She wondered again at the Hag’s presence. Who would She touch? Who were they?
• • •
The city of Remeale sat on the edge of the Kotta Plain, near Arrowhead Bay’s triangular mouth. It was a mining town, a dirty and poor city perched wanly by the ravaged hills, a spectator to the exhumation of the earth’s riches. Sectors of Remeale were legendary for their filth and anarchy—“a lassari from Remeale” was a vile description for any person on Neweden, a vivid insult even if somewhat of a cliché—and those sectors were noted for their ability to supply anything anyone might want of an illicit sort. By day, Remeale was merely shabby; at night, it took on a filthy animation.
Here, two shapes moved in the black night, cloaked with rough capes dyed matte ebony and gray.
In this burrough, dying buildings leaned drunkenly toward each other, at times meeting in a decaying embrace above the narrow streets, trapping foul darkness below. The walkways, littered with the detritus of humanity, weren’t wide enough to allow a groundcar passage; at various places, a person walking would find himself crowded by the houses on either side or need to duck beneath an obstruction half-seen in the night. Even with the daylight, some part of the evening remained, darkening the area, making it a twilight landscape viewed through a dingy gel.
The two intruders came to a brief halt in a doorway. The smaller of the specters leaned against a doorjamb that was many degrees from vertical.
“How close do you think we are, Ric?” The voice was a light contralto, pleasant even though roughened by whispering.
Light flared by the larger shape, which rapidly took on substance and form: a massive man enfolded in a cloak as dark as the streets around him, his face doubly hidden by a beard and longish blond hair glowing ruddily in the light of his handtorch. The light died as quickly as it had come, and he waited for his night vision to return.
“He’s close, if the apprentices have done their work well—and remind me to tell Thane Valdisa to repair this damned map. The light’s gone out in it, and I don’t like using the handtorch. We’ve still hours left to the contract, though. Dawn’s at 5:56:40, and it’s barely one at Underasgard.”
“Good.” Iduna sighed and pushed herself erect. “Let’s move, then. I want some time to do other things before sleeping.”
“Need a partner?”
“Certainly.” She touched his arm briefly, a quick caress. “Let’s get this over with.”
Masked again by night, the two Hoorka made their way down the tangle of streets, half-running and keeping to the sides of the walkways where shadows cloaked them. The Hoorka were rarely bothered by others, especially when on a contract, armed and alert, but they wanted no interference tonight. They turned at a corner where a hoverlamp sputtered fitfully and cast a dancing illumination over a sated wirehead sprawled in the intersection, his open eyes glazed and unfocused. He moved fitfully, spastic, as the Hoorka slipped past him.
They went by a large house where some celebration was evidently in progress. The Hoorka could hear conversation, music, and—once—a scream that held genuine terror, a ululation of horror. D’Mannberg paused a moment, listening for the repetition of the scream, but Iduna touched him on the shoulder, shaking her head. They began moving once more into the maze of tiny streets and claustrophobic alleys.
It was only a few minutes before they came to a small square where the buildings leaned away from each other to form a marketplace. Empty stalls sat in disordered ranks around the area; a few hoverlamps bobbed in their holding fields, throwing erratic shadows about the houses bordering the square. The Hoorka paused in the dark mouth of an archway leading into the marketplace, searching for any movement before they entered—Hoorka had been killed on contract before; that knowledge bred caution where the assassins suspected traps. It was, after all, the victim’s right to escape in any way he could. Dame Fate had no special dispensation for Hoorka, and Hag Death did not care who fell into Her maw. It was best to pray to She of the Five Limbs, the goddess of the extinct ippicators and patron of the Hoorka, and to be careful.
There was a man in the square.
They both saw him in the same instant. He sat on an overturned crate on the far side of the market, staring dully in their direction. The hoverlamps threw a gigantic shadow-parody of him on the wall behind. At the foot of darkness, he looked very small and fragile.
D’Mannberg squinted into the light. He nodded to Iduna and the two assassins walked slowly into the open space, drawing and activating their vibroblades. Their footsteps were loud in the night stillness, and the vibros gave forth a low humming that resonated and built, echoing from the buildings. The man made no move to flee from them. He watched the Hoorka approach, his face resigned and hopeless, his hands clenched between his knees. His head dropped slowly as they came nearer to him, as if he were unable to hold its weight any longer. By the time the Hoorka stood before him, he was in a huddled crouch. They knew he could feel their eyes on his back.
