4 City of Strife

  “Are you still here?” said Bors. There was real menace in his tone now. He moved forward, crowding Kormak, so close that the onion-laden smell of his breath was obvious. Normally Kormak would not have let anybody get so close but he did not want to draw his sword. He was still trying to avoid trouble although he suspected things had already gone too far for that. “I thought I told you to go.”

  Kormak slowly raised his hand, put it on the youth’s chest and pushed him away. The big lad looked at him as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing. The youths had started to crowd forward. There were knives drawn now. He saw their rusty blades glitter in the distant torchlight.

  “Have you ever seen a warhorse fight?” Kormak asked. He kept his tone conversational.

  “What?” Bors asked.

  “Have you ever seen a warhorse fight? It takes years to train them, but once that’s done they are vicious.”

  “What in the Shadow’s name are you talking about?”

  “Star here is a warhorse. I’ve seen him crush men’s skulls with his hooves and rend their flesh with his teeth. The last man he bit, he pulled the cheek right off; you could see the jawbone and teeth through the hole. He made a strange sucking, whistling sound whenever he breathed.”

  The youths had started to back off now. No one wanted to be quite so close to the horse any more. “All I have to do is whistle and he’ll break your skull. He’ll take pleasure in it, for he’s a vicious brute if truth be told.”

  “You’re lying,” said Bors. He did not sound so sure of himself now. He glared at Kormak caught between fear, anger and losing face in front of his gang. “That nag is no warhorse.”

  “Would you like to bet your life on that,” Kormak said. For a long moment, they exchanged glares.

  “Sure,” said Bors. “Why not?”

  Kormak whistled.

  Chapter Two

  IN THE INSTANT all eyes went to the horse, Kormak kicked Bors very hard between the legs. The youth screamed and bent double. Kormak reached down and pulled the knife from Bors’s scabbard, then brought its pommel down on the back of his head, sending him sprawling on the snow-covered cobblestones.

  Before the gang realised what had happened, he stepped towards the weasel-faced youth with the drawn dagger. He was ready to parry any strike the youth might make but the boy was still looking at the horse. Kormak knocked the knife from his hand then smacked him on the side of the head, dropping him.

  By the time the gangs’ eyes were back on him, he had picked up the dagger and had a blade in each hand. They stared at him as if he were a magician, still not quite understanding what had happened. One of them brandished his knife and Kormak shook his head and drew back one of the daggers as if to throw. “I would prefer not to kill any of you,” he said. “But I will if you make me.”

  Bors looked up at him, groaning. “Bastard,” he said.

  Kormak stood on his hand. There was a sound like a small twig snapping. “I’ve had enough lip from you for one day,” he said. “Any more and I break the rest of your fingers.”

  The gang still looked at him. He advanced with a menacing look on his face and they turned and ran, leaving him with the two he had downed and young Jan, who had run up and was starting to apply the boot to Bors. “You’ll stomp me, will you?” He said.

  “Enough,” said Kormak told him, suddenly tired of it all. “Or I’ll skin you myself.”

  The boy backed away quickly. “Run along,” Kormak said. “You won’t have any more trouble with this bunch at least not today.”

  Jan looked at him. “I won’t forget this, sir,” he said. “You saved me from these moon-lovers and I’ll remember that.”

  “Sod off, cat-eater,” said Bors from the ground. “You won’t always be so lucky.”

  “I’m serious, sir,” said Jan. “If you ever need somebody to watch your back, I’ll be there.”

  He seemed very serious. Kormak grinned. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Now scat!”

  The boy smiled back at him and then scampered off along the alley, heading in a different direction from the one the gang hunting him had gone in.

  Kormak turned to Bors and his henchmen. “Now what am I going to do with you?” he said.

  “Nothing if you’re smart, Jurgen Krugman won’t like it.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “Because Jurgen is going to rule this city, and we’re his friends. He’ll set the Silent Man on you.” He paused expectantly, waiting for a reaction that never came. The name of the Silent Man obviously meant something. It had not five years ago.

  “I guess I should spare your lives then,” said Kormak.

  “You weren’t seriously thinking of killing us,” said the other boy. He looked frightened now.

  “I don’t like people drawing knives on me,” he said. “You’d do well to remember that. Next time I might not be in such a good mood.”

  Kormak turned to lead his horse away.

  “What about our knives,” said the boy. Kormak tossed it. It stood quivering in the cobbles between his legs.

  “Nice throw,” said Bors grudgingly.

  “I was aiming for his ear,” said Kormak, dropping the second knife on the ground beside the hand he had stood on. Bors went white.

  “And a pleasant evening to you both,” said Kormak, leading his horse away down the street.

  The waxing, gibbous moon emerged from the clouds as Kormak reached the Gilded Lion. It was a big tavern on Silver Street just off the town’s Southern Square. The vast bulk of the Cathedral loomed over it. All around were other expensive inns and the mansions of the town’s wealthier merchants. Kormak passed through the gateway arch and led his horse into the courtyard. A stableboy ran up to take it, glanced at Kormak, did a double take then grinned and said, “Good evening, Sir Kormak, long time no see.”

