01 - Honour of the Grave (39 page)

Angelika turned her head to listen for laughter and the clattering of flagons
against tables. Even in a town under threat of invasion, the last places to
close were always the taverns.

“There!” she pointed. Across the lane and four doors down, a painted sign
protruded out over the street on a wrought-iron bracket. A swelling wind creaked
it from side to side. On the sign, a grinning pony wore a ridiculous hat.
Angelika sprinted for the door beneath it.

The smell of boiling chicken made siege on her nostrils. A sleepy-eyed man
with a well-fattened face stood before an iron cauldron, wearing only a leather
apron and a pair of worn trousers speckled with paint and gravy. He stirred the
soup with a wooden paddle. With his free hand, he wiped sweat from his balding
pate. Angelika leapt over the threshold.

“Have you seen—” she asked him. She turned and saw Lukas, sitting amid a knot
of drunken, red-faced men. Lukas did not have a cup in front of him, but he did have a bowl of soup, filled to the
brim. The men wore ragged finery; their fashions, on average, two decades out of
date. Years of methodical drinking had brought twisting veins to the surfaces of
their cheeks and noses. Pot bellies bulged above their belts.

“Poets,” said Angelika, grimly.

One of them, the oldest but with hints of handsomeness still clinging to his
ruined face, had been in the middle of a rude stanza when Angelika had burst in.
It was the old one about the charwoman from Altdorf. The man stood with open
mouth and flagon frozen stupidly up beside his head. Angelika sneaked a dagger
from her belt and held it in his general direction. “Clear out,” she told them.

The poet spluttered. “Who are you, you distaff brigand, to—”

Angelika crooked her elbow, ready to throw the blade at his throat. He turned
white and backed away from the table. The others stood and held their hands up,
placatingly. At least one of them whimpered.

“Nidungus,” the lead poet demanded of the pot-stirrer. “Do you mean to allow
this outrage in your very own tavern?”

Nidungus spat disinterestedly, scarcely turning from the pot. The poets
scattered, rushing chaotically for the exit. Lukas remained in his seat, staring
down into his watery soup.

“I think I’ll have that ale after all, Nidungus,” he said. “Hand me down my
stein.”

“The lot of them just left without paying,” Nidungus told him. “Finish their
leftovers.” He dug into an armpit, homing in on a nit.

Angelika walked over to the boy’s table. “We’ve got to get moving, Lukas.”

He kept his eyes down. “I’m not going anywhere anymore. Certainly not with
you.”

“All of Marius’ men are departing for war. That leaves no one to protect you
from your father. Grenzstadt has become unsafe for you, again.”

“I intend to stay here and die, along with everyone else.”

“That won’t happen.”

“Only my father could have led the troops to victory. Marius will lose. It’s
my fault. My weakness will destroy the town. The least I can do is stay here and meet the same fate as those whose
dooms I’ve sealed.”

She grabbed him by the ear. “You morose little—useless—If you propose to
do something useful to help someone, then very well, I’ll let you do it. But I
haven’t suffered and scraped just to let you sit here like a sluggard and wait
for the orcs to stomp in and take your head! Get up!”

“Ow!” he complained, rising.

Behind her, Franziskus softly called her name. She turned.

Henty Redpot stood in the tavern doorway. He exposed a smile full of yellow
teeth. He had his big axe already out.

Without taking her eyes off him, Angelika pivoted. She had heard the creak of
stairs behind her. Elennath, diagonal scar blazing, moved lithely down them.
Toby Goatfield crunched carelessly down after his elven partner.

“Well, well, well,” he said. Toby leaned over the stairway railing and dropped
a leather purse into the taverner’s hand. Nidungus rattled the coins inside the
purse and departed through the front door. Henty swooshed theatrically aside to
let him pass.

“Ah,” said Toby, expansively lifting up his arms. “The Hat and Pony. You
shouldn’t have spent so much of your time babbling away to us, boy.” He winked
at Lukas. “You described it so poetically that it was easy to find.” He reached
the bottom of the stairs and bounced onto the springy floorboards. “And wherever
you were, boy, we’d find these two. If we waited long enough. What they see in
you, I don’t know.”

Angelika opened her mouth and covered it with her hand, in a mocking,
artificial yawn. “While there’s nothing I enjoy so much as listening to a good
gloat, maybe you should just tell us what you want from us.”

Goatfield laughed. Elennath sneered. Henty chortled.

