Irons in the Fire Read Free

hunters!"
    Cheerful voices shouted appeals in the hunting god's name. Their exuberant horns were deafening.
    "Go shit on your own doorstep!" a surly householder shouted from an upper window, prompting laughter and agreement from the crowd.
    A half-grown russet pig was running up the sloping street, two men on horses harrying it with lances. Already bleeding from gashes on its shoulders and hindquarters, the infuriated beast was unable to decide where to attack first.
    "Get back! Get back!"
    Budding sprigs of ash pinned to their tunics, hunters on foot rushed up to level sturdier spears and make an impromptu barrier between the infuriated beast and the jostling crowd. Others stood ready, their broad blades pointing downwards.
    "You kill the beast and welcome, but don't you leave blood and guts spread all over here," a stern matron warned belligerently from her doorstep, "bringing rats and dogs to plague us!"
    Some onlookers were cheering. More were still doing their best to leave the perilous hunt behind. Even a young pig could inflict murderous injuries.
    Squealing with fury, the pig lunged, only for the nearest sweating horse to dance nimbly aside. The second hunter took his chance and stabbed at the pig's rump. The tormented beast whirled around, screaming with ear-splitting ferocity. The hunter wrenched his mount's head sideways to urge it out of the way. Bloody foam dripped from the horse's mouth as it half-jumped, half-stumbled on the slippery cobbles. The first hunter dug his spurs into his steed's sweating flanks. As the pig charged, he drove his lance deep between its neck and its bristling shoulders.
    A cheer of relief went up as the pig fell, thrashing and squealing. One of the foot-hunters hurried up to dispatch the hapless animal with a thrust to the heart.
    "Fair festival!" The first hunter waved his bloody lance exuberantly. "Fresh meat for the paupers' feast at the shrine of Ostrin!"
    The cheers grew more enthusiastic as the crowd flowed back into the street.
    Tathrin didn't feel the carved wooden post digging into his shoulder. He wasn't hearing the hunters' congratulations. Shrieks and curses and dying pleas still echoed in his ears. The scent of men's lives spilled out across a little town's market square filled his nostrils, not the mingled sweat and perfumes of this sprawling city's holiday crowd.
    Instead of the hunters' jerkins bright with new ash leaves, Tathrin saw ragged leather tunics and chain mail clotted with muck and blood. He had cowered behind a stinking privy as the riders had passed by. Stained rags bound gashes on their arms, their legs, even their heads, but none of them seemed to care. All with their naked swords still gory in their hands, any one of them would still have killed him as soon as look at him. All he had been able to do was hide like a frightened child.
    "Tathrin! Stay there, lad!"
    Master Wyess's triangular black velvet cap headed towards him, fighting against the flow of people. If Wyess was a head shorter than Tathrin, he was broader in the shoulder and made short work of clearing a path.
    At least being taller than most meant he was easy to spot in a crowd, Tathrin thought numbly. But he could not have moved even if no one had been standing in his way. Recollection of that earlier slaughter still paralysed him.
    "Come on, lad, let's try a different route." The burly merchant puffed as he reached him.
    Tathrin clenched his fists to stop his hands shaking. Why had this hunt brought back memories he'd taken such pains to stifle? He hadn't even dreamed of that appalling day for more than a year.
    "No harm done and that's one less hog menacing the streets." Wyess's voice slowed, concerned. "Lad? Are you all right? You're as white as my lady's linen."
    "Yes." Tathrin cleared his throat. "Yes, Master. I'm fine."
    "Let's get there before all the good wine's drunk, then." Wyess urged him back down the sloping street.
    Tathrin was about to ask why they were retracing their steps.