"Be easy," Durine said. "Let's let it end here. You can't expect my friend Erven to stand by while you rape his cousin, and I can't see why it has to get any more exciting than this. Erven," he said again, figuring even Kethol would pick up on the necessity of not using their real names, "let it go. We'll just head back the way we came, and you fine young gentlemen can head back the way you came, with none of us the poorer for it than a few bruises on the girl and a few splinters in the buttocks. Let's all be on our way and gone before the girl summons the nightwatch and has us all hauled before the lord warden to be held for the next judge."
"I'm not afraid of a good Holtish judge hearing of us having a bit of innocent fun with a peasant girl," the leader said. "And get your foot off my sword and I'll show you who is much the poorer," he went on.
He buttoned the last button on his fly, showing either an overdeveloped sense of dress or, more likely, a feeling of less vulnerability with his suddenly flaccid penis tucked away instead of flapping in the chilly breeze.
One of the others started to make a move, and Kethol took a quick step forward, sword tip out, stopping when his opponent thought better of it.
Durine kept his irritation off his face. But, still... Kethol hadn't done anything quite this stupidly heroic since the Old Emperor's Last Ride. But back then they were traveling quickly through neutral territory, trying to get out and away before word that the emperor was vulnerable brought the slavers down on them; as long as they could move faster than any news, they were fine. In those days, in the old days, the right thing to do would have been to just kill the three of them, hide the bodies under the docks, perhaps, and get out of town before the smell would lead to their being found.
That might still be the best thing to do here, but the girl was the problem. If she'd been seen with these three, when they turned up dead, the Lord Warden or mayor -Durine didn't know which governed Riverforks - would surely have the town wardens speak with her, and Durine wasn't sanguine about the possibility of her not giving a description of the two of them if asked.
Loyalty was a tree that grew slowly, over years; not something you could instantly stick in a scared girl by sending her running off naked into the night. He and Kethol should have waited while the three took turns sticking something else into her.
But it was too late for that.
Durine swept his foot to one side, flinging the sword belt over the side of the boardwalk, letting it thwuck on the muck at the river's edge below.
"Enough," he said. "It's over. Let it be over." He started to move away, kicking the leader's cloak to one side to clear the way for Kethol to back up without tripping. They could fade back into the night and be done with this.
The other two seemed to relax as Kethol's careful retreat brought them out of range of his sword. That was the most tense moment - would they take it as an opportunity to draw their own weapons and charge? There wasn't much reason to worry about flintlocks in Holtun, except among the most elite and trusted occupation troops. And a man moving quickly, dodging from side to side, would be close to safe from a pistol at all but the closest range. Legend aside, the things were deucedly hard to aim.
So it was all perfectly reasonable that they'd disengage with no further damage, which was fine with Durine. You got in enough fights for necessity and money, after all.
But the leader snatched at the hilt of one of his companions' swords, and shoved him aside in order to draw it.
Well, that was the way of fighting, and of war. It could make all the sense in the world to avoid it, but if anybody didn't want to be sensible, nobody could be.
"Mine," Durine said.
Kethol was the better duelist of the two of them, but it was without protest or even a look sideways that he took a delicate, dancing step to one side and backward, his sword tip momentarily wavering as he brought it into line with the attacker for just a moment, then back to hover near the chest of the remaining armed young bravo, who had the sense to keep his hands up, fingers spread as wide as his eyes.
Durine already had his own sword in his hand, although for the life of him, he couldn't remember when he had drawn it. It wasn't a light duelist's rapier but a heavier saber, rigid and inflexible the way Durine liked his swords, sharpened on the top edge a handsbreadth back, to allow for a backhanded slash that a weaker man couldn't have considered.
Yes, the point was deadlier than the edge, but the point and the edge were deadlier than the point alone.
Yes, skill was far more important than strength in sword-play, but skill plus strength was better than skill alone.
Yes, there were swordsmen who could best Durine, but no, not these swordsmen, not today, not here, not now.
