by Peter McLean
“Cunts!” Jochan bellowed.
He grabbed his axe from behind the bar and was off and running out the door a moment later, his mail forgotten and his shirttails flapping behind him in the freezing wind and blowing snow of the winter night.
“Sam, Billy, Mika, get after him,” I snapped. “I’ll see to my aunt.”
The boys hastily grabbed weapons and set off after my brother’s reckless charge. Ailsa was helping Enaid into a chair now, and I had a proper look at Brak.
“I’m sorry, boss,” he said. “I tried me best.”
“I know,” I said, and frowned. “How are you burned?”
“They had blasting powder,” he said. “That’s how they took the front door off. There was a fire. I couldn’t . . . I tried.”
His face and hands were a mess, but a few more scars wouldn’t kill him. It was that shoulder I was worried about. The cut was deep, right through the meat and almost to the bone. That’s not a killing place, not in itself, but if it went bad he’d be done.
“Ailsa, rouse Cookpot out of the stable and send him to get Doc Cordin,” I said.
She nodded and went, and by then Anne and Erik had joined us. I put Erik in Billy’s place on the door to watch for more trouble, with Stefan and Borys in the alley behind the stable yard. That was it; that was all the crew I had left at the Tanner’s, what with the men I had off guarding my other businesses. I didn’t count Hari in that, but he could still barely walk. I found I actually missed Sir Eland, which wasn’t a thought I’d ever had before. He was a Pious Man in truth now, and his heavy armor and long sword would have been welcome if the Gutcutters came in force. I considered sending a runner to Chandler’s Narrow to fetch him back, but what if they struck there instead? Will couldn’t hold the place alone, and Cutter was still at Slaughterhouse Narrow.
“Cookpot’s off on his errand,” Ailsa said.
I looked around and saw her standing there with my sword belt in her hand. She passed it to me, and I nodded thanks as I buckled it on.
“Keep the pressure on that shoulder,” I told Brak. “The doc’s on his way.”
Brak nodded, pale now with shock.
“Fucking blasting powder,” he whispered, and I could only nod.
It seemed to me that if Ailsa could supply me with poppy resin, then she ought to be able to get her hands on powder too. That was a thought for later, though. I turned to Anne.
“I need to go after my brother before he gets himself killed,” I said. “Can you hold the Tanner’s with just three men, if it comes to it?”
“Aye,” Anne said. “If it comes to it.”
“I can work a crossbow,” Ailsa said, and smiled at me. “If it comes to it.”
I was sure she could, at that.
“My thanks,” I said. “Anne’s in charge.”
With that I threw a cloak around my shoulders and headed out the door in pursuit of Jochan.
THIRTY-FOUR
Aunt Enaid’s house wasn’t far from the Tanner’s Arms, and by the time I had run the length of three streets I could hear fighting. It had stopped snowing by then, but as I dashed around a corner my feet still almost slipped on the wet cobbles. I drew the Weeping Women. The house was on fire, the house that I had mostly grown up in, and Black Billy and Mika were back to back and fighting three men in the street outside. There was no sign of Jochan or Simple Sam anywhere. I stepped up behind one of the Gutcutters and rammed Mercy through his left kidney, dropping him to ground. Billy pressed the advantage and finished his man with a swing of his heavy club that smashed the fellow’s head like an egg.
“Where the fuck’s my brother?” I demanded.
Billy jerked a thumb toward the burning house and turned to help Mika. I left them to it and ducked through the shattered doorway, where a charge of blasting powder had torn half the front wall down. Inside was chaos.
Enaid had said there were four of them, but either she had been wrong about that or more had followed—there were two Gutcutters dead on the floor in the main room, and Sam and Jochan were fighting another three who were holding them off while one of their fellows wrestled a barrel upright in the space under the stairs.
Jochan had cuts and grazes and blood all over him, one sleeve of his shirt torn off, and a long sooty burn up his exposed arm. He was roaring like a madman as he fought. Sam was favoring his right leg and had a hand held to a bloody gash in his thigh as he slashed wildly about him with the shortsword gripped in his other.
