"It's a lie," said Hawk.
"Of course it is."
"Don't use that tone of voice with me, Burns! I'm not a child. I'm not a fool, either. This is just something Morgan's come up with to try and slow me down, distract me from going after him. Well, it's not going to work. I know Isobel. It's impossible that she could be involved in anything like that. She wouldn't…"
"Of course not," said Burns. "Let's go, Hawk. We've got what we came for."
Hawk nodded, and headed for the door without even looking at Shire and Linden. Burns made a quick, placating gesture to them, and hurried out after his partner.
Down in the street, Hawk strode blindly through the snow and slush, staring straight ahead. People took one look at his face and hurried to get out of his way. Burns walked along beside him, studying his partner anxiously.
"We have to talk about this, Hawk," he said finally. "Of course the idea of Fisher being a rogue is ridiculous, but we can't just ignore it, either. Whoever the corrupt Captain is, it has to be someone who'd normally be above suspicion. Someone so honest and trustworthy no one would ever connect them with Morgan. Everyone we've talked to agrees on that, and it has to be said there aren't many Captains in the Guard who fill that description."
"It isn't Isobel," said Hawk.
"Then why name her in front of someone like Linden? Even if Morgan's people knew they were being overheard, how would they know you'd end up talking to Linden? You only decided to visit the Advisors a short time ago."
"He would have passed the word on, and it would have got round to me eventually. It's just a distraction, that's all."
"Sure," said Burns. "Look, whoever the rogue is, it has to be someone close to us. Close to you. Someone who knows you well enough to know the people you'd go to for answers. How else did Morgan's people know where to ambush us after we left Saint Christophe?"
"We're probably being watched," said Hawk.
"Not all the time; we'd notice."
"Well, maybe he's got a sorcerer watching us magically! He had a sorcerer at the factory; how do we know he hasn't got another magic-user working for him?"
"I think we'd better leave this till later," said Burns suddenly, his voice low. "We're being followed again. Look around you."
Hawk's preoccupation fell away in a moment, and he looked casually about him, his hand moving naturally to the axe at his side. "Hell's teeth, how did I miss them? They're not exactly professional quality, are they? That's what happens when you let yourself get distracted. There's a lot of them; I make it twenty-seven, most of them wearing gang colors. How about you?"
"I only see twenty-two, but I'll take your word for it. They must have known we were going to be here, Hawk; it's another bloody ambush. Better thought-out than the last one, too; they're all around us this time."
Hawk sniffed. "It doesn't matter. I'm just in the mood to cut up a few bad guys."
Burns looked at him sharply. "Wait a minute, Hawk; this is no time to start feeling heroic. We're outnumbered more than ten to one here."
"So what do you suggest? Put up our hands and surrender nicely, and hope we'll get taken as prisoners of war? This may be a war, Burns, but no one's taking any prisoners."
"We could always make a run for it."
"We could, but how far do you think we'd get? The streets are narrow and crowded, and we're both dog-tired while our pursuers look decidedly fresh. There aren't even any fire escapes in easy reach this time. They've planned this well, Burns, and we walked right into it."
The street grew increasingly quiet as they strode along, and passersby began moving into the shelter of doorways so as to be safely out of the way when the killing began. Everyone knew what was happening. The ambushers weren't even trying to hide themselves anymore.
Hawk stopped walking and looked openly around. Burns stopped beside him, and looked quickly about for any escape route he might have missed. The ambushers were everywhere, moving confidently forward. Now that they were all out in the open, Burns counted twenty-nine of them. They were dressed in ragged furs and leathers, and carrying clubs and swords and axes. Some had broken bottles and lengths of metal piping. They all looked lean and hungry and very dangerous. Burns looked to Hawk for support, and a sudden chill ran through him. Hawk was smiling, a cold and nasty death's-head grin. Burns felt an instinctive need to back away. He'd seen his partner go through many moods that day, but this was something new and awful, and for the first time Burns understood why Hawk was so widely feared in the Northside. At this moment, he looked vicious and deadly and totally unstoppable.
