A Circle of Iron

Chapter 11

Quinix was unlocking the stockade when Thorn awoke just after dawn. “What are you doing?” he said groggily, rubbing his face. Then, realizing his hands were liberally adorned with mud, filth and sticky straw, he cursed and spat.

“Redmourn was here last night,” said Quinix. “You’d better come and see.”

Thorn wasn’t sure how Lord Viorno would react to his unscheduled furlough, but he didn’t plan to sit in the stockade if he didn’t have to. He stood and ducked through the small gate, and then walked with the wizard down the street towards the Duck.

A crowd was gathered around Lord Viorno’s pavilion, and Thorn pushed and elbowed his way through them to see what they were gawking at. The severed heads of three men were mounted on stakes in front of the Gray’s tent: Big Odd, Blind Tom and Lord Viorno himself.

The mastiff was sitting on his haunches next to Blind Tom’s head. The dog whined and ducked its nose. Thorn clucked his tongue and the mastiff trotted over to him, tail wagging. Thorn knelt in the mud and scratched the dog’s ears. It had some nasty cuts and an open wound that looked like a bite mark on its neck. Blood matted the dog’s coarse fur and it seemed to be favoring one leg.

“Look what they did to you,” he whispered, and the mastiff whined again.

“Ebertus led a small group of soldiers into the ruins after Redmourn,” said Quinix.

“Well, then he’s dead, too.”

Quinix nodded. “That’s why I thought no one would mind if I let you out of the stockade.”

“No one left to argue, I guess.”

Mara shoved through the crowd, cursing. She had the leather bag Thorn had used to transport wight heads, and now she gently lifted the heads of their friends off the stakes and placed them in the bag. “We’ll bury them out back of the Duck,” she said. “They’d like that as well as anything else, I guess.”

“What about Lord Viorno?” said Quinix.

“The Gray can sit there on his bloody stick.”

They borrowed a couple of shovels from a peddler selling tools out of the back of a wagon. The peddler wanted a quint for the pair, but Thorn gave him a hard look and he changed his mind. They took the remains of their friends out behind the Duck to a clear patch at the edge of the wood. Thorn dug a hole and then helped Quinix with the other one. When the graves were deep enough, they buried what was left of Big Odd and Blind Tom.

Their work finished, Thorn leaned on the shovel and looked at Mara. “I’m sorry.”

“Would you really have left?”

He thought about it a moment. “Yeah, I guess. I would have come back, though.”

“It might have been too late.”

“Probably. I won’t do it again.”

“That’d be good,” Mara said, and smiled. “You want to say some words?”

Thorn nodded and cleared his throat. “Neither man ever had much to say, but when they did it was usually worth listening to. Blind Tom was wise, and he might have been a shaman like his forefathers if the world hadn’t gotten too old for it. Big Odd had a way of looking at things different from the rest of us. You could learn something if you figured out how to see them the same way. More than anything else, they were our friends. They fought and bled with us, and in the end they died for us, too. Maybe we’d rather they hadn’t done that, but that don’t matter. All we can do now is tell them we’re grateful for what they gave us and try to do something with it.”

“Thank you,” said Quinix, his voice hoarse.

Mara looked at him sharply, and then nodded. She dropped to her knees and placed her hands on the graves, digging her fingers into the loose earth. “Tom, Odd…I’m grateful for what you did.”

When they were finished at the gravesite, they went to the Duck and toasted their absent friends. The taproom was full—most of the scavs had taken the day off when they saw the heads staked in front of Viorno’s pavilion.

“You know how I met Big Odd?” Thorn said. Mara smiled—she’d heard the story a thousand times. Quinix shook his head and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “I was in a dockside tavern down on the canals in Sacerta. I was in a foul temper, I guess, and this drunk whore wouldn’t leave me alone. She was hanging on me, and I’d push her away, and finally she sat herself down on my lap. Well, I stood up and dumped her on the floor. So then this sailor comes up and asks me what I think I’m doing, and I say, ‘This whore won’t leave me alone.’”

“And the sailor says, ‘That’s not a whore—that’s my wife,’” Mara finished, laughing so hard her eyes watered.

Thorn grinned. “So the sailor takes a swing and I put him on the floor, and then his whole crew jumps me. They’re beating the spit out of me, and then all of a sudden there’s this giant pulling sailors off me and throwing them across the bar. He’s got fists the size of my head, they’re flying around, and sailors are dropping right and left. When it was over, I asked him why he helped me. You know what he said?”

Quinix smiled and shook his head.

“He said, ‘It wasn’t right for you to get beat. You’re the only one in here who ever told her no.’” They all laughed, and Thorn ordered another round of drinks. When the serving girl had gone, he told them about Redmourn’s visit to the stockade.

“We have to kill him,” Mara said when he had finished.

Thorn nodded. “It’s either that or run. He made it pretty clear he was coming for me. He might be coming for both of you, too.”

Quinix’s brow was furrowed and a frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Tell me again what he said he wanted.”

“The wight had a way of talking that irritated me,” Thorn said, scratching his chin, “but it was something about wanting things to be the way they were, wanting the city to be whole again, that kind of thing.” Thorn jumped when the wizard’s hand slapped the table. “What is it?”

“The wights built this city,” Quinix said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I always assumed the builders died off—or were hunted to extinction by the wights. But they weren’t. They are the wights.”

“I’m not sure wights could build a city.”

Quinix laughed. “You didn’t know they could speak, either. No one did.”

“I guess it’s possible. He seemed pretty attached to the city. I figured it was just his way of marking his territory.”

Quinix nodded. “Perhaps it is, except it’s more than that. It’s…loyalty.”

Thorn shrugged. “I don’t see how it matters any. Maybe blood-drinkers built the city, but they’re still blood-drinkers.”

“They are now. We know they were awash in magic. They depended on it. That’s why we’re all here—because in all the known world, there’s still more magic here than anywhere else. But perhaps it wasn’t enough to sustain them any longer. We know magic is fading from the world. What if they needed more?”

“What are you getting at?” Mara asked. She chewed her lip nervously.

“There’s magic in blood. Blind Tom used it when he made his wight’s cross. It is forbidden by the Schoolmen, but there are dark arts—ancient arts—that draw upon its power.”

“You’re saying the wights drink blood because they need magic to survive?” said Mara.

Thorn shook his head. “I still don’t see how it matters. They drink blood. Whether they do it because they’re hungry or because they take some magic from it, doesn’t make much difference to me.”

“Do you still want to kill Redmourn?” Quinix asked. Thorn nodded, and the wizard gave a wicked grin. “Have you ever heard of copperas?”