Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Misenchanted Sword

When the taverner came by with a refill, he asked, “What do they do with thieves around here, anyway? One almost got my purse this morning.”

“Depends who catches them,” replied the taverner, a heavy man of medium height, bristling black beard, and gleaming bald pate. “If it’s the city guard, by some miracle, they hang them—assuming they can’t bribe their way out of it. Usually, though, it’s just the neighbors, and they’ll beat a little honesty into them, even if it means a few broken bones—or broken heads.”

“The neighbors, you say?”

“That’s right; the landowners have the right to defend their property, old Azrad says.”

“Landowners only, huh?”

“Yes, landowners; can’t have just anyone enforcing the law, or you’ll have riots every time there’s a disagreement.”

“So if I were robbed here—I can see you run an honest place, but just suppose some poor desperate fool wandered in off the street and snatched my purse—what should I do? Call you?”

“That’s right; we’d teach him a lesson, depending on what he’d stolen, and from whom, and whether we’d ever caught him before, and if he lived through it that would be the end of it—assuming he gave back your money, of course.”

“What if I caught him myself?”

“Well, that’s your affair, isn’t it? Just so you didn’t do it in here.”

Valder nodded. “Good enough.”

It was, indeed, good enough. If he could contrive to be robbed or attacked, then he would have every right to defend himself. He was an old man, with a fat purse—or fat enough, at any rate. If he were to wear his purse openly, instead of beneath his kilt, and were to somehow make Wirikidor less obvious while still ready at hand, he would be very tempting bait. It would be unpleasant, and he might receive a few injuries, but it seemed the quickest and best solution to his problems.

He thanked the taverner, finished his ale in a gulp, paid his bill and left. He turned his steps back toward Westgate; he was heading for Wall Street.

Wall Street had changed in detail since Valder had spent a night there forty years earlier, but not in the essentials. The law still required that no permanent structures be erected between Wall Street and the city wall itself, and that meant that the Hundred-Foot Field was still there, and still the last resort for the homeless. Those had been confused veterans when Valder had first seen it, men suddenly displaced from the only life they had known since childhood, but the majority had still been honest men who simply had not yet found their places. Now, however, all such had long since departed, either finding themselves better homes or dying, leaving behind the human detritus of the city and the Hegemony, the beggars, cripples, outcasts, and simpletons. The tents and blankets of the veterans had given way to shacks and lean-tos, and where the soldiers had been almost exclusively young men, the current population came in both sexes and all sizes, shapes, and ages.

And among these derelicts, Valder had heard, hid the worst of the city’s criminals. The guard did not willingly come into the Hundred-Foot Field, and there were no land-owning vigilantes, since it was entirely public land, so that it served as a final refuge for scoundrels and blackguards who had been driven from all the more comfortable places.

With that in mind, it was Valder’s intention to stroll the length of Wall Street with his purse plain on his belt, and Wirikidor serving as a cane. That, he was sure, would attract thieves, and any such lurking along Wall Street might reasonably be assumed to be no great loss to anyone, should he kill them in self-defense. Whether he would be able to lure nineteen of them to their deaths he did not care to guess, but he did expect to make a good start.

He walked south from Westgate Market an hour or so after the sun passed its zenith, a good meal in his belly and feeling reasonably rested. The day was warm but not hot, and a strong wind blew from the east, tugging at his clothes and keeping him cool. He expected the first attack within an hour.

It did not materialize; rather than being attracted by the harmless old man, the people who noticed him at all stared and actively avoided him.

Perhaps, he thought, he was being too obvious about it. Thieves would suspect a trap of some sort. He tucked the purse into a fold of his kilt, as if he were unsuccessfully attempting to hide it, and trudged onward.

Another few minutes brought him to Newgate Market, in the city’s southwestern corner; although far smaller and less active than Westgate Market, the square was lined with inns and taverns, and he stopped into one for a drink and a rest. He intentionally chose the one that looked worst, in hopes that a drunken brawl might start and provide an opportunity for swordplay. He promised himself he would not be the first to draw a weapon in such a situation, and that he would not actively provoke a fight—but should one begin he was ready and eager to join in, sixty-six or not.

No fight began, and after an hour or two he moved on, heading from Newgate into Southwark. This gave every appearance of being a quiet and respectable residential area, despite its proximity to Wall Street and the Hundred-Foot Field, where Westgate, Westwark, Crookwall, and Newgate had all been more colorful. The population of the Field seemed thinner here, and the shacks and huts fewer and more substantial.

Another hour found him still plodding along unmolested, well on his way to Southgate and inwardly fuming. He had decided that Wirikidor was too obviously a sword, rather than a cane. From what little he knew of the city’s geography he judged himself to be nearing the southern end of the Wizards’ Quarter—assuming that district reached the southern wall, which he doubted. He began mulling over the possibility of purchasing a concealment spell or an illusion, to hide Wirikidor or make it appear something other than itself.

Although the idea had a certain appeal, he marched onward down Wall Street rather than turning aside; he had no desire to become lost in the city’s tangled streets.

It also occurred to him that perhaps he overestimated the boldness of the city’s thieves in expecting an attack by daylight; he resolved that the next time he came to a tavern or inn he would settle in, eat an early dinner, and wait until dark.

The next inn, however, did not turn up until almost half an hour later, in Southgate, as he drew near Southgate Market. There he paused, glanced at the sun sinking behind him, down nearly to the rooftops, and with a shrug stepped inside.

It was indeed well after dark when he stepped out again, and he was slightly the worse for drink, but his belly was full once again and his feet did not hurt quite so badly as before, whether from the rest or from the liquor he was not sure.

With fresh resolve, he strode onward toward Southgate Market, past innumerable cookfires scattered among the ramshackle shelters in the Field, and beneath the torches that lit Wall Street.

He had gone perhaps two blocks when a thought suddenly struck him; would a thief approach him on Wall Street itself, where there were torches and campfires lighting the way and any number of possible witnesses in the Hundred-Foot Field who might be bribed into identifying an attacker?

Far more likely, he decided, they would look for their prey in alleys and byways that were uninhabited and not as well lit. With that in mind, he turned left at the next opportunity, into a narrow, unlit street.

He wanted to remain in the vicinity of Wall Street, however, so he doubled back at the next intersection.

For the next hour or so he wandered the back streets of Southgate; several times he sensed that he was being watched, though no one was in sight, and once he thought he heard stealthy footsteps, but no one accosted him. Still, he was encouraged.