Chapter Six
The eyes beneath the cant of the hat brim were the color of a frozen Caribbean sea, chips of ice set in the composed features, though it was unlikely his foe caught even a glimpse of them as the lantern he carried dropped from suddenly lax fingers, replaced by a primed and ready pistol. The naked rapier instantly in his right hand flexed infinitesimally as he raised the gun and shot the first one coming directly at him. The second, rapidly advancing on his right, dropped like a stone from a savagely whipped pistol butt before the now useless weapon was abandoned. He jammed his parrying dagger into a third, yanked it out and whirling, sent it spinning toward the jugular of a fourth who had no time to dodge as he engaged the fifth in a silent, deadly duel that lasted approximately three minutes before Athos disengaged from a bind, rocked back on his left heel and drove the point of his rapier between the left fourth and fifth ribs.
His sword made sucking sounds as he pulled it out very slowly and watched his opponent keel over like a straw dummy.
"Last man standing." The rasp was barely a whisper. It took a great deal of effort not to kick the body as Athos stepped over it, moving to disengage a massive key ring from the belt of the man whose neck was sporting his dagger. He collected the parrying dagger as well, stuck it hilt-deep in the dirt to rid it of the blood and stowed it in its sheath behind his back before rising, rapier quietly quiescent in his rock steady hand.
Around the side of the ramshackle house, the cut-out dirt steps down to the basement were crumbling badly and bore evidence of much recent activity. The large iron key fit easily into the rusty lock, but he had to sheath his sword and use both hands to turn it. He did so warily, ears tuned for the slightest scrape of sound behind him, though he did not bother looking over his shoulder.
Empty.
He knew instantly and without a doubt those he sought were not within. The crypt five men and the self-important lock had guarded so conspicuously was empty. Athos knew himself for a fool as well. The hair on the back of his neck rose like spines on a desert plant as he turned on a boot heel, expecting to face another dozen miscreants, though he had heard nothing. His hands dropped without thought to the various accouterments that would announce his presence as he moved silently back to the corner to reconnoiter the courtyard again.
He took a deep steadying breath and focused - as much as he was able with his heart pounding an unholy wrath through his system - on the carnage left in the wake of his assault. He was no closer to finding his friends and there were five dead bodies littering the small space between the gate hanging half off its hinges and the decrepit building brooding above the empty cellar.
Seething, he grabbed the feet of the closest caitiff, dragged him to the basement threshold and sent the body tumbling down the rickety stairs with a shove of his boot.
The gate banged as he heard d'Artagnan's running footsteps slide to a stop at the furthest body. Still he did not turn, just continued with the job of dragging the deceased to the door of the cellar. He knew himself disproportionately angry, if he spoke at all it would be to spew forth in bitter acrimony and d'Artagnan would take his words as a further measure of fault.
He'd certainly imparted a few cold, deadly words to the youth earlier when d'Artagnan had all but fallen into their room, waking Athos from a dead sleep with the nearly incomprehensible report, between gasps, that Aramis and Porthos were missing.
A thing unheard of; Aramis and Porthos were an unbeatable combination. They could take a room full of drunken bastards alone and leave d'Artagnan sitting at the table. Though the hot-headed youth was incapable of staying out of any fight.
On further reflection, Athos regretted his sharp reprimand. Fault rarely belonged to one alone. And to be fair, d'Artagnan did not pick fights like Porthos, who liked to flex his muscles occasionally, or Aramis, who often relieved his boredom with his facile tongue. The youth's fiery zeal was usually reserved for cases of blatant injustice.
Clearly, expecting d'Artagnan to keep the other two in line had been the height of stupidity. And unfair as well.
Athos leaned wearily against the foul smelling door jamb. If this mounting tally of dead bodies reached the ears of their potential allies, Tréville - not to mention the cardinal and the king - would have three Musketeer heads mounted on platters like John the Baptist.
He turned from the top of the dank, dark head of the stairwell to find d'Artagnan behind him, hauling another body. This one looked familiar, though he could not place where he had seen the man. Aramis, with his uncanny knack for identifying faces, could have told him, but they'd been so many places - the opening ball, the masquerade, even church - and met so many faces, they were mostly a blur to Athos. He saw no reason to mention the uneasy feeling to d'Artagnan, though, and together they hefted it silently down the stairs.
