Traitor's Blade

THE CITY OF SOLAT

The fall from the second-floor window of the inn played against my strengths. Kest was inhumanly coordinated; he could probably fall from the top of a tower without hurting himself. Brasti was unbelievably lucky and managed to hit a wide awning above the rear entrance. He slid down to the cobblestoned courtyard. I was neither agile nor lucky, so I just kind of fell. Hard.

As I rose to my feet I saw eight men arrayed in front of us, all armed with pikes. I hate pikes almost as much as I hate magic. Twelve feet long with a sturdy wooden shaft and a wicked iron spearhead, properly grounded, a pike had enough stopping power to take down a Knight charging in on an armoured warhorse. At the same time, it was a simple enough weapon that even an amateur could wield it effectively in battle. And the more men you had with pikes, the easier it was to take out a group of swordsmen, regardless of their skill.

But that wasn’t what was bothering me. What was bothering me was that I hadn’t heard any bells. When the city constables of Solat patrol the streets, they go in pairs, and that way, if they discover a crime and it looks like trouble, one of them can go and ring one of the huge bells placed throughout the city to call for more men. There’s a code, with each district allocated a specific number of chimes, so that reinforcements know where to go. But I hadn’t heard any bells ringing, so I was beginning to suspect these men were specifically looking for us.

‘Eight men here with pikes and two above with crossbows, Falcio,’ Kest said, slipping his sword from its sheath. ‘I believe this might just be a trap.’

‘Do try to keep the enthusiasm out of your voice, Kest,’ Brasti said as he looked longingly towards the edge of the courtyard where his bows were strapped to the saddle of his horse.

‘You’ll never make it,’ the constable opposite him said, smiling so wide it made his helmet tilt.

Brasti grumbled and reluctantly drew his sword.

A voice above us shouted, ‘The pike or the crossbow, Trattari: which would you prefer?’

I looked up at the man leaning out of the window of Tremondi’s bedroom. The collar of his leather armour displayed a single gold circle, marking him as a senior constable. ‘If you put down your swords, I can promise you a relatively painless death,’ he said. ‘That’s more consideration than you gave Lord Tremondi.’

‘You can’t seriously believe we killed Tremondi, can you?’ I shouted back.

‘Of course I can. It says “Greatcoats” right here, and in the Lord Caravaner’s own blood.’

‘Saint Felsan-who-weighs-the-world,’ I swore. ‘Why in all the hells would we kill our own employer?’

The senior constable shrugged. ‘Who knows with your kind? Aren’t you Trattari fond of seeking revenge for the death of King Paelis? Perhaps Tremondi supported the Dukes when they removed your King? Or maybe it’s simpler than that: he caught you stealing his money and you killed him to keep him from revealing how the so-called “Greatcoats” have become nothing better than brigands and thieves.’

‘Except his money’s still sitting there right beside him,’ Brasti shouted back, giving me a dirty look.

‘Hmm? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trattari,’ the senior constable said, smiling. ‘There’s no money here – none at all.’

The men in front of us laughed. Evidently thievery was only a problem in Solat when it was someone other than the constables doing it.

‘You’re doing it again, Falcio,’ Kest said quietly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Talking when you should be fighting.’

I pulled my rapier from its sheath and raised the collar of my greatcoat, hoping the bone plates sewn inside would protect my neck. Kest was right; there wasn’t anything we could say now that was likely to get us out of this mess.

‘How would you rate our chances?’ I asked him.

‘We’ll win,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll get wounded, probably in the back. You’ll get hit by one of the crossbow bolts and likely die. Brasti will almost certainly be killed by one of the pikemen, once they get past the weak defence he puts up with his sword.’

‘You’ve been a real joy to work with, Kest, you know that?’ Brasti said, shifting his guard.

Kest rolled his right shoulder, preparing for the first attack. ‘Blame them – they’re the ones planning to kill you.’

Brasti gave me a look that indicated it wasn’t the constables he blamed. ‘I don’t suppose you have a better plan than just dying?’ he asked as he brought his sword in line with the belly of the guard closest to him.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We teach them the first rule of the sword.’

One of the guards, the one closest to Kest, tightened his grip on his pike in preparation for the attack and said jeeringly, ‘And what’s that supposed to be, tatter-cloak? Lay down and die, like the traitors you are?’

He was a big man, well-muscled, his broad shoulders perfectly suited to using a pike.

‘No,’ Kest said. ‘The first rule of the sword is—’

His words were cut off as the guard jabbed his pike with the speed of a metal ball flying from the end of a pistol.

‘—put the pointy end into the other man,’ Kest finished.

No one else moved or spoke. The exchange had been so fast that only the final result was visible. The back of Kest’s left hand was now pressed against the haft of the pike, and the point was deflected safely behind him. His body was extended in a tight forward lunge and the point of his sword was six inches deep into the constable’s stomach.

