by Dale Lucas
Ginger Joss.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rem understood immediately what was about to happen. Clearly Torval did, as well. He sighed and shook his head slowly.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” Joss said. “You’ve got five seconds to hand it over.”
“You’ve got three seconds to beat feet, Joss,” Torval countered.
Three seconds. Five at the most. Rem assessed the situation, trying to formulate a plan of attack. He wouldn’t be caught unawares again, like he was with that drunken orc in the Pickled Albatross.
Joss was a known quantity—small, wiry, cunning, and quick, perhaps, but certainly not strong. His companions, however, were of tougher mettle. The one on Rem’s right looked like he might have once been Tregga, one of the horse-mounted steppe nomads that wandered the frosty plains beyond the Ironwall Mountains. His hair was shorn now, lacking the many braids and knots so common in Tregga culture and showing that he’d surrendered at least some measure of his identity to civilization, but his face still sported the familiar ritual scars in strange geometric whorls and patterns that made the nomads so easy to identify. He wore a longsword in a scabbard slung across his back. As yet, the blade had not been loosed.
His partner, by contrast, had swarthy olive skin, dark hair, and gray eyes—clearly a southerner, perhaps from as far away as Isolis or Ferosus. He was armed with a farmer’s mace—a cheap piece of steel on a hickory shaft, inelegant, but definitely effective. Each of the brutes towered at least half a head above Rem, and looked like they tossed aurochs and felled trees with single ax swipes in their spare time. Torval was exactly half the size of either of those big men, and despite his ferocity and bravery, Rem guessed that those hired hands could—given the opportunity—make mince of Torval and leave the dwarf bleeding in the middle of the muddy street without breaking a sweat.
Was there help coming? Rem scanned the street in all directions. People carried on about their business. He caught a few passersby and shopkeeps noting the tense standoff in the middle of the muddy avenue, but that was simple curiosity. There would be no one to assist them if it came to a fight.
Rem then stole a glance at Torval. The dwarf had already sized up their opponents and marked their weaknesses—Rem could tell by the way he stared at them with neither fear nor fury, only cold appraisal. Torval had his maul in his hand, but what could that one blunt instrument do against these two, with their own weapons and their long reaches? Rem himself had a few ideas of his own about how to fell these giants if they started a fight, but he couldn’t count on either strategy until the fight was truly joined. Rem didn’t fancy trying to disarm them with nothing in hand, but he hoped that their size and very clear overconfidence—neither of them seemed to be in a guarded stance—would work against them.
Those five seconds were up now. Rem drew a long, slow breath.
Joss snorted, tired of waiting. “Cripple them,” he said.
The moment the words were out of Joss’s mouth, Rem lunged for the scar-faced nomad before him. The big man grabbed Rem’s tunic and tried to lift him. Rem, going in for a low, hard tackle, collided with the horseman, head in his gut, one arm wrapping around his muscular waist. Before the horseman could yank him free, Rem grabbed the nomad’s testicles and squeezed.
The horseman roared.
Rem managed to get just a moment’s image of what was happening beside him. Joss had withdrawn, eager to let his hired hands fight it out. Torval, meanwhile, matched blows from the southlander’s mace with his maul, drawing the dark-skinned man away from where the fight began. Rem was relieved: so long as each of them kept their own man busy and separated from his partner, it would keep the two of them from working in concert.
The horseman seized Rem’s tunic, trying desperately to tear him loose from their grappling. Rem let go of the nomad’s balls, tore himself out of his grasp, then spun sideward. The steppe rider tried to stand, still half-hunched over in pain, and reached out with one hand to snag Rem again. Rem evaded his clumsy snatch with a quick step, took aim, and kicked hard, aiming squarely for the outer crook of the bruiser’s knee joint.
With a sickening crack, the joint collapsed inward. Once more, the horseman screamed. He fell, face forward, right into the mud.
Rem looked to Torval, who was still engaged with his opponent, their melee having drifted onto the boardwalk along the edge of the street now. A crowd gathered to watch the duel. No one seemed eager to call for a watchman to break it up.
And Joss? Where was Joss?
