Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  Based on what Rem now saw through that little window, he guessed it might be everyone …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Torval first stopped in at the dormitories where Tav and his fellow apprentices were housed, a collection of broad slate-roofed buildings huddled just outside the citadel’s walls. The proctor informed Torval that Tavarix had been summoned to the ethnarch’s house some time ago, just after the apprentices’ return. If the boy had not been sent home, then it was possible he was being guarded there. Torval thanked the proctor and stalked off toward the citadel gates. Somehow he doubted that Tav was being kept in the ethnarch’s manse to assure his safety …

  The gate guards readily admitted him. Within the compound things were silent and still, as though everyone was already in bed or engaged in other pursuits. Only a few lamps burned in the windows of the ethnarch’s palace, while the great temple across the courtyard was so dark and quiet that it seemed deserted. Torval carried only his maul, leaving his sword and quartet of daggers in their sheaths. With luck he could convince them that he only wanted Tav and that he didn’t give a miner’s flaming fart for any other concern. If they thought it in their best interest to release the boy without a bloody contest, they just might do so, no matter how much they hated him or what he represented.

  Or maybe, he thought grimly, Eldgrim will try to teach me a lesson … put me in my place … humble me before my boy.

  And that was what the blades were for, wasn’t it?

  Two more guards urged Torval through the doors of the manse without challenge. The great banded doors groaned on their iron hinges, and a little warmth from within wafted out into the night, strangely comforting against the biting winter air. Without bothering to peer in to see what he was walking into, Torval stepped through the open portal and heard the door shut with a tomb-like finality behind him.

  Torval stopped just inside the doorway and studied the broad, high-ceilinged foyer before him. A house porter—bald on top, hair long and plaited in the back, smooth, silky beard falling in a gray cascade against his barrel chest—busily rearranged logs in the massive fireplace that dominated the wall to Torval’s left. Hearing the groan of the door, the porter turned to look. He gave the logs on the fire a last annoyed shove with the iron poker in his hand, then rose and crossed the marble floor toward Torval.

  “You are expected,” the porter said, head high and shoulders square, like any good butler.

  “Then take me to the ethnarch,” Torval said slowly. “Sooner begun is sooner done.”

  The porter had opened his mouth, no doubt about to respond in the affirmative, when another set of heavy hinges gave a metallic creak. Beside the enormous fireplace, the oaken doors that led from the grand foyer into the audience chamber swung open. Eldgrim stood there, a pair of armored members of the Swords of Eld just a few paces behind him.

  “There he is,” the ethnarch said, with a strange sort of relish. “Our wayward son, returned.”

  Torval felt his muscles tense, a wholly unconscious, anticipatory response. Eldgrim was planning something. This parley would not go as he’d hoped.

  “Where is Tavarix?” Torval demanded.

  Eldgrim strode into the foyer, his guards following. He wore his familiar long, ermine-lined cloak of command—a regal symbol, sumptuous and indicative of his importance—but Torval noticed something else about him that once more put him on guard. Beneath his cloak the ethnarch wore a breastplate. It was the ceremonial sort—lightweight steel, busy with decorative chasing and inlays—but no less effective for all that embellishment.

  “Your boy is here, Son of Jarvi. Safe. Safer than he would ever be in those streets, or under your protection.”

  Torval sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you, Eldgrim, just give me my boy and let us be on our way. You gain nothing by refusing me.”

  “Guards!” Eldgrim roared. He had crossed the room now and arrived at its center. The Swords of Eld must have been nearby, because Torval heard their heavy, tramping footsteps almost instantly in answer to Eldgrim’s summons, along with the rattle of their armor and the creak of leather harnesses. In moments a sextet of guardsmen in their familiar blue-gray surcoats and square-scaled mail pounded into the room from a side corridor. They formed a straight, well-spaced line across the width of the room, from the door beneath the great staircase that they’d emerged from to the fireplace on the far wall. They all bore shields. Two had swords, one carried a great battle-ax, and the other three had matching spears.

  Torval felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He still hadn’t seen Tav, and Eldgrim was offering a rather vulgar display of force. None of it boded well.

