The Sorcerer's Ascension (15 page)

He and Jon settled themselves where everyone else stood or sat in the main room of the building to explain what had taken place. Jon told the group about his run in with guild man.

“So basically we either join the guild or pay their extortion, or tax as they like to call it. You all know how I feel about the guild. Once you throw in with them, you belong completely to them. You do what you’re told when you’re told no matter your feelings on the subject. If they tell you to rob a widow of her last coins, you do it. They tell you to break in and rob a merchant and kill him if he objects, then you do it or you’ll be found floating in harbor.”

Everyone was silent for several moments. Maggy broke the silence and asked, “What are we going to do then?”

Jon responded simply. “We’ll do what we can as best we can like we always have done. We’ll pay their tax if we can and if we can’t well, I seriously doubt they’ll waste too much effort on the likes of us. We’re not even small time thieves; we’re just some folks trying to survive.”

“I hope you’re right, Jon,” Ryan said, “because I don’t swim very well, especially with my throat cut and my pockets full of ballast.”

They all went off to sleep in their corners while Azerick bedded down in his tiny stone-walled fortress. He thought about what the hard-looking man had said and felt a strong sense of unease course through him. He was certain that this was not the last they would hear of this situation.

Word was out on the street that the family of one of the homes in the wealthier part of the city was going to go on holiday or visiting relatives outside of Southport or some such. Azerick investigated the rumors and found that it was the same manor that had unceremoniously thrown him out several weeks earlier.

Azerick watched the comings and goings of the manor for three days before he saw the coach leave with the master, his homely wife, and fat son. The disgusting stableman looked to have scrubbed himself clean and dressed in something resembling livery for his secondary role as driver.

He still looks like a pig no matter how fancy you dress him,
Azerick thought as he watched the coach depart.

Azerick darted down the street and into one of the small alleys created by the tall, stone walls of a couple of nearby mansions and where Azerick had stashed some things he would need. He pulled several tight-woven oilcloth sacks from under piles of refuse. Even with the treated canvas, dark stains showed through and a foul stench emanated from the bags. He carried them the few blocks to the wall that surrounded the manor and threw them over, making four trips to retrieve them all.

He then strode casually up to the gate where the same guard that had stood watch before was again acting as gateman and sentry. Azerick was confident that the man would not recognize him, few people committed the faces of the homeless to memory and the man was not exceptionally bright, another example of the master’s miserly and stingy nature.

“
What’a
ya want, boy?” the guard asked lazily.

“Sir, the master ordered Baldric to muck out the stables, but he
din’t
get round to it and told me
ta
have it done
b’fore
he got back or he’d beat me
somethin
’ fierce,” Azerick told the man in a low-class drawl.

The guard rubbed his stubble covered chin with one rough-nailed hand. “I don’t know. I weren’t told
nothin
’ about anything like that.”

“Please, sir, Baldric said he
din’t
want nobody
ta
know lest word got back to the master that he was
shirkin
’ his duties. I
gots
ta
get inside and get it done. You know how he likes to take the leather to a boy,” Azerick pleaded. “I’ll give ya half what he paid me
if’n
you’ll let me pass. I get good work here and I want
ta
keep it without fear o’ Baldric’s lash.”

The guard’s eyes lit up at the mention of a bribe. “How much he give you, boy?”

“Two silver, sir. One I got now that I’ll give
ta
ya, the other I’ll get from Baldric when I finishes the job an’ he gets back.”

“Let’s see it then.”

Azerick fished the coin out of his pocket. He hated to give up the sum that he had held back from his earnings and pickings of the past weeks, but it was a justified means to an end in his mind.

The guard snatched the coin from Azerick’s hand through the bars quicker than Azerick would have given him credit for before opening the gate a crack. Azerick went straight for the stables, examined the loft, and formulated his plan.

He lifted a stall door from its hinges then tried to muscle the wooden half-gate up a ladder and into the loft, but it was too heavy. He found a block and tackle suspended from the roof used to lift the heavy bales of hay on a wooden platform dangling from a series of ropes suspended over-head. Azerick used it to hoist the door into the loft. He then then set the door down flat across two bales of hay like a tabletop, with the bale closest to the edge of the loft barely under the edge of the stall door.

Once the door was in place, he returned to the stalls and began scooping piles of horse dung into a small cart. When the cart was full, he wheeled it to the hoisting platform and dumped as much droppings as he thought he could lift onto it.

Azerick scrambled back up the ladder into the loft, tied a couple bales of hay to the pull rope, and rode it down to the stall floor where he tied the rope off to a ring set in the floor. He climbed back up into the loft and scooped the dung onto the door lying atop the hay bales. He repeated the process several times until he had a couple hundred pounds of manure piled atop the stable door perched precariously across two bales of hay.

Once he had as much filth piled up as the gate would hold, he returned the bales of hay back into the loft, stacking them back out of reach of the gaff so that the only bale within reach was the one holding up the front half of the stable door. He then used the cart to retrieve the heavy oilcloth sacks and wheeled them up to one of the servant entrances.

