The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (62 page)

“Trouble,” I spat. A handful of figures were silhouetted against the glow of the battle. One had already seen us and he alerted his mates with a delighted shout, thick with the accents of Grynth. The other four spread out to block the gaps we might have fled through. These were out to take their recompense wherever they could, slung around with the lumpy outlines of purses and pouches, looted bags and belts. One saw Aritane, bare legs seductive beneath the gaudy blanket. The lowlander licked his lips and showed a gap-toothed smile of eager anticipation.

’Gren dumped the enchantress unceremoniously. “You want a taste of honey, you get past my sting, shit-sucker.”

Hearing obscenities from the gutters of Col coming out of a Mountain mouth halted these bravos long enough for me and Sorgrad to take stance either side of ’Gren. All our opponents had swords but held them more with the tight, close grip of the self-taught than the relaxed readiness of the competent.

’Gren took a pace forward and the middle man lifted his blade, but in opening his shoulders he ducked his head forward. ’Gren shoved the beak of his pry-bar up under the lowlander’s chin, ripping up into the skull beyond. The man went down like poleaxed beef, blood and spittle spraying.

As ’Gren yanked his pry-bar free, the next man along recovered enough to stab at him. He didn’t even look at me in my muddy skirts until my iron bar smashed his arm with a crack audible even above the tumult. He gaped, aghast as I brought the jemmy up under his ear, sending him clean into the Shades. Shoving him hard against his fellow gave me time to slide out of reach. ’Gren filled the gap, a sword sharp in his hand sending the man howling toward a sizable gang of ruffians, clutching a bloody gash to his thigh.

“Leave him!” Sorgrad wiped his own captured sword on a decapitated body.

’Gren halted, expression mutinous.

“You’re going to take them all on?” Sorgrad pulled his pry-bar free from the head of another corpse, where it stuck through the temple like a spoon in an egg.

“This way.” I followed the conduit up the slope, slabbed rim treacherous and water evil with an oily sheen. It had to be coming from somewhere in the apparently featureless cliff face. I traced the flow to an opening barely perceptible in the inky shadows, ’Gren and Sorgrad hard on my heels, our pursuers shouting their outrage over the bodies we’d left behind.

Once in the mine entrance I flattened myself against the wall, forcing myself to slow my breathing. Sorgrad pushed past and ’Gren came next, Aritane’s shift brushing my arm. I laid one hand on ’Gren’s shoulder and stretched out the other, running fingertips along the wall to steady myself in the utter darkness. We shuffled slowly forward until shouts behind us made us halt.

I turned and looked at the pale square of starlit sky. At least down here they could only come at us one or two at a time. Sorgrad worked his way to my side, sword ready. The curses and taunts came and went, the only sound the distant clamor of battle.

“Do we risk going out again or do we sit in our hole until they’ve all killed each other?” My voice sounded heavy in the still air.

“Let’s see where this goes first.” Cloth rustled as ’Gren shifted Aritane’s weight. “Word is you can get right through from the next valley into these seams.”

“They say that about any number of sokes.” Sorgrad clicked his tongue in thought. “But Teyvafess have been working this valley pretty much since Misaen made it. We could try to get around the fighting through the tunnels.”

“What are the odds?” I asked. “There won’t be any miners in here?”

“Nothing more than a few surprised rats.” Sorgrad led the way. ’Gren slung Aritane over one shoulder like a sack of wheat and I followed close behind, sliding my feet cautiously over the irregular rock, cursing as a cold puddle caught me unawares and splashed my bare legs.

Pry-bar still in one hand, I felt my way along the jagged wall with the other. The stone was slick with moisture and slimy in patches that I didn’t want to think about. I looked back over my shoulder to see the square of night sky get smaller and smaller. What had been darkness outside now looked more pale and bright with each step away. The still, cool air smelled of metal and earth, with a faint undercurrent of piss. The faint echoes of the fight outside could have been coming from the Otherworld, they sounded so far removed from us.

We turned a corner and the darkness was absolute, a cocoon of black so total it made no difference whether my eyes were open or closed. Forest blood did me no favors here. I swallowed to get a little spit for the dryness catching my throat and carefully felt for tinder, flint and steel in my belt-pouch. “Sorgrad, can you take the lamp for a moment?”

His hand touched mine and I closed his fingers around the punched-metal cylinder. “Wait till I get the slide open.”

