Honor among thieves

Chapter One Hundred Six

Malden looked to Cythera. She was drained, and worse than that, she was wrestling with something inside her he couldn’t begin to comprehend. She couldn’t meet his eye, couldn’t so much as look at him. What had he done to her? What had he done to Slag? He had wanted to save Ness. Was it worth destroying everyone he loved?

“Lad! Come with me! We must check the tunnels-there was something-something,” Slag said, bubbling with new strength. With desperation, too. “Something different. We need to go. We need to go now.”

Malden reached for Cythera’s arm.

“Go with him, Malden. Go do what you do best,” she said.

“And what in the name of all that’s good in the world is that?” he asked her.

“Go be smart. Be devious. Find the way to save us all,” she told him.

“Lad! Come with me, now!” Slag insisted.

Malden went with the dwarf. What else could he do?

They hurried through the streets, Slag leading the way, still muttering to himself about dangers and fears and the rate at which burning gases expanded in a closed vessel. Malden heard none of it. He allowed himself to be led and asked no questions.

“Make a big show of it,” Slag said. Whatever foul magic Cythera had used to save his life seemed to be burning within him still, disordering his thoughts even as it filled him with boundless energy. “Maximize the surprise involved-only way to benefit from-they’ll think twice, is what it’s worth. My arm,” he said, suddenly. “I’m missing a fucking arm.”

Malden’s thoughts came to an abrupt stop. He stood there in the cold air and stared in horror at the dwarf. Had Slag just noticed his arm was missing? Perhaps he had forgotten all about the explosion. Perhaps it had been a mistake to wake him.

“There was a great fire in your workshop,” Malden explained. “Like an eruption of the pit. I pulled you out of there but you had already lost your arm. Cythera couldn’t give you a new one.”

Slag stared down at his shoulder for a while, as if he could find the arm there if he looked for it hard enough. Then he sighed, and some of his manic energy drained from him. “I remember, lad. I remember the light, the heat of it. This is what it cost me, eh?” Then he looked up at Malden with a wicked grin. “Good thing I have a spare. Come on, we’re wasting time.”

The entrance to Slag’s countertunnel was in the cellar of a house on the western edge of the city, hard by the Ryewall. Once, the cellar had been used for storing roots and preserved meat against winter’s hunger, but all that food had been commandeered long since. Now the room was given over entirely to sacks of dirt, tailings from the tunnel below. If the barbarians broke through into the countertunnel and tried to use it to enter the city, the sacks could be toppled down into the tunnel mouth, sealing it instantly.

Slag took a lantern from a pile by the mouth and held it while Malden lit it. Then the two of them headed down the steep slope into the countertunnel. Its ceiling was so low Malden had to stoop, its walls rough, as no effort had been made to smooth them. Tree roots reached out from those walls to snatch at his cloak as they hurried along, squeezing past the hastily placed timbers that kept the tunnel from collapsing under the weight of the earth above them.

The countertunnel was not particularly long. It didn’t need to be. The barbarian sappers had already tunneled under the city wall, and were working, Slag had told Malden, on digging a series of parallel tunnels that would further weaken the stones above. As they came to the end of the countertunnel, Malden saw a number of bowls full of wine set upon the floor.

Ripples formed on the surface of each, then the wine stilled again. After a moment new ripples formed, and then stilled. The pattern repeated without cease. “They’re digging right now,” Malden said.

“Aye,” Slag told him. The dwarf grabbed a pick from where it lay on the floor. “Day and night. They’re in a hurry.”

“Shouldn’t our own diggers be working, too, then?” Malden asked.

“No need. I sent them all home. We’re ready now.” The dwarf took a step back, then ran at the far wall and struck it a mighty blow with his pick. Clods of dirt and small stones cascaded from the wall. Slag struck again, and again. “It might help, lad,” he said, breathing heavily, “if there were two of us at this.”

Malden grabbed a mattock from the floor and struck at the wall as hard as he could. After a few more blows he broke through. His mattock met nothing but air. They had breached the barbarian tunnels.

