Free Demon King by Chris Bunch Page A

sword, then spun as someone cut at me with a scythe. I knocked the wooden handle up and put my sword through that man’s neck.
    Two men with clubs stumbled at me, and I danced to the side, sliced one’s arm open, gave him an instant to howl in pain while I gutted his friend, then slashed, almost taking the first man’s head off.
    There was a man with a wide-bladed falchion, and he cut at me. I parried his thrust, struck, but he moved aside. He swung again, and I blocked his blade at the hilt, forcing his arm up, and our bodies slammed together. His breath stank of garlic and fear.
    Before he could pull back, I jerked my knee into his crotch, and he screeched and doubled over. I crashed the pommel of my sword down on the back of his neck, cracking his skull, and finished him as he fell. Then there was no one standing except soldiers.
    “Domina!”
    Bikaner came toward me, limping a little. I saw the dark of blood on his thigh.
    “I think I’m gettin’ a little old, sir. One of ‘em went down and I didn’t stay to finish him. Bastard had th’ brass t’ cut me. What’s your orders, sir?”
    “Take their heads. We’ll have something decorative for the walls of Polycittara come morning.”
    Bikaner’s teeth flashed. “That’ll give them something to ponder, sir.”
    The city would have more than just heads to think of. All Kallio would go into mourning for my fallen Lancers. Not that I expected them to do anything but rejoice privately, but they would mourn several things: the banning of all festivals and playing of any music for a time, and the shuttering of all public houses for the same. If I couldn’t appeal to their sense of justice or their fear of the consequences, I’d instruct them through their guts.
    Kutulu was two dozen feet away. A man lay moaning at his feet and, a foot away, a second was on his hands and knees. I went to him. “I thought you’d gone mad,” I said.
    “Not at all,” and he looked about, saw no one else within earshot, “my friend. It didn’t seem as if you could guarantee the safety of those I needed, so I thought I might make an early selection. One of these is the man we saw giving orders, the other’s one of his … assistants, perhaps. We’ll see what they have to say for themselves, once we return to the castle. I have many questions, and I’m sure they’ll give me all the answers I need.”
    He neither smiled nor sounded angry, and his words were a simple declaration of fact. There would be no mercy from his torturers.
    The skirmishing was over, and it was time for full battle.

FOUR
C ASTING THE N ET
    I never should’a played politics,” the bandit who called himself Slit-Nose grumbled, and spat bloody teeth. “Thievin’s never so dirty, an’ worst it’ll get you is a clean death.”
    “You’ll have your death,” Kutulu promised. “When you’ve told us everything — and we’re sure it’s the truth.”
    “There’s naught more t’ tell,” the man Kutulu had taken said. “Th’ man said he’d pay us good red gold, an’ did. All we had to do was scrag those so’jers for him.”
    “Who was he?”
    “I told you, an’ I told that dogfucker who’s been beatin’ on me I don’t know. He come to us, knew our hideout, knew th’ places we’d been, knew me by name, an’ was willin’ to pay. A’ready had Oswy’s people convinced, but needed more thieves. Wanted to make sure nobody got away. I asked what th’ band thought. Pickin’s been slender since th’ war. Ain’t none got coppers, let alone gold an’ silver t’ be thieved.
    “We’d been thinkin’ about goin’ on east, into Wakhijr, an’ tryin’ our luck there. ‘Stead …” Slit-Nose spat blood again and wiped his face. He looked distastefully at his shattered fingers. “Don’t guess
those’
ll ever hold a blade again, now will they?”
    I wanted to turn away and vomit, as much from the stink of the chamber as what the torturers had done to this thief, but forced myself not