Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (20 page)

It was after the last turning that the sheer
peculiarity of the situation finally dawned on him.  Nearly every time he
rounded a corner, he would see the red coat vanishing down an alley or side
street.  Whether the new course was a building away or over a hundred yards, no
matter how quickly he’d run from the last, it was always the same.  A brief
flapping to signal where the man had gone.

Seeing the stranger enter a tavern brought Marik up
short.  Only then did it occur to him that it might be a trap.  Anyone who
moved as the stranger did could have easily left him kneeling in the road,
clutching a burning stitch in his side from the attempt to keep apace.

His gaze darted in every direction, pealing apart the
shadows until he belatedly reinstated his magesight.  With the stranger out of
view, he could use it to find any thugs lurking in the darkness without feeling
his brain cooking.

After guaranteeing no toughs were waiting for him, or
him specifically out of the many targets of opportunity traversing the dark
streets, he slowly approached the tavern.

On the face, it gave the impression of a business that
enjoyed greater prosperity than its neighbors.  It loomed larger than the rest
on the street, with the damage of time repaired.  Or showed attempts at making
such repairs, anyway.  Fresh paint must have been applied at least once since
the first because it lacked the flaking skin disease evident on the others. 
Over its door hung a signboard, the only building within view that displayed
such.

Marik read the inn’s name, finding it to be The
Queen’s Head.  Under the words, as he had found customary in Thoenar, rested a
black silhouette.  It resembled a female head with a hint of shoulder, atop
which perched an equally black crown.  He could see none of the rippling locks
that symbolized Ulecia.  This inn must either be old, or simply chose the name
at random, the woman representing no ruler in particular.  Whichever the case,
he debated the wisdom of entering a strange place while pursuing a likely
enemy.

A further reason for caution lay simply in the noise
he could hear.  One could tell a lot about a tavern before entering it simply
by listening, he’d learned over the course of his travels.  Most emitted the
loud, undistinguished chatter of a confined gathering, everyone talking to be
heard over each other.  Those were the taverns were a man could sit at a table
or the counter without much cause for concern.  Other taverns were quieter. 
That could either mean it had pretensions of an upper-class station, where loud
behavior was considered more suitable to the common classes.  Or it could mean
the place swam with less savory types who wished to avoid notice, who in turn
scrutinized every man who walked through the door, evaluating their potential
as targets.

The Swan’s Down Inn, where last he had stayed in
Thoenar, had been a quieter one.  This owed mostly to the clientele who were
generally local merchants and well-to-do types.  They tended to keep their
conversations muted while they discussed how the business day had run, but
during the height of the dining candlemark the place could resemble a flock of
annoyed geese squabbling with all the formidable
honking
they could
muster.

What gave him pause was the quality of the noise he
overheard from The Queen’s Head.  It sounded louder than any tavern he’d ever
been in, with the possible exception of the gaming room in The Randy Unicorn. 
Oddly, threaded through the wild shouting came sounds he took for barking.  He
could not remember a single tavern that had sounded like this.

The need to find answers pushed him to the door.  He
meant to crack it open, to peer inside first.  A hand from behind him reached
past to haul it fully open.  Marik caught a glare from a fellow dressed in
finer clothing than he expected to see in the slums.  With no help for it,
Marik followed the fellow inside.

He felt his ears twitching with the volume of noise
battering around inside them.  His eyes confirmed the presence of nearly as
many dogs as men near the entrance.  The clusters close by revealed other
well-dressed men rubbing shoulders with seedier types, none apparently giving a
care for their social stations.  To judge from their demeanor, this tavern must
be some sort of world apart, where the interior operated by a completely
different set of rules than life outside.

The well-to-do who’d passed him on the way in wove
through the crowd.  Marik started to move as well when a man standing beside
the door, whom he had taken for simply another customer shoved to one side by
the press, held a hand firmly to Marik’s chest and blocked the way.

