Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  “I miss my old troop, really. Or rather, this troop’s old captain. He retired a couple of months ago, and we got Eder instead, along with a few new guards. Eder’s a good captain, a bit humourless at times, a bit of—”

  “A bit of a dick?”

  The grey eyes darkened with disapproval. “A bit of a stickler, I was going to say. For protocol.”

  “Same thing. And that’s all he said, that we might warp you?”

  “Well, it took a lot more words for him to say, but that’s what it boiled down to. The guards are better than the guild, more moral, less fly-by-night. We should remember who we are and not go pining after what we aren’t, not let ourselves be seduced by the flash, remember that we’re worth more than that. And especially remember that the guild tried to take over the city, is not to be trusted and so on and so forth, at length. I don’t think he rates you very highly in particular, especially after that stunt you pulled with the wolf. He said some very intense things in that regard.”

  “Technically it was Eneko who tried to take over the city, and I for one hated the bastard as much as anyone. As for not rating me highly, the feeling is mutual, I’m sure. And the rest… Well? What do you think?”

  She looked at him in silence for a long time, long enough he was tempted to break it, but as he could still only think of inanities, he kept his mouth uncharacteristically shut.

  “I think,” she said at last, “that all the things he told me just made me think you were at least someone interesting to talk to on this godforsaken trip. Also, Eder has a problem with the guild. With perhaps you in particular. And Kass too since the wolves–don’t know why. He was beginning to like her, trying to impress her with how efficient we were, and then, poof, hates her. And you for upstaging him. So now, no talking to you. I know I’m not especially impressionable, and you’re not especially warped. Unless you’re hiding something?”

  He grinned at her and tried to look heroic. “Oh, all kinds of things.”

  Sitting on the saddle rack was doing his hip no favours, and he shifted awkwardly to try to relieve the pain. No use.

  “Really? You seem more the type to shout it across the rooftops.”

  “Only when it makes me look good.”

  They talked on, and it seemed to be going well–she laughed in all the right places when he told one of his stories, and she told one of her own that made him laugh in return–but the rack was doing him no favours.

  “I did notice,” she said into this, “you looked a bit pale when that landlady mentioned the Skull.”

  “That? Oh well, you know. Just a stray thought.” Only it wasn’t all that stray, was it? “It’s just… OK, look, I thought for a second I might know… only it can’t be him. He still had most of his face, and he’s even more unlikely to work with a magician than I am, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “Eder never mentioned a magician,” she said doubtfully.

  “No, well, it seems he’s not inclined to believe in them. On the basis of personal experience however, I am.”

  “And the Skull?”

  Yes, what about him? “It could be anyone. Half the guild match his description–well, apart from the face bit–and a fair few went missing after the battle for Reyes. This guy’s face was pretty messed up, but he still had one.” A pause as he considered whether the jollop was starting to make him paranoid. “I’ve probably just got his name on the brain. He’s not the brave sort or likely to start robbing people. Likes to think he’s all noble, you see. And he’s far too sly to get involved with this sort of thing. Besides…” A sudden remembrance of the lies he’d told, and a sudden shame for them, when he’d never really been ashamed before. What was she doing to him? How? “Besides, he’s supposedly dead. The Skull might be, probably is, someone I’ve never met, even if they were in the guild. It just niggles me a touch.”

  It was no good–he had to move. He tried to make out that he was getting up to inspect a bridle, but her frown was back, though less disapproving. God’s cogs, why couldn’t they have gone somewhere warm? His whole leg was throbbing, and for a second he thought he might end up on his arse, which would do him no good in impressing Carrola. His hand found the bottle of syrup before he’d even thought about it. He hesitated, took a look at Carrola as she paused in what she was saying–that he shouldn’t worry about it; no one thought he had to know who the Skull was. She wouldn’t know what the bottle was either, why Kass didn’t like him having it. He pulled the bottle out and had a swig, shut his eyes for a moment as he waited for it to work. It didn’t take long, and he sat back down with a sigh, feeling less tongue-tied as a happy bonus.

