The Cold Commands (15 page)

“That’s good. Something to be proud of, then. So look, who around here is—”

“Gadral?
Gadral?
” It wasn’t quite a full bellow, but the boy jumped as if the head in the cage had suddenly opened its eyes at him. “If you’re out there jawing with your little cunt mates again, I’m going to give you such a fucking hi—”

The voice dried up as its owner loomed in the doorway and saw Egar standing there. The man narrowed his eyes against the early-morning sun.

“Help you, pal?” It wasn’t a helpful tone.

Egar let the moment stretch, took the time it gave him to read the other man. Big by Yhelteth standards, a heavy, once-muscular frame now beginning to blur at the edges with age and easier living. Sun-darkened face seamed and pouched, but still some trace of military bearing, something a little deeper etched than levy standard. A butcher’s chopper held casually in one meaty, blood-sprinkled hand.

Egar nodded at the clumsy blade. “Making soup?”

Brief clash of gazes while the other man took the trouble to read him, too. The chopper lowered, hung slack at arm’s length.

“Yeah. Week’s End stew. You want some?”

“I’ll start with a beer. Work up to it.”

“Sure.” The other man nodded him inside. As Egar stepped past and found a stool at the bar, he heard the publican cursing the boy out again. But he thought there was a little less heat in it this time, and the man came inside pretty quick.

“Your boy?” Egar asked, as his pint was drawn.

“Is he, fuck. My boy died under arms at Shenshenath, when the lizards came. That’s just my whore’s son. Came with the territory, y’know. Someone’s got to feed the little shit.”

“Right.”

The other man set the filled pint glass down on the bar between them. “Stew is going to take a while. I got bread and oil, you want it while you wait.”

“Sounds good.”

The publican disappeared behind a grubby curtain hung across the kitchen entrance, leaving Egar to his pint. Low voices, clatter of plates, and then the dull, repeated thud of the chopper into a wooden board. The Dragonbane sat in the stale, beer-scented gloom and the dusty, filtering
light from shutters still not opened. He sipped his beer. It wasn’t bad.

Presently, a tall, haggard-looking woman came out carrying a platter with his bread and oil. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Egar but then gathered herself quickly enough and set the food down on the bar. She charged him one elemental for the platter and the beer, looked relieved when he paid up without a fuss, and then went outside. Egar heard her murmuring to the boy.

When she came back in, he said, breezily: “Guess you don’t see that many like me in here?”

“What?” Voice faint.

“Steppe dwellers. Don’t get a lot of them? I was wondering because—”

“Not so early,” she said and fled back into the kitchen.

Egar raised his eyebrows and went back to his pint. More lowered voices in the kitchen. The chopper chunked once, definitively, into wood. The publican came out through the curtain, glowering.

“What’s your fucking problem, then? I said she was
my
whore, I didn’t say she was up for grabs.”

Egar set his drink aside with care, and looked at the man.

“Just making conversation,” he said softly. “Where I’m from, reasonable men can talk to a woman without it meaning anything. You seemed like a reasonable man when I came in, but maybe I was wrong about that.”

The publican hesitated. Sunlight filtered into the low-beamed space and the quiet. Somewhere, a beer tap dripped into its tray. The moment stretched.

Went away.

“Yeah, all right then.” An ungracious shrug. “Let it go. Got a brother served up at the Dhashara pass, he always did say you lot let your women run riot. Mouthing off like they were men, riding horses, carrying weapons, shit like that.”

“Been known to happen,” Egar agreed.

“Yeah, well, that shit won’t wash down here. This is Yhelteth, this is the Empire. We’re civilized. Women know their place. And truth is, I’m about fucking sick of the trouble we get from your kind coming in here.” Grudging, bitten off. “No offense.”

“Oh—none taken. What kind of trouble would that be, then?”

“Only a big fucking fight a couple of weeks back. They put out two windows, and one of my serving girls lost a finger. Had to call the City Guard. Like I said, I’m sick of it. You going to live in a civilized city, you’ve got to act civilized, too. You know?”

Egar pulled a face. Brawling at the Pony Stringer’s Good Fortune hadn’t ever been out of fashion as far as he could recall.

