The Inquisitives [1] Bound by Iron (2 page)

He turned. He went back home.

And the blissful darkness enclosed him.

Dark Meetings
Zol, the 10th day of Sypheros, 998

C
lutching her cloak about her, Henya glanced up at the sky. The rain clouds had largely broken up, their energy spent. Somewhere beyond her sight, the sun drew near the horizon, sinking behind the dark evergreen trees that covered the land of Karrnath. Although the sky still shone with pallid autumn sunshine, down in the cobbled streets of Korth all was growing dark. Not only dark but cold. Protected by the quiet embrace of the building’s shadows, the damp chill of impending winter crawled out of the alleys to slither through every gap in her cloak, and pry at every loose seam of her clothing. If the sunshine had still reached into the narrow streets she walked, she would have seen her own breath. As it was, she felt it condensing on her hood as she tried to hunker down even further into the folds of her cloak.

She was cold, that much was true, but she had food. One hand extended from the front of her wrappings to hold the handle of a large woven basket, by necessity leaving a drafty opening in her cloak and slowly chilling her fingers through. The basket was filled with a large pork roast and several round loaves of dark rye or, as her father called it, “chamber music.” It was simple fare,
especially with the weak home-brewed beer her father made, but it was better than the alternative. Her family had suffered deep pangs of hunger during the famine two winters past. They’d been so hungry that they’d barely had the energy to chop wood for the fire, so they’d spent the long winter months cold and famished, chewing on shoe leather to ease their growling stomachs. It had been a miserable way to celebrate the end of the Last War.

That and her younger brother had never come home. She’d helped him learn to walk those many years ago, and now she wondered whether he still could. Could he still walk, or had he been crippled? Or did he lie rotting in some forgotten field somewhere?

She’d asked, of course, as had so many others. Standing in long lines at the Korth military administrative bureau. Stoically awaiting her turn to hear … nothing.

Her brother’s death she could handle. Through hunger, siege, and battle, the Last War had taken her great-grandfather, two granduncles, and several of her aunts, uncles, and cousins. She’d grown up with stories of martial valor and the last battles of many of her relatives. She’d known all her life the war might take her brother as well. Such sacrifices were necessary for the preservation of the nation and brought glory to the family name. And even dead, a Karrn soldier could still serve the crown as an animate warrior, his body gathered by a royal corpse collector, alchemically preserved and magically ensorcelled to fight for the military even after his life had ended. It was considered an honor to have the king spend such lavish amounts to preserve the service of a common foot soldier.

Her brother’s survival would be wonderful, to see his smile again and his clear blue eyes. Even were he crippled, she’d feel no sorrow, delighting in the chance to be able to serve him again.

Not knowing, that was the worst. According to the official records, her brother’s unit had fought as a rearguard at Shadukar. The army had been compelled to withdraw and had been unable to scour the field afterwards. There was no way to know his fate. “In
all likelihood he was killed in battle,” the clerk had said, “but he might have been captured, might have been struck unconscious or disarmed and fallen therewith into the hands of the enemy.”

Upon hearing that, Henya had turned up her nose and narrowed her eyes, fighting back the tears.

The clerk had misinterpreted her reaction, and mumbled an apology. “Of course, there’s no way a man of such prowess as your brother would have done other than kill the stinking Thranes until his final breath.”

Such prowess? He’d been just another soldier to the clerk. Recruit number 992-1-1763. One of the faceless peasants pressed into service, just another body to carry a spear.

She’d held her tears and left. For the last eighteen months, she’d wondered whether or not her brother had been captured, whether he might some day return home, return to his family, return to her and grace her life with his laughter once again. According to the Treaty of Thronehold, all prisoners were to be repatriated. That knowledge had given her hope for the first year, to know that if the Thranes had indeed captured him, they could neither keep him as a slave nor execute him.

Soon, though, that hope gave way to despair, for if he’d been captured, it shouldn’t have taken him a year to find his way back to Korth.

The persistent ache in her cold hand pushed her from her dark reverie. She reluctantly unclenched her other hand from where it held her cloak shut, and switched her grip on the basket, losing most of her remaining warmth in the process. She drew her cold hand back into her cloak and did her best to coax her numb fingers to grip the fabric closed as tight as they could manage.

Looking up, she saw that the sky was darkening, the light growing more scant in the narrow backstreets and alleys about her. She had slowed her pace as she’d fretted about her brother, and the evening had waned. Starting to shiver, she hurried forward into the gloom. If only her brother could come back. She’d give so much for just one more chance to hear him say—

“Ho there.”

The voice was so masculine, so gravelly, that she stopped in her tracks. She turned to the sound, a hesitant, desperately hopeful smile starting to bloom across her face.

A short figure, likewise in a hooded cloak but with a moderate beard poking out of the hood, stepped out of the shadows. Though he stood no higher than her shoulders, he moved with purpose and, judging by the breadth of his mantle, he was very muscularly built. He drew close to her, shaking one arm loose from the folds of his cloak. He brandished a heavy stick pierced through at the end by cruel spikes.

“Give me your basket, wench,” he growled, shaking his club as punctuation.

For a moment, she almost yielded, but the thought of her family fanned her ire. She glanced at his bulk and height, and decided that even burdened with a basket, she should be able to outrun him. She didn’t have to get far, just to Angle Road. There’d certainly be someone there who’d defend her against a conscienceless thug.

“Give it,” he repeated.

“No!” she spat, and turned and ran as hard as she could, clutching the precious basket with both hands, the chill air forgotten.

She expected to hear him pursue her, but no noise of boots on gritty cobbles dogged her heels. Instead, after a panicked breath or three, she heard a single grunt of exertion. She had barely enough time to register the sound when stars exploded in her vision and she found herself stumbling into a rough, stone wall and falling to the rain-damp ground.

