Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  “These are our streets,” he said again, and he sounded helpless now.

  I nodded. That they were.

  I owned a tavern half a mile away, and I led the column there. It was called the Tanner’s Arms and it had been a fine old place, before the war. It wasn’t looking so fine now, though. The windows had been the new sort, thick glass in square panes instead of the little leaded diamonds of older buildings, but now half of them were broken and boarded over. The sign was hanging at an angle, and most worryingly there was no one on the door. All the men with less than forty years who could stand upright and hold a spear at the same time had been conscripted, of course, but Alfread had still been a fierce one at fifty-two, and I had left him on the door when we went away. He wasn’t there now.

  I dismounted and hitched my horse to the dry, splintery rail outside, remembering when that rail had been smooth and gleamed with oil. The other three riders followed suit, and I motioned Jochan, Anne, and Sir Eland to come with me.

  “The rest of you stay out here, for now,” I told the assembled crews. “You’ll know if we need you to come in. Luka, you’re boss.”

  The fat man nodded at me and hooked his thumbs self-importantly into the top of his straining belt. I didn’t really want Eland with me, but I wanted Fat Luka in charge outside, and if I had put him over the false knight there would have been trouble about it. A leader has to think of these things. Besides, Eland looked the part well enough in his stolen armor.

  I led the three of them into the tavern. Any hope I might have had of seeing Alfread or Aunt Enaid or any familiar face behind the bar died as soon as the door swung closed behind us. The place was dim with half the windows boarded up and only a few lanterns lit against the gloom. The fireplace was cold despite the damp chill of the early evening. A man looked up at us from behind the bar, and his face went pale as I met his eyes.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded in the soft, flat tone of danger.

  There was a big brass ship’s bell hanging over the bar, something I had acquired from a merchant sailor years ago, and now this man who was standing behind my bar lunged for it and pulled the rope hard, making it clang fit to raise the gods.

  Jochan lost his temper all at once. He picked up a chair and hurled it over the bar and into the man’s face. The fellow went down cursing, smashing bottles and glasses as he went. A door at the back opened, and six ruffians ran into the tavern with knives and cudgels in their hands.

  We drew steel, and Bloody Anne put two fingers to her mouth and whistled loud. The front door burst open as Fat Luka led his first charge, and a moment later there were nineteen men at our backs. The six strangers froze, wild-eyed, as they stared at my crew spread out around them.

  I took a step forward.

  “My name is Tomas Piety,” I said, “and you’re in my fucking tavern.”

  “I am Dondas Alman,” one of them said. “And this is my tavern now.”

  I looked at his men, then very deliberately turned in a slow circle to look at mine. Once I was sure I had his full attention, I smiled at him.

  “Can you not count?” I asked him. “This is my tavern.”

  “I know people,” he said, and that sounded too much like a promise for comfort. “I know important people.”

  “We fucking are important people!” Jochan bellowed. “We’re the Pious Men, and we’ve come home!”

  FIVE

  Dondas Alman and his boys weren’t stupid enough to try to fight us. We threw them out into the street, and then Fat Luka took half a dozen boys into the back and threw all of their stuff out into the street after them.

  “There’s a stable yard round the back,” I told Luka. “Get our horses off the road before it gets full dark and give them a rubdown and some oats.”

  He did as he was told, and I sat at the bar with a glass of brandy in my hand and watched the room. The Pious Men. That was a name I hadn’t heard since before the war. That was what we had called ourselves when we were up-and-coming young men, Jochan and me. I couldn’t remember now which one of us had first thought of it, but when your family name is Piety, you might as well make something of it. I’d never thought to become a priest as well, but it completed the picture nicely.

  Once Alman and his meager crew were out of sight I let the lads loose behind the bar. I hadn’t paid for the stock, after all, and I thought some of them probably needed a few drinks to help them get over their first sight and smell of Ellinburg.

  The tavern was a good size, with a kitchen and three storerooms out the back that would be large enough to sleep the boys, and a couple of rooms upstairs in the loft space too. I reckoned one of them would do for me. It’s not like anyone in the crew was used to luxury, after all.

  Someone had got the fire going and lit some lamps, restoring a little of the old cheer to the Tanner’s Arms. I caught Bloody Anne’s eye and motioned her toward me.

  “Round up four lads and keep them sober,” I said. “I don’t want those fools coming back in the night and finding everyone passed out drunk.”

  Anne nodded and turned away without a word. She walked across the room, picking men and taking the drinks from their hands with short, hard words. Anne had been a sergeant, and the boys in my crew respected her. I noticed she didn’t pick any of Jochan’s crew, and I thought that was wise. I didn’t know them, and that meant I didn’t trust them. Not yet, anyway. It looked like Bloody Anne thought the same way.

  I poured myself another brandy and sat alone at the bar, watching the revelry. Jochan was drinking with his men, roaring with laughter and even louder than they were. We had different ways of leading men, Jochan and me.

  I felt someone beside me and turned to see Billy the Boy looking up at me.

  “They’re coming back,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I guessed as much,” I said. “When?”

  Billy looked at my drink. “Can I try that?”

