01 - Honour of the Grave

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  The poet spluttered. “Who are you, you distaff brigand, to—”

  Angelika crooked her elbow, ready to throw the blade at his throat. He turned white and backed away from the table. The others stood and held their hands up, placatingly. At least one of them whimpered.

  “Nidungus,” the lead poet demanded of the pot-stirrer. “Do you mean to allow this outrage in your very own tavern?”

  Nidungus spat disinterestedly, scarcely turning from the pot. The poets scattered, rushing chaotically for the exit. Lukas remained in his seat, staring down into his watery soup.

  “I think I’ll have that ale after all, Nidungus,” he said. “Hand me down my stein.”

  “The lot of them just left without paying,” Nidungus told him. “Finish their leftovers.” He dug into an armpit, homing in on a nit.

  Angelika walked over to the boy’s table. “We’ve got to get moving, Lukas.”

  He kept his eyes down. “I’m not going anywhere anymore. Certainly not with you.”

  “All of Marius’ men are departing for war. That leaves no one to protect you from your father. Grenzstadt has become unsafe for you, again.”

  “I intend to stay here and die, along with everyone else.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Only my father could have led the troops to victory. Marius will lose. It’s my fault. My weakness will destroy the town. The least I can do is stay here and meet the same fate as those whose dooms I’ve sealed.”

  She grabbed him by the ear. “You morose little—useless—If you propose to do something useful to help someone, then very well, I’ll let you do it. But I haven’t suffered and scraped just to let you sit here like a sluggard and wait for the orcs to stomp in and take your head! Get up!”

  “Ow!” he complained, rising.

  Behind her, Franziskus softly called her name. She turned.

  Henty Redpot stood in the tavern doorway. He exposed a smile full of yellow teeth. He had his big axe already out.

  Without taking her eyes off him, Angelika pivoted. She had heard the creak of stairs behind her. Elennath, diagonal scar blazing, moved lithely down them. Toby Goatfield crunched carelessly down after his elven partner.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. Toby leaned over the stairway railing and dropped a leather purse into the taverner’s hand. Nidungus rattled the coins inside the purse and departed through the front door. Henty swooshed theatrically aside to let him pass.

  “Ah,” said Toby, expansively lifting up his arms. “The Hat and Pony. You shouldn’t have spent so much of your time babbling away to us, boy.” He winked at Lukas. “You described it so poetically that it was easy to find.” He reached the bottom of the stairs and bounced onto the springy floorboards. “And wherever you were, boy, we’d find these two. If we waited long enough. What they see in you, I don’t know.”

  Angelika opened her mouth and covered it with her hand, in a mocking, artificial yawn. “While there’s nothing I enjoy so much as listening to a good gloat, maybe you should just tell us what you want from us.”

  Goatfield laughed. Elennath sneered. Henty chortled.

  “You’ve done your job,” said Angelika, wondering which of them to go for first. “You got paid.”

  “Paid in money, perhaps,” said the elf. “But not in blood. Not for this.” He pointed to his ruined face.

  “Don’t be so narrow-minded,” she said. “The scar gives you character.”

  “Before,” cried Elennath, “I was perfect-looking!”

  “And you two halflings,” she said, “you care so much about his porcelain features?”

  “No,” said Henty, behind her. “We just enjoy killing people we don’t like.”

  “If you murder the boy, you’ll ruin your employer’s plans. It will spoil their story if the henchmen who so generously delivered him turn around and gut him, for no apparent reason.”

  “Our employment has come to an end, girlie,” Toby said. “Apparently the Bretonnian bitch finds us bloodthirsty, uncouth and uncontrollable. How she could come to that conclusion I can’t possibly reckon.”

  “We’re not here to murder the boy,” Elennath told her. “Just the two of you.”

  Goatfield cracked his knuckles. “Oh, I think I’d like to kill the boy, too. What say you, Henty?”

  “Indeed,” Henty said, investing the second syllable with lusty fervour.

  “Well then,” said Angelika. She hurled herself at Elennath, knife outstretched.

  Franziskus ducked Henty’s axe. It splintered the doorframe.

  Elennath twisted to dodge Angelika’s blow. Her dagger tore open his left side, skating up his ribcage. The elf screeched.

