Authors: Richard Lee Byers
“Kill them,” Mandal said.
The outlaws charged, and as they scrambled forward, they changed.
The transformation happened fast. Still, Kara glimpsed thin, black-gray fur spreading over skin, faces jutting into bestial snouts, front teeth swelling into chisel-like incisors, whiskers and thin, hairless tails springing into being. In an instant, her captors, though still scuttling on two legs and capable of gripping weapons, had cast off a goodly portion of their humanity to become a mix of man and rodent.
The transformation from man to wererat dispelled any lingering doubts Kara might have had as to whether Mandal and his cronies truly did mean to hurt her. She had to help the strangers fight on her behalf. She groggily heaved herself to her feet, called a spell to mind, and an earthen jug smashed against her forehead.
One of the ratmen had seen her rise and had thrown the missile at her. She collapsed to the floor in a shower of shards and pungent spirit. Stunned, she tried to flounder onto all fours, but her limbs wouldn’t obey her. She could only lie and watch the fight unfold.
Her would-be rescuers looked unfazed by the ratmen’s metamorphosis. Dorn stood motionless as the shapeshifters rushed him, then, just as they were about to close, he sprang forward. It was remarkable that such a hulking, heavily-armored man could pounce so quickly, and it caught the wererats by surprise. He swung his fist in a backhand blow, and the knuckle spikes on the gauntlet crunched into a lycanthrope’s skull. Evidently the iron glove was enchanted, for the creature’s normal resistance to any out silver weapons did nothing to protect it. Flung backward, it sprawled inert, its head bloody and battered out of shape.
Three more shapeshifters hacked and stabbed at Dorn. It seemed inevitable that one of them would penetrate the big man’s guard, but he swept the gauntlet back and forth, blocking and parrying the attacks, for as long as it took to bull his way out of the center of his remaining foes. That accomplished, he came back on guard as he had before, armored hand extended before him, sword poised behind.
Kara peered to see if Will was faring as well. For a moment, she failed to spot the little halfling himself, just the three ratmen scrambling in pursuit. That was because he was taking evasive action, dodging behind or ducking under furniture, using his size to his advantage, making it difficult for his screeching, chattering, manifestly frustrated foes to close with him. Indeed, he was so adept at the tactic that for a moment, they lost track of him all together. As they crouched to look under one table, he leaped on top of another, then gave a piercing whistle. They lifted their heads, and he spun the warsling. Kara didn’t see the stone fly, but it was obvious from the way two of the lycanthropes jerked that the missile had hit one, then skipped to strike the other.
Swords raised, beady scarlet eyes blazing, the ratmen rushed forward. Will stood his ground long enough to hurl another rock, which made a double crack as it impacted not just one skull but two. Evidently, like Dorn’s gauntlet, the stones were enchanted, for one shapeshifter swayed and crumpled sideways, overturning a rickety chair as it fell.
Alas, that still left two assailants who finally lunged close enough to strike. Will, however, somersaulted off the edge of the table before the leaping blades could touch him. He landed on the floor as neatly as a tumbler in a carnival, then ran. Tails dragging through the sawdust, the ratmen scuttled after.
By then, Dorn’s gauntlet was bloody from claw-tips to wrist, evidence of the vicious efficiency with which he employed it. He snatched, and a ratman with a gashed, gory chest frantically sidestepped, only to discover that the mauling grab had merely been a feint. The human swung his hand-and-a-half sword at the creature’s shoulder and sheared its long, skinny arm off. The ratman went down, gore pumping from the stump.
One of its comrades pounced, desperate to drive its dagger into Dorn’s back before the human could come back on guard. Dorn somehow sensed the attack coming and snapped his elbow backward into the creature’s ribs. Weighted with iron, the blow caved in the wererat’s chest. That left the biggest of the pack, who snarled and drove in hard, foam flying from its gaping jaws.
Will was down to a single opponent, too, but that one had finally managed to push him into a corner. Still smiling, the baffling drew his hunting sword. The weapon seemed sized
for a human, and Kara assumed a smaller fighter would have to wield it two-handed, but it wasn’t so. Apparently the sword was one of the small folk’s enchanted “hornblades,” so light and exquisitely balanced that its relative largeness was no impediment.
