Honor among thieves abt-3

by David Chandler

  He brought Bloodquaffer up, ready to parry Morget’s axe stroke.

  Morget was as big as a horse and his arm was like a tree trunk. The axe came around in an arc, a blow as fast and inescapable as an avalanche.

  Orne took the perfect stance and gripped Bloodquaffer’s hilt in both hands. He braced himself in perfect form. How many times had he stood like that, ready to take a blow that could have killed a normal man? Orne was a knight and an Ancient Blade. A warrior of incomparable skill.

  He could no more have stopped the axe blow than he could have held back the ocean at high tide. The axe would have cut him in half if that had been Morget’s intention. Instead it cut right through Bloodquaffer’s blade.

  The end of the serrated sword spun in the air for a moment, then dropped to clatter in the street. Orne was left holding a hilt and a foot of severed iron.

  Impossible, Croy thought. Swords could be broken, of course. A strong enough man could shatter even dwarven steel, and Morget was the strongest man Croy had ever seen. Yet-Bloodquaffer was no ordinary sword. The Ancient Blades were eight hundred years old. They had been forged by the greatest smiths of their day using techniques long lost to modern metalcrafters. They had been imbued with potent magics and blessed by priests of both the Bloodgod and the Lady, back when the people of Skrae worshipped them both equally. The swords were sacred, and they were supposed to be eternal. In all those centuries, none of them had ever been broken. Yet Croy saw it with his own eyes. Bloodquaffer shattered as easily as a piece of poorly forged iron, and with it eight hundred years of tradition.

  It was like the world had come to an end.

  It was like everything he had ever known was proved wrong.

  Even Morget looked surprised at what had happened. But he did not slow his attack. The axe smashed against the cobblestones, carried onward by its inexorable momentum, and then Morget’s sword arm swung around, his own Ancient Blade held straight outward in a perfect form.

  Orne did not flinch as Dawnbringer’s chopping stroke took off his head.

  His time, at last. As had been foreseen.

  Croy longed to howl out in injustice, to call to Morget to try his hand and his axe against Ghostcutter next. He burned with the need to avenge Orne’s death and strike down the barbarian as his vows required. Every particle of his being and every shred of his soul needed that, needed to see the battle through.

  Yet he had taken a vow, another vow he could never break. He must save the king, no matter what he personally desired. His battle with Morget would have to wait.

  Croy did not waste another moment. He hurried through the open gate and pushed it quietly closed behind him. If the barbarians had seen him, they would come howling for his blood next. They would give chase.

  They would kill him, and the king.

  He could do nothing but keep running.

  He tried to be quiet, willed himself not to be seen as he hurried down the road to the west, outside of Helstrow’s walls. He did not stop until he reached a copse of trees well outside the fortress-town’s precincts, a place where he thought he might hide long enough to catch his breath. He laid the king down in a sward of soft grass and looked back the way he’d come, his eyes unblinking.

  Looming above the walls of Helstrow, he could see the keep and the palace. Both of them were burning.

  Part 2

  The Sleeping King

  Interlude

  There was a place in the Free City of Ness where drovers brought their sheep to pasture while they waited to be taken to market. A pleasant common of green in the midst of a boisterous and noisy city. It was not particularly safe at night (no place in Ness truly was), yet for its idyllic calm, it had become somewhat fashionable, and some of the richest men of Ness built villas on its edges, pleasure palaces where they could get away from the endless flow and ebb of commerce.

  In the middle of this sward there stood a wide swath of rubble and burnt timbers that no one had ever fully cleared away. It marked where the grandest of those houses once stood. Everything of even remote value had been gleaned from the spot, but no one wanted to build anew there and even the sheep gave it a wide berth.

  It had been the house of Hazoth, the sorcerer. It was the place where that great man had been dragged down into the pit by his own enslaved demons. It was also the place where Cythera was born, and where Coruth the witch had been imprisoned for many, many years.

