by Dale Lucas
Bjalki stood again, toe to toe with the beast.
“I command you to stand down!” he shouted. “There will be no more murders! No more justice! I revoke my summons!”
The Kothrum stared, doing nothing.
“Will you obey me in this?” Bjalki asked.
The Kothrum shook its head slowly.
“But I command you!” Bjalki said. “I summoned you!”
The Kothrum nodded.
“But you will not obey when I try to revoke that summons?”
The Kothrum shook its head.
“What will you do, then?” he asked, starting to realize how foolish he sounded. “Now that you’ve begun, you’ll not stop until the warrant I gave you is satisfied? Until all those marked men are dead?”
As he’d dreaded, the Kothrum gave a single curt nod.
“No,” Bjalki said, shaking his head. His knees buckled beneath him. “No, this isn’t what I wanted … It can’t be …”
The Kothrum offered no more responses. No nods, no shakings of its tiny head. It simply stared, even as tears filled Bjalki’s eyes and he became aware of the blood from the creature’s hands now staining his robes, now smeared on his face, imparted in their momentary contact when the thing had tossed him about the room.
The blood of the slain. Marking him. Condemning him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rem and Torval were just about done with their shift, trudging back to the watchkeep and dragging under the weight of their recently mandated armor, when they heard the scream of a watchwarden’s whistle just to the west of them. The partners exchanged mordant looks, sighed, then broke into a jog, heading off in the direction of the call. It took some searching—they pounded down the wrong street or alleyway at least twice in an effort to home in on the whistle calls—but finally they arrived at a short, bent lane between two larger thoroughfares, a depressingly ordinary street of shabby old boardinghouses and dingy little shop fronts. A crowd clotted the center of the street, right near the mouth of an alley. Flickering torchlight was visible deeper in the alleyway, throwing warm light and dancing shadows on the wide-eyed, staring faces of the gathered onlookers.
Torval led the way through the crowd, holding up his badge and barking that all the gawpers needed to make way for the wardwatch. Rem followed suit and noted uncomfortably that more than a few of the people present eyed Torval warily, as though he were vermin carrying some disease. That observation made Rem more than a little uneasy. He knew well that all over Yenara—especially in the Fifth Ward—there were neighborhoods where anyone with a badge was unwelcome and regarded with suspicion. But what he saw now—narrowed eyes, disgusted frowns, even a few whispers—seemed to have nothing to do with the two of them, or their office, but only with Torval specifically.
It’s spreading into the streets, he thought as they forced their way through the crowd. This business that began with a single group of humans and the dwarves. Soon enough it’ll turn into one of those bitter, bloody feuds that spiral into madness and stir hatred on both sides, with the original slight or insult long forgotten …
Gods of the Panoply, he prayed it never came to that.
At last they made it through the crowd and broke into the mouth of the alleyway. Four other watchwardens—Djubal and Klutch, Pettina and Firimol—were already present. Djubal and Klutch stood by with blazing torches, trying to light the grim tableau as Pettina—a compact, tattooed Kostermaid from the north whose well-honed tracking skills were often employed in just such a fashion, to parse murder sites for faint but usable clues—studied the mess before them. A few feet away, deeper in the alley, Watchwarden Firimol took testimony from a man whose choked, lowered voice Rem could barely hear and whose face he could not see.
Rem lowered his eyes to the body crumpled on the floor of the alley. He didn’t fancy himself of a sensitive bent, but the sight made his stomach churn a bit. Just beneath the smell of the resin torches he caught the charnel, coppery tang of blood and the musty barnyard scent of exposed organs—in this case the dead man’s dashed brains.
Torval groaned. “Sundry hells,” he said. “What befell that poor bastard?”
Djubal, skin dark and eyes bright, shrugged. “Your guess is as good as ours, old stump. This is how we found him.”
Rem studied the wall of the alley about six feet above the man’s lifeless body. There was a horrible garish splash of gore there, thickened by a few curds of brain matter, slowly coagulating as it dripped down the uneven surface of the wall.
