In Treachery Forged (The Law of Swords) (23 page)

Tur’Ne grinned, catching the coins. “And thank you, my lady, for remembering I’m a Dwarf and need to be paid, whether I like you or not.” With that, he was ushering them out the door. “Now, I need to lock up, so you better get going. Time is money.”

“We’d better move quickly,” Maelgyn said as the door slammed behind them. “With luck and speed, we may be able to get out of sight before word spreads. Which way is your office, Doctor?”

“Please, just call me Wodtke,” she answered him. “And we’re not far at all. Follow me, if you want – though I have no idea how you think you’ll be able to protect me. There are just two of you, and if an angry mob wants my head I doubt you’ll be able to stop them.”

“Well, hopefully we won’t have to worry about that, but if we do get into a fight you might be surprised,” Maelgyn smirked, falling in behind her. “I’m wearing dragonhide armor and carrying a pair of good swords. Euleilla is a First Rate mage, and I’m a decent mage as well, if I do say so myself. Even you should be able to take care of yourself to some degree, since you are also a mage. A good sized force of well-prepared troops, equipped for combating mages, would be a serious threat. Against a mob of unarmed or lightly armed peasants, I’m more concerned about not hurting them too badly.”

“I’m not that good with combat magic,” the doctor warned him. “I can use magic to enhance my strength and hold down a single patient when I’m performing surgery, and I suppose I could apply that same technique for battle, but I’m not especially powerful – I was tested at a Fourth Rate mage some years back. I’m strong enough to do my job, and I do it pretty well, but…”

“You’ve improved some,” Euleilla said. “Low-level Third Rate, I would say. I haven’t felt anyone with stronger magic than yours around here besides Maelgyn and I... except perhaps that Nekoji mage I thought I sensed.”

“Still,” Wodtke continued, ignoring for a time Euleilla’s mention of a Nekoji mage. “I’m not likely to be much use if it comes down to a fight. And there are just two of you....”

“You’ve never seen a mage in combat, have you?” Maelgyn asked.

“No, but that’s beside the point,” Wodtke answered. “The Dwarves have been fighting mages for over two thousand years they’ve somehow managed to stay competitive. I may not know what it’s like to fight someone like you two, but they will... and they probably will expect it.”

Maelgyn shook his head. “Armies can compensate for a mage if they go into battle prepared. A simple set of lodestones in strategic places around your armor will deflect the worst of what your average mage can do. Bronze blades, archers with stone-tipped arrows, and cavalry charges which strike so fast nothing magical can be done to stop them are all effective anti-mage tactics – which is why we’ve come to respect the Dwarven wolf-riders even if they don’t stand up well against a real cavalry. Powerful mages, like Euleilla and myself, can generally do a lot more to stop such attacks... but we’d be on the defensive quite a bit and would have to rely on others to do the main bit of fighting for us. That’s how the dwarves can survive battles with mages.

“However, protective lodestones for fighting mages aren’t exactly common among civilians. Neither are bronze blades or stone-tipped arrows – they have little use outside of military applications. Iron and steel weaponry is cheaper, sharper, lighter, and more durable, and therefore much more common in civilian practice. Unless I completely misunderstood something, your El’Athras is in control of the military right now, is he not?”

“He controls the national armies, yes,” Wodtke agreed. “And his clan’s army. But if the other clan lords decide to incite a riot, they can easily bring out their own clan armies to support it.”

Maelgyn hadn’t thought about it, but in his mind that only added fractionally to the danger. “Maybe they’d add to the manpower, but surely no clan lord or Merchant Prince would authorize the use of special military equipment that could be traced back to them. Not for assassinating their ruler’s lover, no matter how unpopular he may be.”

“The clan lords may or may not be behind it,” Euleilla interrupted with a slightly strained lilt in her voice. “But there are an awfully large number of Dwarves up ahead... and they are talking in rather angry tones.”

Maelgyn tuned in his senses, and saw that she was right. “Yes.... It feels like it may be a few hundred of them, coming this way, but they’re still pretty far off. I can’t hear them yet, myself.”

