The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [114]
Jack-a-Blade hadn't risen to hold more real power than the local baron by being stupid. "Perhaps I meant to say six drethar each," he said smoothly.
The slaver stopped, turned slowly, and stooped to wave cheerily at the nearest open panel. "Perhaps you did," he agreed, "and perhaps you meant to say five drethar each-but perhaps I might go back up to six if you throw in the boy."
"The boy?"
The slaver nodded. "Their son. The little spider who scrambles all over the cargoes doing the tallies for them-ah, I meant 'scrambled,' of course." He smiled again. "Slavers watch warehouses, you see."
Jack-a-Blade tossed his head in an indication of futility and growled, "No one's seen that lad since the fire."
The slaver raised an eyebrow. "Oh? You don't look up very often?"
The port pirate frowned. "Don't? Eh?" He spun around and stared up into the rafters-and for just one horrified moment, Jack-a-Blade and Craer Delnbone stared into each other's eyes.
Then the knife in the boy's hand slashed out, shearing through the candles of the lamp hanging beside him on its chain, and in the sudden, curse-filled darkness Craer extended that knife down like a spear and followed it, pitching forward into the emptiness above Jack-a-Blade's upturned face.
His blade struck something solid with force enough to numb his arm right up to the shoulder, and sliced as he fell past. The port pirate cried out-a raw shriek of pain laced with a wet bubbling. Craer was already crashing to the unseen floor, gasping to find breath or a groan of his own, when the sharp cracks of many firing crossbows almost deafened him.
The sharper cracks and splinterings of the quarrels striking walls and glancing off couldn't entirely drown out the wet thuddings of bolts finding homes in bodies. Groans much larger and more frantic than Craer could have uttered did, however, drown out the small sound he made next.
Everywhere men were cursing and booted feet were hurrying and stumbling and doors were crashing open-and the chain of the lamp was rattling as it fell to its full length, a few feet off the floor; someone must have pulled out its peg in hopes of getting it relit. Someone who hadn't counted on the slavers' men bursting into Jack-a-Blade's warehouse with swords drawn and fury in their hearts.
Craer heard the crash and sing of steel meeting steel, the coughs and screams and sobs of men being stabbed in the darkness, and confused flashes of light as lanterns were lit and then smashed, or doors to distant rooms opened and then smashed shut again. One flash told him no one was standing in the slaving room anymore, and that something studded with crossbow quarrels was trying to, and that the lamp chain was… there!
He sprang forward in the dark, found its hot, grimy metal with fingers that trembled with fear, and swarmed up it in frantic haste, as men died in the darkness all around him. The rafters above could take him out into the night before he joined their ranks, if he could only…
A boy crouched on a rooftop in the damp river mists and trembled, too drained to sob any more. Wisps of smoke still rose from the ashes of the second warehouse to burn in as many days, but the men with buckets had rubbed their backs and grunted and gone wearily off in search of ale, or at least a place to lie down in a port free of Jack-a-Blade.
Craer looked down at where the bones of his parents must lie and whispered their names in despair. In an alleyway below, there was a sudden skirling of swords as someone disagreed with someone else about who should succeed Jack-a-Blade as the real power in this barony. The boy whom some called the Spider listened, uncaring. When life is in ruins and revenge over with