  “Good evening, Ned,” said Kormak. He slipped the youth a couple of copper coins. “It’s been a while.”

  “Must be five years at least,” he said. “The mistress was not best pleased when you rode out.”

  “You think I’ll get a warm welcome?”

  “Maybe too warm, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to find out.”

  “I always said you were a brave man as well as a generous one. You do like to live dangerously though, don’t you?”

  Kormak shrugged, took up his saddle-bags and strode into the inn. The taproom was large and warm and smelled of very good food. A number of pretty barmaids moved around the area serving wealthy merchants and the well-groomed hard men who served them.

  When Kormak stepped in, all eyes went to him for a minute. Men whose lives depended on their ability to quickly sum up a stranger stared at him with calculating glances. He let them look, knowing that all they would see was a successful mercenary, one who had maybe been a knight once before he fell out with the wrong people. It was what most people took him to be.

  He strode up to the bar. A beautiful, blonde woman looked at him as if she could not decide whether to smile or throw the tankard she was holding at him. Kormak could not blame her. He had been forced to leave the house at speed the last time he was here.

  Eventually she strode over to him and said, “You’ve got a nerve, I’ll say that for you.”

  “Lovely as ever, Lila,” he said, looking her up and down. Her face flushed slightly and it was not from the heat of the fire. She stared at him. “We’ve a lot to talk about and this is not the place to do it.”

  Afterward, as they lay on the bed, Lila looked along the length of his naked body and said, “You’ve got more scars.”

  He stroked her hair and said, “You don’t.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that bloody easy, Kormak. Where have you been?”

  “I told you I might have to leave the town quickly,” he said. “I wasn’t lying.”

  “Yes, but five years, five bloody years and you just come strolling back in the door as if not a minute had pas
sed, looking the same as you always did, except for the bloody scars. How the hell did you get them anyway?”

  “I’m a soldier, Lila.”

  “So was my first husband. I’ve seen a few sword wounds in my time, a few arrow wounds too. Those cuts were never made by blade or point. Those are claw marks and I have no idea what the hell might make them. Too big for any hunting cat I have ever heard of. ”

  He shrugged. She leaned forward and touched the tattoo over his heart. It showed a red winged dragon. She looked at it for a long time thoughtfully then got up and poured herself another goblet of wine. “Do you remember when we first met?” she said.

  “It was downstairs, two days after the feast of Saint Verma; you asked me what I wanted.”

  “And you said you were trying to avoid being drawn into sin.” She smiled. “I was good-looking in those days.”

  “You are very beautiful,” he said.

  “By your voice I thought maybe you were a churchman,” she said. “One of those visiting scholars who are always coming to the Prelate’s court. I thought maybe you were one of the ones who liked to break their vows of chastity.”

  “So the idea of sinning with a priest excited you . . .”

  “You know it did . . . but that was just the first look I took at you. A second told me you were no priest. Too dark, too fierce, too dangerous.”

  “There’s plenty of priests who fight, Lila. Your own Prelate for one. In his youth he put both his neighbouring barons to the sword and took their lands for the Holy Sun’s church.”

  She got up and moved away from the bed, stood studying him in the mirror, as she adjusted her hair. She looked over at his gear, the saddle-bags, the sword. She looked at the amulets hanging over the bedposts.

  “You know the last time, after you left, they found a dead body up in the Cathedral.” She spoke a little too casually and Kormak was immediately on his guard. He kept his face bland. “Really.”

  “They found several actually. A prominent churchman. The architect of the Cathedral. Two well known local merchants.”

  “All dead?”

  She looked at him cold-faced, tilted her head to one side as she judged him. “They were all beheaded. As neat as if the Council’s executioner had done it. As if they had been found guilty of some crime. Whoever killed them did everything but stick their heads on a spike over the gates for the peasants to gawp at.”

  He would have done that too if he’d had the time. He kept his face bland. She paused for a second, took another drink. “Another merchant vanished, was never found. He left town in hurry, apparently very scared. The same night you left, actually.”

  Kormak remembered that man all too well. His name had been Venn. He had dabbled in the darkest of sorceries. It had taken a month to catch him. A lot of people had died.

  He pushed himself up from the bed and walked over to her. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She turned half away from him, avoiding looking up into his face. “You did tell me you might have to leave town quickly. You never told me why.”

  “The contract I was waiting for came through. There was war along the Valkyrian border.”

  “Aye, there was,” she said, like someone who wanted very badly to believe. Her jaw quivered for a moment and then she took a step away from him. “The thing about those bodies was it was all so neat. There were no wounds on them. So they say.”

  “Taking a man’s head off usually means you don’t need to stab him,” said Kormak.

  “What sort of man can do that though?” she said. “Who could trap four armed men and behead them? And how—they were all big, powerful men. A couple of them had proved they could fight. Marcus had killed three men in duels.”

  “Again, why are you telling me this? It’s interesting, I admit, but it’s old news.”

