The Mercenaries - Ed Greenwood [4]
Some of the watching drinkers hooted, and there was a chorus of shouted suggestions-but the well-dressed sailor was in no shape to hear them. He was sagging back against a table, a dark stain spreading down the front of his breeches.
The sarcastic man strode toward his foe, face set and dagger ready-but a bottle came spinning out of the shadows and struck his head sharply aside. He staggered and fell into someone's dinner-and the Masques erupted into battle.
All over the room men shouted and snatched at forks and tankards and stools, hurling and swinging and thrusting with all their might. The little man took hold of his tankard, just in case, and placed the fingertips of his other hand on the hilt of the slim needle-knife hidden up his own sleeve. Then he sat as still as his table, and watched!
His eyes were on the seven Sharkers as they thrust back their chairs and backed into a rough defensive ring, eyes wary. They were obviously expecting some of Redbeard's crew to come seeking them in this battle-and it seemed they might just find the trouble they were waiting for.
Two of the lammers waded into view through the fray, laying about vigorously in all directions with stout wooden clubs-until one of them went down with a hurled knife in his eye. The other fled, and a gong sounded.
By now the Masques was a chaos of splintering furniture, screams, breaking glass, oaths, and flailing fists. Bunkmates and men who were utter strangers were pounding each other for no reason at all but the drink and the pent-up anger of desperate men who spend their days in danger and discomfort and see a ready foe to lash out at.
The fat man found his feet, and the door. A man who wore a purple scarf on his head rose out of the fray with a cutlass in one hand… and a loaded hand crossbow in the other.
He aimed it at the Konigheimer Sharker-and from the corner a hard-thrown stool struck aside the leaping quarrel an instant before it smashed into the face of the man who'd fired it.
As he went down, startled faces turned toward the little man in the dark nook. He beckoned to the seven Sharkers and said urgently, "The Daggers are on their way! Hurry!''
Chapter 2
Decisions in the Dark
Blade glittering, the fat man waved at the Sharkers to follow. He flung the door wide, looking right and left for lurkers by the door-and put his knife into the throat of the one who was swinging a club in his direction.
As the man toppled with a gurgle, a "blind" beggar who'd been sitting mournfully across the doorway scrambled hastily to his feet, his begging bowl spilling out a tangle of coins that proved to be tied to his wrist on fine threads, tossed his cane away, and fled across the dark field as fast as his feet could carry him.
The fat man ignored him, rolling into the grass without pause and coming to his feet as Redbeard's man was still sagging down the wall, trailing his club behind him.
The pirates exchanged looks. Sharessa saw Kurthe's mouth tighten; their leader liked nothing about this invitation.
The fat man might well be one of Redbeard's men himself, here to lure them into a slaughter… but the burly, cold-eyed Daggers of Tharkar were infamous for their brutality even in Konigheim. If a pirate port was to have any law at all-and if it lacked such temperance, neither Ulgarth nor the Free Cities would long have tolerated its existence-its Watch must be meaner and deadlier than a tavernful of drunken pirates.
Even the Tavern of Masques. The Sharkers watched as their companion went to a spill of broken glass, dug under it with the toe of his boot, drew forth some sacking-and from it produced a baldric bristling with daggers.
Their eyes could not see that the blades were tipped with something expensive that made a man sleep for hours. Even a watchman.
Or a hostile Sharker, if it came to that. As the fat man buckled on the baldric Kurthe made a reluctant