Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  The soldier raised his hand – and for a moment, it seemed so much bluster – but then, powered by fear or hatred or simply winter dark, he cut.

  The blade struck the innkeeper’s arm and cut it deeply – so deeply that his left hand dangled. Blood fountained and Don Cucino seemed to deflate.

  Aranthur moved another step closer to his own sword and the buckler atop his pack. He was out of the shadows now, and his ritual was wavering again – the violence, the blood, the innkeeper’s face, his own fear …

  He lost his working. But he’d expected it, and he moved faster, with a sudden long step – shoeless, completely in contact with the smooth wood floor, balanced. He made a grab for the sword, which leant in its scabbard by the fireplace.

  No one challenged him, because the man in the fine brown clothes rose to his feet. Aranthur caught only the end of the movement – it focused all of the soldiers in the room on him.

  Lecne’s hand was just going to his father’s arm …

  A second spurt of blood washed a table, and Don Cucino began to topple …

  The man in brown put his right hand on his sword hilt. The motion was economical and not particularly fast. He had three men within his reach, all armed – one with his sword in hand, and the other two already reaching for their blades.

  Aranthur’s hand closed on his own sword hilt.

  The innkeeper, staring at the ruin of his left arm in horrified fascination, fell forward onto a table already slicked with his own blood.

  The man in brown drew.

  The man who’d maimed the innkeeper raised his blade, a broad grin crossing his thin face, admiring his cut. Aranthur’s attention was still on the man in brown. His draw was also a cut that rose through the entrails of the nearest soldier and finished over his head just in time to parry a desperate, tardy slash from the original attacker – so neatly timed that they might have practised it.

  The man in brown pivoted on the balls of both feet and cut down with all the power in his hips, beheading the second man while he tried to draw his sword. But the same pivot powered his left arm to cross-draw a heavy-bladed dagger from behind his back, with which he continued to guard.

  And then the room exploded into motion.

  By ill luck the thin man, who wore a browned shirt of maille, was closest to Aranthur. Now he saw Aranthur’s sword and he turned and lunged, focusing on the younger man as the acolyte rolled across the table, unarmed but game.

  The soldier reached for Aranthur’s still scabbarded sword. Acting on his training, Aranthur let him take the scabbard and pulled back his left leg, leaving the other man’s cut to whistle past him. Then he leant back and pulled, the motion drawing his weapon free. Aranthur thrust without thinking or planning, simply committing to the attack as he’d learned it. He was, in fact, too eagerly terrified to think about his actions, and his motions seemed slow, as if his limbs were wrapped in string.

  And then his sword was a hand span deep in the thin man’s bicep, Aranthur’s point penetrating right through the man’s maille shirt.

  His victim bellowed, tried to raise his arm and the pain stopped him.

  Aranthur – still running off school lessons – rotated his hand from thumb up to thumb down, pushing outwards with his hand, so that he twisted the blade in the wound and ripped the sword out of the flesh and maille that trapped it. Someone was roaring – a huge shout that filled the taproom.

  Tiy Drako hit the wounded man waist high.

  The thin man fell, his hand clutching at his opened bicep. A piece of him flapped as he moved and his head struck one of the oak tables.

  Behind him were two more soldiers, and one raised a crossbow …

  Aranthur realised, in one beat of his heart, that the man in brown had somehow put all three of his assailants down. And the crossbow was pointed at him …

  Aranthur was not well trained enough, nor agile enough, to cross the space. His hand was fully extended – he couldn’t have thrown his sword, even if he’d thought of it. He saw the man in brown’s eyes as he understood the imminence of death, and the anger this sparked.

  The priest said a word, and there was a brilliant flash.

  Aranthur flinched, blinded, and raised his sword.

  ‘Stop fighting,’ said a voice. It was a working and it was powerful, and Aranthur felt the compulsion and the flood of saar.

  There was a flash – and a sharp bang like the sound a smith makes when he hits a piece of iron very hard.

  The crossbowman dropped like a doll. The last soldier standing whimpered and dropped his sword.

