by Dale Lucas
“Are you threatening us?” Torval asked.
“Geezer, stop!” Rikka shouted.
“Bleeding right I’m threatening you!” Geezer growled, then lunged for Torval.
Things happened fast then. Geezer charged Torval, but the dwarf had his maul up quick, swinging it in a broad sideward arc that knocked the bread knife from Geezer’s hand. There was a sickening, wet crack as the blunt metal head of the maul connected with Geezer’s outstretched fist. Rem guessed that every bone in Geezer’s hand shattered with the blow.
Geezer screamed and retreated, yanking his broken hand close. “You half-pint tonker son of a whore!” he roared. He raised his eyes to Torval, wide and white in his sweaty, blood-streaked face, teeth gnashing. “I’ll break you in two for that!”
Rikka was on him then, arms around Geezer’s hunched shoulders. “Stop it!” she hissed. “Stop now, Geezer, love, or this’ll—”
“Off,” the furious man grunted, and tried to shrug his wife from his shoulders.
“Geezer, love, come on now—”
“Off, I said!” Geezer shouted, and used all the force of his body to throw Rikka clear. Her feet left the floor and she fell backward, screaming as she went. In the next instant, her head connected with the sharp stone edge of their hearth and she was instantly silent. When Rikka’s body hit the floor, it did so without a speck of life in it: rag-doll limp, empty.
Rem instinctively took a step toward the fallen woman, but Geezer was in his path and snarled like a rabid hound.
“Don’t do it, lad!” Torval said. “He’s mad, that one!”
Rem froze, seeing the hate and fury in Geezer’s eyes. He tried to speak to him. “Geezer,” he said, “just look. I think Rikka’s hurt.”
Geezer’s eyes swung back and forth—from Rem to Torval, then back to Rem—before he finally stole a quick glance behind him and saw Rikka lying there. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing.
“Get up,” Geezer said.
Rikka didn’t respond.
“I said get up, woman!” Geezer shouted, and kicked her nearby foot. Her body shook, but she made no move. Rem guessed she never would again.
Geezer turned now, almost forgetting about Rem and Torval. He still clutched his broken right hand close to his body. Little by little, Rem could see the anger and violence seeping out of his face, like wine draining from a broken skin. Only a blunt, pale shock remained. He stared at Rikka.
“Rikka, lass? What’s going on?”
Rem and Torval exchanged sorrowful glances.
Geezer fell at Rikka’s side. He shook her with his good hand. “Come on, now. Just a bump on the noggin. You’ll be fine . . .”
He tried to pull her up by her corset. Her body sagged limply in her clothes, nothing but flesh and bone now—wholly lifeless, a bundle for the lichyards. Since he had only a single hand and no good grip, Rikka fell to the floor again with a thump. Geezer was left kneeling beside her, staring, mouth working and no words coming out.
Torval took a tentative step forward. “Come on, Geezer. We’ll see to her. Just come over here and calm down—”
Geezer bent over Rikka, held her face in his good hand, and tried to pat her cheek. The gesture was gentle, loving even, and it made Rem feel a terrible pang of sorrow and loss, a barbed arrow that pierced right through the center of him.
“Rikka,” Geezer rasped.
“Geezer,” Torval insisted, “come on now.”
“Rikka!” Geezer shouted, shaking the dead woman who lay before him. Rem could see that a widening puddle of blood was staining the floorboards under Rikka’s mound of disheveled curls. Whether it was a cracked skull or a broken neck or both that had killed her, he couldn’t say . . . but clearly the result had been the same.
Geezer turned on them now. His sorrow was apparent, but something else rose beneath it. That rabid fury that he’d displayed when squaring off with the two of them returned with a vengeance. Rem could see it in his eyes: Geezer finally understood that Rikka was dead, and clearly he held Rem and Torval responsible.
Rem felt his hand tighten on his sword hilt, unbidden.
“You two,” the grieving man spat, tears cutting tracks through the drying blood on his face.
Torval raised his maul. “Stay where you are, Geezer,” the dwarf said quietly.
“You murderers!” Geezer said, shakily regaining his feet. He looked around him, found a shattered bottle, and took it up by its narrow end.