Their only hope lay in the fact that this was an unsavory neighborhood; perhaps the authorities would be appreciative of their efforts to rid it of some of the vermin population.
"They are not here then?" d'Artagnan asked uneasily. The carnage in the courtyard had made him sick to his stomach.
"Do you see them?" Athos clamped his teeth shut on the snarled incivility.
d'Artagnan turned away to collect another of the sprawled men and the remaining two bodies were similarly dispatched before returning in silence to gather up the weapons lying where they'd been dropped by dead men. Athos hefted a gleaming halberd, running a gauntleted finger across the blade - it sliced off a layer of leather thin enough to see through - before tossing it into the dirt cellar as well.
Returning to the courtyard, he took a moment to survey the disorder and consider what to do.
He put a hand against one of the dilapidated support beams, needing a moment to consider what to do, but the beam shifted and only d'Artagnan's quick snatch kept him from being buried under the timber that gave way as the porch roof sighed and abruptly rained down a wagonload of debris.
They both shied back from the deluge of dust raised by the collapse, throwing up elbows and arms to shield faces as the porch pulled lose of the house, adding bricks and more rotten timber to the wreckage.
Athos did not miss the boy's sharp inhale. "Are you hurt?"
"No."
The response was as quick and sharp as the inhale, which in the short time Athos had known the young man had already come to signify d'Artagnan was lying through his teeth.
"Where?"
"I'm fine. What happened?"
There was no visible wound, no telltale blood dripping; the Musketeer let it go. He did not have time to waste, the trail grew colder with each passing moment. "We had a shadow. He took off when I turned on him."
d'Artagnan bent over, hands on his knees, trying to wheeze quietly. "I only found you because I heard the pistol shot."
A long moment of grudging stillness yielded, "You're right." Athos acknowledged the unvoiced reproof, though the youth's temperately modulated tone only stoked his anger. "We're down to two already, we should stick together." The words came out bitten off, laced with hostility.
d'Artagnan was silent behind his heaving breath. "I'm sorry," he said finally, and for the thousandth time in the last several hours. The bitterness seeping from the quiet utterance was too reminiscent of Athos' own self-loathing.
The Musketeer sighed, reining in his run-away resentment, though it was difficult at best. Two of his men, his brothers, were missing; he was seething still. But he tempered his voice, collected his will and said in his usual monotone, "Again, the fault is mine. Remind me to apologize profusely when this is over. I should not be taking my anger out on you."
d'Artagnan had done his level best to keep the blame from falling on Aramis - where it belonged, Athos had no doubt - spreading it evenly between the three culprits. The fact that it had involved a woman, though she'd only been mentioned very briefly, almost in passing, told its own story. d'Artagnan's version had focused mainly on the sudden and inexplicable multitude who'd risen up as if at some signal and stormed their table with naked rapiers.
"If only they'd taken me..." d'Artagnan mumbled under his breath. "They're likely dead by now."
The night was quiet, though, and Athos heard the anguish in the pernicious tenor of the words. "No." He glanced once more around the dimly lit courtyard. "If whoever is behind this had wanted them dead, you would have all been left for dead in the tavern. They took Aramis and Porthos for a reason and left you to bear the news back to me."
But what reason?
The tavern, when they'd returned, had been locked up tight, though that had not stopped Athos. He'd smashed a person-sized hole in the front window and crawled into the dark interior heedless of danger. The place had been little more than a hole in the wall, the bar a plank across two saw horses, with a shelf of liquor behind. A few tables, a couple of dark corners and another locked door into an alley literally seeping excrement and offal.
Athos kicked through the rubble of the porch roof until he found the lantern that had been hanging over the door. The descent had snuffed the wick. He pulled it out, deliberated for a moment, then strode across to one of the still lit lamps hanging from a nail by the stable entrance. He relit the one he'd pulled from the rubble and took both back to the porch where he settled one carefully in a nest of debris, tipping it just enough to purposefully spill a little of the oil. Then waited to make sure the hungry tongues of flame lapped beyond the hood of the lantern. When the curling tendrils of flame began to lick at the brittle wooden roof shakes around it, he rose and crossed to the opposite side of the courtyard to retrieve a third lamp from where it hung on the enclosure wall.
