The Poisoned Quarrel: The Arbalester Trilogy 3 (Complete Edition)

by Duncan Lay

  “Fallon, please, in memory of what we did together, I beg you!”

  “That was another man,” Fallon said coldly. “Out of respect for him, I let you go tonight. But don’t push me too far.” He waved to his men. “Escort the Archbishop’s man out of here and make sure he does not come back. We have work to do.”

  He ignored Gallagher’s shouts as the former fisherman was hustled out and the doors shut behind him. One benefit was the merchant had had extra time to shiver in the cold, his plump body looking particularly pale in the lamplight. But he was still carrying plenty of extra flesh, Fallon noted sourly, unlike most people in the city.

  “Right. You are going to tell us where Munro is hiding,” he announced.

  “Who?” the merchant blustered.

  Fallon signalled and two of his men wrapped a rope around the merchant’s wrists and then fed it over a beam, hauling on it until the man’s toes were scraping at the floor.

  “You may have heard what I did to King Aidan, and to the country’s nobles when I caught them in Meinster,” he said conversationally. “That was merely practice. I shall test it on you in a moment unless you start talking.”

  He snapped his fingers and Brendan stepped forwards, his hammer over one shoulder, while Bran produced a long knife, wickedly curved.

  “We shall start to break every bone in your body, and then we shall skin you. Or maybe we’ll skin you first and then break your bones,” Fallon said. “I want to know about Munro!”

  The merchant began to sob then, deep wailing gasps that shook his whole body and made the soldiers on the rope fight to keep him upright.

  “Oh, for Aroaril’s sake, cut off his fingers and see if that gets him talking,” Fallon said sharply.

  The merchant’s eyes snapped open and he gasped down his tears.

  “Please, you have to protect me,” he babbled.

  Fallon smiled in satisfaction. “Tell me everything and I shall keep you safe. But lie to me and I shall see you take days to die,” he promised.

  “I can give you several houses where others are storing food illegally,” he said. “I also know where Munro is staying tonight.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Can I keep my house and my gold at least?”

  Fallon stepped closer, so close he could see tears dripping down the man’s face.

  “Keep your house and gold? I will let you keep all your fingers and toes and no more. Try to bargain with me again and you will lose your balls first of all.”

  The merchant’s bowels let go then, forcing Fallon to step backwards in disgust. “He’s staying at my house!” he cried.

  Fallon stepped closer, carefully, and patted the man’s damp cheek.

  “Excellent. Then we are going to pay him a visit.”

  *

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Brendan asked.

  “No, let’s go back and find another, while we wait for Munro to escape,” Fallon said.

  The smith grunted. “Three of us to grab the man who has been dancing around us for moons?”

  “Any more and he will smell a rat. Three guards left with Docherty here, three have to return. Padraig will be leading the others in to throw up a circle around the place. All we have to do is get close enough. He was a dressmaker, for Aroaril’s sake!”

  “Well, he might have posed as a dressmaker but he killed two of our best men easily enough to free the Duchess and then got in and out of the castle without anyone seeing,” Bran pointed out.

  “Just let me near him with a shillelagh and he will be nothing to worry about,” Fallon promised. “Now, Docherty, are you ready for what we have to do?”

  The merchant nodded vigorously and Bran patted him on the shoulder. “Good, because I shall open your fat guts with my knife and let you take a day and a night to die screaming if you try to do anything clever.”

  “Nothing clever, I promise you,” Docherty said hastily.

  Fallon pulled a blanket around his shoulders. He was not cold, in fact he burned with impatience and excitement, but it was important Munro, if he looked out, saw what appeared to be three bored guards returning from their job.

  “How far?” he asked.

  “Just at the end of this street,” Docherty said. “When we get there, two of you will need to open the side gate and then we all ride in, hiding the cart in my stables at the back. Munro is in there, under the false floor.”

  “That better be the only false thing about this story, or you will regret it.”