“Torval,” Rem said, knowing what came next. Geezer’s eyes were fixed on the dwarf. The jagged edges of that broken bottle were clearly meant for Torval.
“I’ll have your flayed skin, you bloody stump!” Geezer shouted, and lunged toward Torval.
Rem’s sword cleared its scabbard and flashed in a broad, flat arc. Rem felt steel bite flesh, saw Geezer shrink from the blow and bend double. While Rem’s eyes drank in the sight, his body followed through, almost independent of his conscious mind. He used the momentum of his sideward swing to bring his sword up, point leveled, then drove it forward in an angled downward thrust. The blade bit deep into Geezer’s rib cage on the left side. The drunken man shouted and cursed, then stumbled to the floor, the deep thrust bringing forth a great gush of blood.
The bottle fell from his hands. Rem kicked it clear, resheathed his sword, then rushed to Geezer’s side. He had binding ropes in hand, ready to tie the man and make sure he could do no more damage. Gods, there was so much blood, more pouring out every second!
“You killed me,” Geezer said, blinking as though his vision was failing him. He tried to slap Rem’s hands away, but Rem rebuffed his resistance easily. Geezer’s strength fled fast. It was staining the floor all around them.
“We warned you,” Rem said, trying to keep from vomiting. He wanted to comfort the man, to reassure him, but he heard only anger and reproach in his own voice. “It’s not our fault you wouldn’t listen!”
He gave up trying to tie Geezer’s hands—what was he thinking?—then struggled instead to yank up the man’s blood-soaked shirt and get at the wound. It wasn’t large, but it was deep: his thrust had passed between the fourth and fifth ribs, just below Geezer’s left nipple. As Rem watched, dark-red blood pumped forth rhythmically, spilling over Geezer’s prone frame, turning his once-white shirt into a dark-red funeral shroud.
“Rikka,” Geezer moaned, sense leaving him as his blood pressure dropped. “Rikka, love, talk to me.”
Torval stood over the two of them, staring down, face a mask of pity and regret. “You’ll see her soon, Geezer. Don’t you worry . . .” Torval then hurried across the room to the window. He let out three long, shrill bleats of his watchwarden’s whistle, then began shouting. “Somebody get a surgeon! Move! We’ve got a dying man up here!”
Rem looked around for anything he could find. He seized upon a kitchen rag encrusted with old stew stains and stinking of sour beer. He snatched up the rag, made a wad of it, and pressed it hard against Geezer’s flowing wound.
“Aemon,” someone breathed.
Rem looked to the doorway. Emacca and Tembryna—two of their female comrades from the wardwatch—had arrived. They stood just outside the door, as though they were loath to enter the room and let the bad fortune swirling there settle on them. Tembryna’s soft young face and great green eyes betrayed horror and sadness at the ugly scene before her. Emacca, born to a hard life on the Tregga Steppe and rarely inclined to displays of emotion, simply stared, stoic and silent.
“Oh, this is just a fine way to end it,” Geezer said sadly. As his life ebbed out of him, his sanity was returning. “Bleeding out like this, done in by you lot . . .”
“Calm down,” Rem said, trying to get the fidgeting Geezer to hold still. “We’ve called for someone. We’ll not let you die tonight.”
“Says the man who killed me,” Geezer retorted.
“Well, we warned you!” Rem shouted back, suddenly losing his patience. “How many times, Geezer? How many? Beating her? Threatenin
g us? Making a mess of . . . of . . . of everything! You’re a fool, and if this is the way you end, you’ve only yourself to blame!” Immediately Rem regretted his words. They seemed cruel, somehow, no matter how true they might be.
“Rikka, lass,” the dying man said. “I can’t see her. Where is she?”
Torval was at Rem’s side now, lifting the rag Rem held just long enough to study Geezer’s wound. The dwarf looked to Rem and gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. He wasn’t going to make it.
“Curse you,” Geezer wheezed. “Curse you both. I call down Hyryn’s wrath . . . beg for Serath’s snare . . .”
“Go on,” Torval said dismissively. “Blame us, you sod. This is all on you.”
Geezer’s face was so white now, his eyelids drooping. “May you be broken on Ghagar’s table,” he whispered. “Swallowed by Meimis . . . snatched by Kraet . . .”
