Assassins' Dawn (4 page)

“Gunnar,” he repeated. “I don’t believe this. We thought—” he broke off his speech and came around the table. With a guttural obscenity, he took Gunnar’s hand, then clasped him fully. Gunnar managed a wan smile.

“By all the ippicators in hell, man, you stink.” Potok held Gunnar at arm’s length and looked down at the mud that now smeared his own clothing. “Where’ve you been crawling?”

“I’d rather not think about it.” Gunnar’s grin wavered and died as the color drained from his face. He ignored the others in the room—guild-kin, all members of his own ruling guild—looking at Potok with eyes quickly moist and fragile. His gaze darted about, without seeing anything, from the table ringed with moisture from glasses to the faces staring at him to the empty, black windows. “Potok,” he said, with discernable effort in his voice, “they killed Ricia. I saw it.”

“Ricia? Who, the Hoorka?”

“No, some others.” Gunnar remembered the Hoorka’s eyes.
M’Dame Cuscratti was not killed by Hoorka,
he’d said.
You will bear the truth of that.
And Gunnar understood the implicit threat in those words. “I don’t know who they were, unless that bastard Vingi sent them. They weren’t Hoorka, at least I don’t think so . . .” His voice trailed off as he seemed to notice the others for the first time. “Sirrahs Tuirrene, de Vegnes, Hollbrook, m’Dame Avina.” He nodded to each in turn. “I’m sorry to have to bear such tidings to my kin. I, umm, don’t . . .”

He turned back to Potok. “I’m just tired, too tired.” He shook his head and took a slow breath. “I seem to have interrupted a meeting of the Guild Council. Have I disturbed something of importance?” Gunnar looked at m’Dame Avina, but she seemed intent on studying a chip on the side of her mocha cup.

“Gunnar?” Potok’s voice brought Gunnar’s head around sharply. “We were meeting to discuss the future of our guild, to elect a new kin-lord.”

“You couldn’t wait? You couldn’t take the time to know that I’d been killed? Is that what you’re saying, my friend?” Gunnar’s voice held an edge that cut all of them.

“No one here thought you’d escape the Hoorka.”

“You didn’t seem upset when I decided to run rather than remain here. And had you elected the new head?” Scorn lashed them.

“We”—Potok glanced back at the others—“hadn’t yet come to a decision.”

“Then I’m sorry to have interrupted you with such alarming news.” As if he could no longer sustain his anger, Gunnar slumped, leaning heavily against the wall. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “I have to rest. There’s much we have to do. With Ricia gone”—the pain returned briefly to his face—“we have no contacts among the upper strata of Sterka. Discuss that, if you must plot and plan. And send someone to see Ricia’s guild-kin and offer our support, to make sure that all the rites are performed for her, until I can see to it myself.” He paused, and the room seemed to waver before him. “I need a bed,” he said, simply.

“Upstairs. Your normal room.” Gunnar, with Potok’s help, took his leave. At the door to the bedroom, Gunnar paused and sighed. “My legs ache like hell.” He shook his head, started a laugh tinged with hysteria, then shook his head again.

Potok opened the door for him and took his arm. “I
am
glad to see you again, Gunnar.”

“Despite any thwarted ambitions?”

“You taught me ambition. If I’ve learned too well, you can only blame yourself. And with the Hoorka contract, it was easy to think of you as . . . dead.” Potok shrugged. “The guild would have declared bloodfeud when the Hoorka revealed the signer of the contract. You would have had your revenge, and the gods would have been at rest.”

“A small compensation, I suppose. And I did enjoy the guilt on your faces when I entered. Tell me, Potok, who had you elected?”

Potok stared at Gunnar, his eyes challenging. “Myself. But I step down gladly now that you’re back.” A pause. “Truthfully.”

“I’ll sleep easier for that knowledge.” Gunnar nodded his thanks to Potok and closed the door.

On his way downstairs, Potok wondered if it had been sarcasm or merely weariness in Gunnar’s voice.

Chapter 2

T
HE HOORKA-THANE was possessed by the closest approximation of rage any had ever seen in him. The Thane found himself very aware of Sondall-Cadhurst Cranmer, watching from a floater near the thermal duct behind the Thane. He knew the man, the little scholar, would be alternately fascinated and frightened by the outburst, and that he would be busily recording the new facets of the Thane’s personality that this outrush of temper revealed.

