Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (25 page)

They were quite alone in the stable, which suited Alberich's mood perfectly.
:You've told Taver and Talamir we're going out tonight?:
he asked Kantor, throwing only the plainest and most basic of saddle pads and blankets over Kantor's back.

:Of course.:
Kantor looked back over his shoulder as Alberich tightened the girth.
:We're going out the private entrance?:

:Of course.:
Alberich swung up into the saddle, and they made their way across the Field. Kantor's hooves made no sound at all on the soft grass; they moved across the silver expanse like a pair of spirits gliding over the surface of a silent sea.

There was a little gate at the far end of the wall around Companion's Field that would have been a dreadful security hole had it not been closed by three doors—the final one of iron cunningly cast to look exactly like the rusty-brown stone that the wall itself was made of. Only Talamir, Sendar, and Dethor had held the keys to those doors, and Dethor had given his to Alberich. Furthermore, the iron one was so heavy that it required a Companion's strength to haul it open from the outside, and it wasn't likely that anyone with a horse or a mule was going to be able to get along the outer wall of the Palace without a challenge. And
then
a would-be intruder would have to get his mount to push instead of pull. Not too likely, that. It was an amazingly clever door, that actually could swing in an entire one-hundred-eighty-degree arc—but there was a springloaded stop on it that worked as a fairly high doorsill to keep it from swinging outward; a stop that could only be dropped down level to the ground from the inside. So Kantor could push it to swing
out
when they were on the inside, but no one could
pull
it out from the outside. Locking the door released it again, and as Alberich turned his key in that final lock, he heard it
smack
up into place on its spring.

There was no one on the road, but several times he looked up to see one of the Guards keeping watch on the wall, so well hidden in the shadows that only he, who knew
every
hiding place along it, could have spotted them. He nodded to them, and got a little hand signal in recognition. The Palace Guard, at least, now knew and trusted him.

Of course, he'd trained a good many of them, and bouted regularly with all of them. You learned a lot about a man, sparring with him. Once Kimel had accepted him, the rest had started coming around.

He wasn't in Whites tonight—and that would have made him instantly recognizable to the Guards no matter what. He could have Whites if he wanted them . . . but he didn't want them. He'd become accustomed to those dark gray leathers; they suited him, suited his nature, suited his wish to be something less conspicuous.

:As if you could be anything other than conspicuous,:
Kantor scoffed.

:When I'm with you, perhaps not,:
he acknowledged.
:You are rather conspicuous all by yourself.:

By alleys and shortcuts that only he knew, he and Kantor slipped quietly among the mansions of the highborn, through the townhouses of the wealthy, and suddenly came out on a side street in a neighborhood of inns and taverns. They were only paces away from the Companion's Bell, a respectable inn that was their intermediate goal.

Alberich felt that tightening of his muscles again, and a quickening of his pulse. It was time to go to work, work that he understood, work that he, and only he,
could
do.

The Bell had several distinct advantages for what he was about to do. Firstly, it was a place often frequented by Heralds, so the sight of a Companion in a loose-box would not go remarked, nor would the sight of Alberich entering the stableyard. Second, the Heralds had a private taproom available to them—Heralds could and
did
mingle with the regular customers, but no one would think twice about Alberich not appearing among them, for plenty of Heralds who came here kept to the private room.

Ah, but then there was the third reason. . . .

He dismounted, and Kantor followed him into the stable. There were two other Companions there already, who whickered a welcome to both of them.
:Excellent,:
Kantor said.
:I shall have reinforcements—if you need them.:

Alberich snorted, and left Kantor to make himself at home in a third loose-box as he approached the far wall, and the third reason for his being here.

The third reason for his being here and no other place, was that the Bell had a locked room at the back of the stable that contained a trunk, and had a second locked door that let out onto an alley. A very dark alley, and one that, somehow, never had patrols of constables or City Guard at night.

He unlocked the door. He paused just long enough to light a spill at the lantern beside the door, then locked himself inside. There was a second lantern there, which he lit.

In that trunk had been Dethor's disguises; now it held Alberich's.

Someone else—Alberich thought it was probably the innkeeper himself—had a key to that room, for any clothing he left atop the trunk was taken away and laundered and placed back inside it. Some disguises, of course,
shouldn't
be cleaned—the stains and yes, the odor lent verisimilitude to his persona. Those he put back in the trunk himself, wrapped in a waxed canvas bag to keep from stinking up the rest of his gear.

Tonight, however, it was about time for Aarak Benshane, a common enough thug with a reputation for not asking too many questions of prospective employers, to put in an appearance at the Blue Boar. Aarak was not too noisome a fellow; Alberich could get away with cleanliness tonight.

Alberich opened the trunk and selected his disguise with care; leather trews, battered boots and hat, scarred black leather jerkin strong enough to turn most blades, and a shirt of no particular color that was a bit frayed about the cuffs and collar. Over these, he slung a belt holding two knives, but no sword. Aarak did most of his work with his fists.

:That should suit you, considering the mood you're in.:
Kantor was not being ironic nor sarcastic this time.

:As a matter of fact,:
Alberich replied,
:it does.:

By day, the tavern that was his goal, the Boar, was a quiet enough tavern, serving manual laborers at the nearby warehouses. At night, however, it took on a rougher clientele. Some of the laborers returned to drink away their earnings, and they were joined by others, for whom the warehouses were of less-than-legitimate interest. Aarak fit right in there; he
might
hire himself out as a day laborer, if he was inclined to do manual labor, or forced into it, but he would far rather serve as the lookout for thugs who planned a little late-night looting.