  Henty directed a second, lower, blow at Franziskus. He jumped aside. The axe stuck in the frame, causing the wall to shed flakes of stucco.

  Goatfield kicked out at Angelika’s legs, trying to trip her. She grabbed Elennath and spun him into the leering halfling. The elf fell into Toby’s dagger; parting the muscles of his lower back. His eyes widened as he became aware of agony. Goatfield pushed him off his blade. He stumbled onto his knees. Goatfield regarded the thick elfin blood on his dagger with bemused detachment. With a swinging, backhanded blow, Angelika sliced open Elennath’s throat, just below the jaw. Voice box destroyed, he gargled angrily. Only when words refused to form did he seem to comprehend what had happened. He touched fingers to his throat. They came back coated in red. He gargled some other threat or insult. Blood drenched him. It pooled on the floor, seeking the deep cracks between floorboards. He fell face-first.

  “I never truly cared for him,” Goatfield eulogised, rushing at Angelika.

  Henty’s axe was stuck again in the shattered frame of the tavern doorway. Franziskus drew his rapier and warily advanced. The monolithic halfling took quick sideways glances as Franziskus searched for an advantageous position.

  Henty kept working at the axe. Franziskus decided to use his height advantage, slashing down at the halfling’s neck. Faster than he should have been, Henty edged away from the blow. He elbowed Franziskus in the gut. Franziskus wheeled back. He thought he might fall over, but he didn’t.

  Still facing Goatfield, Angelika jumped onto the stairs. He came at her. She kicked him in the face. A loose nail on the heel of her boot tore into it, ripping a white gash up the side of his right cheek. The gash filled and turned red. She kicked at his throat. He grabbed her leg and pulled her down. The back of her head smacked against one of the steps. Then another. He dragged her like a mop through Elennath’s blood.

  Henty freed his axe. He surged at Franziskus. Franziskus feinted left, then dodged right. Henty crashed into a table. Franziskus smashed his hilt-pommel into the base of Henty’s skull. Henty made a woofing noise. He swung at Franziskus with the axe. Franziskus danced back toward the stairs. He hit the spreading patch of elfin gore and his feet flew out from under him. His fall saved him from Henty’s sweeping axe, which otherwise might have detached his head and sent it flying across the tavern.

  Franziskus found himself at Goatfield’s feet. Goatfield let go of Angelika to send a stomping boot down on the Stirlander’s face. Franziskus met it with the palm of his hand, which he then wrenched sideways with all his might. Goatfield toppled off balance.

  Angelika took stock. She was face to face with Henty. He drooled at her. She threw her knife at his eye. He moved and it hit his forehead instead. It bounced off, and not so much as a red mark appeared on his skin. He brought his axe down. She leapfrogged over him, pushing on his back on the way over. He struggled to keep his footing. She turned, spun, and tried to topple him with a kick to his blocky posterior.

  Though well placed, it failed to budge him. He whirled and crashed his axe down, splintering floorboards all around him.

  Franziskus poked the tip of his rapier into Toby’s side. The halfling was still flat on his back and struggling to right himself, but his feet were skidding in sticky gore. He grabbed Franziskus’ blade, wrinkling his eyes up as it cut into
the soft flesh of his hand. He grunted and bent the rapier to a right angle. He released it, rolled onto his stomach, and used Elennath’s blood as lubricant to slide himself quickly across the floor to Franziskus, whose ankles he seized with gnarled hands. He bit Franziskus’ ankle, then yanked forward, bringing the Stirlander down on his buttocks. Franziskus kicked him in the face, widening the narrow, riverine wound Angelika had inflicted there.

  Angelika took hold of a flimsy wooden chair, to use as a shield against Henty’s axe. Henty smashed it to bits. She picked up a second chair. He smashed, too, leaving her holding a broken spindle from the chair’s back. Its end had sheared through crosswise, leaving it sharpened like a stake. She drove it into the side of Henty’s neck. He staggered back, goggled his eyes in pain, but then recovered to swing his axe furiously at her. She leapt up onto the table. He hammered the axe down on it, breaking it in two. As it fell, she leapt backwards onto the table behind it. To get at her, he parted the wreckage of the first table.

