A Discourse in Steel (13 page)

The tip took the flame, glowed a soft red and softly shot off a spark now and then. He dropped it down the shaft and it hit dry stone twenty rods down, lighting a passageway that went off in two directions.

“Have a piece of chalk in that pack?” Egil asked.

“Satchel,” Nix corrected, but handed over a piece of chalk.

Egil quickly scratched his own graffiti on the cobblestone near the grate.

Egil and Nix were here.

Nix nodded, smiled. “Why not, by the gods?”

With that, Nix lowered himself into the shaft, pressing the soles of his feet against one side and pushing his back against the other, slowly walking himself down. After he'd gone about five rods, Egil followed him in, sliding the grate back into place and placing the padlock back in its place. He didn't lock it, but a Watchman would have to examine it closely to know it was unlocked.

When they reached the bottom, Nix took his falchion in one hand and the glow rod in the other, while Egil put the haft of a hammer in each fist. A small scattering of rocks and other debris lay on the smooth stone floor, probably bits of junk dropped down the grate by children. The air crowded them, a stale cloak, and it smelled moldy and vaguely of piss. Light from the glow rod illuminated less than a candle. At four paces Egil looked like a hill of muscle and hammers and anger. But Nix figured the dim red light would be harder to spot and wouldn't betray them as readily as a torch. The sound of their breathing bounced off the walls. A narrow corridor of cut stone stretched off before them.

Egil took the mail shirts from his large pack, handed the smaller to Nix, and they both worked them on over their tunics, both of them cursing to the sound of ringing links.

“I feel like a stuffed sausage in this,” Egil said.

“Aye,” Nix agreed, testing his range of motion. “How's a man supposed to kill someone in this nonsense?”

“Let's go find out,” Egil said, and they headed off in the direction of the guildhouse, walking dark, musty corridors in a bubble of dim red light. The sound of dripping water came from somewhere and their breath and the soft ring of their mail seemed loud in the quiet. Between the weight of the armor and the close air, Nix was sweating before they'd covered two hundred paces.

“This keeps up and these slubbers will
smell
me coming.”

Egil led them on, turning here and there, through corridors wide and narrow, but always moving in a generally southwest direction. Nix didn't question him about the route. A decade of robbing tombs all across Ellerth had given both of them a head for maps and a keen sense of direction, even underground.

From ahead a slow current of air carried the pungent stink of sewage.

“That's not me,” Nix whispered.

Egil grinned as the narrow hall was bisected by a wide corridor. Walkways flanked a sunken channel of still water that stretched off into the darkness left and right. Filth floated on the surface of the water, shapeless patties of stink. The odor made Nix's eyes water.

“Leads out to the Meander,” Egil said, pointing with his chin to the west.

A heavy rain or winter melt would raise the Meander and rinse the channel, but otherwise the water sat there, stagnant, a stew of shite and trash.

“City needs better engineers,” Nix said.

Minding their step on the slimed walkway, they leaped the sewer channel to the other side.

Nix smelled himself and winced at the reek. “If I'd known this little excursion was going to put such a stink in my clothes, I might've let these guildboys slide. But now that I smell like a turd, we might as well kill a few of them.”

“Or more than a few,” Egil said. The priest stopped and visibly consulted the map in his mind. “We follow this for a bit. Then right down a side channel, then we're under Mandin's Way and close.”

After they'd walked for a time, Nix said, “Walking through sewers is less fun than I imagined.”

“Imagined yourself walking through sewage often, have you?”

“Given the shite you're prone to utter, I don't have to
imagine
it at all.”

Egil smiled, seemed about to say something in response, but stopped and held up a hand. He whispered, “Things are about to get more fun, I think. Listen.”

From somewhere ahead, Nix heard someone clear his throat, then a soft cough. The sound bounced off the masonry, carried down the corridor. Nix used his hand to shield the meager light from the glow rod. They stood still for a time, listening, wondering if they'd been heard. Nothing from ahead.

“That about where they should be?” Nix whispered.

Egil nodded. “From there, there's a concealed door to a stair that heads into the rooms under the guildhouse.”

“And once we're in?”

“Fun's in finding out,” Egil said.

