The Fifth Ward--First Watch

by Dale Lucas

  “Prefect!” the Kosterman called, his speech sharply accented.

  Ondego turned, as if this was the first time he’d heard a single word spoken from the cells and the prisoners in them.

  Rem’s cellmate rattled the bars. “Let me out of here, little man,” he said.

  Kosterman all right. The long, yawning vowels and glass-sharp consonants were a dead giveaway. For emphasis, the Kosterman even snarled, as though the prefect were the lowest of house servants.

  Ondego looked puzzled for a moment. Could it be that no one had ever spoken to him that way? Then the prefect stepped forward, snarling, looking like a maddened hound. His fist shot out in front of him and shook as he approached.

  “Get back in your hay and keep your gods-damned head down, con! I’ll have none of your nonsense after such a bevy of bitter business—”

  Rem realized what was about to happen a moment before it did. He opened his mouth to warn the prefect off—surely the man wasn’t so gullible? Maybe it was just his weariness in the wake of the beating he’d given Kevel? His regret at having to so savagely punish one of his own men?

  Whatever the reason, Ondego clearly wasn’t thinking straight. The moment his shaking fist was within arm’s reach of the Kosterman in the cell, the barbarian reached out, snagged that fist, and yanked Ondego close. The prefect’s face and torso hit the bars of the cell with a heavy clang.

  Rem scurried aside as the Kosterman stretched both arms out through the bars, wrapped them around Ondego, then tossed all of his weight backward. He had the prefect in a deadly bear hug and was using his body’s considerable weight to crush the man against the bars of the cell. Rem heard the other two watchmen rushing near, a flurry of curses and stomping boots. Around the dungeon, the men in the cells began to curse and cheer. Some even laughed.

  “Let me out of here, now!” the Kosterman roared. “Let me out or I’ll crush him, I swear!”

  Rem’s instincts were frustrated by his headache, his thirst, his confusion. But despite all that, he knew, deep in his gut, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just let the hay-covered Kosterman in the smelly leathers crush the prefect to death against the bars of the cell.

  But that Kosterman was enormous—at least a head and a half taller than Rem.

  The other watchmen had reached the bars now. The stubble-faced one was trying to break the Kosterman’s grip while the elfmaid snatched for the rattling keys to the cells on the human guard’s belt.

  Without thinking, Rem rushed up behind the angry Kosterman, drew back one boot, and kicked. The kick landed square in the Kosterman’s fur-clad testicles.

  The barbarian roared—an angry bear, indeed—and Rem’s gambit worked. For just a moment, the Kosterman released his hold on the prefect. On the far side of the bars, the stubble-faced watchman managed to get the prefect in his grip and yank him backward, away from the cell. When Rem saw that, he made his next move.

  He leapt onto the Kosterman’s broad shoulders. Instead of wrapping his arms around the Kosterman’s throat, he grabbed the bars of the cell. Then, locking his legs around the Kosterman’s torso from behind, he yanked hard. The Kosterman was driven forward hard, his skull slamming with a resonant clang into the cell bars. Rem heard nose cartilage crunch. The Kosterman sputtered a little and tried to reach for whoever was on his back. Rem drew back and yanked again, driving the Kosterman forward into the bars once more.

  Another clang. The Kosterman’s body seemed to sag beneath Rem.

  Then the sagging body began to topple backward.

  Clinging high on the great, muscular frame, Rem realized that he was overbalanced. He lost his grip on the cell bars, and the towering Kosterman beneath him fell.

  Rem tried to leap free, but he was too entangled with the barbarian to make it clear. Instead, he simply disengaged and went falling with him.

  Both of them—Rem and the barbarian—hit the floor. The Kosterman was out cold. Rem had the wind knocked out of him and his vision came alight with whirling stars and dancing fireflies.

  Blinking, trying to get his sight and his breath back, he heard the whine of rusty hinges, then footsteps. Strong hands seized him and dragged him out of the cell. By the time his vision had returned, he found himself on the stone pathway outside the cell that he had shared with the smelly, unconscious Kosterman. The prefect and his two watchmen stood over him.