  “What was that?” Carrola asked.

  “Oh, nothing much. You recall me saying about a grievous wound received in battle while being dashing and heroic?” He settled back down, his hip quiet for now, relishing the opportunity to tell a tale in which he sounded fantastic but could also play up the humble angle. Saved the city, defeated a formidable foe, been heroically wounded but managed to struggle on and win the day. Single-handedly in his story, but hey, that’s why it was a story.

  Carrola was quiet when he’d finished, before she laid a hand on his. “So your hip… You can’t duel?”

  The hand was welcome but not the words. “Of course I can. Good as ever. No problem. Just need a bit of the jollop in the cold weather, that’s all.”

  And then because… he didn’t know why. Just that he had to tell someone the truth, just the once and why not her? Yes, why not, because he felt like he could say it to her and not get flayed, and while she might snort a laugh, might tell him he was a prat, it was… it was different. He lied because he could, as a rule, but something about her made him think that “could” was relative, that she’d see through all his lies and half-truths, so he might as well lay it all out. It made him feel both peculiarly naked and oddly comforted.

  “Look, I haven’t told Kass about me drinking this because, well, she’s had other things on her mind. So, er, if you could not tell her too?” Strange how all the years of lying made telling the truth really difficult to do. He’d left most of it out without even thinking about it. Truth was something he might have to work on in stages.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why not? She knows you got hurt, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, but look.” He took a deep and not entirely steady breath. It must be the beer talking, he thought. Or the jollop, and that must be what made him keep thinking of Petri too. “This isn’t what the surgeon gave me. In fact I’m not even sure where it comes from. Only that a magician made it for me to start with.”

  “You drink a magician’s brew? Willingly?”

  “Yes. Sort of. It’s a bit complicated. And Kass doesn’t like me drinking it, but I’m not me without it, so I hide it.”

  She shook her head, and the smile that came was tinged with sadness. “Come on, then. Let’s get back where it’s warmer and your hip can unfreeze and you can explain a bit better.”

  Vocho had the most unsettling feeling that instead of being impressed, she felt sorry for him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two months ago

  Scar came at Petri from his blind side, slicing up inside his guard just as he’d taught her, taught all of them. The blade flashed close by his face–too close, but it was getting easier now.

  He dropped the practice blunt from his left hand, grabbed at her overextended wrist and brought his other weapon to bear–a hidden stiletto strapped to the wrist of his useless hand. Not so useless now as he brought the blade to a halt at her neck.

  The group of men and women watching laughed at the look of utter rage on her face as Petri pushed her away and picked up his sword again.

  “The next lesson,” he said. “For every move, every move I teach you, there is a counter-move. Learn it and learn how to counter that too. That’ll do for today.”

  They started picking up all the equipment that today’s practice had strewn across the snow-streaked valley. The wind whipped t
iny stinging flakes in his eye, but Petri was becoming accustomed to the harshness of the weather up here, where snow wasn’t the problem, it was the knife-like wind that scoured the snow from the ground, piled it up into drifts. Scar’s fighters weren’t the only ones learning; Petri had learned that snow could keep you warm if you got a good blanket of it on the roof of your hut, or if you found yourself lost and carved yourself a cave in it. It was the wind that killed.

  He’d learned too that Scar had been right. Some people were willing to look past his face, and he was becoming more willing to look back. He still wore a mask over the fleshless cheek and empty eye socket, but the looks and whispers had stopped as they’d learned more and more about how to fight well. Most of them were natural thugs, had spent a lifetime clubbing people in dark alleys or exploiting a momentary weakness with a surprise knife. Now they were actually fighting rather than brawling.

  Petri held out his good hand to help Scar up, but she glared at him and got to her feet without his help, then her sharp hatchet face broke into a grin that made her scar pucker even more.

  “They’re doing very well,” Petri said.

  “So are you, learning with your off hand.”

  “I’m ready. You know that.”

  “For what?” A teasing grin that twisted her scar into enigmatic shapes.

  “Let me come on your next raid.” He hadn’t thought he’d want to, but with better swordplay came more confidence. “Not just to watch this time.”

