“You have already met your assassin,” Sheldrake said, quietly.
“Sir, this is a joke, and I am too old and feeble-minded to realise, forgive me?” He smiled, unconvincingly. Afraid.
“No joke.”
The sword pressed harder, drawing blood which trickled down the incline of the blade, black in the moonlight.
“How have I failed in performing the task you set me? What have I done to offend you?” The old man swallowed. Carefully. “The assassins are bringing the head of Anton Leyander here even as we speak,” he said.
Sheldrake withdrew his sword from the old man’s throat and paced back and forth before him, breathing heavily. “Tell me of the two assassins you hired,” he said.
“They are two very professional men, sir. Ideal candidates for the task of ridding you of that most troublesome fellow. They are silent. They are invisible – “
“They are dead.”
“Dead, sir? I think not. I spoke with them only yesterday, and they agreed to expedite the deed we wished done. They were certainly not bereft of life when we met. The victim in question is, however, in all probability, dead even as we speak.”
The Captain’s face was pale in the moonlight. Red-rimmed eyes darted left and right, missing no detail, never still. Straight black hair clung to his damp forehead, and below the thin nose his moustache twitched as he muttered to himself. He stopped pacing suddenly, jammed his face close to the old man’s.
“Was one of your assassins dark, and the other pale, with a gold ring in his ear?” Sheldrake asked.
“Why, yes. How...?”
Sheldrake dropped the two ears on the floor at the old man’s feet. “It is your assassins who are dead. Their victim visited me this evening as I bathed. He left me those.”
“Oh, dear.”
Captain Sheldrake’s tongue darted out, moistening a purplish lower lip. “Oh, dear?”
“It would seem, sir, that I have failed you.”
“It would seem so.”
“These were my assassins.”
“You are mistaken,” Sheldrake said.
“How so?” The old man looked up.
“Here is your assassin!”
“Forgive me?” the old man croaked.
The thrust of a sword.
Again.
Again.
Ping! The sword broke under the force of a particularly violent thrust.
“Shit!”
The old man lay still in the dirt.
If Sheldrake had examined the severed ears in the light of day, he would have discovered that they had been cut from the carcasses of a dark-skinned boar and a pink piglet.
*
“We are late,” Bryn said.
“I wasn’t the one who kept stopping because head hurt,” Gosling said.
“Yours would hurt too, if it was full of seawater,” Bryn said. He pinched his nose a blew watery snot into the gutter.
“Leave it alone, the ache will soon fade.”
“I fell from a cliff,” Bryn said. “You don’t know what it’s like to see your whole life pass your mind’s eye in an instant and fear you’ll never draw breath again.”
Gosling stopped and looked up at the blond assassin. “Have you forgotten Drake’s Spur?” he asked, pulling open his shirt to reveal the thick white scar over his breastbone. “I had a sword through my chest and almost died.”
“All right, so we’re equal on that score,” Bryn said sulkily, “but my suffering is still fresh.”
“Come on. Let us hope our ‘John Smith’ is a patient man.”
The two assassins turned into the blacksmith’s yard. Almost immediately, they spotted the dark shape on the ground.
“That can’t be good,” Bryn said. He looked around warily as Gosling hurried forward. “Is it him?”
“It is,” Gosling said.
“Dead?”
“Several times over. Not the work of a professional.”
“Then our victim still lives, and our employer is dead?” Bryn asked.
“This man is not our employer,” Gosling said, “he is only the intermediary.”
“But he would not tell us who he worked for,” Bryn said.
“No, but Anton Leyander gave us the name: Sheldrake. He will pay us the other half of our fee,” Gosling said.
“The fee that we haven’t earned?”
“The fee that we have not earned yet,” Gosling said.
“Do you really think it worth the effort?” Bryn asked. “Why don’t we just walk away with the half of the fee we already have?”
Gosling looked at him, his wizened face twisted into a sneer. “Two reasons come to mind,” he said. “First, we are professional assassins. If we accept a commission, then we must see it through to the end. We have to complete this contract.”