 
After checking that the coast was clear, Azerick grabbed a few of the laden sacks and carried them up into the crawlspace. Once inside, he untwisted the wire holding the sacks closed and almost retched at the horrid stench that wafted out. He remembered the perfumed kerchief he had swiped from a woman in the market square and tied it over his nose and mouth.

The stench of the decaying carcasses of the dogs, cats, and rodents inside the sacks still threatened to sicken him before he finished his work, but he forced down the bile that arose in his stomach and dumped the remains between the walls of several rooms within the manor. It took several trips to before he emptied the last sack between the wood slat and plaster walls.

Seeing that he still had a bit of time for more mischief, Azerick took a bucket and filled it several times at the well used to fill the horses’ water troughs. He liberally soaked the dung pile concealed in the loft then covered it with loose straw before leaving by way of the gate, tipping a make-believe hat to the guard and whistling a jaunty tune on his way out.

The wealthy family returned three days later from their short trip, enjoying the warmth of the early summer. The guard opened the gate at the approach of the carriage. The horses’ hooves clopping on the flagstone courtyard alerted those inside the manor to the return of the master and his family.

The fat cook, alerted by the sound of the carriage, stood in the courtyard wringing his hands in the front of his apron. The sweat that poured down his bloated face had little to do with the heat of the day.

Baldric climbed down from the driver’s bench of the carriage and opened the door for his master and family, extending an arm for the missus as she exited the coach.

“Bring in the luggage after you have seen to the horses, Baldric,” the master drawled as he strode towards the house.

“Aye, milord, won’t be but a moment,” Baldric replied and led the horses by hand towards the stables.

“My Lord,” the cook said as he intercepted the master, using an honorific that the master was not technically entitled to seeing as how he was not actually a nobleman despite his pretenses.

“What is it?” he snapped, the short amount of travel he had done shortening his normally quick temper.

“It is the manor, My Lord. There is a foulness that we have not been able to locate,” the cook replied nervously.

The master looked confused. He had already spent a fortune replacing several termite-infested beams. “What sort of foulness?”

“I do not know, My Lord. The servants have left every door and window in the house open in hopes of airing it out, but it has had little effect.”

They could now make out the putrid scent wafting out of the open windows and doors as they approached.

“Oh, what is that horrible smell?” the master’s homely and dim-witted wife asked as she pressed a scented silk kerchief to her nose.

The family walked into the house only to bolt back out seconds later, the missus and her fat son vomiting most undignified upon the flagstones, the master cursing and gagging.

Baldric parked the carriage under an overhead cover to protect its fine glossy paint from the sun and elements and led the horses to their stalls. He glanced at the empty stall that lacked a door that he was certain had been there when he left. He scratched his head in confusion but lacked the desire to tax his brain to devote the necessary energy to the mystery.

Baldric grabbed his gaff, snagged a hay bale with its iron hook, and gave it a sharp tug. He watched the bale fall and guided it away from him so it would not land on his head, something he learned after clobbering himself more than once with the fifty-pound bales.

The moment Baldric pulled hay bale down, the soppy, dung-laden platform tilted downward, its front no longer supported by the bale, and dumped its entire load onto the head of the stableman. Before he could fathom what had just befallen him and utter a curse, the heavy stall door slid down from the edge of the loft and crashed onto the top of his head, knocking him senseless into the muck.

The decaying carcasses inside the walls of the manner had quickly turned to a rancid mess of entrails and bones under the assault of the summer heat and soaked into the wood and plaster of the manor. The vile taint had so infested the insides of the home that the entire structure had to be razed and burned after several failed attempts to clean it out. Azerick watched from across the street, smiling at the orange flames and greasy black smoke that curled into the air like his own personal banner of triumph.

Azerick had almost forgotten the unease that had lingered in his gut after hearing the conversation between Jon and the thieves’ guildsman. They were all sitting around inside the common room as they called it, where they all supped together and were awaiting the return of Ryan and Steven. They were long past due to return and there was talk of going out to search for them. Maggy was certain something bad had befallen the pair. Margaret was comforting her when the man guarding the door yelled in and said he saw them coming up the street. The two men soon stumbled into the room a moment later bruised and battered.

“Steven, Ryan what happened to you?” Jon asked his voice thick with concern.

Maggy ran to help Steven sit down, held him, and dabbed at his spilt lip and cut brow with a damp rag.

“Several men jumped us on the street a few blocks from here as we were returning. They took what we had pilfered and told us that what we had wasn’t nearly enough to pay the guild's tax and that we had better pay them in silver by the end of the week or we would all be paying them in blood,” Steven said as Maggy ministered his cuts and bruises.

“Damn it, Jon, I’m not going to end up dead because you don’t have the guts to do what needs to be done. I’m leaving tonight. I’m sorry, Jon. You’re a good man, but I don’t have anyone here but myself, and if I did have someone, I’d get out and take them with me and you all should do the same. I’ll not cross the guild. You see what they’ll do, and this is just the start,” Ryan exclaimed before getting up to pack his few belongings.

“Ryan please, we’ll pay their tax. We’ll come up with something tonight,” Jon swore.