Honour Among Thieves

Croy stood there and listened with a contrite expression. After a while he heard none of the words. He stopped hearing the endless pounding of Groomwich’s hammer, and no longer felt the heat of the forge on his skin.

In his mind’s eye he only saw the Lady, dressed in green and white. And wearing Cythera’s face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The day after the gates of Helstrow were sealed, the town moved quickly to a war footing. Wagons full of men streamed toward Helstrow from a hundred villages. Croy and Hew stood on horses near the main gate, watching as each new consignment was checked in and sent to be armed and trained. These were farmers, men—boys—who had never been more than a mile outside their homes. They all had the same goggle-eyed expression as they first took in the colors and chaos of Helstrow. They’d never seen a town before, but even if they had, they couldn’t have been prepared. The outer bailey was packed now from side to side with humanity, every house a billet and every tavern an arsenal. Men in formation marched everywhere through the streets, while serjeants in kettle hats screamed orders at them and beat those who failed to keep in line.

The few dwarves who hadn’t packed up and fled for their own kingdom in the north were working day and night to make weapons and rudimentary armor. They worked side by side with human blacksmiths and the night rang with hammer blows and was lit by great gusts of sparks shooting out of the chimney of every forge. Fires broke out constantly, but at least there were plenty of men ready to hold buckets of water and sand. The iron flowed, and piece by piece the city was armed—with bill hooks, halberds, axes and swords. With lances and flails and maces with grotesquely flanged heads. With leather jack, and ring mail, and chain hauberks, and coats of plate.

On the third day Sir Rory rode up to the gates, and beat on them with the pommel of Crowsbill to be let in, and another Ancient Blade took the king’s colors. Sir Rory was the oldest of their order, running a little to fat, and he rode with his wife and six children all on horses behind him. He brought a company of volunteers, as well, which the king was happy to receive. Anyone who actually chose to fight for Skrae was automatically commissioned as a serjeant and given the best pick of the weapons.

“They’ll fight to their last breath,” Rory promised, as his men marched up toward the keep in a semblance of good order. “Though perhaps not well.”

Croy clasped the old knight’s vambrace and said, “Well met, my friend. Any word of Sir Orne?”

Rory drew his fingers through his thick mustache. “Last I heard, he was up north, hunting some centuries-old sorcerer. I’m sure he’ll hear the call.”

Croy hoped so. Orne had more military experience than any of them—after Ulfram V had discharged them all, Orne had gone north where there was always fighting to be done. Endless skirmishes with the hill people there had turned the knight into a master strategist—something Helstrow needed more than iron or steel.

“There are only four of us now, I hear, for Bikker’s dead, and Acidtongue’s in unknown hands,” Sir Rory said, and made the sign of the Lady on his breast. “Against two.”

“I’m not so worried about the barbarians holding Dawnbringer and Fangbreaker,” Hew insisted. “They haven’t had our training. They never took our vows. And one of them’s a girl!”

“You saw Mörgain, though,” Croy told him.

“She’s a woman. I don’t care how big she is, no woman has the stomach to cut a man from crop to crupper.”

Croy wished he could share the sentiment. He’d met more than a few woman warriors in his time, and they’d been fierce enough. Woman who chose to take up swords had to constantly prove themselves, and it made them more driven and more dangerous than any man. And Mörgain had seemed altogether too much like her brother, Mörget—the strongest and most dangerous fighter Croy had ever known.

“The Lady will sustain us,” he said, more for his own sake than the others.

On the sixth day Balint showed herself in the courtyard before the keep. Croy had managed to avoid her so far but that evening, as she wheeled a train of ballistae out of the armory cellars, a great cheer went up from the people and the Ancient Blades had to be on hand to do her honor.

The dwarf rode high on the bolt of one of her great contraptions as it was pushed through the streets, kicking her legs and waving a wrench in the air. The war machines were dragged by conscripts down through the gate into the outer bailey, and then across the Strow bridge, where half the city waited to cheer them on. The king showed himself at a balcony atop the palace while his heralds waved pennons and sounded great trumpets. As Balint came even with the knights on their horses, she gave Croy a long and triumphant look.