“Yes, but you don’t have Euleilla’s experience relying on your ears instead of your eyes,” Wodtke noted. “She can probably hear better than either of us can.”

Maelgyn shook his head. “I don’t understand – how could there be a riot of this size, already? Doesn’t it take time to assemble and arouse this many Dwarves?”

Wodtke grimaced. “Not if the crowd has already been assembled and primed to start it. You may have been trying to keep your visit low-key, but you didn’t exactly have the quietest of arrivals. I bet that El’Pless figured your appearance presented him with a good opportunity to usurp Athy’s position. He got the rioters together, but he wanted a better pretext to send them out. He must have been looking for us so he could blame the riot on us.”

“It doesn’t matter why they’re rioting,” Euleilla pointed out. “That can be figured out later. It only matters that they’re here.”

“In any case,” Maelgyn said, “I’m afraid they’re blocking the way to your clinic. It’s probably not a good idea to head there. As a matter of fact, maybe we should go back to our inn. When El’Athras gets our message, he’ll probably send out the guard and that should make it safe... but I don’t think it’s a good idea, just now, to return to your clinic. I doubt your patients will be trying to make their way through that mob, anyway.”

“Well,” Wodtke sighed. “I suppose it won’t be possible to do my job if there’s an angry mob outside the door. In that case, we should probably just head for Athy’s place and wait there for him to assemble a guard.”

“No,” Euleilla said. “That’s not possible, either. The mob is between us and the mansion as well. And if we don’t move quickly, I fear they could get between us and the inn.”

Wodtke looked alarmed for the first time, and said, “They’re trying to surround us?”

“No,” Maelgyn replied after studying the mob’s movements for a few seconds. “They’re just trying to converge on your clinic, I think, and we’re still pretty close to your clinic. If we move fast enough, we can evade them... but we need to lie low, and the inn is the best place to do that.”

The threesome successfully made it back to the inn, believing themselves to be unrecognized. They hurried indoors, where El’Ba and Tur’Ba met them with arrows on string and bows drawn. They were alone, however; apparently all other guests had left in haste.

“Oh,” El’Ba said, lowering his weapon. “‘Tis you. I was worried it was one of those lunatic rioters. You, doctor, caused quite the stir – did you have to rile El’Pless up like that?”

Wodtke snorted. “It’s the other Merchant Princes trying to give Athy a black eye. I doubt most of the Dwarves out there would have cared if it hadn’t been for their clan heads stirring the pot for them.”

“Regardless of what started it,” El’Ba snorted, “It’s going across the city like wildfire. I imagine your boy’s already started trying to clean it up, by now, but it’ll take him hours to clear a path here.”

“Thankfully,” another voice said from behind the two Dwarves, “The rioters haven’t yet learned that any of the people they’re rioting against are here, they haven’t. I suspect we’ll have to deal with them on our own, we will, if they manage to find us, they do.”

“Spearmaster Wangdu,” Maelgyn said, nodding his head in greeting. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was coming to talk with you, I was,” the Elf replied wryly. “But the rioters distracted me, they did.”

Maelgyn sighed, taking a seat at one of the inn’s tables. “Talk about a long day. I woke up, was given two kingdoms, had a long talk with my wife about our future together, went to buy some magic powder, blew my ‘hidden’ identity yet again, got into an argument with a merchant prince, and dodged a mob of rioters. And it’s not even dark out, yet.”

“It ain’t over yet, no,” El’Ba noted wryly. “I’m wondering how long it will be before the rioters think to come here. The good doctor is a frequent visitor to many of our inn’s guests, and I would expect you’ve been seen here as well. Surely we’ll be thought of as a refuge.”

“I believe we’ll be okay, I do,” Wangdu said. “If they come, they do, we can fight them, we can.”

El’Ba snorted. “Master Wangdu, I am well aware of the combat abilities of Elves and mages. One Elf may be better than a thousand foot soldiers, as your reputation suggests, but we Dwarves have become quite innovative when it comes to battling the major mystical powers of our enemies.”

