The Broken Bell m-6

by Frank Tuttle

“The wedding is tomorrow,” I said. “You should think about getting a new suit.”

  He cussed and slammed his door.

  There are two ways to travel south out of Rannit-the old forest roads that creep through the forest via the South Gate or down the Brown itself.

  A man in a hurry would opt for the Brown. The forest roads are overgrown and prone to disgorge bandits, bears and bobcats from every tallish shrub. Half the bridges are out and the other half were never built to begin with.

  River travel, on the other hand, is fast and cheap. Especially to places like Wall Downs, where one could readily book passage on the same barges that deliver cargos of grain, coal or lumber.

  So that’s where I headed, cursing the traffic and gritting my teeth. If Carris Lethway wound up aboard a southbound boat before I made the docks, I’d be forced to follow. Even a trip to Wall Downs would wind up taking a couple days, and that was time I didn’t have.

  My cab rolled to a halt blocks from the Docks. I leaned out to see why, and found the street clogged with wagons and cabs and carriages, all jostling and scraping, unable to move in anything other than fits and starts.

  Even the sidewalks were choked, as mobs abandoned their vehicles and made for the Docks on foot.

  I did the same. The cabbie cursed at me despite a hefty tip. I ignored him and joined the masses as half of Rannit headed for a boat out of town.

  It wasn’t quite pandemonium yet, but it was a half-dozen pushes and a few thrown punches from turning that way. Men were hauling bundles and chests. Women were carrying babies and bags. Kids were clinging to their parent’s sleeves and bawling with every step.

  The Watch appeared, here and there, red-faced from whistle-blowing and bellicose shouting. I saw a Watch nightstick rise and fall just once, when a drunk wouldn’t listen to the sweet voice of reason, but other than that, violence never quite erupted.

  It took two hours to make the Docks. There I was confronted with a wall of panicked travelers, each trying to push the other aside in a mad, hopeless bid for a place on anything mildly buoyant that claimed to be heading south.

  They say the Watch managed to keep people from being pushed right off the wharfs and into the river by charging the crowd dozens of times with Watchmen mounted on the same enormous Percheron horses bred for use against Trolls.

  I never saw the horses. I did hear the screams.

  I couldn’t have found Carris Lethway had he been juggling flaming torches and blowing out a tune on a trumpet.

  I tried. Oh yes, I did. I waded into that mob, shoved my way ahead with elbows and knees, punched strangers in the kidneys, shoved kindly old dowagers aside with my shoulders. I did exactly the things I imagined Carris Lethway would do, but in the end all I got for my troubles was a fresh set of bruises and a guilty conscience.

  By the time I reached the wharf, the boats were gone. I could still see the rear of the makeshift flotilla, which was composed of everything from barges to barrels. Each and every craft was packed to the rails with as many souls as they could bear.

  Only the front ranks of the mob could see this, and they were trapped there by the mass of shoving humanity.

  The mob showed no signs of thinning. I remembered all the traffic I’d passed, heading for the Docks, and I knew things were only going to get worse.

  I switched the hand cannon from my jacket pocket to my belt.

  I folded my jacket before I hung it neatly across the rail. My shoes went beneath it. With deep regret, I placed my new hat there as well.

  If anyone shouted when I went over the rail, I didn’t hear. Then the muddy waters of the Brown closed over me, and I fought for the surface and began my long swim south.

  I was in the water for most of an hour before I found a place to come ashore.

  The crowds had given up on finding a boat and settled instead on the time-honored pastimes of fighting, arson and looting. Smoke hung low in the still, chilly air. Men ran back and forth, seemingly aimlessly, until you realized they were looking for undamaged businesses to loot.

  I climbed shivering out of the Brown at an empty barge mooring. I was dripping wet and shoeless and no one gave me a second look.

  Finding a cab was out of the question. Honest folk fled the looting. I resolved to do the same, as quickly as my sock feet could take me.

  The streets, never paragons of cleanliness, were filled with broken glass. I was forced to skip and hop from bare patch to bare patch, dodging mean-eyed bands of youths all the while.

