Honor Among Thieves (18 page)
T
hrough the stout oak door, Croy could hear the voices of men outside the holdfast. He could not tell how many of them there were, nor whose men they might be—they could be barbarians, or bandits, or any manner of evil pursuers.
“I can hear a fire crackling in there,” one man said, quite close to the door.
“Aye—and I heard clanking armor,” another said, fainter.
“So what if there’s someone inside?” the first voice argued. “I’m cold, and tired, and hungry. We’ll make short work of ’em and have the place to—”
Croy wrenched the door open and saw a terrified face staring back at him. He grabbed the man by the throat, then pulled him inside and slammed the door behind him before the others could force their way in. He dropped the bar across the door, sealing it again, then whirled around with Ghostcutter’s point to face the man he’d drawn in.
The intruder fell backward, to clatter on the floor, his kettle hat sliding down over his eyes. He reached up to move the helmet but Croy batted his hand away with the flat of Ghostcutter.
“Who are you?” Croy demanded.
The man seemed too frightened to answer. He was dressed in canvas jack, with iron plates sewn to his elbows and shoulders. He wore a hanger at his belt—more dagger than sword, but deadly enough. The man made no attempt to reach for his weapon.
Croy placed the point of Ghostcutter against his throat. “You wear the harness of a soldier of the king,” he said. “If you’re true to your coat, you’ll find no enemy here.”
“G-G-Gavin,” the man choked out.
“That’s your name, Gavin? Where did you serve?”
“At Helstrow, milord,” Gavin said. He reached up slowly to adjust the brim of his helmet. Croy allowed it. “You’re Sir Croy!”
Croy didn’t deny it.
“Milord, I beg you—have mercy. I only sought shelter here!”
“And you would have taken it from me, by force of arms,” Croy said, nodding.
Gavin’s eyes were wide with fright. “How long have you been in here? Since the battle? You don’t know what it’s like out there! The barbarians harry the countryside. They kill any man they find, take any woman. They burn villages and ravage good crop land. Any place with a roof over your head, any place safe, is worth fighting for.”
“And the king was good enough to give you arms to fight with,” Croy said. He tapped the knife at Gavin’s belt, then the helmet on the soldier’s head. “How many others are with you?”
“Seven. All that’s left of my company. Please, milord—just let me go in peace.”
Croy stepped away from the man on the floor. He unbarred the door and cracked it open. Beyond he could see men peering back at him. They looked more frightened than Gavin. “You’ll come inside one at a time, and drop all your weapons as you enter. At the slightest sign of treachery I’ll cut Gavin to pieces. Understood?”
The men outside nodded eagerly.
Croy allowed them to file inside. They were filthy after days of crawling through mud, and their pale faces had the haunted eyes of men who’d seen too much bloodshed. They obeyed his instructions, dropping even their belt knives. One had a shield. He made to hold onto it, but Croy smacked it with Ghostcutter so it rang. All of the men jumped at the sound.
“A shield’s as good as a mace, in the right hands,” he said. “Drop it.”
The soldier did as he was told.
“Good,” Croy said. “Now. There’s soup in that pot. If you’re hungry.”
Six of them fell on the soup, making cups of their hands in the absence of proper bowls. Only Gavin seemed able to resist. Perhaps because he’d seen something so astonishing he’d forgotten his appetite.
“Sir Croy,” he said, after a moment. “Is that—”
“Aye,” Croy said, moving to stand over the sleeping form of Ulfram V. “This is your sovereign. You see now why I am so careful about what guests I entertain.”
Two of the men at the pot broke away to kneel and make the sign of the Lady on their breasts, the proper form of reverence for men of their station. The rest were too hungry—or not devout enough—to stop their feasting.
“He’s wounded,” Gavin said, his eyes wide.
“He sleeps. I cannot rouse him. Were any of you apothecaries or herbalists, before you became soldiers?”
The men stared up at him in incomprehension. No, of course they hadn’t been healers. Croy knew his luck wasn’t running in that direction these days. They had probably been farmers, like ninety-nine men out of a hundred in Ulfram’s army. Like ninety-nine of every hundred men in Skrae. Farmers conscripted, given a day or two of training, and then armed and put to service before they knew what was happening.
