A Discourse in Steel (14 page)

“I concur,” Nix said hurriedly. “That way. But first…”

“Now you with the waiting?”

Nix dug into his satchel, found two of the smoke balls and one of the boomsparks, a matchstick, and lit all three. The fuses sizzled and Nix tossed all three down the hall in the direction of the voices.

“Come on,” Egil said, pulling at his arm.

“Wait, wait.”

In a moment the smoke balls boomed and filled the corridor with thick green smoke, and the boomspark went off, shrieking and shooting colored sparks in all directions. A steady stream of curses and shouts of alarm bounced off the walls.

“Come now!” Nix said, grinning. “That was worth seeing, no?”

“It was,” Egil conceded. “But now
move.
”

And move they did, pelting down corridors lit by hanging lanterns.

“We need to get up into the guildhouse itself,” Egil said, looking back for pursuers. “Stairs are this way.”

From ahead came shouts and the sound of men running.

“Getting interesting now,” Nix said, and tightened his grip on his weapons.

He and Egil didn't so much as slow. Moving at a fast jog, they came around a corner and found themselves face-to-face with three guildsmen. Nix had time only to register the look of surprise on their faces, the glint of steel in their fists, before Egil shouldered into the first, driving him up against the wall. The priest took the man's face in his huge hand and slammed his head into the stone. Eyes rolled and he fell.

Meanwhile Nix slapped aside a clumsy, surprised stab from a short, thin guildsman, then split his skull with a downward chop of his hand axe. The axe stuck in the skull like it had found a warm home and while Nix tried to pull it free the third man, shouting for aid, lunged at Nix, blade stabbing for his gut.

Cursing, Nix left his axe in the skull and bounded back, but he was too slow and the blade caught his stomach, sending a few mail links chiming to the floor. The man followed up quickly and stabbed at Nix's chest.

Nix backed into the wall hard and managed a sloppy parry with his falchion and the short sword rang on the stone of the wall. Nix loosed a kick into the man's balls and he went wide-eyed, purple-faced, and down on his knees. Nix drove his falchion through the man's face and out the back of his head, sending teeth to the floor to mingle with the chain links.

“All right?” Egil said to him.

“Fine, though we owe Veraal,” Nix said, fingering the gap in his mail shirt.

More voices and shouting from behind them. Nix rocked his axe from the skull of the other dead guildsman.

“Let's live long enough to pay the debt, eh?” Egil said.

“Is that a plan?” Nix asked. “I think we may have a plan at last.”

Gore spattered the priest's face and thick, hairy arms. “Every guildsman in this house is going to come down on us soon. We can leave thirty on the ground behind us but it won't matter if one of them isn't the Upright Man.”

“Let's get moving, then,” Nix said, and shoved his big friend forward.

Doors dotted the corridors at intervals. Nix kept a wary eye on them, waiting for them to open and puke up some guildsmen, but they stayed closed. When one did finally open to Nix's left, Nix was ready. The guildsman who stood in it had a question on his face. For an answer Nix drew a dagger from his belt and drove through the underside of the man's jaw, up into the brain case. The man fell and Nix left the blade in its bloody home. Daggers he could spare, just not his axe.

Another door opened, this one to their right, and a skinny, brown-haired boy of maybe fifteen winters stood there, mouth agape. Nix stopped the downstroke of his axe a finger's width from the top of the boy's head. The boy stood there in stunned silence, eyes wide, as rooted to the ground as a tree. He didn't even wear a blade.

“Shite,” Nix said, and dropped his axe to his side.

Shouts and the sound of running men erupted behind them. The boy's eyes darted back and forth between Egil and Nix and the sounds of their pursuers.

“Don't kill me,” the boy said.

Egil growled and grabbed him by his tunic. With one hand he lifted him from his feet and pulled him close. “How old are you?”

The shouts from behind drew closer.

“Egil…” Nix said.

“Thirteen winters…sir,” the boy said.

A urine stain darkened the front of the boy's trousers.

Egil saw it, glanced at Nix, back at the boy, and tossed him back into the room. The boy landed on his arse, face pale.

“Don't open this door again,” Egil commanded.

“N-n-never?” the boy said.

