One Quest, Hold the Dragons

by Greg Costikyan

  "It is a good establishment," said von Kremnitz. "Now, then; what did you learn?"

  "I pursued the hansom through the winding streets of the city," said Jasper, "flying at a sufficient height above the vehicle that the occupants did not suspect my presence. Seeing no reason to waste the time spent en route, I essayed a number of spells in an effort to read the thoughts of the occupants of the cab."

  "Yes, yes," said Timaeus. "Get to the point, please."

  "Testy this morning, what, d'Asperge?" said Jasper. "I shall tell the tale in my own fashion, and at my own pace, if you please."

  "I don't please," muttered Timaeus.

  "Nonetheless," said Jasper. "Alas, my spells proved fruitless; I was able to discover that the driver was a Luigi Amato, of Seventy-six Slobinstrasse, a member of the Hauliers' Guild—a mere hireling. The cab was occupied by three others: a troll and two women. One of the women wore an amulet against scrying; I was unable to read her at all, and knew she was there only from the perceptions of the others. The other woman had been complexly trained—and, I believe, programmed under hypnosis-so that I was unable to read anything other than the most cursory, fleeting thoughts. She thinks of herself as G. The troll's surface thoughts were in the creature's barbarous native tongue, with which, alas, I am not familiar; I was able to determine that he spent the bulk of the trip in a reverie, thinking of his plans for the rest of the night, which seemed to involve a substantial quantity of ale and a lady troll. Not much help there.

  "I did, however, manage to overhear part of the women's conversation, which was unguarded. G's companion was named Wolfe—"

  "Renee Wolfe?" asked von Kremnitz sharply.

  "I didn't get the first name," said Jasper apologetically. "They went directly to a large building of rather unusual architecture—stucco and exposed beams, the sort of thing one expects in country chateaux. The building itself was warded, and I thought it best not to enter, but scouted about until I found a late-night pedestrian, who thought of it as the Albertine Lodge—"

  "Stantz," said von Kremnitz.

  "Eh?" said Jasper.

  "The Albertine Lodge is the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Serenity; the minister is Guismundo Stantz."

  "The Spider," said Timaeus.

  "Yes," said von Kremnitz. "The man who may well have assassinated my master. Renee Wolfe is his woman."

  "His paramour?" said Timaeus, in some surprise; it was difficult to think of the dreaded Spider as a man with lusts like any other.

  Von Kremnitz snorted. "No, no; his employee."

  They mulled over that for a moment.

  "You think he killed Siebert?" asked Timaeus.

  Von Kremnitz sighed. "I don't know what to think," he said. "The common opinion holds that Stantz tried to assassinate the Lord Mayor before, killing Julio von Krautz by mistake; Siebert himself believed otherwise, that Gerlad von Grentz killed von Krautz, and then tried to pin the blame on Minister Stantz."

  He paced for a while between the chaise longue and couch. The others watched him.

  "If Stantz were in truth allied with my lord," he muttered, "then Stantz would want to free the statue from von Grentz; but if Stantz were an enemy, he would want the statue anyway, to bolster the position of whomever he supports—ach, I cannot decipher it."

  "Does it matter?" asked Timaeus gently. "Siebert is dead; does it matter whether Stantz betrayed him? Either way, he has the statue."

  "It matters to me!" shouted von Kremnitz in rage. "If he betrayed my lord, he shall die."

  "Well spoken, lad," said Jasper, voice thick with emotion.

  Timaeus snorted. "You, raw youth, provincial swordsman; you shall kill the Spider? The Spider, whose web spans all the human lands, whose agents are everywhere? Whose dungeons are legend, who has outlasted ten lord mayors?"

  "Aye," said von Kremnitz, his aquiline nose in noble pose, "I shall."

  "And we shall aid you," said Jasper warmly.

  "Oh shut up, .you unbearable idiot!" shouted Timaeus. "Bad enough you go gallivanting off into von Grentz's backyard, triggering every alarm in creation; now you want to—"

  "To aid a brave young man in his quest against villainy," said Jasper severely. "A young man, need I say, who has offered us every assistance; a young man of unstained escutcheon; a young man who aided us when we were in peril."

