The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “Young Master Trellane,” Procost finally said, eyes never moving to the man he addressed. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “What, what…? What?”

  “I am conducting rounds in accordance with my position here as Imperial military liaison. I really need not explain beyond that.”

  “I…” Banner Trellane took a deep breath. “I understood that my Uncle had an errand for you. Out in some village…”

  “It is done,“ Procost said. “Though I decided to ride back early rather than stay over the night.”

  Block’s eyes were only slits, and Tilda could tell he was grinding his teeth by the thrust of his fuzzy chin. He had marked Procost’s look at Dugan and clearly did not like what it boded any more than did Tilda. It reminded her of the deadly attention shining in the cold eyes of a Miilarkian jungle adder, the kind that were brought aboard ships in port to clear them of rats.

  “Sir Knight,” Block barked, moving forward and advancing on Procost until the man finally looked down at the dwarf.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Block barked. “You know who I am, and that I am here with the permission of your liege.”

  “My liege is the Emperor of All Lands Under the Code,” Procost said quietly.

  “Well, good on him! Now if you don’t mind, we were just enjoying a spot of breakfast ’neath the charming loom of the mountains. Do you have some sort of problem with that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good!” Block said. “Then unless you’ve come for the coffee, why do you not go on about your way like the good soldier, hmm? My time here is not long, and I’ll thank you to take up no more of it by skulking about in the briars, giving good people a start!”

  Procost met the dwarf’s eyes, but Tilda in no way felt Dugan relax next to her.

  “Gentleman of the Islands,” the knight said formally. “Nothing could have been further from my intention than to trouble you in the least. All of us here, in the Empire, appreciate the valued service of your great fleets and merchants, and none would have desire to pain you in any way. If my presence has offended, sir, I sincerely apologize. And if you wish me gone, then I go post haste.”

  The knight stepped back and bowed deeply to Block, who blinked as though thinking that had been far too easy. The knight straightened and saluted Banner Trellane as a Codian nobleman, removing his felt hat to do so.

  Trellane returned the courtesy, as did Fitz and his men. Only Dugan stood unmoving, his head covered by his silly, musty, fur hat. Tilda moved her right hand slowly under her half cloak toward the dagger at the small of her back.

  “Commoner,” Procost growled.

  “He is with me, knight!” Block shouted.

  “He is no Miilarkian.”

  Trellane and the others had begun to look at Dugan as if noticing him for the first time. For his part, Dugan only met the knight’s gaze. His demeanor was at peace, and there was no retreat in it.

  Block was still shouting.

  “It matters not if he be a Miilarkian born, or a Cobra Bay barmaid! He is in my employ, and I am an Islander in good standing in my House…”

  “Uncover, foot soldier!” Procost boomed, and instantly Dugan did, tearing the sorry hat from his head and tossing it aside, revealing his close-shorn black hair.

  No one said anything for a goodly long time. When Procost finally broke the silence, there was a smile in his voice that did not show on his face.

  “You are out of uniform, legionnaire.”

  “I am at that.”

  “Show me your shoulder.”

  “Sir Procost!” Block bawled, now standing directly in front of the knight. The dwarf held one hand up in warding but his other was somewhere under his cloak. Tilda had a fairly good idea what that meant. She also had a finger on either side of a slim dagger pommel, just enough to slip it from its sheath and cast it underhand.

  The knight ignored the dwarf. He had eyes only for Dugan, and no more semblance of politeness.

  “Show me your insignia, dog! I would know from whence it is you run.”

  “Does it matter?” Dugan asked, so quietly Tilda was surprised Procost heard him as the two were still separated by the length of the cottage. But the knight plainly did.

  “It does, for if you are a deserter from some local force than you are under arrest.” The knight’s teeth appeared as a white line within his beard. “But if you are renegade from the damnable 34, the burners of the Round Hall at Trabon, then before these witnesses you will meet justice here and now.”

  At the mention of the 34 and the Round Hall, everyone but Tilda and Block stared at Dugan. The renegade gave a slight smile.

