MERCY
FELIX R. SAVAGE
A short story of revenge and rebellion
Digital Edition by Knights Hill Publishing
Copyright © 2011 by Felix R. Savage
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MERCY
At the first scream, they all looked up, bored but hopeful. Close, Rab thought. Might be able to
get there before the black-caps. He set down his tankard. A chance, at least. Better’n small-ale on an
empty belly.
A year back, he wouldn’t have dreamt of robbing the homes of people who had fled into
the streets to escape a chimera. A year back, there’d been no chimeras. A year younger, he
hadn’t known how much you could get away with if you had the guts to try.
More screams needled into Venn’s, and they were all jumping to their feet, jolting the
table. Just across the bridge. Drum Lane, maybe Blower’s Street, and rat-faced Yoel caught a tankard
that was toppling, not his own, and drained it… Blower’s Street.
Davy.
“My brother,” Rab shouted. “My brother’s over there, you turnipskulls. Run!” He
loosened his dagger in its scabbard as he sprinted down the street. Not that it would do him
much good against a chimera, but it was a sturdy pigsteel blade, stolen from a drunken
equerry up Salthill way. They strung out behind him: Yoel the thief, Bren the ex-carter’s boy,
True Tim, and Hoppy who could outrun a man ahorse, so he claimed, but he couldn’t
outrun Rab now. Not even an avistrider could have overtaken him on the way over
Wandless Bridge. Davy was on the other side of that canal, and Rab held no treasure dearer
in the world.
Nearly all the people on Mayfish Street were running the other way. Rab shoved them
aside when they blundered into his path, skidding in the mud. It had rained heavily on and
off all day, the first of the autumn storms. The reed-thatch roofs of the houses that crowded
the entrance to Blower’s Street were still dripping. That hadn’t stopped something further
down the street from catching fire. White smoke belled around the corner, blindingly thick.
The yellow fools! They’ve left the furnaces. Not everyone had left: Glassmaster Triott rampaged
across the street, vainly grabbing at stragglers and roaring for buckets. The glaziers had their
own cistern, but it was back there in the smoke. The fears of the guildfathers looked set to
come true – the glaziers were going to burn down everything between Fancher’s Canal and
the Blisterwater.
“You worked around here, didn’t you, Rab?” True Tim danced from foot to foot. “You
must know where the swag is!”
“Swag be damned, it’s my brother I want to fetch out of there,” Rab bawled. Mayhaps
Davy had already run, but Glassmaster Purclevey was a hard man who would brave even a
chimera’s rage, and force his apprentices to brave it too, if there was any chance of saving his
workshop. And mayhaps there was no chimera. Mayhaps it was only a fire.
Only a fire! A few years ago in Emylon, fire had been the worst disaster anyone could
imagine.
“With me,” Rab shouted, and barged into the smoke.
“Halt! You boys, get back!” The smoke eddied high over the wall of Triott’s. Two
watchmen blocked the friends’ path, iron-shod pikes barring the narrow street. “Get back,”
the left-hand man barked again. His companion’s smoke-reddened eyes rolled. From beyond
them came shouting, the furious whinny of a horse.
“I’m a glassblower’s prentice,” Rab yelled. It had once been nearly true: he’d spent two
years humping firewood, sand, and potash for Glassmaster Miggs, and would have got his
prentice’s berth for sure if Miggs hadn’t been arrested for conspiring with the rebels. “So’s
my little brother.” After Miggs’s arrest, Glassmaster Purclevey had taken Davy on straight
away. Unlike Rab, Davy was diligent and sweet as well as good with his hands. “He’s in
Purclevey’s yard. I’ve got to fetch him home. Our poor old mum—”
“There’s no one in Purclevey’s. No one alive. Get home and comfort your mother.”
“You’re lying,” Rab bellowed, and next thing he knew both pikes were pointing at his
gut, and there he stood with his useless dagger in his hand. “Let me through!”
