The Fire Duke

by Joel Rosenberg

  But Torrie didn’t believe it for a moment.

  Ahead of the procession, another road T-ed into the main one, leading off across a raised berm, toward a village no more than a mile away.

  “Herolf?” Torrie walked briskly, up toward where the leader of the Sons trotted more back and forth in impatience than forward and backward. “Herolf? Can I ask you something?”

  The large head, golden fur trimmed with black, turned toward him, and the wolf cocked its head to one side.

  A hairy bitch in human form, her face covered with a light brown fuzz, stopped rubbing the scar that was where her left middle nipple ought to be, and growled at Herolf, spreading her hands and growling some more when he answered in a way that Torrie was sure was sarcastic.

  She turned back to Torrie. “It would depend. If it’s ‘how much longer is it until we get there,’ I get to eat two of your fingers.” Her smile showed teeth that were ample for the job. “So lie to him, please.”

  Torrie shook his head. “It is about shoes. My mom and Maggie have but slippers,” he said. “Good soles on them, but there is a village there, I see—would it be possible to get them proper shoes? Humans don’t have thick soles on our feet the way Sons do, and—”

  Herolf cut him off with a growl, then growled at the bitch.

  “ ‘What would you plan to use for money to pay a cobbler?’ he asks,“ she said.

  Torrie swallowed. “I had thought to use some of the gold that you seized from my pack and that of my father.”

  He had never heard a wolf laugh before, and Torrie was sure that the answer was not only going to be no, but to be offensively so, when the bitch turned to him and snarled, “Have it as you will.” She dipped two long-nailed fingers into her pouch, and dropped a Krugerrand into his palm. The gold coin was, as always, heavier than he thought it should be.

  “Four for guard duty,” she called out in Bersmal; the snarls that followed were probably a translation.

  Dad flinched, cowering away, as one of the Sons brushed too close to him. Mom reached over and patted his shoulder, while Maggie ignored the lot of them.

  “I’ve gotten Herolf to agree to let us go into the village and get a cobbler to, er, cobble together a pair of shoes for each of you.”

  Thanks, Maggie mouthed.

  “Thank you, Torrie,” Mother said.

  Dad didn’t meet his eyes.

  The four guards turned out to be two Sons in wolf form, and a pair of bitches in human form.

  “Torrie,” Dad said, “just be careful. I’m … vaguely concerned,” he said with a slight wink.

  Torrie forced himself to keep his face calm and emotionless. The word “vague” or the Bersmal equivalent, posfe, was supposed to be the code word for him to run, but Dad hadn’t used the word, not exactly, but something close to it, and the emphasis and wink made it clear that it wasn’t accidental.

  A chill washed up and down Torrie’s back; it was all he could do not to shiver. Dad wasn’t a coward; but he was pretending to be one. Let the Sons think him cowed, and they’d be less careful around him, until it was time to move. Torrie could have kicked himself for thinking Dad a coward. He knew better; he ought to have known better.

  So when Dad threw an arm around Torrie, pulling him close and hugging him, saying, “Be careful,” Torrie wasn’t in the least surprised that his free hand unbuttoned a button over Torrie’s belly, and quickly slipped what felt like two small scabbards inside.

  Torrie pushed Dad away and drew himself up straight, as though disdainfully, but mainly to pull closed the opening in his shirt. “I don’t need any of your words, you who flinch from the Sons.”

  Torrie’s bodyguards snickered. One of the bitches turned to the other and muttered something low.

  “It’ll be soon,” Torrie said, as though to the Sons.

  Dad nodded once, so slightly that if Torrie hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have noticed.

  The village was known as the Village of Mer‘s Woods. Not terribly creative, all and all, given that the village was in a clearing at the edge of a hunting preserve owned by the Margrave Mer, but there was no reason to think the Vandestish terribly creative, after all.

  As he followed Maggie and Mom into the dark cobbler’s shop, none of their bodyguards preceded them, but two followed them into the small, dark, dank room.

