D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (8 page)

The large man and his comrades directed hard stares at the two City Watch officers before returning to their drinks and gaming tables. Someone closed the door, shutting in the light that had spilled onto the street. Garett and Burge both felt the surreptitious eyes that watched through the cracked shutters as they started down the Processional again.

“Wonder what that was all about?” Burge said conversationally.

Garett shrugged. “I’ll wait if you care to make inquiries.”

But neither had any intention of returning to the tavern. Their scarlet cloaks and star-embroidered tunics meant little in the Thieves’ Quarter after dark. They were not afraid. They just weren’t looking for that kind of trouble tonight.

Just ahead, three more men stepped out of another tavern and halted when they saw the gleam of Burge’s lantern. For an instant, they stared at the pair of watchmen, their expressions surly, and Garett thought there would yet be trouble. One man’s hand drifted toward his sword, and he tossed the corner of his cloak back over one shoulder to make sure the trio saw that he was armed. After a moment more, the three exchanged dark glances and wandered down the street and around a corner.

“Lower the hood a bit,” Garett told Burge. His lieutenant fingered a small lever on the side of the lantern, and a thin metal panel slid down a few inches over the glass front, narrowing the aperture through which the light shined. The amber pool surrounding them drew in by half, and Garett nodded approval as his eyes adjusted to the new darkness.

As they walked farther on, the blackness and the silence deepened. Ramshackle tenements rose on either side of them, old wooden structures barely fit for habitation. In a good wind, they swayed and groaned, and timbers could be heard as they cracked under the stress. In Garett’s memory, two such tenements had collapsed without warning. Seven bodies had been found in the ruins of the first. No one had bothered to excavate the other.

“We’re bein’ watched,” Burge announced in a whisper. Though he continued to face straight ahead, his eyes raked from side to side.

“Of course,” Garett answered without hesitation.

The old wooden boards of Kastern’s Bridge creaked softly underfoot as they passed above the shallow waters of the South Stream. The bridge, named for its architect, was one of the oldest surviving structures in all of Greyhawk, dating from the city’s earliest village days. The square-cut stones that made its supporting arches had been quarried and brought all the way from the Cairn Hills by cart and set in place by hand.

South Stream made a pleasant enough sound in the quiet night, but a mild odor caused Garett to rub his nose. The stream was a narrow, meandering ribbon that actually began at the upper end of the High Quarter, where it was called, logically enough, North Stream. But as it flowed southward, it collected most of the city’s waste and refuse. By the time it passed under the Black Wall, it was quite unsanitary.

A few of the poorest citizens still drew their water from the stream’s banks and sometimes fished in it for their suppers, a thought that made Garett shudder, since so much of the city’s sewage also emptied into it. Still, he had seen hungry men do worse. He wondered, though, if Greyhawk hadn’t grown too large for its own good, when it couldn’t take better care of its citizens.

Once across the bridge, they left the Processional and turned up the Serpent’s Back, a twisting, shadowed street that ran diagonally through the Thieves’ Quarter into the Slum Quarter. Ancient warehouses, long unused, rose on either side of them. Dark holes could be seen in the faint moonlight where the roofs had fallen through.

“Damn!” Burge muttered suddenly, stopping, and lifting one foot. The lantern revealed the look of disgust on his face as he hopped aside and scraped his boot several times on the ground. A noxious odor wafted up from the spot where he had stood a moment before. “Stepped in somethin’,” he added needlessly.

“Smells like a couple of fools to me,” a gruff voice said from overhead.

“Come on down,” Garett invited calmly, not bothering to look toward the source. “I was getting tired of listening to you breathe up there.”

A lithe shadow dropped to the ground in front of him. In its hands it clutched a stout club. Three more figures landed noisily in the street behind them, blocking that way. Garett turned only enough to ascertain they carried similar weapons.

“You might have told me they were there,” Burge whispered as he moved to Garett’s side and turned to face the three. His sword was already in his hand.

“I didn’t want to upset you,” Garett answered with quiet sarcasm. “There’s only four of them.”

Actually, Burge’s hearing and eyesight were considerably superior to Garett’s, thanks to his father’s elven blood. “Afraid not, Cap’n,” Burge muttered.

“Four, did you say?” the leader interrupted, proving the quality of his own hearing. He snapped his fingers. Just up the street, another pair of figures stepped out of the shadows. As far as Garett could tell, they still only carried clubs, though it was possible they had daggers tucked into their belts.

