Ice, Iron and Gold

by S. M. Stirling

  A company of archers and billmen was deploying in the street, no doubt as overjoyed at being in the wet cold murk as Bramble thought. Two men-at-arms armed cap-a-pied in plate came through the door, looking like living statues of green steel with their visors down and beads of rain and melting sleet trickling down the enameled metal; another man followed them.

  He was in uniform as well, a gold-frogged scarlet jacket with an entirely unceremonial sword at his belt, and a rain-cape thrown over his shoulders. Rutherston noted that the trousers were non-regulation too, and might well be pajama bottoms; he'd probably just grabbed whatever was to hand.

  "Your Grace," Superintendent Arnson said, bowing.

  Everyone else but the soldiers followed suit. Colonel His Grace, Duke of Portsmouth, George Caruthers—and holder of a bundle of other titles military and civil—nodded curtly in reply.

  He was a compact muscular man in his mid-forties, with a close-trimmed light-brown mustache shot with gray and cold hazel-green eyes. They hadn't met personally before, but the files in Rutherston's mind filled in the details: Caruthers had been retired from the Active list as a battalion commander, and given a Reserve commission as a colonel. He would have been in line for promotion and the Imperial General Staff if he hadn't inherited the title after the death of his father and elder brother, and been translated to the House of Lords.

  He'd been Undersecretary of War for three years now, since the Tories came in after the last general election, on a take-no-nonsense-from-the-damned-foreigners platform. They'd been quite frustrated at the upsurge in corsair attacks, to put it very mildly, and looking for an excuse to thump someone.

  "Quite right to roust me out," he said to Arnson, patting his pockets absently. "This is more than a murder investigation now."

  Rutherston offered one of his own cigarillos and snapped his lighter. The duke accepted, and puffed with silent ferocity for an instant. Outland suns had baked his complexion a permanent red. It flushed a little more now, and his eyes narrowed. Rutherston would not have cared to be on the receiving end of that glare. The quiet flat deadliness in his voice was even more disturbing, in its way:

  "In fact, a preliminary report is on its way to GHQ and the PM in Winchester. It's a good thing that these Moorish chappies were bloody stupid and tipped their hands."

  "Only because of our unknown helper, my lord," Rutherston said, shivering a little inwardly at how close it had been even so. "I doubt they intended to use my blood to write: Death to all pig-eating unbelieving faranj dogs! Signed, Emir Jawara and the Mouride Brotherhood on the wall. If both of them had gotten into the room intact before I woke, it would just be a mystery when I was found stabbed to death in the morning."

  "And dead men tell nei tales," Arnson repeated.

  Caruthers snorted a laugh. "How did they get in?"

  "Up the wall, my lord. It's brick, and easy enough to climb if you're strong and active."

  His mind's eye saw the figure of his rescuer bounding from wall to wall, upward in that weird display of free-running gymnastics. They hadn't been as active as that, probably.

  Aloud he went on: "They left a rope and grapnel, probably intended to aid their escape. This is a cosmopolitan town—there are probably several hundred Africans here, from Ashanti and the Cape Republic and other friendly powers, not to mention South Americans of similar appearance; nobody would remark them on the street, once they took off their turbans and veils."

  "Good man," the nobleman grunted, and turned back to Arnson. "Now, Superintendent, give me a complete briefing from the beginning. Witchy Scots and foreign arrow-marks . . . quite a tangle. But our Moorish friends are another matter; they're all too familiar. Some people are going to learn that our forbearance has limits. Limits far smaller than our supply of warships, arrows, or the available store of shot and incendiary bombs for our catapults."

  Bramble and Rutherston looked at each other. Ships would sail because of this; south of the Tropic line men would die and villages would burn. To the senior detective's surprise the former NCO quoted softly under his breath:

  "They called us out of the barrack-yard

  To God-knows-where from Gosport 'ard . . ."

  Rutherston nodded soberly. The attempt to hush things up had backfired badly on whoever made it . . .

  "God-dammit but I'm an idiot!" he burst out suddenly, as pieces suddenly slid into place in his mind. "They won't stop with me!"

