Wild Magic (20 page)

Even then, he had hesitated. It was remarkable how much could pass through your mind at such a crucial moment. He had seen himself a year hence, a stranger in a strange land, forced to dye his hair and shave his beard and speak the language of his enemy so that he might be hired to carry out menial jobs in order to provide for a woman and child not his own. And then he thought how things might have been in a different world a year from now, a world in which Katla had not perished and it had been because of no Footloose charm that he had won her love. In his mind’s eye, he had seen the sun shining on a smallholding on North Isle, a group of turf-roofed houses at the head of a cove in which fishing boats bobbed at anchor and a fine longship lay in its winter cradle on the strand. On the hills around the hall, sheep and goats cropped grass and grew fat. And in the doorway of the biggest house stood a slim woman with long red hair braided about her head, a baby nursing at her breast. He saw all this with such hallucinatory clarity that for a moment it seemed it might be a true vision of the future and not some impossible dream, but then reality rushed in at him and he realised firstly that even if Katla had not burned, she would never want such a life; and that just thirty feet away from him, a woman was drowning.

He had covered the space between them in three powerful oarstrokes, determining the location by the dim red shadow of the gown that sank with Selen into the depths. And then he had hurled himself overboard and, grabbing that fateful robe, had hauled it up until he was able to catch the Istrian woman by the arms, and though she had hung there, limp and unresponsive, he had somehow fought them both up through the water till his lungs were burning and ready to burst.

It had been a desperate struggle to get her into the faering without overturning it, but terror had lent him immense strength. Then she had lain in the bilges like a great, wet, dead seal, while he remembered how Thoro Twistarm had nearly drowned off Sand Isle the winter before last, and Gar Otterson had roughly pressed the water out of him on the beach there till he had choked and coughed and had the strength to curse the lot of them. A lot of water had come out of her, in big gushes and spurts to begin with, then in weak trickles. And still she did not stir, nor seem to breathe. But when he had touched her neck and her wrist in a terrible panic (all the time a tiny voice chanting in his guilty mind,
you did this, you did this, you did this
) there had been a small flutter of life there, and so he had taken off all his clothes, saving one rag for his modesty, had wrapped her in them as close as he could and had chafed her hands, her face, her feet. Even in these dire circumstances, even knowing that the core of a body’s heat resided in the chest and belly, he could not bring himself to put his hands on the more intimate parts of her. And so he sat there, shivering in the chilly wind, watching over her as if the power of his will might bring her back to the world, and fearing all the while that she might be allowing her spirit to simply drift away rather than face the dreadful alternative that coming back to life offered.

‘We could try our luck in Cera.’

‘We could.’ Joz ran the whetstone down the edge of the Dragon of Wen, then rubbed the blade with his oiled cloth and sat back and admired Katla Aransen’s artistry for the thousandth time.

‘I heard the Duke was assembling troops.’

‘He won’t take Eyran mercenaries since Cob Merson turned tail on him and took the Duke of Gila’s coin at Calastrina.’

Mam considered this. ‘Further south, then, maybe? Where there’s less competition?’

‘Less money, too. Though Jetra might be worth a visit.’

‘I wouldn’t mind visiting the Eternal City again.’

To Joz’s sensitive ear, Mam sounded almost wistful. He glanced up and saw that her eyes had become unfocused, as if they gazed on something far beyond the inn room in which they sat. ‘It’s a curious place, Jetra,’ he said carefully. ‘Full of odd folk passing through.’

Mam sighed. ‘I suppose they do pass through and rarely stay,’ she said at last. She smiled brightly at him, without showing the dreadful teeth. ‘Long way to go on a chance, though we’d best move on from Forent, I’d say. I would not trust the lord here as far as I can throw him.’

Joz grinned. ‘Still, we got paid, and that’s more than I’d expected, given the circumstances. You’re a wonder, Mam, for truth.’

Mam tapped the side of her nose. ‘I know more than he would like me to know,’ she said cryptically, ‘and that’s what keeps us safe.’ She got up, crossed the room and looked out of the window onto the streets below. Outside, revellers wandered unsteadily up and down with flagons in their hands and coin in their purses. ‘Should be a good night for the whores,’ she said tightly. ‘Looks as if most of their customers’ll be too addled to get their wicks stiff enough to use ’em.’

