Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild

by John Daulton

  “Watch yer angle,” Ilbei called to Kaige, who had just turned aside a blow that would have pulped him. Ilbei moved himself closer to the wall. He circled and tried to get in behind his enemy, but despite the vacant look in the man’s eyes, he wasn’t so vacant as that. Whoever had trained him to fight had trained him well.

  A cry and a grunt from Meggins showed that the infernal Gad Pander had worked himself loose from Ilbei’s too-hastily tied knots and had thrown himself on the archer. The two of them lay grappling.

  In his distraction, Ilbei wasn’t fast enough, and a sweep of a great oak club came at him like a hardwood hurricane. He got his pickaxe up in time to attenuate the blow on the haft some, but the force still threw him the two spans between himself and the cave wall, where he struck with a breath-blasting thud.

  Two men ran in from the outside, and Mags, hidden from their view, swung a flat blow with her quarterstaff across the cave mouth, so hard and so level that Ilbei was certain she’d crushed one of the newcomer’s windpipes even as Ilbei himself gasped for air. The other was barely nicked by her swing, but it caught his attention. He changed the course of his charge from Meggins to Mags, and if there was any relief to be had in that, it was that he held as a weapon a sledgehammer of the most common workman’s variety. Ilbei hoped that whatever training Mags had gotten from the Sisters of Mercy was up to the man’s combat abilities with that.

  The hammer shot out, a low, punching-type strike. Mags leapt to her left, letting the hammer crash into the cave wall as she brought her staff down hard alongside his neck. Ilbei heard the crack of his collarbone at the same time he let out a yelp. Mags would be okay.

  Kaige, like Ilbei had just done, blocked a blow that came so hard it threw him back against the wall. He wasn’t winded by the impact, though, and he, again like Ilbei, rushed back in to prevent the titanic human from getting any closer to their companions. That’s when Ilbei was reminded of the fire burning there, just visible out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he could get the brute to stumble into it somehow. He needed something, some kind of advantage. They were running out of time.

  “Sorvanor maricopse veyn!” Jasper shouted.

  Ilbei had time to turn to look, his mind only beginning to shape a question about what that meant, when there came a thumping sensation down upon him, a soft thump like the quasi-solidification of air, a rush of it, all in an instant as if by a blow but not, a wave of pressure perhaps, soft and yet brutal, not so unlike the sort of blow that might come from a great club made of oak, if oak could be made of air. Then Ilbei saw the ground rushing up at him. At least, for a moment. And then he, like the rest, like Kaige, Mags, Meggins and the man he was grappling with, even the giant man and, sadly, Jasper, went off into the dark place called unconsciousness, leaving behind a whole cave full of motionless bodies. Even the forge fire went out.

  Chapter 20

  When Ilbei came to, he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the cave. Morning was just creeping inside, an angle of it slicing into the gloom like a blade of light. There were voices nearby, and he sat bolt upright, reaching for his pickaxe. It was not on his back, and for a dazed, post-concussion moment, he patted himself down seeking the weapon with his hands as his eyes looked around for the enemy.

  He found them, several of them, five men trussed up like pot roasts, lying right where he’d left them, two more near the cave entrance, plus the great brute with the oak-limb clubs lying off to the left, nearly mummified in rope. He did not fight against the bonds, and Ilbei realized he was unconscious, just as Ilbei himself had been for apparently quite some time.

  Ilbei looked for his companions and found them lying roughly in a row beside him to the right: Kaige immediately beside him, then Meggins, then Mags, then Jasper. He could see two lines in the dirt near Jasper’s heels, drawn by the act of someone dragging him, and marking the path that someone had taken when they’d brought him from the cave entrance to where he was now. Ilbei noted that each of his companions breathed comfortably, a great relief, and all of them were asleep.

  He stood and assessed himself, found that he was in fine health but for a headache, which was not much worse than those that follow a fine sort of evening, and discovered in a glance at the wall that his pickaxe was leaning there behind him. He took it up and looked about again, seeking the source of the voices that he heard.