  There was no other door, unless the vaguely door-shaped tapestry hanging from the rear wall hid one. It was gorgeous, though: a long, skinny waterfall in a wooded setting, splashing down into a green meadow, its head and foot wreathed with spray. Very, very pretty.

  The rest of the walls were covered with cubbyholes filled with scraps of leather and wood and tiny bits of round metal, presumably eyelets for laced-up footwear. Over the much-battered workbench under the mottled-glass window, there was a rack of tools of all sizes, some of which—mainly the knives—Torrie had no problem in identifying, others of which he had no way of identifying.

  “Enh.” The lead bitch snarled. She pointedly looked at the rack of tools, then reached out a long, hairy arm and snagged something that looked like a scalpel on a foot-long stick. “Go on, if ye want it. Cut me good, trying to escape, see how much good it’ll do ye and yers.”

  “No,” Torrie said, swallowing.

  Mom pursed her lips for a moment, but then shook her head. Maggie just stared off into the distance.

  There was a tingling that sounded more like glass crystals than bells, and a dwarf—no, a Vestri, Torrie reminded himself—pushed through the waterfall that now clearly consisted of thousands of loose, painted strands hanging from above where the doorframe would have been.

  “Bindur, at yer shervish,” the dwarf said in a thick Bersmal rendered almost unintelligible by his lisp. He looked from Torrie to the women to the Sons, and gave the slightest of shrugs, as though to say it was none of his business. “Do ye noble lords and ladies have need of me poor services?”

  There was a perfect opening: the lead bitch was paying attention to Bindur, and the Son in wolven form had lowered his massive head and was sniffing around the legs of some of the tables, as though getting ready to mark his position.

  But the moment went by, and was gone. Torrie explained that they needed good shoes or boots for the women, and flashed the Krugerrand as a demonstration of his ability to pay.

  Maggie was soon sitting in a bench, her slipper off. The dwarf kneeling over her had taken a peculiarly marked wooden board down from the wall, and was holding it up to her foot, making several sets of markings on the board with a piece of white chalk. His second set of measurements came from Mom’s feet.

  He nodded. “I can have those ready tomorrow if you’d like.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now, we ought to decide on a price …”

  Torrie pulled out the gold coin, again. “We need them now, and this is your price. All of it.”

  The dwarf’s massive head tilted slightly to one side. “Well, well, I could modify a couple of boots I was making on speculation, you see, on speculation, but then the price—”

  Torrie picked up the Krugerrand.

  “—will be amply paid by your gold, amply paid, young lord. Sit ye down, sit, sit, and it will be just a matter of moments.”

  This wasn’t exactly a normal sort of situation, but even under bad circumstances Torrie always enjoyed seeing somebody who was good at it work with his hands. Within just minutes, the dwarf had taken down two pairs of boots and with a small, pointed knife, removed the stitching that held sole to foxing; he carved on each sole, in one case simply making it slimmer, in the other case making it shorter and slimmer.

  It was just a few moments, but the Sons were starting to get impatient. “We need to move today,” the bitch said. “Herolf is generous with our time, but even he would not be overgenerous.”

  Torrie knelt down in front of Maggie, and checked the lacing on the calf-high boots. “In a moment,” he said, turning back to Maggie. “You’re going to have to pull this tighter,” he sai
d, grabbing hold of her wrists and gently pulling her forward. “When I say now,” he said quietly, slipping a scabbarded knife into her hand, “you go all out—you pull hard, eh?”

  Dad had probably wanted him to give the knife to Mom, but Maggie was the fencer, not Mom, and while the knives Dad had passed him weren’t epees, they were the closest thing he had to that, just as Maggie was the closest thing to a knife-fighter.

  It was supposed to be scary, Torrie decided, but there was something about it, something strange, a feeling like this is what he had been born for, been trained for, for all of his years.

  He might not be able to do it right all the time, but nobody could: but it was the right thing for him to be doing.

  He slipped the scabbard from his remaining knife, and used his thumb to pin the hilt against the palm of his hand, letting the length of the blade lie along his arm, parallel to it.

