Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  The arbiter – for this session it was a West Ward man called Tevon – hushed them.

  “Ward Master Gayne,” he said, approaching the Dock Ward table, “this is unacceptable behaviour. You must return the stone.”

  “What I have to say cannot wait,” Francis said.

  “There are rules…”

  “War is coming,” Francis said, cutting the arbiter off.

  The effect was immediate. Councillors that had not already stood at his first outrage now stood and demanded to know what he meant. War with Avilian? One even named Seth Yarra. It was Tevon himself that guessed correctly.

  “Duke Kenton,” he said.

  Francis banged the speaking stone on the table, hard. The crash of stone on wood brought them to heel and the babble of voices was stilled.

  “Aye, Duke Kenton is coming, and he’s coming with five thousand men.”

  “He cannot have so many,” one councillor protested.

  “I warned you all that the war wasn’t over,” Francis said. “Derali has put what is left of his force at Kenton’s disposal, and the rest of Falini’s men, those that you drove from the city with your purges, have gone north and joined them. Five thousand men, and our walls still gape a welcome to any invader.”

  “We have the city regiments,” another said.

  “Do we?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Francis was not a man to miss a chance to make his point.

  “Your purges,” he said. “Your ceaseless hunting down of those you blame for the Dukes’ excesses – it has touched everyone, or nearly everyone in the city. They don’t like it. They might prefer to take a chance with a ruler who has never harmed them. The city regiments have family all over Afael, friends in the Dukes’ regiments and you are asking them to give their lives to fight for you, to preserve your authority. Even Falini had the sense to look after his own.”

  “They are soldiers,” a councillor said. “They will obey orders.”

  “They are men and women,” Francis responded. “Like you.”

  “We were chosen by the people,” another said. “Just as you were.”

  “They would not choose you again,” Francis said.

  Tevon held up his hands to still the bickering and the council quieted again. He turned back to Francis.

  “What do you suggest?” he asked.

  Francis was ready for this. The council was very bad at coming up with ideas, but good at voting on them.

  “Three things,” he said. “Stop the purges and promise that they will never resume. Grant amnesty to all those who you have held for their so-called crimes, and throw everything you have at rebuilding the city’s defences.”

  “How long do we have?” Tevon asked.

  Francis shrugged. “Two weeks, three if we’re lucky. It depends how quickly Kenton wants to get here, but I think he’ll be cautious. It’s in his nature.”

  One of the others stood – Chaini’s man. “And how do you know so much about Duke Kenton’s nature?”

  “The same way that you do,” Francis replied. “By watching what he’s done in the past, by listening to men who’ve worked for him.” Francis was growing tired of the relentless sniping from North Ward. He did not doubt that it was Chaini’s doing, but he was unsure of the man’s motives, or what he was trying to achieve.

  “And how did you learn of Kenton’s plans?” the man asked.

  Francis laughed. “By now it will be common knowledge on the street,” he said. “A trader came in from the north this morning carrying the news of Kenton’s preparation for war. The Duke is not being coy about it.”

  In the end it was North Ward standing alone. They had heard his news and they believed it. War was coming and they needed to defend the city as best they could. They voted to accept his plan, though he could tell that some abandoned their vengeance reluctantly. He had been confident of the vote, but it was a relief to see the hands raised, to know that he had won.

  He left the council chamber when the meeting finished and walked back down into Dock Ward with Keron. He was frustrated that his own talents, as useful as they had proven in disposing of the Falini family, would be of little use in open warfare. He could spy, he supposed – creep around the enemy’s camp and listen to their councils – but when it came to it, when men stormed the walls and battered at the gates he would be no more use than a common soldier. His gift for taking life was limited and an invisible assassin was just as likely to be cut down by friend or foe in the mêlée of battle.

  They found a tavern on the dockside and spent the afternoon planning what they could do if the city gate was breached. It was precious little, though, and it seemed that Francis’s best course would be to lie low and assassinate the new duke once the battle was done.

  Around sunset General Delarsi appeared and approached their table. It was a turnaround that now the old man sought him out, Francis thought. He no longer had to make the effort to visit the general’s home.

  “Did you prevail?” Delarsi asked.

  “We did,” Francis said. “Work on the walls will begin tomorrow.”

  “About that…” the general said.

  “What?”

  “You don’t have time. It would take a month to repair the city wall with stone, even if you have every mason in Afael shaping the stones.”

  “You have a suggestion?”

  The general was under his control now. The man was afraid of him, and that was fine with Francis. It would become a problem one day, he knew, but the general was an old man. His time was almost done.

  “In the Great War, the second war, General Arbak invented a way of building walls more quickly. He used wire baskets, filled them with stone and stacked them.”

  “I knew that,” Francis said. “It was smith work. Any smith in Afael could make you the wire.” He smiled, “but if every smith in the city started work now we just don’t have the time.”

  “It’s already done,” Delarsi said.

  “Done? What do you mean?”

  “There were no Afaeli soldiers at the White Road, but there was one in Bas Erinor when Arbak showed his invention to the duke. He brought back the knowledge and the wire frames were built in readiness for whenever they might needed.”

