by Tim Stead
“Thirty pennies,” he said. “And ten more for each glass you break.”
The old man paid. He poured the wine. Narak admired the colour. It was a deep, plum red, and when he took the scent, sipped it, it answered in every way.
“A fine wine,” he said.
“Pardon me for asking,” Cherat said, edging forwards, “but is Tegal going to get up any time soon?” He cast a nervous glance at the large man, who was still spread out on the floor. There were signs of movement, and a distinct groan from his direction.
“He might be stupid enough to try,” Deadbox said. “But I think he’ll be down until the watch arrives. The way he hit that table…” He shook his head.
“The watch?” That last thing that Narak wanted was to get into some sort of official encounter with the watch.
“Yes, I sent for them. My apprentice ran to fetch them.”
“Why?”
Deadbox saw that he was not exactly happy about it. “Don’t be concerned, friend,” he said. “They want Tegal. They want him quite badly, I think. He beat the wrong man, and they’ve been asking after him for days.”
The wrong man – somebody rich, somebody with friends. That was the way it always worked in the low city. Narak remembered that much. If men like Tegal stuck to beating their own kind, even to killing their own kind, they often got away with it for years. Even then it was usually a harder man of the same breed that stopped them, or the mob.
The watch duly arrived. There were five of them, swords drawn, ready for a fight. When they saw the condition that Tegal was in the swords vanished and they acquired a certain joviality. The officer, the watch leader by his insignia, came over to the bar while several men went to look at Tegal.
“So, can anyone tell me what happened?” the watch leader asked.
“Certainly,” Deadbox volunteered. “He tripped and fell on the table.”
Narak looked at the officer, expecting disbelief, but the man put his head back and laughed, a good belly laugh. When he stopped laughing he slapped the counter and ordered beer for all his men.
“You’re not troubled at the explanation?” Narak asked.
“Friend, if you’re the one that put him down the only reason I’d want to know your name is to make sure every watchman in the city got a chance to buy you a drink. That bastard knocked one of my men about so bad he’s going to be a week in monk’s house, and then a month off duty. He almost died. If someone told me the moon fell on Tegal’s head it’s all the same to me. We got him, and there’s a reward coming.”
The watch leader’s second approached, smiling broadly.
“He’s pretty banged up, sir,” he said.
“Details?”
“As far as I can tell, concussion, broken nose, dislocated shoulder, several cracked ribs and a broken foot. When he comes to his senses he’ll barely be able to walk.”
“Citizen here says he fell over,” the watch leader gestured to Deadbox, and the second grinned more widely.
“Reward?” It was Cherat who asked.
“A good one. Five gold guineas. Are you claiming it?”
Cherat looked at Narak, then away again. “No,” he said.
“It should go to this man,” Narak said, indicating Deadbox. “He sent for you.”
Deadbox looked at him with a mixture of surprise and gratitude in his eyes. Five gold guineas was a lot of money. He had no idea what the old man did, but he had an apprentice, so he must be a craftsman of some kind. Even so, it was a lot. Twenty pennies to a florin and twenty florins to a guinea – it was enough to feed a poor family for a year.
The watch leader didn’t miss anything. He looked at Narak more closely, his eyes picking out the swords, taking in the wiry, lean frame.
“I’d wager you were standing close to him when he fell,” he said, but he was still smiling.
“I was sitting,” Narak responded, and the watch leader laughed again.
“Now to business,” he said. “Your name, citizen?” He was looking at Deadbox.
“Alos,” Deadbox said. “Alos Stebbar, Carpenter, Kale Street.”
“I will see that you receive the reward.” He wrote a note on a scrap of paper. That done, he joined his men. By this time they had fetched a sort of stretcher from their watch house and they loaded Tegal onto it, being none too gentle about it. The man’s hands and feet had been bound. Even in his somewhat diminished condition they clearly considered him a threat.
Narak spent another hour in the tavern, mostly drinking to the good fortune of Alos Stebbar, otherwise Deadbox. It turned out that not only was the old man a carpenter, but most of his trade was coffins, and hence the familiar name. Narak enjoyed their company, and after a couple of drinks the journeymen became quite relaxed in his presence. He left them celebrating again after Alos had decided to give them the rest of the day off.
He had reached the door when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It was Alos. The old man looked up at him with a peculiar expression on his face, his eyes shining.
“What is it?” Narak asked.
“I am an old man,” he said. “I have seen many days, but this is the best day of my life. I am honoured beyond my ability to express it, Deus.”
Narak smiled. “How did you know?” he asked.
“There is an image in your temple, but such images can be many men, and yet it is a good likeness, and then there are the swords, but I did not dare to believe until you raised Tegal above your head as though he were a child. I know the old stories, all of them, and they are true to your spirit.”
Narak reached out and touched the old man’s head, gently.
