Traitor's Knot Read Free

could be stewed into soup grease right where we sit!’ The moorlander caught hold of Dakar’s moist wrist. ‘I’m using the good sense my grandame taught the goatherd. Will you haul your arse up and get out of here?’
    By now, intrigued onlookers shouted for bets. Coins flashed, to the patter as someone made odds on which brawler was going to swing first. Here at the Kittiwake, fisticuffs and mayhem were counted as prime entertainment.
    â€˜Young fool!’ the fat spellbinder snarled. Now jostled as enthusiasts totted up wagers, he nursed his pitcher and, with sullen deliberation, refilled his dry tankard. ‘I’ll wring your neck, you dirt-stupid Araethurian, before I move even one step.’ Ignoring the whores, who stopped kissing to crane, and the growl from their displeased patron, Dakar nattered on. ‘Press me further, yes, beware! You’ll see trouble on a scale you can’t possibly imagine. Enough to make a verminous sink-hole seem blithe as a nurse-maid’s picnic. Now, shut your mouth. Sit on your temper and swallow the beer set in front of you.’
    â€˜Damn you to Sithaer before I take a drop,’ Fionn Areth retorted.
    The rabid pack of gamblers shoved back to make space.
    Dakar shut his eyes. He sucked a martyred breath. Then in one lightning move, he elbowed erect and dumped his brimming tankard over his tangled head.
    The run-off doused the longshoreman, to ear-splitting shrieks from his harlots. They hiked up scarlet petticoats and fled. Their swain’s irate bellow clashed with the clerks’ howls and rattled soot from the Kittiwake’s rafters.
    Dakar freed his captive arm. While the trestle skidded, upsetting the pitcher and smashing two lightermen’s dinner plates, he skinned through the clerks’ snatching grasp and used his tankard to parry the stevedore’s battering fist.
    Crockery smashed. Fragments pelted over the dicers crammed elbow to elbow on the seat just behind.
    Yelling murder, and unnaturally quick for a stout man grown tight on the Kittiwake’s twopenny brew, Dakar ducked a dock-walloper’s left hook. Then he lost his balance and sat. The brute’s knuckles hammered into the clerks’ outraged charge. The leading one crashed with a bloodied jaw, and flattened two of his fellows. Their thrashing upset the adjacent trestle. Bowls and hot chowder went flying. The four brawny fishermen deprived of their meal unsheathed flensing knives, screamed, and plunged in. Their vacated bench upset with a bang, toppling a drunk, who bowled into a circle of overdressed merchants. Lace tore; spilled food and spirits rained over fine velvets. The outraged peacocks redoubled the noise, bewailing their despoiled finery.
    Trapped in the breach, Fionn Areth clambered upright. Disaster overtook him. Bedlam exploded like froth on a pot, and the Kittiwake’s tap-room erupted.
    Tankards sailed. Broth splashed. Elbows and fists smacked against heaving flesh. Beneath the soaked tits of a gilded figure-head, an agile pack of sail-hands laid into their neighbours with marlinspikes, knuckle-bones, and clogs. Their sally encountered the longshoreman’s kin, who had levelled a trestle for use as a ram. Card games whisked air-borne. Stew bones and cutlery showered the brick floor, stabbing toes and tripping combatants. Three prostitutes scuttling for cover went down, then another man, who became mired in their skirts. Their squeals drew the lusty eye of a galley-man, who dived in to lay claim to the spoils. While the landlord at the tap screeched threats and imprecations, the three heavies the Kittiwake employed to toss drunks at last stirred themselves to take charge. Brandishing cudgels, they waded in, dropping bodies like beef at a knacker’s.
    By then, Dakar had vanished, swallowed into the battering press.
    Fionn Areth found himself trapped, all alone, mashed against the rocked edge of the trestle. The burgeoning riot cut off