The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms) (41 page)

The little man stood back. ‘My task in life. Come in, and bring your friends with you.’

They trooped inside and followed Phrynius down a shabby hall, then through another door to a larger room where the shutters were pulled down against the sun and which smelled slightly of ammonia and sulphur. There was a fire burning in a brazier, shelves of dusty books and a large table littered with papers, vials, bottles and jars. A threadbare rug covered the stone of the floor, and a human skull grinned to itself in the corner. Riven half-expected to see a crocodile hanging from the ceiling, but instead there were bulbs of garlic and bunches of other herbs which he could not identify. Their tang permeated the room along with the chemical smells, making him blink. He stared at the rows of glass jars below the books on the walls—and saw an eye staring back at him from one of them, and what could have been a human foetus in another.

Luib had laid Madra down on a faded red couch. She was awake now, and looking about her in bewilderment. Riven sat beside her and took her hand whilst Finnan introduced the company and told Phrynius something of what had befallen them.

The old man shook his head. ‘What times! What times are upon us!’ He shuffled across to where Madra lay and shooed Riven out of the way. Then he took his place and touched here and there with his thin, liver-spotted hands. She flinched, but made no sound. The old man spoke to them without looking round, and with surprising authority in his voice.

‘Finnan, heat some water and rip some bindings in the kitchen. The rest of you must leave; no good in crowds. The poor girl doesn’t want you staring at her. Get out. Have a drink, polish your swords. Go!’

They left, somewhat sheepishly, and followed Finnan into a tiny, grubby kitchen where he was setting a water-filled pot over the fire.

‘He’s a funny old goat,’ the pilot said, ‘but he has more goodness in him than the rest of the city put together. She’s in excellent hands.’

‘All right,’ Bicker said. ‘I believe you. So we wait.’ He glanced about him. The company were crammed into the kitchen like a limpet in its shell. He laughed suddenly. ‘But not here. There’s not enough room to scratch our heads.’

‘Beer,’ said Ratagan suddenly. ‘Beer! By all that’s holy, I’d almost forgotten we were in a place where they sell beer. Our problem is solved. We’ll go and wet our throats.’

‘There is an inn, the Blackbird, just down the street,’ Finnan put in. ‘It has good ale, and the landlord has never cheated me yet.’

‘Then we are off,’ said Bicker.

‘I will stay,’ Luib said quietly.

The others trooped out of the healer’s house on to the sunlit street, glad to breathe fresh air and to feel the breeze on their faces. They almost ran down the road, drawing looks from the passersby. But they did not care. They were glad to be free of the flatboat and the smell of death that had been with them ever since the battle. Even Riven laughed with the rest as they piled into the inn Finnan had told them of, and Ratagan wished the landlord good day in a roar that made the poor man cower. Soon they were kicking the bar with their toes, their noses buried in cold beer. Only Corrary was still subdued, remembering his brother lying in a makeshift grave far from his home Rorim. He had given Darmid’s sword to Riven, to replace the one lost.

When the first beer had gone, they ordered another, and turned to survey the inn. It was quiet, but perhaps that was because their entrance had been so noisy. A scattered crowd of locals was eyeing them in silence. The landlord cleaned a tankard with nervous twists of his hand.

Ratagan belched, raised his mug to the other customers, then turned to lean on the bar again. Isay was the only one not drinking. He stood beside Riven, fingering his staff thoughtfully.

‘So here we are,’ Ratagan said, ‘in Talisker, biggest city of the north, and the last before the mountains. What now, Bicker?’

The dark man sipped his beer, then rubbed his finger in the condensation dripping on the outside of the metal mug. ‘The hardest part of the journey lies before us.’

‘The mountains,’ Riven murmured.

‘And no horses,’ said Corrary.

‘That is no great thing. They would not get us far in the heights of the Greshorns anyway,’ said Bicker.

‘How far?’ Riven asked.

