Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  “The reconciled Aemon shan’t let this pass,” one older man whispered to his apprentice-age son—the boy a well-known friend of Grendan’s, nigh inconsolable since his companion’s death. “There shall be justice, lad,” the father assured his boy. “That’s a fact. Bank on it.”

  Valaric needed to be away from it all, if only for a moment. Perhaps he should go to the stores and fetch up another cask of ale. The strong stuff, so as to calm them all and urge them to sleep. True, the whole point of their vigil was to avoid just that, but they hadn’t stopped drinking, had they? And, truth be told, he had no words left to calm them. His last, best hope to keep them from whipping themselves into a frenzy was to slowly, surely anaesthetize them with drink. So what if they all passed out before morning? At least that would keep them from taking their rage into the streets.

  It wasn’t a long walk to the dwarven quarter, after all. Not for angry men.

  Valaric rose and crossed the room, heading for the back corridor that led to the kitchens and pantry stores. Just as he rounded the corner, leaving the common room behind him, someone started to sing “Weeding the Garden.”

  Valaric froze where he stood, out of sight, but still capable of hearing the words as the men sung them. “Weeding the Garden” was an old crusader’s shanty about the primacy of mankind beside the inhuman otherness of all the other sentient races of the world. It was a marching song from the plague years, and its jaunty tune, well timed for a company of marching men, belied the bitter, hateful nature of its words. Almost every man of Valaric’s grandfather’s or father’s generation knew the song, but Valaric had always half hoped it would die out among the men of his generation, and especially among those younger. Apparently it had not. Hearing it bellowed forth now, strong and vibrant, in the midst of their mourning, gave him no pleasure.

  How did we come to this? he wondered. When we went down there, to the dwarven quarter, it was just to make our cause known. To treat with the people. To be heard. We meant no harm.

  But we did harm, didn’t we?

  Hrissif, did, anyway. Rabble-rousing fool.

  But Hrissif didn’t beat Grendan, did he? Didn’t crush his hands and break his bones and leave him gasping for breath and dying. Maybe we started a bit of a row, but is that any excuse for what happened to the boy? What was the true cost of the upset we caused? A few broken pots? Some torn awnings? Ruffled feathers and shattered windows? Material damage hardly equaled cruelty and murder, did it?

  Did it?

  Moment by moment, verse by verse, “Weeding the Garden” grew louder. With each repeated chorus, Valaric felt a terrible dread, like a poisonous vine, slowly climbing up the wall of his soul, spreading to engulf his heart, his lungs, his bones, his very being. They were so lost … so angry. What could he do to draw them back? Could he draw them back, before someone did something foolish and got themselves hurt?

  “You’re not singing,” someone said beside him. Valaric turned, suddenly ashamed and abashed, like a boy caught in some unnatural act by his mother. It was Hrissif, the smirking fool still holding that damned cup of his—eternally half-full—and staring at Valaric with a bemused disdain that made Valaric want to tear the man limb from limb.

  Internecine fighting of that sort would be pointless, though—and disrespectful to boot—so Valaric resisted the urge. He simply let his eyes settle back on the dregs of ale in his own cup. Silently he prayed for Hrissif to leave him be. His deputy steward moved closer anyway. They were all alone in the cramped, dark little corridor.

  “This is when they need you the most,” Hrissif whispered. “You’re their leader, after all. Lead them.”

  “Lead them to what?” Valaric hissed in answer. He did not want the men to hear the two of them talking like this. “We are grieving, Hrissif. This is a vigil. There is nothing to lead them to ’til dawn, when our vigil’s done. Then every man can lead himself to his bed.”

  Hrissif’s smirk widened. He leaned in. It was a conspiratorial gesture—one that suggested a close kinship between the two of them, making Valaric uncomfortable.

  “This vigil is for their sadness,” he said. “But what about their rage?”

  “What about it?” Valaric asked.

  “Don’t be coy,” Hrissif said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. They want justice. Do you think the wardwatch will give it to them?”