“Heyy’ap fellow!  Where’s your coin?”  He held a pouch
in his right hand, giving it a shake to illustrate the point.  Marik heard
nothing but from the way dimples moved across the sides, he guessed it must be
filled with coins.

“What coin?” he hollered back.

“Oh.  First time in the Head, is it?  Well, watch or
play, it’s five C to come in after dark.”

The need to hurry urged Marik on.  Without arguing, he
quickly dug a five-copper coin from his purse.  He flipped it into the
doorman’s pouch and craned his neck to see over the crowd.

Marik saw not a thread of red clothing, nor the
equally red hair that filled the stranger’s head in a mockery of fire.  The
ceiling was low, the entire common room dingy and cheap, if far larger than
normal.  Tables were scattered around yet men stood in any free space
available, completely filling the room.  Whatever space was free of men was
instead filled with dogs.

Dogs were tied to table legs.  Others were cradled in
their owner’s arms.  There were bulldogs, terriers of different breeds, as well
as dogs of no species Marik could put name to.  The closest table had seven men
in a tight knot beside it.  One fellow in coarse clothing bent down to grab a
dog by its short stubby tail and collar, lifting it up to deposit on the round
surface.  A noble with silver trim running around his cuffs pried open the
dog’s jaws to examine the teeth, while a commoner who might have been a crafter
to judge from his apron felt the hindquarters.

Marik could hardly fail to notice how scarred the
canine’s face and body were.

From the low rafters hung dog collars with steel studs
on leather leashes.  The portions of wall he could see displayed small
portraits.  Each were of dogs.  Two or three were renderings to make the
subjects appear noble.  Most of the others showed the canines with teeth bared
in a snarl.  None were larger than eight inches.  From the look, there must be
no less than fifteen lining the doorframe.

Marik pushed deeper into the throng.  The people
ignored him, so caught up were they in their private doings.  Other dogs were
undergoing examination.  He overheard snatches of questions that made little
sense to the mercenary.  At first he assumed the talk of badgers must be the
result of so much noise distorting the words, until two other groups seemed to
be arguing the same subject.

The countertop bar ran across the end of the common
room opposite the entrance.  He saw it due to a gap in the crowd.  What might
cause such an open space he could not see until he pushed through four men,
three of whom erupted in braying laughter when the last delivered a
punch-line.  “ ‘E said, ‘Catch a fart and paint it blue’, and
‘e
went on
to heaven!”

What caused the void ended up being a circular
construction on the floor.  It was a ring six feet wide, with walls of
slat-board four feet tall.  The ground inside the circle had been painted over
in whitewash.

He could see no purpose for it, only saw several men
nearby gazed at the construction fondly while pointing into it, still
conversing with those close to them.  Across the far slat-board wall there was
space enough for perhaps two men to stand between it and the bar.

Marik still had found no sign of the red stranger. 
The space nearest the bar proved less congested.  He moved toward it.  Drawing
closer, he saw that the counter made a large L shape, stools bolted to the
wooden floor all around it.  Twenty stools lined the long side while only four
were situated on the shorter end to the left.

He was fiercely fixated on finding the ruby-eyed man. 
Marik’s gaze slid right past the bar’s short end at first.  Only after several
moments, when his brain realized that something had definitely been odd, did he
focus on it.

A lone man sat half-huddled on the stool closest to
the wall.  The lack of other people near him looked bizarre in a common room so
absurdly packed as this one.  That might have been for any number of reasons,
except it probably stemmed from the frighteningly massive sword leaning against
the bar beside the loan wolf.

And nothing else but a wolf could he be.  A child
could see this man and know at once that his teeth had been sharpened through
war and fire, honed with steel and flame.  Marik, amazed, hardly recognizing
him, stared at the exhausted form of Rail Drakkson.