  I knelt before this pig once, Torval thought. I’ll not give him the satisfaction a second time. And by all the gods and forebears, if he’s harmed a single hair on Tav’s precious head …

  “I am Eldgrim Sastrummsson,” the ethnarch now said, voice ringing with pride and pretension. “For twenty generations my forebears have been arbiters, magistrates, and custodians of the laws of our people. I came here—was sent here—to be the pillar of strength, justice, and righteousness for Hallir’s Folk in this foreign territory. By virtue of those laws and my birth, I am the sole and sovereign authority over our people in this house and throughout the city beyond. I am not bound to grant you anything, Torval, Son of Jarvi, until you acknowledge my authority.”

  Torval considered his words carefully. Before saying what he wanted to say—what every drop of blood in his body and every bone beneath his flesh exhorted him to say—he drew a deep breath and made one last petition.

  “Show me my son,” Torval said to Eldgrim. “Let me see that he’s safe before we take this any further.”

  Eldgrim seemed to weigh those words for a long time, then gave a curt nod. “Captain!”

  On the balcony above them, at the head of the great curving staircase that dominated the right side of the grand foyer, Captain Godrumm, commander of the Swords of Eld, appeared from a side hall. Tavarix walked before him, the captain’s heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. When Tav emerged and saw his father below, he lunged for the stone railing of the balcony.

  “Papa!” he shouted.

  Torval’s heart almost stopped beating. The boy looked untouched, perfectly healthy, but there was terror in his voice. Godrumm grabbed Tav’s collar and yanked him back from the railing before he had a chance to say anything else. It took every ounce of self-control that Torval had to keep from roaring like a rabid bear and charging up that staircase.

  “Don’t touch him!” Torval shouted, leveling his maul at the captain across the great span that separated them. “Lay hands on my son again, and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Eldgrim interrupted. Torval looked once more to the ethnarch. Above, at the periphery of his vision, he saw the captain of the house guard urging Tavarix onward, down the stairs.

  “This is beneath you,” Torval said, trying to appeal to the ethnarch’s self-importance. “Threatening a boy who never hurt you, provoking violence from a dwarf who would just as soon leave this place and never darken your doorstep again.”

  “I disagree,” Eldgrim said. “This is precisely why I was made ethnarch in Yenara—why our elders in Bolmakünde sent me here. This world that we move in and ply our trades in, it does not want us. It hates us, in fact, for it knows that we are outside it and beyond its petty concerns. My whole purpose—my reason for being—is to protect our people here and remind them who they are, and where they came from.”

  “As you never fail to remind me,” Torval countered. “Not only where I came from, but how right it was that I should have been exiled from there.”

  “You are an exile, true,” Eldgrim said, and Torval thought he sensed some sadness in the ethnarch’s voice. “But that boy, as you are so fond of pointing out, is innocent. He should not have to pay for your mistakes, nor should he have to live beneath the yoke of your shame, your unworthiness.”

  Torval took a step forward.
“I’m warning you, Eldgrim.”

  “No,” the ethnarch said, “I am warning you, Torval, Son of Jarvi. If you persist, you will bleed and you will die. That boy is under my protection now, has become my responsibility. While the tall folk hunt us and smite us, I can protect him, whereas you cannot. You have neither the mettle nor the authority.”

  “I am his father,” Torval answered. “That is all the authority I need. As to my mettle—”

  “Take him!” the ethnarch suddenly shouted.

  Three of the guards—two spears and the battle-ax—broke from the line behind Eldgrim and charged across the marble floor. Torval stepped forward, drew his sword to join his maul, then roared an order of his own.

  “Stop!” he barked.

  The soldiers stopped. They did not look intimidated, precisely, just curious.

  Torval eyed each of them in turn, then pressed on. “My name is Torval, Son of Jarvi. I am a watchwarden in this city, and I have come here on business of my own, as one of your kin—”

  “I said,” Eldgrim roared, “take him!”

  To Torval’s great amazement—and great relief—the guards still stood, listening.

  “You’ve all heard me make demands of this ethnarch,” he pressed on, “fair demands, and honest. If you cross steel with me now, shed blood now, it is because that dwarf, in his ermine cloak, refuses to treat honorably with me.”

  “Now!” Eldgrim pressed.

