IM 1008 Pt 4 ~ Harvest: The Battle of Cheapside

[Sire Halfblack]

Harvest IM 1008: The Battle of Cheapside

Forgetown
Mud sucked at his boots as he crossed the main drag. For days the rain had fallen on the land and Forgetown was no less sodden than anywhere in the territories. But here the large number of people in what was relatively speaking, for the Deci wilds, a small place had turned the area to a quagmire. The mud was six inches deep at best and Tirack jumped a puddle that lengthwise ran fifty yards in either direction. In his wake a clutter of wives both young and old followed and clucked over the filth. If only a relatively recent change, the womenfolk hereabouts had become proud and possessed of the sort of propriety more commonly seen in Eartholme.

Stomping on the boot beaten metal of the walkway Tirack almost slipped and was jeered at by a small crowd of men in ragged cloaks. He cursed them for their lack of good manners and when one suggested that the woman nearest to Tirack give him a kiss, the girl squelched over to land a clout on the side of his head. The spearmen laughed. For days now more like them had been arriving, assembling and readying for the push towards the city but of them all the Bannercrows were lingering the most. Horrible men for the most part, Tirack snapped at them to ‘ware the state of their souls, which only elicited further laughter. They were spearmen and their fate was to die but to do so after brief flares of riches and the sort of blind eye turned to their brawling, drinking and nonsense-making that was common in the cities. Tirack spared them a further stern gaze before storming onwards and behind him he heard more slaps and more suggestions of a lewd nature.

By the time he reached the Hitchin’ House and Hospice he was fuming. The town was a rough, bawdy sort of place. Not that it had ever been anything else Tirack would be the first to admit, but with so many spearmen passing through it had become if anything worse. His cloak he cast off and his boots followed it. Before he was half way to the altar both had been plucked from the boards and on their way to be cleaned, repaired and buffed anew.

He breathed in. He breathed out. He considered that his delay for the festival of joining had been perhaps the wisest decision he had made this year. With so many reprobate spearmen about it would have been a disaster. Tirack genuflected towards the alter that only that morning had seen him heal a badly broken leg on its surface and tucking his hands thereafter into the small of his back he let his eyes pass over the supplies piled throughout the main room and, he knew, every other room beyond. Here and in most tents, on many carts and now even the heavier trader wagons were to be found food and drink. It might not have been enough just here to feed the hundreds that would gather but this was a trade town and it was clear that before the sun rose on the coming Day of Joining traders, peddlers and carters would have more than enough jostling every pitch.

Already there were more than a hundred couples from out in the wilds come to Forgetown and more doubtless on their way. He was the closest thing to a preacher man the Deci territories had and with the sheer shortage of cattle hereabouts a lot of young men and women were not being allowed to marry by their families. Lack of a proper and seemly dowry that for longer than anyone could remember was often a cow, goat or stranger beast to set the youngsters up on their own spread. So they had run to Forgetown and Tirack it was known, would marry ‘em all. With a service designed to cross as many religious divides as possible. He clapped his hands together, happier with the thought that he looked set to make a lot of treasure. Gifts as it were. For the poor and the needy. Mostly. The best things in life, he had heard, were dirty. Dirty, filthy lumps of gold.

Most were wild folk and so the rows of tents were thickened with dirt and turf huts. Even those from older settlings were said to have been born under a wandering star. The chances of Big Anath not sending carts laden down with manufactured tents, skillets and other necessaries when the price here soared in a few weeks was remote. Indeed, Tirack considered that if he wanted to make even more treasure himself and as a complete aside help people out, it might be worth paying a carter to fetch the same here.

They would all expect something loud. Plenty of damnation talk. ‘Church’ out here meant thunderous theatre. Tirack paused when he heard the more matronly womanfolk in the next room cluck over the bridal gown they were embroidering for the star of the marriage show. Every production needed its stars and given the way Strawberry was spreading the word Tirack hoped Gideon was up for it. His friend had been spending entirely too long ensconced in his shop from which had emerged a variety of stinks and twice a loud bang. The last time one of the heavy slates of the roof had been found half a mile away.

The Mercantile
If he had been forced to leave his horse behind for the next few days at least the North Warden had been given command of the Army of the Slurries. Kintarma was a master tactician, blooded against the tribes where he had perhaps been the most successful of those there and he was not so cursed by hubris to consider his task any less important than the thrust into Cheapside. So he had been given the task of retaking the Slurries, and he was sure that the tools for the job would have been given him in consequence. Potentially half the fight was his to oversee, to lead and to win.

It was perhaps suitable for his army to assemble in the courtyard of the Warsmiths and so though it rained hard enough to wash the wretched streets of Deci clean Kintarma strode out bright and early after being treated to a decent breakfast by the chaps of the Guild. He paused when he reached the courtyard, clearly either being too early or too expectant in his opinions of the local spearman.

Seated in the cover of the open sides of the outer forges about forty fellows in somewhat faded finery were playing dice. Looking at them in some suspicion were about as many again from across the yard. These leant on the walls and under the eaves so that the downpour missed them entirely. Neither wore armour, though the latter had decent Scarlene style sailors cloaks wrapped about their lean frames.

“Gentlemen, we might as well meet before the rest of the lads arrive.” The eighty spears, in total, looked up. The cloaked figures ran into the courtyard and formed up in lose order. The more gaily dressed and they looked like duellists to Kintarma, came more reluctantly and with many a look at the increasing dip in the brims of their hats. From each a leader came and Alendari introduced himself, before Christopher Flashblade offered a little bow as his own announcement. “Splendid to meet you. Don’t look so glum. We’ll soon sweep the Slurries of the filth that occupies it. So then, who has the biggest horses? Me! But they ain’t here. So then, how many Mount do you boast?”

Alendari smiled a little wryly. “My men are jaeger – light wall.”

“Never mind, never mind. Can’t all be the best, eh? You, sir?”

“Me, sir?”

“Indeed, you, sir!”

“I, sir, I am the Master of the Flashing Blades. And though brave Wyliham is a servant of some renown, I fear you mistake us. We are experts at single warfare. Call ‘em out twenty at a time and over the course of the next week we’ll soon tweak Johnny Orc’s pug nose.”

Kintarma liked the sound of that. But not perhaps as a battle plan. “Now then, before the others arrive, we intend to trot into the Slurries, give ‘em a blast of the horn and with a good charge we’ll sweep all away. Make sure your lads have all had a good nosebag and in this bloody awful weather you probably want to give each a good rub down before the chills set in. So then, first here, damn good. Got armour?”

“No.” Christopher admitted.

“Yes.” Alendari agreed but added that there was no way they were going to wear it. They were jaeger, they knew how to fight in cities but that did not mean they wore great, heavy suits of chain. Nice though of Jander as it was to buy it for them. “We had best be off then.” He settled his shield on his arm.

Kintarma walked the length of the courtyard. He returned. “Best wait for the others though? The Army of the Slurries?”

Without replying Christopher went off to jolly up his girls and boys. Alendari knew then that Kntarma was probably experienced with somewhat larger numbers. He had something of a reputation and word had it that he was on the cusp of being a War Sire. In fairness then he pointed at that those here, well, that was it.

“This ain’t even a full Held.” The North Warden pointed out.

Alendari had noticed that too. Diplomatically, he just nodded.


Forgetown
If there was one thing about being the local alchemist, apothecary and herbal pounder it was that no matter how miserable the weather outside got Gideon’s was always the warmest place in town. A brazier crackled gently close to hand in which rods of glass and silver, brass and scorched wood glowed amber. Spirit burners heated several small cauldrons. In an iron cage a salamander snoozed.

Gideon had a moment to himself whilst a tincture heated. Up on the roof one of the locals was nailing the last of the slates back in place so he was able to push the bucket underneath to one side. The odd explosion was to be expected and his customers would be suspicious if they did not hear one every so often. Besides which, having eyebrows was a sure way to lose treasure in this business. And he needed the business for Gideon was soon to be married.

The thought did not worry him. Tirack’s decision to move the occasion back a few weeks had been a little annoying perhaps but the fellow probably knew what he was talking about and besides which the man had managed to discover what an Alfari princess coming to Forge Town expected as a wedding gift. A ceremonial naming axe. One made, to be precise, by Jander. Which given where Gideon had set up shop could not be too great a problem, surely?

“Ah.”

The broth had turned blue. Gideon fetched out the lead helmet from under the table and pushed his hands into the dragon hide mittens. With his longest tongs he fetched up the potion he had bought and counted the seconds off between when the contents in their sealed bottle bubbled and when they finally did not. When safe so to do Gideon took off the armour of his trade and made a note with a lump of chalk on the nearest wall. Say whatever you liked about ink, Gideon thought but you’d never ran out of chalk in the Empire.

“So, both are of the twenty fifth accord.” He rose, went outside, checked the state of the moon. Nodding he returned to make another note. He divided both by the sum of where he sat in reference to the Nagrech and came to the conclusion that each potion was of the fourth tier. Bit high up for him at present. Alchemical potions clearly they had each one had a rite of the fourth power invested in them. When drunk they would, yes, he checked, whisk the drinker back to the world of their birth, or elevation, if they had changed from the race they had crawled into the world as. They were not specific to a world. The potion reacted to the person who drank it. Thus the changing race clause. Interesting.

Gideon took a handful of leaves from a pot close to hand and dropped them in the still bubbling cauldron. Tea was tea, even when blue.

He picked up the samples he had taken from the stocks brought to him by the traders some months before. The trollbulb was of use for the apothecary as it was a suitable ingredient to make a bundle of potions that would make those that drank it hardier. Tougher. Or more able to resist the cold. Indeed he had enough that for a bundle of such made of the first or second tier such would cost him nothing to make at all, whether the batch was successful or failed. The same could be said about the Bridgefluer for apothecary potions that when rubbed on a group of people would repel insects, even quite fearsome ones like the stingwings of Centaris.

The Dognuts though would make but a single potion and that alchemical. The drinker would unfortunately become covered in dense hair for the month but that was an unavoidable side effect of the potion that would strengthen them against ritual. Again though, he had enough to try for his first potion with them and similarly would not have to pay for the privilege as the ingredient was sufficient with only the addition of more common materials, all of which his shop possessed.

Rain rattled the roof and with a thump the labourer landed in the yard. Gideon fetched up the steaming tea and a glass jar. Milk of course he added not at all. He was an apothecary, not a scribe and he did no drink his tea half black.

He sighed. It had been mentioned to him over a pint of Old Jander Most Peculiar that once there had been quite the most proficient alchemist of the nation in Deci. What Gideon would not give for a rummage in his now tightly closed shop.


Cheapside
It had taken a week to build and still the camp forges and saw pits stood about it as for the tenth time that day the great arm was pulled back, foot by foot, by great teams of oxen. Jander’s people swarmed all over the Lord’s Hammer whilst it trembled after each sharp jerk of the ropes and chains that slowly lowered the arm and raised the solid counterweight that though itself twice the height of a man was cast in the form of Jander’s angry head. For days the Forge had stood, watched, and only spoken to order the great bars pulled free and even now the oxen were at the limit of a walk that had dug a trench knee deep in the clay, rock and even lose stone outside the city.

It was fortunate that they were aiming at a city because the wind drove the rain upon them so hard that Deci was just a smear nearly a mile distant. It was filthy weather and it was set to get worse for the storm from the north and west was turning above them on a great, flat plain that though it filled the sky still the city lay some distance from its heart. Thrashed then by the downpour that had made a shallow lake before the city Jander watched, still filled with hate for the orc that had brought him to this. The first city he attacked with all his might and ingenuity and it was Deci.

Great stacks of armour and shields, weapons and tools lay nearby. More men and women carved and cut at the rock to make more ammunition to feed the beast. Even now more oxen were dragging one such stone to the platform under which the chain sling was being threaded.

“Nice day, lads.” Kelvar looked up as he spoke and a spear of lightning hit the western horizon. Seeing it the stick of Templars that had come to watch the war engine stepped back a little further from the tall, half metal beast.

“Nice for the...” Jon Bunt looked at the Warden of Castle Mount. “Well, nice for you Kelvar. This your doing?”

The ritualist chuckled but shook his head. Still, it was nice to be made to feel welcome. “Where’s the Sire?”

“Back with the rest of those that know what they’re doing.” The Templars were still working out the kinks in their new armour, grateful that no idiot had thought to make them dash here, walking fifteen hours a day, with such a burden. The Templars were about as proud as spearmen could be but even they might have ‘lost’ a lot of it had that been the case, and knowing that they would have to fight straight thereafter. Armour was armour, but being able to actually fight was a little more important. “You with us?”

But Kelvar was not. He nodded at the craftsmen as they swung down rope and ladder to hurry back before the Lord’s Hammer was released. Bunt spared his companions a quick glance and cuffed his snotty nose. It was bloody wet but they were unlikely to get any drier so they wanted to see what all the fuss was about this war engine. “With them. First in to the breach my friends, first in to the breach.”

The Templars looked at each other again. They had no problems with not having to take the freshest kicking but had made the assumption that given that they and the Bannercrows had the wits for this sort of work they would be given the wet end of the stick. “You serious?”

“Quite serious, Bunty. I am assured that the spearmen of the Forge are fine warriors. Why, they even head up a host.”

“Look Kelvar, we like you. Really. No one blows an enemy apart quite like you do. Truly, I cannot think of one fight you’ve been with us where you weren’t vital. You’re one of us. But, see, this Host you talk about. It’s made up of Guildsmen.”

“And I.”

“Aye, Master Warden. And you.”

There came a crash that made the Templars jump. The great arm had risen with such slowness that the boom of its impact on the cross bar had been unexpected. The frame shook but did not sway for it was held to the ground with four foot pins. Dimly they could just about make out the rock as it arced through the air. It probably hit but in the rain no one there could tell.


Torn Hollows
The cliff was sharp enough to give a mountain troll pause and at its highest point stood several hundred feet above the stark land well below. To either side it ran for a mile before sloping downwards just as behind him the same could be said on the easier, less noticeable hill side that dipped towards distant Eartholme. Here though Loxley rested a foot on one of the curling trees that jutted from the cliff and faced that other city for this was the border between the two lands and once it had been a place where Lords had watched for Deci trouble. Not that Deci had ever boasted much in the way of an army to Loxley’s recall. Indeed, it was not in their character and the people of his family’s home had a cultural aversion to armies that was not perhaps a surprise considering that anything that so resembled such a thing was always only going to mean trouble.

Considering the filthy land to the north and the not much better hereabouts to the south, Land Torn Hollows was an oasis several leagues across. The tangled trees, and dense grasses were set in fertile earth and clay that coated the rock that made up the estate like a many times plastered wall. This land had seen warfare and the blood and bones of victor and defeated alike had sewn the land with a wealth of potential. But it was also a gloomy place. For two days Loxley had not been able to look over the cliff at all for the entirety of the plateaux had been within the lower clouds.

Now though and in a change that had taken even him by surprise, the day was fine and clear. He could actually see how south the rainclouds hugged the landscape and well north, right on the horizon, the edge of a storm turned in a rumbling wheel. It was windy here too, but a wind that smelt good and clear and between the two mining hearts of the Empire it might well have been the only place in a week’s travels in any direction that could claim that.

