The Black Bouquet

Aeron whirled back around toward the bugbear. Its low forehead bleeding, the burly creature, taller than almost any human its attacker had ever seen, lurched to its feet, snatched its scimitar from its scabbard, and raised it high. Its sleeve slipped down its hairy forearm, revealing the ruddy axe brand Aeron had once declined to wear.

Sidestepping out from under the threat of the curved sword, he lashed the bugbear across the ribs and kicked it in the knee. It stumbled, and that brought its head low enough for him to bash it a second time, and a third. The goblinoid collapsed unconscious.

Aeron pounced atop the bugbear and poised an Arthyn fang at its throat. The human Red Axe, who was lunging forward, hesitated.

"Stay back," Aeron panted, "or I'll kill it."

The guard spat, "I never liked him anyway. I think he cheats."

"If you're such a dunce that a bugbear can trick you," Aeron shot back, "you deserve to lose your coin. Now, you may not like the brute, but I'll bet your chief finds it useful. Useful enough that he wouldn't appreciate you throwing away its life when it can be avoided."

"Maybe. What do you want?"

Aeron nodded toward the windlass and said, "First, raise the portcullis."

He had no intention of squirming through the bars again when it was time to leave.

The guard grumbled, "That's a two-man job."

"The damn thing has a counterweight," Aeron said. "Just put your back into it."

Grunting with effort, or the petulant pretense of it, the Red Axe managed to do as instructed. The chain clanked as it wound around the reel.

"Now what?" the guard asked.

"Now you go into the house and tell Kesk to come out alone for a private talk. Tell him that if he doesn't show himself in the next five minutes, the cardsharp here dies, and he can forget about ever taking possession of the saddlebag."

The sentry stood and stared at him.

"What are you waiting for? Go!"

The Red Axe disappeared through the door, slamming it behind him, and after that, Aeron had nothing to do but listen for approaching footsteps, at least until the bugbear stirred. He pressed the keen edge of his knife against his captive's throat, drawing the goblin-kin's attention to it.

"Don't move," he said, "or you're dead."

"Don't matter," the bugbear said, its bestial voice slurred. Evidently it was still dazed from the beating it had taken.

"You don't care if I kill you?"

"Don't matter you didn't do… what you was told. You're still going to die."

Still? What did that mean, precisely? Aeron would have asked, but at that moment, Kesk Turnskull stalked through the door.

If ever a creature was born to rule a company of cutthroats, Kesk was surely the bully in question. Short and stooped as he was, his muscular body looked nearly as thick as it was tall. Patches of coarse hair bristled from his leathery gray hide, and with its truncated snout and jutting tusks, his face resembled that of a wild boar. Despite the oil lamp burning beside the door, the interior of the water gate was dark enough to reveal the faint luminescence of his scarlet eyes, which smoldered like coals beneath a low, ridged brow.

Aeron had heard that tanarukks hadn't always existed, that the race had emerged only in recent times as the result of crossbreeding between orcs and demons. He himself had no firsthand knowledge of such esoterica, but thought that anyone who laid eyes on Kesk would have no difficulty crediting the story.

As always, the founder and master of Oeble's most vicious gang carried a heavy, double-bitted battle-axe in his hand. Supposedly, he'd plundered the enchanted weapon from the body of a fallen foe, a gold dwarf champion who'd believed the axe, a cherished family heirloom, would only serve a pure-hearted warrior of his own race. Kesk liked to tell the story of how he'd proved the fool wrong by using it to slaughter the dwarf's own kin.

The tanarukk regarded Aeron and the bugbear. It was difficult to read the expression on that swinish face, with its protruding lower jaw, but he seemed to be sneering.

"What's the point of this?" Kesk growled. "Why didn't you come to the house through the Underways, as I told you to?"

"If I had, would I be dead already? Did you have some of your murderers lying in wait for me?"

Kesk's red eyes narrowed and he asked, "What are you talking about?"

"According to the bugbear, you meant to kill me."

"You can't club Tharag over the head and expect him to talk sense. He doesn't do much of that at the best of times. Now, if he's smart, he'll shut his hole and let the two of us palaver."

"You expect me to forget what he said?"

"Just use your own head, will you?" Kesk replied. "Why would I hire a man to do a job, then kill him? To get out of paying? I buy stolen and smuggled goods all the time, and a gang chief has to deal fairly. If I picked up a reputation for cheating, no one would do business with me."

When Kesk put it that way, it did seem to make sense, yet Aeron found he wasn't ready to let the topic go.

"You'd betray a hireling in the blink of an eye if it was worth your while, particularly if you thought you could make him disappear with no one the wiser."

"We agreed on a nice fee for your work, but hardly large enough to beggar me, or make me go to the trouble to play you false. I don't see the saddlebag. Where is it?"

"Somewhere safe."

"It's like that, is it?"

"I lost three friends stealing that box."

"Which means you don't have to split up the coin," said the tanarukk. "You can keep it all, and wind up four times richer than you expected. Be satisfied with that. Don't think you can grind me for more."

"You knew to send us after the box, so maybe you knew how well protected it was. But you didn't warn me."

Kesk snorted-a wet, ugly sound like a pig oinking-and said, "I thought you knew the game, redbeard. I thought you were a man. When a job gets bloody, a man doesn't weep and whine about it."

"Right. A man hits back when someone sets him up for a fall."

The tanarukk glared and said, "Why wouldn't I tell you everything I knew about the… the box? I wanted you to get away with it, didn't I?"

"Maybe you feared that if I knew what I was getting into, I wouldn't take the job. Or maybe you hoped some of my crew would get killed. That would save you Red Axes the trouble of slaughtering us all yourselves."

"I told you, we weren't pla

"What's it worth to you, really?"

Kesk quivered, quite possibly with the urge to charge and attack.

"Curse you, human," the gang leader said, "we had a deal, and no one goes back on a bargain with me!"

"I'm not reneging, exactly," said Aeron. "It's just that I charge extra for every lie and lost partner."

"You don't know what you're getting into. If you've got any brains at all, you understand I can't let folk cross me and live to brag about it, or else I'm finished in this town. But even that isn't the whole of it."

"You're starting to bore me, Kesk. Perhaps someone else will pay a fair price for the coffer."

The tanarukk shuddered, and the corner of his mouth twitched and drooled around the jutting tusk and fangs.

"All right," Kesk said. "I'll give you five times as much as we agreed on."

"Ten, and we'll make the trade at a place and time of my-"

The flame in the oil lamp flared, momentarily illuminating the shadowy gate as brightly as the noonday sun. Aeron had the misfortune to be looking in the general direction of the blaze, and it dazzled him.

He didn't know how Kesk had accomplished the trick. Maybe it was some i