01 - Honour of the Grave (40 page)

Franziskus cast about for a weapon. He found only Toby’s dropped dagger, a
pathetic implement against so unrelenting a foe. He required something that had
reach.

He kept searching, but saw nothing long enough. Puny dagger in hand, he ran
at Henty.

The halfling backed Angelika into an alcove, framed with oaken beams. He
swung. The axe caught in the timber. Franziskus leapt onto Henty’s back, pulling
him off his weapon.

Angelika grabbed the sharpened chunk of chair-back she’d plunged into Henty
earlier. She strained to yank it out. It wouldn’t go. She leapt up on it,
pushing down on it, driving it further into him.

“Doxy!” he yelled at her.

Franziskus put a leg between Henty’s and tripped him. Henty crashed headlong
into the wall. He recovered. Franziskus stepped beside Angelika. Now both of
them blocked the muscle-bound mercenary’s path back to his great axe.

“Your friends are dead,” Angelika told him. “Time to cut your losses.”

He laughed and hurled himself at Franziskus. He picked up the skinny
Stirlander and threw him into a pile of chairs. Franziskus stayed down. Henty,
arms open, lunged at Angelika, hoping to wrap her in a crushing hug. She slipped
aside, picked up a chair, and brought it splintering down on his back. One of
its legs broke. She hit him with it again. It fell to bits. He smashed her in
the temple with a closed fist. Dazed, she toddled sideways. She reached the
door, steadying herself on its shattered frame. Henty jumped up, grabbed her
shoulders, and pulled her down. He kicked her. She inched backwards.

He turned and sprinted for his axe. She took this brief reprieve to lie back
and breathe. She closed her eyes and searched herself for hidden reserves of
strength. She panted.

Henry was back. He had his axe over his head. Tongue waggling wormishly in
his mouth, he sniggered. “I told you I’d get you,” he said.

Jurgen von Kopf stepped from the street into the tavern doorway, both hands
wrapped around the hilt of a mammoth greatsword. He chopped it down on the haft
of Henty’s axe, cutting through the halfling’s wrist. The axe thunked to the
tavern floor. Henty’s hand dangled from a skein of cartilage and skin. Jurgen
brought his greatsword down on the mercenary again, making a wedge through the
side of his head, cutting away his ear and cheek. Blood spouted from the
wrist-stump and then pulsed up through the head wound. Still Henty did not fall.
Jurgen kicked him over.

“I’ve come for my son,” he told Angelika.

Angelika made it to her feet. The room was spinning. Jurgen’s face went in
and out of focus. “You’ve come to your senses, then?” she said. She did not
believe this, but hoped to shame him.

He hardened his features. “Where is he?”

Lukas came up from behind a shattered table. He met his father’s sharp blue
gaze. He spoke steadily. “I am here, father.”

“You have shamed me, Lukas. You’ve brought disgrace and ruin crashing down on
our family.”

“Am I the one who’s done that, father?”

Jurgen ground his teeth together. He tightened his grip on his greatsword.
“It is beyond question that you have. From the cradle, you knew our rules. Come
here. At least allow the chronicles to say that, in the end, you took the chance
to atone for your crimes against our blood.”

Lukas straightened his shoulders. “If you intend to kill me, you’ll succeed.
But I won’t help you butcher me. I reject your nonsense of honour and crimes
against the blood. I am Lukas von Kopf. I have done what I have done.”

Jurgen took a step. “Then I will come to you.”

Franziskus clutched Toby’s dagger. Lukas saw this. “What do you intend to do
with them?” he asked.

“Yesterday I hankered for comeuppance.” Jurgen regarded Angelika and the
Stirlander. “Now I see them again, and they mean nothing. They may go.”

Lukas addressed Franziskus. “Go, please. Please.” He turned to Angelika.
“You, too. Thank you for what you’ve done. I don’t see how I deserved it.”

“Swear not to harm him,” Angelika said to Jurgen, “and we’ll happily leave.”

“I’ve sworn the contrary,” Jurgen said.

“There is not a part of you that feels doubt, is there?”

“No,” said Jurgen. His demeanour had changed. Though he still held himself
upright, and spoke with clear, ringing tones, the old imperious manner was gone.
He no longer dripped haughty contempt. She did not know, at first, what
sentiment to attribute to this new demeanour. For a moment, she dared to hope
that it was sympathy, or regret. Those feelings she could make use of. Then it
came to her: Jurgen was in mourning. In the old man’s mind, his boy was already
killed.