  The duke and the superintendent stopped and looked at him. He went on, his voice clipped:

  "Your Grace, there's no time to explain: I need your men, now."

  "You have them. Captain Smythe! On the inspector's orders!"

  Smythe was in his twenties, but he was still puffing a bit when the party arrived at the office-cum-dwelling place of Vadalà And Sons. Rutherston found that vaguely reassuring—the effects of sitting at a desk were a minor background worry of his life, even if he still had the same belt-size as the year he'd graduated from Sandhurst.

  But then, I'm not running while wearing seventy pounds of plate armor, he thought.

  Arnson was puffing as they came up, but she had breath enough to swear lividly when she saw the sprawled body of the man she'd had watching the merchant's house, lying staring with a long knife in his side. The building was a solid plain house, four stories of salvage brick and blue-painted windowframes and shutters. The flames behind the upstairs windows became visible just as they arrived, and that only because of the solid dark outside; this was a side-street, and the city didn't have enough methane to light everything. The sleet-rain had turned to wet snow, and it was falling more heavily every instant.

  "Saunders, run and fetch the fire department! And . . . charge bills!" the officer shouted.

  The points of the weapons came down in a ripple, three deep and bristling, with a barking hurrah from the soldiers, sounding loud but muffled by snow that swallowed echoes. The bills pointed inward in a semicircle around the front door, blocking any escape with a wall of edged steel.

  "Nock shafts!"

  The forty archers behind the billmen reached over their shoulders for arrows, no doubt cursing what the damp would do to their strings and hoping the wax and water-glue would keep them from going slack. It would, at least for a while; a weapon that wouldn't function when it was raining would be of little use in England.

  "Oh, this is a friendly-fire incident waiting to 'appen," Bramble said, peering at the growing ruddy flicker from above. "Just what we need, two-score of squaddies behind us shooting in the sodding dark!"

  "More constables would be better," Rutherston agreed. "But one works with what one has. You and I will go in first. Captain Smythe, remember that we want living prisoners, if you would—"

  The two policemen drew their swords and took their bucklers in their left hands as they walked towards the door; Rutherston knew an instant's sharp nostalgia for the much bigger heater-shaped shield he'd carried as part of a lancer's kit in the Blues. It covered a reassuringly larger part of your body, and so did a full set of plate armor. A scream came from behind the house, and a clash of steel; someone was trying to get out that way, and discovering they had the building surrounded.

  Almost at the same instant the big front door burst open and two dark-faced men charged down the steps, shrieking like files on iron. The pair were dressed in unremarkable dark baggy sailor's woolens, but they had long curved swords in their hands, and they attacked without hesitation, leaping like leopards half-seen in the dimness. Rutherston was first in their path, and edged steel flickered at his face.

  "Allllaaahu Akbar!" the man screamed.

  This time the Englishman had his own blade out. Cring-ting!

  The scimitar crashed against his straight longsword and slid down until the guards locked. The man was taller than Rutherston, and stronger; the hilts bent back towards the Englishman's neck, and he could feel his feet skidding on the slick pavement.

  "Don't—" Rutherston began.

  A billhook thrust at t
he Moor's face. He ducked, released the detective's sword so quickly that he staggered, and turned to slash at Bramble's back where he fought the other stranger. Rutherston recovered, pivoted and lunged in a savage blur of speed he hadn't been sure was still in him.

  "Don't kill him, I meant to say," as he jerked the blade free from the man's lower back.

  He sank with a bubbling shriek, kicked, and died on the wet slates. Which was a pity; the military had different regulations—Rutherston carefully thought of them as more robust—concerning interrogation, at least for foreigners who weren't Imperial subjects. They'd have gotten his story out of him.

  Some of the billmen were trying to catch the sword of the man fighting Bramble on the hooks at the rear of the blades. Others had reversed their weapons and were smashing the blunt butt-caps at the swordsman, to knock him down or disarm him. But it was crowded and dark and the footing was bad as the snow built up on the pavement, and the man was shrieking and slashing in a heedless berserker frenzy that was probably intended to make them kill him. One of the soldiers staggered and sprawled backward, a long dint in the steel of his breastplate where a cut had landed that would have bisected an unarmored man.

