Brothers in Arms

by Margaret Weis

  “Bastards!” Caramon said, his face pale. He licked dry lips, felt as though he might be sick. He had never before heard the cries of a person in torment. He gripped his sword hilt, rattled the blade in its sheath. “We’ll make them pay!”

  Sergeant Nemiss fixed him with an ironic eye. “Afraid not, Majere,” she said dryly. “Those are our gallant allies.”

  The baron’s army established camp with disciplined efficiency, under the critical eye of the baron’s second-in- command, Commander Morgon. Caramon and his company stood guard duty around the camp’s perimeter. Danger would presumably come from the direction of the city, but the guards’ gaze shifted constantly between the city and the camp of their allies.

  “What did the baron say?” Caramon asked Scrounger, who was making the rounds of the guard posts with the waterskin.

  Scrounger had yet another talent besides deal making. He was a remarkable eavesdropper, a talent that amazed everyone, since eavesdropping is perhaps the one and only fault not generally consigned to kender.

  A kender overhearing a conversation feels compelled to join that conversation, deeming that he has valuable information to share on the subject under discussion, no matter how personal or private that subject may be. Whereas a good eavesdropper must be silent, circumspect. When asked how he managed to come by such skills, Scrounger said that he thought it came from deal making, wherein it is always more profitable to keep the ears open and the mouth closed.

  A good eavesdropper must also be in the right place at the right time in order to see and hear to best advantage. How Scrounger managed to be in all the places he managed to be in to hear all the information he managed to hear was a marvel and a wonder to his comrades. They soon ceased to question how he came to know, however, and relied on him for information.

  Scrounger reported on the conversation he’d overheard while Caramon drank the warm and brackish water thirstily. “Sergeant Nemiss told the baron that the soldiers of King Wilhelm were looting and burning the countryside. The baron said to Sergeant Nemiss, ‘This is their country. Their people. They know best how to deal with the situation. The city is in rebellion. It must be taught a lesson, a hard lesson and a swift one, or the other cities in the kingdom will see that they can flout authority with imp … impunity. As for us, we’ve been hired to do a job and by the gods we’re going to do it.’ ”

  “Huh.” Caramon grunted. “And what did Sergeant Nemiss say?”

  “ ‘Yes, my lord.’ ” Scrounger grinned.

  “I mean after she left the baron’s tent.”

  “You know I never use language like that,” Scrounger said mockingly and, hefting the heavy waterskin, he trudged off to the next guard post.

  Raistlin had no leisure to sit and ponder the odd ways of their allies. He was kept busy the moment the army arrived, assisting Horkin in setting up the war wizard’s tent, which was a smaller and cruder version of Horkin’s laboratory. In addition to concocting the components they used for spells, the two mages also worked with the baron’s surgeon, or “leech” as he was fondly known among the troops, to provide medicines and ointments.

  Currently empty, the surgeon’s tent would soon be used to shelter the wounded. Raistlin had brought with him several jars of ointment, along with instructions for their use. The surgeon was busy arranging his tools, however, and curtly bade Raistlin to wait.

  The tent was neat and clean and lined with cots, so that the wounded would not be forced to sleep on the ground. Raistlin examined the tools—the saw for amputating shattered limbs, the sharp knife used to cut out arrow points. He looked at the beds and suddenly he saw Caramon lying there. His brother was white-faced, beads of sweat on his forehead. They had tied his arms to the bed with leather cord and two strong men, the surgeon’s assistants, were holding him down. His leg bone was shattered below the knee, broken bone protruded from the torn flesh, blood covered the bed. Caramon, breathing harshly, was begging his brother for help.

  “Raist! Don’t let them!” Caramon cried through teeth clenched against the pain. “Don’t let them cut off my leg!”

  “Hold him tight, boys,” the surgeon said and lifted his saw.…

  “You all right, Wizard? Here, you better lie down.”

  The surgeon’s assistant hovered near him, his hand on Raistlin’s arm.

  Raistlin cast a glance at the cot and shuddered. “I am perfectly all right, thank you,” he said.

