Vol.4, Ch.3, P.4
“Hah. Dog’s ballocks, wot I say, eh? More empty than a tavern on Lententide, that were,” whispered Sig as he stared ahead with a smirk. In his view was the viscount’s manor, a monolith of a shadow looming just beyond the hem of the wood where we were. And he had the right of it: not another soul had we crossed in our secret incursion through the vales. Having gone the trail unchallenged, we now found ourselves as hunters prowling the nest of our long-expected and unsuspecting prey.
“We wait here a while,” I reminded Sig. “When night falls, we move.”
“Aye, that,” he acknowledged.
And there we melted back into the mirk of the wood, sitting ourselves between shrub and bush. The second time this was for me, breaking into a noble’s abode. Trouble was, this abode was as a mountain to the Albecks’ hill-hole of a manor. And with the rumour of battle rumbling at the border, doubtless the lord’s den here would be swimming with sentries. Indeed, this seemed a dive more daring again than the one months’ prior.
Yet not all was fraught. Dark to see it soon would be, with the moon but a sliver of silver, faint and fine as faeries’ hair, dangling in the deep-wine sky. And ready at my side was the sword of soot, and as well, a firebrand at the other—one by the name of Sig.
“Lo—en’mies galore, all bodies to gore,” he chanted as he kept watch. “Loads o’ fun this ought be. Loads, an’ loads. Heh.”
“Keep your eyes peeled, and you might find your favourite mark amongst them,” I goaded him and his gleeful grin. I shared some of his excitement, admittedly. Though we’d trekked for four feet-punishing days, I found the jaunt with Sig quite the joy.
“Hmph, ‘favourite’,” he snorted, as thoughts of self-loving silver-spoons seemed to simmer in his mind. “Begotten on the gutters, growin’ up in muck an’ mis’ry—that were me life for the longest time. An’ all thanks to the princes in that there palace,” he recounted, quiet and cutting. A childhood spent uncared for and without family, wandering from alleyway to alleyway, wilderness to wilderness, never knowing what the morrow’s whims might bring. Such winters had forged the Sig afore me and brewed all the bad blood now beating through his heart. “It were the former lord wot’s ‘ad me live through that ‘ell, sure, so I can’t very well grudge ‘is son. But that son—’es sin’d all the same, ‘e ‘as,” Sig seethed. “If I finds ‘im… why, I’ll ‘ave ‘im lop’d limb from limb, I will.”
Sig’s smile darkened with demonic delight. Bartt Tallien, viscount and former mareschal—grand was his regard, with his connections with Central as amicable as they come. But it seemed to the folk of his fiefdom, he was sooner a parasite, one Sig was more than happy to crush underfoot.
“We ought count our blessings, crossing the border unseen like we did,” I said, “but such luck runs dry the moment we set foot in the manor… Pity we can’t keep up our cover till the end. Not with the numbers inside.”
“’Em numbers be nothin’,” Sig jeered. “Manor men—wot’s ‘em lot do all day ‘sides scratch their ballocks, ‘ey? Just cut through ‘em nestle-cockses swift-like, why not.”
“One of those ‘nestle-cocks’ might prove a kick harder on our hinds than we’d like,” I warned Sig. “Nay, best we keep our wits about us.”
“Aye, aye,” he droned.
Caution bidden, though perhaps needlessly; Sig may be chronically cocksure—albeit with the mettle to back it up—but never is he the sort to belittle whatsoever a battle may bring. Not in his heart of hearts, anyway. No, our journey together had me full-convinced: like a wild beast, always does Sig keep his senses keen with caution.
“…Sig. You ever regret leaving Londosius?” came my quiet question amidst the dying evenlight. Out of the blue, I admit, though I posed it with all sincerity. Night was looming nigh; oft does such gloom invite a man to mull on matters deep—myself included.
“Hmph. Bugger if I’ve done,” Sig answered straightway. “Never were a pissin’ patriot, if I’m honest.”
Nor could he ever have been, I suppose. Not this former stray of the streets, who had lived hand-to-mouth and made ends meet with what but sleight and selfishness. Indeed, the grasses and gutters that raised him had served too sickly a soil for patriotism to take root. Small wonder why he’d scorn creed of both Church and Crown, and fancy not in the slightest any sentiment for his homeland. Like an estranged son he was, taking his bitterness to the grave and beyond.
“Yet, here we are,” I noted. “Why come along like you have?”
Not on this mission, but to the side of our former foes: the Nafílim. And with whom but Rolf the rebel. Such was the crux of my question, one I confess was asked too tersely. But going by his answer, Sig understood it well enough.
