Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  The flask was full of gunpowder—not the ordinary coarse stuff one might use to propel a cannonball, but a much more finely ground variety sometimes called 'flash powder'. It burned faster and hotter than its common cousin, and it was so fine-grained that particles of it lingered in the air like an incendiary fog. A few pinches was enough. He restoppered the flask, motioned Beth to back off a step, and struck a match near the keyhole.

  The powder went off with a soft whumph, producing a flash of light that would have ruined Andreas' night-vision if he hadn't already had his eyes tightly shut. As soon as he heard the noise, he grabbed the door-handle and turned it. Inside the lock, the tiny fireball would have blown all the tumblers outward; the handle resisted for a moment, then opened with a click, smoke still pouring out of the keyhole.

  Andreas eased the door open. As Rose's plans had promised, it led into a servant's hall, just off the kitchens. It was late enough that the staff—except for the watchmen, of course—would have gone to bed for the evening. A back stair led up to the third floor, to the Secretary-Treasurer’s room. So far, so good.

  #

  The ambush was waiting in the third-floor hall, where a concealed door led out from the servants' passage onto a well-appointed hallway. Andreas opened the door and glanced in both directions, satisfying himself that the hall was empty, and slipped through, with Beth close behind him. Just after the door closed, though, he caught the sound of running footsteps, and then a squeal as an iron bolt slammed into place.

  Someone had been waiting until they went through to block their escape. Something at the back of Andreas' mind, the part of him that kept him alive when missions went wrong, had him reaching for his weapons before his conscious mind understood what had happened. He drew a short sword in his right hand and a curved fighting knife in his left, and when the nearest bedroom door burst open to disgorge armed men, he was already moving.

  The men were ready for a fight, but they were not expecting their opponent to come at them so quickly. Andreas got only an instant to assess the grim-faced, mustached fellows in fighting leathers, slim swords in hand and small round shields belted to their opposite forearms.

  The first one through the door way stopped in his tracks when he saw Andreas coming, forcing his fellows to pull up short behind him. Andreas feinted high with his sword, bringing the man's shield up. Metal scraped on metal as the butt of Andreas' hilt hammered the shield, but he was already pivoting to bring his knife around into the man's belly. His opponent doubled up around the wound, exposing the next guard, wedged awkwardly in the doorway. There wasn't time or room for a proper swing, so Andreas punched him in the face with the hilt of his sword, sending him stumbling backward with blood streaming from his nose. The third guard, who'd had a moment to get clear, stepped aside and raised his sword, only to find Andreas shoving the man he'd stabbed out of the way and slamming the bedroom door.

  Behind him, the hallway echoed with the stupendous bang of a pistol shot. Andreas looked over his shoulder to find three more swordsmen closing from the opposite direction. Beth had shot one in the chest, and she tucked the smoking pistol into her waistband and drew another from the leather strap at the small of her back. The remaining two guards hesitated, not eager to charge a loaded pistol, and Andreas decided to use that opportunity to seek a better tactical position.

  "Beth!" he said. "With me!"

  Beth fired again, and he winced—the shot had probably been more useful as a threat. Andreas ran flat-out at a pair of double doors that gave way before his shoulder with a wooden splintering sound. He pulled up short in the room beyond—a hexagonal, nearly empty space, some kind of performance chamber—and Beth trotted past him, pistol still held in one hand. Andreas slammed the door behind her. He'd broken the lock, but there was an iron bolt, and he drew it closed just in time for the first of the guards to reach the doors and start pushing.

  "That won't hold," he muttered, casting about. A glass-fronted drinks cabinet looked heavy enough for his purposes, and he gestured to Beth. "Help me with this."

  She dropped the pistol, and together they managed to get the solid piece of furniture off the ground, glass bottles inside rattling and tinkling wildly. They parked it across the doors, and Andreas stepped to one side of the doorway, drawing Beth after him.

