The Shadow at the Gate (27 page)

“That,” said the prince of Harth in wonder, “is a fast horse. Exceedingly fast.”

“He is, isn’t he,” said the regent. His voice trailed off, as he wasn’t sure whether to be proud or not.

“He’s getting away,” said the duke of Dolan with gloomy satisfaction.

“He is, isn’t he!” howled the regent. “Get him! Catch him, you fool!”

But even though the old trainer whipped and belabored his own horse, there was no doubt of the outcome. With every passing second, the brown galloped faster and faster until he was only a streak of limbs and flying mane skimming across the meadow. In a moment, he would be gone. Faintly, the watching party heard the blurred tattoo of his hooves. The unseated stable lad staggered to his feet and stared after his mount, mouth gaping.

“I fear you have lost a horse, and not just any horse either,” said the prince. “Alack and alas. Such a horse only appears once in a lifetime, my dear Botrell, and I would have gladly given a fortune to have that steed for my own. But with such speed comes great heart and will, and if neither choose freely to bend to servitude—nay, even friendship with a kindly master—then there’s no hope in keeping the animal. Ah—there—he’s gone.”

The regent ground his teeth at these words and did not trust himself to speak.

“If you would allow me, my lord,” said the duke of Mizra. “I might have a solution.”

“What’s that?”

“I would send my dog after your horse to bring him back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t raise sheep in my stables.”

“Sheep and horses can be turned the same, if they hear enough growling and see bared teeth.”

“But I don’t want that beast of yours biting my horse,” said the regent plaintively. “Why, if he caught him—and how could that bow-legged thing catch a horse?—he’d probably take a great chunk out of him or worse.”

“Holdfast will not touch a hair on him,” said the duke of Mizra. He bent and whispered into the dog’s ear and, when he was done, the dog ran off across the meadow toward where the horse had gone, toward the north.

“He’s fast,” said the duke of Dolan. “I’ll give you that, but he’s nowhere near the speed of his quarry.”

“Ah, but Holdfast can run all day and all night without tiring, and what horse have you known to possess such endurance? He’ll track him down, he will, and then herd him back as gently as a sheepdog tending a lamb.”

“Min the Morn could’ve run a month of Mondays and never broken sweat, so the stories say.” But the duke of Dolan said this under his breath and no one heard him except, perhaps, the prince of Harth, who smiled slightly at the older man.

“Perhaps,” said the prince, “our race should be deferred until the flower of your stable is brought back to hand? I would not want to have you at a disadvantage, my lord.”

“Nonsense,” sputtered Botrell. “This afternoon. Back here on the meadow!”

And with that, he spurred his horse away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LOOKING FOR CHALLENGERS

Ronan woke up that next morning frowning and smiling at the same time. He was clear with the Silentman. He had not been reinstated as the Knife of the Guild, true, and there was still the matter of payment, but that was nothing to worry about. The Silentman’s word was as good as the gold itself. It would only be a matter of time, as soon as the—the creature came to collect the boy.

He shuddered slightly at the thought. The little girl stared at him from across the room, her face reproachful in the thinning shadows of the morning. He sighed, and then she was gone. The shutters swung out to let in the sunlight. There was nothing in the room except for its few bare sticks of furniture. He poured water into a bowl and washed his face. Perhaps it was the water trickling through his fingers, or perhaps it was the sea breeze wandering in through the window, but he smiled.

Tonight was the night of the regent’s ball.

Liss Galnes.

It was the night to finish out the bargain she had made with him.

But then he frowned again. Clothing. He didn’t have clothes suitable for a regent’s ball. Smuggling her into the castle would be one thing, but keeping her safe once inside, safe and mingling with the silkened and bejeweled nobility of Tormay—that would be a different matter. His threadbare clothes would have them as conspicuous as an ogre in a tavern.

Perhaps the Silentman would pay him his money now? No. He’d get the gold sure enough, but not until the completion of the Guild’s contract. Not until the creature returned. No use trying to budge the Silentman.