But the ratman’s broadsword was longer still, as were its limbs. It poised itself at just the proper distance to exploit its advantage in reach, then began rather cautiously cutting and slashing. Will parried but couldn’t reach the shapeshifter with a riposte. After a moment, he darted forward.
It was what the wererat wanted him to do. The creature hopped backward and swung its blade in a low, murderous stop cut. Will dived under the blow, rolled back to his feet, and raced on into striking range before his amazed opponent could recover. The hornblade ripped open the shapechanger’s belly.
At almost the same instant, Dorn caught his remaining opponent’s blade in his armored fingers, gave it a cunning squeeze and twist, and snapped it in two. Disarmed, the lycanthrope recoiled. Dorn bounded after it and gripped the long, wire-wrapped hilt of his sword with both hands. His final stroke flung the wererat’s severed head tumbling through the air.
Both Dorn and Will took a look around, evidently making sure all their foes were dead or incapacitated. Then they came to check on Kara, and she goggled in amazement.
She recognized that Dorn wasn’t really wearing plate on the left side of his body. Rather, someone had replaced his limos of flesh and bone with appendages of iron, cast all in a single piece and granted mobility by enchantment. Below the neck, it was impossible to tell precisely where artifice ended and nature began. His dun leather brigandine and breeches hid the joins. But his square, heavy-jawed, green-eyed face displayed the vaguely sickening dividing line where metal fused to skin.
Noticing Kara’s astonishment, he scowled. Or maybe that was simply his habitual expression.
Will knelt beside her and asked, “How are you holding up?”
She tried to answer but slid into darkness instead.
As Gorstag Helder stepped out into the night, freshly fallen snow crunched beneath his soles. Soon enough, his feet would be cold, for his thin, cheap boots wouldn’t keep out the chill. He hadn’t possessed enough silver to pay for both warmth and the latest style.
He wouldn’t mind chilled feet if he could finally slip out of town. His report was more than a tenday overdue. He let the salle door swing shut behind him, sealing in the clatter of practice blades, the babble of conversation, the music of glaur, longhorn, and hand drum, and the shrill laughter of a whore, and surveyed the benighted street. His heart sank, because Firvimdol Eastmere was sitting on the edge of a frozen horse trough, awaiting him. Gorstag couldn’t figure out whether his “brothers” thought they needed to keep an eye on him or were simply making an effort to bring the newest initiate fully into the fold. Either way, the effect was the same. They sought him out so relentlessly he could scarcely visit the jakes unsupervised, let alone sneak out into the countryside.
Well, he mustn’t let his frustration show. He arranged his narrow, long-nosed features into a smile and hurried toward his comrade, who rose and met him with a mushy hand clasp. Both men were young and wore their capes thrown back, defying the cold to display their fashionable slashed doublets, and their equally modish rapiers canted at just the proper angle, but in other ways, they made a contrast. Firvimdol had a plump frame, waxed, curling mustachios, and flaunted genuine velvets and gems. Gorstag was thinhe hoped it made him look athletic, rather than like someone who periodically starved for want of fundsclean-shaven, and a creature of cheaply woven tripe and paste.
“Well met,” Gorstag said.
“How was the fencing?” Firvimdol replied.
“Fine.”
“Did you and Taegan Nightwind have a chance to talk?”
“Yes.” They’d spoken at some length, in fact, but Gorstag would rather have cut out his own tongue than attempt to entice his teacher into the same corruption he himself had seemingly embraced. “I felt him out again, and I must tell you, he simply isn’t interested. Why should he be? He’s already prosperous and renowned.”
“Notorious, anyway.”
Inwardly, Gorstag bristled, even though he had to concede that Firvimdol had a point. In recent years, a new breed of fencing master had sprung up in Impiltur to teach swordplay to anyone with coin, and a good many commoners proved eager to learn and to lionize their instructors. The knights and paladins who constituted the kingdom’s traditional martial elite, however, disdained the maestros as a source of public disorder, fomenters of duels, brawls, and blood feuds. It perhaps didn’t help that a good many of the salles shared space with taverns, gambling halls, ratting pits, or, as in Taegan’s case, bawdyhouses.
Firvimdol continued, “why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to be a lord in the Impiltur to come? Are you sure there’s no hope of him joining us?”
“I’m sure.”
Firvimdol’s mouth tightened and he said, “So be it, then. Stroll with me, why don’t you?”