“You’re on our turf,” the leader commented, clearly thinking himself in command of the situation. He was a wiry little fellow, perhaps a third of Garett’s age, though most of his teeth were already missing. A gleam of desperation burned in his eye, despite his mocking tone. He tapped his club against the palm of one hand in an intimidating manner. “You want to use the Serpent’s Back, you got to pay a toll. You haven’t paid the toll yet, General.” Garett frowned. “It’s captain,” he responded dryly as he studied the figure before him.

He’d encountered such gangs in Old Town before, rover packs of desperate youths who usually preyed on the weaker, poorer members of the neighborhood. Lacking talent to win a place in the Thieves’ Guild, too proud to join the Beggars’ Union, and too stupid to learn a fair trade, they ran wild, depending on their numbers for survival. It was unusual for a gang to come this far north, though. They usually stayed to the southern part of the Slum Quarter.

This group, then, probably counted itself as one of the more important and daring of the Slum Quarter gangs. The possessions of a couple of city watchmen would make nice trophies they could show off. No doubt they would win a lot of respect from rival gangs.

Too bad for them it wasn’t going to be that way.

“We can do this politely,” Garett suggested reasonably, addressing the leader. “Let’s just go our separate ways and pretend we never saw each other. No embarrassment for either of us. My men at headquarters won’t laugh at me for walking into your very clever trap . . .” Garett shrugged and turned his palms outward in a gesture of offering. “And you don’t get your guts handed to you by my nasty-tempered friend here.” He put an arm around Burge’s shoulder, and the half-elf gave a low growl.

The gang leader put on a smirk. “He don’t look so nasty to the six of us,” he proclaimed, emphasizing their greater numbers. “Now the toll on the Serpent’s Back is kind of expensive this time of night. First, it’ll cost you your swords. Then, we’ll see what else you got.”

“Don’t he know, Cap’n,” Burge said in a mocking voice as he waved the sword he’d already drawn easily before him, “that it’s illegal for a citizen to carry a sword on the streets without a proper license?”

The leader watched Burge’s sword warily. The blade gleamed with a mesmeric quality in the amber light that seeped through the lantern’s narrowed aperture.

“That’s true,” Garett replied. “ you don’t have a license, do you?” he said to the leader.

An impatient voice from behind them hissed sharply. “Enough of this, Burko! Let’s just bash ’em and take their stuff before somebody else comes!”

“Now that would be really stupid, Burko,” Garett warned quickly before the gang leader could think it over. “There are six of you, yes, but you’ve only got clubs.” At least, he hoped they only had clubs. At most, some might have daggers or knives, but if they did, surely they’d have them out by now. With a hasty glance around, he still counted only clubs.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “we’ve not only got swords, but these long, ugly stickers, here.” He gestured toward the long-bladed daggers both he and Burge wore on their belts. “Now, even if we weren’t watch officers, even if we hadn’t had a bit of training in our lives, it’s still a safe bet one or two of you would die before you bludgeon us.”

“All you have to do, little boy,” Burge said, openly taunting them now, “is figure out which of you is gonna get it.” He laid the flat of his blade back on his shoulder, as if it were a shovel or an axe being carried home at the end of a long day’s work.

Garett watched Burko carefully, noting the doubt that crept over the young man’s face. It might still be possible to bring this to an end without killing one of them. “Let’s give them a sporting chance, my friend,” Garett said with a wink to Burge.

Burge frowned and shook his head with great drama. “I don’t know, Cap’n. They might be tougher’n they look.” With a show of reluctance, though, he sheathed his sword.

“Look at ’em, Burko!” hissed the voice behind them again. “They’re laughing at you! A couple of soft-bellied New Towners in their prissy uniforms, and they’re laughing at you!”

“Shut up, Whisper!” Burko yelled suddenly, loud enough to be heard several blocks away in the stillness of the Slum Quarter. It was an amazingly careless thing to do. There were always rival gangs in the quarter who might decide to drop in on Burko and try to take his captives away from him and stomp Burko in the bargain. Burko knew it, too. It showed in the way his gaze suddenly raked along the rooftops above them.

