by K. J. Coble
He wondered if Varya would be amused to know he was terrified of heights.
The debate amongst the Vhurrs on the other side intensified at his appearance. Noting the agitation, Vengess was halfway into a turn when Anzo reached him, saber outstretched, dimpling the leather of his tunic above the kidney. “This is taking too long.”
Vengess’ face slackened with the uncertainty of calculations disrupted. “They—they want to be sure.”
“I am sure.” Anzo jabbed the Vhurr. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t—”
Anzo pushed the saber point a fraction of an inch into leather. “Get going forward or get going over the side.” He bared teeth at the barbarian. “It’s easy.”
Vengess’ face contorted in a mixture of fear and fury, his throat bobbing as he turned slowly and started forward. Anzo followed on his heels, the thrum of the falls drowning out the hammer of his pulse and the moisture of settling haze slicking away sweat. The men on the other side ceased bickering, one racing back through the cave, the armored leader eyeing their approach with disbelief and perhaps a half-smile of amusement.
“Now get out of the way.” Anzo shoved Vengess forward on the tip of his sword as they neared the cave mouth. The barbarian stumbled and flopped to the wet stone, his sword spinning away with a lazy flicker lost in the silvery cascade of the falls as hands scrambled for purchase on the rocky edge.
None of the waiting Vhurrs moved to help their fellow as he squealed and legs kicked wildly. The armored leader, a squat younger man with a thick auburn beard and piercing blue eyes, held his battered sword of Aurridian make before him but smiled openly rather than advance. The barbarians to his either side wore only tunics but held their spears poised overhand in some semblance of proficiency.
“Are you waiting for something?” Anzo took a step forward, his toe pressing down on Vengess’ forearm. “Try me.”
“Kill him!” Vengess shrilled, his grip on the walkway slipped an inch. “Ulfun, kill him now!”
The armored leader cocked an eyebrow at Vengess.
Anzo glared at the Vhurr and his companions. “Go ahead. One of you try me!”
Ulfun returned the glare for a drawn-out momeny—and exploded in laughter. “By Orkall’s flea-infested whiskers, who are you?”
“Anzo Severnus. And as I told this goat-fucker—” Anzo ground down a bit harder on Vengess’ wrist “—I’m looking for a company worth serving with. You’d be Greaus?”
The man’s face darkened slightly. “No. As the goat-fucker said, I am Ulfun.” The smile returned and Anzo decided he liked the man.
The vague pattern of a drum rattled from the crags above. Ulfun glanced upward. Anzo didn’t follow the stare, still had men in front of him with weapons. “It appears, though,” he said, meeting Anzo’s gaze again, “that this little scene has gotten Greaus’ attention.” He sheathed his blade slowly and again appraised Anzo before finally holding out his hand. “Allow me to extend the welcome of the Flinarr.” The spearmen at his flanks had not lowered their weapons.
Anzo sheathed his own weapon, stepped forward, and accepted the hand.
“Ulfun...” Vengess’ face contorted into bands of purple and pink. “Don’t...kill that—” His fingers slipped from the stone with a pop of knuckles. Anzo caught a flash of eyes bulging in terror and a frenzied tangle of arms and legs silhouetted against the raging white of the falls.
Vengess’ howl echoed for a long time.
***
Anzo stood at the foot of the table of the Flinarr—stood, as amongst all the Vhurrian tribes none but a chieftain’s chosen sat at his table.
Greaus filled the rear corner of the soot-stained cave that passed as fire-hall for his warriors, a mass of deer- and wolf-skins piled around a bulge of bejeweled fat. A face the pallid shade of diseased flesh shined out from a tangle of whiskers wasted to blonde-white. He was so corpulent that Anzo had to wonder—even as the leader of the Flinarr appraised him with flinty gray eyes—about the half-starved, feral state of his men. Anzo had no doubt, though, watching their leader finger the helve of a monstrous axe angled across his lap, that on his feet Greaus was an avalanche of violence.
“Suva, Halda, and now Vengess dead,” Greaus said to Ulfun, standing just at Anzo’s left flank, his hand never far from his sword. “Urvus?”
“Ran off screaming,” Anzo finished for Ulfun.
