A Discourse in Steel

  The man’s eyes went wide, his mouth opened in a silent wail of pain. He dropped his sword, so Nix withdrew his blade and kicked him backward into the sewer channel. He hit the water in a splash of stink and floated there with the rest of the grime, unmoving.

  “See how you like that shite on your clothes,” Nix said.

  He turned to see Egil slam the door into the other man again, leaving him a broken, unmoving heap in the doorway.

  “Door won’t close,” Egil said.

  “Look at you with the jests now,” Nix said.

  Nix wiped his blade on the fallen guildsman, stepped into the doorway, and held up a hand for quiet. A set of stone stairs extended up to a landing, turned left, and then continued higher. He heard nothing.

  “Nothing,” he whispered.

  He and Egil recovered their weapons and heaved the bodies of the dead guildsmen into the sewage channel.

  “You want to say a prayer or something?” Nix asked Egil.

  Egil stared down at the floating corpses. “That’s what you get for trying to harm our girls and burn our inn. Fak you all.”

  “Well said,” Nix said. He thumped Egil on the shoulder. “Now let’s go find the fakker we came for.”

  “Aye.”

  They crept up the stairs, keeping close to the wall, listening for any indication of alarm. When they reached the landing, they saw that another flight of stairs ascended to a reinforced wooden door with a latch and an elaborate key lock. Egil took Nix by the elbow and pulled him back down the stairs a ways, where they had a hushed conversation.

  “It’ll be locked and they’ll have a coded knock,” Egil whispered.

  “A merry jig, no doubt,” Nix said. “They’ll probably have it barred, too.”

  “I’ll handle that,” Egil said.

  “No doubt of that either,” Nix said. “I’ll handle the lock with the key, but swear you won’t say ‘gewgaws.’ ”

  Egil looked pained. “I always say ‘gewgaws.’ The world will end if I don’t. You know that.”

  “All right then, say it, but don’t be so smug about it, yeah?”

  “Fair enough.”

  Nix took out the magic key, wrapped its mouth with his hand, and spoke a word in the Mage’s Tongue. It came to life and nipped him on the finger, but he kept his curse in his mind rather than on his lips. He unwrapped his fingers slowly.

  “Give us a turnip,” it said.

  “Fakking key,” he muttered, and dug a small turnip out of his satchel. It was a good thing Gadd had a well-stocked cellar and that Nix had a magic satchel with so many pockets. To the key, he said, “Take two bites then open the door up there. And be quiet about it.”

  After the key took its bites, Nix and Egil sneaked back up the stairs. Nix slowly inserted the key into the door, wincing at the soft grate of metal on metal. The key squirmed gently in his hand, fitting itself to the mechanism. When it stopped moving, Nix looked back at Egil.

  “Got it. Ready?”

  Egil stared at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Fak’s sake,” Nix whispered with a sigh. “Say it. I said say it.”

  “Gewgaws,” Egil whispered.

  Nix turned the key, the lock opened, and Egil slammed his shoulder into the door. Wood splintered, metal screamed, something snapped, and the door flew open to reveal a small room with no one in it. A table sat in the center, two tankards atop it, chairs set around it in orderly fashion.

  “Shite. A bit anticlimactic, no?” Nix said.

  One of the two doors in the room flew open to reveal a potbellied, horse-faced guildsman in a chain shirt.

  “What is going on—”

  Egil’s hammer flew, hit the man in the chest, shattered ribs, and sent him careening backward and down.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Nix said.

  Shouts from the room beyond sounded like another half-dozen guildsmen.

  Nix and Egil darted for the door, Egil scooping up a chair in one hand as he crossed the room. The moment Nix filled the doorway, stepping on the man Egil had downed, two crossbow bolts thudded into his chest, knocking him sideways against the jambs. His mail turned the points but the impact still left him gasping.

  “Fakkers,” he hissed. Three guildsmen stood in the hallway to his right, two with leveled crossbows.