  The blood-tinged mists cleared from his eyes, the bursting stars vanished, the sick feeling passed. He pushed aside the assistant’s solicitous hand and left the tent, forcing himself to walk calmly and slowly, with no unseemly show of haste. Once outside, he drew in a deep breath of smoke-tinged air and almost immediately began to cough. Still, even tainted air was preferable to the stifling atmosphere inside that tent.

  “It must have been the stuffiness that overcame me,” Raistlin told himself, ashamed and scornful of his weakness. “That and an overactive imagination.”

  He tried to banish the picture from his mind, but the image of Caramon’s suffering had been extremely vivid. Since the picture would not fade, Raistlin made himself look at it long and hard. He watched in his mind’s eye as the surgeon took off Caramon’s leg, watched his brother linger for days in terrible agony, healing slowly. He watched his brother being carried back to the baron’s castle in a wagon with other wounded. Watched his brother living the rest of his life as a cripple, his hale body wasting away beneath the pitying stares of their friends.…

  “You would know how I feel then, my brother,” Raistlin said grimly.

  Realizing what he’d said and what he’d meant by saying it, he shivered.

  “By the gods!” he murmured, appalled. “What am I thinking? Have I sunk so low? Am I so mean-spirited? Do I hate him that much?

  “No.” Raistlin thought back to those few terrible moments in the tent. “No, I am not quite such a monster as that.” His mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I cannot imagine him in pain without feeling anguish. And yet at the same time, I cannot imagine him in pain without feeling vengeful satisfaction. What black spot on my soul—”

  “Red!”

  Horkin’s voice boomed behind him, startling him like a sudden and unexpected drum roll. Raistlin blinked. He had been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he’d walked into the war wizard’s tent without even being aware of it.

  Horkin stood glaring.

  “What’s the matter with the ointment? Wasn’t it what he wanted?” Horkin demanded. “Didn’t you tell him what it was for?”

  Raistlin looked down at his hands to discover he was clutching a jar of ointment with a grip Death might have envied. “I … That is … yes, he was quite pleased. He wants more, in fact,” Raistlin stammered, adding, “I’ll make it up myself, sir. I know how busy you are.”

  “Why in the name of Luni did you bring this one back?” Horkin grumbled. “Why not just leave it there for him to use until you can make up the other?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Raistlin said contritely. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”

  Horkin eyed him. “You think too goddam much, Red. That’s your trouble. You’re not being paid to think. I’m being paid to think. You’re being paid to do whatever it is I think up. Now just quit thinking and we’ll get along much better.”

  “Yes, sir,” Raistlin said with more obedience than he usually showed to his master. He found it suddenly refreshing to let go all his tormenting thoughts, watch them drift away on the air currents like so much thistledown.

  “I’ll bring in the rest of the supplies. You start on that ointment.” Horkin paused at the tent flap, gazed loweringly at the city. “The Leech must figure it’s going to be a bloody battle if he’s stocking up on war-flower cream.” Shaking his head, he left the tent.

  Raistlin, as ordered, refused to let himself think. Reaching for the mortar and pestle, he began to crush daisies.

  3

  THERE WERE MANY ALEHOUSES IN THE CITY OF HOPE’S END.
THE name of this particular alehouse, an alehouse discovered by Kitiara on her arrival to the doomed city, was the Gibbous Moon.

  The tavern’s signage featured a picture of a man hanging from a rope, a picture done in lurid colors—the man’s face was particularly gruesome—set against the backdrop of a bright yellow moon. What the hanging had to do with the alehouse’s name was anybody’s guess. Popular opinion held that the owner had mixed up the word “gibbous” with the word “gibbet,” but this the owner always vehemently denied, though he could give no reason for the noose’s presence, other than that “it attracted notice.”

  Swinging in the breeze very like the noose it portrayed, the sign brought many a passerby up short, caused many to stare in wide-eyed wonder, but whether or not it induced those same passersby to taste the food or sample the ale of a place denoted by a dangling corpse was another matter. The tavern was not exactly overwhelmed with customers.

