by Tom Lloyd
‘Return to Vosain,’ Shonrey said at last, eyes never leaving the urchin growing steadily more real as he emerged from the fog. ‘Tell him to come at once.’
Toher nodded. ‘So close to Dragon District,’ he breathed as he cast around to get his bearings. ‘Astonishing.’
‘Their choices will have been limited,’ Shonrey said. ‘The Investigator will have had little money and has likely never left this city in his life. His thinking will have been similarly limited.’
‘And Kine will not have been able to travel …’ Too late did Toher realise his mistake and tail off.
Shonrey turned and grabbed the youth by the throat. ‘Never speak that name,’ he hissed with barely constrained fury. Toher croaked and shuddered as Shonrey’s grip closed his windpipe but the tall warrior did not relent. ‘She is dead to us. The whore was never part of our family, understand me?’
Toher’s eyes began to roll up and Shonrey released him, letting the youth fall back to the ground where he gasped and pawed at his throat. Finally he heaved in a ragged breath, retching once noisily before he recovered himself.
‘I’m … my apologies, cousin,’ he managed at last, sitting with legs splayed in the slush and filth of the street.
‘Get up,’ Shonrey snapped, turning away. ‘Bring Vosain to me, quickly now.’
As Toher fled, the urchin stepped forward – he had wisely decided not to get involved in the scuffle – and stuck out a grubby hand. ‘Smokehouse, down behind the tavern.’
Shonrey pulled a silver coin from his increasingly depleted purse and held it up. The embossed Wyvern emblem on one side glinted in the feeble light of the street.
‘You have one final task,’ he said in halting Imperial. While it was the trade language of the Empire, Shonrey’s family were warriors only, their need to learn anything more than House Dragon’s tongue limited.
The urchin hesitated. Evidently he wanted to curse and demand his money, but he knew what that would bring from a warrior caste.
‘What?’ he said in a sulky voice.
‘Scout the land,’ was the best Shonrey could manage at first, falling back on words a warrior needed to learn. ‘The smokehouse is big? Small? We can flank it?’
‘Ah right,’ Virin said, nodding as he understood. ‘Aye, there’s an alley behind. It’s this way.’
‘I wait here,’ Shonrey said.
‘Suit yourself, I’ll go check. Been a while since I came this way, but I reckon I remember it okay. You’ll get in easy enough round the back – some old woman owns it, I think. Probably rented her spare room out, it’s not a big place, none of these round here are.’
‘Find me a path,’ the Wyvern said, fingers touching the butt of a pistol at his waist, ‘and the silver is yours.’
It took Toher a half-hour to return with the remaining five of their number, Vosain at their fore as always. In that time Shonrey had himself ventured to the mouth of the side-street and scouted what he could of their goal. The smokehouse was a typical low-caste building; shabby and small, made from yellow clay bricks stained halfway to black by dirt and rain.
Virin, now paid and gone, had told him there was a workroom behind the main door and the smoke-room itself lay beside it. Above the workroom were two smaller ones where the owner lived, one looking out onto the street, the other over the smoke-room. An alley that stank of piss ran from the rear of the tavern all the way down behind the houses until it reached the wide street that served as the border with Dragon District. Their path was clear to Shonrey, the only problem being a large man he had seen entering the house after Investigator Narin.
‘I was lucky,’ he said to his cousin as they stood together, fifty yards from the side-street entrance. ‘A minute earlier and he could have seen me there.’
The scarred veteran looked down at him. ‘You are sure he did not?’
‘I am sure.’
Vosain nodded, taking him at his word. The age between them was too great for them to have grown up as friends, but they had served five years together in the army. Shonrey had once been the foolish youth Toher was – perhaps not so foolish, given the skirmishes he’d survived in those early days, but still reliant on his elder cousin to see him through.
‘He was warrior caste?’ Vosain asked.
‘No. A big man; he looked like a mercenary or hired thug, but no high caste.’
‘We do not need to worry, then. Toher alone is worth more than a low-caste mercenary.’
