David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Garric stepped into the tunnel and paused, letting his eyes adjust while his companions joined him. He liked the catacombs even less than he liked the sunlit plain, but these tunnels were the only choice save death.

He grinned. A choice didn’t have to be good to be easy.

The four men at the front of Lord Lerdain’s tent didn’t have uniform equipment like the Blood Eagles, nor was their varied armor as heavy as that of the line infantry they resembled. Most wore iron caps instead of helmets with visors and flaring cheekpieces, and they carried small bucklers instead of targets so heavy that they required a shoulder strap as well as the soldier’s left arm for support.

Regardless of their equipment, these were tough veterans. Merchants from one end of the Isles to the other hired Blaise armsmen as bodyguards. That’s what these men, now protecting the son of their count instead of acting as hirelings for strangers, were.

Two of the guards had short broad-bladed spears meant to slash rather than throw; the other two had hooked swords bare in their hands. They watched silently as Sharina and Carus approached.

The section leader, a spearman, had a heart tattooed on one cheek and a skull on the other. At the distance of a double pace he dipped his spearpoint toward Carus, and said, “That’s close enough. Sir.”

“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, soldier,” Carus said in a bored tone. “The folks in Donelle sent the count a thank-you gift for arriving, and he’s passing her on to the boy.”

“Eh?” said the section leader doubtfully.

Carus touched the peak of Sharina’s cowl to draw it back. Sharina slapped his hand away. They hadn’t discussed this; Sharina was acting as seemed natural for the character she mimicked tonight.

“Hey, temper temper,” Carus said with amusement. He waggled his fingers to shake the sting out of them. “Show the boys the goods so they don’t think you’re some cutthroat out to scrag his lordship, eh?”

Glaring at him, Sharina jerked the cowl down herself. She shook her head side to side, spreading her blond hair in a loose cascade. Moonlight woke as fire from her diamond-studded combs. She’d had to place them herself and hastily, but she thought both her mother Lora and her maid back in Valles would give her efforts qualified approval.

Sharina transferred her disdainful glance to the section leader, then deliberately drew the cowl up to cover her face again. She continued to watch the guards coldly from beneath it.

“By the Lady…” the section leader muttered. In a normal voice he went on, “Does Lord Lerdain know she’s coming?”

Carus shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Ask him. And believe me, if he’s not interested, the little lady won’t go to waste.”

“You have a better chance of feeding the Mistress than you do of knowing me, dog,” Sharina said. The contempt in her tone roared straight down from the Ice Capes and the Pole. She turned back to the guards, and added, “Rouse Lord Lerdain and enquire what his will for me may be. This isn’t a matter for lackeys.”

The other spearman whispered something. The section leader nodded and rapped his spear into the little gong hanging from the tent’s ridgepole. A steward in an unbelted silk tunic raised the flap from the inside; he was barefoot but held a lighted lantern.

Sharina walked forward, tossing back her cowl again. No one tried to halt her.

“I am here at your master’s service,” she said to the steward before the guard could speak. “If he chooses to send me away, well and good; but no other will make that decision.”

The silver broach at the throat of Sharina’s cape was unpinned; she held the halves closed with her left hand. Now she slid that hand down the seam to grip again just above waist height. The front gaped open; the single tunic she wore under the cloak was of diaphanous silk with panels of lacework.

Smiling like a blond icicle, she closed the cape again.

“Oh!” said the steward. “Yes, of course. Please follow me, ah, mistress…”

He turned; Sharina stepped between the guards. Carus called, “Your ladyship?”

Sharina looked over her shoulder. Carus cleared his throat, and said, “Ah—shall I wait? In case, ah, Lord Lerdain doesn’t want your company?”

“I scarcely think that’s likely,” Sharina snapped. She followed the steward into the tent’s anteroom, which held clothes chests and an inlaid bed.

As the flap closed, Sharina heard the section leader say, “Not a bit likely with that randy bugger, sir. Mind, I’m a little surprised his old man gave her a pass hisself.”

A velvet curtain separated the anteroom from the tent’s inner chamber. The steward slid it partway open. Without entering, he said quietly, “Your lordship, you have a visitor.”

“Huh?” said a sleepy voice.

Sharina pulled the curtain back farther so that she had a good view of the inner chamber—and the reverse. A lighted lantern hung from a trellis anchored to the ridgepole. Lord Lerdain’s bed was of chased and gilded bronze, with a tasseled silk canopy.

The count’s son and heir presumptive, a husky youth with fair hair, sat up. He’d run to fat when he was his father’s age, but for the moment he was a well set-up fourteen-year-old who looked as if he’d give a good account of himself in a fight.

“Your father sent me, your lordship,” Sharina said. She looked at the steward. “I believe your master can handle matters from here. Or”—she glanced at Lerdain appraisingly—“perhaps not. You’re rather young, aren’t you?”

“By the Shepherd’s dick, I can!” Lerdain said, bounding out of bed. His long muslin sleeping tunic bore the lion symbol of Blaise woven in red. He reached for Sharina.

She turned her back and pulled the curtain closed. The steward hopped hastily away. Lerdain fondled her from behind.

Sharina twisted to face the youth. He tried to kiss her. She put the index finger of her left hand on his lips, and said, “Carefully, milord; not a sound.”

“What?” he said in puzzlement.

Sharina held his right wrist in her left hand and touched the point of her Pewle knife to the skin beneath his breastbone, just hard enough to prick. Lerdain jerked at the contact and stared down at the blade she’d hidden under her cloak. It was polished steel and as long as his forearm.

“If you stay quiet, you won’t be hurt, and your father won’t be hurt,” Sharina continued in the same low, pleasant voice as before. “Otherwise, there won’t be enough survivors from this army to bury the dead; but that won’t matter to you, because I’ll have spilled your guts right here and now.”

“You?” said the youth. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice started to rise from a hoarse whisper. “You can’t—”

The trellis was made from thumb-thick ash poles. Sharina held Lerdain’s eyes with her own while her right arm slashed sideways, so suddenly that her heavy blade was against the boy’s belly again before he could react. The guards and steward must have heard the whack! as the keen edge parted the trellis, but the sound wasn’t so untoward that it’d bring them rushing into the nobleman’s privacy.

“That could’ve been your spine,” Sharina said. It was good that she’d had an excuse to let out some of the emotions surging in her blood. Even so, her voice and the big knife trembled. “You’re no good to me or the Isles dead, but I’ll still kill you unless you do exactly what you’re told.”

Lerdain was taller and stronger than she was, but even so Sharina’s additional five years gave her more ascendency over the boy than the weapon in her hand did. He might have tried to struggle for the knife, but the firm assurance in Sharina’s voice cowed him. He’d have died beyond doubt if he’d grappled with her, but he wouldn’t have believed that.