The Long War 01 - The Black Guard (18 page)

‘And why are we here exactly?’ Brom asked.

Rham Jas sat on the floor and removed his sword belt, placing his katana on a rack behind a stack of clothes. ‘Well, I thought being drunk in the tank was a good alibi when the watchmen come and ask me if I shot a man in the head. I stashed my armour and bow here earlier and then vomited in an alley outside. The Brown clerics ushered me in.’ His constant smile beamed brighter than usual as he looked at his friend. ‘I stayed up there a good hour or so and then came down here, got my stuff and killed that man.’ He reached under one of the racks and produced a bottle of strong Ranen whisky.

‘Drink?’ he asked with good humour.

Brom shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’ll be joining you in the tank and I don’t want to see any watchmen, whether they’re looking for you or me.’

A quizzical look crossed Rham Jas’s face as he spoke. ‘Yes, you’re the wanted one. What exactly happened in Canarn?’

Brom looked as though he didn’t want to revisit what had happened to his homeland, but he gathered himself and faced Rham Jas. ‘Magnus came south again and my father asked for sanctuary. The old fool actually tried to join the Freelands of Ranen.’ He tried to smile, but the expression never reached his eyes, and Rham Jas thought he was close to tears.

He looked out of the window, into the loud night of Ro Weir, and continued, ‘Someone betrayed them and a battle fleet of Red knights attacked. Rillion and that bastard Pevain massacred anyone who tried to defend the town and the knights took the keep.’

Rham Jas knew how much the fall of Ro Canarn would affect the young lord and he felt a momentary pang of concern for Magnus. The dopey Ranen was far too proud to leave the city and actually stay alive. ‘I bet Magnus did some fucking damage before they took him down. I’ve seen that man take a dozen swords and stick them up their owners’ arses.’

Brom looked up. ‘I don’t know what happened to him. I still don’t really know what happened after the battle ended. I just know that they took my father alive.’

‘Your sister?’ asked Rham Jas.

‘She’d have drawn a sword and fought if Father let her…’ He shook his head. ‘But I don’t know whether they’d kill her or not.’

‘Knights of the Red aren’t squeamish about killing women,’ offered Rham Jas, with little tact, causing Brom to direct a hard look at him. ‘What? If you expect me to hold you and make everything better, you’re talking to the wrong Kirin.’ Rham Jas felt for his friend’s loss, but he had concerns of his own. ‘Look, Brom, I wish I could help, but I’ve really got to go upstairs and pretend to be drunk.’ He finished getting dressed and stood up. ‘Now, how do I look?’

‘Like a filthy Kirin scumbag.’ Brom spoke with no humour and Rham Jas felt guilty for being so dismissive of his friend’s pain.

He took a moment to consider his words and spoke again. ‘Brom, I owe you a lot… you know I do, but we’re a long way from Ro Canarn and I don’t see how I can help. If Magnus and your father are both captured or killed, then you and I should be grateful we weren’t there at the time.’ He put a comforting hand on Brom’s shoulder. ‘You’re a dangerous little bastard, I reckon you could make a decent living with that overly shiny sword of yours.’

‘Go and pretend to be a drunk, Rham Jas. Maybe it was a mistake to look for you.’ Brom stood up and grasped his old friend’s hand. ‘Now, can I get out through that door or should I climb back out of the window?’

Rham Jas was not used to feeling guilt, but he was pragmatic enough to know that whatever the young lord was planning would be very unwise indeed. Rham Jas was a clever man and was not given to foolish displays of courage. He had stayed alive for most of his thirty or so years through his wits, skill and good humour, and he didn’t want to make a foolish move now.

‘Go through the door and take the stairs to the street. The door’s in a back street behind a brothel. No one will see you.’

Brom maintained eye contact for a moment, but turned to leave the storeroom with no more words. ‘Brom,’ Rham Jas spoke as his friend opened the door. ‘What did you want from me?’

The young lord of Canarn looked down, then back at his friend, but he said nothing and left the room, closing the wooden door softly behind him.

Rham Jas let his smile disappear and kicked a pile of clothes out of frustration. He paced back and forth in front of the window for several minutes, trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing and that nothing Brom could have had to say would be for his benefit. But Rham Jas owed him his life.