Burns made some kind of noise in his throat, and Hawk looked at him briefly. "These aren't Morgan's people," he said, his voice eerily calm and even. "These are street-gang toughs from the Devil's Hook. I beat up their leader, a piece of slime called Hammer, earlier on this morning. He must have declared vendetta on me. Knew I should have killed him."
He fell silent as one of the ambushers stepped forward, but his death's-head grin never wavered. He recognized the man as the gang leader, and drew his axe with a flourish. Hammer stopped where he was and called out to Hawk, his voice carefully loud and mocking.
"I've been looking for you, Hawk. No one messes with me and gets away with it, not even the high and mighty Captain Hawk. Don't look so tough now, do you? Now you're on your own and I've got my people here to back me up. You're going to die slow, Hawk. We're all going to take turns cutting on you; going to take our time and get real inventive. You're going to scream and cry and beg for death before we're through."
Hawk laughed at him, and there was enough naked violence in the sound to silence the gang leader almost in mid-word. The watching ambushers stirred uneasily. Hawk swept his axe back and forth before him. "Who's first?" he said mockingly. No one moved. Hawk glanced at Burns. "Get out of here while you can," he said quietly, his voice calm and conversational. "They don't care about you; they just want me. If you make a run for it, they'll probably let you go."
"Forget it," said Burns. "They'll kill me anyway, just for being a Guard, and being with you. Believe me, if I could see a way out of this mess, I'd take it. I'm not crazy. Do me a favor, Hawk: Next time you feel like punching out a gang leader, don't do it in front of witnesses. All right, you're supposed to be the expert on winning against impossible odds: What are we going to do? There's nowhere to run, and if we try and make a stand they'll roll right over us."
Hawk nodded, still grinning at the ambushers and hefting his axe. Burns looked away. The grin was starting to unnerve him. One of the toughs stepped forward. Hawk looked at him, and the tough stopped where he was.
"I think our best bet is to try and lose them in the side streets and alleyways," said Hawk calmly. "They're narrow and crowded, and the gang will only be able to come at us a few at a time. We should be able to take them easily, as long as we keep our heads."
"What if they've staked out the alleyways with more of their people?" said Burns tightly.
"Then we fight our way through and keep running. Maybe we can outrun them."
"What happens if we get trapped in a dead end?"
"Then we see how many of the bastards we can take with us. Think positive, Burns. We're not dead yet, and I've faced worse odds in my time."
"When?" demanded Burns. Hawk just grinned at him.
Hammer suddenly barked an order, and the toughs moved forward from every direction. Hawk lifted his axe threateningly and then sprinted towards the nearest side street. Burns charged after him, his stomach churning sickly. Three gang members made to block their way. Hawk cut down the first two with vicious sweeps of his axe, and hit the third man with a lowered shoulder. The massive tough was thrown aside like a child, and Burns hacked halfway through his waist without even slowing. He pounded after Hawk down the narrow street, with the gang howling behind them.
More gang members appeared out of darkened alley mouths, but somehow Hawk and Burns managed to cut a way through them and keep on running, leaving bodies lying in po
ols of vivid scarlet on the grimy snow. Hawk glared about him, trying to figure out exactly where he was. This wasn't an area he knew particularly well and he couldn't afford to stop and look for landmarks hidden or disguised by the recent snow. His breath burned in his chest, and he could feel the beginnings of a stitch in his side. Normally he prided himself on his stamina, but it had been a long day and it wasn't getting any shorter. From the sound of it, Burns was finding the going equally hard.
And then they rounded a sharp corner and skidded to a halt as they saw more gang members waiting for them. There were ten of them blocking the narrow alley, all armed with some kind of weapon and smiling confidently. Hawk glanced back over his shoulder. The pursuers were coming up fast, and there was no way out. Hawk felt more anger than anything. Being killed in a gang ambush was such a stupid way to go. And now he'd never get the chance to clear Fisher's name. He'd make them pay for that. He threw himself at the smiling faces before him, and laughed aloud as he saw their expressions change to shock and terror as his axe tore through them like firewood. He sensed Burns fighting desperately at his side, but Hawk had no room in him for anything but rage.