“Used to be a town.” He announced. Indeed, one could even see the old walls that must have spread as widely as a city quarter. Now though only the tower of the former manor remained and close to it one hamlet. Two more a mile away. Cabbages grew wild across the hill, great fields of green and purple some as large as Loxley’s spread arms. Amongst them thin goats with dotted pelts jumped from place to place with surprising dexterity. They were not domesticated in the sense that they were not penned but the years had seen them grow used to the locals so that they were easily milked, even caught for meat, though mostly the people here ate little of that. But a few years ago great flocks of birds had rested here at this time of year but none had been seen of late.

“So was say, aye.”

Loxley turned and clapped Hoxten Bite on the shoulder. He tipped back his head and laughed heartily. Bite chuckled along though he could not see the joke but supposed that anyone that wore such tights must have need of a good sense of humour. The new Lord stood with his feet wide and as was his way planted a fist on each hip. He laughed again and again Bite chuckled along. Bite was the fellow who collected the taxes from the people hereabouts and took them to Eartholme every few weeks to buy up what the villagers needed for the return journey. Bite had a sprung wagon and a team of eight little goats he had broken to the pull. Amongst the people he was considered both strange and brave. No one here ventured off the rock when they could help it and most have never been more than a mile or three from the estates outer limits. Even when the Magiarchs had fought they had scarcely been touched and in the early days of the Empire when the skies had been dark and thick with roaring storms of clashing stones, then they had lived in the catacombs in the rock below their feet whilst the town and little fortress had been levelled. Those caves still existed but no one had lived in them for a generation.

Loxley liked the land and if the people were terribly quiet then he supposed that was better than them being hostile. Crops clearly grew well here but there was no hint of a mine and not a chance of establishing decent vines. The climate was nowhere near that of the Heartlands. Too windy, too wet, too exposed. Having inspected the old tower, Loxley had nearly dropped to his knees to thank the gods themselves when he had been shown the Inn. Lying directly between the three hamlets the Lady Tookley was the largest building there. Established by a now long paupered trader some ten years before it was strictly speaking now Loxley’s. Big as a rich farmer’s barn it looked about the same, without either sign or other indication of its purpose. But it was an Inn, and it was the brewhouse for the area, and it had an actual bed to its name. One that was very old and looked like it had been rescued from the rubble of the old manor of which now only the tower remained of course.

So back to warmth, local cabbage ale and a bed Loxley returned.


Cheapside
“There’s no main street.”

“There’s no what now?” Master Elden had a beard you could render down for soup and the mail he had been given only just went over the brown fur tunic he wore. Baggy britches were soaked to the groin and on the Warlord’s table his plain helmet added to the damp inside the pavilion.

William Chance had been in the city for some days and most of his spears still were. They had swept through the Slurries but found no one there, though they had not entered any buildings. Approaching Cheapside they had been unable to use their planks and ladders to cross the rooftops for the nature of the lanes just made it a little too far to cross what only if you looked at it a certain way were fortifications at all. He had entered alone and known that he had been watched even as he did so. Still, given the small army here assembled and Jander’s wakeup call that went off several times a day he had not felt he was offering up any advance warning to that bloody orc. “There are no main streets. I did not stay long, frankly. The place is a mess. Dead ends. Drop backs. It’s like a fire ants nest. No open spaces. Look, we’ve all been in Deci, half the adventurers in the land seem to have been born there. Cheapside has always been a maze but if you ask me it’s changed the more so over the last...” He shrugged. It was impossible to say. “...Year? Who knows?”

“What about the breach?” Macros asked. He had not spoken so far, content to stand, arms crossed and waiting. He looked to where Elden was scratching his beard. Catching the glance, the leader of the Bannercrows rolled his eyes. “How big is it?”

“There is no breech. Look, I met Selgard.” William explained that the war engine had knocked great lumps out of the outer parts of Cheapside but that the rubble just hit other alleys. There were walls, of a sort, but Cheapside was called a Castle entirely. But again, if there were any walls no one was manning them. Neither though were there obvious gates apart from that which faced them out here. William and Selgard had wished one another well but had not lingered together.

Macros coughed. “We should go in first.”

The Warlord rose from the collapsible chair he had according to his station behind the camp table. “No.”

“Look Warlord, it’s all very funny but some of my lads and lasses have been talking to the Forge’s lot and frankly they know feck all about this sort of thing.” Elden protested.

“Gentlemen. The Bastion is not here to conquer Deci. We are merely in a supporting role.”

“Aye.” Elden said. “Bollocks.”

Aaron banged his hand on the table so that ink pot, scrolls and sword jumped. “Enough. You have your orders. See them done.”


The Slurries
They stood or knelt about the base of one the great chimneys that rose high above. Brick banded with iron the whole was thick with soot that came away in crumbling cakes when one of the gathering touched it with a knife. It was warm by the chimney and indeed the only slightly sloping roof of the foundry hissed and steamed as the rain came at it. Above and the chimney stack like its fellows dribbled more sickness into the air to feed the poison smog, though today it was all one part with the clouds high above. In a depression in the roof the tainted rain had pooled with more soot to make a sludge. Here one could see far across the Slurries and those gathered had eyes that saw the upper city in lines of run and ducks, of pathways and follow-throughs.

The new leader of the Deci Hunt was bent at the knees, his hands flat against one another with fingers pointing down. Each one was masked. Each one was cloaked. They wore black because it was Deci and local fashion aside pretty much any colour worn outside for a week would become black by the end of it.

Half watched the adventurers enter the Slurries, half watched their peers.

“Lord Sleek..?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Enough. I will remain. Take my kin to the lap of the enemy. Then retire.”

“Lord Sleek.” The woman agreed. He did not hear them as they dashed away. Even had the rain not made the quarter rattle like two tinkers carts in collision the Deci Hunt was well renowned for its silence. He waited a minute more before rising then stepped off the roof to land on a metal beam along which he walked to a rung and three lose bricks. A concealed gantry. A blacked out window. And was gone.

*

“Serpent screw me.” Gadfast Bower pushed back his square leather cap and whistled. The cuss was fairly apt in one part at least as the empty bowels of the foundry were overrun with snakes. Snakes that fed on the little piles of crap left as presents by Blackjack’s boys. Snakes being born from some still warm. Snakes that snapped away from the lanterns of Bower and his fellow workers as they banged back the rusted doors to let a little, of what might charitably be called, air in. It did not seem to so long ago since they had fled King Blackjack’s furious levy rebels. Nor too that they had crept back again when the King had taken himself away for foreign climes. Nor even shorter a time since they had approached the night’s labour, seen the sign of the upraised finger and gone home again. Though suspecting a trap they had come back again after a few quiet words had been directed at them on behalf of the Sleek.

“Look funny?”

“Your name again?”

“Talon.”

Gadfast rolled his eyes. Bloody apprentices. Doubtless still with Cheapside behind the ears. No one actually got named ‘Talon’ but it was the sort of name one adopted in the gangs. To be fair it had only been six years since Bower himself had worn pointier boots and called himself ‘Shadow’. If he had been a more suspicious man then he might have wondered at Talon’s supreme lack of knowledge to do with industry. Or perhaps he did, and being Deci had decided not to point it out. Assassins got particularly annoyed at that sort of thing. “Get the broom, Mr. Talon. We’ve got work to do. Charcoal to sift. Ore to smelt.” He banged his hands together. Proper work. Hard as Jander and hot as a Noble brat on slumming day.

A voice called across chambers that would in a few hours once more roar with the furnace. “Master Bower?”

Another apprentice. “Aye, young Vosten?”

“Someone’s jammed the gates on the rock ovens, sir.”


Cheapside
There was a madness here. Marius licked the end of one finger and with it seemed to trace dust from the air. He touched it again to his lips. He blinked. He looked at the wretch from Thimon in his old, rotten robes. He shook his head. Red eyes and hissing were just so second age. Still, there was something there. Some soft song of madness and when the wretches’ hood turned up the street and Drake turned the corner Marius winced as the volume went to a roar. He rubbed each eye with two fingers. When he looked up again he was smiling fit quite literally near from cheekbone to cheekbone.

They were in Deci and here they were meeting on a boat. It was raining hard enough for the cobbles to be hidden under four inches of runoff but still, a boat, in Deci. Drake climbed wetly aboard and frowned at Marius’ expression. He looked at where Selgard was clutching a dozen scroll tubes. He nodded to Diomedes who not so much ignored the downpour as it ignored him, standing tall and dry between the raindrops. Finally he noticed Kei-Ry.

“Son, you don’t look well.”


The Slurries
They came down the main street in line abreast. Swords stood in hands and the marks of the Knights of the Land on one, of Gothiel on another. In the centre walked the same golem that on his last appearance had aided in the retreat from this very place. There were hand prints everywhere. Cut into the stone, burnt onto the wood or just banged free from the treacle soot that coated everything. Hand prints with one finger raised. The gang sign of King Blackjack.

They made no attempt to hide their advance and just ploughed through half made barricades or pulled free beams set to one side but never used. They went by storehouses with their locks broken and from which trails of flour or metal dust went towards Cheapside. But no one attacked them and no one jumped up to assail them from the high roofs.

The gangs, the rabble and followers of Blackjack had cleared out. They had robbed and they had gone. Only so much had been done to scar the place and Gnug supposed that Blackjack intended to return once he had won and this was Deci’s real treasury.

Barak threw lightning at a sign and blew it to splinters. Something insulting. Something unnecessary then. Behind them Kintarma’s army would be forming up but these were the obvious squad. They were here to draw the eye whilst others went for the hostages. When they came to the largest of the foundries Raven ducked his head out to beckon them in.

They crossed the echoing chamber with its strong scent of burnt tin and charcoal dust. Several dozen workers paused as they went by. Raven came to where the gates to a certain part of the foundry had been forced apart and there lined up under a smelting spout were perhaps two hundred dolls. Dolls of clay. Dolls of rag. Dolls of porcelain and dolls with turnip heads.

It seemed that before they had run home, the people of Cheapside had thought it only fair to give the other side something to rescue after all.

“He Lied.” Khopesh announced “There Were No Hostages.”

Gnug picked up the nearest doll and in hindsight everyone was surprised that it had not gone bang. Still. “Dolls of mud.”

Barak sniffed. “Doesn’t smell like mud.”


Cheapside
Well behind them and the drums of the Bannercrows were sullen in the persistent rain. Their skins stretched the normally thunderous boom was little more than a gentle roar. Jander walked at the head of his brave boys. They were clad in the finest armour, equipped with the finest weapons and they made a fine show even as they walked through the clay slick lake that coated their boots as they stomped out the far side. Close now he could see how the old walls had been crushed to fall in on the streets beyond to make just a slightly more disarrayed barrier. The wind ran across the city to chill his ‘gang’. About their arms each wore a band of beaten gold, though most of the army wore yellow cloth. They were a half bowshot from the city when Jander raised a hand to call a halt. He looked along the line, pleased that his craftsmen had kept the shieldline as well as any of the Bastion Helds that looked on. Well to their left Hacka’s Hearties were in loser order. To the right, the Gentle Few pulled out bottles and began to toast one another from tin cups that filled with water as fast as they could be so topped up with wine.

Jander turned back, the line folding up to fill the space. Behind them the great heavy wagon of his War Altar had been hauled forward and he climbed the immense cart that towered four times his height to stand with the statue that resembled him towering to his rear and his great anvil altar to his front. “I am Jander! I am the Forge! A child of Deci and long its champion! Quit this place or feel my wrath!” The rain hammered louder and it was doubtful if his words had carried. Nonplussed Jander climbed down once more and slowly the oxen were turned in their harnesses and the altar dragged back once more.

When Jander came once more to his warriors he turned to Kelvar. The Warden of Castle Mount had a heavy spear over one shoulder and little flashes of lightning were sparking through the rain so that they ran upwards as well as down. There was no breach to assault. There were no wall defenders to sweep away. The ritualist ground his teeth. He had been looking forward to releasing the Storm Giants upon Deci. “Let’s get on.”

Jander drew his sword. He raised it high and led the Helds off. They cheered with each third step. To the right the Gentle Few readied rope and grapple. To the left Hacka’s Hearties kept pace. They came to the gates and paused whilst Jander had his Mark draw into a column, for they could not pass through in line. One of the ancient gates had been broken to splinters by the Lord’s Hammer. The other rested at an angle. Jander cheered and once more his followers yelled with him. The Gentle Few cast aside their cups and with a hurrah swarmed at the battered wall.

Kelvar raised one hand and lightning flashed from the heavens to touch and turn back and boil in a long line across the surviving gate that blew apart as the storm came amongst them.


The Slurries
The Flashing Blades and Alendari’s Held ran into the Slurries. They did not stop to form walls but dashed through the stinking fog of foundry and smeltery, through long rows of storehouses and everywhere they went they found people creeping back to their places of work. Five burly men and two skinnier ones walked by where Christopher had just taken a crossroad, his fellows with swords drawn. The duellists in their quilted half coats and now drenched hats tensed as the foundry smiths nodded from under their leather hats, tin boxes holding lunch tucked under their arms and big wooden soled boots clumping on the cobbles.

A street away and the fast moving jaeger had taken control of more storehouses, fanned out to present a spread target but ready to hit back with their tensely held spears.

Kintarma walked between them, guiding them on and quartering the Slurries carefully so that by noon they were left with searching the seemingly endless and ever reaching structures that made the real wealth of Deci. When at last they came together even the most worrisome of the spearmen had tipped his helmet or hat back on his head and no few were nursing smoke from their pipes.

“Look, all nose-in-the-air War Master nonsense aside,” Kintarma had taken Alendari and Christopher away from the spears, “and between you, me and that big pile of charcoal over there, if this is an ambush, it’s a bloody good one.”

“Or a bloody bad one.”

Christopher agreed. Personally he was not unhappy with the way things were working out. As armies went theirs was a pretty small one and even if they fought well it would not take much to overwhelm them. “Who else was meant to be here?”

“Pathfinders.”

Christopher slapped his forehead. “They left a note. Hang on.” He dug inside his yellow trousers. After a bit of a search he produced it with a flourish. “Here. It was pinned to a doorway.”

Taking shelter the North Warden opened the scroll and read it with muttering lips. Rerolling the used scroll on whose back the message had been scrawled he returned to his subordinate Held Masters. “Seem there’s no one here.”

Alendari suggested they should remain in case of a break out. Christopher agreed that Alendari should do that whilst in his case he would make sure that no one raided the nearest Inn. Kintarma tried to work out if a no-show counted as a win, decided that it did and in the face of total victory without loss considered that the Army of the Cheapside was going to have to go a long way to beat the Army of the Slurries.

The sound of boots came from a short distance away. Horns blew. Kintarma darted a glance at his subordinates. Could Blackjack be advancing into open battle? “Both sides of the street. Fall back when you have to and don’t get pinned. Use your knees to guide your mounts, you’ll need both hands for lance and shield.”


Cheapside
It had been dangerous but they had entered Cheapside and since no one had been watching the walls had reached the roofs. Planks and ladders had been brought but now it seemed they were not needed. The roofs, though in a long line some had been demolished, were long used highways. The Pathfinders ran lightly towards where Jander was now entering the city but William called them to a halt a little short. Each had a bow ready and a quiver full of Forge made arrows but it was all too easy.

For a moment he looked about the roofs. They were not alone. They were very much not alone. And silently dipping and flitting towards them were many more than they. It was impossible to say whether the shapes were rabble, gang members or a hardened threat. At the moment the shapes were closing in and William spread the word quickly.