“The man who hired us lies at our feet; the contract ended with his death,” Bryn said.
“Technically, that is true,” Gosling admitted.
“Tell me your second reason,” Bryn said, certain he could frame a suitable argument against it.
“We cannot leave here with the first half of our fee, because we paid that half – and more besides – for those horses that we were unable to return to their owner,” Gosling said.
“It wasn’t my fault they got away, you were on the beach,” Bryn said. “Why didn’t you tie them up?”
“Because I was rescuing you from the water with the rope,” Gosling said.
“We are really broke?”
“Penniless,” Gosling said. “Pick up our friend Smith, we’ll take him with us.”
“Pick him up?” Bryn wailed. “But I have a stabbing pain in my forehead.”
“You’ll have a kicking pain in your arse in a minute. Bring him – he may still be of use to us.”
“How much use can a dead man be?” Bryn muttered, bending to pick up the corpse.
“Almost as much use as you are,” Gosling said.
“I heard that. Oh, you didn’t warn me he was covered in blood – this is my second shirt ruined today.”
“You should wear black, it doesn’t show the stains. What sort of assassin wears a white shirt?”
“Black makes my skin look pale,” Bryn said. He stood, the dead man draped over his shoulder.
“If anyone asks, our friend is drunk,” Gosling said.
Bryn sniggered. “Dead drunk.”
Gosling sighed loudly.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The dock was dark. The ship itself was a silhouette, twin masts pointing into the sky, a spider-web of rigging draped from them. It looked trapped in the confines of the loading dock, where it now lay moored, awaiting final permission to have its cargo brought from the powder mill for loading. In this environment, it looked far larger than it did out on the open water.
Edison approached the dark ship, passing ropes the thickness of a man’s leg, coiled like massive sleeping serpents. The water lapped under the boards he walked on and he could smell fresh-cut wood and tar above the salt-tang of the sea and the ever-present odour of fish. Edison was startled by a ragged cat which suddenly leaped from one shadow to another, tracking a dockside rat. He came upon the cat again a few yards further on: its paw rested on the body of a black rat, whose spine was broken. The rat made horrible, weak screeching sounds as the cat toyed with it.
Pausing at the foot of the gangway, Edison looked up at the vast bulk of the ship. There was no sign of light. Of life. He gripped the rope which served as handrail, worn smooth by the passage of many hands. The boards creaked beneath his feet.
“Meg?” he called, as he reached the deck of the ship.
The message had been passed to him by the barman of The Unicorn. It was urgent, Meg wanted to see him as soon as possible, on board her ship. It was a few days since he had embarrassed himself in Anton Leyander’s cabin: perhaps Meg felt he had suffered long enough and now sought to have him in her own cabin.
“Megan?” More loudly.
Around him
the ship creaked and groaned.
There was a sound behind him. He half-turned, expecting to see Meg behind him. The belaying pin caught him behind the ear, clubbing him unconscious.
The salt water was cold in his face, startling him awake. Stinging his eyes. His vision was blurred. His head was pounding, swollen. A strange disorientation. He blinked away the tears and his vision finally cleared. He found a small face, like a wizened apple, staring into his. The face smiled, revealing stained teeth. Why was the face wrong way up?
Edison was suspended upside down a few feet above the deck, a rope tied about his ankles. His hands were tied behind his back. Directly below him he could see his own tunic and shirt on the deck.
“To stop the blood staining the boards,” the little man explained. “It is not our boat, you see, we are only borrowing it. But then you already know that. Your beloved Megan captains this ship, does she not? Did you get her message?” He grinned. “She will not be able to join us, I am afraid. She is otherwise engaged.”
“What have you done to her?” Edison asked.
“Nothing. As far as I am aware, she is drinking heavily in a tavern in town. She knows nothing of this meeting. No one knows we are here. But where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself: I am Gosling, and this is my associate Bryn, also known as Bryn the Blade. For obvious reasons.”