No matter. Rem turned back to his opponent in the mud. The nomad was trying and failing to raise himself on his disjointed leg. He screamed again and shifted his weight, trying to support himself on his three good limbs instead of his single damaged one. The sword on his back passed within a foot of Rem’s grasp.
Rem reached out, yanked the blade from its leather sheath, then moved in to end the duel before it started. He kicked the Tregga hard in the ribs—once, twice, four times, six times—and when he felt the nomad well and truly tenderized, shoved him sideward with one boot so that he would roll onto his side. The horseman lay fetal, shaking, howling in pain, cursing as well, making all sorts of promises about what he would do when he was on his feet again. One hand hovered over his balls. The other grasped at his right leg, the one that Rem had dislocated. He made one halfhearted swipe at Rem, as though he could simply grab him by his breeches and yank him down into the mud with him.
Rem evaded him. He chanced another quick look behind him. Torval was still dancing around in the street, avoiding some very violent attacks from the swarthy, mace-wielding southlander. He no longer had his maul. Blast! He must have lost it in the midst of their fight. That meant that Rem was needed—his partner was outmatched and unarmed. He had to make sure the nomad wouldn’t rise or cause further trouble so that he, Rem, could speed to Torval’s aid.
A few knots of citizens had gathered now, all transfixed by the unfolding drama.
“Call the wardwatch!” someone finally shouted.
“We are the wardwatch!” Torval replied, still evading his attacker but, without arms of his own, unable to truly engage.
Rem looked to the horseman again. The nomad glared up at him. Mud and tears streaked his scarred face. He looked furious and terrified all at once.
Rem thought he recognized that look. It was unbridled rage. It showed no self-regard or self-control.
And where was Joss? The thief could be sneaking up behind him at that very moment, a sharp little dagger in his filthy hands, ready to strike—
“Stay down,” Rem said to the wounded nomad, “or you’ll only make it worse.”
The horseman reached out, lightning-quick, one big hand seeking Rem’s ankle, probably to yank him off it and send him toppling into the mud.
Rem regarded the fast-moving hand as a striking snake. Pure reflex took over. He stabbed downward with his stolen sword. The blade passed right through the horseman’s grasping hand like a crucifixion nail and pinned it to the muddy street. The horseman roared and bled.
“I warned you,” Rem said. Then something else was upon him—a writhing, smelly form that he vaguely recognized as Ginger Joss. The little thief was trying to wrestle Rem to the ground. Rem, having both height and muscle on the lithe little bastard, managed to curl one arm around Joss’s throat and lock it in place. As Joss bucked and sidled and struggled to free himself, Rem used the only weapon left to him. He punched Joss in the face several times, until he heard the crunch of nose cartilage and felt hot blood and snot pouring out onto his crooked forearm. When Joss’s struggles grew weak and haphazard, Rem spun him around, kneed him in the gut, then tossed him aside. He looked again to Torval.
“Sundry hells, you poncey bastard!” Torval shouted. “I could use some help here, if you’re done toying with those two!”
Rem drew a deep breath to steady himself. Without warning, he yanked the sword from out of the horseman’s pinned hand and hurried to mee
t Torval’s attacker. Presently, the mace wielder had his back to Rem. Rem prayed that would remain the case, just until he could close in.
The macer struck at Torval. Torval leapt backward—and buffed up against a stone horse trough, half-full with green, scummy water. The swipe carried the macer around so that, suddenly, he stood face-to-face with the approaching Rem.
The swarthy southerner, seeing Rem’s approach with sword in hand, only hesitated for a moment. Rem knew what was about to happen. It made his stomach turn a somersault in his belly. But his years of training in his father’s courtyard took over. He slid backward into a low, defensive stance, sword point leveled. He caught the southlander’s wild gaze and tried to reason with him.
“Stop,” he said, as loudly and clearly as he could. “Drop the mace, walk away, and that’s the end of it.”
The southlander clearly had his blood up. He was panicked, wild-eyed. Rem felt something coil up in the center of him. Was it really about to come to this? Here? Now? Early on such a fine morning, after such a long and sorrowful night?
He knew what had to be done, but he didn’t want to—he had never not wanted a thing so much in all his life …
But he knew what these men would have done to them if they had not managed to overpower them. He knew, instinctively, that there were no rules in this fight, only victory.