“Cade Gies, stand up.” D’Mannberg’s voice, though pitched softly, sounded loud in the square, deep and ritualistic. Iduna, beside him, looked briefly at the walls flanking the market. Heads had begun to appear at a few of the windows, curious people staring down at the tableau below them. It didn’t matter. The spectators didn’t look as if they intended to hinder the Hoorka in their task, and it was better entertainment than that offered by their holotanks.
Gies made no movement, still tucked against himself. D’Mannberg, glancing at his companion and the silent witnesses around them (lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl of distaste at the watchers), put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He felt Gies shudder at the touch and move away with a soft moan. The assassin tightened his grip on the cloth and pulled. Gies came stiffly to his feet, hands balled into impotent fists, his eyes closed and his head averted. He waited, a thin, soft wailing escaping his clenched teeth.
“Cade Gies, your life has been claimed by Hag Death. Dame Fate has severed the cords of your existence.” D’Mannberg’s words were brittle with ritual, but then they softened in pity/disgust as Gies suddenly jerked away from the Hoorka and doubled up, retching dryly. D’Mannberg stared down at the frightened man. “We’re not monsters, Gies. You’re a slave of the Hag, but we can make your passage to Her easier. It needn’t be painful or frightful.” His voice was a whisper, harsh in darkness. Gies did not reply. Still hunched over, he spat once, then again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His breathing was rapid, wheezing from his lungs.
“Look at us, Cade.” Iduna’s velvet voice seemed to calm him. Gies stood, slowly, his gaze sweeping over the onlookers, now leaning on their elbows in the windows. His broken stare finally came to rest on the Hoorka. He saw two pairs of oddly sympathetic eyes. The rest of their faces were masked in their nightcloaks.
“Death comes to each of us,” Iduna said. “Even as an offworlder, you can understand that. Hag Death will have Her due. And we Hoorka are but instruments in Dame Fate’s hands.”
“They’re not my gods.” Gies’s voice was a cracked whisper, his eyes as wild as an animal’s, pleading with their moist softness.
“You’re on Neweden, and those are the gods that rule here.”
Gies shook his head. “I don’t believe in gods.”
“Then simply believe in death,” d’Mannberg said. “You had your chance to escape us and you chose not to run—the apprentices explained your alternatives to you.” D’Mannberg’s voice struck at Gies as if it were a weapon. The man shuddered under the impact.
“You’re going to murder me!” His last words were a frantic shout that echoed back to them from the surrounding walls.
“Not the Hoorka,” d’Mannberg replied, very softly. “We’re but weapons in another’s hands. The guilt, if any, belongs to them.”
“Who?” Gies demanded. His hands clutched at the assassin’s nightcloak, and d’Mannberg backed away a step.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Tell me, if you have
any compassion. I’m dead anyway— what difference would it make? Tell me, so that I can haunt her from my grave.”
D’Mannberg glanced at Iduna, an exchange without words. “I don’t know who signed the contract, Gies. I would tell you if I knew, but I don’t. I’m sorry.”
Gies swayed softly, as if he might fall. D’Mannberg reached out to steady the man. “I can’t tell you,” he continued, “but your kin will know. All Neweden will know. Our code commands that all successful contracts be made public. You can be assured of that.”
“It’s not fair!” He ended with a wail. A few more windows dilated to reveal new spectators.
“The Hag is never fair.” Iduna held out her hand to Gies. The man looked down, as if expecting to see a vibro held there. But the palm held only a small gelatin capsule.
“Take it, Gies. It’ll make your passage to the Hag enjoyable.” Iduna waited as Gies reached out with a tentative forefinger to touch the capsule. He had small hands, dainty hands—he had not seen much labor. His fingertips trembled, and he hesitated, looking at d’Mannberg.
“Consider the alternatives, man. Would you rather I used my vibro?” He held out the weapon to Gies. Its angry snarl was frighteningly loud to the man. Gies, his lips tightly clamped, shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Oldin—she wants Neweden, and she’ll take it as she’s taken everything else.” He grasped the capsule gently between thumb and forefinger—always with that slight aura of the effete—and held it for a moment near his mouth. “She’ll destroy you, too. You’ll see.”
