Silverthorn Read online

  Jimmy grinned and there was a hint of moisture in his eyes. ‘Why not indeed?’ He swallowed hard and raised his mask again. ‘Whatever happened to Amos?’

  Arutha sat back. ‘The last I saw of him, he was stealing the King’s ship.’ Jimmy guffawed. ‘We’ve not had word of him since. I’d give much to have that cut-throat by my side this night.’

  Jimmy lost his smile. ‘I hate to bring this up, but what if we run into another of those damn things that won’t die?’

  ‘Nathan thinks it unlikely. He thinks it happened only because the priestess called that thing back. Besides, I can’t wait upon the temples’ pleasure to act. Only that death priest, Julian, has offered to help.’

  ‘And we’ve seen how much help those who serve Lims-Kragma can provide,’ Jimmy added dryly. ‘Let’s hope Father Nathan knows of what he speaks.’

  Arutha rose. ‘Come, let’s get what rest we may, for the night should provide bloody work.’

  Throughout the night bands of soldiers, dressed in the common garb of mercenaries, had been wending their way through the streets of Krondor, passing one another without a flicker of acknowledgment, until at three hours after midnight over a hundred men were in the Rainbow Parrot. Several were dispensing uniform tabards from large sacks, so the soldiers would again be in the Prince’s colours during the raid.

  Jimmy entered in the company of two men dressed in simple foresters’ garb, members of Arutha’s elite company of army scouts, the Royal Pathfinders. The senior Pathfinder saluted. ‘This youngster has the eyes of a cat, Highness. He spotted our men being followed to the inn three times.’

  When Arutha looked at them questioningly, Jimmy said, ‘Two of them were beggars known to me, and they were easy to intercept and chase off, but the third … It may have been he simply followed to see if something was up. Anyway, when we blocked his way down a street – subtly, you may be sure – he simply moved off in another direction. It could have been nothing.’

  ‘It also could have been something,’ Arutha said. ‘Still, there is nothing more we can do. Even if the Nighthawks know we are doing something, they will not know what. Look you here,’ he said to Jimmy, pointing to a map on a table before him. ‘This was given to me by the royal architect. It is old, but he thinks it a fair accounting of the sewers.’

  Jimmy studied it for a moment. ‘Perhaps a score of years ago it was.’ He pointed to one spot on the map and another. ‘Here there’s been a collapse of a wall, and while the sewage still flows, the passage is too narrow for a man. And here there is a new tunnel, dug by a tanner requiring a more rapid disposal of his waste.’ Jimmy studied the map a bit longer, then said, ‘Is there a quill and ink, or charcoal?’ A piece of charcoal was forthcoming and Jimmy made marks upon the map. ‘Friend Lucas has a slip-me-out to the sewers in his basement.’

  Behind the bar the old owner’s mouth dropped at hearing that piece of news. ‘What? How’d you know?’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘The rooftops aren’t the only Thieves’ Highway. From here’ – he pointed at the map – ‘companies of men can move to these two points. The exits from the basement of the Nighthawks’ stronghold are cleverly located. Each comes out in a tunnel not directly connected with the others. The doors may be only scant yards apart, but it’s yards of solid walls of brick and stone, with miles of twisting sewers to travel, to gain one from the next. It would take an hour to find your way from one exit to another. It’s this third one that’s the problem. It empties out near a large landing with a dozen tunnels to flee down, too many to block.’

  Gardan, who was looking over the boy’s shoulder, said, ‘Which means a coordinated assault. Jimmy, can you hear if someone is breaking in one of the doors and you’re at the other?’

  Jimmy said, ‘I should think. If you slip someone to the top of the stairs, for certain. Especially this time of night. You’d be surprised how many little noises filter down the streets during the day, but at night …’

  Arutha said to the two Pathfinders, ‘Can you find these locations from this map?’ Each nodded. ‘Good. Each of you will guide a third of the men to one of these two entrances. The other third will come with Gardan and myself. Jimmy will guide us. You will position men but not enter the basement of that building unless you are discovered first or you hear our party assaulting those within. Then come with all speed. Gardan, those on the streets should be in position. They have their orders?’