  “Explain yourself,” Ondego said. He was a little disheveled, but otherwise, the Kosterman’s attack seemed to have left not a mark on him, nor shaken him.

  Rem coughed. Drew breath. Sighed. “Just trying to help,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you want out now, don’t you?” Ondego asked. “One good turn deserves another and all that.”

  Rem shrugged. “It hadn’t really crossed my mind.”

  Ondego frowned, as though Rem were the most puzzling prisoner he had ever encountered. “Well, what do you want, then? I can be a hard bastard when I choose, but I know how to return a favor.”

  Rem had a thought. “I’m looking for work,” he said.

  Ondego raised one eyebrow.

  “Seeing as you have space on your watch rosters”—Rem gestured to the spot where they had been beating Kevel in the torture pit—“perhaps I could impress upon you—”

  Ondego seemed to appraise Rem honestly for a moment. For confirmation of his instincts, he looked to the elf.

  Rem suddenly knew the strange sensation of another living being poking around in his mind. It was momentary and fleeting and entirely painless, but eminently strange and unnerving, like having one’s privates appraised by the other patrons in a bathhouse. Then the elf’s probing intellect withdrew, and Rem no longer felt naked. The elfmaid seemed to wear a small, knowing half smile. Her dark and ancient eyes settled on Rem and chilled him.

  She knows everything, Rem thought. A moment in my mind, two, and she knows everything. Everything worth knowing, anyway.

  “Harmless,” the elfmaid said.

  “Weak,” the stubble-faced guardsmen added.

  The elf’s gaze never wavered. “No.”

  “You don’t impress me,” Ondego said, despite the elf’s appraisal. “Not one bit.”

  “No doubt I don’t,” Rem said. “But, by Aemon, sir, I’d like to.”

  The watchman beside Ondego leaned close. Rem heard the words he whispered to the prefect.

  “He did get that brute off you, sir.”

  Ondego and the big watchman continued to study him. The elf now turned her gaze on the boisterous prisoners in the other cells. A moment’s eye contact was all it took. As the elfmaid turned her stone idol’s glare on each of them, they fell silent and withdrew from the bars. Bearing witness to the effect the elf’s silent, threatening stare had on those hard, desperate men made Rem’s skin crawl.

  But, to his own predicament: Rem decided to mount a better argument—he certainly couldn’t end up in any more trouble, could he?

  “You’re down two men,” Rem said, trying to look and sound as reasonable as possible. “That man you were beating and the partner he murdered. Surely you can give me the opportunity?”

  “What’s he in here for?” Ondego asked the watchman.

  Rem prepared himself to listen. He was still trying to reason that part out himself.

  “Bar brawl,” the stubble-faced watchman said. “The Bonny Prince here was casting dice with some Koster longshoremen. Rolled straight nines, nine times in a row. They called him a cheat and he lit into them.”

  It was coming back now. Rem remembered the tavern. He’d been waiting for someone. A girl. She hadn’t shown. He’d had a little too much to drink while waiting. He vaguely remembered the dice and the longshoremen—two tall fellows, not unlike the barbarian he’d just tussled with in the cell.

  He couldn’t recall their faces, or even starting a fight with them … but he did remember being called a cheat, and taking umbrage.

  “I wasn’t cheating,” Rem said emphatically. “It was just a run of good
luck.”

  “Not so good,” Ondego said, “seeing as you’re here in my dungeon.” To the guardsmen beside him: “Where are the other two?”

  “Taken to the hospital, sir,” the big man said. “Beaten senseless by the Bonny Prince here.”

  “And a third Kosterman, out like a light on my dungeon floor. What is it with you and these northerners, boy?”

  Rem shrugged. “Ill-starred, I guess.”

  Ondego seemed to appraise Rem anew. Three Kostermen on their backs was bold, and he couldn’t deny it. “Doesn’t look like much,” the prefect said, as if to himself, “but he can hold his own in a fight.”

  Ondego was impressed with Rem—no thanks to the stone-faced watchman laying that damned “Bonny Prince” label on him. Rem guessed that Ondego’s grudging respect might work in his favor.

  “I don’t like being called a cheat,” Rem said, “first and foremost because I don’t cheat. Ever.”