“When they see my babies here,” she told him, “the barbarians will turn around and run so fast we’ll send bolts straight up their arseholes.”

“I have no doubt of it, dwarf,” Croy said, his mouth tasting of gall and vinegar. “You have shown yourself a genius at shooting men in the back.”

Balint crowed in joy—she loved a good taunt, whether she was giving it or receiving it—and rode on toward the eastern gate, where she placed the giant crossbows high atop the wall.

On the eighth day the conscripts tried to revolt. A rumor had been going about that only one man in two would be armed with iron when the battle came, and the rest would be given nothing but shields, their lives to be thrown away blunting the barbarians’ first charge.

“Who told them any of them were going to get shields?” Rory asked, his voice little more than a whisper. From atop the wall of the outer bailey, the Ancient Blades watched the conscripts strive against their serjeants, pushing the shouting officers up against the wall.

“We should be down there imposing order,” Croy said, through gritted teeth.

“You heard the king. He has a better way,” Sir Hew told him.

And the king, in fact, did. Making no show of aggression, he appeared before the crowd at the head of a train of mules, each pulling the largest a giant hogshead of ale. Bungs were thrown open and foaming brown liquor streamed into the streets. The conscripts forgot the serjeants immediately, lest the ale go to waste.

In the morning not many of them felt like renewing their rebellion. It was the quietest morning Croy could remember since the gates were sealed. He was able to walk the wall nearly halfway around the town without hearing a curse or a profanity uttered. Not much work got done, either, but at least Helstrow was at peace.

When he reached the northernmost point on the wall, he lingered, and looked out across the rolling farmland toward the distant northern forests. But it wasn’t until the ninth day that Sir Orne finally appeared, standing his horse in a field half a mile away, Bloodquaffer held high over his head. The sword’s edges looked fuzzy in the distance, as if it were glowing with its own light. For hours he stood like that, the horse’s head lowering occasionally to graze on field stubble.

When the sun set Orne lowered the weapon, then slid from his saddle to kneel on the earth. He left the horse behind and crawled the rest of the way on his knees.

It was an act of devotion to the Lady. No one dared rush out to help him or speed his way. It wasn’t until well after midnight that he was brought inside the walls of the fortress.

Croy was there to receive him. As Hew helped the knight to his feet, Croy tried to take Orne’s free hand in hearty embrace—only to be rebuffed after a very short clasping of wrists.

“Do not take offense, I beg you,” Orne told Croy. The knight was the youngest of the four, yet his dark eyes hid an old and unhealed pain. “It’s for your own sake I am so cold. I do not wish to pass on my curse.”

“Curse?” Hew demanded. “We heard you were chasing a sorcerer up north. Did you get the bastard?”

“I did,” Orne said. He looked as if he would gladly have said no more. Croy and Hew stared at him until he relented. “With his last breath, though, he laughed in my face. And told me how I am to die.”

None of them missed what the knight was not saying. If he was this afraid to come to Helstrow, it could only mean one thing. The sorcerer’s dying prophecy must have told Orne that he would die here, inside the fortress.

Hew looked to Croy with eerie dread in his eyes. Croy shook his head. “You came,” he said, bowing to Orne. “That’s what’s important.”

“I took a vow,” Orne told him. “I took a vow.”

They took him to a bed, and posted a guard on his door—not for Orne’s own sake, but to keep away the curious, who heard the knight screaming in his sleep, and wished to hear the prophetic words he could not speak while wakeful.

On the tenth day after the gates were sealed, the barbarians arrived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Malden put his hand on Acidtongue’s hilt, but kept the sword in its sheath. It was a ridiculous weapon for a thief to use—once drawn, it began to foam and spit, and its acid dripped on everything and made a hissing noise. Noise that could be Malden’s downfall.

Moving by nothing but starlight, he came around the corner of the milehouse and looked out into its dooryard. He saw nothing—no movement, save a wisp of old smoke that trailed away through the weeds.