The first few died easily before his fury, but there were too many of them for him to break through, and soon the rest of the gang arrived. Hawk and Burns fought back to back, surrounded by screaming mouths and flailing weapons, hemmed in by the jostling press of bodies. The sheer number of attackers gave Hawk and Burns a fighting chance; the gang were so eager to get at their victims that they kept getting in each other's way and deflecting many of the blows meant for the two Guards. Hawk fought on fiercely, sending blood spraying through the freezing air, but knew it was only a matter of time before someone got in a lucky blow. Then his guard would drop, and he'd go down under a dozen swords. And if he was lucky, he'd die before Hammer could pull his people off. He was just sorry he'd dragged Burns into this. Hawk fought on, as much out of stubbornness as anything. If he had to die, he was going to make them work for it. A sword licked in past his defenses, and punched through his side and out again. Blood ran thickly down his hip and leg, and the strength seemed to flow out of him along with the blood. He swung his axe clumsily, and the swords were everywhere.
A thick mist sprang up suddenly in the alleyway, diffusing the amber lamplight in strange ways, and misty grey ropes curled and tightened around the gang members' throats. They dropped their weapons to tear at the strangling mists with desperate hands, and fell gagging to the ground. Curling mists lashed viciously among the gang, sending them flying this way and that, and they fled screaming back down the alley and out into the surrounding streets. The mists flowed after them like a relentless river. Dead bodies littered the alley. Hammer stared uncomprehendingly about him, abandoned by his men, and then backed away as Hawk loomed up before him, grim and bloody, his gaze colder than the winter could ever be. He turned to run, and Hawk cut him down with one blow of his axe. Hammer fell dying to the ground, and there was enough anger still in Hawk for him to regret it was over so quickly.
He turned to see how Burns had fared, and fell back against a wall as the wound in his side caught up with him. The stabbing pain filled his mind, and then a strong arm curled around his shoulders, supporting him, and a cool hand pressed against his bloody side. There was a brief, crawling sensation as the wound knitted itself together, and then the sorceress Mistique stepped back and grinned at him.
"I thought I'd leave the gang leader for you to take care of personally. But I can't believe you just walked right into that ambush. If I hadn't been following you too, they'd have had to bury what was left of you in a closed coffin."
"I had a lot on my mind," said Hawk, feeling gingerly at his side. "And it must be said, this has not been one of my better days. Thanks for the rescue."
"You're welcome. But next time don't go dashing off like that. I nearly didn't catch up in time."
Hawk nodded, and looked across at Burns. The man's clothing was soaked in blood, but he nodded quickly to Hawk and Mistique to show he was all right. Hawk looked down at the gang leader, lying dead and broken on the dirty snow, and swore softly.
"I should have taken him alive. He might have been able to answer some questions."
Burns frowned. "What could he have known? He isn't connected with Morgan; he was just after you because you made him lose face in front of his people."
"Someone had to have told him where to find us! He couldn't have followed us all the way from the Hook."
"He didn't," said Mistique flatly. "I've been following you for some time, and they were already here waiting for you when you went in to talk to the Advisors."
Hawk looked at her narrowly. "I didn't see you following us."
Mistique smiled. "Well, after all, darling, I am a sorceress."
Hawk nodded slowly. "All right; want to tell me why you were following us? And why you dropped out of sight right after we left the Hook?"
The sorceress scowled, and leaned back against the alley wall with her arms folded. "I know something that certain important people don't want known. Something… dangerous. So I decided to disappear for a while, and do some hard thinking. I needed someone to talk to, someone I could trust. You were the obvious choice, Hawk, but I had to be sure you were what you were supposed to be. So I've been following you." She looked at him for a long moment. "Even now I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. You're not going to like this, Hawk."