Bryn had the proportions of a barbarian, but had smooth, tanned skin and long white-blond hair. A heavy gold ear-ring in his left ear reflected the moonlight. He smiled a very white smile and raised his knife in greeting.
“We are hired assassins, if you had not already guessed,” Gosling said. “We have been paid to dispose of your friend Anton Leyander; a task which would have been accomplished some evenings past, had it not been for your dear captain’s interference. We have heard rumour that you and she have him hidden away somewhere.
“You will tell us where Leyander can be found tonight, after which you will remain here, until he has been dealt with.”
“Can we begin?” Bryn asked.
Gosling smiled and shrugged. “My friend gets a little impatient at times. He does so enjoy his work. He is an artist, you see. It is a pleasure to see him work.
“I give you a simple choice, Mr. Edison: you can tell us what we need to know, and suffer no more than the indignity of being left tied up here. Or, I can allow Bryn to exercise his artistic nature.”
“If you seek to frighten me, your amateurish efforts are wasted,” Edison said.
“I would urge you to reconsider,” Gosling said. “You will be amazed by how much suffering the human frame can survive: Bryn will soon have you screaming, and you will in all probability be screaming until the dawn lights the edge of the ocean over there.”
“I will try not to disappoint you,” Edison said.
Gosling smiled his brown smile. “I do so like a good sport.” He nodded to Bryn, who set a bucket down on the deck beside Edison’s shirt. Its contents were white.
“Salt,” Gosling explained. “They use it for preserving fish and meat, perhaps you know that? They also use it on board ship to help prevent wounds festering, though it tends to be a somewhat painful treatment.”
Bryn surveyed his victim’s flesh, head on one side, and smiled. Then he moved forward with his knife and drew its razor-sharp blade horizontally across Edison’s bared midriff. The shallow wound began to bleed, the blood trickling towards Edison’s neck.
“We don’t want that wound to become infected, do we Mr. Gosling?”
“Indeed not, Mr. Blade.”
Edison wondered how long it took them to learn their lines. Gosling hurried forward and scooped up a handful of salt. He rubbed it into the cut. Edison bit his lip, air hissed between his teeth.
Gosling leaned close. “This is only a beginning. Bryn will take your fingers, a joint at a time. Your flesh an ounce at a time. This is going to be the longest night of your life. And perhaps the last.” He stepped back and spoke to his companion.
Bryn brandished his knife once more.
Gosling drew up an empty barrel, upending it and using it as a seat. “I watched him skin a man once. It was beautiful. You don’t see talent like that very often.”
“The thing about a knife like this,” Bryn explained. “Is that the edge is honed so sharp that you do not feel the cut.”
The blade flashed, cutting across Edison’s left breast. “You see? You only know the wound is there when the edges part and the blood begins to flow. That is why we need the salt. At least to begin with...”
Edison’s scream echoed around the dock.
“Well, well, doesn’t this look like fun?” a voice rasped in the darkness behind them.
The assassins turned. Edison strained to see through the tears.
A misshapen silhouette stepped off the gangplank onto the deck and approached the two assassins.
“Is this party by invitation only?” he asked.
The two assassins remained mute.
“You are damaging my man,” Grimwade hissed. He hobbled forward.
“You are in error, sir. This victim is ours,” Bryn said, menacingly.
Two taller shadows took up positions behind Grimwade. Gosling heard steps behind them, and turned to find two more of the hunchback’s men advancing on them.
“Why do you do this to my young friend?” Grimwade asked.
“For money,” Gosling replied.
“And because we enjoy it,” Bryn added.
“Will you withdraw and leave him here?” Grimwade asked.
Bryn and Gosling exchanged glances. “No,” they said simultaneously.
“Leave him with us, and I won’t have you gutted,” Grimwade said.
“I am very much afraid of this hideous little fellow,” Bryn said. “Are you too?”