  The man in brown moved silently with a rolling gait like a sailor. He lunged, and his sword passed through the back of the soldier’s head and emerged from his mouth like an obscene tongue. He, too, fell forward, head still supported by the blade that killed him, eyes open. His feet scrabbled madly on the floor as if he was trying to outrun death, his hips rising and falling in an obscene parody of life. The man in brown gave a fastidious turn of his hand and the dying man slipped off his blade and lay still.

  Aranthur saw the woman from the snow on the balcony above. The chirurgeon was lying flat on the floor by the alcove like a summer solstice worshipper. She held a wand …

  Aranthur understood. It was, in fact, a puffer. The tang of sulphur in the air was his evidence. As he thought this, he tried not to look down to the creeping pools of blood at his feet.

  When he was a boy, he and his father had killed a deer. The first of many. The deer had bled out on snow – the red spreading, spreading …

  At his feet – his unshod feet – the man he’d hit in the arm was writhing. Warm blood was soaking through the fine black hose that the acolyte had given him.

  The man in brown was moving from downed man to downed man, finishing them with careful thrusts. The priest moved to stop him and the two men all but collided.

  ‘None of your pious crap here,’ the man snapped.

  ‘On the contrary,’ the priest said. Aranthur could tell that he was very angry. ‘On the contrary, sir. You will stop killing immediately, or I will see what can be done.’

  ‘Mumbo jumbo.’ The man in brown raised his sword’s point, leaving the last soldier alive. He stopped by Aranthur’s shoulder.

  ‘You’ve never fought before, have you?’

  He sounded like an angry fishwife. His voice was shrewish, as if the idea that some young men avoided fighting for their lives annoyed him.

  Aranthur was watching the wounded man. He’d made the mistake of meeting the man’s eyes. The man’s mouth opened and closed, and blood was pouring out of his arm.

  ‘He’ll bleed out in a few minutes,’ the man in brown said. ‘Or you could behave like a gentleman – like a swordsman – and either finish him or stop the bleeding. Ignore this fake. Be a man and put him down.’

  Tiy Drako was nursing his own shoulder from the flying tackle he’d made, but he sat up.

  ‘We must save him, of course,’ he said.

  The man in brown frowned. ‘If he were mine, I’d kill him.’ He looked Aranthur in the eye. ‘Who teaches you, boy? That imposter Vladith?’

  ‘Master Vladith is in fact my swordsmaster …’

  Aranthur felt light-headed. The woman was looking at him, and she had a silver hairnet with pale jewels at the interstices of the net, and this drew his eye dangerously. He saw the fire in her aura again and wrenched his head away from the sight of her. The remnants of his own ritual were still singing in the recesses of his mind and he used them to build himself a shield. It was the first occulta he’d learned.

  All in one beat of a man’s heart.

  Tiy was already on his knees by the downed man, digging his thumbs into the wound, trying to stop the blood.

  ‘Sunrise!’ he said. ‘I can’t stop it!’

  Aranthur knelt by the man he’d hit and put a hand above the wound – and realised for the first time that he still had his sword in his hand. He put it down with too much emphasis.

  Then h
e got both hands on the man’s shoulder and pushed as hard as he could.

  The flow of blood lessened immediately.

  To his left, the chirurgeon was on the floor by Lecne’s father. Aranthur dug his thumbs into the man’s shoulder and the man screamed. Tiy was playing with a string – a loop of linen thread.

  ‘You really are trying to save him,’ the man in brown said. ‘He’ll hang, you know.’

  ‘I won’t send another man to the Dark tonight.’

  Aranthur hadn’t known what he was going to say until his mouth opened, but once he spoke, he was surer of himself.

  The man in brown cut most of a wool shirt off the crossbowman and used the fabric to clean his sword. He bowed to the young woman above them, like a goddess in the theatre.

  ‘I believe I owe you my life, Despoina.’ Even his thanks were cautious.

  She frowned. ‘You sound none too pleased. And I think it was the Lightbringer’s action that saved you.’

