Avenger botm-3

by Richard Baker

  “I don’t want to,” Selsha said.

  “Nor do I, but we might have to anyway.” She found a small smile, and brushed Selsha’s hair from her eyes. “Don’t worry yourself about it for now. That day’s not here yet, and it might never come. I just wanted you to know in case it did.”

  The door to the house opened, and the Tresterfins-Burkel, Elise, and their daughter Niamene-bustled out to greet them. The Tresterfins and Erstenwolds were both old Hulburg stock, but the two families were more than just neighbors. Burkel and Elise were the closest Mirya had to parents now that her own had passed on, and Niamene had been promised to her brother Jarad before he’d met his death out on the Highfells.

  “Welcome, Mirya,” Burkel said. “Welcome, Selsha. We’re glad to see you.” He was a stoop-shouldered, gray-haired man who wore a short, spadelike beard at his chin. Before Marstel’s coup he’d sat on the Harmach’s Council, but he’d never been comfortable as an adviser to the harmach.

  “Well met, Da Burkel,” Mirya replied. She set the wagon’s brake, clambered down, and helped Selsha to the ground.

  Selsha ran over to Niamene and hugged her. “Niney!” she cried.

  “Selsha!” Niameme kneeled and returned Selsha’s hug warmly. A pretty young woman of twenty-four years, she’d come to know Selsha well during the time she was betrothed to Jarad. Selsha looked on her as something of a big sister, which tickled Niamene. “I hope you’ll like staying with us for a time.”

  “Come in out of this damp, both of you,” Elise said. While Burkel retrieved a chest with Selsha’s clothing from the wagon, his wife ushered the Erstenwolds inside. The farmhouse was warm and comfortable, with a cheerful fire in the hearth and the smell of a good stew rising from the kettle above it. In short order they were enjoying a hot midday meal of mutton stew and coarse bread, a rare treat for Mirya and Selsha-with Erstenwold’s to mind, she never cooked for herself or Selsha in the middle of the day, so they usually made do with some cheese and smoked fish.

  After they finished, Burkel glanced at Mirya, and then looked over to his daughter. “Niamene, I’d wager that Selsha would love to see more of the steading.”

  Niamene gave a nod of understanding. “Let me show you around the farm, Selsha,” she said. “I’ll show you all the places I loved to hide when I was your size.”

  “Really?” Selsha said. She bounced up from her place at the table, and followed Niamene to the door. They threw on cloaks and went outside.

  Mirya watched her go, trying to still the pang in her heart. She knew she’d miss Selsha terribly, and in countless ways that she couldn’t even begin to guess at yet. But she couldn’t bear the idea of being the cause of any danger to her daughter, not again-the Black Moon misadventure had taught her everything she’d ever need to know about that. She looked over to Burkel and Elise, and sighed. “Thank you both for taking her in,” she said. “I’ll sleep better of nights, knowing that she’s safe here with you.”

  Elise waved her hand. “Think nothing of it, Mirya. She’s a darling girl. It’ll be a pleasure to the both of us.”

  “She might be more of a handful than you think.” Mirya smiled, and steeled herself for what she had to say next. Drawing an envelope from a pocket in her skirts, she handed it across the table. “Listen, if anything should befall me, this is for you to give to Selsha when the time’s right. It’s … it’s about her father. She knows nothing about him now, but if worse comes to worst, she has kin in Phlan. She won’t have much of a claim on them, but I’d hope that if she ever needed it, they might help her in some way.”

  The Tresterfins looked at each other. After a moment, Elise reached out to take the envelope. “Of course we’ll see to it,” she said. “But Mirya, what do you mean to do?”

  “It would be better if you didn’t know,” she answered. She paused, gazing out the thick glass window in the house’s kitchen door as she considered her next words. She could make out the barn behind the house, and a few skeletal apple trees, but blank gray fog hid the world beyond the Tresterfins’ farm. “I mean to do what needs doing. Marstel, his wizard, the Verunas, the Chainsmen, the Cinderfists … they’ll not stop until every decent person in Hulburg is coinless or enslaved. The Hulmasters haven’t forgotten us, but this isn’t their fight alone-it’s ours too. I’ve a mind to do my part.”

