The Blacktongue Thief

54 The Dogs of Hrava

When the giants had come to Hrava this year, they’d found a proud, rich city just starting to go soft in the middle, like an old warrior now too fond of beer and bench, a once-feared sword hanging up with its first cobwebs on it. They’d found a beautiful city cut with canals and tall new houses with slate roofs and gardens of strange winter plants. That was not what I found on this tenth day of Vintners, a week and a day later than my Guild told me to get here.

I found a graveyard of rubble and thrown boulders.

I found a playground of free thieves.

I found so much blood between cobblestones that thirty rains might not wash it all away.

I would soon find the statue of the giant-killing god toppled and lying on his face, in three huge pieces, the gold and copper stripped off him like jewelry off a victim. The city of Hrava had been well and truly murdered.

The rest of the party stayed in the foothills close to the dead city while I went in to see what I could find out. Galva entrusted me with the map of Hrava Rough Fucker had provided; it was the first time I’d had a good look at it. She just handed me the map and nodded at the ruins. Turned her back before I could say anything. Not that there was anything to stay.

I was a thief, and thieves scout as well as steal, don’t they?

I hadn’t Norrigal’s power or the Ispanthians’ swords, but I had luck and training. This was my moment.

And if I could find that wayward witch-queen, it might just win me enough to have my own leaning house on a windy Galtish bluff with no one to answer to but me, and naught to do but read old stories and count my filthy silver.

Besides, I wanted to impress not only Norrigal but that Spanth birder, too. It struck me funny that I should care so much what Galva thought, but so I did. I don’t know if it was the noble birth or the Ispanthian blood, but the last daughter of Braga had a way of making you feel like you were just one stupidly brave deed away from finally earning her respect.

Maybe walking into a city that had been crushed by giants was more stupid than brave, but there was nothing for it but to point my toes and swing my legs.

I walked by the cold, calm lake with my strung bow around me and a dozen arrows in my quiver; my long dagger oiled and my feet up on the balls, ready to move. The sun was on the water like coins, which made me think of my own Platha Glurris, or Shining River, back home. Water looks more or less the same everywhere, or everywhere I’d been. Poets enough had spilled ink about the green shallows in the Sea of Tigers, or the turquoise bays off Istrea and Beltia, and maybe oceans were another class. But it seemed to me that a river was a river and a lake was a lake. This one was just really far north and really far west.

What the fuck was I doing here, anyway?

Oh, that’s right. Betraying my Guild for love of a woman, friendship with a Spanth, and hatred of the Takers.

Onward!

Soon, I heard the chunks and haws of a tongue I’d never heard before, and I hid myself quick. Crouching low, I saw one party of looters, squat, dusty-brown-haired hardboys and sharpgirls draped in finery and bristling with spears and hatchets, pulling a cart laden with spoils. They were on the road, and I was well away from it, keeping to the high grass already yellowing with the start of Vintners month.

I squatted like a mother quail and waited for the larcenous bunch to pass—I didn’t feel like trying to fight or flee the six of them to keep them from adding my few possessions to their trove. I had to wonder how long they’d be able to keep it. Larger, tougher groups of looters and highwaymen prowled the roads around the broken capital—unless they were allied with one of these, their merrymaking would be brief.

I passed what had once been a sort of town square, its proud, tall blue firs mostly snapped and fallen, dozens of kynd-sized boulders strewn about, mixed in with the rubble of a fountain that once honored Aevri, the Gunnish goddess of rain. Her beautiful white arm—I think now not unlike Norrigal’s when first I saw it at the Downward Tower—seemed to beckon to me since she’d found no help from Wolthan, the Sky-Father, that arm had once lifted toward.

I found a canal stained with blood on both sides, pocked where great rocks or massive axe-heads had smashed cobblestones—the fallen city wall behind it told me that a second stand had been made here at the canal, that it was probably just too wide for a giant to leap. It was too wide for a normal kynd to leap, or even me without a cantrip behind me.

One street advertising glovers and tanners had fared better than the rest in that most of the buildings were still standing, but their insides had been gutted; it looked like each window and door had coughed or vomited rubble into the street. At first, I saw people only at a distance; shadowy figures in twos or threes who were as eager to avoid me as I was to avoid them, though I would need to talk to someone before long if I were going to be able to find this non-Guild thief Ürmehen that Rough Fucker said might help us.

Stray dogs started following me near the wrecked temple of Tuur. At first, it was just one or two, then another half dozen joined, and they stalked nearer.

“This is all I need,” I said.