The young lord had saved him from being hanged three years ago. Rham Jas and a Karesian bastard called Al-Hasim had foolishly broken into a Purple church in the city of Ro Tiris. They were drunk and were following a tip-off that the church had little security and easily accessible caches of gold.

Hasim was no thief and Rham Jas was not stupid, but they’d plied each other with just enough drink to make them think it was an amazing idea. The two of them, more out of boredom than need for gold, had climbed up a neighbouring building and jumped through a glass window to enter the church.

Rham Jas hadn’t thought about the incident for a while and found his memories difficult to put in order. He remembered Hasim laughing while sitting on the altar and pretending to defecate, and he remembered the shouts of anger from the Purple clerics who emerged from below the knave.

There was definitely a fight and, as Rham Jas looked down at a faint scar on his chest, he thought how lucky he’d been not to die right there, in the sight of a god he didn’t follow. The Purple clerics had probably been so taken aback by the sight of two laughing foreigners pissing on an effigy of the One God that they didn’t fight at their best.

Rham Jas took a swig from his bottle of Ranen whisky and sat on the floor, temporarily forgetting that he’d just killed a man and would be being hunted by the city watch. His thoughts were elsewhere, as he remembered being dragged from the church, blood covering his clothes and vomit barely contained behind his lips.

The clerics had beaten the two of them insensible and the memory of exactly how Rham Jas had ended up with a noose round his neck was rather fuzzy. He was sure that Hasim was unconscious and vaguely recalled a list of charges being read out. He’d been told since that the clerics hadn’t waited for any kind of official justice and were simply going to hang the two foreigners from a wooden beam in the church stables.

What happened next had been told to him by Brom and Magnus on a number of occasions and he still didn’t know which version to believe. What was certain was that the young lord had taken his Ranen friend on a visit to the capital in order to help him understand the Ro. They’d been drinking too, though not to the extremes of Rham Jas and Hasim, and they had found themselves in the streets of Ro Tiris, alerted to the sounds of swearing and commotion from the Purple church.

Brom had always claimed that he tried to reason with the clerics, considering it his duty as a noble to stop what he saw as a miscarriage of justice. Whereas Magnus remembered the fight starting almost instantly. Either way, Magnus and Brom fought and bested four Purple clerics and rescued the drunken thieves from a pathetic death.

The first clear memory Rham Jas had was of Brom throwing a bucket of freezing water over him and Magnus barking out something about Rowanoco. The four men left Ro Tiris the next day and hid in the town of Cozz for several weeks until Brom was sure the encounter had not been seen by anyone and no one was looking for them.

Rham Jas had ingratiated himself with Brom straightaway, the young lord appreciating the Kirin’s sense of humour. Magnus and Al-Hasim shared a love of alcohol and women that made them near-instant friends and the four men spent their time in Cozz laughing, drinking and mocking the clerics.

A Karesian, a Ranen, a Ro and a Kirin were an odd mix in any of the lands of men, but they developed a swift and strong bond over their shared hatred of the laws of Tor Funweir.

The four men travelled together for over a year, Magnus learning about the culture of Tor Funweir, Rham Jas getting Brom into trouble, and Al-Hasim exploring the country through the medium of whores and wine. They teased Brom for being a Ro and antagonized Magnus into more than one pointless tavern fight, but they remained friends.

Rham Jas had few genuine friends and counted Brom as one of the best. A Kirin assassin and a Ro lord were unlikely companions, but the various times they had met since their initial encounter had simply confirmed that Brom was an honourable man and one of the few that Rham Jas could trust.

A noise pulled him from his thoughts and caused him to stand up quickly. He could hear the sound of chain mail and metal-shod feet from the street-level door three storeys below.

He swore to himself as he realized that he’d lingered in the storeroom too long. Quickly checking that all of his gear was hidden, Rham Jas opened the door and stole a peek down the wooden staircase. He swore again as he glimpsed a squad of watchmen ascending the stairs.

Taking a quick swig of whisky, he left the room. Silently closing the door, he took the steps leading up to the drunk tank three at a time. He was now barefoot and made little sound as he splashed whisky on his clothes so as to smell like a drunkard.

Two floors up and Rham Jas emerged into the tank. Within were five long wooden benches, each seating a dozen or so drunken men, secured in an upright position by a length of thick rope stretched across their chests. Rham Jas was glad to see an array of blank faces as all the men were either asleep or in various states of insensibility.