I heard a grating noise and struck a spark. The darkness fled at the bright flare of the candle only to come rushing straight back. The boundless black was revealed as a tunnel tapering slightly to its roof and curving gradually in the direction of the valley bottom. The walls were brown and gray, streaked with odd pigments and sparkling faintly, perhaps from moisture, perhaps from some crystal or metal in the rock. My spirits rose at the cheerful flame throwing dapples of light out through the lamp’s pierced sides. We were well away from the fighting, we finally had a prize worth holding, and once we found a way out of this warren we could be clear and on our way back to somewhere civilized before sunrise, Halcarion willing.

The Teyvarekin,

18th of Aft-Summer

Jeirran hammered on the gate with the hilt of his sword, bloodied to the pommel and beyond. “Open, do you hear me, open up!”

For all the rage swelling his chest, his bellows made little impression with the clamor on every side. Choking on fury, fear and the treacherous fumes of alcohol, he vomited, the spirits searing his throat. Coughing, he reeled unsteadily, sweat breaking out on his forehead, cold shivers running the length of his body. Without the bulk of the fess wall to support his blindly reaching hand, he would have fallen.

The spasm passed, but little improved. The ground seemed to be rocking beneath his feet and his head was ringing like an anvil. The hollow in his gut had little to do with spewing up the golden liquor, looted bread and meat.

Where was Eresken? Where were the foreigner’s promises of lofty enchantments and secret wisdom? Jeirran groaned with confusion; this was no time for wavering, when they were hemmed against the walls of the fess. But why hadn’t Eresken warned them of this, asked a treacherous hint of doubt as the press of bodies grew ever thicker, struggling for the gate blind and deaf to their entreaties. The yells of the encroaching lowlanders grew ever more threatening.

“Aritane!” roared Jeirran in frenzy. Some echo of his desperation, some sympathy of blood must surely stir her Sheltya skills. He stood, panting, mouth dry and foul, but felt no gentle touch of her mind on his. Two men shoved him aside, raising bloodied hammers more used to honest toil than warfare. They hit the gate together with three ringing blows. A pause for breath, the same again, and a slide in the arch above the lintel wrenched open.

“Maewelin’s mercy, let us in!” screamed someone.

There was a moment of frantic debate, voices raised in argument and fear. “Get ready to run. We can only do this once.”

Jeirran fought his way to the front, pulling lesser men aside. He set his shoulder to the gate, heedless of armor digging into his shoulder. The massive gates creaked but did not open.

“Back off a pace,” yelled someone in frustration. “The bar can’t lift with you all pressing inward.”

Hands dragged Jeirran back and the gates swung apart. With a howl of triumph, savage as hunting wolves, the lowlanders redoubled their efforts, desperate to gain the gates before they could be closed.

Jeirran stumbled through the huge doors, fighting the surge of frantic men threatening to carry him past. He grabbed for an iron tethering ring, snatching at those passing him with the other hand. “We have to close the gates!” In that moment he felt sober and certain; the next he longed for the oblivion of drunkenness.

“But ours are still out there! We can’t shut them out!”

Jeirran backhanded the man with a mailed glove. “If the lowlanders get in we’ll all be deader than winter-killed birds!”

The yelling bloodlust of the lowlanders rang through the confines of the tunnel, unreasoning as a maddened dog. Jeirran pushed against the gate’s inner face, digging his heels in the dust. Others joined him, black with gore, arms hanging uselessly by their sides, some even blinded with their own blood, guided by friends and groping for a handhold. As the hinges creaked, others hovered at the narrowing aperture, dragging comrades bodily through, seizing a hand, a belt, a jerkin. Men were passed bodily along, feet barely touching ground littered with weapons, boots, bandages, pitiful fragments of once prized possessions.

New faces appeared in the gap, dark lowland eyes beneath steel-rimmed caps, burning with hot desire for slaughter and revenge. Two got through the gap, then three, then a handful. In some distant corner of his mind Jeirran realized he must surely be killed, a thought bringing not so much horror as resignation, even relief.

“Let us through!” Men from the rekin, old and young, injured and sick, rushed forward, falling on the foe with the tools of ore mill and furnacehouse. Picks and axes bit deep to crack bone and rip flesh. The lowlanders fell back and the gates were forced shut. A knot of lowland men were cut off; assailed on all sides, they soon fell. Shouts of abuse screamed frantic outside, blows hammering in vain on the ancient timbers. The great beams were rammed home in their brackets, bracing the gate against the bulk of the wall, unmoved by the furious assaults.

