Three nights later all Hell broke loose.
We had no warning. The first I knew of anything wrong was when a man charged into the Tanner’s Arms with his face bloodied and the coat on his back in scorched tatters.
“Gutcutters!” he shouted, and never mind that the tavern was full of customers. “They’re attacking the Chains!”
“Fuck!” I shouted, and rounded on Fat Luka. “Where was our intelligence?”
Luka had gone pale in the face, and he had no answer to give me.
Bloody Anne was already on her feet and shouting orders. Black Billy and Simple Sam were throwing customers out as fast as they could while men ran around getting into their leather and mail and fetching their weapons. Captain Larn and his men I tasked with holding the Tanner’s and guarding the precious weapons they had brought with them. I had Luka stay there too, and Black Billy. Everyone else was armed and ready in record time.
“Jochan, you’ll lead the counterattack,” I said.
He nodded, and I saw the savage gleam in his eye. He was the right man for the right job, I knew that. It was time to unleash the mad dog whether I liked it or not. Jochan picked eight men, Cutter included, and they charged out of the tavern and were on their way to the Chains no more than ten minutes after the alarm had been raised. I looked at Bloody Anne.
“You’re with me, with young Billy and the rest,” I said. “Larn, hold here at all costs.”
Ailsa grabbed my arm as I buckled the Weeping Women around my waist.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed at me. “Distance yourself, I said.”
I gave her a hard look.
“Fuck. That.”
I wrenched my arm free and led my crew out into the biting cold.
“Chandler’s Narrow?” Anne said, and the look on her face was almost pleading.
I nodded.
“Aye.”
It was their obvious second target, and of course Anne knew that. Her Rosie was there, and all the other women, with only Will the Wencher and Sir Eland to protect them.
We ran.
As we came up the steps of the narrow I could see we were too late. The front door of the stew was hanging open on one hinge and there was a body sprawled in the courtyard outside the closed chandler’s shop, lying half in the light of the single lantern. He was no one we knew, so I simply stepped over him and went inside with Remorse and Mercy in my hands.
There was a stranger in the entrance, leaning on the counter with his hands clutching a wound in his side. I gave him Mercy without breaking stride. The sound of fighting was coming from down the corridor. Bloody Anne kicked the door open with her daggers drawn.
Sir Eland had retreated to the parlor door, and there he was making his stand.
He hadn’t had time to get into his armor when they attacked, of course, and he was standing there in his shirt and britches and bleeding from a dozen cuts, his long sword running scarlet in his hands. Four more men lay dead on the boards, but there must have been another six facing him. One man can hold a narrow space against many, until his strength deserts him or he is overcome by his wounds. It looked like Sir Eland was close to both of those things.
Just as Anne stormed into the corridor a crossbow bolt burst through the neck of one of the Gutcutters, and I heard a ratchet being cranked from behind Sir Eland as someone frantically reloaded. Anne and Mika and me waded into the rear of the Gutcutters while the rest of our crew spread out through the building, searching the bedrooms and killing every stranger they found.
Eland’s face split into a savage grin when he saw us, and he attacked.
The hammer and the anvil, that was how we cleared the corridor in Chandler’s Narrow. That’s a terrible thing in such a confined space, and we butchered them until all of us were red to the elbows and it was done. The floor was littered with corpses, just like it had been at Messia.
“Rosie!” Anne shouted.
She shoved past Sir Eland and into the parlor, and now I could see the women he had been protecting. Rosie was at the front of them, with the crossbow in her hands. Three of the bodies on the floor had bolts in them, I noticed. Rosie had given a good account of herself while Eland held the door.
I clapped Sir Eland on the shoulder.
“You fought well,” I told him.
“I really did,” he said, and collapsed at my feet.
“Boss!” someone shouted from behind me.
“See to Eland,” I snapped at Anne, and turned back down the corridor.
Stefan led me up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms. There were more dead Gutcutters there, who I supposed had been looting the building, and two customers whom the Gutcutters had obviously killed themselves. I saw two of the women dead too, and that pained me. Will the Wencher was sprawled on the floor out cold with an ugly purple bruise on his temple. It looked like he had been trying to protect the girls who had been working when the Gutcutters attacked, but he had been unarmed at the time and had never stood a chance. I respected him for trying, all the same.
Billy the Boy was waiting in that room, and he had something for me.
I recognized the man at once. He wasn’t wearing his purple shirt that night, but I recognized him anyway. This was Gregor, Luka’s man in the Gutcutters. My man, bought and paid for. My man, who should have given us ample warning of this attack, and who had said nothing.
He was backed against the wall, and Billy was staring at him. I didn’t know what Billy was doing to him, but it was plain to see that Gregor was pinned there as helpless as he would have been if four strong men had been holding him in place.
“You’ll want this one alive,” Billy said, and as always he was right.
I walked slowly toward the helpless man, Remorse and Mercy dripping red in my sticky hands.
“Hello, Gregor,” I said, my voice taking on the tone that meant harsh justice was coming, and soon.
“Mr. Piety, I can explain,” he said.
I nodded slowly and turned and used Remorse to point at the half-naked woman lying dead on the floor with her guts hanging out of a ragged wound in her stomach. She couldn’t have had more than twenty years to her.
“Explain that,” I said. “Explain to me why two of my girls are lying dead because I didn’t know there was going to be an attack on my stew. Explain to me why no cunt told me that.”
“I can’t—” Gregor started, and I dropped and rammed Mercy through his calf hard enough to smash his shinbone.
He howled.
“Try again,” I said.
“He’s got my son!” he gasped around the agony. “I couldn’t . . . He found out I was informing . . . I couldn’t!”
Some people aren’t your friends, however much you pay them. They’re just scared to be your enemy. If someone finds a way to scare them more than you do, someone like Bloodhands, then you’ll lose them. I knew that well enough.
“I grieve for those two women,” I said. “I grieve for them, but I didn’t know them. You’re very lucky, very lucky indeed, that it wasn’t a different woman who died here tonight. If Bloody Anne’s woman had been killed, Gregor, I would have given you to her. I want you to understand what that would have meant. Bloody Anne would have started at your feet and filleted you like a fish, if you had got her Rosie killed. Do you understand me?”
He nodded, his teeth clenched against the fire in his ruined leg and the pain making flecks of spit bubble between his teeth.
“I don’t think you do,” I said, and I smashed Remorse down hilt-first into his kneecap.
He shrieked that time, and a moment later Bloody Anne came through the door behind me.
“Tomas?” she asked me. “What in Our Lady’s name are you doing?”
“This is the man who almost got your Rosie killed tonight,” I said. “This is the man who Luka pays to tell us what the Gutcutters are doing. This is the man who didn’t. Fucking. Tell us.”
I swear to Our Lady that I heard Bloody Anne growl, low in her throat like an animal. I held up a hand to stay her.
“Is Sir Eland still alive?” I asked her.
“Aye,” she said. “He’s weak, but he’ll live.”
“Good,” I said. “I want you to do something for me, Bloody Anne. I want you to go downstairs and borrow Sir Eland’s sword from him, and bring it up here to me. Will you do that for me?”
“Aye,” she said again, and left the room.
I looked Gregor in the eye, and I held his fearful stare. Remorse and Mercy are beautifully crafted weapons but they are shortswords, and they’re not designed for taking a man’s head off.
Sir Eland’s heavy war sword, though, that was.