by Glen Cook
They were swarthy, hungry little men who would not have dared face the Grimmssons one on one. But there were a swarm of them.
"Shit," Shagot swore softly, with no special heat. "The Walker must be thirsty." He discarded the chicken, shed his pack, produced his sword and the head of the dead demon. There was no doubt whatsoever that Shagot was touched by the gods. Svavar even wondered, sometimes, if his brother was still alive, in the generally accepted sense.
Shagot took the fight to the pirates. Perforce, Svavar stayed close, covering his brother's back.
Nineteen pirates were down when the handful still upright broke and ran. None were dead until Shagot removed their heads.
Shagot was in a state of communion with his gods. Svavar felt it. He sensed their attention, too. The Gray One himself was close. There had been blood and slaughter sufficient to span the occult abyss. A little more blood and the Old Ones would be able to enter this alien world and time.
Shagot was possessed. "I feel him, now. Come, brother. This way."
Grim headed north, toward the river. Toward the pirates. He used the latter to provide blood sacrifices in quantity, more than sufficient to assure the continued attention and assistance of the Old Ones.
They reached the Teragi. They must have slain a hundred Calzirans. Svavar was having trouble keeping up. Grim had been cut several times, too, but was not showing the effects. They were going to need another long convalescence. Unless their luck turned better than he expected and they brought their man down.
Svavar remained alert for the presence of someone — anyone — from the Great Sky Fortress. He was convinced that the slaughter had made it possible for those Instrumentalities of the Night to begin stalking Brothen streets.
However, if one of the Old Ones did slip through, he was not making his presence obvious.
"The Godslayer is on the other side," Shagot said. "There." He pointed vaguely in the direction of some burning ships.
Svavar said, "There's a bridge up there. Half a mile, or so."
Shagot did not care about bridges. A hundred yards directly ahead a dozen pirates were piling plunder aboard a captured rowboat. Shagot killed them and took the boat. Then their heads. Then sat down at the oars.
He pulled like a thing not human. Svavar did not volunteer to take a turn. His wounds bothered him too much. And he did not want to disturb his brother's connection with the gods.
Svavar feared that Grim was so far gone he could turn on anyone. He had become a berserker of the oldest form.
A few Calzirans attacked them when they reached the north bank. And so added their blood to the sacrificial pool. Shagot did not take heads this time. In fact, he abandoned his collection with the boat, retaining only the head of the demon. His wounds had begun to slow and weaken him at last. But that lasted for only a short while.
Shagot healed almost visibly fast. Calzirans overcome, he turned his nose north of northwest and started limping. Svavar had trouble keeping up.
Svavar felt his own wounds healing, though not at the ridiculous rate Grim enjoyed.
In minutes they reached a neighborhood untouched by current events. It was a poor area but not a slum. It was not crowded, horizontally or vertically. Svavar thought he remembered a wall not much farther on. Beyond that the city faded into a typical Firaldian countryside of olive groves, vineyards, truck farms and, farmer out, wheat fields. All the ground that could be tamed had been — two thousand years ago.
Shagot began to show an uncharacteristic uncertainty. "We're real close," he said. "Right on top. I can almost smell him. But I can't pinpoint him. Something is getting in the way."
"Any idea how close?" Svavar asked. If he had a distance to work with he could attack the problem intellectually. Which was a concept almost alien to his brother.
He felt something disorienting, too. Like a mild buzz inside his brain that kept his thoughts mushy at their center. His vision seemed a little wobbly.
"Thirty yards at least. Not more than fifty."
Svavar reasoned the possibilities down to four houses and their outbuildings. He explained, then asked, "Why don't we start with the closest?"
"Let's do it." Shagot hefted his battered blade and hoisted the demon's head.
And Svavar realized that this was not going to go well. Because Shagot was going about it all wrong. And there was something else…. Something more … A Presence that should not be present…
24. Brothe, Besieged
Else dragged his weird burden farther and farther from the river, always with an eye toward a place to go to ground.
Northern Brothe lay silent and empty. A goat cart crossed the street a hundred yards ahead, unaccompanied by any master. He saw several feral dogs. They slunk away. Even the swarms of pigeons seemed subdued and disinclined to pursue normal pigeon business. Remarkable. Nothing kept pigeons down. The woman did not fight. She stumbled along beside Else, dazed, incompletely aware of her situation. Though she did become more alert and engaged with time. And strove to keep her recovery concealed.
Else's back trail was noisy for a while. The pirates wanted their witch back. Else zigged and zagged, leaving them confused and worried about ambushes as the expanding search forced them to break up into smaller and smaller bands. Now he needed a place where he could hole up and spend some time chatting with Starkden.
He moved more and more slowly. Something was wrong. This silence was not normal. Not in a city being raped. He began to feel that something dark and dreadful was closing in. He hit the woman, hard. That changed little but the fact that he had to carry her again.
That crisp feel that air knows when lightning will soon strike began to build.
Else kicked in a door. His assault caused vibrant excitement in a distant part of the house. That faded as terrified residents fled through a remote exit.
Maybe that was the root of the wrongness. The fear. The fog of terror that overlay the whole quarter.
