A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

  Rusk wanted exactly the opposite but the requirements of guild law severed thoughts from words. “Yeah. No careless shots if you see them. Channis comes back alive.”

  “No shots at all, I’d say,” Trelgin countered, smiling through his droop. “Just to be safe.”

  Rusk had to walk with a light step, so he merely grunted noncommittally. Trelgin’s eyes lingered on him, but he ignored the look.

  “We hit the inn hard,” Rusk said. “Anyone inside shows any fight, you put them down. Clear?”

  “Clear,” said the men.

  “Make it a slaughter and the Watch’ll have to look into it,” Trelgin said.

  “I didn’t say make it a slaughter,” Rusk said, irritated. “I said put down those that show fight. And fak the Watch anyway. We got enough of ’em bought. There won’t be any blowback whatever we do.”

  “I want a go at that big fakker,” Varn said, cracking his knuckles. “I heard he strung up Zren the Blade by the chain.”

  “I heard that, too,” said Mors.

  They drew blades as they turned onto Shoddy Way. Decrepit buildings lined both sides of the street. The Slick Tunnel stood out among the smaller shacks and shops for its size and long-faded grandeur. Rusk assumed it had once been the manse of a nobleman, before the rich had moved to the west side of the Meander.

  They kept to the darkness on one side of the street, but otherwise did little to mask their approach. This wasn’t a click that required precision or surprise. It was a straight muscle job and Rusk and Trelgin had manned the team with some of the guild’s best blade men. He also figured the eyes he’d stationed on the inn would fall in with them.

  The Tunnel sat on a square parcel of land bounded by narrow alleys on two sides, Shoddy Way and Tannery Row on the other. The building was two stories of stone and wood, with once ornate windows on three sides, most of the panes cracked or missing. A poorly built wooden fence bordered the back of the parcel, the slats leaning this way and that between the posts. A balcony with a balustrade stuck out from the second floor, but the posts that held it up sagged under its weight. Like most of Dur Follin, the building gave the impression of imminent collapse.

  No light glowed in any of the windows.

  “Maybe they’re sleeping,” Varn said.

  “They ain’t sleeping,” Mors said, his voice low and dangerous.

  “No,” Rusk said, though he wondered if maybe Egil and Nix hadn’t come back to the inn. “Do the front door. I need at least one person taken alive for a chat.”

  “Front door, aye,” Varn echoed, his tone eager.

  They picked up their pace.

  —

  Egil, Nix, Tesha, Veraal, and all the rest poured out the back of the Tunnel. The fence gate around the back of the inn was thrown open, manned by Gadd and his tulwar. A covered wagon waited for them on Tannery Row, a threadbare mule harnessed to it.

  “Wagon will serve?” Gadd asked Nix.

  A thick layer of straw and two bales were inside the wagon. Gadd had stocked it with two hogsheads of beer, a few water skins, two bags with several loaves of bread each, and several bags of roots and tubers taken from his cellar.

  “That’s well done, Gadd,” Nix said, once more shaking the easterner’s hand. “Take care of Tesha like I said, yeah?”

  “Tesha can take care of herself,” said Tesha, gathering off to the side of the wagon with the rest of the group.

  Egil and Nix placed Rose in the wagon, wrapped her in blankets. Nix smiled at her.

  “Ain’t much of a rattler, is it?” Rose said. She shook her head. “Wagon, I mean. It’s not much of a wagon.”

  “We won’t be in it long,” Nix said.

  Egil took Mere by the waist and lifted her onto the wagon.

  “You and Rose will stay back here,” the priest said.

  He gave her a dagger he produced from somewhere.

  “Nix and I will drive. Channis stays with us.”

  “Veraal,” Nix called. “Can your men spare a pair of crossbows?”

  Nix had his sling, of course, but a loaded crossbow on the bench beside him would be an easier thing to fire.

  “Make it three,” Mere said from inside the wagon.

  Veraal nodded, gave the order, and Nix, Egil, and Mere all armed themselves with borrowed crossbows. The men supplied them with wishes of good luck and ten bolts apiece. Egil tossed Channis onto the floorboard and he and Nix took their seats on the driver’s bench, Egil driving.

  “Sorry-looking mule,” Egil said.

  Nix eyed the points of the skinny mule’s spine, its threadbare fur and bent head.

