by Vox Day
“What can I do for ye, sir? Are ye looking for some good fighting men to fill yez command? Pay no mind to these scum. I can find ye good mountain fighters, men with twenty years experience warrin’ upon the borders, p’raps even a city ranger if ye don’t mind a man with considerable experience. Course by which I mean he’s got less gray hair than white.”
Nicolas smiled thinly. “I fear I’m not an employer. I’m looking for work myself. I am called Nicolas du Mere, and I want to join your Guild.”
The registrar didn’t bother to hide his disappointment, but he looked Nicolas up and down with a speculative eye. “Ye’ve commanded men, I should say. In Savondir, I takes it.”
“Precisely. I once had the honor to command two hundred horse, sir.”
“Don’t ye call me sir. I’m just Old Sammy. Two hunnert? A high-and-mighty captain of cavalry, is ye? What did ye do, man, seduce yer lord’s wife?”
“No, I was always true to my lord. My misfortune is that my erstwhile lord happened to be the Duc de Montrove.”
The other man was silent for a moment, then he frowned and nodded. “So, I suppose ye can fight, then, if ye got yeself outer that mess withouts getting yer neck stretched. D’ye have a command with ye? I expect we’ll be seeing more of yern sort soon.”
“That’s unlikely, sir. Or rather, Sammy.” It was, in fact, not so much unlikely as impossible, Nicolas knew. None of the knights hung from the city’s remaining walls would follow in his footsteps. “Only fifteen of us broke through the lines. We sallied out the gate when their mages broke our walls. The others went east, to the Seats. I thought I’d try my luck south instead.”
“Didn’t want to stick with yer men?” Old Sammy didn’t appear to like what he was hearing. “Or mebbe they didn’t wanter stick with ye?”
Nicolas shook his head. “They weren’t my men, as it happens. More importantly, they say the Red Prince is a right vindictive bastard, and it’s harder to track one man than fifteen. I thought it would be safer south, where there is little love for him or his father.”
“Ah, it’s a careful one ye are, then. Good. I likes me a careful man. They stays alive, they do. Well, if ye’ve got the silver, we’ll take ye. Two silvers today if ye got it, or ye can pay three on installment if ye don’t. Five pennies from every week on a job, even if ye find it yeself.”
“Five pennies! That’s half a day’s wage!” Nicolas did his best to sound outraged. “Even if I find the hire myself?”
Old Sammy rubbed at his chin and shrugged. “Ye’ll pay it if’n ye ever want to work agin in these parts. And if’n yer employer ever wants to hire a wardog again, he’ll make damn sure ye paid it too.”
The one-legged man jumped suddenly as Nicolas slammed the required two silver coins down on the table in front of him.
“There’s your cursed silver, Sammy. But you bloody well better find me something soon! And not mindless bravo work like walking mules back and forth through the blasted pass either!”
“No need to cuss at Old Sammy, captain. There ain’t but what there is. T’aint a lot o’ demand this time of year. No one with any sense has the stomach fer blood once the snows start fallin’. Too hard to get about. Come spring, ye can probably hire out as the head of a company, since ye look like ye knows yez business, and some fool nobles’re always looking to grab lands that belong to someone else. But it’s too late in the season for any new campaignin’. If there’s a merchant looking for a bodyguard or an escort, I’d advise ye to take it. But do what ye like, t’aint my belly that’ll be yowling when ye run out of coin.”
Old Sammy pushed himself up from the bench and stumped over to a small room without a door, indicating that Nicolas should follow. He unlocked a rusty strongbox, dropped in the two silvers, and withdrew a stamped brass slug, which he handed to Nicolas. On one side was the guild’s insignia, on the other was the bear of Malkan. Nicolas examined it and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t lose it,” Old Sammy warned him as he dipped his pen in the inkwell. “Cost ye a silver to get another. Now, what’s yer name again? Nico d’Mare?”
