Irons in the Fire (Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution)

by Juliet E. McKenna

  "Nothing, and I wouldn't countenance such sacrilege." Reher stared down, grim-faced. "I can help you regardless. I mended Macra's belt buckle and drew the wire to make links that half the camp has patched their chain mail with."

  "But you can't scry," Gren pointed out tersely.

  "I can find any piece of metal I've ever worked. If it's close enough, I can call it to my hand." Reher shrugged his massive shoulders. "I thought all blacksmiths could, till my father told me different."

  "I've always said there's more useful magic outside Hadrumal's libraries than in them." Sorgrad was keenly interested. "You can show me the trick of that, if you like."

  Tathrin retreated from the carnage. "If they died last night, the killers could be leagues away by now."

  "Not if they're spies." Gren was adamant. "They won't have got anything out of Macra worth taking back to their paymaster."

  "True enough." Sorgrad looked speculatively at Tathrin. "They'll be looking for some other pigeon to pluck."

  "What?" Tathrin took another pace backwards.

  "Up in the mountains, if a wolf's raiding the flocks, a goatherd tethers a dry nanny out overnight." Gren's smile was far from reassuring. "When her noise draws the wolf, the goatherd draws his bow."

  "I'm not a goat," Tathrin retorted.

  "We won't let them kill you." Sorgrad looked at him unblinking. "You're our only link with Aremil."

  "They won't be expecting magecraft," Reher pointed out.

  "If you haven't got the stones for it, go back to the camp. I can play the victim." Gren smiled unpleasantly. "Of course, these spies might catch up with you on the way. Then you'll be all alone without any of us to pull your feet from the fire."

  "Think what a tale you'll have for Failla," Sorgrad mused. "Such a hero."

  Tathrin stiffened. "I'm in this for the sake of all Lescari, not just to impress Failla."

  "Good," Sorgrad said briskly. "Reher, which way?"

  Tathrin opened his mouth to protest that he hadn't agreed. He closed it again. The others were already walking away. He followed reluctantly.

  Leaving the valley where Macra and his men had died, Reher led them across another shoulder of barren turf. Looking around as he paused to catch his breath, Tathrin observed how this cluster of high hills was fringed with deep valleys. Here they ran down to a broad vale where he could see the silver gleam of a river. On the far side of the low ground, another range of steep summits rose jaggedly into the sky.

  "Whoever these bastards are, they're good." Gren was studying the ground. "There's no trail to speak of."

  "This way." Reher didn't slow as they crossed the steep rocky slope to the next gully.

  Sorgrad scowled. "Tathrin, you're skylined."

  Reher had dropped to his hands and knees to avoid being silhouetted against the pale clouds. Tathrin ducked hastily, following Sorgrad in a crouch that made his back ache.

  As they slipped down a mossy incline, Reher paused, his eyes disconcertingly vacant. Then his dark gaze sharpened and he pointed to a distant furze brake. "Down there."

  "Couldn't it be Arest and his men?" Tathrin wondered aloud.

  Reher shook his head. "Not wearing Macra's belt buckle."

  Tathrin wasn't convinced, but nor was he inclined to argue the point. Besides, if it was Arest, he would be perfectly safe, wouldn't he? "So what do I do?"

  "Walk down there looking like you'll tell all you know as soon as someone holds a knife to your throat." Gren unsheathed two viciously curved daggers. "We'll do the rest."

  "Reher?" Tathrin turned to ask the smith. He wasn't there.

  "Just get on with it." Sorgrad's voice echoed oddly from the empty air.

  "Gren?" Tathrin looked around wildly but the other Mountain Man had disappeared.

  "We'll be close by," Reher's gruff voice promised.

  Tathrin took a breath to slow his pounding heart. There was no hint of magelight, no rustle of unseen footsteps among the tussocks of coarse grass. How could three men, one of them Reher's size, just vanish into thin air? Wizardry in tavern ballads and festival tales was all very entertaining. No story ever said how thoroughly unnerving it was to be around magical workings.

  An unseen hand shoved him hard in the small of the back. He had to step forward or fall over. Gripping his sword, he started walking down the narrow valley.