Croy turned away from them. “Eat, Gavin,” he commanded. “What was the last food you had?”
“A bit of bread three days ago,” the soldier told him. “Thank you, milord.”
Croy nodded. While Gavin went to the soup pot, Croy sat down by Ulfram’s head. He placed the point of Ghostcutter against the earthen floor and leaned on it, his forehead resting on the pommel. “What news have you of the war?”
One of the men—not Gavin—answered. “War’s lost,” he said, shaking his head. “The barbarian has all this land for himself, and none dare oppose him.”
“I saw them sending riders toward Redweir. Scouts before an invading force,” Croy said. “They don’t think it’s over yet.”
The soldier threw up his hands. “I never been to Redweir. Don’t know nobody down there. Why should I care what happens to them?”
Croy closed his eyes for a moment. If he could trust these men, if they could stand watch while he slept—but no. Not yet.
“Has any man seen Sir Hew, or Sir Rory?” he asked.
The soldiers looked at each other as if afraid to answer. “Everyone says they perished in the rout,” Gavin answered between sips of lukewarm soup. “Of course, they say the same of you, milord. And—And your master, there.”
“They think him dead?” Croy asked, suddenly looking up. That might actually be the first bit of good news he’d heard. If the general wisdom was that the king had died in the battle, then perhaps the barbarians thought so, too. At the very least that would mean they weren’t actively looking for him.
“Good, good,” Croy said. “We’ll let them think that until we’re ready to surprise them with the truth. When we’ve gathered our men in secret—all those who survived the battle. All those who would stand under the king’s banner. There must be others like you, others who fought and were defeated but not destroyed. Others ready to rise again, true men of Skrae, bloodied but not beaten, and when—”
He stopped because he’d caught the men looking at each other again. Like they shared a secret they didn’t want to give him.
Croy frowned but said nothing for a while. He waited until the men had finished eating. Then he asked, quite carefully, “Where was your company posted, during the battle?”
Gavin looked away as he answered. “We were billeted in the western part of town, in an old almshouse. We didn’t get word that the battle had been joined, not until the barbarian was already inside the gate.”
Croy nodded. “And when word did come, that the fortress was in full distress. Where did your serjeants send you then?”
Another conspiratorial glance.
Croy knew what their shared silence meant. These men had not been part of the fighting. They had probably never had a chance to draw their weapons. If they escaped Helstrow before the barbarians took the western gate, then they must have left even before he himself fled with the king over his shoulder.
These men weren’t battle-hardened veterans. They were deserters.
“Never mind, don’t answer,” he said. There were some things he didn’t want to know. Like whether Gavin and his men had deserted the fortress unhindered—or whether they’d had to fight and perhaps kill their own serjeants before they were allowed to go. Whether they were craven cowards, or, much worse, traitors.
Either way, he knew he would not be sleeping for some time yet. He couldn’t leave the king’s safety in such hands.
Honor—the vows he’d taken—the principles on which his life was built—all demanded that he bring these men to justice, if they were guilty. That he slay them on the spot. That was the penalty for desertion in every army Croy had heard of.
But the fortunes of war could play havoc with honor, he thought. Fear could do strange things to a man’s heart. So he decided to temper his anger with mercy. He would watch Gavin and his crew closely—but he wouldn’t slay them in the name of justice, not yet. Not until they’d had another chance to prove themselves.
“The past is the past. You’re here, now, and that’s what matters,” he said. “Here where you can still serve your king. We’ll need to make a litter for him, something two men can carry. We won’t get far if I have to keep him over my shoulder.”
“Milord, you aren’t thinking of going out
there
,” Gavin said carefully, pointing toward the door, “when we’ve safety and warmth right here?”
“Just as soon as we’ve all had a chance to rest,” Croy told him.
The war wasn’t over. Not while Ulfram V still lived.