  Gardan said, ‘Each has been instructed. At first hint of trouble, no one is allowed to leave that building unless he wears your tabard and is known by sight. I have thirty archers in place on the rooftops on all sides to discourage any seeking quick exit. A herald with a trumpet will sound alarm and two companies of horsemen will exit the palace at the bugle. They will reach us within five minutes. Any in the streets not of our company will be ridden down, that is the order.’

  Arutha quickly put on a tabard and tossed one each to Jimmy and Laurie. When all were wearing the Prince’s purple and black, Arutha said, ‘It is time.’ The Pathfinders led the first two groups into the cellar below the inn. Then it was time for Jimmy to lead the Prince’s group. He took them to the slip-me-out behind a false cask in the wall and led them down the narrow stairs to the sewers. The stench caused a few soldiers to gasp and utter soft oaths, but a single word from Gardan restored order to the ranks. Several shuttered lanterns were lit. Jimmy motioned for a single line to be formed, and led the Prince’s raiders off towards the Merchants’ Quarter of the city.

  After nearly a half hour walking, past slowly moving channels carrying waste and garbage towards the harbour, they found themselves approaching the large landing. Arutha ordered the lanterns shuttered. Jimmy went forward. Arutha tried to follow his movements but was astonished as the darkness seemed to swallow him up. Arutha strained to hear him, but Jimmy was noiseless. For the waiting soldiers, the strangest thing about the sewers was the stillness, broken only by the sound of slow water lapping. Each soldier had taken care to muffle all armour and weapons, so should there be a Nighthawk lookout he wouldn’t be alerted.

  Jimmy returned after a moment and signalled that a single guard stood at the bottom of the stairs to the building. With his mouth near Arutha’s ear he whispered. ‘You’ll never get one of your men close enough before the guard gives alarm. I’m the only one who stands a chance. Just come running when you hear the scuffle begin.’

  Jimmy pulled his dirk out of his boot and slipped away. Suddenly there was a painful grunt and Arutha and his men were off, all thoughts of silence discarded. The Prince was the first to reach the boy, who struggled with a powerful guard. The youth had come up behind the man and had leapt and grabbed him around the throat, but had only wounded him with the dirk, which now lay upon the stones. The man was nearly blue from being choked, but had tried to smash Jimmy against the wall. Arutha ended the struggle with a single thrust of his blade and the man slipped silently to the stones. Jimmy let go and smiled weakly. He had taken a terrible battering. Arutha whispered, ‘Stay here,’ to him, then signalled his men to follow.

  Ignoring his promise to Volney to wait behind while Gardan led the assault, Arutha silently hurried up the stairs. He halted before a wooden door with a single sliding latch, placed his ear next to it, and listened. Muffled voices from the other side caused him to raise his hand in warning. Gardan and the others slowed their approach.

  Arutha quietly moved the door’s latch and pushed gently. He peeked into a large, well-lit basement. Sitting around three tables were about a dozen armed men. Several were tending weapons and armour. The scene was more reminiscent of a soldiers’ commons than a basement. What Arutha found more incredible was that this basement was located below the most richly appointed and successful brothel in the city, the House of Willows, one frequented by most of the rich merchants and no small portion of the minor nobility of Krondor. Arutha could well understand how the Nighthawks could gain access to so much information about the palace and his own comings and goings. Many a cou
rtier would boast of his knowledge of some ‘secret’ or other to impress his whore. It would not have taken more than a chance mention from someone in the palace that Gardan had planned to ride out to the east gate to meet the Prince for the assassin to know Arutha’s route that night earlier in the week.

  Abruptly a figure entered Arutha’s view that made the Prince catch his breath. A moredhel warrior approached a man who sat oiling a broadsword and spoke quietly to him. The man nodded while the Dark Brother continued his discourse. Then suddenly he spun. He pointed directly towards the door and opened his mouth to speak. Arutha didn’t hesitate. He shouted, ‘Now!’ and charged into the room.

  The basement erupted into a riot of action. Those who had moments before been sitting idly by now grabbed up weapons and answered the assault. Others bolted out doors leading up to the brothel or down to other parts of the sewers. From above, screams and shouts told of customers alarmed by the fleeing assassins. Those who attempted to leave via the exits to the sewers were quickly pushed back up the stairs into the cellar by the other units of Arutha’s invading force.