  “It was a nine-day wonder,” she said. “Everybody talked about it. They thought there might be a madman loose but no one else was killed. Then the other rumours started. That the dead men had been in a cult of some sort, that dead girls were found in a secret room in the Cathedral foundation—you remember the young girls who went missing, don’t you?”

  Kormak nodded. He remembered finding the girls’ mutilated bodies all too well. He sometimes saw their faces in his darker dreams. He forced the frown from his face.

  “There was all sorts of talk, that a dark consecration had been taking place, that the dead men had been making sacrifices to the Shadow. And then suddenly it was all hushed up. It became one of those things that nobody wanted to talk about. The priests all started preaching from the pulpit about tellers of tales and gossips. Somebody, somewhere very high up had decided to sweep the whole thing under the carpet or so it seemed to me.”

  He put an arm around her waist. She shivered and leaned back against him. “You’ve obviously given this matter a lot of thought.” He kept his voice very flat.

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Am I boring you?”

  “I can think of more interesting things than talk.” He tilted her head and kissed her on the mouth. She started to respond then pushed him away. “No,” she said. “No.”

  She moved back over to the bed, drew her legs up beneath her. “You want to know something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I wondered about it. I wondered about you. When you left town the killings stopped. No more dead girls. No more headless corpses. The city went back to being normal or as normal as it ever is, anyway.”

  “You think I killed those girls?” She flinched at the cold anger in his voice and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think you killed the girls. You were here with me the night Azara Kendal went missing, and the night Dorothea Spanders was lost as well. And the first of them vanished months before you came to town.”

  He moved over, lay down beside her. She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment. Her long hair tickled his flesh. She looked up at him with frank brown eyes. “After you left, I started asking questions.”

  He stared at her. She stroked the tattoo on his chest, running her finger along the dragon’s folded wings. “I asked about tattoos and dragons. I heard some interesting stories.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “A merchant from Saladar told me about an order of knights, sworn to oppose the Shadow, who bore such tattoos. He told me the order had fallen into darkness and become a cult of paid assassins.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Another man, a soldier . . . like yourself maybe . . . told me of a society sworn to fight the Old Ones. Their badge was a dwarf-forged blade. They grew rich and fat and extorted money even from the Kings of Men and eventually the kings turned against them and banished them. He said they still fight the Old Ones for money. And sometimes they even fight for the Old Ones when paid.”

  Kormak wondered at the way stories mutated as they travelled. He supposed it was inevitable the way merchants gossiped and bards exaggerated.

  “A wizard told me that the dragon was the sign of the Order of the Dawn, an organisation feared by all his kind. That they were implacable enemies of magic, hated mages like cats hate rats.”

  “You think I am one of these men, these wizard haters?”

  “You carry a very old sword. You have as many amulets as a wandering holy man. You look to be in your forties and you move like a man of twenty. And you have a lot of strange scars. What am I supposed to think?”

  He looked at her steadily. Anger twisted her face. “Are you going to deny any of this?”

  “Would it help if I did?”

  “I don’t know. I do know this though . . . five years ago terrible things were happening here and when you went they stopped as if somebody had pulled a lever. And now, today, the city is going to hell in a hand-basket and suddenly you are here again, out of nowhere, in my bed.”

  He put his arms around her. She seemed to want to say something more. “And?” he said as gently as he could.

  “And I am afraid .
. .” She reached out and pulled him hungrily to her before he could say anything more.

  Chapter Three

  IN THE MORNING, they went down to the kitchen. The cooks were already up. Several of them had been so for hours, baking. The smell of fresh bread reached Kormak’s nostrils and made his mouth water.

  Lila went into the pantry and produced a jug of milk, poured some into a bowl then went to another cupboard and put the bowl down. Kormak looked down. There was a small, very sick looking kitten in the basket. Its ear was torn and one of its eyes was milky. It meowed feebly, rolled over and started lapping the milk.

  Lila tickled it under the chin but it ignored her and looked at him beseechingly. “Typical,” Kormak said.

  “That’s right, you don’t like cats, do you?” Lila said. “I remember now.”

  Kormak shrugged. “I neither like nor dislike them.”

  “That’s what people say when they really don’t like them.”

  “You have an interesting approach to understanding people,” Kormak said.

  “There’s not so many about these days. They mostly seem to have vanished. Cats, kittens, all of them.”

  Kormak felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. “Is that right?”

  “Storytellers in the market say they have all gone to the Moon for the winter. I don’t think so.”

  “Where do you think they have gone?”

  “Not the Moon.”

  One of the cooks looked up and said, “And not into any of my pies no matter what anyone says.”

  Lila went over to the man, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “No one is accusing you of anything.”

  The big doughy faced man smiled and then just as suddenly looked angry. “Somebody is killing them though.”

  “What?” Kormak asked.

  “For a couple of months there, every full moon, dead cats were showing up everywhere. Some were skinned. Some were skeletons. Some were found on middens. Some looked as if they were half eaten.”