"I thank you, thane -lady Hjördis. Our recruit is so recent he hasn't chosen a name for himself yet. He is our new champion." "Him?" Hjördis scowled. "This boy?"
"Don't be fooled by his looks, the lad's tough. He killed Bonecrusher." Soft muttering washed over the platform. "By trickery?" somebody asked dubiously.
"In fair and open combat. I saw it all."
There was a moment's tension before the thane-lady nodded, accepting. Then Lord Weary said to her, "We must confer. Serious matters are afoot."
"First we eat," Hjördis said. "You will sit with me at the head table."
To Will's surprise, he was included with Lord Weary in the invitation. Apparently the office of champion made him a counselor as well. He watched as tables were built in the central square, of boards set over wire milk crates, and then covered with sheets of newspaper in place of linen. A cobbley set out pads of newspaper for seats and paper plates for them to eat from. Another filled the plates with food. The thane-lady's table was set under the wall, beneath the tiled dwarves. She and her favored companions sat with their backs to the wall, so that the rows of lesser ranked diners faced them.
The food was better than might be expected, some of it scrounged from grocery-store dumpsters after passing its sell-by date, and the rest of it from upstairs charities. They ate by the light of tuna-can lamps with rag wicks in rancid cooking oil, conversing quietly.
Will commented that the tunnels seemed more labyrinthine and of greater extent than he had thought they would be, and Hjördis said, "You don't know the half of it. There used to be fifteen different gas companies in Babel, six separate sets of steam tunnels, and Sirrush only can say how many subway systems, pneumatic trains, sub-surface lines, underground trolleys, and pedestrian walkways that nobody uses anymore. Add to that maintenance tunnels tor the power and telephone and plumbing and sewage systems, storm drains, the summer retreats that the wealthy used to have dug for them a century ago, the bomb shelters, the bootleggers' vaults..."
Lord Weary shook his head in agreement. "There is no lore-master of Babel's secret ways. They are too many, and too varied." His sea-green eyes studied Will gravely. "Now. Tell us what drove you here."
"Speak carefully or truthfully," the Whisperer said in his ear, "or you will not survive the meal." Will spun around, but there was nobody there. He looked into Lord Weary's stem face and decided it was the truth.
He told his tale, concluding, "Since that time, I have been cast out of my village and ill fortune has pursued me across Fäerie Minor all the way to the Dread Tower. Perhaps I have been cursed by the dragon's death. All I know is that from that day I have had no place to call home."
"You have a home here now, lad," said Lord Weary. "We shall be a second family to you, if you will have us."
He laid a hand on Will's head and a great flood of emotion washed over Will. Suddenly, and for no reason he could name, he loved the elf-lord like a father. Warm rears flowed down his cheeks.
When he could speak again, Will asked, "Why do you live down here?"
It was a meaningless question, meant simply to move the conversation to less emotional ground. But., "Why does anybody live anywhere?" the Whisperer said in his ear. Will spun around, and there was nobody there.
Then, graciously, Hjördis explained that though those above dismissed the dwellers in darkness as trolls and feral dwarves, very few of them were subterranean by nature. Most of the thane-lady's folk were haints and drows, nissen, shellycoats, and broken feys — anyone lacking the money or social graces to get along in open society. They had problems with drugs and alcohol and insanity, but they looked after one another as best they could. Their own name for themselves was johatsu—"nameless wanderers."
"Are there a lot of communities like this one?"
"There are dozens," Lord Weary said, "and possibly even hundreds. Some are as small as six or ten individuals. Others run much larger than what you see here. No one knows for sure how many live in darkness. Tatterwag speculates there are tens of thousands. But they don't communicate with each other and they won't work together and they are perforce nomadic, for periodically the transit police discover the settlements and bust them up, scattering their citizens. But the Army of Night is going to change all that. We're the first and the only organized military force the johatsu have ever formed." "How many are in the Army, all told?"
The thane-lady hid a smile under a paper napkin. Stiffly, Lord Weary said. "You've met them all. This is a new idea, and slow to catch on. But it will grow. My dream will bear fruit in the fullness of time." His voice rose. "Look around you! These are the dispossessed of Babel — the weak, the injured, the gentle. Who speaks for them? Not the Lords of the Mayoralty Not the Council of Magi. His Absent Majesty was their protector once, but he is long gone and no one knows where. Somebody must step forward to fill that void. I swear by the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, and the Golden Apples of the West, that if the Seven permit it, that somebody shall be me!"
The johatsu froze in their places, not speaking, barely breathing. Their eyes shone like stars.
Hjördis laid a hand over Lord Weary's. "Great matters will wait upon food," she said. "Time enough to discuss these things after we eat."
When all had eaten and the dishes had been cleared away. Hjördis lit a cigarette and passed it around the table. "Well?" she said at last.
"When last we were here," Lord Weary said, "I left some crates in your keeping. Now we have need of them."
A shadow crossed the thane-lady's face. But she nodded. "I thought as much. So I had my folk retrieve them."
Six Niflheimers stood up, faded into darkness, and returned, lugging long wooden crates between them. The crates were laid down before the table and, at a gesture from Lord Weary, Tatterwag pried open one with his bowie knife.
Light gleamed on rifle barrels.
Suddenly the taste of death was in the air. Cautiously, Will said, "What do we need these for?"
"There's going to be a rat hunt," Lord Weary said. "We're hunting rats?"
Lord Weary grinned mirthlessly. "We're not the hunters, lad. We're the rats."
The Ninheimers had been listening intently. Now they crowded around the main table. "We call them the Breakneck Boys," one said. "They come down here once a month, on the Day of the Toad or maybe the Day of the Labrys, looking for some fun. They got night goggles and protective spells like you wouldn't believe, and they carry aluminum baseball bats. Mostly, we just slip away from 'em. But they usually manage to find somebody too old or sick or drugged-up to avoid them."
"It's a fucking hobby for them." Tatterwag growled.
"Last time, they caught poor old Martin Pecker drunk asleep, only instead of giving him a bashing like usual, they poured gasoline over him and set it on fire."
"I saw the corpse!"
"This is a mad notion and a dangerous folly." the Whisperer said. "Their sires are industrialists and Lords of the Mayoralty. If even one of their brats dies, they'll send the mosstroopers down here with dire wolves to exact revenge."
"I fear retaliation," the thane-lady said, and then, with obvious reluctance, "Yet the Brcaknecks' predations worsen. Perhaps it is time to meet violence with violence."
"No!" Will said. He had eaten almost nothing, for his stomach was still queasy from the stench of Niflheim, and Bonecrusher's death weighed heavily upon him. If he closed his eyes, he could see the sparks rising up around the wodewose's body. He hadn't wanted to kill the creature. It had happened because he hadn't thought the situation through beforehand. Now he was thinking very hard and fast indeed. "Put the guns back."