Ian Esslemont - Stonewielder

Tar, broad as a boat, lumbered down the middle of the way flanked by his chosen enforcers and followed by Kyle, who marvelled at the way the fellow, perhaps by dint of plain dull-witted obstinacy and towering self-absorption, could bully everyone and everything from his path. Not only all late night pedestrians of the capital city melted aside, but also men drawing carts, stevedores grunting under heaped bags and bales, even horse-drawn carriages which were diverted at the last instant lest they flatten, or be flattened by, him. Astonishingly, he even forced aside an ass leading a blind man on a rope.

‘Got your trophies?’ he demanded of Kyle without turning his bull neck.

Kyle gritted his teeth and reluctantly drew the grisly, stinking belt from a pouch and hung it round his neck. Tanned, wrinkledup things hung from it — ears perhaps, or noses. He wasn’t sure and frankly didn’t want to know. Best had dug it up from somewhere and made him wear it when on the job. Said it frightened everyone good. What frightened Kyle was the smell.

They stopped close to the waterfront in front of a row of darkened two-storey shop houses and Kargin banged on a door. ‘Bor ’eth! Open up! I know you’re in there! Open up!’

The three thugs grinned at Kyle and thumbed the truncheons they carried pushed down their shirt-fronts. Kyle crossed his arms and for the hundredth time cursed this civilized innovation called work. He didn’t think much of it so far.

A vision-slit opened and an old man peered out. ‘Oh! It’s you, Kargin. You know, it’s funny, but I was just-’

‘Stow it and open up.’

‘But tomorrow I’ll-’

‘Today’s too late.’

‘I swear, tomorrow-’

‘If you don’t let me in now, next time I won’t ask so nice.’

‘Oh… well… if you must…’ Locks rattled and jangled. The thick door slowly swung until Kargin thrust it wide and stepped in. The thugs followed and Kyle brought up the rear.

They jammed into the foyer of a shop that in the dim light of the old man’s lantern looked stocked with fine imported goods. A shelf next to Kyle held goblets of various sizes and shapes. Kargin gently reached out to take the lantern from the old man, Bor ’eth, and set it high on a nearby shelf. He motioned for one of his boys to shut the door. The old man’s smile slipped as the thug shot the bolts.

‘I’ll pay, Kargin — you know that. I will.’ He tried to smile again but only looked frozen and terrified. ‘It’s just that business is slow right now…’

‘Slow…’ Kargin raised and lowered his great bulk in a sigh heavy with weary patience. He waved Kyle forward. Kyle remembered to set his face in his best sullen glower. ‘See this lad here?’ Bor ’eth nodded uncertainly. ‘He comes from a savage distant land where they don’t think twice about killin’ one another. Don’t value human life. Not like us civilized people here. See that belt?’ Again an unsure nod. ‘Those are the ears and noses and… other things he’s cut from the men he’s killed.’ Peering up, the old man flinched back, pulled the quilt he’d thrown about his shoulders tighter. ‘I’d just have to snap my fingers like that, and he’d have your ears… What do you think about that?’

The old man clutched his neck and glanced from face to face as if wondering whether this were a joke or not. ‘Really?’ he gasped, his voice high and quavering. ‘Amazing…’

‘Take his ears!’

Kyle launched himself forward and grasped a handful of the old man’s thin orange-grey hair, pressing the edge of his knife just under one ear. The fellow screeched like a hoarse bird, flailed uselessly at Kyle’s arms. Kyle turned a glance on Kargin.

The big man let out a great belly-laugh and took Bor ’eth from Kyle’s hands. He held him in a tight hug. ‘But I won’t let him do that this time, Bor ’eth! Why would I do such a thing to a paying customer, right?’ The old fellow was fairly sobbing and clung to Kargin as if he’d just saved his life. ‘No… that’s what I’ll do to you if you don’t bring the money to Best tomorrow. This is what I do to those who are late.’ He nodded to the thugs and, grinning, they pulled Bor ’eth from him.

‘What…?’ the old man gasped.

‘Break his hand.’

Laughing, the lads hefted their truncheons, and while one held the squirming man’s hand on a counter the other two raised the weapons.

‘No… please… In the name of Soliel…’

‘I am being merciful, Bor ’eth.’ He gave a curt nod. One truncheon whistled down to smack the counter. The old man shrieked. The second truncheon swung and landed with a wet bang. Bor ’eth went limp in the thug’s arms. The lad shook him until he roused. ‘Again,’ Kargin said. The batons rose.

Kyle examined the goblets while the thugs shattered the merchant’s hand. All this pain and trouble over coins; he’d grown up without any on open plains where his people hunted for the food they needed and made the tools they used. They had some coins and other bits and pieces they kept for trade, but other than that he’d grown up without the need. From what he’d seen in his travels since, his people had been better off without this one particular advance of civilization. And if someone pressed such a need upon him, he’d just walk away.

Kargin raised a hand. Kyle glanced over; released, the old man slid down to sit rocking back and forth, cradling the bloody broken thing that was his hand to his chest. Kargin motioned to the door. Kyle set the rose-hued cut-crystal goblet back in place on its shelf.

Out on the street, as they walked back to Best’s, the night air cold and crisp after a light rain, one of the young thugs sidled up to Kyle and grinned, exposing his broken uneven teeth. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked.

‘See what?’

‘Pissed himself, the old guy. Wet those expensive robes of his,’ and he laughed.

‘Congratulations. You beat an old guy into pissing himself.’

The grin fell away. The young tough tossed his long hair from his pimply face. ‘You ever do any of that stuff Kargin says — cuttin’ ears and such?’

Kyle set his mouth in a leer and leaned close. ‘All the fucking time.’

Close to the front of Best’s inn, Kargin stopped and waved everyone on. ‘Too bad about your friend,’ he said to Kyle.

Kyle stopped, untied the string of fetid trophies and slowly lowered it into its bag. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That fellow you used to chum with, the other foreigner. The merchant houses he got to put up the money for his place… they foreclosed on him. Closed him up tight.’

Cinching the pouch, Kyle glanced over. ‘Really?’

‘Uh-huh. When I heard the news, I wondered… what would you have done if it was his place we went to visit tonight?’

Kyle hefted the feather-light pouch. ‘Nothing. I wouldn’t have had to do anything because he would have scattered you lot like geese.’

The chief enforcer for Best, the man who controlled most of the blackmailing and extortion in the city, seemed to peer down sleepily at Kyle over the great bulk of his chest. His nostrils flared as he snorted. ‘Some kinda hot ex-mercenary you’ve turned out to be. I ain’t seen fuck-all that impresses from you yet.’

‘And you won’t. Here,’ Kyle flicked the pouch at him, ‘keep your ears on. See you around.’

‘I don’t think so,’ the man called after him. ‘He’d be in prison right now ’cept someone bought his debts — and that someone ain’t from around here…’

The man’s sly rumbling laughter followed Kyle down the darkened street.

Some Falaran legal documents, all ribboned and weighted by wax seals, hung nailed to the door of Orjin’s school. Kyle tried the door and found it unlocked. Just inside the tunnel he stopped to study the empty practice floor; the sand shone in the moonlight like glittering quicksilver.