Dagger (мир воров)

by David Drake

  Because of their multiple hammered refoldings, the join lines between layers of iron and steel were as complex as the sutures of a human skull. After the bar had been forged and ground into a blade, the smith polished it and dipped it into strong acid which he quickly flushed away.

  The steel resisted the biting fluid, but some of the softer iron was eaten by even the brief touch. The iron became a shadow of incredible delicacy against which the ripples of bright steel stood out like sunlight on mountain rapids. Even without its functional purpose, the watermarked blade would have commanded a high price for its appearance.

  Samlor's eyes stung. He blinked, because in the wavering lamplight the spidery lines of iron against steel looked like writing.

  The stranger smiled more broadly.

  "Unc-" began Star with a tug on the caravan master's left sleeve.

  The iron shadows in the heart of the blade read, "He will attack" in Cirdonian script. A moment before, they had been only swirls of metal.

  The stranger's hand slid fully onto the hilt he had been pinching to display. He twisted it in a slashing stroke toward Samlor's eyes.

  Samlor didn't believe the words written on steel. He didn't even believe he had seen them. But part of his nervous system-"mind" would be too formal a term for reflex at so primitive a level-reacted to the strangeness with explosive activity.

  The Cirdonian's left hand shot out and crushed the stranger's fingers against the grip of his weapon, easily turning the stroke into a harmless upward sweep. The metal that Samlor touched-the copper buttcap and the tang to which scales of dark wood were pinned to complete the hilt-were cooler than air temperature despite having been carried beneath the stranger's cape.

  Samlor's right hand slammed his own dagger up and through the stranger's ribcage till the crosshilt stopped at the breastbone. The caravan master could have disarmed his opponent without putting a foot of steel through his chest, but reflex didn't know and instinct didn't care.

  The stranger-the dead man, now, with steel from his diaphragm to the back of his throat-lifted at the short, powerful blow. His head snapped back-his mouth was still smiling-and hammered the hoop which suspended the lamps. They sloshed and went out as the heavy oil doused their wicks.

  "Star, keep behind-" Samlor ordered as the light dimmed and his right hand jerked down to clear his weapon from the torso in which he had just imbedded it. The stranger flopped forward loosely, but the blade remained stuck.

  Somebody's hurled beer mug smashed the lantern behind the bar. The Vulgar Unicorn was as dark as the bowels of Hell.

  Samlor ducked and hunched back against the bar while he tugged at his knife hilt with enough strength to have forced a camel to its knees.

  There was a grunt and an oak-topped table crashed over. Somebody screamed as if he were being opened from groin to gullet-as may have been the case. Darkness in a place like this was both an opportunity and a source of panic. Either could lead to slaughter.

  Samlor's dagger wouldn't come free. He hadn't felt it grate bone as it went in, and it didn't feel now as if the tip were caught on ribs or the stranger's vertebrae. The blade didn't flex at all, the way it should have done if it were held at one point. It was more as if Samlor had thrust the steel into fresh concrete and came back a day later in a vain attempt to withdraw it.

  One advantage to winning a knife fight is that you have the choice of your opponent's weapon if something's happened to yours. The Cirdonian's left hand snatched the hilt from the unresisting fingers of the man he had just killed, while his right arm swept behind him to gather up his niece.

  A thrown weapon plucked his sleeve much the way the child had done a moment before. The point was too blunt to stick in the bar panel against which it crashed like a crossbow bolt.

  Star wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere within the sweep of Samlor's arm, and there was no response when he desperately called the child's name.

  Steel hit steel across the room with a clang and a shower of orange sparks. Someone outside the tavern called a warning, but there was already a murderous scuffle blocking the only door to the street.

  That left the door to the alley on the opposite side of the tavern; stairs to the upper floor-which Samlor couldn't locate in the dark and which were probably worth his life to attempt anyway; and a third option which was faster and safer than the other two, though it was neither fast nor safe on any sane scale.