By law, a milehouse stood every ten miles on the road from Helstrow to the Free City of Ness, and was required to stay open to common traffic at all hours. They were places where weary travelers could spend the night, or buy new horses, or simply choke down the dust of the road with a tankard of cheap ale. Malden and his crew had passed most of them by on their way since they had no desire to be seen. This one, however, had drawn the thief’s interest, because it had been burned to the ground.

The stone walls still stood but the roof had collapsed inward. The stables were empty and there was no sign of human life anywhere nearby.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to pass this milehouse by as well, but Malden didn’t like what he saw. He thought it might augur trouble for them further down the road, and he wanted information.

Velmont had laughed and said he was welcome to go and check it out—alone.

Moving with the silence of a hunting cat, Malden dashed into the shadows below the milehouse’s empty doorway. Inside he smelled ash and burnt hair. The stars winked on a pool of water in the center of what had been the common room. Maybe the proprietors had tried to put out the fire, or maybe it was only rainwater that had collected since the roof fell in.

Malden slipped inside, keeping close to the soot-blackened walls. He heard nothing, sensed no movement in the place. But he liked to be careful.

A spot of the floor had been cleared of ash and debris. A pile of clay bottles stood to one side of the remains of a campfire. Bits of rag had been gathered together to make crude bedding. So someone had been there since the fire. Malden chanced detection by slinking out into the light, just enough to pick up one of the bottles and sniff at its mouth. He smelled old, sour wine. The bottle had been emptied down to the lees.

Then someone moaned in the dark, and Acidtongue flashed out of its scabbard.

“No, I beg you, not again,” a woman croaked.

She was covered in soot that hid her nakedness. Her hair might have been blonde once but was so smeared with ashes it looked white. Only her eyes reflected light as she held one hand up, trying to fend him away.

“I’m a friend,” Malden whispered to her. “Are you alone here?”

“Friend? What friend have I?”

He saw her lips were badly chapped and her tongue dry and white. Searching through the debris, Malden turned up a bottle that had survived the cataclysm—and whatever had come afterwards. He dug out the cork with his belt knife and brought the bottle to her lips.

She sucked greedily at it like an infant at the teat.

“What’s your name?”

She only stared at him, still lost in terror.

“Alright,” Malden said. “I don’t need to know it. There were others here, earlier,” he went on, looking back at the pile of empty bottles. “I’m guessing they weren’t paying guests. Bandits?”

She nodded, careful not to take her eyes off of him. “Six of them. Some of them came back for seconds.”

Malden took off his cloak and draped it over her body.

“After the recruiting serjeants came, and took away all the men, there was no one but me to run the place. The law demands we stay open,” she told Malden.

“They conscripted your … husband?”

“My father, and all my brothers. They came through taking every man they could find. All the farmers from the local manor, all the villagers. Most women fled to wherever they had family or friends to shelter them. I had no one. I knew it wasn’t safe, but … ’tis the law. And I thought every man was gone, so what was there to fear? But it seems a few stayed behind. The sort that would refuse the call. There were six of them, still, six who kept their freedom. And I was all alone here.”

Malden closed his eyes in horror.

“Do what you must to me,” the woman said, her voice a resigned whisper. “Just please … I’m hurt. I’m hurt down there and I don’t think I can anymore …”

Malden strode out into the dooryard, wanting to spit with anger. He stood in the brightest spot before the door and waved one arm in the air. Soon Cythera and Velmont’s crew joined him. He only wanted Cythera. “There’s a woman in there who doesn’t need to see another male face for a long time. Can you try to comfort her?”

“Of course,” Cythera told him. She hurried inside.

He turned next to Velmont. “From now on, we stay off the roads. This whole county has been stripped of able-bodied men. That doesn’t mean the recruiters aren’t still looking. Worse, there are bandits afoot.”

Velmont shrugged. “That’s the way of it, in a war. Just lads havin’ a bit o’ fun while they can. And you shouldn’t get your blood up, seein’ as you’re about one peg up from them as did this.”

Malden’s face burned as he stared at his fellow thief. “I take money from fat merchants and fools who don’t know to keep their hands on their purses. But I don’t hurt anyone, not if I can help it, and I never—never—harm a woman. If you’re working for me, now, you’ll follow the same code.”

“Do I, now? Do I work for you? Or for meself?”