"Tell me," said Hawk. "Tell me what you know."
"I was talking to one of the prisoners we took in Morgan's factory, before we brought them back to Headquarters," said Mistique steadily. "He was mad as hell because the Guard Captain that Morgan had been paying off hadn't warned them about the raid. I asked him for the Captain's name, but he didn't know it. He knew what the Captain looked like, though. He recognized her when he saw her during the raid.
"It was Fisher, Hawk. Captain Isobel Fisher."
Chapter Seven
Scapegoat
Fisher looked out the repaired study window and glowered sourly at the array of armed men camped out on the wide lawns. There had to be a hundred men out there now, wearing chain mail under their furs and warming their hands at the scattered iron braziers. If the Peace Talks had had this kind of protection before, two of the delegates and all of the original security force might still be alive. Fisher felt obscurely guilty that she hadn't got to know the men under her command before they were killed. As it was, it would take a hell of an army to get past the new security force; that, or a particularly nasty piece of magic. Fisher decided she wasn't going to think about that. She still got edgy every time she remembered the flood of twisted creatures that had come spilling out of the split in reality. She'd only just got over jumping at every sudden noise.
Raised angry voices cut across her reverie, and she turned her back on the window to study the squabbling delegates. Her mouth compressed into a thin, flat line as she realized they were going round and round in the same futile circles. The Peace Talks were becoming increasingly warlike, with the two lords blaming everyone and everything but themselves for the present sorry state of affairs. Lord Nightingale of Outremer was the loudest voice, quite openly determined to lay the blame for everything at Haven's door. Lord Regis was trying to be reasonable and diplomatic, but his temper was visibly shortening, and his voice had already risen to match Nightingale's.
The two Majors, Comber and de Tournay, had withdrawn from the fray and settled themselves in a corner with the drinks cabinet. They were busily comparing whiskies and doing their best to ignore the whole unpleasantness. They had no interest in recriminations or name-calling, and had said so loudly. Unfortunately, it hadn't been loud enough to compete with the racket Regis and Nightingale were making, so their objections had gone completely unnoticed by the two lords.
Captain ap Owen was standing with his back to the fireplace, watching everything and saying nothing. He hadn't spoken a dozen words to anyone since he'd overseen the new security force as they clea
red up the mess left by the assault. Fisher understood. The men under his command had been longtime associates and friends, and now he'd lost them all in one brief clash of arms. The bodies were gone now, along with the dead mercenaries, but the smell of blood and death was still strong in the house.
Major Comber stirred suddenly, and slammed the flat of his hand against the top of a nearby table. It made a satisfyingly loud noise, and the two lords shut up and looked round to see what was happening. Comber carefully put down his whisky glass, and glared at each lord in turn.
"I think this nonsense has gone on long enough," he said firmly. "We're supposed to be here to discuss the border problem, not play at who can shout and stamp their foot the loudest. We'll probably never find out exactly who betrayed us, and it doesn't matter worth a damn anyway. The attack was a failure and the Talks can go on. Now, may I respectfully suggest that we get back to what we're supposed to be doing, and leave the squabbling and whining to the politicians. That's what they're paid for."
De Tournay started to nod vigorously in agreement, and then stopped as he realized both Nightingale and Regis were glaring at Comber.
"Your opinion is noted, Major Comber," said Lord Regis icily. "But allow me to remind you that your function at these Talks is to provide us with military information and advice. Nothing more. The Lord Nightingale and I are quite capable of deciding what is important here, and right now nothing is more important than determining who betrayed us. We could all have been killed, dammit, and I want to know who was responsible! Particularly since it seems we can't trust our own security people to keep us safe."
He glared at Fisher and ap Owen, who stared back calmly, fully aware that anything they said would only end up being used against them. Major de Tournay stirred in his corner, and then shrugged uncomfortably as Regis turned his glare on him.
"With respect, my lord, no security system is perfect. Fisher and ap Owen did their best, in extremely difficult circumstances."