  Toby grunted and scrabbled forward, hauling himself up onto Franziskus’ body, and clambering along his legs. He bit down on Franziskus’ crotch. He growled and spat out a tooth. Franziskus silently thanked his sister for giving him a codpiece as an enlistment gift, and himself for remembering to put it on, under his trousers. Then he stuck his thumbs in Toby’s eye sockets and started gouging. Toby reared back, snapped at his fingers like a turtle, then got to his knees, driving an elbow down onto Franziskus’ sternum. Franziskus groaned.

  Angelika alighted from the table before Henty could smash this one too. She reached for a beer stein. It was made of pewter and weighed at least ten pounds. She hurled it at Henty’s head. It hit the bridge of his nose. His eyes glazed. A viscous dribble of blood emerged shyly from his left nostril. Redpot blinked and cracked his neck. He advanced on her.

  A shape appeared behind him. It was Lukas. He held a heavy club of wood, its end still coaled in white and yellow embers, from the taverner’s firepit. He crashed it across the back of Henty’s skull.

  Henty teetered forward, then back. He elbowed Lukas in the chest, dropping him. Embers clung to his head and shoulders. They burned through his tunic. Strands of his hair singed, curling up. He raised his axe.

  Toby seized Franziskus by the back of his neck, hauling him to his feet. He pressed the Stirlander’s face into a table. Franziskus groped its surface. His searching fingers found a paring knife. He slashed it backwards, prompting Toby to release him. Franziskus whirled to face the halfling. He jabbed the knife at Goatfield’s ear. Toby grabbed his wrist and twisted. The knife fell. Franziskus kneed him in the stomach. He doubled over.

  Henty swung his axe. Angelika dodged.

  Franziskus took a step back and then hit Toby with his shoulder, catching him full in the face. Toby skidded back, his right arm making contact with the soup cauldron. He squawked in pain and drew back from it. His arm, from the elbow down, had gone pink; it bubbled with blisters. Franziskus tried another shoulder slam; Toby adjusted his stance to forestall another slide into the cauldron. The impact nonetheless drove him back; he turned his ankle and fell to one knee. Franziskus knelt, grabbed each of the halfling’s stubby legs, and pulled, upturning him. Goatfield flailed his arms as Franziskus held him upside down. Shaking from muscle strain, the young deserter staggered over to the pot. Toby worked to clamp his legs around his neck, but Franziskus resisted. He leaned ahead, letting the halfling’s weight carry him forward, and dropped Toby headfirst into the pot of boiling soup.

  In the soup, Toby’s legs thrashed. The cauldron rocked on its metal bracket. It dropped off, into the fire, and overturned. Franziskus sidestepped the ensuing splash. Toby rose screaming from inside the pot, bone exposed, eye sockets empty. Small bits of chopped leek dotted his cooked flesh. He teetered to the side and fell to the floorboards, where he twitched and expired, barely two feet from Elennath’s dead and staring face.

  Franziskus checked to see how Angelika fared. Plainly, she was tiring: each dodge of Henty’s axe-blows was slower than the last. The murderous halfling had manoeuvred her to the front of the tavern. She was pressed against a wall, where an old bronze shield hung. She ducked as he swung; he hit it, folding it in two.

  Franziskus cast about for a weapon. He found only Toby’s dropped dagger, a pathetic implement against so unrelenting a foe. He required something that had reach.

  He kept searching, but saw nothing long enough. Puny dagger in hand, he ran at Henty.

  The halfling backed Angelika into an alcove, framed with oaken beams. He swung. The axe caught in the timber. Franziskus leapt onto Henty’s back, pulling him off his weapon.

  Angelika grabbed the sharpened chunk of chair-back she’d plunged into Henty earlier. She strained to yank it out. It wouldn’t go. She leapt up on it, pushing down on it, driving it further into him.

  “Doxy!” he yelled at her.

  Franziskus put a leg between Henty’s and tripped him. Henty crashed headlong into the wall. He recovered. Franziskus stepped beside Angelika. Now both of them blocked the muscle-bound mercenary’s path back to his great axe.

  “Your friends are dead,” Angelika told him. “Time to cut your losses.”

