Authors: John Maddox Roberts
“That remains to be seen,” the ex-assassin muttered.
The sign above the door of the tavern consisted of a pair of crossed swords. The two men ducked beneath the low lintel and entered the dim, smoky interior. It was only midmorning, but the place was packed with armed warriors, most of them wearing oddments of mismatched armor, the sure sign of mercenaries who picked up their equipment as needed from the battlefields of many lands. They also tended to sell it off a piece at a time for living money between hires and buy more secondhand when a new war was in the offing. Ironwood’s dragon suit was a great rarity.
At one end of the long room, with his back to a hearth fire, sat a recruiting officer with a parchment scroll and a gold-nibbed pen. Beside him sat a city accountant with an iron-banded chest and an array of steel coins ranged before him in stacks of five. Lined up before the recruiter
were mercenaries standing in a patient file. As the name of each was registered, the accountant dropped five of the coins into a waiting palm.
“Five steels for sign-up pay,” Ironwood mused. “Not bad.”
“And it costs the Lord of Tarsis practically nothing,” said his companion. “How so?”
“The mercenaries will spend almost all of it here in Tarsis, mostly at the taverns. The lord will levy a special tax to pay for the war, with the greater part of it falling on the tavern keepers. Thus these coins will flow right back into his coffers.”
“True,” Ironwood said. “It is always at the final payout that they balk.” He got in line behind a man who wore a studded leather cuirass from which hung short sleeves of bronze mail. “Often as not, they stop paying around the middle of the campaign, then promise to settle up all the back pay when the fighting is over. That is when you must speak sharply to them.”
“It is unfortunate that persons of honor must sometimes deal with the ignoble.”
In time they reached the head of the line. The recruiting officer lost his bored look when he scanned Ironwood’s armor and weapons. “Well, here’s a likely prospect. Your friend doesn’t look like a soldier, though.”
“Nor am I,” said Nistur. “I am a poet.”
“He’s handier with a sword than he looks, I can assure you,” Ironwood told him.
“Well, I think I can trust your judgment,” said the recruiter. “You have the look of an officer.”
“I’ve been a captain of foot in a half-dozen armies.”
“Excellent! I recruit for Shagbar’s regiment, and he has need of experienced captains. The rank carries double pay. Your name?”
“Ironwood.”
The recruiter’s pen, fresh-dipped in green ink, paused above the parchment. “Ironwood? I have heard that name.”
“So has everyone else,” said a man wearing an old bronze breastplate and an even older iron helm. “He’s a cursed man, and no one will serve under him.” Others growled their assent.
“Is it true?” asked the recruiter. “Are you that Ironwood?”
“I am he, but I bear no curse. It is”
The recruiter held up a palm. “Peace, say no more. I have questions of morale to consider, you understand. I cannot hire one who will make the others distrustful and therefore less effective. It is nothing personal.”
“Aye, nothing personal,” IronwOod said. He whirled and stalked from the tavern, his face flaming.
“Well,” said Nistur, relieved, “so much for that. Now, why don’t we return to the ship and get warm, then make some traveling plans?”
“I know no trade save war,” Ironwood said. “It would be the same story elsewhere. Come, there are other recruiters.”
With an exasperated sigh, Nistur gathered his cloak around him and followed.
By late afternoon they had been turned down in a half-score of taverns. Ironwood’s reputation preceded him everywhere. Nobody could say for certain what was wrong with him, but no one wished to serve with an unlucky man. Finally, in desperation, they turned their steps down a filthy alleyway. At its end was a low, narrow doorway. Above the door was mounted a human skull with the hilt of a dagger protruding from one of its eye sockets.
“Is this wise?” Nistur demanded. “This morning all the regiments of repute rejected us. Each of those we have
tried this afternoon was less savory than the last. Surely whoever recruits in this noisome dive leads nothing but bandits and gallows-cheaters.”
“Wise?” said Ironwood in a voice of almost demented bitterness. “Who speaks of wisdom? I must have employment and surely, somewhere in this city, there must be a band desperate enough to hire one such as I!”
“My friend,” Nistur demurred, “I must admonish you that mutual desperation is not the best of bonds between warrior and chief.”