  Samlor gripped the body of his victim beneath both armpits and rushed forward, using the corpse as a shield and a battering ram.

  His niece might still be inside the Vulgar Unicorn, but he couldn't find her in the darkness if she didn't-or couldn't- answer his call. Star was a level-headed girl who might have screamed but wouldn't have panicked to silence when Samlor shouted for her.

  He was much more concerned that she had bolted for the door the instant the lights went out, and that she was now in the arms of someone with a good idea of the price a virgin of her age would fetch in this hellhole.

  Somebody brushed Samlor from the side-backed into him-and caromed off wailing in terror. Samlor did not cut with his new dagger at the contact because Star could still be within reach of his blade. .

  He was willing to be stabbed himself to avoid making that sort of mistake.

  Samlor stumbled on an outstretched limb which gave but did not twitch beneath his boot. Then the corpse hit the screen to the right of the door and the Cirdonian used all the strength of his back and shoulders to smash the wickerwork out into the street.

  The screen was dry with age, and many of the individual withies were already splitting away from the tiny trenails that pinned them to the frame. The wicker still retained a springy strength greater than that of thin board shutters, and Samlor felt a hint of infuriating backthrust against his push.

  The frame snapped away from the sash, letting the corpse carry the collapsing wickerwork ahead of it into the street.

  There was enough haze to hide the stars and sliver moon, but the sky glow was enough to fill the window sash after the lattice had been torn away. Samlor dived over the sill, keeping his body as low as possible. He could have boosted himself with his empty right hand so that he landed feet first instead of slamming the street with his shoulder-

  But if he had done that, the knife that flicked through the air above his rolling body would instead have punched between his shoulder blades. Some brawlers, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, don't need a reason to kill: only a target.

  "Star!" the caravan master bellowed as he hit, the shock of impact turning the word into more of a gasp than he had expected. His cloak and shoulder muscles had to break the fall, because his left hand, the downside hand, held the long knife that could be the margin of survival in the next instants.

  The door of the tavern beside Samlor was blocked by two men, the larger holding the smaller and stabbing with mindless repetition. The only sound the victim made now was the squelch of his flesh parting before the steel.

  A watchman had stepped from a door down the street. The lantern he raised did not illuminate figures, but its light wavered from metal in the hands of half a dozen men scurrying toward the altercation.

  Samlor had heard that there were local militias raised from every few blocks of the Old City. They differed from street gangs in their expressed determination to keep order and protect their enclaves-but that didn't mean it would be healthy for an outsider to fall into their hands after starting a brawl on their turf. Militiamen rarely saw the need for a trial when there was already a rope or a sword handy.

  The squad marching toward the noise from the other direction was paid to enforce the law, but the priorities of the men comprising the unit tended to be more personal. They were regular army, and the quicker they silenced the trouble, the quicker they could get the fuck back to the patrol station where they didn't have to worry about showers of bricks and roofing tiles.

  One of the soldiers carried a lantern on a pole. The glazing was protected by wire mesh, and
similar metal curtains depended stiffly from the brims of the squad's dented helmets. They carried pole arms, halbreds and short pikes, and they shuffled forward with such noisy deliberation that it was obvious they hoped the problem would go away without any need for them to deal with it.

  Samlor was willing enough to do that. The problem was how.

  Star wasn't in the street and wasn't answering him. He'd find her if he had to wash Sanctuary away in the blood of its denizens, but first he had to get clear of this mess into which Fate seemed to have dropped him through no fault of his own.

  Why had that clumsy, suicidal stranger attacked him? Why had the fellow even accosted him?

  But first, survival.

  Samlor switched the dagger to his right hand, master hand, and dodged into the alley nearest him.

  The passageway was scarcely the width of his shoulders,

  but a door-strapped and studded with metal-gave onto it from the building on the other side. The Cirdonian slapped the panel as he dodged past it. Had it opened, he would have dived in and dealt with those inside in whatever fashion seemed advisable.

