by Damien Lake
Tallior huffed, but in the end accepted that Beld knew best. Veji thought it about time the man stopped trying to force the rest of life to obey his city ways.
Dellen left with the cutthroat after several minutes, grumbling about the return trip until his foul mood vanished with him. Beld, walking behind Albin, kept muttering under his breath, “Right when he never thinks to check his back. Yeah…right then. When he never thinks to check his back…”
Chapter 11
A figure wrapped tightly in a concealing cloak followed a second man through a grimy alleyway. The leader was thin, sinewy, the sort who could catch others off guard with his speed or unheralded strength. His dress and appearance revealed nothing of his true nature.
Professional.
Like recognizes like.
They came to the back door of a port office on the Starshine River’s shore. The guide pulled a key from his inner vest. He simply opened the door, dispensing with the overdone system of secret knocks amateurs were always in love with. Few lamps were lit within. No light would betray them by spilling into the night.
“As it has been agreed, Rubian,” an older voice said in Traders Tongue from the shadows. Once the door shut, the aging man lit an oil lamp from a stove beside the wall. “You will have the opportunity you desire to perform your work. It will take place three quarter-marks after the midnight bell.”
The shrouded figure unwrapped his cloak. A leathered face was revealed under a crop of short bristles. An eye-patch covered one socket. “Then take these with my thanks.” A hand emerged holding a small leather pouch.
Jide’s guide took it and passed it directly to the elder. Wrinkled, yet dexterous, his fingers shook four stones free. Three glistened as bloody ice in the firelight. The last captured the single lamp-flame, making the orange curl appear encased in the multi-faceted jewel’s glassy depths.
No further word was said except when Jide prepared to re-enter the night. “Rubian.” A hesitant smile glinted in the gloom. “If Rubian you are. The promise of the Dark Father is to repay betrayal. If our men are captured by waiting cityguard, it will go badly for you.”
A scythe of teeth split the shadows within Jide’s hood. “Tell your Dark Father that I plan to be miles off by sunrise. My promise is that my fees had better buy what was promised, else I will not be the one for whom things go badly.”
The streets of this foreign city were dark and eerily empty during the post-dusk hours, Jide felt. Walking through them, following the shadow that led rather than followed, he kept his hand close to his sword hilt all the same. Avenlight made this Galemaran city resemble a wilderness settlement. But rats were rats wherever they scampered, be it here or back home in the capitol of Arronath. Knife blades through the back were as deadly no matter which city’s shivs did the sticking.
Several streets, including the roads along the riverfronts, boasted high lamps set on poles. By the water the poles were made from oak. The only iron poles were in the streets closest to Thoenar’s heart. Paving stones had been avoided along the water following whatever alien rational these people followed.
His guide departed after five cross-streets. He had only traveled with Jide to ensure the man did indeed leave, that he would not double back to spy on or attempt to follow the Dark Guild’s senior representative. There remained approximately two hours, or candlemarks as these people reckoned, until the local thieves would do the job he had paid them for. Until then he could gather further resources that might be useful.
Four days had given him enough experience to have the darker half of Thoenar memorized. It might baffle the local guards who fought battles against the criminal classes but Jide had ruled as an underworld king in a city that made this one look like a mere district.
The locals had been clever in a handful of their business establishments. Certainly the guards would be thunderstruck to learn that one of their own port inspection posts was serving as a Dark Guild fence. Stolen goods would be miles downriver before the dawn sun crested to greet recently robbed homeowners.
This city’s streets were easy to navigate after nightfall. Jide strode quickly down Porta Street and reached Bello Road in short order. Unlike other streets throughout Thoenar, no matter the district, Bello remained open at all hours. Not a single shop locked its doors at the end of a business day because, by tradition, business never ended here. It was the only place in the city that felt familiar to him. Activity never ceased completely.
Bello Road was unique, and a valuable discovery of Jide’s the day before. No brothels or taverns, traditional nighttime commerce establishments, existed on Bello. Rather it consisted of shops that sold every manner of goods imaginable.
Yet no merchant counters for local crafters, bakers or alchemists were these. Nothing was new, shiny or in pristine condition. Anything could be found among its diminutive shops. Items men had sold, acquired in places one could only guess at, goods and treasures in the oddest variety drowning in a rickrack sea sprawling from storefront to storefront. Whatever men had chosen to sell but failed to find a buyer for among the average shopkeepers.
People said the riches of past ages could be found along Bello Road. If one dug through the junk heap long enough.
A thicker swell of bodies could be seen loitering along the street when Jide entered Bello. Pairs, at times trios, sat on slat-board walkways along the building fronts or on rickety chairs behind crate piles. None looked friendly. None wore airs of hostility, either. Men, each over forty years, watched the world go past without taking significant interest in it any longer.
There were tarnished brass lamps scattered along the road, bolted to walls beside the doorways. Their illumination seemed halfhearted since most of the light on Bello spilled over the hard earth from filthy glass window panes. Figures within the shops cast their shadows across the road as they moved in front of the windows. It added to the ambiance of the back road, where movement never stopped even in the darkest hours of the night.