  Her voice had a coolness that was very much at odds with her appearance.

  Aranthur was scarcely aware of the exchange, because he and Tiy were fighting the man’s body for his life.

  ‘Why should I be pleased?’ the man in brown asked. ‘I failed myself and misjudged my adversaries.’ He shrugged.

  ‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ the woman said, her Liote pure the way Westerners spoke it. Then she stepped back from the balcony, even as Tiy Drako got his loop of linen into the blood and gristle.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said.

  Aranthur could taste salt in his mouth. He was having a hard time not looking at the dying man or smelling the result of the man’s voiding his gut and bladder in his agony. His heels were drumming on the floor.

  ‘Slaves of Darkness!’ the man in brown spat. ‘Just kill him!’

  A heavy staff struck the floor near Aranthur’s head.

  ‘Be silent,’ the priest said. ‘If the boys choose to save the man, what business is it of yours?’

  The man in brown sheathed his sword and stepped back, offended as the priest knelt in the blood and began to sing tunelessly.

  The three of them laboured together. Tiy and the priest knew their business. All Aranthur had to do was keep the thumbs of his two hands locked together until he was relieved. The two sang together in low voices.

  Lecne burst in among them. ‘Are you a healer, priest? Then for Sun’s sake save my father.’

  The priest neither looked up nor ceased his singing.

  ‘My father is a good man. This man was a killer!’ the young man said.

  The singing went on.

  ‘What kind of justice is this?’ Lecne shouted. ‘My father is dying and you are saving a murderer!’

  The priest sat back on his heels, his face grey. He made the sign of the sun over the soldier’s head.

  ‘You can let go, now,’ Tiy said softly.

  Aranthur had trouble focusing and his hands were stuck together with the man’s blood.

  ‘I might ruin it,’ he breathed.

  ‘You can’t ruin it,’ Tiy said. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Now will you come to my father?’ Lecne begged.

  ‘I will come,’ Tiy said. ‘My master has spent himself.’

  ‘On the criminal!’ Lecne spat.

  The old priest slumped and hung his head.

  Tiy Drako rose smoothly to his feet.

  ‘We treat all men the same,’ he said carefully. He was not yet as good as most priests at controlling his face and his voice.

  ‘All men are not the same,’ Lecne said.

  ‘How wise of you,’ Tiy said.

  He went towards the huddle around the fallen innkeeper. The chirurgeon was working as fast as he was able, but he had no power, only craft. The woman stood in the alcove from which Aranthur had emerged, reloading her puffer from a small flask.

  Aranthur got up off the floor slowly. Most of all, he wanted the blood off his hands and his feet. Without apparent volition, he began to move stiffly to the kitchens, where he knew there was hot water.

  He found himself nose to nose with the woman with the shining hair. She had put her charge into the barrel of the deadly object and was winding the clockwork wheel that drove its spirit – or so he understood. She looked up at him from under her lashes.

  He avoided her eyes.

  ‘If you have the power,’ he said quietly, ‘you might use it.’

  She winced. ‘If I had any saar left, you think I’d use this cannon? You …?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said savagely. ‘I retrieved your cases under your compulsion.’

  She looked away. ‘I’m sorry.’ She was not, in fact, sorry. ‘Where are they, then?’ she asked sweetly. ‘More than one?’

  He had to push past her. They were very close and he was aware of her aura and aware, too, of the blood all over him. She smelled like a temple – incense, and a bitter tang like musk.

  ‘You could help the innkeeper,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t expend my reserve,’ she said. ‘I … overspent already. You are the boy who brought me in from the snow?’

  The chirurgeon was shaking his head.

  He nodded. ‘Ah – you burned yourself?’

  She nodded. ‘Why did I tell you that?’

  ‘Can you save the innkeeper?’

  ‘Probably,’ she admitted, not meeting his eyes.

  He could smell her breath. She ate cloves.

  ‘Can you channel?’ he asked her.