  The guards started forward again. Torval took one long stride forward to meet them. His movement stopped them in their tracks. The four of them stood frozen—Torval and his three opponents separated by just a cart length, weapons ready, each on guard.

  “Withdraw now and there shall be no quarrel between us!” Torval said hurriedly. “Advance and you bleed!”

  The captain spoke from the staircase. “The ethnarch gave you orders.”

  Two guards charged. The third, the one with the battle-ax, hung back. Torval bent to his bloody work.

  They were good, he gave them that. The two spearmen coordinated their attacks, one engaging directly while the other circled to try to draw blood from Torval’s exposed flank. Torval had mauled his way out of enough bar brawls to know how that sort of coordination went, though, and what was required to counter it. He traded fierce blows with each of his opponents, parrying spearheads with sword or maul, using his blade to thrust his adversaries’ shafts aside and open their defenses. He aimed for their soft bits, their joints, anything that would give him an advantage. The spears were formidable, but they were also clumsy for close combat. He only hoped he could use that to his advantage.

  Steel rang, squealed, rasped. Torval and his enemies grunted and barked. In the midst of his onslaught and defense, Torval managed to connect his maul to one dwarf’s ribs. He heard a sickening crack below the dwarf’s scaled mail, then his adversary doubled over, falling to the floor.

  Torval did not wait to see him fall. He whirled on the other to deflect his thrusting spear attacks. Sword and maul were employed in equal measure to fend off his blows before Torval finally managed to land a stunning strike that broke his opponent’s shaft hand and sent his spear clattering to the floor. As the dwarven guard raised his shield and charged—a last-ditch attempt to put Torval on his back—Torval brought his maul around in a flat arc above the lip of the shield. The war hammer’s blunt head rang on the guard’s helmet and he toppled like a sack of turnips. The other guard, still rolling on the floor with the pain of his broken ribs, quickly scurried aside when Torval turned to check on him.

  On came the next, howling mad, battle-ax raised high for a skull-splitting strike. In the bare seconds Torval had remaining before the guardsman was upon him, he dropped both sword and maul, snatched up one of the fallen spears, then lifted the shaft two-handed to meet the falling blade. The blade’s keen edge dug deep into the ash shaft but did not break it. The guard tried to pull the battle-ax loose, but it held. Torval tried to use his grip on the spear shaft to yank the weapon from the guard’s hands, but the dwarf’s grasp never slipped.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  It was the Lady Leffi, frozen in the doorway to the audience chamber beside Trade Minister Broon and the young priest Bjalki. Torval guessed they had heard the ringing and grunting. A moment after the lady spoke, Torval’s opponent turned his head, just the slightest bit, toward the sound of her voice.

  Torval seized the moment. With both hands he wrenched the spear shaft sideways. The battle-ax left the guard’s sweating hands, dislodged from the shaft, and hit the marble floor with a terrible clatter. Before the guard could right himself or dive for his weapon, Torval swung the blunt end of the spear upward, right under the guard’s mail shirt, toward his testicles. The guard bent forward to try to save himself the pain that was about to come—and that’s when Torval had him. Abandoning his nut strike, Torval shifted his weight and reversed his swing, connecting the shaft’s other end—just below the sharpened point—with the guard’s helmeted head. The dwarf hit the floor, dazed and groaning.

  Torval looked to the newcomers—the ethnarch’s wife, the trade minister, the priest—and made sure he held them with a damning gaze as he struggled to catch his breath. His fallen adversaries moaned around him, slowly crawling out of reach.

  Torval heard more bootheels. Moments later a new contingent of house guards arrived, some from the corridor beneath the staircase, others at the top of the stairs and fanning out across the balcony. Godrumm had stopped halfway down those stairs, with Tavarix still held tight by the collar of his tunic. The boy stood, scared to move, beseeching his father with his eyes, though Torval could not tell if it was rescuing he wanted or simply his father’s withdrawal, to spare any more bloodshed.

  It would have to be rescuing. Torval wasn’t leaving without him.

  “Let all bear witness,” Torval said, addressing the wide-eyed Lady Leffi and her companions. “I’ve come for my son, and the ethnarch refuses to hand him over.”

  “Eldgrim,” Leffi said, “this is foolish, wasteful—”

  “Quiet!” the ethnarch roared. “I am sovereign here, and I will decide what is foolish and wasteful.”