With a gentleness that belied the nature of the encounter, Kest slid his blade from the guard’s belly and watched as he slumped to the ground.

For a moment – just a moment – the constables in front of us looked so shocked that I thought they might actually back away. But then I heard the metallic twang of a crossbow firing and felt the impact against my back. As the sting spread throughout my body I thanked Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears that the bone plates had kept the bolt from piercing my body. It still hurt like the red death, though.

‘Damned coats,’ I heard the senior constable mutter from the second-floor window.

‘Under the awning,’ I shouted, and the three of us took up positions beneath the wide cloth awning above the back door of the tavern.

‘This won’t stop crossbow bolts,’ Brasti pointed out.

‘I know, but it’ll make it harder for them to aim.’

The two constables nearest me started jabbing at me with their pikes. The one on the left, the smaller of the two, had a face like an angry ferret. The one on the right was taller and stocky, reminding me more of a bear than a man. I parried the point of Ferret’s pike and grabbed onto the shaft with my free hand as I swung my blade back to block Big Bear’s weapon half a second later. Ferret tried to pull his pike back, but I grounded myself and used my greater weight to prevent him from recovering it. The frustration on his face would have been rewarding if another crossbow bolt hadn’t shot just past my ear, landing just between us. I used the momentary confusion to knock the shaft of Big Bear’s pike downwards with the hilt of my rapier, then stepped on the shaft, driving the point to the ground. When Ferret tried pulling again I leapt towards them both, using the momentum of Ferret’s efforts to help me bridge the gap between the tip of my sword and Big Bear’s throat. As the big man fell to the ground, detaching himself from my blade, I drove the point into Ferret’s shoulder and he too fell to the ground, but with considerably more screaming.

Another bolt forced me back under the dubious protection of the awning, and I took the opportunity to see what else was waiting for me. Fortunately, the other guards closest to me were a little warier now, so I took advantage of their hesitation to see how Brasti was doing. I never bother checking on Kest – watching him fight just makes me feel like an awkward teenager fumbling his first kiss.

Brasti was trying to edge away from the constables, but there wasn’t much room to move without leaving the cover of the awning and becoming a target for the crossbows.

‘Damn it, Falcio, this is all your fault,’ he grumbled.

‘If we die now, Brasti, I’m going to order Kest to tell everyone you went to your death poor, hated and rated a lousy lover by women everywhere.’

‘You know I can’t fight pikes with this damned thing,’ Brasti shouted back as he swung his sword in an awkward arc in front of him. He was a good enough swordsman, considering he almost never practised, but fighting two or three men with pikes is hard for anyone. Of course, if he’d had his bow, it would have been a different matter entirely …

‘Kest!’ I shouted, ‘help Brasti get clear.’

Kest glanced at me as he parried a frantic attack from the constable in front of him and I knew he’d understood. But, ‘Crossbows, Falcio,’ he reminded me as he slipped under the attack of the man in front of him to join Brasti.

Damn it, I thought, he’s right. If Brasti made a run for the horses, the men on the second floor would aim straight for him. They needed a more attractive target.

‘Fine. Do it – now!’ And with that, I pulled a throwing knife from the bracer inside my coat, stepped out from the awning and threw it straight at the senior constable on the second floor. The blade jammed into the windowsill not six inches from his face and I cursed whichever Saint was supposed to be helping my aim.

The senior constable was an experienced man; he ignored the knife and took aim. I jumped to my left just as the bolt hit the ground between my feet. Without hesitating, he put down the crossbow and took the loaded one from the guard next to him, but something in the middle of the courtyard caught his attention – it must have been Brasti – and I saw him reposition his weapon. I threw another knife at him, making it clear that I was the more pressing threat, and this knife did a better job than the first and hit him in the shoulder. Unfortunately for me, he stumbled and let loose the bolt. I had my coat open so that I could reach my knives, and with the luck afforded me by Gods and Saints alike, the wayward bolt stuck into my exposed thigh.

‘Got you, Trattari bastard,’ the senior constable cried as he fell backwards into Tremondi’s room.

There was a yell behind me and I turned, cursing at the pain shooting through my leg, to find one of the remaining constables had his pike aimed squarely at my chest and was ready to strike. I swung my sword arm towards the pike, knowing it wouldn’t be fast enough, only to see the shaft of an arrow appear through the man’s neck. He fell to the ground in front of me and I looked around to see where the next attack would come from – but there was no next attack. There were two other bodies on the ground with arrows in them next to the two I had slain, and the three remaining men were lying dead or wounded by Kest’s blade.

‘The crossbows have stopped,’ he said, stepping out from under the awning.

‘That means they’re coming back down. Time to go.’

‘That was a good idea, Falcio, covering Brasti so he could get to his bow. I hadn’t thought of that.’

I leaned my hand on his shoulder, taking some of the weight off my wounded leg. ‘Kest, next time you think the most optimistic outcome possible is everyone but you dying, try to think harder, okay?’

