Warrior (The Key to Magic) (21 page)

As a whole, Khalar had accepted the transition to a new Viceroy and a new Emperor without batting an eye and not a single moment of unrest had occurred.  In point of fact, the common people seemed to have whole-heartedly welcomed the change.  Nevertheless, Purhlea had never been one to temp fate and as a matter of policy always had his guards near.  On the frequent occasions when he found their presence constricting or agitating, he would recollect the historical account of the Emperor Bhorghandt III that he had first read as a youth.  Bhorghandt had been stabbed to death in the open street by his three closest friends and allies.

Moving to the right to walk around a three armlength wide raised planter that sported dark purple roses, Purhlea harrumphed.  "It will be the sixth, but with summer coming on, there will be battles in the east.  I will be needed there."

"I think you told me the same thing last time, my lord."

Purhlea laughed.  "You are right, legate.  Nevertheless, I shall continue to --"

A few paces ahead, the steel head of a quarrel burst obscenely out the back of the guardsman on the left, Thindhaol, and he collapsed with nary a sound.   The guardsman on the right, Burtrahn, hardly had time to twist about in shock before a second bolt took him full in the chest.

Purhlea threw himself prone, just avoiding a third shot that whizzed passed, and shouted at the others, "Get to cover!"

Khraake dodged, trying to draw his sword, but gasped and slammed to the ground with a quarrel through his left shoulder.  Lhot and Gaabrol, the two guardsmen stationed at the rear, dropped without delay behind the bulky planter.

With more bolts zipping overhead, Purhlea reached out and caught hold of Khraake, rose to a crouch, and then dragged the legate back to the other two men.

Leaving off Khraake to the care of the two guardsmen, Purhlea spun around to poke his head briefly over the top of the planter to peer between the thorny bushes.  Beyond the sprawled bodies of the dead guardsmen, he saw that ten or more swordsmen in chainmail and leather that bore the colors of Korhthenr had just emerged from out the gates of a villa showing the sigil of the Merchant House of Bhleyr on its wall.  Swords drawn, the gang was thirty paces away and gave every indication that they were about to charge.

In the open, ten to four was terrible odds.  He glanced at the legate.  "Can you run, Khraake?"

Sitting between the crouched Lhot and Gaabrol, the Khalarii officer gritted his teeth and then reached up with his right hand to snap off the protruding feathered shaft.  Blood oozed around the wound, but not badly.  "Yes, my lord."

"They're coming, my lord!" Lhot warned.

"Withdraw to that house," Purhlea ordered, pointing to the right at the nearest doorway.

The three storey townhouse had a marble facade in a modern style and a projecting entrance with a false gable, painted frieze, and simulated columns to give it the semblance of a classical portico. 

He jumped up and burst into a run, only casting a glance behind once to see that the others were following.  He crossed the thirty paces to the copper sheathed door without feeling the piercing blow of a quarrel through his back, slowed just enough to throw the latch,  and then burst inside to find a well lit circular entryway with passages leading left and right and a curving stair going up.

Khraake and Lhot followed close on his heels.

"Where is Gaabrol?" he demanded in a sharp tone as he spun about to look back through the door.

"He fell, my lord," Lhot said, breathing heavily.  "Quarrel through the throat."

The leading Korhthenr were nearly to the stoop.  Purhlea slammed the door in their faces but found a keyed lock, inconveniently missing the key, instead of an old style bolt.  He seized the latch handle in his fists to keep it from being turned from the outside.

Holding a large iron key in her right hand, a thin woman with graying hair appeared at the left passage, shrieked, and fled the way she had come.

The door shuddered and then jarred heavily a second later, cracking the jamb and splintering the casing.  Both Khraake and Lhot immediately threw their weight against the door, bracing their feet.  When the door jarred a second time, the latch burst through the casing, but the three of them managed to keep it closed.

"We cannot hold this," Purhlea judged.  "You two, run for the stairs!"

Neither guardsman budged.

"You go, my lord," Khraake urged.  "We'll give you a chance to escape."

The door jarred again, swinging partially open despite their efforts and the butt of a crossbow jammed through the gap, keeping it from closing.