Nix rolled his eyes. “No, not never, boy. Just stay out of the way, yeah?”

With that, he closed the door. The shouts from behind faded some. Their pursuers must have taken a wrong turn.

Nix glanced at Egil and the reality of the situation settled on him. Blood spattered both of them, wet weapons hung from their fists, a dozen dead men lay behind them, and a terrified boy trembled on the other side of the door.

“Not half as fun as robbing tombs, is it?” he asked.

“No,” Egil said. The priest's expression fell but only for a moment before hardening. “But everybody in the inn would've burned. Rose. Mere. Kiir. Lis. Tesha. And every one of the guildsmen in this house would've happily struck the matchstick. And they would've come at us again, even if we hadn't come at them. Let's remember that.”

Nix knew Egil was right. Some discussions were best had with edged steel.

“We tossed in our ante,” he said. “Let's play out the hand.”

The voices from behind grew louder again. The pursuers must have realized their mistake.

Egil turned to go but Nix grabbed him by the arm. “Wait.”

Egil harrumphed. “Again with the waiting.”

Nix threw open the door to the room with the boy. The frightened youth hadn't moved. He still sat on his arse in the center of the room. Seeing Nix, he backed off crabwise, his expression fearful.

“Where's the Upright Man, boy? Quick now.”

“The who?”

“I won't ask again.”

“You mean Channis? He's on the first floor, I think. In the grand room. A meeting, I heard.”

“You know where the grand room is?” Nix asked Egil over his shoulder.

“Aye.”

“Don't come out and don't tell anyone what you told us,” Nix said. “They'll kill you if you do. And we'll kill you if they don't.”

The boy paled and Nix closed the door.

“I think he took my point.”

“Aye,” Egil said.

Many voices sounded from behind them, the tread of many boots, a dozen or more. The guildsmen had gathered into a larger group.

“Tell me the grand room isn't that way,” Nix said, nodding at the noise.

“Other way,” Egil said. “Come on.”

With Egil leading, they sprinted through lantern-lit, door-lined halls, through a dining hall, an armory, training rooms, what looked like quarters for the guildsmen, the occasional shrine to Aster. Anytime they passed or ran through the latter, Nix made sure to throw the god an obscene gesture.

“Where is everyone?” Egil said.

“There aren't enough behind us?”

“I'd think there'd be a lot more men than this. Odd, is what I'm saying.”

“Something to do with that meeting the boy mentioned, maybe,” Nix observed.

“Here,” Egil said, and turned down a long hall with no doors. Halfway down, Egil's pace slowed. Nix disliked the way the priest's brow furrowed.

“What?” Nix asked.

The priest pursed his lips, stopped. He looked forward, back the way they'd come. “I think we're going the wrong way.”

“The wrong way? Shite, Egil, not a lot of room for error here.”

The priest nodded. “No, no, this is right. Come on. Keep going.”

The hallway terminated in a large archway, the thick wooden door thrown open. They rushed through and found themselves in a large, roughly circular chamber. No door led out. Torches hung in sconces and cast flickering light on various hooks, tongs, pokers, and blades that hung from mounts on the wall. A chain dangled from a ceiling-mounted winch, a leather loop tied to one end of the chain. A thick wooden table, like a butcher's block, sat in the center of the table, stained brown with blood, ghosts of pain hovering in the air around it.

For a moment, the two of them stood there in silence.

“The fak?” Nix finally said.

Egil ran his hand over Ebenor's eye. “Must be for discipline, punishment, interrogation, and whatever else. These slubbers are zealots. Anyway, this
is
the wrong way. We need to go back.”

“Shite,” Nix said. “We best hurry—”

A huge form barreled out of the dark corner to their left. The man, taller and broader than Egil, but more fat than muscle, plowed through Nix and knocked him flat, driving the air from his lungs. The man continued right through, bulled into Egil, and drove him up against the wall. Taken by surprise, Egil dropped his hammers and they hit the floor with a clang.

A sweat-stained tunic, leather jack, and bloodstained pantaloons wrapped the mountain of the man. He punched Egil in the ribs and the back, the mail ringing under the impact, the blows coming fast, all while Nix lay on the ground, gasping.

