Guard Against Dishonor h&f-5

by Simon R. Green

  "We're being followed again. Look around you."

  Hawk's preoccupation fell away in a moment, and he looked casually about him,

  his hand moving naturally to the axe at his side. "Hell's teeth, how did I miss

  them? They're not exactly professional quality, are they? That's what happens

  when you let yourself get distracted. There's a lot of them; I make it

  twenty-seven, most of them wearing gang colors. How about you?"

  "I only see twenty-two, but I'll take your word for it. They must have known we

  were going to be here, Hawk; it's another bloody ambush. Better thought-out than

  the last one, too; they're all around us this time."

  Hawk sniffed. "It doesn't matter. I'm just in the mood to cut up a few bad

  guys."

  Burns looked at him sharply. "Wait a minute, Hawk; this is no time to start

  feeling heroic. We're outnumbered more than ten to one here."

  "So what do you suggest? Put up our hands and surrender nicely, and hope we'll

  get taken as prisoners of war? This may be a war, Burns, but no one's taking any

  prisoners."

  "We could always make a run for it."

  "We could, but how far do you think we'd get? The streets are narrow and

  crowded, and we're both dog-tired while our pursuers look decidedly fresh. There

  aren't even any fire escapes in easy reach this time. They've planned this well,

  Burns, and we walked right into it."

  The street grew increasingly quiet as they strode along, and passersby began

  moving into the shelter of doorways so as to be safely out of the way when the

  killing began. Everyone knew what was happening. The ambushers weren't even

  trying to hide themselves anymore.

  Hawk stopped walking and looked openly around. Burns stopped beside him, and

  looked quickly about for any escape route he might have missed. The ambushers

  were everywhere, moving confidently forward. Now that they were all out in the

  open, Burns counted twenty-nine of them. They were dressed in ragged furs and

  leathers, and carrying clubs and swords and axes. Some had broken bottles and

  lengths of metal piping. They all looked lean and hungry and very dangerous.

  Burns looked to Hawk for support, and a sudden chill ran through him. Hawk was

  smiling, a cold and nasty death's-head grin. Burns felt an instinctive need to

  back away. He'd seen his partner go through many moods that day, but this was

  something new and awful, and for the first time Burns understood why Hawk was so

  widely feared in the Northside. At this moment, he looked vicious and deadly and

  totally unstoppable.

  Burns made some kind of noise in his throat, and Hawk looked at him briefly.

  "These aren't Morgan's people," he said, his voice eerily calm and even. "These

  are street-gang toughs from the Devil's Hook. I beat up their leader, a piece of

  slime called Hammer, earlier on this morning. He must have declared vendetta on

  me. Knew I should have killed him."

  He fell silent as one of the ambushers stepped forward, but his death's-head

  grin never wavered. He recognized the man as the gang leader, and drew his axe

  with a flourish. Hammer stopped where he was and called out to Hawk, his voice

  carefully loud and mocking.

  "I've been looking for you, Hawk. No one messes with me and gets away with it,

  not even the high and mighty Captain Hawk. Don't look so tough now, do you? Now

  you're on your own and I've got my people here to back me up. You're going to

  die slow, Hawk. We're all going to take turns cutting on you; going to take our

  time and get real inventive. You're going to scream and cry and beg for death

  before we're through."

  Hawk laughed at him, and there was enough naked violence in the sound to silence

  the gang leader almost in mid-word. The watching ambushers stirred uneasily.

  Hawk swept his axe back and forth before him. "Who's first?" he said mockingly.

  No one moved. Hawk glanced at Burns. "Get out of here while you can," he said

  quietly, his voice calm and conversational. "They don't care about you; they

  just want me. If you make a run for it, they'll probably let you go."

  "Forget it," said Burns. "They'll kill me anyway, just for being a Guard, and

  being with you. Believe me, if I could see a way out of this mess, I'd take it.

  I'm not crazy. Do me a favor, Hawk: Next time you feel like punching out a gang

  leader, don't do it in front of witnesses. All right, you're supposed to be the

  expert on winning against impossible odds: What are we going to do? There's

  nowhere to run, and if we try and make a stand they'll roll right over us."

  Hawk nodded, still grinning at the ambushers and hefting his axe. Burns looked

  away. The grin was starting to unnerve him. One of the toughs stepped forward.

  Hawk looked at him, and the tough stopped where he was.

  "I think our best bet is to try and lose them in the side streets and

  alleyways," said Hawk calmly. "They're narrow and crowded, and the gang will

  only be able to come at us a few at a time. We should be able to take them

  easily, as long as we keep our heads."

  "What if they've staked out the alleyways with more of their people?" said Burns

  tightly.

  "Then we fight our way through and keep running. Maybe we can outrun them."

  "What happens if we get trapped in a dead end?"

  "Then we see how many of the bastards we can take with us. Think positive,

  Burns. We're not dead yet, and I've faced worse odds in my time."

  "When?" demanded Burns. Hawk just grinned at him.