The spot left by the Kirin two hours ago was still empty and Rham Jas hoped his absence had not been noticed. The Brown clerics who maintained the tank would not return until daybreak to check on the occupants.

Rham Jas splashed more whisky on his face and downed as much as he could without vomiting. He dropped the bottle in a large piss-pot and tiptoed across the room to his seat. With great dexterity he wriggled under the restraining rope and took his place amongst the faceless drunks of Ro Weir. Leaning forward against the rope, he looked down, letting his hair fall over his face.

He didn’t spare a look up as the door opened and five watchmen in chain mail entered the room. They spread out loudly across the tank, shaking a few men into vague consciousness as they began checking faces.

Rham Jas kept cool and shook his head, playing the part of a drunk who’d been roused from his sleep. He felt a hand grab his hair and his head was pulled back. Through feigned bleariness he looked into the face of the watchman, a man wearing a belted chain-mail shirt and the tabard of Ro Weir, a black crow in flight.

‘Sergeant… over here,’ the watchman said, still holding Rham Jas’s head back.

Two of the watchmen remained by the door while the other two moved over to stand in front of Rham Jas. Several of the drunks were now awake. A few mumbled swear words and requests for quiet, and were answered with an array of kicks and slaps.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t our Kirin friend,’ the sergeant said with a sneer, as he levelled his crossbow at Rham Jas.

In response, the Kirin groaned and shook his head, making some show of trying to raise his arms and rub his eyes. The rope restricted movement and Rham Jas pretended he had just woken up and wasn’t sure what was happening.

‘Straighten yourself up, you Kirin piss-stain.’ The sergeant slapped Rham Jas hard across the face. ‘Where’s your bow?’

Rham Jas blinked rapidly several times and tasted the blood on his lower lip. ‘I don’t know what…’ The Kirin accentuated his accent and made a show of appearing the ignorant foreigner.

The sergeant turned to one of his men. ‘Get him up, soldier.’

The watchman grabbed Rham Jas by the throat and pulled him upright, the rope restricting his stomach and making it difficult to stand. The smell of whisky was strong and the watchman held Rham Jas at arm’s length. ‘He stinks of cheap Ranen shit, sir.’

The sergeant leant in and immediately baulked at the smell. ‘Rham Jas, you smell like you’ve been swimming in the stuff.’

The Kirin smiled and made a show of retching. All three watchmen stepped back, leaving Rham Jas to fall theatrically to the floor.

‘A thousand apologies, my noble lords… I seem to be in a state unsuited for the company of dignified men such as yourselves.’ He spat on the floor and retched again, holding his hand up to the watchmen and asking for a moment.

‘Kirin, look at me,’ the sergeant said. ‘A man got a longbow arrow in the head less than half an hour ago.’ He held out the bloodied shaft of one of Rham Jas’s arrows. ‘Know anything about that, boy?’

Rham Jas looked up, letting a helpless and pathetic expression flow across his face. ‘Sorry, milord, I sold my bow to buy the cheap shit I’ve been swimming in… whisky is a much better master than death.’ His smile was broad, but unfocused, and Rham Jas retched again, this time summoning a small amount of vomit and aiming it at the sergeant’s feet.

‘Get the fuck away from me, you filthy Kirin.’ The sergeant roughly pushed Rham Jas back and turned to his men. ‘This piece of work can barely stand, let alone string a bow. He could maybe vomit a man to death, but he’s not our killer.’

Rham Jas saluted in a mocking gesture and fell face-first on to the floor, drooling and making low groaning sounds .

The watchmen laughed and mocked him loudly as they walked back to the door. The room filled with swearing from the assembled drunks for a few moments, but silence quickly returned to the tank and the sound of the metal-clad watchmen disappeared below.

Rham Jas allowed himself a smile, but remained on the ground, thinking a few moments of rest wouldn’t hurt.

* * *

Several hours later and Rham Jas found himself sitting outside a tavern on the far side of town. He’d retrieved his weapons and armour when the Brown cleric had come to wake everyone up, and the Kirin had swiftly removed himself and his belongings to a place of relative safety.

The sun had been up for less than an hour and Rham Jas had enjoyed watching the night turn to day from a wooden bench overlooking the port. The tavern was not yet open, but he liked the view of stone houses, tall ships and life slowly creeping into the streets.