The Tainted Cup, page 20
“I’d say Talagray could use some more sentiment,” I said honestly. “Especially after all we’ve discovered, sir.”
“Ha! But no need to be so formal.” The smile faded from his lips. “I mean, you call your immunis by her first name.”
“Ana is…different, sir. As you’ve no doubt seen.”
“Yes, but.” His smile was gone now. “You’re not in my Iyalet. I could be different, too. You could just call me Kepheus, if you liked.”
A strangely earnest look stole over his face, and his eyes searched mine. Despite his warm words he suddenly seemed terribly lonely, standing there in the light of the fires, his curls clinging to his temples. I reminded myself to stay controlled and contained.
“Never mind,” he said suddenly. “Perhaps I overstepped. Apologies. We should continue on, yes?”
I nodded and followed him into the night.
* * *
—
BY THE TIME we got to Suberek’s neighborhood it was fully dark. As Ana had suggested, Suberek’s fernpaper mill was one of many in this industrial section of town, which was stacked with tall, narrow wooden structures built next to the canals, all using the water’s trickle to power their many wheels and mechanisms. The mills were all quite similar, with stables and large doors at the back for the loading of their wagons. The great wheels hung still and blue and ghostly in the starlight. It must have made a merry scene in the day, but tonight it was strange and spectral.
Strovi pointed into the dark. “That one at the end. That’s it.”
I studied Suberek’s mill carefully. Utterly dark, no trace of light within. Fernpaper walls clean and thick, framed by stonewood posts. A sturdy structure that should withstand the fiercest of quakes.
“I’ll knock,” said Strovi, as we approached, “but I am empowered by the Legion to enter by force if unanswered. So if we can’t get in, I shall break in, to make sure this fellow still lives. That make sense?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
A gleaming grin. “Should be entertaining. I expect this will be the first time you’ve ever broken into a house.”
I chose not to answer that.
Strovi strode up to Suberek’s front door, lantern raised high in his hand. As I followed, the mill’s stables rose into view. The shadows behind the fence posts flickered and shivered in Strovi’s light, making it feel like all the darkness was shifting there. Perhaps it was the clar-tea running through my blood, but I liked it not at all.
Strovi raised a hand to knock as I stared into the stables. Yet then I noticed something and snatched his hand before his knuckles struck the door.
“What is it?” he asked.
I nodded toward the stables, where the gate was standing slightly ajar. Then I gestured to the other mills, whose stable gates were firmly shut.
“Gate’s left open,” I whispered. “Doesn’t seem right.”
Strovi looked at them, then at me. He nodded, drew his sword, and together we approached the stables.
The little yard within was utterly abandoned, no pony or mule or hog to pull any cart. A few hints of manure, most of it soft from the rains. I touched the hay piled in the corner and found it soft and mildewed. Smelled it and caught the scent of fungus. Days old at least.
I gestured to Strovi to lower the lantern, and when he did I read the mud at our feet. There I saw the scars and shapes of many footprints, mostly boots, many larger than my own—but no hoofprints of any kind, no animals. And it had just rained today, as my wet clothes could testify.
I looked at the mill again, thinking. Studied the windows, wondering if I might spy some movement within.
Then the wind shifted, rose. I caught an aroma in the air, faint but powerful. As the wind died it vanished, but I recognized it: the scent of rot, and putrefaction.
I kept staring at the house. I felt my blood dancing in my ears, felt sweat trickling on my back, the wooden sword at my side heavy and sagging.
Strovi’s face was pale in the lantern light. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered.
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded. Then I crept to the side door, knelt, pressed my nose close to the bottom gap, and inhaled.
The aroma of death was overpowering—a familiar one, after Aristan’s house. My eyes watered, and it took all my effort not to cough or gag.
I withdrew from the door and crossed to the corner of the stables.
Strovi followed, lantern held high. “What is it?” he whispered.
“Something is dead inside,” I said softly.
His eyes grew wide. “Sanctum…You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. And no animal’s been in these stables for days. Yet here, many boot prints. It rained mere hours ago. So they are very recent—but the death inside is not.”
Strovi turned to the house, head cocked. Then he placed the lantern on the ground and shut its chimney, killing its light.
“They’re still in there,” he whispered. “Aren’t they.”
I said nothing.
“I shall go and fetch a Legion patrol,” he said. “They’ll come and we can round them up.”
I looked down at the lantern at our feet, thinking. Panic began unspooling in my belly.
“Wait. Open the light back up,” I said.
“What? Damn it all, they’ll see the light!”
“They’ll have already seen the light, from the front windows. They’d have seen us come.”
“So?”
“So if the light’s suddenly gone out, and they didn’t see it leave, then they’ll worry, and—”
Then the side door opened, and they came out.
* * *
—
I COUNTED FIVE of them in the dark, large men in light armor, their buckles and buttons winking in the dim light—along with the points of their swords, of course.
