Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher) (54 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher)
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“I just wanted to say thank you, Captain. For going down into the rubble after the tenement collapsed, and bringing out my little Katie safe and sound. She’d have died, if it hadn’t been for you. Thank you.”
Hawk looked down at the little girl, and smiled slowly. “They told me she was dead.”
“Bless your heart, no, Captain! Someone found her foot in the rubble, and the doctors stuck it back on with a healing spell! And the Guard is paying the bill! Almost makes you believe in miracles. She’s right as rain now. Thanks to you, Captain. I never did believe all the terrible things they say about you.”
She plunged forward, hugged him tight, kissed him quickly and stepped back again. She nodded to Fisher and set off down the street, hauling her daughter along behind her. The little girl looked back briefly and waved goodbye, and then mother and child disappeared into the crowd and were gone. Fisher looked at Hawk.
“All right, that’s two.”
THE BONES OF HAVEN
 
The book is dedicated to Grant Morrison, boy genius, and The Waterboys, sui generis, without whose inspiration this book could not have been written.
Haven is an old city, but still growing, with new houses built on the bones of the old. But some parts of Haven are older
than others and have never been properly put to rest. Down below the surface of the city, the remains of older structures stir uneasily in their sleep and dream dark thoughts of the way things used to be. There are new buildings all over Haven, and some of them stand on unquiet graves....
1
 
Hell Wing
 
Rain had come to Haven with the spring, and a sharp, gusting wind blew it in off the sea. The rain hammered down with mindless ferocity, bouncing back from the cobbles and running down the gutters in raging torrents. Water dripped from every surface, gushed out of drainpipes, and flew in graceful arcs from carved gargoyle mouths on the smarter buildings. It had been raining on and off for weeks, despite everything the city weather wizards could do, and everyone was heartily sick of it. The rain forced itself past slates and tiles and gurgled down chimneys, making fires sputter and smoke. Anyone venturing out into the streets was quickly soaked, and even inside the air seemed saturated with moisture. People gritted their teeth and learned to ignore damp clothing and the constant drumming of rain on the roof. It was the rainy season, and the city endured it as the city endured so many other afflictions—with stubborn defiance and aimless, sullen anger.
And yet things were not as gloomy in the port city of Haven as they might have been. The rain-soaked streets were decked with flags and bunting and decorations, their bright and gaudy colors blazing determinedly through the grayness of the day. Two Kings had come to Haven, and the city was putting on an attractive face and enjoying itself as best it could. It would take more than a little rain to dampen Haven’s spirits when it had an excuse to celebrate. A public holiday had been declared from most jobs, on the grounds that the eager citizens would have taken one anyway if it hadn’t been granted, and people held street parties between the downpours and boosted the takings at all the inns and taverns. Tarpaulins were erected in the streets wherever possible, to ward off the rain, and beneath them could be found street fairs and conjurers and play-actors and all manner of entertainments.
Of course, not everyone got to take the day off. The city Guard still went about its business, enforcing the law and protecting the good citizens from pickpockets and villains and outrages, and, most important of all, from each other. Haven was a harsh, cruel city swarming with predators, even during a time of supposedly universal celebration. So Hawk and Fisher, husband and wife and Captains in the city Guard, made their way through the dismal gray streets of the Northside and wished they were somewhere else. Anywhere else. They huddled inside their thick black cloaks, and pulled the hoods well forward to keep the rain out of their faces.
Hawk was tall, dark, and no longer handsome. He wore a black silk patch over his right eye, and a series of old scars ran down the right side of his face, giving him a cold, sinister look. Huddled inside his soaking wet black cloak, he looked like a rather bedraggled raven that had known better days. It had to be said that even when seen at his best, he didn’t look like much. He was lean and wiry rather than muscular, and was beginning to build a stomach. He wore his dark hair at shoulder length, swept roughly back from his forehead and tied at the nape of his neck with a silver clasp. He’d only just entered his thirties, but already there were streaks of gray in his hair. It would have been easy to dismiss him as just another bravo, perhaps already past his prime, but there was a dangerous alertness in the way he carried himself, and the cold gaze of his single eye was disturbingly direct. He carried a short-handled axe on his right hip, instead of a sword. He was very good with an axe. He’d had lots of practice.
