Wartorn Obliteration

BRYCK (1)

"You there!"

The sudden cold had nothing to do with Callah's autumn weather, a harsher season apparently than it was in U'delph, to the south. Instead, this was a shock-chill of fear.

Bryck had the collar of his coat raked up, shoulders hunched. He had just been starting to feel assured about this little excursion outdoors. The early morning sun, where it found its way through the clouds, felt good. The air was certainly sweeter than that in the rooms he was sharing with the entire complement of the Broken Circle.

He had skulked along unobtrusively, gaining confidence with every unmolested step. He had traveled one street, then two, away from the relative safety of those rooms.

The voice had called from behind. It had a hard authoritative ring to it. Bryck didn't doubt that when he turned, he would find a Felk soldier there, one who had just recognized him as the murderer of one of the garrison.

The members of the Circle didn't know about this jaunt of his. He had slipped out while most of the others were still sleeping. Today was going to be a busy day for the group, and he had advised everyone to rest up properly.

He was at the edge of the street, which was just stirring with activity. He looked furtively and hurriedly for escape routes. He was near an alleyway's mouth. Casually he sidled toward it.

"You. Hold. Hold, I said—"

But it wasn't a proper alley, just a niche between buildings where debris had accumulated. The three walls enclosing it were too high to scale.

The Broken Circle had a small arsenal of mostly improvised weaponry—hammers, cooking cutlery, and the like. Bryck was unarmed. Still keeping his manner nonchalant, he finally turned, as if just becoming aware of the hail.

He expected a uniform, armor, a sword. Instead, a man, Bryck's senior by a tenwinter in a once-fancy merchant's coat, was stalking toward him. His face was tightly drawn, and his eyes moved a little wildly in their sockets.

"Don't you hear?" the man demanded.

Bryck barely lifted his face from the circle of his coat collar. "What do you want?" he asked, voice pitched softly. He didn't recognize the man.

"I want to know what's become of your promises."

It occurred to Bryck then that this might merely be someone mad, mistaking him for some bygone acquaintance who had wronged him and unable to realize he had the wrong individual, even now, when they were this close to each other.

"I made you no promises." Bryck turned. He would simply and quietly go back the way he'd come.

But the man seized his shoulders and spun him back. He had some strength to him. "Now you make your lies worse! Haven't you a shred of honesty?" His coat appeared to be loosening at every seam, and it was generously stained.

There were just enough people in the street by now for this commotion to be drawing attention. It was the last thing Bryck needed. He wrenched his shoulders out of the man's grasp.

"You are mistaking me," he said, enunciating it clearly, concisely, hoping against all reason that this would penetrate.

The man's eyes went a bit wilder. "In the tavern..."

Despite himself, Bryck asked, "What tavern?"

"Those beautiful, beautiful words. In the tavern. The songs. Then... then your words. About rebellion. About people rising against the Felk in Windal. Godsdamnit. Godsdamnit. Why did you tell such lies?"

The man had heard him some night, when Bryck had been going from tavern to tavern throughout Callah, posing as a troubadour and spreading the gossip about an uprising that hadn't occurred (at least to his knowledge) and a rebel underground here in Callah that didn't exist (or hadn't at the time).

Bryck looked beyond the man, saw watching eyes in the street. None of them belonged to a Felk soldier, but one might come by at any moment.

He had to end this. Now.

Bryck edged once more toward the litter-strewn alcove. The man grabbed for him a second time. Bryck side-stepped, drew him farther within the fetid recess.

"You'll pay for your lies," the man said. His teeth showed. His hands rose, fingers spread and claw-like. He lunged, this time catching Bryck's coat as he tried again to dodge. Bryck's heel slid in something damp, and he found himself suddenly tipping backward. He clutched the man's tattered merchant's coat and pulled him down as well.

They crashed together among the refuse, a board splintering across Bryck's back. He had pivoted so that the man's weight didn't come down entirely on top of him, and also so that his elbow struck the man's chest with a good thump.

Bryck turned farther, throwing off the body, scrabbling for the broken length of wood. His searching hands snatched it up. He spun around on one knee, raised the board and swung it.

It broke into two even smaller segments, this time across the man's temple. It had been a powerful blow; but unlike that time he had killed the Felk garrison soldier, he knew that this wasn't a fatal strike. The man slumped down heavily in the garbage, but his chest was still rising and falling. Bryck had knocked him unconscious.