Dellen brushed past the two peacekeepers flanking the
inn’s foyer, casting a spurious glance at them when one made a derogatory
snort.  What made them think they were so high and mighty?  They worked the
same pissy job he did, and he could scrunch them both into wads before punting
them over the building to boot.  He had six inches on the larger one, easy.

That toerag Tallior shot him a bitter look once they
moved further into the room.  Dellen sneered back to show the man that his
opinion was Toad Juice as far as he was concerned.  Though, looking around the
place, he guessed it wasn’t a serving room that poured leftover dregs from
tankards at the end of the night into a common barrel, creating the infamous
mixture drunk only by the desperate, the nearly coinless and the daring.

“Can you sit for five minutes without starting a brawl
this time?” Tallior asked nastily.  “This isn’t the type of roughneck tavern
you were born and raised in.”

His fingers clenched meaningfully on his carved club’s
handle.  Dellen grunted.  “ ‘S cleaner, anyway.”

Dellen scowled when an older man, a
better-than-everyone-else type if he’d ever seen one, approached from a corner
by the street.  No one else had shared his table under the window.

The gray-haired old fart ignored him completely,
speaking to Tallior.  “Good.  This makes the fourth night I have dined here.”

Tallior renewed his scathing glare.  “We weren’t able
to travel as fast as I’d expected.”

“Don’t ya try and pin that on me!” Dellen barked
back.  “I didn’t see ya trying to help none back there.  Who’s this fella
anyhow?”

A quick, unspoken thought passed between Tallior and
the moldy crust in his silk nickers.  “I expect there is a long story
behind…this.”  The old man nodded at Dellen.

“You have to take what you can find,” Tallior replied,
making no effort to whisper the words.  “It’s not that he and his friends were
the best of the lot.  It’s that they were the only lots to draw.”

“It was ya fancy ideas what screwed it all to the
hells,” Dellen snapped.  “Don’t be blaming Beld for nothing!  Ya the big man
with all the metal, then.  The one we keep hearing about?”

Both men treated his words as if he had never spoken. 
The old fart said, “Times are changing.  Perhaps we are not so desperate as to
be shackled hand and foot in this matter.”

Dellen felt his knuckles twitching.  A scrawny,
dried-up twig like him ought to know better than to brush off a man
his
size!  Before any further words were uttered, a clean-shaven snot-nose with a
white apron tied around his waist sauntered over.

“Good evening, sirs.  Might I fetch you a drink, or
are you interested in dinner?  Our kitchen has several special dishes available
tonight.”

“Tell Wysmin I have need of a private room tonight
after all,” the old man ordered.  After a jaundiced eye at Dellen, he added,
“And bring this…fellow whatever he would like while he waits.  Add it to my
bill.”

They floated away toward the back.  Dellen, grumbling,
dropped into the chair pulled out from the corner table, which creaked
alarmingly.  Outside he could see numerous sorts traipsing along the streets of
Thoenar’s Second Ring.  Enough damned lamps had been driven into the ground to
light up the city like festival night.  No wonder the women didn’t have the
sense to go home after dark.  And what limp-wristed men running this place let
their women wander around in the dark like whores, anyway?

The snot-nose came back to ask what Dellen ‘wished to
partake of’.  Dellen looked suspiciously at the white apron.  No question.  He
was a bum-puncher all right.  This city must be full of them.  That explained
why every woman who walked past the window had plastered on thicker makeup than
Marina did on her evenings to serve the men who came to Gloria’s Tavern.  No
one went
there
for a meal, and most of the ale served wound up in the
Toad Juice barrel for the local lushes next morning.

Dellen paused just to make the pervert wait.  He knew
this place rarely ever served real men.  Not a tankard in sight.  Artsy little
fluted glasses on crystal stems were filled with wine.  Red in most cases,
except for the few looking like piss.  The men sitting around the tables were
dressed in the kind of clothing that a smudge of honest dirt would ruin, like
the geezer Tallior had slunk away with.