  Egil bulled past him and hurled the chair at the guildsmen. It crashed into the two crossbowmen, knocking one prone. Egil followed up and rushed the mass of them, taking his one hammer in both hands. A downward smash crushed the head of the prone guildsman and Egil bulled past the second. The third man managed to get his blade drawn and to stab at the priest’s chest, but the blade skipped off Egil’s mail. A backhand swing from Egil’s hammer crushed the man’s chest and sent him into the wall, his dying gasps the squeal of a broken bellows.

  By then Nix had recovered and he hurled his dagger into one of the crossbowmen who’d shot him. The blade took the man in the arm and he cried out, dropping his crossbow. Egil wheeled around, swinging his hammer, and hit the side of the man’s head with a sound like a dropped melon.

  Nix picked up the hammer Egil had thrown and handed it to the priest. “Which way?”

  Egil looked back and forth, thought, pointed. “That way?”

  Nix started off.

  “Wait,” Egil said.

  “Wait?”

  “Wait.”

  “Gonna be more along soon, priest.”

  Egil looked unsure. He shook his head. “All right, this way. As I said. Fairly sure.”

  Voices from the other direction carried down the hall, shouts. A lot of shouts.

  “I concur,” Nix said hurriedly. “That way. But first…”

  “Now you with the waiting?”

  Nix dug into his satchel, found two of the smoke balls and one of the boomsparks, a matchstick, and lit all three. The fuses sizzled and Nix tossed all three down the hall in the direction of the voices.

  “Come on,” Egil said, pulling at his arm.

  “Wait, wait.”

  In a moment the smoke balls boomed and filled the corridor with thick green smoke, and the boomspark went off, shrieking and shooting colored sparks in all directions. A steady stream of curses and shouts of alarm bounced off the walls.

  “Come now!” Nix said, grinning. “That was worth seeing, no?”

  “It was,” Egil conceded. “But now move.”

  And move they did, pelting down corridors lit by hanging lanterns.

  “We need to get up into the guildhouse itself,” Egil said, looking back for pursuers. “Stairs are this way.”

  From ahead came shouts and the sound of men running.

  “Getting interesting now,” Nix said, and tightened his grip on his weapons.

  He and Egil didn’t so much as slow. Moving at a fast jog, they came around a corner and found themselves face-to-face with three guildsmen. Nix had time only to register the look of surprise on their faces, the glint of steel in their fists, before Egil shouldered into the first, driving him up against the wall. The priest took the man’s face in his huge hand and slammed his head into the stone. Eyes rolled and he fell.

  Meanwhile Nix slapped aside a clumsy, surprised stab from a short, thin guildsman, then split his skull with a downward chop of his hand axe. The axe stuck in the skull like it had found a warm home and while Nix tried to pull it free the third man, shouting for aid, lunged at Nix, blade stabbing for his gut.

  Cursing, Nix left his axe in the skull and bounded back, but he was too slow and the blade caught his stomach, sending a few mail links chiming to the floor. The man followed up quickly and stabbed at Nix’s chest.

  Nix backed into the wall hard and managed a sloppy parry with his falchion and the short sword rang on the stone of the wall. Nix loosed a kick into the man’s balls and he went wide-eyed, purple-faced, and down on his knees. Nix drove his falchion through the man’s face and out the back of his head, sending teeth to the floor to mingle with the chain links.

  “All
right?” Egil said to him.

  “Fine, though we owe Veraal,” Nix said, fingering the gap in his mail shirt.

  More voices and shouting from behind them. Nix rocked his axe from the skull of the other dead guildsman.

  “Let’s live long enough to pay the debt, eh?” Egil said.

  “Is that a plan?” Nix asked. “I think we may have a plan at last.”

  Gore spattered the priest’s face and thick, hairy arms. “Every guildsman in this house is going to come down on us soon. We can leave thirty on the ground behind us but it won’t matter if one of them isn’t the Upright Man.”

  “Let’s get moving, then,” Nix said, and shoved his big friend forward.

  Doors dotted the corridors at intervals. Nix kept a wary eye on them, waiting for them to open and puke up some guildsmen, but they stayed closed. When one did finally open to Nix’s left, Nix was ready. The guildsman who stood in it had a question on his face. For an answer Nix drew a dagger from his belt and drove through the underside of the man’s jaw, up into the brain case. The man fell and Nix left the blade in its bloody home. Daggers he could spare, just not his axe.