  “That’s a dangerous pastime,” Burkel said. “You’re already under suspicion because of your friendship with Geran. And even if you’re not concerned for yourself, you know that if you-and any others of like mind-strike back at the conniving sellswords and thieves who are running things these days, the first thing they’ll do is knock us all to the ground and put a foot on our necks. It’ll be blood, Mirya.”

  “I know it,” she said in a small voice. “But we’ve got a foot on our necks already, haven’t we? It’s a hard world out beyond the Highfells, and I don’t fancy the idea of being driven out into it without a copper to my name. Better to make our stand here, and fight for the Hulburg we remember.”

  They fell silent for a long moment. Outside, Mirya heard Selsha laughing in delight at something Niamene had said. Burkel looked to his wife again, and sighed. “I can’t say I haven’t had thoughts like yours,” he told Mirya. “Are the Hulmasters coming back? Do you know?”

  “I’ve seen Geran,” she replied. “I trust him, and Kara too. They’ll not leave us to Marstel and his wizard one moment longer than they must.”

  “All right, then. What can I do?”

  “You’ve got the hardest task of all: you’re to do nothing other than keep Selsha safe and out of sight. In the days ahead we’ll sorely need people we trust who aren’t under any suspicion at all, people who can show their face in town without fear and pass messages without seeming to do so. Beyond that, I’ve no idea yet.”

  The Tresterfins exchanged one more look, and Elise gave Burkel a small nod. The former councilman tilted his head. “So be it. You know where to find us when you need us, Mirya. And don’t have a worry for Selsha. We’ll look after her like she was our own.”

  Mirya smiled. “I know it. That’s why I asked you.” She stood and went to the back door, opening it up to look outside. Selsha and Niamene were looking at the goats the Tresterfins kept in the pasture behind the house. “Selsha, come inside a moment! I’ll be heading back into town!”

  “Coming, Mama!” Selsha shouted. She ran to the door, breathless with excitement.

  Mirya smiled at her and ushered her inside, determined not to let her daughter know that she had the slightest worry for either of them. “I want you to be your best for Aunt Elise and Uncle Burkel,” she said. “Mind them as you’d mind me-no, better than you’d mind me. There’s to be no arguing over chores or any such thing.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Then be a good guest, and don’t forget your lessons!” She leaned down to catch Selsha in a fierce hug, squeezing until her daughter squeaked in protest, and kissed her cheek when she was done. “I’ll be back to visit in three days. Fare you well till then.”

  “Fare well,” Selsha answered. “I’ll be fine, Mama.”

  Mirya sighed and straightened up. Leaving Selsha behind was harder than she’d thought, but she knew it was for the best. She’ll only be three miles down the road, Mirya told herself. I can see her every day if I’ve a mind to. She turned to give Elise Tresterfin a quick embrace, and gave the older woman a grateful smile. Then she hurried out before any tears might appear. Burkel followed her out to lend a hand with the wagon.

  After they said their good-byes, Mirya drove her wagon-now loaded with several casks of Tresterfin cider-slowly back to Hulburg. She passed a few travelers heading away from Hulburg, mostly Winterspear folk who’d come to town on some errand or other and were now heading back home. Most of the wagons hauling provisions up to the timber and mining camps in the Galena foothills were well on their way, having left early in the morning. About a mile outside town she passed by a small band of soldiers in Council Guard tabards r
iding out to patrol the road, but they didn’t bother her. She guessed that most of the merchant company sellswords had orders to leave her be, since the Hulmasters were in exile. With Geran and the others out of sight, she wasn’t of any special interest to them.

  That might change soon enough, she reflected. It wouldn’t be wise to count on being ignored for too much longer.

  Another hour saw her safely back to Erstenwold’s, where she had her clerks store the Tresterfin cider, stable the horse, and put away the wagon. The afternoon was drawing on, so she devoted herself to catching up with a dozen small tasks around the store-setting out the orders that would go out the next morning, totaling her ledgers, putting together her own orders to leatherworkers, blacksmiths, ropemakers, brewers, cheesemakers, and smokehouses all over the vale. Erstenwold’s had seen better days, but for now she could still make a decent living from the store, and pay a half-dozen clerks too. At six bells she shut the storehouse doors, sent the last of her clerks home, and locked up the store.