With a convulsive movement quite unlike his normal demeanor, he tilted his head back and swallowed.
“Soon?” he asked.
D’Mannberg nodded.
The two Hoorka moved back from Gies as he sat on the crate once more. Gies stared at the assassins, blinking slowly. He grinned, abruptly, then giggled, a sound that, reverberating, became a full manic laugh. D’Mannberg glanced about the market: they were still watching, the silent ones, leaning forward now as if they wanted to be closer to the moment of this pathetic man’s death, as if the Hag might momentarily become visible as She came to collect the proffered soul. D’Mannberg knew that this night would fill the next morning’s conversations.
Gies was still laughing when his body found that it could no longer support itself. He fell backwards to the ground and rolled onto his side, his legs doubled up, fetal. He took a deep, rattling breath that began to dissolve into hilarity, then was suddenly still.
Silence wrapped the square as the Hoorka switched off their vibros.
Iduna took a spare nightcloak from her pouch, handed one end to d’Mannberg, and together they covered the body. The onlookers slowly began to withdraw, the windows going opaque as they returned to more private diversions. Distantly, they could hear a complaining voice and loud music beginning in mid-bar.
“At least this is over,” d’Mannberg commented. He hefted the body of Gies across his shoulders, grunting with the weight.
He was wrong in that. It was just beginning.
• • •
“You’re just reflecting your own doubts, Gyll. The meeting wasn’t run that badly, no matter how you view it. Bachier’s challenge couldn’t have been anticipated. I thought Thane Valdisa handled herself well.”
“To a point, Cranmer. I saw her, I know what I would have done in her place, a few months ago. Bachier wouldn’t have been cut by kin then. Gods, man, I have a good deal of affection for Valdisa, both as a friend and a lover, but I can see that she shouldn’t have been so abrupt with kin. They’re all proud people. Leadership doesn’t have to mean heavy-handedness.”
“And it’s always easier to criticize from the outside. Look, you’re feeling an understandable loss of control since you abdicated in favor of Valdisa. Couple that with the last several contracts you’ve worked and your, ahh, irritation . . .”
“Forget the last contracts. Just—shh, be still.”
Ulthane Gyll and Cranmer were in the outer caverns of Underasgard, with the moon Sleipnir throwing cold light past the jagged mouth of the Hoorka-lair. Gyll, sitting slump-shouldered on a boulder, suddenly lurched erect and stared intently at a cave-rodent moving slowly across the broken floor. Cranmer, wrapped in a thick nightcloak, curled his lips, wrinkling his nose in distaste.
The rodent, a stalkpest—a furred body with patches of open sores (it had evidently been in a recent fight), a small head from which the thin whip of its eye-sensor sprouted, a lithe quickness when it moved—stopped, started, and crept forward again, always closer to Gyll. Underneath his nightcloak, Gyll fingered the hilt of his vibro as Cranmer glanced from stalkpest to assassin.
The stalkpest stood on its hind legs, the eye-sensor slashing like the tail of a nervous cat, then inched forward. Gyll lunged, the vibro hissing from its sheath already activated, the arm plunging down. The stalkpest keened in surprise and terror, the body convulsing against the weapon that pinned it to the ground, the claws skittering helplessly. Gyll flicked off his vibro and sheathed it. He prodded the body with a boot tip.
“One less to get into the stores,” he said.
Cranmer, from his boulder seat, shivered. “The damn things give me chills. How can you stand to get near it?”
“A Neweden axiom, scholar—to kill with honor, you must always be near. Our Ulthane taught us that.” The voice came from the darkness of the corridor leading back into the caverns. Gyll and Cranmer both turned to see Aldhelm regarding them. His nightcloak melded with the cavern’s eternal gloom, but Sleipnir’s glow played on his face—light eyes above the furrow of a scarred cheek. “Good evening, Ulthane, Sirrah Cranmer,” Aldhelm said, nodding to each in turn. His gaze went to the bloody stalkpest. “Practicing, Ulthane?” A faint smile seemed to twist the ridge of the scar. “A pity our victims are rarely so easy.”