Egil grunted under the onslaught, wincing with pain, but dropped an elbow on the man's spine. The man grunted but loosed another punch into Egil, another. Egil crouched to protect his side, tried to maneuver his feet to get off the wall, all while grabbing at the man's wrist.

The man landed another two punches in Egil's side, the sound heavy and meaty, before Egil finally got a grip on the wrist. At that point the man roared, spraying spit, and reared back and slammed Egil into the wall once, twice.

To Nix, the two men looked like vying titans. He rose to all fours, still unable to breathe. He tried to pull himself up, to help his friend, but his body would not uncurl until he could recover his breath.

Egil slammed another elbow into the man's back, another. The man barked with pain and Egil leaned over him, wrapped his arms around the man's fat midsection, and lifted him just enough to de-anchor him from the ground. He whirled the man around and slammed him sideways into the wall.

The man snarled through his thick beard and kneed at Egil's groin, but the priest slid his hips sideways and instead took the knee on the thigh and punched the man in the jaw, wobbling him.

Growling, Egil grabbed the man by his leather jack and slammed the top of his own head, Ebenor's eye, into the man's nose. His wide nose audibly broke and exploded in blood. The man's eyes rolled. He staggered and would have fallen but Egil held him up, bashed his head into the man's face a second time. Nix couldn't tell if the man was still conscious.

The priest swung the stunned man around and walked him to the center of the room. He grabbed the chain, fixed the leather loop around the man's throat, grabbed the other end of the chain, and hoisted. While the man gagged and kicked, Egil looped the chain around a leg of the table.

The man's tiny pig eyes widened to white; his mouth opened, his tongue lolled, but not even a gag emerged. His legs kicked once more, he shat himself, and it was over.

“Fakkin' torturer,” Egil said.

Nix stared at his huge friend. He could only imagine the bruising the punches would summon in Egil's side. Blood and snot, the dead man's, covered Ebenor's eye.

Egil touched his nose with his fingers, then looked at them, frowning. “Is my nose bleeding?”

Nix had not yet recovered his breath and could only shake his head.

“You all right?” Egil said. The priest stepped to his side and lifted him to his feet.

Nix nodded, his breath still coming hard as he struggled to refill his lungs. “Lost my breath is all. Are you all right?”

Egil looked at him in surprise. “Me? I'm fine.”

“Shite, Egil,” Nix said. He nodded at the hanged man. “Big, he was.”

Egil picked up his hammers. “Not so big. Come on. Back this way.”

They sped back down the hallway they'd come, concerned they'd get boxed into the corridor and have to fight their way out, but they reached the intersection without seeing any guildsmen. Shouts seemed to come from every direction, though. Without warning crossbow bolts hissed out of the darkness farther down the corridor and slammed into the wall.

“Shite,” Nix said, making himself small against the wall. He shouted down the hall. “That's not very sporting, you fakkers!”

“Come on!” Egil said.

Nix fell in behind him. “You sure you know where we're going? I mean, maybe there's some other big torturer fakker you need to stop and kill?”

“No, I think I'm good,” Egil said. “Now keep moving!”

The tread of boots fell in behind them as they pelted down a long corridor. Crossbow bolts whistled past them from time to time, each one summoning a curse from Nix. Two hit him square in the back and only Veraal's mail saved his life.

The corridor ended at a wide set of ascending stone stairs.

“This is it!” Egil said.

Without slowing they took the stairs two at time, harried from below by the sounds of their pursuers. A large, reinforced wooden door topped the stairs. Nix pushed down on the latch and breathed easy when he found it wasn't locked.

Crossbow bolts whistled out of the darkness behind and below them. Two thunked into the wood of the door and quivered there, another slammed into Nix's back, the mail shirt once more saving his life.

“Here!” called a voice from below. “They're over here! Going up!”

Nix shoved the door open and he and Egil piled through and slammed the door closed behind them. They surprised three guildsmen seated at a table, in the midst of a card game. Commons and a few terns lay piled on a table and each of the men held playing plaques.

“What's this now?” said one of the men, his narrow face and long hair reminding Nix of a wolf.