Isobel Fisher walked at his side, unconsciously echoing his pace and stance with the naturalness of long companionship. She was tall, easily six foot in height, and her long blond hair fell to her waist in a single thick plait, weighted at the tip with a polished steel ball. She was in her late twenties, and handsome rather than beautiful, with a rawboned harshness to her face that contrasted strongly with her deep blue eyes and generous mouth. Some time ago, something had scoured all the human weaknesses out of her, and it showed. Even wrapped in her thick cloak against the driving rain, she moved with a determined, aggressive grace, and her right hand never strayed far from the sword on her hip.
People gave them plenty of room as they approached, and were careful to look away rather than risk catching the Guards’ eyes. None of them wanted to be noticed. It wasn’t healthy. Hawk and Fisher were feared and respected as two of the toughest and most honest Guards in Haven, and everyone in the Northside had something to hide. It was that kind of area. Hawk glared balefully about him as he and Fisher strode along, and stamped his boots unnecessarily hard on the water-slick cobbles. Fisher chuckled quietly.
“Cheer up, Hawk. Only another month or so of utter misery, and the rainy season will be over. Then you can start looking forward to the utter misery of the boiling hot summer. Always something to look forward to in Haven.”
Hawk sniffed. “I hate it when you’re this cheerful. It’s not natural.”
“Me, or the rain?”
“Both.” Hawk stepped carefully over a tangled mass of bunting that had fallen from a nearby building. “I can’t believe people are still going ahead with celebrations in this downpour.”
Fisher shrugged. “Any excuse for a holiday. Besides, they can hardly postpone it, can they? The Kings will only be here two more days. Then it’ll all be over, and we can get back to what passes for normal here in the Northside.”
Hawk just grunted, not trusting himself to any more than that. His job was hard enough without extra complications. Haven was without doubt the most corrupt and crime-ridden city in the Low Kingdoms, and the Northside was its dark and rotten heart. No crime was too vile or too vicious to be overlooked, and if you could make any kind of profit out of it, you could be sure someone was doing it somewhere. And double-crossing his partner at the same time, like as not. Violence was commonplace, along with rape and murder and protection rackets. Conspiracies blossomed in the shadows, talking treason in lowered voices behind locked doors and shuttered windows. Throughout Haven, the city Guard was stretched thin to breaking point and beyond, but somehow they managed to keep a lid on things, most of the time. Usually by being even harsher and more violent than the people they fought. When they weren’t taking sweeteners to look the other way, of course. All of which made it increasingly difficult for anyone to figure out why the Parliaments of both the Low Kingdoms and Outremer had insisted on their respective Kings coming to Haven to sign the new Peace Treaty between the two countries.
It was true that the Peace Talks at which the Treaty had been hammered out had taken place in Haven, but only after the Guard had protected the negotiators from treacherous assault by mercenaries and terrorists. There were a great many people in both countries who had vested interests in seeing the Peace Talks fail, and they’d shown no hesitation in turning Haven into their own private battle-ground. Hawk and Fisher had managed to smash the worst conspiracy and preserve the Talks, but it had been a very close thing, and everyone knew it. Everyone except the two Parliaments apparently. They’d set their minds on Haven, and weren’t going to be talked out of it. Probably because they simply couldn’t believe what their Advisors were telling them about the city.