They set off wandering the broad, cobbled, elm-lined avenues of Lyrabar, Queen Sambryl’s city. Though it was late, many a shop shone bright with lamplight to lure customers. Laughing and singing, sometimes racing one another, revelers traveled from one entertainment to the next in ornately carved, brilliantly painted carriages and sleighs. Signs of wealth and bustling commerce abounded on every side, as if in mockery of those who lived in need.
“I fear,” said Firvimdol, while fat snowflakes started drifting down, just as they had in fits and starts all day, “that you aren’t making a very impressive start.”
“I can’t reach inside Maestro Taegan’s head and change the way his brain works. By the Nine Hells, I’ve accomplished every other task you gave me.”
Firvimdol shrugged and said, “Routine chores. Not really enough to prove your commitment or usefulness.”
Gorstag felt a pang of anxiety, drew a calming breath, and replied, “I have the feeling you’re about to set me a test.”
“Not methe Wearer of Purple. She said that if you could make no headway with your mentor, I was to give you a different errand.”
“Whatever the job is, if it will prove my loyalty, I welcome it. I’m tired of being the new man, mistrusted and kept in the dark.”
“Good. You know Hezza, the pawnbroker on Lutemaker Street?”
“Vaguely.”
In truth, he knew Hezza, and others like him, depressingly well. He’d often pawned one or another of his meager belongings to put bread on his table.
“We’ve learned he took possession of an emerald pendant just a few hours ago,” said Firvimdol. “The stone’s of the highest quality.”
Gorstag saw where Firvimdol was going. The cult had been procuring jewels “of the highest quality” for some tendays.
“You want me to steal it,” Gorstag said.
“Yes, we do. It’s rare luck that such a prize is sitting in Hezza’s shop. The place isn’t nearly as secure as it ought to be to protect such a treasure.”
“It’s surely locked, though, and I’m no burglar.”
“With a light and a crowbar, you’ll do fine.”
“What does the brotherhood need with all these gems anyway?”
“You’ll find out at the proper time. Will you do it?” The spy nodded and said, “Anything for the cause.”
So it was that Gorstag made his way to a neighborhood displaying little sign of Lyrabar’s general affluence, a district of crumbling brick tenements and rookeries like the one where he’d grown up, and where, to his shame, he still resided. Nearing the scene of his intended misdeed, he abandoned the customary swagger of a rake to skulk through the shadows. He had a certain practiced knack for it. Over the years, as legitimate ways of bettering himself had eluded him, he’d occasionally resorted to petty thieving to make ends meet. He suspected his employer somehow knew, and that was why he’d sought him out to be his agent.
Grateful to find it deserted, Gorstag crept down a narrow, twisting alleyway to the rear entrance of the pawnshop. He pulled his hood up to shadow his features, took another look around, then brought the hooked iron pry bar Firvimool had provided out from under his cloak. He stuck the end between door and jamb then threw his weight against it.
The lock held for a moment then broke with a snap. To Gorstag, the noise seemed hellishly loud, and when he pushed the door open he half expected to hear Hezza rushing to investigate. But the dark space beyond the threshold was silent.
Gorstag slipped through the door, pushed it shut behind him, and removed Firvimdol’s other gift from its black cloth bag. Strung on a leather thong, it was a wooden bead enchanted to shed a pale luminescence, and Gorstag couldn’t help thinking that by itself, it was a niggardly sort of help for the cultists to provide, in view of the potent magic they claimed to command. But apparently it was all an unproven recruit could expect.
The ghostly light revealed a large room cluttered with tools, furniture, flutes, porcelain dolls, display cases full of cameos, bracelets, and tortoiseshell combs, and countless other dusty objects. The pawnshop took up the entire first floor of the house. Hezza lived upstairs.
Holding the bead aloft like a lantern, Gorstag cast about. Where would Hezza stow a valuable emerald? Surely he wouldn’t leave it sitting out with the junk. He’d stash it somewhere safer.
Gorstag found a strongbox under the counter. It was harder to pry open than the door had been, because his crowbar was too big for the job. Finally he managed to open it, to discover only an assortment of coins.
At that, it was coin that could feed and clothe him and pay his rent, and for a second he considering pocketing it. But he was better than that, or at least he aspired to be, and he left the gold and silver where it lay.