  Another door opened, this one to their right, and a skinny, brown-haired boy of maybe fifteen winters stood there, mouth agape. Nix stopped the downstroke of his axe a finger’s width from the top of the boy’s head. The boy stood there in stunned silence, eyes wide, as rooted to the ground as a tree. He didn’t even wear a blade.

  “Shite,” Nix said, and dropped his axe to his side.

  Shouts and the sound of running men erupted behind them. The boy’s eyes darted back and forth between Egil and Nix and the sounds of their pursuers.

  “Don’t kill me,” the boy said.

  Egil growled and grabbed him by his tunic. With one hand he lifted him from his feet and pulled him close. “How old are you?”

  The shouts from behind drew closer.

  “Egil…” Nix said.

  “Thirteen winters…sir,” the boy said.

  A urine stain darkened the front of the boy’s trousers.

  Egil saw it, glanced at Nix, back at the boy, and tossed him back into the room. The boy landed on his arse, face pale.

  “Don’t open this door again,” Egil commanded.

  “N-n-never?” the boy said.

  Nix rolled his eyes. “No, not never, boy. Just stay out of the way, yeah?”

  With that, he closed the door. The shouts from behind faded some. Their pursuers must have taken a wrong turn.

  Nix glanced at Egil and the reality of the situation settled on him. Blood spattered both of them, wet weapons hung from their fists, a dozen dead men lay behind them, and a terrified boy trembled on the other side of the door.

  “Not half as fun as robbing tombs, is it?” he asked.

  “No,” Egil said. The priest’s expression fell but only for a moment before hardening. “But everybody in the inn would’ve burned. Rose. Mere. Kiir. Lis. Tesha. And every one of the guildsmen in this house would’ve happily struck the matchstick. And they would’ve come at us again, even if we hadn’t come at them. Let’s remember that.”

  Nix knew Egil was right. Some discussions were best had with edged steel.

  “We tossed in our ante,” he said. “Let’s play out the hand.”

  The voices from behind grew louder again. The pursuers must have realized their mistake.

  Egil turned to go but Nix grabbed him by the arm. “Wait.”

  Egil harrumphed. “Again with the waiting.”

  Nix threw open the door to the room with the boy. The frightened youth hadn’t moved. He still sat on his arse in the center of the room. Seeing Nix, he backed off crabwise, his expression fearful.

  “Where’s the Upright Man, boy? Quick now.”

  “The who?”

  “I won’t ask again.”

  “You mean Channis? He’s on the first floor, I think. In the grand room. A meeting, I heard.”

  “You know where the grand room is?” Nix asked Egil over his shoulder.

  “Aye.”

  “Don’t come out and don’t tell anyone what you told us,” Nix said. “They’ll kill you if you do. And we’ll kill you if they don’t.”

  The boy paled and Nix closed the door.

  “I think he took my point.”

  “Aye,” Egil said.

  Many voices sounded from behind them, the tread of many boots, a dozen or more. The guildsmen had gathered into a larger group.

  “Tell me the grand room isn’t that way,” Nix said, nodding at the noise.

  “Other way,” Egil said. “Come on.”

  With Egil leading, they sprinted through lantern-lit, door-lined halls, through a dining hall, an armory, training rooms, what looked like quarters for the guildsmen, the occasional shrine to Aster. Anytime they passed or ran through the latter, Nix made sure to throw the god an obscene gesture.

  “Where is everyone?” Egil said.

  “There aren’t enough behind us?”

  “I’d think there’d be a lot more men than this. Odd, is what I’m saying.”

  “Something to do with that meeting the boy mentioned, maybe,” Nix observed.

  “Here,” Egil said, and turned down a long hall with no doors. Halfway down, Egil’s pace slowed. Nix disliked the way the priest’s brow furrowed.

  “What?” Nix asked.

  The priest pursed his lips, stopped. He looked forward, back the way they’d come. “I think we’re going the wrong way.”

  “The wrong way? Shite, Egil, not a lot of room for error here.”

  The priest nodded. “No, no, this is right. Come on. Keep going.”

