every man among them as proud and fierce as Mörget’s berserkers and reavers. They lived as nomadic hunters and raiders. Over time, though, the weaker among them banded together to form villages and holdfasts and eventually permanent cities. They built high walls to keep out those who were too strong and wild to live in any structure more permanent than a tent. Eventually the city people united against the nomads. A great war was fought, and the wanderers, the warriors, were too small in number to resist. They had been pushed back to the east, where they could not endanger the city folk. Eventually they were pushed right over the Whitewall Range. A wall higher than anything their cities could boast.
For two hundred years the clans of the East had been penned in, kept locked behind those mountains by the men of Skrae. Mörget’s people had once been great warriors—soldiers, generals, slayers of elves and ogres. For far too long they’d been reduced to raiding the sheep of the hillfolk north of their steppes or at best picking away at the edges of Skilfing in the Northern Kingdoms. It kept them sharp, forcing them to keep their arms strong and their fighting skills honed. But it made them bitter as well because they knew their true destiny was to rule, to smash open every wall and plunder the treasures inside.
Now that destiny was coming to fruition. And yet . . .
Mörget had believed it would make him happy to stand here, to walk these streets he’d conquered. He’d thought he would feel some kind of fulfillment now that his life’s grand task was under way. He would take the West back for the strong, for the righteous, for those who worshipped only Mother Death.
So why, then, did he wander aimlessly, feeling empty, feeling like he was still only part of what he should become?
For anyone else it would have been reckless to wander those ways alone. Mörgain and her spearmaidens roamed the rooftops with bows. Their faces were all painted to resemble the visage of their goddess Death, and they acted as Her servants in the world that night, finishing off those few soldiers of Skrae who had not surrendered and who thought to hide in dark and small places. Time and again as Mörget turned down a new street his thoughts were interrupted by the sudden twang of a bowstring and a desperate cry. His clanswomen were drunk on black mead, that most befuddling of brews, and Mörget wondered if they even saw half the targets they fired at or if they chased as many phantoms as real enemies. More than once they drew on him, but he had only to stare upward, his red-painted face fixed in a scowl, and strings were eased, arrows unnocked.
He came at one point to the Halls of Justice, the last public building in the fortress-town untouched by fire. Inside he heard Hurlind the scold recounting the day’s battle, embellishing the tale with many a jest and pointed observation on the quality and quantity of Skrae’s collective manhood. Mörget almost passed by, but as he glanced in toward the light and merriment, he saw something he could not ignore.
His father sat on a stone bench, surrounded by half-dressed barbarian women as drunk as he was. The masterless dog was curled up on Mörg’s lap, kicking one leg in sleep. Berserkers had passed out on the marble floor in heaps. As the first to the gate, the first to storm the city and brave its defenders, these men had been given the honor of feasting with the Great Chieftain, yet none of them had managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy it. The fury they brought to battle was not without a price to be paid later, a torporous exhaustion that could last for days. Mörget had been one of them once, and he understood, so as he stormed into the chamber of justice he did not trod on his brethren but stepped over their snoring bodies.
Hurlind was bowing low as Mörget came upon him from behind. The scold had a velvet pillow in his hands, upon which lay the crown of Skrae. Mörget knew it had been recovered after the battle of the eastern gate, picked up from where it fell in the grass. The crown was crushed in on one side now, and a few of its emeralds were missing, but someone had polished it to a high luster.
And now Mörg, Great Chieftain of the eastern clans, was reaching for it.
Mörget struck Hurlind across the back of the neck with one massive fist and drove him to the floor. The crown went flying, to spin in circles in a corner of the room.
Mörg frowned at his son. From behind a column, Torki, Mörg’s champion, loomed into the firelight, a great-axe in his hand.
Mörget sneered at the burned face of the giant champion. He’d beaten him once, and could do it again. If challenge were offered, he was ready to accept.
But it seemed Mörg had received the message his son meant to send. That crown was not for the Great Chieftain. No man of the eastern steppes could ever call himself king—that was the law. The Great Chieftain only spoke for the men under them. He did not rule them.
Besides, the battle might be over but the war was just beginning. Helstrow had been taken and sacked, but Helstrow was not all of Skrae. Nor was it certain the true owner of that crown was dead. Most of the clans believed the king had perished in the fighting, but until Ulfram V’s body was found, Mörget would not believe it.
Mörg stared down into his son’s eyes as if mistrusting the fire there, the fire that would not let Mörget rest, even in triumph. The fire that had always separated father from son and kept them understanding one another. Mörg had never respected that fire.
You put it there
, Mörget wanted to say, but this was not a time for words. Eventually the Great Chieftain waved away his son, and Torki took a step back. Mörget spat on the floor near Hurlind’s face and went back out into the night.
He spent a while by the eastern gate, digging bodies out of the rubble. Even after the portcullis came down, the gate had not been wide enough to admit the barbarian horde en masse, so much of the stonework was pulled down—while defenders still thronged its battlements. There were plenty of corpses to find.
None of them belonged to the king.