  Arutha ducked a blow by the moredhel warrior and leapt to the left as soldiers fought their way into the centre of the room, separating the Prince from the Dark Brother. The few assassins who stood their ground charged into Arutha’s men with complete disregard for their own lives, forcing the soldiers to kill them. The sole exception was the moredhel, who seemed to be in a frenzy trying to reach Arutha. Arutha shouted, ‘Take him alive!’

  The moredhel was soon the only Nighthawk standing in the room, and he was forced back to the wall and held. Arutha came up to him. The dark elf locked gazes with the Prince, naked hatred upon his face. He allowed himself to be disarmed as Arutha put up his own sword. Arutha had never been this close to a living moredhel before. There was no doubt they were elven kin, though elves tended to be fairer of hair and eyes. As Martin had remarked more than once, the moredhel were a handsome race, if one dark of soul. Then, as one soldier bent to examine the moredhel’s boot top for weapons, the creature kneed the guard in the face, pushed away the other, and leapt at Arutha. Arutha had barely an instant to duck away from hands outstretched for his face. He moved to his left and saw the moredhel stiffen as Laurie’s blade took him in the chest. The moredhel collapsed to the floor, but with a final spasm tried to reach out and claw at Arutha’s leg. Laurie kicked the creature’s hands, deflecting the weak clawing motion. ‘Look well at the nails. I saw them gleam as he let himself be disarmed,’ said the singer.

  Arutha grabbed a wrist and inspected the moredhel’s hand closely. ‘Careful how you handle it,’ warned Laurie. Arutha saw tiny needles embedded in the Dark Brother’s nails, each with a dark stain at the end. Laurie said, it’s an old whore’s trick, though only those with some gold and a friendly chirurgeon can get it done. If a man tries to leave without paying or is given to beating his whores, a simple scratch and the man is no longer a problem.’

  Arutha looked at the singer. ‘You have my debt.’

  ‘Banath preserve us!’

  Arutha and Gardan turned to see that Jimmy had crossed to a fallen man, fair and well dressed. He was staring at the dead assassin. ‘Golden,’ he said softly.

  ‘You knew this man?’ asked Arutha.

  ‘He was a Mocker,’ said Jimmy, ‘In my life I would not have suspected him.’

  ‘Is there not a one left alive?’ demanded the Prince. He was in a fury, for his orders had been to capture as many as possible.

  Gardan, who had been taking reports from his men, said, ‘Highness, there were full thirty and five assassins in this basement and the rooms above. All either fought so our men had no choice but to kill or turned and slew one another, then threw themselves upon their own weapons.’ Gardan held out something to the Prince. ‘They all wore these, Highness.’ In his hand was an ebony hawk on a gold chain.

  Then there was an abrupt silence, not as if the men had stopped their movements, but rather as if something had been heard and all had instantly halted to listen, yet there was no sound. An odd dampening of sound occurred, as if a heavy, oppressive presence had entered the room, and an eerieness descended upon Arutha and his men for a brief moment. Then a chill fell over the room. Arutha felt his neck hair rise, as some primordial dread filled him. Something alien had entered the room, an unseen but palpable evil. As Arutha turned to say something to Gardan and the others, a soldier shouted, ‘Highness, I think this one is alive. He moved!’ He sounded eager to please his Prince. Then a second soldier said, ‘This one, too!’ Arutha saw the two soldiers lean over the fallen assassins.

  All in the basement gasped in horror as one of the corpses moved, his hand shooting upwards to seize the kneeling soldier by the throat. The corpse sat up, forcing the soldier upwards. The terrible wet cracking sound of the soldier’s throat being crushed echoed in the room. The other corpse sprang upwards, sinking his teeth in the neck of the second guard, ripping open his throat while Arutha and his men were rooted in shocked silence. The first dead assassin tossed away the choking soldier and turned. Fixing milk-white eyes upon the Prince, the dead man smiled. As if from a great distance, a voice sounded from the grinning maw. ‘Again we meet, Lord of the West. Now shall my servants have you, for you have not brought your meddling priests. Rise! Rise, O my children! Rise, and kill!’

