Once A Hero (11 page)

The final two hours of our journey to Aurium took the form of a nightride. We rode through dark woodlands and the northern foothills of the Central Mountains. Though we had seen no signs of Haladin mayhem since the ambush, I let Aarundel ride point and had Shijef ranging through the woods ahead of him. Aarundel's keen night vision made him proof against the sort of trick that had gotten me, and Shijef s orders allowed him enough leeway to cause the sort of trouble that would raise an alarm for us.

The woods abruptly ended in a stump meadow that marked the source of the wood used to build most of Aurium. While the merchants who controlled the town dared name it "City of Gold" in the Elven tongue, truth was that the town had been built of tree-flesh and only recently had acquired a building of stone. It was supposed to have a palisade, which could help in defending it against the Haladina, but I knew of no local militia or native troops that called Aurium home.

We rode past some woodcutter camps, and that sparked some optimistic comments from my fellows. We had all feared that a Haladin force had somehow eluded our detection and laid siege to Aurium. Given the nature of the Man-town, a torch or two would have had it burning hotter than the firewell in Jammaq. Chances were, however, that the Haladina wouldn't burn it because of its control over river traffic.

Up ahead, on the crest of the last hill leading to the Aurium valley, Aarundel stopped his horse and whistled. I rode forward and drew abreast of his position. From our vantage point I could see little because the city lay a good half mile ahead or us in the darkness, but that did not bother my eagle-eyed companion. Where I saw dots of light in a pool of brooding darkness, he saw much more.

"The gates are open, Neal. There are no custodians on the walls."

I looked hard out into the darkness but saw nothing more nor less than I expected. The night's breeze came up from the river and into my face, but I smelled nothing to indicate the lights I saw were the embers of a fire that had consumed the town. "Does all else look normal?" I gave him a quick smile. "Excepting the fact it's a Man-town."

"Absent that consideration, I see a nimiety of normality." Aarundel's face remained impassive, but he let some amusement bleed into his words. Though we were good friends—brothers born of different races—Aarundel held himself tightly and seldom let down the fierce Elven facade that reminded others of the excesses ascribed to Elven Legions by the Eldsaga. When we were alone he would open up, but being soul-kin meant I understood the part he was playing and why he played it.

Blackstar shuddered and shied toward Aarundel's horse, which meant only one thing. I looked down to my left and a half-dozen paces forward. Crouched there sniffing the wind, Shijef turned his nose toward Aurium. "Lifeblack pools." He raised his head and let out a howl that echoed through the valley. "Lifeblack floods."

More than the howl, his words sent a shiver down my spine. Over the dozen years through which I have suffered my Dreel slave, I learned one fact that was true. Like an old man whose bunions can foretell a gathering storm, Shijef just out and out knows when violence is building in an area. Given his choice, he would seek it out the way a lonely man hunts for a smile and a laugh.

He undoubtedly knew the ambush in the woods was coming, but he did not warn me because he knew the chances of my getting killed were—in his eyes—minimal. While my death would end his servitude to me, he was a creature of curious honor. As much as he hated me for enslaving him, he accepted that his servitude was the prize I won in our contest. As a result, he pledged himself to preserving my life. He left me to the Haladina on the trail because the man was not a threat, but killed the horseman because he could have killed me.

It had taken me a long time to see Shijef as more than a bear and a tiger mixed together with a lot of anger and a limited vocabulary. Not only was he intelligent, but he understood emotions and concepts like honor and friendship. I never imagined we would be friends because, unlike Aarundel and me, our partnership was not one of willing participation. Still, I had some admiration for the Dreel and trusted his reading of murky and complex situations under the right circumstances.

Circumstances such as these.

I glanced at the Dreel. "Shijef, are there Haladina in the town?"

"Not sandmen." The monster half hopped a bit down the hillside. "Denmen."

"Civil strife during a war?" Aarundel's saddle groaned as the Elf shifted his weight and reseated his feet in the stirrups. "Is intervention warranted?"