  Coruth was probably the first person to set foot inside its ruins since the night it came down. It never occurred to her to do so before-she had been glad enough to get away from the place-but sometimes a witch had to go where others feared to tread.

  That day she looked mostly like an old and bent woman, because that was how she felt most of the time, and no one was watching, so she didn’t have to take the trouble to appear as an imposing figure. Her robes were black and shapeless and unremarkable. Her iron-colored hair was bound back with a bit of cheap ribbon. She walked with a measured step that suggested some of her great age, though she retained enough vanity not to use a walking stick.

  It was not difficult to find the place where Hazoth died. The very ground there cracked open to admit him, and while the earth had smoothed itself over, finding its own level, not even weeds would ever grow there again. Coruth paced out the patch of utterly barren ground to find its center, then sat down on the dirt and let the sun warm her for a while before she did anything else.

  “She’s your daughter too,” Coruth said finally. Hazoth couldn’t hear her, of course. He was dead. But some things needed to be said even if there was no one there to hear them. “You were a terrible man, a right bastard, frankly. One of the worst. But it was your seed that put her in my womb, and I figure you have a right to know what’s going to become of her. It isn’t pretty.”

  A soft breeze stirred the grass at the edge of the barren patch. Each individual blade fluttered, rubbing against its neighbors. A cricket looking for a meal approached the place where Coruth sat, then reconsidered and turned away. No human being was in sight-and definitely not in earshot.

  “She’s going to learn magic, one way or another. She’ll gain the kind of power you and I work with, maybe even more. I’m going to have to train her. It’s the only chance she’s got. And you, of all people, know what that means. I’ve seen her future and it can go one of two ways. Normally when I see the future, I know it’s bound to happen. That there’s no changing it. I do my best to look surprised when it comes to pass. And being a witch, well, that means when I see something unpropitious, something I don’t like, it’s just too bad. More times than not I have to go along and help make it happen anyway. This time, though, I see two possibilities. One is she becomes like me. A witch. Old and alone and bitter, but the world is better for it. The other chance is she becomes a sorcerer like you, and every horror of the pit can’t match what happens next. I can’t let that come to pass. There’s still time for her to pick which path she’ll walk. Do you know how rare that is? How infrequently I get this chance to make the future a better place?”

  A cloud passed briefly across the sun, one of those thin insubstantial clouds that can’t block out all the light. A chill breeze ruffled her clothes, but soon enough the cloud passed by and the sun returned. Coruth tilted her head back and let the heat sink into her face.

  “It’s going to cost me. Especially now, when I’m needed for other things. I don’t suppose you care, but Helstrow fell today to the barbarians. I’m going to have far more work than I can handle. As if that’s something new.”

  In the distance she could hear a cowbell chiming, as a herd of animals was brought down to the common.

  “Sod this,” she said. “I’m getting stiff, sitting here talking to you. I just thought you had a right to know about Cythera. A father should know these things.”

  It hurt her old joints to stand up, but she did it without making too much noise. She started away from the barren patch of earth, intending to head home and begin her preparations
. But then she glanced around slyly to make sure no one was watching, and headed back.

  The patch of dirt was the closest thing Hazoth had to a grave. She hitched up her skirt and pissed all over it, cackling the whole time. And then she went home.

  Chapter Thirty

  Helstrow burned for days. The barbarians were too busy celebrating to notice. A great carousing went on in whatever houses remained spared by the flames, an orgy of drinking and debauchery. Out in the streets, men of Skrae hung by their necks from every eave and standard, or lay stinking and bloody on the cobbles. Inside the houses, berserkers danced and reavers gambled for the spoils of war, while drunken thralls made sport in the elegant mansions, stealing what they could carry, smashing anything too big to be moved.

  Of all that horde, one man stayed sober on the night of the victory-Morget, now called Mountainslayer, who never touched spirits. Nor did he exult or crow in victory. Instead he roamed the alleys and lanes of Helstrow, looking for something he could not find.

