The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (13 page)

Jeirran stepped forward boldly, Teiriol rather more hesitant at his shoulder. “Good day to you. Your colleague suggests that you might be interested in mountain pelts.”

“I might, at that.” The man Harquas relaxed but his eyes were acute beneath bushy brows. He wore slate gray broadcloth, conservatively cut, bulk suggesting muscles relaxing into fat as he left enforcement of his dealings to younger men. “Are you looking for a regular trade or a one-off deal?”

“For the moment, just the one transaction,” replied Jeirran cautiously.

Harquas pursed narrow lips thoughtfully. “You’d be the two Mountain Men I’ve heard tell of, then, trying to sell your goods at the fair without paying your dues?” He nodded to someone.

“Where we come from, men only take a profit from work they’ve had a share in,” Jeirran said stiffly.

A mirthless smile curved Harquas’ bloodless mouth. He turned his head slightly as a potman came and whispered in his ear. “Excuse me.” Harquas leaned sideways in his chair to the man next to him, another thick-set type missing the forefinger on his near side hand and with a wicked scar running the length of his jawbone, as if some attempt to cut his throat had come in just a little too high. Harquas hid his words behind a raised hand. Jeirran folded his arms with a cold air of confidence. Teiriol’s attempt to copy this was rather less successful, as he realized he now had three villainous-looking men breathing heavily down his neck, all topping him by more than head and shoulders. Harquas nodded as his companion murmured something, shooting Jeirran a suspicious glance. “Well, friend,” Harquas smiled at Jeirran with all the warmth of a pig on a butcher’s hook. “I’m in something of a fix here. You seem like an honest man to me but Lehrer tells me you got taken up by the Southgate Watch at the fair. I can see for myself that Vigo and a couple of other nailers have been wasting their coin on these cocks since just after midday. If I were a suspicious man, I could think you getting taken up to the assize were just a ploy. Suppose I strike a deal with you, am I going to find guildsmen kicking in the door to my warehouse and you identifying the furs you sold me to some nosy Justiciar?”

The three men at Teiriol’s rear stirred with a creak of leather and the soft rasp of metal as one rubbed at a brass-knuckled glove.

“If that’s what you think, we won’t waste any more of your time.” Jeirran was unmoved. “There’ll be other people I can trade with in a city this size. I’m not interested in your guilds and your rules and your Watchmen,” he continued, not concealing his contempt. “I just want to sell my furs for a decent price and get back to my own affairs in the uplands.”

Harquas raised an eyebrow. “That’s very plain talk for a man outnumbered and out of his way. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I don’t give a donkey’s hangdown if you’re impressed or not.” Jeirran shrugged. “Are you buying?”

Harquas exchanged a glance with his neighbor, who in turn looked beyond Jeirran for some signal. Whatever he saw satisfied Lehrer, his scarred face nodding to Harquas.

“If you’re prepared to do something to establish your good faith, I’ll buy from you,” said Harquas slowly. “If some misfortune lands on Vigo and his little gang, then I can be sure they’re not nosing around my business, do you see? If you were to be that mishap, then I’d know you weren’t hand in glove with them, wouldn’t I?”

“Why should we do your dirty work for you?” Jeirran ignored the rumble of annoyance behind him.

“Do you want to sell your furs or not?” inquired Harquas with silky menace.

“You want us to kill them?” asked Jeirran baldly.

Harquas frowned. “A dead Watchman gets the Justiciary unduly stirred up, in my experience. But they have to accept that every so often a nailer takes on a man just that bit too strong in his drink and gets a beating.”

“That’s the price of doing business with you?”

Harquas nodded. “Tell me where you’re lodging and if I hear the right word I’ll send someone to look over your stock at noon tomorrow.”

Jeirran shook his head. “We’ll meet at the market square, by the fountain.” He turned and glared up at the bull-necked man blocking his way.

“Let our friend pass, Teg,” said Harquas smoothly. “We’ll talk tomorrow, Jeirran.”

Teiriol followed Jeirran out of the cock-pit and back to the rowdy tavern. Jeirran’s eyes flickered from side to side until he saw Vigo, the Watchman, plump red face glistening with uncomplicated delight as he cradled a tangle-haired girl on his knee. Her unlaced bodice showed off heavy breasts to any who cared to look while Vigo hitched up her skirts to reveal bare and grubby legs beneath her tattered petticoats.

Jeirran pushed Teiriol into a gloomy corner and shook his head in disgust as the Watchman’s hand slid up and around the girl’s thigh. “Lowlanders. No more sense of fitness than dogs rutting in the street.”