Jeirran slid down to the ground, gripping his hair in frustrated fists, wits in turmoil. He raised his head to find a ring of questioning faces. Some were hopeful, others doleful, some were expectant, others accusing. All were looking for answers and all were looking to him.

Jeirran scrambled to his feet, feeling a numbness in his legs. His senses seemed awry; silent anticipation on all sides was loud in his ears, drowning out the riot beyond the walls. He stumbled toward the rekin, forcing a ghastly smile, unable to frame answers to the urgent questions thrown at him. Panic threatened to overwhelm him. All this pain, all this carnage, he had started it—and for what? How could he hope to take on even a fraction of the lowlanders? Why had he urged these good and trusting people into such folly? Screams beyond the gates tore holes in the comforting delusions woven by liquor and self-deceit.

Where was Eresken? Cudgeling his bewildered wits, Jeirran headed for the side door of the rekin, heedless of the curious crowd following him. He turned to yell at them, “Let me alone, can’t you? Go ’way!” The alcohol he’d drank in heedless celebration betrayed him with slurred and broken words. Jeirran’s courage failed him and he stumbled blindly up the stairs.

The door to Aritane’s room stood ajar, a keening coming from it to ran around the rekin like a lost shade. The insane sound raised the hairs on Jeirran’s neck and the skin on his arms crimped into gooseflesh. A trickle of clotted blood pooled on the threshold like a visible curse. The nerve-rending wailing didn’t waver. Jeirran kicked wide the door but backed away from the ghastly sight within, one hand convulsively wiping his mouth and beard. Krelia hugged the lifeless Ceris to her breast, gore and filth covering them both. Her uncomprehending face was that of an animal knowing only its agony.

“What happened? What happened?” raged Jeirran. He dug vicious fingers into Krelia’s shoulder, in a vain attempt to halt her noise. All he did was jar her to an even more ear-shredding screech punctuated with noisy sobs. Her eyes remained locked on some unseen vision of horror.

Jeirran gaped at the body of Ceris’ father, baffled, retching at the butchered thing beside it. Wrenching aside an overturned table, he halted, shock stifling the breath in his throat. Blood hammered through his head so hard he thought his skull would split clean in two. Eresken was dead, face ghastly pale and head half severed.

Who was this stranger, this thin-faced man with his mixed-blood hair and distant features? Aritane had brought him, told Jeirran to take his unsupported word. Lifelong habits of self-justification and excuse reared up within Jeirran but quailed beneath the cruel lash of inescapable truths. He had urged her to summon this mountebank. He’d turned a blind eye to their unseemly fumblings, telling himself his reclaimed sister deserved to know love, scorning the strictures of Sheltya vows. But that code was necessarily harsh, treacherous memory reminded him, to ensure strict neutrality gave no one grounds to dismiss Sheltya judgment.

“Where is Aritane?” Jeirran yelled at Krelia, his useless hands jerking in impotent confusion, desperate to beat some answers from the howling bitch.

“What has happened here?” Remet stood in the doorway.

“I don’t know!” Jeirran exploded with sudden fury. “You tell me; you’re Sheltya, all knowing, all wise. Tell me what has happened! Tell me what to do! Tell me why Eresken is dead and why did I ever listen to him! Tell me where to find Aritane!”

Jeirran stormed forward, grabbing the boy’s robe and forcing him backward, fistful of gray cloth twisted at his chest, other hand lifted in a threatening fist.

Remet’s eyes were huge in his pallid face. “I have no idea where she is. I cannot find her mind,” the boy said with a tremor in his voice. “All I know is the soke is under foreign feet, the fess is surrounded and we have no way out.”

“I don’t know what to do,” screamed Jeirran, “I don’t know how we came to this. Why has it all gone so wrong?”

“I can’t answer you,” quavered Remet.

Jeirran smashed his fist into the boy’s mouth, shocking a cry of pain from the lad. As he drew back his arm for an even harder blow, Remet wrenched himself free with the unexpected strength of terror. Pausing in his flight at the top of the stairs, he wiped blood from lips gashed on broken teeth. “You’ll answer for this, for all of this. Somehow, someday, you’ll answer.”