  I made a single block before I caught sight of a shoemaker’s shop. The plate glass windows were shattered. The shelves were bare or broken.

  I went inside anyway. I found a left shoe that fit and a right shoe that fit. They didn’t match. I didn’t care.

  Then I put my looted shoes to good use by heel and toeing it out of there as fast as I could huff and puff my way east.

  Trouble dogged my steps. What I’d thought was an incident on the Docks was spreading south and east as fast I was. Watch whistles sounded on all sides, as did the breaking of glass and shouting and the hoof beats of panicked horses.

  I kept to alleys and back streets. I pulled back into doorways when bands of men approached. I hurried away from shouts and taunts and dodged hurled bricks as best I could.

  I’d heard of the Bread Riots, of course. Everyone had. I’d been dodging Troll arrows far from Rannit, but tales of the Riots were the first things I heard upon coming home. I’d wondered if the tales had been embellished. I had trouble believing law and order would break down so completely and so quickly.

  I wasn’t having trouble believing anymore. The Watch had given up going after looters. As far as I could tell, they were instead intent on putting out fires and giving the odd murderous blow to anyone openly conducting robbery in the street.

  But even so, the smoke from a hundred fires began to rise and trail across Rannit’s sky.

  I made for Darla’s. I’d tried to find Carris. I’d done my best and nearly drowned in the process. If he was on a boat heading south that might be the best place for him. At least he had a pocketful of coins and shoes that matched.

  But if anyone felt compelled to loot Darla’s place, they were going to have to loot my damp ass first.

  I didn’t fire the hand cannon again. I wasn’t sure it would fire, after taking a swim. I’d have gleefully chopped off a finger to have Toadsticker back in my hand, but I had to make do with a stout length of oak I found in the street. That, and my pungent aroma, kept would-be hooligans at bay all the way to Destride.

  I rounded the corner and nearly broke into song. Someone in the Watch retained partial use of his senses. They’d barricaded the streets with commandeered cabs and placed archers at prominent points along the barricade. Scores of regular Army were joining them, running about and waving plain lethal Army swords in a manner that sent looters and arsonists shuffling back the way they’d come.

  I drew a dozen hard looks as I threw down my knocking stick and put my hands above my head and slowly approached the barricade.

  “My name is Markhat,” I shouted. “Captain Markhat.” The words stuck in my throat. “The Corpsemaster will vouch for me.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the Regent’s wife.”

  Nervous laughter sounded down the ranks.

  “I heard she had a thicker beard.”

  “Wait right there.” The speaker hesitated a moment. “Sir.”

  I nodded and kept my hands raised. His tone told me he’d never heard of me, but he did know better than to randomly slaughter persons who, however slight the chance, might be officers in the service of the Corpsemaster.

  I nearly dove for cover when I heard the sudden twang of a bow being loosed, but I saw an arrow wobble harmlessly into a trash-bin down the street and I realized some nervous kid had let his sweaty fingers slip off the bowstring.

  “Relax, lads,” I said. “I’m only half Troll.”

  Behind me, glass broke. Someone shouted a curse and someone else an
swered with another. The sound of many running feet drew closer, and a vagrant breeze brought the scent of new smoke wafting across my back.

  More glass windows shattered. More feet pounded.

  The mob was maybe half a block from the makeshift barricade.

  I lowered my hands.

  “You, you, and you,” I bellowed in my best imitation of a sergeant’s tone. “Pick out the ringleader. Take him out before he can take cover. You, on the left. Round up another twenty archers. Tell them to take out the ones with torches.”

  Men froze.

  “I am Captain Markhat, commissioned by the Corpsemaster himself. Disobeying my order is disobeying his.”

  A brick hit the ground and shattered so close bits of it pelted my ass.

  “Archers. Loose.”

  I turned my back on two dozen anxious bowmen.

  It could have gone half a dozen ways. But in the end, the ancient military maxim that stated the loudest voice is the one obeyed, held sway. Flights of arrows hissed over my head and full into the approaching mob.