Howling with frustration, Mörget picked up stones and threw them into the night, not caring what he struck. He trampled on the king’s banner, dropped here by a sniveling herald.
There will be other days
, he told himself.
Other battles. The clans will not be satisfied for long by this blood. They will want more, and I will give it to them, in the name of our mother Death. I will make this country bleed until it runs white.
He sat down on the pile of fallen masonry and took from his belt the only souvenirs he’d kept from the day’s spoils. A hilt, its corresponding blade broken off at a jagged edge, and six inches of another blade from a sword older than history. Bloodquaffer and Crowsbill, or what was left of them.
He’d been surprised as anyone when the swords shattered. The axe he carried was of the finest dwarven steel, he knew—he’d stolen it himself from an abandoned dwarven city. The mirror-bright face of its blade was streaked with wavy shadows, and in a certain light the axe looked iridescent. It was a fine weapon, though not magical in any way.
Yet it had sheared through two Ancient Blades without stopping. Mörget had long believed the seven swords to be indestructible. Everyone believed that—it was an article of faith. Yet here he had the proof that even magic swords were mortal.
Knowing that, he could only wonder one thing.
Will I truly find an enemy here in Skrae, the enemy I’ve sought so long? The enemy who will be more precious than any lover—the enemy who can challenge me, and make me sweat, because I do not know I can beat him?
He had conquered every foe he’d met east of the mountains. He had pushed so hard to come west because he thought he would find there what he sought. But if even the legendary Ancient Blades of Skrae were so easily brought low—
His reverie came to an instant stop when he heard a moan rise up from the pile of corpses. A survivor—one he had not found in his frantic search, one his sister had not discovered as she haunted the dead city.
Mörget leapt down from his perch on the rubble and kicked bricks and bits of scorched mortar away from the source of the sound. Then he reached down with one massive hand and lifted his prize free of the debris.
“You,” he said, the first word he’d spoken all night.
“Are you going to kiss me now, or stick me on a spit and roast me alive?” Balint the dwarf asked. She must have fallen here when the gate collapsed, staying with her ballista crews until the fatal moment. “Either way, I need a change of breeches first.”
J
ust outside the gates of Ness a recruiting serjeant had been broken on a wheel and hung up on a pole. The man’s kettle hat had been nailed to his head so it wouldn’t fall off, and so anyone passing by would recognize his occupation. Then his legs and arms were broken in several places so his limbs could be woven through the spokes of the wagon wheel, and then the wheel had been lifted high in the air so all could see.
Malden just hoped that he’d already been dead beforehand.
The message this grisly execution sent was clear. Recruiters had swept through all the counties and baronies around Ness, calling up every man who could fight for Skrae. Ness had refused that call. As a Free City it technically owed no obligation to the king—he could not conscript Ness’s citizens, nor could he demand they pay taxes to fund his campaigns. Clearly, at least one serjeant had been foolish enough to think the people of Ness were patriots all the same.
It was that independent streak that had birthed Malden and made him who he was, that unique Nessian truculence in the face of authority. Still, he doubted the serjeant deserved such treatment. Surely the Burgrave who ruled Ness could just have had the man tarred and feathered and sent on his way.
But of course Malden knew it had probably been the Burgrave himself who ordered the death of the serjeant. Ommen Tarness, the current Burgrave, was fiercely independent of nature. He answered only and directly to the king, and even then he excelled in sticking to the exact letter of the city’s charter. Tarness saw the Free City as his own personal fiefdom, and he would not have looked kindly on any attempt to recruit from among his people.
“Poor bugger,” Slag said.
Cythera didn’t even look at the dead man. Her eyes were on the city walls. “Home,” she said, with some weary measure of relief and hope. Malden took her hand, not caring who saw it. Their journey from Helstrow had been an endless round of nights spent slogging through muddy fields and long days hiding in abandoned barns when they saw signs that bandits were about. Velmont and his crew had given them numbers, and a certain degree of security, but Malden hadn’t been willing to chance an encounter with desperate men.
Funny, that. It wasn’t so long ago he’d considered himself as desperate as they came.
“It’ll be good to get back to my workshop in Cutbill’s lair,” Slag said, rubbing dust out of his eyes.
“Aye, Cutbill should be glad to see us,” Malden said.
The dwarf shot him a meaningful look. Malden chose to ignore it.
The city gate was manned by a single guard, a lame old watchman in a shabby undyed cloak embroidered with a pattern of eyes. That made him a watchman, one of the bailiff’s enforcers of public order. Normally the watch didn’t stand gate duty. Malden worried that the oldster might recognize him, but the guard took one look at the sword on his hip and waved him through.
The street beyond the gate was empty. Usually it would have been thronged with hawkers and beggars, hoping to make some coin from any newly arrived travelers. Malden couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen this street—or any street in Ness for that matter—when it wasn’t crammed with people. “Where is everyone?” he asked.
The watchman laughed. “Gone to ground if they’re smart, or run as far and as fast as their feet could carry ’em. You haven’t heard there’s war coming?”
Malden bit his lip. “We heard rumors, I suppose.”
