Dishonour by Dee Carteri (simple e reader TXT) 📕

you."

"Maybe," Coste said, frightened.

Dell asked, "What if we let you go? For your crimes, you could spend up to twenty-five years imprisoned. The Sheriff is not kind to those who aid murderers for money. Tell us, and your name will never reach the courts."

Rodul nodded and said, "You have my word as a knight."

Coste bowed his head and said, "I sell steel to a woman named Kylinia. She sold the weapons to the desert men in the raid on Tandar Palace in 1264. If anyone in Whiterift made those daggers, it was her."

"Fully four dozen innocent freemen were killed in that raid! You aided this, this slaughter! For what, half a pound of silver?" raged Daken. Coste was silent.

Daken spit on Coste, then asked coldly, "Where is Kylinia?"

He began to give them directions, but two of the other men in the room drew daggers and ran at Coste. Penag drew his Honor Blade and stepped in their way. Reconsidering, they threw open a panel in the wall and ran outside.


Outside, Bakine saw the two men leave through the secret door over the deputy’s shoulder. He yelled, "Halt!" and began to run after them, the deputy following. He grabbed the back of one’s collar and threw him to the ground. The deputy behind clubbed and grappled with the man.

Bakine ran after the remaining criminal. The man scrambled over a fence to the right. Bakine could hear his comrade’s shouts behind him. He leaped on to a crate and bound over the fence, landing hard on the flagstones. The alley was silent, the culprit vanished. Bakine stood up, glancing around the empty side road. Suddenly, a shape darted out of the side door and tackled the knight.

Sir Bakine elbowed the man’s stomach and freed a hand. His aggressor pulled away. Bakine slammed his mailed fist across the man’s face. Coste’s client was thrown backwards off Bakine’s torso. He still clutched one of the knight's legs. In a heartbeat, the criminal pushed Bakine’s foot against a crate and brandished his dagger. He hesitated for a moment. Bakine’s eyes widened in horror.

The man gripped Bakine’s leather boot and drove his knife through the foot, just below the anklebone.

Bakine screamed in agony; the man dashed down the alley. Rodul climbed over the fence as the wounded knight wrenched the dagger out with a howl.

Rodul began to run after the criminal, but he was long gone. Rodul returned and carefully bandaged Bakine’s wound.

"Is the joint broken?" asked Bakine, cold sweat dripping over his grimacing face.

"Yes," replied Rodul placidly.

Bakine denied it and began turning his head from side to side. The man looked as if he was about to burst into tears. "How bad is it? Can the Seers fix it? Will I, will I ever," Bakine turned away. His voice was shuddering with a hint of hysteria.

"You’ll walk again just the same, mark my word. Better, even."

Penag and Daken tore the fence down and approached the pair. Rodul backed away to display the ankle, bound loosely and obviously broken. "Damn," swore Penag. "Can’t you splint it or something?"

"Do I look like a surgeon?"

Daken motioned to a deputy and ordered, "Run to the inn and see if there’s a Seer or a surgeon staying there."

Rodul yelled after, "And buy some strong liquor!"

The deputy could be seen hammering at the inn door. An annoyed innkeeper answered, hesitated, then let him in. A few minutes passed, Bakine writhing in pain, Penag and Rodul holding his foot still.

The deputy emerged with a stooped Seer in green robes and Sir Aloce, holding a bottle in his hand. The Seer tiredly walked, despite insistences that he run.

He reached the injured knight and knelt beside him. "My name is Archdeacon Hadar."

Bakine said nothing, but took the bottle from the deputy and drank deeply, sputtering as some spilled over the edges of his mouth.

"Good brandy," he commented with a slight smile.

Hadar asked, "Have you ever been healed by a Seer before?"

"Yes," Bakine replied between drinks.

"Then you understand-"

Bakine replied sadly, "Yes. I’m going to have to get a lot more drunk."

Eventually he cast the bottle aside, drained of the liquor. He said, "Do it."

The Seer placed his hands above the ankle, then hesitated and asked, "What about payment?" He eyed them sharply.

Daken replied, "What do you mean, payment? It will take you a few seconds and barely tax your power, like doing a small favor for a friend."

"I am no friend of knights. Pay now, or you can try to find a way to get him to a surgeon before he goes lame." Bakine cried out drunkenly in fear.

Rodul opened his money pouch and withdrew a silver lump and handed it to the Seer, who looked closely at it then asked, "How much is it?"

"Two ounces pure, on my honor."

Hadar pocketed the lump. He ordered, "Hold him down."

The four knights complied, an the healing began. For five minutes Bakine thrashed around in the agony of regrowth as his friends held him fast. At one point during the ordeal, someone had gagged the patient to stop his cutting screams. The seconds dragged on, and Bakine’s squirms became more desperate, his eyes pleading to be let go. After four minutes, tears ran freely down the knights face as finally lost control. The tears were echoed by the wetness in his friends’ eyes as they forced the torture on him. In the end Bakine passed out, though froThe skin over the former wound was pale white, in contrast to the tanned flesh around it.