Jide had picked his way through the first six shops the previous day. Several items had looked interesting to him from a professional point of view. Interesting, except each as foreign as the next. Nothing had been built, crafted or cobbled together in exactly the way an Arronath would do it.
Also, there were items that would have been useful were he going about his customary business of stalking corrupt army personnel in Avenlight. None were valuable enough to warrant hauling the deadweight across two kingdoms and an entire ocean, though.
He was pushing aside dusty paintings, unframed loose canvases, in his fourth shop when he struck gold, finding what he had vaguely hoped for. Merchants providing goods for travelers had offered him maps for the past three days. Their proffered charts of Galemar had displayed only the main roads, each town plotted under a ‘best guess’ approach. Asking the Dark Guilds for an accurate map in addition to his other requests would only have reveled how much of an outsider he truly was. They already suspected his cover as a Rubian.
Buried behind moldering depictions of dead geese hanging limply from the jaws of hunting dogs lay a genuine map. At two feet in height, he would need to take care. It would have to travel strapped to his pack. A cautious eye must constantly be on the lookout for rain.
Jide lifted it to examine it carefully. In detail it displayed the terrain wherever he cast his gaze. Numerous villages were minutely scribed in black against the multi-colored ink. From the feel, from its appearance, it must be far older than he. Perhaps a hundred years. Perhaps twice that.
The towns could easily be gone, or new ones sprouted in unmarked places, but that made no difference. Terrain only changed over the course of centuries. This map would see him back through to his army without needing to rely so stringently on farmwives and woodcutters for directions. His trip to Thoenar had been riddled with such risky encounters.
And it would be a valuable tool for the strategists once Adrian returned to resume his rightful command. Xenos could go hang himself. Let anyone dare
gainsay Adrian after detailed information about this foreign land made Galemar’s conquest a far easier task than Tullainia’s had been.
He pulled the map from the stack. The paintings fell back into place, a nude woman imploring the gods for justice on the top. From the cast of the lead deity’s expression, must be these people’s idea of Sheirleon, if they twisted the truth as much as they flaming went and twisted the Trader’s language, the nude woman wove a convincing story of woe.
A bored man with far less meat on his frame than could possibly be healthy manned a desk beside the door. It could only be seen due to an ongoing effort to leave a small window within the clutter towering on either end. Jide took him the map and made little effort at haggling despite the pangs that sparked in him. This kingdom used a monetary system with a different value basis than Arronath. He still struggled to understand exactly how much he paid for any given merchandise.
His acceptance to pay five silver coins for the map must have struck the only other patron as odd. A deeply tanned woman in a flowing black dress, full sleeves and sheer scarf around her shoulders adjusted her gaze enough to look over at him. Only a moment passed before she returned to her own excavations, picking through a flat box filled with raw stones in every hue. She lifted a fist-sized chunk of pink quartz aside to run one gloved finger over whatever stone lay beneath.
The rolled map in hand, Jide meandered the streets, choosing to arrive at his destination at the appointed time. Not a heartbeat sooner than necessary. Being forced to wait in an area where mischief was planned often drew unwanted attention.
Jide shed his cloak in the privacy of deep night. Without it, his Galemaran soldier’s uniform, bought from the Dark Guilds, would be clearly visible should he happen to enter any well-lit areas. Dark green and brown, it blended well with the pitch void surrounding him. He encountered no one when he departed the trees and approached the fenced detention area of the prisoner camp.
If any soldier did see him, he would assume a fellow brother had chosen to stroll through the night for fresh air, or had wanted privacy in order to smoke the type of tobacco that produced interesting effects within the inhaler’s mind. His purposeful, unhurried, gait would lend to that perception.
What sparse night security existed came alive when the fire erupted in the western trees. Within moments, a dozen trees blazed in a roaring conflagration, a wild beast with a voice louder than a wolf pack celebrating a successful hunt. Jide counted nine men running in a panic of thoughtless action. None carried water buckets. Even if they had, there was little they could have achieved with them.
Two men remained by the barred gate leading into the prisoner area. They paid his approach scant attention, their eyes locked on the sudden fire. Jide killed the first by thrusting his knife into the man’s throat from the side. Before he felt the tip exit the far side, he whipped his sword up to slash at the second. Both bodies hit the ground within a second of the other.
The keys, he soon discovered, were on a loop around the second man’s neck. He ignored the hot blood, refusing to allow his fingers to slip on the metal surfaces. Only three keys made the task of testing them each quick work.
Behind the gate he found two additional soldiers, their backs to him. They stood at the wire fence to peer through at the commotion without. Jide struck fast and hard.
The detention area was divided into four crude housing barracks with a yard the prisoners could wander during the day. He yanked at the first door, tried each of the keys, then returned to the two inner guards, cursing the whole while. A second set of keys emerged from their corpses. These opened the stout doors on the first barracks.
“General Adrian!” he shouted in Arronathian, rushing into the dark interior. “Where is the general?”
“You think you have the right to demand anything of us?” came a voice back to him.