He handed one to d'Artagnan. "Look for markers. If they were here, we'll find a new trail."
d'Artagnan had only been initiated into this system a few hours ago, when Athos had insisted they begin their search at the tavern where d'Artagnan had woken alone. The Musketeer had begun casting about the street in front of the establishment, a half-shuttered Rathaus lantern held low to the ground, intently scouring each millimeter of ground until he'd bent and picked up what appeared to be a small button. And it had been, of a sort. A small bit of clay stamped with a pair of dice no bigger than the end of Athos' thumb. Inconspicuous, but easily seen if one knew what to look for.
d'Artagnan had found another almost immediately.
Athos had informed him that every Musketeer carried some kind of marker, usually in a hidden pocket inside clothing. They came in handy for all sorts of things. Aramis, naturally, often used his to chink the windows of his various amours.
The dice belonged to Porthos, which, d'Artagnan had discovered, likely meant Aramis was unconscious, or he too would have left an identifier. Athos had muttered something about vanity and continued searching the ground, moving further along the road from where d'Artagnan had found the second one. He'd found a third very quickly and held it up for inspection.
The markers served two purposes, the first being the information that their friends were alive, and just as importantly, had given them a direction to begin looking.
They had followed a trail of dice from the tavern up one road and down another, through back alleys and lanes, occasionally crisscrossing a road they had already been on, often having to stop and backtrack or cast about over long distances to find the next one, the job made much more difficult by the inky blackness of the night and the need to keep their lanterns half-shuttered.
Until d'Artagnan had glanced up at a whisper of sound, barely in time to catch sight of a boot heel whipping around a corner at a dead run. He'd chased after the fleeting glimpse immediately, but despite hearing the sound of boots ringing on the cobblestones, the close set streets had all echoed with the sound and d'Artagnan had spent another quarter hour flinging himself up and down every street in the vicinity, until he'd heard the retort of the pistol nearby by and stopped long enough to get his bearings and listen for any other sounds.
The noise of the fight had come to him very faintly, heard only because he'd been listening intently for distinct sounds he recognized.
"Why are you setting the place on fire?" he asked, barely above a whisper, as he bent to inspect the courtyard with the un-shuttered lantern Athos had handed him. He glanced over in time to catch the clench of the bearded jaw and was instantly relived. Clearly there was a purpose behind the arson, one Athos was not particularly happy about.
It was another teachable moment, though Athos was in no mood to impart the hard-earned knowledge every Musketeer eventually came to terms with. He did it anyway, the words ground out in his usual sparse style as he, too, scoured the ground, scuffing at anything that looked pebbleish. "Maybe someone will come looking for this quintet; maybe not."
The dead were clearly not the rogues and miscreants he'd taken them for in the dim light. On closer inspection, every one of them had been of an age with the Venner. Miscreants or merely mischief makers, they had harmed his brothers and attacked him with lethal weapons - ancient lethal weapons, true - deadly nonetheless; every one of them had been bright with a newly honed edge.
He could make no sense, however, of five armed men, ostensibly guarding a pretentiously locked cellar, advancing with sinister intent apparently to do bodily harm. Either it had been intended as a very elaborate ruse - for what purpose he could not discern - or the tail they'd set on him had not been very good at his job and Athos' entrance had caught them completely off guard.
"If they were acting on their own, it buys us some time to conclude negotiations and get out of Berne." Athos rubbed his forehead wearily. "I just ... cannot fathom a reason five individuals would rush to die for an empty cellar. Unless ..." Athos trailed off. Perhaps even now Aramis and Porthos were waiting for them back at the Rathaus, though given d'Artagnan's description of events, that would be nothing short of miraculous.
"Unless what? And if they are not acting on their own?"
