by Dale Lucas
The baron in question had been a longtime friend of Rem’s father, and had turned to his old friend in that time of turmoil for support. Rem’s father, regarding the baron as a good earner, a stout defender of the march’s borders, and a reliable retainer, was more than happy to march a company of his own men to the castle and meet the farmers on the field.
Rem watched from the battlements as those men—honest, hardworking plowmen who owned their farms and little plots of land outright, asking nothing more than a postponement of their annual tax payments so that their families could survive the winter after a bad harvest—were surrounded, threatened, and finally openly attacked. Four died that day, twenty more were injured badly or crippled for life, and the remainder fled the field, delivering their surplus to the baron before the week was out.
Let this be a lesson to you, Remeck, his father had said in the aftermath. The low-born will take all they can from you if you let them. Sometimes they need to be reminded just how lucky they are to own anything at all, and that what they do own is by your largesse and good graces alone. Fail to keep them in their place and they’ll walk all over you.
Rem supposed that might be true. But now he stood in a shield line, shoulder to shoulder with his fellow watchwardens, wearing mismatched bits of armor that were probably rusted before he was born, facing down an angry mob of Yenaran citizens whose demands for the release of their stonemason neighbors were both terrifying in their intensity and not wholly unreasonable. He understood their anger, as well as their determination to make the wardwatch the villains in all of this. Perhaps the watch could have handled things differently. Perhaps mediation of some sort, a dialogue, might have averted the bitterness and bloodshed that followed in the wake of the riot and the Panoply temple fire. At the very least, perhaps the remaining space in their dungeons needed to be filled with dwarven miscreants, and not just the men of the city who’d lashed out in anger at their smaller cousins.
But Rem supposed all of that was an academic question now. Here, in the present, there was only anger and unrest, shouts and demands. The crowd filled a good portion of Sygar’s Square before the watchkeep, and when they raised their voices as one, it made a deafening roar that drowned out all the sounds of the world and seemed to make the stone walls of the watchkeep itself shake on their foundations. Rem wasn’t sure if there was a plan in place, but there certainly didn’t seem to be.
This will end badly, Rem thought. These people—they just want to be heard. And us? We just want to survive the night. If they charge, we’ll fight to survive. If we advance, they’ll do the same. How in the world can we keep this situation from escalating? The casks are burning and the oil inside is already boiling. The only options are to flee, or stand fast when it all explodes.
To Rem’s right, something clonked against Emacca’s shield. Rem was fairly sure that it was just a clod of mud or horseshit, but the collision put him on edge. Emacca, to her credit, hadn’t even blinked. The former Tregga horsewoman, face grim beneath the long-healed ritual scars that decorated her cheeks, kept scanning the great mass of angry citizens before them as if the mob were a quiet tree line at the edge of a forest clearing.
Then there were more. Clonk, farther off to his left. Clonk, right beside him. Whiz, right over his helmeted head. Thump, right into his shield. The whole crowd was lobbing half-frozen loam and horse apples now. What had started as a sprinkling turned into a deluge.
“Shields up!” someone cried, and Rem obeyed. He raised his shield until its upper lip almost covered his field of vision. No mean feat, the damned thing was so heavy. A chorus of thumps, clonks, and clangs followed as stones, old fruit, mud, and excrement continued to arc out of the crowd. Rem stood fast, held his shield high, and kept his head down. There was no telling when it would end.
He heard bootheels behind him. When Rem craned his head sideways for a better look, he realized it was Hirk, in old, creaking armor of his own, running along with his head down, barking as he went.
“Ondego’s about to address them,” he said as he passed. After another minute or two of thumping and thwacking against their raised shields, the volley subsided. From the back of the line, Hirk shouted for the watchwardens to stand at attention. Rem lowered his shield again and drew his boots in beside one another, straightening his back. Though most of his body was still covered by the shield, its base now resting on the muddy ground, he still felt horribly exposed, standing right in front of an angry crowd. When he looked out across them, he saw that many had paused in midwindup, lumps of mud and steaming dung still in their hands. Rem stole a quick glance toward the front stairs of the watchkeep and saw Ondego descending. He wore a fine, well-cared-for old breastplate that looked to be of Loffmari make—one could always tell by the molded muscles and the angular geometric chasing. Decked out as he was in more or less a full suit of armor consisting of both mail and plates, the prefect of the watch had never looked more like a general. Rem supposed this must have been what Ondego looked like long before he came to Yenara, when he was still a campaigning mercenary, renowned across the known world as a fierce warrior and a hard leader of harder soldiers.
Ondego descended the watchkeep stairs. The line of watchwardens standing at attention split and allowed him to pass through. Fearless, he stepped out in front of his men, occupying the churned-up no-man’s-land between their shield wall and the front ranks of the protesters.
A few more clods of earth and shit arced toward Ondego, but he avoided them with ease. The man betrayed neither panic nor fear. He eyed the unruly throng as if they were a gaggle of teenage boy-soldiers in a barracks about to be given latrine duty. While the crowd continued to seethe and surge, Rem could clearly see that some of the folk at the fore had appraised Ondego and knew that this was an adversary not to be trifled with. Gradually their shouting and cursing subsided to a dull, indecorous murmur. Ondego waited. His stare—impossibly patient—suggested that he wouldn’t say a word until they closed their mouths, and that they would, most like, want to hear what he had to say.