Unlike most Wyvern warriors, Vosain’s dark head was bald rather than a mass of braided or threaded hair. It accentuated the brutal bullet-scar and ruined upper-half of his right ear, making him appear even more fearsome than his size already indicated.
Shonrey glanced back at the youth, standing nervously to the rear. Vosain was right in that the youth had been trained to shoot well enough, but there had to be more at work here. They had all lost kin on this blood feud; sisters and brothers dead in some gutter, their corpses eaten by demons, he was forced to conclude.
‘We must assume he is dangerous,’ Shonrey pressed. ‘We have too many dead to do otherwise.’
‘You think one mercenary killed so many of our kin?’
‘Not alone I’m sure, but what other explanation is there?’
‘A dozen or more,’ Vosain growled. ‘Do you forget my brother was among our first to be lost? I underestimate no man.’
‘Then what? Have we stumbled into something more?’
‘That bloodless viper son of Brightlance is all my brother stumbled into,’ Vosain replied, ‘and he paid for such luck with his life. Lawbringer Rhe is a great warrior, this is known, but he is not here now. There are no guns inside, no true warriors. I had not thought you so anxious, Shonrey.’
‘When we’ve lost the first skirmishes, I grow wary,’ Shonrey said calmly. ‘Your brother had four with him, none returned. Harai and Usern were assigned to follow Lawbringer Rhe the next day and they disappeared with our two watchers on the bridge. Until I know how they were ambushed, I remain wary.’
‘Your wariness lets victory slip through your fingers,’ Vosain spat. ‘We have the rats cornered now. I will kill them both myself if needs be.’
‘I am always at your side, cousin, you know that.’
‘I do.’
They fell silent as Vosain considered the layout Shonrey had reported. With the divine constellations hidden by cloud, the diffused slivers of light from surrounding windows were the only light. The street itself was quiet, the side-street and alley deserted now.
‘I will take Toher,’ Vosain announced at last. ‘He will guard my back and ensure no one from the tavern uses the alley. I will climb the roof of the smoke-room and wait at the window there. That front door should be easily kicked in – even barred, two of you should be able to break it down with your shoulders.’
‘They have relied on ambush before,’ Shonrey said slowly, knowing no other answer was possible. ‘They will do so again.’
‘It is so. Break in the door and fire on anyone you see, but do not enter. Lure them out if you can. Station one man at the window, ready to shoot should they use that.’
‘Meanwhile you will enter and take them by surprise. I should be with you, though, not Toher. Better we both make the assault.’
‘Either one of us will succeed or both will fail,’ Vosain argued, putting his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘When you hear my guns, enter cautiously. They cannot cover both sides effectively.’
‘We should take nothing for granted. I have a grenade, I will use it. It does my honour no good, but until the whore is dead my honour can suffer no greater stain.’
Vosain’s mouth thinned. ‘Very well,’ he said with obvious reluctance. ‘You are right, cousin. They fight without honour and nor should we until she is dead.’ He turned and beckoned the youngest of their group over. ‘Toher, come with me.’
‘You have to the count of a hundred,’ Shonrey said, freeing his pistols from their holster ties. ‘Then you must
be in place, ready for when we breach the door.’
Vosain nodded. ‘Lord Knight bless our cause.’
‘Lord Executioner guide our hands,’ Shonrey replied. ‘The Gods be with us all, cousin.’
From beneath a cloak of rags, he watched. Hunched and pathetic, he was ignored by all in his hollow of broken boxes. Just another beggar too drunk or crazed to find somewhere more sheltered from the descending cold. Just another beggar who’d be dead by morning, whose corpse others would step over until one became sickened by the sight and tipped him into the river to feed the demons.
The fog grew thicker, the breeze off the sea a savage cold that left ice in its wake. Still the beggar did not move, did nothing but watch. He was motionless and silent, but for the voices that chattered in the depths of his mind.
We wait.
There are four.
I count ten.
Sea snakes.
Count the shadows.
I see flame and shadow.
The hounds call.
