The Fifth Ward--First Watch
Page 35
“Which way?” Torval asked.
The tall man pointed, back up the parallel street they’d approached from. “That way,” the man said. “Over the rooftops.”
Torval turned and smacked Rem by way of invitation. “Come on,” he said, and set off at a run. Rem fell in behind him.
Torval explained between panting breaths. The union hall was home, at present, to the Most Benevolent Confraternity of the Stocking and the Glove, one of the city’s most elaborately named and thoroughly un-noteworthy thieves’ guilds. The thieves were, Torval explained, largely just small time grifters, gambling sharks, and ne’er-do-well pickpockets, but they paid their taxes regularly and held fast to a number of treaties made with both the neighboring guilds and the wardwatch itself, operating only within the allowed confines of their turf and never making a fuss. In other words, by Yenaran standards, they were model citizens and friends of the watch.
And that meant that, if they had been wronged, Rem and Torval were liable to try to right things, as they would for any honest folk.
“But, what’s this about a god?” Rem pressed. The cold night air burned his lungs. “Who kidnaps a god?”
Torval took a sudden left, down a dark, narrow alley, and Rem very nearly overshot and lost him altogether. Luckily, he managed to jog in a wide, backward-curling arc, and followed in the dwarf’s wake down the alley.
Torval barked back over his shoulder. “They can steal whatever else they need,” he said, “but their gods … well, once ensconced and paid tribute to, they see their gods as inviolate. Any failure to provide for or protect them could result in terrible consequences.”
Though Rem did not understand immediately—not in detail anyway—he was able to make a quick association that sorted it out for him. It was, he supposed, not unlike the old Horunic legions that had marched forth from their desert lands in the south to quell the once-barbaric western world a millennia before their own time. Rem remembered childhood stories of the legions, how each carried a standard that bore its numeric and its motto, topped by a cap in the shape of a dragon. The dragon that topped each legionary standard was created only for that particular legion and the mold was broken after the gold cap was cast. If a legion lost its dragon standard—as many, both famous and infamous, had over their storied centuries of existence—it was seen, at best, as a sign of possibly impinging calamity, and, at worst, as an indicator of the legion’s utter failure to uphold its most basic values.
So, apparently, thieves’ guilds had gods that blessed and protected their guild halls, and those storied idols, if stolen, indicated a guild in need of better leadership, or perhaps courting severe punishment from the capricious immortals they prayed to and paid tribute to.
Just when Rem thought he’d heard it all—that his six months on the ward had prepared him for any strange eventuality or irony of the moment—here came a new surprise: lawmen, begged by self-proclaimed thieves to recover stolen personal property.
If his partner had not taken off, almost immediately, in hot pursuit, Rem would have expected him to laugh off the master thief’s desperate request.
They broke out of the alley, back onto the wide, cobbled boulevard that was Fishmonger’s Row. Torval scrambled to a halt in the middle of the empty street, searching up and down its length. Foot traffic was light on such a cold night, and at such a late hour, but there were a few shadowy figures stumbling this way and that, up and down the avenue, reeling their way home from a drink or trudging off to a midnight shift in some warehouse or mill on the riverbank. Rem skittered to a stop beside Torval and struggled to catch his breath.
“What are we looking for?” he asked between great gulps of air.
“I’ve seen that idol,” Torval said. “Thasspar the Prowler. It’s an ugly thing, made of a hundred different chains and rings and trinkets, all half-melted and pressed together by a drunken smith. It’s hollow, so it’s movable, but it’s of an awkward size and shape. The thief might have fled across the rooftops, but he couldn’t keep that up for long. If he’s going to move such a thing, he’d have to go on horseback or by cart sooner or later.”
“Simple enough,” Rem said. “Carts and horses are forbidden on the streets from dusk ’til dawn. He’d stick out like a sore thumb. He could just be holed up, waiting for morning—”
“Not likely,” Torval said. “The guild owns all of Gaunt’s Point. Every house and hovel out here is under their protection. He’d be mad to seek shelter right under their noses. No—if he’s going to gain ground, he needs wheels, and fast, to flee the Fifth in search of a hiding place—or to flee the city altogether.”
