Crooked Streets

by R. J. Creaney

  The fighting raged on. The ruffians, though, were not fighting men. They knew how to ravage and how to brutalise, but their training and experience did not proceed far beyond drinking house brawls and back-alley scuffles. Neither were they armed with anything more substantial than daggers and knives.

  Eventually, the ruffians found that they had had their fill of battery and broken bones. They gathered themselves together and tumbled out of the inn, slinking away down the street like acrimonious serpents; muttering curses and swear-words and drawing fearful glances from the townspeople as they went.

  2 – The Battle at the Grotto Grouse

  Inside the hotel, the vagabond mercenaries Kozef and Cainen picked out a table that had not been disturbed overly much in the commotion and sat down, without so much as a word exchanged between themselves. Hopefully the first quantity of their food and ale – as had been agreed upon with Helaire – would be brought to them before long.

  Cainen glanced over to the proprietor and his daughter. They were not preparing food and drink, and nor were they busying themselves with cleaning up the damage: they were talking, hurriedly and tensely, between themselves. They did not seem to be at all pleased or relieved to be rid of the rough patrons. Neither did they seem overly irritated at the extent of the destruction, even though a great many of their furnishings had been damaged amid the violence. They appeared frightened, more than anything else, he realised – they were perhaps more frightened now than they had been when the thugs had been traipsing about their common room. Something was very amiss.

  Finally, Helaire and the hotelier gained a measure of composure. Helaire sent the young girl away – telling her to run straight home without stopping – and with her father, tentatively approached the two mercenaries.

  “My saigneurs,” the hotelier said. He addressed them in very much the same way he had the ruffians: meekly and deferentially, back slightly bowed and with hands clasped before him as if in prayer. The false smile he had displayed for the ruffians was now gone, replaced by a serious, sorrowful countenance. “I am Ouend, the proprietor.”

  “Good-day, Ouend!” Cainen replied, overly-happy. He was grinning and sitting back languidly. “Cainen is my name, and the big fellow is Kozef – greet the good man, Kozef – and might I just say that your inn here is altogether grand, and we look forward to spending the night.”

  Ouend’s lip quivered at the compliment. It seemed that he had been an innkeeper for a very long time, and was conditioned to smile at such things.

  “It is a pleasure, certainly,” he said. “The girl was Mariene, our hired helper. And of course you have already met my daughter, Helaire.”

  “We certainly have,” Cainen said, winking at her.

  “I am afraid, saigneurs, that there has been something of a misjudgement on our part.”

  Cainen looked at him, askance. “Sure, I hope you’re not telling us that you’ll be dodging on our agreement,” he said. “She called out to us ‘So be it!’ – didn’t she, Kozef? – and then that was that, the matter was decided and everything was agreed upon.”

  “Yes, gentlemen, I understand,” Ouend said. “That is not the issue, necessarily. You see, there are other considerations...”

  “Considerations?” Cainen exclaimed. He and his comrade both then stood. “What bloody considerations?”

  Helaire stepped out in front of her father then, adamant. “They rule here, you fools! They are the masters of this city!”

  Kozef and Cainen were taken aback.

  “They were a gang of alleyway-brutes, maidamme,” Kozef said. “I hardly think that –”

  “Didn’t you see their leather jerkins?” Helaire asked. “The badges at their breasts?”

  The mercenaries exchanged a quick, uncertain glance. Cainen thought on it, and realised that he had not taken too much notice of what they wore. He began to speak, but Helaire spoke up again.

  “They were the tanners, you dolts! Journeymen of the Tanner’s Guild, the fraternity that holds dominion over this city. Their word is law in Thieudan.”

  “Tanners? What!” Kozef exclaimed. “They are craftsmen and labourers! Who is liege here? Do you not have an overseer for Thieudan? A count?”