  Some came from the passage out of which the big brute and several others had emerged. Others came from outside.

  Worried about those behind him in the cave, Ilbei entered the passage and crept down it, staying out of the little waterway running through it and following the curve until he’d gone beyond the last assistance of the dawn’s light. He pressed forward into the darkness, squinting and hoping for some form of light to emerge. Then the dim flicker of firelight appeared from around the bend. He picked his way along until he came to where the passage branched left and right.

  The light came from the right, so he peered around the bend and saw, to his surprise, Major Cavendis standing over Gad Pander. The counterfeiter’s hands were bound behind him, his ankles tied together, and he sat upon a low rock with blood running from his mouth and nose.

  Major Cavendis, still in his lordly attire, was shaking his head as he gazed down at the battered man, and Ilbei saw that he held an extinguished torch, the wrappings at its end dangling loose like a tangle of untied boot strings.

  “Listen here, Pander,” Cavendis was saying. “I really don’t enjoy this sort of thing, but I’ll stand here all day and all tomorrow if I have to until you tell me where they are.”

  Pander spat blood out into the dirt at the major’s feet. “I already told you where they were. I’ve told you fifty times. Fifty-one will be the same.”

  The major smashed the torch down on Pander’s knee. The captive cried out, and Ilbei recognized it as the same sound that had woken him from unconsciousness. The bloody miner fell off the rock, his body rigid with the wave of anguish until the worst of it had passed. The major pulled him back up by one arm and resat him on the rock.

  “Let’s try the other one then,” the major said, as casually as if they were discussing the results of a recent royal tournament. “What else have you seen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Please, just tell me what you want me to have seen, and I’ll say I saw it yesterday. Gods, I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “You’re a stubborn man, Pander. And braver than I’d have given you credit for.” The major struck him twice across the face with the torch, once forehand and another back. One of Pander’s teeth flew across the cave and bounced off the rocks. “The problem is,” resumed the young lord, “that bravery here nets you nothing. So, let’s start once again. Where are the molds?”

  “In the packs,” Pander gasped, his head drooping, chin to chest, blood running in a stream. He began to sob, barely more than a whimper, repeating over and over, “They’re in the Mercy-loving packs like I’ve told you a hundred times.”

  Ilbei could tell the answer infuriated the major by the way he straightened, his face rising so that he might gaze up toward the ceiling, an exasperated prayer to the gods of patience, perhaps. “I’ve checked the wretched packs, Pander. You were sitting right there when I did it. So where are they in all of that, hmmm?” He pointed with the ragged end of the torch toward the wall just inside the opening, the wall behind which Ilbei hid, so Ilbei could not see what he was pointing at. Cavendis struck the man once more, a powerful blow to the ear, so hard it knocked him off the rock again. He left him there and spun to exit the room. At which point he saw Ilbei gawking at him.

  “Spadebreaker!” he said. “Good. I see you are revived. I trust you had a nice nap?” He grinned as pleasantly as if he and Ilbei were great old friends.

  “Aye, sar. I suppose I did.” Ilbei’s gray brows wriggled unevenly on his forehead.

  “Well, your timing is excellent. As you can see, we’ve found the animal that Pander here claims you took f
rom him, and having gone through the packs, we can’t seem to find a particular item that we came looking for.”

  Ilbei stepped into the chamber and looked where the major was once again pointing, toward that nearest wall. Sure enough, there were the two panniers Ilbei had gone through and then carefully repacked.

  “What might ya be lookin fer, sar?”

  Cavendis studied him for a long string of heartbeats, the same sort of look Ilbei had seen him employ when they’d sat together and played cards so briefly not so many nights ago. Ilbei’s face remained exactly as it was. There was cheating at cards, and then there was the real game, where the façade mattered as much as the cards.

  “We’re looking for the other half of those.” He directed Ilbei’s gaze to a long table in an alcove opposite where Ilbei stood. He took another torch from a sconce mounted on the wall and led Ilbei to the table, where there were ten flat ceramic bricks. Each of them had perfectly circular impressions pressed into them, all depicting in relief a gryphon and its rider flying above the great Palace in Crown City. There were words written around the top and bottom edges along the rim, presumably backwards and in the language Ilbei couldn’t read.

