by Stan Nichols
His first couple of swipes showed that the militiaman had energy but little expertise. She parried them easily. For a moment she swapped blows with both men alternately and held them off. But deadlock didn’t suit her. With a series of wide sweeps and deep jabs she drove back the paladin. Then she spun to the other man and mercilessly hacked at him, to the extent that when she feigned an opening he took it recklessly. She knocked his blade clear, breaking his guard.
The gap was all she needed. Her sword sank into his chest. He staggered and fell.
As Serrah pulled away she glimpsed the family, huddled at the wall, horrified expressions on their faces.
The paladin was onto her again. After what he’d just seen he was fuelled by desperation. His strategy was simply to batter her into submission, and the way he dealt out steel verged on the careless. Serrah liked that. An unruly enemy was a gift. She soaked up everything he threw at her, letting him tire. When fatigue set in, she went for him.
While she pounded, Serrah was aware of the two watchmen. They were a dozen paces off, the wounded man sitting on the ground, hands to his streaming face. His partner knelt beside him. But he was staring at Serrah, and she thought he was about to move.
A crack from her blade prised ajar the paladin’s guard, and she would have finished him, but the second watchman chose that moment to spring at her. He came with his sword slashing in great arcs. She ducked a pass from her main opponent and turned to face this new one. Expertly she blocked the side of his speeding blade with the edge of her own. It ruined his rhythm and rocked his balance.
Another cross to the paladin kept him clear. With her full attention on the watchman she engaged again, targeting his sword arm. Two swipes skimmed his flesh. The third connected, ploughing the length of his forearm, spraying blood. He yelled in agony and his fist spasmed open, releasing his weapon. She thrust hard and pierced his heart. The watchman sagged and dropped. His injured comrade, one hand to his face, quickly crawled to him.
Serrah powered back into the fight with the paladin. If anything, he fought with more intensity, forcing her to retreat a step or two. She barred his onslaught and reversed the trend. They fenced back and forth along the lane, some of his traditional skills resurfacing. Their blows and counterblows fell like metal hail.
At last she drew him out with a fake offering of unprotected flesh. He gulped the bait, moved in, ready to eviscerate this mad, troublesome female.
She swerved, hammered his blade out of play and ribboned his chest. He shrieked, slashed wildly in her direction, and took the full impact of her follow-up. Her sword burrowed between ribs and ruptured a lung.
Spitting crimson to match his tunic, the paladin went to his knees, then pitched forward. He lay still, bar the twitching.
Serrah took a long breath. She looked to the watchman who’d lost his nose. He crouched next to the partner she’d killed. The man was frozen, transfixed by the sight of her. She walked over to him, gently swinging her sword. He cowered.
‘No!’
It was the big man, his hat comically askew. She stayed her hand, stared at him.
‘There’s no need,’ he explained, talking rapidly. ‘He can’t do us any harm. Leave him. Please.’
The dark-haired woman was nodding agreement and mouthing some kind of plea to back him up.
But it was the faces of the children that decided Serrah.
She bent down to the quaking watchman and wiped her bloody sword on his jerkin, making him flinch. Then she straightened, re-sheathed and strode to the others. They watched her coming with eyes wide.
‘We have to get out of here,’ the man said.
‘There are more coming,’ the woman reminded him, clutching the children tighter.
Serrah scanned the harbour. ‘Any ideas for a good hiding place? I’m new in these parts.’
‘Yes,’ the big man told her, ‘I think so. Come with us. But hurry!’
He began hustling them away.
Serrah got a good look at him. ‘Don’t I know you?’
He looked pained. ‘Can we discuss that later, please?’
They fled, leaving a trembling watchman and three bodies in spreading dark pools.
17
‘Are you sure you’ll not take some wine?’ Karr said, offering the flagon again.
Reeth shook his head.
The patrician eyed Caldason’s modest platter of dry bread, cheese and a few grapes, which he was picking at with scant enthusiasm. ‘You’re not exactly eating extravagantly either.’
‘I take a sufficiency.’ He was in a brooding temper.
Kutch, tucking heartily into his heaped plate, asked, ‘Can I have some of that, please?’
Karr smiled. ‘You seem to have developed a taste for the stuff since Reeth took you into that tavern. Here.’ He poured a little wine into a cup, then topped it up from a jug of water. When he passed it across, Kutch’s look of gratitude was tempered with just a smidgen of disappointment at the dilution.
They went back to eating in silence.
The large, solid table they sat around stood in a sizeable kitchen in a spacious house on the edge of Valdarr. Sitting on a small rise and surrounded by a high wall with stout iron gates, the house was located at the end of a road with open fields beyond. There were several exits. When he first saw the place, Caldason correctly assumed it had been chosen because it was defendable.
Since they had arrived, a stream of visitors had been discreetly coming and going. Karr introduced some of them to Reeth and Kutch, usually by name only, with few if any personal details. But mostly he didn’t. Other people seemed to be permanently based in the house, acting as staff and bodyguards.
Sighing, Karr finally put down his knife. ‘This sort of atmosphere can affect a man’s appetite. What’s on your mind, Caldason?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Covenant.’ He said it with the air of a man who’d heard the word too often.