“No matter what the situation,” stalled Angelika, “you always know what to do
next.”

“Yes,” said Jurgen.

“You don’t remember the last time you hesitated.” She saw that she was
backing up, and giving him ground. She forced herself to hold her position. “Or
were torn between two choices.”

“That is correct.”

“Jurgen, that’s a madness as great as Marius’.”

He cocked his head as if considering the point. “Fine, then. I’ve given you a
chance to insult me. Now begone, and vex me and mine no more.”

“Go, both of you,” Lukas said, to Franziskus and Angelika.

“But I’ve made a stupid vow of my own,” said Angelika. She kept her eyes on
Jurgen’s sword. “So here we find ourselves.”

“Then that is how it is,” Jurgen said. He distractedly pawed the floor with
the toe of his boot, scraping grit between sole and floorboard.

“Does honour allow you to fight with that enormous sword, when we are all but
disarmed?” Angelika asked him.

He laid the sword carefully on a table. He clenched and unclenched the fists
of both hands.

Franziskus sniffed; his nose had started running.

Jurgen pushed past Angelika. She dived at him, knocking him off course. He
stumbled into a wall. She charged him. He clamped hands on her shoulders and
tossed her aside. She fell into Franziskus, blocking his charge at Jurgen.

Lukas stood, waiting. His father strode at him. Angelika leapt on Jurgen’s
back. He bucked her off. She landed on a table. He flipped the table away from
him, rolling her off it and onto the floor. Franziskus dropped Toby’s knife and
thumped both fists against Jurgen’s back. Jurgen whirled, head-butted
Franziskus, sent him wobbling. Angelika crawled up, throwing her arms over the
upended tabletop, hauling herself to her feet. Jurgen kicked the table, sending
it sliding into its neighbour, and pinning Angelika between them. She fell back,
trapped, head lolling.

Franziskus ran at him. He turned. He grabbed Franziskus by the collar and the
belt. He threw him over past Angelika.

He approached Lukas. “You think I want to do this,” he said. “I do not. It is
because I love you, my son, that I must.”

“She’s right—you’re not merely stubborn. You’re crazed,” Lukas said, his
newfound composure cracking. He backed away. He bounded over a broken table.
Jurgen leapt after him. He turned and punched his father in the jaw. His finger
bones crackled like leaves in a fire. Face drained, he nursed his hand. He
turned to run. Jurgen tackled him. He fell.

From Angelika’s vantage point, the two momentarily disappeared behind wrecked
furniture. She’d wiggled herself out from between the tables pinning her. Father
and son came up again, Jurgen clasping the boy from behind, lifting him up,
mighty arms around the boy’s neck and chest. “I love my son,” Jurgen choked, “so
I give you your honour back.” His eyes were wet.

In both hands, Angelika held a spindle from one of the broken chair backs.

Jurgen constricted his grip on Lukas’ neck.

A snapping sound rang through the tavern. Lukas went slack. Jurgen turned him
around, held him. He pulled open one of Lukas’ eyelids. He made a noise midway
between an ordinary sob and the neigh of a horse. Gently he laid Lukas’ body on
the tavern floor, taking care to keep him clear of the various patches of blood that adorned it. Tears flooding, he turned a
hate-frozen visage on Angelika and Franziskus.

“You made it happen this way,” he said.

“No,” said Angelika.

“I was not supposed to be the one to do it,” he said.

“Maybe that should have told you something.” Her hand wandered from the
snapped chair spindle to the dagger dropped first by Toby, then by Franziskus.

“He was supposed to do it himself. You put ideas in his head. You’re to blame
for this.”

He stepped on heavy feet toward her. She coiled up, sprang, hurling herself
through the air. She planted the dagger in the side of his neck.

She crashed into a cart laden with stoneware. Plates and mugs fell all around
her. He tottered at her. Red liquid erupted from the wound. “I thought we were
fighting unarmed,” he said. “Is that honourable?”

“I don’t believe in honour,” Angelika told him.