As one the pathfinders ran. They slipped down the slope of one roof and too late behind them they heard the sound of many missiles cutting at where they had been. They jumped for the next roof but this too was protected and still a good run away a number of Pathfinders were plucked from the air even as they crossed. Several skittered across this flatter roof and William congratulated himself that he had learnt the bow as he drew back, fired and saw the closest pursuer knocked between the gap.

His surviving Pathfinders were already away and swearing, William followed them. What was the use of his killing a small horde if he went down too? It was the most ignoble of deaths. The downpour drained every shouted imprecation and he almost slipped on the wet slates himself before he was back in the Slurries. He needed more pathfinders. He needed a lot more Pathfinders.


The Forgotten Pass
“We need to be very careful.”

Master Bourd nodded and with some care tapped out his pipe on the nearest rock. Inspecting it, he spat in the bowl before tucking it firmly into a clip on his helmet. Guff similarly stomped his feet in his boots before cricking his neck from one side to the other. Further down what was now a slope heavy with black shale a large number of miners watched them, most grinning. It was dangerous work here and above the Forgotten Pass but it beat feck, as they put it, out of attacking Cheapside. Rural miners for the most part they did not have quite the same reserves about attacking their fellow citizens, after all it was not like they lived there but still it sounded like a whole lot of no fun. It was the sort of thing that got one hated, and besides which killing people was not what they had signed up for. Goblins maybe, but not people.

“Very careful.” Ashalan said again. He licked his lips. Clearing out Milkwood Hill had taken them two weeks. More effort than danger since anything unstable had long since gone up but it had been an awful place with the stumps of the white trees stretching up the little mountain like so many gravestones. Joron would have told him the trees needed to be burnt back every ten years or so if they were to thrive. That growing on dragon ore they were thick with magic and earthpower and it was all part of their cycle. But Joron was not here and Ashalan was not a druid and so the work had been dirty, hard and gruelling but done. The miner’s guilds have been no help at all but the Held from Jander had been much the opposite. There was no way the three of them up on the lip of the blackstone hill could have done the lifting, digging and clearing on their own.

“On the count of three then.” The aspirate ruler of the Hearthlending nodded to Bourd and Guff. They nodded back. Between them they took hold of the metal trellis in which rested the softly glowing lump of hot dragon ore they had brought with them. “One...” Guff and Bourd jumped up and ran down the shale slope. “...two?” Ashalan’s voice went up three octaves. Suddenly the only one holding the improvised frame he grunted as his arms took the strain and he wished for a moment he had learnt a little more about Conveying and a little less about Fundamenting. He cursed when it tipped up. “Bollocks!” He screamed. “Three!” And as if all the taxmen in Halgar were on his heels turned and slipped, skidded and clutched his hands to the helmet he had been told to wear. The hill went out from under him. Half reclined he gained speed until yelling at the top of his lungs he swooshed by his two companions.

Below and the miner’s held scattered, waving their arms in the air and taking up the shout so that for a moment every scrap of proud professionalism was cast over their fleeing shoulders along with lamps, picks, packs and breadbags.

Ashalan careered amongst them and apologised loudly as he knocked two over. He fetched up with some grace in a depression at the hills lower dip, facing upwards and with his feet pointed at the smoking little mountain. “That wasn’t too bad...” He coughed.

The whole world went bang.

For a moment Ashalan was still. The range seemed perfectly frozen. Even the smoke of the hill had halted. His two companions were caught in mid dive, their faces both excited and frightened witless. Then all of sudden the top of the hill vanished. Bourd and Guff landed either side of Ashalan and dug themselves into the dip, head lowest.

A heavy wind swept over them and then several tons of rock and rubble flailed the ground about them and no piece larger than Ashalan’s nose. The sound was hail on a tin roof but the roof was Ashalan’s helmet and the hail blackstone and rock. Then came the wall of dust and bruised, battered and choking the three picked themselves up. It started to rain. They swore some more and painfully picked their way back to where the miners were themselves assembling.

Guff grinned. “That. Was. Brilliant!”

Bourd retched. He shook his head but he too was smiling and behind them the blackstone mine smoked no more.


The Slurries
The innermost pairs raised long horns to the lips and blew a fanfare. In a column behind them stretched the smart ranks of the Spire Guard. Their armour had been buffed and tailored. Heavy surcoats of stiffened fabric bore the heraldry of every Deci House. Their spears shone. Their black shields were divided black with black regent prominent. Each man was close shaven and every woman had her hair tight bound in short pigtails.

At their head rode Dirk in armour much the same but four times as heavy and all chased in gold. On a mare he had sought out the Princess Flay rode side saddle whilst commoners in Dirk’s own livery held a small pavilion over her head. They were entering the Slurries along a very specific route before turning back to the Mercantile and thence presumably once more to the suite she had been ascribed in the Spire. As with every other street she had been shown, this one gleamed and twice she had spotted a gang of workers scurrying away to hide. A gang indeed that carried barrels on their backs and were armed, quite clearly, with long handled brushes. Deci it seemed mostly smelt of paint. Dirk drew the procession to a half with a stiffly raised hand and to her surprise fetched up a lute. The Guard clashed their boots on the cobblestones. Nearby the freshly coloured walls ran in the rain to send streamers of paint and limewash across the stones beneath the hooves of their horses. Far and at the back of the procession two apprentices from the Conveyers gratefully lowered the field privy to the ground. To her astonishment and quite ignoring rain hard enough to make a bald man bleed servants ran forward to set out a light luncheon. She hoped it was not soup.

In a light baritone Dirk sung gently of faraway places and faerie maidens. Of Dirk’ing-do and ardent love in which men in armour proudly dipped the lance towards swooning ladies. The symbolism was not lost on Isabella even if it clearly was on Dirk.

“Turn back!” A voice demanded. Dirk stilled his sonnet. Two score men and women in the dandy garb of what was presumably some underwater kingdom levelled long, slim swords in their directions. “You’ll not find the Army of the Slurries wanting, sir!”

“I think.” Isabella turned to Dirk. “That they are offering a duel?”

From a face more thunderous than heavens high and unseen above the Drakken countenance relaxed into one of simple happiness. “Egad, sir! You wish to take me on?”

Christopher Flashblade had not quite thought that one through but it was hardly time to back down now. Besides, black knights were never on the side of right. “Very well, sir, I challenge you!”

With a short bow Dirk accepted. Kintarma skidded round the corner and after looking longingly at Dirk’s horse, waved. More spearmen hurried forward but Kintarma caught Alendari’s arm and explained something that further away was long lost within the storm. Behind Christopher the Flashing Blades noticed that their allies were being ordered to fall out and were heading into the nearest shelter. Seeing such as a good idea they followed.

Uncle Jack, Christopher thought, would be so proud. He looked forward to rubbing the old man’s nose in it when he described how he had single handedly beaten the Black Knight of Deci. He did not then realise that he was in the thrall of whatever Primus considered to be ‘most Dirk’ and so adjusted the glove on his off hand and nodded to the challenged.

Dirk rose in the saddle and clapped down the visor of his helmet. He reached out a hand and his weapon was passed forward. He settled his shield from the rest to the present. “Verra well, sir! Dirky, as thera’ challenged, may’a select choice a’ weapons?”

Less sure now Christopher straightened up from the en garde. “Ah, he does what now?”

“Lances it’sa is a’then!”

“Dirk!” A voice crossed the confrontation. Standing alone in the rain and dressed in little more than a dress of red gauze was the Countess Medrel Bartholomaw. The Black Knight dropped his lance. His helmet his tossed aside. Ignoring Christopher entirely he dismounted and hurried to where his wife stood all tossed in the rain. Dirk went to one knee and from somewhere mysterious produced a bouquet of flowers. He was about to call for his lute when the sky, for Dirk, broke in two. “Dirk, this cannot go on. We were wrong to do as we did. It was a mistake.”

“Eh? Wot now? Wot wot?”

“I have sent a message to my brother the Duke. He will see that our marriage is dissolved by the Lord Inquisitor in accordance with Amora’s writ on the matter. Do not seek to persuade me otherwise!”

“Eh now? Wot?” Dirk had only that morning received an invitation from Duke Bartholomaw for the yearly hunt set to take place once again on his Thimon estates in the weeks to come. “Wot?”

“Weep not, my knight but this between us was never right. Farewell.” With which she turned and walked away up the lanes until she was gone.

Further back and Isabella might not have caught every word over the wind and rain but the action had been clear enough to one of her upbringing. “Bit awkward this...” She whispered to her servant. Scrip nodded.


Cheapside
The Mark of the Forge were inside Cheapside and ahead of them ran the elementals conjured by Kelvar. There was no immediate or obvious path onwards for the main road had been closed. Buildings had been broken and more strangely it just seemed to turn sharply and vanish. With others behind them they had no option but to press on but within fifty more paces they could simply not all fit and began to be bottled in.

Kelvar looked from one side to the next. He swore.”I’ve got a bad feeling about this...” He reached into the storm and a boom ram across the city. Above and the eye was coming closer and from it cracked down streaks of lightning that touched the spears of the Mark so that they blazed. Shining still brighter than the moment they had ever come free of the fire the Mark cheered and flourished their weapons with increased ardour.

There came a roar far to their right but the rain was too thick and Cheapside too dense for them to know what was happening. “Jander...” There came about them a crash. Shutters slapped open and shapes rose from rooftops. “Feel my wrath you...” The ritualist swept his arm across the rooftops and the thickened air howled. Elementals dance upwards. Screaming faces rolled in the rain and a howling ran up and down the lanes and even as lightning flew at one side of the narrowed street sling stones, crossbows bolts and rude arrows filled the space below. The Mark of the Forge swore as one and then many screamed. From the other side of the rude line of roofs more fell.

Jander bellowed his anger at the cowards and ran to the nearest doorway, booted it in and found only rubble within. He caught up a hammer from his belt and it burst into power as he struck the stones but the screams were growing. “Stand you fools! Stand!”

Kelvar tossed aside his spear even as his elementals fought one side. His thumbs touched and his fingers spread and he bellowed in the savage downpour so that lightning roared from his hands and lit the street in blue, yellow and white forked lightning. He scoured the rooftops so that slates exploded and men and women were turned to black, dead things that rippled with the dance of his Dragon’s gaze.

The street went quiet but for the shouts and weeping of the dying. From lanes and alleyways a rabble poured forth and Jander jumped amongst them shouting his own warcry. But there were too few of them and the Mark were driven back by half pikes and knives, with stones and now spears. They went back with Jander having to be dragged by his own followers who now would not stand so that they were pushed into the lighter spears of the newly recruited Jander’s Blades. The spearmen that lived could not form up. They tried to fight as they had learnt but the enemy would stand still, would not line up for the clash and now lanes were sprouting about them.

“Cowards!” Jander howled. “Traitors!”

Kelvar gasped as the elementals withered above. He risked a glance behind himself and was surprised to see how close to the destroyed gates they had been driven. The Mark was breaking and it seemed to the Warden that the only dead, and there were many amongst the rabble before them, were still touched by the lightning he had conjured to the blades of the Mark.

Still screaming Jander was held hard by his followers, most of who had dropped their spears and were sheltering behind shields as they broke apart. Behind them Jander’s Blades tried to form up but there was no one giving them orders, no one to steady their line. This was about to turn into a butchery and so Kelvar turned and once more reached into the storm so that thunder rolled hard and low across the street. The wind seemed to turn behind him and the Warden screamed at this rabble that dared to come at him. Once more the wind hit the traitors and yet more lightning thrashed into the common filth as the wind took form. A great rolling mass of elementals cut a path through the enemy and every second two, three more were tossed high into the air or lanced with streaking power.

Cheapside turned, took in a breath and the mob seemed to be sucked into alleys and lanes. Pursued by Kelvar’s children so that the cramped road was thick with the dead. Commoner, Guildsman and rebel alike and all people of Deci.

Kelvar raised his fist and shook it at the wretched city. He stumbled, fetched up a discarded spear and leant on it heavily. So much power in how long? It had seemed an hour but he knew it could not have been more than five minutes. Quickly Jander’s Blades came level with the ritualist. They advanced no further. Most looked to where the survivors of the Mark were even then streaming back by the next wave. Jander came up level with the ritualist.

“We advance.”

“Then you’ll die. For the Dragon’s sake Sunstar, you think it will be any different further in?”

“Blackjack dies for this.” But when he looked into the faces of the light jaeger spear he now led he saw grim determination, and a lot of concealed fear. Jander turned away, frustrated and more angry than he had ever been.

*

Deep inside the boat and Drake towelled his head dry. His city garments heavy enough to brain a troll he fetched out a trunk from which he dug a certain tunic, a shirt, tunic and britches. They were stained. They were threadbare. They were cracked and they smelt of anger and loss. They were his old Thimon clothes, the garments he had worn for those years on the streets, mostly admittedly near everyone else’s, with Kei-Ry. The good old days, he now realised. Hell, it had been a while. He laid them out on the bench he used each Starsday but for now just tossed an old Thimon militia tabard over his shoulders.

“What we got?”

Selgard stepped forward. For someone that had done near all the hunting in Cheapside there was a certain innocence about him. Of Deci, he alone perhaps had not been tainted by it. Determined to not let Drake down, he realised, he opened the scroll tubes and from each took out a scrap of parchment, vellum or badly tanned hide. Whatever had been to hand. Sensing the mood Selgard knew that for something like this there could be only one leader and knew he had to enforce that. “I went into the streets and tunnels, boss. ” He smoothed out one scrap after another and assembled them carefully on Drake’s bench. “Blackjack’s hard to trace. He seems to be all over the place in there. People are angry. Perhaps half are spoiling for a fight.”

Kei-Ry was Drake’s closest associate here. The rest were all newcomers to this sort of work with the old man. “Jander’ll give them one.” He winced when the local Governor slapped him about the back of the head.

“Yer think, Kei-Ry?”

“Sorry boss.”

“Don’t apologise, it’s a sign of weakness. Selgard, you did all this by yourself?” He traced a hand over what was a very confusing map of Cheapside. Mostly what it showed was that it was a maze. A maze within a maze. Whole streets seemed to be missing. Lanes had appeared.

Selgard moved the corner of one scroll over another and the map changed subtly. “It... changes too, boss.”

Marius was not sure what was going on but he was sure he liked it. They were inside a house whose top floor was a boat and here in the cellars the ribs of another craft stood stark and bare and clearly in the middle of being worked on. “We need disguises.” He suggested. Marius was the outsider here he knew.

Drake for the moment seemed to ignore the Watch Captain of Bilfdteve. “Selgard did all the probing. Good work Selgard.”

“Thank you, boss.”

“Kei-Ry!”

“Bossss.” The Bildteve Magistrate’s voice slipped on the last vowel. He swallowed.

Drake’s eyes narrowed. “Lookin’ a bit evil there, Kei-Ry.”

“No, boss!” He shook his head. Drake stared harder and bits of his former partners hood drifted into the air. From about the cellar there were coughs and shuffling sounds. “No chance of me unleashing the power of evil neither!”

Drake wiped the last of the rain from himself with the tabard and started pulling on his old, comfortable, arse kicking clothes. “Who said about ‘disguises’?” Marius raised a hand. Drake looked the lanky traveller up and down. He had never seen anyone in Deci dressed in purple, green and yellow. A limp hand held a pomade to a twitching nose.