“It’s a fool’s move,” Rem pressed. “Knowing that he’d be caught so easily, on a horse or a wagon, out in the open, when there are none about—”
Torval turned to Rem and eyed him askance. “Except for …?”
Rem suddenly realized what Torval was getting at. “Honeywagons,” Rem said.
“Honeywagons,” Torval repeated, proud that his protégé had followed his lead.
The only wheeled, beast-drawn carts allowed to move through the streets at night were those of the nightmen, known colloquially to most as gong farmers, slop-brokers, and piss-mongers—men who contracted with the wards and their neighborhood councils to collect urine and excrement from the waste barrels that haunted the darkest downstairs corners of most tenements and boardinghouses. They’d crawl slowly up and down the side streets of Yenara all night long in their horse- or ox-drawn slop wains, hauling out those stinking barrels wherein Yenara’s good citizens emptied their chamber pots and slop jars, transferring all that stewing egesta into great clay jars that were then delivered to the city’s tanneries for use in industrial leather-curing, or beyond the walls as fertilizer for nearby farms. Generally speaking, they were a sullen, silent lot, going about their filthy trade like penitent beggars, having no friends or familiars except one another, being left to their nightly collections as though even speaking to them or acknowledging their common humanity might doom the speaker to later ply their unpleasant latrinal trade. Once or twice, Rem and Torval had had to break up brawls between competing slop-mongers, as one might try to horn in on another’s contracted routes, in order to illicitly top off his jars, but generally, the wardwatch were aware only of the progress of the honeywagons peripherally, the sight, sound and smell of them a barely noticed but prosaic element of Yenara’s everyday life—best ignored, if not forgotten.
“So we’re looking for a slop wain?” Rem asked.
Torval nodded. “Just so. Check their haul to make sure our perp hasn’t already tried to slip us and make them aware of who and what we’re looking for. Could be, if they’re on their guard, our thief won’t manage to so easily overtake and abscond with one of their carts.”
They split up, Torval moving southward, Rem to the north. Three blocks along, Rem saw just what he sought: down a side alley, two silhouettes attended the wheels of a large horse-drawn waincart, its length very nearly out of his line of vision as he advanced. It was parked in the lee of a three-story tenement. He could see nothing of the figures aside from their dark shapes gently outlined by light from a post lamp somewhere on another side street, but he knew instantly the cart he sought could hold the idol that Torval had described.
“Torval,” he called. “I’ve found one!”
“Carry on!” the dwarf shouted back. “I’ll keep searching down this way!”
Rem set off, trotting down the length of the dark side street, the cart and its two attendants only about one hundred yards beyond the main road.
“You there!” Rem cried. “Step away from that cart and stand where you are! Wardwatch!”
The two silhouettes froze, seemed to study him—though he could not see their faces—then exchanged puzzled glances (clear because their two shadowy heads turned toward each other, profiles melting out of the murky light). One clapped the other on the shoulder. The one assured bent to his labors again, while the other seemed to round the
forward end of the cart, toward Rem.
“I said stand where you are!” Rem shouted. “Throw up your hands!” Slowing now, he drew his sword, the blade hissing reassuringly as it slid from its scabbard, its keen edges glinting a little in the dim lamplight on the street.
The moving silhouette—the one that had seemed to assure the other that its labors could continue—now stood beside the cart. Rem saw disheveled hair on a large head; pock-marks; the glint of small dark eyes under a heavy brow.
Then, Rem smelled it. The acrid, ammonial tang of urine. The deep, rich stink of excrement. The smell assailed him while he was still some distance from the wain but seemed to rise exponentially—horribly—as he neared. Now that he was closer, he could see with more clarity just what sort of cart it was: four sturdy wheels supporting a deep, wide cargo bed, being drawn by a single, big liver-colored draft horse, and attended by two men in befouled leathers, who smelled almost as bad as the contents of the wain itself. The cargo bed was full of clay jars, each as tall and wide as a fat, overfed child. Rem knew exactly what they were brimming with and wanted to get no closer.