  Where were these murderous spies? He tried not to look too obviously at the patch of spiny greenery that Reher had pointed out. Showing undue interest in one particular furze brake would betray him, surely? Besides, the sentries around Captain-General Evord's encampment could hide behind two stones and a fallen leaf. These spies could be anywhere. He slowed involuntarily.

  What if they shot arrows from cover, like hunters stalking a deer? If Macra had already told them everything they wanted to know, then he was just an inconvenience to be swiftly eliminated. He forced himself to walk onwards, breathing harder than the exertion of walking downhill warranted.

  Unable to resist glancing covertly at the furze again, he blinked. The spiny tangles were far less clear than they had been. He looked up at the sky. It was still too early for evening mists to be thickening. More magic? His grip on his sword tighter still, he walked on, bowels clenching, throat dry. The wind blew his hair into his eyes and he brushed it quickly aside.

  Halfway down from the head of the gully to the furze brake, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Movement coming uphill, not down. Tense as a hunted hare, he startled as the branches of a stunted blackthorn shivered on the other side of the track. He heard the sound of a boot nail on a stone. He searched the undergrowth desperately. Who was lying in wait? He didn't dare turn and see if someone was creeping up behind him. If he did, he was convinced someone would rush to attack him from the front.

  The brambles vanished in a white haze. For a horrible instant, Tathrin thought Sorgrad was sweeping him away with his magic again. In the next breath, he realized it was just mist wrapping around him. But magecrafted mist, it had to be. No normal fog would rise this fast. Already he couldn't see his feet.

  Somewhere behind him, a scream tore through the whiteness. Tathrin whirled around, sword at the ready. Cries of alarm sounded on all sides. He tried to make out the shouted words, but to no avail. Every voice was twisted, not merely by the fog but magically muffled, he was sure of it.

  His hair was sodden, water trickling down his forehead and stinging his eyes. He desperately tried to wipe it away as shadows loomed through the fog. Was someone intent on killing him? Had Sorgrad and Gren taught him enough sword-work to stop them? Fear and damp chilled him equally. His fingers were numb and clumsy.

  "Tathrin?"

  Fast as it had arisen, the mist vanished. Reher was standing in front of him.

  "Where's everyone else?" Tathrin turned a hasty circle.

  "Over here." Sorgrad was kneeling on the back of a mercenary who was trying not to smother as his face was pushed into the damp earth. Sorgrad's vicious hold on his twisted arm ensured he wouldn't be getting up.

  "Gren?"

  "Coming." The younger Mountain Man emerged from the furze, a curved dagger in one hand dripping red. He had his other fingers knotted in the curly brown hair of a weaponless man, forcing him to scramble along on his hands and knees. Both of them were liberally spattered with blood, drops clotting on the prisoner's shocked white face.

  "How many dead?" Reher looked up and down the gully.

  "Four." Sorgrad twisted his captive's contorted arm hard up his back. "Is that all?"

  "Six of us, that's all!" the man yelped.

  "All present and correct." Gren forced his prisoner to kneel on the damp grass, pressing the bloody knife to his throat.

  Tathrin realized that he and both spies were still sodden from the fog. Reher, Sorgrad and Gren were all bone dry. That was hardly fair. He sheathed his pristine sword with a shove of resentment.

  "Who are you working for?" Sorgrad leaned on his captive's twisted arm.

 
The man whimpered but pressed his face down into the dirt. "No."

  "Him over there eating mud, is he a pal of yours?" As Gren spoke, he drew his curved blade lightly across his own prisoner's throat. "Will he answer to save your neck?"

  Tathrin saw fresh blood trickle through the drying splashes on the man's white skin.

  "No." The curly-haired man screwed his eyes tight shut.

  Gren shrugged. "We'll just have to use you to show him what we'll do to him, then. Unless you have the answers we want?" he offered as an afterthought.

  "Don't," the man lying face down warned.

  "You saw me rip your mate's tripes out with this," Gren said reasonably. He waved the gory knife in front of the curly-haired man's eyes. "That was quick because I only wanted to kill him. I can keep you alive till sunset. Then I'll truss you up with your own guts and you can wait for the wolves to come and put you out of your misery."

  Shivering, Tathrin had no doubt he would do it and sleep soundly afterwards.

  "But we don't know anything," the man said desperately.