Gyll felt a rising anger, fueled by the sarcasm he sensed in Aldhelm’s voice. The last three contracts he had worked, the victim had escaped: Cranmer had mentioned it already this evening, and Gyll had been soured by the Hoorka Council earlier. Gyll had heard the whispers of his guild-kin. Ulthane Gyll doesn’t seem to care for the hunt any more—I was with him, and he didn’t seem concerned, didn’t have the sharpness he once had. He looks like he’s brooding, lost. He’s gotten out of shape—he doesn’t work enough with long-vibro and foil. He thinks about the victims, wonders about their lives. He’s depressed, moody. Ever since he named Valdisa as Thane . . . By the code—Gyll’s code—the victim must escape from time to time, but for the Hag to go hungry on three consecutive attempts: it could simply be Dame Fate’s will, but the whispers and the well-meant jests from his kin hurt, made him narrow his eyes in irritation.
“You think I need the practice, Aldhelm? Is that your intimation? Because of the contracts?”
Aldhelm moved in darkness, frowning. Rock scraped rock under his feet. “I didn’t say that, Ulthane.”
“You didn’t have to.” Gyll swept his nightcloak over his shoulder. Moonlight glinted from the vibrohilt at his belt.
“Ulthane,” Cranmer began from his seat, his voice uncertain. The short, thin man cleared his throat. “I think—”
“I was speaking to Aldhelm, scholar.” Gyll did not look at Cranmer, but at the other Hoorka.
Aldhelm stared back. “When I failed one contract—yah, it was the Li-Gallant’s and thus important, but you teach us that each contract is as important as the next—you gave me this.” Aldhelm touched his cheek and the high ridge of the scar. “We all fail contracts, Ulthane. You set us up that way when you created Hoorka. It’s what sets us apart. If your failures bother you, well, I think you need to shrive yourself, not be angry with kin.” Aldhelm’s face was set in careful stoicism, neither smile nor frown.
With the words, Gyll felt his anger cool. Of all Hoorka-kin, he has the most right to taunt you, and he doesn’t. You called him a friend once, after all. But Aldhelm had opposed Gyll on the two contracts the Hoorka had worked for the
Li-Gallant Vingi, both intended to kill the Li-Gallant’s political rival, Gunnar. Aldhelm had twice felt the touch of Gyll’s vibro, and whatever affection they had shared had gone with the blood. Gyll didn’t apologize to Aldhelm, but nodded down at the stalkpest.
“Cranmer and I came out here to see if d’Mannberg and Iduna were back, and I happened to see the ’pest. It’ll feed my bumblewort instead of raiding our grain.” Gyll stopped, noticing the bulging pack under Aldhelm’s nightcloak for the first time. “You’re going out?”
Aldhelm stared at Gyll, defiance ready in his eyes. “Yah.” For a moment, it seemed that he was not going to say more, but then he hefted the pack, adjusting it around his shoulders. “There’s an Irastian smith in Sterka, visiting. He’s reputed to be very good with blades. I’m taking a few things to show him, and I’m also going to see what he might have for sale.” Aldhelm’s affection for edged weapons was well known among Hoorka.
“You’ve gotten Thane Valdisa’s permission?”
“After the uproar during Council last night? We both saw the blood from Bachier’s wound, Ulthane—and I’m not saying it wasn’t what he deserved for arguing with the Thane. But I’m not going to risk my own skin by leaving Underasgard without telling her first.”
“I thought she had sufficient reasons for making the ruling,” Cranmer said. He had wrapped the cloak more tightly around him; the offworld scholar had never gotten used to the cooler Neweden climate. “With the reports of lassari attacks on lone guilded kin, and Eorl being killed in an unprovoked assault, it makes sense to know where all Hoorka are.”
Aldhelm nodded. “I realize that. You don’t have to lecture me, scholar.”
Though the man’s reproof was gentle, Gyll’s irritation rose once more; he was silent a moment, forcing it down with an effort. So quick to anger of late—calm down, old man. “Go on, then. But be careful, Aldhelm. The kin can’t afford to lose you.”
“I’m always careful, Ulthane. And I’m also very good with my weapons—I’d worry about the lassari, not me.”
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