Dragons rise from the depths.
We burn.
Still he did not move, but he watched all and slowly the fog curling around him grew and thickened. A corona of vapour rose from his shoulders, then smoke. At last he moved, head bowing to look at his clasped grey hands. Each finger was inscribed with a prayer; hands, arms and entire body too, an ancient etched script that glowed faintly in the darkness. As he watched, the glow increased and the rags of his cloak continued to smoulder.
We burn, he called to the night.
Shonrey finished his count and made a small gesture with his hand. Each of the Wyvern warriors shrugged off the long concealing coats and shook their braided hair loose before they drew their pistols. One moved next to the lower window of the workroom, ready to shoot anyone who might throw open the shutters, and the rest headed straight for the door. The largest, Urern, led the way and broke into a run in the last few steps.
He dipped his shoulder and hit the door with the full weight of his body. The sound echoed like thunder around the street as something burst under the pressure. The door flew open and Urern staggered forward over the threshold, dropping to a crouch as Shonrey levelled his pistol at the room behind. A sour, pungent smell met him; smoked meat and fish mingled with something unrecognisable to a high caste.
The room was dark enough that he could only make out the regular shapes of packing crates arranged along the far wall. The door lurched drunkenly, one hinge ripped free of the wood. Ahead was an open doorway to a smaller room, empty chairs and a dead stove illuminated by weak lamplight from above. Just as Shonrey took a breath a dark shape edged around the corner of the doorway ahead and darted back. He fired on instinct, seeing his bullet strike the far wall.
He turned, leaving another to aim at anything that moved in the room and gestured to the cousin at the rear of them. He offered over a burning taper which Shonrey held to the stub of fuse on his grenade. They were untrustworthy weapons and disliked by all warrior castes, but he had enough deaths to account for back home without chancing more. When the first group of family had not returned from their mission to capture the Investigator, Shonrey had bought the fist-sized iron ball from a Dragon weapon-smith, aware of its power in the narrow streets of the Imperial City.
The breath caught in his throat as Shonrey watched the cord fizzle into life. Once he was sure it had taken he wasted no time and hurled the grenade through the door where it clattered against the stove. He held his position a moment longer, second pistol in his left hand, in case the figure made a break for it, then ducked back out of sight before the blast could shake the room.
It never came. One held breath stretched out and became a second, then a third. Caution kept Shonrey back a moment longer then he turned back around the corner, sinking to one knee to present a different target to anyone within. The view was empty, the grenade a dark and dead shape on the ground. The fuse was still visible – it had gone out somehow, rather than been dislodged. He doubted even a desperate man would have tried to gather and smother it.
‘Come,’ he breathed to the man beside him; Suken, the oldest of their group.
Together they edged forward, Shonrey silently drawing his longsword as they went. The smell worsened as they entered, filling his head with a heavy, sickly sensation. There was no movement ahead, no sign of the low castes they had cornered here. As they reached the middle of the room he found his limbs grow heavier and instinct made him grab Suken’s arm, dragging the man back out with him into the open air.
They stumbled through the doorway, only to find the others similarly enfeebled. Shonrey forced himself to look around the street, to keep moving, but he saw no assailants, just empty shadows.
The city blurred around him, the fog wrapping its tendrils around his arms. It dragged him down like a demon’s embrace and then the darkness took him.
The Firewind stood, burning rags cascading from his body. His second skin shone now, trails of incantation following the line of his body like cracks in a lava flow. Nearby he sensed his war-siblings do the same, the glow around each illuminating the bone-white struts and buildings nearby. From below he felt as much as heard the deep booming call of the Stone Dragons as those armour-clad destroyers rose to join them.
A curl of flame flickered into existence in the air in front of him before winking out again. The Firewind bent and grasped his grey spear, the edge a dull white that began to shine in the waxing light. Bursts of fire began to erupt from his second skin, flaring out as the prayers shone so bright they became unintelligible and the wood around him caught light.