Purhlea drew his sword, jumped sideways to face the thin gap and thrust out at the half-perceived shapes of the Korhthenr.  He struck flesh, heard a yell, and for a moment, the pressure on the door ceased.

Instinctively, he grabbed the crossbow.  "Let up enough to get this out!"

When the guardsmen did, he twisted the stock and dragged the weapon in.  Two quarrels shot through the closing gap.  One struck the stock a glancing blow and clattered across the tile floor to lodge against the bottom of the stairs.  The other passed between his knees, piercing his left trouser leg and barely nicking his skin, skipped off the tile, spun, and thudded to a stop five steps up.

He raced to pick up the first quarrel, sheathed his sword, stood the crossbow on its stirrup to quickly cock and load it, and then brought it to his shoulder.

"Up the stairs, now!" he barked.

Khraake and Lhot bolted by him as he stood ready to fire.  For an excruciating count of three, he waited with his finger tense upon the trigger, then turned and charged up after them, catching up the second quarrel as he passed it.

The door burst in before he had gained the top, but he did not slow or turn, sprinting for all that he was worth.  He crowded Khraake and Lhot ahead of him on up the second set of stairs.

"Keep going!"

The sound of boots pounding on the stairs below spurred the three of them to run faster. 

The landing at the top floor gave access to two closed doors and a corridor running toward the back of the house.  Khraake, in the lead, went down the corridor and Purhlea followed Lhot after him.  The corridor made a right turn and then ended with but a single door on the right. 

The legate threw open the door and entered the small room, calling back, "No windows or doors." 

Purhlea waved Lhot into the room and pushed in behind him.  When he heard heavy footsteps, he leaned out the doorway, fired the crossbow, then dropped to the floor and wiggled back behind the cover of the frame.  As he moved, he pitched his head to get a good view out of his eye along the corridor and saw that the quarrel had taken down one of the Korhthenr armsmen.  Struck high in the chest, the man started screaming as his compatriots reached out to drag him back into shelter.

Purhlea rolled to a sitting position, cocked the crossbow again, and loaded his second quarrel.  Remaining semi-prone, he rocked out to fire again, but the attackers had already retrieved their comrade and were not in view.  After a moment or two, the wounded man's screaming faded.

"They'll rush us in a minute, Viceroy," Lhot said with a bland expression.

"Never thought that I would die in a latrine," Lhot groused.

Purhlea swung his head back and forth to take in the room.

The small chamber had simple, white plaster walls and a red tile floor.  A large tiled platform at the back that had a hinged wooden cover made him realize that Lhot was correct.  They were in a garderobe.

"Lhot, watch the door."  As he changed places with the guardsman, he asked Khraake, "Shaft or pipe?"

"Sorry, what's that, my lord?"

"The toilet.  Imperial designs always use a large, side-vented main shaft.  Modern designs employ clay pipe and water traps.  The ones with the pipe usually have a rain barrel or other water source to wash the soil down -- otherwise the smell becomes unbearable -- so I believe this must follow the imperial design."

 "No idea, my lord.  My house just has a privy out back that sits above the sewer."

 With his free hand, Purhlea flipped back the tightly fitted lid, giving himself an inadvertent whiff of the cloaca far below.  Underneath, a stone-lined shaft almost an armlength square descended into darkness. 

"Excellent," he told Khraake.  "Lhot, help the legate get the lid off while I convince our friends to give us a few more minutes."

Purhlea brought the crossbow to his shoulder, went to the door, and fired just as soon as he stepped out.  The hardwood shaft missed the two men that had started to sneak down the hall and buried itself into the wall at the end, but the sneaks immediately fled back out of sight.

Never one to discard a good club, he kept hold of the crossbow as he rejoined the other two.

Khraake and Lhot had succeeded in prying up one end of the joined plank cover.  Minding the nails, Purhlea caught the end to help, and the three of them wrenched the remaining nails free and tossed the cover out of the way.

"In you go," he ordered.

Lhot gave the pungent shaft a dubious look.  "I'll hold the door until you escape, my lord viceroy."

"You can die for king and emperor another time.  Today you will go down this shaft and live, because I will not be one of those craven noblemen who always survives his guards."

"The sides are covered in... that is, they look slick, my lord."