  “If we have to make a run for it, I say I drive and we yoke you to the bridle.”

  “Aye,” Egil said with a smile, but it faded right away. “Be nice if we could wait a day. They’re likely to spot us. The streets are empty at this hour. They’re going to have eyes everywhere.”

  Nix knew Egil was right. But he also knew they had no choice. They couldn’t hole up at the Tunnel. And Rose needed aid as fast as they could get it. “There’s nothing for it. We risk it.”

  “Thoughts on getting us through a gate?” Egil asked.

  “Working on it.”

  Mere’s voice sounded through the canvas from behind them. “A gate? We’re leaving the city?”

  “Aye,” Nix said. “If we can. I’ll explain as we go.”

  Mere was quiet for a moment, then said, “I can get us through the gate.”

  “How?” Egil asked, then, “Mindmagic? Won’t that hurt you, Mere?”

  “I’ll be fine, Egil.”

  “There,” Nix said, and grinned. “Problem solved.”

  “That’s one solved, anyway,” Egil said. “Take odds there won’t be more?”

  —

  A pile of debris in the street caught Rusk’s eye, the flutter of loose material in the breeze.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Wait for what?” Trelgin said, irritated, but the men held up and followed his gaze. What Rusk had first taken for rubbish he now saw for what it was.

  “Bodies,” he said, and they all hustled over to the two corpses lying in the mud of the street. The shattered wooden remains of what looked like a wall lay under them.

  Rusk recognized them right away—guildsmen. They’d been two of the three eyes on the Tunnel. One had a dagger still lodged in his throat. The other had a snapped neck and broken leg. Rusk looked up at the abandoned, dilapidated building from which they’d probably fallen. The men followed his gaze up to the second floor of the building, muttering angrily.

  “I’ll check the top of that building,” Mors said in his high-pitched voice.

  “They ain’t up there,” Rusk said. “They were just blinding the eyes.”

  Rusk turned to the Tunnel, windows dark, doors closed. He’d be surprised if it wasn’t already abandoned.

  “Just left ’em in the street,” Varn said, shifting on his feet. “Whoresons.”

  “There were three men on this duty,” Trelgin said.

  Rusk nodded. “We’ll look for him later. Could be they pinched him, too. Right now, get these two onto the walkway. The mud’s no place for our brothers. We’ll collect them on our way back and give them the rites later. Meanwhile, throw a pray for ’em.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Trelgin hissed.

  “No we ain’t,” Rusk said.

  The men quickly gathered their fallen comrades, lifted them out of the mud, and placed them on the walkways, removing the wooden symbols of Aster they wore on lanyards.

  Once that was done, Rusk said, “Let’s see to this business, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” all of them echoed.

  They stormed up and across the street to the Slick Tunnel, all of them with a blade in one hand and a cocked crossbow in the other. Varn took the door, splintering the bar in two kicks. The rest poured in behind them.

  —

  A crash sounded from inside the Tunnel, the crack of splintering wood.

  Everyo
ne out back froze. Nix put a finger to his lips.

  “That was the door,” he whispered to Egil.

  “Those slubbers move fast,” Egil said. The priest hefted his crossbow, trained it on the back door of the Tunnel.

  “What is it?” Mere asked through the canvas.

  “They’re here,” Nix said.

  Veraal hurried to the wagon. Tesha followed him.

  “Cutting it close,” Veraal said softly. “You good?”

  “We’re good.”

  “Then good luck,” Veraal said. They shook his hand.

  Tesha came around to the other side of the wagon where Kiir would not see.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said to Nix. “Come here.”

  Nix leaned down and she took his face in her hands and kissed him softly, fully, deeply on the mouth. She tasted of citrus and smoke leaf, and Nix was so surprised he barely returned her kiss.

  She let him go and smiled. “That’s for luck.”

  Stupefied, he said, “You’ve made me blush, milady.”

  “That must be a first,” she said.

  More crashes from inside. Shouts.

  “Get going,” he said to her, to all of them.

  Veraal nodded and he and his men shepherded Tesha, Kiir, Lis, and Gadd down the street. His men covered their retreat and advance with crossbows. Kiir blew Nix kisses while they moved away, the wind tousling her red hair.

  “I think I could die happy right now,” Nix said, watching Kiir and Tesha move away from him.

  From within the wagon, Rose moaned softly.