Marius bowed. “Blackjack came here a week or two ago from Bildteve. He has been in Ishma.”

“You got a point, Bildteve?”

“I am reliably informed that the very concept of ‘hot pursuit’ was establishing by you?” Drake was forced to nod. Marius removed the kerchief wrapped pomade from before his nose to show his rictus smile more fully. “Therefore the villain is mine to apprehend. Lovely though you seem to be, you don’t have the resources here.”

“Man’s looking to claim jurisdiction, boss.”

“You think, Kei-Ry?”

“I am merely pointing out that Bildteve has a large and effective Watch. Two in fact. We have a gaol that threatens to tip the city into the sea. And before you point out that Deci does not have a Watch it has the ‘Sleek’ – we have pretty much all that as well.” Marius leaned forward. From the lantern by the doorway his shadow grew. “I’m just saying that it might be time for your provincial little... law and order, to accept that it’s time for the big boys.”

Drake shook his head. Blackjack was a local matter. But his Drave nature was not letting him out of the corner so easily. It was true that Marius was acting in a manner Drake had himself established. “In my office.” He pointed with a thumb to a cargo hoist.

Selgard watched the pair stalked into the cubby. A gate was shut. Kei-Ry heaved on a set of ropes and the hoist rose to a point perhaps halfway between two floors. “What are they doing?”

In Drake’s absence Kei-Ry seemed to swell. He looked at the man who in actual fact he knew rather well. Still he was new to this particular game. He might be Drake’s probe but he was not his partner. “They’re sorting out the ground rules, probey.”

“What about these disguises?”

Kei-Ry shook his head with a smile only a little less bright than had been Marius’. Frankly and in his experiences such would never get past a few coded names. Kei-Ry would always be ‘son’ to Drake and with a start the Magistrate of Bildteve realised how dangerous it was to be viewed in an almost paternal manner by Drake. Selgard was Drake’s hunter, or his probe as it had been put. Diomedes, who for all this time had been over the side of the chamber checking amd teasing at the lattices of power bound about himself would probably end up being lumped into some religious whole. Temple, Shrine or the like. Though he had suggested it, Marius would not get such a coded title. He was not part of the gang. He was heading up an outsider Watch. One, it was true, that was larger and much more effective than that hereabouts. He heard the stamp of a foot and Kei-Ry pulled on a second set of ropes so that the cargo hoist descended once more. The gate banged open. Judging by the expressions of the contrary looking figures that emerged they were going to share the jurisdiction on this one.

“The hatch still closed, Kei-Ry?”

The Magistrate jumped. “On it boss!” He slipped like tattered oil to where in the floor a trapdoor was to be found. He and Selgard took one half each and with a grunt heaved the entrance open. They looked up eagerly but Drake was talking to Diomedes who was describing just how much power he had assembled, and how he had twisted it to be a tool not worship.

“Good work, Abbey.” The Governor beamed at Diomedes, using the code name he and Marius had decided upon. Drake turned. “You still here, son?”

Kei-Ry rounded on Selgard. “Get in there, probey.”

Marius was the last to leave and then only after he had dashed upstairs to fetch the Watchmen he had brought with him. As the small group followed on after the Watch Academy Marius allowed himself a moment to close to his eyes, to breathe deeply and to sigh. The madness here was something new. Like a potion needing two parts. Drake and Kei-Ry. Oh my.


The Slurries
“I Have Found A Doorway.”

“It’s a very nice doorway, Khopesh.” Gnug assured his companion. Short of climbing over the walls, not an option for the golem, they could have used their magic to simply walk upon the stinking air but they would have been spotted swiftly and further, only become split apart. They had spent the best part of a day being obvious but with the noise increasing from the west quarter they had made the decision to see if there was anything they could do. There were doubtless rat runs in and out, and Raven had found a few, but all had been systematically blocked so that the effort of clearing the rubble and doubtless triggering any simple rubble traps therein had not been so easy perhaps as Khopesh simply taking a good long walk up to the closest they found to a wall and not stopping when he got there.

Nonetheless it was getting dark and in Cheapside at this time that meant they only had their hubris to guide them. Inside a house now Barak walked forward with his sword held in two hands and high above his head. He stopped when he saw the only occupants to be a frightened girl clutching what must have been her younger brother tightly to her chest. Slowly the warlock lowered his blade. “There now, girl. Nothing to be frightened of.”

She backed away. Barak took another step and she spat full in his face.

“Why...”

Gnug caught hold of the warlocks arm. “Come along Barak.”

“What is wrong with these people? We’re here to help!”

“I Have Found Another Doorway. It Goes Outside.”

Raven slid ahead, squinting in the reducing light. He could have made more but at that moment he could think of nothing quite so likely to bring notice to them. Behind him Gnug took out a length of black sausage from his belt and handed it to the girl. Barak ignored her, cuffing away the spittle that still streaked his cheek. Raven returned to suggest he thought it clear and his companions stomped on into the street.

Gnug paused to raise a hand to the girl who only ran after him, put down her brother and then at the top of her lungs screamed. “They’re here! They’re here! This way! Over here!” She fell backwards when Raven closed a quick hand over her mouth, turned her about and forced her down. Two quick rips from the tail of his shirt and she was gagged and bound. But the damage was done and shouts were going up from every direction.

“Right then.” Barak flexed his fingers each hand in turn and settled his feet apart in the winding lane into which they had emerged. “Let’s have them.”

“I Do Not Think They Will Wish To Talk.”

“Excellent, we shall be of a mind then.”

“Brothers together.” Gnug beamed. Raven nodded and went to the flank. First came a pair of alley brats. Then a huddle of old women carrying a basket. A smattering of grinning youths. Then a fat man bare to the waist and smeared with someone’s blood. Gnug raised his sword and charged forward. Surprised for a moment by the impulsive dash Barak picked up his heels and followed. Raven looked up, whispered and ducked.

Khopesh took a step forward and several hundred-weight of rocks, arrows and slingstones smacked the ground. He was struck thirty or more times and each strike drove him an inch in the direction from which he had stepped. “Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow! Citizens Will Desist - Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow!”

From the direction Barak and Gnug had run there came a roar like the crowds once seen in the long gone Deci arenas of old. For a moment there was nothing more and then Barak and Gnug came running back with walls sprouting in their wake. They had to skid to a halt when they came to the chipped and porcupine like Khopesh. “Ow. ”

“Come on, come on...” Raven was whispering as loud as he dared. “This way, this way!”

Then the mob spilled about them. They seemed to tumble over one another and to build up in a tide that threatened to swallow the group whole until Barak threw up his sword and with a shout banged both hands together. There came a boom then that shook the street and spilled the nearest to the ground. The mob recoiled and above others slipped from the roof. The great wave of sound rolled onwards and where it touched bottles, privy pots and lose bricks blew apart to add to the noise. The mob scrambled back upon itself in a panic and clawed at one another as they made to escape. The rolling thunder ran onwards and away and with it went the hundreds that had been so delighted to find just four.

“Damn you!” Barak bellowed after them. “I’d been saving that!”

“We are the obvious squad!” Gnug joined in with a shout and a cheer.

Raven started to usher them all off the street. “But, and here’s a plan, let’s not be any more, eh?” It was getting dark and soon the only light would be that which they made for themselves. Raven had no intention of that happening. The girl, the mob, none of them had been evil. He was not in the business of vengeance against just angry or excited people. Rebellion moreover was just politics. There would be evil here aplenty but he had no wish to wade through a sea of grey spirited blood before getting to it.


The Badlands
“There.” She was hidden under a cloak and hood that was more for the rain than any wish to actually hide her identity. Since they had left the city the weather had worsened considerably to the point where it was hard to see anything beyond a dozen yards as anything other than a shimmering blur. The honey miner nodded and scratched a hand across his chest, tearing his rags and drawing some of the dead blood stolen from the red meat of his last meal. His teeth ached for the hunger in his belly was the only living thing about him and if not fed then like some supernatural parasite it would gorge itself on its vessel.

He did not mind the rain. Cold was something that concerned other people and the gloom of the crackling clouds only served to make even the noon of the day something hidden high above. This was the weather of the dead and the hungriest of them saw better than mere men. So he saw further than his Mistress, bound by the bargain they had struck. If it bothered him that in making the agreement something in his old soul have been set in cold stone then he did not show it. Indeed, service was ingrained in him he now knew. And just as it would bind others, it freed him.

It gave him purpose.

The slope they crouched on was typical of the lower levels of the River Spittle. In a land where the soil had long since been washed away old stone and iron clay remained. The river ran through a gulley that rarely emerged on the flats. The city was some way distant and the flatter ground there as much forgotten. The river was wide but turned treacherously and below them a barge had been broken on the rocks. Trees and even bodies had made a dam. The river was angry in the rain and gushed over the top of the poor blockage to make a waterfall that roared even above the downpour. A pair of sloops had tied up as best they could but the swelling river was doing them no favours at all. Deci may not boast many trees comparative to its size but it did not take many to increase the problem and as the miner watched one struck a sloop hard enough to force it up and sidewise in the river.

“Be careful...” The Mistress warned.

The ghoul grunted. What care he for the existence of the beasts under his will? He was not some cautious Master of a bannered Held. He was the pack leader of fiends, of ghouls and no matter how proficient or hardened they grew they were mere chattels to his whim. Rising, the creature widened its mouth and howled.

It was as if the hard rock of the gully gave way. A small avalanche swarmed down the slope, hidden by the rain and the furious river they came on the dam half unseen and swarmed across it. Many were caught and sent screaming down its flow. More ran lightly over the blockage and though his ears could not hear the sound his cursed soul exalted as his children fell on the bargees, the traders and the passenger one boat had carried. The rain came harder so that even his eyes lost the fight but then the swell lessened and the howls of the ghouls echoed dully up and down the crack.

Escorting his Mistress the ghoul led the way down the slope, catching her by the arm when once she slipped. It took them twenty minutes to negotiate the hill and the rough dam and he nodded at the way she ignored the ghouls as they feasted in a frenzy on the dead and, in one, case, the dying.

She pointed at one body and cursing them the master of ghouls kicked and roared, clawed and then tore the head from one of his followers until they backed away. The Mistress bent and nonplussed by the filth and blood that was washed away by the rain as fast as it stuck to her dug about the body. She pulled up an amulet, slipping the chain free from the caved in head.

The ghouls crept back and seeing that their master no longer stared at them balefully ripped once more into the body. The master ran a long tongue about the teeth that crowded his jaw. So easily done and the reward promised so worth having.

“You know where to go now?” The mistress shouted across the roar of the river.

The ghoul nodded and genuflected almost mockingly. Ah, his soul sang, purpose...


Cheapside
“One more step, and you die.” It was not a threat. It was not a curse. It was not even a promise. “You are citizens of Deci. I do not claim to know what you are all arguing about but you should lay down your arms and be judged by your Magistrate for your crimes.” Whatever they were meant to be, Macros did not say aloud. “Or, come with me and fight if you like but fight the Sunless!” The War Sire of the Templars stood two paces before the closest of his followers. Their tower shields hardly allowed any sight of them at all but for a little eye, a helmet and an upraised spear.

It had been a hard, wet and frustrating day for Macros. He and his had fought with these tactics before and if it was worse, if it still hampered them, then still they had pushed on. As close together as they could manage in the same general lanes and curling rows. Nearly a score of them had gone down in the first five hard minutes and these were in the building they had already cleared. Once one of his spears had said, it had been the meeting hall of some fallen ruler or another. The priests in the Held were not at all happy at fighting people armed with sticks and stones for all intents and purposes. There certainly seemed to be more seasoned enemies in the city but Macros had not seen them. They had been shot at, twice there had been a flurry of missiles, but the mobs they had chanced upon had not charged them and consequently the Templars were not happy about attacking first. Demons were one thing. Citizens quite another. It was damn internecine politics and it left a sour taste in Macros’ mouth.

“Get out of our city.” What seemed to be the ringleader shouted back.

“Now? No. Did you hear what I said?” The Templars unfurled their banner. As one they rapped their spear staffs on the rims of their shields. It was a dark city made the more so by the filthy black fog that hung overhead and the rain that had hardly let up in a week or more.

The mob jeered but hurried away. In a moment the narrow street was empty. It was getting dark and Macros had no intention in fighting here at night. It was bad enough in the sickly light of the day, what there was of it. The Templars had crawled into the city and the terrain did not allow an orderly advance. It was hard enough to keep one Held together. So they had picked their way inwards and chased away anyone they saw, always with the same offer.

“Barley!”

With his Reeve overseeing the First Gate the War Sire was learning how much easier leadership was when someone reliable acted in ones name. Barley was not the youngest in the hardened core of the Templars and he was an almost fatherly figure to many.

“Sire. ” The grizzled figure appeared and snapped smartly to the salute.

“Fortify this building. Get guards set. Make sure the spears get some sleep.”

“Sire!”

And tomorrow we will see, Macros thought. When word comes of what in the Source’s name was happening.

*

“Is it possible that someone knows the catacombs and tunnels better than us?”

They were so far under Cheapside that they were within it. Old Cheapside at least. The rough cave passageways under the boat had soon given way to what could only be described as streets. Crushed, crammed, mostly fallen. But streets nonetheless. Great pillars that might have held Cheapside above had the look of Guildhouses crushed like a tin half sat on by an armoured warrior. Statues lay on their side. More worryingly, every one of them was up to their waist in water so that Drake had to tilt up his chin to avoid swallowing too much of the filth being washed below.

Selgard searched the gloom with sharp eyes. The water was coming in through a thousand cracks but it was not draining further. He might have been mistaken once, but not three times and he pointed to the latest blockage with his knife. That was Drake’s Rule Seven. Always carry a knife. Since Selgard did not even visit the cludgy without at least three that was not ultimately a problem. “This is fresh, boss.”

“Good work, Selgard.” Drake knew the city too. Hell, he might not have been here long but his lore was pretty sharp. There was no point railing against it though, someone’s lore was better. Someone not only knew Cheapside, perhaps the city, better than they but had used that to deliberately block the entrances that led anywhere. No need for two guesses as to whom. “There must be somewhere out of here and into Cheapside?”

“On it, boss.”

“Kei-Ry? Son?”

“Boss?”

“Where’s the closest place of power?”

“Can’t tell, boss.” He winced as Drake slapped him round the back of the head once more.

“Well where are all the lose riches and artefacts of power?” Drake coughed and spat.

Kei-Ry and Diomedes turned a three quarter circle before both stopped at the same point. Each pointed.

“Good work, Abbey! Kei-Ry?”

A little hurt not to get the praise the fiend slipped away. The water in his wake was disturbed not at all. Marius was already twenty paces in that direction, his small pack of helpers crowded about him. Bildteve turned back to Thimon and asked if Deci needed a raft? Given that Drake was in danger of drowning Marius was already wet to the knees.

*

The Inn was not so bad when they had broken through the barricades and the wounded were laid out as comfortably as they could be in the circumstances. The barriers battened across every window were as effective once inside against the locals as they might have been had the positions been reversed but Aaron knew he had needed to get inside the city if he was to have any chance of bringing some sort of order to the attack.