  “Them’s counterfeiters’ molds,” Ilbei said.

  “Precisely, Sergeant. And as you can see, they are but half of what is needed to forge a proper gold crown of Kurr.”

  “So they are. And a two-tailed crown wouldn’t buy a man a grope, even in the brothels of Murdoc Bay.”

  “No, Sergeant, it wouldn’t. Which is why I know that somewhere there exists the other half of this set. Our friend Pander here insists that you took possession of that other half when you relieved him of his horse.”

  It was once again Ilbei’s turn to evaluate the major’s hand. He had a bad feeling that the major, despite his youth, was the better liar between them, a man likely trained to it since birth. But Ilbei knew there was something missing still, despite having no evidence of it. He wondered if maybe it was simply because he didn’t like the man, because he knew that Cavendis was a cheat. Cheats and liars were hardly better than animals in the end. But he was a major, even if he didn’t bother to wear Her Majesty’s colors most times—yet another thing about him that crawled under Ilbei’s skin. But he had to answer something for it.

  He glanced at the major, then at the molds, then across the room where Gad Pander lay. He nodded his head. “Yes, sar,” he said. “He’s told ya true about that—and seems a number of times he told ya too, what with ya havin beat him half to death so as to hear it over and over again.”

  “Well, where are they?” Relief was evident in the way the major’s shoulders moved, lowering as tension left—relief where Ilbei had expected reproach or some abuse for what he’d just said and how he’d said it. “Then why didn’t you say something before?”

  Ilbei watched the major watching him back. “You was pretty quick to run me off last time we spoke, as you’ll recall, and I near forgot all about it till we was on our way. I turned back to go tell ya, when we seen that feller ya been poundin on come skulkin out and run off into the woods. Seemed sinister how he done it, so we went off after, thinkin we’d find where he was perpetratin the counterfeits.”

  “Well, clearly you found it, Sergeant. But perhaps in doing so, you bit off more than you could chew.” The major stood casually, relaxed, his smile marginally gloating.

  “Right, sar, so it seems. We was in a spot, it’s true, though I expect the main trouble was our mage run off some kind of magic accident. We’d have done all right in the end otherwise.”

  “Yes, well, likely he did you all a favor, as there were several more men outside the cave, on their way in when we arrived.”

  “We, sar?”

  “Yes, myself, Locke Verity, whom you met the other day, and a few others.”

  “Well then, it was right good timin ya come along.”

  “It was. Now, please, Sergeant, where are those other plates?”

  “I sent em off to Hast with the corporal.”

  “You what?” The major’s face flushed.

  Even in the prejudiced light of the torch, Ilbei saw him reddening, but he pressed on. “I sent them tiles off to Hast with a note fer General Hanswicket hisself. Told him we’d get in touch with ya and see to the situation as best we could after, or send word fer reinforcements if’n we thought it was more than my boys, and yerself of course, could get done.”

  “You idiot!” the major spat. “By the gods, Spadebreaker!” He spun and stomped across the room, overcome with rage, profanity spewing forth like foul odors from a foundry. He went on so long Gad Pander actually began to laugh, though it was a choking, blood-soaked sort of sound.

  Ilbei thought that was even odder than the major’s tantrum, and would have remarked on it, but the major stomped over to the local man and kicked him so hard in the stomach he began to choke in earnest, and eventually to throw up, retching and gagging up blood and teeth along with his last meal.

  “When did you send them to Hast? How long ago?”

  Ilbei blinked and made a show of perplexity, clearly confounded as to why the major was so upset. He finished the display with an appropriate bit of stammering. “Why, I, uh, well, sar, seems it was … it was five days before yesterday—no, make that six, given we done come back, went back, come back again, and then up here fer a night. So, countin that, that’d be eight if’n today is one, what’s barely begun, otherwise seven not countin it.”