  “Won’t they?” Valaric asked, but he already knew the answer to that. He’d said as much, hadn’t he, when those two watchwardens had come around earlier?

  “Valaric,” Hrissif said, and the slow, measured tone of his voice grated on Valaric more than any of Hrissif’s snorts or asides or insults ever did. “We have been wronged. These men … our entire guild … every man, woman, and child of human birth in Yenara. We lost one of our own to the rancor of aliens—outsiders—and we know the authorities will not avenge that boy’s death. Should we let that stand? Should we not seek our own justice?”

  “We cannot,” Valaric said. “We’re stonemasons, Hrissif, not assassins or mercenaries.”

  “The only difference between a civilian and a soldier,” Hrissif said, “is a cause.”

  “Stop it,” Valaric said, perhaps too loudly. The men sang on. He hoped they had not heard him. Nonetheless, he could not let Hrissif’s provocations go unchallenged.

  He tried to continue, forcing himself to remain calm. “That sort of vengeance carries a price, Hrissif. Forgive me if I wager these men and their families are not equal to paying it.”

  “You underestimate them,” Hrissif said. “They set a fire readily enough, didn’t they?”

  Something snapped in Valaric. He knocked Hrissif’s cup away, then snatched his deputy’s tunic in both fists and slammed the wiry bastard into the wall.

  “You and your brother, you mean,” Valaric said. “And don’t think I don’t hold you fully responsible, even if he was beside you! Foelker wouldn’t swat a fly unless you told him to, but we all know that when you give orders, he follows them. Don’t try to convince me that half the guild crept in there with you last night and started that fire.”

  “You’d be surprised at how much help I had,” Hrissif said.

  “Shut your mouth,” Valaric hissed. “This—all of this—it was you. You started it all. And now it falls to me—to the rest of us—to try to clean it up.”

  “I started nothing,” Hrissif said, chancing a little smile. “We voted, remember? All but a minority favored a public demonstration, and you honored their wishes.”

  “A demonstration,” Valaric said, “not a riot.”

  “I broke some baked clay,” Hrissif said with a little shrug. “And what did they answer with? Cold-blooded murder! Grendan was just a boy, not seventeen—”

  Valaric slammed Hrissif against the plaster wall again. “Those men trust us to lead them,” he said through gritted teeth. “To guide them. We help them make good decisions—honorable decisions. What we touched off in the Warrens—that was not honorable!”

  “Wasn’t it?” Hrissif asked, one corner of his mouth curling now. “What else should we have done, eh? Those bloody pickmonkeys snatching our work—and our wages—right out from under us?”

  “We all bid on that contract, and they won it, fair and square.”

  “Fair?” Hrissif sneered. “What’s fair, Valaric? They’re not human. They barely sleep. They work an eighteen-hour day without a pause. They keep no holy days and see no honor in leisure, and so they can work all six days of the week. They were built to dig and burrow and scrape in the earth beneath our feet—what patron among all the gods of the Panoply made them our equals? Entitled to our labor, our wages, in our own gods-damned city? I promise you, if that had been an Aemonist temple and not one of those bloody god-choked Panoplist dens, the winds would have blown in our favor.”

  “Stop it,” Valaric said. “You’re turning a labor dispute into a holy war, and I won’t have it.”

  “Won’t have it?” Hrissif asked. “Last time I checke
d, master steward, you were elected to your position, not appointed by the reconciled Aemon himself. If you’re so squeamish about protecting the interests of these men, maybe I should move for a special election before the end of your appointed time?”

  Valaric slammed Hrissif into the wall again. Hrissif’s skull clopped hollowly off the plaster wall and he cursed in pain.

  Out in the common room, the song had not ended. It was louder than ever. It sounded as if every man had joined in—not a tongue idle, not a voice silent.

  As the men launched into a last, rousing rendition of the chorus, Hrissif smiled at Valaric. “Hear that?” he asked. “Sounds like holy war to me. And I didn’t even get them singing.”

