by Jim Hodgson
Bones, Ergam thought. Yes. There would be bones, wouldn’t there?
“And you say an extramortal helped to capture him?”
“That’s what the spiders say.”
Ergam nodded.
“What can we do for you, Ergam?” Usta asked. “I can send a detail of men with you, if you like, to help find your father. We can help organize a funeral in Kanat. We can have it here in Dilara. Whatever you like.”
Ergam shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. You are already planning a wedding and the merging of two countries. I will go, find my father, and find who did this to him.”
“The point of having friends is so that they can help you in times like these.”
“I think my father would have liked a grand funeral in Kanat,” Ergam said. “But first, his son is going to find out exactly what happened to him. I thank you for your generous offer of men, but this is beyond the world of men now. I want to get there as fast as possible, in any case. And the extramortals loyal to my father will be there if I need help.”
Usta nodded.
Ergam drew himself up. “I’ll be off then, if that suits Your Majesty.”
“Talk to my spiders if you need anything,” Yonca said.
Ergam made a series of clicking noises. Yonca gave a snort.
“Ozel and Aysu asked if you’d stop by the blacksmith shop,” Usta said.
Ergam nodded that he would.
“Our hearts go with you,” Usta said.
“Hearts,” Ergam said with a sneer. “Who needs them?”
He saluted Usta, then strode out of the room.
When he was gone, with a raised eyebrow Usta turned to Yonca. “Clicks?”
“Ah. He said, er. Well, he said the spiders might not want to watch.”
Aysu ran to Ergam and hugged him. Ozel had never seen anyone hug Ergam before, nor had he seen anyone get snot on the dead man’s coat because they were crying and hugging him at the same time. He didn’t seem to mind too much.
After a moment of Aysu hugging him like that, she loosened her hold. “Can we give you anything? Weapons? Armor? Anything?”
Ergam shook his head. “I have my bow. And you know I don’t wear armor. Don’t have to wear armor when you’re all bones.”
Aysu gave a little laugh.
“Let us come with you,” Ozel said. “The three of us together, against the world, like old times.”
Ergam shook his head again, more emphatically. “Not possible, I’m afraid. I’m going to be up in the hills for a while, I expect. Won’t be much food or fresh water up there. No place for the fleshy.”
“But we could be nearby to support you as friends,” Aysu said.
“You are already my best friends,” Ergam said. “There is no greater level.”
“But there could be greater proximity,” Ozel said.
Ergam tilted his head to concede the point. “By the time you could get there, I might have learned everything I want to know. I could be headed home. Besides, you both have businesses to run. And there’s a certain wedding and feast to attend as well.”
Aysu wiped at her eyes. The tears were coming again.
“See?” Ergam said. “You’re already wasting water.”
Aysu and Ozel laughed.
Ergam gestured at the cart with the Koksal steel ore in it. The prototype Koksal sword lay in with the ore, half-hidden by a rusty old chain Aysu had replaced. “Throwing away swords?” he asked.
Aysu shook her head. “No, just a cart full of trash. Gotta find a way to get rid of that ore.”
“Let me take it,” Ergam said. “I can dump it in the lava near the tunnel.”
“I thought you wanted to hurry?” Ozel asked.
“I do. Pulling a heavy cart like that will give me something to struggle against. Honestly, if I run unburdened right now I’m likely to smash into a tree or something.”
“It’s yours,” Aysu said. “Anything of mine is yours.”
“Ah!” Ergam said. “Ozel, you’ll never believe it.”
“What’s that?”
“I just became the owner of a blacksmith’s shop!”
Ozel laughed, then stuck his hand out. Ergam shook it with his glove.
“I don’t know what you’re about to do,” Ozel said. “But do come back in one piece.”
“I also don’t know what I’m about to do,” Ergam said. He nodded to Aysu, then grabbed the poles attached to the front of the cart and pulled it out into the street, heading for the city gate.