“Head crushed against the stone?” Rem asked, by way of an affirmation.
“My guess,” Klutch said, moving the torch in his hand a little closer. “And look there—outside the main bloom. These two marks, and this third over here. What does that look like to you?”
“Fingers?” Torval asked.
“But what’s only got three fingers?” Klutch added.
“An orc that lost two?” Pettina offered from her crouch.
“Maybe a Kosterman wearing split mittens?” Djubal countered.
“It doesn’t have to be fingers,” Torval said impatiently. “Those could just be smears.”
“Or the smears of three fingers,” Rem offered, “when the murderer actually had five.”
“I’m a little more concerned about the force involved,” Djubal broke in. “Look at this poor sod’s head, will you?”
Rem and Torval crouched to get a better look. It was true—the victim’s skull had been smashed utterly, brains everywhere, face squished into a vile, narrow parody of a human visage, like a doll missing half its stuffing. Worse, the collapse of the victim’s skull and jawbone stretched his open mouth into an elongated oval that made it look as if he were yawning or screaming—a hideous detail that Rem half wished he could instantly forget.
“Who is he?” Torval asked.
“He’s my brother,” a hoarse voice answered. It was the man Firimol was questioning, just a few feet from them.
Rem recognized him instantly: Hrissif, that smirking stonemason who’d tried so mightily to blow them off the other night when they’d come to ask their questions.
“Well,” Torval said beside Rem. “Here’s a familiar face.”
Hrissif pushed past Firimol, leveling a finger at Torval. “I don’t want him here!” he said, and Rem saw something strange in the man’s manner—a true, bone-deep fear, an unspoken hysteria. Rem had pegged this fellow for the sort who was never rattled by anything—the sort more likely to do the rattling, and stay calm as a coiled adder all the while. But here, now, he could see clearly that the man seemed to literally hate and fear Torval, all at once. That he wasn’t simply grieving the loss of his brother—he was truly, deeply shaken by something.
Firimol edged up behind the stonemason. He was a strange, slender man—always seeming to Rem more like the fussy butler for some proud old patrician family or a canny artist of some sort than like a keeper of the peace. Nonetheless, everyone swore the man was most dependable on the streets, eager to keep the peace most of the time, quick to enforce it when things got out of hand, refined manners notwithstanding.
“Here now,” Firimol said to the agitated Hrissif. “Watchwarden Torval’s one of our best.”
“He’s one of them,” Hrissif said. “And if I were a betting man, I’d put this”—he pointed at the corpse—“at their doorstep.”
“Them,” Rem repeated. “You mean dwarves?”
“Of course,” Hrissif said. “The little pickmonkeys think we’re threatening them now, so they’re sending messages.”
“Mind your tongue,” Torval said, taking a single step toward the man.
Rem threw his arm in front of his partner, hoping that his attempt to quietly hold him back wouldn’t make the old stump more angry. “So,” Rem said slowly, “you’re saying dwarves did this? To your brother?”
Hrissif shook his head. “It wasn’t a dwarf,” he said. “It wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. But I’m betting they’re responsible, someh
ow.”
“He’s not making any sense,” Torval growled.
“I know what I saw!” Hrissif shouted. “At least—I don’t know what it was, but I know it was nothing natural.”
“Smelled like damp earth,” Firimol recited, clearly parroting some of what he’d gleaned in his conversation with Hrissif before their arrival. “A little taller than Hrissif. Wide shoulders. Big hands. Bones.”
“Bones?” Rem asked.
“Aye,” Hrissif said, nodding. “Studded with them, like. I couldn’t see clearly, it was dark, but the outline was somewhat clear, picked out by the starlight.”
“Smelled like earth,” Torval muttered, almost to himself, “and covered in bones …?”
Hrissif lunged at Torval. Firimol and Klutch caught him. “Don’t mock me!” the stonemason spat. “That’s my brother lying there! Look at his goddamned skull! Look at how he died! I’ve still got his blood on my face!”
