Steeled

by Liam Reese

  The slightly askew highwayman squinted at him for a moment, then turned to the guard, who sat disinterestedly picking at his nails a dozen feet or so away from them.

  “Can I talk to him?” he said. “Take him off a bit, like, and ask him a question?”

  “About the dog?” said the guard.

  The young highwayman grunted. “Yes, more or less.”

  The guard couldn’t even be bothered to really reply, simply waving a hand carelessly in his direction. The askew highwayman took hold of the rope with which Thorn’s hands were bound and led him through the few rogues at close range to the darker area where he himself had been camped. There, turning Thorn so what little light remained glinted and shone from his eyes, he waited expectantly.

  Thorn cleared his throat.

  “If you want only to know what sort of dog it is,” he said, “I suppose I can tell you that it is brown.”

  “I’ve never had a dog,” said the young man, “and I hope to heaven that this is more than an elaborate joke, because if it is, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

  Thorn squinted at him. “Rickerd?”

  “Hush, not so loud. Around here, I’m known only as Pike. And if you ever let on to anyone that I’m known anywhere as anything other than Pike, I’ll probably kill you. Just to keep up appearances, you understand, not for any real personal reasons.” He reached up to gather a fingerful of his mask and pull it down off his face, revealing his features. Though it was dark, Thorn could see that he had heavy features for such a small, slight figure. His profile was close-set and square, quite unlike the delicate features of his cousin. “Have you brought me a message from Lisca?”

  Thorn rocked back on his heels, blinking rapidly. The sound of her name, just as he had been thinking about her, sent his brains into a tight spin.

  “Er — no, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh.” Rickerd looked disappointed. “Who then?”

  “Your uncle, Batrek Felcin.”

  “Oh, him.” The young man rolled his eyes. “Who cares about him? What message could he possibly send me, other than perhaps, ‘Come home, your mother needs you and you’re an embarrassment to the family’.” He stopped and looked closely at Thorn. “Was that the message?”

  “Er — more or less.”

  “Yes. I thought so. There’s nothing that man ever wanted that he didn’t try to buy outright, and he probably can’t stand the fact that I’ve run off and done something crooked.”

  “I think you are probably correct in that assumption.”

  “But that doesn’t matter,” said Rickerd, folding his arms. “I left for a good reason, though he doesn’t know it. And even if he did, he’d never admit it. There’s more going on here than he’s ever dreamed was possible, but he doesn’t care. I did try to tell him, once, but I gave up on it soon enough. No one’s ever been quite as deeply into the king’s pocket as Batrek Felcin.”

  “Er, well,” said Thorn, thinking rapidly over all the names that he now knew to have been deeply in the king’s pocket. “Perhaps you’re right. But I was under the impression that all of your family was deeply loyal to the December King. You — you are aware of the fact that he’s been defeated and chosen to go into exile, aren’t you?”

  “That’s the story they spread around,” said the young man, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Whether or not it’s the truth is a very different thing. I think if my uncle ever heard the truth — about the king, or about me, or about his own daughter, for that matter — he’d probably throw himself off a bridge just to be rid of the shame.”

  Thorn opened his mouth, closed it again, then rethought the whole thing.

  “What do you mean?” he said, carefully. “Are you — not loyal to the December King, as your family is?”

  “Was,” corrected Rickerd. “I don’t know if you could throw a stone at my family and catch more than one or two who still harbors those loyalties. Even a silly girl like Irae might be able to do a better job at reigning.”

  “She’s not —” Thorn started, but Rickerd wasn’t paying any attention to him and went right over his words.

  “There’s been too much — though it’s true, he was good to my family while he was in power, and before. My uncle and King Lev have years of friendship; I doubt there was anyone who knew Lev like my uncle did.” He waved a hand. “But all of that’s beside the point. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the king and his choices.”

  “You joined a band of highwaymen and rogues to spite the traitor king?” guessed Thorn.