  The ringleader fell-torch in hand, two arrows in his chest and another in his gut. His lieutenants scattered, trying to dart back into the ranks, and half of them fell with shafts in their backs.

  The mob raged. Smoke billowed up behind them, and a great gout of flame rose up as an aged wooden storefront exploded into a sudden inferno.

  Caught between fire and the barricade, the mob panicked and surged ahead, heedless of the sleet of new black arrows.

  Coming directly at me.

  I dove beneath a cab, managed to wrestle the hand cannon out of my wet waistband, and emptied the thing with small barks of thunder in the space of two breaths.

  Men fell. More charged ahead. Two dove beneath my cab, and I kicked them in their faces with my stolen shoes.

  An old familiar chaos broke out, all along the barricade. Men lunged and fought and screamed and died. Swords rose and fell when there was no more room for arrows. Some generous soul stuck an Army shortblade in my hand and I flailed and stabbed with all the rest, a wordless cry on my lips, a fresh new horror in my heart.

  The fire rose up and up, a hungry ancient god relishing its sacrifice of blood. Smoke filled the air, rendering our enemies mere shadows and our allies more of the same. Screams gave way to coughs, and coughs to wheezing, labored breaths, and when it was done, it was done because no one could see and no one could breathe.

  I stumbled away with the rest. The man who clung gasping to my shoulder might have been a Watchmen or a looter. It no longer mattered.

  The mob scattered, broken and beaten. The fire jumped the street when a building collapsed across it. We managed to extinguish the blaze it touched off by attaching chains to the porch of the burning building and hauling it into the street.

  After that, we all just stood and coughed and watched whole neighborhoods burn.

  But the smokes and the fires never crossed Destride.

  I was laid out flat in the back of a wagon when a kid with a bloody nose and a familiar voice trotted up.

  “Captain,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “So I checked out after all.”

  “The Corpsemaster sends his personal thanks.” The kid eyed me as though I might spit flames any second. “Sir.”

  “Get me a horse, kid.”

  “Sir?”

  “A horse. Four legs? Bad tempers? Craps in the street? A horse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh. And a wet rag. Need to clean up a bit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Scoot.”

  He scooted. I lay back and coughed.

  I counted columns of smoke. Fourteen big ones. An hour ago, there’d been eighteen. Maybe the ruckus was winding down.

  Or maybe the fires were just running out of fuel.

  The kid returned. He led a big, black mare with a fancy black saddle. Her flanks weren’t sweaty and her eyes weren’t wild despite the smoke.

  “Good choice. I’ll see she’s returned.”

  A bowman came trotting up with a washbasin, a plain brown jacket, and a fresh pair of new leather boots.

  “If those are for me I’m putting you in for a promotion, kid.”

  He grinned. I washed, found the boots were a close enough fit for a trip across town, and left the barricade in charge of a lieutenant named Jeffrey who might be old enough to shave by spring.

  On the whole, I think I prefer fighting Trolls.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Darla’s dress shop was empty, locked and shuttered. So were all the shops on the street. A band of wary shop keeps, whose average age veered perilously close to codger-hood, patrolled the sidewalks, gripping their collection of push brooms and fireplace-pokers with as much well fed menace as they could muster.

  They asked about fires and looting. I told them what I’d seen, and shared my cautious optimism that Destride had been the turning point. I advised them to take to their heels if a real mob showed on their street.

  They shook their brooms and vowed mayhem on miscreants far and wide.

  I wished them luck and turned my mount for Darla’s house. I had the street mostly to myself. If cabs were still running they weren’t doing it in my part of town. I did meet little bands of pedestrians, cases and bags in their hands, who were determined to flee to somewhere even if they had no idea where that somewhere might be found.

  I sent the ones that would listen home. Getting out of town was now far more dangerous than finding a sturdy door and placing oneself behind it.

  Which is where I found Darla.