  “It’s too quiet without Selsha about,” she muttered to herself. The old store seemed still as a tomb without her daughter’s sudden laughter or carefree footsteps pelting over the well-worn floorboards. She ate a cold meal made up from the pantry she kept in Erstenwold’s back rooms, spent an hour tidying up, and then settled in to wait. When ten bells tolled over the city streets, she drew on a heavy cloak, tucked a dark hood in her pocket, and took the crossbow she kept under the counter. In one of the back storerooms she rolled a heavy barrel aside, and lifted up the trapdoor leading down into the cellars. She lit a lantern, and descended into the darkness.

  The cellars were deep and empty. In another month or so, Mirya would hire workmen to cut blocks of ice from Lake Hul before the thaw and drag them into town on horse-drawn sledges. No one needed cold storage now, but with a little luck her ice cellars would last through the summer, and she’d turn a decent profit by selling it off a block at a time then. She headed for the far wall of the cellar, where a small, thick, double-barred door stood in the foundation wall. Drawing back the bolts, she pushed the door open and peered into the passageway beyond with lantern held high.

  “Don’t be a goose, Mirya,” she told herself. “There’s naught to fear down here but rats and dust.” Drawing a deep breath, she headed into the passageway.

  Hulburg was built atop the ruins of a much larger city. The town she knew had grown up only in the last hundred years or so, but the city beneath it was almost five times as old. It had been burned, razed, plundered, and reduced to rubble two or three times over its sad history, and each time folk had come back to rebuild from the ruins. Most of Hulburg’s current wooden buildings stood atop stone foundations from the far older city. In many places, old cellars-and in a few cases, whole streets-had been filled in or covered over, leaving a dusty old labyrinth of forgotten cellars with no buildings above or blind passageways joined to the basements of businesses like Erstenwold’s. Most of the old passages were sealed off, of course, but over the years quite a few folk had found it useful to have secret ways to move about just beneath the streets. In other cities, the shades of the dead might have haunted such places, making it terribly dangerous to wander through the hidden bones of the old Hulburg … but the harmachs of old had struck some bargain with the great lich Aesperus, the King in Copper, and undead creatures did not lurk beneath Hulburg’s homes and workshops.

  She set her foot in the stirrup of the crossbow and cocked the weapon, laying a bolt in on the string. There might not be any ghosts or ghouls to fear, but that didn’t mean buried Hulburg was necessarily safe. Then Mirya set off through the old rubble-choked passages. From time to time she passed by doors leading into other cellars or basements, intersections where several tunnels met, even one open space where a whole taphouse had been buried in its entirety, with the great wooden tuns of ale standing dry and dusty. As a teenager she’d explored some of these passages with Jarad and Geran, nosing around in search of lost treasure or hidden smugglers’ dens. She hadn’t much liked the old passages then, and she didn’t like them much now.

  She turned a corner and let herself through a small door into a dusty old cellar beneath a cobbler’s workshop, then climbed a flight of stone steps back up to the street. Carefully she shuttered her lantern and set it by the upper doorway, waiting a short time to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then she drew a simple sackcloth mask over her face before letting herself out into the cold night again.

  The stairs emerged in a dark alley behind Gold Street, not far from the compound of the Iron Ring Coster. Several hooded figures waited in the shadows, their faces covered by masks like hers. She knew them all anyway, of course: Brun Osting, the strapping brewer who owned the Troll and Tankard; his cousin Halla Osting, a tall young woman who could bring down a rabbit with a slingstone at fifty paces; Senna Vannarshel, a half-elf woman of sixty years who was the best bowmaker in Hulburg; Rost Therndon, a carpenter and shipwright almost as big as Brun Osting; and the dwarf Lodharrun, whose smithy was the largest in Hulburg not owned by one of the foreign merchant companies. They tensed in sudden alarm as Mirya made her appearance, steel glinting in their hands before they recognized her.

  Mirya looked about the dim alleyway, and allowed herself a humorless smile. “I thought you all had more sense than to carry on with this,” she murmured. “Well, first things first-were any of you seen? Were any of you followed?”

  They all shook their heads, but Brun spoke softly. “There are more of the gray guards by the Harmach’s Foot and the Middle Bridge,” he said. “I counted eight more of ’em tonight on the way here. They didn’t see me, but if more of them show up in the streets, it’ll be hard to avoid them.”