Nix frowned and stared at his friend, eyebrows raised.

“I'm not to say that?” Egil asked.

“That's mine to say.”

“I see.”

“It sounds ridiculous when you say it.”

“It sounds ridiculous when you say it, too.”

“It does not. Wait…does it?”

Egil ignored the question. “Once we're in we'll have to search for the Upright Man. Or get lucky. Possibly we could have planned this better.”

“Where's the fun in that?” Nix said. “Eh, did that sound ridiculous, too?”

Egil grinned. “Kill the glow rod. They'll have their own light.”

Nix dropped the glow rod into the sewage channel, extinguishing it. Darkness enveloped them but it wasn't entire. A glow came from ahead, the soft flickering glow of torches.

Hugging the wall, weapons bare, the two crept forward in silence. The corridor and sewer channel split into a Y-shaped intersection. They followed the glow along the left-hand wall and crept to the corner. Nix crouched and peeked around.

Ten paces down, four guildsmen sat on barrels to one side of the sewer sluice. One toyed with a dagger, two sat close, holding a whispered conversation, and one, heavyset, had his hands crossed over his ample stomach and his back against the wall, snoring. Two torches burned in makeshift sconces attached to the wall. All wore leather jacks and sharp steel. None looked alert. Nix imagined guard duty in the sewers was more punishment than posting.

He leaned back from the corner and put his mouth to Egil's ear. “Four men. This side. Ten paces. Slubbers, the lot.” He put his hand axe in its belt thong, drew a throwing dagger, and showed it to Egil. “I take the sleeper.”

Egil nodded, hefted a hammer in his throwing hand. “I take whoever I feel like killing.”

Nix counted down from three with his fingers and when he reached zero they ran around the corner, leaped the channel, and charged, hurling their weapons as they went.

Egil's hammer hummed as it spun toward the guildsman with the unsheathed dagger. The man looked up in shock for only a moment before Egil's hammer slammed into his head and pulped his face, spraying the wall in blood and knocking him from his barrel.

Nix's dagger knifed neatly into the throat of the sleeping man. He woke only to die, grabbing at the dagger's hilt, eyes wide, blood spurting around the shaft of steel. He rose, staggered, gasped, and fell facedown on the floor, the upper half of his body in the sewer channel.

The two survivors, wide-eyed with surprise, cursed, drew blades, and shouted for aid. One of them went to the wall between the torch sconces and frantically worked some kind of mechanism. He pulled open a door concealed to look like the wall but before he could get through it, Egil, roaring, hit the half-open door at a full run. The man, caught between door and jamb, squealed with pain. Bones audibly broke and he spat a mouthful of blood while he stabbed weakly at Egil. The blade caught the priest but scraped along the outside of Egil's mail.

Meanwhile Nix drew his hand axe in his off hand and bounded at the other man, who backed away, short sword and dagger drawn. Nix crosscut at the man's throat with his falchion, but the man parried with his dagger and returned a stab at Nix's stomach with his short sword.

Nix anticipated the counter and slipped sideways, avoiding the stab, then chopped down on the man's arm with his hand axe. The edge sank to the bone and blood sprayed. The man shouted with pain, recoiled, his fearful eyes already seeing his end. Nix lunged in close and stabbed the man through the stomach, feeling his falchion scrape spine.

The man's eyes went wide, his mouth opened in a silent wail of pain. He dropped his sword, so Nix withdrew his blade and kicked him backward into the sewer channel. He hit the water in a splash of stink and floated there with the rest of the grime, unmoving.

“See how you like that shite on your clothes,” Nix said.

He turned to see Egil slam the door into the other man again, leaving him a broken, unmoving heap in the doorway.

“Door won't close,” Egil said.

“Look at you with the jests now,” Nix said.

Nix wiped his blade on the fallen guildsman, stepped into the doorway, and held up a hand for quiet. A set of stone stairs extended up to a landing, turned left, and then continued higher. He heard nothing.

“Nothing,” he whispered.

He and Egil recovered their weapons and heaved the bodies of the dead guildsmen into the sewage channel.

“You want to say a prayer or something?” Nix asked Egil.