Together he and Slag worked quickly to clear an opening big enough to wriggle through. In the tunnel beyond, Malden found he could stand up straight. “Their tunnel is bigger than ours,” he said.

“The barbarians are bigger’n you,” Slag pointed out. “There’s also the fact that I was trying to not bring the wall down.”

The timbers shoring up the barbarian tunnel were more slender than those Slag had used. They were propped up almost haphazardly. Shoddy workmanship-but then, as Slag had pointed out, this tunnel had not been built to last. It ran perpendicular to Slag’s countertunnel, headed away in both directions into utter darkness. Slag looked both ways, then seemed to pick a direction at random. He handed Malden the lantern and placed one finger across his lips for silence.

They moved quickly down the tunnel, all of Malden’s senses alert and searching for any sign that they were about to stumble into a barbarian work party. He could just hear, faint and distant, the sound of heavy iron tools biting into the earth with a series of soft thuds. He knew from past experience that sound carried strangely underground, and was not reassured by the far-off quality of what he heard.

Had he not been paying such close attention, he might have missed the trap. Slag came very close to stumbling right into it. At the last moment Malden grabbed the dwarf by the collar of his tunic and pulled him back.

Ahead of them stood an especially thin timber, propped up to hold a place where the ceiling sagged down toward them. At the base of the timber a web of thin copper wires stretched toward the walls, partially buried in the rough dirt of the floor. The wires were held at tension and bolted to the base of the timber.

Anyone who walked into one of those wires would yank the timber out of alignment. Probably not by much, just an inch or so. Malden had no doubt that would be enough to bring the whole ceiling down on top of them.

He pointed out the wires and Slag nodded, a look of great consternation on his face. “Good eyes, lad,” he whispered.

Malden just shrugged.

They headed farther down the tunnel, keeping an eye out for any more traps or dangers. After perhaps fifty feet, they came to where the tunnel ended at a junction with two more passages. The sound of men digging was much louder there. Malden thought the work crew might be right around the corner. He could hear the barbarians talking among themselves in their guttural language. Then he heard someone else addressing the laborers.

“If you dug with half as much strength as you use pulling your tiny little manhoods, we’d be halfway to Helstrow by now.” This other voice spoke the language of Skrae, with a distinct dwarven accent.

Malden knew exactly who it belonged to. Judging by the look on Slag’s face, he did, too.

“Keep at it,” the voice said. “Don’t think you can take a break. Mountainslayer will personally eat the first man who shirks down here, don’t forget it. I’m going to go drop my breeks and make some tailings. Don’t let me catch any of you looking, neither.”

Malden and Slag looked at each other. They were in perfect agreement. Malden blew out the flame of their lamp, leaving them in darkness.

A few moments later he held his breath as he heard someone coming toward them. He saw her light-a low and guttering candle-paint the tunnel wall near him.

It was Balint, as Malden suspected. The barbarians wouldn’t know how to build trebuchets, or dig a sapping tunnel. Slag had even figured out they must have a dwarf working for them. What dwarf other than Balint would ever help such a monster as Morget? There was something strange around her neck, though, like a ruff but made of iron. A badge of office? Jewelry that Morget had given the dwarf as a gift for her service? Malden couldn’t figure it out.

She didn’t see them until it was too late. Slag grabbed one of her braids and yanked her off her feet so that she fell on her back on the tunnel floor. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth began to form the syllables of a cry for help.

The law said that Slag could not use violence against anyone, not even a fellow dwarf. Malden was happy to do it for him. He used Acidtongue’s pommel to knock her unconscious.

The law was very clear on what penalty Malden faced for assaulting a dwarf. It said he should be roasted alive for striking her like that. Of course, he was the only law within a hundred miles, and he had struck down capital punishment in Ness.

Malden picked Balint up and carried her back to the cellar and the city beyond, Slag following close behind. By then she was starting to come around again.

Out in the street, Slag picked up a handful of snow and smeared it across her face. It was enough to fully rouse her.