Alberich let himself out into the alley. It was dark back there, shadowed on both sides by tall buildings, but he knew his way around Haven even in pitchy black. He kept to the alleys for the most part, only crossing streets when he had to, and at length, found himself in the warehouse area where the Boar stood.

There was a lot of coming and going around a warehouse, and no one asked what was being stored there very often. And, of course, warehouses were full of things that were already packed for transportation; what could be more attractive and easier for a bold gang of thieves?

Alberich had been recruited by such gangs, once or twice, though never out of the Blue Boar, and never as Aarak. He had hopes, though, and he nursed his thin, sour beer at a table here several times a moon, waiting to see if his patient fishing would catch him another gang of thieves.

He opened the door quietly. It wasn't a good idea to make any kind of an entrance into the Boar
.
There were always people there who would take that sort of hubris amiss.

He paused, just inside the door, and caught himself.

Damn. Come on. Don't show anything, or you're dead.
He shoved on inside the door on strength of will, until his vision cleared and he could pretend that he hadn't just had a flash of ForeSight.

The regular servers knew him by now, or at least, they knew Aarak's distinctive hat. He caught the eye of one, nodded at a vacant table off to one side of the room, and took his seat there. Within a reasonable length of time, the server appeared with a jack of beer.

Despite Kantor's needling, he'd had a few hopes that someone
might
try to recruit him tonight—a full moon now meant moon-dark in a fortnight, and moon-dark meant the possibility of work.

But the truth was, from the moment he'd crossed the threshold, he knew that Dethor had been right about a tavern brawl in the offing. Even if he hadn't gotten that brief—very brief—glimpse of a tumble of fighting bodies on the floor of the place from his ForeSight, he'd have known it. There was something in the air tonight, something wild and edgy, something that made Kantor, back in his stall, prick up his ears and ask wordlessly, and in all seriousness this time, if Alberich thought he'd need any help.

Alberich never actually got a chance to reply. He was just starting on the first swallow of his beer, when the fight erupted over a card cheat, three tables down.

The cheater had friends, and the friends waded in, and Alberich saw—

He came to himself long enough to dodge out of the way of a tumbling body, and shoved his hand into a special belt pouch he always wore as Aarak. It held weighted knuckle guards, his preferred weapon for brawling. He didn't like using blades in a brawl—he was there to immobilize people, not kill them. No point in killing them, when, if they were what he
really
wanted, he wanted them alive, to question.

Another flash of blue, freezing him for a moment.

Alberich shook his head to free it of the vision, as shouts and cries of pain marked the center of the brawl. A drunk, stinking of beer, blundered into him and made a wild swing at him.

And that was just enough. Alberich sprang into motion, like a mastiff held leashed and suddenly released. A savage grin with nothing of joy in it split his face. He ducked under the other's swing and gut-punched the drunk with his laden fist, stepping out of the way and shoving him to one side to topple him before he spewed the contents of his stomach all over everything in front of him.

That was it; that was all his ForeSight showed him. But it was enough. When his eyes cleared for the third time, he saw the three men beginning to make their way towards the bar.

Ha.
Another drunk approached, got one look at his face, and flinched away. Alberich shoved him aside, straight-armed another, shouldered into a third.

And when the three would-be robbers reached their goal, he was already there, waiting.

They
only saw one more temporary obstacle in their path, and moved to clear it.

They weren't very good with their lead-weighted clubs, which was probably why the clubs were weighted in the first place. And they hadn't practiced fighting as a team either. He managed to get the first two to tangle each other up for a moment, by grabbing the first and shoving him bodily into the arms of the second. They weren't expecting anyone to reach
for
them—

While the first two were shouting and tripping over each other, he stepped in toward the third, came in low, and laid out his target with a brass-laden right to the point of the chin.

His fist connected solidly, with a satisfying impact that snapped the fellow's head back and sent him sailing across the floor to land over a table. It didn't break, of course. The tavernkeeper didn't want the expense of replacing furniture every moon. The Boar's tables and chairs would stand up to a charging bull and the bull would come away second best.

Now he felt it, that heady pleasure—which would be a guilty one, later, when he came to think about it—that rush of energy and unholy glee that only came during a fight. Fighting-drunk; that was what Dethor called it, for it wasn't

the berserk rage that wiped out thought and sense. On the contrary, it made him sharper, and he enjoyed it when he was fighting in a way that would make him feel a bit ashamed of himself later. But now, it widened his manic grin and filled his veins with lightning.

When the first two got clear of each other, he grabbed them both and shoved their heads together with a
crack
that echoed even over the noise of the brawl. One went down; the other didn't.

He was stunned, though—stunned just long enough.

Alberich grabbed his shoulder and spun him around to face forward; pulled back his fist, and delivered a gut-punch that made the fool's eyes bug out as he toppled to the floor.

He looked around for the trio's friends, the ones he'd seen in his vision, but they, seeing that the cash snatchers were down and out and there was no reason to continue the fight any further, began breaking free of their little knots of combat and scuttling away.

He thought about pursuing. His blood was up now, and he was ready to chase down half a dozen of the young thugs.