  “That makes one of us then,” Mere said through the canvas. “Now drive this fakkin’ wagon.”

  “Aye,” Egil said, and whickered at the mule.

  It pricked up its ears, lifted its head, and started off. The wagon creaked and rattled and groaned and Nix figured it could be heard all the way to the Meander.

  —

  Tables lay on their sides, blocking the windows.

  “They were ready for us,” Trelgin said.

  “Were,” Rusk said, because the common room was now dark and empty. Varn and Mors darted up the stairs, kicked in doors, shouted for anyone there to come out. Varn’s voice carried down the stairs.

  “There’s no one up here!”

  “These boys ain’t stupid,” Trelgin said.

  Rusk heard the roll of wagon wheels over the cobblestones of Tannery Row.

  “Maybe a whisker slow, though,” he said, and sprinted for the back door. “Come on!”

  He bounded over the bar and through the back door and through a storage room, his men hard on his heels. He burst through another back door to the fenced grounds behind the inn. A gate was thrown open and he ran through it, out onto Tannery Row. A covered wagon rumbled down the street, heading west.

  “That’s them! Shoot the mule!”

  —

  “Shite,” Nix said, standing on the driver’s bench and watching behind them. The dying street torches of Tannery Row provided scant light, but they provided enough. Nix saw a half dozen or more shadowy figures run through the Tunnel’s gate and sprint down the street after them, closing the distance with the slow-moving wagon. One of them stopped to take aim.

  “Lay flat back there!” Nix said to Rose and Mere. “Crossbows!”

  A bolt whistled wide of the wagon.

  “How many?” Egil asked.

  “Eight, I think,” Nix said. “Maybe nine. They hit the mule and we’re done.”

  With Rose and the Upright Man unable to move, they’d never escape on foot.

  Egil slapped the reins on the mule. “Hyah!”

  The wagon lurched, nearly dislodging Nix, as the mule picked up its pace.

  “Hyah, mule! Hyah!”

  Another bolt whistled past. The mule snorted. The wagon bounced and jostled over Dur Follin’s streets.

  Under Nix’s feet, Channis groaned.

  “Why does everything have to happen at once?” Nix muttered.

  He balanced himself, took aim with the crossbow as best he could in the bouncing wagon, and let fly. He didn’t drop any of the men, but he heard them shout in alarm, so he must have come close enough for them to hear the bolt.

  He turned around and sat on the bench to recock the crossbow. Channis groaned again.

  “Stick to the paved streets, yeah?” he said to Egil. “We don’t want to get stuck in the slop.”

  “Aye,” Egil said. “Hyah!”

  The mule showed more grit than they’d expected. It was no cavalry charger, but it moved at a good trot and showed no signs of fatigue.

  Channis hissed, the sound vaguely bestial. His hand twitched.

  “Keep your eye on him,” Nix said, nodding at the Upright Man.

  Nix stood up on the bench, legs bent, looked back, and took aim. The men hadn’t closed any more distance with the wagon. The mule was holding its own and the guildsmen would tire before the mule.

  “A little more from that mule and we’ll outrun them!” Nix said over his shoulder.

  “Hyah!” Egil said, and slapped the reins. The mule snorted, put its head down, and picked up its gait. Nix feared the pace would cause them to throw a wheel or snap an axle but they had no choice.

  The twang of a crossbow sounded from the back of the wagon—Mere firing out the back. The men responded with more shouts of alarm. Nix fired again, eliciting more curses but hitting nothing. The pursuers reloaded as best they could on the run, firing mid-sprint. For several blocks it went that way, the men sprinting after, firing when they could, Nix and Mere returning fire, Nix praying to gods he didn’t trust that a bolt wouldn’t find a home in the mule’s hide.

  “Stubborn fakkers, I’ll give them that!” Nix said, reloading.

  Egil had to slow the wagon to take a turn onto the Serpentine and the pursuers gained some ground. A crossbow bolt whistled past Nix’s ear.

  “You shooting at us or the damned mule,” he muttered. He settled his aim, picked one of the closing figures, and released, grinning as his target stumbled and fell to the road. The pursuers shouted, cursed, slowed.

  Having rounded the turn, Egil goaded the mule back up to speed and they started to outdistance their pursuers. The men slowed further and finally halted, several of them turning back to help their fallen man. Nix watched until they were out of sight, then turned and sat back on the bench.