  The hallway terminated in a large archway, the thick wooden door thrown open. They rushed through and found themselves in a large, roughly circular chamber. No door led out. Torches hung in sconces and cast flickering light on various hooks, tongs, pokers, and blades that hung from mounts on the wall. A chain dangled from a ceiling-mounted winch, a leather loop tied to one end of the chain. A thick wooden table, like a butcher’s block, sat in the center of the table, stained brown with blood, ghosts of pain hovering in the air around it.

  For a moment, the two of them stood there in silence.

  “The fak?” Nix finally said.

  Egil ran his hand over Ebenor’s eye. “Must be for discipline, punishment, interrogation, and whatever else. These slubbers are zealots. Anyway, this is the wrong way. We need to go back.”

  “Shite,” Nix said. “We best hurry—”

  A huge form barreled out of the dark corner to their left. The man, taller and broader than Egil, but more fat than muscle, plowed through Nix and knocked him flat, driving the air from his lungs. The man continued right through, bulled into Egil, and drove him up against the wall. Taken by surprise, Egil dropped his hammers and they hit the floor with a clang.

  A sweat-stained tunic, leather jack, and bloodstained pantaloons wrapped the mountain of the man. He punched Egil in the ribs and the back, the mail ringing under the impact, the blows coming fast, all while Nix lay on the ground, gasping.

  Egil grunted under the onslaught, wincing with pain, but dropped an elbow on the man’s spine. The man grunted but loosed another punch into Egil, another. Egil crouched to protect his side, tried to maneuver his feet to get off the wall, all while grabbing at the man’s wrist.

  The man landed another two punches in Egil’s side, the sound heavy and meaty, before Egil finally got a grip on the wrist. At that point the man roared, spraying spit, and reared back and slammed Egil into the wall once, twice.

  To Nix, the two men looked like vying titans. He rose to all fours, still unable to breathe. He tried to pull himself up, to help his friend, but his body would not uncurl until he could recover his breath.

  Egil slammed another elbow into the man’s back, another. The man barked with pain and Egil leaned over him, wrapped his arms around the man’s fat midsection, and lifted him just enough to de-anchor him from the ground. He whirled the man around and
slammed him sideways into the wall.

  The man snarled through his thick beard and kneed at Egil’s groin, but the priest slid his hips sideways and instead took the knee on the thigh and punched the man in the jaw, wobbling him.

  Growling, Egil grabbed the man by his leather jack and slammed the top of his own head, Ebenor’s eye, into the man’s nose. His wide nose audibly broke and exploded in blood. The man’s eyes rolled. He staggered and would have fallen but Egil held him up, bashed his head into the man’s face a second time. Nix couldn’t tell if the man was still conscious.

  The priest swung the stunned man around and walked him to the center of the room. He grabbed the chain, fixed the leather loop around the man’s throat, grabbed the other end of the chain, and hoisted. While the man gagged and kicked, Egil looped the chain around a leg of the table.

  The man’s tiny pig eyes widened to white; his mouth opened, his tongue lolled, but not even a gag emerged. His legs kicked once more, he shat himself, and it was over.

  “Fakkin’ torturer,” Egil said.

  Nix stared at his huge friend. He could only imagine the bruising the punches would summon in Egil’s side. Blood and snot, the dead man’s, covered Ebenor’s eye.

  Egil touched his nose with his fingers, then looked at them, frowning. “Is my nose bleeding?”

  Nix had not yet recovered his breath and could only shake his head.

  “You all right?” Egil said. The priest stepped to his side and lifted him to his feet.

  Nix nodded, his breath still coming hard as he struggled to refill his lungs. “Lost my breath is all. Are you all right?”

  Egil looked at him in surprise. “Me? I’m fine.”

  “Shite, Egil,” Nix said. He nodded at the hanged man. “Big, he was.”

  Egil picked up his hammers. “Not so big. Come on. Back this way.”

  They sped back down the hallway they’d come, concerned they’d get boxed into the corridor and have to fight their way out, but they reached the intersection without seeing any guildsmen. Shouts seemed to come from every direction, though. Without warning crossbow bolts hissed out of the darkness farther down the corridor and slammed into the wall.