  This is where we could use more coppers, Rutherston thought as he poised his blade—his service at least got training in subduing without killing. Now, a thrust to the hamstring . . .

  Light suddenly blossomed, lantern-light as the door to the house swung open again. Llesenia Vargas was there, staggering, one side of her face covered in blood. She also had a cocked crossbow cradled in her arms, a powerful Italian military model. Men scattered with a yell as she raised it to her shoulder.

  The man with the scimitar turned, eyes and teeth white and wild in his dark face, screaming: "Ana haneji nehawi dine deyemak!"

  Which was Arabic, and very rude; he didn't speak the language but he had a working command of its obscenities.

  Tunngg!

  The steel prod gave a single deep note as she shot. The thick short bolt was invisible in the snowy murk; it disappeared from the weapon and reappeared buried to its vanes in the man's chest. His high-pitched battle scream cut off with startling abruptness; everyone froze as he collapsed, and the steel of his blade rang on the slate of the landing steps. Rutherston darted forward as the woman buckled in turn, caught her before her head struck the stone and passed her on to one of the soldiers.

  "Follow me, Bramble!" he shouted, and went in through the opened door.

  He stooped as he did, raising the buckler in his left hand, just in case, but no blow descended. The delay for the scrimmage on the steps had let the fire take firmer hold, and it seemed to draw in a breath and then roar at him with dragon-wind. He coughed as his panting sucked in harsh smoke and charged up the stairs. Vadalà was in the hallway on the second story, a rapier in his hand and the remains of a nightshirt on his slashed body; another dead man with a curved blade and the thin braids of the Baye Fall lay dead before him. His wife and children huddled behind him, hacked to pieces. Rutherston made a single attempt to storm up the stairs to the topmost floor, but the heat drove him back. He could just glimpse tumbled office furniture and stacks of papers crisping into black.

  "Here, Inspector!" Bramble called.

  He had a figure in his arms—a woman dressed in black trousers and jerkin, her long blonde hair trailing. She wore a sword-belt with an empty scabbard, and a quiver over her back; Bramble had a longbow in one hand as well, looking subtly different from the English type. They retreated down the stairs and outside into the snow. The fire-truck had come, its big gray-coated horses snorting as they trotted with a crash of platter-sized hooves on the pavement, and the men jumped down and deployed, dragging their hoses forward and attaching them to the hydrants.

  "Any chance of saving the house?" Rutherston asked their chief.

  "Nei, it'll burn to ash. We'll be lucky to save the house t' either side, even with the snow. Now get these sojers out of our way!"

  Rutherston did. McTavish and two nurses were working on the women. He rose from the stranger's side as the detective approached.

  "Miss Vargas will be all right, provided there's no cerebral haematoma," he said. "Blow with the flat of a sword, I'd say."

  "Someone trying to put her out?"

  "Not intentionally; see how there's a cut along here on the side of the head? A slice, not a pressure-cut. Whoever landed that intended to top her head like a boiled egg but something threw off the stroke. She was very lucky—not really out, even, just very woozy. You can tell the pattern of the blade from the shape of the contusion. A longsword, I'd say."

  Rutherston looked down at the stranger's body; the scabbard from her belt was lying nearby, and it was much like his own—intended to house a straight double-edged blade about thirty inches long.

  "The other?"

  "The stranger? She's a lot worse. Moving her again before we have her stabilized would kill her, with the knife like that. I'm typing her blood and giving her plasma for now; the ambulance should be . . . ah, there it is. Touch and go, but she has a chance. Murdoch at the General Hospital has a lot of experience with this sort of injury. It rather depends what was pierced inside."

  "Knife?" Rutherston said.

  "Look."

  The detective went to one knee. The gaslights and the flames bursting out of Vadalà's house gave good light; the woman was young and tall and strikingly pretty, with golden hair caught in a fighting braid that leaked strands. He could see the rounded hilt of a stiletto under her ribs. There was still a flutter of breath as her leather jerkin rose and fell, but blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth. The wide unseeing eyes were blue, but with an odd striation, silver rims around the iris and veins of silver running inward.

  His eyes fell to the jerkin; it had the same device as he'd found stamped on the arrowhead that saved his life, a stylized tree surrounded by an arch of seven stars, and topped by a crown.