  This place, this fortress city, belonged to him and his people now. As it should be. As it always should have been. Morget knew the story of this land, having heard it repeated by scolds since he was just a boy.

  Once, Morget’s people and the people of Skrae had been cut from the same cloth. When they first arrived on this continent, fleeing from the decadence and bureaucracy of the Old Empire, they had all been warriors, every man among them as proud and fierce as Morget’s berserkers and reavers. They lived as nomadic hunters and raiders. Over time, though, the weaker among them banded together to form villages and holdfasts and eventually permanent cities. They built high walls to keep out those who were too strong and wild to live in any structure more permanent than a tent. Eventually the city people united against the nomads. A great war was fought, and the wanderers, the warriors, were too small in number to resist. They had been pushed back to the east, where they could not endanger the city folk. Eventually they were pushed right over the Whitewall Range. A wall higher than anything their cities could boast.

  For two hundred years the clans of the East had been penned in, kept locked behind those mountains by the men of Skrae. Morget’s people had once been great warriors-soldiers, generals, slayers of elves and ogres. For far too long they’d been reduced to raiding the sheep of the hillfolk north of their steppes or at best picking away at the edges of Skilfing in the Northern Kingdoms. It kept them sharp, forcing them to keep their arms strong and their fighting skills honed. But it made them bitter as well because they knew their true destiny was to rule, to smash open every wall and plunder the treasures inside.

  Now that destiny was coming to fruition. And yet…

  Morget had believed it would make him happy to stand here, to walk these streets he’d conquered. He’d thought he would feel some kind of fulfillment now that his life’s grand task was under way. He would take the West back for the strong, for the righteous, for those who worshipped only Mother Death.

  So why, then, did he wander aimlessly, feeling empty, feeling like he was still only part of what he should become?

  For anyone else it would have been reckless to wander those ways alone. Morgain and her spearmaidens roamed the rooftops with bows. Their faces were all painted to resemble the visage of their goddess Death, and they acted as Her servants in the world that night, finishing off those few soldiers of Skrae who had not surrendered and who thought to hide in dark and small places. Time and again as Morget turned down a new street his thoughts were interrupted by the sudden twang of a bowstring and a desperate cry. His clanswomen were drunk on black mead, that most befuddling of brews, and Morget wondered if they even saw half the targets they fired at or if they chased as many phantoms as real enemies. More than once they drew on him, but he had only to stare upward, his red-painted face fixed in a scowl, and strings were eased, arrows unnocked.

  He came at one point to the Halls of Justice, the last public building in the fortress-town untouched by fire. Inside he heard Hurlind the scold recounting the day’s battle, embellishing the tale with many a jest and pointed observation on the quality and quantity of Skrae’s collective manhood. Morget almost passed by, but as he glanced in toward the light and merriment, he saw something he could not ignore.

  His father sat on a stone bench, surrounded by half-dressed barbarian women as drunk as he was. The masterless dog was curled up on Morg’s lap, kicking one leg in sleep. Berserkers had passed out on the marble floor in heaps. As the first to the gate, the first to storm the city and brave its defenders, these men had been given the honor of feasting with the Great Chieftain, yet none of them had managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy it. The fury they brought to battle was not without a price to be paid later, a torporous exhaustion that could last for days. Morget had been one of them once, and he understood, so as he stormed into the chamber of justice he did not trod on his brethren but stepped over their snoring bodies.

  Hurlind was bowing low as Morget came upon him from behind. The scold had a velvet pillow in his hands, upon which lay the crown of Skrae. Morget knew it had been recovered after the battle of the eastern gate, picked up from where it fell in the grass. The crown was crushed in on one side now, and a few of its emeralds were missing, but someone had polished it to a high luster.

  And now Morg, Great Chieftain of the eastern clans, was reaching for it.

  Morget struck Hurlind across the back of the neck with one massive fist and drove him to the floor. The crown went flying, to spin in circles in a corner of the room.