“I wonder if there will be any hill people left when we see him again,” Aysu said.
Ozel put an arm around her shoulder and watched Ergam go. The dead man was pulling the brutally heavy cart along as if it were empty. Ozel said, “I just hope we see him again.”
Chapter 21
If there were any gods who presided over the world of plotters, Gonul thought, they were smiling on him today. Tig returned with an excellent report. The so-called king of the extramortals was dead. Gonul could scarcely believe the plan had worked so well.
Of course, he’d planned it down to the very last detail, but plans and reality so rarely met for good effect. He had but one king left to kill.
Granted, the plans had required some modification, but this was because the idiot Usta and his whore bride had actually made the plot to do murder easier, if that could be believed. Gonul had been racking his brains for a way to get Tig inside the castle with a crossbow, or a longbow even, but now, thanks to Usta’s hubris and his plans for an outdoor wedding among the people, all Gonul had to do was find a way to place Tig with a clear line of sight. There were rooftops and windows, and all manner of obvious choices.
Of course, he’d have to do his best to steer clear of obvious choices. The idiot king’s General Alabora was no idiot, nor was his Ilbezian lady friend. They’d have all the most likely sight lines to the royal couple covered. But Gonul was betting on the fact that they wouldn’t be thinking in terms of an extramortal assassin, especially not now that all the “free” undead slaves were flocking to the border of Ilbez to figure out what happened to their stupid king. Hah!
It simply could not have worked out more perfectly. But Gonul couldn’t get too full of himself. True, luck was with him, as it always was with the righteous of purpose, but he needed to stay sharp and have a look at the lay of the land. That’s why he’d volunteered to do something he’d never thought he’d find himself doing — manual labor, helping with preparations for the wedding.
He’d bought the wooden barrow the night before, wheeled it home, then been unsure what to do with it. It seemed an incongruous thing to bring into the house, but he knew that if he left it on the street it would be stolen. In the end he managed to bump it over the step into the house without any of the cats running out. He didn’t care if the cats ran away, of course, but still. It was senseless to waste one resource trying to preserve another.
In the morning, he repeated the process in reverse, then wheeled the barrow to the baker and filled it with sweet buns laid on a clean cloth. He then rolled the whole affair toward his meeting with the rest of the wedding volunteers with a song in his heart. He nearly whistled a tune.
The sweet buns did exactly what he’d predicted. He was immediately popular with the other volunteers, simpering lot that they were. All he had to do was explain, “Well, it seems only right, what with our good king preparing a feast for us and all. The least we can do is have a full belly while we work, eh?” He’d even thrown in what sounded to his ears like a convincing good-natured chuckle.
One of his fellow volunteers was a busybody wife of an innkeeper with whom Gonul had once had a disagreement, back when he was the heir apparent to the family business. She looked at him through narrowed eyes and he pretended not to notice. And she took a sticky bun, so that seemed all right.
Of course, he’d had to do a little bit of work to keep up appearances. He’d brushed down some cobbles with an old whisk broom someone had handed him. That proved t
o be excellent cover for wandering around the site where the wedding would be.
The important bit was, no one ever checked under the clean cloth in his barrow. On this occasion it was just a bundled-up old coat under there. But no one ever checked. It could have been anything. Anything at all.
On the second day volunteering on the wedding preparations crew, Gonul was discovered. The nagging old hag who had been giving him eyes the day before was back, and this time she was looking significantly at his barrow. He’d brought more sweet buns from the baker again and laid them on the clean cloth, same as the day before. But the hag was giving him the eye all the same.
A few of the guards milling about came over to grab a bun. As one of them reached for a bun, a bit of chain mail sleeve snagged a thread on the cloth and tugged it aside, revealing the bundled-up jacket underneath.
“What’s that, hidden under the cloth?” the old hag asked, shocked.
Gonul’s mind froze. His mouth and voice worked without his permission. “What?” he heard himself say. “Hidden?” He reached to pull the jacket out from underneath and show that it was just a jacket, but a heavy gloved hand fell on his shoulder from behind. Another guard had been standing there eating a sweet bun.
