01 - Honour of the Grave

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “It is nonsensical,” Franziskus said to her. Realising that he was whispering for no good reason, he tried to speak in a normal manner. “They know Jurgen wants him dead, don’t they?”

  Toby shoved Lukas up to the edge of the platform. The boy resisted for a moment, going slack and flopping back. His bobbing head turned to take in the audience of soldiers, and he changed tack, allowing the halfling to boost him up. Lukas slapped his arms up on the platform and windmilled his legs, as the two halfling mercenaries boosted him up.

  Jurgen who was standing, fixedly, shook himself to step over and lend his son a hand.

  “I don’t understand,” Franziskus said.

  “Look at him,” Angelika said, as Jurgen stepped back from the spindly form of his lost son, eyeing the men assembled before him. “You can see the calculation he’s making, can’t you?”—

  Franziskus watched as Jurgen faltered. “He’s asking himself if he can dash the boy’s skull open in front of his men—and has decided that he can’t.”

  “Exactly right. You’re becoming a skilled judge of character, after all.”

  “Thanks to your former and remorseful foe,” Elennath called, addressing the crowd, “the future leader of the Black Field Sabres is saved!”

  Toby raised a gnarled and jubilant fist. “Three cheers for Jurgen von Kopf!”

  The cheers sang out. Soldiers shook their fists as Toby had done, yelping out a trio of hoorays. These contained more ardour than the cheers before.

  “It is an omen of victory!” Elennath proclaimed. “Our lord, Prince Davio, commends you all to your task, as you ready yourselves to face the greenskin hordes!”

  “Victory!” Toby echoed. The soldiers joined him in thrusting their fists skyward, stamping feet or clattering sabre hilts against their breastplates. A growing crowd of civilians, who had gathered on the street, added their own voices to the cheering. Overcome by enthusiasm, a vendor of griddlecakes expressed his pleasure by tossing his wares up into the air. The passersby were only fleetingly perturbed by the shower of hot batter; they returned quickly to their own giddy shouts and bellows. Among the civilians, a new chorus of “Victory!” went up, and soon the soldiers themselves had taken it up.

  Jurgen had moved to the centre of his platform, and posed in an attitude a sculptor might choose for a memorial statue. He held his right hand behind his back, Angelika noted. She recalled the gesture from their interrogation: the hand would be coiled into a fist, tight with contained fury.

  Lukas looked from side to side and covered his loins with his hands, as if he were naked. He inched to the back of the platform, behind his father.

  Gelfrat broke from the officer’s formation to steam toward the mercenaries. Henty spotted him first, licked his lips, and braced to receive a charge. Jurgen followed Gelfrat’s progress. He took an affected step up and raised his arms for quiet. Gelfrat saw this and froze for an instant, then backtracked behind the platform.

  “Indeed!” Jurgen said. He repeated the word several times, until the crowd quieted itself. “Prince Davio has capitulated himself to us—as we knew he would!” He paused, to invite further cheers. As the crowd’s roar washed over him, he feigned a smile, pulling the muscles of his stony face away from his teeth. “As these emissaries say, it is indeed an omen of victory.” Jurgen faltered, furrowing his brow.

  Angelika followed his line of vision: the three mercenaries were now on the move, backing toward the courtyard gate, between the columns of fighting men. They were making a slow, sly exit. Toby and Elennath bowed low as they backtracked; the halfling seemed to sweep an imaginary hat out before him.

  Jurgen snapped his gaze forcibly from them. “Yea, even our old enemies proclaim the inevitability of our triumph!” he resumed.

  Toby hooted his approval for Jurgen, rousing the soldiers around him to join in.

  “Brilliantly and brazenly played,” Franziskus said.

  Angelika nodded. “If I could bring myself to admire anything about them, it would be their gall.”

  Jurgen called to Gelfrat. The big man heaved himself up on stage. Jurgen spoke instructions into his ear; Gelfrat took frozen, goggle-eyed Lukas by the forearm and tugged. Head down, Lukas meekly followed him as he jumped from the back of the platform. A complement of fellow officers moved from their formation with dignified speed, hemming the boy in. They led him into the manor.