  He laughed and hurled himself at Franziskus. He picked up the skinny Stirlander and threw him into a pile of chairs. Franziskus stayed down. Henty, arms open, lunged at Angelika, hoping to wrap her in a crushing hug. She slipped aside, picked up a chair, and brought it splintering down on his back. One of its legs broke. She hit him with it again. It fell to bits. He smashed her in the temple with a closed fist. Dazed, she toddled sideways. She reached the door, steadying herself on its shattered frame. Henty jumped up, grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her down. He kicked her. She inched backwards.

  He turned and sprinted for his axe. She took this brief reprieve to lie back and breathe. She closed her eyes and searched herself for hidden reserves of strength. She panted.

  Henry was back. He had his axe over his head. Tongue waggling wormishly in his mouth, he sniggered. “I told you I’d get you,” he said.

  Jurgen von Kopf stepped from the street into the tavern doorway, both hands wrapped around the hilt of a mammoth greatsword. He chopped it down on the haft of Henty’s axe, cutting through the halfling’s wrist. The axe thunked to the tavern floor. Henty’s hand dangled from a skein of cartilage and skin. Jurgen brought his greatsword down on the mercenary again, making a wedge through the side of his head, cutting away his ear and cheek. Blood spouted from the wrist-stump and then pulsed up through the head wound. Still Henty did not fall. Jurgen kicked him over.

  “I’ve come for my son,” he told Angelika.

  Angelika made it to her feet. The room was spinning. Jurgen’s face went in and out of focus. “You’ve come to your senses, then?” she said. She did not believe this, but hoped to shame him.

  He hardened his features. “Where is he?”

  Lukas came up from behind a shattered table. He met his father’s sharp blue gaze. He spoke steadily. “I am here, father.”

  “You have shamed me, Lukas. You’ve brought disgrace and ruin crashing down on our family.”

  “Am I the one who’s done that, father?”

  Jurgen ground his teeth together. He tightened his grip on his greatsword. “It is beyond question that you have. From the cradle, you knew our rules. Come here. At least allow the chronicles to say that, in the end, you took the chance to atone for your crimes against our blood.”

  Lukas straightened his shoulders. “If you intend to kill me, you’ll succeed. But I won’t help you butcher me. I reject your nonsense of honour and crimes against the blood. I am Lukas von Kopf. I have done what I have done.”

  Jurgen took a step. “Then I will come to you.”

  Franziskus clutched Toby’s dagger. Lukas saw this. “What do you intend to do with them?” he asked.

  “Yesterday I hankered for comeuppance.” Jurgen regarded Angelika and the Stirlander. “Now I see them again, and they mean nothing. They m
ay go.”

  Lukas addressed Franziskus. “Go, please. Please.” He turned to Angelika. “You, too. Thank you for what you’ve done. I don’t see how I deserved it.”

  “Swear not to harm him,” Angelika said to Jurgen, “and we’ll happily leave.”

  “I’ve sworn the contrary,” Jurgen said.

  “There is not a part of you that feels doubt, is there?”

  “No,” said Jurgen. His demeanour had changed. Though he still held himself upright, and spoke with clear, ringing tones, the old imperious manner was gone. He no longer dripped haughty contempt. She did not know, at first, what sentiment to attribute to this new demeanour. For a moment, she dared to hope that it was sympathy, or regret. Those feelings she could make use of. Then it came to her: Jurgen was in mourning. In the old man’s mind, his boy was already killed.

  “No matter what the situation,” stalled Angelika, “you always know what to do next.”

  “Yes,” said Jurgen.

  “You don’t remember the last time you hesitated.” She saw that she was backing up, and giving him ground. She forced herself to hold her position. “Or were torn between two choices.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Jurgen, that’s a madness as great as Marius’.”

  He cocked his head as if considering the point. “Fine, then. I’ve given you a chance to insult me. Now begone, and vex me and mine no more.”

  “Go, both of you,” Lukas said, to Franziskus and Angelika.

  “But I’ve made a stupid vow of my own,” said Angelika. She kept her eyes on Jurgen’s sword. “So here we find ourselves.”

  “Then that is how it is,” Jurgen said. He distractedly pawed the floor with the toe of his boot, scraping grit between sole and floorboard.

  “Does honour allow you to fight with that enormous sword, when we are all but disarmed?” Angelika asked him.

  He laid the sword carefully on a table. He clenched and unclenched the fists of both hands.