And so with little ado, Nicolas established himself as a mercenary in good standing with that fine, upstanding organization, the Mercenaries Guild of Malkan. When he left, not bothering to partake in what Sammy informed him was the customary celebratory cup of ale, he saw the girl outside was still there, but she had fallen over on her side and was now snoring softly.
An old friar wearing the brown robes of one of the mendicant orders was kneeling down beside her, attempting to wake her. Nicolas nodded approvingly to the clergyman as he passed them by. It might be a small mercy, but it was one that cheered him all the same.
His morning task complete, it was now time for an unexpectedly fortuitous meeting with his first employer.
It did not take long to find the man he sought. The tavern where the meeting was arranged was only five streets away from the guild hall, and no sooner had his eyes adjusted to the darkness within than he spotted his contact. A short, rotund fellow with a well-trimmed beard, the man, obviously a merchant of minor standing, was visibly ill at ease even though the shabby lot in the room were already too deep into their cups to pay him any notice. One rough-looking man in the far corner appeared as if he might at least be capable of posing a threat, but he was deep in conversation with a short-bearded dwarf.
“Relax, friend,” Nicolas told him as the man whirled around fearfully at his approach. “Monsieur Jean-Baptiste sends his regards from Lutèce.”
“You’re…” The man swallowed hard, then tried again. “You’re the one they’re sending?”
“Sent, rather. If you can confirm for me that you’re the man I’ve been seeking.”
The little merchant nodded quickly. “Yes, yes. Um, Mademoiselle Verdun sends her regards, as well. I’m Jervais.”
Nicolas snorted, wondering who had chosen this ridiculous place for their meeting. It had been someone who didn’t understand the first thing about remaining inconspicuous, that much was certain. Jervais was probably the first merchant to set foot in this stinking rathole in years. True, neither the dwarves nor the bored serving girl looked to have even the slightest interest in either Jervais or Nicolas himself, but there was no knowing who might be a spy in a city where gold flowed as freely as it did here.
However, he’d seen no signs of anyone following him since his arrival in the city, so he assumed his worries were little more than habit. He sat down, fished in his coin purse for the brass slug, and placed it on the table before Jervais. “As you can see, I’m in official standing with the merc’s guild here. I assume I’m hired as your bodyguard?”
“My what? Oh, ah, yes, of course!”
“Be sure to spread the word around. I’ll need to be seen out in public with you for two weeks or so before I make my move. How many days have you been coming here?”
“This is the fourth. The mademoiselle told me to start coming here six Starsdays after the autumn equinox, but I missed two days last week.”
“Never mind that. I just arrived yesterday. And the girl? Have you found her?”
“Not yet, but I’ve narrowed the possibilities down to three locations. The first brothel, you can have a look for yourself. The other two… There is a problem. They’re not open for business, at least not to the public. They’re more like private clubs. You have to be an invited member to enter. You can’t simply walk into them.”
“So, buy yourself a membership. Or get a member to invite you.”
“It’s not that easy. I don’t do business with the sort of men who belong to these clubs. I don’t even have any real contact with them. I’m not rich enough. It’s a very small group. Mostly old money. Only the great houses and a few of the more powerful nobles belong. A few poets and bards make their way in from time to time, I suppose, and some charioteers, of course. Perhaps a gladiator or two.”
Nicolas sighed. They should have sent an athlete or a songbird here, not him. If he could win a few rac
es or sing a few songs, they were so desperate for entertainment here in this godforsaken mountain wilderness that he’d be given the run of the damn place within a month. As usual, the fools in the royal intelligence corps had arranged to put the wrong man in the wrong place at the right time, but Nicolas knew very well that the shadowy men who served the king’s interests with ruthless devotion were not interested in excuses. They expected results. A thought struck him.
“Why haven’t you visited the first brothel you mentioned? If it happens she’s there, then we needn’t bother with the other two.”
Jervais blushed. “I couldn’t. My wife, you see. If she heard? No, I wouldn’t dare!”
Nicolas stared at the merchant in disbelief. There were more than three hundred thousand men living in Malkan and this soft little pudding was the man that damned du Moulin had chosen for such an extraordinarily delicate operation? He reminded himself to arrange some appropriately choice words for the king’s chancellor upon his return to Lutèce.