“A bit of a misunderstanding,” Nix began, but saw the truth of the situation reach the men as they took in Nix and Egil's bared weapons, the priest's blood-spattered arms and face and pate.

“Shite,” one of them said, and all three lurched to their feet, bumping the table, scattering coins.

“Yours for now,” Nix said to Egil.

Egil charged the three men and they answered with shouts and curses. Wood splintered, coins chimed to the floor. Nix looked around for a bar for the door, saw nothing.

“How do you slubbers have all these damned locks but not simple bars?”

He pulled the magic key from his satchel, hearing behind him the spill of a chair, the meaty thud of Egil's hammer against flesh, an abortive wail of pain, the crush of bone. A word in Mage's Tongue animated the key and it gave its demand.

“Give us some meat.”

“Meat, now? Fak.” He didn't bring any thrice-damned meat.

Another thud from behind him, a cry of pain abruptly cut short as Egil's hammer reaped another guildsman. The priest growled and more wood splintered. One of the men cursed and Nix imagined him backing up in a panic.

A jarring impact on the door knocked Nix away from it. It started to open. Nix cursed and threw his shoulder back into it, slamming it closed once more. Someone howled with pain on the other side. The door must have caught his fingers or hand. An idea struck Nix.

“I need one of those bodies, Egil!” Nix called, leaning into the door as the men on the other side pressed against it. “Hurry!”

A corpse flew in from behind, hit the door, and lay in a bloody heap beside Nix. The dead man's skull was concave from a blow of Egil's hammer. Nix shoved the key's bit into the dead man's cheek.

“Meat,” he said, and the key bit a chunk and chewed.

Another impact on the door, another, another, each one pushing the door open an increment. Nix fumbled with the key and nearly dropped it, his feet scrabbling on the floor with the effort to reclose the door.

“You fakkers are dead!” came a shout from the other side of the door.

“Egil!” Nix called. “Egil!”

The priest hit the door at a run and slammed it closed, eliciting curses from the other side. Nix shoved the key into the lock, felt it warm, and gave it a turn. Once it locked, he pulled out the key and shoved the blade of a punch dagger into the keyhole, hoping to foul the mechanism. He turned his back to the door and sagged to the floor. Egil did the same. The guildsmen on the other side continued to beat against the door, but they'd need a lot of time to get through the reinforced wooden slab.

“They have to have an axe somewhere,” Egil said.

“Aye,” said Nix. “Has to be another way up from the underground chambers, too. Even so, I'm going to say this hasn't gone half bad so far.”

“Agreed,” Egil said, grinning.

The gaming table had lost a leg in the combat and sat slanted on the floor. All of the chairs had been overturned. The other two guildsmen, their bodies broken by Egil's hammers, limbs at grotesque angles, lay on the floor among the scattered coins and playing plaques.

“You fouled their game,” Nix said. He picked up a plaque and showed it to Egil—the Knave of Blades.

“They weren't very good players,” the priest said.

“How many is that now?”

“Guildsmen?” Egil asked. “I lost count.”

The pounding on the door behind them ceased and the silence struck them as more ominous than the attempts to break through.

“Probably should move,” Egil said.

“Aye, that,” Nix said with a sigh. He stood. “To the grand room with us.”

Egil indicated which door they should take. Nix listened at it and heard nothing to alarm him. He opened it and peeked out.

It was like looking into another world. They emerged from the dank chambers beneath the guildhouse to a long carpeted hallway appointed with cushioned chairs and wall art.

“Seems these guildboys do all right,” Nix said, as they hustled down the hall.

Egil grunted.

They moved quickly through the guildhouse, Egil navigating its halls and stairs and rooms by way of the mental map Merelda had given him. They still saw no one, and it seemed that word of their attack had not yet reached beyond the underground chambers. But that was mere good fortune and they knew they had only a short time before someone raised a general alarm. They needed to get to the Upright Man before that.

“Place is a maze,” Nix said.

Egil nodded, his mind obviously on the layout in his head.

“It's also emptied out,” Nix said. The rooms and halls they walked were empty of guildsmen. “The Upright Man might not even be here.”

“He's here,” Egil said. “That boy said there was a meeting. That's where they all are.”