“You’d better decide soon,” Malden told him. Careful of his fingers, he put Acidtongue back in its sheath.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T he woman from the milehouse turned out to be a homely girl of sixteen named Gerta. Once Cythera had seen to her hurts and washed the soot from her hair, she was able to rise and walk under her own power. Malden was glad for that. He didn’t know what he would have done, had she been unable to care for herself.

Gerta was happy to travel with them—the thought of staying behind all alone visibly terrified her. After a while Velmont tried to talk her up, telling her how pretty her hair was, offering her his manly protection. Malden put a stop to that right away.

The next night they found a holdfast on the grounds of an abandoned manor. Not much to it, just four stone walls and a locked door, but it offered more safety than the thatch-roofed cottages they’d seen along the way. A score or so of women from the local villages had sealed themselves inside. They wouldn’t open up for Malden or his crew, but they agreed to take Gerta in once all the men had gone away. Cythera stayed with Gerta to make sure the women kept their promise, then rejoined Malden and his crew as they headed south, away from the road.

Getting off the highway slowed them down considerably, but they spent all that day without seeing another living soul. They crossed through stubbled fields turning into patches of mud, well out of sight of any village or manor house.

Cythera stopped, once, to pick up a stray shaft of wheat that had been trampled into an irrigation ditch. “We won’t starve this winter, at least,” she said.

Malden pursed his lips. “How’s that?”

Cythera sighed and dropped the stem to flutter on the air. “The wheat’s all been taken in, probably milled by now, too. It’s harvest time. If this war had begun in mid-summer, and all the farmers pulled away from their labor, the wheat would have been left to rot on the ground.” She shook her head dolefully. “I’ve read of wars in the north where more men died of starvation and disease than ever could have been slain by steel. I worry what will come in the spring, if this war drags on—there will be no one here to plow or plant.”

Malden had never really thought about where the food he ate came from. Grain appeared at the gates of Ness twice a year, and was somehow turned into bread. Livestock were driven through the streets to great slaughterhouses, and steaks and cuts came out to be sold in the shops of butchers on market days. It all went on without his knowledge or labor, and so he’d assumed it always would continue the same way.

He had gone hungry many times, of course, but only for lack of coin—not because there was no food to be had. The idea of reversing that situation, of having plenty of coin but no grain to spend it on, made him feel a bit queasy. He could hardly raise his own food—that was a skill he’d never learned, nor wanted to. How many citizens of the Free City had the secret of it? How many of them would starve before they learned how it was done?

“That’s a problem for a future worry,” he told Cythera, because he didn’t like to think on what Ness would be like if there was no food in it. “Right now we need to make our rendezvous. We’re already a day late.”

They made camp that night in a deserted barn. They dared make no fire, but the walls kept some of the wind out. Malden made sure Cythera was awake enough to stand guard—he would never leave her sleeping alone with Velmont and his thieves around. Near midnight he slipped back out into the cold.

A mile away, at a place where two roads crossed, stood an ancient gallows. It had been built on the site of an old and desecrated shrine of the bloodgod. Once the Lady’s church had taken over this land, it had been turned into a place of punishment.

Normally no thief in his right—if superstitious—mind would get within a half mile of the place. Even Malden found it nigh unbearable to listen to the crosstree creak above his head. Hanging was the penalty for thievery, and he had lived his whole life expecting to end suspended from such a beam. In that flat land, however, it was the most convenient landmark available. Malden lit a single candle that guttered in the night breeze, and sat down to wait.

Nothing moved in the cloud shadows. Nothing stirred. He heard an owl hoot from miles away, a low, mournful sound almost lost under the noise of his own breathing.

He waited.

He took the scrap of parchment out of his tunic and unfolded it against his leg. In the light of the candle he could just make out the words, and the symbol at the bottom of the page—a kind of signature.

“What’s that, lad?” Slag asked, stepping into the light.

Slag stood no more than four feet tall. He was as thin as a rail, and as pale as moonlight on snow. His dark beard stuck out in wild profusion and his keen eyes glimmered in the candlelight, but in the dark his clothing made him nearly invisible so his face seemed to float in the light. He might have been a specter of vengeance, bound to the place where he’d been killed.