  The merchant nodded vigorously. Fallon congratulated himself on ordering the man stripped before being strung up. It meant his clothes had not been completely ruined. Some of the buttons were torn but the thick cloak hid the worst of the damage and it only needed to last for a few moments, long enough to get to Munro.

  “What if this is a trap?” Bran murmured into Fallon’s ear.

  Fallon smiled. “This tub of lard won’t give us any trouble. He shat himself at the thought of what we would do to him. It’s taken a long time but we’ve closed enough of Munro’s ratholes that he’s had to put his trust in this pudding. Anyway, if there is trouble, we just need to keep the gate open. And Padraig will be there with the others in a few heartbeats.”

  They rattled on slowly, the cart’s greased wheels making little noise on the cobbles, until Docherty nodded towards a substantial house on their left, set behind a tall stone wall.

  “That’s the gate,” he said.

  Fallon nodded to Bran and Brendan, who jumped down and strolled over to the double gate set in the wall. The ornate ironwork decorating its wooden panels would have cost enough to feed a family for a moon, Fallon thought sourly, as Brendan and Bran lifted the latch and hauled the gates open. Docherty snapped the reins and the horses ambled forwards, their hooves wrapped to protect against the ice and noise. The cart just fitted through the gate and forced Bran and Brendan to wait until it had passed before following them.

  In that moment, Docherty reared up on his seat, jumping to his feet on the leather-padded bench.

  “In Zorva’s name!” he roared into the night, his voice echoing around the small stone courtyard beside the huge house.

  Lights were unfurled around the courtyard and men raced out of the darkness, armed with sword and spear. As Fallon quickly counted his attackers, Docherty bent down and whipped out a long knife from a hidden sheath beside his seat and jumped into the bed of the wagon, the blade held high.

  “My weakness was my strength. Now you shall die, you arrogant bastard,” Docherty snarled. “Die for the glory of Prince Swane and Zorva!”

  But Fallon had a shillelagh in his hand and he reacted instinctively, punching the end out to snap the merchant’s head back and send him reeling, dribbling teeth. Then Fallon stepped in and smashed the iron-bound end into the merchant’s forehead, flipping him back off the cart, where he landed with a soggy thud on the cobbles.

  “With me! Padraig, get here now!” Fallon bellowed.

  Bran and Brendan joined him on the wagon, which now blocked the doorway and also acted like a little castle. A dozen of Docherty’s guards flocked around the wagon, trying to get up, spears jabbing out and swords waving.

  Brendan reached down and grabbed one waving spear and simply hauled it out of the man’s hands by strength alone. The guard was dragged up onto the wagon bed and Fallon slammed his shillelagh into the back of his neck, ignoring him as he convulsed and then went limp. Bran dodged a spear thrust and kicked out, snapping that man’s head back, then jumped high as a sword thudded into the wagon bed, just missing his foot. Brendan reversed the spear and rammed it into a man’s neck, deep into his chest, before unslinging his massive hammer.

  The guards drew back instinctively at the sight of it and, in the sudden silence, broken only by the moans of the dying, Fallon could hear the clatter of hooves on cobbles.

  “Give it up now and you might live! Your paymaster is dead and you will soon follow if you don’t drop your weapons now!” he o
rdered.

  They wavered, then one jumped up onto the wagon, only to be met with a swing of Brendan’s hammer that caved in his chest with a hideous crack and dropped him back to the cobbles. The others, who had been about to leap up, hesitated again. Fallon was sure they were about to give up when a voice called from the darkness beyond the lamps.

  “Get them! They can’t stop you all!”

  They surged in again and Fallon braced himself, except the cart horses came to their rescue, coming to life, kicking and biting and stamping at the men around them.

  Guards fell under their hooves, while Bran hacked the arm off one of the few to reach up to haul themselves aboard the wagon. Next moment crossbows began to snap, throwing the surviving attackers back, and a rush of armed villagers came around the back of the wagon and swept through the remaining attackers.

  “I want that man out there!” Fallon bellowed, pointing into the darkness where the voice had come from.

