The Black Bouquet

by Richard Lee Byers

  Aeron would have liked nothing better than to stand still and catch his breath, but when he glanced around, he saw that Miri’s plight was as difficult as before. Accordingly, he transferred the big Arthyn fang back into his primary hand and charged across the yard. He bellowed to draw the attention of the orc and gnoll. Or rather, he tried. The sound came out as more of a bleat.

  Still, it worked. The Red Axes faltered in their attack and glanced around. Miri tried to take advantage of the opportunity that afforded her. She lunged, her arm straight, the broadsword extended to pierce the towering gnoll’s guts. She almost scored, too, but the canine-headed creature must have glimpsed the motion from the corner of its eye. It wrenched itself back around just in time to parry with the sturdy brass-headed cane in its off hand, then it chopped at her head with a falchion. She turned the stroke with her steel buckler. Metal rang.

  Foam flying from its muzzle, the gnoll snarled something in its own yipping language. Aeron couldn’t understand it, but the orc must have, because it immediately turned to face him. The sheen of its warty flesh made his eyes ache and his stomach queasy. It reminded him of the way he felt on those rare occasions when he drank enough to make the world spin around.

  The orc feinted a cudgel jab at his face, and when he lifted his arm to block, it swung its scimitar at his leg. Evidently it trusted that it could cripple him without killing him outright. Caught by surprise, Aeron still managed to recoil in time. Then, before the Red Axe could come back on guard, he sprang in close and thrust the Arthyn fang at its ribs.

  The blade screeched and glanced away, tearing the orc’s tunic and shirt, but not the skin underneath. The Red Axe threw its arms around him and clasped him in a bear hug, meanwhile gouging at his throat and face with the tusks jutting upward from its lower jaw. For some reason, it trusted that wouldn’t kill him, either, or else in its excitement, it had forgotten the object was to take him alive.

  Whatever it had in mind, Aeron was sure he had only seconds to break free before it blinded him or flensed the flesh off his skull. He wrestled frantically, holding its boar-like teeth away, trying to loosen its grip, grimly certain that most of the tricks he might ordinarily have tried in such a predicament—a head butt, biting, a knee to the groin—wouldn’t deter the magically armored orc. It strained to fling him down beneath it onto the ground. Aeron could feel his balance going, and with a last frenzied effort, he tore himself away from it.

  They both came back on guard at the same time. The orc whipped the club at his head. He ducked, stabbed the underside of its wrist, and failed to break the skin. As before, by committing to an attack, he’d merely opened himself up for the Red Axe’s riposte. He had to snatch his foot back to keep the scimitar from chopping it in two.

  Aeron groped for another idea. He wasn’t confident of the one that came to him, but it was all he had. He ducked, dodged, parried, and gave ground while he waited for the chance to try it. He knew a few obscene taunts in the orc tongue, and gasped them out in hopes of further angering his adversary and so undermining the creature’s judgment.

  The Red Axe charged and swung the cudgel. Aeron lunged in close, avoiding the stroke in the process. He didn’t bother to thrust out the knife in another futile attack. Instead, he dropped it to free up his hands. He shifted behind the orc and kicked it in the knee.

  The assault likely would have lamed an ordinary foe. He was sure it hadn’t hurt the Red Axe, but it did cost the creature its balance. The orc stumbled, and Aeron threw himself on its back and bore it to the ground.

  Using his weight, Aeron fought to hold the orc down. He grabbed its neck and squeezed. It heaved and thrashed, trying to buck him off.

  Once or twice, it nearly succeeded, but then its struggles grew weaker. As he’d hoped, though the potion’s magic kept its flesh from being pierced or pulped, it couldn’t stop Aeron from pressing its windpipe closed and cutting off its air.

  Eventually the Red Axe stopped squirming. Aeron choked the orc for a few more seconds, just to be sure, then he let go. His hands ached.

  “Are you all right?” Miri asked.

  He turned. At some point in the last minute or so, she’d disposed of the gnoll, which lay on the ground behind her with a deep cut on the left side of its chest.

  “Yes,” Aeron replied, panting, “and from the looks of it, you are, too.”

  He rose and hurried to the fallen hobgoblin. Miri followed.