  Around the room the corpses began to twitch and move and soldiers gasped and offered prayers to Tith, the soldiers’ god. One, thinking quickly, hacked the head off the second corpse as it started to rise. The headless corpse shuddered and fell, but began to rise once more while the rolling head mouthed silent curses. Like grotesque marionettes manipulated by a demented puppeteer, the bodies rose, in jerks and spasms. Jimmy, his voice almost quavering, said, ‘I think we should have waited on the temples’ pleasure.’

  Gardan shouted, ‘Protect the Prince!’ and men leapt at the animated corpses. Like crazed butchers in a cattle pen, soldiers began madly chopping in all directions. Gore spattered the walls and all who stood in the room, but the bodies continued to rise.

  Soldiers slipped in the blood and found themselves overwhelmed by cold, slimy hands that gripped arms and legs. Some managed throttled cries as dead fingers closed around their throats or teeth bit hard into their flesh.

  Soldiers of the Prince of Krondor hacked and slashed, sending limbs flying through the air, but the hands and arms only flopped madly about the floor like bleeding fish out of water. Arutha felt a tugging at his leg and looked down to see a severed hand gripping at his ankle. A frantic kick sent the hand flying across the room to strike the opposite wall.

  Arutha shouted, ‘Get out and hold closed those doors!’ Soldiers swore as they cut and kicked their way through the blood and pulped flesh before them. Many of the soldiers, hardened veterans, were coming close to panic. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for the horror they faced in that basement. Each time a body was knocked down, it would but try to rise once more. And each time a comrade fell, he stayed down.

  Arutha led the way towards the door leading upstairs, the closest exit. Jimmy and Laurie followed. Arutha paused to cut apart another rising corpse and Jimmy dashed past the Prince. Jimmy reached the door first and swore as he looked up. Stumbling down the stairs towards them came the corpse of a beautiful woman, wearing a diaphanous gown, torn half away, with a spreading bloodstain at the waist. Her blank white eyes fastened on Arutha at the bottom of the stairs and she shrieked in delight. Jimmy ducked under a clumsy slash and drove his shoulder into her bloody stomach, shouting, ‘’Ware the stairs!’ They both went down and he was first to his feet, scrambling past her.

  Arutha looked back into the basement and saw his men being pulled down. Gardan and several other soldiers had reached the safety of the far doors and were attempting to close them, while stragglers who were frantically attempting to reach them were being pulled down. A few valiant men were pushing closed the doors from inside, ignoring a sure sentence of death. The floor was a sea of
gore, wet and treacherous, and many soldiers slipped and fell, never to rise again. Detached body parts seemed somehow to gather together and corpses would stand once more. Remembering the creature in the palace and how it had gained in strength as time passed, Arutha shouted, ‘Bar the doors!’

  Laurie leapt up the stairs and struck at the grinning whore, once more on her feet. Her blonde head rolled past Arutha as he raced up the stairs after Jimmy and the singer.

  Reaching the ground floor of the House of Willows, Arutha and his companions were greeted with the sight of soldiers struggling with more animated corpses. The horse companies had arrived, cleared the streets, and entered the building. But they, like those below, were unprepared to fight dead opponents. Outside the main door several bodies, impaled with dozens of arrows, were trying to rise. Each time one would gain its feet, a flight of bowshafts would strike it from the dark, knocking it over again.

  Jimmy glanced around the room and made a leap atop a table. With an acrobat’s spring, he jumped high over a guard being strangled by a dead Nighthawk and grabbed at a wall covering. The tapestry held his weight for a moment, then the room filled with a loud tearing sound as it ripped free of its fastenings high overhead. Yards of fine cloth fell about Jimmy, and he quickly disentangled himself. He grabbed up as much cloth as he could and dragged the tapestry to the large fireplace in the main room of the brothel. He dumped it in the fireplace and then started overturning anything that would burn onto it. Within minutes flames were spreading out into the room.

  Arutha shoved away a corpse and yanked down another tapestry, which he tossed to Laurie. The singer ducked as a dead assassin lunged at him, and tangled the corpse in the fabric. Quickly spinning the dead creature, Laurie wrapped it in cloth and with a kick sent it stumbling towards Jimmy. Jimmy leapt aside and let the cloth-bound thing stumble into the rapidly spreading flames, tripping it as it went past. The dead man fell into the flames and began shrieking in rage.