‘You’d think that if the Cap’n was only letting three men go and drink outside the palace, he’d pick three as was clean and well kitted,’ Milus said, fingering Long Paw’s threadbare doublet.
Long Paw wanted to say that it was a working evening and he didn’t want to ruin good kit in a fight, but the three of them had the strictest orders about secrecy. So he stood silently.
Ser Milus made a face. ‘I’ll go tell the fucking gate,’ he said, and walked out with the faint rattle and clash of a man in full harness.
‘He’s only in a state as it’s not his watch,’ No Head said to his mates. ‘Ser Alcaeus is on the roster – didn’t show to relieve his nibs.’
They were all back at attention when Bad Tom, announced by his leg armour, clanked back into the guardroom. ‘All right. You’re all clear. Drink for me, you bastards.’ Ser Milus appeared, and Tom whispered to him, and the surly standard bearer’s face cleared. He stepped back and nodded. ‘I’m for bed,’ he said, a little too loudly.
The three archers saluted and moved quickly out the guardroom door into the torchlit Outer Courtyard before Bad Tom could change his mind.
They passed through the gate, exchanged passwords with the Nordikans there, and Cully and Bent went immediately across the Great Square. Long Paw dropped away.
‘Look impressed,’ Cully hissed. ‘We can’t seem too sure of ourselves.’
So they drifted from statue to statue for a while, until Cully was sure. Bent was standing with his thumbs in his belt, admiring one of a naked woman with a sword.
‘We’re being followed,’ Cully said with satisfaction. ‘Let’s go.’
An hour later and the two men sat in a taverna lit by oil lamps, listening to four musicians play Morean instruments. The two archers didn’t know what the instruments were called, but they obviously liked the music, as well as the attention of the two young women who had attached themselves to the foreigners.
The crowd was thick – surprisingly thick for the time of night.
Bent’s girl became increasingly insistent, and he looked at Cully in mute appeal. Cully looked around carefully, and shrugged. ‘Stick it out a while longer,’ he said.
A voice behind Cully said, ‘Just go with the girls,’ but when he turned his head, there was no one there.
Cully leaned forward to Bent and made a sign, and Bent grinned. He dumped his girl off his lap, tossed a silver leopard to the musicians and let her pull him up the rickety stairs to the balcony above, and the tiny rooms behind over-fancy doors.
Cully’s girl took his hand in hers and all but dragged him past the music, and an elderly workman in a crushed straw hat muttered ‘Lucky bastard’ in surprisingly good Alban. Cully gave the man a broad wink and ran up the stairs.
Long Paw pulled the hat down over his eyes, paid for his wine, and slipped through the beaded curtain that served as a main door.
The street outside the taverna wasn’t packed – but there were a dozen or more men leaning against corners and pillars, all wearing swords. He kept his shoulders stooped and shuffled his feet.
One of the bravos in the street bumped into him – hard, and a-purpose. Long Paw allowed himself to lose his footing and fall, like an untrained man.
‘Fuck you, farmer,’ spat the bravo. ‘Stay clear of my sword.’
Long Paw crawled away, turned a corner and bolted. He’d had three days to get to know the area and he still found it difficult in the darkness. He went down an alley, got turned around, and had to climb a rickety fence. A small church gave him his bearings – he was, after all, less than a stadion from the palace.
He tossed his smelly farmer’s overshirt and his straw hat, got his scabbarded sword in his left hand, and ran.
The man sitting on the whore’s bed was wearing mail. His two henchmen filled the rest of the room, and they both had heavily padded jupons and heavy clubs.
‘So,’ the man said. ‘You two want to leave the Emperor’s service?’
Cully shrugged. ‘Maybe, and maybe not,’ he said. ‘I heard there was money in it.’
Bent couldn’t quite squeeze into the room. He watched the young woman slip down the corridor with real regret. He also noted that armed men were starting to fill the common room below.
‘Looks to me like you plan to have us whether we want to come or not,’ he said.
The man on the bed spread his hands. ‘You know,’ he said with a nasty smile, ‘either way, your mates will think you deserted, eh, foreigner?’
The Captain had been firm – they were to play the part of greedy mercenaries all the way to the end. Cully narrowed his eyes. ‘You mean there’s no money?’ he asked. He had a hand on his dagger.
The two thugs in jupons moved towards him, raising their clubs.
‘We’ll talk about money later,’ said the man on the bed. ‘That’s not my decision to make.’
‘I don’t like these odds,’ Bent said. He’d been leaning in the doorway, cramped by his own size and the smallness of the room. Now he seemed to uncoil. He didn’t fully draw his sword, but rather he slammed the pommel into the teeth of the nearest thug, who had somewhat foolishly chosen to ignore him. The man bent over, spitting teeth, and Bent broke his nose and kneed him in the groin in a single breath while Cully drew his dagger right-handed and mystified the other thug by swapping hands – the man blocked his empty right and received the left in his right eye. He fell, dead. Bent’s man fell wheezing, and opened his mouth to scream.
Cully looked at Bent. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said.
Bent stepped on his fallen adversary’s throat.
The man on the bed turned white as a sheet. ‘Don’t you touch me,’ he said. ‘My people are all around you.’
Cully shook his head. ‘So – there’s no money?’
The man bit his lip.
‘If you scream, I’ll gut you,’ Bent said. He pulled the door closed. To Cully, he said, ‘There’s twenty men down there. I don’t think they plan to negotiate.’
Cully shook his head. ‘Fuck me. You thought you could take us down with two fat fucks?’ He sounded annoyed. ‘And now you’re alone with us. Doesn’t that seem like bad planning?’
‘He’s not their boss,’ Bent said. ‘Look at him.’
The man was terrified.
Cully reached for the heavy shutters on the window. Bent stopped him. ‘Crossbows,’ he said.
‘Oh, fuck,’ muttered Cully. ‘What have we got ourselves into?’
Ser Alcaeus spent more time with his mother than with the rest of the company – not by choice, but because the princess’s hold on the throne was more precarious than the Alban mercenaries seemed to imagine and his mother, the Lady Maria, was working very hard to fill the posts of the court and to get the basic machinery of justice and tax collection running properly. In their short time back in Liviapolis, Ser Alcaeus had twice had to debate a point with his mother’s inner council and then sat in on one of the Red Knight’s – the Duke of Thrake’s – meetings and had to debate the same point again. Once, he’d found his view changed and ended up debating the opposite point of view.
Eight days of riding the tiger and Alcaeus was exhausted. He avoided his chambers in the palace – he was too easy to find there – and walked across the Outer Court to the Athanatos barracks. Alone of the men in the company, he knew what a symbolic honour it was for a company of mercenaries to take the barracks of what had once been the Empire’s elite cavalry regiment.
He’d played in the neglected barracks as a child – he’d kissed a pretty Ordinary there and taken her by the hand and run into the barracks as an adolescent, on a perfumed May day.
Now the barracks were clean and full of life, and he passed the outer door as the great gates of the Outer Court were opened behind him.
Bad Tom was sitting at the duty desk. He looked up. ‘Ah! Where the fuck have you been, then?’
‘And a pleasant evening to you, too, Ser Thomas,’ said the Morean.