  Timaeus was turning dangerously red.

  "Thank you, Sir Jasper," said von Kremnitz, warmly. "If, in truth, Stantz is the villain of the piece—" "Jasper, dear," said Sidney dangerously, "you really

  can't commit us, you know. We're on a quest; we can't rescue every treed cat and help every old lady across the street."

  "Bosh!" said Jasper. "This is no such trivial affair. And as we are heroes, so we must act heroically."

  "Yah!" said Kraki. "Topple empires, slay foemen by the score, slaughter vast monsters and foul beasts!"

  "Um, yes, thank you, Kraki," said Jasper. "If we refuse to aid those in need, shall not the gods turn deaf ears to our pleas, when we ourselves need aid?"

  "Economy of resources," said Nick economically.

  "Magna est veritas, et praevalebit, " countered Jasper. "If Stantz slew Siebert, he is no more than a murderer; and the truth will out."

  "Omnia vincit amor, " said Timaeus in disgust. "Magna est veritas ... Whoever taught you the Imperial tongue did us no favor. And argument does not proceed by aphorism."

  "Again, sir," said Jasper severely, "I am astonished at your. lack of feeling—"

  "Wait, wait, wait," said Nick. "Look. Let's not argue about this; okay? Stantz has the statue, we know that; we've got to get it back. Maybe he killed Siebert; maybe not. Maybe, in the process of getting the statue, we'll find out—and we can worry about what to do about it then."

  "Right," said Sidney. "The important thing is to figure out how to get into the Albertine Lodge."

  "Oh, I can get you in, all right," said von Kremnitz. "It's getting out that's the problem."

  " 'Allo?" said a voice from the door. "I ' ave your ' otcakes, messieurs et madame."

  Von Kremnitz led the way, as he knew Hamsterburg best; his hand was at his pommel, for while it would not do to walk the streets with naked blade, still the uneasiness of the city had infected them all. Jasper flew behind and above, height giving him a view of the path ahead. Kraki strode at the rear, to deter attack from that direction, while Nick and Sidney flanked Timaeus and Frer Mortise, protecting their spell-casters.

  Folk scurried about, most hugging the sides of the street. Shopkeepers stood in the doors or windows of their shops, not yet closing up, for some were doing a brisk business, in food and the kinds of goods one might need to survive for several days of chaos. Still, they looked worried, and most carried weapons prominently, to indicate their willingness to defend their property. Some had gone so far as to hire some of the neighborhood bully-boys, both to provide muscle against looters and to occupy the people most likely to loot. Sidney saw that with cynicism; a few pence from a shopkeeper would not deter such as they, not if windows started breaking.

  Down the center of the street marched a group of men and women, surrounding a man in costly dress: a nobleman and his clients—a common sight on the streets of the city, but uncommon to see them all armed. The folk gave them a wide berth; von Kremnitz led his companions to the side of the street to do likewise.

  After a time, they passed into a rougher neighborhood; ahead, a barricade loomed. Von Kremnitz called a halt, asked Jasper to fly upward to reconnoiter, then decided that detouring was more trouble than it was worth. He walked on ahead, toward the barricade-for all of them to go was to risk having the defenders decide this was an attack-and called upward, to the doughty workingmen and kerchiefed women who perched there, "We seek passage."

  "An' who d'ye be?" demanded a mustachioed man, naked to the waist and tattooed with a spur on one shoulder—a former cuirassier, for the spur was the symbol of the Heavy Brigade.

  Von Kremnitz considered; to decl
are his regimental allegiance might give offense-no love lost between the cavalry and the Mayoral Foot-yet it would be dishonorable to offer a lie. "Pablo von Kremnitz," he said, "of Meersteinmetz; and my companions, foreigners."

  "And what d' ye desire?"

  "Merely passage," von Kremnitz replied.