  “Look.” He gestured with that arm, and when the bitch followed his gesture, he spun the knife around in his hand and slashed back, low, catching her across the belly.

  She let out a bark, and then a howling scream that trailed off into a bubbling moan.

  Torrie wasn’t waiting. He had already lunged at the Son next to her, the one in wolf form, ducking under outstretched claws to slip the knife in between his ribs. The flesh parted easily, too easily, as though it was Jell-O, not hard muscle under tough skin.

  The two Sons on guard were already dashing in. Torrie barely nicked the one in humanoid form, but tripped him as he lunged past, and turned to face the other. There was nothing to do but hope that Maggie was able to handle the injured one, because the wolven Son flattened himself against the floor and sprang.

  Timing, Father used to say, was everything: Torrie ducked to the right—the only direction open—transferred the knife to his left hand, and planted it firmly in the Son’s throat, twisting as he withdrew it.

  He turned. Mother had flattened herself against the wall, but Maggie was covered with a Son’s blood from her chest to her feet, and while her face was white, her jaw was set.

  “Quickly,” he said. “We’ve got to run, to get out of here.” Torrie turned to the dwarf: “Does this shop have a back way out?”

  “Hurry, hurry,” the dwarf said, urging the three of them toward the rear of the shop, down a narrow hall and into a storeroom that ended in a thick, barred door. The dwarf slid the bar aside and yanked the door open. “Go left down the alley, and then right at the end of it, and run for your lives, run, run, run.”

  As Torrie opened the door, he heard a click behind him. The three of them were alone in the storeroom; the dwarf had disappeared.

  He stepped out into the alley, and froze. The mouth of the alley was filled with a dozen swordsmen, each with a drawn blade, each wearing black livery edged in crimson orange, decorated at the chest with a flame design. Behind them, holding the reins to their similarly liveried horses, a quartet of Vestri waited patiently.

  “Well done,” said the largest swordsman, sweeping his black crimson-edged cloak aside as he bowed. “It is just as well that we had the Sons … forget to tell you that we were to accept delivery here and now, or you likely would have escaped several days ago, and quite probably gotten yourself killed for the trouble.”

  The troop parted, to reveal Dad, his arms bound before him, a swordpoint at his cheek forcing him to tilt his head to one side, and even that wasn’t enough: a thin trickle of blood ran down his unflinching cheek, dripping off his jaw and splashing on his already dirty shirt.

  “His Warmth would like to see you all in person, and alive,” the leader said. “I trust that can be arranged?”

  Behind him, the Sons growled.

  “I really would advise surrender,” the leader said. “But have it your way—” He nodded to another swordsman near Dad, who pulled back his blade, ready to—

  “Wait.” Torrie put up his hands.

  “Very good.” The leader smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  Harbard and Frida

  Ian woke, lying on his side, a warm, damp cloth on his forehead and the smell of roasting beef filling his nostrils, making his mouth water. There was a distant taste of sweetness at the back of his tongue, powerful, but not cloying.

  He waited for the pain to hit. After the way he had exhausted himself, every muscle in his body was going to ache; dragging the travois halfway down the mountain had ripped the palms of his hands raw, and no doubt the blisters on his feet had all burst. This was just a pain-free moment as he emerged from the respite of sleep, and in an instant the agony would be back, redoubled by comparison with this island of no-pain.

  But the pain didn’t hit, and after a few moments he opened his eyes, feeling kind of foolish.

  Under a thin brown wool blanket, Ian lay on a sleeping frame a few inches above a slab-wood floor; a skin, stretched tightly across the frame, gave the surface enough give to be comfortable. A few feet in front of him, a small fire burned in a huge stone hearth. A roast of some sort turned slowly on a spit, although it was hard to guess what the motive power was, as one end of the spit simply lay on the crotch of an upthrust Y-brace, and the other end was sunk into the wall.

  It was getting either dark or light outside; a low sun cast a buttery light through the window, turning swords and spears hung on the wall opposite all golden.

