David Chandler - Honor among thieves

The knight let go of his flail-trapped and useless now-and punched Morget hard in the face with a steel gauntlet. Morget’s head spun around to the side and spittle launched from his lips as his entire skull rang with the impact.

He shook off the blow and brought his head back around to see the knight dancing backward, reaching for a long dagger at his waist.

“Very good,” Morget laughed. “You’re very good,” he said, in the same moment that he flicked Dawnbringer to the side to free it of the entwined flail. The knight did not reply as he brought his knife around, the blade held diagonally across his chest to ward off Morget’s next blow.

Morget feinted with his axe, and the knight drove hard with his knife to parry. That left his chest open, so Morget impaled him on Dawnbringer. The blade lit up inside the knight’s body and red light glowed from inside the dying man’s rib cage.

Morget spun around, even as he pulled his sword free of the corpse. All around him more horses were circling, the knights on their backs lashing out left and right with morningstars and cavalry spears, cutting down thralls and warriors.

Who were these knights? From whence had they come? They were nearly as vicious and well-trained as his own warriors, and they knew how to use their horses to their advantage. They were a real threat, for once, and Morget’s blood sang with excitement. A real battle!

Then, behind the horses, he saw a pike square advancing toward him. Each was made of a score of men, each man armed with a ten foot pole with an iron spike at its end. Five men stood shoulder-to-shoulder with no break between them, while another five walked sideways to their right and left, and a final five brought up the rear, walking backward, trusting the men in front to lead them. Simple weapons, simple tactics, but Morget knew how dangerous pike squares could be. The length of the pikes made it impossible to get at the men directly, while they could jab outward with impunity.

Of course, the tactic assumed that when presented with such a wall of spikes, any sane warrior would retreat, knowing he was beaten. In civilized lands pike squares could drive a whole flank back, or break a main charge, or even hold their own against cavalry. But Morget was not civilized. And he was not altogether sane.

Howling a war curse, he ran straight into the midst of the pikes. One spike lodged in his neck but he tore free of it and pushed in closer. His axe swung in a wide vertical arc that sliced through the wooden hafts of the pikes until their severed ends bounced and drummed around his feet.

Dawnbringer took the head of one pikeman, and suddenly there was a gap in the square, and just as suddenly Morget was inside it, looking at the unsuspecting backs of the men in the rear. One of them glanced over his shoulder and dropped his weapon in terror.

The square tried to turn in on itself, but the pikes were useless in close quarters. The pikemen were as likely to stick each other as Morget. The barbarian’s axe and sword flashed left, smashed right, came around, circled, cutting everywhere, slashing and stabbing and thrusting and lunging until twenty dead men fell against Morget and threatened to knock him off his feet. He jumped over the falling bodies before they’d even stopped breathing and looked up to see four more pike squares coming toward him, even as the knights on horseback kept charging through the camp, slaughtering men who were still half asleep.

“Well played,” Morget said, addressing the unseen commander of this ambush.

Yet one quick sortie of overwhelming power did not a rout make. Morget had his own gambit to try. This assault of mixed foot and cavalry was deadly, but only on open ground. If he could get the clans inside the city wall before they were cut to pieces, he could build a defensive barricade and hold off his enemies forever with arrows.

He dashed toward the city wall just as the first limb of the sun crested the horizon, shouting, “The ropes! The ropes! Bring down the wall now!”

O mother, he prayed, O Mother Death you have blessed me this day!

As soon as Malden could stand on his own two feet, Cutbill disappeared into the shadows without so much as a parting word of advice. Perhaps, Malden thought, that suggested the guildmaster of thieves had such confidence in him that Cutbill thought he no longer needed guidance.

Or perhaps Cutbill went to make his own exit from the city, just like Velmont, while the getting was still good.

Malden clenched his hands, released them again. His fingertips burned as the blood rushed into them. Cutbill had warned him there would be pain when “Gaah!” he shouted, unable to stop himself. A violent cramp had run up and down his whole left side, as feeling returned to his trunk. He felt a vein in his temple curl and spit venom like a snake, and he cried out again.

The agony was enough to drive him to his knees.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for pain just then. His cry had drawn attention from the nearby streets. A man with a torch came hurrying around the corner, leading a half dozen curious citizens. One of the six was dressed all in red, like a priest.

If the priests caught him now, he knew better than to expect them to apologize for seizing him and threatening him with human sacrifice.

“Blast,” he muttered, looking around for a convenient shadow to hide in. But the torch-bearer was already shouting that he’d found the Lord Mayor. Malden glanced over at the wagon that had brought him this far, and the three dead bodies lying around it. He looked intently at the horse, still standing there, waiting patiently in its traces.

The horse turned its head to look back at him with impassive eyes.

Malden knew how to ride, if just barely. He’d never mounted a horse before without someone to give him a leg up, but he decided it didn’t matter now.

There was no time to get the animal unhooked from the cart, so instead he looked up, his natural instinct when being pursued to climb. He ran at a half-timbered wall that offered so many hand- and footholds it might as well have been a ladder and leapt to catch a particularly thick beam.

The drug Velmont had given him was still at work in his blood, however. His leap was more of a lopsided hop, and when his fingers latched onto the side of the house, he was barely able to cling to it without falling.

Looking back, he saw his pursuers were only seconds away. “Hold, damn you,” he grunted at his own hands. They’d never failed him before. He managed to swing one arm up and grab the ledge of a second story window. Cramps ran up both his ankles and made him gasp for breath. When the muscles there relaxed again, he swung his right leg up to get purchase on the top of the door frame.

“Lord Mayor!” someone shouted below. “Please-your people need you! We need you at the Godstone!”

“He’s slaughtered this crew,” someone else said in a hollow voice. A woman screamed. “They were Sadu’s ministers-what has he done?”

“Please,” a third voice shouted. “Think of us! Think of our safety!”

Malden didn’t have the breath to waste on a reply. Pain wracked his arms but he managed to pull himself up onto the shingles of the house’s roof. He lay there gasping for a moment, staring up at the sky, while the entreaties continued from below.

The sky was a peculiar shade of purple. He turned his head and saw orange clouds on the horizon. No, it can’t come so soon. But he could not deny the evidence of his senses. Dawn was about to break.

He had to get to Ryewall as quickly as possible, to lead the counterattack.

He rolled over onto his side, then painfully rose to his feet. He was halfway across the city and could barely trust his legs. What if he had a cramp in the middle of leaping from one rooftop to another?