  I nodded and poured a measure of brandy into a spare glass for him. He had only twelve years to him, but he had fought in battles and he had killed men, so I didn’t see why he shouldn’t drink like a man too. He took a big gulp of the dark amber spirit and gasped, almost choking as it burned his throat.

  “Do you like that, Billy?” I asked him.

  “Beer’s better,” he said.

  “Then drink beer.”

  “I just wanted to try it,” he said.

  “And now you have. When will they come back?”

  “Tonight,” Billy said. “She didn’t say when, exactly.”

  She didn’t say, exactly. Billy was touched by Our Lady and sometimes she spoke to him, or through him, or he thought she did, anyway. Perhaps he was just mad, I wouldn’t know, but he was right often enough that I wasn’t about to reject the idea out of hand. He was always right, come to think on it. I reached across the bar and pulled the rope to ring the big brass bell.

  “No more drinking,” I said, when everyone turned to look at me. “Those bloody fools will be back tonight, with their ‘important friends,’ no doubt. We need to be ready for a fight.”

  “I’m always up for a fight!” Jochan bellowed, raising a bottle of brandy in his hand.

  He took a long, deliberate swallow from the neck of the bottle, as though to show me what he thought of my orders. His lads laughed. Mine didn’t.

  I couldn’t let that pass, not now. Not when I needed them to be coming together, and Jochan seemed to be trying to keep them apart. We were brothers, after all, and we needed to stand together on this.

  I got to my feet.

  “Listen,” I said. “Most of you are new to the city, so you don’t know how this works. We’re the Pious Men. You’re all Pious Men now. That means you do what I say, and you get rich. These are Pious Men streets, round here, and Pious Men businesses. I own taverns and boardinghouses and inns, racehorses and gambling ho
uses and brothels and all the good fucking things in life. You can all be a part of that, but you do what I say. Understand?”

  Heads nodded, but not all of them. Sir Eland, I noticed, was just staring at me. Jochan was giving me that look of sullen resentment I knew all too well, but I’d worry about him later. I met Sir Eland’s eyes and held his gaze. He took his sweet time, obviously weighing his options, but eventually he nodded too.

  “Good, that’s settled then,” I said. “Four-man watches, three-hour rotation. You know the drill, boys. It’s just like the army. The rest of you get some sleep while you can.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was another three or four hours before they came, and by then I was dozing in a chair near the fire. The sound of shattering glass woke me. I opened my eyes in time to see something hurtle through the broken window and land in the middle of the tavern floor, fizzing.

  “Flashstone!” I shouted, and dived off the chair and under a table.

  That cry woke everyone, veterans all of them. A flashstone is like a hollow cannonball packed with blasting powder and nails. There’s a fuse sticking out of it that you light, and then you throw the thing into a confined space. Most of us had used them in the war, and been on the receiving end of them too. I pulled the table over in front of me, putting a two-inch thickness of solid oak between me and the flashstone just in time.

  It went off with an almighty noise, hurling shards of red-hot iron around the room and producing a choking cloud of acrid smoke. Someone screamed, hit with a flying chunk of metal, and then all Hell broke loose. The front door of the tavern exploded into splinters, and I could only guess that they’d put a charge of powder outside there as well. More smoke boiled across the room, and flames licked at the door frame, lighting the face of Cookpot, who had been sitting nearest the entrance.

  He went berserk.

  I think only those who had not been at Abingon could fail to understand the effect that using blasting weapons on us would have. Cookpot wasn’t even a fighter, not really. He had been in charge of stores and foraging and the cook fire, but he had been there. He had seen almost as much as the rest of us, and Lady knew he never wanted to see it again. The first of them charged through the door, and Cookpot rammed his shortsword into the man’s side with a bellow of tormented rage. He pulled the blade out and stabbed him again, and again. In that moment, Cookpot was back in Abingon.

  “Breach!” Jochan roared, and then he was over the table where he had taken cover, with an axe in his hand. “Breach in the wall!”

  Men stormed into the tavern over the body of the one Cookpot had stabbed, and Jochan met them with a bestial fury. We were all up now, steel flashing in the light of the fire in the grate and the other that was licking up the wooden door frame and trying to eat its way into the walls.

  The Tanner’s Arms was timber and daub at the front of the building, and that fire could take with frightening ease if we didn’t get it out soon. Smoke filled the room, and shouting, and the clash of blade against blade. I had the Weeping Women in my hands now, and I slid into the battle beside my brother. I killed a man with a straight thrust of Mercy through his kidneys, then found myself driven back by a huge red-bearded stranger with a battle-axe. I could only dodge and parry, unable to get inside the reach of his swings in the boiling, confused mass of smoke and fighting, cursing men. He forced me back almost to the bar before he went rigid, his face twisting in sudden shock. He dropped his axe and sagged to the floor with blood gushing from the inside of his thigh, and Billy the Boy grinned up at me.

  “In Our Lady’s name,” the lad said, a dagger dripping red in his hand.

  Sir Eland ran a man through and kicked the corpse off the long blade of his sword. His eyes found mine across the room. Had he seen? Had he judged me weak, in that moment? I didn’t know, but I knew I would have to keep an even closer watch on him from now on.