  The man looked worried; no doubt he saw Jasper flitting above, and could see that the group he faced had magic. "The borough of Einhoch is a poor one," he said. "We seek only to defend our homes; we do.not wish to fight ye, but have no desire to see armed men traipsing about our streets."

  "I give you my word," said von Kremnitz. "We shall offer no harm to any in Einhoch, nor tarry, but travel expeditiously through."

  "Your word?" said the tattooed man skeptically. "That an' tuppence' ll buy ye pastry."

  Von Kremnitz instantly drew his blade. The heads oftwo women appeared over the barricade; they bore crossbows, with quarrels against the string. "You doubt my word?" the leftenant said angrily. "You have not the manners of a swineherd, you refuse! Come down here and face me, or you are no gentleman!"

  The tattooed man snorted laughter. "Aye, true enough," he said. "No gentleman I. And ye must be a true cavalier indeed, to offer me harm beyond the support of your companions, me with numbers and fortification; no one but an honest gentleman would be so daft. Very well, then, give me your word, and ye may pass."

  Von Kremnitz waved the others forward; they came, and clambered over the barricade-timbers from ruined buildings, with plaster still adhering; bricks and cobblestones, rickety furniture and broken barrels-under the mistrustful eyes of labor-stooped slum-dwellers and mighty-thewed washerwomen. The tattooed man, who seemed in command by virtue of his military past, dispatched a walleyed youth to guide them-and, no doubt, to report if they should break their undertaking. And then they strode through the sad streets of Einhoch, raw sewage in the street centers and dilapidated buildings slumping into each other, roofs at uneven angles, heaps of trash in every alley, until they came to its nether end and a second barricade. The youth conferred briefly with a commander there, and they were escorted over this obstacle, too.

  They found themselves at the foot of a bridge over a narrow canal; and beyond it, once more in a commercial area, the shops somewhat grander here, and many already shuttered.

  They strode up the street, doing their best to avoid the occasional armed parties, until—

  Off, off in the distance, they heard a sound: A rhythm, repeated. Bom—bombombom. Dum—dumdadum. One syllable; then three. Over. And over. And over.

  It was a crowd; not so much a crowd as a mob, the voices of a thousand, ten thousand, raised in unison. A mile away, they could hear the beat, though the words were impossible to distinguish.

  They quailed momentarily, and glanced at each other with unease and awe, but yonder lay the Albertine Lodge, and therein Stantius; and there they must go. Onward they went.

  The volume rose as they progressed. Onward, at the end of the avenue, they could see a crowd of people, and around it a mist of others, wandering into the crowd and out of it, the tightly packed mass of the mob thinning out at its fringes. The mob swayed this way and that, swirling in chaotic motion like a fog, the brightly colored clothes of one person showing briefly against the drabber garb of the rest, moving across the crowd and then merging somewhere into its depths; random motion, like that of leaves in a gale, the purposefulness of individual action merged into insensate chaos. Vowels and aspirated consonants are more easily perceived than other sounds; a few blocks away, they began to discern the sounds: "Shtahn—ur-ur-ur. Shtahn—ur-ur-ur. Shtahn—ur-ur-ur."

  They were in the fringes of the mob now, almost instinctively moving together, preserving their unity as a party amid the vast collectivity beginning to form about them. That collectivity was not universal; away from the mob came some folk, those spooked by how individual consciousness merged into vast, unreasoning union, or leaving to tend to other matters. And toward the mob came others, drawn by that roar, drawn by the rumors that washed across the city, drawn by the promise of violence or the thrill of participation, drawn by who knows what instinct or what compulsion: drawn toward one of the moments when individual futility becomes, for better or for worse, a moment of collective destiny.

  They were amid the crowd now. Even here, with weeping men and bellowing women all about, with bannerswaving and fists shaking, with people pressing leaflets into their hands, it was difficult to make out exactly what they shouted. One beat; then three. One; three.

  "Stantz! Murderer! Stantz! Murderer! Stantz! Murderer!"

  They screamed it toward the Albertine Lodge, across the square.