  “I’ll make a note of them,” Mirya replied unhappily. The gray guardians were some work of Rhovann’s, she was sure of it. A month before the first of the tall, silent things had appeared on the battlements of Griffonwatch, armored warriors seven feet tall with thick, powerful limbs. Their faces were covered by black helms, and strange magical sigils were written in their gray flesh. Sometimes they accompanied the Council Guard on patrol, and other times they simply stood watch at street corners or doorways. Figuring out what they were and how Marstel’s wizard was making them was clearly becoming more important every day … but that wasn’t her mission tonight. As far as she knew, none of the gray guardians were nearby, and she and her small band of rebels had different work ahead of them. “Any word from Darsen?”

  “Aye,” Halla answered. “The Jannarsk sellsword’s in the Black Gull, with two more mercenaries. Darsen’s there.”

  Mirya nodded. It was one more foe than she’d hoped for, but she meant to carry things through anyway. Two days previous, one of the House Jannarsk sergeants and his squad had wrecked the shop of Perremon the cheesemaker, beating him severely when the Hulburgan had objected to their crude overtures to his daughter. It was time to draw some boundaries for the foreign mercenaries occupying Hulburg. She slid out to the mouth of the alleyway, looking up and down the street; a handful of passersby were still about, but no one nearby.

  “Should we head for the Black Gull?” Rost Therndon said. “We could take them from the front and the back in one rush-”

  “No, we’ll wait for eleven bells,” Mirya answered. That was the plan they’d worked out before, and she didn’t want to throw it out over simple impatience. The night was cold and damp, with a thin wet fog brooding over the streets. She drew back into the alley’s shadows, and wrapped herself more tightly in her cloak. The others in her small band did likewise, and they waited in silence for a time. Finally, the bell in the Council Hall struck eleven; Mirya shivered and straightened up, as did her companions.

  Out of sight down the street, she heard a sudden distant burst of laughter and music as the taphouse door opened up. A few moments later, a single slender figure hurried by the mouth of the alleyway-Darsen Ilkur, the son of Deren Ilkur. The younger Ilkur worked as a clerk in the mercantile compounds, and was well
placed to watch the foreigners’ comings and goings. “Three right behind me,” he murmured as he walked past, careful not to even turn his head toward the alleyway.

  Mirya motioned to Brun, Rost, and Lodharrun. The three loyalists crept closer to the alley mouth. Heavy footsteps, the jingle of mail, and a coarse drunken jest announced the approaching Jannarsk men. The armsmen walked unsteadily past the alley mouth with hardly a glance at the shadows-and Mirya’s fighters struck. A quick, stealthy rush brought the three Hulburgans into the street behind the mercenaries, with cudgels gripped in strong hands. Mirya, Halla, and Vannarshel followed after them, spreading out to cover the streets to either side.

  “What is this?” the Jannarsk sergeant snarled, reaching for the sword at his belt.

  “You’re not welcome here,” Mirya spat.

  The other armsmen started to turn, reaching for their own weapons. They were too slow. In a dark, furious tide, the Hulburgans swarmed over them with their cudgels rising and falling. The sergeant managed to draw his sword, and stayed on his feet long enough to line up a thrust at Rost as the carpenter bludgeoned one of the other sellswords to the ground. Mirya raised her crossbow, sighting for a shot-but Brun Osting stepped close and neatly rapped the sergeant’s sword from his hand with a sharp blow of his club that likely broke the man’s thumb. Then all three of the sellswords were on the ground, and the Hulburgans fell to beating and kicking them furiously.

  Mirya winced at the violent assault, but she refused to look away. There’d be worse than this if she meant to see things all the way through. “Leave them alive!” she hissed to her neighbors. “We’ll not spill blood until we have to.” She had no particular concern for sparing Hulburg’s enemies, but she hoped that leaving the Jannarsks alive would bring less of a reprisal than cold-blooded murder.

  In the space of ten heartbeats, it was over. Mirya motioned for Brun and Therndon to drag the mercenaries back into the alleyway, pausing for one more look up and down the street. No one was close enough to pay them any attention; the fog was their friend tonight, or so it seemed. She stooped by the battered mercenaries, searching for signs of life. All of them were breathing, but if she was any judge, they’d be in slings or casts for tendays. Well, it wasn’t anything more than they’d inflicted on poor Perremon. “Take their weapons,” she told Therndon. The carpenter quickly gathered up their swords and daggers in a sack, throwing it over his shoulder.