  The fire was threatening to take hold now, but we had won the fight. Jochan was holding the doorway, and all these important people were trapped inside the same as us. There were five of them on the ground, and eight still standing facing us. They slowly lowered their weapons in surrender.

  “Put the blades down, all of you,” I told them. I pointed to the youngest of them, a lad who couldn’t have had more than eighteen years to him. “You, come here.”

  He dropped his shortsword and took a hesitant step toward me. I held the point of Remorse to his throat.

  “Kill the others,” I said.

  It was butchery, but sometimes that’s what harsh justice looks like. I held the lad in front of me at swordpoint and met his terrified eyes with a level stare until all of his friends were dead on the ground.

  “Now you,” I said, “you I’m going to let go. You’re going to go back to your boss, and you’re going to tell him that the Pious Men are home from the war. If he sends any more fools into any more of my businesses, they won’t come out again. You tell him Tomas Piety made that promise. You understand?”

  He nodded, as much as he could with a sword under his chin.

  “Kick him out,” I said.

  Once the lad was gone into the night my boys set to putting the fire out, passing buckets down a line from the hand pump in the kitchen behind the bar. It was piped river water, too filthy to drink, but it served.

  I stood in the sodden, smoky room and took stock. There were twelve men dead on the floor, and none of them were mine. Black Billy was holding a bloody rag to a wound in his biceps, the blood bright against his dark skin, but he’d live. One of Jochan’s men didn’t look too good, though—he was sitting slumped in a chair with both blood-slick hands clutched to a wound in the top of his thigh. It wasn’t in the killing place where Billy the Boy had got the axe man or he’d have been dead already, but it was close enough. His face was waxy pale and sweaty.

  I went to him.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Hari,” he whispered.

  “Keep the pressure on it, Hari.”

  “There’s metal sticking out of my leg,” he said. “Please take it out.”

  I shook my head. He’d been hit by a bit of the flashstone, and that meant the shard was in there good and deep. The lump of iron stuck in the wound was probably all that was keeping the rest of the blood in his leg, to my mind, and taking it out would most likely have killed him.

  “Leave it alone, and keep the pressure on it,” I told him.

  I beckoned Fat Luka over to me.

  “You remember old Doc Cordin, from Net Mender’s Row?” I asked him in a quiet voice.

  “Aye,” Luka said, trying hard not to look at Hari’s leg.

  “Right, go and find him and bring him here. Drag him out of his bed, if you have to, but you bring him.”

  Luka nodded and hurried out of the tavern. I sent Billy the Boy to find some rags to bind Hari’s leg while we waited.

  “Fuck a nun, can we have a fucking drink now?” Jochan shouted from behind the bar, and a couple of the lads cheered.

  I ignored him the same way he was ignoring his wounded man. We had different ways of leading men. I looked at the bodies on the floor again. Only twelve of them, and the one I’d let go. They had obviously thought that their blasting powder would give them enough of an advantage to make up for the numbers, and no doubt they had expected to find us passed out drunk as well. I looked at Jochan, swigging from the neck of a brandy bottle. We would have been, I thought, if he had been the boss instead of me.

  “We need to get rid of these bodies,” I said. “Cookpot, you remember the short way to the river, don’t you?”

  Cookpot was staring blankly into space with a dazed look on his face. He only came back to himself when I said his name a second time. He needed something to do, I realized. Something to bring his mind back from Abingon and into the here and now. After a moment he nodded.

>   “Through the alleys,” he said. “There’s steps down to the water.”

  “That’s right, Cookpot,” I said. “I want you to go and find a cart, and hitch one of our horses to it. Not Sir Eland’s monster, take mine or Anne’s. Then I want you and Brak and Simple Sam to load these bodies into the cart and take them through those alleys and roll them down the steps into the river. Can you do that, Cookpot?”

  He cleared his throat, licked his lips nervously. I didn’t really think he could, but it would give him something to do. Once they had been shown the way, Brak and Simple Sam would take care of the rest of it anyway. Brak had never been one to be bothered by dead men, and nothing much of anything seemed to bother Sam.

  “I can do that,” he said, after a moment.

  “Good lad,” I said. “Best get on with it, then.”

  Cookpot nodded again and headed out the back to the yard where Luka had stabled the horses. I knew there was a dray cart out there, to fetch the barrels behind the bar from the brew house. I’d let Cookpot find that by himself, and feel important for it. It would do him good.

  I set a couple of the lads to boarding up the broken window and barricading what was left of the doorway. It would need replacing in the morning, but anything would do for now.

  Fat Luka came back while Brak and Sam were dragging the bodies out of the tavern to the waiting cart, and he had Doc Cordin with him. Cordin was only sort of a doctor, more of a barber-surgeon really, and he had seventy years to him if he had a day. All the same, he knew how to clean and dress a wound. I’d seen him cut a crossbow bolt out of a man before, and I couldn’t think a shard from a flashstone would be much different. Cordin was wearing a nightshirt and a pair of old boots under a patched and grubby cloak, and he didn’t look happy to be there. He looked even less happy to see me, truth be told, and he gave the dead men a hard stare.