A Thief in the Night (11 page)

Chapter Seventeen

I
n the morning, Malden woke late, and came out to the common room to find that he could not break his fast—the kitchen was already closed. Remembering there was food stored in the wagon, he headed out toward the stables and found his companions there waiting for him. Cythera and Croy were already on horseback, looking impatiently toward the east, while Mörget and Slag had the wagon up on blocks. The dwarf was underneath its wheels, grunting and swearing as he worked on the wagon's undercarriage with a hammer and a wrench. The barbarian stood placidly by, ready to lift the vehicle by one end as Slag requested.

Eventually Slag emerged from beneath the wagon and told Mörget to remove the blocks. The barbarian kicked them out of the way and the wagon dropped heavily onto its wheels—and bounced up and down for a while before coming to a stop. As Mörget strapped the two hackneys into their harness, the dwarf explained.

“I spent all yesterday trying to sleep in this thing and failed miserably. Every time we drove over a pebble in the road I got thrown against this berk's pile of iron weapons,” he said, nodding his head in Mörget's direction. “So I fixed it.”

Malden looked underneath the wagon and saw a cunning arrangement of leaf springs mounted to the axles. “So now it will bounce and rattle even more?” he asked.

“I fixed it,” Slag repeated, one eye squinting nearly shut. “I'm a dwarf. Trust me. You'll be happier this way, too.”

They got under way quickly enough then. Mörget proved to have an easy hand for the reins, and while the wagon did sway more than it had before, Malden soon realized the dwarf had done something right. When the wagon wheels passed over deep ruts in the road, the wheels went up but the body of the wagon did not, and when the wheels dropped into ruts, the springs kept Malden from flying off his seat. It was almost like the wagon was suspended above the road, held up by invisible hands.

The only disadvantage of the rebuilt wagon was that it made it even harder to stay awake. After a mostly sleepless night, and unable to stretch his legs, Malden found himself dozing constantly, only to be awakened with a fright as he realized he was about to slump over to the side and fall from the wagon—or worse, to lean over and rest his head on Mörget's shoulder. He was uncertain what the barbarian would do if he inadvertently touched him, but he was sure it would be painful.

Watching the fields of wheat go by on either side only made things worse. The mile markers were too far between to hold his attention. Cythera rode far ahead of the wagon, so he could not talk to her, and Croy was singing again. There was nothing for it but to talk to the barbarian.

Fortunately Mörget seemed to love the sound of his own voice. He told Malden many tales of his native land, few of which Malden could understand. Apparently there was no feudal system at all on the eastern steppes. No villeinage, no manorial obligations. No kings or knights or lords either. That sounded fine—wonderful, in fact, to someone with Malden's political sympathies—until you learned what the barbarians had in place of those institutions. “The strongest man rules, as chieftain,” Mörget said. “This is the basis of all our laws. If you disagree with his policies, you challenge him to a fight. If you win, you get to be chieftain and make your own rules.”

Malden frowned. “But surely some young fool with muscles but no brains could become king of you all, then.”

“Aye,” Mörget said. “And often does. But such rarely last long. No matter how strong a man's arm may be, there's always someone stronger out there, waiting.”

Malden frowned. “But what of justice? What recourse do the meek have, if the strong decide what is right?”

Mörget laughed, loud enough to make Slag shout for peace. The barbarian shrugged and told Malden, “In Skrae, I've met many such as you. Philosophers and priests, two things we have none of on the steppes. They've tried to explain this justice to me, and other abstract concepts, and yet all I hear is the voices of children saying, ‘It's not fair, it's not fair.' Where they got this idea that life was meant to be fair remains a mystery to me.”

Malden tried to imagine how he would survive under barbarian law, and the prospect made him queasy. “If every chieftain makes his own laws, what is to stop him from saying that murder is no crime, or that a man may lie with his sister if he chooses?”

Mörget shrugged. “In principle, I suppose, it is possible. Yet I've never heard of a chieftain that would ignore such basic laws. If a man kills in cold blood, we run him through with a sword, that's always been the way. If a man rapes another man's daughter or wife or mother, we strangle him.”

“What if . . . just hypothetically, here—a man were to steal another man's property? Say, his horse blanket. Or something trivial like that.”