He skittered to a halt just ten feet from the cart and its reeking contents. The thick man that stood between Rem and the cart raised something: a wooden ax handle with an improvised iron crown. Not an ax blade, precisely—just a hastily forged and bolted bludgeon, for use in unpleasant scrapes and street fights.
“You’re a wardwatchman?” the man spat. “Let me see your badge!”
Rem held up his hands, sword hovering in the air beside him. “Sir, my sincere apologies—”
“My permits are paid,” the fellow spat back. “And if you’re from Toomey’s camp, trying to jack this load, you’ll find my boy and I hard competition, indeed!”
The lug at the rear of the cart lifted his head. “Need help, Da?”
“Bend to your work, boy. I can handle this one.”
Rem reached into his great coat—standard issue for all watchwardens in these colder months—and drew out his lead badge on its leather string. “I am the wardwatch, sir,” Rem said, showing it plainly. “You have my word. We’re just—”
He could barely get his breath. Aemon, but his lungs burned!
“Well, if it’s all the same to you, wardwatchman,” the nightman said, “we’ve got slopping-out to do—”
“Steady on, old timer,” the muscled boy at the rear of the cart said.
It took Rem a moment to realize that the boy wasn’t talking to him, nor to his own father. He was, instead, addressing a new arrival—a bent old man with what looked like a horribly hunched back, shuffling up the street toward the cart. The old beggar leaned on a crooked stick to support himself as he made slow, crab-wise progress along the muddy street. Clearly, the big boy had noticed the old man’s struggling, shuffling gait and sought to help him.
He stepped away from the cart. His father turned away from Rem and looked back toward his son, Rem’s own puzzled stare forcing him to investigate. As the boy lumbered up to the bent old man, Rem and the elder gong farmer watched.
“It’s not safe out here,” the youth said to the old man. “You really need to get off the streets.”
“Myrick,” the father said, “get back on those slop jars!”
“Just a moment, Da,” the boy said. “This old duffer’s just about stumbled right over them.”
Then the old man suddenly swatted the young man’s shins with his walking stick. The young piss-collector bent, crying out, and the walking stick rose and fell. It thumped him hard on his melon head and down he went into the mud, moaning.
For just a moment, Rem wondered why the old man would be so cruel to the boy, who had only tried to help him—then the old man stood straight upright and Rem understood.
This was their fleeing thief. That hump on his back was the idol of Thasspar the Prowler, tied to his person and covered in a ratty old cloak.
The piss-monger dove to his son’s aid. Rem stepped sideward and tried to charge the thief, but the elder wagon driver was in his way. Before Rem could reach his suspect, the purloiner’s disguise was shed. In a series of deft movements, the rogue spun, yanked at a knot on his tunic, which released the ropes holding the idol on his back, and dumped his heavy, back-bending cargo into the bed of the honeywagon. Then, just as Rem reached the midway point of the wagon and leapt awkwardly toward the sideboard, to clamber up and over its plank frame into the bed, the thief danced nimbly from the aft end of the cart to its fore, thumped down comfortably on the sprung driver’s bench and snatched up the reins of the draft horse and snapped them.
The big beast jerked in its traces and jolted forward, gaining speed in seconds.
Rem clung to the side of the cart, one boot on the running board, another flailing through space. He had one good handgrip on the rail of the cart bed, but holding his sword in his other hand meant he could not gain another without first dropping his weapon. He was trying to decide what to do about that when the thief rose up in the driver’s seat and, without loosing the reins, turned and gave the slop jar nearest the outside rail—nearest Rem—a stout kick. Terrified of getting a face full of cack and piss, Rem threw himself off the trundling cart. He missed being crushed by the right rear wheel of the cart by mere inches and hit the mud with stunning force. Somewhere, he heard the shattering of a big clay jar and the world was suddenly rich with the smell of ordure—but none of it, thank all the gods of the ancients and the Panoply, had landed on him.