It was, frankly, a mess. Great burning wagons had appeared as if from nowhere after the first wave had gone in. For precious minutes the wave had been cut off from any reserves and even now Moregil had been set to try and keep the gate in ‘Jander’ hands. It had been perhaps a hundred yards to the bloody great Inn from that gate but it might as well have been a hundred miles for all the good they could do here as a fighting Held. The Hob had lost a score of their fellows just crossing that distance. They had a lot of wall in here did Jander, and feck all way to fight back against the missiles that were rained down, across and from behind anyone that entered. Cheapside was nearly impossible to advance into competently and even the streetfighting Helds had gone into close sticks, taking or pushing into a clutter of lanes or buildings.

Beyond the city and Aaron had realised as soon as he had heard fifteen minutes after it had happened that he needed to be closer. He needed more Hound. He needed more scouts. He needed to be conducting... whatever this mess was meant to be... anywhere other than bloody Cheapside.

Dark outside now his Hob were snatching at sleep in between taking their duty on guard. At least the Inn was large enough to hold them. So what did he know? Aaron paced whilst others slept or comforted the wounded. Cut off from the reserves the Templars had started taking lane and street in little hops and bounds. The Winterhaven Sentinels had advanced and swiftly alone but from all accounts had proved so impervious to missile fire that they had advanced up any street they could fit into increasingly left alone. They could not catch anyone but no one had been so much as able to scratch them. The Bannercrows he had sent straight up once the carts had been cleared and they had been swarmed over but had it seemed left a trail of bodies behind them. Their drums had quietened for the night and he knew they were only about a half mile further into the city. Doubtless they had, like Macros, fortified up for the night.

There were no objectives was the problem and Aaron did not like making war in this manner. They could not just roam and get shot at. They could not advance and meet up as there was nowhere to advance to. Indeed, they seemed to be there just to damn well herd Blackjack to some bloody trap. Oh, and there were about fifty reports of seeing Blackjack but strangely he had not been drawn to open battle. Funny that.

Hacka’s Hearties had vanished after claiming they could not get over the walls and no one knew where they were. Run away most likely, Aaron thought. The Gentle Few on the other hand had gone into the city at the same time as Jander and now all twenty of the survivors were back protecting the Lord’s Hammer. Aaron knew he could use even those twenty but he was buggered if he was going to lose a whole Bastion Held over this.

Damn and blast it, he needed more information. What was Jander playing at?

*

It slipped across the rooftop before sweeping down to the alley like a discarded cloak caught by the wind. Tumbling through the curling streets, when it hit the blocking point it paused only long enough to creep up the stone and thence to descend the far side to alight in the darkness thereafter. It was night and if every city was dark when the day turned then this city was all the worse for it. The sickly smog that hung overhead had been thinned for the moment by the rain and though the eye of the storm turned almost sluggishly overhead still the moon and stars were little more than a myth here deep in Deci.

The deep puddles no longer drained but where he passed they were not disturbed. The old, hard stone and rock solid timbers of a Quarter now long gutted by fire so that all that remained was its impregnable heart cracked softly in his wake. Like a man crossing a lake not quite hard frozen enough, the King’s Wizard left such signs where he went. Above him and unseen in the pitch darkness a bag holding cheese and a little dry bacon smoked. The food spoiled, turned a sickly green and curled in upon itself as if to hide from the passage of such a pariah.

It was night time in Deci and for the most part the scattered fighting had finished. Mobs still roamed the streets but if there was conflict it was all between they. Old gang loyalties were emerging. Loyalties ever based on turf, which was mostly where people just lived anyway. Blackjack might have crushed the gangs but that had just meant few wore colours or openly paraded in street or narrow, pointed square. In this time though the mobs raised had retreated to their homes and barricaded themselves in. Or attacked a mob that came to the wrong place. Indeed, many had no wish to fight for their King at all but were ready for the worst to come to their little rows. Deci had seen so much death in recent years that even these places were separated by whole areas empty of life.

But for the occasional roar the only sound that stirred the night was that from the Mercantile where the people there seemed to think they could beat back the destruction with celebration, the light of hundreds of purple hued lanterns and their own call to city. There the Hundred took no part in what was a clash between Kings. Whoever won everyone would serve, such as they did anyone and all until the next power rose.

The King’s Wizard thinned out. He shrunk lower as he moved until he was just rags in the still night. He rose slightly at a crooked crossroads and darted to the left to settle behind a long line of forty men and women. Now last in line he softly fell behind them, making for them a shadow.

Ahead and the pariah saw what they approached. It looked like it had once been some sort of meeting hall or even Guild with a yard and a low wall. Sturdy enough and flat roofed, torches burned high every few feet on the tops of raised rafters in whose light had been hung someone that had come upon them. It was an obvious warning, just as it could be supposed that the collection of banners stolen from those they had defeated were meant to be. The King’s Wizard could see no obvious spears on guard, but that probably meant they were keeping low. Sliding on the traceries of faith as he was, the pariah did not at first notice that the alley was lined with the dead. Dead in ill fitting armour, with short spears and even shields but by their faces locals. More lay against the low wall of whatever the building the Bastion Held had taken had once been.

The line he had joined paused when they came to the mouth of the lane and no more than four good paces from the torchlit wall. To the rear the pariah drifted over the last in line, wrapping him in the folds of his cloak. There was only a brief struggle and when the folds of the rotten cloth parted once more there was nothing to be seen within. A second it took before the assassins noticed and those nearest recoiled with a sudden shout, colliding with their peers.

They rallied at once and the King’s Wizard did not seek such pride as he could take so many - so with a howl he rose high. The assassins closest took a step back but they were many and knives and ropes held ready for their raid flipped out only to touch stone or cobbles as the haunting pariah flowed up the wall as swift as a hard thrown stone. From the improvised fort a drum broke the night. From behind the low wall a score or more of spearmen jumped up, another drum sounded, a third.

The assassins hurried away.


Stab Street
Great, fat lumps of dragon crowded Stab Street outside. They had packed each morsel away as best they were able but still there was only so much one could do and Sire Berry wanted the Stepsons ready for trouble. Even inside the inner depths of the shop the rumble of the fighting could be heard. It rose and fell in waves. Sometimes nothing for an hour and then nothing for but another. More commonly the sounds came in fits and starts so that the goblin had begun to not hear it at all.

His was probably the most effective fighting force in Cheapside all things considered. Which was why they were damn well not going outside of the Quarter. The foray into the Slurries had been quite risky enough and now the families and friends were huddling in the rows of shops and houses. The Stepsons though were on roof and barricade and anyone, anyone, that came near the street was going to learn very briefly why they should not. Given that they had been drawing Bastion pay for months now the rats that followed Sire Berry had been relieved to find out that they were not involving themselves in the civil war. Or invasion, as the last bunch of rabble rousers had shouted at them when last anyone had come close enough to be heard but not to be pinned by a knife from the buckets of such close to hand.

Taking a crafty pull on the silver flask he had concealed under his hip, Sire Berry ducked his hat under the low doorway. Here lay the entrance to the old city and over it a rock as wide as the goblin’s stretched arms hung on a complex arrangement of chains, pulleys and locks. Crouched by a foot long cotter pin of hardened brass Custard held a hammer in both paws.

“Ain’t any trub?”

“No Da.”

“Keepers yer peepers squeaky.”

“Yus, Da.”


Cheapside
The sickly air coated his throat and he was forced to roll up a quick one just to get rid of the taste. The boy Nichal had done good back south’a’ways but the old wolf had ever wished to come here and given the time he had made sure not to come alone. “’Member much?”

The King growled softly.

“Thought as much.”

There were a couple of dozen of them in the attic. One side was entirely open but no moon could be seen through the smog that had lowered to sit within reach of the highest beam. At least the rain had slackened off but that was only because the eye of the storm was upon them. There was more to come and falling through the smog it landed sickly, polluted by the taint of Deci. Even the padfoot wolves here hated it, and these were wolves that liked cities better than the wilds. The old wolf however much preferred the rolling plains, the dense woods and a quiet barrow in which to have a smoke. But rain had no friends and even a druid had to be a fool that delighted in such as they had seen all the previous day.

“What’s the plan?”

“Billyboy, I ain’t much fer plans. What we ‘ave ‘ere is yer basic barrel of bollocks.”

“But yer brought...” The younger man nodded in the direction of the shadowy wolf that stood in the open darkness and learnt about Deci on the wind. The King’s chain hung old and heavy to knees close wrapped in fresh pelts. On his back he carried a grave sword. His face was brutal. All instinct and with little need for the corruption of thought. “...that.”

Berek had. Bildteve had imprisoned him in his mound and Berek had seen him freed. It was about bloody time, the old wolf had decided, that people hereabouts remembered that there were wolves in Deci. And that one was a King. Of, it was said, here. And it seemed to be the season for Kings. A call had gone out to the Watch Captains of the Empire. So here he was. The gran’daddy of Watch Captains. Leastways till the new fangled Covenant said otherwise. Berek bent forward to cadge a light from the attics only candle then rose to clap King Iyanel on the shoulder. “Welcome ‘ome.”

The King growled.

Berek lifted his hand again. “Alright me old son, no ‘arm done.”

Someone laughed. All those present were young bloods, the Straw Dogs’ that remained were guarding their dens in case this was all just another colossal trick. Billy shook his head when the pups looked round. Oh, there’d be harm done.


Castle Cheapside
He had been retching since the previous morning but he bore up under that, dropping his kecks as he waited for the Held he knew to be coming. It was early morning and he liked a good dump to clear his head. He still felt the pressure on him from without, he was being attacked with damn witchiness or other do-whats but he was King. Feck ‘em. A King who knew exactly where everyone was, more to the point.

They were being brought together again now of course and he could not allow that to happen. Or if it did. Feck ‘em again. The funny big lads in their now wet, stained white clobber had secured a load of streets about them and no one wanted to mess with them. The other hard cases with their raggy flags and drums were besieged by the largest mob and the Stickers, even though someone had snuck in and stuck the stickers a bit bad, had hundreds of filthy scum to back them up. But the flags-drums-and-banner lot were mean too. They had killed a few hundred and then hung about a hundred more. They were holed up in Bathnight Batters lane and proving bloody annoying.

“King...” Grabnasty whispered from the doorway. Blackjack stood up without bothering to wipe and tied up his britches so that his mail could drop once more to the floor. His iron boots struck sparks from the flagstones.

“Wassat?”

“Jander fecker.”


Cheapside
They had thankfully been climbing upwards for the last ten minutes so that by the time they came to the tin floor they were all out of the water. Marius had clicked his fingers so that one of his followers unhitched a large chest from his back and after only a slight pause and a change of clothes Bildteve was once again more seemly garbed, and this time in the faded garments he only dragged out to blend in when on the adventuring trail. Diomedes had waited patiently; already dry for never having somehow got wet. Kei-Ry had been more nervous after Selgard had suggested that the way the water was rising it would soon be a part of the Spittle. Drake looked like he had been drowned and restored by the greatest magic. Albeit, not very well.

“This a way out, son?”

Selgard was already running his fingers about the roughly welded tin barrier. Kei-Ry and Diomedes nodded. Marius just raised an eyebrow and very deliberately yawned. One of his followers knelt down to make of himself a chair. A chair on which Marius sat.

They were in Cheapside now and already some of them were feeling vulnerable. There was no specific reason for this for as a group if they knew how to do anything it was to move through tunnels looking for trouble. But the sensation of trespass upon them was very real. Blackjack was not just called a ‘King’ because it had a nice ring to it. From what they knew of the orc he would most likely have been content with ‘Big Bastard’. But a King that claimed his power had a Kingdom. And power therein that did not perhaps need more than a puppet to exercise. Even the shadows did not seem so deep, especially considering that those only existed at all because of the lanterns two of them carried. By now they should have been where they had intended. The plan had unravalled right about the time it had relied on someone else not doing something to oppose it. Drake recognised all this. He ran both hands over his face. He sighed.

“Too old for thisss ssnuts?” Kei-Ry rasped.

“Son, I was born too old for this nuts. Tell me that’s the way up?”

“It is.” And to Selgard’s mind about the only part of Cheapside not closed down. “Where are we?”

“Just get rid of the barrier, son.” But the question sparked a little life in the old man who tried to work out in his head where they could be. He looked about. Diomedes had drifted back aways. Selgard had finished smearing butter over the seams and now began to pry at part of the barrier with a long-handled jemmy provided for the purpose by Marius.


Stab Street
Sire Berry stopped when he noticed the faintest groan in the floor. “Custard?”

The rat raised his hammer, breathed in and then almost delicately knocked free the cotter pin.


Cheapside
The rock crashed through the barrier causing Selgard and Marius to launch themselves up and out of the way so that they nearly collided in the air. Kei-Ry shrank inwards and his robes and cloak seemed to flow over and about the rock and Drake just swore as the immense stone bounced once without sign of having lost its momentum and ran at him!

If there was one thing his cracked old boots remembered it was how to run. One hand clasped to the crown of his tin hat he took off back down the passageway even as a cloud of incorporeal Diomedes erupted before, about and then behind him. It was a race he seemed likely to lose but a race that he had not lost yet and so sturdy legs pumped as Drake ran without much concern as to where, so long as it was away. He could physically feel the rock rolling up on him. With a grunt he poured on more speed so that the rock, close enough that the crushed remains of one of Marius’ followers slapped the Drave each time the boulder turned only scraped his shoulders.

Dammit! Twenty four hours to stop Blackjack wiping out Deci.

Drake tripped, fell.

Way, way back up the passageway an angry voice told them all to ‘bugger off’.


Hightown
Still the water fell from high though from the sound of it the rain had slackened. He could see the pinprick lights of Hightown well above, hundreds of feet so that even had the day been high still the sky would have a tiny oblong near all obscured by the rising Quarter that sat over the Deci abyss. The great crack that ran along perhaps half the Quarter where the richest were to be found and who had built ever upwards so that the highest point, the great spire of the nobility, pierced the clouds that normally still roamed high above the less natural clouds of poison that otherwise smothered upper Deci.

It was a city of men of course. If there had once been another city here below that had long since been smothered and though it was said and Jaraxle did not comment on it, that such was found only a little way distant here in Deci the drow were not even third class citizens. The real slums were deep below, threading off the bottom of the abyss into perhaps endless caverns and corridors. Argoth had been happy to keep them that way and now the drow closest to the city above were wretched things. Why but weeks before two heroes of Elbereth and Gothiel had come below and killed one of the old ones before leaving. The Drow, caught in their induced dreams or their wretched lives had hardly noticed. Those that lived above were sycophants that hid their heritage as best they could, and lived amongst men more or less as men.

He crouched in the place where the Elberethians had come. With the death of the old one here, the murder of he called ‘Husk’, the decay had been rapid. The levelled floor where once had stood an impressive and hallowed temple long ago was carpeted now with silvery webs inches thick. Here had been spun a glittering and beautiful palace but all gone now, as gone in fact as the drow that had dwelt here so that only garments, personal objects, the odd weapon even remained. There was power here and a presence and Jaraxle felt himself watched as if from a very great distance. He knew well that the fearful creatures of his own people hunched without the tall cavern, themselves too fearful to enter. Only a more determined little band led by a warlock called Irryann had offered to accompany him but Jaraxle had bade them watch the main entrance for the moment.

Something glittered amongst the silver confetti of the crumbled webs. Jaraxle bent and to his delight uncovered a gemstone. He saw another, then spied a third. Carefully now he eased aside the strands until he had filled his pouches to the brim and still there seemed to be more. It was a good place, he considered. High and dry whereas now many other of the caves and corridors were half flooded. The abyss itself was thirty feet deep in the rainwater but that was some way distant.