  He jumped down from the wagon, his men flooding forwards at his back. A dazed guard raised a sword but Fallon rammed his shillelagh into the man’s groin and shoved him aside for someone else to take care of. His night vision had been spoiled by the lamps but he could see the bulk of the stables and raced towards them, heedless of what might be waiting.

  The doors were locked and he looked around for Brendan. “Hammer! Fast!” he roared.

  Brendan pounded over and snapped the locking bar with two huge blows and a dozen men shoved the doors open to see another door swinging shut at the other side, leading to another street.

  “Hurry!” Fallon called, feeling sick at the thought Munro might escape again. “Padraig!”

  By the time they got through the other door, all they could hear were hoofbeats on cobbles as someone made their escape.

  “Tell me we have patrols blocking off these streets as I ordered,” Fallon said.

  Nobody said anything and he clenched his hands around the shillelagh. In the next moment, the hoofbeats seemed to get louder.

  “Maybe he’s doubling back,” Brendan said.

  “Spread out. We have to bring him down,” Fallon ordered and they blocked the road.

  A man on a horse rounded a corner, coming out of an alleyway hanging on for dear life as he seemingly fought with the horse. Fallon braced himself but the horse simply ran up to them and skidded to a halt, despite the rider’s best efforts to make it move. The man sat there, jerking the reins this way and that and slamming his heels into the horse’s flanks but it refused to move.

  He was dragged off the horse and pinned to the ground.

  “Get a lamp and let’s see what we have here,” Fallon ordered. He was elated but had to fight to keep it under control. After all, it might not be Munro. There had been so many false leads and hopes over the past few moons.

  Padraig strolled up, wiping sweat from his brow. “Not a bad effort, even if I say so myself. He was nearly too far away but I found his horse and brought it back here for you,” the old wizard said with satisfaction. “I don’t think he was expecting that.”

  Fallon clapped Padraig on the shoulder. “You have earned your pay tonight, my friend. Saving our bacon at the gate and now this!”

  “I get paid? Since when?” Padraig exclaimed, raising a chuckle from the surrounding men.

  “Since tonight,” Fallon smiled, as a lamp was brought over and held high over their captive’s face. It was streaked with dirt and twisted in a snarl but it was still unmistakable.

  “You can have half of whatever we find on Munro!”

  *

  Docherty still lived, but not for long, and spent his last moments raving his hatred of them.

  “You were right and I was wrong,” Fallon told Bran. “But, I have to say, he was the most unlikely killer I have seen in a long time.”

  The bearded guardsman nodded in reply but said nothing. Fallon didn’t worry about that. He had much bigger things on his mind. As Docherty had said, there was a false floor in the stable and a cellar beneath. Obviously once it had been full of food but now only a quarter or so was filled with sacks of oats.

  “He had to be selling to others. No way a man like him would have lived on oats alone,” Brendan said.

  A search discovered the answer: a series of parchments detailing payments to five other merchants, goods in kind for delicacies.

  “Get Bran in here. I want to find out where these five men live and then pay them a visit. We tear their places apart until we find what they’ve hidden,” Fallon ordered.

  He paced over to where his men had been ripping apart Docherty’s house, revealing little, but giving them a certain amount of satisfaction. He was tempted to inspect their progress, to delay the pleasure of interrogating Munro a little more, but it was bitterly cold and getting late and tomorrow promised to be a big day of hunting for Munro’s spies and, best of all, for Swane.

  He walked back to the stables. A line of his men were hauling sacks of oats out to be taken to the nearest food warehouse, while four guards watched Munro intently, even though he was tied to a stable post with so much rope that only his head and feet were visible, although his hands were also poking out. Fallon nodded to Brendan.

  “Soften him up,” he ordered.

  The smith stepped up with a grim smile. Slowly he grabbed Munro’s hands and, one by one, broke each finger, until the man was howling and cursing.

  Fallon signalled and took Brendan’s place.