  Men on the other side were shouting in a language he couldn't follow—not Hamveltai. Daciai, presumably. Those fellows have an Old Coast look. The Knights might be more commercial enterprise than marital organization these days, but evidently they could still rustle up a few soldiers when the occasion called for it.

  "Holy shit," Beth breathed.

  "Are you all right?" Andreas said. He watched the door, which was shaking as the guards pounded on it from the other side.

  "Fine." She gulped air and swallowed hard. "I'm fine. I just…shit. I barely saw them coming."

  "It was neatly done. Block the way behind us, trap us in a corridor between two converging teams."

  "They were waiting for us."

  "Indeed. Rose's information is apparently not as good as she believes."

  "Any idea who those guys are?"

  "Knights, perhaps. More likely Old Coast mercenaries." He listened for a moment. "There's at least six of them out there."

  Beth crossed to the other side of the room, where three big windows looked out over the river.

  "We're right over the balcony," she reported. "But they've got a man down there."

  "Of course they do." Andreas unshipped the folding crossbow from its harness and snapped the ribs into place. "Find something to tie a rope to."

  Beth drew another coil of rope from her small pack. "There may be more inside. Over the balcony rail once we get down?"

  Andreas finished drawing the crossbow, hearing the catch click, then paused. "Over the rail?"

  "And back down the cliff. To the boat." She looked back at him. "Or did you have an alternate route in mind?"

  Escape. That was the correct option, obviously. The mission was blown, had been blown from the beginning; they'd been expecting a couple of sleepy watchmen, not a house full of hornet-mad mercenaries. The best decision was to withdraw and wait for another opportunity.

  But the Gray Rose is watching. Would she withdraw, under the same circumstances? Or would she get the job done, and be damned to the opposition?

  Beth was staring at him. Her eyes were wide, he saw, and her breath came quickly, but she wasn't panicked. Good. That guard in the hallway had been her first kill, and every trainee reacted differently to a first kill. I've done a good job with this one.

  "We're not pulling out," Andreas said. "We'll drop to the balcony and go in through another window. They won't be expecting it."

  Beth blinked, swallowed, and nodded. She hadn't been privy to the mission briefing; if he thought it was important enough to carry on, in spite of the risks, that was his call to make.

  "Okay," she said, with only a slight tremor in her voice. With a few quick movements, she opened the window and tied the rope to the iron crossbar. "We're good to go."

  "You may want to take this chance to reload," Andreas said, indicating the pistol she'd dropped.

  "Right."

  Beth fumbled through her pocket for a paper cartridge, and Andreas moved to the window. He leaned out, just for a moment, to spot the armed figure waiting on the balcony, then ducked back and fitted a blackened metal bolt to his crossbow. The man down there would be alert—the whole house had probably heard the pistol shots—but he didn't know where danger might come from.

  "Ready?" Andreas said.

  Beth nodded, and as though to reinforce the need to move, a pair of shots came from the doorway. The wood around the bolt cracked and exploded, and the doors shifted against the heavy cabinets.

  Andreas raised the crossbow to his shoulder. "I'll shoot, you drop. Go."

  Beth took a deep breath, put her pistols back in her waistband, and jumped through the open window, knotted line in one hand. Andreas leaned o
ut after her, sighting on the guard, who had turned to face the house at the sound of more shooting. Perfect.

  The crossbow thrummed, and the guard sprouted a quarrel just above the bridge of his nose. He toppled, shield clattering against the stones. Andreas snapped the ribs of the crossbow closed, secured it to its harness, and followed Beth down the line. It was only a fifteen foot drop, and she was already on the balcony, pressed up against the wall between a pair of windows. Andreas joined her, trying to recall the layout of the parts of the building he hadn't expected to enter.

  "That hallway leads out to the main staircase," he said. "Most of them are still breaking down the door upstairs, so we've got a minute or so."

  "They'll still have guards on the stairs," Beth said, her tone professionally detached. Andreas hid an admiring smile.

  "Shoot one of them, I'll handle any others."

  "Got it."

  "Ready to run?"