For Malden, he was a sight for sore eyes.

The thief rushed to his old friend and embraced him warmly. He hadn’t seen the dwarf since they split up outside the ruins of the Vincularium. Not since before he’d gone to Helstrow.

“A love letter from your leman?” Slag asked, tapping the parchment.

“Not exactly,” Malden said, hurriedly folding it up again.

“I thought not. I saw you pull it off of Prestwicke’s body, way back,” Slag said. “I’ve been wondering about it since.”

Malden shook his head. He wouldn’t speak of the parchment, not yet. Not until he had a proper measure of Slag’s loyalties. “How are the elves?” he asked, instead.

“Squared away, neat as nails in a fucking drawer,” Slag told him. “I took ’em up to the Green Barrens, where at least they’ll have trees for company, and bade ’em to be fruitful but keep their heads down. The desolation of that place, and their natural mistrustfulness, will make sure the humans never know they’re there.” The dwarf sighed deeply. “Though they threatened to follow after me, and would not sit still, not ’til I promised Aethil I’d come back for her. She’s still besotted with me.”

Malden laughed, though he kept his voice low. “Maybe she just likes short men.” Aethil, the queen of the elves, had been given a powerful love potion that would make her give her heart to the first man she saw. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that had been Slag. According to Cythera—who knew about such things—the effects were permanent.

The fact that the elves and the dwarves were bitter ancestral enemies had made no difference. The last time Malden had seen them together, Aethil was still under the impression that Slag was just a very short human.

“But enough of my love life,” Slag said. “Tell me about the paper. Have we got fucking secrets between us now?”

Malden glanced down at the creased parchment in his hand. He’d hoped to distract Slag, but dwarves had keen and penetrating minds and he knew Slag wouldn’t give up until he’d learned the truth. “It’s a contract for an execution. Mine. It just describes me, gives information on my favorite haunts in Ness. There’s no price named, but considering that Prestwicke crossed an entire kingdom to fulfill it, I can assume the bounty was high.”

“Is it signed?” Slag asked.

Malden frowned as he unfolded the parchment. “In a fashion,” he said. He held the paper where Slag could see it. At the bottom of the page was a crude sketch of a heart, transfixed by a key.

Slag’s eyes went wide.

“The boss sent an assassin after you?” Slag asked.

Malden watched the dwarf’s eyes. Slag was a fellow employee of Cutbill. Malden wasn’t sure if he’d made the right decision showing Cutbill’s mark to the dwarf.

“But for fuck’s sake, why? You’re one of his best earners.”

“Maybe that’s reason enough. Maybe he was worried I was too good at my job, and that made me a threat.”

“To Cutbill? Hardly. I’m sorry, lad, but you’re no kind of match for that villainous bastard.” Slag pulled at his beard. “I can’t figure this at all.”

“I was never supposed to see this. I was just supposed to die. Cutbill doesn’t know I have it.”

“What’ll you do now that you know?” the dwarf asked, quite carefully. “If you plan to move against him you’d better do it quick. He’s smarter than you. If he gets any idea you’re coming for him it’ll be over before you can fucking blink.”

Malden stood up slowly. If Slag decided that his allegiance to Cutbill was worth fighting over, this conversation could end very badly. “Slag, I need to know—”

The dwarf waved away his concerns with one hand. “Cutbill’s my employer. You’re my friend. Dwarves count those things different. I don’t know how humans rate them.”

Malden nodded carefully. It was a kind of reassurance, and it would have to do. He could never hurt Slag, he knew that much. They’d been through too much together.

“You’re still headed to Ness?” Slag asked.

Malden filled him in quickly on the barbarian invasion. Slag had already known some of the information.

“Aye, sounds like Ness is the safest place in the storm of shit. When we get there, I don’t want to know what you have planned,” Slag told Malden. “Maybe you’re not going to do anything. Just play along like you never saw that parchment. Maybe you’re going to forget the whole fucking thing. That would be pretty smart. Smarter than most humans I’ve known. Maybe you’re going to try for something else. Don’t tell me, and I can’t tell anyone else, alright?”