Blood For Wages

22: Odds Worth the Taking

After what felt like hours of down and dirty street fighting, Fia and Cleric Vass stepped out into a square with a fountain in the centre of it and bodies scattered all around. It must have been one of Redstone's chief market squares, for the place was ringed with witchlights that cast an ethereal luminescence on the scene. The cobbles were perfectly set and had been worn smooth by the passing of years and hundreds of thousands of feet.

Combat raged here too in places, but there was a different energy to it. These particular Frekirie soldiers weren't making any move to advance. They repulsed the sporadic attacks of the guerilla fighters, keeping them back with rotating flintlock and crossbow fire. The smell of death was not so strong here as in other parts of the town; the coppery tang of blood and the sharp, pungent smell of shit, piss and split guts less oppressive.

Redmond Marr sat atop his bay stallion, surrounded by a dozen or so Frekirie infantrymen. There was a map of Redstone in his lap, along with a glass oil lantern. His eyes flicked from the knots of fighting men around him, to the windows of the houses that faced the square where, no doubt, scores of Redstone residents were peeking through their heavily shuttered windows. His supercilious gaze scanned the distant rooftops, where here and there the glow of burgeoning fires could be seen.

Fia and the cleric moved across the square. Two soldiers attempted to accost them, but Fia's course was set and there was no way that she'd be diverted from it by some lunk-headed fighting man. She sidestepped the first axe swing and let the man stumble past her onto Cleric Vass' waiting knife, kicked out at the knee of the woman coming in hot behind the first and heard something crunch. The female warrior's leg gave out and she fell back heavily onto her arse. Without breaking stride, Fia gave her a love lick across the neck with her broadsword and opened her throat.

"Redmond!" she bellowed, yelling louder than she'd had cause to in years. "Redmond fucking Marr!"

Her voice bounced off the stone buildings and found her half-brother's ear, snapping his head around.

The cold blue eyes narrowed, even as his personal guard drew around him, blocking Fia off. Their swords were bared to a man, and there were a few cradling flintlock pistols at the rear of the group.

"Wait!" Redmond snapped. "Wait, dammit! Let her approach. I'd hear what she has to say before we set to doing anything irreversible."

The guards backed away as commanded. Slowly, carefully, they arranged themselves in a crescent around Redmond.

Fia came forward, stopping when she was about twenty yards from her half-brother.

"Don't suppose I can convince you to cease this madness, can I, Red?" she asked. "I know our mother would––"

"Save your entreaties, and save your breath," snapped Redmond.

"Much obliged," Fia said mildly. "It's been a taxing night. I ain't got much of it left."

"No. No, you haven't."

They stared across the expanse of empty cobblestones at one another.

"You should've tried a little harder at finding your absolution at the bottom of a bottle, sister," Redmond said, breaking the brittle silence. "Makes me think that you can't have loved Arlen as much as you make out, otherwise you would've succumbed to bottle-rot a long time ago. Still, maybe you just had an epiphany. Maybe you realised that Arlen was too weak and pathetic to have ever made a strong Count."

"You need to stop your bleatin' and yammerin' very soon, little boy," Fia said. "It don't do for a sheep to bait a wolf so."

"You could've just given Gunn up and gone away, Fia," Redmond continued, his voice rising, the control on his anger slipping. "You could've given him up like you gave Arlen up, like you gave the rest of the family up when you ran away! But, no! Of course, you had to come back and fuck me over, just as I was about to use the Imperator to achieve more than any Count of any tribeland has ever achieved in Fallaros' fucking history!"