The southlander drew back the mace for another hard arc, aimed right at Rem’s skull. He loosed a throaty battle cry.
That moment—that tiny, infinitesimal moment, when the swarthy southerner decided to sound his intentions and draw back farther for an all-or-nothing killing blow—gave Rem the opening he needed. He lunged, using all his weight to drive the sword point forward, pushing himself inside the arc of the southlander’s blow. The sword passed through the man so smoothly that Rem had to glance down to make sure that it had hit home.
It had. The blade was sheathed, hilt-deep, in the southlander’s gut. Blood welled out in a hot sheet, filling the sword’s shallow fuller groove and burbling over the hilt onto Rem’s hand.
Rem looked into the man’s gray eyes. The fellow looked confused, surprised, almost comical.
But Rem could not laugh. Rather, he wanted to weep, the way this man would weep, if he had more time to devote to his tears before all the life bled out of him.
The southlander sagged to the street with the Tregga horseman’s sword in his gut, Rem still standing above him. Rem watched as light left the sellsword’s eyes and the swarthy killer expelled a last, hoarse breath.
The street was silent and still.
Torval stared at Rem, clearly shocked that the young man had gone for the kill.
Elsewhere, over Rem’s shoulder, Joss scrambled through the mud. When he gained his feet, he burst through the clotted onlookers and fled the scene.
Rem bent double and vomited beside the man he’d just killed.
His first.
Rem remained in a stunned daze. He heard the shrill cry of Torval’s little brass whistle. He noted, after a time, that some watchwardens had arrived—dayshifters, men he didn’t recognize. They listened to Torval’s report of the incident, then set about cleaning up the mess. Throughout, Rem thought he heard whispers passed among the onlookers and passersby, all of them murmuring about how that young, red-haired watchwarden had simply murdered that southlander in cold blood, without any real provocation or justification. If he was so good with a sword, why couldn’t he simply disarm the poor man, instead of slaying him in the street? And what sort of contest was that—the deadly point and cutting edge against the simple blunt strength of a farmer’s mace?
Rem heard these whispers—or imagined he heard them—as all those workaday Yenarans milled past and stole glances at him: a stout baker’s wife with rosy cheeks and dark eyes; a pair of grizzled, gray-bearded dwarves who had carried their morning ale mugs out into the street to watch the fray; a burly longshoreman, all muscle and bulk, leading his child to their morning labors; a slack-faced albino orc in a tattered cloak, its red eyes blinking out of its bestial face with only dim understanding. Though he knew it was impossible, Rem felt that he could hear what they were all saying about him—thinking about him—as they lingered around the periphery of the bloody brawl and studied its pitiful aftermath. The many voices all sounded like one voice, after a time—the voice of his own conscience, persecuting him for taking a man’s life when, perhaps, he had not truly needed to.
Or was that his father’s voice? I hope you’re proud of yourself, Remeck. You left the safety and ease of the court and came all the way down here to prove something to yourself, and look what you’ve proven. You’re a brawler and a killer, just like any of those illiterate fools who crew a merchant’s barque.
Well, he’d proven something about himself at last, hadn’t he, however unpleasant it might be to face it? Finally, he had something that he could claim as his own, for all time and beyond.
“Lad?”
Rem snapped out of his reverie. He was thankful for the interruption. Those voices were starting to sicken him.
Torval stood before him, staring up into his face with a true and probing concern that Rem had never seen before. Slowly, the dwarf reached up and laid one thick hand on Rem’s shoulder.
“How are you?”
Rem started to answer in the affirmative but lost the words. It occurred to him to ask a question of his partner, but an instant later, he lost that question as well. After a time, he managed a resigned shrug.
Torval pivoted and moved in beside Rem. Rem was sitting on the broad lip of the stone horse trough that had almost trapped Torval during the fight. Now the dwarf leaned against it beside his young partner. He laid a hand on Rem’s back, a gentle reminder that, whatever Rem felt at that moment, he wasn’t alone.
“You’ve never killed a man before, have you?” Torval asked.
Rem shook his head.
“You gave him a chance to run,” Torval said, “and he failed to take it. You did your duty, lad, clean and true, and the fool left you no options.”
“I suppose,” Rem muttered.
