From the shadow of the hood, strangely feline eyes held fixed on the road ahead. The first decrepit shanties of South Worrytown emerged from the morning mist like the dishevelled nests of some oversized carrion bird, lining the dirt track to either side. From cracks and holes in the leaning walls, liquid eyes peered out as the guard led his clattering train past.
Before long, they were well and truly within the maze and its crowds of fife’s refugees, rising like ghosts from the shadows, raising faint voices to beg for coin and food. Few caravans coming up from the south chose this route into Darujhis-tan, since the track through the city’s shabby outskirts was both narrow and twisting. And those that proved insufficiently defended could become victims of the raw, desperate need drawing ever closer on all sides.
A hundred paces still south of the main road known as Jatem’s Worry, it seemed that such a fate would befall this hapless caravan and its guardian of one.
As grasping, grimy hands reached out to close round spokes in wagon wheels, and others snatched at the traces of the horses, the hooded man glanced back at the growing boldness and reined in. As he did so he seemed to suddenly fill out as he straightened in his saddle.
Eyes fixed on him, furtive and wary and with fading diffidence. One rag clad man swung up beside the first wagon’s driver who, like the guard, was hooded yanked him round, the hood fell back.
Revealing a dead man’s withered face. Themostly hairless head turned, hol-low sockets settling on the man crouched on the bench.
Even as the the Worrier shrieked, twisting to fling himself from the wagon, the lone caravan guard drew his cutlasses, revealing broad iron blades stained in a pattern of flaring barbs of black and pale orange. The hood dropped back to unveil a broad face tattooed in an identical fashion, the mouth opening to reveal long canines as the guard smiled. There was no humour in that smile, just the promise of mayhem.
That was enough for the crowd. Screaming, flinching back, they fled.
Moments later, the four wagons and their lone guard resumed their journey.
On to Jatem’s Worry, edging into the traffic slowly working towards the city gate, where the lone, tattooed guard resheathed his weapons.
The unhooded corpse guiding the lead wagon seemed disinclined to readjust its head covering, and before too long the lifeless driver acquired a flapping, squawking escort of three crows, each fighting to find purchase on the grey, tattered pate. By the time the caravan reached the gate, the driver sported one crow on its head and one on each shoulder, all busy tearing strips of desiccated meat from its face.
A gate-watcher stepped out to squint up at the barbed, bestial guard as he drew rein beneath the arch.
‘Gruntle, ain’t it? You been in a fight, man. Is this Sirik’s caravan-gods below!’ This last cry announced the watcher’s discovery of the first wagon driver.
‘Best just let us past,’ Gruntle said in a low, rasping voice. ‘I’m in no mood for more than one conversation, and that one belongs to Sirik. I take it he’s done his move into his new estate?’
The man nodded, his face pale and his eyes a little wild. Stepping back, he waved Gruntle on.
The journey to Sirik’s estate was blessedly brief. Past Despot’s Barbican, then left, skirting High Gallows Hill before reaching the freshly plastered wall and broad, high-arched gate leading into the merchant’s compound.
Word must have gone in advance for Sirik himself stood waiting, shaded from the morning sun by a servant with a parasol. A half-dozen armoured men from his private bodyguard were clustered round him. The merchant’s expression descended in swift collapse upon seeing a mere four wagons roll into the compound. Curses rode the dusty air from the guards when they spied the first driver, whose centre crow at that moment decided to half spread its wings to regain balance as the withered hands twitched the traces, halting the wagon.
Gruntle reined in and slowly dismounted.
Sirik waved his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘But-but-’
Drawing off his cloak revealed the damage on Gruntle’s chain hauberk, the slashes through the black iron links, the gouges and punctures, the crusted blood. ‘Dwell raiders,’ he said in a rumble, grinning once more.
‘But-’
‘We gave good account,’ Gruntle resumed, squinting at the guards behind the merchant. ‘And if you’d let loose a few more of your precious preeners there, we might ha’done better still. The raiding party was a big one, a hundred shrieking savages. The fools torched the other wagons even as they looted ’em.’
One of the bodyguard, Sirik’s sear-faced captain, stepped forward, scowling at the wagons. ‘A hundred, was it? Against what, eight guards under your command, Gruntle? Do you take us for idiots? A hundred Dwell and you’d not be here.’
‘No, Kest, you’re not an idiot,’ Gruntle allowed. ‘Thick-skulled and a bully, but not an idiot.’
As the captain and his men bridled, Sirik held up a trembling hand. ‘Gruntle, Gisp sits that wagon but he’s dead.’
‘He is. So are the other three.’
‘But-but how?’
Gruntle’s shrug was an ominous roll of his massive shoulders. ‘Not sure,’ he admitted, ‘but they took my orders anyway-granted, I was desperate and yelling things I normally wouldn’t, but by then I was the last one left, and with four surviving wagons and as many horses…’ He shrugged again, then said, ‘I’ll take my pay now, Sirik. You’ve got half the Bastion kelyk you wanted and that’s better than none.’
‘And what am I to do with four undead drivers?’ Sirik shrieked.
Gruntle turned, glared up at Gisp. ‘Go to Hood, you four. Now.’
The drivers promptly slumped, sliding or tottering from their perches. The three crows picking at Gisp’s shredded face set up an indignant squall, then flapped down to resume their meal once the body settled on the dust of the compound.
Sirik had recovered enough to show irritation. ‘As for payment-’
‘In full,’ Gruntle cut in. ‘I warned you we didn’t have enough. Kest may not be an idiot, but you are, Sirik. And sixteen people died for it, not to mention a hundred Dwell. I’m about to visit the Guild, as required. I get my pay in full and I’ll keep my opinions to myself. Otherwise…’ Gruntle shook his head, ‘you won’t be hiring any more caravan guards. Ever again.’
Sirik’s sweat-sheathed face worked for a time, until his eyes found a look of resignation. ‘Captain Kist, pay the man.’
A short time later, Gruntle stepped out on to the street. Pausing, he glanced up at the morning sky, then set out for home. Despite the heat, he donned his cloak and drew up the hood once more. The damned markings on his skin rose flush with battle, and took weeks to fade back into a ghostly tint. In the meantime, the less conspicuous he could make himself the better. He suspected that the hovel he called home was already barricaded by a murder of acolytes awaiting his return. The tiger-skinned woman who proclaimed herself High Priestess of the local temple would have heard the fierce battle cry of Trake’s Mortal Sword, even at a distance of thirty or so leagues out on the Dwelling Plain. And she would be in a frenzy… again, desperate as ever for his attention.
But Gruntle didn’t give a damn about her and the mangy losers she’d gathered to her temple. Killing those raiders had not been a task he had welcomed. No pleasure in spilling blond, no deligkt in his own savage rage, He’d lost friends that day, including the last pair who had been with him ever since Capustan. Such wounds were fur deeper than those his flesh still carried, and they would take much longer to heal.
Mood foul despite the bulging purse of councils at his belt, he was disinclined to suffer the normal jostling necessary to navigate the city’s major avenues and streets one push or snarl too many and he’d be likely to draw blades and set Shout carving a path through the crowds, and then he’d have no choice but to flee Darujhistan or risk dangling from High Gallows Hill-and so once through the Estates Gate just south of Borthen Park, and down the ramp into Lakefront Dis-t rict, Gruntle took a roundabout route, along narrow, twisting alleys and rubbish-lllled wends between buildings.