  “The Overseer of Thieudan – a meek fool – hangs by their purse-strings,” the hotelier’s daughter told him. “Our disgraceful louse of a count, meanwhile, knows to turn his scrutiny away from this city as long as he receives his bribe on time.“

  “They do not only control the tannery and the other leather guilds,” Ouend said. “The butcher-shops and abattoirs belong to them. All the gambling huts, the brothels and bathhouses are theirs. They extort coin and goods from us bourgeoisie and the other guilds, calling it the ‘commune tax’, you see – we give them their silver crowns every week, otherwise a dozen of them will come and brutalise us.”

  “They are dogs and fiends, clad in leather jerkins!” Helaire said, fiercely. Moments later, the fire in her had died down and she began to wring her hands. “This will draw their ire to us, without a doubt. And I am culpable.”

  “It wasn’t you, Helaire, what went and kicked them in the face,” Cainen said. “It was us.”

  “I should have restrained myself,” she said. “I should never have called out to you.”

  “What would have happened if we had not stepped in?” Kozef asked. “A rough grope here and there? Or maybe something very worse. You could not know. You acted to protect yourself and the girl.”

  “They will come for the two of you,” Helaire said. “They will come for us. Even now, they’ll be banding together, and they will arrive here in strength. It’s their way.”

  Just at that moment, they heard the sound of rushed footsteps in the street outside. A dark shape swept past the windows and came to a skidding halt at the doorway.

  It was a lone youth. His wild, severe eyes took in the broken crockery and the overturned seats and trestle tables as he clung to the door-jamb, catching his breath. He entered the hotel common room, glaring suspiciously at Kozef and Cainen as he moved over to Ouend and Helaire.

  “I heard that there had been a fracas,” he said. He appeared to be about nineteen years of age, and resembled the hotelier Ouend and Helaire in his facial features, if not in the dark shade of his hair and eyes. “And I came here promptly.”

  “It was the hide men, Ovier,” Ouend said, unhappily. “They were harrying Mariene and your sister, and these gentlemen took action against them.”

  The youth Ovier turned his head to look again on the vagabonds. His glare was less stern, but still guarded. There was a long dagger belted at his hip. Cainen suspected that he had some understanding on how to use it.

  “I detest the tanners with all my passion,” Ovier said. “So I would consider anyone who strikes against them my friend. But if only that strike had not put my family in peril –!”

  “If only indeed,” Cainen said, unhappily.

  “The tanners!” There was a small, high-pitched voice: a little girl stood at the door, diddering about on the spot. “A big lot, coming down this way!” She did not stop to exchange pleasantries, but promptly rushed off.

  “You both should flee,” Helaire said, turning back to the mercenaries. “There is still time. When they arrive here we will tell them that you have already fled the city.”

  “Flee?” Kozef said. “And leave you to the wolves coming down from the hills? We might be wandering mercenaries, but we have more honour than that, maidamme!”

  “On the other hand, we haven’t the good judgement to turn ourselves in peaceably, either,” Cainen said. “You three best take yourselves upstairs. This will be dirty and disorderly.”

  Cainen looked upon the youth then, and noticed his clenched fists and the indignant fire in his dark eyes. “That includes you, young fellow. You’ve the hot blood and fighting spirit to match, we can see, but you’d best stay with your family for now.”

  The family retreated to the second floor, leaving Kozef and Cainen alone i
n the ruined and deserted common room.

  The Fennishman stepped part-way out the door and peered down the street. He saw a band of men – about a dozen strong – advancing up the thoroughfare at a measured pace. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder, and spanned almost the entire breadth of the busy street. All were clad in leathern jerkins tanned a deep, burnt red.

  He let out a groan.

  He turned about then, and peered up the street. Sure enough, there was another band of leather-clad men approaching from that direction. Roughly fifteen in all.

  He let out an especially loud groan and returned to Kozef.

  “We’ve foes approaching, my blood. About twenty five to thirty of them.”

  “Sweet Janneus!” Kozef exclaimed. “It would seem, small man, that we have cut more firewood than we can carry. Do I need to remind you about who thought up this small plan in the first place?”