Sober, ready, braced, the young swordsman could probably have given a better accounting of himself, but he was drunk and angry, and too eager. Durine engaged and parried easily as they closed, coming almost chest to chest.
This was where the hidden left-handed dagger was supposed to have ended things for Durine, but Durine's own left hand had already seized his opponent's shoulder as they closed, and his bruising grip, combined with the pressure of the forte of his blade, spun the youngster half around, at least momentarily bringing the hidden weapon out of play, and Durine's raised knee that slammed into his opponent's buttocks, lifting him clear into the air, kept him off balance long enough for Durine to slam the brass pommel of his saber into the other's shoulder, causing his borrowed sword to clatter to the boards.
There was still some - too much - energy left in him, so Durine just fastened the fingers of his free hand on the boy's left wrist to keep the knife under control, at least for a moment, and dropped his own saber so that he could fasten his other fingers on the seat of the boy's trousers. He lifted him up, flinging him easily over the boardwalk's rail and into the water below, where he landed with a loud splash and a louder shout of anger and indignation.
"Follow your friend, if you please." Kethol gestured with his sword tip toward the railing. "No, no, not the stairs. Just jump over the railing."
"But..."
"Or take up your weapons," Durine said, straightening with both his own sword in his right hand and the newly acquired rapier in his left, "and since your friend didn't just let this be, let's let it end with you splattered either with mud or with blood and shit, and bodies all over the boardwalk." His lips tightened. "I've had about enough of this, and of you, for one evening. Choose."
They looked at each other, and then the one who still had his sword shook his head and the other walked to the railing, clambered over, and dropped down, while the last of them looked them over very carefully before vaulting neatly over the railing.
Durine hefted his newly acquired sword. A good sword was always worth money, but he didn't have the contacts to sell it quickly and discreetly here, and carrying around a clearly identifiable sword like this one wouldn't be a good idea, so he hid it in the corner near where he and Kethol had hidden, and walked on.
There was probably still time to get to the game, let Kethol win some money, fight their way to safety, and make a profit on the evening.
Chapter 5
Leaving Rivcrforks
Pirojil woke to the scratching of rats. And alone. Except for the rat. The rat was a large, fat animal, bristling whiskers twitching as its long yellowed teeth gnawed at the seam of Kethol's leather saddlebags. Pirojil quickly had a knife in his hand - but the rat caught the movement and skittered off into the shadows of the corner, vanishing into what was no doubt some improbably small hole. Rats were like that. If you wanted to kill one badly enough - and Pirojil had once been hungry enough to eat rats, and eat rats he would again, were he again that hungry - you had to think ahead of them.
He levered himself out of bed and stood unsteadily. His bladder was full to bursting, his head ached, and his gut clenched like a fist at the smell of food coming from somewhere. The reek of cooking sausage made him gag.
Too much beer last night.
The chai
r was still propped under the door latch, which wasn't surprising. The other two would have woken him when they returned so he could let them in. A chair propped up against the door wasn't a guarantee against a middle-of-the-night invasion, but it was much safer than trusting to keys provided by the owner.
Dawn light more oozed than streamed in through the dirty greased-paper window.
He was vaguely bothered by their absence, but Kethol could have found a game and Durine an all-night whore. Or they both could be dead. Either way, it could wait.
He quickly checked their cache - it was intact - and pulled on his trousers and boots before heading down the hall to the privy at the end of it.
It must have been the hangover; the smell of rotting excrement made him gag badly enough to vomit up what was left of whatever he had eaten last night. He quickly finished relieving himself and headed back to their rooms, then rinsed out his mouth with a deep draught from the water pitcher.
Beer. A quick mug of beer would clear his head and settle his stomach.
The common room was busy in the morning, although not in the noisy way it had been at night. Over in the corner, the six dwarves from last night - at least, Pirojil assumed it was the same six; he had trouble telling dwarves apart - were busy bolting down their breakfast of bread, onion, and that nauseating-smelling sausage, while the teamsters took their time over huge wooden bowls of stew. Erenor the wizard was nowhere to be seen, but you wouldn't expect that an old man would be up that late at night and again up this early in the morning.