"It is, I'm thinking." I squeezed my knees together and urged Blackstar forward. Shijef's predictions of death coming to a place could be deflected or contradicted with proper action. If we could stop whatever was going on in Aurium, it would frustrate the Dreel, and that would be punishment enough for what he did to the Haladin warrior. "Being as how the Red Tiger is not wanting a whole Reithrese navy descending on Polston, saving this inflated barter-post is likely within our duties."

The fifteen of us rode on into the valley and up to the gates. I put Senan in command and set him to closing the gates and seeing how secure the town was. The wooden palisade looked in fine repair, but the open gates bothered me. While I felt fair certain no Haladina had gotten this far north, I had no desire to have them inside Aurium when I learned I was wrong.

Aarundel, the Dreel, and I headed deeper into the town. It took neither the Elf's vision nor the Dreel's deathsight to direct us toward the center of the trouble in Aurium. Most of the town lay quiet and shut up tight against possible violence. Not a shutter opened as we rode through the muddy streets—the fear in the air clung like swampscent and smelled not nearly as sweet.

When we reached the stone building on the top of the hillock at the town's heart, I immediately knew what had to be going on. Two groups of Men stood on either side of the building's wooden doors. They had no weapons in hand, and were valiantly doing their best to ignore each other. Our arrival made that easy, though the eldest of each group stepped forward to give us orders—bringing the two groups of five into conflict again.

Without a word between us, Aarundel and I reined up just short of the men and dismounted in unison. Mirrors of each other, we flipped our reins to each of the groups' self-appointed legates. "Obliged, gentlemen. Now you'll be opening the doors for us."

"That is not possible," one Man blurted out quickly. His deep flush and hot words told me he was not in a good mood. He hastily signaled to one of the other Men in his group to take Blackstar's reins. "The doors are closed until the council makes a decision."

The sounds coming from beyond the doors sounded to me like those from a bloodpit duel, but I'd seen politics go malignant and become war before. "Good, then we are yet in time. They'll not be wanting to make a decision before they have had our counsel."

The Man in front of me moved to block my path. I could see from the emblem crudely embroidered on the breast of his tunic that he was bound to the Fisher Clan. A bird in flight, it had a fish in its beak and a purse clutched in its talons. I knew the Fishers to be one of the two clans that lived in and around Aurium.

Opposite him, stood his equal in the employ of the Riveraven Clan. Like the Fishers, they took their name from that of a bird that frequented the tri-river valley. Common wisdom had it that river-ravens were rats with wings and that Fishers regularly placed their eggs in river-raven nests to be tended. I'd also heard people wonder if the two clans wouldn't have gotten along well had their forebears been wiser in their totem-choices, because the two families seemed to everyone outside them to complement each other.

"Goodman, I do not doubt you've been given a duty to perform here tonight." I stepped in close to him, mounting the first of three steps to the level of the doorway. My right hand reached out quicker than he could see or block, and slipped my dagger, Wasp, from the sheath over my right hip. "Now, you're all guards, and that's a right proud job to be having."

Flicking the blade forward, I stuck it quivering in the right-side door to the squat and ugly legislatorium. I'd not expected the blade to stick really—Wasp has all the balance of a one-legged man hopping on wet ice—but the door's soft wood would have held the blade even if it had backed into place. Behind me the Dreel yipped appreciatively, and at my side Aarundel just narrowed his black eyes. "What you don't want to be are dead guards, I'm thinking."

The combined effect of action and words worked to open the doors faster than a latchkey. The two gangs of rowdies opened the building for us, bowing low and mumbling very polite greetings in what I believed they thought was Elven. Aarundel remained as silent and implacable as death, while the Dreel sniffed at one Man, then another, like a customer sorting fresh fish from spoiled. I recovered Wasp and resheathed it, then stepped through the threshold as if I were bound to see the Reithrese emperor in Jarudin.

The Hall of Laws had not risen very tall because of the cost of bringing stone in from the quarries upriver. To make the structure big, the people of Aurium had dug down into the hillock. Whereas outside, the building only rose a score feet above the ground, within the hall itself a good forty feet stood between floor and ceiling.