Greaus smirked as low chortles issued from some of the men. “And Heathen dying...” The leader of the Flinarr frowned in conflicted amusement at Anzo. “Why not finish the big brute?”
Anzo shrugged. “It seemed a waste, if he can be nursed back to health.”
“It’ll be a bigger waste for him to eat our meat and then die with it rotting in his stomach.” Greaus grinned. The expression seemed more the last thing a field mouse sees before a snake devours it. “And it’s an even bigger waste, yet, if his thanks for your mercy are his hands around your neck.”
Laughter rippled around the cave, fifteen men in threadbare tunics or animal skins jostling one another in the nervous flicker of torches fixed into sconces fashioned from human skulls—the Flinarr’s vanquished, Anzo figured. They sat cross-legged around a rock slab serving as table, adorned with an admixture of wooden bowls, dulled knives, yet flickers from a goblet at Greaus’ side and glimmers about cups and plates—jewels missing from sockets and gold tarnished, but still the flash of someone’s former wealth.
“Of course,” Geaus continued, “you must have learned such stupidity amongst the flabby, boy-fuckers on the other side of the Lydirian.” Stony gaze took on a flickering threat. “Tell me again what brings a slayer such as you back to the Land of Heroes.”
“I was a slave amongst the weak-willed Aurids as a boy,” Anzo replied with the practiced lie. “My mother was a Legionnaire’s whore. When she died, I found my way into the service of a great ring-giver.” He held up his right forearm, the tattoo of the serpent seeming to writhe under the collective gaze of Greaus’ entourage. “I ran with the Vyrm Kyn, slaying Aurids and Vhurrs alike, any who stood in our path. Many were our victories and much was our plunder.” Some of that last part was true, even.
“Yes,” Greaus’ gaze flicked from the tattoo to Anzo’s face with a hardening about his eyes, “until Aurid coin brought the Marovians down on them.” His fingers drummed on the handle of his axe. “The Vyrms were run down like curs and massacred, or so the story goes.”
“A few of us survived the Marovian treachery.” Anzo spat, nearly hit one of the men from the ambush that morning. The Vhurr flinched with enough force to spill a bowl of watery gruel and start grumbling around the table. “It would have been better to die. We were sold to the games-masters of Aurid and trained as gladiators. None survived the training, save me. And I alone survived the games, fighting for my life for the amusement of eunuchs. With my freedom I came east again, seeking a chance to stand amongst men.”
Growls of approval thrummed through the Flinarr. Greaus settled back onto his pile of hides, a knobby-knuckled hand rising from his axe to play at his mustache. “That’s a hell of a tale,” he growled, “if it’s true.”
Anzo grinned. The saber of Enu Mbawa flashed into his hand, scintillas of torchlight peeling from its naked edge. The Flinarr jolted, wine-drenched gazes shocked into white as some scrambled for weapons leaned against the walls at their backs and some simply stared. Anzo noted the chilly but expected prod of a sword tip at his spine, heard Ulfun’s grunt of warning.
Greaus continued to twist at his whiskers with amused disdain.
His grin pinching into a mask of defiance, Anzo flung the blade upon the stone slab table, overturning plates and dashing goblets of wine loose in ruby plumes. The rest of the Flinarr were on their feet now with hollered threats and brandished weapons.
“You’ll need only the word of these dogs—” Anzo nodded at the glowering pair from the botched ambush “—to know my quality.” He glared around the cave. “Of course, if you need another demonstr
ation, I’m game, but I’d hate to cull this herd much more.”
More shouts, and the Flinarr began to crowd towards Anzo, outrage and wine mixing into something that was not quite courage, but could definitely kill.
Greaus’ laughter boomed from the head of the table. His men turned as one slowly, watched as their leader shook until pain pinched cheer from his face and a hand clenched at his belly. Ulfun started towards the chieftain but a headshake held him off. Greaus righted himself and clapped once. “Henna! Attend me!”
A side chamber branched off from the main cave. A curtain of wool soiled to the color of an old bloodstain draped before its mouth. Anzo thought he’d heard a rhythmic pattering from within, like palms beaten softly across a drumhead. Fumes writhed through the tatters with a stench like sulfur and burnt flesh, wormed to the narrow roof of the cave to gather and swirl in smoky blackness.