Joz grimaced. ‘I could sink a few jugs of ale myself. Why don’t we take ourselves downstairs and carry on our discussions in the snug?’

Mam folded her arms. ‘And who guards the money if we get legless?’

‘We could take it with us.’

‘We might as well hang a banner out of the window inviting every thief in Forent to help himself as clank through the bar with this lot.’

The mounds of cantari they had accumulated in the past few months – by fair means or foul – lay in a large, Eyran-made wooden coffer. It now contained almost two dozen bags of coin: far more than the two of them could carry without drawing considerable attention to themselves, even if they used all the moneybelts and the cloaks with the hidden pockets.

‘Tell you what,’ Mam said after a while. ‘Why don’t you break into the funds and go down and buy us a few jugs of that good red wine they make round here and bring it back up? A meat pie wouldn’t go amiss, either.’

Joz got to his feet with alacrity. He opened the coffer, helped himself to a handful of coin and was out of the door before she could change her mind. The Dragon of Wen lay on the bench where he had left it, gleaming in the candlelight.

As the door swung closed, Mam turned and surveyed the town of Forent again. It was not a bad place, she thought. The food was good, and its ambience was a little less stuffy than some Istrian cities, though she did not like its lord, and keeping track of the lads in a town that contained quite so many distractions could prove to be something of a problem. But they’d be out of here tomorrow, and maybe it was time to head south and confront the demon she had encountered in Jetra: if indeed he was still there.

Her reverie was broken by the creak of a floorboard in the room behind her. It was far too soon for Joz to be returning. She whirled around, knife in hand, but the assassin’s blade took her in the side of the neck all the same.

Knobber, Doc and Dogo crossed the market square, and took the second turning on the left past a pair of drunken brawlers. It seemed the lighterman had not yet made it to Tiger Alley to ignite the dozen sconces there, for the street was dark and gloomy, although the Tower of Earthly Delights was apparent about halfway down on the right-hand side where pale porticoes marked its entrance. Knobber ran a hand nervously through his hair.

‘Dark,’ he noted laconically.

Doc laughed. ‘Bet you can find your way blindfold – you’ve been here every night since we arrived, haven’t you?’

‘D’you think Mam would let me bring her with us?’

‘Gia? You’re joking! What can she do, other than f—’

‘She’s not a whore by choice,’ Knobber interrupted grimly. ‘She had a decent life before her bastard husband got fed up with her and paid one of his slaves to say she took him as a lover and cast her off by law. If she hadn’t got to Forent, she’d have been burned.’

‘They’ve all got some sob-story. There’s always some web of lies they’ve concocted to appeal to your better nature and get a bit more money out of you, and this Gia sounds like she’s spun you up as cosy as a she-spider. Just nod and smile and get back to work on her, that’s what I say,’ Dogo grinned. ‘But don’t believe it for a second, or you’re a bigger fool than you look.’

Knobber stopped dead. When he turned around, moonlight fell full upon the broad bones of his face. ‘Say another word about her and you’ll be skipping with your guts.’

Dogo shrugged. Then his eyes flickered away from his companion and his face became a mask of ferocity. Snarling with fury, he drew one of the blades strapped to his leg and leapt away from Knobber, who stared at him in bemusement.

It was the last thing he did. A moment later, his face met the cobbled street with a sickening thud and he died wondering what had caused the sudden burning pain in his back and whether Gia would think him disrespectful for turning up with mud on his shirt.

The moodstone on the pendant around his neck changed in swift succession from green to cloudy grey to unsullied white, as if its colour had drained out of it to meet the dark pool that spread out from Knobber’s body. Neither of his comrades remarked upon it, for they were fighting for their lives.

When Joz shoved open the door to their common room, his hands wrapped around a trayful of bread and meat and broth, and with two capped flasks of the innkeeper’s best wine balanced precariously under each arm, it took him several seconds to make sense of what he saw. Mam was on her knees in the middle of the chamber in front of a wiry, dark man who had her hair caught in his fist, forcing her head back. For an insane moment, Joz wondered whether his troop leader was engaged in an unthinkable sexual act; then he saw the bright gore leaking from her neck and the sheen of a silver blade in the man’s right hand. With a roar, he hurled the victuals at the intruder. The tray skimmed Mam’s head, raining bread and broth down on her. One of the wine flasks flew wide, but the other caught the man a glancing blow, shattered against the wall behind him and spewed its deep red liquid down the plaster like blood.

