That night we didn’t open the Tanner’s to the public, and I assembled the three crews in the common room to address them.
Jochan, Stefan, Erik, and Cutter made up one raiding party. Me, Bloody Anne, Borys, and Billy the Boy were the other, leaving Fat Luka, Simple Sam, Mika, and Black Billy to hold the Tanner’s. Sir Eland and his squad of hired men had a good grip on the Golden Chains, I knew, and I could only hope that Will the Wencher had his new lads in good enough shape to keep the house on Chandler’s Narrow safe. Slaughterhouse Narrow wasn’t likely to be at risk, to my mind, being the farthest from the Wheels and the least valuable. The rest of my businesses just paid me protection and weren’t permanently guarded. That was well and good, then.
Everyone was mailed and fully armed, and Bloody Anne had made sure no one was drunk. Except for Jochan, of course. There was nothing to be done about that.
“Right,” I addressed them. “Tonight we take the fight into the Wheels. There’s two ways up there from here, the river path and Dock Road. Jochan, I want your squad to head along the river path. Slip up the alley past Old Kurt’s house and come out at the top of Dock Road where they won’t expect you. Kill anyone who tries to stop you. I’ll lead my lot right up the road from here, where they’ll see us coming. That should put the fox in the fucking henhouse, and once they’re up and at us you can come running and take them in the rear. Everyone clear on that?”
There was a chorus of grunts and ayes, and I nodded. Ailsa was standing behind the bar, for all that we weren’t open, and I looked over and caught her eye. She gave me a short nod, and it was done.
We pulled up the hoods of our cloaks and set off into the blowing snow.
Dock Road was a good mile long, from the edge of the Stink to the top of the alley that ran past Old Kurt’s house, but no one had noticed that flaw in my plan. Not that it was a flaw, as such, not if what I believed turned out to be true. Expecting Jochan’s crew to creep along the river path and join up with us before we were overwhelmed would have been a fool’s thinking, of course, if it had just been the four of us with blades marching into Gutcutter territory. I had hoped for it to be the four of us with a cart full of flashstones, and another five men who knew best how to use them, but it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case tonight. I had something almost as good, though.
I had magic, or so I very much hoped.
“How do you feel, Billy?” I asked the lad as we approached the edges of my streets.
“We’re going to fight,” he said. “Good fucking deal.”
“Aye, we are,” I said. “We’re raiding tonight, though, not going into battle. Do you know what raiders do, Billy?”
“Strike fast, strike hard, burn everything, and run away afore we’re caught,” Billy recited, quoting the captain’s words from memory.
“Good lad, that’s right,” I said. “That’s exactly what raiders do. They strike fast, and they burn everything. If I ask you to burn something, Billy, can you do that for me? A workshop maybe, or an inn?”
He looked up at me, although truth be told, he wasn’t all that much shorter than I was, by then.
“With the cunning?” he asked.
I nodded. “Aye, lad, with the cunning.”
“I can do that,” he said, and he grinned at me. “Old Kurt never let me burn nothing big, but I know I can if I try.”
“Good lad,” I said again.
I could feel Bloody Anne giving me the hard eye in the darkness, but I had to ignore it. Billy the Boy was of age now and he was one of us, whether Anne liked it or not. If I was right, he was the most dangerous man I had.
Apart from Cutter, perhaps. I remembered the fight in the Golden Chains and how the Skanian magician had sent us all cowering behind tables. I remembered how Cutter had crept up behind him and opened his neck, magic or no fucking magic. Cutter was very dangerous too, I had to remind myself.
That, and he was still Jochan’s man, not mine.
All my attempts to build a trust with Cutter had fallen on stony ground. He had been content to move into the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow, and I had seen little of him since. The man said next to nothing, and I had no idea what levers moved him. Something tied him to my brother, some bond of loyalty forged in the war, but I hadn’t managed to find out what it was. I didn’t even know where he was from, but he had skills that conscripts don’t get taught.
I would have bet a gold crown to a clipped copper that Cutter had been a professional killer before the war, but where and for who remained a mystery. So long as he was a Pious Man, that was well and good, but I trusted him even less than I had used to trust Sir Eland before he proved himself to me, and that was quite some statement to be making.
“Right,” I said, and squared my shoulders under my cloak. I could feel the weight of the mail dragging against them, over the thick layer of leather beneath. “This is the last street of the Stink. Up there is Dock Road, and that runs all the way through the Wheels to the docks. That’s Gutcutter territory, all of it. What we’re going to do is walk up that street, nice and slow. Billy, I want you to leave the houses alone but burn every business I tell you to. Anne, Borys, we’re going to kill every bastard who comes out and tries to stop us. When we meet up with Jochan and his lads, we’re going to turn and run back to the Stink like the very gods of war are behind us. Everyone understand?”
They all nodded, and the smile on Billy the Boy’s face told me how much he was looking forward to it.
“Yes, Uncle Tomas,” he said.
We set off up Dock Road, and the first place we passed was a baker’s that I knew paid protection to Ma Aditi. I pointed to it, and Billy’s smile widened. He stopped in the street and stared at the shop front, the snow settling on his cloak. A moment later a dull glow began to light the windows from within. It brightened by the moment, until I could see flames licking at the inside of the panes.
“It’s done,” he said.
I nodded, and we moved on.
“Witchcraft,” I heard Bloody Anne mutter under her breath.
“Magic,” I said, correcting her. “It ain’t the same thing, Anne.”
I wasn’t sure I could see a difference, but I needed her to.
There was shouting behind us, the crash of breaking glass and the sound of panicked voices as the baker and his family fought the fire. They weren’t my enemies, no, but then the people of Messia had done nothing to me either. This was war, the same as Messia had been.
The same as Abingon.
Civilians suffer in war, and there was nothing to be done about that. I couldn’t meet the Gutcutters in formal battle any more than our generals had been able to draw the garrison at Abingon out from behind the city walls. Instead we had smashed those walls with our cannon and stormed the city, killing and burning as we went. This was the same thing, to my mind.
“There,” I said, indicating a chandler’s shop.
That went up even better than I could have hoped, and it took the tailor’s shop next door with it. A lot of Ellinburg is timber and daub, and even in the cold wetness of winter that burns well. We hurried on, hearing the shouts and chaos building behind us. These were just protected businesses, though, and for all that we were making a nuisance of ourselves in the Gutcutters’ eyes, we hadn’t really hurt them yet. To do that, we had to reach the Stables.
The Stables was nothing to do with horses.
It was Ma Aditi’s favorite place in all of Ellinburg: a brothel that specialized in boys. She liked young lads herself, and there were enough men who felt the same way for it to be a lucrative business. The Stables was near the top of Dock Road, where it could attract incoming sailors who had got too used to their cabin boys while aboard ship.
I wanted to burn the Stables to the ground.
We had to be careful about it, though, I knew that much. Those lads hadn’t hurt anyone, and for all that civilians have a hard time in war I wouldn’t see it happen to them. Those boys had seen enough hardship, to my mind.
This was where the second part of my plan came to life, the part I hadn’t shared with anyone.