The Cold Commands Read online

  Ishgrim flushed and shifted on the stone bench.

  “Are you going to tell him?” she asked in a small voice.

  Silence. Egar switched a glance between the two of them. “Tell me what?”

  “It’s nothing, really.” Kefanin waved a dismissive hand. “Not worth—”

  “Tell me what, Kef?”

  The majordomo sighed. “Well, then. It seems we are being subjected to a little more clerical brinkmanship. The Citadel wish once more to remind us of their existence.”

  “They’re out there again?” Egar hadn’t noticed coming in, and an odd sense of shame crept through him at the realization. Some fucking hound, Eg. “Guys on the gate didn’t say a thing about it when I came in.”

  Kefanin shrugged. “They are on loan from the palace. They don’t want unnecessary trouble.”

  That ticklish fucking balance again. Egar remembered the wary looks the guardsmen had given him. Felt a fierce grin stitch itself onto his face.

  “They think I’d cause unnecessary trouble?”

  “My lord, I do not know if—”

  “Leave it with me, Kef.”

  Voice trailing out behind him as he walked away. Riding an upsurge of varying emotion now, at whose heart was that same vaguely familiar restlessness he couldn’t pin down. He strode back through the chambers and halls of the house. Across the blaze of the courtyard. Under the brief, cool caress of the arch, past the startled guardsmen—assholes—without a word. Out once more into the bustle and tramp of the street.

  Paying attention now, he spotted them easily enough—there, under one of the acacia trees planted in twinned rows down the center of the boulevard. The lean, drab-robed figure of the invigilator and, flanking him in the cooling puddle of shade, the inevitable brace of men-at-arms; cheap bulk and professional scowls, lightweight mail shirts under surplices with the Citadel crest, short-swords sheathed at the hip.

  There was a twinned flicker of motion as both men clapped hand to sword hilt when they saw the big Majak come striding through the traffic toward them. Egar nodded grim approval, let them know he’d seen it, and then he was planted firmly in front of the invigilator.

  “You’ve got the wrong house,” he said conversationally.

  The invigilator’s face mottled with anger. “How do you dare to—”

  “No, you’re not listening to me.” Egar kept his voice patient and gentle. “There’s obviously been some mistake back at the Citadel. Pashla Menkarak isn’t keeping you up to date. When he sent you down here, didn’t he tell you how dangerous it is to stand under this tree?”

  The invigilator flashed an inadvertent glance up at the branches over his head. Egar dropped an amiable right arm onto his shoulder, just above the collarbone. He dug in with his thumb. The invigilator uttered a strangled yelp. The men-at-arms came belatedly to life. One of them raised a meaty hand and grabbed Egar’s free arm.

  “That’s en—”

  Egar clubbed down with the blade of his right hand, felt the invigilator’s collarbone snap beneath the blow like a twig for kindling. The invigilator shrieked, collapsed in a sprawl of robes and choking pain. By then Egar had already turned on the man-at-arms who’d grabbed him. He locked up the grasping hand with a Majak wrestling trick, put the man into the trunk of the tree face-first. The other man-at-arms was a heartbeat too slow in reacting, and did entirely the wrong thing—he went for his sword. Egar swung a shoulder in with his full body weight behind it, trapped the man’s sword arm across his chest, and smacked him in the temple with the heel of one palm. At the last moment, something made him pull the full force of the blow, and the man went down merely stunned.

  Meanwhile, the one he’d put face-first into the tree was still on his feet, blood streaming from a broken nose, and he’d also decided it was time to bring out the steel. He got the sword a handbreadth out of its scabbard and then the Dragonbane kicked his legs out from under him. He went down in a sudden heap. Egar stepped in and kicked him again in the head. That seemed to take care of things.

  Behind him, the invigilator was still screeching and thrashing about on the ground in his robes like some kind of beached manta ray. An interested crowd was starting to form. Egar looked up and down the street for reinforcements, saw none, positioned himself carefully, and kicked the robed form hard in the guts. The screaming stopped, was replaced by a ruptured puking sound. Egar planted another solid kick, higher this time, and felt a couple of ribs snap against his boot. Then he crouched beside the invigilator, grabbed him by the throat, and dragged him in close.