“Front and center, soldier! Give me your name at once!”
Before the mysterious voice could comply, a second came from the left. Figures moved through the faint illumination streaming through the open door. “Major Jide? Or do my ears deceive?”
“General!” Jide snapped a quick salute, his silhouette clear in the lighted frame. “Time to move, sir! We’ve got about two minutes before the window collapses. Then we’ll be hip-deep in the manure pile! You there, smart mouth!”
Men swarmed from the shadows. Jide threw the keys to a man who stiffened at his command. “Unlock the other barracks and let the rest of the men out. Tell them to scatter and head west as they can.”
Jide spearheaded the fast move through the exit. At the gate he paused long enough for a lightning-quick reconnaissance. Apparently no one had yet noticed the two dead bodies at their guard stations.
“Move!” Jide barked softly. “And spread out.”
He watched the faces darting past until he located Adrian’s. The man had aged noticeably, his eyes sunken within dark circles that might never completely leave him. Accompanying him were nine solid men Jide recognized as part of the general’s personal guard force.
“This way,” Jide hissed. He tugged a sleeve to start the group heading north. Most of the escapees were dashing south toward the nearest trees.
Jide brought Adrian’s group away from the sparse buildings, across the open field. The space sported an odd population of misshapen shadows from training equipment that had been left scattered everywhere. Adrian moved up to sprint alongside the one-eyed bandit.
“How far until we join the forces?” Adrian asked between breaths.
Adrian’s guardsmen had fanned out in a loose protective shield, within hearing distance unless they spoke low. Jide answered in a husky whisper. “Only about a few weeks. Then we can get started on rigging up Mendell’s gibbet.”
“Weeks?” Adrian sounded surprised for the first time Jide could ever recall.
“This was a ‘demarcation operation’,” Jide replied, using the sarcastic phrase they had invented for his solo forays into the corrupt underworld over the years.
“Damn it all, I need to know what is going on!” Adrian demanded.
Cries from behind alerted them to a change in the situation. The Galemarans had discovered the break. Every available soldier ran to recapture the weapon-less escapees.
“What’s going on is we are about to get caught unless we move fast, Adrian,” Jide said. He ran harder until they penetrated the northernmost trees. Once there, the men reformed in a knot around the general. Jide scooped up his pack before weaving around the trunks. Several minutes later they came to an open clearing marking the end of the woods.
In a spot where a massive tree grew from a boulder pile, the gnarled roots squeezing the rocks in a tight fisherman’s net, Jide stopped. One rock near the base had been added long after the tree had imprisoned the others. It moved aside with minor effort.
Behind it, Jide pulled out a canvas sack that rattled with metallic sounds. The thieves had lived up to their word. But only to the absolute definition, Jide reflected sourly. In the moonlight he could see that the blades met the letter of their agreement by the narrowest margin. They would have to serve until they could re-supply in Arronath-held areas.
He kept his sword and passed out the others among the men. Three of Adrian’s bodyguards were left unarmed.
“We need to move fast and without stopping,” he told the others. “Search teams will be forming. They might use dogs if we aren’t lucky. We’ll cut northwest because they will be expecting us to run southward away from the city like a spooked squirrel. Any man who starts wheezing will be left on his own to fend for himself. So get moving! You two men scout ahead, and you two trail behind in a rearguard.”
“Where are your men?” Adrian inquired once they set their feet to moving.
Jide returned the look. “We have plenty to discuss, general. But it can wait until morning, after we find a haystack to hide under for the day.”
* * * * *
“No, sir,” Marik muttered under his breath. Torran
ce was the only man close enough to overhear. “I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
The band commander offered no reaction. Marik shook off his misgivings, knowing the supposed leader of this festival troupe should avoid being seen mumbling aloud.
Lieutenant Gibbon stood several feet away. His posture might be slightly less formal than he would have displayed to a man he considered a true superior instead of the king’s pet mercenary. He had so far made it plain that he was unhappy. Still, he would do his soldierly duty and follow orders issued by the established chain of command.
Beyond Gibbon loitered an unseemly group. Marik blamed his own inexperience for what could turn out to be a mistake after all. The only mercenaries he had ever known had been his father first, the Crimson Kings second. Intellectually he’d acknowledged that the Kings had a reputation for being the best, in professionalism as well as in combat.
But knowing it and understanding it were two separate matters. The mercenary leaders from the smaller bands that had been brought in so far lived up to the very stereotype he loathed. In the years since joining, he had angrily ranted at Dietrik whenever common citizens looked down on the Ninth Squad. Judgment that had been cast an instant after recognition.
He could see why, looking at the six figures who could be mistaken for a prisoner work gang. All they lacked was iron manacles around their ankles.
Not one must know the correct way to hold a razor, he reflected. Each sported a beard that displayed only a semblance of orderliness. Three black, two brown and one that could have been the same except it hovered closer to blond. Four were in shape with visible muscle; two were the type who allowed winter idleness to exact a heavy toll. Their only saving grace lay in their clothing. Whatever coin they earned found its way to purchasing necessities before transforming into ale-filled tankards.