  “That is the Fighting Three-Four to you, tin can.”

  Procost’s teeth bared wider and his nostrils flared as he drew his great, strong-bladed broadsword over his shoulder and held it forward with both hands on the long hilt. He began to speak some formal words of challenge, but Dugan rolled his eyes and shook the blanket he still wore as a wrap off his shoulders. He fetched his Legion short sword from under his tunic.

  “Nine Gods, spare me the dither!” he called, holding his sword almost absently in his left hand while swinging his right arm to loosen the shoulder. “Will no nobleman ever just die without a lot of pointless talk first?”

  “Dugan, sheath your weapon!” Block ordered, giving Tilda one meaningful glance. She edged closer and just a step in front of the renegade. Across the way, Procost’s face was turning crimson.

  “Not bloody likely,” Dugan sneered at Block, then he put his sword in his right hand and beckoned at Procost with the blade. The knight shouted.

  “Then blood it is!”

  Suddenly both men were moving. Fast.

  Before Block’s hamstringing dagger was out from under his cloak the knight lunged forward like a bounding charger, one high knee slamming into Block’s head and spinning the dwarf to the ground. Dugan grabbed Tilda’s arm behind her back through her cloak, kicked out one of her feet and shoved her hard to the side. She blundered two hopping steps and failed to fully brace herself with one arm against the back of the cottage. Her forehead hit the wall with a fat, wooden smack.

  Tilda’s knees wobbled and she slid to them, then rolled to a crouch and whipped free her throwing dagger as she turned around. She was just in time to see the beginning and end of Dugan and Procost’s very short duel.

  The men barreled at each other with their swords held high, both shouting in the manner all Codian soldiers are taught. The cooling campfire was closer to Dugan as they began their charges and at the last moment the renegade veered toward it. He kicked the coffeepot off its braces and sent the carafe bouncing into the running knight’s path.

  The top popped as the pot hit the ground and the last hot dregs splashed up onto Procost’s boots. It was hardly enough to slow the big man but the surprise of it made him pull up short. Dugan darted forward and ducked inside the long reach of the great broadsword. That was enough.

  The knight was trained to fight mainly on horseback, fully armored and swinging heavy weapons in wide, devastating arcs. Legionnaires fought in a clinch, only their eyes peeking over the rims of tower shields while their fat, ugly swords poked hungrily around the sides, feeling for anything soft and yielding.

  The point of Dugan’s sword sparked against Procost’s breastplate. Dugan raised one hand to catch the knight’s arms over his head, then he reversed his own grip with a twist of wrist. The two men strained and the short sword slid down plate mail until it bit. Dugan leaned in with all his weight on his blade, driving it deep into the knight’s thigh through his groin.

  Tilda did not bother to throw her dagger, and neither did Block who was back on his feet with a blade of his own in his hand. Procost screamed and fell to the ground, broadsword falling uselessly into the grass at his side, clutching himself. Dugan fell on top of him but quickly pushed off and wrenched his sword free, eliciting more screams. He backed away a step with his blade, hands, trouser
s, everything now a charnel swath of wetly-shining gore. All around men stood slack-jawed and staring. Banner Trellane lost his legs and fell to all fours. The young nobleman regurgitated coffee and eggs while still unable to take his eyes of the man, a man he knew, lying butchered like a hog.

  Dugan knelt and said, “Knight,” until Procost’s wild eyes focused on him.

  “You are ruined,” Dugan said quietly. “It is a mortal wound.”

  Breaths ending in sobbing gasps issued from the huge, helpless man.

  “End it,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Dugan stood, cast away his filthy short sword, and took up the knight’s. Procost squirmed uncontrollably and Dugan had to put a foot on his breast plate to pin him still. Dugan raised the blade, Procost shouted that it was the sword of his father, and Dugan brought it down on his head.