“’Cos with you, I reckons we can make better o’ things, maybe. The world an’ all.”
Arno, a child thrust upon Death’s door for no sin of his own; the captives at the concentration camp, suffering cruelty after cruelty, though they themselves be neither party to this war nor empowered to wage it—to stand with me is to stand against such injustice. This did Sig somehow perceive along the way. And true to form, his senses had led him well, for that was precisely my plan.
The fiend of a smith whose hammer forged this iron-fisted bigotry, the institutions that guided his every strike… and the loss and suffering of the meek so ensnared in the maws of their mad machinations. To each of these I wish to usher an end. To smite that smith in the shadows, to unmake his masked masters… to deliver their every victim.
That is why Londosius must fall. Why the Crown must crumble, their teeming legion of tyrant lords withal. At such a neck is my blade ever poised to strike.
All well and good, but for the fact that never had talk of these designs arisen between me and Sig. Not that he would humour it, I would think, for his hardly seems an ear to be piqued by politics. Yet in spite of my reticence, still did Sig choose to believe in me.
“‘Make the world better’? We?” I echoed. “What’s convinced you that we can?”
“Ah?” growled Sig. “Your sword. Wot else?” His brows bent with annoyance, as though his answer had been unfairly teased out of him—as though it were criminal to ask so obvious a question, to begin with.
“Is that right…” I remarked in wonder.
“Interr’gation done with yet, inspector?” Sig quipped with a cluck of his tongue.
“Apologies. Could scarce help it. Never once had a mate my age, after all,” I confessed.
“Ech,” Sig half-retched. “Quit that soppy talk. Makes me mawkish-like, it does.” His face then twisted with more wrinkles than a raisin. Jolly fellow, him.
Truth was, I had no shortage of same-aged acquaintances during my years at Buckmann. But for a boy brought up to be the next baron—one oft over-vaunted as a wunderkind, no less—the estate proved a barren environment for making an honest friend. Thus did the other boys ever keep this lordling at arm’s length.
Nay… Perhaps not. Perhaps “environment” was but half the issue.
“All right, mate. I tells ya wot your problem is,” Sig said sharply, pointing a finger at my face. “Ya half-says wot ya means, an’ ya half-means wot ya says. That’s why you ain’t made no bloody mate worth remem’brin’—ever.”
To that, I grimaced.
“Ya carries out the conversation in that pate o’ yours, innit? Aye, bet you’re doin’ it right now,” he continued, before tapping my head with a finger. “An’ in there, it finishes—gets all tied up nice an’ neat-like, an’ then ya shuts up ‘bout it as if all’s said an’ done.”
“…I’ll not deny that,” I conceded, feeling myself stung by such unrestrained admonishment. But such is part and parcel with companionship, I suppose.
As I mulled on, my thoughts turned to the three women I’d met moons ago. Them, too, I considered my friends. And in recalling them did my eyes fix themselves upon the manor. Ina, Carola—were they yet well, captives therein though they were? Let alone Frieda, who’d writ of her intention to pretend a common picklock and infiltrate the estate. I’d hoped to meet her before breaking in myself, but uncertain as to the “if” and “when” of my arrival, she’s like to have made the leap and stolen in without waiting. For her wellbeing, too, did I worry increasingly.
Sig and I soon went about making ready: checking our gear, slaking our thirsts, and planning out our moves from here on out, battle included. In a few hours’ time, the last of the sun’s light was snuffed altogether. Amidst the cinder-dark night, Sig and I looked and nodded to one another.
∵
The manor rear.
As a lanterned patrol parted from both ear- and eyeshot, I slinked out of cover and sidled up to the perimeter wall. Pressing my back against it, I signalled to Sig, who at once speedily approached from the shadows. With my clasped hands as a foothold, the former mercenary leapt large up the height of the wall, and after a quick scan about from the top, reached down to help me over.
Hurdle cleared and with the garden gaping afore us, we pressed on apace. So far, so good—and splendid work besides, if I do say so myself.
“Marks my second sneak into a manor, this,” I whispered to Sig once we’d found cover. “What about you? Tenth? Hundredth?”
“Bugger’d if I knows,” he answered, glancing about for guards. “Lost count too bloody long ’go.”
Spying an opening, we then stooped and stole through a path thick with hedges. High were they grown, and haughtily hemmed with floral displays. No doubt to the tastes of the viscount, notorious as he was for his extravagance. Indeed, the entirety of the garden seemed ablaze in blossoms—the perfect playground for a little prowling.