  “No,” said Rickerd, “I joined a band of highwaymen and rogues because I suspected that they were being hired by the December King to take nobles for ransom — and I wanted to prove it.”

  Thorn looked at him long and hard, but he gave absolutely no indication of being anything other than perfectly serious.

  “I — don’t understand, I suppose,” said Thorn at last, rubbing at his forehead. “Not that that’s anything new.”

  “I can tell you some of it,” said Rickerd. “Because you knew my name, and because I have a feeling you know my cousin, too — at least, you look familiar, and I think you might be the one she escaped with. Am I right?” At Thorn’s answering nod, he gave a triumphant grin. “I thought so. Yes. I can tell you some of it, but you have to keep it to yourself — not that it matters a great deal anymore, with the December King mysteriously gone as he is, but, well — I’ve still got a living to make, don’t I? And I can’t very well make it if I’ve been shanked in my sleep for being a snitch, can I?”

  Thorn allowed that, no, he could not.

  “Fine, then,” said Rickerd, “just so we understand each other.”

  He began to tell the tale.

  His facts were somewhat spotty, as he confessed openly to Thorn — it was more about the timing of everything than anything else. That was what had set him off to begin with. The December King had taken over the throne, and almost instantly it seemed that the highwaymen were growing in numbers and ranks, expanding in operations. It was almost as though King Lev had started them himself.

  Probably because he had.

  “Why?” Thorn asked him at this point. “Why would the king of Ainsea set-up roving bands of highwaymen to take away the security of his people and undermine his own rule?”

  Rickerd gave the carefree shrug of a young man who neither has all the answers nor feels the need to find them.

  “Who knows?” he said. “Perhaps just for that very reason — to take away the security of his people. Perhaps he wants us all unsettled and ill at ease. If we’re focused on fighting the highwaymen, on protecting ourselves and our families, we can’t very well be too engaged in pondering whether our king is legitimate or not. Perhaps he meant it to keep us occupied. Distracted.”

  Thorn thought that this was a bit of a stretch but was also too polite to say so.

  “That’s completely idiotic,” he said instead.

  “I’m glad we agree,” said Rickerd. “But that doesn’t really matter in the long run. What matters is that I’m here to find out what’s going on, and then suddenly the December King disappears, and we’re without orders. So, my own investigation seems to have stalled and is no longer moving forward.”

  “And what do you intend to do about that?”

  Rickerd shrugged and stretched with his arms over his head. “Nothing but wait and see. It isn’t a bad life as a Damn Rogue. Certainly better than some lives I could be leading, dancing to the tune of whoever’s in charge. I suppose you could call me a frustrated idealist, having searched for answers to big, important questions and turned instead to crime, but you might as well call me the ideal frustrationalist, because I don’t really mind it.”

  Fascinated despite himself at this approach, Thorn shook his head to try and refocus.

  “Lisca,” he said. “Your cousin Lisca. How did she come to be all mixed up in this?”

  Rickerd’s smile turned fond, and he said, “She knew I had my susp
icions — perhaps she had some of her own. When she had an opportunity to get away from her father, she took it, and used herself as bait. It was the December King who was giving the highwaymen their orders, we were almost certain of it — when she left, I waited to see who might show up, or what messages might come.”

  “But Lisca was loyal to the December King — loyal to a fault,” said Thorn, mostly to himself, since Rickerd didn’t even seem to be listening, so eager was he to tell his tale. He tucked the thought away to be taken out later and stressed over. “And what did you find out?”

  Rickerd shook his head. “They must have been sneakier than I would have given them credit for. Either the messenger came through when I wasn’t able to catch them —”

  “Or there was no messenger to begin with, and your theories are all based on supposition and assumption,” said Thorn. Rickerd scowled at him.

  “If I’d known you would be so dismissive, I wouldn’t have talked to you,” he said haughtily. “All you have for me is a message from my uncle to come back to civilization, and in return I share the results of my research and hard work and get doubted.”

