David Weber - How firm a foundation

Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

“ Kill the heretics! Burn the bastards out!”

The raucous shout went up from somewhere deep inside the mob, and other voices took up the refrain, bellowing the words in an ugly, hungry rhythm. It sounded like the snarl of some huge beast, not something born of human throats. It was still several blocks away, but Byrk Raimahn’s heart plummeted as he heard it coming.

“Come on, Grandfather!” he said, reaching out and actually grasping Claitahn Raimahn’s arm as if to drag him bodily out of the courtyard.

The old man-he was in his sixties, his hair shining like snow in the cold winter sunlight-was still powerfully built, and he jerked his arm out of his grandson’s grasp.

“Damn it, Byrk!” he snarled. “This is our home! I’m not handing it over to a mob of street scum!”

For a moment, Byrk seriously contemplated knocking him unconscious and simply hauling his limp body down the street. Claitahn might still be a fit, muscular man, but Byrk had spent the last five years sparring with some of the finest boxing coaches available in Tellesberg’s and now Siddar City’s gymnasiums. A quick jab to the solar plexus to bring his grandfather’s hands down, then a right hook to the jaw would do the trick, he thought grimly.

But he couldn’t do that, of course. Not to his grandfather. And because he couldn’t, he stepped back, drew a deep breath, and made his voice come out flat and hard.

“We’ve got to go. Go now, while there’s still time.”

“This is our home,” Claitahn repeated, “and it’s a lot safer place to be than getting caught in the street by those thugs! The City Guard’s bound to turn up soon, and when it does-”

“The Guard isn’t going to get here-not in time to do any good,” Byrk said, hating himself for the words as he saw the look in his grandfather’s eye. Yet they had to be said. “And we’re in the richest part of the Quarter. Those bastards out there will make burning us out a priority. I know you don’t like the thought, but we’ve got to go.”

“And where do you propose we go to?”

“I know a place. A place where we’ll be safe-or, at least, if we’re not safe there, we won’t be safe anywhere in Siddar City!”

“Then go!” Claitahn snapped. “Take your Grandmother and go. But I didn’t give up everything in Tellesberg just to let gutter trash and street scum drive me out of my home here! ”

“Grandfather, they may be street scum,” Byrk said as reasonably as he could, “but there are hundreds of them. You wouldn’t stand a chance of stopping them. All you’d manage to do is get yourself killed.”

“And if I choose-” Claitahn began, but for the first time since he’d been a passionate, adolescence-driven fifteen-year-old, Byrk cut him off in midsentence.

“And if you choose to stay here and get yourself killed, Grandmother will stay with you! There’s no way she’ll run away and leave you… and neither will I, you stubborn, stiff-necked, obstinate -!”

He made himself stop and glared at his grandfather. Eyes of Raimahn brown locked with eyes of Raimahn brown, and after a brief, titanic moment, it was Claitahn’s which fell.

“I…”

“Grandfather, I understand.” Byrk reached out again, resting his hands on Claitahn’s shoulders. “You’ve never run from anything in your life, and giving ground before a mob comes hard. I know that. But I don’t want to see you die, and I know you don’t want to see Grandmother die, so, please, can we get out of here, you stubborn old… gentleman?”

Claitahn stared at him for a moment, then surprised himself with a harsh laugh. He put his right hand over the younger, stronger hand resting on his left shoulder, just for a moment. Then he nodded sharply.

“My legs aren’t as young as they used to be,” he said. “So if we’re going to be running away, what say we see if we can’t get a good head start?”

Samyl Naigail gave a yell of delight as he used the smoldering slow match to light the rag stuffed into the neck of the bottle of lamp oil and threw the incendiary through the display window. Glass shattered, and a moment later he smelled smoke and saw the spreading pool of fire flickering in the depths of the shop. Racks of dry goods and bolts of cloth began to smolder, taking flame quickly, and Naigail’s eyes glowed.

This was better even than bedding a woman! There was a power- a wild fierce freedom-in finally freeing the anger which had boiled inside him for so long. Smoke rose from other shopfronts all around him as the mob rampaged through the Charisian Quarter, torching everything in sight. Fortunately, the wind was out of the northwest. It would blow the wind and cinders away from the central part of the city, and if they happened to set fire to the harborside tenements where the filthy Charisians lived like so many spider-rats in a city garbage dump, so much the better!

He turned away from the burning shop, reaching into his satchel, and heard a shrill scream. He looked up just in time to see three or four more young men-his age or a little older-run down a girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. They trapped her against the wall of a building, and she cowered back against it, head darting around frantically, looking for any escape. Then she made a desperate dash for an alley mouth, but one of her pursuers caught up with her first. She cried out again, in mingled terror and pain as he wrapped his hand in her hair and jerked her off her feet. Naigail heard her crying out-begging, pleading, imploring anyone to help her-and he smiled. He watched them dragging her by the hair down the alley where the little Charisian bitch had thought she might find safety, and then he drew another bottle from his satchel, lit the rag, and threw it through another shop window.

“Behind me- now! ” Sailys Trahskhat snapped.

Myrahm Trahskhat looked up, then gasped and stumbled back behind her husband. She clutched three-year-old Sindai, their youngest in her arms, while seven-year-old Pawal clung to her skirts, their eyes huge with terror as the bedlam thundered around them. Thirteen-year-old Mahrtyn pushed himself in front of her, behind her father, his face white and frightened but determined. Behind the boy, Myrahm darted her head around, looking for any escape, but with two small children, outdistancing pursuit was out of the question.

Trahskhat knew exactly what was going through his wife’s mind, and his own terror was as deep as her own. Not for himself, but for her and the children. Only he couldn’t let that terror paralyze him, and he glared at the three men sauntering arrogantly towards them. He knew two of them-longshoremen, like himself, but definitely not Charisians, and both of them with knives thrust through their belts. The third was a stranger, but he carried a sword and there was a cruel, eager glitter in his eyes.

“Stay with your mother, Mahrtyn,” he said quietly, his voice iron with command, never taking his own eyes from the other men. “Whatever else happens, look after your mother and the babies.”

“Well, well, well,” the sword-armed man called mockingly. “What do we have here?”

“Pretty wife you’ve got there, Trahskhat,” one of the longshoremen said, reaching down and rubbing his crotch suggestively while his fellow leered and drew the foot-long knife from his belt, testing its edge with a gloating thumb. “Gonna enjoy showing her a really good time.”

Trahskhat’s face tightened, and he brought up the baseball bat. He’d had that bat for more years than he could remember. He’d broken plenty of others over the years, but never this one. It had always been his lucky bat, and he’d brought it with him from Tellesberg when he left the Krakens behind with the rest of his heretical homeland.