We joined Brasti and the horses at the other end of the courtyard and I thanked Saint Shiulla-who-bathes-with-beasts that the horses hadn’t been hit during the fight. While Brasti went to recover his arrows, I wondered out loud who had set this up.

‘Gods, Kest, when did it become so easy to believe the worst in us?’

‘Times have changed, Falcio,’ he said, pointing behind me.

I turned to see Brasti, reclaimed arrows in one hand, searching the bodies of the fallen men with the other.

‘Brasti, stop stealing from the constables,’ I shouted.

He looked sullen, but nonetheless ran to his horse. ‘Fine,’ he grumbled. ‘Wouldn’t want to take anything from the nice men who were just doing their jobs trying to kill us.’ He hopped up on his brown mare. ‘I mean, that wouldn’t just be dishonourable. It would be – oh my Gods and Saints – impolite.’

‘Interesting,’ Kest said, taking the reins and pulling his horse around.

‘What?’ Brasti asked.

Kest pointed at me. ‘I’ve just realised: he talks too much before a fight and you talk too much after. I wonder what it means?’

He kicked his horse and took off down the street, Brasti following behind. I looked back at the dead men on the ground and wondered how long the Greatcoats could last before we became what people said we were: Trattari.

The second worst feeling in the world happens when your body discovers that yet again it’s about to get into a fight for its life. Muscles start to clench, you start to sweat, you start to smell (luckily, nobody ever notices that at the time) and your stomach sinks down to your nether regions.

But the first worst feeling in the world is when your body realises the fight is over. Your muscles start to give out, your head throbs, you keep sweating and – oh yes, you notice the smell. Last but not least, you realise there’s a crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh. It was the crossbow bolt that finally forced me to stop.

‘It’s going to have to come out,’ Brasti said sagely, looking down from the rooftop where he was scouting for the constables.

I could have killed him, but that would require asking my body to repeat the whole cycle again and, frankly, I smelled bad enough as it was. We had found ourselves a decent alleyway with two exits to hole up in for a breather. The horses didn’t like trying to race around corners on cobbled streets, and we needed to deal with my leg.

Kest looked at me. ‘Punch-pull-slap?’

I sighed. It hurt. ‘I don’t suppose we have time to find a doctor, do we?’

Brasti climbed back down from the roof of the building. ‘They’re doing a house-to-house. The men don’t look all that eager to find us, but the head guy – the senior constable, the one who shot you – is pushing them hard. It’s only going to be a matter of minutes before they get to this alley.’

Damn. ‘Punch-pull-slap,’ I said, already dreading it. ‘But make it hard this time, Brasti.’

Kest poured water on the wound, making me whistle through my teeth.

‘Just don’t scream this time,’ Brasti said. ‘We’re trying to avoid being caught.’

While I prayed to Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears to come down just this one time and meet my good friend Brasti, Kest got a firm grip on the shaft and then nodded at Brasti.

The three of us invented ‘punch-pull-slap’ some time ago. One of the things you discover after you’ve been wounded enough times is that the body really only keeps track of one source of pain at a time. So, for example, if your tooth hurts and someone pokes you in the stomach, your body momentarily forgets about the tooth.

So the way this is supposed to work is like this: Brasti punches me in the face, Kest pulls the arrow out of my leg and then Brasti slaps me so hard my brain never has time to register the bolt and therefore I don’t scream at the top of my lungs.

I screamed at the top of my lungs.

‘Shhh! You need to keep quiet, Falcio,’ Brasti said, leaning in and wagging a finger at me. ‘They might hear that. You need to toughen up.’

‘I told you to hit me hard!’ I said, watching the stars form in my vision.

‘I hit you as hard as I could from that angle. Kest was in the way.’

‘You hit like a girl.’

Kest stopped bandaging my leg and said, ‘Almost a third of King Paelis’ Greatcoats were women. You trained most of them. Didn’t they hit hard enough?’

It was a fair point, but I wasn’t in the mood for semantics. ‘They hit like angry bloody Saints. Brasti hits like a girl,’ I grumbled, holding onto the end of the bandage while Kest padded the wound.

‘So I suppose we’re off to Baern, then?’ Brasti asked.

I pushed myself up. The leg felt a lot better with the bandage on tight: a throbbing pain instead of a burning one. ‘It’s that or stay here and try to teach you how to not hit like a girl.’

‘Falcio, if you say that again, I’ll punch you myself,’ Kest said.

‘It’s just a phrase, “you hit like a girl.” Everyone says it. It’s funny.’

He handed me back my rapier. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it just sounds absurd.’

‘It’s funny because it’s absurd,’ I replied.

Brasti slapped me on the back. ‘Don’t pay him any mind, Falcio. He lost his sense of humour the day he learned to swing a sword.’

Oddly, since Brasti had no way of knowing it, he was absolutely right.