That knowledge did nothing to quell the irritation. The Thane faced Aldhelm and Sartas, his face lined with emotion. “Gunnar simply escaped, you say. Unarmed. Alone.” The words fell like hammer blows. “The two of you let him live until dawn. Two supposedly competent Hoorka let simple prey escape them?” The Thane’s voice was laced with mock surprise that raked Aldhelm and Sartas. The Hoorka bore the outburst in obedient silence.

The Thane gestured with a fisted hand. “Do both of you need training in rudimentary exercises? I won’t permit this, not now. I won’t have Hoorka destroyed by incompetence. You, Aldhelm.” In a swirling of nightcloak, the Thane turned and glared at him. “You’re the best knife man of our kin. How could you have missed, how could you have allowed this to happen?”

Aldhelm and Sartas looked at the Thane, though neither one moved nor spoke. His last words came redundantly back at them, an echo from the far walls of the cavern in which they stood. Hoverlamps glistened from water-filmed rocks and ruddied their complexions, making deep hollows of their eyes. Underasgard. Hoorka-home. The caverns. Again the Thane was conscious of Cranmer watching from his vantage point, and he remembered that once the scholar had made the comparison between the Thane and the caverns: both cool, dark, and with hidden recesses you felt more than saw. And one more thing that he hadn’t said. Old.

A vibroblade gleamed in the Thane’s hand, the luminous tip describing short lines of brilliance in the atmosphere of the cavern—the Thane had brought them away from the well-lit rooms of the main caverns, not wanting to admonish the two Hoorka in public. Vibro held foremost, the Thane advanced upon them. They didn’t flinch.

“Do the two of you realize what you’ve done? When I came to Neweden there were no Hoorka, only a band of petty thugs without kinship; lassari, no more respect than the processions of the Dead. I spent years setting up our guild, gaining us grudging respect, making this a group protected by the Neweden Assembly and tolerated by the Alliance. Idiots!”

The blade swept before their eyes. The following wind cut them coldly. Cranmer—the Thane saw him at the edge of his peripheral vision—jumped involuntarily, but the two Hoorka before the Thane stood in taut rigidity.

“The Li-Gallant Vingi himself signed that contract,” the Thane continued. “Gunnar’s death would have left the opposing Ruling Guild in shambles—and Vingi might have had total control of the Assembly. Don’t you see the possibilities there? Fools!”

The Thane gesticulated violently and the vibro tip gashed Aldhelm’s cheek. Blood, bright scarlet, ran freely, but Aldhelm didn’t grimace or show pain beyond a narrowing of his eyes. The Thane cursed himself inwardly: he shouldn’t have drawn blood then, shouldn’t have let his anger at circumstances controlled by Dame Fate spill over into his relations with Hoorka-kin.
Are you getting so old and stupid?
Yet he refused to let any of this show on his face. He let the hand holding the vibro fall to his side.

“You’re both out of rotation until further notice,” he said. “You’ll do apprentice work if that’s all you’re capable of. Aldhelm, do I need to see you work again?

“An elementary lesson, children. We’re but one step removed from outlaw or lassari. No other world of the Alliance accepts us, and only this one backwater world allows us to work, due to its own code of bloodfeud. We’re free
because
we have no loyalty to those in power—because the Neweden Assembly and the Alliance know that we follow our code.
My
code. We have no alliances: we can be trusted to side with no person or no cause. We’re social carnivores feeding on death without caring what beast provides the meal. Do you see what the Li-Gallant will be thinking? We allowed Gunnar to escape because we’ve allied ourselves with him—that’s his thought, if I know the man at all. To his mind, we’ve lost our adherence to the code. Bunglers!”

The Thane shoved the vibro back into its scabbard. The leather, blackened with age, showed much use. “Wipe your face, Aldhelm. I should have you both cast from the kin for last night. It’s good that I know you both and have respect for your earlier work—and because I love you as guild-kin. It appeases my anger.” Then his voice softened, though his dark eyes didn’t.

“I know: because of my code, the victim has a chance of survival. I just wish it hadn’t been
this
one. I wish She of the Five had looked a little more kindly on the Hoorka.”

Aldhelm daubed at the blood on his cheek with the sleeve of his nightcloak while Sartas glanced quickly from his companion to the Thane.

“I’ve never seen Her so much against us. Gunnar could have stood against the entire kin.” Aldhelm looked at the blood on his cloak, then at the Thane. “But I’ll accept the blame for this, Thane. My dagger missed its target, and it shouldn’t.”

