cover.
He didn’t move.
The sound of hooves grew louder. Blood spread out in a muddy puddle around Sheel’s split head. The boy slowly backed away, broke into a waddling trot, dragging his crippled leg after. Temple watched him go.
Then Jubair rounded the side of the inn, mud flicking from the hooves of his great horse, sword raised high. The boy tried to turn again, lurched one more desperate step before the blade caught him in the shoulder and spun him across the street. Jubair tore past, shouting something. More horsemen followed. People were running. Screaming. Faint over the rumble of hooves.
They should have had an hour.
Temple knelt beside Sufeen, reached out to turn him over, check his wounds, tear off a bandage, do those things Kahdia had taught him, long ago. But as soon as he saw Sufeen’s face he knew he was dead.
Mercenaries charged through the town, howling like a pack of dogs, waving weapons as though they were the winning cards in a game. He could smell smoke.
Temple picked up Sheel’s sword, notched blade red-speckled now, stood and walked over to the lame boy. He was crawling towards the inn, one arm useless. He saw Temple and whimpered, clutching handfuls of muck with his good hand. His satchel had come open and coins were spilling out. Silver scattered in the mud.
‘Help me,’ whispered the boy. ‘Help me!’
‘No.’
‘They’ll kill me! They’ll—’
‘Shut your fucking mouth!’ Temple poked the boy in the back with the sword and he gulped, and cowered, and the more he cowered the more Temple wanted to stick the sword through him. It was surprisingly light. It would have been so easy to do. The boy saw it in his face and whined and cringed more, and Temple poked him again.
‘Shut your mouth, fucker! Shut your mouth!’
‘Temple! Are you all right?’ Cosca loomed over him on his tall grey. ‘You’re bleeding.’
Temple looked down and saw his shirtsleeve was ripped, blood trickling down the back of his hand. He was not sure how that had happened. ‘Sufeen is dead,’ he mumbled.
‘Why do the Fates always take the best of us…?’ But Cosca’s attention had been hooked by the glint of money in the mud. He held out a hand to Friendly and the sergeant helped him down from his gilt saddle. The Old Man stooped, fishing one of the coins up between two fingers, eagerly rubbing the muck away, and he produced that luminous smile of which only he was capable, good humour and good intentions radiating from his deep-lined face.
‘Yes,’ Temple heard him whisper.
Friendly tore the satchel from the boy’s back and jerked it open. A faint jingle spoke of more coins inside.
Thump, thump, thump, as a group of mercenaries kicked at the door of the inn. One hopped away cursing, pulling his filthy boot off to nurse his toes. Cosca squatted down. ‘Where did this money come from?’
‘We went on a raid,’ muttered the boy. ‘All went wrong.’ There was a crash as the inn’s door gave, a volley of cheering as men poured through the open doorway.
‘All went wrong?’
‘Only four of us made it back. So we had two dozen horses to trade. Man called Grega Cantliss bought ’em off us, up in Greyer.’
‘Cantliss?’ Shutters shattered as a chair was flung through the window of the inn and tumbled across the street beside them. Friendly frowned towards the hole it left but Cosca did not so much as twitch. As though there was nothing in the world but him, and the boy, and the coins. ‘What sort of man was this Cantliss? A rebel?’
‘No. He had nice clothes. Some crazy-eyed Northman with him. He took the horses and he paid with those coins.’
‘Where did he get them?’
‘Didn’t say.’
Cosca peeled up the sleeve on the boy’s limp arm to show his tattoo. ‘But he definitely wasn’t one of you rebels?’
The boy only shook his head.
‘That answer will not make Inquisitor Lorsen happy.’ Cosca gave a nod so gentle it was almost imperceptible. Friendly put his hands around the boy’s neck. That dog was still barking somewhere. Bark, bark, bark. Temple wished someone would shut it up. Across the street three Kantics were savagely beating a man while a pair of children watched.
‘We should stop them,’ muttered Temple, but all he did was sit down in the road.
‘How?’ Cosca had more of the coins in his hand, was carefully sorting through them. ‘I’m a general, not a God. Many generals get mixed up on that point, but I was cured of the misapprehension long ago, believe me.’ A woman was dragged screaming from a nearby house by her hair. ‘The men are upset. Like a flood, it’s safer to wash with the current than try to dam it up. If they don’t have a channel for their anger, why, it could flow anywhere. Even over me.’ He grunted as Friendly helped him up to standing. ‘And it’s not as though any of this was my fault, is it?’
Temple’s head was throbbing. He felt so tired he could hardly move. ‘It was mine?’
‘I know you meant well.’ Flames were already hungrily licking at the eaves of the inn’s roof. ‘But that’s how it is with good intentions. Hopefully we’ve all learned a lesson here today.’ Cosca produced a flask and started thoughtfully unscrewing the cap. ‘I, about indulging you. You, about indulging yourself.’ And he upended it and steadily swallowed.
‘You’re drinking again?’ muttered Temple.
‘You fuss too much. A nip never hurt anyone.’ Cosca sucked the last drops out and tossed the empty flask to Friendly for a refill. ‘Inquisitor Lorsen! So glad you could join us!’
‘I hold you responsible for this debacle!’ snapped Lorsen as he reined his horse up savagely in the street.
‘It’s far from my first,’ said the Old Man. ‘I shall have to live with the shame.’
‘This hardly seems a moment for jokes!’
Cosca chuckled. ‘My old commander Sazine once told me you should laugh every moment you live, for you’ll find it decidedly difficult afterward. These things happen in war. I’ve a feeling there was some confusion with the signals. However carefully you plan, there are always surprises.’ As if to illustrate the point, a Gurkish mercenary capered across the street wearing the bard’s beribboned jacket. ‘But this boy was able to tell us something before he died.’ Silver glinted in Cosca’s gloved palm. ‘Imperial coins. Given to these rebels by a man called…’
‘Grega Cantliss,’ put in Friendly.
‘That was it, in the town of Greyer.’
Lorsen frowned hard. ‘Are you saying the rebels have Imperial funding? Superior Pike was very clear that we avoid any entanglements with the Empire.’
Cosca held a coin up to the light. ‘You see this face? Emperor Ostus the Second. He died some fourteen hundred years ago.’
‘I did not know you were such a keen devotee of history,’ said Lorsen.
‘I am a keen devotee of money. These are ancient coins. Perhaps the rebels stumbled upon a tomb. The great men of old were sometimes buried with their riches.’
‘The great men of old do not concern us,’ said Lorsen. ‘It’s today’s rebels we’re after.’
A pair of Union mercenaries were screaming at a man on his knees. Asking him where the money was. One of them hit him with a length of wood torn from his own shattered door and when he got groggily up there was blood running down his face. They asked him again. They hit him again, slap, slap, slap.
Sworbreck, the biographer, watched them with one hand over his mouth. ‘Dear me,’ he muttered between his fingers.
‘Like everything else,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘rebellion costs money. Food, clothes, weapons, shelter. Fanatics still need what the rest of us need. A little less of it, since they have their high ideals to nourish them, but the point stands. Follow the money, find the leaders. Greyer appears on Superior Pike’s list anyway, does it not? And perhaps this Cantliss can lead us to this… Contus of yours.’