  “Probably a terrible decision on your part,” said Thorn, “but there’s nothing to be done about it now. I’m perfectly willing and ready to believe that King Lev was orchestrating the rogues. The question is how. And why. And why they were taking orders. And, more importantly, how you’re going to help me escape.”

  Rickerd’s brow wrinkled even further.

  “Escape?” he said. “I’m not going to help you escape.”

  “What?” Thorn raised his clenched fists, tightly bound with rope. “I need you to.”

  The young man shook his head definitely.

  “Absolutely not. I’m on thin ice as it is, speaking with you this long, and having that little — incident — a few months ago. I’ve done what I can for you up until now, but that’s too much to ask.” He took hold of Thorn’s joined hands again and tugged him back towards the rest of the camp.

  Thorn resisted him. It wasn’t particularly hard; Rickerd was a good foot shorter than Thorn himself, and despite being compact and in good health, he wasn’t any more muscle-bound than Thorn himself. The thought flitted through Thorn’s mind that he could snatch his hands out of the young man’s grasp and make a break for it. The only thing that kept him from running was the fact that Berren lay there, back in the camp, wounded, at the mercy of the rogues, who might very well take their ire on an escaped Thorn out on the other man. Well, that and the fact that he would probably be captured again almost as soon as he took off running; their horses were nowhere to be seen, he had no supplies with him, and he was still nearly a day’s journey away from his destination.

  No, he needed some other sort of plan.

  This was where having a companion who was still awake would have come in handy.

  He allowed Rickerd to take him back to the little clearing in the middle of the rogues where Berren was still sleeping the sleep of the just, or at least the sleep of the badly wounded. Settling back down beside him and checking to see that he was breathing normally, Thorn fell to pondering his options. He could claim that Berren needed immediate medical attention — that might even be true. But were the rogues likely to pay any attention to him?

  He could try to Forge — but even with the practice he had had at the hands of the alchemists in the desert, it still took him a few minutes to do so, and he had to get someone at his mercy first. Thorn was never entirely comfortable with having someone at his mercy, and he wasn’t sure of his ability to make it happen here, when he was surrounded by rogues. True, his hands were relatively free other than being bound together, but there was absolutely no chance that he could extricate his sling from beneath the binding, and that meant he was without a weapon beyond the force of his feet and his hands — so he was more or less without a weapon at all. He could remember the last time he had attacked someone using his bare hands — or rather, attacked someone by kicking — and though it had not ended badly, the happy ending had nothing to do with his prowess in physical combat.

  He could declaim Rickerd for the traitor that he had been, and hope for attention and consideration based on his information.

  He could make a break for it, leaving everyone — including Berren — behind and taking off into the still-dark wilderness with no horse or supplies.

  His choice suddenly became clear to him in a burst of insight, and he breathed a sigh of relief as though he had caught sight of a familiar face in the distance. Everything might just turn out all right.

  He was going to have to lie.

  It seemed to have worked well the first time, so he repeated the operation again, struggling to his feet — still difficult with hands bound — and shouting for an audience with the leader of the rogues.

  This got the attention of the men around him a bit faster, as some time had gone by and many were apparently trying to sleep.

  “Shut up!”

  “Someone put a gag on that prisoner.”

  “I demand to see the leader!” Thorn shouted. “If he is quite done with his toast now. I have valuable information for him.”

  “More trouble than he’s worth — just shank him and have done.”

  To Thorn’s alarm, someone appeared to be taking action in accordance with this last remark. A bulky member of the band stumbled up from his bedroll and staggered towards Thorn, wiping the sleep from his eyes, and hefting a knife meaningfully in his hand. Thorn stepped backward and tripped over Berren’s prone body, ending up half on the wounded man, legs entangled. The rogue, seeming to find this funny, stopped for a moment and gave a dusty chuckle; Thorn thanked anyone who might have had anything to do with this, pushed himself up on his elbows, disentangled one leg, and delivered a strong kick to the rogue’s kneecap.