The guard in front flipped the cloth aside, then prodded at the jacket with a finger as he chewed on his bun.
“You see?” Gonul said. “It’s only a jack—”
The guard held up a hand to signal that Gonul should be quiet, and the hand on his shoulder gave a little squeeze. A deep voice behind said, “Not to worry, sir. We’ll just have a little look and see what’s what, all right?”
Gonul’s heart was beating so hard he thought the hand on his shoulder could probably feel his whole body throb.
The guard in front poked the last of his sweet bun into his mouth, then lifted the bundled jacket and unrolled it. He patted it to check for a dagger, gave it a shake. Nothing fell out of it. He looked past Gonul at his companion and shrugged.
The hand on his shoulder removed itself, and the deep voice said, “I think I know what’s going on here.”
Gonul’s mouth and voice were desperate to gibber, to say anything at all even if it was unintelligible. He felt himself tipping over into a pit. Why, he could be beheaded!
The guard behind had stepped around to the far side of the barrow. “He probably put the jacket in there to keep the buns from getting crushed.”
Gonul barely contained a squeak of hope. He nodded.
The guard went on, “I worked as a baker’s apprentice as a boy. You can’t pile too many buns on top of one another or the bottom ones get all flat and manky.”
The other guard looked suspicious. He gave the jacket another shake, then turned to Gonul. “Try not to seem to be hiding things from the guards around the royal palace and wedding site, all right, sir?” He flopped the coat back into the barrow.
“Indeed, gentlemen, indeed. I apologize.” He managed a smile.
The hag innkeeper’s wife had watched the whole scene with mounting approval, but now looked sour.
Gonul gave her a smile as well.
That night, Gonul instructed Tig to improve the barrow with a false bottom. The first attempt used a piece of board Gonul found in an alleyway, but the wood didn’t match the barrow at all. It looked far too new. It almost begged the hand to reach in and lift it up. By the time he realized the issue, it was too late to go sniffing around the city for spare pieces of lumber, but Tig discovered that the underside of a table in the old potting shed would work.
They moved all the dusty old pots off it, dragged it inside to muffle the sawing sounds, and set to work on it. After just over an hour, Tig had the piece of the old table top shaped nicely to fit into the bottom of the barrow. The wood looked like it had always been there. It would be perfect.
The gods of plotters were smiling on him once again, Gonul thought. This was going to be easy.
Chapter 22
It was nearly time for the wedding. Usta had heard men talk about what it was like to get married. Some said that he needed to make sure to stand with his knees slightly bent, because if he stood straight up for too long he’d eventually topple over. Usta had been obliged to stand stock-still for long periods of time once or twice during his early military career, so he wasn’t much concerned about that one.
He’d also heard about a groom whose friends had painted words on the bottom of one of his boots so that when the groom knelt before the assembled guests and showed his boot soles, everyone got a big laugh. Usta wouldn’t be kneeling as part of his ceremony so that particular trick wasn’t a possibility, but he kept his eyes open for similar little jests all the same, even though the most likely person to try something like that was Ergam, who was not around, and anyone else close enough to the couple to attempt something similar would know to fear swift death at the hands of the bride.
Ergam.
This was what it was like to be king, Usta thought. Equal parts joy, sorrow, concern, anger … but the different emotions didn’t even have the decency to come at him one at a time. They were all stacked on top of one another. If he wanted to be married to the woman of his dreams, and he certainly did, he’d have to take what joy of that he could alongside the dread of protecting his people against an unseen enemy, the impotent anger that someone would do harm to his friend’s family, the sorrow at the loss of a friend and brilliant royal advisor.
Still, when duty called, he had to answer. Not because he wanted to, but because he knew his peers would. Wagast would never shrink from a challenge, nor would Alabora or Nazenin, or Elgin for that matter. The people around him were brave and effective. He had to be the same.