  Angelika gathered up the rope. “That’s our first question answered—we know where he is. For the moment.” She crossed to the armoury’s far battlement and looped the rope around one of its merlons, knotting it tight. “I don’t suppose you have a plan less stupid than mine?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “We sneak into the manor, find him, and whisk him out without being caught.”

  “That is a stupid plan. But I have no better.”

  She told Franziskus to climb down first. He tugged on the rope to show that he was down. She rubbed her hands, grabbed the rope, and began her descent. At the halfway mark, she saw a man standing behind Franziskus, a friendly arm draped around his chest. From their respective postures, she could tell he had a knife to Franziskus’ back. It was Benno. He beckoned her to continue down. She took an instant to consider her choices, then did as his gesture demanded. She touched down on the dirt floor of the alleyway, in front of Franziskus.

  “I should have been looking,” Franziskus said to her.

  “Don’t reproach yourself,” said Benno, wearing a cat’s smile. “I had myself cleverly hidden.”

  “Let me go,” said Franziskus. “We must rescue poor Lukas from your father’s custody.”

  In an almost playful gesture, Benno shoved him forward, out of the range of his knife. He sheathed his weapon. “Franziskus,” he said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Benno entered the small back room and threw a sheet of folded paper down on an uncomfortably low table, where Angelika and Franziskus were sitting. Angelika picked it up; it was a broadside, offering a bounty for their capture. The drawn likenesses were much the same as the posters they’d seen before, but this sheet was printed on a press, and the reward for their hides had doubled.

  “Your father wastes no time,” she said to Benno. She tossed the broadside into Franziskus’ lap. He unfolded it and stared at his image in mournful revulsion.

  “As you’ve probably gathered, he’s never one to let a slight slip by.” Benno sat and tucked into the meal spread before them: there were apples, coarse-skinned pears, round loaves of sour bread with sage; wedges of pale cheese; fat, peppery sausages, curled in the Kislevian manner, and a pot overflowing with sauerkraut. A clay jug of sharp cider sat in a ring of condensation next to a pitcher of lukewarm, yeasty ale.

  The three of them sat among high, teetering wooden shelves laden with bolts of cloth. All the colours of the Empire’s uniforms were represented, but bolts of yellow and black were the most common by far.

  Benno had taken Angelika and Franziskus directly to this hiding place, a few lanes away. It was the back room of a fabric shop, owned by a friend of his. The friend had not been introduced by name: he was well into his sixth decade, enjoyed the blessing of an imperious mane of flowing white hair, and bore himself with full military rectitude. He had no left arm, so it required no genius of deduction to mark him as a veteran of the wars. It was he who’d supplied their food, while Benno had been out gathering his intelligence.

  The cloth merchant had also taken their clothes from them. Benno had remarked that they could be smelled a mile away, which would be a drawback when they went to get Lukas free. They now sat wrapped in robes of coarse muslin. The robes were laced securely at the front, sparing Franziskus a crisis of modesty. Their drying garments hung on a cord suspended over their heads.

  “It’s as you suggested,” Benno now said, cutting free a thick disc of sausage and popping it into his mouth. “They’ve stored him in the same cell we put you.”

  “And, naturally,” Angelika said, “they’ll be doubly watchful no
w.”

  “Could be. But my father knows better than anyone what a spineless dishrag Lukas is, and I can say for certain he’s not expecting you to break the boy out. I stole a few moments with him, and he reckons you’ve long since fled to the borderlands. He’ll wait till the war’s over to send bounty hunters after you in earnest.”

  “He’s also not expecting you to suffer a sudden spasm of brotherly love,” said Angelika.

  “Love?” Benno laughed. “I promise you, I’m motivated by my own narrow interests.”

  Though she did not trust him, Angelika felt a pang of new affection for the Averlander. She liked a man who spoke without hypocrisy. There would be no falling into his arms, or any other such nonsense, given all that had passed between them. That didn’t mean she couldn’t briefly enjoy the way the lines of his face crinkled, or take pleasure in his wolfish way of devouring food.