  Ondego nodded toward Kevel, limp in his chair. “Neither do we,” he said.

  “So I see,” Rem answered.

  A long silence fell between them.

  “Get him on his feet,” Ondego said. “We’ll try him out.”

  Without another word, the prefect left.

  Rem looked to the tall man. He felt a smile blooming on his face, then suddenly felt the pain of his brawl the night before. A swollen, split lip; a bruised nose; at least one missing tooth, far back in his mouth; the taste of old blood.

  The big man offered a hand and yanked Rem to his feet. Upright, Rem swooned for a moment, his vision briefly going black again before finally clearing.

  “Don’t look so pleased with yourself, my bonny boy,” the stubble-faced watchman said. “You’ve no idea what you’re in for walking the ward.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  This, Rem thought, was a stroke of good fortune, indeed. He’d been in Yenara for almost a week now, his purse was growing dangerously light, and he had yet to find paying work. He thought himself qualified for a great many things—he could read and write in three tongues, he was good with horses and strong enough to put in an honest day’s labor—but somehow, employment in Yenara had eluded him. Each day, as his coin dwindled, he tried to tell himself that it was just a matter of time, that he would find something suitable if only he kept searching. But what could he hope for when even the carpenters and stonemasons of the city seemed to have too many strong backs on their payrolls? When he was told, time and again, that there was not enough paying, unskilled labor to be had in the city? And unskilled labor was, by and large, all that was open to him: trading on his courtly, lettered background might expose him, and he could not risk that, even so far from home.

  In truth, that’s what had gotten him into trouble the night before. He’d been in that tavern for one purpose and one alone—to meet a young lady he had spoken with in the market that very afternoon—but when those Kostermen asked if he’d like to join their dice game, Rem couldn’t resist. Why not try to turn his last half dozen silver andies into a full dozen, or two dozen? Why not let fate decide his future?

  He probed the empty space where a tooth once rooted with his tongue. Clearly, throwing dice was not his game. Despite his winning streak.

  But here, at last, was an opportunity: he would join the wardwatch! He could certainly make a go of that, couldn’t he?

  Two flights of stairs took them from the dungeons back up to the ground floor of the watchkeep. The watchman leading Rem, called Hirk, was the sergeant-at-arms and second-in-command after Prefect Ondego. He didn’t speak much, so when he did, Rem paid close attention. In his experience, taciturn men rarely wasted their breath on chit-chat.

  “Did you understand what was going on down there?” Hirk asked.

  “I think so,” Rem said. “Kevel was skimming off the fines he collected.”

  “Bright boy,” Hirk said grimly. “You understand why that’s a bad idea?”

  “Because it throws off the natural order of the world, denies resources to those in need of them, and undermines the chain of command?”

  Hirk stopped on the stairs and turned. Rem couldn’t tell if he was pleasantly surprised or simply incredulous. “Where are you from, boy?”

  “Up north,” Rem said. “From Hasturland, around Great Lake.”

  “You a lordling?” Hirk asked.

  Rem shook his head immediately. “No, sir,” he lied. “Though, I was raised in a lord’s house. My father was a groom. For a lord, that is.”

  Hirk stared, eyes narrow. “So you’re good with horses?”

  Rem nodded. “Very good, sir.”

  “Not much use for horses on this job,” Hirk countered, then continued up the stairs. Rem followed.

  When they reached the ground floor, the world was suddenly full of air and light that Rem hadn’t realized he missed being down in those dungeons. The inner walls of the watchkeep were thick and solid, like a castle redoubt, but their arrangement and the windows at the front and back of the building allowed air to flow through and kept the place from seeming stuffy. Granted, the air had the slightly fetid tang of low tide, horseshit, and human sweat about it, but it beat the moldy drear of the dungeons any day.

  The place was full of activity. They passed a chamber redolent of onions and hot bread that Rem assumed to be a mess hall. Beyond the door to the mess, Rem saw a corridor crowded with dozens of petitioners held back by stout ropes looped through iron rings in the walls. They all cried about this or griped about that—looking for locked-up loved ones, trying to collect debts from prisoners they identified by name, demanding that confiscated property be returned to them. A knot of watchwardens—including the familiar elf from the dungeons—stood on the inside of the rope barricade and held the public at bay.