A moment, and we found ourselves stopped at a corner, taking glimpses over a manicured bush.
“Tch—roses, this?” Sig hissed under his breath. “Silver-spoonses well-fancy ‘ese twee li’l things, innit? Why’s that?”
“‘Buggered if I know’,” I quipped back, taking my turn at the lookout.
“Eh?” muttered Sig. “Ya got blue blood beatin’ in ya, or wot?”
I stooped back down. “Sure. But frankly never fancied them much myself…” I answered him.
To be more precise, I neither detested the dainty reds—just that they showed too much of their shimmer, as it were. If I had to name one flower that met my fancy, well… the lily bells back at Buckmann would float first to mind. Come to think of it, why did Sig pose such a question? He scarce seemed the sort to fuss over flowers. But a look at him, and the answer was clear: a small, crimson nick was on his chin—all thanks to an errant thorn, most like.
“That reminds me,” I said. “Sorry about that scar.”
If the red nick was a crack, then the sword mark at Sig’s cheek was a canyon. Clean yet cruelly hewn it seemed, cut by my own blade back at our battle in Arbel.
“You ain’t seemin’ too sorry to me,” he snarled.
“I would seem if it didn’t suit you so well,” I jested, earning a chiding swat of the hand against my rib.
“Wot you on ’bout,” Sig protested. “Scars ain’t dec’rations, mate.”
“Oh?” I said as I risked another peek over the bushes. “Count me fooled, what with you leaving it unmended.”
“Oi, piss off!” rasped Sig. “I lefts it so I ain’t never forget the bloody bloke wot’s given it!” For all his indignance, Sig yet seemed sensible enough to keep his seething down to a simmer.
“…A missus much fancies a scar on her man’s cheek, you know,” I noted, “or so the tales say.”
“Aye? Well bugger your books, then,” quibbled Sig. “Speak from experience, why don’t ya? Or wot? You ain’t got ‘ny, ain’t ya? With missuses, that is.”
Sour silence was my answer. And such chatter did we chance as we wove our way onwards through the shrubbery, till at last we spied out an avenue leading into the manor proper. At its end, two guards stood watch, flanking a postern entrance.
“…’Em bints be proper bedworthy, innit…”
“…Might beg the lord to spare us a lick o’ ’em… heh heh…”
The footmen themselves sounded no less loquacious than we tonight. Amidst their ribald raillery, Sig and I nodded to each other. Straightway, we pounced out of the shrubbery—
“Hh—?!”
—and muffling their mouths, slit the guards’ throats. Catching their coldening bodies, we dragged and left them to expire between the bushes.
“Very good,” I whispered, wiping clean my dagger against their uniforms. “In we go.”
Swiftly and softly, we then stole into the manor. Brilliant so far. Yet now in the lion’s den as we were, covertness would avail us little. Leading the way instead would be the swords at our sides. Newly steeled, Sig and I skulked at speed down a corridor of neatly lined vases, our eyes and ears hotly alert for ambush.
A while more of spelunking through the sprawling manor, and we soon emerged into a yawning hollow of a hall, one well-able to host a hundred guests and more, and with opulence enough to awe their every eye. Dangling aloft was a dazzling chandelier, illuminating a two-winged stairway that wound up left and right. As soon as Sig and I thought to climb them, ringing into our ears was the rumble and rattle of armour.
“Intruders!” a voice vaulted. “At the grand foyer!”
At once, we stood poised and bared our blades. About us blurred a maelstrom of motion as we soon found ourselves quickly encircled by sentries.
…Nay. Sentries these were not.
“Oi, Rolf,” said Sig. “Bloody silver-spoon’s got ‘isself some silver’d men, looks like.”
“Courtesy of the 3rd, I’ll wager,” returned I as my gaze caught glimpses of the Order insignia.
“Heh. Yellow-liver, ain’t ‘e, the lord,” Sig remarked, tapping the flat of his sword against his shoulder. An eager grin grew on his face.
“What’re you lot!? And who’s your master!?” barked one of the knights.
“Ya said it yaself, mate,” answered Sig. “‘Intruders’.”
The former freelance then brought his blade to bear, whilst mine I clenched tightly in anticipation. A quick glance about found the knights totalling sixteen—all summoned with but a single alert. Disciplined they were; the 3rd’s cream of the crop, if I had to guess. Indeed, grim seemed our situation.
But in me danced neither desperation nor panick.
For standing at my side was a mate worth his mettle.
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