‘It has been a couple of days now. And you did -’
‘Promise. Yes, I know. I’m trying, Reeth, believe me. They’re not the easiest group to contact and they don’t exactly advertise their presence.’
‘You said you’ve dealt with them.’
‘So we have. We’re in an alliance with them, in fact, as we are with other like-minded groups. But it’s early days and communication tends to be on their terms.’
‘Nevertheless, we had an agreement.’
‘And I’m doing my best to honour it. I have somebody working on this right now as a matter of fact. But to put it bluntly, Reeth, I have problems other than yours to sort out. Plenty of them, just in the couple of days we’ve been here.’
‘It feels longer,’ Caldason remarked acerbically.
Karr decided to ignore that. ‘I’ve seen people who want my help because they’ve had their children taken away by government officials, or their brothers have been unjustly sentenced. People who’ve caught diseases after being forced to work in the eastern mines, had their sons conscripted, or their property seized to house Gath Tampoor’s bureaucrats. To mention just a few.’
‘Do you normally get so many requests?’ Kutch asked.
‘Their numbers climb the more the empire encroaches on personal freedoms. On top of that,’ he added, warming to his subject, ‘we’ve just learnt that Ivak Bastorran himself is in Bhealfa, along with his sadist of a nephew. We’re trying to find out if such high-ranking paladins are here for a special reason, something we should know about.’
Mention of the clans brought a harsh set to Caldason’s eye. ‘All right, so you’re occupied with other people’s problems,’ he conceded, ‘but you can farm out the routine work to aides, can’t you?’
‘To some extent, yes. But now and again something comes up that’s out of the ordinary. And we’ve just had not one but three… oddities, I suppose you could call them. I think at least one of them might be of interest to you, Reeth.’
‘Oh?’
‘There are three stories,
as I say, and they’re quite a tangle. But I’ll try to tell them simply. If you want to hear them, that is.’
‘
I
do,’ Kutch said.
Caldason said nothing.
‘They do make for intriguing table talk.’ Karr wore the slightly smug expression of someone about to impart a good tale. ‘Recently, a member of one of Gath Tampoor’s leading families met an untimely death in Merakasa,’ he explained. ‘The regime blamed a captain of one of the special units run by their Council for Internal Security.’
‘What are special units?’ Kutch asked.
‘Like a lot of things the empires do, officially they don’t exist. In reality, they’re small groups of elite fighters whose job is to assassinate enemies of the state. That can mean dissidents, revolutionaries, opposition members, bandit gangs…whoever’s causing enough trouble to be worth eliminating.’
Kutch looked shocked.
‘Anyway,’ Karr went on, ‘this captain was held responsible for the young man’s death. Dereliction of duty, they called it. Whether that’s the case or she was a dupe, we still don’t know. The Resistance in Merakasa saw her as a potentially valuable asset. Their thinking was that if her bosses had turned against her she might be inclined to talk, or even to join the dissident ranks. So they got her out of jail, and right under the nose of Commissioner Laffon too, though they took heavy losses.’
‘What happened to this woman?’ Caldason wanted to know.
‘No sooner had they made good her escape than she got away from them and disappeared. Only now she’s popped up again. Here, in Valdarr. But her story’s just a third of it, as I said. The woman in the next story couldn’t be more different from her. She’s from Jecellam, but she isn’t a Rintarahian. She worked as a courtesan in a state-controlled brothel, apparently.’
A reddish tint flared in Kutch’s cheeks.
Karr drove home his point. ‘And this is the part you might find interesting, Reeth. She’s a Qalochian.’
Caldason was typically hard to read.
‘She had some involvement in the deaths of two people,’ Karr continued, ‘including a middle-ranking state administrator. She’s fetched up here as well, along with two children, not her own. The Rintarahian Resistance told us she got away without their help.’
‘You mean the Resistance here and in Rintarah talk to each other? They’re connected?’
‘Don’t look so surprised, Kutch. Resistance is universal. It straddles trifling political differences.’
Caldason brought the conversation back on line. ‘You were telling us three stories.’
‘Yes. The third concerns a Gath Tampoorian quite prominent in his profession; a pacifist who quietly supports the Resistance. When these two women crossed his path, here in Valdarr, there was more violence, and possibly an end to his career. Though that still has to be determined.’
‘Why are you telling us about these people?’ Caldason asked.
‘Because the underground has given all three protection. Lost lambs brought into the fold, you might say. And it’s possible that before too long you’ll be making their acquaintance yourselves.’
‘Why?’
‘No particular reason. But you never know what the future might bring, do you?’
‘Stop trying to drag me into your schemes, Patrician. Don’t even think about it. You know what I’ve said about -’
A soft knock at the door interrupted them. The man who entered was one of the many unnamed people who acted as helpers and guards in the house. He went to Karr and whispered something in his ear. Karr nodded and thanked him, and the man quietly left.
‘Well, you’ve got your wish, Reeth. You’re to be granted an audience with Phoenix himself, it seems.’
‘About time.’
‘And he wants you there too, Kutch.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘That’s something you’ll need to ask Phoenix.’
‘I’m not sure about the boy going along,’ Caldason said.