Staggering away from her attacker, Mam rounded on Joz, hand clamped to her neck. Blood leaked through her fingers. Broth leaked from her hair. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ she croaked. ‘Don’t try to drown the bastard – stick him with your sword!’

The Dragon of Wen lay glittering on the bench beside the door where Joz had left it. He could feel the tug of the metal like the breathing presence of a live thing behind him. And he could see how the black eyes of the assassin slid for an instant towards the blade. In that instant, Joz moved: not for Katla Aransen’s finest work, but straight at the hillman, taking him fast and low in the gut with his head in a time-honoured and hardly subtle Eyran wrestling manoeuvre. His left hand clamped itself around the man’s wrist, twisted mercilessly. Bones crunched; the assassin screamed. The curved southern blade clattered to the floor and spun harmlessly away. Carried backwards by Joz Bearhand’s powerful momentum, the hillman lost his balance and fell heavily beneath the mercenary. Joz clamped his knees down on the man’s shoulders and prepared to squeeze the life out of him; then a moment later found himself falling sideways, propelled by an insistent kick. By the time he had come to his feet, the man was dead. Breathing raggedly, Mam stood over the fallen assassin, propped up by the greatsword which she had driven so hard through the hillman’s chest that it was buried to the depth of half a hand in the wooden boards. Fingers caressing the dying wolf that lay strangling in the coils of the intricately carved dragon etched into the hilt, she stared down at the foe who had so nearly taken her life, a strange little half-smile on her broth-and-blood-smeared face. In the preternatural silence that followed the death, Joz could hear the steady drip from Mam’s wound onto the floor.

‘You’d better bind that—’ he started, but she put her finger to her lips.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs below, heavy and awkward.

With terrifying determination, Mam set her foot on the dead assassin’s chest and dragged at the Dragon of Wen with what little strength remained to her, working the blade back and forth so that metal grated repulsively on bone, but it remained stuck fast. Joz extended his short sword towards her, hilt first. Mam gave him a mulish look. Then with a shrug she took the weapon from him and stepped away. Joz wrenched the Dragon free in a moment and took up his stance facing the door.

A moment later, Dogo appeared, prodding a tall, cloaked man with a tattooed face before him with his dagger. He was followed by Doc, a body slung over his shoulder.

Mam’s legs suddenly gave way beneath her and she crumpled to the floor. Joz was at her side at once; but it appeared it was not solely the loss of blood that had caused her collapse.

‘Persoa,’ she breathed. ‘I thought you were dead.’

The cloaked assassin smiled thinly.

‘Several times,’ he said in heavily accented Eyran. ‘Just like the proverbial Bast, I seem to have nine lives.’

‘Must have reached your ninth, then,’ Doc growled, dropping Knobber’s corpse onto the floor. The dead sell-sword fell with a thud to lie between them like an accusation. The pendant on its leather thong swung clear of the body to rattle on the wooden boards, and its stone as empty as his gaze. ‘I thought you might care to question this bastard yourself, since he claims to know you,’ he said, turning to Mam. His eyes became round at the sight of her blood-soaked tunic and gaping neck. ‘By the seven hells what happened here?’ He had never seen his leader wounded before: it shook his faith in the rightness of the world.

Mam gave him her ghastly smile, made all the more ghoulish by the blood on her teeth. Then she wound a kerchief tightly around her neck and crawled over to Knobber. Head on one side, she scrutinised his corpse. ‘No swordbelt?’ she asked at last.

‘He said Gia was scared of his weapon.’

Dogo stifled a tasteless chuckle.

Mam glanced at him sharply, then ran her fingers gently over the dead mercenary’s face. When she withdrew her hand, Knobber’s eyelids were closed. ‘Why’d you bring him back here?’

‘I thought you’d want to question him,’ Doc repeated. ‘Find out who paid him.’

Mam rolled her eyes. ‘Not
him
, you fool:
Knobber
.’

Doc exchanged appalled glances with Joz. ‘Couldn’t just leave him out in the street . . . it wasn’t right.’