  To Aeron’s relief, the slave was still breathing, and though he was no healer, speaking to it and patting its hairy, big-nosed faced sufficed to restore it to consciousness.

  “How are you?” Aeron asked.

  The hobgoblin sat up and rubbed its head.

  “I’ve had worse,” it said. “My people are hard to kill.”

  “I reckon so,” Aeron replied. He took out some gold and pressed it into the goblin-kin’s hand. “Plainly, you have more grit than these others. Can you make sure they get to the Barony of the Great Oak before you strike out on your own?”

  “I can if you get this crossbow bolt out of my shoulder.”

  “I’m no chirurgeon,” Miri said, kneeling down beside it and drawing her knife, “but I’ve done this a time or two, when none was available. Let me.”

  It made Aeron wince to watch her cut the quarrel out. The hobgoblin, however, bore it stoically. Only its clenched jaw revealed how much it was hurting. Once Miri bandaged the puncture as best she could with strips of cloth, the former slave gave the two humans a nod, then hauled itself to its feet and appropriated the strangled orc’s scimitar.

  It glared at its fellow thralls and said, “What are you all standing around for? Loot the bodies and the shack. We want weapons, coin, and any clothes that aren’t bloodstained. You’ve got three minutes. Move!”

  Aeron turned to Miri and asked, “Do you feel up to wrecking another of Kesk’s operations?”

  “Why not?” She sniffed the breeze and said, “We’ve still got a while before it rains. Let’s salvage my arrows, leave your mark on the wall, and move on.”

  Sometimes the Red Axes struck or spat on Nicos as they passed by the chair to which he was tied, but no one had made a serious, sustained effort to torture him since they’d decided he really didn’t know where Aeron was hiding or where he’d stashed the strongbox. Still, it hardly mattered. His body screamed with the memory of the agony Sefris Uuthrakt had inflicted on him.

  He’d thought he understood pain. It had, after all, been his constant companion since the night the master of a caravan from Innarlith caught him trying to steal a cartload of valuable rugs. Instead of turning him over to the Gray Blades, the merchant decided to mete out his own form of justice. His guards beat Nicos, then hanged him.

  Miraculously, the noose didn’t kill him. He dangled for hours, slowly strangling yet enduring, until friends found him and cut him down, to suffer, hobble, and silently curse his infirmities forever after. Or rather, until just then. Nicos thought that after the torment Sefris had inflicted on him, if he somehow managed to escape Kesk’s mansion alive, he’d never, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, complain of his everyday afflictions again.

  He must have passed out for a while, because suddenly, or so it seemed to him, the long row of windows shone with the soft silver light of a rainy morning. Despite the grime on the panes, to say nothing of his own distress, the cloudy sky and rippling river were lovely, and lifted his spirits for just a moment.

  Then, her garments wet and dripping, Sefris stalked into the solar, and any semblance of peace or ease in Nicos’s soul died in a spasm of terror. He hated himself for feeling so afraid, but after what she’d put him through, he couldn’t help it. Toward the end, had it been possible, he might even have betrayed Aeron to make it stop.

  To his relief, the monastic ignored him to focus on Kesk, slouched in his golden chair with his battle-axe across his knees and a half-eaten sausage in his fist.

  “Well?” the tanarukk snapped through a mouthful of meat.
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br />   “I haven’t found him yet,” Sefris replied.

  She ought to have been feeling a chill, but if so, Nicos saw no sign of it in her manner.

  “Well, he found us,” Kesk said. “He stole some of my slaves, and killed the Red Axes who tried to stop him. Hurt and robbed two more whose job it was to collect protection coin along the docks. Burned a wine shop I operated onboard a barge. Didn’t even try to steal the till, just destroyed the place.”

  “He’s sending you a message,” Sefris said.

  Kesk trembled, and his eyes shone red.

  “That I have his father, but he can hurt me, too, by interfering with my business,” said the tanarukk. “I understand. I’m not a fool. The question is what to do about it.”

  “The same thing we have been doing. Hunt.”

  “We’ve already seen how pitiful you are at that.”