• • •
Lodi didn’t think much of the man sitting across the table from him. But then, he didn’t think much of anyone who happened to be situated in this building that now proclaimed itself an inn, although its low ceiling was only one of the many indications of the animal barn it had once been. No doubt the mules and pigs that previously inhabited the structure had been in better condition than some of the sad specimens of Man now hunched over the crudely constructed tables, sitting upon narrow benches that wobbled loosely as if they had been broken apart and ineptly reassembled with some degree of regularity.
The inn’s ale wasn’t anything close to what a self-respecting dwarf would consider drinkable, but it wasn’t all that much worse than the equally thin, equally yellow, beer-flavored water that more prosperous breeds of men called ale and drank in loftier establishments. The ale served its purpose, at any rate, in lubricating a situation that could all too easily become difficult, if not downright violent.
“Your health,” Lodi grunted, lifting his flagon and gesturing half-heartedly toward his companion.
“Health,” muttered the man, noisily gulping down a mouthful of the hopswill. “They never said nothing about no dwarf.”
Lodi nodded agreeably and twirled a coin in his fingers. He did it deftly despite their dwarven thickness. “No, they don’t. I give them reason not to.”
“So I guess you knows I got four of your kind.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Because you thought I wouldn’t have met with you if I knowed…”
“Would you agree to come if you knowed?”
“Maybe. Depends what I thought was in it for me. But I ain’t freeing nobody nohow unless you makes it worth my trouble.”
“You must make great trouble,” Lodi agreed, nodding his head. “To take four dwarves prisoner is no small thing even for a great warrior. How many men did you lost?”
“Didn’t lose none. I bought them off some orcs. Big ugly bastards—mountain orcs, most like. They said they captured them dwarves only a few hours before I run into them down by the river.”
“Any dead?”
“Nah, not that I knows. Orcs say they caught them fishing alongside the Dunbois, so they didn’t get no chance to do no fighting. The black-haired one got hisself banged about a sight, but he’s all right now. I saw him doctored. I treat ’em right, you just ask ’em.”
Lodi nodded, satisfied that the slaver was merely an opportunist, not one who made an object of preying upon Lodi’s people. Dwarven slaves commanded a premium price in certain markets, but it would take an unusually ambitious and greedy man to risk making a habit of attempting to acquire them. The man seated before him possessed no shortage of greed, but he appeared to lack both the ambition and the ability to be a genuine danger to Lodi’s kind.
Coming to a decision, Lodi reached under his belt and withdrew a rough cotton bag about the size of his fist. It clanked as he slammed it down on the table.
“I buy all four,” he said, stroking the thick hair, still short enough to be coarse, that hung down from his chin. It had been nearly a year since he’d been able to start growing his beard again, but it would require at least another decade to return it to its former splendor.
The man’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t reach for the coins in the sack. “If that’s silver in there, it ain’t enough. And I’m thinking it ain’t gold.”
“Silver, and a fair price,” Lodi said, with a smile that exposed two broken teeth. “And I say you take it, so you take it.”
“I can get fifteen silvers each for them in Amorr. There ain’t even thirty in that there bag!”
“There is twenty-eight. The silver is from Iron Mountain. Pure. As good as forty Imperials.”
The man’s eyes narrowed speculatively, but he shook his head. “I’ll give you that, but even so, forty ain’t sixty. Throw in fifteen more of them dwarf silvers, and I’ll consider it.”
“I didn’t tell you consider it. I tell you take it.”
The big slaver snorted, unimpressed. “Now, why would I do that, dwarf? Ain’t no point in trying to scare me. I knows you ain’t starting nothing in no Man city unless you’re a lot stupider than you looks.”
Lodi shook his head, smiled, and raised his glass to the man.
“You take it because I save you big trouble and maybe a little profit too. I think you have not sold dwarves before. In Amorr, two of the stables pays sixty silvers for just one dwarf, but he must be warrior. They pay fifty times more for true smith, but no smiths leave the Deep. So, they gots to train your dwarves for months or lose them the first week on the sands.”