  “That was a hundred years ago.”

  “The frames were steel, and stored in a dry place. They’re still good. I checked them last night.”

  It was news indeed, and it gave Francis new hope. Perhaps the wall could be repaired after all.

  “Very well…”

  “Ward Master Gayne,” the general interrupted. “I have an idea.”

  “For the frames?”

  “Aye. I say we leave a breach in the wall.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Kenton will think so, but then he’s not the soldier that Falini was. If we leave the breach they will be drawn to it like flies to a corpse. I suggest that we build our new wall behind the old one, a three sided box with the old wall, and the breach, on the fourth side. We leave them room to push a few hundred men through and man the walls with archers.”

  “A trap.” Francis liked the idea. He could see it happening in his head.

  “But even better,” the general went on, “the old wall will prevent them using archers against the new. They will have to come through the breach to shoot at us.”

  “I like it, general,” Francis said. “But won’t a wire wall be easier to climb than a stone one.”

  “That’s true,” Delarsi conceded. “But a man has to climb with two hands, even more so on the wire than with a ladder. We can man the new wall heavily, knowing that it will draw them in, and we can prevent a retreat with some kind of gate, use fire against them. The options are endless.”

  “They’ll not come at us that way more than once, then,” Francis said.

  “Unless we spring our surprises one at a time. If we can take the first assault with bows alone they’ll come again. Kenton will still see it as the weakest poi
nt.”

  Francis was impressed. He could see why Delarsi had earned his exalted rank. This was strategic thinking – something that he should make an effort to master.

  “See to it then,” he said. “You are our general.”

  Delarsi left, a spring in his step.

  “You trust him too much,” Keron said.

  “With this? I don’t think so. He has nothing to gain from losing the city, and the man knows his business.”

  “He’s tricky,” Keron said. “He’ll find a way to turn on you.”

  “So much the worse for him.”

  But Keron was right. The general seemed beaten, but who could tell with a man like that, a man who could make a breach in the city wall into a strength?

  They abandoned their tasks in the evening and took a meal, after which they retired to a private room and began to drink. All in all it had been a good day, but there was still a sense of impending doom about the city. As Francis had expected, the news had spread in the streets like fire and every man and woman in the city knew that Kenton was coming, though the number of his soldiers varied between a guessed three thousand and a wildly exaggerated ten.

  There was nothing he could do about it and he wanted to escape, for a short time, from the burden of being who he was. He had been drinking more heavily since Johan’s death because the world seemed a darker place without his mentor. It was dangerous, he knew. He had enemies that might take advantage of any incapacity, but he had ceased to care so much for his own safety.

  They were halfway down the second bottle and talking about Keron’s sister and her betrothed when someone rapped on the door and opened it.

  It was one of the Dock Ward men they’d left outside.

  “What?” Francis demanded, resentful of the interruption.

  “Someone wants to see you,” the man said.

  “Someone? Who?”

  “He won’t give a name.”

  Francis exchanged a look with Keron. “Tell him to come back in the morning,” he said. “I’m busy.”

  “He says he has a gift for you.”

  “A gift? Nobody brings me gifts.”

  The man in the doorway held up a gold coin. It wasn’t small. “He gave me this just to ask,” he said.

  Even for a master smith it was more than a week’s money. Francis exchanged another glance with Keron. “Well, if he’s paying for the drinks… Show him in.” By way of a precaution he reached down and made sure the dagger in his boot was easy. Keron moved his chair a little further back from the table to give him room to move. There was a fair chance that this was a trick of some kind, an attempt on his life, but Francis enjoyed beating assassins. He could kill them with a thought, or simply vanish before their eyes.

  The man they showed in wasn’t what he was expecting. He was average in height, though stooped a little so that he appeared shorter. He looked around the room as he came in, and Francis saw him note each window, and both Keron and Francis with equal interest. Francis wouldn’t have called him handsome, but the stranger had the sort of face that inspired trust and he radiated an aura of subservience. His clothes were travel worn, his skin tanned from too long in sun and wind. He was holding a nicely finished wooden box under one arm.

  “Who are you?” Francis asked.

  “I am Mordo Tregaris,” the man said, almost by way of apology. Francis had never heard the name, but it wasn’t Afaeli, or even Avilian, and the man spoke Afalel with an accent that he couldn’t place.

  “You have a gift for me?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps? You gave my doorman a gold coin. What’s in the box?”

  The man didn’t reply. Instead he seemed to hug the box tighter to his body. “I have heard stories about you,” he said. “Those stories bid me seek you out.”

  “What stories?”

  “People hereabouts say you have power, that you walk through walls and kill men with a word.”

  “People have the strangest ideas,” Francis replied.

  “If you have power, then I may have something that will be of great benefit to you.”

  Keron leaned forwards. “What would that be?”

  “That is between me and your master,” Tregaris said.

  “There are no masters here,” Francis rebuked him.

  Tregaris smiled, and instead of speaking placed the box on the table and opened it. It contained a nest of black velvet and in the midst of it a circlet of wire with a single dull white stone, about the size of as pigeon’s egg, mounted at the front.