In fact, some of his best brawls …

“What was this fight about, then?”

“Fuck would I know?” The publican swabbed irritably at his bar with a fetid-looking cloth. “Some tribal shit? Not like I
speak
northern, is it? All I know is, one minute everybody’s drinking and yelling back and forth like normal, next thing it’s fists and blades. Half of them in Citadel threads, too—I mean, that’s just …”

He gestured helplessly, a man losing his grip on the changing world.

“Citadel rig, huh?” Egar, voice elaborately casual, sipping his beer. “That’s unusual.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. When I was a kid, they wouldn’t have let an outlander set foot inside a temple, let alone fucking pay them wages to do it.”

True enough. It was a time Egar caught the tail end of, arriving in Yhelteth a decade and a half ago. A time when a lot of taverns were still calling themselves the Majak’s Head, still sporting iron cages very like the one outside this place to prove the point. He remembered burning one to the ground in the Spice Quarter one riotous summer night. A mixed-bag company of other steppe nomads, out staggering drunk on furlough. Summer heat, booze-tightened tempers, just waiting for the right tinder. Some heavyset Ishlinak, ax in hand, bawling that that was his fucking
uncle
up there in the cage, rot-eyed and blackened …

They burst in, boots and brutal-indignant rage. Broke faces and furniture, tore women’s clothing, grabbed torches from brackets on the wall. Roaring encouragement to one another. Whirl and toss—up behind the bar, in amongst the crowded tables. The straw across the floor went up, flames thigh-high in seconds.

And then it was all discordant screams and chaos, and a stampede for the doors.

He remembered making it outside, standing there grinning into the blaze as it built. Remembered the fire leaping out of windows, chewing at the low eaves. The head in its cage, flame-wrapped and roasting until the bracket charred too much to take the weight and the cage tumbled to the street, still on fire. The roof timbers took—cheap wood, poorly seasoned—burned rapidly through, and crashed in with a roar. The watching Majak roared with it.

Whirling, red-orange sparks on a cinnamon wind.

Akal the Great, always shrewd in his lawmaking, brought in an ordinance the following year. War against the League had brought the Majak south in their mercenary thousands—you could no longer afford to offend them. The tavern names changed.

No one recalled what happened to the various heads. Most, in truth, had probably never belonged to genuine Majak in the first place.

“… and he should fucking know better. That’s all I’m saying.”

Egar blinked back to the present. Scent of stale beer and the sifting, low-angle sunlight. He’d evidently missed a chunk of the publican’s rant.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Look, don’t get me wrong. I got nothing against you people, right. Really. And I still serve Harath in here just the same as anyone else, same as I always did before. I just think you got to know who you are, is all. Can’t make a decision like that just because you’re cunt-struck. He really wants to convert, hey, fine with me. Revelation says it’s for all men to make that choice—even outlanders. But you can’t turn around later and say you want out just cuz your little whore fucks off and dumps you. That’s apostasy, it’s serious shit up at the temples. He can’t blame the ones who still carry steel for the Citadel when they give him the cold shoulder.”

“So.” Egar made a quick estimate on the shape of what he’d missed. “You’re saying this Harath started the fight?”

“I’m saying he was here, is all. And I’ve seen the way he gets when the others are around. Starts yelling about the old gods, how the Citadel is full of shit. You can’t expect to talk like that and not get a kicking.”

“True enough.” Egar turned his tankard back and forth a little on the bar, frowning. “You know where he flops these days?”

It got him a funny look. “Yeah, and what’s it to you?”

Shrug it off. “Sounds like this guy I’m looking for, is all. Mother’s cousin’s son, it’s the same name. Bit of a fuckup by all accounts, but I’m supposed to check on him. No big deal. Family. You know how it is.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Does he still come in here? Since the fight, I mean.”

The publican glowered into the middle distance for a moment or two. Maybe he was remembering the broken fixtures.