  Most of the others closed their eyes or looked away, but not Tilda. She sat with her back to the cottage and crossed her arms over her knees, one hand still holding her unused dagger. Dugan left the knight’s sword where it was and slowly bent to pick up his own. All eyes followed him as he walked back to where he had dropped his blanket. He reached for it, and only then seemed to notice his red hands. The only sound was the dying fire, and the dry wheezing of Banner Trellane.

  Dugan looked up at Tilda. Sir Procost’s blood was spattered across his face.

  “That,” he said, “is the sort of kind man that I am.”

  Chapter Eight

  Banner de Trellane was too shaken to even try and stop the Miilarkians from leaving. He made some feeble protests that his Uncle the Baron should be informed immediately of Sir Procost’s end, but Captain Block was adamant. Without direct orders to the contrary the gnome Fitzyear could only shrug. His men helped Tilda with the baggage as Dugan was too covered in gore to carry anything without soiling it, and the gnome led the way into the woods and the hills leaving the sorry scene at the cottage behind.

  Within half an hour they reached a stream where they paused while Dugan did a more thorough job of washing up. He had to strip off his tunic, soak and wring it, and as he did so Tilda was reminded of cleaning out the stirge remains from her own cloak some days before. She shuddered. She could have gotten Dugan a brick of soap, but it was in a pack now carried by one of Fitz’s men and she did not want to go through the rigmarole of fetching it. Not with a headache already throbbing between her ears from her skull-bounce off the cottage.

  Tilda and the others saw the renegade legionnaire’s incriminating tattoo as he worked, a “34” done in square black lettering on his upper back between left shoulder and neck, whirled around by Tullish-looking designs of the type prominent on the margins of Imperial coins. Something to remember his time in the Legion by, though the man would never see it without a mirror. Dugan wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and carried the tunic on a stick until it dried. The cold seemed not to trouble him.

  The garment had time to dry out for the way was long. For the rest of the morning hours the gnome led the line of marchers on a winding route through the maze of culverts and gullies snaking among the mountain foothills, passing through shaggy copses of pine trees with prickly boughs that made the humans duck while the gnome and dwarf strode on undisturbed. No one spoke a word. Tilda’s headache finally faded but she was footsore and her legs ached by the time a campsite was reached, a semicircle of five small cabins with log walls and roofs of tented canvas. Another half-dozen fellows of Sergeant Fitzyear’s command were there, just beginning to clean some species of wild hill hog for a spit above a kindling fire.

  Though Tilda could dress an animal if she had to, at the moment she could not stand to look at the work being done with heavy knives. The group did not stay in any case.

  Fitzyear was curt and brief, seemingly to his men’s surprise. Speaking mostly in what Tilda now recognized to be Daulic the gnome directed the men from the cottage to stand down and change places with the six at the cabins. While those who had accompanied the band thus far had been lightly armed with short swords and dirks at their belts, the fellows readying themselves now also brought bows or short spears. One hoisted a great maul across his back, and a pair had fearsome picks. Tilda was not sure if the picks were weapons or tools, but supposed they would do in either case.

  There had been familiar calls of greeting among the soldiers but Fitz kept barking unnecessary orders to interrupt conversations between those moving on and those staying here. It was obvious that the gnome intended for the group to leave before the new men were fully informed about the morning’s events, but there were too many of them in pairs, cinching thick leather armor and exchanging baggage, to keep them all from talking. Captain Block had another idea.

  “Dugan, you take that pack and the long case. Matilda, biyn jo waha.”

  Tilda frowned for a moment but then dropped the baggage she was carrying, which was mostly her personal equipment. She slipped her half cloak off over her head, and as ordered, outfitted herself for war in the manner of a Guilder. The men around stopped talking and watched, first with curiosity, then amusement, and finally with vaguely concerned frowns.