  But he didn't expect that; and as he expected, the door was as solid as the stone to either side of it.

  The alley jogged, though Samlor didn't recall an angle from inside the Vulgar Unicorn's taproom. He slid past the facet of masonry, into an instant of pitch darkness before someone within the tavern reignited a lamp.

  There were two slit windows serving this side of the taproom. The grating still covered one, but the light silhouetted the crisp rectangle of the other from which the wickerwork had been torn since the caravan master last saw it inside.

  Even so, the opening was too narrow to pass an adult.

  Samlor's mouth opened to call, but the child in the midst of four men was already screaming, "Uncle Samlor."

  CHAPTER 2

  THERE WERE THREE of them between him and Star, packed into the passageway so that the child's dust-whitened garments were only a shimmer past their legs. They were the punks from the table by the door. Beyond them was a fourth man, tall and hooded, closing Star's escape route.

  Light in the passageway was only the ghost filtering through the tavern windows and reflected from the filth-blackened wall opposite, but it was enough for Samlor's business. He drew the push dagger from its sheath under the back of his collar and held it so that its narrow point jutted out between the fourth and index fingers of his left hand.

  Before the caravan master could lunge into action, the hooded man stepped past the cringing Star and held his staff vertically to confront the trio of toughs. Either the hood was flapping loose or something tiny capered on the fellow's shoulder.

  "What are you doing with this child?" he demanded in a clear voice. "Begone!"

  "Hey," said the nearest thug, doubtful enough to step back and jostle a companion.

  The staff glowed pale blue, a hazy color which seemed to hang in the air as the object trembled. The face beneath the hood was set with determination which controlled but did not eliminate the underlying fear. The staff shook because the man holding it was terrified.

  Reasonably enough.

  Samlor paused. If the toughs did turn away in fear of what confronted them, he didn't want to be launched into an attack intended for their backs.

  He didn't know what was going on. Sometimes you had to act anyway-but just now, Star was out of immediate danger, so there was no point in going off half-cocked.

  Something-a man, there was no damned doubt about it, but he was only a handspan tall-stood on the right shoulder of the man with the glowing staff. The little fellow hopped up and down, then piped, "Do not be afraid to do that in which you are right!"

  A thug swore and swung his weapon at the staff.

  Instead of blades or ordinary clubs, this trio of street toughs carried weighted chains which Samlor had mistaken in the tavern for items of armor or adornment when they were coiled through an epaulette loop on each youth's shoulder. Each chain was about a yard long, made up of fine links which slipped over one another like drops of water. They were polished glass-smooth and then plated for looks-silver for two of the thugs, gold for the third who now swung his weapon in a glittering arc.

  Both ends of the chain were weighted by lead knobs the size of large walnuts, armed with steel spikes. The knobs were heavy enough to stun or kill but still so light that they could be directed handily and with blinding speed. A skilled man in the right situation could pulp an opposing knife artist, and he could do so with the sort of flashy display which on the street counted for more than success.

  It was the wrong weapon for an alleyway which even at his widest point was straiter than the span of the chain fully extended, but the hooded man seemed to have no idea of how to defend himself. The weighted end of the chain wrapped itself tight against the staff-it clacked like wood, despite the glow which suggested it was of some eerie material-and the tough jerked it toward him.

  The hopping manikin disappeared with a high-pitched shriek of terror. The hooded man staggered forward, managing to keep a hold on his staff only by lurching toward the punk whose weapon had snatched it. The blue glow was snuffed out as if the gold-plated chain had strangled the life from the wood.

  The hooded man was a magician, had to be with his staff and capering manikin. Samlor-and probably the street toughs as well, though psychotic pride ruled the actions of their leader-expected magical retribution for the attack. A thunderbolt might shatter them, or icy needles from nowhere might lace their bodies into bloody sieves.