  From that corridor, they passed into a vast chamber, this one more administrative. There were desks like those used by monks in a scriptorium, shelves chock full of scrolls and ledgers, along with piles and piles of papyrus, parchment, and vellum. A portion of one wall was crammed with hundreds of portraits, some hand drawn, some printed by woodcut, a select few even painted in full color on vellum or some other sturdy surface. Rem could not be sure, but he guessed those might be the likenesses of fugitives. In the administrative chamber, the watchmen were just as hard and unflappable as those holding back the rabble in the outer hall, but they had an ease about them, being out of the public eye. Rem heard one fat watchman being ribbed about his penchant for whores with rich taste and few teeth, while in another corner a trio of hard-faced watchwardens interrogated a sickly old man who might have been a witness or a prisoner. At a desk near the wall, a red-haired, querulous dwarf told a rather shocking joke to a dour-faced prisoner in irons. Near the back wall, he saw a pair of female wardens—one tall, frowning, with red-brown hair cropped close to her head, the other smaller and far more feminine but just as severe in countenance—trying to extract a coherent story from a trio of rather genteel male prostitutes.

  Hirk led Rem into a dark and narrow back corridor. At the mouth of the corridor was a strange little alcove, in which stood a cage of sorts, the kind of fortified booth that a moneylender might hide inside of. A few watchmen stood in line at the booth. As they stepped up to the little window therein, they handed over all manner of items—torques and necklaces, fine leatherworks, shiny daggers and flashing rings. Each of these the man inside the cage inspected, made note of in a bound ledger, then set aside before drawing coin from an unseen cashbox within arm’s reach.

  “Our treasurer, Welkus,” Hirk said as they passed the little booth. “When you collect fines, you might sometimes have to do so in goods, not coin. When that happens, you come here to Welkus. He records the fine as paid, then gives you your cut.”

  Rem nodded. A fine system, if a little cumbersome. He wondered how effective he would have to be in appraising the items offered by lawbreakers in lieu of payment. If he took a gold bracelet in lieu of a six-andi fine, and this Welkus only felt the bracelet worth four andies, wou
ld Rem then be responsible for the balance? All because he didn’t have a pawnbroker’s eye for an item’s trade value?

  “Keep up,” Hirk said. Rem realized he had fallen behind, lingering to study the trade unfolding at the treasurer’s window. He quickened his pace and followed Hirk down that dark, close little hallway to their final destination.

  That destination turned out to be a storeroom or armory of sorts, crammed with shelves and drawers full of bric-a-brac: daggers, maces, and jewelry; swords, spears, axes, and dented shields; old Wanted posters faded by time, piles of strange old books that were clearly not ledgers (given their hasps of bone or gold and the bizarre writing on their covers), even a few stuffed beasts of strange lineage—creatures that Rem had probably read about in fairy tales and forgotten the names of long ago. Rem had seen a cabinet of curiosities in a duke’s castle once that looked something like this, although in place of swords and spears, that duke had displayed dragon bones, rare gems or crystals, and orreries of brass and tin. In both cases, Rem guessed that the keeper of the chamber was the only one capable of finding anything, with a filing system as puzzling and arcane as his holdings.

  The keeper of the ward’s armory was a droopy-faced old fellow with smiling eyes, a frowning mouth, iron-gray hair, and thick whiskers on his cheeks. He was bent over a desk, comparing ledgers, line by line, and mumbling to himself.

  “Eriadus!” Hirk barked.

  The old man looked up from his figures. “Sergeant,” he said in greeting, then returned to his ledgers.

  “Official business, Eriadus,” Hirk said. “We need a standard kit. New recruit.”

  Eriadus, whom Rem assumed to be the quartermaster, raised his eyes again from his ledgers. He studied Hirk for a moment—as though he thought the sergeant-at-arms was joshing him—then turned and noted Rem. He looked rather upset by Rem’s shoddy appearance.

  “Aemon’s wounds, what happened to him?”

  “Barroom brawl last night,” Hirk said, “joining the wardwatch today. Neat and tidy, eh?”