The Clandestine Circle (12 page)

He slowed as he approached them, drew to his full height, and swept them with a raking regard.

“Lord Bight, what’s happening?” shouted several at once.

“Why are you taking people away?” a woman cried.

“We’ve heard hundreds have died. They say the illness is a curse!”

Another angry voice shouted, “How many more ships will you burn?”

More people joined the throng, sailors and merchants, pickpockets and servants. Their voices rose, confused and angry, and muddled together until there was only a babble of noise that assaulted the ears and made no sense.

Commander Durne and Captain Dewald, without apparent
concern, sent soldiers to bolster the line of the City Guard and to surround the governor.

Lord Bight climbed onto a pile of crates and raised his arms to the crowd to ask for silence. Gradually, with much squabbling and muttering, the onlookers grew quiet.

Using a loud voice and succinct words, the lord governor answered the questions fairly and fittingly and explained the disaster as best he could over a renewed barrage of more questions, comments, and drunken heckling.

Linsha watched, impressed by Lord Bight’s unending patience. He seemed to radiate calm in his voice and in every movement of his body, and his words were chosen to comfort as well as inform. The noisy crowd slowly subsided under the hypnotic quality of his deep, even tones. So powerful was the effort he exerted to sway the mob that no one who stood within hearing remained unmoved by the enchantment of his voice.

Linsha and the guards were so intent on watching Lord Bight, they didn’t notice a gang of boisterous youths who had joined the crowd late and were hovering along the fringes, laughing drunkenly and whispering conspiratorially among themselves while they passed several large bottles of ale around.

A stocky man, clothed in a nondescript tunic and leggings, eased into their midst and handed them a jug of dwarven spirits. A smirk and a laugh crossed his face as he whispered something to their leader, a gangly fisherman’s son. The boy choked with mirth as at a joke and leaned over to tell his friends. In the middle of their guffaws, the stranger slipped away into the shadows of a dark alley.

The boys passed the jug around a few more times for courage, then one by one they picked up small items from the ground, the wharf, or nearby piles of cargo and eased their way toward the front of the crowd.

The fisherman’s son took the last swallow from one of the bottles of ale. “Help, we’re under attack!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, and he hurled the bottle in the general direction of Lord Bight’s guards. His friends threw their
ammunition, and a virtual rain of bottles, rocks, bale hooks, and broken boards fell among the guards.

Several guards fell, bleeding and dazed. The rest drew their weapons with shouts of fury.

The crowd gasped like people startled out of a dream. They saw the fallen warriors, the drawn swords, and pandemonium broke loose.

Furious City Guards charged into the mob to capture the boys. Most of the people scattered, terrified, in all directions, but a few of the more observant ones jumped on three of the miscreants, and several others gave chase to the rest of the boys. The guards’ horses reared and neighed in fright at the noise and rushing people. Officers shouted orders to their men.

The lord governor leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and drew a deep breath. His strength was temporarily depleted by his effort to calm the mob and the sudden shattering of his enchantment. His bodyguards, those still on their feet, immediately surrounded him in an impenetrable wall.

But Linsha saw little of this.

The heavy brown jug, crafted from red clay and fired to a rigid density, sailed through the air and crashed with unexpected accuracy on Commander Durne’s head.

Stunned, the commander staggered back between two stacks of barrels, caught his heel on the edge of the pier, and toppled backward into the darkness.

Linsha shouted an oath. She put the cat and the ship’s log on a barrel, then stripped off her sword and boots while peering over the edge of the pier. Fortunately for Durne, the tide was full and enough water swirled around the pylons to have saved him from a crushing fall. Unfortunately she couldn’t see his body.

Before she had time to think about her folly, Linsha took a flying jump off the pier into the night-black waters of the harbor. Thank the gods, she had learned to swim well in both lake and river, and the water here was fairly smooth. There were no currents, undertows, or heavy waves, since
the tide was about to turn. Nevertheless, it was very dark, and it stank of refuse.

She treaded water for a short time, looking frantically for the commander. She had landed close to the spot where he must have gone in, so she hoped to find him quickly. She didn’t relish diving underwater in what was little more than a treacherous, submerged trash dump. And who knew what might lurk under that great pier? Linsha hated swimming in water she couldn’t see through.

She pushed herself a little higher out of the water and scanned the dense shadows under the pier. Suddenly a yellowish gleam of light reflected on the water around her. Several guards leaned over the pier and held their torches at arm’s length for her. It was enough. At the edge of the faint illumination, beside one of the large pylons, she caught a hint of red. Four strong strokes brought her to a body nearly submerged, clothed in red, and floating faceup in the slight swell. Blood oozed from a deep gash at his hairline, and his eyes were closed and unresponsive. She checked him quickly and was relieved to see a faint rise and fall in his chest.

“He’s here!” she yelled. She cradled Durne’s head in her arms and kicked out away from the pylons, where the other guards could see her. Thank Paladine, he wasn’t wearing his armor. With fumbling fingers, she unfastened his belt and let his sword and dagger fall to the harbor bottom. She would apologize for that later.

“He’s injured,” she replied to anxious inquiries. “I can’t see a ladder close by. I’m going to need a skiff or a rowboat. And hurry!”

The noise above had abated considerably, and more guards joined those on the pier with torches. Linsha concentrated on treading water and holding Durne’s face above the surface. As worried as she was, she was grateful he was unconscious and not thrashing around in a drowning panic. All too soon, though, her arms and legs grew tired and her lungs ached from the struggle. She clasped him tighter and willed the men to hurry.

A loud splash nearby sent her heart racing, and she turned
as best she could to see what was in the water with her. Torchlight shone on a wet head and a pair of arms pulling toward her, and with a sigh of relief, she recognized Lord Bight.