  “Why? You’re comfortable enough here, aren’t you? Why come with us?”

  He looked down at the knife, pushed it back into the little contraption one of the smiths, or what passed for smiths here, had made for him. Because I thought I was supposed to be your equal, and right now I’m your pet, and I’m sick of being people’s pet. Because Dom had been right: bold enough and the guild would come–maybe she would come–and he wanted to show her who he could have been.

  Not just that either, he thought. He glanced up at a snow bank where Morro steamed gently in the cold, water pooling around his feet, Maitea huddled close by. The magician inclined his head as though he could see every thought in Petri’s head and thought them all worthy of a five-year-old.

  “I want to see how well they do in a real fight. How well I do too.”

  “Petri…” She pinched her lips together, clearly torn.

  He gathered up some of the blunts. For a time he’d thought it had been enough to finally start to feel like he belonged somewhere. Like he’d forgotten who he’d been, what he’d wanted. For a time that had been enough, but it wasn’t now.

  “They didn’t want you,” Scar said at last. “But we do. They left you out to dry, but we won’t. We need you. My little boys and girls are starting to respect you even. I’ve been waiting for you to say you’ll come. Give them something to respect even more. Give you a reason to belong a little more.”

  He stared around the camp, at the log and turf huts, the windswept scree that fell away from the edge of the valley. It had crept up on him in the last month or so, but it felt like home, and the people he shared it with had started to feel like friends. Friends who looked to him to show them how to fight, who didn’t see half a face and think it meant half a man. Bold enough, and she’ll come, and you can show her.

  “When do we leave?”

  They hit the village just as another snowstorm crept in along the ridge that hung over the little houses and the inn. Scar led them, scarf over nose and mouth to keep out the wind, bundled up in furs, with a close-watched Morro ahead to clear a dripping foggy path. The inn, she’d said. When the weather turned bad, the villagers all sat it out in the inn, leaving their homes vulnerable. She sent half her crew to see what they could find there, set some more on watch, and yet others to stay with the shaggy mountain ponies they rode and the mules that would carry whatever they managed to steal. The rest, including Petri and Morro, headed for the inn.

  Petri fidgeted with the new mask that Scar’d had made for him. Not to hide his ruined face this time, but to show it and hide the good side.

  “No sense in anyone else recognising you. Tried for treason will be the least of your worries if that happens,” she said. “Besides, you’ll scare the crap out of them.”

  It worked even better than she’d hoped.

  Kepa threw open the door and Scar strode in, Petri half a pace behind, both with swords out. Behind, a ragged moan from Morro as he sank against a wall, spent from his exertions melting snow–he’d been using his own blood only, as Scar would allow none from her crew. The sound of his exhaustion was a comfort to Petri. A magician behind him was more usually a needle of worry in his head, but a magician without the energy to stand less so.

  The crowded inn sat in stunned silence for all of ten seconds while Scar stood, swathed in furs, dripping slush over the flagstones, as though proclaiming herself queen. A clock ticked loudly on one wall, making Petri flinch with each click of the second hand. Kepa came up behind Petri, almost braining himself on a low beam, a dozen more crew crowding in after.

  Finally, an older woman, comfortably broad across the beam and with a red-cheeked quizzical look about her, stood up in front of the scant two dozen people huddled by the fire. She glanced down at Scar’s sword and back up to her swathed face as though trying to place it.

  “A bad night to be out,” she said in the end. “We got room and to spare, and ale to make the time go faster.”

  Scar pulled down the scarves that had kept the knife wind from cutting her, and the woman blanched. A signal from Scar, and Petri stepped forward and after a moment’s hesitation pulled his own scarf down.

  “Oh, god’s cogs and gears,” the woman breathed. Someone behind her swore, and a thump shuddered through the flagstones as someone else fainted. A dropped knife clattered on the floor.

  The clock ticked into the new silence, slicing seconds off Petri’s life. He tried to shut the sound out but couldn’t.

  “You know who I am now?” Scar said.