“What's the penalty for such in your Free City?”

Malden shrugged. “Hanging.”

“Ah! You see, there's where your civilization breaks down. You put a man to death for stealing? Regardless of why he did it? What if he only takes a loaf of bread, to feed his hungry family? That is senseless cruelty!”

“I always did think the penalty too harsh,” Malden agreed.

“Yes, in the East we are far more humane. We do not kill our thieves. We simply cut off their feet and leave them crawling in the dirt like the dogs they are.”

“Oh,” Malden said. “But then—how would such a thief feed his family after that? He would be reduced to begging.”

“We have no beggars in my country,” Mörget said.

“No?”

The barbarian laughed again. “If a man cannot feed himself, we make him a slave. We would never let someone starve!”

“Ah,” Malden said.

“You know—sometimes I think if my people overran this country,” Mörget said, gesturing at the fields of wheat, “it would be a good thing for your people. You're so soft! You need a good war to toughen you up. Make you remember what is important in life.”

“You'll forgive me,” Malden said, “if I hope it never comes to that.”

The barbarian laughed. “Don't worry, little man. You've got a whole mountain range protecting you. A wall to keep us out.” He chortled so exuberantly he nearly dropped the reins.

“And knights like Croy to defend us,” Malden pointed out.

The barbarian stopped laughing on the instant. He turned a shrewd eye toward Croy, who was singing some old ballad, a duet with Cythera. “It'll be interesting to see what he's made of, when we face our demon. Whether he can fight or not.”

He wasn't laughing when he said it. A fact that made Malden uneasy for reasons he couldn't quite explain.

Chapter Eighteen

T
hey covered twenty miles that day, pushing the horses near their limits. “I always thought men rode horses to go farther and faster than they might afoot,” Malden told Mörget, when they came to a stop outside another milehouse. “But I think if we walked we'd make better time.”

“Bah! Horses are meant for running short distances, not this ambling gait we force them to. A man walking can cover more ground than a horse in a day,” the barbarian said. “Yet not while carrying so much on his back.” Mörget reined in the horses by the stables—this milehouse looked almost identical in design to the Cow—and thumped the side of the wagon to wake Slag. The dwarf came stumbling out into the dusk and squinted at the place's sign.

“This place is called the Sheaf of Wheat?” Slag asked. “First the Cow. Now the Wheat. I wonder what will be hanging on the wall inside? What fucking wonderful imaginations these farmers have.”

Croy leapt down from his horse and slapped the dwarf on the back. Slag nearly sprawled forward in the dust. The knight explained, “There are seven milehouses between Ness and Helstrow. They are named after the Seven Munificent Blessings of the Lady. Come, you'll forget the name once you have a quart of ale down your throat.”

Croy headed inside, with Cythera following so close behind Malden didn't even have a chance to catch her eye. Clearly she'd meant what she said last night.

“Lad,” Slag told him softly, “if your rival was any less trusting than Sir Croy, you'd have a long piece of steel sticking out your back already. Let her be.”

Malden felt his cheeks burn. He shot a look toward Mörget, but the barbarian was already leading the horses away. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said to Slag.

“Fine. But if you go slipping out of the room again tonight, try not to be so damned noisy about it, all right?”

Inside the common room of the Sheaf of Wheat, Malden found familiar surrounds—right down to the dozy alekeep behind the bar. This time at least the place wasn't completely deserted. A man in a dusty cloak sat near the fire, drinking brandy from a wooden cup. He glanced up as they entered and studied each of their faces, then glanced toward their belts to see what weapons they carried.

Either a thief or a watchman, Malden thought, judging by the professional efficiency of the man's scrutiny. Malden glanced at the man's own belt and saw a stout cudgel there, painted white and kept where it was visible. The symbol of a reeve, an overseer of peasants—but this was no mere farm supervisor. He must be a shire reeve, then. The local enforcer of the king's laws.

Eating in the same room as a lawman made Malden uneasy, but he hadn't broken any laws since leaving Ness, so he tried to ignore the feeling. It didn't help that the shire reeve kept glancing his way, as if he recognized Malden from somewhere.