"All the better.  There will not be any chance that we will get stuck.  Keep your back against one side and use your arms and legs to slow yourself down as much as possible.  I expect that there will be water in the branch tunnel underneath the house, but it could be shallow, so try not to land going too fast.  Get out of the way immediately. Khraake will be right behind you and I behind him. Get moving."

Still showing reluctance but obeying, Lhot climbed in and began to work his way down. 

"You next, Khraake," Purhlea said as soon as Lhot was a manheight down.

The legate gave half a shrug with his good shoulder, scabbarded his short sword, and climbed gingerly over into the shaft.

"I'm not sure that I can keep hold --" Khraake began.  With a curse, he plummeted from sight and then a second later Purhlea heard the sound of a collision and a great splash echo up the shaft..

Wasting no time, Purhlea hooked the arm of the crossbow on the side, climbed in, and then held onto the stock with one hand while he tried to wedge himself in with shoulders and feet.  As Lhot had said the walls were slick, but mostly from a leprous green muck rather than raw excrement.

 Hearing the hurried tramp of hobnailed boots, he let go of the stock and wiggled downward as rapidly as he could.  He had only gone about a manheight and a half when both his boots slipped at the same time and he fell, smashing into and scrapping the sides of the shaft.  He tried to tuck in his arms, but was not fast enough and he felt an excruciation jolt as his right hand caught briefly on an inlet opening, and then he plunged into the water at the bottom.

The fluid -- it was only
mostly
water -- proved to be barely chest deep and Khraake and Lhot, soaked, soiled, but apparently undamaged, moved in immediately to catch him before his head went under.  Lhot unfortunately tried to grab Purhlea's right arm, causing him to cry out.

The guardsman instantly released him.  "Sorry, my lord.  It looks broken."

Gritting his teeth, Purhlea settled his feet against the weak current and straightened, raising his arms above the flow and in the process sending another lance of paint shooting up his right arm to his shoulder.  That limb had an extra kink between elbow and wrist and he thought most of his fingers were broken as well.

"I am sure that it is."

He considered their new situation.  The brick-arched tunnel was only twice the width of his shoulders but at least an armlength of clearance extended above his head.  Upstream the tunnel certainly grew smaller.  Logic indicated that downstream it must merge with the main sewers and eventually lead out into the river.

  "Follow the flow," he ordered.  "We need to move while those Korhthenr are trying to decide if the gold they were paid is worth joining us down in this shite."

THIRTY

The 1645th year of the Glorious Empire of the North

(Thirdday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire)

Khalar

Ghyamyr backed away from the shaft.  "Not me, fugleman. I can't swim."

"If we don't get the viceroy, we don't get the bounty on his head," Fher'amahn argued.  "Somebody has to go down after him."

Finaeal walked into the garderobe.  "Pergaus is dead.  Bled to death."

Fher'amahn turned to Finaeal.  "Find some ropes.  We've got to go down and kill that son of a whore."

Finaeal shook his head.  "Don't be daft.  The rains yesterday will have flooded the sewer tunnels.  They drowned."

"We need the body to prove that he's dead."

"No we don't.  In fact, it's better without it.  With the other quads covering the ground floor exits, nobody knows what went on up here but the three of us. We'll just say that we killed him and dumped his body down the toilet to get rid of the evidence.  Then we collect Hwraldek's gold."

  "You told Hwraldek that your plan was guaranteed to work," Ghyamyr said.  "We can't tell him that the viceroy got away.  He'll have us gutted.  Besides, Finaeal's right.  They must've drowned."

Fher'amahn rubbed his chin.  "Alright, but if the viceroy happens to show up alive, we'll all be killed, no matter who winds up on top."

"So as soon as we get the money, we hop a barge down river," Ghyamyr responded in a matter-of-fact tone.  He shook his Korhthenr tabard.  "If Hwraldek falls, I don't want to be caught here wearing this."

After a moment, Fher'amahn nodded.  "That works for me.  Seems like the place to spend my share would be in Mhajhkaei."

"There's one other thing we might better do," Finaeal said.

"What's that?"

"Hwraldek's going to blame this on the riots, but there's no riot going on here.  We were supposed to get the viceroy in the empty street, not in a house.  We might need to cover our tracks."