Hadar stood and bowed stiffly, then walked without a word back to the inn.

"Good Gaia, I thought that would never end," stated Rodul, wiping the tears of his face under the clever premise of wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Daken stated, "Jylo was able to heal wounds like that in a matter of seconds. I’ve heard the battle Seers are superior, but still-"

"It doesn’t matter. It’s over, the ankle’s whole, and, if that brandy’s strong enough, Bakine won’t even remember it come next morning," interrupted Rodul.

Aloce said in a voice uncharacteristically emotional, "I don’t believe anyone could ever forget something like that, strong drink or no. I certainly won’t."

As they carried the unconscious knight back to the inn, Rodul whispered to Daken, "Bakine’s the only man Aloce ever took a real liking to. That healing probably hurt Aloce more than Bakine, if you understand me."

They found a room waiting for them at the inn, rented by the deputies. Dell stood by the bed, and said, "I also rented the cellar and tied up the men who tried to flee down there. Now for Kylinia. Coste gave me directions."

"Well, I’d imagine that that last man has already told her we’re coming. We have to make our move tonight, before she leaves the city."


The knights and deputies ran down the streets behind Dell, every street almost completely devoid of life, save a few miserable beggars, who followed them for a spell out of curiosity. Ten armed men jogging down the road at this time of night was surely a sign of upcoming excitement. They entered a broad boulevard, surrounded by huge houses two to three stories high and fifty yards wide. A row of trees ran down the center. Near the end of the street, Dell stopped. "That’s it," he whispered.

The house he pointed to was small compared to the others, but still grander than most of the homes of the city. It was painted with a single shade of red, covering all the walls, interrupted only by white windows and shutters and long vines stylishly left to grow the length of the house that met with a dark green hedge wrapped protectively around the building. The occupants were certainly awake, as evidenced by lights shining through the shutters in almost every window and a low murmur of speech that drifted across the boulevard. Daken saw the dark silhouette of a man on the rooftop, who suddenly ran to a trapdoor and disappeared into the house. Daken shouted, "Take cover!" just as the shutters of the upper windows opened and arrows flew.

The group fled to the other side of the street, ducking behind trees. Daken sat with his back to a thick tree, glancing at Dell on his right and Aloce on his right. Aloce nocked an arrow and spun round, loosing it at the nearest window. The enemy archer ducked just in time to see the shaft fly right through where his chest had been.

"Return fire!" ordered Dell, and he rose as one with four of the deputies, bows singing in the twilight. One of his men went down with a strangled gasp, echoed in the mansion by an archer who ducked a heartbeat too late. Both sides were much more cautious from then on.

For half an hour they laid siege to the home in this fashion, and another of Kylinia’s men was downed. Some of the surrounding residents had gathered a hundred yards off, watching the skirmish as if it were a theatre production. All the knights save Aloce simply hid behind their respective trees, unable to help the deputies, wary of the archer fire. Aloce jumped back behind the tree and threw down his quiver, empty. The other soldiers seemed to be in the same predicament, and each one only loosed an arrow every few minutes. Daken scanned the mansion.

m the liquor or the pain none could tell. At last Hadar pulled away, and said, "It is finished." His ankle was as before.


Kylinia’s soldiers seemed to fire with abandon, and likely did not fear exhausting their stockpile of arrows. One man, it seemed, even wielded a cross-bow of the sort used by Lecoy and Jirith, firing shafts slowly, but with deadly accuracy.

Dell stated glumly, "She’s probably already fled halfway to Syburmia."

Daken shook his head. "The garden in the back of that mansion is nestled between two outworks of the Inner Wall. Unless she can climb a hundred feet of the tightest masonry in the world, she hasn’t escaped yet. However, I’ll wager she’ll soon work up the bravery to try to escape through the front door, once we run low on arrows."

Daken scanned the manor. A bowman stood in each of the five upper windows, watching the trees cautiously. A hand touched his shoulder, and he spun around, nearly striking a man in surprise.

The man slinked backwards, holding up his hands passively. "I mean no harm." He was middle-aged and slightly fat, his dark hair tinged with gray. "Me and my sons, we heard the fighting, and we always knew that they in that house were up to no good. A bad sort of people to have as neighbors, I always said. Always up an’ about in the midnight hours. So trust me, I don’t hold with them, not in the least. Now my family, when we heard the fighting, we chopped up a table into planks quick as we could, and lashed them together to make six big shields, tall and thick, proper man-at arms shields, I fancy. They’re coming out now, if you can tell your men not to attack them."

Daken relayed the message down the line. It was only then that the man realized the presence of Dell and Sir Aloce, who were covered in bushes and were not easily seen.