Disoriented, she shook her head, all memory of her plight temporarily forgotten. She started to sit up, but dizziness and a raging ache in the back of her head gave her pause. Footsteps drew near, and she looked up. There, towering over her, stood a broad, cloaked figure with a spiked cudgel. She thought he might help her to rise, until his growl of distaste brought everything back to her.

“Help!” she screamed.

He raised the club. “Lock yer jawbone!” he snarled. Then his words slowed to a malevolent cadence. “You don’t want to stoke up a member of the Iron Band, do ya, wench?” He pulled up the sleeve of the arm that carried the club and displayed an armband. It glinted in the darkness.

She gasped, raising a trembling fist to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I mean, you can have—that is, if you’d asked, I’d—well, soldiers like you—”

“Quiet, wench,” he said. He looked around at the dirt of the cobbled side street, but in the looming darkness, there was little detail to be seen. “Gone,” he harrumphed. “And that was my best throwing rock. Do you know how long I looked for just the right one?”

“Please don’t hurt me. You can have my food …”

“But now it’s all spilled on the ground,” he said as to a child. He sighed and tapped his bludgeon lightly on the side of his calf. “You’ve done given me some trouble tonight, wench. I’m going to have to take something of equal consideration for that rock.” He leveled a harsh kick that took her in the meatiest portion of the thigh.

“I can help you find the rock,” came a voice from the darkness, a voice quiet yet clear, “if your skull feels empty without it.”

The thug turned around with a snarl to see a tall stranger approaching, a long walking-stick in his hand. He was bare headed, but his open longcoat nearly swept the ground. “Shut your beerhole, you,” the robber said. “And get out of here, unless you want a portion of what she’s got coming.”

“Spoken like a rat who hears not the cat,” said the interloper, strolling forward, his metal-shod staff tapping quietly on the cobbles in counterpoint to his stride. “Drop your stick and go on home. You’ve already proven your manhood and courage by assaulting a defenseless woman, armed with only with a large spiked stick to help even the odds.”

“You have no idea who you’re dealing with, stranger.”

“I need not know you. I stand by my god.”

“Be careful,” urged Henya. “He’s one of the Iron Band!”

The newcomer stopped in mid stride. His head canted slightly to the side. “Really?” he said, skepticism bending his voice.

The thug stood as tall as he was able. “It’s the sovereign truth,” he said, shifting his grip on his makeshift weapon. “And I was the meanest, toughest one of them all. They called me ‘The Killer with No Mercy,’ and I deserved the title. That’s why I lived to tell the tale. So unless you want to go the way of the three hundred Aundairians I slew, I suggest you scat.”

“The Iron Band,” said the tall man.

“That’s right. I heard myself the first go-round.”

“Hm. Funny.”

“You won’t think it’s so funny when I beat your carcass so full of holes the corpse collectors’ll use you for a whistle.”

“No,” said the man, raising his free hand as if in benediction. “That’s not it. What’s funny is that I do not remember any dwarves.”

The thug shifted his feet. “What do you mean, you don’t remember? Haven’t you seen a dwarf before?”

The man shrugged. “Plenty of times. But the commander refused to recruit them. Stubby little legs were simply too slow,” he added, fluttering two fingers in a mockery of running.

The dwarf hesitated a moment, then raised his cudgel and started to close, waving it near his ear. “Right, that’s enough out of you.”

“Indeed,” said the human, ignoring the dwarf’s threatening posture, “as best I recollect, the Iron Band was made up exclusively of humans and half-orcs. Every last one of us.”

The thug stopped. “Us?”

The human nodded. “Oh yes.” He sniffed, placing his free hand on his hip. “And I am most displeased that you are trying to set up your stunted little pedestal on the graves of my blood brothers.”

With a gravelly bellow, the dwarf charged. Henya crushed her eyes closed.

Cimozjen hadn’t expected his words to provoke the dwarf into an all-out charge, and the spontaneity of the attack caught him off his guard. He raised an arm to ward off the first clumsy overhand blow, and the wood of the cudgel smacked into his unarmored forearm. The dwarf’s follow-up came crossways and stripped Cimozjen of his staff.

The dwarf continued his assault—reckless, untrained—with a series of wild swings. The rusty spikes of his club whistled through the deepening darkness as Cimozjen evaded the strikes, gauging his adversary’s skill and power.

The lack of a response gave the dwarf more courage. He pushed himself harder and harder, trying to land a blow. Yet as he did so, his breath grew more labored. Cimozjen surmised that a tendency towards lassitude and debauchery had taken its toll on the dwarf’s constitution, or, more charitably, that he had perhaps a disease of the lungs that had precluded him from military service.

“Looks like you should have thought to bring a weapon to the fight,” panted the dwarf. “You’re going to pay for that mistake.”

He swung again, and the spikes on his bludgeon caught the edge of Cimozjen’s long leather coat, tearing several long rips in it and pulling it off one of his shoulders.

Cimozjen retreated and took a second to inspect the damage. “I just bought this yesterevening,” he groused. He slipped one arm out of its sleeve and grabbed his coat near the hem. He started to shuck the other sleeve off.

The dwarf swung again, and Cimozjen dodged, flustering with the coat and getting his hand twisted up in the leather sleeve. The dwarf followed through with a heavy back-handed strike to the midriff, but this time Cimozjen did not give ground. He stepped in, catching the head of the mace in his longcoat. He heard a popping sound as the spikes punctured the thin leather in several places, holding the weapon fast.

Cimozjen whipped his coat around the weapon, swaddling
it in leather padding. A quick jerk yanked the weapon up, and Cimozjen was likewise able to snare the dwarf’s weapon hand with one long sleeve, trapping it in place while simultaneously freeing his other hand from his sleeve.