Imperial longswords. Bright and glimmering. Finely made tools for quick and easy killing. They offered no shout or cry of warning. They just advanced, swords unsheathed.
Strovi reacted much faster than I, raising his weapon to guard position quickly. His attacker moved in, swinging his sword in a diagonal downward slash, left to right. Strovi caught the blow with his blade and stepped forward into his stance, and I watched him, waiting to see if the gallant captain would live more than a second longer. But then a second attacker was on me, his sword raised high, and all I could think about was the edge of his blade.
I watched the sword approach, unable to comprehend or believe what was happening—and then my eyes shivered and trembled.
Everything slowed down.
I read the swords and the feet and the positions of their shoulders of all those about me. Angles of wrists, of knees, of hips. Grips and crossguards and the tilt of a sword’s edge. I read it all, engraved it all…
And then I was moved.
This was the only word for it: I did not move, but rather my muscles moved me, like my skeleton was being thoughtlessly shoved about by the flesh around it.
I leapt backward as my attacker approached, mindful of the stable wall behind me. Then I drew my wooden blade, raised it with both hands, and caught the attacker’s blow, my right elbow angled high.
My attacker’s sword should have cut clean through my practice weapon, yet I had angled it in just such a way that his sword did not cut straight through, but rather at an angle to it, as if trying to shave off the edge. This meant his sword got lodged within my own, trapped inside my wood and leaden blade. My attacker grunted in surprise, evidently not expecting such a thing.
My eyes fluttered. Memories of my training poured into my mind, and my muscles.
Instantly I recalled my old dueling coach Princeps Trof bellowing—Stop a swing at the right position, children, and you open up the whole of their body. And remember—you don’t swordfight with just a fucking sword!
Old Trof had shown us what to do then.
And I remembered.
I was moved, again.
I stepped forward and shoved my right elbow into where I gauged my attacker’s throat to be in the darkness, as hard as I could. My elbow instead met the crunch of cartilage, and the splash of hot blood—his nose.
A howl in the darkness, but I had no attention for it: my muscles were moving me, guiding me mindlessly through the countless dueling steps I’d learned so many months ago. I reached forward with my left hand, grabbed my attacker’s wrist, wrenched down, and used my own sword to twist his blade to his left.
His grip broke, and his sword fell free. I snatched the handle as my attacker fell back, wrenched his imperial longsword out of my shabby wooden one, and assumed a two-handed stance.
I had a sword now, a real one, for the first time in my imperial career.
I surveyed the darkened yard before me.
Strovi was still on his feet, engaged with two attackers. The one I’d disarmed was crumpled to my right. A fourth approached me to my left, growling and swinging his longsword across his body from left to right, intending to strike me on the shoulder or neck.
My eyes fluttered. Read the movement, read the position.
His choice, I saw, was a bad one.
Old Trof’s voice in my ear—A fight with blades is all about exposure and leverages! Which swings and slashes and cuts offer your opponent the most openings? Where and when can a movement be stopped? Where shall the sword’s path start and end? This is the language of steel, my children!
My muscles were moving me again, stepping me forward with my sword straight upright to catch my attacker’s blade before it could cross their body.
The steels struck, the reverberations dancing up my wrist. Yet because I had stopped the swing so early, the whole of his body was open to me.
Three smallspan, cried Trof’s voice in my memories. Three smallspan, my children! A sword point must only penetrate three smallspan deep on the trunk or neck of a person to disable and kill them. Don’t do any more fucking work than you have to!
I angled my blade to my left, trapping the strong of their sword against my crossguard; and then I jabbed the point left and up, and into their throat.
A cough, a gurgle, and the hot splash of blood in the dark. A salty flavor in my mouth, a stinging in my eyes. I blinked, and the figure fell backward into darkness.
I kept moving.
Another man was coming on my right, screaming, thrusting forward with his sword. If I had been even slightly slower he would have scored a devastating hit; yet I was jittering with clar-tea, and my eyes recognized the movement, and my muscles summoned up the memory of when Trof had forced me to train against such an attack.
I danced to the right, away from the path of his blade. I hacked down hard against the narrow of his blade, putting maximal twist on his grip (The grip, children, screamed old Trof in my ears, is always, always the weakest point of all fights!), and then I kept moving forward and hacked down again, this time closer to his crossguard, trusting that my destabilizing blow would make it too hard to respond.
I felt the crunch of the bones in his hands, my blade perhaps severing a thumb. He cried out, swung around, and tried to raise his sword with his good hand, but it was too late. My muscles shoved me forward, thrusting my blade into his shoulder; and then, when he turned, into the side of his knee. He collapsed into the mud, shrieking.
A grunt to my right. The man whose nose I’d broken was charging at me, howling. No sword in his hand. I responded instantly, thoughtlessly: a simple jab into his midsection, near the neck, then dancing back. He staggered, tried to turn to see me, and kicked over Strovi’s mai-lantern as he did so. Blue light strobed the yard as the lantern fell open, and I saw him clearly: a man of thirty or forty, nose broken and dribbling blood, and blood spurting from the deep gash just below his left collarbone.