“We waste time,” said Ironwood. He had to turn slightly to get his wide shoulders through the narrow doorway.
The two entered the tavern, and Nistur saw, instantly, that the warriors within lived down to the very worst of his misgivings. Even the flickering, smoky light of the oil lamps was insufficient to disguise the brands, the cropped ears and tattooed faces whereby a score of lands distinguished their felons. On two or three he even descried the neck scars of unsuccessful hangings. Few had any armor to speak of, and their weapons consisted of little more than long daggers, notch-edged hatchets, and a few short swords. They looked none the less dangerous for their dearth of panoply.
The man at the recruiting table looked no less villainous than the rest, and only slightly better dressed and equipped. The clerk who sat beside him wore a glum expression, and the coins before him were stacked in threes. These two were not recruiting for an elite regiment.
The recruiter studied the newcomers with eyes reddened by smoke and drink. “Names?”
“Ironwood. I” He broke off short when the recruiter brayed with laughter. “What do you find amusing?” he said, his voice low and menacing.
“Amusing? It’s riotous! None can accuse me of being overly picky, but even I am not so hard up that I will sign
on a man with a reputation for bringing bad luck and disaster wherever he goes. Why, if I” The words were cut off with a strangled squawk as Ironwood’s fingers closed around the man’s burly, unwashed neck. With a strength surprising in one so recently laid low, he raised the man from his bench and thrust him against the stone wall, where the back of his head struck with a vicious smack.
“Hard up for men, are you?” Ironwood bellowed. “Do you think me so desperate that I’ll be insulted by a lowborn bandit corporal like you? What do they hire your band for, killing the wounded and going through their purses after better men have done the fighting?”
With an inarticulate snarl the recruiter drew his dagger and darted it toward Ironwood’s midriff, but Nistur drew the dirk from his right boot and applied a neat, precise cut to the inside of the man’s wrist. Instantly, the dagger dropped from his nerveless fingers.
“No need for a battle when an object lesson will do,” said the former assassin.
“Kill them!” the recruiter squealed, seeking with one hand to stanch the bleeding.
Eager to please their paymaster, the ragged mercenaries jumped toward the two unwanted intruders, both of whom had their weapons clear in an instant. Nistur punched one attacker in the face with the boss of his small shield and dealt a similar clout to the jaw of another, using the steel basket hilt of his sword. Ironwood was fending off two more with his own curved sword and dagger.
From the corner of his eye, Nistur saw the barkeep dashing out through the door. It was time to leave. Even with their relatively short weapons the quarters were too cramped to fight effectively.
“Let’s go!” Nistur said. “It is far too crowded here, and the watch will be coming shortly!” He drove off an attacker with a neat cut to the knee and made another fall
back by cracking him across the nose with the edge of his shield.
“Break for it!” Ironwood said. “I’ll cover your back.”
Nistur gave him no argument. The mercenary’s armor gave him a considerable advantage in such a rear-guard action, one that the ex-assassin wholly lacked. The instant he reached the door he darted into the alley outside and shouted, “Through!” A moment later Ironwood squeezed past, bleeding slightly from a nick high on one cheekbone.
“Time to be on our way,” Nistur said. They dashed up the alley as men began to boil from the tavern, only to come to a skidding halt as they reached the street beyond. Around the mouth of the alley stood a dozen men with a chest-high net stretched between them. Behind these stood others with polearms balanced at shoulder height.
“In the name of the Lord of Tarsis,” intoned a man wearing the gorget of an officer, “surrender your arms and come with us to the Hall of Justice!”
Ironwood snorted. “Since when did the city watch begin to show such zeal?”
“Since our lord laid the city under military discipline, foreigner. Surrender your arms now!”
Ironwood turned to Nistur. “He means he wants a bribe. Do you have any money? The price of a couple of ales will do.”
“My friend, I do not think”
“Bag them!” shouted the officer. Instantly, the watchmen threw their net over the two men. The pursuing mercenaries had faded back into the tavern by this time. Ironwood and Nistur struggled briefly, but within a few minutes they were trussed up, disarmed, and being dragged off to the well-peopled dungeons beneath the Hall of Justice.