“Never mind that,” Teiriol dragged his wide eyes away reluctantly. “How did that Harquas know your name?”

“How do you think?” replied Jeirran scornfully. “He’ll have men all over this city, won’t he? If he got word of our arrest, he’ll have had our names from the assize, maybe even our lodging.” He glowered darkly. “If his brutes come near Eirys, I’ll gut them, assize or no assize.”

“What are we going to do about these Watchmen?” Teiriol looked back at Vigo, whose head was now cradled in the girl’s arms, her wriggles feigning pleasure but her face bored.

“I can’t see him tupping that whore in full view. They’ll want a back alley at very least,” said Jeirran thoughtfully.

“We catch him with his trews around his boots?” Teiriol laughed a little nervously.

“Fair recompense for the way he nailed me and Keisyl yesterday,” answered Jeirran with cruel satisfaction. “Come on.”

Outside, the afternoon light was softening and a handful of wrestling bouts were being contested inside roughly marked-out circles of sand. Teiriol looked toward them regretfully but followed Jeirran obediently to a dark corner behind a gibbet. The wood was blackened with old blood and noisome corpses of rats dangled.

“Watch for him and for the others,” Jeirran ordered. They did not have long to wait. Vigo soon appeared with the whore hanging on his arm, Rif and Neth trailing after with expressions of eager anticipation.

“Are they all going to do her?” Teiriol wondered, startled.

“Like I said, they rut like dogs.” Jeirran moved cautiously as the Watchmen headed for the narrow entry between two dilapidated houses. “And they’re stupid enough to take their bitch down a blind alley,” he added with satisfaction, taking a pair of gloves from his belt and nodding to Teiriol to do the same. “Careful. We don’t want to start a fight anywhere we’ll be seen.”

Teiriol loosened his knife in its sheath as they crossed the open ground but Jeirran shook his head. “We’re not looking to kill them. We don’t use knives, not unless we have to.” He paused to pick up a stave from a broken barrel dumped outside a doorway and peered down the alley. “She’s taking them into that stable. We’ll give the fat one a few moments to get busy stuffing her. The other two will probably have their tools in their hands by then, so we can drop them before their boss gets himself unknotted.” Jeirran’s eyes were hard with a savage anticipation. Teiriol ran his own barrel stave through his hands, hefting the wood with a grin.

“Leave your cape here and tie something around your face.” Jeirran untucked his shirt and tore a wide strip of linen from the hem, suiting his actions to his words. “All they can claim is Mountain Men did for them, and if anyone comes looking at us we swear blind it was those other two we saw. When we get in, you bar the door.”

The alley was not long but gloomy in the double shadow of the city wall and the houses looming on either side. Refuse was piled high, discarded sacks, boxes and household rubbish mingled with old bones, nameless peelings and moldering muck, a fetid ooze seeping along a rough drain scraped into the bare earth. Teiriol and Jeirran moved silently forward, eyes fixed on the stable door dragged ajar on broken hinges. Jeirran brought his barrel stave up and back, nodding to Teiriol, who did the same. They paused, one each side of the doorway, but Vigo’s groans of pleasure and the whore’s practiced responses were enough to drown any footsteps.

Jeirran rushed inside, Teiriol a pace behind him, kicking the door shut with an ominous thud. Neth turned, face flushed, eager expression changing to startled horror. Jeirran’s stave scythed in to catch him under one ear. The impact sent him staggering into Rif, who clutched at him in confusion. Teiriol jumped forward and brought his club into Rif’s unprotected flank. Mountain-hardened muscles landed the blow squarely in the man’s kidney, forcing a yell of agony from him. Neth was still dazed but Rif threw him off and turned to rush at Teiriol. It was an unwise move. The Mountain Man sent him reeling back with a merciless jab to the gut.

Jeirran swung at Neth again, landing a vicious strike on the outside of his knee. The Watchman went stumbling sideways. Jeirran discarded his club and moved forward, gloved hands hammering face, ribs, gut and groin with a flurry of punishing blows, blood from the gash in his head soon coating the Watchman’s shirt and jerkin.

“What the shit—” Vigo had abandoned the whore and was scrambling to his feet. The Mountain Men ignored his impotent curses as he clutched at the breeches hampering his feet.

Rif had a stall to his back now, rocking from foot to foot, clenching his fists. Teiriol sneered at him and feinted with his stave, first to one side, then to the other. Rif was forced back against the splintered wood, painful blows punishing shoulders and thighs. He hunched in a vain attempt to protect himself, spat at Teiriol and snatched for a hanging harness strap. Teiriol brought the age-hardened stave up in a swift move to smash his forearm.