The damn fool had obviously charged straight into the house in his rage, and poor faithful Sam must have followed him. I coughed in the thick smoke and joined them in the fray. Now we were evenly matched, Pious Men and Gutcutters. Cinders fell from the ceiling as we fought, and the wooden stairs were on fire. It felt like Abingon in there, choking smoke and flames all around us, the desperate clash of steel in the firelit darkness.
I parried a cut with Mercy and took my man through the throat with Remorse. A moment later Billy and Mika joined us, and the last Gutcutter still fighting chanced a desperate look over his shoulder at the man with the barrel.
A barrel.
A burning building, and a barrel . . .
“Run!”
I grabbed Jochan by the shoulder and almost dragged him after me as I sprinted for the hole in the wall. The others followed, trusting my instinct and the voice of command that they remembered from Abingon. When I saw that the two Gutcutters were fleeing with us, I knew that my instinct had been right.
We all but threw ourselves into the nearest alley, and a moment later the house exploded with a deafening roar as the barrel of blasting powder went up. A great rush of hot air and dust and smoke burst past the mouth of the alley, choking us even as we covered our heads against the rain of shattered timbers and burning laths.
The last timber clattered to the cobbles, the following silence broken only by the faint crackle of flames.
“Fuck a nun,” Jochan whimpered. He was slumped on the ground with his back against the wall, visibly shaking. His breath came in short gasps that spoke of a violent bout of battle shock. “Oh, fuck a nun, Tomas, when will it ever end?”
He put his head in his hands and started to weep.
I rubbed a hand over my face, and it came away black with soot and sweat. Billy and Mika were both obviously shaken too, and I saw Sam hurrying down the alley away from us.
No, that wasn’t right—Sam was wounded in the leg but he wasn’t limping. This man was balding on the crown of his head too, and Sam wasn’t.
“Oi!” I shouted.
Billy’s head whipped around and he took off on his powerful legs, quickly running down the Gutcutter whom I had taken to be Simple Sam in the dark confusion of the alley. There was a thud and I saw Billy’s knife rise and fall once, twice, and it was done.
“Where the fuck’s Sam, then?” Mika asked.
I doubted Sam could have run, not on that wound. I swallowed bile and looked away.
“Stay here,” I said. “Watch my brother.”
I ducked out of the alley and back into the street, Remorse in my hand. The house was gone, and only flames and a few of the heavier timbers remained of the place I had called home after my da had died. People were out of their houses now that the fighting had stopped, passing buckets from their pumps and trying to keep the flames from reaching their own homes. Everything was still wet from the earlier snow, thank the Lady, and I didn’t think the fire would spread.
There were two bodies lying on the cobbles.
No one paid me any attention as I stood over them. These were my streets, the heart of the Stink, and if anyone there saw me they would know well enough to pretend that they hadn’t. One man lay on top of the other, his back raw and blackened with burns. He was quite dead, but he was no one I knew. I rolled him to one side and bent over Simple Sam. He was breathing, at least, and with no tim
e for niceties I slapped his face until his eyes opened.
“Come on, Sam lad, up with you now,” I said.
Sam grinned up at me.
“Hit me head, boss,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t run none so I stabbed that arsehole and pulled him down over me, but I hit me head on the cobbles.”
“Aye,” I said. “You’re alive, thank the Lady, but we need to go.”
Simple Sam was alive because he had had the good sense and the plain ruthlessness to use the fleeing Gutcutter as a shield from the explosion, even if he had managed to knock himself out in the process. I wondered if Sam was quite as simple as we all thought.
* * *
• • •
Mika and Billy helped Sam back to the Tanner’s between them. He had both his arms over their shoulders, and his wounded leg dragged behind him in the patchy snow as the three of them walked awkwardly down the road. I led Jochan, my hand on his arm to steer him. He was meek as a child now, his eyes downcast and his breathing steady once more.