Rem struggled mightily to regain himself—to wipe the mud from his eyes, to draw breath, to stand—despite pains both broad and acute from head to toe. In his ears, he heard the raucous clip-clopping of the draft horse’s shod hooves galloping along Fishmonger’s Row, the speeding cart rumbling rowdily behind it.
There. Rem was upright. Breathing. His limbs obeyed his commands. Nothing was broken. Stand, damn you! he thought, Give chase! Don’t waste a moment!
As he reeled to his feet, the two piss-mongers trotted up behind him. “That’s our load!” the father shouted. “Someone call out the wardwatch! That bastard’s gone afoot with my slop jars!”
Rem ignored him and reeled out into the middle of the wide, cobbled street, his quarry shrinking into the distance, heading east-southeast. If the fleeing rogue kept the cart on cobbled streets, his path would loop back toward the river, follow it for a bit, then once more bend eastward, unraveling straight toward the city gate.
If he reached the gates with enough speed behind him, not even the city guards could hinder his escape.
Rem was about to fall into a desperate sprint and give chase, his mind formulating something like a plan—fuzzy and bent though it might be. Before he could move, however, something up ahead caught his eye.
A short, stocky form trotted out of a side alley farther down the street—just ahead of the rushing honeywagon. It was Torval, his squinting eyes and frowning mouth making it clear, even at this distance, that he’d come back onto the main drag in answer to the sound of those clattering cart wheels, those pounding hooves.
But the thick-headed bastard had rushed right into the cart’s path!
Rem broke into a run, shouting Torval’s name as he went. He had time for only two loud warnings before the hurling cart ran right over his stocky dwarven partner, losing no momentum as it careened on down the length of Fishmonger’s Row.
if you enjoyed
THE FIFTH WARD: FIRST WATCH
look out for
KINGS OF THE WYLD
by
Nicholas Eames
GLORY NEVER GETS OLD.
Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best, the most feared and renowned crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.
Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk, or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay’s door with a plea for help—the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.
“It’s Rose.”
“Your daughter?” Clay prompted.
Gabe nodded slowly. His hands were both flat on the table. His eyes were fixed, unfocused, somewhere between them. “She is … willful,” he said finally. “Impetuous. I wish I could say she gets it from her mother, but …” That smile again, just barely. “You remember I was teaching her to use a sword?”
“I remember telling you that was a bad idea,” said Clay.
A shrug from Gabriel. “I just wanted her to be able to protect herself. You know, stick ’em with the pointy end and all that. But she wanted more. She wanted to be …” he paused, searching for the word, “… great.”
“Like her father?”
Gabriel’s expression turned sour. “Just so. She heard too many stories, I think. Got her head filled with all this nonsense about being a hero, fighting in a band.”
And from whom could she have heard all that? Clay wondered.
“I know,” said Gabriel, perceiving his thoughts. “Partly my fault, I won’t deny it. But it wasn’t just me. Kids these days … they’re obsessed with these mercenaries, Clay. They worship them. It’s unhealthy. And most of these mercs aren’t even in real bands! They just hire a bunch of nameless goons to do their fighting while they paint their faces and parade around with shiny swords and fancy armour. There’s even one guy—I shit you not—who rides a manticore into battle!”
“A manticore?” asked Clay, incredulous.
Gabe laughed bitterly. “I know, right? Who the fuck rides a manticore? Those things are dangerous! Well, I don’t need to tell you.”
He didn’t, of course. Clay had a nasty-looking puncture scar on his right thigh, testament to the hazards of tangling with such monsters. A manticore was nobody’s pet, and it certainly wasn’t fit to ride. As if slapping wings and a poison-barbed tail on a lion made it somehow a fine idea to climb on its back!