When he heard a shout and a scream Jaraxle rose, turned and walked swiftly in the direction from which more shouts were coming. He paused only briefly when for a moment he thought ghe detected something in the deeper shadows high above but he saw nothing when harder he stared and if the screams ahead had stopped that did not mean the threat had ceased.


Cheapside
It was at least daylight if only a poor approximation of such and Jander led his jaeger swiftly through the streets. Astonishingly they had seen people in the earlier hours traipsing across the dusty lanes with breadbags over their shoulders and Jander had realised that they had been going to find work. People were scared but a lot of them hereabouts might be for King Blackjack but they were not about to fight for him. True, an awful lot were but not all by a long stretch. And before it had gotten light many of them were going about their business. Some were probably even going to grab the free food and drink to be had to be had in the Mercantile. There was a war going on here and quite large numbers were just ignoring it!

Now they were moving on. They had rested up overnight amongst barns filled to the brim with bundles stolen from the Slurries. Jander might have burnt it to deny the enemy before remembering that those supplies were actually Deci’s.

He knew then that he should have lost everyone the day before. If it had not been for Kelvar and his Marks first refusal to break they would have done. He examined the action again. The wagons that had blocked the reserves had been stalled by his own crumbling Held. The amount of horror poured on them had been ridiculous and he could not remember having heard of so many arrows and slingstones finding their mark on the first release. The next hour had been chaos. Even with the wagons gone the Helds had to part in order to fight and not just get squeezed into a single lump, to die.

He and the Blades had fought free even as a considerably nastier looking mob had been about to slam into them, cutting them off from the steadier progress of the Sentinels and the much more proficient tactics of the Templars. They would have been caught too had not the last street left open to them been, it seemed, sleeping. Or rutting at any rate. A hundred and probably a lot more beside celebrating in the side buildings and lanes, drunk as Dukes and being entertained by a band of women the likes of which Jander had never seen. Such beauties indeed, even though he had seen tails poking out from some of their raised dresses.

“Great Forge?” Jennet called. Jander turned to the girl just as the rear of her head blew out from a crossbow bolt that entered her forehead. More whistled by and Jander heard the bee-sting buzz of one as it took the top from one of his ears. The jaeger fell. Again?

But this time and with a roar fake walls went down. Ropes snapped out. Jander took the head off the first with his enchanted hammer even as he went low to sweep the legs out from two more. This time he held his temper and fought and called to his people to close up. Their shields clattered together but not fast enough. A great swarm of evil was upon them with notched short swords, with clubs, nets and cleavers. This was of a sudden a street brawl and then the Blades were down to ten and being driven under. Kelvar hacked and spun simpler lightning at them and Jander cursed them as he pummelled the enemy until there were but five but forty of the enemy all about him. Arrows thwacked off Jander’s armour and now he was finding it hard to see under the rain of missiles. Hands dragged at him and still he killed before they fell away.

Then they laughed.

A great wave of bitter laughter settled over the streets and Kelvar stretched out an arm soaked with his own blood to catch hold of the Sunstar. Cuffing the blood of others from his face, Jander straightened. It was just he and Kelvar, the dead of the Blades and the greater numbers of the enemy. They were in a circle dozens deep now and the hateful looks on all their faces were all alike.

“We’re going.” Kelvar hissed.

“No. Wait.”

From the other side of the crowd King Blackjack stomped out. He was hunched as if wounded and only one eye burned red but he was slathering, exultant. Jander cast aside his hammer and dragged free his sword. “You and me, sleeperson! You and me!”

Blackjack farted. He raised one hand and gave Jander the Blackjack salute with one finger. “Don’t talk wet.” The voice seemed to rumble and the eye of the storm turned overhead. Then heavens broke once more and rain hammered down with such force it was as a giant had unearthed a captive river on the city. “Do ‘im, boys.”

“Coward!”

“Yuhs, yuhs, yuhs. Bye, bye thingyweed.” Blackjack turned his back on the pair and the hardened street fighters of his pack closed in. But Kelvar reached for the magic and before Jander could resist the pair vanished.

*

A gang ran by with ropes coiled about their chests. Rope made their belts and rope soled their sandals. It was treacherous on the rooftops but still they ran and in their hands they held light lassoes and half moon knives. They flashed by and were gone even as lightning flashed far away and crackled about the peak of the Spire.

In silence the dozen members of the Hunt uncurled themselves so that they appeared to rise from the chimneys and stacks, the empty bird hutches and the eaves of roof and turret. Two streets over they thought lay the palace. One caught hold of a silk rope when he saw the little group of figures in which Drake was centred.

“Have fun, Majius.” A thin man offered.

Troy fetched off his mask and handed it over. “That’s King Majius.” He corrected and swung out and over and was gone to join those about to pass below.


Hightown
The parchment he held over the drow darkened in places where the essence that escaped from the stomach wound touched it. Words in a cruel tongue were being revealed and though he had seen it to be a bad idea to do such here then perhaps his sight was not always to be trusted. Everdawn did not think that for a moment but time was time and it was in short supply so he spent it no matter the cost. He did not immediately recognise the angular, almost spiky script but someone in this horrid city would. Even though it was past breakfast still there was hardly any light down here, so he made his own and when the drow had vanished so that his once fine garb had collapsed in on itself Everdawn rolled his scroll up and pushed it into a tube on his belt. He picked up the sack half full of the gemstones left in his wake when recently he had fled from this place and slung it over his shoulder.

When his light was swallowed he had the spell up only a broken second before harsh streaks of darkness came at him. They glanced away to fizzle into the shadows and Everdawn had a knife out even as his eyes pierced the magical gloom to see a score of drow coming towards him. A women in spun armour walked at their head and the elf from Gothiel took a step back. “Don’t be silly.” He warned her.

“You think to come here? Here of all places?”

Everdawn widened his eyes. He grinned to show his many sharp, slightly inward pointing teeth with their points all perfectly aligned to lie close and tight to one another. “Why not, girl, you did. Dem Orristal? Is that where you are from? Where is that then?”

The woman seemed startled. “How could you possibly..?”

“Know that? I see many things. Can’t go back there either can you? And who are you to speak of anything, you who murdered one of your own blood? Or is that simple politics? Shame the attempt failed. So little exile, do you wish to die too?”

But Jaraxle had arrived now. “You talk too much. So which are you?”

The traveller offered a bow. “Everdawn.”

“Jaraxle. Son of Lolth and battle master. You,” a sword sung as it cleared the scabbard, “are wise to be so polite. It is so much more seemly I find to label that sack you seem so keen on when I include what remains of you within it and have it sent to your city.”

For a moment Everdawn seemed to consider the point. He nodded. “Bye then.” He said and was gone before the last word was complete so it came only as a whisper.


Cheapside
The palace had all the charm of a basket of drowned kittens.

Diomedes had been gone for some hours now and even after the party had swept the halls and corridors no one had spoken in the time after they had assembled once more. The throne was empty. Drake ran a hand over the chair that had once been the Governors before Blackjack had stolen the Citadel, literally, and moved it to Cheapside. Now it was piled with stinking furs and spread out before it were heaps of what Troy now discerned to be little more than junk. Wooden collars, bowls, tin plates, some with a veneer of yellow paint or even some real gilding but for the most part just rubbish. The stink here was heavy enough that Troy had to resist the impulse to gag.

“There’s the throne, King Majius.” Drake kicked the chair. He fetched up a tin crown from where it had been left on one of the uprights. He still ached from the rock and if it had not been for... The Governor shook his head. He had not explained to the others how he had been saved. He did not like to think about it too hard himself. The Hat had fetched them up, brushed them down, given them hot tea and heavy cake and them firmly suggested they go about their business, whatever that might be, somewhere else.

Marius had settled himself in an arrow bay a floor up, had there been floors. When he swore the curse banged about Blackjack’s throne room like a wounded crow. “Trouble!” He added.

Kei-Ry flowed to the great double doors. Outside he saw a crowd gathering, already a hundred or more strong. There were no great squares remaining in Cheapside but the grounds of the palace were as close as it got and increasingly little room remained. No one outside chanted, called or had made so much as a sound as they had come here. Amongst them the Thimon Magistrate spied children that pointed towards the palace, more too above alleyways urging others onwards. Without waiting to explain Kei-Ry put his shoulder under the first of the doors and heaved it closed. Then came the thunder of the mobs voices and Drake bounded forward whilst the others still waited for Kei-Ry to explain.

The doors crashed as people reached them and Drake was shoved back a foot or more before his hobnails gained purchase. Selgard darted in and cut three times outside, long enough for Drake to push back and then Kei-Ry caught up the metal pole of an old standard and slotted it across the doors as a makeshift bar. Instantly the doors began to jump as they were assailed and even as Marius was unlacing a roll of Number Four Knives Drake and Kei-Ry were fetching furniture, bodies and a stuffed troll to throw behind the creaking portals. Finally and to Troy’s astonished gaze the two ran back, heaved up the throne and then returned to lean it against the now more fortified doorway. Drake scratched his arse and winked at Troy.

Kei-Ry chuckled thinly. Marius looked up, seemingly delighted. Selgard climbed up to the former Bildteve roost to peer out, only to duck back when a sling stone cracked on the lintel. “There’re hundreds of them! They’ve got us completely surrounded, I can’t see any way out!”

Drake banged his hands together clearly and suddenly in the finest of moods. “Thank all the gods and dragons for that.” Kei-Ry nodded warmly. There it was, they both thought, they were completely and utterly in the nutster. It was just like old times.

“They’re insane,” Selgard called down. “It’s bloody madness out there. If the rebels get in here we’ll get torn to pieces.”

Having slotted a round dozen daggers about his person, cracked his fingers to touch the spirits of the slaughtered, the tortured and the dead that proliferated in this very chamber Marius ran a few spiritual commandments through his head to make sure he remembered them as he ever had. Satisfied, he looked up to where Selgard was working out how many knives he did not have to throw back. “What do you mean ‘we’, Imperial lackey?” Marius laughed. He looked around the room. Everyone looked right back. Even his remaining Watch Sergeants. “What? It was mostly a joke.”

“Mostly?” Troy plucked at the word.

“Oh, like you’re about to lick your own spit from Truic’s ten tiny toes?”

They all thought about that.

Even Marius. “Well yes, okay, who wouldn’t? But what I meant was...” But what Marius meant was something that future story tellers would have to imagine for at that moment the doors banged so hard that the barricade scraped back ten inches.

Drake took instant charge. “You all know what you have to do. Get on with it.”

Right. Marius nodded. The plan. Even he was not about to die at the hands of a rabble and he thought hard even as his current companions ran forward to the doorway. Then plan. The plan. He forced his thoughts to the present, and then the past. The plan. The plan. “The plan!” He clicked his fingers together loudly. From the still open chest he took out several skins of finest Ishmaic fire snake venom. He went off to find the driest corner. Troy, the last to the doorway saw Bildteve slope off and pointed it out to Drake. A little busy with sticking his sword through the increasing numbers of holes in the door whilst perched on the tottering barricade the Governor politely told the King to ‘do something useful’. Troy backed off but Kei-Ry, seeing him, caught up the King’s short cloak and spun him about before he could attempt anything rash.

“Stay here.”

“But that fool from Bildteve, he’s going to...”

“Our only chance,” Kei snapped, “our only chance is to get so deep in trouble that it cannot – and I stress this – cannot get any worse.” The words rasped like old, dry paper but were no less forceful because of it.

Troy stepped back. Selgard barged past the King, caught hold of a thrusting hook spear and yanked it inwards so that he cut at the forehand holding it. Equipped with what was after all a dagger on a stick he reversed it and began to relieve some of the pressure on Drake. “That makes no sense at all!” Troy protested.

Kei-Ry started to fetch out a roll of pinkish leather from a black silk roll over one shoulder. From a heavy pouch he fetched out a stained black copper bowl. He knelt, rolled up one tatty sleeve and cut into his forearm with a wavy bladed knife. “Welcome to Thimon. ”

“But... but... we’re not in Thimon.”

“Son,” barked Drake, “we never are...” A spinning disc cut across the Governor’s shoulder. Selgard forced out his hand and there came the sound of crashing beyond as he mentally threw back the nearest into the arms of the crushing mob. “Can you get out?” Drake shouted. Selgard agreed that he could, when he could. “Well let’s not keep people in the dark about what’s happening here. You hear me, boy?”

Kei-Ry raised both arms so that his blood fell into the copper bowl and where it touched, it steamed. The dark mist rose and hung in the air before him. He rose. He pointed at the now once more cracking door. “Go!” He commanded.

Marius backed off a short way. When he returned it was at a run. Close on his heels was a three headed dog the size of a pony. Its claws scraped on the floor and with a leap it crossed the room to slam through the upper portions of the door. There came screams from without. Bildteve got up with care, brushed off his britches and returned Kei-Ry’s hard look. “What now?”


The Invisible Quarter
The wagons did not parade as perhaps they had done in previous years but were drawn up throughout the Invisible to form stages, great stalls and even places where the Guilds shouted out their wares and purpose. The Hundred had moved fast under Anath’s leadership and every scrap of sailcloth, every tarp, every bolt of oiled or tarred cloth had been dug out and strung from roof to wagon and from wagon to post. It was if the whole of the Mercantile had been placed under one immense pavilion. A pavilion whose poles were Guildhalls and whose stiffed walls were streets. Great sheets of water flowed away and into the Slurries, even he had heard to make filthy waterfalls into the abyss that peeked through the roads and bridges of the Hightown. The noise would have been abysmal had not the people here smothered it with their own. It was as if they were celebrating the end of the world and from all the reports that Anath was receiving there was just about the slightest chance that they were right.

The people of the Mercantile had seen all the death of Argoth and all the horror of Blackjack and they wanted none of it. Screw the stupid bastards, one of the Diviners had averred to Anath and even the vizier had looked over his shoulder in case they had been heard. Screw the villains, was the feeling here, and screw the war. They had turned their backs on it. They wanted none of it. And if they feared Blackjack then they also feared the Bastion too for no amount of yellow armbands was about to convince the Guilds that this was Jander’s show. In short, they ignored it all and did not even pray for it to go away. In the north Quarter they were sheltering in Star Set Square or the Cathedral and when the wind screamed like the bellowing of giants Anath realised that the ridiculous efforts undertaken to keep the rain off the celebrations also acted to block sight of what was happening in Cheapside.

“The Sunstar had better win...” Anath muttered to himself. Sneertwice frowned, unused to his master voicing his thoughts. Privately the scribe worried not about the day but the weeks that would follow. The city had been divided and if no man could escape swearing for one king or another Cheapside had been reborn, bloody Blackjack or no bloody Blackjack.

Wine was in abundance and Anath personally went from hall to hall, sharing a word with the Masters and Sires of the Hundred at each pause of an hour or two. It was not so long until each Guild acclaimed their new head and the Halfblack was in no doubt that the new crop would be men and women of action, the current more personable leaders relegated to more diplomatic duties. The Hundred had hardened in recent months, it was not always easy to read them. Near all were for King Majius but the Puppeteers and others amongst the darker of observance were quietly remaining aside from the conflict. Which was, Anath knew, a good deal better than their secretly aiding the murderous orc. Suspicion and wariness was rife in the city. Anath had watched in puzzlement as even Drake when last they had talked had asked about whom had last been in the Halfblack’s water closet before accepting the offer of its use. The Governor had been in a strangely fine mood despite his words. Ever since he had gathered his bullish gang and that particular example of evil from his old city. Anath had never met this ‘Kei-Ry’ before but he smelt trouble in the brief moment their paths had crossed. A bad influence if ever there was one.