Maybe a generous friend?

He didn’t have any friends.

That was the trouble with holding the office of the Knife. Going about leaning on people—quite hard, usually—and killing others every once in a while did not encourage friendships. The Guild was nothing more than a pack of wild dogs, and there was no love lost between the pack and the brute that kept them in line. Not much to show for thirteen years. All he had was scars and a head full of memories.

And then he smiled again, for he remembered it was Saturday.

Ronan slung his knife around his neck, dropping it down his back and under his shirt, and then he was out the door into the white glimmering dazzle of the morning sunshine. It was Saturday and there was gold to be made.

The city was coming alive. It seemed as if there was not room enough for the vast throng in the streets. To Ronan’s eye, it looked as if the buildings leaned back from the cobbled thoroughfares to provide more space, more air, more light. Creaking cart wheels, drovers shouting to their oxen, the staccato of hooves striking stone. The cry of vendors rose above the rumble of the city, hoarse from the days gone by and sounding like the greedy voices of seagulls. Awnings flapped in the breeze. He smelled the salt of the sea on the air, distant and sharp above all the other reeks of sweat and dung and spice and cheap perfumes. Three ragged children brushed by him and disappeared into the crowd. He automatically checked his pockets. He bought a loaf of bread at the bakery on the corner. The baker’s daughter cut a wedge of cheese for him as well—cut from the family’s own stock and not for sale. She smiled at him as she always did, but he did not see her.

The Queen’s Head tavern was on the north boundary of the Fishgate neighborhood, close to the streets where the merchants kept their warehouses and counting houses. The tavern drew clientele from around the city. Fishermen drank their ale there. Merchants huddled in meetings, arguing prices and interest and the relative merits of shipping by sea versus an overland caravan. The young sons of the nobility drank there, earnest in their slumming and loud in their bravado, for the heights of Highneck Rise were only a quick canter away—down through cool, tree-lined avenues and stately mansions until the city below came rising up in all of its hard stone and heat. The Guild drank at the tavern as well, for there were deals to be cut with the merchants, foolish lords to be swindled, and drunken fishermen to be sneered at. Besides, the brewer at the Queen’s Head was a master with ale and he kept one of the finest wine cellars in the city.

Saturdays, however, were special. That was the day when the Queen’s Head did its real business. Behind the tavern, hemmed in by the walls of a stable and two warehouses, was a large, cobbled yard. In the center of the yard stood a raised platform, square and built of wood. The planks were of oak. They were of different ages—some old and bleached by sunlight, some green hewn and freshly replaced. Stains marked them and sand was ground into their grain. And every Saturday, sweat and blood were spilled on that wood, for Saturdays were fighting days. Gold to be wagered and won. Challenges made—soberly, drunkenly, guessing the odds of one man against another. Reputations were made and lost.

It was to the Queen’s Head that Ronan had first come thirteen years ago, newly arrived in Hearne without name or prospects. Anyone would fight a skinny boy with an innocent smile. He had made a lot of money back then. Now, though, no one would fight the Knife. Except he was the Knife no longer.

He heard the roar from a street away. The sound was punctuated by the bright, ringing tones of iron clashing against iron. They had started early enough. There was nothing like a good fight in the morning to get your blood going. He grinned, and there was more in that grin akin to the anticipatory snarl of a sandcat as it leapt for a kill rather than the smile of a man.

The sign hanging over the door bore a faded painting of a severed head. Further down the way, between the warehouses flanking the street’s end, the stone wall of the wharf was visible, with one pier stretching away on the hard glitter of the sea. Ronan pushed through the door into the gloom of the common room. It was empty except for a potboy scrubbing skewers in the ashes of the fireplace. On Saturdays, no one bothered drinking indoors at the Queen’s Head.