  The owner complained that this was due to the fact that the other tavern owners in town were “out to get him.” It should be noted that this was not necessarily true. In addition to being cursed with the stomach-turning sign, the Gibbous Moon was situated in the oldest part of the city, located at the very end of a crooked street lined with abandoned, tumbledown buildings, far away from the marketplace, the merchant streets, and Tavern Row.

  The tavern was not prepossessing in appearance, being a mass of ill-assorted wooden planks topped by a wood shingle roof and not a single window, unless you counted the hole in the front of the alehouse where two of the planks were not on speaking terms and refused to have anything to do with one another. The building looked as if had been washed down the street in a flash flood, coming to rest smashed up against the side of the retaining wall. According to local legend, this was precisely what had occurred.

  Kitiara liked the Gibbous Moon. She had searched all over the city for a place like this, something “out of the way” where a “body could find some peace and quiet,” where a “person wasn’t pestered to death by barmaids wanting to know if you wanted another ale.”

  The few customers of the Gibbous Moon did not have to put up with this inconvenience. The Gibbous Moon employed no barmaids. The tavern’s owner, who was his own best customer, was generally in such a sodden stupor that the guests ended up serving themselves. One would think that this would be an open invitation to the unscrupulous to drink up their ale and leave without paying. The owner cleverly thwarted this practice by making the ale undrinkable, so that even though it might be free, it was still considered a bad bargain.

  “You could not have found a more wretched pesthouse if you had searched the length and breadth of the Abyss,” Immolatus complained.

  He sat on the very edge of a chair, having already removed one splinter from his soft, squishy, and easily damaged human flesh. He deeply regretted the loss of his own steel-hard, shining red scales. “A demon who has spent tortured eternity roasting over hot coals would turn up his nose at the offer of a mug of that liquid, which has undoubtedly come from a horse who died of kidney disease.”

  “You don’t have to drink it, Your Eminence,” Kitiara returned testily. She was highly irritated with her companion. “Due to your ‘disguise,’ this is the only place in town where we can talk without having the people in the city staring at us and breathing down our necks.”

  She lifted the cracked mug. Ale slowly dribbled onto the floor. Kit tasted it, spit it out, and hastened the process by upending the mug. This done, she reached into her boot, removed a flask of brandy purchased from a more reputable tavern, and drank a swig. She returned the flask to her boot, not offering any to her companion, a mark of her displeasure.

  “Well, Eminence,” she demanded, “have you found anything? Any trace? Any hint? Any eggs?”

  “No, I have not,” Immolatus replied coolly. “I have searched every cavern I could find in these godforsaken mountains, and I can state categorically that there are no dragon eggs hidden anywhere there.”

  “You’ve searched every cavern?” Kitiara was skeptical.

  “That I could find,” Immolatus replied.

  Kit was grim. “You know how important this is to Her Majesty—”

  “The eggs are not hidden in any of the caverns I searched,” said Immolatus.

  “Her Majesty’s information—” Kit began.

  “Is accurate. There are eggs of the metallics hidden in the mountains. I can feel them, smell them. Gaining access to them—that’s the trick. The location of the entrance to the cave is well hidden, cleverly concealed.”

  “Good! Now we’re getting somewhere. Where is this entrance?”

  “Here,” said Immolatus. “In the city itself.”

  “Bah!” Kit snorted. “I admit that I know nothing about these so-called metallic dragons, but I can’t picture them calmly laying their eggs in the middle of the town square!”

  “You are right,” Immolatus replied. “You know nothing about dragons. Period. May I remind you, worm, that this city is ancient, that this city was here when Huma the Accursed crawled, sluglike, upon the land. This city was here in an age and time when dragons—all dragons, chromatic and metallic—were revered, honored, feared. Perhaps I even flew over this city once in my youth,” the dragon said, gazing dreamily into the distant past. “Perhaps I considered attacking it. The presence of the metallics would explain why I did not. …”

  Kit drummed her fingers upon the table. “So what are you saying, Eminence? That gold dragons perched on the rooftops like storks? That silver dragons cackled in coops?”