“They are an amazingly inefficient force of men,” Nistur observed as he felt about his clothing, satisfying himself that he yet retained his small dagger and several other unobtrusive weapons disposed about his person. “It escapes me how they can find all one’s money while missing concealed weapons.”
“It’s because they want your money, and they don’t care if you kill yourself or your fellow prisoners,” Ironwood informed him. The two men sat on the straw-covered floor of a windowless cell that held a dozen more wretches, some of them showing the marks of severe beatings and torture of moderate severity. “The only reason they didn’t take my armor is that it would fit none of them. But they’ll find a buyer soon.”
“If you had not been so precipitate in seeking employment,” Nistur chided, “we would not be in this predicament.”
“I wish the two of you would shut up,” groaned one of their cellmates. “At least you were caught disturbing the peace. We did nothing at all.” The man held a handful of bloody straw pressed against the side of his mouth, as if to stanch bleeding.
“I daresay,” Nistur remarked. “I have never been in a jail that held any save innocent prisoners. Such is always the claim, anyway What was the nature of your incredible misfortune, my friend? Did a cutpurse drop that stolen money bag in your tunic, unbeknownst to you, getting rid of the evidence? “
“I once knew a man,” Ironwood said, “who’d been caught in an alley crouched over a corpse with one hand on the dagger and the other rummaging under the wretch’s clothes. He swore to the judge that he’d found the poor, unfortunate
fellow lying there. When the watch arrived he was just trying to pull out the dagger while feeling for a pulse.”
This raised a weak laugh from the prisoners in their cell and those nearby, but another of their cellmates said, “No, he speaks the truth. We were just minding our own business in the Tavern of the Bottomless Barrel when it closed up. Outside we were milling around when somebody yelled that there was a body on the base of a statue in front of the tavern. We were looking it over when the night watch arrived and held us there. Then who should show up but the Lord of Tarsis himself!”
“The lord and his police have been working us over ever since,” said another. “They want to know who we saw and what we heard. But nobody saw or heard anything of importance. That doesn’t make them happy, so each time we’re questioned they beat us a little harder. It’ll be the rack and hot irons before long.”
“Why so much fuss over a murder?” Nistur asked. “Was it someone important?”
“It was one of the nomads,” said the first speaker. “Someone said he was their ambassador.”
“No wonder the nomads are beating their drums,” Ironwood mused. “That’s the sort of thing that would put them in a bad temper. How was he killed?”
“Throat cut,” said a man in the clothing of a traveling merchant. “We heard some shouting, but that was all. Who notices such things? Next time I see a corpse in a foreign city, I’m getting away as fast as I can.”
“A wise course,” commended Nistur.
They passed time discussing their various sad fates until feeding time arrived and they were served thin gruel from a wooden bucket. By this time, all knew better than to complain. Sometime in what they judged to be late evening, they were distracted by the sounds of someone being hustled down the stone corridor toward the cells.
“No need for that! Keep your hands to yourself!” The voice seemed familiar to Nistur. “Forget it! You’ve already taken everything I had!”
Then the speaker was standing before the door to their cell. As Nistur had thought, it was Shellring. The guard behind her wore the black tunic and hood that was the uniform of the Hall of Justice jail staff.
“This is the one I want,” she said in a low voice as the turnkey unlocked the cuffs that bound her wrists. With her hands freed, she turned slightly away while the door was unlocked. When she turned back she pressed something into the guard’s palm. Then he pushed her through and locked the door behind her.
“Well,” she said, smiling brightly, “look who I’ve found!”
“You must not be a very good thief,” Ironwood said, “to be caught at your work twice in just a few days.”
“I was caught because I wanted to be!” she insisted.
“Perhaps this is an obvious question,” Nistur said, “but just why do you prefer incarceration in this dungeon to freedom?”
“I came to find you two, of course,” she said, taking a seat on the straw.
“I confess I am touched,” Nistur said. “But, why?”
“It wasn’t really my idea,” she confessed. “I heard that you’d been arrested and told Stunbog. He’s worried that you’ll die down here because you don’t know how the place works. He said I should look after you.”
“I’m grateful that the man treated mymy illness,” Ironwood grumbled, “but I didn’t ask him to take me on as a permanent charge. I need no nursemaid.”