“You are in my favour, Alos, but forgive me if I say that I hope to never need your particular services.”
* * * *
His mood was better as he walked up the Divine Stair. This was still the same city. It would probably always be the same city. He chided himself for thinking that it might have changed. There would always be people like Alos, like Cherat, even like Tegal. He had known them all four hundred years ago by different names and different faces. It was a simplification, of course, but as the years passed he found himself more prone to simplification. There would always be people who were good, bad and indifferent. It was the nature of things.
The stair was quite busy. By custom one walked up on the outside and down on the inside, and the custom had not changed in all these years. It gave him the chance to look out on the city as he climbed, and to marvel again at the construction of the great divine stair.
It was fifty feet wide, but no more than ten high. The stair was a great groove cut into the side of the butte so that the weight of rock above protected pilgrims from the rain. The outer edge was railed in parts, and supported against the possibility of collapse by a hundred massive columns. Most of the columns were inscribed with the name of a god, but because there were not a hundred gods some of the pillars remained virgin, worn only by the hands of a million passing people. One day the unmarked pillars might bear names. He knew that his own name was there, somewhere near the top, but he did not look for it. That column, Narak’s column, had been unclaimed when the stair was built. It was older even than he.
It did not take long to reach the top. The stair lost its roof and he emerged with the throng of pilgrims in front of the gates.
Before him the vast bleached oak gates to the City of Gods hung on their hinges, rusted wide in a terminal state of welcome. They had been strong once. They had been able to close, though that was so long ago that even Narak could not remember having seen it. Men and women ambled in and out, heads bowed against the sun and in some cases veiled against the yellow dust. As he came to the gaping portal one of the guards on duty, a sergeant by the marks on his collar, approached him. The man was about forty, but solid, strong, with a square jaw and a rugged look. He wore his battered uniform with casual familiarity, and was bare headed. A veteran, by the red stripe on his sleeve.
“Good day to you, sir,” the guard said,
stepping more or less into his path. It was a subtle move for a guard. It bade him stop, but as though for conversation. “Is this your first visit to the City of Gods?”
“I have been before,” Narak replied, “But it was a long time ago.” Four hundred years. Much had changed since. Much had not changed. The stone of the walls still looked ancient and pitted by a thousand summer storms, the road was still dusty, the pilgrims still looked poor.
“You are a merchant?”
Narak smiled to himself. Narala had not failed him. The clothes that he wore spoke to those around him. This man called him ‘sir’, asked his business. “I come to the city on business, yes,” he replied.
The man nodded, but his face suggested that he had heard the hollowness of Narak’s answer. He was not convinced. “You wear your blades in the style of the Ohas, twin swords sheathed across the back.”
“It is convenient. They do not get in the way.” Should he have worn them differently, he wondered? Most men he saw wore their blades at the hip, one sword, one dagger, but he had always worn them like this, two equal blades. It had not been uncommon, once.
“I have not seen them worn so. Are you a disciple of the style?”
“Many years ago I was a diligent student,” he replied. “I have not put my blades to use for some time, but they are still sharp.” It was not exactly a threat, but it told the sergeant that he was not a man to be trifled with. He had indeed been diligent. He had worked hard for close to a hundred years to achieve mastery of the twin blades. It was a skill that had proved more than useful in the Great War.
The sergeant paused before speaking again, casting his eye again over Narak’s wiry frame, judging him.
“It’s not a school that finds favour these days,” the guard said. “Too difficult, they say, and there is no-one left to teach it now.” He sounded almost wistful. Perhaps he had tried to learn, tried to find a master, but Narak doubted it. Ohas was a monk’s style if not a prince’s, sometimes an assassin’s. Some mercenaries had used it, but not soldiers. Ohas was an art.
“Difficult, yes, but the rewards are… considerable.”
“You were not always a merchant then?”
“No, not always.” His terse reply discouraged further enquiry, but the sergeant ignored his signals.
“A soldier, then? A mercenary?”
“Both and neither, and perhaps something better,” he replied. His words were not meant to be understood, but this time the guard understood well enough. He changed the subject.
“And who is it that you come to pray to, sir?” he asked.
“That depends,” Narak said. “Who is in favour with the people of Bas Erinor?”
“The usual,” the sergeant replied. “Pecanis for wealth, Morala for love, Ashmaren for children. There is a fashion among the young people to pray to the Benetheon, but it will pass if war does not come.”
“Then I shall pray to Sinistra,” Narak said. The sergeant laughed out loud at that. Nobody prayed to Sinistra. There was always a temple, but nobody ever knelt there, nobody left offerings. Sinistra was the lady of the left hand path, goddess of doubt, of lies, of betrayal, and in her lighter aspect of scepticism, obstinacy, and contrariness.
“And what will you pray for, sir?” he asked.