When the aproned snot looked ready to wait until
winter without discomfort, Dellen finally grunted a demand for a tankard filled
with ale and a plate of whatever was most expensive at the moment.  As an
afterthought, he shouted after the brat an order to bring a pitcher as well.

May as well soak the situation for whatever he could. 
After all, Tallior had yanked him away from his paying job to ride halfway
across the flaming kingdom after he’d gotten a letter from his boss.  Never
once bothered to say what burr was stuck in his ass, neither.

Dellen snatched the ale from the snot’s hand, draining
half in the first deep gulp.  The pitcher rested in the table’s center for only
brief moments before he tilted it over the tankard’s rim.  He could see that
everyone else in the room refused to look into his corner.  Well, screw the lot
of them, anyhow.  They weren’t anything special to look at, whatever they liked
to believe.

A musician played a violin beside the hearth.  The
squeals made Dellen’s scalp twitch.  It was as if the man were trying to win a
bet to see how slowly he could drag that stick across the strings.  Less than a
minute would force him to cough up.  Noise, not music, and no fit sound for a
man to listen to while he drank.  At least he kept from adding his own
caterwauling to the racket.

He contemplated shouting at the bastard to shut up. 
The squalling kept interrupting his thoughts, making it blasted near impossible
to think straight.  Tallior and his bossman must be talking about the job to
off the flaming mage along with his friends.  Whatever they decided, it seemed
clear they were thinking of cutting his crew out.  Dellen had a heavy score to
settle with the magiker…but more to the point, he needed to protect Beld’s
interests.  Beld would be furious if Tallior cut them loose right before the
mage got what was coming to him.

All the worse would it be for Dellen if Beld thought he
had screwed the deal over by not keeping them in the game.  Aside from paying
back the mage, Beld had started seeing a profit in dealing with Tallior.  Or
dealing with Tallior’s purse strings, anyhow.

The food that arrived came on a platter capable of feeding
four.  In the center were pork chops still on the bone.  Eight chops had been
laid in a circle, the bones sticking up where they overlapped the meat on the
next.  They drowned under a sea of thick brown gravy.  Forming a restraining
wall around the platter’s rim were mashed potatoes squeezed into a wavy
pattern.  In the very center rested a baked onion that had been battered and
opened like a blossoming flower.

Dellen waited patiently until the snot-nose finished
setting a clean plate before him and had positioned the silverware.  Once he
seemed done fooling around, Dellen thrust the empty pitcher into the gut behind
the apron, demanding a refill.  He grabbed a chop by its bone when the
bum-puncher left, setting to gnawing off the flesh with his head propped on one
hand, glaring at the door through which Tallior had left.

By the time those two returned, Dellen was scraping
the tail end of his sixth chop through the gravy to coat the meat with a fresh
layer.  He wiped a trail of brown off his chin with his fingers, gifting them
with the worst expression he could muster while flicking the mess away onto the
tablecloth.

“So whatcha been talking about in there?  Got anything
to say yet?”

The bossman looked disgusted.  Without a single
comment, he walked to the door and collected a cloak that had to be a
decoration rather than any protection against the night.  He pulled a hat down
over his ears and departed.

“I like that!”

Tallior lifted the silver fork.  “Have you ever seen
one of these before?”

“Yeah.  They sell for a nice bit of metal in the right
shops.”

With a flick, Tallior sent the fork spinning so it
stabbed into the mashed potatoes an inch from his knuckles, staying upright for
a second before gradually tilting to one side.  “Let’s go,” Tallior hissed. 
“We have work to do.”

“Work?” Dellen exclaimed, followed by a belch loud
enough to be heard on the next street.  He patted his stomach.  “Ale here’s
pretty rich.”

“Stand up!”  Tallior tugged hard on his arm, his words
exiting in a sibilant growl.  He continued until Dellen finally rose.