“Professional soldiers, yes,” Maelgyn agreed. “But these are rioters – just an untrained, ill-equipped mob. It’s true that the Dwarves were the first to learn how to fight mages, but much of that relied on having the right tools with which to fight. Civilian rioters won’t have such tools.”

“But they
will,
” El’Ba insisted. “You probably wouldn’t know, but all Dwarves – be they soldiers or farmers – are taught to fight those of you who are mystically empowered. Civilians aren’t expected to fight opposing armies, but our families are threatened by the very existence of your powers. We have fought enslavement for so long that now even the untrained know how to create weapons against mages, Elves, Nekoji, and any other force you can imagine.”

Maelgyn frowned, a crack in his confidence forming. “But the costs for equipping everyone, even with the fabled wealth of the Dwarves, would be enormous. Most peasant-class families couldn’t afford it, so how…”

“Peasants may, admittedly, not be able to afford the professional’s tools,” El’Ba explained. “They don’t need them for the tactics we are taught, however. A sling is probably useless on the battlefield, but it can be used to throw rocks, and a smart Dwarf can get pretty good at it in a couple days. It’s cheap, too; you can make one out of spare rope ends and worn out clothing or a scrap of leather. And there’s not much a mage can do to defend himself – or herself – from a sling, outside of what any normal foot soldier can do with shield and armor.”

“They wouldn’t have armor or lodestones—”

“Irrelevant,” the old Dwarf sighed. “These rioters wouldn’t be able to use armor properly, anyway. It obstructs movement too much if you aren’t used to it. We’re Dwarves, so we’re essentially armored already just in our skins, after all. Magic doesn’t work too well on our bodies, so all we need to worry about is what magic can do to the things around us. And for those Dwarves who might feel that isn’t enough... well, you know you can turn any old iron pan into a lodestone if you bang it with a hammer properly, right? And there are a lot of Dwarven families out there with iron pans and hammers.”

Wangdu stepped forward. “And may I ask what your common folk have found effective against my kind, may I?”

El’Ba raised an eyebrow. “Well... truthfully, we’re even better prepared for you than we are for mages. Mages are powerful people, true, but we haven’t faced nearly as many of them as we have faced of your people. Humans never took as much of an interest in us as the Elves did.”

“Yes, but there are not as many convenient ways to stop or divert an Elf’s powers, there aren’t,” Wangdu noted. “There are not many things that can stop the trees and plants, there aren’t, and we Elves control those, we do.”

“Only if there’s still a spark of life left in the tree or plant, Spearmaster,” El’Ba noted. “And look around you: What plants and trees do you see around here? Even our houses are made without wood, living or dead, save my door – which I doubt you’ll be able to use. What do you have to work with?”

Wangdu grinned. “I have a few things which just might be useful, I have. That, and I keep the wood in my spear alive, I do.”

“Yes, but our chemists have spent a thousand years preparing poisons for your plants, Elf,” El’Ba noted. “Poisons which work faster than you do.”

Wangdu grimaced. “Well, that is a matter to contend with, it is. But a race it shall be, it shall, to see if I can grow my plants before you can release your poisons, I can.”

“It might come to that,” Euleilla warned. “I think the rioters are headed in this direction.”

El’Ba turned a skeptical eye on her, but the expression on Maelgyn and Wodtke’s faces told him that she probably had the right of it. “How far away are they?”

“I can sense for quite a ways away,” Euleilla noted, “It’s tiring to ‘look’ that far out, but I wanted to keep track of them. They are moving slowly, but even so we only have ten to fifteen minutes at most.”

“Massacring a horde of civilians would not exactly be the most auspicious beginnings for the alliance I just negotiated. We have to get out of here,” Maelgyn sighed, “We need to stay on the move until El’Athras can get the guard moving... and I’d rather not wreck your inn.”

“Bah!” El’Ba snorted. “Stay. Any who reside in my walls shall receive my protection. My wife and those too young to fight are away – and the rioters will likely strike whether you’re here or not. They know how close we are to the doctor, and they may even have learned that you’re staying here for now. It’s best for all of us to fight here, together... and to hope that ‘Athy,’ as the Doc likes to call him, will able to save us before it goes too far.”