“You’ve done your job,” said Angelika, wondering which of them to go for
first. “You got paid.”

“Paid in money, perhaps,” said the elf. “But not in blood. Not for this.” He
pointed to his ruined face.

“Don’t be so narrow-minded,” she said. “The scar gives you character.”

“Before,” cried Elennath, “I was perfect-looking!”

“And you two halflings,” she said, “you care so much about his porcelain
features?”

“No,” said Henty, behind her. “We just enjoy killing people we don’t like.”

“If you murder the boy, you’ll ruin your employer’s plans. It will spoil
their story if the henchmen who so generously delivered him turn around and gut
him, for no apparent reason.”

“Our employment has come to an end, girlie,” Toby said. “Apparently the
Bretonnian bitch finds us bloodthirsty, uncouth and uncontrollable. How she
could come to that conclusion I can’t possibly reckon.”

“We’re not here to murder the boy,” Elennath told her. “Just the two of you.”

Goatfield cracked his knuckles. “Oh, I think I’d like to kill the boy, too.
What say you, Henty?”

“Indeed,” Henty said, investing the second syllable with lusty fervour.

“Well then,” said Angelika. She hurled herself at Elennath, knife
outstretched.

Franziskus ducked Henty’s axe. It splintered the doorframe.

Elennath twisted to dodge Angelika’s blow. Her dagger tore open his left
side, skating up his ribcage. The elf screeched.

Henty directed a second, lower, blow at Franziskus. He jumped aside. The axe
stuck in the frame, causing the wall to shed flakes of stucco.

Goatfield kicked out at Angelika’s legs, trying to trip her. She grabbed
Elennath and spun him into the leering halfling. The elf fell into Toby’s
dagger; parting the muscles of his lower back. His eyes widened as he became
aware of agony. Goatfield pushed him off his blade. He stumbled onto his knees.
Goatfield regarded the thick elfin blood on his dagger with bemused detachment.
With a swinging, backhanded blow, Angelika sliced open Elennath’s throat, just
below the jaw. Voice box destroyed, he gargled angrily. Only when words refused
to form did he seem to comprehend what had happened. He touched fingers to his
throat. They came back coated in red. He gargled some other threat or insult.
Blood drenched him. It pooled on the floor, seeking the deep cracks between
floorboards. He fell face-first.

“I never truly cared for him,” Goatfield eulogised, rushing at Angelika.

Henty’s axe was stuck again in the shattered frame of the tavern doorway.
Franziskus drew his rapier and warily advanced. The monolithic halfling took
quick sideways glances as Franziskus searched for an advantageous position.

Henty kept working at the axe. Franziskus decided to use his height
advantage, slashing down at the halfling’s neck. Faster than he should have
been, Henty edged away from the blow. He elbowed Franziskus in the gut.
Franziskus wheeled back. He thought he might fall over, but he didn’t.

Still facing Goatfield, Angelika jumped onto the stairs. He came at her. She
kicked him in the face. A loose nail on the heel of her boot tore into it,
ripping a white gash up the side of his right cheek. The gash filled and turned
red. She kicked at his throat. He grabbed her leg and pulled her down. The back
of her head smacked against one of the steps. Then another. He dragged her like
a mop through Elennath’s blood.

Henty freed his axe. He surged at Franziskus. Franziskus feinted left, then
dodged right. Henty crashed into a table. Franziskus smashed his hilt-pommel
into the base of Henty’s skull. Henty made a woofing noise. He swung at
Franziskus with the axe. Franziskus danced back toward the stairs. He hit the
spreading patch of elfin gore and his feet flew out from under him. His fall
saved him from Henty’s sweeping axe, which otherwise might have detached his
head and sent it flying across the tavern.

Franziskus found himself at Goatfield’s feet. Goatfield let go of Angelika to
send a stomping boot down on the Stirlander’s face. Franziskus met it with the
palm of his hand, which he then wrenched sideways with all his might. Goatfield
toppled off balance.

Angelika took stock. She was face to face with Henty. He drooled at her. She
threw her knife at his eye. He moved and it hit his forehead instead. It bounced
off, and not so much as a red mark appeared on his skin. He brought his axe
down. She leapfrogged over him, pushing on his back on the way over. He
struggled to keep his footing. She turned, spun, and tried to topple him with a
kick to his blocky posterior.

Though well placed, it failed to budge him. He whirled and crashed his axe
down, splintering floorboards all around him.