  “We lost them,” Nix said to Mere and Egil.

  “We’re not out of the city yet,” Egil said. “Mere, you all right?”

  “I’m all right,” she answered through the wagon’s cover.

  “I’m thinking one of the fish gates, Egil,” Nix said. “Any of them. We get through, we steal a boat, we’re off. Mere, you have to get us through the Night Watch.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “How’s Rose?” Nix asked.

  “The same.”

  —

  Rusk and Trelgin and the men stood in the street over Mors, hands on their knees, gasping. Mors clutched his shoulder where a crossbow bolt had winged him.

  “Shallow,” he said, pressing on the bleeding wound. “Nothing to it.”

  Trelgin glared at Rusk. “I thought we agreed no shots. We could hit the Upright Man by mistake.”

  Rusk could only hope. “We can’t stop them with curses, Trelgin. If the Man’s conscious, he’d know enough to lay low. And if he’s not conscious, he’s flat in that wagon. The shots were rightly taken. If we’d dropped that mule, we’d have them.”

  Trelgin and his men stood on one side of Mors, Rusk and his men on the other, both groups eyeing each other darkly, things unsaid hanging in the air between them.

  “What now, then, Seventh Blade?” Trelgin asked, making the title an insult, spraying spit in the process.

  “You notice the direction they’re heading?” Rusk asked.

  Trelgin’s droopy expression fell further. Rusk delighted in making the man feel a fool.

  “The docks,” Rusk said. “The Meander. My guess,
they’re piking for a boat. We’ve got eyes out there, yeah? Then let’s move.” He looked at Mors. “You good to keep up?”

  Varn lifted the bald mouse to his feet.

  “I’m good,” Mors said.

  —

  They’d lost their pursuers, but Egil didn’t slow. The rickety wagon made more noise than a street festival, but speed seemed more important than stealth. The mule was lathered, chest heaving, but it kept up the pace.

  The streets widened and smoothed as they moved west through the city. Of course, moving west brought them back toward the guildhouse, so Nix stayed on edge, crossbow at the ready. He expected dozens of guildsmen to stream out of every alley.

  He glanced down at Channis. The guildmaster’s eyes were open and now both were as black as the moonless night sky, split only by yellow vertical slits. Channis stared unblinking up at the stars, his expression slack. He had a vacancy to him that Nix found unnerving. Nix nudged him with his toe but Channis made no response. Even so, Nix leaned down and showed Channis a dagger.

  “Move or speak and you die. Hells, irritate me and you may die. I’m in a mood.”

  Channis made no sign he’d heard or understood.

  “He’s awake?” Egil asked, his eyes scanning the road ahead, the alleys, the rooftops. The Archbridge came into view as they moved west, its stone arch rising above the cityscape.

  “Sort of,” Nix said. He stripped off his cloak and covered Channis with it. “Not sure if he’s much more than alive, though.”

  Egil slowed the wagon as they approached the short wall that blocked off the piers and docks from the rest of Dur Follin. The smell of fish and earth and organic decay thickened the air.

  Three gates—the fish gates, as most of Dur Follin called them; the tax gates, as fishermen called them—dotted the wall at intervals, allowing passage into the rest of the city. Only one of them would be manned at this hour. The others would be locked shut. During the day fishermen who wanted to bring their catch to the fish market on Mandin’s Way had to come through one of the fish gates and pay their tax. The Lord Mayor was nothing if not an excellent revenuer.

  Beyond the wall and gates were piers and docks and berths of all sizes, some new, most old and rickety, and beyond them, the dark, slow, eternal waters of the Meander. Barrels, sacks, crates, and other cargo sat in stacks and piles here and there on the docks. Boats bobbed in the water beside piers. Most were the small, wide fishing boats common in Dur Follin, but a few one- and two-masted shallow-hulled sailing ships were tied off here and there. Glowing lanterns hung on dock posts and boat prows. To the left were the municipal docks, where the city’s meager navy tied off. Two tall, three-masted carracks creaked in the water there. Even at the late hour, a few sailors staggered along the pier, arm in arm, while others worked in the rigging or on the deck of their ships. Normally the docks were thronged with sailors, merchants, and fishermen, but the in-between hour had caught the wharves in a quiet moment. Nix was glad for it.