The Thane glanced at him, immersed in hidden guilt. Yah, he thought, it’s not the fault of these two; it was Dame Fate’s doing. But it’s easier to chastise men than gods, and the anger/fear demanded release. He stroked his beard as the lamps coaxed red highlights from the graying hair. “Extra knife work for the two of you,” he said finally. “At least you followed the dawn code. The Alliance might have had someone observing. I’ll try to redeem our standing with the Li-Gallant, if I can. Go on, you must both be hungry and tired after a night’s fruitless chasing. Get something from the kitchens, though neither of you deserve it.”

The two Hoorka turned. As they were about to walk away, the Thane called to Aldhelm, prodded by his conscience. Aldhelm swiveled on his toes and looked back, his cerulean eyes cold.

“I didn’t mean to cut you, Aldhelm. No one should draw the blood of kin, neh? I was angry, and I’m sorry for that.”

Aldhelm shrugged. “I can understand your anger.” Then, after a pause, “Thane.” He nodded his head in leave.

“Truly, Aldhelm. My hand . . .” The Thane grappled briefly with the truth. “. . . slipped.”

Aldhelm’s eyebrows rose slightly. “I said I understand,” he said, his voice flat.

“Rest well, then.”

The two Hoorka walked away, the compacted earth under their feet making a gritty rasp. The memory of Aldhelm’s chilly eyes remained with the Thane for a long time as he watched the nightcloaks blend with the darkness.
Was I that far out of control of myself?
He slammed a fist into his open hand.

“That won’t do much good. It only makes your hand sore.”

The Thane started and turned quickly, then straightened with a slight smile. The lines on his scarred face deepened. “Cranmer. I’d forgotten you were here.”

“I’d wager you forgot more than that.” Cranmer, a short, slight man by Neweden standards, indicated the passage down which Aldhelm and Sartas had gone. “I’ve never seen you that way, Thane. I don’t think you intended to be so, ahh, cruel.” Cranmer chose his words carefully, but censure rode lightly on the surface. An elfin figure in the twilight of the caverns, the small man blew on his cupped hands, holding them out above the thermal duct. “You almost warmed the cavern with your anger.”

The Thane didn’t reply. He took the tether of the hoverlamps and put them on the clips of his belt, slaving the lamps to him. Quickly-shifting wedges of light pursued themselves over the lines of his body, sending distorted shadows to fight on the creviced walls and ceiling of the cavern. Cranmer, grunting, rose from his seat on the floater and absently wiped at his pants before throwing his cloak around him, muffling himself to the chin. Underasgard stayed a constant but cool temperature in the regions where the Hoorka did not live, and even here it was comfortable for most Neweden natives. But Cranmer always felt chilled, used as he was to a more temperate offworld climate.

The Thane completed his gathering of hoverlamps. The brilliant globes arrayed themselves about him like attendant suns around a god. Held in the stressed magnetic fields of the tethers, they bobbed slightly, never quite at rest, giving everything they illuminated a shivering animation. In this shifting atmosphere, the Thane watched Cranmer pick up his recorder and walk toward him over the broken rock of the cave floor.

“You were making a record of all that? I’m not sure I’m pleased.”

“It seemed rather important to the sociological aspects of Hoorka, and you did give me leave to record as I wished.” Cranmer eyed the Thane, looking for irritation in that well-used face. The confrontation with Aldhelm and Sartas had shown him a new aspect of that personality he’d thought he knew so well. Still, he failed to detect anything but simple curiosity in the Thane’s question.

“It looked as if it might have some bearing on my study of Hoorka,” he continued. “The image won’t be too good. The lamps are really too dim for this unit. It’ll be rather grainy.” The cloak around him moved and rippled as he put the recorder in a pocket.

The Thane made a noise that might have been affirmation. He looked about, waiting, as Cranmer sealed out any possible draft in his cloak.

“Would you care to see some of the inner sections of the caverns?” The Thane nodded his head to the gathered darkness to his right, and for the first time Cranmer saw a cleft between the rocks. He sighed, relinquishing the thought of his comfortable heater back in the Hoorka caverns. But it wasn’t often that the Thane offered tours. “If you’re willing. I’ve never gone further than this room.”

The Thane nodded, knowing that the little man sensed that it wasn’t simple courtesy that had moved the Thane to make this offer. He gave Cranmer two of the tethers and watched while the man strapped them to his waist, over his cloak.