Franziskus poked the tip of his rapier into Toby’s side. The halfling was
still flat on his back and struggling to right himself, but his feet were
skidding in sticky gore. He grabbed Franziskus’ blade, wrinkling his eyes up as
it cut into the soft flesh of his hand. He grunted and bent the rapier to a
right angle. He released it, rolled onto his stomach, and used Elennath’s blood
as lubricant to slide himself quickly across the floor to Franziskus, whose
ankles he seized with gnarled hands. He bit Franziskus’ ankle, then yanked
forward, bringing the Stirlander down on his buttocks. Franziskus kicked him in
the face, widening the narrow, riverine wound Angelika had inflicted there.

Angelika took hold of a flimsy wooden chair, to use as a shield against
Henty’s axe. Henty smashed it to bits. She picked up a second chair. He smashed,
too, leaving her holding a broken spindle from the chair’s back. Its end had
sheared through crosswise, leaving it sharpened like a stake. She drove it into
the side of Henty’s neck. He staggered back, goggled his eyes in pain, but then
recovered to swing his axe furiously at her. She leapt up onto the table. He
hammered the axe down on it, breaking it in two. As it fell, she leapt backwards
onto the table behind it. To get at her, he parted the wreckage of the first
table.

Toby grunted and scrabbled forward, hauling himself up onto Franziskus’
body, and clambering along his legs. He bit down on Franziskus’ crotch. He
growled and spat out a tooth. Franziskus silently thanked his sister for giving
him a codpiece as an enlistment gift, and himself for remembering to put it on,
under his trousers. Then he stuck his thumbs in Toby’s eye sockets and started
gouging. Toby reared back, snapped at his fingers like a turtle, then got to his
knees, driving an elbow down onto Franziskus’ sternum. Franziskus groaned.

Angelika alighted from the table before Henty could smash this one too. She
reached for a beer stein. It was made of pewter and weighed at least ten pounds.
She hurled it at Henty’s head. It hit the bridge of his nose. His eyes glazed. A viscous dribble of blood emerged shyly from his left nostril. Redpot blinked
and cracked his neck. He advanced on her.

A shape appeared behind him. It was Lukas. He held a heavy club of wood, its
end still coaled in white and yellow embers, from the taverner’s firepit. He
crashed it across the back of Henty’s skull.

Henty teetered forward, then back. He elbowed Lukas in the chest, dropping
him. Embers clung to his head and shoulders. They burned through his tunic.
Strands of his hair singed, curling up. He raised his axe.

Toby seized Franziskus by the back of his neck, hauling him to his feet. He
pressed the Stirlander’s face into a table. Franziskus groped its surface. His
searching fingers found a paring knife. He slashed it backwards, prompting Toby
to release him. Franziskus whirled to face the halfling. He jabbed the knife at
Goatfield’s ear. Toby grabbed his wrist and twisted. The knife fell. Franziskus
kneed him in the stomach. He doubled over.

Henty swung his axe. Angelika dodged.

Franziskus took a step back and then hit Toby with his shoulder, catching him
full in the face. Toby skidded back, his right arm making contact with the soup
cauldron. He squawked in pain and drew back from it. His arm, from the elbow
down, had gone pink; it bubbled with blisters. Franziskus tried another shoulder
slam; Toby adjusted his stance to forestall another slide into the cauldron. The
impact nonetheless drove him back; he turned his ankle and fell to one knee.
Franziskus knelt, grabbed each of the halfling’s stubby legs, and pulled,
upturning him. Goatfield flailed his arms as Franziskus held him upside down.
Shaking from muscle strain, the young deserter staggered over to the pot. Toby
worked to clamp his legs around his neck, but Franziskus resisted. He leaned
ahead, letting the halfling’s weight carry him forward, and dropped Toby
headfirst into the pot of boiling soup.

In the soup, Toby’s legs thrashed. The cauldron rocked on its metal bracket.
It dropped off, into the fire, and overturned. Franziskus sidestepped the
ensuing splash. Toby rose screaming from inside the pot, bone exposed, eye
sockets empty. Small bits of chopped leek dotted his cooked flesh. He teetered to the side and fell to the floorboards, where he twitched and
expired, barely two feet from Elennath’s dead and staring face.

Franziskus checked to see how Angelika fared. Plainly, she was tiring: each
dodge of Henty’s axe-blows was slower than the last. The murderous halfling had
manoeuvred her to the front of the tavern. She was pressed against a wall, where
an old bronze shield hung. She ducked as he swung; he hit it, folding it in two.