As we approached the tavern I caught a glimpse of Ailsa at my upstairs window, with Bloody Anne’s crossbow in her hands. Erik let us in and locked the door again behind us as Anne hurried over to help the lads get Sam into a chair.
Doc Cordin was there, just finishing sewing up Brak’s shoulder.
“I brought you another one, Doc,” I said.
The doc just sighed and nodded, and I sat Jochan down and put a bottle of brandy on the table in front of him. I thought he had earned it.
“What happened?” Anne asked.
“We killed them,” I said, and that was enough. I looked up and met my aunt’s flinty stare. “Your house . . . I’m sorry.”
She just shook her head and said nothing.
Jochan had the bottle open now and was drinking straight from the neck, the lump in his throat working as he swallowed brandy like it was beer. I saw Ailsa come down the stairs with the crossbow still in her hands. It looked at home there.
“We blew your fucking house up, Auntie,” Jochan said.
He laughed, brandy dribbling from the corner of his mouth. He laughed, and once he had started he didn’t seem to be able to stop. I helped him out of the chair, and as I did I saw that he had pissed himself. I picked up his bottle for him and led him through to the back where the others couldn’t see him anymore. Hopefully he’d drink himself to sleep soon enough.
When I came back Ailsa had put the crossbow down on the bar and donned her barmaid’s face.
“Are you hurt, my lover?” she asked, fussing around my sooty face with a damp cloth.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Doc, how’s Sam and Brak?”
“I’m all right, boss,” Brak said, but he was ghost white and clutching a brandy bottle so hard with his good hand that I thought the glass might shatter. Enaid was sitting with him now, her hand resting on his knee.
Sam was biting down on a folded belt while the Doc sewed up the long gash in his thigh, but to my mind he’d got off lightly. It’s not often a man walks away from an explosion like that.
“This isn’t too deep,” Cordin said. “Keep it clean and he’ll be all right. Your other man’s shoulder worries me, though.”
“I’m all right,” Brak said again, but he obviously wasn’t.
“The silly boy’s being strong for me,” Enaid said.
“I’m not a boy,” Brak said, for all that Enaid must have had forty more years than him. “I’m your man.”
“Hush now,” she said, and I realized she thought I didn’t know.
“Auntie,” I said in a low voice, taking a chair beside her, “who you choose to bed is your affair, not mine. Brak, you’re not all right. You need to rest. Take my room tonight, you and Enaid. I’ll sleep with the men.”
“You can sleep with me, my handsome,” Ailsa said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
It must have looked like an affectionate gesture to anyone watching, but I could feel the strength in her grip and I knew it wasn’t meant that way. Ailsa wanted words, I could tell.
“Aye,” I said. “Aye, why not.”
Mika and Black Billy hid their grins as best they could, and I let it pass. Ailsa was supposed to be my fancy woman, after all, so why not indeed?
THIRTY-FIVE
Borys and me helped Brak up the stairs to my room, and we left him there with Enaid looking after him. Alone together at the top of the stairs, Borys gave me a level look. He was older than most of the others, a big, thoughtful man who said little. He looked like he was about to make up for that, to my mind.
“It’s going wrong, boss,” he said in a low voice. “We’re running out of men in a fit state to fight. They’ve got blasting weapons and we ain’t. What’s going to happen if these Gutcutters come at us in force?”
“I can get blasting weapons,” I said, and thought on what Ailsa had told me. “More men too. Trained men, who can handle themselves. This is my city, Borys. I can get men.”
Both those things were true, if unrelated. I had raised the crossbowmen we had used at the Chains myself, admittedly, but they wouldn’t do. They weren’t men I knew and they weren’t veterans, and I wouldn’t trust them with anything more than a simple ambush. Ailsa’s men, though, I thought they would be useful.
“Are you lovely boys having a private chat, or can anyone join in?” Ailsa said, startling me.
The stairs were old and splintery and creaked like a sign in the wind, but I hadn’t heard her climb them. That explosion obviously hadn’t done my ears any good.