  Llesenia groaned and sat up, clutching at her head and moaning. The light was uncertain, and the noise heavy; he couldn't be sure what she said, something like sharmuta. Then she looked over at him, and the woman on the other stretcher.

  "Is she alive?" the Gibraltarian woman called sharply, sharply enough to make her wince and put a hand to the bandage McTavish had applied.

  "Yes," Rutherston said. Then: "Wait! She's saying something!"

  He bent and put his ear next to her lips, cupping a hand around it. Then his cold gray eyes flicked to the other woman and he began to rise, implacable purpose in his movements, hand going to the hilt of his sword.

  Even half-expecting it, the cobra speed of her response surprised him. She snatched a dagger from the belt of one of the soldiers next to her and threw herself through the air at the other stretcher, leaping with all her body off the ground like a cat. Rutherston spun, grabbing for knife-wrist and body. She cut at him in mid-leap, parting the heavy cloth like paper and slashing the flesh beneath, but he caught her and twisted and threw with trained strength. The slender body pinwheeled through the air and she landed on her back, hard.

  "Bramble!" Rutherston barked.

  The big man was already moving; he caught the wrist of her knife-hand as she came up with a vicious underarm thrust. Then he tightened his grip. She screamed shrilly as bone broke and hung panting in his grip, shivering uncontrollably when he stopped a movement with a warning twist.

  "Emir Jawara must value your services highly, sayyida," Rutherston said, flexing the fingers of his left hand.

  The cut was long, but it was shallow and ran with the grain of the muscle. The pain was white and hot, and blood dripped freely as he gripped it with his right.

  The woman who'd called herself Llesenia Vargas spat at him.

  "The emir! Jawara, that cowardly apostate son of ten fathers, the dog who licks the privates of the kufr kings! It was not for him I lived among infidels and ate the filthy pig. It was for the holy Marabout! But the At-Tarîqat al-Murîdiyya would have forced him to war in the end—he
is like that fat pig Vadalà, who sold his own folk for our cargoes—Jawara could not forsake the share we gave him and in the end it would mean he had to fight—"

  She stopped. Rutherston prodded: "If that shipment of yew from the far west hadn't started a train of bad luck. God must hate you, eh?"

  "It was the witch, and the sorcerer! Only magic could have kept them hidden in the cargo!" Her eyes grew wilder. "You filth must not have a new source of wood for your accursed bows—you swine who kept us from the Maghreb and al-Andalus—who drove us into the swamps where our children die of fevers and you breed like maggots and fill the empty lands God meant for us—"

  Her words trailed off into an incoherent scream of sheer rage, and then she stood silent, nursing the broken wrist and glaring at him like a chained hawk. Bramble kept a heavy hand on her shoulder, until two of the billmen took her arms. They lashed her hands together before her and thrust the shaft of a bill between her back and her elbows, keeping a tight grip on the ashwood.

  The pain must have been quite agonizing. And my sympathy is underwhelming, he thought.

  "Nice piece of work, Inspector," Bramble said. "Now let's get that cut seen to. It's your night to leak, eh?"

  McTavish was bandaging Rutherston's wound when the duke and Inspector Arnson arrived; there was nothing else for him to do, with the ambulance on its way to the surgery. The nobleman was fully dressed now, in ordinary field-green uniform and half-armor, breastplate and vambraces and tassets; snow drifted down out of a sky the color of wet cement and clung to the cold steel, sparkling occasionally in the light of the burning building. He stood and listened as Rutherston explained to him:

  "—Vadalà was slipping corsairs information on our ships, as well as fencing their loot," he finished. "His family has two ships on the African run; they'd transfer the stolen goods at sea, sell them in Sicily under his own firm's auspices, buy Mediterranean produce and ship it here. Then he'd buy British manufactures the corsairs wanted—weapons made for the African trade, shipbuilding supplies, medicines—and ship them south on his firm's own vessels. They'd meet the rover galleys off the Saloum mouth or the Casamance, and transfer the goods . . . and continue perfectly legitimate voyages to Ashanti or wherever, folding the profits into their ordinary gains."