Toll the Hounds

Antsy snorted. ‘What else would men be but men? Your problem, Blend, is you see too much, even when it’s not there.’



‘Oh, and what have you been noticing, Antsy?’



‘Suspicious people, that’s what.’



‘What suspicious people?’



‘The ones who keep staring at us, of course.’



‘That’s because of Scillara-what do you think we’ve just been talking about?’



‘Maybe they are, maybe they ain’t. Maybe they’re assassins, lookin’ to jump us.’



‘That old man back there who got his ear boxed by his wife was an assassin? What kind of Guild are they running here?’



‘You don’t know she was his wife,’ Antsy retorted. ‘And you don’t know but that was a signal to somebody on a roof. We could be walking right into an ambush!’



‘Of course,’ agreed Blend, ‘that woman was his mother, because Guild rules state that Ma’s got to come along to make sure he’s got the hand signals down, and that he eats all his lunch and his knives are sharp and he’s tied up his moccasins right so he doesn’t trip in the middle of his murderous lunge at Sergeant Antsy.’



‘I ain’t so lucky he trips,’ Antsy said in a growl. ‘In case you ain’t noticed, Blend, it’s been a run of the Lord’s push for us. Oponn’s got it in for me, especially.’



‘Why?’ Scillara asked.



‘Because I don’t believe in the Twins, that’s why. Luck-it’s all bad. Oponn only pulls now to push later. If you’ve been pulled, it don’t end there. Never does. No, you can expect the push to come any time and all you know for sure is it’s gonna come, that push. Every time. In fact, we’re all as good as dead.’



‘Well,’ said Scillara, ‘I can’t argue with that. Sooner or later, Hood takes us all, and that’s the only certainty there is.’



‘Aren’t you two cheerful this morning,’ Blend observed. ‘Look, here we are.’



They had arrived at the Warden Barracks, suitably sombre and foreboding.



Blend saw an annexe fronting the blockish building with the barred windows and set out towards it, the other two following.



A guard lounging outside the door watched them approach, and then said, ‘Check your weapons at the front desk, You here to visit someone?’



‘No,’ snorted Antsy, ‘we’ve come to break ’im out!’ And then he laughed. ‘Haha.’



No one found the joke at all amusing, especially after the sharper was found and correctly identified. Antsy then made the mistake of getting belligerent, in the midst of five or six stern-visaged constabulary, which led to a scuffle and then an arrest.



When all was said and done, Antsy found himself in a lock-up with three drunks, only one of whom was conscious-singing some old Fisher classic in a broken-hearted voice-and a fourth man who seemed to be entirely mad, convinced as he was that everyone he saw was wearing a mask, which was hiding something demonic, horrible, bloodthirsty. He’d been arrested for trying to tear off a merchant’s face and he eyed Antsy speculatively before evidently deciding that the red-whiskered foreigner looked too tough to take on, at least while he was still awake.



The sentence was three days long, provided Antsy proved a model prisoner. Any trouble and it could stretch out some more.



As a result of all this, it was some time before Scillara and Blend managed to gain permission to see Barathol Mekhar. They met him in a holding cell while two guards stood flanking the single door, shortswords drawn.



Noting this, Scillara said, ‘Making friends in here, are you?’



The blacksmith looked somewhat shamefaced as he shrugged. ‘I had no intention of resisting the arrest, Scillara. My apprentice, alas, decided otherwise.’ Anxiety tightened his features as he asked, ‘Any news of him? Has he been captured? Is he hurt?’



Scillara shrugged. ‘We’ve not seen or heard anything like that, Barathol.’



‘I keep telling them here, he’s only a child in his head. It was my responsibility, all of it. But he went and broke some bones and noses, and they’re pretty annoyed about that.’



Blend cleared her throat. Something was going back and forth between Barathol and Scillara and it made her uneasy. ‘Barathol, we can pay the fine to the Guild, but that scrap you had, that one’s more serious.’



He nodded morosely. ‘Hard labour, yes. Six months or so.’ There was the twitch of a grin. ‘And guess who I will be working for?’