“Sorry, Miss Ailsa,” Borys said, moving out of the way of her door.
“How many times do I got to tell you, just Ailsa’s fine,” she said, and showed him her barmaid’s smile.
She went into her room and beckoned me to follow with a saucy wink. Borys nodded and clumped off down the stairs, leaving us alone in her bedroom.
I closed the door behind me and turned to face her.
“Well, you said you wanted to fuck something up,” Ailsa snapped at me. “Blowing up your own aunt’s house certainly qualifies.”
“That’s not . . .” I started to say, and sighed. I slumped against the wall and put a hand over my eyes. “That’s not exactly what happened. They had a whole fucking barrel of powder in there, Ailsa. Blowing the house up was what they intended. They were making a statement, going after my family to show me that they can.”
“And you just didn’t stop them, is that it? Oh, it’s well and good, Tomas. Hauer will never believe I orchestrated a disaster of that magnitude, so at least your brother’s incompetence should have thrown him off my scent. That is what we wanted, after all.”
“I didn’t want Jochan to get hurt,” I said.
“He’s in a better state than Brak and Sam are.”
“No, he’s not,” I said. “I saw him in that house, fighting in the flames. He was back in Abingon, Ailsa, back there in truth. When the blast went off I think he nearly lost his mind.”
“Tomas,” she said, and came to me. She took my hand and looked into my eyes. “Your brother’s mind is probably beyond your power to save, you have to realize that. You can’t cure him, but you do have to control him.”
“I know,” I said.
“He can still be useful,” she went on. “He fights like a wild animal, and he’s dangerous, and men fear him. Those traits can be used, but they must be used carefully.”
“I know,” I said again, and sighed. “He’s my brother, Ailsa, not a war dog.”
“The right man for the right job, isn’t that how you lead men?”
It was, but I couldn’t recall ever having said it to her. I supposed I must have done and forgotten it.
“Aye,” I admitted.
“And how are you?”
“Well enough,” I said, although I wondered if I really was.
I still remembered wh
at Billy the Boy had done to me at Old Kurt’s house, and I wondered if my own mind was so very much stronger than Jochan’s. I walked over to the window and stared out it, into the stable yard behind the tavern. Stefan was keeping watch at the alley gate, wrapped in two cloaks over his heavy coat. Bloody Anne was coming out of the shithouse, hitching up her britches with one hand and trying to hold her cloak around her with the other against the freezing night air. It might be cold, but other than that Ellinburg didn’t feel so very different to Abingon, that night.
That was the very thing I was trying to avoid, and it seemed to my mind that I was failing at it.
“You need to sleep,” Ailsa said.
“Aye,” I said, but my voice sounded hollow in my own ears.
“Tomas,” she snapped. “Look at me.”
I turned from the window and tried to focus. Lady knew Ailsa was beautiful, but I was struggling to see her face. The shadows in the room looked all wrong, and that was making me nervous. Anyone could be hiding in those shadows. My hands went instinctively to the hilts of the Weeping Women and I bent my knees into a half crouch, my gaze darting around the room. I felt exhausted but too alert, my senses stretched taut yet at the same time also strangely numbed. I drew a sharp breath.
I was ready.
Ready to kill.
“It’s all right, my handsome,” Ailsa said in her barmaid’s voice. “There’s no one here but Ailsa.”
She came and took my face in her hands and looked deeply into my eyes. She breathed steadily, slow and deep, and unconsciously I found my own breaths matching her rhythm. I felt my hands slowly relax, slipping off the hilts of my swords until they hung limp at my sides. That awful tightness of the senses drained away, and I felt myself relaxing.
I was so tired.
She backed up a step and I went with her, feeling the warmth of her hands on my face. She held my stare and never broke it until we were right beside her bed. She breathed slow and deep, and so did I. Just then I was fighting to keep my eyes open, as though I hadn’t slept in days. I wondered if perhaps she was doing something to me, some magic, but I was too tired to think about it.