  Valaric stared at his second and listened to the song his men sang in the next room. It stole all the fire from him. Slowly Valaric set Hrissif loose and stepped away. Hrissif propped himself upright against the wall and shook his head, clearing his scrambled senses. Glaring at Valaric, the smaller man straightened his tunic and flattened his ruffled hair.

  The song finally ended. The men cheered, whistled, and applauded, unified in both their grief and their fervor for justice.

  “We go back a long way,” Hrissif said to Valaric. “I’ve known you since you were an apprentice.”

  “And I you,” Valaric said.

  “For the life of me,” Hrissif said, “I never would have expected the man I’d come to admire and follow as a leader to prove himself such a coward. Such a bloody politician.” He sneered that last word as though it were a curse, the vilest of insults.

  “Blind violence isn’t the way,” Valaric said. “You’re smart enough to know that. Anything we do that makes us look like mere brutes.”

  Brutes, like the sort that would corner a frightened young man fleeing a riot. Brutes that mangled the boy’s face with their own stout fists. Brutes that crushed his hands with their stone-hammers. Brutes that answered violence against things with violence against flesh …

  “Anything that we do,” Hrissif countered, “to stake our claim and protect our laborers, we do as men, for men, and for all mankind. Those bloody tonkers in the Warrens have been living and breeding here long enough. Time they knew whose city this was and what comes of crossing true men, men of strength and honor.”

  Valaric was about to tell Hrissif that he was a fool—that there was no strength in wanton violence, no honor in letting his rage run wild—but Hrissif walked away before he could do so. Why did he feel so weak all of a sudden? So weary and aimless?

  From the common room he heard his deputy address all gathered. “Let’s drink to Grendan!” the deputy steward shouted. The men replied with, “Hear, hear!” When Valaric stepped back into the doorway and surveyed the room, their cups and mugs were still raised. All drank, their draughts long and deep.

  Hrissif raised his cup again. “Now let’s drink to the lot of us,” he said, moving through the room. “Let’s drink to our honor, that we might not soil it. To our courage, that we might not lose it. And to justice, that we might see it done, though all the world seems indifferent to our suffering.”

  Hear, hear, again. Everyone drank.

  Valaric knew he should say something, but he could not bring himself to do so. Why was that? Was it fear? Indifference? Weariness?

  There was something white hot and painful at the very center of him. Something that left a bitter taste on his tongue and made his fists shake where they lay flat against the knotty tabletop.

  What was its name?

  Maybe we were wrong to go there, he thought. Wrong to speak against them, wrong to break their bloody pots and their peddlers’ stalls. Wrong to run riot through their streets.

  But they killed Grendan. They drew blood. We cannot abide that, can we?

  “When do we hit them, then?”

  A number of voices chimed in accord. That’s right, they said. When? How? We should! We must!

  “No, no, no,” Hrissif said, but Valaric could hear the tone of disingenuous placation in his voice, the sense that his words were a game, meant to drive the men onward, not stop them in their tracks. “No, that won’t do. We’re stonemasons, lads—not assassins or mercenaries.”

  Groans and curses answered that statement. Hrissif threw a sideward glance at Valaric where he still sat. See? They’ll have none of your passivity. Your determination to forgive and forget.

  From across the room someone suddenly shouted, “I say we take to the streets right now—at this very moment—lay hands on the first dwarf we see, and make them pay!”

  Cries of assent. Cheers. Cups clacked and goblets clinked.

  “I say we go right to the dwarven temple,” a young man said. “Leave some choice words on their walls, a pailful of shit on their altars, and anything that’ll burn in flames!”

  More cheers. More rage.

  Valaric realized now why he could not name the feeling that stirred inside him. It was new to him, rarely encountered in everyday life, and even then usually chased away or suppressed as soon as he was aware of it. It coiled in his belly like a cold serpent, made his body tremble and shake, and turned his usually ordered thoughts into a cacophonic jumble within him. He could feel his own pulse in his temples. His hands shook as though he were caught in a blizzard.