His wrist itched. Again. This itch had nothing to do with Starkden.
Trouble was coming.
He got his prisoner fixed in a chair in a room with multiple doors. Then he awaited her wakening.
She would try to fool him, of course. So he listened closely and studied the movements of her eyeballs behind her eyelids. When the moment arrived he cut her arm lightly. She jumped.
"We need to talk, woman. And, because you're stubborn and think you're tough and I don't have time to be subtle, I won't ask anything till I'm sure you're ready to cooperate."
This was his first woman. True torturers surely had gender-specific trade secrets. He was unfamiliar with those. Nor did he have the specialized utensils a serious interrogator needed.
He improvised. He used the tool at hand, a knife. He started where she could watch it happen. She would think about the scars left once he flayed her in a checkerboard pattern.
His work gave him no pleasure. He lacked zeal. Professionals often communicated their pleasure to their subjects. A bond developed in time. Torturer and tortured entered into a conspiracy, a marriage of pain, wherein each played his role with passion.
But to Else, for whom torture was distasteful manual labor and only the information mattered, no relationship was possible. He worked. And waited to hear from Starkden.
She was stubborn. Being flayed did not crack her, despite the pain.
He needed to cut closer to the essential Starkden.
Who was she? He would not know unless she showed him.
What was she? He knew that one. He thought she was a sorceress. And a pirate.
The witch part would be tied up intimately with who she was.
Sorcerers and sorceresses depended heavily on their hands while manipulating elements of the night Wizards in training spent as much time schooling their fingers as young Sha-lug spent schooling the muscles they would use to wield their weapons.
Else sharpened his knife, then seized the little finger of Starkden's right hand.
Good guess. She gru
nted. She strained. She indicated that she was ready to cooperate. In some capacity.
"I'll take your tongue, too, if you try anything cute.” Generally, people preferred loss of a few fingers to loss of the tongue.
Half from memory, half from impulse, Else brought out every silver coin he possessed. He applied them to the witch wherever magical inhibition might be useful. The woman sagged.
Knife poised, Else removed the woman's gag. "You know who I am. You tried to kill me. Your assassin was incompetent. At the time I was unaware of your existence. That's changed. You caused that. I don't know why. Tell me why."
The witch shrugged, as much as was possible. Else squeezed her hand around his blade. She gasped, whispered, "I don't know why. Somebody wanted it done badly enough to pay for it."
"But you don't know who." Naturally. There would have been a chain of intermediaries so the contractor could remain distanced from the crime.
"It didn't matter. I wanted the money. It wasn't personal."
Else's questions unearthed no hint of why anyone would want his mission to end on an island in the middle of the Mother Sea.
He grew impatient. The woman was not resisting. Neither was she offering up anything useful. Meanwhile, big things were happening to Brothe. He had no idea what Any scenario wherein the defenders repelled the invaders, while Starkden survived, would not bode well for Else Tage. The woman knew who he was.
He shifted to her involvement with the pirates. Was that just mercenary grasping, too?
The silver was too effective. Starkden could speak coherently no longer. Else removed several coins.
He had been part of several large, mysterious operations lately. Gordimer and er-Rashal had piled them on. He was the best man for the job. And Sha-lug did not question orders. Not even orders to undertake a mad raid into the Idiam in the Lucidian Desert, into haunted Andesqueluz, in search of the accursed mummies of heathen sorcerers of antiquity. He had done the job without asking why.
"I'm getting old," he mused. He had been taught, as a trainee, that the old thought too much. And he was now of an age that had seemed ancient when he was the leading prospect in the Vibrant Spring School.
His wrist went from itch to ache while he was getting little of practical value from Starkden.
"The Brotherhood of War wants you. Badly. And they're better at this than I am."
What might have been amusement and mockery shown back at him. Disdain followed.
His wrist throbbed. He had trouble dunking through the pain.
It was decision time.
The choices were plain.
He drew his sword.
Something hit him from behind, impacting every inch of his body.
He had not been fast enough.
He knew what it was. He knew why he had been itching and hurting. He knew what he had forgotten, because it had not been mentioned for a while. And that was that there was a second sorcerer involved with the pirates. Masant al-Seyhan.
Vaguely, Else heard a man ask, "Can you travel? We have to hurry. It isn't working the way we were promised. It's gone bad already. Oh, damn! What the hell is this?”
Else heard steel strike steel. A second, all-over blow hit him. After that, he heard and felt nothing for a long time.
Redfearn Bechter found Else sprawled in the street. Dried blood caked his lips, nostrils, and ears. His skin had turned a nasty, dark shade of pink, with blisters. His nails were cracked. His hair was a ruin. It looked like tiny embers had crawled through it in pursuit of fleas. His face was spotted with little red rings, like the signature of some strange pox.
Else asked, "What happened?" His words were an incoherent drone. "Oh, saints in heaven. I can't hear. Talk slow. I'll read your lips." Assuming he could stay focused. His left eye felt arid. It itched.
His wrist felt like somebody had tried to hack through it with a white-hot iron bar.
"All right. You getting me?"
"Yes. Go ahead."
Bechter grinned. "Just guessing, mind, but I'd say you got your ass kicked."