I readied my bow. I really didn’t want to shoot a dog. I walked through the trash in the street until I came to the three pieces of the fallen statue of Tuur, the rather less than successful deity charged with keeping giants in line. The dogs, skinny and sick and desperate, started to ring around me, the leader edging forward with his head down, his lieutenants stalking close behind. If I shot him, they’d probably scamper, but I thought I’d see what good dodging them might do. I used Tuur’s stone belt and scabbard as footholds and scurried up to stand on the top of Tuur’s arse, which I now saw had been defaced by men as well as giants—a vandal of some artistic talent had used pitch or black paint to draw a number of phalluses all in a circle pointing where the humbled god’s bunger would be. Fair play, too. He’d had only one job, hadn’t he? People putting their fathers’ fingerbones in a great stone chest to pray for protection from giants had a right to be disappointed when an army of giants wrecked their capital.

The giants had done their share, too. Someone must have let on to the bigguns what Tuur’s line of work was, because a coil of poo only a giant could have manufactured adorned poor Tuur’s helmetless head. When and if I got down from here, I was going to have to find something to write with and add Tuurd with an arrow pointing at the offending matter. The thought made me chuckle. The lead dog paced back and forth in frustration at finding me out of reach, and huffed two low barks. I barked back at him. I don’t know what I said, but it might have involved his mother, because he began to growl.

“Ah, don’t take it hard,” I said, leaping the six feet or so between Tuur’s arse and his back and shoulders. “I’m sure your sisters have fleas up their squinnies, too.”

He barked again.

I barked back. This conversation might have continued until well after dark had not the children arrived.

From one of the shadowy side streets that spilled into this square like the spokes of a wheel, I heard a whistle. The dogs looked up. Now a small mob of children came, somewhat less skinny and desperate than the dogs, and they started yelling and pelting the dogs with rubble from the street. The little bastards could throw, too. Soon the dogs, after a few half-hearted lunges at the new pack, decided to find better odds and trotted in a dignified retreat down one of the other spokes of the street-wheel. The scene was so amusing, I momentarily forgot I was more than just a spectator. What I should have done was sprint down one of the other streets before I got myself surrounded, but by the time I thought that, they were too close.

They came up to where I perched and held their hands up to me, saying the Gunnish words for money and food. I showed them a copper shave, and they said, “Je! Je!” so I threw a half-dozen coins down at them, but the kids who got those just hid them away and kept saying, “Igeldi! Esnok!” I thought about threatening them with an arrow, but I would have felt nearly as bad about shooting a child as I would have about shooting a dog. Also, the thought of the score or so of them raining busted brickwork at me was manifestly unpromising.

Inspiration came to me, and I shouted, “Ürmehen!” Which stopped them. I turned it into a question. “Ürmehen?” I said and pointed down different streets. They started speaking to each other. A ginger with a black eye and a wicked short spear seemed to be in charge. He said, “Something-something-something Ürmehen?” which I assumed to be “What do you want with Ürmehen?” or “What will you give me if I bring you to Ürmehen?” so I held up a silver owlet and said je, which sounded enough like a Norholter’s yae that I assumed it must mean yes.

The leader started climbing up toward me, but I don’t know what would have happened when he got there, because a horn sounded. A really big, nut-shrinking horn that rattled my teeth in my head. The smaller children ran, but the ginger’s close henchmen stayed near him and, though he now climbed no farther, he held his hand out insistently. The horn sounded again, and I felt it in my sternum. Something big was moving down one street, making big steps. The ginger and I both looked wide-eyed into the darkness of that street, then he looked my way again and shoved his empty palm at me. He was just that little bit more greedy than scared, which I understood completely.

His lads clutched at his sleeves, but he wasn’t going anywhere until I paid him the toll for safely exiting the square. Ballsy little sprumlet, anyway. I threw him the owlet. He took it and ran, behind the others. When the horn sounded again, I thought about shooting him through the thigh and scooping up the coin when he dropped it; I was pretty sure his boys wouldn’t turn about to help him with a giant almost here, if one of them even noticed he had dropped off, but I didn’t shoot. I almost liked him. I was glad for my generosity later. Mostly. Now, though, I got down and ducked behind Tuur’s arse, watching to see what was coming from the alley.

The streets leading to Tuur’s temple’s square, brilliantly called Temple Square if the signs were to be believed, were merchants’ alleys, their crowded buildings leaning in so the apartments over shops nearly kissed windows over the streets they plumbed in shadow. Down a street called Martyr’s Way, I saw one dusty shadow, fifteen feet high if an inch, duck to avoid the bottom of a balcony. He wasn’t the first one to enter the square. First came kynd, six of them, their necks collared, breaking into sunlight so it shone on their pale, northern skin. Next, the giant’s fist holding the ropes attached to the collars, steering them as hunter’s hand might guide a pack of leashed hounds. Next, the giant himself. It was the first one I had seen in real life, not counting the blurry images in the witness coin.