He came back out onto the street, brushing hurriedly at his clothing and hiding his face down in his coat's collar once again. He met no one's eyes and, thankfully, heard no one else hail him as he made for the Broken Circle's refuge. Whatever else, this early morning outing had taught him that staying put was the wiser course.

It had been a jolly household in which he'd spent his childhood, his young impressionable years wrapped in a fondly remembered familial warmth. He recalled with a distinct immediacy, even now, songs sung around the great dining table, his mother's lilting laughter, his father's wit and ribald dash with a vox-mellifluous.

Good days. They were, Bryck realized, the foundation stones on which his own character had been built. He had chosen laughter over tears, humor over sarcasm, a jolly disposition over a sour one. These choices had served him well; and when he eventually found himself wed and with a family of his own making, he had done all he could to impart these same gifts to his children.

Of course, it had helped that as a wealthy noble and successful playwright he could also provide comforts and luxuries beyond the grasp of most people.

As an outgoing gregarious individual, Bryck had felt free to indulge his appetites for life. Sometimes these were in mild excess. Sometimes he gambled a bit too much or drank an inordinate amount. But these were simply expressions of his basic character and a desire to live to his fullest.

Despite his propensities, however, he had never performed in one of his own works. While he was perfectly at ease entertaining friends at a celebration or comrades at a tavern, the notion of reciting words before an audience and acting out some spectacle was, frankly, terrifying. He couldn't imagine how the actors did it, night after night.

But it didn't matter now, none of it. The extrovert was dead. As dead as U'delph, the city where Bryck had been all those things—husband, father, playwright, noble. He retained only one facet of his original character. He was still able to work his very minor feats of magic, an innate ability.

"I still don't understand. Why're we doing this? You said this dye won't poison the water. It wouldn't even change the taste."

This undertaking, Bryck supposed, was a sort of magic. Not the mystical breed. More the obvious magic of turning whimsy into believable fiction.

He regarded the adolescent girl. A frown creased a very adult line between her brows. Tyber had finally made her wash, scrubbing the scabs from her fingers and the lice from her hair. She looked fairly presentable now. She also, unfortunately, looked too much like recruitment age.

"We don't want to poison the water, Gelshiri," he said. "We have to drink the water, too."

"But who's going to want to drink it? Especially when it's that color."

"Just keep going with that thought. You'll figure it out in the end." Bryck didn't say it condescendingly, and the girl didn't take it wrong. She was at that age when emotions were their liveliest and their hardest to manage. But she was also a full-fledged member of the Broken Circle, a group of rebels dedicated to the overthrow of the Felk here in Callah.

Gelshiri scampered off—or went as fast as her "missing" leg would allow. She wore a long coat, with her left leg folded up behind and secured with cord. It had to be quite uncomfortable, but she didn't complain. She worked the crutch they'd found for her like she'd been born to it. When people saw her, they saw someone crippled and ineligible for service in the Felk army.

She had her packets of dye and had memorized her assigned itinerary. Bryck had no doubts she would visit every one of the public cisterns. If she wasn't as bright as she could be, she was certainly single-minded.

Bryck examined the marked map. Callah's reservoirs were indicated. Four other members of the Broken Circle were on similar errands today. It was the first united organized effort for this group, and Bryck was pleasantly surprised how smoothly it had all gone. So far. The results of this operation, of course, were yet to be seen.

Bryck, after his morning adventure, had returned stealthily to these rooms, which were behind a row of metal- and woodworking shops. During the day there was a steady clangor and also the seeping heat of furnaces, which Bryck enjoyed. Winter in this northerly state, no doubt, would be quite harsh. He didn't know if he would still be in Callah then. His work might not yet be done. Also he had to wonder where he would go from here.

The rooms weren't too squalid. They certainly weren't worse than the cheap lodgings he'd taken when he first arrived in the city. Still, this was a step up from that dilapidated and deserted warehouse where they had been holed up. Bryck had relocated the group here. As enticingly clandestine as that warehouse had appeared, he had deemed it better that they base themselves somewhere where they could come and go without drawing notice. This was a busy district. Despite the shortages pressing on Callah and an announcement of new severe taxes, these craft workers remained active.