“Ah,” he nodded. “I thank you regardless, for the favour you’ve done me. A
father should not outlive… Pardon my…” He reached for an overturned chair,
righted it, sat down, blinked, and died. His head slumped to his chest.

Angelika waited. “It’s safe now,” she said, after it was clear that Jurgen
was finished.

Lukas sat up. He spoke to Angelika, but his eyes were on his slain father.

“Did we plan that?” he asked.

“Plan what?”

“When he had my neck, and you made that snapping noise—what was that?”

“A piece of chair.”

“When you made the noise, I knew what to do—to play dead, as if we planned
it. Did we plan that?” He spoke as if mesmerised.

“We didn’t plan it. It’s just that, when the moment came, you understood.”

“It’s as if we planned it,” he said. With movements slow and stunned, he went
over to his father. He knelt beside the chair and pulled Jurgen down into his
arms, cradling the man’s head in his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he told his
father. His face contorted. “I wasn’t what you wanted. I wish I was.” He bawled the words;
they were hard to make out. Angelika wished she couldn’t hear them at all.

Franziskus surveyed the carnage and thought it remarkable that he felt no
great urge to vomit. He told himself that he was getting used to such sights,
and, for this freshly-acquired hardness, begged forgiveness of the mercy
goddess, Shallya.

Angelika found an undisturbed chair and eased herself into it. She assured
herself that she would soon find the energy to search the mercenaries’ corpses
for saleable items. She would not try it with Jurgen’s body, so as not to upset
the boy. “I just want to sit here for a time,” she heard her voice saying. She
looked at her arms and counted the cuts, looking for injuries serious enough to
warrant bandaging. She looked over to Franziskus, who was likewise covered with
welts and bruises. A nasty, rattling sound assailed her and she looked about to
see what it might be. After some blurry thought, she isolated it as the issue of
her own tortured lungs. Franziskus’ breath was even more laboured than her own.

Bells rang out, outside in the street. There were shouts. Franziskus hauled
himself to the door. The cries grew louder. Now that she was again ready to pay
heed to the world outside the tavern, Angelika realised that the orcish war
drums had increased in volume. They were very close now. Maybe just a few miles
away.

Franziskus appeared in the doorway, panting. “Evacuate—we’ve got to
evacuate! Marius has pulled his forces back, north of the city. He’s going to
let the town fall!”

Grenzstadt burned.

The three of them—Angelika, Franziskus, Lukas—huddled on the far side of
a low, uneven stone wall that separated one stretch of grassy, bumpy sheep
pasture from another. They were a mile or so from town. On the other side of the
wall, a runtish orc, scarcely bigger than a goblin, prowled and snuffled. They
kept their heads down and waited for it to go. It trundled up to an abandoned
farmhouse and disappeared through an open door. They calmly sat as it banged
around inside. Angelika popped her head up to see it wander back toward town,
where its fellows would still be rampaging. When it was far enough away, she
stood to watch smoke clouds drift up from the ruins. Making out details of the
destruction was difficult from their present position. Large gaps had been
pounded in the walls. One of the south towers had somehow been rocked on its
foundations—perhaps by some primitive war machine, or enormous battering ram—and had fallen into the town. It was the tower where Benno and Gelfrat had died.

Angelika tried to remember her south Averlandish geography. If she recalled
correctly, there was a river a dozen miles up, a tributary from the Upper Reik.
Marius’ forces, which had bypassed the city in a heedless rout, would most
likely retrench there, to meet the orcs when they grew bored with smashing empty
buildings and were ready to continue their push up into the Empire’s belly.
Messengers, she reckoned, would already be on their way to the courts of
Wissenland, Stirland, and the halflings’ Moot. Reinforcements would come from
Averheim and from Nuln. Despite Marius’ folly in plotting against his own
general on the eve of battle, the orcs would, in the end, be repulsed. She
declined to speculate on the precise cost in lives. The toll would be paid
mostly in the blood and flesh of peasants, townsfolk, and common soldiers; it
was always they who took the brunt when games of power played out.

Lukas asked her what would happen, and she told him about the river, and the
reinforcements, and how orcs fought badly in water. Typically, they rushed in
with lunatic abandon, obliging their enemies by drowning in great numbers.

Lukas nodded. “An encouraging thought.”

“In war, the less stupid side eventually wins.”

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Do either of you have a weapon I can borrow?”