  He turned over. He was in a largish room, maybe twenty feet by thirty. The walls were all rough-hewn wood, as though the building was really just a log cabin, but the spaces between the slabs appeared to have been caulked with mortar. A large sleeping frame stood in one corner, glossy furs neatly folded on a shelf above it, while the far side of the room was unmistakably the kitchen, dominated by a huge cast-iron woodstove topped with four dull flat iron burners.

  But what really struck Ian about the room was how full it was. What appeared to be a large dresser and two bureaus, each intricately carved and decorated, stood over by the sleeping frame. Above one an oval wood-framed mirror hung on the wall. There were a dozen wooden foot-lockers of various sizes spread around the room, some stacked on each other. Easily ninety percent of the walls were covered with shelves, and the shelves were covered with all sort of things: small wooden carvings; crystals large and small; beakers and tankards of wood, silver, and leather; what appeared to be shards of glass and whole painted eggs.

  It reminded Ian of his visits to Zayda Sol. The old man had never thrown away a souvenir in his life, and kept his shelves filled with little bells and small crystal carvings. This was like that, except more so—most of these things looked like souvenirs.

  There were some exceptions. Next to the thick door, above where the crossbeam would have rested if the door were shut, a spear hung horizontally, supported on a trio of brass hooks that had been shaped to appear to be hands, and below it hung a horn bow and a quiver full of long arrows; to the side was a sword similar to Ian’s—and at that thought, his hands, as of their own volition, sought the hilt of it, finding it on the rough-hewn floor next to his bed.

  Ian swung his legs out of bed and got to his feet, the world spinning about him for just a moment; he tried to regain his balance as he stood, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. The floor was cold beneath his feet, but, amazingly, his feet didn’t hurt. He hopped on one foot for a moment, bringing the other one up.

  There was no sign of the blisters he knew he had. Not on his feet, and not on the palms of his hands. They weren’t scarred over—it was as though the whole trip down the mountain had been a dream.

  It would have made more sense if this whole thing had been a dream, but he wasn’t used to waking up from dreams in some strange log cabin, a sword—not a foil, but a blooded sword—at his side.

  But it was, and he was well. How long had he slept? Weeks, apparently—months? Years?

  He was trying to figure out what to do next—should he belt his sword about himself and walk around, check things out? Should he call out? If so, what should he call out, and in what language?
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  Should I holler something out in English, or in this Bersmal that I seem to have picked up without studying it, and that I can even slip into ofrivillig?

  It was all very strange.

  He had just decided to at least take a look out the door when the door swung open ahead of a woman carrying a huge load of firewood. Ian started—the door had opened by itself, and then it shut, quietly, closing the darkening night out.

  “Let me help you with that,” he said in English, then switched to Bersmal and repeated himself when she didn’t immediately answer.

  “No, no, no,” she answered in Bersmal, quietly, her voice lower and more airy than he had thought it would be. “You are to be resting; I can manage by myself.”

  Her hair was long and definitely white, but straight and glossy; it hung down to her shoulders, parted neatly in the middle, the bangs cut short. Her long legs were bare down to sandals; she wore only that and a less than knee-length blue cotton shift, belted with a particularly nice silver buckle, tight around a slim waist, showing full breasts that would have looked overlarge if her shoulders weren’t just a touch broad.

  She reminded him of a woman bodybuilder—not the overmuscled types who looked like men with small breasts, but the Rachel McLish style: rounded, well-developed muscles that were still very much feminine.

  The muscles that played under the shift must have been in awfully good shape; she was carrying at least fifty pounds of wood without any apparent effort. When she leaned over to dump it unceremoniously in the woodbin beside the stove, the only thing that strained was the cloth of her shift, and he found himself hoping it would give.

  She turned as she straightened, every movement like a step in a dance, and clapped her hands several times to clear them of dust and dirt. “Good morning to you,” she said in Bersmal. “I see that you’ve slept all the way through another night?”

  “Er, I would … guess so.”