  Hammer suddenly barked an order, and the toughs moved forward from every

  direction. Hawk lifted his axe threateningly and then sprinted towards the

  nearest side street. Burns charged after him, his stomach churning sickly. Three

  gang members made to block their way. Hawk cut down the first two with vicious

  sweeps of his axe, and hit the third man with a lowered shoulder. The massive

  tough was thrown aside like a child, and Burns hacked halfway through his waist

  without even slowing. He pounded after Hawk down the narrow street, with the

  gang howling behind them.

  More gang members appeared out of darkened alley mouths, but somehow Hawk and

  Burns managed to cut a way through them and keep on running, leaving bodies

  lying in pools of vivid scarlet on the grimy snow. Hawk glared about him, trying

  to figure out exactly where he was. This wasn't an area he knew particularly

  well and he couldn't afford to stop and look for landmarks hidden or disguised

  by the recent snow. His breath burned in his chest, and he could feel the

  beginnings of a stitch in his side. Normally he prided himself on his stamina,

  but it had been a long day and it wasn't getting any shorter. From the sound of

  it, Burns was finding the going equally hard.

  And then they rounded a sharp corner and skidded to a halt as they saw more gang

  members waiting for them. There were ten of them blocking the narrow alley, all

  armed with some kind of weapon and smiling confidently. Hawk glanced back over

  his shoulder. The pursuers were coming up fast, and there was no way out. Hawk

  felt more anger than anything. Being killed in a gang ambush was such a stupid

  way to go. And now he'd never get the chance to clear Fisher's name. He'd make

  them pay fo
r that. He threw himself at the smiling faces before him, and laughed

  aloud as he saw their expressions change to shock and terror as his axe tore

  through them like firewood. He sensed Burns fighting desperately at his side,

  but Hawk had no room in him for anything but rage.

  The first few died easily before his fury, but there were too many of them for

  him to break through, and soon the rest of the gang arrived. Hawk and Burns

  fought back to back, surrounded by screaming mouths and flailing weapons, hemmed

  in by the jostling press of bodies. The sheer number of attackers gave Hawk and

  Burns a fighting chance; the gang were so eager to get at their victims that

  they kept getting in each other's way and deflecting many of the blows meant for

  the two Guards. Hawk fought on fiercely, sending blood spraying through the

  freezing air, but knew it was only a matter of time before someone got in a

  lucky blow. Then his guard would drop, and he'd go down under a dozen swords.

  And if he was lucky, he'd die before Hammer could pull his people off. He was

  just sorry he'd dragged Burns into this. Hawk fought on, as much out of

  stubbornness as anything. If he had to die, he was going to make them work for

  it. A sword licked in past his defenses, and punched through his side and out

  again. Blood ran thickly down his hip and leg, and the strength seemed to flow

  out of him along with the blood. He swung his axe clumsily, and the swords were

  everywhere.

  A thick mist sprang up suddenly in the alleyway, diffusing the amber lamplight

  in strange ways, and misty grey ropes curled and tightened around the gang

  members' throats. They dropped their weapons to tear at the strangling mists

  with desperate hands, and fell gagging to the ground. Curling mists lashed

  viciously among the gang, sending them flying this way and that, and they fled

  screaming back down the alley and out into the surrounding streets. The mists

  flowed after them like a relentless river. Dead bodies littered the alley.

  Hammer stared uncomprehendingly about him, abandoned by his men, and then backed

  away as Hawk loomed up before him, grim and bloody, his gaze colder than the

  winter could ever be. He turned to run, and Hawk cut him down with one blow of

  his axe. Hammer fell dying to the ground, and there was enough anger still in

  Hawk for him to regret it was over so quickly.

  He turned to see how Burns had fared, and fell back against a wall as the wound

  in his side caught up with him. The stabbing pain filled his mind, and then a

  strong arm curled around his shoulders, supporting him, and a cool hand pressed

  against his bloody side. There was a brief, crawling sensation as the wound

  knitted itself together, and then the sorceress Mistique stepped back and

  grinned at him.

  "I thought I'd leave the gang leader for you to take care of personally. But I

  can't believe you just walked right into that ambush. If I hadn't been following

  you too, they'd have had to bury what was left of you in a closed coffin."

  "I had a lot on my mind," said Hawk, feeling gingerly at his side. "And it must

  be said, this has not been one of my better days. Thanks for the rescue."

  "You're welcome. But next time don't go dashing off like that. I nearly didn't

  catch up in time."

  Hawk nodded, and looked across at Burns. The man's clothing was soaked in blood,

  but he nodded quickly to Hawk and Mistique to show he was all right. Hawk looked

  down at the gang leader, lying dead and broken on the dirty snow, and swore

  softly.

  "I should have taken him alive. He might have been able to answer some

  questions."

  Burns frowned. "What could he have known? He isn't connected with Morgan; he was

  just after you because you made him lose face in front of his people."