  She looked at him and gave a smile – a nasty little smile.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have power. A little—’

  ‘Sunlight, you’re like a fucking customer. All right, sweetheart. Come.’

  She grabbed his hand in a vice grip and dragged him over. Lecne was kneeling on one side of his father and the chirurgeon was holding his good hand mutely on the other side. Donna Cucina was sitting on her heels, praying.

  ‘You asked for this, sweetie,’ she said.

  Everything went black.

  Aranthur awoke in a bed. With a wool sheet under him and a fine, quilted double blanket atop.

  He took a deep breath and the spike in his head made him whimper aloud. Outside the blanket, it was cold – cold enough that he could see his breath, and cold enough that he had slept with his head tucked in under the wool. He blinked at the sunlight coming in through a narrow window above him, and the sunlight made the pain in his head more intense. He found that he could control the pain by closing his eyes, and once he’d managed it, he found his mouth was paper dry. He’d no doubt been snoring. The other three students with whom he shared in the City complained about it constantly and mocked him as well.

  Under his dry mouth was a taste of blood – coppery and full of bile. He almost gagged.

  There was water by the bed: a handsome brown pitcher and a matching cup. He mastered the spike in his head long enough to pour a cup – one of the most difficult exercises of his life – and drink it.

  Exhausted, he pulled the blankets over his head and went back to sleep.

  The sun was still filling the garret when he awoke a second time. Cautiously, he moved his head, and the pain there was nothing but an echo of the pain from earlier in the morning.

  He took a deep breath, stretched, and rose. His head stayed on. In fact, he felt … solid. It occurred to him that he hadn’t slept so long for … a year? Two?

  He was naked. He usually slept naked, to save his threadbare shirts, but he had no memory of becoming naked, and he saw no sign of his clothes. He was in someone else’s room. Cautious investigation suggested that it was Lecne’s, shared with several other young men, almost like a barracks room. But the area at the end, under the narrow window, was clearly Lecne’s. There were two heavy wooden chests barred in iron, and a much-repaired clothes press of ancient vintage.

  ‘You alive?’ Lecne called.

  A sharply curving set of steps entered the attic room in the middle and Lecne’s head appeared from the hole.

 
‘Hello?’

  The cold air was getting through the hours of sleep.

  ‘I have no clothes,’ Aranthur said.

  Lecne laughed. ‘Mater’s washing all your stuff. Wear mine. Here!’

  He bounced into the attic, ducking his head under the gable timbers with the ease of long practice. He threw open the clothes press with a violence that would not have pleased the last person to repair the drawers.

  ‘It’s all simple stuff,’ he said with some embarrassment.

  Aranthur started to dress and remembered his manners.

  ‘How’s your pater?’ he asked.

  He knew the answer had to be favourable – no young man whose father was dead would be as bouncy as Lecne was that morning.

  Lecne looked at him as if a horn had grown from his head.

  ‘You saved him,’ he said. ‘You and Donna Iralia. And the priest, I guess.’ Seeing Aranthur’s confusion, he said, ‘You really don’t remember?’

  Aranthur shook his head, which proved unwise.

  Lecne bubbled with enthusiasm.

  ‘Iralia is really something!’ he said. ‘She did a ritual, but she used your … stuff, whatever the stuff is called. It was incredible! We could see this dark red light flowing out of you into Pater!’ He danced around, and then said, ‘And then the priest said that she didn’t know much about healing and he came and did something – but still with your stuff.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, they pasted Pater’s hand back on his arm. It’s still there today!’ He leant forward. ‘So Mater’s washing all your clothes and you can stay here for ever, I reckon.’

  Aranthur smiled.

  And thought of the big man dying on the floor.

  It hit him like a blow in the gut, and for a moment, he thought he’d vomit.

  ‘I killed someone,’ he said.

  Lecne nodded. ‘Yeah, that was pretty amazing too. I’m sorry for what I said to the priest. But Pater was dying!’

  Aranthur thought that he was looking at the other young man across a gulf of fire, so deep was the chasm between them. He sat up.