  “Sure, it worked without a trouble at that inn down in Monquier!” Cainen quipped, fondly recalling their spell at the sun-soaked southern city. The band of toughs had talked and walked as if they were the hardest men under the sun, but when the time for words ended and the time for action began, Cainen and the big man had soundly thrashed them. “We cleaned out that gang of fools and dined like kings all evening. You remember the mulled wine, don’t you?”

  “It seems that this Monquier has become more a Talquista, then,” Kozef said.

  The name conjured up in Cainen’s mind a scene of violence in a narrow, dusty vale. It had happened the previous summer, in the hills north of that town. He and the big man had run afoul a band of marauders, and found themselves outnumbered four times over. It had been a furious fight.

  “But now is not the time to dwell on that,” Kozef said, bringing his comrade’s mind back to the present. “Our friends have arrived, you see there.”

  Cainen looked. Sure enough, the tanners stood out in the street before the inn.

  The two forces had united to form a small army. To a man they were dressed in jerkins of deep red leather. At each man’s breast was the badge of the guild – representing not some sort of star, of course, but an untanned cattle hide.

  Jague, his face bloodied and bruised, stood at the head of the host. He grinned spitefully at the sight of the two men through the open door.

  The guildsmen bore an array of weapons, Cainen could see: some were common and some were quite unusual. There were daggers, swords and cudgels, but also fighting implements that appeared to be lethal variants on standard hiding and leatherworking tools – dull-edged but heavy-bladed hide-scraping knives and long steel stabbing implements that could have been, perhaps, oversized awls.

  “The foreign mercenaries will come out,” Jague called, “and render themselves to us.”

  A slight twitch from Kozef’s moustache was the only reply. Neither of the men budged from where they were sitting. They were in full view of Jague, standing out in the street amongst his fellows.

  “This is an unfortunate situation, make no mistake,” Kozef said to his comrade, after a moment of strained silence. “There are many of them, and only two of us.”

  The Fennishman grinned as he looked upon his comrade, gauging his expression. They were no strangers to fighting and strife, and neither of them was afraid at that moment. They were instead deliberate; both taking careful stock of the odds, the composition of the enemy force and the lay of the land.

  “We’ve a number of factors working in our favour, though,” Cainen said, eyeing the host of men through the doorway and windows. “They don’t fight for their livelihood. They’re craftsmen who are also alleyway brutes, as you said. That puts them down somewhat. We’re more heavily armed than them, and have longer reach and better defence. That pushes us up. What’s more, they won’t all be able to come through the door at once and overwhelm us, of course, so we can address each man as he steps through – so their numbers need not avail them. That brings them down further. It’ll be just like we’re fighting four, maybe five or six proper fighting-men, surely!”

  “Wishful thoughts, small man!” Kozef exclaimed. He glanced intently at the smaller man, as if trying to determine whether or not Cainen believed his own justifications. “A band of strong men at our side would be better at this point, but wishful thoughts will have to do us at the moment.”

  They both stood up, and positioned themselves close to the entrance.

  “We are for you, gentlemen,” Kozef announced, rapping his war hammer against his shield.

  “Come at us, you bleedin’ blaggards!” Cainen shouted, removing the canvas cover from the head of his axe. “But don’t go tripping over yourselves on your way through the door!”

  With that, the host of tanners advanced.

  3 – The Tannery

  Kozef and Cainen – battered, stripped of their weapons and thwarted – were bustled violently into the street. They were thrown down to the paving stones, kicked and thrashed, and their wrists were tightly bound together with lengths of strong corded leather. They were heaved onto their feet, and soon the tanners had fallen into serried ranks and began to march, troop-like, driving the prisoners along before them.

  They had fought like rabid dogs against the small army of toughs, but in the end they had not accounted for everything. Their tactics had availed them for a short while – one at a time, the most cocksure of the guildsmen would swagger through the doorway, slashing and swiping out with their respective weapon. A sturdy round shield would rise up to block against the attack, or a flourishing axe-head would turn it away. Heads were smashed and shoulders were cleaved open, bloodying the common room’s floorboards and plaster walls. Soon enough, Kozef and Cainen had felled four of the enemy.