He locked eyes with me, mouth working. A piteous, lost look, as if he’d awoken from a bad dream. Then he fell to the side.
I was moving again, being moved, being pulled, dancing through the muddy yard. Strovi was there in the corner, still fighting two men at once, both with their backs to me.
Trof’s voice in my mind, screaming, howling—Rathras cavalry knew that when chasing down fleeing souls, strike at the backs of their knees with a spear! Down them first, then kill them!
I watched almost helplessly as my sword licked forward, its point diving down to shred the tissue at the back of the man’s knee. But then…
My left heel met slick mud. My foot slid forward. Instantly, I was sent sprawling in the mud and crashed into one of the attacker’s legs.
The man turned, snarling. I saw him raise his blade, its point aimed at my chest.
Then there was a flash of blood from the side of his throat. I felt my face fanned with warmth and wetness. Then he toppled over, stupidly pawing at his neck, and I saw Captain Strovi behind him, his blade black with blood.
I did not see how Strovi felled the final attacker. My eyes were filled with blood, and my head was reeling from where it’d struck the mud. Yet as I sat up, I was aware of only Strovi standing in the yard, his chest heaving as he sucked air into his body, and somewhere the sound of moaning.
I staggered to my feet, then stared around, dazed. The memories of my training withdrew from my body like a veil.
“Who…who are these people?” I mumbled.
“Who are they?” said Strovi. “Who are you?”
“What?”
“Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?” he demanded. “You killed, what, two men? And disabled another?”
“I…I just recalled my training,” I said, taken aback.
“You just…just recalled it? Your basic training?”
“Yes. Why?”
He shook his head, stewing for a moment. “These are Legion deserters. You can tell by their uniforms. They must have been holed up in the house. I never would have thought to see a day when an Iudexii could outfight a Legionnaire, let alone three of them, but…” Another shake of his head. “Hell. I’ll go get a patrol. You stay here. Got it?”
I nodded. Then he sprinted away into the streets.
CHAPTER 21
| | |
THE LEGION PATROL CAME to deal with the deserters, and I left the scene in the stables and wandered into the mill, the smell of rot all about me. It was a cavernous, dark place, with bundles of fernpaper drooping in great clumps along the posts. Weak starlight dribbled through a high window, and the skeletons of machinery crouched in the corners. It felt like I was in a tomb, but I was so stunned I didn’t care. I slumped into a chair in the dark and just sat, listening to the mutterings and calls of the soldiers outside.
My eyes fluttered, shook. I remembered the spray of blood on my face, the saline taste in my mouth. The way that one man’s mouth had worked stupidly in the lamplight, his eyes so confused and hurt. Every part of my body was sticky and crackling with drying blood. It was best to not move at all.
Strovi returned, his mai-lantern held high. He glanced about the room and set the lantern on the table, his sweat-gleamed face a smear of light in the dark.
“Did you see a way down, Kol?” he asked.
“A way down?” I said weakly.
“Down into the basement. You haven’t looked about?”
I shook my head.
He stared off into the darkness. “I talked to them. They said there was something there, when they broke in,” he said. “The deserters thought this place abandoned and broke in through a window. But then they went to the basement, and…” He swallowed. “I’ve sent word to the Iudex. The whole investigation team should be here soon—Uhad and all. For now…” He wiped his face with a trembling hand. “I think you should engrave the room. Look at it like your immunis might want you to. Yes?”
I stared ahead. I could hear his words but could not comprehend them.
“Din?” he said. “Din!”
“What?” I said quietly.
“You need to get up and look!” he snapped. “This is a death scene! Get up and…Oh, damn it all…”
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. Then he looked into my face, his gaze compassionate yet desperate, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
“That was your first fight, wasn’t it?” he said.
I said nothing. Answering such questions seemed pointless.
“By hell, you’re a mess.” He gently wiped my face of blood, using the cloth to swab my eyes, my nose, my mouth. Then he sighed and said, “Your sword.”
“My what?”
“The sword. You need to clean it. It won’t do to sheathe it bloody. It’s dishonorable.”
I looked down and saw the sword still clutched in my bloodied hand. I’d had no idea I still held the thing. I watched as he gingerly took me by the wrist, pulled the sword free from my hand, and wiped down the blade with his bloody handkerchief.
“There,” he said. “Not perfect, but…It’ll do.”
I stuck it in my sheath, yet it did not fit: the sheath was too short, leaving at least four smallspan of blade exposed.
“Is…is that not your sword, Din?” he asked.
“Had a wooden sword,” I said. “Lost it in the fight.”
“You what?”
“I haven’t graduated yet, you see, sir. Still an apprentice.”
We both stared at the sword sticking out of the scabbard. Then he burst out laughing.
“By Sanctum!” he cried. “What a thing, what a thing!”