“How do you know they ain’t warriors?”
“No dwarf warrior is capture by orcs. Never. We say is better to die in battle than cook in the pots. If what you bought was more than bones, you bought no warriors.”
“You said, ‘we.’ You saying you’re a warrior?”
“I am what you see. Maybe ask yourself this question. How come a dwarf ain’t got no beard. And how do a dwarf like me know about the gladiator stables in Amorr?”
The slaver’s eyes narrowed. “You saying you supply them, or you saying you fought there your own self?”
Lodi smiled grimly and leaned forward so that his bulbous nose nearly touched the man’s much narrower one. “I am saying you take the silver in the bag.”
The slaver sat back and swallowed hard. He was not a coward, but neither did he appear to harbor any desire to see if Lodi was bluffing. He stared at Lodi for a long moment, then reached forward and took the leather sack.
“All right, dwarf. They’re yourn.”
“One thing more. If you find yourself any more of my people in the future, you bring them here, and you receive seven silvers for each. Iron Mountain silvers.”
The slaver raised his eyebrows. “Seven silvers a dwarf, no questions asked?”
“No questions,” Lodi confirmed. “But I hear you be taking them yourself, my axe take your head.”
The man grinned sourly.
“I ain’t no fool, dwarf. I sees you’re a serious man. I’ll keep my eyes open. Any interest in other breeds, or you just want dwarves? There’s no shortage of goblins and orcs about, and I even heard tell an elf was brought in about a month ago.”
Lodi’s first reaction was to shrug off the news, but then he reconsidered. The elves would pay well to get one of their own back, enough gold to finance his operations for many months. Especially, he mused, in the unlikely case that the elf was a high one from Elebrion. “No need for goblins and orcs. But you tell me where to find elf, I give you that fifteen silvers you want.”
“So elves are worth more, even to a dwarf?” The slaver laughed. “Done, dwarf. But you’ll pay me when I bring the news. I ain’t helping you fetch nothing. That’s all on you. Meet me here in a week’s time. If there’s an elf about the city, I’ll know by then. Where you want your dwarves?”
“Bring them to the Axe and Pick before nightfall,” Lodi told him, giving him the name of
one of the five city inns that catered to a dwarven clientele. He would have liked to leave this horribly bright stinking Man city and return to the underground comforts of Iron Mountain on the morrow, but once he had Arnor Tallsmith’s son and the lad’s three friends safely in hand, he could afford to be patient. A week was a small price to pay for the gold that an elf might bring. “I come here in seven days. If there is news, I pay the silver. If there is none, I pay nothing.”
He rose from the crudely hewn bench and stalked away toward the door, leaving his jar of piss water for the slaver. It was hard to say which of the two he found the less palatable.
• • •
The Merry Widow was moderately less dreadful than Nicolas was expecting, but if it wasn’t an establishment that catered to the gutter, neither was it one that could be expected to accommodate the more esoteric tastes of the sort for which he was searching.
It was located in the southwestern district, surrounded by cheap taverns, one-room offices rented to the nominal professionals who operated outside of the guild structure, and other brothels. It wasn’t in the worst part of the district, but Nicolas had absolutely no expectation that he would find what he was seeking. Still, he had seen longer odds pay off before, and if nothing else, establishing a reputation as an inveterate whore chaser would be useful in providing him with an excuse to ask the sort of questions he needed to ask of nearly anyone.
And if he was honest with himself, it had been more than two months since the last time he’d had a woman. For once, duty and desire were in perfect alignment.
There were five girls lounging about the poorly lit room. One was an alarmingly thin blond girl. There were also three brunettes of varying sizes and a pretty young woman with red hair whose more refined features suggested she might be a noble’s by-blow. He signaled the madam, a thickset woman with large breasts who might have been attractive ten years ago. Her suspicious mien tended to belie the sign outside. A widow she might be, but merry she was not.