  “I don’t understand,” Franziskus said to Benno, as he carefully chose an apple.

  “What happens to me if my father falls into Davio’s trap?” Benno asked, rhetorically. “There’s no advantage in being his son if he gets himself disgraced. Which—” he paused for a vigorous round of chewing, “is exactly what will happen to him if he disposes of Lukas, as I’m sure he intends to do.”

  “Why go to all the risk of helping us free him?” Angelika asked. “Why not just warn him to leave the boy alone, and be done with it?”

  “Warn him?” Benno laughed again. The one-armed shopkeeper was hovering at the doorway, and chortling knowingly. “Jurgen von Kopf doesn’t listen to my warnings. Not where the family honour is concerned. Remember, I’m just one member of his vast society of bastards.”

  “But the soldiers on that parade ground seemed to think the sun shines out of your father’s backside,” Angelika said. “What makes you so sure they won’t forgive a little murder in the family?”

  “My father’s a clever man with tactics and troop deployments, but when it comes to the feelings of the unwashed, he’s thicker than a fencepost. I, in contrast, am a common man. Or was, before I learned of my parentage and pressed for a commission.

  “He thinks the people love him because of the legend of the Black Sabres: family honour, and the selfless pursuit of deadly purpose. And our swagger and reputation, they’re part of it, I’ll grant. But the true reason people here stomp and cheer for him is that he isn’t Mad Count Marius. He doesn’t suddenly turn around and kill his own men, and later explain himself by saying they were possessed by his dead mother’s daemonic spirit. He doesn’t fight like a whirlwind one day, then ride off to mope in his castle the next. Now, with Jurgen at the helm, we can count on winning battles without having to pray that our commander won’t be too deranged to lead the charge today.”

  “So if they find out that Jurgen’s killed his son, to satisfy some mouldy old family ritual…”

  “…then they decide he’s as mad as Marius, and that’s the end of everything. They will only fight half-heartedly when the orcs come. So he loses his post, or we get slaughtered by greenskins, or both. Me, I’d sooner just let Lukas slink into exile, like the cowardly little snot he is. And the two of you,” he said, pointing his cheese-blade at them, “you’re the ones who are going to slink him off.”

  Angelika leaned away and crossed her arms. “What makes you think we wish to do that?”

  “You explain it to me. For some unaccountable reason, you’ve appointed yourselves his mother hens, haven’t you? So it happens that our interests intersect. We both want the boy where my father can’t get him.”

  “And why should we trust you?”

  He refilled her cup. “It’s you who’s been playing crooked with me, Angelika. Oh, I admit we didn’t tell you about Lukas, from the beginning. A mistake, it seems, now that I look back on it. But compared to what you did to us… running off without warning, reneging on the deal to turn our brother over… Not to mention selling him to halfling mercenaries.”

  She stood and stretched, feeling his hungry look on her as she arched her back. “And I suppose you want us to do this for nothing, as usual.”

  He held out empty palms. “I’ve told you a dozen times: I’m a poor man. Perhaps one day, when I lead the count’s armies, I will toss you a golden cup or a string of pearls.”

  She took a final swig of ale. “Let’s get this over and done with, then, before your largesse makes me swoon.”

  They cleared a space in the cloth merchant’s back room; he laid out bedrolls for them and left them to sleep.

  “So—can we trust him?” Franziskus asked.

  “We can never trust anyone,” she answered, closing her eyes. She hadn’t slept much, on the armoury roof, and found it easy to slip into slumber. Soon she was faintly snoring, leaving Franziskus to struggle for comfort on his bedroll. Their plan called for night action, and he knew he should get as much rest as he could. Knowing this just made it harder. He lay on his right side, then on his left. He rested a bolt of cloth under his head. He pulled off his tunic and covered his face. He thought about the heat. The dustiness of the room began to concern him. He became sure that his throat was coated with the stuff. He sat up to cough and sputter.

