David Chandler - Honor among thieves

There wasn’t anything he could do about that, though. He would have to take his chances.

Moving as quickly as he dared on feet still half numb, Malden scurried over a roof ridge and down the other side. The street beyond was blessedly narrow, and he managed to hurl himself across and roll along the shingles on the far side. Bits of wood, brittle from the cold, broke away underneath him and pattered down into the road, but he managed to get his footing. Ahead of him lay a long row of rooftops, the houses all attached to one another. He kept low as he ran from eave to eave, even as cries went up all around him.

“His blood! He demands His blood!” they shouted.

Malden scowled but kept running. There was no time to convince the people of Ness that he was worth more to them now alive than dead.

Up ahead lay a broad street-Crispfat Lane, where a dozen butchers had their shops. The gap between the rooftops was too wide to jump, even if he’d been in a condition to do so. He ran to the edge and looked down.

The snowy street was almost deserted-but not quite enough. He saw women holding candles peering into every alley, every alcove. No doubt looking for the appointed sacrifice of their god. The priests must have put out a general hue and cry to find him. The damn fools didn’t seem to understand that every able-bodied citizen of Ness was needed to repel the invaders-these women looked strong enough to hold polearms.

There was nothing for it. He would have to scramble down into the street and up the houses on the far side. If the searchers tried to stop him, he would have to fight them off. He hurried down a gutter pipe as quietly as he could, praying the dark of night would be his ally as it had so many times before.

Halfway down a searing pain burst through his stomach and his hands turned to spasmodic claws. He lost his grip as he screamed in agony and fell the last ten feet into a snowdrift. For a while he could do nothing but curl around his midsection and blink sweat out of his eyes.

The pain felt like it would never let him go. He could not move, could not even think as the agony wracked his body. It was all he could do to keep breathing. As the snow melted on his face and hands, paining him still further, he tried to force it away, tried to unclench his closed eyelids.

Eventually it worked.

When he looked up, a small crowd had gathered to peer down at him by candlelight. “Lord Mayor,” one woman said, “you’ve come to your senses. If you’ll just come along with us now. We want no trouble.”

Malden rose carefully, the pain in his stomach still making it impossible for him to stand up straight. He reached for Acidtongue’s hilt with a hand that barely obeyed his command.

It would have gotten ugly just then if Slag hadn’t come tearing down the street, screaming, “Make way! Make way or get fucking crushed, you pissants!”

The crowd of devout citizens gasped and ran as a massive wagon covered by a tarpaulin came rumbling down the hill toward them. A dozen men were pushing against it from the front, trying to slow its headlong descent and mostly failing.

Running ahead of the wagon, Slag carried a long brass staff topped by a hook that looked like the head of a snake. Meanwhile, sitting atop the wagon’s burden, Balint waved a cloth back and forth, cheering and shouting curses.

“You’ll all be flatter than a spinster’s tit if you don’t scarper right now!” she cackled. She looked like she’d never had more fun in her life.

“I am well pleased to see you,” Malden said as Slag hurried toward him. “I take it this is your secret project.”

“It’ll be the world’s most expensive heap of scrap if we take this hill too fast, lad,” Slag explained. “Help us!”

Malden hurried toward the wagon. He recognized the men straining against it as workers from Slag’s shop. Some had burned faces and hands wrapped in bandages, but they seemed less concerned with their own hurts than with slowing the progress of the wagon. Malden put his own shoulder against the wagon’s boards and was shocked to feel how heavy its cargo must be. “What is this made of, Slag? Twice-refined lead?”

“Bronze, mostly. Put your fucking back in it, boys!”

They heaved and struggled and strained. The wagon roared as it rolled over the cobbles. The wheels screamed and the axles spat sparks. Somehow they managed to avoid crashing at the bottom of the hill. It was far easier moving it through the relatively level streets beyond, even with no dray animals. Slag suddenly called a halt, and Malden looked up for the first time.

Directly before him was Ryewall.

High above, his thieves and whores were busy taking random shots at targets on the other side. Loophole and ’Levenfingers moved along the ramparts of Westwall and Swampwall, shouting orders like they were born serjeants, calling out targets. When Loophole saw Malden, he gave a cheery wave-even as a barbarian arrow shot past his ear, inches from skewering his head.

“It’s begun, lad,” the oldster called down. “You’d best join me up here.”

Malden grabbed Slag’s shoulder-the one still attached to an arm. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“As close as I fucking can be,” the dwarf told him.

Malden glanced at Balint. “She gave you no trouble?”

A twitching smile passed across Slag’s face as he tried to maintain a sober countenance. “Oh, she distracted me a bit from what I was doing. But after the-well, after some initial, ah, fractiousness, we, ah, we got along right well. She had some excellent ideas, actually, about brisance and containment.” He glanced away from Malden’s feet. “Very imaginative lass, our Balint.”

Malden laughed and slapped the dwarf on the back. “What exactly should I expect from this thing?” he asked, changing the subject. “Are you going to shoot a giant arrow at the barbarians, or will it throw a flaming rock like a catapult?”

“Neither. It’ll either explode when I set it off, and make a much bigger bang than we did at the cloisters, or, it will actually work. In which case-” Slag’s face grew dark with evil excitement. “-it’ll put the fear of fucking dwarves into those stinking cocksuckers.”

“Do your worst, when I give the signal,” Malden said. Then he hurried up the steep, narrow stairs that led to the top of Westwall.

It was only then he saw what he was really up against. The barbarians had massed and armed themselves, and he looked out over a sea of iron and shaved heads and eyes burning with hatred and bloodlust. The warriors out there filled the land as far as he could see. Off in the distance it looked like some of them were fighting each other, which he couldn’t quite understand. Maybe they were just running through practice drills-or perhaps they’d grown so tired of waiting to kill that they’d started hacking at one another for something to do.

Then again, perhaps No. His luck couldn’t be that good. So far everything that could possibly go wrong had, and the idea of something actually working in his favor felt wholly out of the equation.

Yet soon he couldn’t deny the evidence of his own senses. “Look,” one of the archers said, pointing at a line of flags in the distance. Over where the barbarians were fighting a rearguard action. “Those are the Burgrave’s colors!”

Malden’s eyes weren’t as good as hers, but he squinted and strained and-yes, he saw it. The Army of Free Men had come at last to relieve the city.

Now that it was almost surely too late. Directly below him, hundreds of berserkers danced and howled. Foam flecked their lips and cheeks, and their eyes were wide with insanity. The Burgrave had plenty of men but they were poorly trained, poorly armed-no match at all for the reavers and berserkers out there. Tarness could do no more than pick away at the barbarian horde. And he most certainly could not break through in time to save Ryewall from coming down, or the berserkers from overrunning the city.