  “Is it valuable?” Keron asked.

  “It is a tool,” Tregaris said. He lifted the circlet from the box and placed it on his own head. “You see that it denies me. It does nothing.” He pointed to Keron. “Would you like to try it?”

  Keron shrugged. “Why not?”

  Tregaris lifted the circlet from his own head and placed it gently on Keron’s. Oddly, it seemed to fit perfectly, just as it had on the smaller man. Magic, Francis thought. This is magic.

  Nothing happened. After a few moments Tregaris retrieved the artefact and turned to Francis.

  “Will you wear it?” he asked.

  It was not a small thing that Tregaris asked. Francis could feel it, the weight of expectation, the hand of fate. This tavern back room had become a fulcrum upon which forces balanced.

  “This tool of yours, what does it do?” he asked.

  “Exactly, I cannot say. It responds to the presence of an ancient bloodline, it detects a facility, a talent, if you like. That is all.”

  “May I hold it?”

  Tregaris seemed reluctant to part with it, but after a moment’s hesitation he reached out and Francis took the circlet into his hands, feeling the cool touch of the wire against his fingers. On closer inspection it was three wires twisted together. One of them was copper, almost blood red in the lamp light, the others silver – they could be silver or steel, or… blood silver. He could detect a slight glitter to one of the delicate wires. Magic indeed, then.

  He was strangely reluctant to put the thing on his head. His life might change if he did so, and he liked the way things were. He was not certain that he wanted Tregaris’s gift.

  “Put it on,” Tregaris urged.

  Francis laid the circlet carefully on the table and poured himself another glass of wine.

  “Drink with us,” he said. “Tell us something about yourself.”

  The suggestion was not welcome. Francis could see that it caused Tregaris considerable discomfort.

  “I don’t drink,” he said.

  “Everybody drinks. Except men with too many secrets, too many lies to keep track of. How can you trust a man like that?”

  Tregaris sat down opposite Francis, scowling. “The wine here is vile,” he said. “It gives me a headache.”

  Francis laughed. “Well, it’s not that bad,” he said.

  “I’m used to better,” Tregaris said.

  “You’re a wealthy man, then?”

  “I’ve lived high and I’ve lived low,” Tregaris said. “Lately I’ve lived rough, but I’ve come to believe that good water is preferable to bad wine.”

  “He’s a man of taste,” Keron said, pouring himself another full glass. “All the more for us.”

  “Where are you from?” Francis asked.

  “I was born in Telas,” Tregaris said.

  “Yes, but where are you from?” Francis touched the circlet with a finger. “Where did you get this?”

  “It is a simple question with a complicated answer,” Tregaris said. “If you put the circlet on your head I will tell you.”

  Francis had to admit that he was curious, and that made him a little more inclined to put the circlet on. He touched the thing again.

  “If I wear this it will not change me or harm me in any way?”

  “It will not,” Tregaris said.

  “You will swear it on your life?”

  “On my life.”

  Francis turned deliberately to Ker
on. “If this thing harms me, kill him.”

  His words had the desired effect on Tregaris, who looked suddenly worried. Keron pulled a blade from his boot and laid it on the table in front of him, fixing his gaze on their visitor.

  Francis picked up the circlet and studied it again. He liked the feel of it. The simple design was appealing and it felt almost unnaturally heavy in his hand as though it was made of more than the metal and the stone that he saw.

  He lifted it and placed it carefully on his head.

  Lightning struck the room – or that is how it appeared to Francis. A bright, cold light filled every corner, and he saw Keron flinch from it. Even Tregaris took a step back and raised a hand to shield his eyes.

  Francis snatched the thing from his head and it was as though the lamps had been blown out, so dark did it seem.

  “Gods and demons damned…” Keron was on his feet, the knife on the table forgotten.

  Francis turned to Tregaris. “What does it mean?” he demanded.

  Tregaris looked stunned. He had to make a visible effort to gather himself, and when he had he bent one knee and bowed his head.

  “My lord…”

  “I’m a blacksmith, Tregaris,” Francis snapped, but the man’s behaviour worried him. “There are no lords here.”

  Tregaris continued to kneel. “More than a lord. More than a king,” he said.

  “What are you babbling about?” Francis stood up, the circlet still clutched in his hand.

  Tregaris looked up, and his eyes were alight with a mad kind of joy. “I can make you a god,” he said.

  67 The Wolf

  King Degoran stood on the upper terrace and watched Wolf Narak practice. In truth it could hardly be called practise. Narak was better with a blade than any man who had ever lived, and his blades would cut anything. Add to that the fact that no blade, arrow or spear could harm him and there was really little point to it.

  For all that, Degoran appreciated the spectacle.

  Narak had rearranged the lower terrace. Two heavy posts, each a foot thick and six feet high, had been embedded in the ground at one end, about twelve feet apart. Narak had positioned himself five paces from them, and a further forty paces down the terrace he had placed four of the king’s finest archers. He had told the men that every arrow that struck him would earn them a gold coin.