  He looked at Angelika. He told himself he was checking to see how her cuts and bruises had healed. Sometimes she was beautiful to him, sometimes not. Now, with the muscles of her face entirely relaxed, and her lids of her eyes closed and fluttering with dream, she was as lovely as he’d ever seen her.

  He imagined himself reaching over to brush her soft cheeks with the backs of his fingers. Then a thorny realism took over his daydream, and he pictured what would happen if he did such a thing: her danger-sharpened reflexes would jolt her immediately into action. She would burst up, produce a dagger from nowhere, and probably plunge it deep into his eye. If he was lucky, she would stop short, merely threatening him with blindness, disfigurement, and mortification.

  He lay back down on the bedroll. He tried to picture a life for the two of them, different from the one they now had. Franziskus envisaged a cottage. In his mind’s eye, he thatched its roof, covered it in stucco—no—he would shape it from blocks of shale, mortared together. Its stone floor would make it cool in the summer, he decided, as sweat beaded his forehead and soaked the hair at the back of his neck. In the winter, they would need to keep the fire roaring, but that would not be such a hard thing, because this cottage of theirs would be far from everywhere, in the depths of a forest, with no shortage of firewood. But it would not be the prickly woods of the Blackfire’s mountains, nor one populated by goblins, beastmen and mercenaries. Maybe somewhere in an elven glen, he thought, quickly stipulating that they would be on good terms with the elves, who would not be like Elennath in any way.

  He revised his vision again. The home he would truly like for their cottage would be the Moot. Not the wretched place he now imagined, having met so many awful halflings, but the storybook one. He pictured Angelika, rocking in a chair, a blanket on her lap, surrounded by halfling children eager to hear stories. There would be a touch of grey in her hair, and wrinkles at the sides of her mouth, softening them. She would smile at the little halflings, and then she would tell them of her adventures, from way back. She would tell them about…

  About robbing corpses, and about fathers who wanted to murder their sons, and brothers wanting to betray their fathers and…

  Franziskus sat back up again. Angelika moaned softly and turned over. He imagined himself drawing a knife of his own, and putting it to her milky-white throat, and demanding that she beg for his mercy. Voice barely cracking, she would tell him how sorry she was, for opening his eyes to this filthy world. She would admit that she should have left him with the orcs that were about to kill him. He would get her to admit the truth—that, like Lukas, he’d be better off mourned and dead than as a rootless survivor with no home to return to.

  He considered slipping away, and going back to his father’s estate, to bow his head and admit to his shame. He would not leave a note;
he would just go. Angelika would not weep to see him gone. She kept telling him this was what she wanted. She was not lying to herself; she truly did wish to be rid of him. No matter what he told himself, he was just a millstone, dragging her down.

  He would leave.

  He stood.

  But then he was back on his bedroll. First on his right side, then his left. He turned on his belly, and then on his back. He covered his face with his tunic. He dozed, readying himself for the action to come.

  He woke feeling that he’d slept for hours. His eyes were dry and his mouth like glue. The room was empty, except for their clean clothing that was still hanging on the length of twine. The strange feelings he’d had when he couldn’t sleep—the crazy lusts and unforgivable bitterness—had evaporated. He wondered how he could have thought them at all, and put them neatly out of mind.

  He heard voices on the other side of the door. He walked into the shop, where Angelika and the proprietor were idly talking. She was disinterestedly asking him about the present state of his business. He, fastidiously clipping his single set of fingernails with neat, straight front teeth, murmured that trade could either get worse, or better; it depended on how things went. Franziskus hailed them and asked where he might find a chamberpot. He relieved himself and returned. A shrug from the proprietor told him that Angelika had returned to the back room, and that the man was glad for this. Franziskus checked the shop’s small, circular windows, noting the orange light of late afternoon. Rubbing his eyes, he shuffled back into the store.

  Benno reappeared not long after. He was empty-handed, so they finished off the remains of breakfast. None of them was very hungry, anyway.

  Benno unveiled the plan. It was simple: he’d take them in as if they were his prisoners.

  Angelika said, “I hope this isn’t merely a ruse to get us to march happily into jail.”