  She nodded.

  Andreas drew his sword and slammed the hilt against the windowpane, shattering the expensive glass. No point in stealth now, with the house full of shouting men breaking down doors. He vaulted through, avoiding the dangerous shards still stuck in the frame, and Beth followed. A heartbeat was sufficient to assure himself that the floor plan matched what he remembered; then he broke into a dead run, with his apprentice close behind.

  A well-appointed hallway rushed past, doors to sitting rooms and drawing rooms tightly shut. Andreas noted, absently, that whoever had planned this ambush must have made sure the domestic staff were given the night off, or there would have been a good deal more panic. Then they were turning a corner, out into the main hall, where a staircase with crimson carpets led in both directions.

  As Beth had predicted, there were guards on the landing, three more men with sword and buckler. They were looking the wrong way, though, up towards the excitement on the third floor. Andreas ran straight at them, sword extended like a lancer, and took the first through the kidney from behind with a clean thrust. He slid off the blade, gurgling, and the next man to turn dropped with a startled expression as Beth's pistol-shot found him. The third man backpedaled, shouting, but Andreas didn't give him a chance to get his footing. He swung his sword at the mercenary's right side, forcing him to parry, then stepped in and snaked his other hand around the man's shield arm. The guard pulled away, opening himself up, and Andreas kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, and his momentum carried his throat across the blade of Andreas' sword, placed neatly in his path. Blood spurted, soaking the rich carpet a darker shade of red.

  Beth jogged up. "Nicely done, sir."

  "Thank you."

  Andreas looked up the stairs. The hall led in both directions at the top. The left was toward where they'd gone out the window, the right led to Secretary-Treasurer Sepulveda's bedroom. Not great, tactically—if they got bogged down, enemies could catch up from behind—but there was no way around it. He jogged up the stairs, peeked around the corner to the left, and swore.

  Four men were heading back towards the stairs, weapons drawn. They must have got the door down already, and figured out we got clear. Or else they'd heard the shot from downstairs—he'd been hoping it was too noisy for that—and were coming to investigate.

  "Go!" he hissed at Beth. "Third door on the right, get it open. Now!"

  Beth nodded and threw herself forward, turning right at the junction. The guards saw her, and shouted in alarm, but she didn't hesitate. Good girl. Andreas sheathed his sword and grabbed the flask of flash powder from his belt. The container was stiffened leather, and it was the work of a moment to cut it in half with his knife. As the four guards came in front of the stairs, he hurled the mutilated flask into their midst, spraying powder as fine as milled flour in all directions. He followed it with a match, just as the men were turning to face this new assailant, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  The powder went up all at once with a whoomph and a rush of heat that frizzled Andreas' eyebrow. The blast would blind and burn, but it wasn't enough to kill. Andreas would have liked to take a few moments to finish the guards off, but they still had their weapons drawn and flailing, and doing it safely would take longer than he could afford. Instead he slipped past them, following Beth. The door he'd indicated was open, and as he approached he heard a shot from inside. Wood exploded into splinters from the doorframe. Andreas spun through, exposing himself as little as possible, and dropped into a crouch.

  The bedroom was a small guest suite, and he found himself in the receiving room, with a few armchairs and spindly tables. Another doorway in the opposite wall led to a dining room, and beyond that a closed door presumably concealed the bedroom itself. Beth was crouched behind a chair, one of her pistols lying on the floor beside her, trickling smoke. She had the other in her hand.

  The guards would not be far behind him. Andreas pushed the door closed, paused a moment, then leapt across the line of fire from the inner door. A pistol shot rang out, the ball smacking into the plaster in a puff of dust. From his new position, he could reach the bolt, which he pushed home to buy at least a few minutes. That done, he squatted beside Beth, well out of sight of the dining room doorway.

  "At least two of them in there," Beth said. "A pistol each."

  "Two shots so far. We've got quite a few more behind us, too."

  Beth grimaced. "We'll have to risk it."