Rem studied his long, angular face. He was right. For just a moment Rem entertained the possibility that Hrissif’s brother had died by Hrissif’s own hand. But no, that made no sense … His face was bloody but the rest of him was clean—especially his hands. And besides, he could not have done such a thing—crushed his brother’s skull so utterly—without a weapon of some sort. A sledgehammer or a giant stone block. And even then, the force required would certainly be greater than Hrissif’s ropy frame could produce, wouldn’t it?
As Rem shook his head, chasing away that momentary consideration, he caught sight of Torval, lingering just beside him. The dwarf had a puzzling look on his face—blank and pensive, as if something Hrissif had said had jogged a memory within him.
“Torval?” Rem asked, trying to get his stunned partner’s attention.
“Its eyes,” Hrissif said, now appealing to anyone who would listen, turning his desperate, hounded gaze on each of the watchwardens present in turn. “Its eyes burned, like two infernal fires in deep stone pits. I’ve heard stories, had nightmares, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in the flesh. Not ever. It’s some kind of foul dwarven magic, I tell you—”
“You need to stop,” Rem said, stepping close to the man and speaking as quietly as he could. “If you say another word about dwarves or what blame should be laid upon them—”
Hrissif sneered, but there was a terrible sadness behind the expression now, as though he pitied Rem. Pitied his naivety. “You won’t even stick up for your own kind?”
Rem jerked his head toward Torval. “See that badge he wears? That makes him my kind. But you, sir … you’re a stranger.”
Hrissif stared at Rem for a moment, studying him, appraising him. Rem never let his gaze waver. Look here, he thought, right into my eyes. Measure me and tell me what you find. I won’t back down on this.
Then, as if he realized that there was no intimidating Rem—no shaming him—Hrissif swung his gaze aside and focused on something else. A moment too late, Rem realized what it was.
The crowd, just beyond the mouth of the alley.
“Do you see this?” Hrissif shouted. “Here lies a man—my own brother—dead! Murdered! And when I offer my suspicions, these fools with their badges try to tell me I’m wrong—because it’s inconvenient! Because the enemy”—he leveled a finger at Torval—“is one of them!”
The crowd beyond the alley’s mouth began to rumble and murmur.
Rem looked to Torval, half expecting his partner to unleash himself on Hrissif, to defend his own honor if not the honor of his people. But to Rem’s great astonishment, Torval offered no such rebuttal. Instead he just stood staring at the ruined corpse of Hrissif’s poor dead brother, that dazed, puzzled look still on his broad face.
What’s gotten into him? Rem wondered. Since when does Torval let insults pass so easily?
“What do you wager,” Hrissif began, voice rising, still addressing the crowd, “that it’s dwarven gold paying the wages of these sorry, whoring head-breakers?”
Rem lost control. Almost without realizing what he was doing, his fists balled around Hrissif’s cloak and he threw the man right into the wall of the alley. He heard the stonemason’s head thump against the brick and saw the dazed look in his eyes—shock at Rem’s sudden rage, a wincing against the pain of his ringing skull.
“Shut your mouth!” Rem hissed, shaking the stonemason. “Don’t say another gods-damned word—”
Rem felt hands clutching at him, arms folding round him, trying to yank him away from their witness.
“Not helping,” Djubal said.
“That’ll get us nowhere,” Firimol whispered.
“You see that?” Hrissif was shouting now, still addressing his audience in his daze. “My arrow hit too close to the mark, I’d say. What does that tell you?”
Firimol yanked Hrissif aside, then shoved him along, deeper into the alley. “We’re finished here,” he said. “You can go, sir.”
Hrissif took a step back toward them. “I want my brother’s body,” he began.
“When we’ve finished,” Firimol said. “I’ll deliver it myself. Go, now, before you make this any worse.”
Rem glanced at the crowd, just a stone’s throw from them. Judging by the looks on some of their faces, the way they whispered and shook their heads, Hrissif already had. And Rem had played right into his hands.