  Morg frowned at his son. From behind a column, Torki, Morg’s champion, loomed into the firelight, a great-axe in his hand.

  Morget sneered at the burned face of the giant champion. He’d beaten him once, and could do it again. If challenge were offered, he was ready to accept.

  But it seemed Morg had received the message his son meant to send. That crown was not for the Great Chieftain. No man of the eastern steppes could ever call himself king-that was the law. The Great Chieftain only spoke for the men under them. He did not rule them.

  Besides, the battle might be over but the war was just beginning. Helstrow had been taken and sacked, but Helstrow was not all of Skrae. Nor was it certain the true owner of that crown was dead. Most of the clans believed the king had perished in the fighting, but until Ulfram V’s body was found, Morget would not believe it.

  Morg stared down into his son’s eyes as if mistrusting the fire there, the fire that would not let Morget rest, even in triumph. The fire that had always separated father from son and kept them understanding one another. Morg had never respected that fire. You put it there, Morget wanted to say, but this was not a time for words. Eventually the Great Chieftain waved away his son, and Torki took a step back. Morget spat on the floor near Hurlind’s face and went back out into the night.

  He spent a while by the eastern gate, digging bodies out of the rubble. Even after the portcullis came down, the gate had not been wide enough to admit the barbarian horde en masse, so much of the stonework was pulled down-while defenders still thronged its battlements. There were plenty of corpses to find.

  None of them belonged to the king.

  Howling with frustration, Morget picked up stones and threw them into the night, not caring what he struck. He trampled on the king’s banner, dropped here by a sniveling herald.

  There will be other days, he told himself. Other battles. The clans will not be satisfied for long by this blood. They will want more, and I will give it to them, in the name of our mother Death. I will make this country bleed until it runs white.

  He sat down on the pile of fallen masonry and took from his belt the only souvenirs he’d kept from the day’s spoils. A hilt, its corresponding blade broken off at a jagged edge, and six inches of another blade from a sword older than history. Bloodquaffer and Crowsbill, or what was left of them.

  He’d been surprised as anyone when the swords shattered. The axe he carried was of the finest dwarven steel, he knew-he’d stole
n it himself from an abandoned dwarven city. The mirror-bright face of its blade was streaked with wavy shadows, and in a certain light the axe looked iridescent. It was a fine weapon, though not magical in any way.

  Yet it had sheared through two Ancient Blades without stopping. Morget had long believed the seven swords to be indestructible. Everyone believed that-it was an article of faith. Yet here he had the proof that even magic swords were mortal.

  Knowing that, he could only wonder one thing.

  Will I truly find an enemy here in Skrae, the enemy I’ve sought so long? The enemy who will be more precious than any lover-the enemy who can challenge me, and make me sweat, because I do not know I can beat him?

  He had conquered every foe he’d met east of the mountains. He had pushed so hard to come west because he thought he would find there what he sought. But if even the legendary Ancient Blades of Skrae were so easily brought low His reverie came to an instant stop when he heard a moan rise up from the pile of corpses. A survivor-one he had not found in his frantic search, one his sister had not discovered as she haunted the dead city.

  Morget leapt down from his perch on the rubble and kicked bricks and bits of scorched mortar away from the source of the sound. Then he reached down with one massive hand and lifted his prize free of the debris.

  “You,” he said, the first word he’d spoken all night.

  “Are you going to kiss me now, or stick me on a spit and roast me alive?” Balint the dwarf asked. She must have fallen here when the gate collapsed, staying with her ballista crews until the fatal moment. “Either way, I need a change of breeches first.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Just outside the gates of Ness a recruiting serjeant had been broken on a wheel and hung up on a pole. The man’s kettle hat had been nailed to his head so it wouldn’t fall off, and so anyone passing by would recognize his occupation. Then his legs and arms were broken in several places so his limbs could be woven through the spokes of the wagon wheel, and then the wheel had been lifted high in the air so all could see.