Egil stared down at the floating corpses. “That's what you get for trying to harm our girls and burn our inn. Fak you all.”

“Well said,” Nix said. He thumped Egil on the shoulder. “Now let's go find the fakker we came for.”

“Aye.”

They crept up the stairs, keeping close to the wall, listening for any indication of alarm. When they reached the landing, they saw that another flight of stairs ascended to a reinforced wooden door with a latch and an elaborate key lock. Egil took Nix by the elbow and pulled him back down the stairs a ways, where they had a hushed conversation.

“It'll be locked and they'll have a coded knock,” Egil whispered.

“A merry jig, no doubt,” Nix said. “They'll probably have it barred, too.”

“I'll handle that,” Egil said.

“No doubt of that either,” Nix said. “I'll handle the lock with the key, but swear you won't say ‘gewgaws.' ”

Egil looked pained. “I always say ‘gewgaws.' The world will end if I don't. You know that.”

“All right then, say it, but don't be so smug about it, yeah?”

“Fair enough.”

Nix took out the magic key, wrapped its mouth with his hand, and spoke a word in the Mage's Tongue. It came to life and nipped him on the finger, but he kept his curse in his mind rather than on his lips. He unwrapped his fingers slowly.

“Give us a turnip,” it said.

“Fakking key,” he muttered, and dug a small turnip out of his satchel. It was a good thing Gadd had a well-stocked cellar and that Nix had a magic satchel with so many pockets. To the key, he said, “Take two bites then open the door up there. And be quiet about it.”

After the key took its bites, Nix and Egil sneaked back up the stairs. Nix slowly inserted the key into the door, wincing at the soft grate of metal on metal. The key squirmed gently in his hand, fitting itself to the mechanism. When it stopped moving, Nix looked back at Egil.

“Got it. Ready?”

Egil stared at him, eyebrows raised.

“Fak's sake,” Nix whispered with a sigh. “Say it. I said say it.”

“Gewgaws,” Egil whispered.

Nix turned the key, the lock opened, and Egil slammed his shoulder into the door. Wood splintered, metal screamed, something snapped, and the door flew open to reveal a small room with no one in it. A table sat in the center, two tankards atop it, chairs set around it in orderly fashion.

“Shite. A bit anticlimactic, no?” Nix said.

One of the two doors in the room flew open to reveal a potbellied, horse-faced guildsman in a chain shirt.

“What is going on—”

Egil's hammer flew, hit the man in the chest, shattered ribs, and sent him careening backward and down.

“Now that's more like it,” Nix said.

Shouts from the room beyond sounded like another half-dozen guildsmen.

Nix and Egil darted for the door, Egil scooping up a chair in one hand as he crossed the room. The moment Nix filled the doorway, stepping on the man Egil had downed, two crossbow bolts thudded into his chest, knocking him sideways against the jambs. His mail turned the points but the impact still left him gasping.

“Fakkers,” he hissed. Three guildsmen stood in the hallway to his right, two with leveled crossbows.

Egil bulled past him and hurled the chair at the guildsmen. It crashed into the two crossbowmen, knocking one prone. Egil followed up and rushed the mass of them, taking his one hammer in both hands. A downward smash crushed the head of the prone guildsman and Egil bulled past the second. The third man managed to get his blade drawn and to stab at the priest's chest, but the blade skipped off Egil's mail. A backhand swing from Egil's hammer crushed the man's chest and sent him into the wall, his dying gasps the squeal of a broken bellows.

By then Nix had recovered and he hurled his dagger into one of the crossbowmen who'd shot him. The blade took the man in the arm and he cried out, dropping his crossbow. Egil wheeled around, swinging his hammer, and hit the side of the man's head with a sound like a dropped melon.

Nix picked up the hammer Egil had thrown and handed it to the priest. “Which way?”

Egil looked back and forth, thought, pointed. “That way?”

Nix started off.

“Wait,” Egil said.

“Wait?”

“Wait.”

“Gonna be more along soon, priest.”

Egil looked unsure. He shook his head. “All right, this way. As I said. Fairly sure.”

Voices from the other direction carried down the hall, shouts. A lot of shouts.