Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

It was a big wooden one, but already half full; he knelt in misery and then staggered erect when the last cupful of sour stomach-acid had come up; he was spending far too much time these days puking. That thought made him smile a little, a very little, as the policeman guided him back to the bench and handed him a blanket; Kreuha clutched it around his shoulders, and took the cup of hot steaming . . . something-or-other that he was handed. Sipping cautiously, he found it unlike any of the herbal teas wisewomen had given him for childhood complaints.

It had cream in it, and a delicious sweetness without the musky flavor of honey, and under that a bitterness. Still, it warmed him and diminished the pain in his head and brought something like real wakefulness. The two tablets he swallowed with it seemed to help as well, for all that they were tiny, white, and tasteless; the effect was like willowbark tea, but stronger and quicker.

When he had climbed far enough out of wretchedness to talk, he looked up to find the man-at-arms also dealing with papers. Occasionally other armed men—and a few armed women—would come in, sometimes leading prisoners in the manacles known as handcuffs; many of the captives were drunk as well.

"Is it the custom here to make men drink and then fall upon them?" he asked the . . . policeman, that is the word.

Eric Iraiinison laughed. "No, it's the custom to arrest men who break the town's peace," he said. "This is a seaport, and a fast-growing one, with many folk who are strangers to each other and many rootless young men. When ships come in and crews are paid off, we get a lot of traffic here."

"I broke no peace!" Kreuha snapped. "I was set upon dishonorably, by stealth!"

Eric nodded. "And so you're not under arrest. The three assaulting you would be, if I could find them—and evidence against them."

"Ai!" Kreuha's head came up; he was owed vengeance for this indignity. "I can give you faces, and names. Arktorax son of—"

He told all he knew, then scowled as Eric shook his head.

"I know those three," the policeman said. "They're criminals—" he dropped the English word into the conversation, then paused to search for an equivalent "—evil-doers, breakers of taboo and custom. If you were to take them to court, they'd lie truth out of Creation. They're crimps, among other things. If you'd fallen asleep, you'd have woken up in the foc'sle of a sealer or a guano-boat, with a thumbprint on a contract and no way back until you'd worked a year for a pittance and daily swill."

Fury flushed more of the pain out of Kreuha's system. "They sought to make a slave of me?" he cried, springing erect, his hand reaching for a missing axe. "I will take their heads! I will feed their living hearts to the Crow Goddess! I will kill, kill—"

Eric's hand went to his revolver; Kreuha considered that, and the blood-debt he owed the man, and sank back.

"Not quite a slave," the policeman said. "If I could get them on that, I'd be a happy man; the penalty's death. Or if I could prove crimping charges, that would be nearly as good—ten years' hard labor. But they're careful, the swine; they never pick on citizens and never do anything before witnesses. We don't keep track of every stranger who wanders in here—we can't."

"Is no man here man enough to take vengeance on them?" Kreuha said indignantly. "Or to call them doers-of-naught before the folk? I will challenge them to fight me between the wands—the men, of course, not the woman."

The policeman chuckled. "You remind me of my grandfather," he said. "Or me as I might have been, if Nantucket hadn't come out of time. . . . Fighting to the death is against our law here. It's treated like murder, killing-by-stealth. You could invite them to meet you outside our Township boundary." He pointed northward. "The Zarthani still allow death-duels. Arktorax and his friends won't do it, of course. They'll laugh at you, no more, and so would most other people."

Kreuha stared in horror. "Did the wizard-folk take all honor from you Iraiina when they overcame you and ground you beneath their heel, then? You were warriors in our grandsires' time, even if we prevailed in the end."

To his surprise, the policeman's chuckle turned into a full-throated laugh. "You do remind me of my grandfather's grumbles," he said, then held up a hand. "No offense. No, we fled here after you put defeat upon us, took in the Nantucketer renegade Walker, and he led us to war and yet more defeat, and then the Nantucketers did something far more . . . drastic" —that was in English— "more powerful, you might say, than grinding us down."

Kreuha shivered, imagining the vengeance of wizards. "What?"

"They lifted us up again, helped, taught us their faith and all their secret arts." He pulled a silver chain around his neck, showing a crucifix. "My father they took to Nantucket—he was young, our chief's nephew and heir—and the sons and daughters of many powerful men—and sent them to their . . . schools, places of learning. My father lived for years in the house of the Republic's chief like one of his own sons. When he saw all that they had, how could he be content to sit in a mud-floored barn and think himself grand because it was the biggest barn? And so he sent for teachers and missionaries, and . . . well. My sons could be Chief Executive Officers of the Republic, if they desire to go into politics."

The conversation had mostly been in something close to Kreuha's tongue, which Eric spoke easily enough. The young warrior noted that when the policeman spoke to his own subordinates—who must be his own tribesfolk, or mostly—he used English.

He shivered slightly, he who had never known fear before a mortal foe. Mighty wizardy indeed, to make a whole tribe vanish as if it had never been. Then he shook his head. That was an Iraiina problem, not his. Or perhaps not a problem for them either.

"I thank you for your courtesy to a stranger," he said formally and began to rise.

Eric reached over and pushed him firmly down again with a hand on one blanketed shoulder. "It's a cold wet night to go out with nothing but a kilt—and if you are truly grateful, you could help me deal with that God-damned crimp and his gang."

Kreuha's eyes went wide. "I thought you said—" "I said you couldn't chop them up with a war-axe in fair fight," the other man replied. "But we in the Republic have a saying that there is more than one way to skin a cat."

Slowly, as Eric outlined his idea, Kreuha's smile matched that of the man across from him. If the wizards of Nantucket had taught the Iraiina all their arts, then they must be a crafty, cunning, forethoughtful crew.

I like it, he thought. Aloud: "Tell me more."

"Arktorax!" Kreuha called jovially. The little tavern was half empty on this afternoon; with the tide beginning to make in a few hours, crews would be back on their ships and fishing boats, and most ashore were at work. The big hearth on the inner wall had a low coal fire burning, and two big pots of stew simmering on iron hooks that swung out from the chimney wall. The tables were littered but mostly vacant, their few occupants looking to be oldsters or idlers, and a harlot or two.

Arktorax was sitting with a cluster about him, throwing dice from a leather cup; he rose, his expression a little wary, one eye puffed up and discolored. Long greasy blond hair swirled about his face as he turned to face Kreuha, carefully putting his back to the wall without seeming to hurry about it.

"Ah, I see you took some blows also," Kreuha said. "Shame and eternal shame to me that I was too drunk to ward you—or myself. Between the whiskey and the crack on my head, I don't even know how badly I did! But I did remember I left my gear with your friends here."

He seated himself, and Arktorax took the bench across the table, waving a hand. A wench—it was probably the same one who'd helped to befool him last night—brought a plate with a loaf of bread and lump of cheese, and two thick glass steins of foaming beer. The barkeeper called her over, and after a moment she returned with his spear, axe, dagger and bundle of goods. They might be wealth in the Keruthinii lands, but here they were only a pittance of scrap metal.