  "Someone had to have told him where to find us! He couldn't have followed us all

  the way from the Hook."

  "He didn't," said Mistique flatly. "I've been following you for some time, and

  they were already here waiting for you when you went in to talk to the

  Advisors."

  Hawk looked at her narrowly. "I didn't see you following us."

  Mistique smiled. "Well, after all, darling, I am a sorceress."

  Hawk nodded slowly. "All right; want to tell me why you were following us? And

  why you dropped out of sight right after we left the Hook?"

  The sorceress scowled, and leaned back against the alley wall with her arms

  folded. "I know something that certain important people don't want known.

  Something… dangerous. So I decided to disappear for a while, and do some hard

  thinking. I needed someone to talk to, someone I could trust. You were the

  obvious choice, Hawk, but I had to be sure you were what you were supposed to

  be. So I've been following you." She looked at him for a long moment. "Even now

  I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. You're not going to like this, Hawk."

  "Tell me," said Hawk. "Tell me what you know."

  "I was talking to one of the prisoners we took in Morgan's factory, before we

  brought them back to Headquarters," said Mistique steadily. "He was mad as hell

  because the Guard Captain that Morgan had been paying off hadn't warned them

  about the raid. I asked him for the Captain's name, but he didn't know it. He

  knew what the Captain looked like, though. He recognized her when he saw her

  during the raid.

  "It was Fisher, Hawk. Captain Isobel Fisher."

  Chapter Seven

  Scapegoat

  Fisher looked out the repaired study window and glowered sourly at the array of

  armed men camped out on the wide lawns. There had to be a hundred men out there

  now, wearing chain mail under their furs and warming their hands at the

  scattered iron braziers. If the Peace Talks had had this kind of protection

  before, two of the delegates and all of the original security force might still

  be alive. Fisher felt obscurely guilty that she hadn't got to know the men under

  her command before they were killed. As it was, it would take a hell of an army

  to get past the new security force; that, or a particularly nasty piece of

  magic. Fisher decided she wasn't going to think about that. She still got edgy

  every time she remembered the flood of twisted creatures that had come spilling

  out of the split in reality. She'd only just got over jumping at every sudden

  noise.

  Raised angry voices cut across her reverie, and she turned her back on the

  window to study the squabbling delegates. Her mouth compressed into a thin, flat

  line as she realized they were going round and round in the same futile circles.

  The Peace Talks were becoming increasingly warlike, with the two lords blaming

  everyone and everything but themselves for the present sorry state of affairs.

  Lord Nightingale of Outremer was the loudest voice, quite openly determined to

  lay the blame for everything at Haven's door. Lord Regis was trying to be

  reasonable and diplomatic, but his temper was visibly shortening, and his voice

  had already risen to match Nightingale's.

  The two Majors, Comber and de Tournay, had withdrawn from the fray and settled

  themselves in a corner with the drinks cabinet. They were busily comparing

  whiskies and doing their best to ignore the w
hole unpleasantness. They had no

  interest in recriminations or name-calling, and had said so loudly.

  Unfortunately, it hadn't been loud enough to compete with the racket Regis and

  Nightingale were making, so their objections had gone completely unnoticed by

  the two lords.

  Captain ap Owen was standing with his back to the fireplace, watching everything

  and saying nothing. He hadn't spoken a dozen words to anyone since he'd overseen

  the new security force as they cleared up the mess left by the assault. Fisher

  understood. The men under his command had been longtime associates and friends,

  and now he'd lost them all in one brief clash of arms. The bodies were gone now,

  along with the dead mercenaries, but the smell of blood and death was still

  strong in the house.

  Major Comber stirred suddenly, and slammed the flat of his hand against the top

  of a nearby table. It made a satisfyingly loud noise, and the two lords shut up

  and looked round to see what was happening. Comber carefully put down his whisky

  glass, and glared at each lord in turn.

  "I think this nonsense has gone on long enough," he said firmly. "We're supposed

  to be here to discuss the border problem, not play at who can shout and stamp

  their foot the loudest. We'll probably never find out exactly who betrayed us,

  and it doesn't matter worth a damn anyway. The attack was a failure and the

  Talks can go on. Now, may I respectfully suggest that we get back to what we're

  supposed to be doing, and leave the squabbling and whining to the politicians.

  That's what they're paid for."

  De Tournay started to nod vigorously in agreement, and then stopped as he

  realized both Nightingale and Regis were glaring at Comber.

  "Your opinion is noted, Major Comber," said Lord Regis icily. "But allow me to

  remind you that your function at these Talks is to provide us with military

  information and advice. Nothing more. The Lord Nightingale and I are quite

  capable of deciding what is important here, and right now nothing is more

  important than determining who betrayed us. We could all have been killed,

  dammit, and I want to know who was responsible! Particularly since it seems we

  can't trust our own security people to keep us safe."

  He glared at Fisher and ap Owen, who stared back calmly, fully aware that

  anything they said would only end up being used against them. Major de Tournay