The city was functioning. Barely, but it was working still. For weeks he had been scattered here and there to order this, sign that, ascribe to the other. Anath could barely indeed remember half of what he had been called on to do and only a little more than that as to what his decision or action had been. It must, he mused to himself, be so simple in other cities. Ah, but where would be the fun in that? He corrected himself.

He had done what he could to help Ashalan though the fellow had seemed competent enough. Dirk was attending the Princess Flay. Certain amongst the Guilds, even their chamber, would relocate here but only at the passing of the year for reasons of... well, not tearing things down and then having to have them raised up once again! Anath had not enquired too closely into that, secure in the knowledge that in most occasions to know something was to be involved in it. And frankly, there was no point whatsoever in the Hundred if he got drawn into doing everything. For to do everything was to complete nothing.

On the steps of the Conveyers Anath tried not to think about how much the rain water trapped in the canvass above his head actually weighed. Not so far away a crowd cheered as a badly liveried drum band from the Throttlers shuffled into view. Funny, thought Anath, he thought they would have been too busy to attend.

He picked his way about puddles that had formed beneath the more badly laced of the tent roof. Either side of him two women with faces of porcelain and the regal, heavy dresses of a bygone era drifted smoothly either side.

Dangerous times. He had counselled against conflict. War was anathema to his profession. It might seem good in the short term for weapons, food and otherwise but he well knew that it never took long for people touched by war to start wondering why they were paying for anything at all. To consume, not to store. To go and fight rather than, say, toil.

Bad times. But interesting if they were brief. “Wine?” The vizier plucked a bottle from his satchel and closed on someone he recognised in the crowd. Anath crossed the distance without anything so gauche as to seem to be moving at all. He plucked a scroll from the travellers hand and replaced it with the bottle. When the figure turned in surprise Halfblack pressed a goblet into the other. “You seem to have run dry?”

“Oh. You.”

“Good day to you Everdawn. One trusts you found what you wished in our fine and always open curiosity shop? May I?” Anath unrolled the scroll whilst Everdawn tried to juggle bottle and goblet in order to snatch the scroll back. Anath meanwhile had opened it up to peer at it with no real interest.

“There’s no need for you to sell it for me you know.”

“Of course not. How lovely.”

“You can read the script?”

“Of course I can.” Anath snapped it shut and returned the scroll with a flourish. Everdawn bit the cork from his bottle and spitting it out poured himself a generous measure before swapping back parchment for wine. He paused a moment before drinking. Anath pursed his lips. “It’s not poison you know. It’s not like we have a Guild for that or anything!” He laughed. Or rather he said ‘ha ha ha’ which was not quite the same thing.

“Yes you do.”

“Actually, we might at that. It is so hard to keep track of these things.”

With a nod Everdawn indicated where not so very far away a heavy wagon was giving tastings and supplying samples whilst in a long row Guildsmen toiled theatrically over a series of flat cauldrons. Two kept up a certain banter with the crowd that used many euphemisms along the lines of ‘remove unwanted problems’ and ‘sending a thoughtful message’. Their guild patches were of smoking bottles. A banner over head proclaimed the nature of the Guild. Four of the more attractive apprentice girls were shimmying to the sound of fifes and singing about ‘bottled solutions’.

Anath beamed without turning about. “Oh them?” He waved off the last two minutes worth of conversation and fetched out a silver chased glass of his own before allowing himself a small measure. “Chateaux D’Amorphus. Cheeky, young but promising. Promising.”

In the Heartlands they preferred that of House Halgar when they could get it at all and Everdawn was happy to say so.

“Overrated.” Anath opined, having never been able to get hold of some for reasons perhaps best not thought about.

Everdawn did not care either way. He had places to go. “Best lay plenty in Halfblack – what with the Barrowdells and all. Nasty that was.” The traveller chewed the words for a moment before turning away. “No, that has not happened yet. I get confused about ‘Dawns.” And then he was amongst the crowd and lost to view and Anath was called upon in his duties as the leader of those who would be a lot happier if people would just stop kicking sand at each other.


Cheapside
On the rooftops of Five Ways Broken the filth that had followed Blackjack from the first picked at the bodies of the men and women they had killed. One bent to inspect the darker diamond of cloth on the sleeve of one from whom he had just cut free his iron crossbow bolt. With the tip of the quarrel he poked at where a patch had been picked free. “Bastion sods right enough, King.”

Blackjack took out his regal tool and sighed as a long stream of fetid piss splashed over the face of the dead man. He shook it mightily, enjoying the feel of the soot thickened rain on his might member. When his followers sharply skittered away he turned, cleaver in one hand to see how the poison rain was thickening.

Of a sudden there was a pale figure before him. Then Blackjack saw nothing as every scrap of the city’s filthy cloud above turned bright and fell upon him. A howling ran out over Cheapside. There was a roar and Deci itself seemed to pause, to freeze, to take a sharp breath. Then when Blackjack howled the spell was broken. His skin erupted into buboes. One arm withered. He roared and spat out his own teeth. The roof gave way and he fell into the attic below. He thrashed and screamed. Now his back boiled and his chest seemed to bulge. One eye blew up like an alchemist’s balloon. His spine twisted. He rose painfully, screaming all the more but Diomedes had vanished. His followers peeked over the broken slates but when they saw the horror that had become of their king the closet swore. Backing off, they fled.

Blackjack hawked and spat a fang across the room. Pain was no stranger to him. Grunting, he stomped to the nearest wall and kicked his way through it.

Ow, he thought. Kinda different though...


The Spire
“Of course you do not see us at our best.” The Baron Throttle suggested. The Spire would have looked down on the city had not the dense fog covered it below. Indeed, with the storm wreathed about the heavens it seemed as if they looked out at some elemental world in which perhaps only the Spire itself was the most permanent part.

Isabella was a little tired after so much Dirk and had withdrawn from his company after the unfortunate news that was doubtless the heart of the conversation buzzing about the banqueting chamber. Leaving the rather common festivities of the Mercantile to its own devices once she had been introduced to the Baron she felt considerably more at home here amongst her own kind.

Like every part of the Spire, the wide hall was a place of riches. The floor was a rich parquet. The walls were blood red panels tastefully decorated in silver. A five piece played a light tune on fiddles of varying size, each member blindfolded. The Nobility of Deci spoke to one another under the music so that their words only made a soft buzz.

“Of course, my dear Baron.” Isabella laid a hand on the young man’s arm. At home the Nobility wore nothing very much at all and pursued every delight it was possible to imagine. Light, airy towers and delicacies for the wishing. Here the Blood were of a different stripe. Black and dark red, heavy purple and uncomfortable mauve were the colours of choice. The woman in heavy skirts that swept the floor and bodices tight laced with collars to the chin. The men in contrast wore their jerkins open and bulky, their britches tight. Most wore swords or knives. Isabella did not doubt they took their own pleasures no less assiduously than her own people but they were selective here. Precise. Sharp as the blades they wore flattery was not a means to an end but a method to convey deeper meaning. She adjusted to play the game a little differently.

There were links she was sure between her own House and cousins and those here but they were not immediately obvious. Those of title in Deci were those that had sided with the first Emperor. There were others but such were outcasts, unspoken off in polite company. But both cities had old, old Houses and the route of their weaver blood was doubtless similar. If not the same. It was true after all that both stood a little apart from the wider Nobility of the Empire more generally.

“And are you married, sir?” She asked.

The Baron Throttle did not react noticeably. Indeed his whole manner was a little cold but Isabella suspected he was much the same with everyone. “I am not. As yet.” He did not elaborate.

“In my House our sons and daughters are used to such things.”

Talath admitted that he had a clutter of relatives, of whom only the Lord himself had been wed. It was likely perhaps that they could join such a union only at Troy’s express permission. Children meant potential heirs after all. The Claugh’s were likewise and the Countess held that House in a grip somewhat harder than iron. The Marston’s however were somewhat freer, the Lord now resident in rural Sellaville a widower. “It depends if you wish to marry for love, power or status m’lady.”

“Marry? I?”

The Baron Throttle managed a smile. “Indeed. But to the Lord of House you should go. There is always Gerant Gelmenslew but here amongst my peers such things are commonly a matter of House Lord. Unless of course one is feeling rebellious?” Talath did direct the guest to where a big, hungry looking fellow was working his way along the trays of delicacies set for the gathering’s delectation. He grinned at Isabella and held out a platter of Frightened Pies.


Stab Street
Stab Street had been made into a little fortress with quick, clever little walls running even over the rooftops. Rats, their snouts wrapped in linen and their paws covered in more of the same though hardened with glue and impregnated with blades waited for trouble. Judging by the way they prowled back and forth though it looked to Kenobi like at the first hint of trouble the rats and, yes, goblins he saw would jump their own barricades and charge the enemy.

The tortoise formation approached along the winding row that crossed it cautiously, if only because their formation demanded it. Since entering Cheapside they had suffered violence that had bordered on calamity but they had pushed inwards with their shields locked and their spears defensive so that the Held had suffered but two turned ankles and a lot of heavy dents but no actual casualties. Unable to catch anyone they had nonetheless seen very little in the way of people to fight.

Inside the protection of the tortoise now, William had been sent on a boot filling run across Cheapside to find them. Selgard had reached the Warlord to briefly tell him of the siege at the palace before vanishing once more, leaving the recently arrived William to seek out Kenobi and go and relieve the matter.

What had not helped was that none of them there knew Cheapside well enough to know where to go. Certainly not now Blackjack had turned it in his shadow to what it was now. The tortoise formation did not make for convenient navigation but wherever it went others suddenly were not.

“No further!” They heard a voice call to them. Kenobi whispered an order and he and William stepped smartly out of the locked shields. Such closed behind them once more with a rattle. Standing high and proud not so far away a goblin in damp finery and a very big hat stared at them. Foot on wall. Hand on hip. Water ran by the Governor of Halgar, boiling up now he saw from cracks in the street as much as it came from above.

“I am told that if anyone wants to know something then you are the man to come to?”

“Dat’s right.” Sire Berry replied. “Does yer want some cake?”

“No thank you.”

“Dat’s good ‘cause we ate it all. I got an orange?”

“Have you indeed?”

“Nah, we ate dat too.” There came laughter from within Stab Street. A short distance away there were brief screams as some opportunists died after trying to break into a little alchemist shop. “We is defendin’ our own. Love ter ‘elp like. But we ain’t fightin’ in this war, innit?”

“This bloody city.” William swore. “Look you colossal stroker you’ve been part of the Bastion for months! How much have we paid you now?”

“Sorry?” Sire Berry yelled. “Dis rainy stuff lost dat bit. Wot does yer want stringbean?”

Kenobi scowled. “Where is the palace? Blackjack’s place? Whatever he calls it?”

For a moment Sire Berry thingyed one ear. Then, nodding, he pointed away and up the next row but with no real precision. “Dat way, it’s der thing what is on fire!”

As the tortoise slowly went on its way a small band of what were probably goblins flexed their overlarge hands from the sleeves of their too big coats and whistling, made to follow. Unseen by the now advancing tortoise formation Sire Berry held up a shrivelled orange. “Fooled yer.” He shouted. He had been right about the palace though.


The Shedeff
It was dreadfully quiet. The great pointed rocks deadened even the sound of his boots as he climbed upwards with a grunt until at last he rested on the top of the highest of the boulders. The land rose higher but this side of the hill was all made up of such great stones as if placed there by the gods long ago and forgotten about thereafter. Not so very far away the Forest stood and seemed to stare back at him and Storm shivered at the sensation for he had learned not to like the trees. Or rather, what seemed to lie within them. The great boughs were bent towards the rocky slope, branches almost but not quite touching the lower stones. Even the heavy litter of the leaves he could spy about their bases did not come as far as the stone pile. From his current elevation he thought he saw an irregular line where the Forest ended and its neighbour, fort like, began. Only one tree spoiled that image but that was his tree that in turn seemed to stand and defy its cousins of the Shedeff.

Up high as he was still Storm saw no end to the Forest. It ran as far as his could see into and across the mountains. Following that line he knew would lead him to Centaris but that was many days distant even if he could have walked it in a straight line. Magic would make that easier, but his wishes did not lie in that direction. Somewhere to the west a wolf howled and a deeper, longer howl answered a little closer by.

Storm ignored the cold. For three days the area had been wracked by a gale and a storm had marched by overhead. Still now its tail was pinched at by the mountains so that it was stretched, teased out in a rough tear shape whose end he supposed was over well distant Deci. It was hard to imagine how might one be so far from a city and yet still remain within its territory. Storm looked back to the Forest. A territory that ended right about there.

He stood to see a little further and only just clutched at his magic when one boot slipped to half spill him backwards.


Cheapside
Water was no longer gushing through the gate which was now waist deep in the stuff and rising perceptively. The shallow lake through which the attack had forged the day before had long been swallowed so that for the land danced for several miles outside and the distant shape of the Lord’s Hammer too seemed to be shrinking. The wagons that had on the previous day separated the advance from the reserves had been repaired and added to those brought in by the Goat Skinners and upon which they now perched above the spreading flood and under canvass. Moregil’s Guard too had joined them, their numbers lending them more strength than his ability perhaps to lead men. It was hard to imagine what was happening in Cheapside for though they protected the gate the rain filled their ears with its roar. After the close run division at the gate Aaron had suggested very strongly that Moregil, as he was watching the rear anyway, would best do so here.

But an hour before Moregil had seen the Warlord hurry up the wider alleyways with his dismounted Hob close about him but there was no news and so the North Quarter Guard remained to make sure that the gate was not once more closed and those within, made perhaps to stay there.

He had not realised how bad Cheapside had become. By the very nature of what he was making in the North the people liked to work together and not to stab one another over the price of a chicken, though currently a chicken was going for a lot of grulls indeed. There were no herds to be had and Moregil supposed they could always try and raise the snakes that proliferated in the city, if one could milk a snake?

Back home, and it seemed rather more distant than it was, Kallah had been arriving ever since things had started to go bad. He had asked them to scout for him down here but they had fearfully refused. There was a schism in their order, such as it was. If they entered here then they would die. If their argumentative brothers entered the Mercantile then they would die. Their lives were open to their siblings if they crossed that boundary and the Mocker had sent word that they were not to get involved. On either side. Moregil supposed that meant at least that the Cheapside Kallah would be keeping their heads down and that was worth not having a handful of their own.

“What was that?”

Moregil looked up. He heard something too. Everyone sheltering in the wagons erupted upwards just as crossbow bolts ripped into them. Shields held close as added shelter clanged as metal struck metal and chaos erupted as the Guard spilled out and then to their waists in angry water. “Form up! Form up!” Their Master ordered and miraculously crossbowmen went behind shieldmen and started to return fire.