The passage at the back led to another door that opened up into the yard and a sudden blaze of sound and sunlight and the smell of sweat. A steep ring of steps circled the perimeter of the yard so that the platform in the center stood comfortably below the eyes of the entire audience. Shouts of derision and cheers rang off the walls. Ronan edged along the top step until he stood in the shadow of the east wall.

It wasn’t yet noon, but the yard was already packed. He had never seen it so. Perhaps it was because of the Autumn Fair. Casually, he glanced around the crowd. Here and there were faces he knew. As of yet, though, no one seemed to have taken notice of his entrance. Not that it mattered, but some habits would be forever inescapable.

He nudged the man next to him.

“First fight of the morning?”

“Nay, friend,” said the other without taking his eyes from the platform. “Third, and that fool of a Thuleman is about to be taken by the Guardsman. But more fool I to put coin on him.”

“Muscle and broad shoulders don’t always mean a win,” said Ronan.

Light flashed on sword blades as the two men on the platform flung themselves at each other in a flurry of blows. Rather, it was the Thuleman who flung himself forward, using his sword as if he thought it a club with which to bludgeon the other into defeat. He was a good head taller than his opponent, towering over him with a hand’s reach to boot and a brawny build that undoubtedly came from hard years of shifting the weights and measures of life. And yet, it was the Thuleman who dripped with sweat that streaked his arms red where the other’s blade had already found him. His opponent was only a lad, certainly tall enough, but looking small in the shadow of the giant Thuleman.

Ronan blinked. He’d seen that face before. Of course. Arodilac Bridd. None of the clumsy coltishness was on exhibit now. None of the awkwardness that knocked over cups and saucers.

“I’m afraid the boy’s just toying with your Thulish fool,” he said.

“Don’t I know it,” groaned his neighbor. “I thought him just a gangly lad when he took the fight.”

“Lad he might be, but he’s the nephew of the regent and learned his swordplay under the hand of Owain Gawinn, the Lord Captain of the Guard. Your money’s lost.”

With a bellow, the Thuleman leapt forward. His sword swung around in a gleaming arc. The other blade drifted up and almost contemptuously deflected the arc from its deadly path. It was the sort of defense Ronan had learned as a child—rote, unthinking skill—easily predicted and easily done. But what was not so easily predicted was the huge fist barreling in from the other side. The Thuleman was not such a fool. Arodilac’s eyes widened with the impact and the lad staggered back the length of the platform, arms threshing to keep his balance. The sword clattered free on the wood. A joyous shout went up from the crowd. The sea of faces jammed up around the platform’s edge surged. Now this was what they liked. Ronan’s neighbor hollered in delight.

“He’s got him yet!”

Ronan shook his head. It had been an unforgivable lapse on the lad’s part, but Owain Gawinn taught more than swordplay to his soldiers.

“How’d you like that, you whippersnapper!” yelled the giant Thuleman, grinning all over his sunburnt face. He stalked forward, planting one foot on the other’s sword. Arodilac did not bother answering, but only smiled. The blade whistled down at him, but he had already launched himself forward, under the sweep of the blade and legs scissoring around the giant’s knees. The man toppled over backwards, only to spring upright with an oath. It was too late. Arodilac’s sword was an efficient wall of steel that briskly beat him back. He was hemmed in, unable to do more than to feebly block some of the blows and retreat. And retreat he did, until there was no longer any wood underfoot and he fell off the platform’s edge like a giant tree cut at the root by the woodman’s axe.

Those beneath the Thuleman’s fall shouted in surprise, but such was the press of people around them that they had nowhere for retreat and so were also felled by Arodilac’s last blow, crushed under weight of the Thuleman. The crowd howled with delight. Oddsmen worked their way through the press, consulting their slates and collecting or paying out the take. The Thuleman staggered to his feet and slunk off, hunching his shoulders against the blows and jeers that came his way. Cheering and yelling, a group of young nobles mobbed the platform and carried a blushing Arodilac off on their shoulders to the far corner of the yard. Serving girls pushed their way through the throng with trays of ale held high.