The excavated area had been paved with smooth riverstone. It seemed to me that what had been born of economy had turned out to be quite decorative. Three terraces surrounded the central floor. They had been finished in fancy woods of gold and rich mahogany, adding some warmth to the cold white of the hillock's stone carapace. Benches and tables provided seating for those who would enact laws. For such a small town, the Hall of Laws was a thing of which the people could be proud.

My earlier impressions of the sounds proved more correct than I would have imagined. The three of us arrived in the midst of what had to be a heated debate. Two young men circled each other in the center of the stone floor. Each had his left arm bared, as their tunic sleeves had been stripped off and knotted together to form a short tether. Each man held tight to the tether with his left hand. The loose cuffs stood up from the knot like rabbit ears and flopped this side and that as the two men pulled back and forth on the tether.

Each man held a dagger in his right hand. The blades more resembled filleting knives than they did Wasp, but each was long, sharp, and pointy enough to reach the heart through the ribs. Each also glistened with blood which, I gathered from the stains on each combatant's tattered tunic, came from a series of shallow wounds. Both the wounds and the way the two men moved listlessly told me any enthusiasm they'd had for the fight had been swallowed by exhaustion and excreted as mortal fear.

Surrounding them, standing on benches and sitting on desks, nearly the whole of the two clans hooted and hollered encouragement. I saw the mother of one lad sitting on the side, clinging to a daughter and crying silently. Uncles and cousins jerked and dodged in sympathy for their clan's fighter, but not a one of them had lifeleak splotches on their clothes. Older and wiser clan members hung back, occasionally shouting an obligatory bit of advice, but mostly watching and waiting and calculating what they would do in the event of whatever outcome seemed most likely.

Without breaking stride, I sailed down the open aisle dividing the legislatonum left from right. I drew Cleaveheart cleanly as I came and filled my left hand with Wasp. Before either of the young men even had a chance to notice me, the sword flashed down and the dagger up, split-shearing the knot. Each of the fighters spilled backward, flailing sleeve-half waving like the tail on a kite as they went down.

"Foul!" shouted a heavyset, florid-faced man of the Fisher Clan. "Edward was winning. You, Festus Riveraven, you cheated!" He pointed across the assembly at a slender white-haired man kneeling beside his family's champion. "These are your agents, but they shall not win Aurium for you."

Festus Riveraven raised his head and did not even look at me or Aarundel. "Nay, Childeric Fisher, these are not my agents. You are lucky they interfered when they did, for Rufus would have spitted your Edward in a minute." He turned to me and kept a snarl out of all but his eyes and voice. "Who are you that dares . . ."

Finding as I have in the past that my tolerance for politicians is inverse to their degree of liveliness, I spoke over him. "I am Neal Roclawzi and this is Aarundel." I looked back over my shoulder at where Shijef had taken up a post guarding the room's only exit. "He is a Dreel and my command is his will."

Childeric straightened up—no easy task for as corpulent a bulk as I'd ever seen on a man—and eyed me up and down. "You are the Dun Wolf? You command the Steel Pack?"

Aarundel gently patted his war ax. "Sound not incredulous when you address Neal Custos Sylvanii. Treat him as a lack-honor and
I
will choose the manner of your punishment."

"I meant no disrespect, Lansor Honorary," Childeric offered in badly accented Elven.

"And I am near certain Aarundel Imperator did not take it as such. Fisher." I gave him a nasty glare, but saved half of it for Festus. "Yes, I command the Steel Pack. We have been sent here to prevent Aurium from falling into Reithrese hands, but it appears there are other troubles here."

Festus waved my concern away. "No troubles that demand your attention."

I raised an eyebrow at his statement. "Mayhap, then, you can explain why you were about turning this place into a . . . a . . ."

Aarundel smiled easily. "An abattoir, Custos Sylvanii?"

"Thank you, Aarundel Imperator. An abattoir?"

"It is the business of merchants, mercenary." Festus dismissed me with a more vehement wave. "What happens here is not your concern. It is not your business."

"No?" I used Cleaveheart to link the two bleeding boys with an arc. "Tell me, then, what was it I saw? Were you trying to show the sharpness of the blades you sell, or was that a prelude to showing how a poultice you trade in will heal cuts?"