Rem stared, forcing himself to bear witness as the man died. His eyes were half shut now, face white as ash, expression immobile. He stared upward, into the night sky, as if he could see through the ceiling, through the roof, beyond the rain and clouds to the hidden, distant stars . . .
“We warned him,” Rem said. “Bloody fools—we warned them both.”
Torval’s hand fell on Rem’s shoulder. “No regrets, lad. You did your duty.”
Geezer’s last breath escaped him like a shuddering cough.
Rem stood and backed away. He moved to the window and stared out into the night, wishing he could be out in that rain right now, its inexorable fall washing all the blood and the guilt and the pointless waste right off him . . .
CHAPTER TWO
A local barber-surgeon who’d heard the commotion arrived soon after Geezer’s heart stopped. When it was apparent his clinical skills were no longer required, Rem and Torval asked the man to give a sworn statement to either Emacca or Tembryna, then told him he could be on his way. Down in the street, more watchwardens arrived. They immediately busied themselves with taking statements from those in the crowd willing to give them, and dispersing those who had nothing of use to offer. Upstairs, Rem and Torval gave their versions of the event to Emacca and Tembryna before allowing their two female comrades to study the crime scene, a standard practice among the watchwardens when fatalities or serious injuries were involved. Once the two women had completed their hasty recording of Rem’s and Torval’s separate recollections on scraps of parchment and appended their own observations, they promised to see the statements delivered to the watchkeep before the end of their shift. By the time the lich cart arrived to haul the remains of Geezer and Rikka away, the crowd had thinned, but a steady rain yet fell, turning all the world into a muddy screen differentiated only by smudges and shadows, and churning the uncobbled streets to thick, sucking mud. It felt as if they’d passed a whole night’s shift in that cramped little apartment. In fact, less than two hours had elapsed since their arrival.
In no hurry to get themselves soaked to the bone, Rem and Torval lingered in the cramped, dark vestibule of the apartment house, each lost in thoughtful silence.
Rem knew he’d done the right thing—Geezer had killed Rikka with his anger and carelessness, then clearly threatened Torval with that broken bottle. What else could Rem have done? There had been no other choice.
But doing the right thing and feeling that it was the right thing were two distinct states of being, weren’t they? Truth be told, Rem didn’t care how right his defense of his partner had been—he hated the feeling of taking life, especially in the course of what should have been such a simple, routine encounter.
“Are you done yet?” Torval asked.
Rem glanced at his partner. “Done with what?”
“With all of your brooding,” Torval said. “Because if you are, I’d like to head back to the watchkeep.”
Rem shrugged. “Let’s go, then.”
“Hold on,” Torval said, stepping into his path. “Look at me—right into my eyes. Right at my ugly mug.”
Rem forced himself to do so. In truth, consciously looking Torval in the eye felt strange and unnerving. No doubt the two of them spoke eye to eye all the time, but making the decision consciously felt like opening himself up—inviting something he wasn’t sure he could withstand . . .
“I know it’s cold comfort,” Torval said slowly, “but you did what you had to.”
“I know,” Rem said hastily.
“Do you?” Torval asked. “Because I’m fairly certain it’s still weighing on you. I know killing anyone never becomes easy, or normal, but you’ve been doing this nearly a year now. If you strike anyone down because they were threatening you, or threatening me, then it was a good call, plain and simple. Say a prayer for them, but don’t carry the weight of it. We gave Geezer a choice. He made the bad one.”
Rem nodded. “I understand that . . . It’s just . . . it seems like such a waste.”
“It is,” Torval said. “But there’s nothing for it. Those two were headed for some sort of reckoning—some bloody, unwelcome end—since they first fell into the same bed. Somewhere in their haunted hearts, I have no doubt they harbored love for one another, but that love was volatile. If it didn’t get one of them killed, it would’ve taken someone else. We did our jobs by making sure they, and no one else, paid the price of that reckoning.”
“I just don’t understand it,” Rem said, “no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Isn’t love supposed to make you care for things? Guard them? Protect them?”