A great whoosh of flame erupted from nearby, swirling streams of yellow surrounding a second Firewind and casting their brightness wide. Up ahead he saw a figure move in the shadows, raise some sort of weapon, and he threw his empty hand out towards it. A gout of flame raced forward, covering the twenty yards in a heartbeat. A ball of fire exploded around the figure and they fell, but the Firewinds did not advance. Instead the pair stood as sentinels, spears upraised, while the heavy tramp of feet appeared behind him.
The call of the Stone Dragons rang out again, the fury of some ancient monster awakened. Four of the armoured warriors advanced between the Firewinds, weapons ready to cast indiscriminate death. From further ahead he heard more calls, saw more burgeoning storms of flame reflecting in the fog.
The trap is complete, he thought, sending it out to his fellow Astaren of House Dragon. Take them.
CHAPTER 28
From around the corner Vosain heard the crash of the door, followed by the crack of a pistol that echoed through the small house. He waited a heartbeat for movement within the darkened room then slipped his knife through the shutters to lift the catch. He pulled the shutters back and peered into the room as best he could. Nothing moved within. He could see little but certainly there were no faces looking back at him, no naked steel pointing his way.
His knife worked its way around one cheap pane of glass easily enough and soon he had the blade behind it. A twist of the wrist cracked the glass and levered a piece towards him. He removed it and dropped it on the cloak he’d spread out on the roof below, quickly pulling more pieces away until he could slip his hand in and open the window silently.
It had taken him a matter of seconds. There were no more gunshots below but a shuffle of feet and a clatter of something on bare floorboards. Vosain didn’t wait for the grenade to explode, confident enough in his ability to move quietly, so he eased his way over the sill and into the dark room.
It was a cluttered mess inside; opposite him a dresser of pale china shone in the starlight, four armchairs arranged around some low table covered in garish glass pieces. The chairs were pushed back against the walls, affording him a clear space to move in and no hiding places better than a battered glass-fronted cabinet.
Low castes and their pretensions, Vosain thought idly as he picked his way past porcelain figurines of Ascendant Gods and drew his pistol.
He took a step toward
s the door before some sixth sense caught movement behind him. He whirled around, bringing his gun up, but it was smashed from his grip by a numbing blow. The Wyvern warrior was already reaching for a dagger before he focused on his attacker. For a moment he thought they were a Dragon from the dark colour, but then he realised it was a man swathed in black and masked.
Before Vosain could draw his dagger the figure rapped his knuckles with a short baton. He followed that up with a punch to the sternum that drove Vosain back into a chair. There he slumped for a moment, breathless and stunned, while the man grabbed the second pistol from Vosain’s ornate holster across his belly and tossed it aside.
That done, the figure checked behind, glancing out of the window for any assistance he’d failed to notice, but saw nothing. Vosain realised Toher would be out of sight, watching the rear entrance of the tavern. A distant voice told him he was going to die unless he acted, but as he forced himself up the man gave him a slap around the head that set his skull ringing as he fell back.
Confusion filled Vosain’s mind. He was far taller and broader than his attacker, but each blow had struck like a hammer. For a moment he just sat there, stunned and willing Shonrey to burst through the door and shoot this stranger down, but nothing happened.
His assailant cocked his head, lowering the baton in his hand as he looked Vosain up and down. The Wyvern warrior wore only functional clothes, no sign of military rank or honours sewn to his shoulder. He was there to execute, not fight honourably. Still, the other man nodded before he spoke.
‘Guess you’re the cousin, then.’
Vosain blinked once before anger forced his wits to return. This damn low caste thought to speak to him so, let alone be so casual when attacking a twice-titled warrior of the plain?
‘I am the cousin,’ Vosain growled, fighting to think and plan while the low caste enjoyed his moment of advantage. Something was not right here, but Vosain had dealt with stronger men than himself before. ‘The whore told you about me, then?’
It seemed an idle flick of the wrist, but the man seemed to know which exact point on Vosain’s knee to strike and a bolt of pain shot through his leg. The veteran soldier hissed with pain, coming close to crying out.