Playing with the Blade

I drew my eight-inch serrated trench knife from the pocket of my apron, its forged steel blade dull and dark under the lantern light.

I laid the flat of the steel against his chest, right over his hammering heart.

"You took Hrafnsker with thirty swords and your father's severed hand," I said, holding his gaze without blinking. "You think that makes you the master of this stone box. But without my blood in that kettle, your kingdom is just thirty corpses waiting for the lime pit."

Vargun didn't flinch away from the steel. He leaned forward into it, pressing the cold metal through his leather doublet until the point rested directly against his breastbone.

A faint, bloodstained smirk pulled at the corner of his lips.

"Name the price, Brewer," he whispered.

"Full sovereignty," I said. "The brewhouse is mine. The grain vaults are mine. The distribution hatch opens only when I pull the lever. No garrison guard sets foot past that threshold without my seal, and no man touches my assistant Skirn."

I pressed the knife half an inch deeper.

"And you," I added, "will swear it on the kettle. You swear it as my partner."

Vargun looked at me for three slow seconds. His breathing was shallow, his pupils dilated to the rim of his irises, his entire body vibrating with the final stages of metabolic starvation. He was six seconds from a grand mal seizure that would scramble his brain into mush.

He didn't hesitate.

He raised his right hand. The metabolic tremor made his fingers shake, but when he closed his fist around the bare edge of my trench knife, his grip was absolute.

He pulled the blade across his palm.

Dark, crimson blood welled from the cut, hot and thick, running down his wrist in a steady ribbon.

"I swear it," Vargun rasped, his voice dropping like an iron portcullis. "By the stone of Hrafnsker and the blood in my veins. The brewhouse is yours. The kettles are yours. Any man who crosses your threshold without your leave dies by my hand."

He stepped closer, his bleeding palm hovering over the steaming lip of the three-hundred-gallon master vat.

"And you are mine," he whispered, staring straight into my skull. "To the last drop."

I didn't argue with him. Words were cheap in a slaughterhouse; blood was the only currency that cleared an account.

I took the knife from his grip, turned the blade against my left forearm, and drew a clean, two-inch slice across the skin just above the wrist.

My blood rose instantly—vivid, bright crimson, hot against the chill air.

I held my wrist out over the open copper kettle beside his bleeding hand.

Our blood dripped together into the boiling, golden-brown wort.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The moment the droplets struck the hot liquid, a brilliant, luminous reaction rippled across the surface of the three-hundred-gallon batch. The dense, cloudy wort cleared in an instant, turning a deep, crystalline amber that glowed with a faint, violet-blue luminescence under the rising steam.

The enzymatic lock had taken hold.

The master metabolic draught was stabilized.

I grabbed an iron ladle from the racking bench, dipped it deep into the steaming kettle, and brought four ounces of the hot, glowing liquid to Vargun's mouth.

"Drink," I commanded.

Vargun leaned forward and swallowed the draught in two greedy, desperate gulps.

The reaction was immediate.

His chest expanded in a sharp, shuddering gasp. The violent tremors in his wrists and shoulders stopped dead within five seconds as the active enzymes unlocked the glycogen receptors in his brain. The gray pallor vanished from his cheeks, replaced by a dark, flushed heat. His pupils contracted into sharp, predatory points.

He exhaled a long cloud of steam that smelled of toasted malt, iron, and oxidized copper.

His hand came up, catching my left wrist where the cut was still bleeding. He brought my arm to his mouth and pressed his lips against the wound, licking the crimson line clean with a slow, deliberate pressure that sent a jolt of heat straight down my spine.

"A terrifying creature," he murmured against my skin, his voice steady, deep, and dangerous once more.

"A solvent creature," I corrected, pulling my wrist back and wrapping it in a strip of clean linen. "Now get these dead dogs out of my brewhouse."

·  ·  ·

Styr and the grain runners worked in terrified silence.

They dragged Fjalar's massive corpse out through the splintered doorway first, using iron bale-hooks to haul the five-hundred-pound carcass across the corridor toward the waste chute. The two scalded enforcers were piled onto an iron barrow and wheeled away toward the lime pits.

I was inspecting the buckled iron hinges of the doorway when a wet, rasping cough came from the far wall.

It was Hadd.

The blind enforcer was propped against the brick chimney of the malt kiln, his legs splayed out in a puddle of dirty runoff, his throat rattling with his final dozen breaths.

I walked over and stood above him.

"Save your breath, Hadd," I said quietly. "The lye got into your lungs. There's nothing in my flasks that fixes dissolved tissue."

The dying man let out a wet, bubbling laugh that ended in a spray of bloody phlegm across his chin.

"Think... you won, bitch?" Hadd whispered, his milky, unseeing eyes turning toward the sound of my voice. "Think the bastard... takes the seat... because Fjalar's in the pit?"

Vargun walked over, his broadsword resheathed at his hip, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone.

"Speak plainly before I take your tongue," Vargun said coldly.

Hadd grinned—a hideous, red-smeared grimace that showed his cracked teeth.

"The old monster... never meant for you to have it, boy," Hadd gasped, his fingers clawing weakly at the mortar behind his back. "Neither you... nor Fjalar. Hrokkr knew his bastards were mad."

Vargun went very still. The air in the alcove seemed to freeze between them.

"Where is the will?" Vargun demanded.

"Deep below," Hadd wheezed, blood bubbling from his nostrils. "Forty feet down... under the execution yard... behind the drowned portcullis. The founder's iron casket... the true bloodline... the third heir he locked in the black vault before you were born."

Hadd's head slumped sideways against the chimney. His breath caught once, rattled deep in his chest, and ceased.

Vargun stared down at the dead man's face.

Outside the shattered doorway, the deep iron bells of Tier Four began to toll—a slow, heavy rhythm signaling the evening ration call. The fortress was waiting for its brew.

I looked at the glowing amber wort simmering quietly in the master kettle, then looked up at Vargun's unreadable, stone-carved face.

The siege of the brewhouse was over.

The war for what lay beneath Hrafnsker had just begun.