“Where are you coming from, if I may ask?” the guard said, giving the thief a second look. Malden realized he shouldn’t have asked any questions. “I’ve been told to expect refugees from Helstrow. You’re dusty enough for a refugee, I suppose.”
“We’re late of Redweir,” Malden lied, unsure what the guard’s orders might be regarding such refugees. Most likely he’d been told to drive them away—no city wanted new immigrants in time of war. Refugees were extra mouths to feed who would come with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We’ve come to do business with Guthrun Whiteclay, the master of the potter’s guild.”
The guard snorted. “Fare well with that, then, for he’s not here. Him and most of the burgesses’ve already run for it. Some to the west, some as far as the Empire, I hear tell. Is that a dwarf you’ve got with you? They were the first to go—hightailed it for their own kingdom days before we even knew there was barbarians coming. Nobody knows why.”
“Because we’re smarter than you humans,” Slag pointed out.
“Well, that’s what they say. And yet, you’re here, little fella.”
Slag was discreet enough not to react to the barb.
“Whiteclay wouldn’t just have abandoned his business altogether. He must have left some agent inside,” Malden said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I’ll need to speak with him, then.”
“More luck to you, if you do find someone to do business with. Get on inside.”
“My thanks,” Malden told him, and headed through the open gate.
He found his city changed enormously since he’d left. Oh, the buildings were the same, the streets just as winding and close and full of filth as he remembered. Yet every shop sign, every standard in the street, every gable of every house, had been strewn with hawthorn branches—that tree most sacred to the Lady, for it wore her colors. It seemed like every door had been hung with a hawthorn wreath.
And yet there was no one about to appreciate all this decoration. It wasn’t just the street by the gate. Every street in Ness was empty. Occasionally Malden would spy someone through a window, or hear footsteps echoing in a side street, but otherwise the city might have been abandoned, deserted—silent. Or nearly so.
“Do you hear that music?” Cythera asked.
Once she said it, he did hear it—the high strains of a fife and the dull, slow beating of a drum. “Sounds like it’s coming from up on Castle Hill.”
Ness had been built on a massive hill, constructed in concentric zones around the Burgrave’s palace. Market Square was up top, surrounded by the Spires—the district of temples, public buildings, and the university. Malden led his crew up the Cornmarket Bridge, intending to investigate the music and see where all the people had gone. Weary as they were, Velmont and his thieves followed close behind. They had never been here before and most likely just didn’t want to get lost.
It was a long walk up a steep slope, but the cobblestones were so familiar under Malden’s soft leather shoes that he didn’t feel the fatigue of climbing. Slag grumbled but Cythera kept drawing ahead, as if impatient for Malden to get to the top. When they reached the side of the counting house, just outside Market Square, Malden stopped them all and just stood there, staring.
An army had formed in the square, perhaps a thousand men in tabards of russet and green. No two of them seemed to carry the same weapons or wear the same sort of armor, but they marched around the edges of the square in scrupulous order, their feet moving to the beat of the drum. Some of them carried flags with the coat of arms of Ness, while others held campaign banners so old and decayed they frayed visibly as Malden watched.
He’d seen those campaign banners before. They had hung in a secret chamber inside the Burgrave’s palace. They were the souvenirs of Juring Tarness, the first Burgrave of the city, a general who had helped found the kingdom of Skrae eight hundred years ago. Ommen Tarness, the current Burgrave, was Juring’s direct descendant.
“Ye men, will you come, and heed the call?” someone asked in a high, clear voice. Malden looked up with a start and saw an old man with one leg come hobbling toward him on a crutch. There was a sprig of hawthorn pinned to his tunic. “Skrae has need, for this is a dark hour. But the Free Army will show these barbarians a thing or two yet!” The cripple held out sprigs just like the one he wore.
Malden looked again at the soldiers in the square. He thought he recognized some of them. Joiners, cobblers, redsmiths, ropewalkers—men from a hundred other occupations. These were the good solid citizenry of Ness, all right, men who had worked the city’s many trades when last he’d seen them. Men who grumbled about the Burgrave’s policies and taxes, and spoke open treason against him in taverns and gaming houses. Men who thought of government as an evil rarely necessary but somehow inescapable. Now they were soldiers, recruits—could it be, volunteers?
“What happens if we say no?” Malden asked.
The cripple looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Well, that’s your right, of course. As citizens you cannot be forced to serve. But you look able-bodied to me. Why would you turn down this opportunity? You’ll get to see the kingdom, and the pay’s better than anything the guilds offer. Look how many of your neighbors have joined up already! See how dashing they look. And don’t forget—every good girl loves a soldier. Isn’t that right, mistress?”
Cythera shook her head in disbelief. “Malden,” she said, ignoring the cripple, “they’re not bewitched. I would see it if a spell had been cast over them. Beyond that, I have no explanation for this. I should go and talk to my mother.”
Malden grasped her hand and looked deep into her eyes. “Be safe,” he said, “I don’t like the look of this . . . Come,” he told Slag and Velmont. “Let’s go find Cutbill. Maybe he knows what’s going on.”