In answer, Gosling drew his sword.
The hunchback took a step back, smiled weakly. “But you are two against my four, sirs. Why put yourselves at risk? What is the youth to you?”
“We are more than a match for them. Let them bare their steel, if they have the stomach for it. This will be quickly decided.” Bryn drew his sword and took a step forward.
The hunchback danced back out of reach.
Edison tried to blink away the sweat that trickled into his eyes.
Bryn and Gosling were facing all four of the hunchback’s men now. The first of them stepped forward, sword raised. Gosling moved quickly, his sword darting forward and down, cutting a red stripe in the man’s cheek. Grimwade’s man stepped back, pressing his palm to the cut that his tongue poked through.
“Who is next?” Gosling asked brightly. “Be warned though – Bryn and I make our living by killing men.”
Grimwade’s men exchanged glances, unsure. Their master urged them on. Two of them stepped forward together.
“There is an art to this,” Gosling said, taking off half the ear of one man with another flick of his blade; he slashed the other across the forehead before the man had taken more than two steps forward.
The fourth swordsman approached Bryn warily, staring up at him. Bryn smiled warmly, which Grimwade’s man found disconcerting.
“Go on!” The hunchback urged.
The man thrust, stepping forward on the balls of his feet. Bryn parried easily. He stepped in close, before his opponent could prepare another blow, lifted the man from his feet and heaved him over the side of the boat. There was a loud crash and a groan.
Bryn shrugged. “I forgot there wasn’t any water there.”
Gosling’s first victim, his cheek bleeding profusely, stepped forward, between the assassins and his master.
Grimwade seemed unconcerned, and was staring up into the rigging above them.
The blackness that fell on Bryn’s head sounded like an empty barrel and was swarming with red fire bugs. Gosling suffered a similar fate.
“I never expected I would be pleased to see you, ugly one!” Edison laughed.
The hunchback limped towards him, drawing a kn
ife to cut the bonds which held the actor. Edison got to his feet and carefully pulled on his shirt.
“How did you know I would be here,” Edison said.
The hunchback smiled. “I have my spies, Edric.”
“Well, I thank you for your timely intercession,” Edison said brightly. “I am indebted to you.”
“Indeed you are,” the hunchback said darkly. “Again.”
Grimwade’s men surrounded Edison.
*
“What have we here, a thief?” The house-guard’s voice was a throaty rumble. He was carrying a sword, and must have heard the landing window being forced.
Anton had climbed a tree and entered Grimwade’s house through a top storey window, and hadn’t expected to see the guard until he got downstairs. Sometimes Fortune smiled on men, and sometimes she didn’t. He drew his sword.
The guard bared his teeth and moved forward in a fighter’s stance, coming between Anton and the top of the stairs. He was a big man, a fighter, with a heavy brow and a nose that had been broken more than once in bare-knuckle fights. “Think you’re a swordsman, do you boy?”
Anton smiled at him.
Their swords clashed. The house-guard’s swipes were slow and clumsy, but there was power behind them: if he landed only one blow, Anton would lose the use of a limb, or worse. Blades flashed in the dim light, metal rang against metal. They moved in a slow circle, taking small, careful steps, eyes locked looking for any hint of a movement. Anton’s sword flicked sideways, cutting a stripe in his opponent’s cheek. The house guard swore.
“You are not terribly good at this, are you?” Anton asked.
The big man wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. Then he lunged forward, his sword flashing left and right in a series of angry moves which Anton only barely blocked as he retreated. Then his back came up against a wall and he had nowhere left to go. Blood dripped from the house-guard’s jaw. He grinned.
Anton feinted left, then moved quickly to the right, away from the wall, before the guard could recover. Swords struck again and again, light dancing on their edges. Blades scraped together, sliding until they were locked at the hilt. Their faces were inches apart, and the house-guard laughed, his breath hot and smelling of onions. The heavier of the two, he used his advantage and pushed Anton suddenly, sending him staggering back.
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