‘To the Staer, perhaps three weeks if the weather is kind. That is what it took me in the spring of last year, at any rate. It is a roundabout route we have to take to the mountain, avoiding the horseshoe of high peaks that arc out from it. If we leave the city by the north gate, we will travel through the fief of Armishir before coming to the foothills of the mountains themselves. Quirinus is lord there, and he knows me, for it is with he and his Myrcans that I took up service over a year ago. We can find help there...’ He frowned. ‘Though no doubt Quirinus would be more than slightly curious as to our errand in the Greshorns. He has a mind like a blade, does the Lord of Armishir.’

Familiar names were going through Riven’s mind as he tried to tie in what was real in this Minginish and what was in his stories. Quirinus—the name rang in his head, and he remembered red wine and rich robes, a bald head and eyes like rain-scoured granite. A laugh with an edge in it. Quirinus.

‘There are many Myrcans up here, around Talisker,’ he said, making it half a statement and half a question.

Bicker looked at him in surprise, and then nodded. ‘Talisker is not so far from Merkadale, and it is the largest population centre in Minginish. There are fifty of the Soldier-folk here in the city itself, under Odhar, and twice as many more in the surrounding fiefs. And Talisker boasts at least five hundred Hearthwares.’

‘They have a job before them, in a place this size,’ Corrary remarked, but he sounded impressed nonetheless. Riven saw him touch his sash unconsciously. The Hearthware was dressed in a plain hide jerkin; most of their armour had been lost in the flight north and was at the bottom of the river by now. There, or rusting around the bones of the dead. The company had the appearance of hunted refugees, travel-stained and weary. Only the faded sashes they wore, and the weapons they carried, marked them as anything but ordinary folk fleeing the marauders. Those, and Myrcans in their midst.

‘Who rules here?’ Corrary asked. ‘I know nothing of this part of the world, except for the tales sometimes told in the hall about the mountains.’

Bicker gulped at his beer. ‘Duke Godomar is head of the city council, and in theory has the last word when it comes to governing Talisker. But the council is made up of powerful men—Saffarac, Valentir and others. They head the guilds within the city itself, and control its trade. The Duke must compromise with them in order to keep his own authority. In the end, though, his Myrcans and Hearthwares are more than enough to overawe the retainers of the city lords, so there is a truce of sorts.’

‘A fine-balanced arrangement, if I’m not mistaken,’ Ratagan said absently, and downed more of his beer.

Conversation had started up among the customers in the tavern again, although two had left while the company had been talking amongst themselves. The landlord was still looking a little ill-at-ease, however, and he flinched when Ratagan banged his tankard down on the bar with a grin and demanded a refill.

‘You’re jumpy, my friend,’ the big man told him. ‘Why so nervous? We’re not brigands—merely men who appreciate a fine ale when it hits our throats.’

The landlord filled up the tankard from a keg below the bar. As he straightened, something like resolution crept into his florid face.

‘You’re Sellswords, are you not, sir? You’ve come here to take up with Sergius?’

Ratagan’s face clouded, but Bicker laid a hand on his arm.

‘When did you last see a Myrcan Sellsword?’ he asked lightly, nodding towards a frowning Isay.

The landlord swallowed. ‘No offence was intended, sir, I assure you. It’s just that in these times...’

‘What times?’ Riven asked him with a snap. He was suddenly tired and the beer was going to his head, making him think of Madra lying in the house they had left, and of the long journey ahead of them through the mountains. He wanted no more adventure at present.

The landlord’s eyes flicked to the dirty remnants of the Teller’s badge on Riven’s breast. ‘Forgive me. I see you have come far, gentlemen.’ His voice steadied. ‘It is just that we are wary of strangers in the city these days, with so many folk seeking safety behind the walls, and the... the Sellswords flocking to Sergius’s banner, whether the Duke condones it or no. There are so many of them in the city at present, and you are armed...’ He trailed off again.

Bicker sighed, and flipped a few coins on the bar. ‘Intrigue. Politics. Have we not enough problems?’

‘They say the Hidden Folk have come out of the mountains and attacked the Rorims to the south, in league with the beasts,’ the landlord whispered confidentially. ‘There are rumours that the Rorims have been overrun.’