When the toerag glanced around for the snot-nose,
Dellen dropped the bone back onto the platter.  He debated, then lifted the
onion, wiping the bottom off along the tablecloth to clear away the gravy.  His
stomach felt full but no sense in leaving the onion behind when it could fit
into his oversized pocket.

Tallior led the way on the street, ignoring him as
best he could.  Dellen felt his balance swaying slightly.  He could not
remember if he’d finished the third ale pitcher or not.  All he knew was that
he had long since grown tired of Tallior’s idiocy.

Planting his feet solidly in the walking path, he
leaned with one hand against a lamp’s post.  “Hey!  Ya!  I’m a-staying right
here until ya tell me what in the bloody moon is on fire.”

“Do you know where your Thirteenth Squad was sent in
mid-winter?”

“Tullainia.  Beld told ya that.  Or did ya plumb
forget all about it?”  He started a fresh sneer, but stopped when he felt the
ale within him rallying for an escape attempt.

“Where on the Tullainian border?”  Exasperation laced
Tallior’s harsh demand.

“How should I know?  Ya heard him ya’self.  They was
going to split up along the road.  What’s it matter?”

“It matters because there are reports that several
prisoner groups are being escorted to the capitol, mostly by elements of your
band.”

“So ya saying Beld might be coming?  Hang on,” he
stated with a new belch.  “Gotta make room.”  He began fumbling with his
breeches’ tie.

“For the love of all the gods, act like a civilized man!”

“I’m civilized!  There’s some bushes, see?”

Tallior rubbed his temples with his fingertips while
Dellen waded into the decorative shrubbery.  The idiots running this city might
be dumber than horseshoes, but at least they’d been smart enough to put the
bushes near the taverns where they belonged.

“When’s Beld getting here?  Ah, there we go!”

“As soon as the king declares all the street pavers to
be replaced with jellied custards, for all I care!  You can stay in the room
tomorrow.”

“I ain’t sitting around, twiddling my fingers and
pulling my dingus!  Fella like ya can’t be trusted to do it right.  Doing what,
anyhow?”

“It’s against my better judgment to tell you, but
there have been rumors circling around the court about that mage for quite
awhile.  Sounds like he came in a few days ago, escorting one of those prisoner
groups.  I’m not sure yet why, but the indications are that he will be staying
for awhile.”

“He’s in Thoenar?  That ratty bastard?  How did ya
know that all the way from Cedars?”

“I told you rumors had been flying.  If we had made
proper time, we would have arrived before him!”

“Proper time?  I like that.  In a saddle from before
bleeding dawn till halfway after dark.  I’m about rubbed raw!”  He hitched his
breeches up, fumbling with the strings while he stepped back into the street.

“I am going to spend tomorrow learning what I can
about what is going on.  You’ll stay in the room.”

“Like the hells!”

“
Exactly
like the burning hells!” Tallior spat
back.  “After I collect as much information as I can,
then
I’ll decide
if you and your clown friends can be of any use in taking him down.  The only
reason I brought you was in case I turned out lucky enough to have Beld’s unit
close at hand also.  Although whether it would be good luck or bad is highly
suspect.”

Dellen’s fist clenched, his other keeping his stubborn
breeches from plummeting to his ankles.  “Ya gotta start watching ya mouth! 
Remember what Beld said!”

“If the mage isn’t locked away inside your mercenary
basetown, I don’t give a rat’s hindquarters what Beld
ever
said!  These
are
my
hunting grounds.  The day I can’t win here is the day I finally
meet my better.”  Tallior resumed walking without a care for whether Dellen
followed or not.

The failed mercenary-applicant cum bouncer half-hopped
along until his fingers finally negotiated a non-aggression pact with his
breeches’ tie.  He stumbled after Tallior, noting the man had taken a firmer
grip on his club at Dellen’s aggression and not yet loosened it.

All in all, he felt as if there were a number of
questions that needed to be asked.  His fuddled brain snatched at them.  Each
darted away with fishlike agility.