  “Look up there,” he said bleakly, and jerked the man’s head upward for emphasis. “Pay attention, because I’m only going to go through this once. See that window? Second floor, third across from the arch? That’s my room. It looks directly out onto the street, right here. Now I know that you people and the lady of this house have some prior history, but here’s the thing: I don’t fucking care. And more important, I don’t want to have to look out of that window and see your scowling face fucking up my view. Got it?”

  Gritted teeth snarl. “I have an ordained right—”

  Egar slapped the rest of the sentence out of the man’s mouth.

  “We’re not discussing rights, my friend. Do I look like a lawyer to you? We’re talking here about a polite and reasonable personal request I’m making, to you and all your bearded chums. Stay the fuck away from this house. Take that back to Menkarak, make sure he spreads it around. Because anyone who doesn’t get the message, I will be forced to hurt, probably very badly. And if you ever come back here again.” The Dragonbane dug his index fingernail in under the invigilator’s chin and lifted his face closer. Looked into his eyes to make it stick. “Well, then I’ll kill you. Okay?”

  From the man’s face, he judged the message conveyed.

  He got up, looked around at the tumbled, twitching bodies, and the goggling crowd that had gathered.

  “Show’s over,” he said brusquely. “Nothing to see here.”

  And there it was, something in the words as he spoke them, some echo of the elusive feeling he’d been carrying around all day—which now slid out from the shadows and took on recognizable form.

  Bored, he realized with a slight shock. Dragonbane—you are bored.

  CHAPTER 3

  ater, with the band muffled up in thickening cloud and the last of the daylight gone to a fading orange glow over the trees to the west, the march-masters set about building campfires. Tinder sparked and flared at intervals across the low open ground where the thirty-five coffles of slaves were huddled against the growing chill of night. Gerin watched the flames spring up, and counted—four, no, five of them among the slaves and another smaller one farther out where the overseer’s tents were pitched. None was close enough to cast more than the faintest radiance on the men in his coffle—a gleam here and there on a few pale, city-bred faces like Tigeth’s, the odd glint of an eye catching the light as someone turned their head. But mostly, the slaves made a rumpled and undistinguished mass of shadow in the gloom.

  There was a faint, watery itching in Gerin’s eyes and throat. He felt suddenly, ineptly weak.

  He forced it down. No time for that now.

  Those march-masters not tasked with the fires began the lengthy business of feeding and watering their charges. They moved outward among the slaves in ones and twos, dealing out the odd casual kick or blow to open passage. The men overseeing Gerin’s coffle at least seemed in rough good humor as they went around, slopping cold stew into the shallow wooden bowls with reasonable attempts at accuracy, taking the trouble to hand out the chunks of stale bread rather than just throw them, here and there grunting the kind of gruffly soothing words you’d offer a well-behaved dog. Gerin put it down to Barat’s absence—with the troublemaker off the chain and left to rot, there’d be no more unwelcome attention from the overseers, and that had to be good. Now they could all, slaves and march-masters together, get on with the practical business of reaching journey’s en
d in peace.

  Gerin forced down mouthfuls of the gelatinous stew, gnawed at a corner of his bread. He swallowed hard, breathed, swallowed again, and—

  Abruptly, he was choking.

  Choking—thrashing—flailing hard in his chains, so the manacles gouged at his wrists and ankles, and the men around him panicked back as far as their own restraints would let them. Clamor went back and forth.

  “What the—”

  “Look out, look out, he’s having a fi—”

  “Fever! It’s the coughing fever!”

  “Get him the fuck away from m—”

  “Poison, poison!”

  “Don’t touch the fucking food!”

  “Spit it up, man. Spit it the fuck up!”

  And then the new cry, the new terror. “Possessed, possessed! The Dark Court has him. Hoiran comes! Don’t let him touch you, he’ll break the chains like a—”

  “Hoiran! Hoiran! Abase yourselves, it is—”

  “Hoiran walks!”