  "We don't know anything," the prisoner being held face down insisted.

  Gren sliced open his captive's shirt. "You're lying."

  How did he know? What if the man was telling the truth? What if they had already murdered the only man who could answer their questions? Tathrin had to clench his jaw to stop himself protesting.

  Sorgrad leaned over the man he had pinned to the ground. "The only reason you're not dead already is you're wearing my dead friend's belt. If you got the pick of the spoils, you've got the rank to know what you're doing."

  Tathrin wouldn't have thought it possible to feel any colder than he already did. Sorgrad's tone proved him wrong.

  "I'll get your answers." Reher pulled the hammer he'd been using earlier out of the breast of his jerkin. He knelt by Sorgrad and stretched the pinned man's free arm out, clamping his elbow to the ground with his own strong hand.

  "Tell us what we need to know and I'll break your arm just the once so you can't raise a sword for a while. Try to be a hero and I'll smash every bone in your hand. You'll never scratch your stones again."

  "Go piss up a rope," the man snarled, clenching his fist.

  Reher shook his head. "Doing that only makes it worse."

  Tathrin winced as the hammer smashed the man's knuckles.

  Sorgrad's hold tightened as the man shrieked, writhing in a vain attempt to break free from the agony. "Who are you working for?"

  "No." The man drove his face into the soil. Sorgrad grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back before he could smother himself.

  Impassive, Reher brought the hammer down a second time. Tathrin had to turn away. He tensed, waiting for the third blow. This time he saw the man's raw scream startle a flurry of small brown birds from a distant thicket.

  "I'll tell you what I know!"

  Tathrin turned to see the kneeling prisoner begging, wide-eyed.

  "A man called Karn paid us to follow some mercenaries north," the curly-headed captive said hastily.

  "Who's he, this man Karn?" Sorgrad sat back on his heels and let the tortured man loose. Reher rolled him onto his back.

  "That's all we know." The injured man was in far too much pain to think of resisting, never mind fighting back. Tathrin saw he had bitten through his lip, blood and tears mingling with the dirt smeared across his face.

  Reher brought the hammer down on the man's uninjured forearm with an audible crack of bone.

  "No!" Tathrin protested, but no one was listening to him.

  "Whoever Karn is, he's from Triolle," the curly-headed captive said desperately.

  "Is he now?" Sorgrad looked interested. "Where did you meet up with him, and how are you supposed to be telling him what you've learned?"

  "It was the tail end of Aft-Summer." The curly-haired man was gabbling now. "Around the Greater full moon. We were looking for a hire in the camps between Carluse and Marlier. He told us to leave word of whatever we found out at the Silver Spear Inn in Abray."

  "You won't be doing that." Gren abruptly threw the man forward onto his face and held him down with a boot on his neck. "Reher?"

  "Coming." The smith rose to his feet with a sigh.

  "No!"

  The prisoner choked on his plea as a dark stain spread in the seat of his breeches.

  "He told you what you wanted to know," Tathrin pleaded.

  "So?" Sorgrad was unbuckling Macra's belt. The whimpering man could hardly stop him.

  As Reher quickly broke both the curly-headed man's arms, his screams cut through Tathrin's protests. It was a good thing the magic had already made him so ill, otherwise he'd be emptying his stomach again.

  "That'll do." Reher stood up, as unemotional as if he'd just finished shoeing a horse.

  "What now?" Sickened, Tathrin looked at the two injured men huddled in their misery.

  "They're free to go." Reher began walking back up the gully.

  "We go back to camp." Gren stabbed his knives into the damp turf to clean them. "We tell Arest what happened and where to find Macra and the other bodies."

  Sorgrad was coiling Macra's belt round one hand. "These two had best hope they get far enough away before Arest and his men start hunting them."

  That got the injured men's attention. Slowly, they stood, painfully cautious, broken arms crooked against their breasts. The first man's smashed hand was already grotesquely swollen, darkening with lurid bruising.

  "Come on." Gren gripped Tathrin's shoulder and urged him up the hill.

  He didn't resist, silent until they reached the scramble up to the summit linking this line of valleys. Looking back, he could just make out the tiny figures of the tortured men slowly walking away.

  "Why didn't you just kill them?" he asked bitterly.