T
he river Skrait twisted through Ness, carving its way between Castle Hill and the Royal Ditch before diving straight for Eastpool. There it widened out to make a natural haven for river boats. The land on either side of this harbor, also called Eastpool, was a district of tar-stinking wharves and low shacks. It gave home to the fish market by day and a steady trade in the seedier commodities after dark. It was a natural magnet for thieves, yet Cutbill’s charges rarely ventured there alone, since its quays and unpaved lanes were patrolled constantly by rivermen carrying spikes and harpoons—men who did not trust the watch to keep them safe.
In Malden’s experience there had been no time of day or night when Eastpool was not crowded with fishwives and burly salters, with sea captains and pirates looking for a place to lie low. Now, though, like all the Free City, it was a desolate wasteland, almost untenanted. He saw a few women gathered around a jug of strong spirits. They were watching the fishing boats that had been pulled up on the banks and turned hull up to resist the sun. He saw a few confused looking sailors, just in from far ports of call and unknowing of the war or the game fate was playing with Skrae. Yet in many of the twisty ways he passed through, under the shade of half the shanties in Eastpool, Malden was alone.
He headed down the Ditchside Stair toward the water and there he was able to hire a rowboat from a one-armed man who looked very glad for his custom. Yet when Malden told him where he wished to row to, the boatman scowled and demanded a deposit on guarantee of return.
“I shall be quite welcome there, I assure you. I’m known there, and fondly,” Malden told the man, but failed to convince him.
“There’s those in this world like their privacy, and Coruth, she don’t welcome nobody,” the boatman insisted. “Even old friends.”
Malden sighed and turned over an extra shilling, which he doubted he would get back even if he returned the boat in perfect condition. The boatman would probably insist the rowboat had been contaminated just by coming in contact with the Isle of Horses.
It mattered little. If he was truly master of the guild of thieves now—ha, he thought, it’s but some trick Cutbill’s playing, as he’d been thinking all day—then he could afford the surcharge. He leapt into the little boat and grabbed up its oars.
He’d never cared much for rowboats, since you couldn’t see where you were going when you rowed. Yet this time he was almost glad to be pulling himself backward across the Skrait’s slow current. The Isle of Horses was none too easy on the eyes. It had been named for a calamity long passed, during a very rainy year when the Skrait had swollen and flooded its banks and was far too wild to navigate. Still, ships had tried, for Ness was the richest port in Skrae, and paid well for cargo. One ship foundered just inside Eastpool, run aground on a shoal. It sank with all hands and all its goods aboard, yet somehow a consignment of horses managed to escape the wreck and make their way onto the only available piece of dry land. Every attempt to retrieve the animals failed in the foaming water of a bad storm, and for days the people of Eastpool had been forced to listen to the screams of terrified beasts as the water rose, every hour coming a foot closer to washing the island away altogether.
The island survived, but no one found any trace of the horses when the storm had passed. The locals considered the tiny scrap of land haunted now, and neither landed there nor used it for any purpose. It was one of the few uninhabited parcels of land inside the city’s walls, and that should have made it invaluable as the city’s population grew and crowded every available square foot. Yet no one had ever tried to live there—until Coruth claimed it for her own.
Barely six feet above the water at its highest point, the Isle of Horses was choked with gorse and bramble. Coruth’s house was its only salient feature, a shack made of driftwood from which odd lights were often seen by night and sometimes noises issued that could not be explained. The perfect home for a witch.
Malden pulled at the oars until his boat grated on the rocky beach below the house. Because he had not announced his arrival—he knew no way to contact Coruth save to knock on her door—he stood awhile in the boat, letting himself be seen, before he stepped down onto the strand.
When there was no response from the house, he tried calling out, shouting that it was Malden and he wished to speak with Coruth. That elicited no response either.
So he jumped down from the boat, onto the pebbled shore, and started walking toward the house.
He’d taken no more than a half dozen steps before a rope, half buried in the pebbles, shifted under his foot as he trod on it. Instantly he felt the rope shift as it took up tension and he cursed silently. A trap—a trap he should have seen, because this was no magical ward. It was one of the simplest traps he’d ever encountered. The rope stretched away toward a post to which hundreds of cockle shells had been loosely nailed. As the pressure of his foot tightened the rope, it waggled the post and the shells chimed together—a soft, pleasant sound that was lost in the sighing of the wind. Having tripped enough alarms in his life, he knew someone would hear it.