Bicker and Ratagan leaned on the bar, eyes blazing.

‘Who says this?’ Bicker demanded.

The landlord quailed. ‘It is a rumour—no more, sir. Some people fleeing from the south brought the news with them.’

‘What people?’ Ratagan asked, his red beard bristling.

‘I don’t know. Nobles. A lord, or a lady. Some say the Duke has a new bedfellow—a southern lady. I don’t know.’

Bicker swore viciously. ‘Jinneth.’

‘A coincidence, maybe?’ Ratagan suggested, but the dark man shook his head.

‘It is her, I am sure of it. Talisker may not be a healthy place for us. I think it is best if we leave as soon as we can.’

Jinneth. Here. Riven felt somehow that it was fitting—Jenny’s facsimile had come ahead of them. He remembered the black foam of hair, the grey eyes, the ivory shoulders with torchlight playing on them, and grimaced. No profit lay in that line of thinking.

A new bedfellow.

Oddly the thought still writhed within him—the thought of other men using the body he had loved himself, being given wholesale what he had been offered as an inestimable gift.

It’s not the same.

But it writhed within him, nevertheless.

The door of the tavern banged open and a crowd of men entered with rain sheening their steel helms and the mail shirts under their cloaks. They looked rough and ready. They were unshaven or bearded, and dressed in leather and woollen breeches that were held together by scraps of hide with remnants of furs decorating their cloaks and the rims of their helms. Each had also a band of black linen with a white stripe running through it, tied round their upper arms, wound round their helmets or dangling from their sword hilts.

‘The Free Company,’ the landlord said in a whisper.

The newcomers spread out across the floor of the tavern, whilst customers dodged hurriedly out of their way. None of them spoke, but Riven could feel their eyes taking in the strength of the group—Ratagan’s size, Bicker’s wiry frame, Corrary’s longsword and Isay’s staff. They looked at each other, but still none said a word. Finally one of their number stepped forward. His black hair curled under the edge of his helmet and fell to his eyes, and there was a gap between his teeth.

‘Who are you and whence come you?’ he asked in a harsh rasp. Ratagan stiffened and Isay brought his staff up into the ready position with a small, bleak smile adorning his face. But it was Bicker who responded.

‘Who wants to know?’

The gap-toothed mercenary frowned. ‘I ask the questions here, and you answer them. I say again: who are you and where are you from?’

‘Who gives you the authority to disturb honest men having a beer?’ Ratagan asked reasonably, his metal tankard grasped in one vast fist. He grinned. ‘Would it not be better if you were asking us such questions with a beer in front of yourself and the taste of it warming your throat? We could go about it in a friendly manner, then—like people who have just met. Would that not be better?’ Abruptly, his fist tightened and the tankard crumpled in his grip like clay. Behind him, the landlord backed away as far along the bar as he could.

Riven became exasperated. It’s like the fucking Wild West.

‘We’re from the south,’ he said in the cracking silence. ‘We’re fleeing the beasts from the mountains. We came here seeking refuge.’

The mercenary leader’s eyes did not leave Ratagan’s. ‘Where in the south?’

Riven blinked, and shared a glance with Bicker. The dark man shrugged slightly. ‘Ralarth Rorim.’

The gap-toothed man nodded grimly. ‘Then you will come with us.’

‘Where?’

‘To where we will take you.’

Ratagan threw the buckled tankard on to the stone of the floor with a clang, making the mercenaries jump. He was still grinning, but there was no humour in his eyes.

‘Now this is hardly a courteous way to welcome visitors to your city. Why not explain to us why we must perforce accompany you, and where to and suchlike, and mayhap things will be a little clearer. That is the way for civilised men to behave, surely.’

‘We are in the employ of the City Council,’ the mercenary leader said in a strangled tone, ‘tasked with the policing of this city and the investigation of all unusual strangers—especially those from the south and the southern Rorims in particular. Does that satisfy you?’

‘Almost entirely,’ Bicker said. ‘You have investigated us, and now you can go. We are staying here to finish our drinks.’