The Dark Defiles Read Free Page B

tattooed across her face. No telling what any paying customer might do when they couldn’t get it up, and this one here was big and battle-scarred, and a foreigner to boot. Harsh alien accent and hair all tangled up with talismans in iron. Lurid tales of the Majak had percolated right across the continent in the last couple of centuries—they’d doubtless got as far as the Hironish isles long ago. Bloody steppe savages, disembowel a girl and cook her on a spit soon as look at her most likely if they got out of bed the wrong side one morning … 
    He forced a reassuring grimace and went to stare out of the window. Heard them move behind him with alacrity, start gathering up their clothes and the coin he’d left on the table. Light-footed, they left in what seemed like seconds and the door of his room clunked shut. He felt the relief it brought go through his whole frame. He slumped against the window, rested his head on cool glass. Outside, a light rain was falling into the street, clogging up daylight that was already past its best. A couple of children went past, splashing deliberately in the puddles and yattering some rhyme he could barely make out. He’d learned the League tongue, more or less, while on campaign in the north during the war, but the Hironish accent was hard work.
    Yeah, like their fucking awful food and their fucking awful weather and their fucking awful whores. Five weeks in this shit-hole already, and still no—
    Commotion downstairs. A woman shrieked. Furniture went over.
    He frowned. Cocked his head at the sound.
    Another shriek. Coarse laughter, and men calling to each other. The words were indistinct, but the rhythms were Majak.
    Uh-oh.
    He grabbed his breeches off the bed, trod hurriedly into them on his way to the door. Shirt off the table as he passed, out into the corridor still bare chested. Shouldered into the garment as he went down the stairs. No time for boots or other refinement, because—
    He arrived on the ground floor of the inn, barefoot and undone. Surveyed the scene before him.
    There were three of them. Shendanak’s men, just in from the street by the look of it, felt coats still buttoned up and damp across the shoulders from the rain. One had the younger of Egar’s whores grasped firmly by the crotch and one tit, was nuzzling and licking at her neck. The other two seemed engaged in facing down the innkeeper.
    “Oi!” Egar barked, in Majak. “Fuck do you think you’re doing?”
    The one holding the whore looked up. “Dragonbane!” he bawled. “Brother! We were just looking for you! Get your drinking boots on! ’S time to light this shit-hole town right the fuck up—Majak style!”
    Egar nodded slowly. “I see. Whose idea was that, then?”
    “Old Klarn, mate! The man himself.” The whore bucked and twisted in the speaker’s grip. She sank teeth into his forearm. He winced and grinned, let go of her crotch, used the free hand to squeeze her jaws open and force her head back, clear of his flesh. Looked like she’d left a pretty distinct bite there in the thick muscle behind the wrist, welling blood and everything, but the Majak’s voice barely wavered from its previous slurring good cheer. Egar estimated he’d been drinking awhile. “Fucking bitch. Yeah, Klarn says how we’ve been soft-soaping around these fish-fuckers for long enough. Time to get steppe-handed on their arses. In’t that right, boys?”
    Growls of approval from the other two. By now they had the innkeeper bent back over his own bar with the flat of a knife blade tapping under his chin and his legs dangling a couple of inches off the sawdusted floor. They flashed cheery, inclusive grins at the Dragonbane.
    Egar jerked his chin at the girl. “That’s my whore you’ve got there. Let her go.”
    “ Your whore?” The other Majak’s face was suddenly a lot less friendly. “Who says she’s yours? She’s down here waggling her tits and arse in grown men’s faces, she—”
    “She’s paid