  "Reher said not to." It was plainly a matter of complete indifference to Gren.

  "Isn't this as good as murder?" Tathrin rounded on the smith. "Leaving them out here in the wilds without a hand to raise to defend themselves? How will they hunt for food?"

  "I didn't break the skin, so they have no wounds to fester." Reher looked steadily at him. "Broken bones will mend with time and care. They can take whatever food and water their friends were carrying if they don't mind suffering to get it."

  Tathrin recoiled from the thought of trying to plunder dead bodies with such injuries.

  "Dead men feel no pain. If those two have to live with it for a few months, they might think better of making a trade out of other people's suffering." Reher showed no remorse. "This isn't the first time I've broken a man's bones for the sake of keeping Guild secrets safe. There's more brutality goes on in Lescar than you know of, lad."

  "Don't think I don't know it!" Tathrin shivered, disgusted. He couldn't stop, chilled and wet as he was.

  "'Grad!" Gren shouted to his brother. "The lad's still soaking. We don't want him taking a chill."

  Sorgrad reached out, but Tathrin shied away. "I don't want your magic."

  "Then take mine." Reher clapped him on the shoulder with one broad hand.

  Angry and frustrated, Tathrin saw the smith leave a dry handprint on his leather-clad shoulder. As he watched, the pale shape spread down his front and presumably down his back, wisps of steam rising from the creeping edge of the subtle magic. Warmth slid between his chilled skin and the sodden shirt that had been clinging to his ribs.

  "Better?" Sorgrad was watching him.

  "What will you do now?" Tathrin challenged. "Will Arest's men hunt those two down, when they can't even fight back? Where's the honour in that? Or will you just drink yourselves stupid like you did after Jik and the others died, and forget them by the next morning?"

  "Whoever told you there was honour in being a hired sword?" Sorgrad looked quizzically at him. "Come on, we've a long walk back."

  He didn't move, not until Tathrin grudgingly took a step and then another. Reher had gone on ahead, Gren at his elbow, his quicksilver cheerfulness in contrast to the sm
ith's looming presence.

  "I don't hold with torture, not as a rule." Sorgrad walked companionably beside Tathrin. "You can always break someone, but you never know if they're telling you the truth or just what they think you want to hear. We could have got that man Karn's name out of those two without leaving a mark on them if we'd wanted to. But Reher's choice was a fair one. Once that tale spreads, there'll be fewer curs keen to take this man Karn's coin and come sneaking about these hills. Those two won't be fighting us in Sharlac, either." He smiled dourly. "Remember that, long lad. You can take more men out of a battle by injuring a handful than you can by killing twice that number."

  He sighed, more solemn. "Yes, they'll drink themselves stupid tonight, Arest and the others, to blunt the sting of knowing their comrades were ambushed, killed, robbed and thrown into that hollow to rot. To blunt the sting of knowing it could just as easily have been them. To stop themselves lying awake in the darkness and thinking of all the evil deeds they'll have to explain away to Saedrin, one day sooner or later. If they can find a woman willing to sheath their sword between her legs, some of them will rut till daybreak, just to feel alive. While they're inside a woman, inside the circle of her arms, they don't have to remember that every dawn could see them dead by nightfall. Chances are, if the captain-general can spare them, yes, some will go hunting for those men we left maimed back there. Before you waste your breath being outraged, just remember they took coin from this man Karn and all the risks that went with it.

  "Beyond that," he continued coolly, "no, Arest and the others won't grieve overmuch for Macra. The only ones who would have truly lamented his loss died alongside him. Mercenaries only have two or three close friends for the most part, their tent-mates usually, because that's as many friends as you can stand to have and still hope to survive their loss. So don't imagine there'll be many tears shed if you get yourself killed."

  That provoked Tathrin into a response. "I have friends and family who'd mourn my loss."

  "I'm sure you do, long lad," Sorgrad said equably. "You're not a mercenary. So stop judging everyone else by your own very limited experience of life. In the meantime, make sure you're ready to tell Aremil everything we've learned today. Tell him to pass everything on to Charoleia at once. She needs to find out who this man Karn is and who he reports to in Triolle. And to chase up any letters sent from the Silver Spear in Abray."