  I charged onto her quiet little street. It still smelled of flowers and not smoke. Her neighbors had shuttered their windows and closed their doors, but no windows were broken, and no doors had been knocked open.

  I tied the mare to Darla’s white picket fence and ran up the stairs.

  Laughter sounded inside. Men’s laughter, and Mary’s voice and more laughter.

  I tried the door. It was locked. At the sound of my rattling the knob, though, booted feet came running, and in an instant I was staring down the shaft of a well-maintained Army crossbow.

  “Darling.”

  Darla pushed the crossbow carefully aside and caught me up in a fierce hug.

  “What the Hell are you three doing indoors?”

  I was eyeing the soldiers I’d assigned to guard Darla. They responded with a trio of explanations, two of them hampered in their efforts by the copious amounts of apple pie in their guilty mouths.

  “They been outside all night an’ all day,” snapped Mary, who appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips. “Ye never said anything about starving them to death, now did ye?”

  “Outside.” I glared. “Now.”

  They swallowed hard and left without a word.

  Darla eyed me with that all-knowing gaze of hers.

  “Mary, is there any cider left?”

  Mary snorted an affirmative and vanished.

  Darla kissed me. Why, I don’t know, because my swim in the Brown and subsequent street-brawl had left me less than kissable. But she did, and I’m a wise enough man not to argue.

  “Carris?”

  “Alive.” I was suddenly tired. No, not tired-exhausted. Beyond exhausted.

  “Sit. Those aren’t your boots.”

  “I left mine guarding the Regent,” I said. “My jacket is now Minister of Education.”

  I sat. She pulled a chair up facing mine and sat, her hands in mine.

  “Tell me.”

  I told. Mary arrived with a cup of hot apple cider and a frown about the time I finished.

  “I told that band of old fools to stay off the streets,” she muttered.

  I sipped cider and nodded.

  “So Mr. Fields lied, and Carris is heading south. I assume you’re going after him?”

  I sighed.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. If there’s a boat left in Rannit, I might just put Tamar on it. South’s be a good place to be, when the war
starts.”

  “Evis?”

  “It’s ready, hon. Everything we talked about. Whether it’s going to work or not-Hell. I just don’t know.”

  She just nodded. That’s one thing I love about her. She isn’t afraid of letting a silence have its say.

  I finished my cider while Mary fussed about my damp shirt and insisted I change before I catch my death of cold. I reminded her that war and mayhem were the order of the day, and catching death by cold seemed an unlikely prospect, but then my traitor nose issued forth a great sneeze and I was ushered, cider and all, into the back room where I was instructed to bathe and change into dry, borrowed clothes forthwith.

  I was damp, and I did smell of the nether reaches of the Brown, so bathe and change I did. When I emerged, splendid in my new garments and smelling unfortunately of Darla’s preferred lilac soap, I emerged into the company of Darla, who had changed into black pants, a sturdy black shirt and tall, black riding boots while maintaining a steady conversation with me through Mary’s back room door.

  “Oh no,” I began. “You are staying right here. No argument. No negotiation. No sweet talk, my sweet.”

  She pressed a sword in my hand. To this day, she won’t reveal where she came to own a custom-made Beget steel blade. The hilt of a dagger peeked up from the top of her right boot.

  “For all we know, the walls will be down by midnight,” she said. “A mob could come swarming up my street any moment. Or soldiers. Or whatever horror those wand-wavers unleash.”

  “I’m not going to let that happen.”

  She smiled. “I know you’re not. Which is why I’m going with you.”

  “You’ve got three soldiers and a good strong door here.”

  “I’d rather have you. Where I can see you. If the walls come down, that’s where I want to be. With you.”

  “Darla. It isn’t safe.”

  “No. It isn’t.” She crossed her arms and did not smile.

  There are moments, small moments, on which larger matters rest.

  “Damn it all, anyway.” I shook my head. “We’re going to see Tamar. That part of town should be free of looters and fires. It might not be free of Lethway’s goons or Stricken’s killers. Anyone looks at you crossways, you duck, is that clear?”