The dark haze seemed to twitch as a wiry, dusky-skinned arm swept the curtain aside and a figure in a cloak of pelts and feathers darted through. The newcomer paused and yellowy eyes simmered from a face shadowed under a hood as they took in Anzo. Dusky, glistening thigh flashed from a slit in the ramshackle cloak, gave away the figure as a woman as she turned and skulked to Greaus. There she knelt at his feet, held out a chalice worked in burnished pewter with tiny faces stretched in a mesmerizing likeness of torment.
Suddenly stirred torchlight picked out an instant of what might have almost been terror on Greaus’ face before his eyelids went heavy, his jowls relaxed again in a smile. He leaned forward to take not only the chalice but to sweep the cloaked creature to his hip.
“Come to our side,” Greaus boomed, holding out the chalice to Anzo. “Join with us, with the Flinarr, in fellowship.”
“My Lord!” One of the Vhurrs from the morning’s ambush—the one singed by Varya’s wizardry—glared at the chieftain. “You can’t mean this!”
“I do, Destan.” Greaus’ eyes flared and his free hand slid back to his axe. “And you can’t mean to challenge me.”
Greaus’ woman—Henna—rustled her cloaks, bird-like in agitation. Destan’s eyes went not to his lord but to her before he forced them down. “There’s devilry in this, Lord.” He nodded Anzo’s way. “You weren’t there this morning, but Heste and I were.” He gave the other Vhurr from the skirmish a nudge but the man offered no more help than he had after Anzo’s campfire blossomed in purple fire. “Ask our guest about his witch.”
Anzo forced a smirk as gazes turned to him. “You’d take the word of a man who lies to cover his clumsiness?” He gestured at the man’s fresh tunic and the bandages poking out from under a poorly-stitched cuff. “Admittedly, getting knocked backwards into a fire by the woman you’re trying to rape doesn’t carry the same ring as witchcraft.”
Hard chuckles echoed from the others. Destan glanced about for support, sweat beading at his hairline as knuckles blanched around a cudgel. “Bastard. Vengess was right. Someone should have killed you.”
“You tried that once.” Anzo tried to ignore that a lunge for his blade would take longer than Destan’s swing to connect with his skull. “Of course, if you’d like to join the others who tried conclusions with me...?”
Henna rustled again at Greaus’ side. “Enough,” Greaus said in a bored tone. When Destan didn’t relent, he clenched his weapon. “Fool, make an ass of yourself on someone else’s time!”
His face screwed into twists of rage, Destan visibly fought himself before forcing his face down in a stiff bow to his chieftain.
Satisfied, Greaus held out the chalice again. “Join me, Severnus, Slayer Returned from the West.”
Anzo glanced around the chamber. The rest of Flinarr had their heads bowed, most with their eyes closed in grudging reverence. Ulfun’s eyes were open, though averted, a smoldering behind them that hinted at duty in the face of despair.
“Come!” Greaus boomed.
Anzo leapt onto the table slab and stomped forth, not bothering to scoop up his blade and possibly trigger more nerves in a chamber already charged with them. Tableware clattered away from striding boots, not exactly bravado, simply the easiest way from one point to another. He landed before Greaus and accepted the chalice, sweeping it to his lips without hesitation.
The wine was thin but not unpleasant. It was the glance out of the corner of his eye—at Greaus’ woman-creature slinking up her master’s side to fondle his huge, swollen abdomen the way an expecting mother might caress her own belly—that birthed his grimace of disgust.
***
The crag of the Flinarr was actually hollow, forces of water and the earth having carved a great chamber from the heart of sandstone to leave only pillars and a sagging roof of limestone. Wind from the gorge howled through cave openings, sometimes overshadowing the ever-present rumble of the falls. The air smelled of wood smoke, damp rock, and the faintly rank odor of unwashed bodies.
Anzo left the hall of Greaus to find his way among campfires glimmering through the chamber. Small groups in ragged cloaks huddled about their uncertain light, some of them perching dangerously close to the cave mouths and the sheer drop. Starry night sky glimmered over the shadowy huddle of the Bulwarks from beyond. He guessed the Flinarr’s number to be no more than four or five dozen, a few weakened old men and crones, a few more women whose despairing state left gauging their ages impossible. Nowhere did he see a sign of children.