“Fothannon put a jape on my lips,” I mouthed, feeling panic rise up in me. Two more giants walked behind the first, one holding a horn that came off some beast whose dimensions defied belief—a hillox, as I believed, native to the giantlands past the Thralls.

The giants wore greaves made from bones and leather to protect their shins, and knee-length skirts hung with strips of bronze. Great leather girdles two inches thick and likewise tiled with bone rose almost to their teats, arching in the center to shield the breadbasket. They wore no shirts or mail coats. The leader’s pierced teats hung with bronze rings like door knockers on rich houses, and staring eyes tattooed over those teats. Fuzzy, blued tattoos covered their muscly arms, and their hair hung in matted locks. I would later learn this marked them as a lower caste; that the upper sorts had hillox-bone combs, and these before me weren’t allowed to touch combs.

Terrified though I was, enough of my reason remained to note that these giantfolk had armored themselves where the weapons of kynd could easily reach—I couldn’t imagine trying to drive a spear or sword through those greaves or past that girdle. I would later see the great wicker shields they used against arrows, shields woven by human slaves, but this lot weren’t arrayed for battle. They were out for sport. Worse, they were drunk. How like dogs they heeled their leashed kynd—of course. This was how they looted. They were too large to go into the buildings that still stood, so these they sent inside to find gold or silver or other kynd.

Hell, I’d done it again. I had stared too long. I broke and ran. The giant saw and barked a hoarse syllable after me, it sounded like Go! But I spoke no giant or thought I didn’t. He let two of the kynd slip their leash. The very drunk giant with the horn blew it again, and the other laughed. I got to an alley, then turned with my bow. The running men saw me drawing on them, but ran at me with half-closed eyes anyway, scared of what I would do to them, more scared of what was behind them. I shot the first one in the groin, and he fell, tripping up the second. The giants loosed two more to chase me, yelling now to rattle teeth, I suppose in anger that I had slain one of their trained pets.

The alley I’d chosen was, I now realized, the same the children had taken. Had that only been a moment before? It felt like half a day. It was too narrow for the giants, too littered for kynd to easily run down. I ducked and hopped and slid, holding my bow with one hand, a ready arrow in my fingers. The fresh kynd-hounds had made the alley—they were fast, picked no doubt for running. One yelled at me and I thought he said stop in Galtish, but that was scarcely likely. I said, “Sorry about this, mate,” and shot him through the eye.

I came out onto a street whose buildings had mostly collapsed, offering not as much cover as I’d have liked. I saw a sort of crack in the street, then saw it close.

The sewers!

I ran for that, stopping to stab the kynd-hound that tried to tackle me. I did it sneaky, hiding Palthra in front of me so he couldn’t see, then sort of slipping hard left, driving the blade down and right, just at gut level. It’s a very popular Guild move, one of the first things they teach you at Low School, because it works. He grunted, but the knife stuck in him. He balled himself around the knife and slid to a stop on his side, no longer concerned with me or his giant masters, one of whom was stomp-stomping drunkenly around the corner, slobberingly blowing his hillox horn. Bollocks if I was going into the sewers of a strange city without that dagger. I poked him in the eye with my thumb, and when he moved his bloody hands to defend his face, I ripped Palthra free from him, and sheathed her wet. Yeah, I know, I’m a bastard, let’s see how nice you are with your best knife hilt-deep in a fucker and three giants and their slavies coming to kill you.

I grabbed the iron ring and heaved at the stone sewer lid, only just strong enough to move it. The giant was less than forty yards away now, the kynd slave closer. I dropped into the hole, holding up my bow, not knowing how far I was falling or onto what. Only ten feet or so, as it turned I hit dry, foul-smelling stone; a sort of landing, with steps below I could only just make out. I took the first ten steps, then hit another landing. I looked up at the rectangle of sky above me and saw three slavies look down and point. They only did that an instant before they were yanked brutally away and a huge head and shoulders blacked out the sun near completely. I looked back down and couldn’t see where the next steps started, so I shot an arrow where the sun used to be and heard a giant yawp. The rectangle of sunlight magically reappeared. I hurried down the steps just as the dead hound-man was hurled at me, one of his legs clipping my shoulder, almost knocking me off my feet—but I’m nimble, thank Fothannon.

My descent into hell was unimpeded.