“Try up on the An-Monal road, other side of the Span,” he said. “Someplace above a pawnshop, I heard.”

hey reached the river without event, followed the sounds it made and the flash glimpses through sun-metaled foliage that the path afforded them. They tracked along the eastern bank for a while until finally, a hundred yards downstream from the last set of rapids and craggy falls, the trail broke cover and went to the water’s edge. It was the same fording point they’d used coming in, and they already knew the water never went worse than waist-deep. Still, Ringil dismounted there into the long grass and stood for a while, watching. He wanted, he told himself, to check the far bank for any sign of an ambush before they crossed.

Getting a bit jumpy in our advancing years, aren’t we, Gil? What’s the matter, you planning to die old and in bed all of a sudden?

Not planning to die at all just yet
.

It was a beautiful day, drowsy with heat and insect hum. Late-morning sunlight lay on the water in splashes too bright to look at directly. Ringil shaded his face and screwed up his eyes, peered across to the trees on the
other side. It was about thirty yards, an easy crossing for the horses, no swimming required.

If there was anyone in the trees, they were keeping very still.

There’s no one in the fucking trees, Gil, and you know it. This is local militia and the border patrol we’re dealing with here, not a skirmish ranger advance party. They’re all back at Snarl’s encampment, butchering your men and probably the slaves as well for good measure. Just face it—you got away from this one without a scratch
.

Nonetheless, he took the reins and led his horse into the water on foot, moving slowly, ready to scoot back and use its bulk for cover if the far bank suddenly sprouted militiamen with crossbows. He tested each boot-hold on the river bottom, and he never took his eyes from the greenery.

Behind him, Eril dismounted and followed suit.

They crossed without a word, wading through the soft swirl of water at their waists and a curious sun-touched silence that seemed to exist separated from the muted roar of the rapids upstream. A pair of birds bickered brightly and chased each other in dipping flight a scant couple of feet above the surface of the river. Pine needles and bright yellow specks of forest detritus slid by on the flow. It was—

The corpse was on him before he knew it. Bumping at his side in the water, carried on the current. One trailing arm wrapped around his hip like the final effort of an exhausted swimmer.

“Fuck!”

The curse jolted loose, as if punched out of him. Nerves still raw from the morning’s slaughter, cranked newly taut again from watching the bank ahead; he flinched like some upriver maiden touching her first erect cock. Floundered back, hands up and warding, almost off his feet with the shock.

Just about had the presence of mind to let go the reins and not drown his fucking horse.

Hoiran’s sake, Gil. Get a grip
.

He found his footing, reached back to the horse, and clucked at it. The dead man caught at his waist, seemed inclined to cling there. A little embarrassed at being so girlish, Ringil cleared his throat and looked the body over. He saw drenched clothing bubbled full of air at the back,
facedown under a floating mop of lank, dark hair. Crossbow fletches standing stiffly clear of the water where the quarrel protruded from the man’s back.

Some dark and weary war-stained impulse made him reach down and touch the corpse at the shoulder. He rolled the man in the water, pulled the clinging arm gently loose, and turned the body faceup. It told him nothing. Nondescript Naom face, about forty, worn with hard-scrabble living, and a couple of small scars that didn’t look like the result of combat. The sharp end of the quarrel jutted a handbreadth out from the chest. The floating hand that had until a moment ago been wrapped around Ringil’s waist was blunt-fingered and scarred from a lifetime of labor, but it had raw manacle sores around the wrist, leached pale and whitish pink by the water.

The corpse opened dead black eyes and stared up at him.

“Better run,” it hissed.

This time the shock held him rigid, came shuddering in along his veins like icy water and put cold clamps at his temples. His grip on the corpse clenched as if to drown it, he heard his throat make a locked-up sound.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

“You all right, mate?”

Eril’s voice, concerned. He’d led his horse up level with Ringil’s, was peering at his companion curiously. Ringil blinked back at him, and something shifted in the sun-bladed air. He stared down at the heavy, black-barked tree branch in the water and the death grip he had it in. The crooked twist and reach of one arm off the main body, the way it tried to roll in the swirl of the river’s flow.

It was just a chunk of tree.

“Must have washed down from near the bluffs,” Eril said. “Seen a lot of fallen trunks choked up in rapids and falls back there. Something that size, the whole tree’s probably gone in, got jammed, and now it’s rotting off a piece at a time.”