  Albertus Square: where the Tetrine Way merges with the Avenue of Regret, en route to the Eastern Gate. At its center was the Fountain of Albertus, where a statue of the pudgy former mayor flung coins of water—a clever mechanism, that—into the pool, to figures of the poor and hungry, standing in poses indicating thankfulness. Albertus had been legendary for his generosity, but the mob paid him, and the kinder and simpler Hamsterburg he represented, no heed. A thousand, ten thousand, perhaps many more—a measurable percentage of the population of the urbs—they swirled about the fountain, carpeting the cobblestones, packed dangerously close. There were flags and banners, hastily made; there were orators, screaming imprecations to folk who could not possibly hear them against the roar of the mob; there were red faces, tears, angry men.

  Across the square, the Lodge: built by Albertus himself, in a peculiar vision of urban rusticity. Its timbers were rough-hewn, whole pine trees; its walls, stucco; its steeply pitched roof, shingle. It had the aspect of a mountain lodge, but it was enormous, occupying a block entire, roomy enough for a mayor's mansion, as it had been, roomy enough to house the whole Ministry of Internal Serenity, with its voluminous files and its innumerable clerks, its vast apparat of spies.

  The Albertine Lodge had- never been defended in battle; it had not been designed for such, and its innumerable windows made it essentially indefensible. The predecessors of Stantz had no fears on that score, for they had seen the Ministry merely as a way for the Lord Mayor to keep tabs on his obstreperous nobility, no more than that; and Stantz had never seen fit to move quarters to a more defensible site, for he would have taken this, a mob at his very gate, for a clear indication of failure in his selfappointed mission. Yet, around it a thin line of defenders attempted exactly this task: the Serenissima.

  For Internal Serenity maintained the Republic's communications—scrying crystals, stables for the horse-borne express, the semaphore telegraph: It delivered the Lord Mayor's diplomatic missives, the vital orders of his bureaucrats. And these required defenders: the Serenissima, the Most Serene.

  There were not many, here; a few score, perhaps a century. It was a credit to their esprit de corps that they continued to face this mob, shield to shield, pikes held aslant, a few dozen men pressing out against this vast morass of humanity.

  If the mob chose to move, they would be trampled underfoot in seconds.

  So, too, would many of the mob; but mobs do not pause to make such calculations.

  "Stantz! Murderer! Stantz! Murderer!" rose the cry.

  Men and women wept for their martyred lord; for the first mayor in centuries who had tried to curb the excesses of the gens, to restore the privileges of the populus. If Hamish Siebert had never been more than reviled among the nobility, among the proletariat he was well beloved.

  Led by von Kremnitz, a veritable dynamo, reinforced with the strength of Kraki and the power of Jasper's magical suggestion to give way, they forced their way through the crowd, and to the lip of the fountain. There they paused for breath, and to survey the situation.

  "Stantz! Murderer!" roared the crowd.

  "Looks like you're not the only guy that had that idea," shouted Nick to von Kremnitz.

  "Their very conviction makes me doubt it," shouted the leftenant back, wiping his brow.

  "I've got a bad feeling about this," said
Sidney.

  Timaeus and Frer Mortise both looked as if they could hardly bear their surroundings: Timaeus, perhaps, from aristocratic fear of the mob; Mortise, a rustic, from unease at the sheer numbers about him. "Is one supposed to get a good feeling?" shouted Timaeus over the crowd.

  "We get the statue," shouted Sidney in explanation. "Then the mob storms the Lodge. We are killed in the ensuing chaos."

  They contemplated that. Perhaps attempting to regain their statue, in a city in the throes of revolution, from the headquarters of the most hated defenders of the ancien regime, perhaps this was not the smartest move in the world.

  "This way," shouted von Kremnitz, pushing off from the fountain.

  It was hard going, through that morass of humanity, the tightly packed flesh. Without Kraki's strength and Jasper's power of suggestion, they might never have made the mob's edge. At last, however, they neared the wall of shields, the defenders of the Lodge.