  “Back, get back—”

  The march-masters arrived. Gerin was barely aware of them, vision torn back and forth in splinters as his neck spasmed front and side, front and side, front and side. The spittle was gathering in his throat—he coughed and spat desperately, felt it start to foam and blow on his lips. A dimly seen form stooped across him, a fist clobbered inaccurately down. The blow glanced off the side of his head. His spine arched, and he made deep snarling noises at the base of his throat. A second march-master joined the first.

  “Not like that, you fucking twat. Get a grip on his—”

  “Yeah, you fucking try to—”

  “Just hold him still, will you!”

  Someone got fully astride Gerin, tried to pin him down by the arms. He thought he recognized the march-master’s face from days earlier—hair grizzled and receding beneath a knitted wool cap, brow creased, and eyes worried. Another younger, angrier face loomed behind him and to the side. Deep in the fit and foaming, Gerin glimpsed the second man raising a fist wrapped in metallic knuckle-duster gleam. Saw the way he angled carefully for the punch. This one would break his face for sure.

  Something thin and glinting whipped loosely upward in the night air, dropped down again over the younger man’s head—Gerin knew it for a length of chain. He dropped his Strov-practiced spasming like a peeled cloak, hinged furiously up against the grip on his arms, nuzzled into the older march-master’s neck like a lover.

  He bit deep and hung on.

  The march-master yelped and tried to smack him away. The younger man’s steel-loaded punch misfired, hit his struggling companion in the shoulder. Then the chain pulled taut, ripped him backward and tumbling away. Gerin locked his jaws on the older man’s neck, got his hands up to help the clinch. The other slaves on the coffle crowded about, prevented retreat. The march-master was bleating now, stumbling, trying to elbow a path clear. Flailing to get Gerin off him. The woolen cap got knocked askew on his balding head, then away, into the confusion. Gerin rode the struggles, felt his nose bloodied from a random blow, ignored it, ground and sliced and scissored with his teeth, worked at tearing a ragged hole in the man’s neck. Skin, sinew, tiny gobbets of shredded flesh and there, there, the tiny, wet-pulsing pipe of the artery. He spat loose, let go. The march-master staggered back, eyes wide on Gerin’s in the poor light, mouth gaping like a plea. He slapped a hand to the wound in his neck, felt the damage there, the swift pulse of his life running out over his fingers. Made a kind of moaning sound and fell over gibbering.

  “Get his fucking bolt cutters! Now!”

  It was the Rajal veteran, through gritted teeth as he sawed the length of chain link back and forth across the younger march-master’s throat. His fist were up and doubled about the chain in an attempt to keep the worst of the strain off his manacles—still Gerin saw how the veteran bled at the wrists from the pressure. The march-master thrashed and kicked, booted legs lashing out, trying to find purchase. But the dull metal links had sunk deep in the flesh at his throat, and his eyes bulged inhumanly large as he choked, filled with the desperate knowledge of his own death. Gerin darted in, grabbed the cutters from his belt. He wrestled with the unfamiliar angles of the tool, trying to make it bite on the edge of his ankle cuffs.

  “You motherfuckers!” Heavy blow across his shoulder. “Get on the fucking ground, you piece of sh—”

  Gerin staggered, did not quite go down. The third, newly arrived march-master snarled and slammed the club into him again, from the side. It put him in the dirt this time. The march-master stood over him a single hard-breathing second with club raised again—and was clawed down by the other men on the coffle before he could strike. An awful, wailing yell came up from the ground where he hit. Chained forms piled onto him.

  “Cut me loose, son. Do it quick.”

  It was the gaunt man, arms out-thrust. Gerin hesitated an instant, then fastened the bolt cutters on the man’s manacles. He heaved and twisted, forearms aching from the effort. For one sickening moment, he thought the cutters would not work. Then the manacle bent, and split, and tore.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” the gaunt man almost crooning. “Guild-level iron, my arse. Look at that shit. Fucking skimp-shift Etterkal smiths.”

  The second manacle went almost as easily, and then the gaunt man had snatched the bolt cutters from Gerin’s sweat-slick grip. He hefted them like a weapon. Gerin felt his mouth dry up.