“We’ll not have more killed here.” The black-cap’s eyes were as steady as his pike. He
stood a bare inch or two taller than Rab, stocky with a neatly trimmed dark beard. His cap
bore a captain’s badge, and a gold chain glinted inside the collar of his jacket. “I’ve no great
care for your lives, my bullies, but the monster grows stronger with every kill. It feeds on the
death agonies, and you’ll not nourish it while I’m in charge here. So put away that pot-sticker
before I take it off you, and the hand as well.”
Rab looked down at the pike. Then he looked up, smiling. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Wolke.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Oh,” Rab said, “just that if the monster’s fed on my brother, I swear before God the
fishes’ll feed on you.”
“Stuff that lip, rascal,” cried the other black-cap. “We’ll have you down the Pot for
threatening the badge.”
Wolke shook his head slightly. “It’s not that I’m not sorry for you, lad.”
“Rush ‘em,” Bren grunted.
“It’s breaking out!” A thunderous smashing of glass; brick collapsing. Rab leapt sideways
across the street, and around the corner he saw through new billows of smoke a long body
jerk itself wrathfully from the ruin of Purclevey’s wall. Hairy gray it was and swaybacked,
ending in the whip-tail of a snake, but the four legs minuetted on delicate hooves, and the
yellow mane of a lion cascaded over shoulders that supported a pair of naked human arms,
their fingers flexing. The right hand wielded an iron bar that looked as if it had recently
resided in the bolt-housing of Purclevey’s gate.
Rab stood with his mouth open, his guts churning coldly.
“Holy bleeding Ghost of God,” Hoppy said, and bolted.
The two black-caps faced the chimera, the captain, Wolke, inching forward while his
companion hung back. Men struggled out of the breach in the wall, a couple of glassworkers
still in their aprons, but not Davy, and more black-caps poking their pikes in front of them.
The monster spun, terrifyingly quick on its little hooves, and charged. The iron bar laid out
the nearest black-cap. With its free hand the chimera seized another man, dragged him
struggling by the jacket, then lifted him off the ground and bit out his throat. Blood jetted
over its half-human, half-lion face.
Rab took a step backwards.
From the gateway of Purclevey’s dashed a figure in the heron-helm of a royal household
knight, scalemail glinting beneath his surcoat. Knights had started riding out with the Watch
this summer, their arms needed more urgently within Emylon than against the rebels without.
Though no longer ahorse, this knight still bore sword and shield, and Rab heard himself
shouting along with his friends as the blade slashed at the chimera’s side, opening up a
wound that gouted dark blood.
The monster swivelled. The knight dodged the downstroke of the iron bar and landed
another slash on the chimera’s haunch. It surged forward, forcing him to dance back, but
now the black-caps pounded up behind it, Wolke and his companion among them, stabbing
with their pikes.
“Surround ‘im! Pin the bleeder to the floor!” shouted True Tim, jumping up and down.
“Now’s our chance,” Rab said urgently.
The fire had started in Purclevey’s workshop. Some brave soul had managed to douse
the toppled gloryhole that did the mischief, but now the roof was ablaze, cinders dancing
high amid the smoke. A handful of men from the other glassyards were laboring with
buckets of sand and water to stop the flames from spreading to neighboring buildings. Bren,
Tim, and even Yoel joined in their efforts, but Rab kept searching. Shouts of anger and
triumph came from the street, mingled with the spitting of the flames. He wetted his
kerchief and clamped it to his face, scrubbing his burning eyes. At last he found Davy in the
woodshed. Thirteen years old and never to grow any older, he lay on his back, thin limbs
akimbo, and his throat was a red ruin.
The friends requisitioned the pikes of two fallen black-caps to improvise a litter. Solemn
and soot-blackened, they bore Davy out of the yard. The chimera’s body lay in the street,
surrounded by a gloating crowd. Its ugly, half-human, golden-maned head was gone; so was
the heron-helmed knight. Its blood had turned the mud underfoot to slime. Rab shifted the
weight of Davy’s body on his shoulder and kicked the monster viciously, his rage futile. It
was only a beast, magical or not – and now lifeless. He glared at Captain Wolke, who was
standing guard, officiously warning gapers off. Do your job, aye, flaunt your badge! You’re a good
king’s man – and a murderer.