Bryck had ordered the move, and the others had heeded the order. It was still a strange—and yes, admittedly thrilling—dynamic. He wasn't accustomed to being in charge, to making command decisions. His previous life as a noble hadn't really prepared him for it. Even his status as a playwright was more a matter of celebrity than authority. Bryck had always been content to let his affairs more or less run themselves. If a problem came up, there was always enough money around to salve things. Also, his wife, Aaysue, had an organizational knack and kept the household orderly.

Aaysue, besides being his first line of defense against the pressures of being a noble, had also willingly served as Bryck's first—and perhaps most important—audience. He kept his plays secret until he'd penned enough pages to get the gist of the story across. Then he would take Aaysue aside, after the children were asleep, and read her what he'd concocted. He would enact the various roles with amateurish glee, knowing even as he capered and gibbered that he could never do this in front of anyone but his wife.

And she laughed or didn't laugh. She was surprised by the twists that devotees of his work had come to expect. Or she wasn't surprised. She was delighted, or merely and mildly and insufficiently amused.

That was how he judged the initial value of his work. If Aaysue responded well, the play was worth finishing. If she didn't—and she was kind enough not to tell him sweet lies—then he either repaired the piece or, more often, fed the pages into a fire. Revamping a mediocre work was usually more trouble and more demoralizing than creating something entirely fresh.

Bryck's theatricals had made him famous in a way that being a mere noble with money and lands never would have. It was odd that he had stumbled into the profession at all, since it normally attracted men and women of gloomily serious bents.

Maybe that was why he had succeeded so well. What he wrote were shameless comedies.

He wondered, as he continued to brood over the map, what Aaysue would have made of this work. It was ironic that she wasn't here to give her opinion, since this was most certainly dedicated to her. And to their children. Bron, Cerk, Ganet, little Gremmest. He was doing all this in their memories.

It was vengeance. Vengeance against the Felk, who had destroyed Bryck's family, city, people. Who had destroyed his life.

Now he had assistance, it seemed. The Broken Circle. It was still difficult to think of this group—fourteen, including himself—without feeling the impulse to roll his eyes. Had he still had a jolly disposition, he might even laugh aloud. It was all so improbable. These people were, almost literally, the products of his imagination. In his guise as a minstrel he had spread rumors throughout Callah about the Broken Circle, a clandestine rebel ring bent on overthrowing the Felk. His aim was to incite rebelliousness among these Callahans, if not an outright uprising.

The paradox was that at the time there had been no such thing as the Broken Circle! Bryck had further enforced the illusion by branding that slashed circle sigil all over the city. Only then, after the fable was in place, had a "real" Broken Circle formed; and Bryck, through a series of misadventures, had found himself joining the group. More than that: He had been automatically appointed their leader. They had only the urge to rebel. They keenly needed direction, leadership.

He had occasionally met devotees of his theatricals who thought that the comedies he wrote were somehow real. These people could be comical themselves... or most unsettling. But this was the first time reality had truly sprung from something he had conceived.

Perhaps he should be proud of what his creation had accomplished. But as yet, the Broken Circle had done nothing to threaten or upset the rule of the Felk here in Callah. Bryck at least had violently disturbed the local economy with that counterfeiting scheme. And he himself was personally responsible for the murder of a member of the Felk garrison. But he wanted to do more. He had to do more. The Felk had to pay.

He finally set aside the map. He could gain nothing from staring at it. He had devised this operation and dispatched his agents. It was in their hands now. He sat on his bunk and gazed about at the small dimensions of this room, solemnly noting the bangs and clangs that came through the walls from the bustling workshops.

Bryck, he now had to truly acknowledge, was effectively confined here. The garrison had a description of him, and they were very interested in locating the man who had killed one of their own. If Bryck wanted to play it completely safe, he would have to remain in these rooms day and night. It would be possible, of course, to direct the Circle from here, to continue giving orders and sending the others out.

But there had to be other ways, surely. This confinement rankled him, despite this morning's misadventure. He was a creative individual, even though his days of writing plays were, like so much else, forever behind him. He contemplated the problem as he waited for word of the water-dyeing project's success or failure to come back to him.

He knew it had succeeded even before Gelshiri and the four others returned one by one to the set of rooms that were the Broken Circle's headquarters. The news spread boisterously through the streets. There was a satisfying edge of hysteria to it that Bryck could hear even through the walls.

His fellow rebels arrived in the last watch of daylight. The others of the group assembled as well. Among this band only Tyber was also restricted to these rooms, owing to his having tried to bribe a Felk officer into setting up a contraband operation. Tyber was currently wanted by Colonel Jesile and the garrison, though certainly not with the same vigor with which Bryck was sought.