  Nothing happened except that the leading thug gripped his opponent by the throat and shouted, "Finish 'im, dungbrains!" to his fellows as the victim struggled to free his chain-wrapped staff.

  The caravan master waded in to do the job that magic wouldn't take care of after all.

  One of the three youths hung a half step behind his fellows. Samlor punched the base of his skull left-handed. The steel cap concealed beneath the bright bandana rapped the knuckle of the Cirdonian's index finger, but the bodkin point of Samlor's push dagger plunged in to its full length.

  The youth turned and cried out, pulling clear of the two-inch blade that left a trickle of gore crawling toward the collar of his studded vest. He'd been spinning his chain between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, waiting for an opening to slap the weight into the hooded man. One of the balls gouged Samlor's thigh, but that was accident rather than deliberate counterattack.

  The youth dropped his weapon and stumbled off down the alleyway, kicked in passing by the man still struggling for his staff. Star flattened herself against the wall to let him go. Her eyes and the white swirl in her hair were pools of reflected light as she stared at her uncle.

  Samlor cut at the neck of the next thug with the watermarked dagger while drops of blood still winked in the air as they flew from the neck of his first target. The hilt of the unfamiliar weapon was slimmer in his hand than the knife he'd left in the corpse, but the blade's relative point-heaviness gave heft to the slashing blow. The youth got his left arm up in time to block the edge with his forearm while his leader sprayed curses and tried to clear his chain from the staff which now held it rather than the reverse.

  There wasn't enough hilt for Samlor's hands. The shock threatened to jar the knife away from him as the blade sank deep in the leading armbone and cracked it through when the Cirdonian twisted. The youth squealed in hopeless panic, but luck or practice spun one end of his weighted chain in a loop around the weapon that had crippled him.

  Samlor punched the tough in the chest left-handed, then jerked down on the butt of his coffin-hilted dagger. The youth's leather vest was sewn with flat metal washers: the narrow point in Samlor's left hand scratched across the face of one before it sank deep enough into unprotected flesh to prick a lung.

  Whether or not the metal in the daggerblade had spelled Samlor a warning, it served well enough for a fighting knife. At the Cirdonian's swift tug, the edges sawed through the silvered
chain and freed themselves. The severed knob spun to the muck on the alley's cobblestones with its bit of attached chain twitching like a lizard's tail.

  The thug lost his footing and fell backwards. He should have tangled himself with his leader, but the youth with the gilded chain danced clear. On his toes, buttocks flattening against the tavern wall as his fellow sprawled beneath him, he whirled a spiked knob at Samlor in a downward arc that split the difference between vertical and horizontal.

  The stranger's hood had flopped back and his cape was twisted so that its broach closure was at his left shoulder instead of his throat. When the street tough dropped him to deal with Samlor, the man raised a hand and began to stutter words in a language the caravan master did not know. As the spiked chain spun at Samlor's skull in a curve as dangerous as a sword stroke, the stranger stopped talking and prodded the youth between the shoulders with his staff.

  Samlor dodged back to avoid the spikes, forgetting the bulge in the wall behind that rocked him to a halt. The knob sparked across the stone and tore the Cirdonian's left ear as the youth tried to recover from the push that sent him off-balance.

  He didn't get the chance.

  The youth wore a necklace strung with the protective charms of at least a dozen faiths, and the front of his vest was strengthened with gilt and silvered studs. None of that helped him when Samlor stabbed upward from groin level. While the punk thrashed like a gigged frog on the twelve-inch blade, the caravan master punched him repeatedly with the push dagger, aiming at the base of the jaw just below the bandana and the steel cap it covered.

  The youth collapsed. His eyes were open and his lungs were still working well enough to form bubbles in the blood that drooled from the corner of his mouth. A mixture of body fluids and digestive products followed the blade of the long knife as Samlor withdrew it. Their foetor was briefly noticeable even in this alley.