Hrissif snorted and tugged his cloak closer around him. “I’ll expect him at the guildhall by sunrise,” he said. “Fail to deliver him and I’ll see that each and every one of you pays for what you’ve done tonight.”
And with that he was off.
Rem looked to Djubal, who still held him. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No apologies,” Djubal said quietly, and let go of him. “I was on the verge myself.”
“That wasn’t our first run-in with him,” Rem said. “And I’m guessing it won’t be our last.”
“Gentlemen!” Pettina chimed in. She’d moved away from the argument and taken a torch deeper into the alley. Clearly, by the way she stood, staring at the muddy floor of the byway with her torch lowered for better light, she’d found something.
They all hurried to her side. To Rem’s great relief, Torval finally seemed to snap out of his daze, and he joined them. Rem heard the crowd at the mouth of the alley surge forward to see what the watchwardens had found. Djubal and Firimol doubled back to block their way and urge them to keep their distance.
Pettina pointed at a section of the alley floor that was more mud than detritus or rubbish: a two-yard span that allowed for clearer footprints to be made by anyone passing through. She gestured to one track of human feet moving along the length of the alley toward where Hrissif’s brother lay, stiffening.
“Those are the brothers’ prints,” she said. Then she pointed to something else: a strange agglomeration of footprints that didn’t look like feet at all. They were instead strange round depressions in the mud, easily a foot in diameter, but sporting nothing like the contours or textures left by the bare or booted feet of anything in the known world. And yet those strange, circular depressions were arranged and spaced in such a way as to clearly suggest footsteps.
“What in the sundry hells?” Rem muttered.
“Footprints,” Torval said, that single word carrying a terrible, ominous weight.
“There is our murderer,” Pettina said grimly. “And Hrissif was right: it wasn’t human.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The day was waning, dusk just an hour or two away, when Bjalki arrived at the conclave of elders. Those present included the ethnarch, his good wife, Trade Minister Broon, Elder Hrothwar, Arbiter Haefred, and Bjalki himself. Eldgrim’s ever-present, ever-silent secretary—recording their minutes—haunted the proceedings like a shadowy spirit, and Godrumm, the captain of the Swords of Eld, stood by in silence, usually content to listen without chiming in. Bjalki knew not who had called the meeting, nor why, precisely. He knew only that it was of some import, because the audience chamber had been cleared and the mood upon tho
se gathered was grim and silent. Bjalki wondered if it had something to do with him, for he was the last to arrive, and all their eyes swung toward him when he did, weighing him down with silent recriminations the moment he slipped into the room.
“Am I late?” he asked.
“Not late,” Eldgrim said, “but last. Come, sit.” They were all gathered at the great conference table, beer, bread, cheese, and a half-carved ham laid out untouched before them.
Bjalki took an empty seat between Hrothwar and Godrumm. The captain of the house guard’s chest and shoulders rose and fell like a bellows as if he was trying to calm himself, regain himself, after some outburst.
After a long, awkward silence, Lady Leffi leaned forward. “It appears that someone murdered a stonemason in the Fifth Ward last night,” she said slowly. “A member of the very same chapter that lost their contract to our laborers. The man’s death is seen as both malicious and suspicious.”
Bjalki kept his eyes down. He remembered greeting the Kothrum when it returned to him, underground, in the wee hours of the morning. Its dreadful, bony hands stained dark with blood and clotted with something Bjalki opted not to analyze too closely. It had displayed those stained hands proudly for its master, as though it were a child, its fingers splashed with finger paint.
Bjalki’s memory of the predawn hours was interrupted as Eldgrim muttered something and shifted in his seat. Leffi waited for a moment, expecting him to say something. He did not. She carried on. “Naturally, given the hostilities of late between these craftsmen and our own, suspicions fall upon us, or someone in this community.”
“Did they report the manner of this man’s death?” Haefred asked.
“Apparently,” Leffi said, “his skull was crushed. Upon a wall.”
“I swear,” Godrumm broke in, “that neither I nor any of the men in the Swords of Eld had anything to do with this man’s murder … though I wish we had.”