The Flinarr were a dying folk.
Upon their arrival and admission, Ulfun had directed Anzo to set up his camp on an outcropping on the far side of the chamber, angled near one of the waterfalls. That the Flinarr had left their guests cornered with only a drop into watery death was not lost on Anzo. Varya had improvised a barrier with her cloak and Anzo’s strung between a boulder and a rock shard. As he approached, a gust billowed the curtain out and he saw the glimmer of a small fire, Varya’s slim form silhouetted against it.
A fleck of purple-white light danced about her hands for an instant.
Anger building, Anzo increased his pace. He flung aside the curtain with the beginning of a snarl. “What are you—”
Varya stiffened upright, hands falling away from the huge Flinarr, Heathen, the witch light sputtering into an afterimage across the backs of the eyes. Her touch on him broken, the boy seemed to sag, pain and exertion melting from his face as he settled into a tangle of animal skin blankets. Varya put up a finger to quiet Anzo and turned to fasten a bandage improvised from the linen of her own tunic over the wound in the lad’s abdomen. There was surprisingly little blood.
“What are you doing?” Anzo lowered his voice as he knelt beside them. “I thought I told you no more. Gods, Varya, these people think of magic as poison.”
“It was a healing.” She leaned against the boulder, exhaustion on her face giving Anzo a hint of what she’d look like in extreme old age.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded and pinched her eyes shut. “I will be. Healing takes nearly as much from an Initiate as it does the inflicted.” A brittle smile twitched her lips. “And it’s not one of my chief skills.”
His outrage fading, Anzo settled at Heathen’s side, watching the slow rise and fall of the youth’s chest, the sweaty flicker of fever across his brow. “Will he live?”
Varya shrugged and looked at him. “It’s beyond my power now. Perhaps, if an infection has not already gained strength, he will see another night.”
“All right,” Anzo said grudgingly. “But no more. I mean it, Varya.”
Varya grinned, her face gaining a little more resilience, her strength returning and with it a touch of defiance. “So, how is it with our new people?”
“They’ll do for now.” Anzo’s hand went instinctively to his sword grip. “But we won’t be with them long.”
Varya frowned. “Something troubles you?”
Anzo thought of Greaus’ creature and shivered. “Something is not well in this place. I can’t put a finger on it.”
“I feel it, too.” She look
ed out at the waterfall, seemed to see something in the speckle of starlight across its creamy, shifting cascade. “There is sickness here.”
He touched her arm. “Magic?”
She shook her head. “I can’t say. But something is...out of place.” She began to add more but bit her lip instead. “I agree; we shouldn’t tarry here too long.”
“You’re listening to me now?” He squeezed her arm. “That’s a first.”
She pulled away but there was playfulness in the gesture. “My skills saved your life, Anzo Severnus.” She set a palm on Heathen’s leg. “Maybe it saved two lives.”
“I didn’t thank you for that.”
For an instant she looked very young, even embarrassed. “Well, don’t do anything that will make you too uncomfortable.”
Anzo smiled. His eyes went to the wounded Vhurr and it slipped slightly. “How long before he is conscious?”
“We shouldn’t wake him.” Her hand on the boy tightened protectively.
“He doesn’t have some other kin to take care of him?”
She shook her head, vehemence in the gesture, and bitterness. “He spoke of none and the others—” her lips formed a moue of disgust “—left him with me, acted as though he were already dead. I get the feeling he’s like us in a way: a transplant into this group. There seem to be a number of sub-groupings, almost as though these Flinarr are a cobbling-together of other peoples.”
Anzo nodded. “It makes sense. Cantons are always breaking up and reforming around parties of greatest strength. And the Flinarr—” he frowned “—I’ve never heard of them. They’re probably a newer group or what’s left of an older one come west.” He reached towards Heathen. “Maybe if you let me—”
“I told you he needs rest.”
Anzo relented with a shrug. “He may be able to fill in a few gaps for us, is all. Greaus and his lot aren’t the most talkative, even with guts full of wine.” He folded his arms thoughtfully. “There is one man, Ulfun, who seems to be the Second here. He may be kin to Greaus or merely loyal. Loyalty to the man is law with the Vhurrs.”