The innkeeper wasn't in evidence, either, so Pirojil poured himself a large mug of sour beer from an open firkin and sat down at the same table he'd had last night, the one where he had lost the arm wrestling match to Erenor.
Well, it wasn't the best beer he'd ever had, but it did wash the taste of vomit from his mouth, and that was something, and in a little while, it had cleared the fog from his brain and the fire from his stomach enough that he was starting to think about food.
A ragged boy of about ten, maybe twelve, pushed through the inner set of swinging doors into the common room, his ferretlike face scanning the room before he settled on Pirojil.
"Is your name Pirojil?" the boy asked.
Pirojil didn't see any need to deny it. "Yes."
"Your friend said you'd give me a copper."
Pirojil smiled. "And why would he say such a silly thing as that?"
"He said to tell you that - how did he say it? - once a woman's had an orc, she won't go back, whatever that means, and that when I said that, you'd give me a copper."
It meant that the boy had come from Kethol. Maybe nothing more, but... but Kethol wouldn't be sending a boy if there was no problem.
"Fine," Pirojil said, digging into his pouch and coming out with a small copper quartermark that he set on the table.
The boy reached for it. Pirojil slapped his hand down over the coin. "What else did he say?"
The boy hesitated, then shrugged. "He and your big ugly friend are in the jail, and they thought you would pay to know that."
Pirojil stood steadily. Breakfast could wait. He pulled another coin out of his pocket and held it up for the boy. "Where's the jail?"
Getting in to see the Lord Warden was impossible; the Lord Warden was off hunting or tax collecting, or flogging peasants, or sitting under a tree writing poetry, or whatever such a worthy would spend his time doing.
Getting in to see Durine and Kethol was a lot easier. Getting them out would be the problem.
The jail in Riverforks had been carved into the stone of the riverbank itself, the entrance just above the high-water mark. Pirojil walked down the carved steps. There was another way in, of course, but Pirojil had no particular desire to be dropped down through the gratings at the top, or even lowered via a ladder that would be withdrawn before the grating would be sealed.
Some spring, the river would rise enough that a flood would fill the jail and drown its occupants like rats, perhaps - but maybe Pirojil was just being ungenerous. The jail wasn't a dungeon, after all; it was mainly a place to store a troublesome traveler until the arrival of somebody who would pay their way out of trouble - as well as the occasional more serious miscreant, who would have to wait for the high justice of the baron's or emperor's judges, when those worthies got around to Riverforks.
Getting in was no problem. The bored jailer was used to having a barge captain or farmer come to see an abashed sailor or farmworker and hear his protestations and promises before agreeing to pay his fines, and the bribe was smaller than Pirojil had expected.
Pirojil surrendered his sword belt at the entrance and was led down a dark, dank corridor to a barred cell where Kethol paced back and forth while Durine stretched his bulk out on a pile of straw, seemingly asleep.
The bars of the cell were flat pieces of black iron, riveted together at the junction. A good dwarven metal saw could cut through any of the bars, perhaps
- say, a night and a day of sawing, if you had to do it quietly - but it would take a good eight, ten, maybe a dozen cuts to create a hole big enough for Kethol, and Durine would require a larger one. There was one gap large enough to pass a slop bucket or food bucket in and out, but that was hardly big enough for a baby.
No door at this level. The only entrance or exit was the barred hatch in the ceiling, more than a manheight above their heads.
Pirojil didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "What happened?"
Kethol shook his head. "We ran into a little trouble last night. I... started a fight with a trio of young bravos, and it turns out that one of them is Lordling Mattern, Lord Lerna's son."
"It seems that this Mattern broke his leg in a fall he took, vaulting over a fence and into the river." Durine's eyes didn't open. "With some help from the Spider, he's limping around on it, but he's not happy, and Lerna isn't due back in town for a full tenday. The Lord Warden's not going to want to let us go without his permission."