When he had finished his pottage and ale, Malden announced he was exhausted and would go to bed right away. Slag came with him. “You've been sleeping all day,” Malden pointed out, when they were alone together in their room.

“Aye, as is only natural for a dwarf. I don't intend to sleep tonight, but read. Do you mind a bit of light while you take your rest?”

Malden shrugged. “I think I'll be asleep soon as I lie down. A candle won't bother me.” In the brothel where he grew up he had learned how to sleep through noise and other distractions. Yet despite what he'd said, he did not go to sleep right away. He watched the dwarf take a hand-sized book out of his pack. It looked very old, the leather cover worn bright orange at the edges and cracked along the spine. Like any book, it must have been quite valuable, and Malden had an eye for expensive things. “What book is that?” he asked.

Slag shook his head. “Naught for you, so keep your thieving hands off it. If you must know, it's a classic of dwarven literature
. Harnin's Stone Surfaces and Bond Griding Manual
. A masterpiece of strength of materials ratios and specific density tables. Every placer miner and stone carver in my country owns a copy. It's also the only written work to mention the Vincularium.”

Malden was bone-tired but this interested him. Despite Cutbill's suggestion, he'd never managed to ask anyone about their destination. There had been two main reasons for that: for one, he'd been afraid to demonstrate his ignorance in front of Cythera, and for the other, he didn't actually plan on going as far as the Vincularium. He intended to part ways at Helstrow, where he'd be safe from Prestwicke and also from the demon Croy and Mörget were chasing.

Yet he had to admit a certain free-floating curiosity about the place the rest of them were headed. “It's a tomb, yes?” he asked, because he figured the dwarf had to know.

“Aye,” Slag said, and turned a page. “You certain this light isn't keeping you awake?”

“Certain. A tomb for a dwarf, I think—which would explain why you're so intent on going there. You don't want to see your ancestral crypts defiled.”

“There you're wrong. Dwarves built the place, but we weren't the last to live in it. You called it a tomb, and aye, it is. But before that it was a prison.”

Malden's eyes widened. He had no desire to rob graves, but breaking into prisons was perhaps worse. The thing about prisons—and this was common knowledge for a thief—was they were hard to get out of once you were inside.

“Was it a prison for dwarves?” Malden asked.

“No. For elves.”

Malden sat up on his mattress and stared.

“Aye, the fucking elves,” Slag said, putting his thumb in the book to save his place. “What do you know about the elves, Malden?”

The thief searched his memory. It was a common enough expression to say that someone or something was “dead as an elf.” Everyone knew Skrae had been infested with elves once, and that now they were gone. But that was almost all they knew. “Pointy ears, right? And evil, they were supposed to be evil. Sometimes people say ‘sharp as an elf's ear,' and I've heard a man called ‘wicked as an elf' for beating a whore.”

“The ears, yes, those were pointed. As for evil, well, let me tell you something you can learn from. When a man speaks ill of the dead, and calls the corpse evil, you can bet your fundament he killed the poor fucker, and needs an excuse. I don't suppose the elves were any more evil than you or me. Well, me anyway. But they fought a war with the humans, and they lost, so now they're remembered as wicked.”

Slag looked up at the ceiling as if reading a page of history there. “In truth, I know little more than you do about them. They lived long lives, it's said. If they didn't die in battle, they could expect to see their eightieth birthday.”

Malden gasped. That was twice as long as a human's average span in Skrae. Eighty years seemed to him an eternity. “But they're dead now. What happened to them?”

“Men did. Humans forced them out of their lands. They tried to make a final stand in the Vincularium. The last of their kind went into that place eight hundred years ago, and never came out. They starved to death, most like, or turned on each other. A prison and a tomb, as I said.”

“A place like that must be haunted.”

“It's fucking likely, yes.”

“Death would wait for anyone who ventured inside.”

“Almost assuredly. Now, unless the sound of my voice is lulling you to sleep, perhaps you'd do me a favor and let me read, hmm?” Slag asked. “I want to plumb this volume for any clue as to what awaits me.”

“You want to know how you're going to die?”

Slag gasped in frustration and slammed the book down on the floor. “At least that way I won't look so surprised when it happens, now will I? Shut your gob, lad, and let me read!”