The water seemed to rejuvenate the lord governor, for his eyes gleamed with strength and pleasure, and he swam about her like a creature born to the waves. Wordlessly he took Commander Durne’s weight from her leaden arms and began to tow the soldier toward the dock. Linsha followed wearily behind.

Help came at last in a small rowboat someone finally found tied to a sloop nearby. Mica and Captain Dewald rowed out to Lord Bight, Linsha, and Durne and hauled them, dripping and smelly, into the boat.

Linsha crawled to the bow and collapsed on a small seat. “What took you so long?” she grumbled. “There’re things under that dock bigger than I am.”

Although she hadn’t said what those things could be, she hid a small smile when Captain Dewald threw a startled glance at the darkness under the pier and hurriedly bent his back to the oars.

Mica leaned over Durne, his short, thick fingers surprisingly deft in their exploration of the commander’s injury. “Lucky for him you got to him so quickly,” the dwarf said to Lord Bight. “Stupid thing to do, falling off a pier,” he added.

“I don’t think he did it intentionally,” said Linsha testily.

Mica ignored her. He placed the fingers of both hands on Durne’s temples and closed his eyes. He mumbled a spell in his native tongue to help focus his effort in coaxing the healing magic from his heart.

Linsha soon saw why he was the healer to the governor. He was quick and he was good. By the time Dewald brought the boat to a small floating dock not far away, Durne was already conscious and his wound was closed.

The commander stared around in surprise at Linsha, soaked and bedraggled, at his governor sitting in a dripping tunic, at Mica leaning wearily against the gunwale of the small boat, at the water so close by, and at the concerned guards gathered on the dock. He put his hand to his head.
“What, what happened?” he wanted to know.

Lord Bight laughed heartily, as if jumping into the black waters of the harbor was something he did every night. “This young woman,” he said, pointing at Linsha, ‘seems to make a habit out of trying to save people. Tonight it was you.”

T
he confusion was over and the crowd had dispersed by the time Linsha and Durne were helped back to the pier. A few guards nursed bruises and cuts from the rain of missiles, but only Commander Durne had been seriously hurt.

Linsha walked back to the barrel where the ship’s cat still sat complacently on the logbook. She bent over to pick up her weapons, but she felt her legs begin to tremble, and before she could stop herself, she slid down with a thump and sagged back against the barrel. A reaction to what she had done settled into her bones and left her cold, shivering, and utterly spent. The cat jumped down into her lap and began to sniff her uniform tunic with great interest.

Meanwhile, five of youths had been caught, being too drunk to run far, and they knelt in a terrified row with their hands on their heads in front of a squad of angry City Guards. Their ringleader, the fisherman’s son, knelt with the rest and bore a darkening bruise on one eye and a look of frightened
defiance. He sank back onto his heels in obvious relief when the commander walked unsteadily to the pier.

Lord Bight wasted no time. He strode to the fisherman’s son, grabbed his shirt, and hauled the youth bodily to his feet. The boy’s jaw went slack and his eyes bulged in fear; any hint of defiance fled his broad face.

“Boy,” the lord governor roared, “my guards tell me you are responsible for this fiasco. You will tell me in twenty words or less why you and your friends did something so stupid. And it had better be the truth, or you will spend a week in the stocks on top of your punishment for disturbing a public meeting, assaulting my guards, attempting to murder my commander, and inciting a panic.”

The boy made one feeble attempt to speak, then his eyes rolled up and he fainted, from fear or spirits no one knew.

The governor dropped him in disgust and stepped to the next young man, a scrawny, dark-haired boy of about seventeen in the rough-weave clothing of a farmer. He stood over the youth, his brow dark and his eyes like a furnace.

“It was supposed to be a joke,” the boy blurted before the governor said a word. “Just a joke! We didn’t intend to kill anyone.”

Lord Bight looked down at his prisoner like a lion about to pounce. “A joke?” he said in a voice as rough as a growl.

The boy blinked and plunged on. “Yes, my lord. We were laughing and roughhousing among ourselves when this man came up to see us. He had a bottle of dwarven spirits—smelled like mushrooms, you know. And he, uh, talked to us and gave us that jug.”

“He said the speechifying had gone on long enough. How about a laugh to break it up?” offered another boy of about eighteen.

“A laugh?” repeated the governor harshly. He planted his fists on his hips and glared at them. “I almost lost two of my guards.”

A younger boy started to snivel. He was so hunched over he looked like he wanted to melt into the planks of the pier. “We’re sorry, Your Excellency. Really we are. We didn’t think.”

“Well, you’d better start thinking now. Who suggested throwing things?”

“The man did,” said the third boy, eager to be helpful. “He said we should give the guards a scare.”

“What did this man look like? Did any of you know him?”

They all shook their heads. “Kinda tall,” offered the youngest.

The others pitched in, hoping to assuage the governor’s anger.

“And black hair.”

“No. Brown. And he had a beard.”

“You dolt. Those were just heavy sideburns.”

“Enough!” Lord Bight’s order cracked like a whip. His voice took on a relentless certainty no one could disobey. “You will give your statements to the City Guards, including the names of the rest of your accomplices. The magistrate will charge you for malicious conduct and inciting a riot, and the guards will hold you in the dungeons for one week, which should give you plenty of time to think.”

The five boys looked appalled, but not one said a word.

“If I ever catch you doing anything like this again, I will send you to the volcanic mines. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of “Yes, sirs!” and the City Guards took the boys away.

Commander Durne grinned wearily at his governor. “I don’t know what scared them more, you or the thought of the dungeons.”

Lord Bight sighed and rubbed his jaw. “Both, I hope.” He took a deep breath and as quickly as it came, his anger disappeared, to be replaced with a sad resignation. “This has been a hard day for us all. Perhaps I was a little hard on them.”