This was not the first time Athos had wished d'Artagnan was a shade less bright. "If not - and I should tell you I don't believe they were - we are still protected by our diplomatic status. It is unlikely, though not impossible, they will throw us in jail here. More likely, we would be escorted beyond the bounds of their city-state and refused re-entry." Athos straightened, drawing d'Artagnan's attention again, as he'd meant to. "If that should happen before we have found Aramis and Porthos, we will simply find another way into the city." He did not address the unless what, hoping he had distracted the boy from the first question.
d'Artagnan nodded sharply and returned to his own hunt. The men were dead already, it wasn't like they were leaving them to be burned alive.
Behind him, he heard Athos' rattling inhale of relief. He turned as Athos rose again, holding another marker between his fingers. "Aramis." He held it out for d'Artagnan to see the outline of a miniscule ace of hearts card.
"Thank God!" d'Artagnan whispered with complete and utter sincerity, closing his eyes briefly. "So they were here! Does this mean they might have escaped?"
Too smart by half. "Doubtful." Athos hated to quench the sudden blaze of relief, but under the circumstances, no hope was better than false hope. "Check the street in front of the gate. I will search the alley behind."
"Don't disappear on me again." d'Artagnan found two of Aramis' markers headed up the street, into the heart of Berne. Athos found one of Porthos' a good distance down the alley, headed back toward the River Aare.
They could not decide if the two had been separated, or if perchance they had been brought in through the back alley and taken out through the front gate. It was a riddle they had no time to solve, Athos' presence was required in the halls of council on a timely basis and he had no intention of leaving d'Artagnan out on the streets alone, least he be missing three companions by the time negotiations wound up. And he was determined, if nothing else, to bring France's part of the negotiations to an end today. One way or another.
"We cannot continue. Dawn will be breaking soon, we can't be seen hunting like this and we must be back to the Rathaus soon."
The first faint flush of morning was already brightening the horizon beyond the river.
"Won't they ask about Aramis and Porthos?" d'Artagnan felt those touches of light as if they were fingers closing around his throat. His head knew this hadn't been his fault. Athos' corrosive anger, in combination with his youthful heart, said otherwise.
"Likely."
"What do we tell them?"
"I will think of something by then." The rapid staccato of boot heels on cobblestones slowed to assume the pace of an early morning stroll. Athos tipped his hat as a farmer pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with fresh dug beets passed them by trailing wisps of fog. "Early to market today, eh?" the comte observed, smiling at the man.
"'Eees a right 'un, ee is, always up afore the cock crows."
Athos laid a hand on d'Artagnan's arm as the youth startled. An old man appeared out of the gloaming, practically on the heels of the farmer, the form matching the disembodied voice. The farmer in front had responded only with a nod.
"First'ta market garners the best spot! We be the first 'un's here e'vry day, we do. Youun's be the furrin'er's up at the Rathaus?" The ancient gentleman tottered to a stand-still, canting his head back to look them up and down.
"We are." This time Athos doffed his hat and bowed, keeping a hand on the youth beside him, lest he bolt; d'Artagnan was quivering like an unbroken yearling. "Out for a stroll before we head back to the negotiating table this morning."
"Heard tell there were four of ya."
"Da, times awastin'!" the farmer called back, barrow, beets and body disappearing into the still inky blackness of the pre-dawn street.
The old man shuffled off after his son. "Don't ye be takin' all our sons off to war," he called back over his shoulder. "We be a'needin' 'em here, ya know, to raise up more'n we got. That Frenchie king's a'took too many a'ready... too many ..."
The darkness swallowed up the old man, too, muffling the rest of his sing-song words.
d'Artagnan drew the back of his sleeve across his face, swiping at the wet hair plastered to his forehead. He was sweating profusely, despite the decided nip in the air.
"A guilty conscience is not an asset in anyone wishing to serve the king," Athos observed quietly, waiting until he could no longer hear the squeaking wheel of the hand cart before stepping out again. "The market is ahead, a few streets over." He'd spent time with Treville's extensive collection of maps before their journey. "I'd rather not publicize our presence any more than necessary and we need to go in the back way anyway." He stood for a moment more, picturing the map again, then physically turned d'Artagnan. "This way."
They slipped in the back servant's entryway just as the sun crested the horizon, stippling the facade of the Berner Rathaus with an eerie crimson glow.