  Immolatus rose to his feet, fire-eyed and quivering. “You will learn to speak of even my enemies with respect—”

  “Listen to me, Eminence!” Kit returned, rising to face him, her fingers curling over the hilt of her sword, “The army of Lord Ariakas has this city surrounded. Commander Kholos is preparing to attack. I’m not sure when, but it’s going to be soon. I’ve seen what the fools in this city term their defenses. I have a pretty good idea how long this wretched place can hold out. I also know some of Commander Kholos’s plans for the assault. Believe me, we don’t want to be caught inside this city when that happens.”

  “The dragon eggs are in the mountains,” said Immolatus. He grimaced, wrinkled his nose. “Somewhere. I can sense them, the way one senses a fungus beneath one’s scales. It starts with an itching that you can’t quite locate. Sometimes you don’t feel it for days, and then one night you wake up in torment. Every time I left the city, the itch faded away. When I returned, it was strong, overpowering.”

  He began to absentmindedly scratch at the back of his palm. “The eggs are near here. And I will find them.”

  Kitiara dug her nails into her palms so that she wouldn’t dig them into the dragon’s throat. He’d wasted precious time on some fool kender chase! And now, when time was critical … Well, there was no help for it. What can’t be cured must be endured, as the gnome said when he got his head stuck in his revolutionary new steam-powered grape press.

  Having mastered her anger, or at least tamped it down into her belly, Kitiara muttered in no very good humor, “Well, what now, Eminence?”

  They were the only customers in the alehouse. The owner had drunk himself into oblivion by suppertime and now lay sprawled upon the bar, his head on his arms. A dust-covered ray of sunshine filtered through the quarreling planks, wavered, and vanished as if appalled to find it had accidentally ventured inside.

  “We have a day or two at the most remaining to us,” Kitiara said. “We have to be out of here before the first assault.”

  Immolatus stood by the bar, frowning down at a rivulet of ale leaking from a sprung cask, forming a small pool on the hard-packed dirt floor. “Where is the old part of the city, Worm?”

  Kitiara was growing extremely tired of being called that. The next time he did so, she was tempted to shove that word down his throat.

  “What do you take me for, Eminence? Some ink-smeared historian from the Great Library? How should
I know?”

  “You’ve been here long enough,” the dragon stated. “You might have noticed such things.”

  “And so should you, you arrogant—”

  Kitiara washed down the next few highly descriptive adjectives with another gulp of brandy from the boot flask. This time she didn’t put the flask away but left it out on the table.

  Immolatus, whose hearing was excellent, smiled to himself. He grabbed hold of the lank and greasy hair of the bartender and jerked his head up off the counter.

  “Slug! Wake up!” Immolatus banged the man’s head several times upon the counter. “Listen to me! I have a question for you.” He thumped the man’s head a few more times.

  The bartender winced, groaned, and opened bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Huh?”

  “Where are the oldest buildings in town?”

  Bang went the man’s head on the counter.

  “Where are they located?”

  The bartender squinted, gazed up at Immolatus in drunken confusion. “Don’t shout! Gods! My head hurts! The oldest buildings are on the west side. Near the old temple …”

  “Temple!” Immolatus said. “What temple? To what god?”

  “HowshouldIknow?” the man mumbled.

  “A fine specimen,” Immolatus said irritably and lifted the man’s head again.

  “What are you doing?” Kit was on her feet.

  “Humanity a favor!” Immolatus stated and, with a jerk of his hand, he snapped the man’s neck.

  “That was brilliant,” Kitiara said, exasperated. “How are we supposed to find out anything from him now?”

  “I don’t need him.” Immolatus headed for the door.

  “But what do we do with the body?” Kit asked, hesitating. “Someone might have seen us. I don’t want to be arrested for murder!”

  “Leave it,” said the dragon. He cast a scathing look back at the dead bartender, slumped over his bar. “No one’s likely to notice the change.”

  “Ariakas, you owe me!” Kit muttered, trailing Immolatus. “You owe me big. I expect to be made a regimental commander after this!”