  “We’ve done this to show we’re serious. If we’ll break your fingers before we even ask a question, imagine what we’ll do if you don’t give us the answers we want. Now, you are going to tell us the names of all your accomplices, and where we can find them,” he said flatly.

  Munro looked up, eyes slitted against the pain. “I cannot do that,” he said.

  Fallon hit him, smashing punches from either side, hitting out all his frustration and anger, only stopping when Munro’s eyes were swelling shut and there was blood running from both his lips and nose.

  “Are you ready to talk? Give us the woman who tried to kill my wife? Or do we get out the knives?”

  Munro spat blood. “I cannot give you what I don’t have. I gave my people their orders and then sent them away. You can make me scream as much as you like but I still won’t know where they are.”

  “Swane,” Fallon said. “Give me Swane. Where is he?”

  Munro chuckled, then gasped as Fallon grabbed one of his broken fingers and twisted it.

  “I can tell you that now, much good it will do you,” Munro gasped. “He is beyond your reach, for he has gone to Kotterman, taking back Prince Kemal with him. But you will see him again. He will return in the spring, with an army of Kottermanis at his back.”

  Fallon became aware that everyone in the stable had gone quiet and was staring at Munro.

  “You’re lying,” he accused.

  Munro snorted back blood and spat it out again. “Cut me and burn me if you want. Or get your Archbishop to question me. But my story will not change because it is the truth.”

  Fallon spun around, looking at the men in the stables.

  “Not a word of this is to be breathed outside the castle,” he said. “If I hear this on the streets, I will know where to look.” He raced out of the stable, his mind racing. He had to get Munro back to the castle for further questioning and leave Bran to clean up this mess. Suddenly the taste of victory had gone sour.

  CHAPTER 60

  Fallon sat down at the table, ignoring the furious stares he was getting. Gallagher, Rosaleen, Nola, Riona and Devlin all looked like they would like to torture him. Even Bridgit wasn’t smiling. It had taken most of the day and a mixture of threats and promises to bring them here. Well, that had to change.

  “Last night we caught Munro. He revealed Swane has gone to the Kottermanis and plans to use Prince Kemal to convert their Emperor to Zorva. What is coming for us is not just an army but an army of the Dark God,” Fallon said heavily.

  He had to wait until the
shock had died down, waving his hands for quiet as seemingly everyone blamed someone else.

  “Where is Munro? Let us hear what he has to say,” Bridgit said, cutting through the chatter. “I, for one, would like to meet the man.”

  Fallon paused.

  “You have tortured him,” Bridgit said flatly.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” Fallon protested. “I had to make him talk and Rosaleen wasn’t helping!”

  “Because you insulted both Rosaleen and Gallagher. You should have gone on your knees to them if that was what it took to get their help.”

  “A fine look that would be for the Lord Protector,” Fallon said.

  “Does it matter how you look, or whether this country is safe?” she fired back.

  Fallon closed eyes that felt like they were full of grit. He could not remember when he had last slept a full night. He wanted to crawl between the covers, embrace Bridgit and then close his eyes and forget all about this for at least a day.

  “All right,” he said. “I think we can all accept I have made mistakes.”

  He ignored a snort from Nola and a sarcastic laugh from Gallagher.

  “Put aside all that. We have to work together now. Please, I need your help,” he said. This was the old nightmares in the light of day, this was Aidan’s dying prophecy sprung to life. He could not let his choices doom Gaelland. Whatever it took, he had to undo his mistakes.

  “It would have been better if you had said that before you insulted us all, threw aside Bridgit and seized power for yourself,” Riona told him.

  Fallon leaned back in his chair. “You want to get revenge? Fine, shout at me all you want. I shall just sit here. Let me know when you have finished and then perhaps we can get on with saving the country.”

  Bridgit held up a hand. “What needs to be done?”

  Fallon gave her his warmest smile. “First I need every priest in the land preaching the same message, that Gaelland must unite to defeat this enemy. Everyone must do whatever I say if we are to defeat them and end the menace of the Zorva-worshippers.”