  “Yes, m’m,” the woman whispered. Behind her men and women shuffled about, searching for weapons or valuables or children. A baby cried and was hastily shushed.

  Scar’s smiled twisted in the firelight. “I think you can see that we are men and women with nothing left to lose. Not even our faces. Food and money. Now.”

  “And ale,” Kepa said from behind Petri. “I’d quite happily gut any one of you for a pint.”

  The woman looked around at the people crowded behind her. One or two looked belligerent, ready to defend them and theirs, but the rest–the rest wouldn’t meet the woman’s eye, and not one would look in Petri’s direction.

  The woman finally nodded, drew herself up and turned back to face Scar. “If we give you that, you leave us in peace?”

  Scar inclined her head in gracious assent.

  The woman slumped back, shrivelled like last year’s apple, and Scar didn’t wait for any more words. A wave and her crew got going. Some raided the kitchens; Kepa headed a brace of men rifling behind the meagre bar; more went to the cellar. Others, weapons out and ready, grabbed what they could from the men and women here. There was little resistance–what good would that do when they had only perhaps eight men and women old enough, or young enough, to try, and none with anything more vicious than a knife?

  Scar’s crew came back with arms overflowing, pockets bulging. Supplies from the kitchen were already being manhandled out of the door and onto the waiting mules. Good hams, sides of smoked bacon, enough salt beef for a month, sacks of flour, potatoes, apples. Pockets chinked with copper pennies and bracelets, earrings and pocket watches, poor things mostly. Petri could hear the muffled voices of two men sent to check the icehouse for any meat stored there and the clink of men raiding the woodpile stacked neatly beside the back door. Kepa had cleared the bar into a now tinkling sack and stood swigging rum from the bottle and growing redder in the face by the minute, his smile looking ready to lift the top of his head off.

  Th
e clock ticked on regardless.

  Yet not everyone was willing to be robbed so easily. An older man at the back of the inn, half sat in shadows, yanked himself away from a probing crew member. The man’s face was weathered and lined with years of working outdoors, his hair more snow than not, but Petri didn’t mistake the gnarled iron look of hands after a lifetime of hard use, or the iron look in the man’s eyes either.

  But the bandit didn’t have a clue, it seemed, because when the long knife flashed out he stumbled back, blood washing through his shirt. The iron man stood up, and another knife appeared in his other hand. Both knives were old, like the man, but well used and honed to a shimmering sharpness. The crew member grabbed a chair to pull himself back up, but a boot landed in his stomach, almost as an afterthought, sending him crashing back down, wheezing and bubbling from the wound in his chest.

  Petri came forward without a thought. The right hand came up before he remembered, and then his sword presented. “Enough.”

  The iron eyes widened at his accent, flicked down to the sword and back again. No fear there, only a deadly reckoning. “Ah, one of them then. And a guildsman too? I see that sword and know it for what it is. Go on then. Run me through. Tell yourself it was the good thing. Like stealing from people who haven’t got more than a loaf of bread to spare for the winter. Does that seem good to you?”

  The knife came in a flash of firelit sparks, and again there was no thought from Petri, only reaction as his left hand smacked it out of the iron man’s hand with his sword, his own right coming up with the twist that released the stiletto hidden in his sleeve.

  The contempt on that iron face lit everything inside him, made it blaze behind his eye with a white-hot intensity that blinded him to anything else. To what he was doing with his sword, the sudden blood on the flags, the screams behind and around him. Only this mattered. Only slaking this thirst, this need. Fuck the good thing; it had brought him nothing but misery.

  A cool hand on his arm brought him back to the tap room, silent except for the ticking of the clock. The iron man lay at his feet, his blood seeping along the wrinkles of the flagstones as though seeking absolution there. Petri’s breath seemed hot in his throat, an iron band on his chest. Scar’s hand on his arm again, but something… something… He lashed out at the clock on the wall, knocked it to the floor and stamped on it again and again, until cogs spurted like blood and the torturous ticking ceased. Until he could hear his own thoughts again, hear the rasp of his breath, the thud of his heart.