‘Oh, come on, Reeth!’ Kutch complained, face twisted in youthful angst at the prospect of missing a treat.
‘It might be dangerous. Anyway, I’d prefer privacy.’
‘Apparently it’s a condition,’ Karr pointed out. ‘Both of you or not at all.’
‘It makes no sense.’
‘Well, you’ve come this far…’
Reeth considered it. ‘All right. When?’
‘Today. They’re sending someone to pick you up now.’
Covenant were as good as their word.
Within the hour their emissary arrived. He was short and bony with an orderly beard, and he used words sparingly. They were told to call him Ockley. He didn’t know or wouldn’t say why Kutch had been included in the audience with Phoenix. Nor was he forthcoming about exactly where they were going.
Another hour later they found themselves on the opposite side of the city from Karr’s safe house. They were in a bustling, run-down neighbourhood mostly given over to small manufacturers of clothes, cheap furniture, minor glamours and other daily necessities. A market shared the neighbourhood, adding to the traffic. Streams of people on foot weaved around wagons and mules being loaded and unloaded. Tradesmen lugged sacks of vegetables and crates of fish.
As always, there were men and women in the crowd who regarded Caldason with contempt, if not plain hostility. It wasn’t uncommon for children to share their distaste and to show it.
‘How much longer before we get there, Ockley?’ Caldason wondered.
‘Not far now. Naturally we’re taking an indirect route.’
‘Can’t we move a bit faster?’
‘We’re to do nothing that might attract attention to ourselves,’ their guide replied sternly. ‘I would have thought you of all people could understand that.’
Reeth and Kutch slowed and fell back a few paces. They conversed under their breath.
‘Jolly soul, isn’t he?’ Kutch reckoned.
‘I can see the need for caution, but this endless dawdling isn’t to my taste.’
‘You’re not very fond of cities, are you?’
‘Not greatly. Such places are cut off from nature, and that goes against the way my people see things. And cities have the biggest concentration of magic.’
‘I think that’s one reason I’m starting to like it here. Anyway, there’s no contradiction between magic and nature. Magic’s
part
of nature.’
‘I don’t dispute that. It’s the use it’s put to I don’t like.’
A passer-by stared rudely at Caldason. He returned the gaze levelly and the man looked away.
‘Aren’t you excited about meeting another Qalochian? I mean that woman the patrician told us about.’
‘Would you be excited about meeting another sorcerer’s apprentice?’
‘Well, interested might be a better word.’
‘That’s more or less how I feel.’
‘But I’m excited about meeting Phoenix. Aren’t you?’
Caldason didn’t answer.
They carried on without talking, watching Ockley’s back. Then he stopped abruptly by a wooden building whose side was covered in handbills.
When they caught up, Reeth said, ‘What is it?’
Ockley nodded at the mass of posters. They announced events, advertised goods, denounced and championed causes, pleaded for lost things and people. Layers were plastered over each other, with the older flyers peeling and in places defaced. One of the newer posters, still smooth and unruffled, read:
WANTED
REETH CALDASON
Felon. Traitor. Outlaw At Large
A substantial reward is offered for the apprehension of Qalochian Reeth Caldason, murderer, agitator and disturber of the peace.
It is the duty of any citizen knowing the whereabouts of the said Caldason, or having knowledge of his activities, to report to the authorities without delay.
Warning is hereby served
that a
ny found wilfully harbouring the fugitive face punishment as laid down in law. Contact your local watch-house or paladin garrison.
By Royal Proclamation
Underneath, there was a glamoured, three-dimensional representation of Caldason. The picture showed someone older, heavier and fully bearded.
‘It’s nothing like you!’ Kutch exclaimed.
Caldason shushed him. ‘I’ve seen few that were. Maybe because I’ve managed to avoid having my actual likeness taken. These things are always an approximation.’
‘There’s little chance of you being identified from that,’ Ockley agreed. ‘But it’s freshly pasted, and that underlines the importance of us proceeding with caution.’
Kutch started scraping at the poster’s upper edge with his fingernails, trying to tear it down.
‘Leave it,’ Caldason said, ‘it won’t be the only one.’
‘Come,’ Ockley instructed them curtly.
Yes, sir
, Kutch mouthed behind his back, pulling a sour face.
They resumed their journey.
Ockley insisted on maintaining his serpentine route. It took them through crowded squares, roads lined with merchants’ stalls and noisome cobbled lanes. They came to a narrow street where the buildings had jutting upper storeys and a virtual sewer flowed underfoot.
Somebody threw a pail of slops from a window above, barely missing them.
Gales of laughter and hoots of derision came from across the way. A group of drunks were tumbling from an inn. One staggered a few paces to relieve himself against a wall. The others shouted abuse at Caldason and his party, their insults centring on his race. He stopped and stared at them. The jeers increased in volume and spite.
‘Come along,’ Ockley sniffed like a prissy school marm, ‘ignore them.’
Caldason didn’t move.
The two most vociferous of the drunks stood out from the rest. They were worlds apart in appearance. One was a weasel of a man with shifty eyes and bad skin. The other was melon-headed and built like a mountain. But muscular, not fat.