  The major glared at him, the heat of fury evident, his eyelids low. “Don’t you shovel that stinking peat at me, Spadebreaker, you simpleton. Where are they?”

  “I told ya, sar, they’s at Hast by now.” He pretended not to see the malevolence in the major’s eyes. “If’n you’re worried they didn’t get there, just have old Jasper fix ya up with the general usin one of his fancy paper talkin spells. Ya can speak straight to the general yerself and verify he got em safe and sure by now.”

  “Why would you do that, Sergeant? Why?”

  “Why what? Why put ya in touch with the general, sar? Seems to make the most sense, what with ya worried about them tiles and all. Jasper can do it right quick, just say the word.” Ilbei had to concentrate to keep his eyes wide and innocent.

  “No, idiot. Why would you send them away, the crown molds?”

  “Oh. Beg yer pardon, sar. Yes, that. Well, it seemed like too much vital evidence fer us to pack around was all. Never know what might befall a feller out here, what with bandits, harpies and even ettins what supposedly used to be in this here cave.” He glanced at Gad Pander lying nearby and raised one bushy gray eyebrow. That was an awful lot of violence lying there.

  Anger burned behind the major’s glare. So much so that Ilbei knew for certain that whatever facts were missing were big. But for all the rage brimming there, the major had no more to say. He simply spun and stormed out of the chamber, apparently too riled to speak. Ilbei watched him go, then shook his head, not sure what to make of the man. A good ruffs player wouldn’t come so close to unraveling as all that.

  He crossed the room to where Gad Pander lay and took him by the arm, pulling him back up onto the rock he’d been seated on. “Are ya hurt worse than ya look?” he asked. He looked him over in the dim light that remained. His face seemed hardly human, lumpy and swollen as it was. “Even the likes of you deserves better than what ya got.”

  “Piss off,” Pander spat. Strands of bloody mucus flung out toward Ilbei, but snapped back elastically and stuck to Pander’s chin, red webbing that glinted wet and sticky in the torchlight.

  Ilbei shook his head again. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll take that to mean ya got no need fer me to help.” Then he too turned and left.

  Chapter 21

  Ilbei exited the small chamber and took a moment to look down the passage opposite, where the water was coming from. There was a strong smell of lead coming from that way, so he followed it out of curiosity. The passage bent back and forth, and soon the light coming from the chamber he
’d just exited no longer served. Just as he was about to give up on it, he noticed a soft blue glow tracing the outline of a curve ahead. He went straight to it and found himself in a low-ceilinged natural chamber where water trickled down from above. The water fell in twisting ropes, glinting like silver in the blue glow as they stirred the surface of a small pool. The light came from luminous fungal blooms that grew around the pool, some creeping up the wall and others around the edge. Illuminated by the fungus, but not luminous themselves, were other growths within the pool, identical in appearance but not glowing for some reason. All were bulbous and knotty, a few nearly as big as his head, and the smallest hardly as large as his thumb.

  Ilbei’s thirst was upon him the moment he saw the water, and given that there were several buckets and several tin cups set about, Ilbei dropped to his knees and stooped down toward the surface, intent on a drink. As he dipped his cupped hands into the water, he noticed gray foam floating around the edge of the pond. He pulled his hands out. He didn’t need to smell it to know what it was. Gad Pander and his men used the pond to separate the lead. The foam floated all around the side of the pond opposite the glowing fungus, and beneath it, heavier sediments slicked the bottom. He went to where the stream ran out of the chamber and found metal plates placed there, meant to catch the slurry when Pander and his people worked back here. He was just beginning to wonder what kind of idiot would do such work at the head of the only water supply around, when he realized why the buckets and cups were there.

  He rose and took one of the cups, holding it into a trickle of water falling from the roof. It smelled clean to his sensitive nostrils, and it tasted wonderful, like the very heart of Prosperion. He took a long draught and was refreshed. When he finished, he looked round for another way out and saw that there was none. He could see how an ettin would have found this cave a proper lair. Nothing to sneak in from behind, and water right on site, with little chance of flooding even in a wet year. Good place to set up a counterfeiting operation as well.