  If the taunt nettled Sefris, Nicos couldn’t tell that, either. She remained as calm as ever, as composed as she’d been throughout the torture and the amputation of his finger.

  “Aeron only escaped me by a fluke,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “So you say. I never should have trusted an outsider.”

  “I’m better able to handle this chore than are your underlings. You may recall that I proved that by defeating three of them at once. In any case, you still want the jewels, don’t you? If so, let me break my fast and sleep for an hour or two, then I’ll return to the search. I imagine we’ll have Aeron in hand before we see another sunrise.”

  “I don’t want you relaxing just yet. Have another go at the old man.”

  Nicos cringed, straining against his bonds. His chair rocked and bumped against the floor.

  “If he had anything to tell us,” Sefris said, “we would have heard it already. His only use is as bait.”

  Nicos prayed Kesk would believe her and relent. But everything he’d seen or heard about the outlaw chieftain suggested otherwise.

  And sure enough: “I don’t care if he’s got nothing to say. I want to hear him squeal. I promised Aeron we’d make the father pay for the son’s treachery, and so we will.”

  The monastic inclined her head.

  “As you wish,” she said as she advanced on Nicos.

  Nicos fought the urge to squinch his eyes shut or twist his head away. Her fingertips wandered about his body, pressing here and there. She didn’t seem to be straining or exerting any extraordinary force, yet the sensation was excruciating. Nicos prayed for her to ask some questions. That would stop the pain for at least a moment. When she didn’t bother, he still cried out the lies he hoped would satisfy her. They didn’t, though, and before long, he was screaming wordlessly instead.

  He didn’t know how long the torture continued. Long enough for him to shriek his throat raw and reduce his already ruined voice to the thinnest of whispers. In his disorientation, he didn’t know precisely when it stopped, just eventually realized that at some point, for some reason, it had. He sucked in a ragged breath, blinked the tears from his eyes, and peered about. Sefris was backing away from him. By the looks of it, she meant to take up a position with a couple of the Red Axes who were loitering around.

  Nicos didn’t understand it. Kesk didn’t, either. He glowered at the slender monastic in her robe and hood, his stare demanding an explanation.

  Sefris provided one, in an ambiguous sort of way. She touched a finger to her lips, then pointed at the door.

  Kesk looked where she’d bade him. For a moment, there was nothing to see, and he almost seemed to swell with impatience, then a small figure sauntered into view. The newcomer wore a dark green camlet mantle, lightweight but voluminous, and a hood like the one Sefris used to shadow her features and cover her shaved scalp. He’d wrapped a knit lemister scarf around the lower part of his face.

  A law-abiding person might have thought the stranger a menacing figure, but Nicos had spent his life among folk who wore masks of one sort or another. To his eye, the newcomer, who didn’t carry himself like a warrior or bravo, was, except for himself, the least fearsome person in the room. But Kesk and Sefris eyed the stranger as if they knew something their prisoner didn’t, as if leery of the gold-knobbed blackwood stick in his clean, soft-looking hand. Maybe it was just a long cane, but it might also be a magician’s staff. Indeed, as Nicos peered closer, the fact that the small man was entirely dry argued for the latter.

  “Shall I show my face,” the newcomer said, “or do you know me?”

  He spoke like an educated man. Nicos didn’t recognize the voice.

  “I know you,” Kesk growled, “and I told you to stay away. I’ll handle this.”

  “As I recall,” the stranger said, “you didn’t want me to look for your rebellious hireling all by myself, for fear I’d find him, then decide to cut you out of the profits. It occurred to me, however, that if we locate him together, you won’t have cause for concern. So here I am.”

  “What if somebody saw you come?”

  “I’m wearing a disguise, and I left home stealthily, through the exercise of my Art. The same way I entered here, without the bother of persuading your guards to admit me. It will all be fine, and even if it’s not, it’s my worry more than yours.”

  “If something happens to you,” said Kesk, “you won’t be able to pay me.”

  “Nor will I should we fail to recover the prize. In that case, there won’t be anything to pay for.”

  Nicos was still in so much pain that it was difficult to follow the conversation. Yet even so, he gradually figured out that the stranger with the cane was the rich man who’d hired Kesk to steal the coffer.