  Rage. The very same feeling that his men felt at the moment. It had infected him all the while he’d been trying to deny its presence. But now, hearing their words, imagining just what sort of damage they could do to the dwarves and their sacred spaces if they set their minds to it … it all made Valaric drunk. More drunk, more intoxicated, than all the beer he’d been drinking through the night. He did not care for the feeling—hated it, in fact—but there was a delicious sort of comfort in accepting its presence, of stewing in it, bathing in it, and letting its venomous poison soak him all the way to the bone.

  We could simply scare the dwarves, he thought. Humble them. Let them see what happens when they cross us. I swear, Holy Aemon, I swear upon poor dead Grendan, I’ll not let my men hurt anyone, nor draw a drop of blood.

  But those dwarves should know fear. That Valaric could deliver, gladly.

  “What say we line the city walls with dwarven heads on pikes?” someone suggested. The cheers were deafening for that one.

  “What say we take their women?” another countered, the excitement clear in his voice. “Seed each and every one ’til they’ll only spit out half-breeds! See how those tonker bastards like a new generation a head taller than they!”

  “NO!”

  Everyone fell silent.

  For a moment Valaric wondered who had spoken—who had shut them up with a single short word. Then he realized it had been he. He stepped back into the room.

  “No,” he said again. “I’ll hear no more of this.”

  The men murmured.

  Hrissif watched, waited.

  “If we’re to strike terror into their hearts and yet protect ourselves,” Valaric said, “we must be more cunning than this. More subtle. There can be no random beatings. No rape. No haphazard desecration of their monuments. Whatever we do, henceforth, must be done deliberately—with forethought, intent, and dedication. Nothing less will do.”

  Valaric looked to Hrissif. Is this what you wanted? he almost asked. Is this the complicity you sought, you snake? Well, I see which way the wind blows. I hear their lamentations and their curses. These men are primed for action. I’ll be damned if I let you be the one to lead them.

  If I can’t stop them, I’ll aim them.

  And I always hit my target.

  “We shall strike,” Valaric said loudly. The men cheered. “We shall strike, and they shall bleed. We shall make our voices heard, and our words will move them to tears and shrivel their hearts with bitterness and loss. We’ll show them—we’ll show them all—that Yenara is a city of men! Built by men! For men!”

  The roar in answer filled the great room. The men sounded as if they’d just seen the greatest joust of their lives, the most stunning reversal i
n a tournament melee. They shook their fists and cheered and drank and threw their arms round one another and made merry. To see them in such a state made Valaric’s heart leap.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was strange for Rem to be in the streets, working a shift, while the sun still hung in the sky. Strange, also, to be rooted to a particular spot, guarding a prescribed location, instead of patrolling the streets. Stranger still was the chance to take in a Yenaran sunset while on duty, even on what promised to be a cold, wintery night. Such were the myriad glories, Rem supposed, of what Ondego called a “swing shift”—midday to midnight.

  Not so glorious were the circumstances. Rem and Torval had learned of their sudden shift change just as they’d finished their sundown-to-sunrise shift that very morning.

  “Go home and sleep,” Hirk had said when they returned to the watchkeep, the rising sun barely peeking over the eastern walls of the city outside. “We need you back by midday.”

  “You’re joking,” Rem said.

  “Bollocks,” Torval spat in disbelief.

  Ondego appeared then, looking glum as always. “He’s neither joking nor engaging in any commerce whatsoever with anyone’s bollocks.”

  “So what, then?” Torval asked.

  “I’ve decided we need a swing shift to bolster our presence on the streets during the high-traffic hours, and you two are on it.”

  “Cack,” Rem muttered.

  “I know it’s a steaming heap of horseshit,” the prefect said, sounding almost contrite, “but I need some of my best on this, and you two pillocky twats are that.”

  Only Ondego could compliment them and berate them in the same instant. The man was a masterly motivator.

  “You can both still take the following day off,” he continued, “but if I’m to grant you that, I need you two on this shift first. Understood?”

  Rem and Torval had answered with nods and terse grunts.

  “Sod off, then,” the prefect said. “Get some sleep. Report at midday to the Panoply temple site. Queydon will be the warden in charge on the scene, and she’ll give you your orders.”