There were men and women all around them and the fighting closed in on itself as with a roar Moregil forced himself into the front rank. He struck down the nearest even as a slingstone near took the head off the man next to him. “Roof, roof!” His own crossbows went up and they had to advance else not be able to reload. Clubs, swords and spears reached for them and nearby the Goatskinners stamped on hands that reached up. Harder looking rogues with the sign of the dark, extended orc digit on their chests jumped up and butchered the carters even as Moregil got to slightly firmer ground. There were rabble about him whilst nastier scum kicked the bodies of Jander’s carters. The mob about him went down as he and his pushed on, whilst the clearly more skilled gang laughed at their easy victory.

He saw a brutal looking figure about to direct this greater threat against the Guard and he knew they were doomed then but to his astonishment something folded over the chief thug. He vanished, screaming still and was gone and the killers that remained stared at one another in as much surprise as had taken Moregil. Their orc master was not present and now they yelled at ‘Crunch’ to come back. But he was gone and the thugs ran to the building near to where he had been standing. The rabble before the Guard turned and ran. Before Moregil could decide what to do his own spears just splashed forward after the cruel thugs that had killed the Goat Skinners.

“Alchemists! Alchemists!” Bellowed Moregil, and amongst his spears certain of them ripped open side packs and the sodden straw inside. Each took a glass bottle up with some care and as the spears went behind their shields cast them through door and window. A bang shook the street and the spearmen yelled as they charged in but it took only moments to ascertain that the enemy had already gone. Or, to be more precise, had been driven off.

Moregil snapped at his followers angrily. There would be no more lounging about in the comfort of wagons now.

*

“Sire!”

“Barley? Why aren’t you in the next street?” Macros was a stickler for orders and though the Held had been pushing ever onwards progress had been snail like. They had been ambushed twice and even their experiences in street fighting were being tested to the limit. They had wounded now, the sticks of the Held flanking one another slowly whilst the injured limped in the centre with the priests.

“Warlord, Sire. Wants a word, sir.”

“Very well.” Macros cupped his hands about his mouth. There was little need to presume to stealth. “Templars will close in and hold!” When answering shouts came back he ordered Barley to take charge, the veteran instantly clouting one lad on the top of his helmet for presuming to look round. ‘Am I so fecking beautiful that you can’t take your eyes off me young Tenson?’ Macros heard behind as he walked off, allowing himself a small smile.

It took less than a minute to negotiate the alleyway at each end of which Templar spearmen acted as doors with their shields. When amongst the outer stick of his warband Macros was delighted to see Kelvar, though frowned when he saw Jander and at what that must have meant. Further out and the Imperial Hob crouched low in the surrounding alleyways, shields up. If they were rushed now they would never pull together fast enough Macros thought. Still, they would learn or die. Coming in now Aaron banged the soot and dust from his gauntlets.

Aware of propriety as always and knowing that the spears would be watching Macros straightened up and offered the Warlord a salute with his drawn sword. “News?” His eyes flicked towards Jander. Here the water was only ankle deep and sheltered from the worst of it by the overhang of the lanes no one had to shout.

Aaron brought the Templar up to date. It seemed this was Bastion work now. “I sent Kenobi to fetch the Governor and... Earl... Majius. Can’t be seen to be conquerors. Jander’s run out of spears. Gentle Few I’ve ordered back, what’s left of them. Kenobi I just mentioned. Bannercrows seem to be advancing too but I’ve got no one left to find them. They got attacked last night I believe.”

“What about the local Helds?” Macros asked. “That Hacka’s lot and the other ones?”

“Seems they claim not to have found a way in. Or not shown up to fight. Either. Both. Don’t think they reckon the pay is worth getting involved.”

“I see.” Macros looked down. Jander’s anger was making the puddles bubble just this side of boiling. “Orders?”

“Man approaching.” Aaron’s Reeve called out. Macros noticed the fellow wore the sash of a Held master. Strange, he had not known the Warlord had a Host. Dressed still in local garb Raven was only let in when he was recognised. Having decided not to appear amongst so many pointy ended sticks.

Half breathless the newcomer accepted Kelvar’s near empty water skin. “We’ve found Blackjack.” He declared.

*

It did not look like any palace Kenobi had ever seen but word had gotten out and he was the first one here. Despite the enormous beacon it was projecting over the entire city it had still taken the Sentinels an hour to cross what couldn’t have been more than half a mile, and that pressing onwards all the while. They had nearly ended up in another dead end before William Chance had bolted back to wave them aside so that now, finally, they had reached what had once been the centre of Blackjack’s power.

Stones and larger objects had not struck the close confines of the tortoise with any real force since they had left the old Squire Burners Guild that morning but from what little Kenobi could see through one of the narrow gaps in the formation they were being followed on rooftop and even paced to the rear. Children for the most part but scattered mobs otherwise that had hurled abuse but scurried off without attacking them.

Probably the closest they had seen to a clearing in the Quarter the grounds of the palace were a slaughter house. Local ghouls in suspiciously common coats and boots lay amongst dead rebels. The mob was being refreshed as if the beacon was calling many of the more malcontent and angry rioters so that they danced and howled at the flames that were consuming the building. Even as William was admitted smartly into the tortoise Kenobi was snapping at his spears to tighten up yet further.

William had not slept for two days now and his voice showed it. “Oh, what now?”

“Vampire?”

“Ours or theirs?” Frankly nothing was about to surprise William at the moment. Standing with his back to the now once more advancing tortoise a gaunt figure in some finery was advancing on the palace ground. Where he passed by the dead rose up. Jerking, twitching but with little coordination corpses dragged, stomped or crawled behind the vampire until when he stopped his progress they continued. The mob finally seeing this backed off. “One of ours then. Bloody place.”

Kenobi pushed on into the gap made and the vampire watched them go by without any real interest. The mob picked up stones from the ground and from the nearest windows an ambush set for such rescuers instead shot their crude bows and sling stones into the zombies who jerked again and in twos and threes spun about or just fell the twenty paces their new ritual unlife had lasted.

When William looked back to where the vampire had been, the wretched thing had vanished. He clapped two of the nearest spearmen on the shoulder and they made a gap through which he could scamper out and run the last twenty yards to the burning palace.

The doors were mostly gone but a rough barricade remained, mostly he noticed made up of dead people and if one of them whined as his boot made contact William finished him off. He ducked inside to see where Drake was standing, sword in hand and nearly mummified by the bandages close tied about his body. The only fighting going on was where Marius sat on the chest of a big, fat woman and held her face in a demons claw that slowly crushed her head like a softly boiled egg.

He took in the line of attack. Noticed that many on the ground looked a little well dressed for rioters. In the centre of the chamber something spectral and summoned was hunched on the chest of the most richly dressed of the attackers. It suckled at the limply moving body so that a gauzy spirit was being drawn between the attackers face and its own more indistinct features.

The whole of the rear wall was ablaze. The furnace heat was eating at the high ceiling and as he stopped a charred lump of rafter crashed at his feet. “Come on, you have to get out.”

“We wait to ambush Blackjack.” Troy Majius pointed out.

“Look,” William kicked the rafter out of his way, “I don’t want to be the voice of dissension but I’m pretty sure he knows someone’s here.”

Marius stood up from his last victim and smoothly slipped his hand behind his back. Kei-Ry, seeming not the least surprised to see that help arrived had enquired if anyone else but William had come, half expecting to hear the answer that Master Chance was the sum total of the Bastion’s efforts. When he heard about the tortoise the Thimon Magistrate seemed satisfied. Indeed, they had clearly provided enough danger for themselves that Deci had given up in disgust at not being able to better it.

“Selgard, get the hell out’ve here, son.” Drake ordered. “We’re only dragging you back.” The slighter man opened his mouth to protest but seeing the wisdom of it nodded, raised a hand in farewell and darted away. “How many of us can get in Kenobi’s Held?”

William had been amongst the tortoise and admitted not many.

“King Majius goes inside. Marius, son, you too.”

The Bildteve Watch Captain, who had already been shuffling towards the broken doors, nodded.

“Kei, you and me are going to have to run on the outside.” The Governor patted his companion on the shoulder. Kei-Ry did not protest. Who else but they were going to take it up, as they said in Thimon, the rat’s chuff?

With a crash half the palace collapsed. The wall with the door was all that remained. There was not a lot of point defending it now. William utterly failed to understand why Drake and Kei-Ry started to laugh and so pushed Troy to where outside one side of the tortoise shield formation stood open for those that were to enter its protection. The mob was already creeping back and thickening once more. Sling stones and arrows were smashing into the old cobbles or glancing from the shields.

Standing a little outside the formation Kenobi tapped his foot in irritation.


The Slurries
“Shall we try and arrest them?”

“No.”

“I only ask,” Gnug said, “as it would be seemly to at least try first.”

Barak did not care. They could hardly see the mob that had grown about them throughout the day, going from place to place, fighting and distracting and thankfully able to move often in straight lines thanks to Khopesh. The golem had said nothing in all that time. There was not much to be seen of it under the arrows that had lodged in the cracks made by the slingstones, thrown masonry and worse. But even able to make their own roads they had been driven onwards until now as the heavens seemed fit to drown Deci. Clearly the mob had known what they were doing even though badly led they had allowed their prey to slip through their hands time and again until finally the Obvious Group had emerged into a clearing. So surprised had they been that had first they had paused. Only to press on when the small army set after them had come close.

It was not as other cities might have considered it a very large square. It was as if in fact some great Guild had stood and then for reasons of its own vanished. The ground was hard, clean and raised on still present steps so that they came upon what was now an island. The gloomy mob came on slowly, whips seemed to be cracking amongst them and there they heard the booming voice of the enemy roar at them once more.

“Feckers! Feckers!” Then something about bringing him his ‘best whippin’ whip’. There must have been hundreds, a thousand even but it was hard to tell. From the relative elevation of the lost guild they could make out every lane and street to the north of them crammed and heaving. They could see no individuals, just what must have perhaps a third of Cheapside chanting for their blood. Still even over that Blackjack’s voice roared, both in anger and pain. He had orcs in there, others too, driving the mob on and behind their party so opposite to the mob Gnug, Barak and Khopesh heard drums.


Cheapside
The tortoise had picked up speed and was making its way to the gates as best as William could direct it. The Warlord’s orders had been very precise in that the Governor and the Majius had to be rescued for what were probably political reasons. If they died, Blackjack would only say the Empire had done it as part of their invasion, William supposed.

Still missiles were coming at them. The mob and a more organised group were keeping pace but on the ground they too were hampered by the confusing and winding streets. Kenobi heard a shout of dismay and turned to see Drake go down.

Drake, Drake, do the fecker, do the fecker!

No one there had any power remaining but Kenobi pushed through his own shields, ducking sharply as an arrow snapped out to break on them as they slammed shut once more. Kei-Ry was standing over the Governor’s body and the air between he and the mob leaked a wave of stinking evil as he made a lunge that was never going to connect. Kenobi ran over to see arrows stitched down Drake’s back and then, incredibly, the mob started to turn away. Children were calling them back. Children kicked and swore at the laggards until where once they had been nearly surrounded the Sentinels were rapidly alone.

Kei-Ry bent and heaved Drake over one shoulder. Kenobi stood between them and the now empty streets. Troy pushed free and took up Drake’s other arm. They hurried on and turning the next corner saw the lake that stretched all the way to the long broken gate where Moregil’s small Held had tipped over two wagons to make a rude wall.

They ran on, the tortoise breaking apart until the Sentinels became strung out, shields up. Troy and Kei-Ry hurried, Drake held between them and when they splashed through the new lake had to hold up higher until strong hands reached down from one of now floating but still upright wagons.

“Tell me you’re here to reinforce?” Moregil yelled across the rain to Kenobi. Exhausted from the long run the Governor of Halgar could only raise his sword in acknowledgement.

Marius was the last to wade to where the others now sat, crouched or just plain waited. He tapped Moregil on the shoulder. “Hello there? I’m a Watch Captain. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any women hereabouts?”

“Are you serious?”

Kenobi looked up. “They don’t have tails do they?”

“Of course not. If they did though..?”

“That way.”

Marius touched a finger to his forehead and whistling, moved in that direction. He was most surprised when ten minutes later he found just what he had been looking for in the company of a band of drunken wastrel swordsmen, sat on lumpy looking sacks, and who according to the girls had entered the city but hours ago to save and protect their virtue. Marius bent down to the nearest and snatching the sack out from under him rifled it until he found a half decent golden cup. He waved it in the face of the astonished pickeroon. “Virtue costs double, young man.”

*

“Form.” Macros had to shout and his temple ground voice carried across the Held. “Reeve Barley, your place is to the rear! Kelvar, the Source protects you it seems. Are we loaded?”

“You might be.” Kelvar grunted. “I’ve got a spear.” But he turned to Jander and reaching over his shoulder tugged free a sword. “Star silver. I thought. Well, I was going to give it to you at the end of the day.”

Jander looked up, took the sword and raised it experimentally.

Then the Templars went forward and in their first sudden rush cleared for themselves space before the lost Guildhall so that swiftly and at long last they could come together in a proper shieldwall. When they pushed on the Warlord’s Own managed to do similarly.

*

“Dirty cheatin’ bastards...” Blackjack chuckled. None of his followers were to be found but he was a man of the mob and the mob was being driven on. The water was all about them now and the whips cracked hard over their heads as they were driven forward. Up ahead and the tool stains he had been chasing for laughs had been shuffled into the ranks of the ragged lot with all their silly banners and funny drums. The orc was finding it hard to walk. The stones were cracking under his metal boots. There was fighting to his right now and he just about made out a long line of black and white, which meant the Saucy Ponces. Feck ‘em. Feck ‘em all. Let ‘em kill the city, what the buggerin’ feck did he care? “On yer dogs!” He cracked open the skull of a malingerer with his linked chain whip. “Kill! Kill!”

*

They pushed on but it was the weight of the bodies that slowed them rather than the skill of the levy mob. Had they even been militia quantity would have told over quality but step by step and fighting to their waists in water the Bannercrows, the Templars and the Warlord’s Own went on. They had the mob on three sides now and more were trying to escape than were fighting back so that Aaron set up a shout that took five minutes to carry until at last the Bastion line came to a halt and the mob, panicking was able to flee. The Orcs were swarmed under and the rabble streamed away across rooftops and lanes, streets and alleys.

The shieldwalls came together once more but only the beast remained.

Twisted, cursed but the larger because of it Blackjack laughed. He stood clear of the water because he stood on a hill of the dead. And when he laughed the shieldwalls quivered and shouts had to run up the lines to hold them steady. In the front ranks Jander, Kelvar, Aaron, Khopesh, Barak, Gnug, Raven and Macros glared at the orc and the dead they had been forced to kill. The water was thick with death and there Blackjack stood on his hill of corpses amidst his lake of blood. And cursed and battered he defied them all. “Fink dere’s enough of yer?” The skies boomed. Great rolls of thunder ran across the city and when Jander pushed himself clear King Blackjack threw back a misshapen arm so that the great iron whip clattered upwards.

Lightning struck. It smashed into the tip of the whip so that it caught hard in the air. More lanced from the heavens and the Helds did step back then as the Grate Black Orc Of Cheapside was roasted blacker than he had ever been until only his fangs and one eye showed clear. And still he laughed. And with a last effort he raised his free arm and one middle finger.

Then with a last defiant roar the flesh fell to ruin and he collapsed like a pole-axed bull. The rain came down all the harder and the waters rose. And Blackjack King of Deci ended his reign in a kingdom of blood and skulls.

By Alan Morgan (CI10V6)