  In response to the mercenaries’ strong position, the tanners saw fit to change their own tactic. They moved to attack the Grotto Grouse’s windows, shattering the glass panes and quickly climbing through. A small band of them came from the rear of the hotel, gaining access via a back door. They rushed into the common room, closing the circle around the two mercenaries.

  The vagabond duo had been overwhelmed by sheer numerical superiority. They were wrestled down to the floor – cursing and striving – and their weapons were torn from their hands. Now they found themselves being forced, south-eastwards, through the narrow streets and avenues of Thieudan towards the great tannery.

  Visitors to Thieudan would always inhale the tannery before actually seeing it – and things were no different for Kozef and Cainen. After walking some distance from the city centre, they rounded a corner and the smell of it struck them like a boulder in the face. A profoundly cruel and offensive stench clung to the air in that part of the city. It seemed a concretion of two or more separate and distinctly noxious malodours into a single towering, overwhelming stink – a smell that not only ravaged one’s nostrils but also addled the head and burned the eyes.

  “Haw!” Cainen retched. “Sweet mercy of the Intercessor, that is blasphemous! Which one of you tanner boys did that? It wasn’t me!”

  The guildsmen gagged the Fennishman by way of a response, running a sturdy length of leather between his teeth and tying the two ends together behind his head. Not only did it put a halt to Cainen’s japes, but it also made breathing through the nose his only option.

  The compound of the tanners of Thieudan was like a small walled town unto itself. It was a sizeable network formed of the buildings and the spaces between them – open courts and yards and culs-de-sac – in the town’s south-eastern ward, a district that was ostensibly for the poor, but was here dominated by the tanners and sealed off from the rest of the city with high stone and palisade walls. Kozef and Cainen were marched through the gate, the sole point of entry and exit into the compound.

  They proceeded deeper into the guild’s centre of operations. The mercenaries would have been somewhat curious at all the buildings and tannery paraphernalia if they hadn’t currently been in the captivity of their enemies, and if they hadn’t been reeling at the mighty stench
of it all. They saw the various beamhouses, storehouses, outbuildings and entrepots. There was an abattoir and skinning building, to which there was attached a large pen of cattle – Cainen noticed them first: a hundred or more bulky, gold-red creatures standing in crowded confinement. There were countless drying racks: upright timber frameworks, each loaded with hides hung out to dry. These could be seen everywhere one cared to look – they were stacked against walls, stacked on top of each other and standing inside old storehouses and narrow alleyways.

  What Kozef and Cainen noticed immediately, however, was all the many deep pits, vats, barrels, vessels and buckets throughout the compound. These were filled sometimes with plain water, or sometimes with an oak-bark solution or some other tannic concoction – but most of the time, they appeared to be filled with something altogether caustic or noxious or putrid. Some of the vats filled with lime, while some were filled to the brim with dark, murky piss. Some of the barrels contained a slurry that combined water with the ordure of dogs or pigeons, and one large vessel was brimming with a strange grey something – a lumpy liquid that could only have been brain matter. For all of these odious substances were essential components of the leather tanning process.

  Kozef could see, also, that there were a number of boys milling about the compound; mostly apprentices and prospective apprentices. Some were astoundingly young: stomping about one of the aforementioned vats there could be seen a squad of dirty little creatures clothed in rags, none of them older than seven or eight years of age – urchins, he supposed, employed by the guild to scour the streets and alleyways for excrement.

  Their procession stopped in the middle of a large open yard – presumably the main area of the compound. Nearby, the vagabonds could see a tall building constructed of golden, finely worked stone. It was three stories tall, and was surprisingly stately in appearance – almost to the point of garishness – despite the filthy and utilitarian surrounds. It could only have been the tanner’s guildhall.