She looked up at Malden first. And smiled merrily.

“Thank the ancients it’s you,” she said.

Malden’s eyes went wide. “You’re happy to see me?” he asked. “Do you even know how much trouble you’re in?”

“Not as much as I was. Morget had me in thrall.”

“That’s your excuse? For building trebuchets so he could bombard the city? For trying to break through our wall?”

“If I didn’t do those things he would have cut me into morsels and eaten me raw,” Balint insisted. “I only stayed alive by doing his bidding. He was going to kill me eventually anyway. He kills everything he ought to preserve. That boy would bugger to death a horse he was riding on at the time, just to get his jollies. You’ve rescued me from that, and I’m grateful.”

“You might find me just as dangerous,” Malden said, putting a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Balint laughed. “Unlikely.”

“I have every reason to slaughter you!” Malden rasped. “You’ve played at evil for the last time.”

“Evil?” Balint shrugged. “What have I done, but it’s not the same as you?”

It was Malden’s turn to laugh. “You aided my enemies in a time of war.”

“Indeed,” she told him. “I also goaded him to kill his father and drive off his sister. I kept him burning for Skrae’s blood. And with good reason. I’ve never done aught but my duty to my own king. As long as the barbarians tarry down here in Skrae, they won’t turn their bloody eyes toward the dwarven kingdom. I’ve been protecting my people, at no small danger to my own beautiful arse.”

“Utter pother and nonsense,” Malden cursed. “You’re a villain pure and simple, and you live to do bloody mischief, you’re a-”

“Enough, you two! The tunnels,” Slag insisted, waving his one hand in frustration. “Balint-tell me fucking true. How long until they’re finished?”

The female dwarf had no reason to tell the truth-but perhaps no reason to lie either. “Oh, they’re done now. I was just adding a few flourishes for a more pleasing aesthetic effect. I’m a bloody artist, I am. The wall comes down at dawn. Morget insisted on that.”

Cold fear gripped Malden’s heart and he thought he might lose consciousness. That soon? “How can we stop it?”

It was Slag who answered. “You can’t, lad. I saw enough down there to know it’s truth she’s telling.”

Malden spat out the bile that had seeped up into his mouth. “So that’s it? We’re finished?”

“Aye,” Balint crowed.

“Maybe so,” Slag said. He turned to look at Malden. “You want to just give up, then? Fucking surrender and ask for terms?”

“From Morget? He’ll offer nothing,” Malden said. He knew it was true. He’d spent enough time with the barbarian to know he would slay every man, woman, and child in Ness, just for having given him such troubles already.

“Then we get back to work. Nothing’s changed,” Slag said. The look on his face betrayed him, but he remained adamant. “Nothing’s fucking changed. You going to kill her now?” he asked.

Malden studied Balint’s face. There was no fear there-as if she already knew he couldn’t kill her. That he wouldn’t. Was he really that predictable? “I wouldn’t kill the child-murderer. I wouldn’t kill the priest of the Lady, or even Pritchard Hood. No. I don’t kill anyone except in self-defense.”

“Good,” Slag said. “Because I can use her.”

“On your secret project?” Malden asked. “Why would she help with that?”

“Because she’s an arsing dwarf, that’s why.”

“Fuck you,” Balint said. For once it seemed the limit of her crudity.

It was Slag’s turn to smile. “Oh, milady, you’ll sing a different tune when you’re in on the game. I know our kind. You won’t be able to resist when you see what I’m building. It’s just that clever.”

Malden stared at the two of them. “You seriously believe she’ll work nicely with you?” he asked.

“Oh, I do, lad,” Slag said. There was something funny in his eye. A certain twinkle. Balint must have seen it, too, because she started giving the one-armed dwarf a shrewd look that on a human face would have meant only one thing. If Malden didn’t know better, he’d have thought Never mind. It didn’t concern him. “Take her, then. Er, lead her where you will. I have a million and one things I need to attend to, if tomorrow’s the day we face the enemy.”