  “Do not test me!” Torval answered, now facing the ethnarch. As he spoke, he snatched up his fallen sword and maul again. They felt good in his hands. “I told you I wanted Tavarix returned to me. Honor your word, you son of a whore, or I’ll leave every guard in this house broken, bloodied, and worthless for further service.”

  “He boasts,” Eldgrim said, addressing all present—including his guards.

  Torval spat on the floor. “Ask these who lie at my feet if I boast.”

  “You are strong,” the ethnarch said. “You are fierce. In your own mind you might think you’re brave, but I think you’re stupid, like an angry ox that won’t be broken to the yoke.”

  “Husband, please,” Leffi began.

  “Silence, woman,” Eldgrim snapped.

  “There’s no need for this,” the priest, Bjalki, said from the Lady Leffi’s elbow. “Can we not settle this—”

  “There is nothing to settle,” Eldgrim said slowly. “This dwarf is a disgrace. He was cast out for defying the laws of our people, and now he would come here—into this house—and make demands that further undermine the gods-ordained order that we hold dear. Why we ever agreed to school his spawn after he’d so stained the boy with his own failings remains a mystery to me …”

  “Call my boy stained again,” Torval said, “and I will kill you.”

  “And why should you care what I say?” Eldgrim countered. “You criminal. You broken, isolated little castaway. Clearly you left your home and your kind because you knew better. You were stronger than us, braver than us, above our traditions, our justice. Why should you bristle now if I call that little whelp of yours stained, or an outcast, or a shameful mistake, wrought upon the world by you? Unless there is truth in it … unless, deep down, you believe it.”

  Torval knew the ethnarch was trying to
bait him—to get him to fly into a rage and make a mistake. He wasn’t entirely sure he could resist taking that bait.

  Rem would be proud, he thought absently. The very fact that I haven’t slain this fool yet shows I’m not the dwarf I once was …

  Eldgrim advanced now, all but swaggering as he crossed the marble floor. “We should do that boy a favor and make sure you take your last breath tonight, so that he can find a new family—a new father—worthy of his birthright as one of Hallir’s Folk.”

  “Stop it!” Bjalki shouted, stumbling forward as he did. “Stop it, milord, I beg you! We cannot have this!”

  “We most certainly cannot,” said Trade Minister Broon.

  “Save your breath,” Lady Leffi said, and Torval heard both exasperation and resignation in her voice. “He’s not listening any longer.”

  Eldgrim’s head snapped toward his wife. He speared her with a burning, hateful glare, but Torval saw clearly that the lady would not back down.

  “Milord,” the young priest now said, standing in Eldgrim’s path, “has enough dwarven blood not been shed already?”

  “Get back in your corner, cur,” Eldgrim snarled, then struck the priest backhanded. The priest hit the floor in a heap. Torval took a step forward, something about Eldgrim’s violent rebuff of the young cleric giving his already-heated blood a sudden stir. The young priest raised his sad eyes to Torval. He waved him off.

  That’s when Eldgrim threw off his cloak, revealing the fine ceremonial armor that he wore beneath … and the heavy sword sheathed at his hip.

  “I’ll do it myself, then,” Eldgrim said, then loosed his blade and charged across the floor toward Torval.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Once, when he was a youth in Lycos Vale, Rem had seen a crowd of angry yeoman farmers gather in force outside a local baron’s castle. It had been a bad summer, at first too dry to get the crops seeded, then too rainy for the late-planted crops to take hold and flourish. By harvest time most of the farms in the area, serfs’ and yeomen’s, had struggled to produce a yield of any sort. Of course, since the local lords took their share first, they left most of those farmers with nothing to stock their own stores for the winter, let alone surplus to sell at market. When the farmers banded together to beg a reprieve from their annual duties, the baron and his peers refused, and fined the farmers by taking a deeper cut of their produce. In a single case, when the house guards of the local lord came to collect their due, the farmer they’d come to visit put up a bloody fight, and ended up dead and bleeding in a puddle of mud. It was soon after that bit of bloody business that the yeomen of the region banded together, marched to the baron’s castle, and camped before his gates, demanding to be negotiated with and dealt with reasonably and compassionately.