“Last chance, lobbers! ” Burko said with frantic intensity, obviously feeling the pressure from his gang to do something, at the same time realizing he might have bitten off more than his small mouth could chew. He tried to bluff his way through now. “You gonna give up them weapons? We might let you walk out of here alive! ”

Garett was running out of patience. He might have tried to bargain with this poor idiot earlier and found some way to let Burko save face before his followers. He was simply no longer in the mood. If there was going to be a fight, it was time to get on with it.

He crossed his arms in a defiant pose. “No,” he said flatly.

“That’s tellin’ ’em,” Burge muttered out the side of his mouth. “You silver-tongued devil, you.”

“Well . . . !” Burko fumed and stamped his foot, looking desperately for a way out and finding none as his men began to shuffle closer. His sigh was almost explosive. “Aw, bash ’em!” he shouted.

Garett moved as Burko raised his club. A silver star flashed through the darkness and thunked solidly into the wood in the narrow space between the gang leader’s two hands. Burko gave a loud yelp and froze in midcharge, staring at the star. Garett moved again, and with the instep of his left boot, he swept the boy’s feet out from under him. Burko hit the ground hard as the point of Garett’s long dagger came to rest at his throat.

Almost at the same time, behind Garett, the hood on the lantern shot wide open. Someone moaned at the sudden brightness, and the thick sound of a fist sinking into flesh followed. “Come on!” Burge bellowed. “I won’t even use a weapon!”

But the only other sounds were of feet flying in the darkness. Garett glanced over his shoulder to see Burge with his foot in the small of someone’s back. The half-elf had a smug, pleased look on his face as he swung the lantern gleefully back and forth. “Go on, struggle!” he told the squirming figure under his boot.

Without taking his dagger far from Burko’s throat, Garett leaned over and picked up the gang leader’s club. A well-balanced and honed throwing star was too fine a weapon to waste. He backed up a step, sheathed the dagger, and began to worry the star loose.

“You missed,” Burge said with a grin.

“No, he didn’t,” Burko croaked before Garett could answer. The look of humiliation on his face was gratifying as he sat slowly up and felt his throat where the dagger point had touched him. He knew Garett could have killed him with either the star or the blade, and instead had chosen not to. He glared at the watch captain, but it was the dull glare of resignation.

There was a watch house in each quarter of the city with cells to hold a few prisoners until they could be transferred to the jail at the Citadel. Garett knew he should haul these two over to the Thieves’ Quarter watch house, but the thought didn’t appeal to him. He’d come to find an old man on Bladder Lane, not to clean up the town or do social work.

He bent down and casually seized the front of Burko’s tunic and pulled him to his feet. “Have you ever seen the inside of a prison workhouse?” he asked the boy. Burko shook his head sullenly. “Let me tell you what it would be like for you,” Garett continued. “You’d spend your days repairing streets or breaking rocks, and your nights upside down.” He smiled his best menacing smile. “Yes, they’d like you in the workhouse. They’d feed you the best rat-bone soup. Of course, you’d have to catch your own rat and hide it from everyone else. You know how to make rat-bone soup?” Again, Burko shook his head. “Well, first you catch a rat and kill it. Then you wait a few days until it goes stiff and begins to rot. Now, every morning the guards at the workhouse will bring you a cup of water. It won’t taste very good, because they never wash the mugs, but that’s no matter. Anyway, when the rat is good and rotten, you dunk it in the mug and swirl it around. If the corpse is ripe enough, little bits and pieces come off. Real nourishing, but not too tasty. Still, they say you can make a big rat last several weeks.”

Garett ran a hand lightly over the front of Burko’s tunic, smoothing the wrinkles, and he dusted a speck from his shoulder. “you think you’d like that, Burko?” he asked quietly.

“No, sir.”

Garett smiled to himself. Burko was a fast learner, it seemed. “your friend over there.” He nodded toward the gang member under Burge’s boot. That one, too, had grown silent and still as he heard about life in the workhouse. “Is that the one you called Whisper?” Burko nodded hesitantly, earning a nasty scowl from his cohort. “Well, I’m going to give both your names to the local watch officers,” Garett continued. “And I’m going to keep an ear out down this way. If I ever hear your names mentioned in anything less than a complimentary context, we’re going to have this little talk again.” He put on a big smile as he patted Burko’s shoulder in a not-quite-fatherly manner. “Now, do you mind if my friend and I continue on? We’re here on official business, you know.”