"Even my gums hurt. What happened? Enunciate carefully. Hey! I'm starting to hear something."
"The neighbors have painted a picture that doesn't make sense."
"And? So?"
"You came running down that street there, dragging a woman. Presumably the witch. A band of pirates weren't far behind."
"I remember that. They wanted her back. I kept trying to lose them before I headed for friendly territory. They wouldn't shake. Every time I turned back toward the Castella, they would get in my way. I decided to hole up until they gave up."
"That would be over there. Where that house used to be." Bechter pointed.
The place no longer stood. Smoke still drifted toward a sky clouding over, promising rain. Most of the afternoon had passed. "Sainted Eis and Heron!"
"No shit."
"Keep it slow and loud. I can hear most of what you're saying now."
"Here's what we have. You broke in there. You were seen. The neighbors didn't do anything because you have blond hair. Later, a band of Calzirans arrived. They seemed to know where they were going. Their leader was a wizard."
"Masant al-Seyhan. I think. That name came up when the piracy started."
"Maybe. He used a couple of spells that must've been real potent."
"Do tell. They knocked a house down on top of me."
"No. That happened later. You'll love this part. Two blonde men showed up. It's pretty clear they were the two we've been hunting. They didn't say anything. They just walked up and started killing Calzirans. They were completely savage and totally unstoppable. Eventually, the fight moved inside."
That did not jibe with what Else remembered. But his recollections were kaleidoscopic and vague and incompletely trustworthy. "I can hear pretty good, now. I could use some water."
"Something terrible happened inside that house. But by then the neighbors stopped being curious and went into hiding. We've just started digging into the rubble. We're finding a lot of dead pirates."
"But no witches or wizards, I'll bet."
"Not a one. Nor any blond men, either. Did you get anything out of the witch?"
"She wouldn't even admit she was a witch. Or that she understood me. I kept her unconscious most of the time. Anyway, I was too busy outrunning pirates to have time for questions."
"That's what I figured. Damn it all!"
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault You went above and beyond, just making that swim."
"Wait a minute, now. How come you've got time and manpower to waste looking for me?"
"The situation improved. The Collegium weighed in while you were distracting the Calziran talent. Plus, a regiment of Imperial cavalry turned up and took the raiders by surprise."
And everyone else, Else surmised. What was Hansel up to? He had seven or eight hundred regular soldiers handy, deep in Patriarchal territory, just when Brothe's situation was most desperate?
Else said, "I can't get my brain to work. I hurt too much."
"I'll see if I can get you a ride home. But not yet. There's still spots of heavy fighting. Most of the pirates didn't get back to their boats. Those few that were left to be gotten to."
"Sonow you're a hero," Paludan said, when Else appeared before him the next day.
"Not a very successful one." He ached all over, still. His eye and his ears were not yet right. The red circles were worse. They were not restricted to his face, either. He felt old and tired despite ten hours of sleep.
"But one of ours," Gervase Saluda said. "Out there making the Bruglioni name shine."
Paludan scowled. He was not pleased, despite the positive reflection on the Bruglioni name. The whole city would now notice that one of its richest men had sent just a handful of men to help defend Brothe. And that neither Gervase nor Paludan, nor any of their handful of men, had become involved in the fighting. Only the name Piper Hecht would stand out
Else replied, "I did what I could. I d
idn't do it well enough. I lost the witch. I never saw me two blond thugs. Or the sorcerer who rescued the witch. Masant al-Seyhan could strut in here right now and I wouldn't know enough to duck."
Saluda sneered. "All that perishes before the fact that you were one of the rare few who actually fought the Calzirans. You were the one who distracted their mages long enough for the Collegium to break the pirates."
"How is that going?" Else asked that rather than why Paludan was determined to be disgruntled by a Brothen success.
"Not good for the pirates. Groups are cut off all over. They just want to leave Brothe, now. But that isn't working for them. There aren't any boats left"
Paludan grumbled, "The Calziran wizards are frantic. They keep trying to salvage their manpower. But that isn't going well, either."
Else asked, "We know that they survived, then?" A concentration on force preservation? Military thinking, that which ought to be alien to the pirates.
Paludan grunted. He was ready for a change of subject.
The Bruglioni properties had come through unscathed. Gervase and Paludan wanted to sit back and let someone else clean up. They had little idea of the reality out there in the Mother City. Men with no personal stake in Brothe, the Imperials and those squatters who had enlisted for the pay, had done and were doing most of the fighting. Neither group would take risks. They were disinclined to die for a city that disdained them.
Mr. Caniglia appeared. "Master Paludan, your uncle has arrived. He'll be up in a few minutes."
Saluda told Else, "They may have to carry him. He has trouble with stairs." He did not seem pleased by the visit.
Divino Bruglioni arrived puffing, presumably due to the change of attitude. His footmen seated him in a chair the house maintained exclusively for the Bruglioni Principal, then withdrew. "Stay, Captain Hecht," Principatй Divino said when Else started to follow.
Paludan's face darkened. But he controlled himself, a habit he had developed since the deaths of his sons.
Principatй Divino told Else, "I hear you did quite well out there."