Upon hearing of the singular honour being bestowed on their fair city, Haven’s city Councillors practically had a collective coronary, and then began issuing orders in a white-hot panic. No one had ever seen them do so much so quickly. One of the first things they did was to give the Guard strict instructions to get all the villains off the streets as quickly as possible, and throw the lot of them in gaol, for any or no reason. They’d worry about trials and sentences later, if at all. For the moment, all that mattered was rounding up as many villains as possible and keeping them safely out of the way until the Kings had left Haven. The prison Governor came closer to apoplexy than a coronary, though it was a near thing, and demanded hysterically where he was supposed to put all these extra bodies in his already overcrowded prison. That, he was curtly informed, was his problem. So the Guards had gone out into the streets all over the city, backed up by as many men-at-arms and militia as the Council could put together, and started picking up villains and hauling them away. In some cases where their lawyers objected strongly, the Guards took them in as well. Word soon got around, and those miscreants who managed to avoid the sweeps decided it would be wisest to keep their heads down for a while, and quietly disappeared. The crime rate plummeted, overnight.
Which is not to say the city streets suddenly became peaceful and law-abiding. This was Haven, after all. But the usual petty crimes and everyday violence could be more or less controlled by the Guard and kept well away from the Kings and their retinues, which was all that mattered as far as the Council was concerned. No one wanted to think what the city would be like after the Kings had left and most of the villains had to be released from prison due to lack of evidence. To be honest, few people in Haven were thinking that far ahead. In the meantime, Hawk and Fisher patrolled their usual beat in the Northside, and were pleasantly surprised at the change. There were stretches when no one tried to kill anyone else for hours on end.
“What do you think about this Peace Treaty?” said Hawk idly. “Do you think it’s going to work?”
Fisher shrugged. “Maybe. As I understand it, the two sides have hammered out a deal that both of them hate but both of them can live with, and that’s the best anyone can hope for. Now that they’ve agreed on a definitive boundary line for the first time in centuries, it should put an end to the recent border clashes at least. Too many good men were dying out there in the borderlands, defending a shaky line on a faded old map to satisfy some politician’s pride.”
Hawk nodded. “I just wish they’d chosen somewhere else for their signing ceremony. Just by being here, the Kings are a magnet for trouble. Every fanatic, assassin, and terrorist for miles around will see this as their big chance, and head straight for Haven with blood in their eyes and steel in their hands.”
“Come on,” said Fisher. “You’ve got to admit, the Kings’ security is pretty impressive. They’ve got four heavy-duty sorcerers with them, a private army of men-at-arms, and a massive deputation of honour guards from the Brotherhood of Steel. I could conquer a minor country with a security force that size.”
Hawk sniffed, unimpressed. “No security is ever perfect; you know that. All it needs is one fanatic with a knife and a martyr’s complex in the right place at the right time, and we could have two dead Kings on our hands. And you can bet Haven would end up taking all the blame, not the security people. They should never have come here, Isobel. I’ve got a real bad feeling about this.”
“You have bad feelings about everything.”
“And I’m usually right.”
Isobel looked at him knowingly. “You’re just miffed because they wouldn’t let any Haven Guards into their security force.”
“Damn right I’m annoyed. We know the situation here; they don’t. But I can’t really blame them, much as I’d like to. Everyone knows the Guard in this city is rife with corruption, and after our last case, no one trusts anyone anymore. After all, if even we can come under suspicion ...”
“We proved our innocence, and exposed the real traitor.”
“Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.” Hawk scowled and shook his head slowly. “I still can’t believe how ready everyone was to accept we were guilty. After all we’ve done for this city.... Anyway, from now on, there’ll always be someone ready to point the finger and mutter about no smoke without fire.”
“Anyone points a finger at me,” said Fisher calmly, “I’ll cut it off, and make him eat it. Now, stop worrying about the Kings; they’re not our responsibility.”
They walked a while in silence, kicking occasionally at loose debris in the street. The rain seemed to be letting up a bit. Every now and again someone up on a roof would throw something down at them, but Hawk and Fisher just ignored it. Thanks to the overhanging upper floors of the buildings, it was rare for anything to come close enough to do any harm, and there was no point in trying to chase after whoever was responsible. By the time the Guards could get up to the roof, the culprits would be gone, and both sides knew it. They were in more danger from a suddenly emptied chamber pot from an upper window. You had to expect that kind of thing in the Northside. Even if you were the infamous Hawk and Fisher.

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