Torval stood again and slid right into Rem’s line of sight. He glared into Rem’s haunted eyes and made sure that Rem was looking at him.
“Listen to me,” Torval said, a little more forcefully, “his blood was up. He tried to kill me. He would have killed you. You did nothing wrong here.”
“It just seems so …” Rem choked. He couldn’t find the word. What was the word? He should know the word, because it was right on the tip of his tongue. Why was his mind suddenly all a-muddle? Was this the price of killing a man?
“Cheap,” Torval said. “Cheap and tawdry. Is that it?”
Rem nodded, amazed that Torval knew the word he had been searching for.
“Well, it is,” Torval said, moving closer to him. “When a man dies in the mud over a second-rate trinket like that bloody pendant we’re carrying—dies for no good cause, and meets no good end—it is cheap and tawdry. But you gave him a choice, lad. You gave him a choice, and he failed to take it. His death might as well have been by his own hand, and not yours.”
“That doesn’t help,” Rem said.
“Well, it should,” Torval snapped. “You didn’t just save your own life, boy, you saved mine! My children still have a father because of you. For that, I’m eternally grateful.”
Rem raised his eyes to Torval. “Children?”
The dwarf carried on, ignoring Rem’s inquiry. “Now come on. If this bloody pendant we lifted from Freygaf’s room is so important that a weasel like Joss’d be willing to spend coin on hired killers to retrieve it, I say it could be important to us. Shall we go visit the Lady Ynevena and pick her haunted elven brain forthwith—first thing in the bloody morning—instead of letting the day waste away?”
Rem drew a deep breath. He thought his heart rate might be slowing at last. He looked at his hands and saw that they were no longer shaking. “Let’s do it,” he managed, and stood. “Let’s get out of
here.”
Torval set out, and Rem fell in beside him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Their walk was a long one. The gradually gathering light of the morning, softened by the thinning fog and enlivened by the vague chill that still clung to the air, acted as a balm to Rem’s conscience after a time. By the time they moved through the outskirts of the Third Ward into the First, Rem could almost justify his opponent’s death to himself; by the time they passed across the borderline between city center and the richly appointed Second Ward, Rem could almost convince himself that he hadn’t killed anyone at all—that had been the act of some other young man (he told himself) that he had merely borne witness to. An altercation turned deadly. A misunderstanding spiraling quickly out of hand.
He had a choice, he kept telling himself, just as Torval had insisted. He had a choice and he failed to take it.
That would have to do, for now.
The Second Ward was, according to Torval, where the moneyed and well-to-do of the city made their homes. There were a few crowded tenements and dodgy side streets laden with vice and populated by members of the unwashed masses at its periphery—where else should the servants and artisans who served the rich live, after all, but close at hand?—but the concentration of lovely, well-maintained villas on winding, hilly streets behind high, ivy-covered walls and well-manicured hedges was unmistakable. They climbed into the gently sloping hills of Yenara’s southern quarter, those hills like colorful steps carved into a mountainside, and they gazed down on the sprawling city below as the well-heeled patricians of that neighborhood would—askance, aloof, down the long, sloping bridges of their proverbial noses.
As they entered the ward and climbed a not-too-steep cobbled street, Torval explained that the Lady Ynevena, Yenara’s sole elven ethnarch, ran a sort of posh hostel for her kind and any others who might desire to sojourn among them (provided those others—human, dwarf, or otherwise—met Ynevena’s undefined and ever-mutable social standards and could pay the price of admission). Some muttered that unnatural things went on behind those walls, but Torval assumed that was just the gentry offering jealous gossip about the activities of a person they could not understand, inside a pleasure palace they would never be allowed to explore. Everyone knew elves were decadent, sensuous, carnal sorts, in love with every last sensation to be drawn from the world, from the quiver of flesh under a bare fingertip to the sublime movement of the soul provided by espying a lovely and monumental piece of architecture or looming, cyclopean mountain summit. But from what little Torval had seen, and what more he had heard, Lady Ynevena’s pleasure palace was not so much a pulsing, torrid den of iniquity as a strange, particular sort of inn and museum where guests sometimes dallied with themselves or one another. So long as they kept their peculiarities within their bloody walls, Torval reasoned, he didn’t give a tin tinker’s fart what they got up to.