He could hear the wedding procession approaching the square in front of the palace as people cheered Elgin. When she came into view, he saw why.
She was a beautiful woman every day of her life, but dressed in her royal wedding gown, walking with her head high, she looked like a moving painting. People along the avenue seemed to be losing their minds with joy. Men were waving their caps over their heads. Women clasped their hands to their breasts. More than a few people, gender notwithstanding, were wiping tears out of their eyes.
Yes, Usta thought. This is what we will be. A good, peaceful nation wherein everyone can be happy.
“She looks positively stunning,” Wagast observed quietly.
Usta cracked a smile, and was still smiling when Elgin walked up the steps to join him. He put out his hand to help her and she gave a short huff.
“Trying to walk on the cobbles without stepping on my dress was murder,” she said. Usta remembered that he was supposed to lean over at this point and help the women carrying the complicated rear train of the dress to arrange it artfully on the steps. He bent over, and when he did he felt something flick painfully at his arm. He stood back up, thinking Elgin or Wagast had swiped at him to get his attention, but when he did, something was terribly wrong.
The feathered end of an arrow was protruding from Elgin’s chest. Wagast grabbed her.
Usta bellowed, whirled to see where the shooter was. The movement likely saved his life, because the next arrow caught him in the arm rather than piercing his chest. He saw movement near the rooftops, pointed, shouted. The arm he used to point had an arrow stuck through it, but he couldn’t feel anything at the moment.
He turned back to Elgin and saw, to his horror, Wagast crouching over her prone body and using the heel of his hand to push the arrow deeper into her chest. “Reach underneath and pull it through!” the old wizard yelled. He snapped the few inches of shaft that were protruding from the wedding dress off.
Usta reached underneath Elgin and grabbed at the head of the arrow. It was slick with blood and he couldn’t get a grip on it at first, but by allowing the rear-facing barbs on the arrowhead to bite into his hand down to the bone he was able to pull on it. He used every ounce of his strength, but the angle was poor. He kicked his foot under her body to brace himself against her and yanked on the
arrow, blood running freely from where it had cut into his hand. At last, he pulled it free.
When he did, Wagast pulled Elgin’s body toward him and began dribbling a liquid into her lips. “Drink,” he was saying over and over again. “Drink. You must drink. Drink the liquid and come back to us. Drink.”
Usta held her hand. It was limp, slick with blood. Usta squeezed it.
Wagast grunted, threw the healing potion aside, and gripped Elgin’s chin in his hand, holding her mouth closed. With the other hand he pinched her nose closed. “Swallow!” he bellowed into her ear.
“Wagast!” Usta yelled at him, horrified to see Wagast’s bloody fingers gripping at Elgin’s face.
The wizard released her face, sat back a bit, then leaned over and stuck his ear near her mouth. Usta was dimly aware of shouts, screams, and the sound of running boots somewhere nearby, but not aware enough to look around.
Then, he felt Elgin’s hand in his give a little twitch.
Wagast, still listening to her mouth, grunted approvingly. “She will live, for now. Guards! Help me lift her.”
“I will do it,” Usta said, standing.
“No, Your Majesty,”
Usta stood, about to shout an order at the most respected wizard in the world, when Wagast pointed to his arm. “You’ve been shot in the arm, son.”
Usta looked down. Sure enough, there was an arrow sticking through his arm. That explained the ache.
Usta snapped off the feathered end and turned his arm so that the point faced Wagast. The old wizard gripped the arrow and tugged it free. It felt like he was ripping every muscle in the arm out all at once. It felt like his heart had been ripped out as well.
Usta waited for the right moment to explain himself to Wagast, but it didn’t seem any such opportunity was going to present itself. So he asked to be left alone with the wizard. Everyone filed out of the room where Elgin was lying.
“I’m not ignoring you, but I can’t rest, Wagast,” Usta said. “I am the king. If I am weak, then the country is weak.”