“For war, for the triumph of my enemies, for an early death. With any luck she will take against me and grant me the opposite. And you?”
The guard chuckled. He seemed to enjoy the joke. “Me? I am a soldier. I pray to Maritan, the god of war, but like the old reaper I am I pray for peace. I’ve seen enough of war.”
“I hope that your prayer is answered,” Narak said. “War is bad for business.”
“For any business, sir,” the guard said. “I hope that your stay is profitable.” He smiled and turned back to his men, apparently satisfied that this stranger with swords strapped to his back would not be causing trouble. Narak walked on, through the broken gates, into the city of the gods.
He did not want to go to the castle at once. He was curious about what had changed and why, so he walked among the temples. It was a busy day for the gods. There were hundreds of people here. Men and women strolled and talked. Some sat on the steps of temples and ate food that they had brought with them. In the small square in front of the temple of Ashmaren there was a hoard of children, shepherded by the priests. That, too, was an old tradition. Parents left their young in the care of the gods as they went about their devotions, or simply sought time apart from the duties of parenthood, and Ashmaren, in whose care children were deemed to reside, was the obvious choice.
It was curiosity, in the end, that brought him to his own temple. He had not seen it. Centuries ago he had been bothered by artists, sculptors and the like in the aftermath of victory, and he had been tolerant. His friend the Duke had been pleased, but he had left before they had begun to build it, and he had not returned; not until this day. Now all of his noble friends were dead and gone to dust, and their children, grandchildren, and so on down the line. All dust. And this thing remained.
At first he thought it ugly; a granite box squatting on the ground between its more elaborate neighbours, but after staring at it for ten minutes he began to appreciate it. The temple lacked the fluted columns, decorated porticoes, symbolic lamps and intimidating doorways of its peers, but Narak himself was drawn to simple things, to practical things. It was a reflection of himself; distorted perhaps, but still recognisable. It did not proclaim itself to the world, shout out how grand and terrible was its god. It just squatted between its neighbours and mocked them by its very lack of ornament. He appreciated the way in which the architect had softened the corners, taken all the sharp edges away, but only slightly. It gave the building a river worn feel, like a smooth stone that lies easily in your hand.
The building had its own vanity, to be sure, but it was not the vulgar fanfares of its peers, not a prating, anxious vanity. It was the self assurance of knowledge, the practical vanity of function.
His mood lifted still further, and he felt benign. He made his way directly to the gates of the castle.
It was much as he remembered it. Once it had been a great fortress, and it still retained the thick walls and crenulated towers of its former identity, but for many centuries it had been the seat of the Dukes of Bas Erinor, and the Dukes had grown fond of their comfort. Where there had been forbidding slits in the massive stone waiting for an archer’s arrow there were now windows, widened to let in the light, glassed to keep out the wind, and curtained to keep in the heat on cold nights. Banners of many colours flew from the towers that bracketed the gateway, announcing the lineage of the noble men and women that dwelled within. It had become no more than a great house, and though the curtain wall was formidable, it was no more than an accident of history.
Narak walked beneath the arch and found his way barred by the guards.
“Your business?” one of them asked. He was not rude, and yet not quite respectful.
“I have come to speak with Duke Elyas,” he said. The guards looked at each other.
“Wait here,” one of them said, and vanished within. The simple word: Duke. It had triggered a response. Anyone who even claimed to want to speak with the Duke was a problem best passed up the chain, and in due course the guard returned with a better dressed military figure. An officer. Narak had learned to respect the officers of the Duke’s guard in the Great War.
“Good day to you, sir,” the officer said. “I am Captain Tarell of the Duke’s guard. You wish to see the Duke?”
“I do.”
The captain looked him up and down. He was not dressed as nobility, but the captain was a wise enough head not to judge solely on appearances.
“Your business?”
“Matters of State,” he replied.
“I see,” the man looked doubtful. “Have you applied to the Duke’s secretary?”
“That will not be necessary,” Narak said. “He will see me.”
An eyebrow was raised.
“Your name?”
“Wolf Narak.”
The captain looked at him, his eyes glazing over slightly. Four hundred years of improbability challenged the words that the thought he had heard.
“I’m sorry,” the captain said. “Could you repeat that?”
“Wolf Narak,” he said. “To see the Duke.”
He could see doubt in the officer’s eyes. He was being asked to believe that this quite ordinary looking man in merchant’s dress was the Bloodstained God, the master of the hunt, the Victor of Afael. He had some sympathy for the man. To make things easier he lifted the veil just a fraction, allowed something of his aspect to be seen just for a moment. The two guardsmen stepped back involuntarily. The captain flinched very slightly, but he turned to the guards with admirable self control and ordered one of them to seek out the Duke’s secretary and tell him that Wolf Narak was here to see the Duke.