Silence reigned at last—or the closest thing to it. Ondego drew a breath and spoke, projecting his voice like an actor holding forth from an amphitheater stage.
“I am the prefect!” he shouted. “This is my ward, and you’re all gathered in violation of its laws! Let it be known, here and now, that if anyone else casts a single stone our way, we’ll tread down the lot of you and drag those we can lay hands on back into our dungeons!”
Boos and hisses rose from the crowd. Someone tried to start a chant, but it didn’t catch on. Once more, Ondego waited until they grew silent.
“If you have demands,” he said, “I’ll hear them! If you’re just a mob out to entertain yourselves, I urge you to take your asses homeward forthwith, before you end up a guest in my watchkeep or a bloody salt mine! Now who’s willing to treat with me?”
The crowd began to titter. Small groups within the larger seemed to turn inward on themselves, as if trying to work out if there was a leader, and who that might be. While many of them argued or tried to press a single member of their little band forward, one man stepped out of the crowd, seemingly without any encouragement. He headed straight for Ondego.
Rem knew the man instantly: Hrissif, deputy steward of the Sixth Chapter of the Yenaran Stonemasons’ Guild.
Cack, Rem thought.
“You’re the leader?” Ondego asked.
Hrissif shook his head. “Just one of many. No one else was stepping forward, so I thought I might.”
Though Rem was still some distance away from where Hrissif and Ondego stood, he managed to hear most of what passed between them.
“Good man,” Ondego said, with real admiration. “Say what there is to say.”
“My name’s Hrissif,” the stonemason said. “I’m deputy steward of the Sixth.”
“Deputy steward, you say?” Ondego asked, then raised an eyebrow. “You’re lucky I don’t clap you in irons here and now and throw you in with the rest of
your brothers below.”
“Why don’t you, then?” Hrissif countered.
“Because I’m still listening,” Ondego said with a sigh. “Say your piece.”
Hrissif nodded. “Very well. I lost my own brother to dwarven violence, just last night. Now, the men of my guild are locked in your dungeons, even though we are the ones wronged—”
“Dwarven violence,” Ondego said, as though chewing on the words. “Has that been proven?”
Hrissif offered that familiar sneer of his. “Are you going to try to convince me they’re not responsible?”
“I read the reports,” Ondego said. “I don’t remember you describing a dwarven assailant.”
“Maybe not a dwarf,” Hrissif said, “but sent by them, I’m certain.”
“Until you can prove that,” Ondego said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your suspicions to yourself.”
Hrissif’s sneer broadened into a mordant, bemused grin. “You wardwatch cunts,” he said, shaking his head. “So sure you know it all.”
“Call us cunts again,” Ondego said, “and you can join your brother masons in the dungeons.”
Hrissif raised his voice now, still staring at Ondego but clearly addressing the crowd. “Did you hear that? The prefect doesn’t like to be called names! To have the honor of his precious wardwatch besmirched!”
The crowd booed and jeered. Rem knew exactly what Hrissif was angling for now, and wished he had the authority to step out of line and knock the man cold.
“Don’t talk to them,” Ondego said. “Talk to me. What is it you want?”
“These people,” Hrissif said, indicating the enormous crowd, “they’re only here because they think you’ve made a mistake.”
“Enlighten me,” Ondego said impatiently.
“You think we’re criminals, fine,” Hrissif said. “What I’d like to know—what everyone here would like to know—is why only those of our kind are in that dungeon. Where are the tonkers, eh? Surely, if two sides are trading bloody blows here, both should be questioned, shouldn’t they?”
“How do you know they’re not down there already?” Ondego asked. “Have you seen the inside of our dungeons?”
Hrissif opened his arms. “Take me down to look them over,” he said. “I’ll be happy to come back up here and tell everyone what I see.”
“No doubt you would,” Ondego said sourly. “What say you let me worry about who’s in the clink? You and yours worry about making sure the wives and children of the men we’ve arrested have food, rent, and warm beds for the days to come. Isn’t that what your guilds are supposed to do in times of trouble?”
“Show me the dungeons,” Hrissif said. “Let me ease the minds of these agitated people.”
“I’m inclined to show you the dungeons,” Ondego said slowly, “though I’m not sure I’d let you out again.”
“Hear that?” Hrissif asked, addressing the crowd again. “The prefect’s threatening me! Me! An innocent man! A man who just lost his brother to dwarven violence!” He turned away from Ondego, no longer even pretending that the prefect was his preferred audience. “Suddenly, when I come and beg justice of the authorities, I am the criminal!” he shouted to the crowd. “But what about the criminals in the Warrens, eh? Those bloody pickmonkeys? How many cells do they occupy? How many of them are crowding the Fifth’s dungeons as we speak?”
“If you’ve got stumps in your dungeons, Prefect,” someone shouted from the crowd, “we’d like to see them! And not just one or two! Parade the lot out here!”
A cheer answered that suggestion.