"Success! Success!"

"Nobody ever even noticed me when I—"

"—slipped that packet into the pipe—"

"—didn't even loiter around to watch the first reactions, though I dearly wanted to."

They were all uproariously pleased with themselves. Each member had been assigned several targets, all publicly accessible, all well trafficked. It really required nothing more than simple sleight of hand, but there was still potential for danger, even disaster.

It was Quentis who gathered up the individual reports, questioning each Broken Circle agent to be certain that no one had been seen and all precautions had been observed. Quentis had a cool nature. Bryck owed her much. She was the one who had given him shelter when he was first on the run from murdering that Felk soldier.

She was a capable woman, a street vendor with a cart. Her face was somewhat weathered, but not so much as some who were nearing their fortieth year. And what age and wear were there was tempered by the softness of her amber-colored eyes.

"The disruption has by now reached all of Callah, I think it's safe to say." She gave Bryck a nod.

"So I've been hearing." He waved, indicating the busy street beyond the shops, where for the past watch he had heard cries and panicky shouts.

"People are... very upset," Gelshiri said, excited and confused all at once. She had done her job well but still hadn't figured out what it was all about.

"Godsdamned right they are," Ondak, Quentis's cousin, said happily. "When water turns to blood, you have to guess that something's amiss!"

Everyone laughed merrily. They made quite a crowd in these undersized rooms. But they were still so few, Bryck couldn't help thinking. So very few, compared with the Felk occupying this city.

It was Ondak who had explained which powders were needed to create the transmutation of the water. Others in the group had procured the substances from bakeries and restaurants around Callah that were still operating. Ondak had mixed the packets, which, when put into a water supply, would change the color and viscosity of the water without adding anything harmful. The blood-water now flowing from Callah's cisterns and reservoirs might be unpleasant to look at and pour too thickly, but it was perfectly fine to drink.

"Those buggering Felk might have magic on their side," Tyber pronounced as he filled glasses for everyone, "but I'll wager they still carry their superstitions about the gods."

"Oh," Gelshiri suddenly cried out, a light coming into her eyes. "This is supposed to scare the Felk, isn't it?"

Tyber, who had a face of blemished skin and a mouthful of unhealthy teeth, threw an arm around the girl's gaunt shoulders.

"Girl, if you were a creature of more interesting gender, I'd make you fall in love with me. Lift your glasses, my fellows. We drink to the Minstrel."

It was wine that had been poured, not the newly transformed Callahan water. Bryck dutifully took a swallow. Once, he'd taken real pleasure in drinking and in the carousing and camaraderie that went with it.

He hadn't divulged his name to the members of the Broken Circle. He hadn't even given them the alias he had lived under when he first arrived in Callah. And so he had become the Minstrel. That was fine. There was an anonymity about the sobriquet that he appreciated. After all, he wasn't doing this for glory.

They all continued to congratulate one another, and Bryck did nothing to interfere with their celebrating. As Gelshiri was finishing her glass, she asked, frowning as she concentrated, "If we do scare the Felk, won't we be scaring everybody else, too?"

Again Bryck didn't patronize. "But we can spread the word that this is the work of the Broken Circle. No Callahan need fear the water." It would have been a nice final touch if they could have left the Circle's sigil at each water site. But that would have called attention to them and lessened the chances of success for the operation dramatically. It was too bad Bryck couldn't follow each of them today and brand the slashed circle at each target, using that trick of magic that allowed him to make fire from nothing.

Bryck settled back and sipped quietly at his wine. He had plans for the days ahead. This band had performed successfully. He could have a little confidence in them; they'd earned it. But greater challenges and much greater dangers were ahead.

Tyber, Bryck noted, had a curious charisma about him, particularly since he was such an unsightly fellow. Yet, as Bryck watched, the celebration seemed to slowly gravitate toward him. He laughed and made the others laugh. He had a cheerful air, a winning self-assurance. He was the point of focus, the same position that Bryck had once so naturally and ably held whenever people gathered and the wine flowed.

It was when Tyber grabbed up three empty glasses and started deftly juggling them, as everyone applauded, that Bryck got the idea he'd been waiting for. Afterward, he pulled the man aside and asked, "Tell me, Tyber, do you know any magic?"