  “I told you,” said Kesk, “I’ll find it.”

  “Will you? My sources inform me you can’t lay hands on our quarry even when he’s robbing one of your own enterprises.”

  Having figured out who the small man was, Nicos could think of one reason why Kesk wanted to get rid of him, and why Sefris had concealed herself among the common ruffians: The two of them had conspired against the stranger, and didn’t want to give him the chance to find out.

  The tanarukk looked as if the newcomer’s last observation had so irked him that he scarcely cared any longer. He shuddered, and chucked away the remains of the sausage to grip his axe with both fists.

  “Are you mocking me?” he demanded.

  “Of course not,” the stranger said, his mild, cultured voice steady. He seemed almost as unflappable as Sefris. “I’m simply pointing out that now, even more than before, it’s in your best interests to let me assist you. I can think of several reasons why you’d be reluctant, but …”

  As the man with the cane nattered on, Nicos had a sudden horrifying inspiration. He could ruin Kesk and Sefris’s deception simply by speaking up.

  The idea terrified him. After what he’d already suffered at their hands, the last thing he wanted to do was attract their renewed attention, let alone infuriate them.

  Yet he despised himself for his dread. He yearned to defy it.

  Would it do any good, though? He didn’t understand enough to foresee the consequences of such an action.

  He did, however, have good reason to fear that if matters continued as they were, Aeron was doomed. Apparently his son had enjoyed remarkable success in evading the Red Axes, then taking the fight to them, but it wouldn’t last. A lone thief, no matter how cunning or deft with a knife, couldn’t oppose Oeble’s most powerful gang for long. But maybe, if Nicos sabotaged relations among the boy’s enemies, his chances would somehow improve.

  If so, he had to try, not only because he loved Aeron, but because it was his fault the lad was in danger. Oh, conceivably, Aeron might have become an outlaw anyway. He’d always had a taste for excitement and the tawdry life of the gutter and the Underways. Still, Nicos thought he’d sealed his son’s fate by getting himself crippled. From that point onward, Aeron had become his family’s sole support, and there had been no honest way for a boy so young to earn as much coin as was required.
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  Nicos screwed up his courage, then cried out to the man with the cane. Or rather, he tried. His throat was still so dry and raw, his voice so feeble, that it was inaudible even to him.

  He swallowed and tried again. This time, he heard the frail little croak, but no one else paid any attention. In desperation, he thrashed, and the legs of his chair, bumping and squeaking against the floor, finally made some significant noise.

  The other people in the room regarded him with some surprise. He understood why. Once ruffians bound, tortured, and seemingly broke a man down, they didn’t expect him to do anything to assert himself thereafter. Such mistreatment typically left a victim as cowed and passive as a piece of furniture.

  “Who’s this?” asked the small man.

  “Just someone who crossed me,” Kesk said.

  He didn’t seem too upset that Nicos had stirred. He must not have any notion of what his hostage intended to do.

  “Wizard,” Nicos rasped, “if that’s what you are, you have to listen to me.”

  “Do I?” The small man shrugged and said, “Then I’d better move closer. As it is, I can barely hear you.”

  Kesk’s smoldering eyes narrowed. Perhaps he felt a sudden uneasiness, an inkling that Nicos could cause him some actual inconvenience.

  “Surely,” the tanarukk growled, “you don’t need to hear the wretch grovel for his life. I’ll have somebody shut him up so we can palaver in peace.”

  “Don’t be hasty,” the stranger replied. The ferule of his walking stick clicked on the floor as he ambled in Nicos’s direction. “Perhaps it would be worthwhile to hear what he has to say.”

  “It will be for you,” Nicos said. “Kesk has sold you out. I overheard the whole thing.”

  The tanarukk sprang up from his seat and brandished his battle-axe at his captive.

  “By the War Maker,” he said, “hold your lying tongue, or I’ll split your skull here and now!”

  “Is it a lie?” said the man with the cane.

  “Of course it is!” Kesk snarled. “Who would I sell you out to? Your rival? Why? He couldn’t afford to give me as much as you promised. He definitely wouldn’t pledge to make the Red Axes supreme over all other gangs in Oeble and keep the Gray Blades from troubling us ever again.”