“Show us you’re holding both sides accountable, Prefect,” someone else cried from the back. “Then we’ll leave you to sort it all out!”
More cheers. Hrissif turned and stared at Ondego, holding out his arms in a gesture of smug exaltation.
Ondego looked as if he was about to answer.
Then, from the rear of the mob, someone screamed.
Rem raised his eyes and tried to get a better view. At the back the throng pressed and seethed, then seemed to tear right down the middle as a great many people in that part of the gathered mass became eager to flee. But those in flight were blocked by the sheer numbers on hand. As the crowd tried to split and scatter, Rem saw bodies churned underneath, heard people crying for aid, buried as the lurching mass tore itself to pieces.
A roar sounded out of the horde—hoarse, elemental, bestial. From his vantage point in the shield line, Rem saw people in the center of the crowd thrown left and right, as though something large and hulking were driving a wedge right through them. Ondego saw it, too, as did Hrissif. As the crowd dispersed, the prefect and the deputy steward slowly backed away from the turbulence toward the line of watchwardens behind them.
In the next instant the square fell into total pandemonium. Ondego grabbed Hrissif’s arm and tried to yank him toward the safety of the shield wall. Hrissif pulled away and retreated.
“The hell with you,” he spat. “You’ll not get me in your dungeons that way!”
“Don’t be a fool!” Ondego barked. “Get behind the line, man! Now!”
“Shields up!” Hirk shouted.
Rem and his companions fell into formation again, shields rising and jostling against one another as they prepared to meet whatever now drove a path through the center of the roiling mob.
“What is it?” one of the watchwardens on the line called.
“Gods defend us,” someone muttered nearby.
People from the crowd crashed into the shield wall, trying to press through, to flee the scene and leave the watchwardens to defend their retreat.
“Steady!” Rem heard Ondego shouting above the din. “Let the runners through but keep your shoulders close! We might have to tighten that wall with little notice!”
“Against what?” someone yelled.
Finally the crowd thinned enough for Rem to see clearly. All of Rem’s hopes that Torval’s strange theory about a dwarven vengeance demon and black magic had been unreasoned fears and idle fantasies evaporated. There, wading through the crowd, moving straight toward the shield line, was the Kothrum. Rem had never seen one, never heard the word spoken before that very night, but now, recalling Torval’s description of it, he knew there was nothing else it could be.
For a single moment, Rem’s mind unearthed childhood stories of grave dirt–smeared boggarts roaming the countryside in search of naughty children to flay and dismember for their supper. He recalled his old nurse’s bedtime tales about child-devouring trolls in the deepest woods and flesh-eating goblins haunting shady bridgeworks and dark, root-encrusted overhangs in twisty rivers. He remembered the stories told by him and his young friends when they were barely into adolescence about ghouls and wights lurking in local graveyards, visible only when the moon shone on the fog that choked the gravestones. This thing—this infernal, avenging angel of ash and bone and grave soil—was all of those childhood phantoms rolled into one.
And now the beast came right toward Rem and his companions. Nothing stood between the bone beast and the line of watchwardens behind their rusted old shields.
Someone suddenly stumbled into Rem’s field of vision—a lone member of the roiling crowd, seeking a path of escape.
It was Hrissif. He was confused by all the chaos and jostling bodies around him, tossed about by the human tide, thrown back time and again like a man on a reef pummeled by incoming waves. Too late he saw the Kothrum, almost upon him.
“Get out of there!” Rem shouted, in spite of himself.
Hrissif tried to do just that, lunging toward the shield wall. Before he’d gone even two strides, the Kothrum was upon him, moving right toward him, intent, purposeful, when all its previous movement had seemed mindless and haphazard. The creature yanked Hrissif backward in one huge hand, tossed him onto the ground, then lifted one heavy, flat foot and brought it crashing down upon him. Rem heard Hrissif’s ribs shatter, saw cloth and skin tear, smelt blood and shit on the cold, churned mud.
A gout of blood gushed from Hrissif’s open, screaming mouth, and then he was silent. With its next step, the Kothrum crushed Hrissif’s skull.
Someone appeared at Rem’s left and shoved their own shield into the line. It was Ondego, now wearing a helmet. The prefect bent into the same stance he’d demonstrated for his watchwardens at the start of this mess and shouted so that everyone could hear.
“Shields up! Close ranks! Dig in your heels, the lot of you!”
Rem did as his prefect commanded. All around him he felt the line of his compatriots doing the same. Their shields were interleaved, each broad curve protecting the wielder’s front and the right side of the man or woman to their left.
Standing there on Hrissif’s smashed, pulverized corpse, the Kothrum seemed to take a moment. It was like watching a hunting hound that had run down its prey work out what came next.
The Kothrum turned its fiery gaze on the shield wall. For a moment Rem thought it was looking at him, but that wasn’t it. No, the beast was looking through him—through their shields, through the barrier they offered—its burning glare fixed right on the watchkeep behind them.
Then the beast plowed forward and hit the line, slamming into Ondego’s shield, sweeping its enormous arms left and right. For just a moment Rem could smell it—damp earth, funereal ash, the coppery reek of fresh blood, and the sulfuric stench of hellfire.