  “Come on,” the man snapped. “Hold ’em out.”

  It was like his father speaking—Gerin obeyed in a daze. The gaunt man set the bolt cutters to his manacles, snapped each one open in turn with a powerful doubled crimping action. He did Gerin’s feet almost as fast, then his own. He tore off the broken cuffs, straightened up and laughed—a sudden, fierce burst of joy that had something animal about it. He clapped Gerin on the shoulder, almost flooring him again with the force of the blow.

  “Fucking amazing, son. Never seen anything like that.”

  Elsewhere, other men had laid hands on the other two march-masters’ bolt cutters and were now about the squabbling uncertain task of trying to free themselves or one another in the dark. The scar-faced Rajal veteran rose up, like something summoned, from the corpse of the man he’d killed. He tugged his chains loose from the red-raw gape of the march-master’s burst throat and offered them up. Gerin felt a shudder run up his spine at the sight. The veteran shook the chain impatiently.

  “You two going to stand there congratulating each other all fucking night?” he growled, and nodded out across the gathered slave caravan to where the commotion was now general. “We’ve got a couple of minutes tops before someone with a sword gets here. Come on.”

  Gerin followed the gesture, saw the truth of it. Dark figures waded about through the disarrayed coffles, trying to trace the source of the uproar. Most held up torches or brands pulled hurriedly from the campfires. Dim glint of blades unsheathed in their free hands.

  The gaunt man set the cutters to the veteran’s manacles, broke them apart with no more effort than he’d needed before. The veteran jerked his hands impatiently free of the ruined metal, then bent and pulled each foot free of its snapped ankle cuff in turn.

  Behind them, a shout split the night.

  “There! Monkgrave’s coffle!”

  “They’re … Get them! They’re loose! Fucking get in there and …”

  Still bent over his ankle cuffs, the veteran twisted his head toward the voices. Gerin saw him grimace and nod to himself. Then he got carefully back to his feet, curled a hand around each freed wrist in turn and breathed in deeply, grunted as if surprised by something.

  “You’d better get out of here,” he told the gaunt man.

  “I, you, but … ”

  The veteran took the bolt cutters gently from him. “Go on. Take the kid, get up into that tree line quick, while you still can.”

  “And you?”

  The veteran gestured at the confusion around them, the other men struggling to free themselves i
n the dark. “Friend, if someone doesn’t buy us some more time, this is all going to be over quicker than a priest’s fuck.”

  “Then I’ll stay, too.”

  “You fight in the war?” the veteran asked, as gently as he’d taken the cutters.

  The gaunt man hesitated. Lowered his head, shook it slowly.

  “Reserved trades,” he said. “I was … I’m a blacksmith.”

  The veteran nodded. “Thought it had to be something like that. Way you cut that iron. Look, there’s no shame in it. Can’t all be swinging the steel, you know, someone’s got to actually make the fucking stuff. But you got to know your specialty.”

  He swung the cutters absently, feeling the weight in them. It made a sound through the air like a scythe. The blacksmith stared at him, and the veteran’s scarred features creased in something vaguely resembling a smile. He gestured with his newly acquired weapon, up to where the trees thickened toward forest.

  “Go on, get moving, both of you. Head for the trees.” The smile became an awful grin. “Be right behind you.”

  They turned from the lie, the impossible promise in his ruined face, and fled.

  The scarred man watched them go. Yelled curses and stumbling behind him as the first of the sword-wielding march-masters kicked their way through to the scene of the revolt. His grin faded slowly out. Amid the chaos of men scrambling to be free, tugging at their chains, and screaming for cutters, he turned to face the newcomers. Two men, both wielding swords, one with a torch upraised. The veteran felt a muscle twitch, deep under the scar tissue in his face.

  “You!” The first march-master saw him, lifted his torch, and peered. He pointed with his sword. “Get down on your fucking knees. Do it now.”

  The veteran closed the gap with three swift paces, ignored the sword, got inside its useful reach before the march-master could grasp what was happening. He loomed over the man.

  “We left them behind,” he said, as if explaining something to a child.

  Moth-wing blur of motion—the bolt cutters, slashing in at head height.