  This didn’t have quite the effect he had intended. What he wanted was for the rogue to back off, perhaps to stagger a little, to buy Thorn some time to — do something else. He wasn’t sure what. But the rogue behaved like a tree that had been chopped at the root by an ax; with a terrible slowness, he went over backward, crash landing on someone behind him. Thorn had only a split second in which to marvel at his own kicking ability before he heard someone say, disgustedly, “I told Nerod to stop drinking so much ale or he’d fall over.”

  The rogue onto whom Nerod had fallen was not taking such a philosophical view of this, however, and in a rage he, in turn, had sprung up to vent his ire on Thorn, who had, after all, been the cause of all of this. Thorn wasn’t about to take issue with the fact that he was responsible; he did, however, have a problem with people trying to kill him. He attempted the kick on this new rogue; his aim went wild, and he only grazed the side of the man’s leg. After that it was only a short hop to the point where the rogue had Thorn’s throat in his hands. Thorn scrabbled with both hands at the man’s fingers, but the other had a great deal of weight and strength on Thorn, as well as decidedly having the upper hand. From all sides the cheers and shouts of the rogues egged the man on — evidently Thorn had managed to annoy the majority of them. Something he would have taken pride in, under other circumstances, but with someone actively trying to kill him he was rather distracted.

  He twisted and squirmed, but the rogue’s grip was deathlike, immovable as iron.

  Struggling for breath, knowing it was likely pointless, he reached his right hand toward the rogue, channeling what force he could into his fingertips, the palm of his hand, searching inside himself for the glow of the Forge —

  There was a spark, and a flash, and his brain went white, and he saw the expression of shock in the rogue’s eyes, saw his mouth open and something, something, spooled out —

  “Stop.”

  It was a quiet command, but everyone heard it. And everyone obeyed, at once, without questioning it; the rogue released Thorn, who sucked in a huge breath and gasped and coughed and hacked, dropping his own hand away from the rogue in the process. He turned over to get away from the o
ther man, and crawled a few lengths away, accidentally kicking Berren as he went. The wounded man made a small noise of protest but remained asleep other than that.

  The rogue who had been most recently choking Thorn stood, though he was swaying somewhat like a tree in a gentle breeze. With one hand he clutched at his chest; with the other he pulled the green tendril from his mouth and looked at it wordlessly. There were budding leaves in the skin of it, and in the breaking dawn of the morning, a few of them unfurled.

  “He was causing trouble,” he muttered.

  “Be that as it may.” The leader of the rogues — for of course that was who it was who had spoken — clapped a hand on his subordinate’s shoulder. “He is our captive, and as such he is to be treated as a guest, until such time as we have no use for him. Then, what happens?”

  “He becomes a victim,” muttered the rogue.

  “Exactly. From mark, to guest, to victim. That’s how it goes. And the step from one to the other is not up to you, my friend — not by a long shot.” The rogue leader stepped over towards Thorn and looked down at him. “Injured, are you?”

  Thorn’s throat had opened up once again, though he could feel that bruises had blossomed in the shape of the rogue’s fingerprints. He shook his head.

  “Good,” said the rogue leader promptly. “What was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

  Thorn shook his head. “In private,” he managed, testing his own voice out little by little. “I bring news from someone of a great deal of interest to you.”

  “Oh, yes? Is that so?”

  “Yes. News and —” He paused, then took the chance. “Orders.”

  The leader of the rogues looked down impassively at him. In the growing light of the morning, his pale blue eyes were almost colorless, but startling in their intensity; it was like being looked at by a ghost.

  After a moment, the man seemed to reach a solid decision, and held a hand out to Thorn to help him up.

  “Very well,” he said. “Please, step into my office.”

  Thorn cast one last look at Berren as he was led away. He wished dearly that the wounded man would wake up. Thorn felt very much as though he had carried the bulk of the weight of responsibility in this endeavor; basically, all that Berren had done was get himself wounded and pass out. Thorn didn’t think this was fair, really. He rather wished that he had kicked him harder.