  Off came Tilda’s cloth tunic and wool sweater, both rolled up and stuffed into a pack after she first removed a web of leather belting and straps. Over her cloth undershirt remained a leather vest of a shade of brown so dark it looked nearly black. The front of the vest and the lower back were pleated with long, thin, triple-stitched pockets that became armor when specially fashioned lengths of steel were inserted, though Tilda did not have any of those as their great weight had been judged not worth the effort when she and the Captain left Miilark. But the front pockets had another use. From a second pack Tilda produced six sheathed throwing knives, a matched set with the one she always wore at the small of her back. Each had a short handle accommodating only a finger and thumb, with flat, narrow blades honed keen and counterbalanced with a round wooden knob. Three each went into the pockets to the right and left side of the vest’s eye-and-hook clasps, each hanging upside-down and held in place only by snaps Tilda could flick with a thumb.

  Next, Tilda wriggled into two wrist-length sleeves of blackened leather joined together by a back strap, which required a good amount of yanking and twisting to don for the leather was hard and stiff. Each sleeve was in two sections joined by cloth at the elbows, else she would not have been able to bend her arms. There was another sheath stitched to the bottom forearm section of each into which Tilda slid a pair of heavy knives. The points reached almost to the inward bend of her elbow joints and the grips long enough for a whole hand ended at a circular metal pommel that rested at the base of either palm. They were typically both to be drawn at once by bringing the hands together, elbows pointing out. The blades were stout and sharp only on one side, reinforced by the flat-edged so that they were hard to break. Two more just like them went into sheathes in her boots.

  Tilda undid her belt buckle, raising numerous eyebrows. She withdrew half the belt and threaded it through an additional buckle of a kind, then back around her waist. To this buckle was then attached a sheathed short sword in a light wooden scabbard wrapped with eel skin dyed black, as was the cord grip. The metal cross piece above the grip - the quillons - and the knob of the pommel were painted the same hue, with an obsidian stone set in the latter. The blade which Tilda did not draw at the moment was also painted black, excepting on the keen edge. She let the weapon hang from her right hip for a left-handed draw, despite being right handed.

  Another tunic came of Tilda’s packs, this one of much stouter cloth than her traveling gear and heavier by far for within the two-layered knit were thick pads on the shoulders and over her kidneys. Tilda pulled it on, got her braid out of the back of it, then paused and glanced to the Captain. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. While Tilda untangled a particular series of straps from the bunch at her feet, Block set down the kit-bag that was the one piece of luggage he generally carried himself. Tilda buckled on a right-handed shoulder
holster, while Fitz and the soldiers now stared at Block as he produced, charged, and loaded a short ackserpa. The word meant “barking snake” in the Trade Tongue, but the simpler term was dag or pistol. He tossed the readied weapon to Tilda who caught it, wound the internal spring that would move the spur-like wheel of the lock when triggered, and holstered the gun under her left arm with the ivory grip forward.

  It was by this point that the soldiers were exchanging worried glances among themselves. But Tilda was not done.

  She got back into her half-cloak and let her long braid hang to her waist beneath it so she could raise the hood without trouble. The voluminous garment hung little different than it had before a small armory had been beneath it, and the triangular cut let Tilda get her hands quickly inside. Across her chest went one more diagonal belt with an open sheath on the back, a modified version of the kind usually holding a quiver of arrows. Instead of a quiver Tilda slid the business end of her buksu into the stiff leather cup at the bottom of the sheath, and stretched to button a strap across its neck just behind her own. This left the long two-handed grip within easy reach, sticking up at an angle behind her left ear.

  The buksu was a traditional style of Miilarkian club dating from long before the coming of any outsiders to the Islands. Proper ones were carved from a single piece of golden swamp oak, though Tilda’s was darkened with tar polish. The grip was rounded with the knob at the end carved to look like a human head with a face. Tilda’s wore a smile and was winking. Above the grip the weapon had four narrow sides, which on an old club would be scrimshawed top-to-bottom in intricate images, geometric designs, symbols, and pictograms. The whole club curved just a bit and the four faces met at a flat top in an elongated diamond shape, giving the buksu flat faces for swatting plus long edges and sharp points for more compelling blows. There were some that had been kept within tribes and families for generations, each succeeding one adding to the decorative carving. Tilda had bought hers as an aged and shaped but unadorned piece of wood. The only carving, just the knob and a few inches on one face, was her own.