There were a dozen questions that Pirojil would have liked to ask, for effect if not because he didn't know. Like why, if Kethol had started a fight, Durine had been drawn into it. But he knew the answer.
The question wasn't how to make the two of them feel like the couple of idiots they were - you just didn't get into fights with the nobility - but how to deal with the problem as it was, and preferably without drawing a lot of attention.
"I'll see what I can do," he said.
He would need help, and the only two friends he had in town were in jail, so he couldn't count on them. For a moment he toyed with the idea of the
wizard Erenor and a seeming, but he couldn't figure out a way to turn that into an escape. Hmm... There was another option.
The dowager empress would surely have forbidden it if she had been here, but that was the nice thing about Riverforks:
She wasn't here.
He quickened his pace. A quick jog-trot would clear the beer and sleep and cobwebs from his brain.
The local military garrison was an old castle on a hill a short ride outside of town. The wall was low and narrow, Euar'den style, and the ramparts were crumbling in spots; until it had been taken over by imperial occupation troops, it had probably stood empty for a generation or more. The main gate was closed, and the grass growing in front of it showed that it wasn't in common use, so Pirojil rode around the dirt path circling the hill. A single sleepy-eyed guard slouched against the postern gate, and made no objection when Pirojil asked to see the captain. With a good chunk of luck - say, the sort that Kethol habitually had over the bones table - the captain would be somebody Pirojil knew from the old days of the Holtun-Bieme wars, or from Biemestren during the Old Emperor's time, but Pirojil's luck wasn't in.
Captain Banderan shook his head. "I don't see a lot that I can do," he said. He probably had cut a fine figure in his uniform and armor in the old days, but he had run to fat, and what had probably been a strong and noble chin was just sagging jowls. "Steady the horse, will you?"
He gave a
testing tug to the halter that kept his large black gelding fixed to the hitching post, and moved his three-legged stool back to the rear of the horse. Pirojil took a solid grip on the halter, and gave the horse a reassuring pat on the neck while Banderan sat himself down and bent up the horse's leg, digging clotted dirt and dung out of the bottom of its hoof with a dull knife.
Pirojil wasn't sure whether to think less of an officer who couldn't trust his own stablemen well enough to make sure they gave proper attention to his horse, or to admire him for doing it himself and being sure it was done right, so he settled on both.
Life was like that.
"You said you're from Furnael," Banderan said as he picked up the stool and moved around the back of the horse to the other rear leg.
"That's right." No, it wasn't right, but Pirojil didn't correct him. Legally, the barony was Barony Cullinane, but it had been the barony of the Furnael family until Thomen had become emperor.
"Well," Banderan said thoughtfully, "I might be able to put in a good word with Lord Lerna if I could tell him you were old companions from the war, and I guess that's close enough. I could talk to the Lord Warden, but he's going to want to wait for Lerna. He has to wait for Lerna, really. And he's not going to want to go to the governor over it, and neither am I." He tapped the knife against the heel of his boot to clear it, then spread his hands. "And the jailers are mainly his relatives. Doubt you'd find them wanting to let your friends go for any kind of money you'd be likely to have. Family's important around here."
"It would be best if my friends and I are well out of Riverforks and on our way as soon as possible."
"I don't see how that could be arranged." Banderan shook his head. "Although, for all my opinion's worth, your friends probably should have beaten Mattern worse. He's the second son, and always been a wild one." He frowned derisively. "His brother's off on the borders, leading a company chasing down those orcs, while Mattern rides around the city and the countryside, chasing down peasant girls to stick something entirely different than a sword in them." He raised an eyebrow. "Your friends must be good with their blades, though, if they managed to disarm him without doing more than that. Mattern's back from Biemestren just this year, and in between jumping the local girls he was supposedly studying the sword with some decent sword-master, some fellow with a good reputation."
Not Exactly The Three Musketeers Page 8