“Some love, yes,” Torval said, his voice soft and unusually tender. “But there’s another sort . . . a dangerous sort. It’s a love that doesn’t just warm—it burns. It blazes. And ultimately, it devours things. That kind of love doesn’t protect—it kills.”
Rem sighed and lowered his eyes. “Gods save me from a love like that.”
“Well, now,” Torval said, and gave Rem a friendly clap on the shoulder, “what say we make a dash through that downpour? The sooner we’re back at the watchkeep, the sooner we can scratch out our bloody reports and be done with this ugly business.”
Torval led the way through the rainy streets, keeping a steady pace in an effort to get them through the rain and out of it as quickly as possible. Their progress was a zigzagging game as they darted from one overhang or portico to another, trying to keep from spending too much time in the rain, and hoping at each brief stop for an abatement that never came.
They were just blocks away from Sygar’s Square and the watchkeep, the thought of the crowded common chamber and the quiet, thoughtful scratch of a quill-tip on parchment already making Rem feel warmer and drier, when Rem heard a strange series of sounds behind him: first, a light, tinny rattle—the sound of chain mail on a moving body—followed by an impact, a curse, and a loose clickety-clacking, like something solid skating over a bumpy surface, followed by a dry rattle as pieces of something hit the mud. Rem stopped and turned to scan the street behind them. Just a few feet away, he saw a trio of slate roof shingles lying in the mud beneath the overhanging eaves of a peak-roofed warehouse. He tilted his gaze upward, to see where they might have come from, and scanned the steeply slanting roof for signs of damage.
“What are you gawping at?” Torval shouted from up ahead. “I turned back and you were gone!”
Rem’s eyes made the peak of the roof. There, visible in dark relief against the black sky, was a strange, solid figure straddling the roof’s center. For a moment Rem wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Maybe it was just a misshapen chimney? A large alley cat? A stray dog that had somehow climbed to a height it couldn’t find its way down from?
Then a short, sharp flash of lightning illuminated the huddled shape and Rem saw clearly that it was none of those things; it was, in fact, a man. He wore what looked like royal livery of some sort—a soaked, colorful surcoat over gleaming chain mail—and his hair was lank and plastered to his head in the rain. In that brief lightning flash, Rem not only saw his quarry; his quarry saw him. Realizing that he’d been d
iscovered, the man on the rooftop spat a curse, then rose, still straddling the peak, desperately searching for an escape.
“Torval?” Rem called, and pointed toward the roof above them. “Did you see that?”
“Bollocks,” the dwarf cursed under his breath. “I did.”
“You there!” Rem called. “Get down here! This is the wardwatch!”
The man, now an inky blot, suddenly disappeared. He’d flown his perch, probably gone sliding down the far side of the pitched roof.
“Around the other side!” Rem shouted, and broke into a run, right past Torval, rounding the front corner of the big warehouse. Even as he approached, Rem could vaguely hear the commotion of the climber’s rough descent and landing: the sound of his body sliding over the uneven roof, the rattle of falling shingles as his passage tore them loose and sent them tumbling earthward, then a wet splat as the man fell and hit the mud. Rem was just rushing into the mouth of the alley on the warehouse’s far side when he heard his quarry curse again.
Lightning flashed once more. Rem gained a momentary glimpse of the dark alley. The rooftop bandit, pulling himself out of the mud, was trying to orient himself and locate an egress. When darkness returned, Rem could still pick the man’s form out of the slate-gray shadows and used that blot of black on black to guide him.
“Stand fast,” Rem said, bolting forward. “You’ll only make it worse on yourself if you run.”
Of course the fellow ran, turning his back on Rem and pounding down the long alley toward the far end, splashing through the standing puddles and sheets of rain. Rem broke into a sprint after him. Some small part of him supposed he should let this one go—that no good would come of this sudden, intense desire to run a single roof-hopping burglar to ground when they’d already dealt with such foul business at Geezer and Rikka’s—but Rem simply couldn’t resist the urge. So what if it was a shit night? If he couldn’t lay hands on this single clumsy sneak thief, what sort of watchwarden was he?
He was closing, but not fast enough. The man was twenty paces ahead. In seconds the bastard would hit the side alleys that fed into the one they now traversed, and if he made it around either of those corners, Rem was fairly sure he might lose him entirely.