Rif’s yell of agony mingled with the crack of bone. His cry was drowned out by Vigo’s howl of outrage as he threw himself on Jeirran’s back, Neth lying limp and helpless in a mire of blood. The Watchman tried to get his broad hands around the Mountain Man’s thick neck but Jeirran was too quick, ducking his chin to his chest and hunching his shoulders. Jeirran stepped forward and sideways in one fluid move, dropping one shoulder and sending the unsuspecting Vigo clean over his head to land him into the slime of the stable drain.

Vigo was gasping at Teiriol’s feet, all breath knocked out of him. Teiriol used his boots, heavy leather reinforced with metal and nails going in hard to leave studded prints on Vigo’s shirt, his half-laced breeches, stamping on his hands and ankles, ripping open one cheek with a sweeping kick. The Watchman could only roll and twist in the muck, vainly trying to get away from the torment, curling around a blow in the stomach only to have his back arch in the agony of a boot to the base of his spine.

Rif tried vainly to intervene, one arm dangling uselessly. Jeirran dropped him with one iron hard punch to the short ribs and grabbed Teiriol’s arm. The younger man’s breath was coming quick and harsh through the cloth around his face, his kicks ever harder and more cruel.

“That’s enough. You don’t want to kill him, just make him useless for work. Didn’t your father teach you anything about fighting?”

Teiriol struggled for a reply, gave up, and bent down to spit full in Vigo’s face, now a mask of blood and filth.

Jeirran nodded with satisfaction. Rif was hunched on his knees, choking as he struggled for breath. Neth’s tears thinned the blood dripping down his broken and oozing nose as he slumped in a corner.

“What about her?” Teiriol gestured at the whore crouched in a terrified huddle of petticoats on a heap of musty hay. Daring warred with distaste in his face and he licked his lips uncertainly.

The girl tried for a smile but could only summon a ghastly grimace, ashen with fear. “You can take your pleasure for free, just don’t hurt me,” she begged, opening her blouse in a parody of seductiveness, hands trembling.

Jeirran wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t touch a festering trull like you with a stick of firewood!” He picked up his barrel stave and took a menacing step forward. “Or maybe I’ll come and find you, give you some of this, if I find anyone coming after us. You’re the only one to have seen, so you’re the only one can tell tales. You do and I’ll be back to spoil your looks, you hear me?”

The girl whimpered incoherent promises of silence.

“Come on!” Jeirran dragged the stable door open. He shoved Teiriol through then wedged it shut with his stave. Stuffing his stained gloves into a pocket, he put on his cape, securing the front to conceal the blood on his shirt. He looked cautiously out from the mouth of the alley. “We need to get clear and quickly.”

Teiriol caught up his own cape, pausing to splash his boots through water gathered where some cobbles had been dug up. “That should show our man Harquas we mean business,” he observed with satisfaction. “And I can tell Keisyl I’ve settled his debts in full.”

“You’ll say nothing of the kind, not a word to him nor to Eirys,” snapped Jeirran. “Anyway, it was hardly a fight to boast of, was it? They call these Watchmen tough? They wouldn’t last three days in a mining camp!” His eyes rested briefly on the wrestling matches still being hotly contested. “We leave swiftly but calmly and we don’t look back. We came to watch the wrestling, we found nothing to interest us and now we’re going back to our lodgings. That’s what we tell Eirys and Keis and anyone else who comes asking. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Teiriol couldn’t resist one glance over his shoulder as they left the slaughter yards behind them. “So what now?”

“We clean ourselves up before the others return. We eat whatever that thief of a landlady claims is a four-Mark dinner and then you and Keisyl take yourselves off for whatever entertainment you fancy. Eirys and I deserve a quiet evening in, just the two of us,” announced Jeirran, eyes bright with anticipation. “I think it’s about time she showed me some appreciation.”

Selerima, Western Ensaimin,

Second Day of the Spring Fair, Evening

The runes finally rolled my way when I reached the Crackwillow, a tidily kept eating-house on the corner of the Audit Way. The resonant song of a lute floated out through an open shutter. Childhood recollection stirred to Forest rhythms and I pushed open the door to find a neatly furnished room where respectable worthies were entertaining wives and daughters over sumptuous pastries and expensive wines. It was several breaths before the servitors noticed me, all eyes turned to the minstrel sat by the stairs, his own closed as he lost himself in the melody.