  Andreas nodded, picturing the two men inside frantically reloading. If they were fast—or if they had a second pair of loaded weapons—this was going to be extremely dangerous. Even a poor shot would have a hard time missing a target trapped in a doorway at this range.

  "Okay," Andreas said. "Give me the pistol. You go first, move fast and stay low, try to draw a shot. I'll be right behind."

  "Got it." Beth closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Andreas could hear booted feet outside, and once again frantic pounding on the door. "Ready."

  She reversed the pistol and handed it to him, then crouched by the edge of the doorframe. Andreas took a position behind her, ready to lean out as soon as she moved.

  "Andreas…" Beth's voice was a bare whisper.

  "What?"

  "Nothing. Sorry, sir. Ready?"

  "Go."

  Beth pushed off, rolling through the doorway and throwing herself into a sideways dodge as soon as she was clear. Two pistols went off, almost simultaneously, roaring in the enclosed space. Andreas stepped into the doorway, drew a bead on a man crouching behind a long lacquered table, and fired. It wasn't a perfect shot, but the ball caught the guard in the shoulder and spun him to the floor. The second guard had discarded his pistol and drawn a sword, and Andreas did likewise. They stepped forward, the guard edging clear of the chairs tucked in around the table to get a clear space, Andreas giving ground slightly.

  The mercenary snarled—he was an older man, with a badge sewn into his jacket, perhaps indicating his rank—and pressed forward. Then something went thunk; a throwing knife sprouted between his shoulder blades, as if by magic. It didn't sink deep enough to do real damage, but the guard turned to find the source of this new attack, and that was all the opening Andreas needed to drop into a neat lunge and put the point of his sword through the man's throat.

  He hurried across the room to the other guard, in case he was still capable of offering any resistance, but the mercenary was only clutching his wound and moaning. Andreas finished him with a quick slash, sheathed his sword, and went back to check on Beth.

  She was sitting up, with obvious difficulty, supporting herself with one hand and keeping the other pressed against her stomach. Blood, thick and red, welled between her fingers.

  "Good throw," Andreas said. Recognizing good work was important for training.

  "Thanks." Beth swallowed, the muscles in her throat working. "Not quite fast enough, though."

  Andreas said nothing. Beth gave a weak smile and jerked her head toward the inner doorway.

  "Go on," she said. "Finish the job. Then we'll see about getting out
of here."

  #

  The door to the Secretary-Treasurer's room opened with a creak, neither locked nor bolted. No lamps were burning, but by the light from the outer room Andreas could see dark shapes sprawled across the floor. He counted four of them—five, he corrected, seeing another curled up in one corner—all armed mercenaries, all dead. There was remarkably little blood. Each man had been killed by a single deep stab wound, to the head or to the heart. None of the five had managed to even draw a sword.

  The bed, a big four-poster, was hung round with curtains. Andreas drew them back, already certain what he would find. Sepulveda was an old man, pale and liver-spotted, with wispy gray hair and long, quivering jowls. His mouth was open in a silent 'O' of surprise, and his cloudy eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. His hands were clutched over his heart, where a dark stain on his shirt marked the wound underneath.

  "Rose?" Andreas said. "You're here, aren't you?"

  A shadow extracted itself from the deeper darkness beside the bed. "I wasn't expecting you."

  The guards in the outer room didn't know about this, Andreas thought. That meant that these men had died, not just without getting the chance to draw a weapon, but practically without a sound. This wasn't a fight. It was a…dissection.

  "Did you know they'd be waiting for us?" he said.

  Rose shrugged. "It was always a possibility. One of our local informants has been compromised by the Komerzint. Now that they've tipped their hand"—she gestured at the corpses—"we'll be able to find out who, and express His Grace's feelings on the matter."

  "And you just decided to come in here and do the job yourself? You didn't think I'd make it?"

  "I didn't think you'd try." She walked across the room to stand in front of him. "Retreat would have been the correct tactical option."

  "But you waited here for me."

  "As I said. I've read your file."