The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

by Tom Holt

  “I remember telling you that was a bad idea,” said Clay.

  A shrug from Gabriel. “I just wanted her to be able to protect herself. You know, stick ’em with the pointy end and all that. But she wanted more. She wanted to be …” he paused, searching for the word, “… great.”

  “Like her father?”

  Gabriel’s expression turned sour. “Just so. She heard too many stories, I think. Got her head filled with all this nonsense about being a hero, fighting in a band.”

  And from whom could she have heard all that? Clay wondered.

  “I know,” said Gabriel, perceiving his thoughts. “Partly my fault, I won’t deny it. But it wasn’t just me. Kids these days … they’re obsessed with these mercenaries, Clay. They worship them. It’s unhealthy. And most of these mercs aren’t even in real bands! They just hire a bunch of nameless goons to do their fighting while they paint their faces and parade around with shiny swords and fancy armour. There’s even one guy—I shit you not—who rides a manticore into battle!”

  “A manticore?” asked Clay, incredulous.

  Gabe laughed bitterly. “I know, right? Who the fuck rides a manticore? Those things are dangerous! Well, I don’t need to tell you.”

  He didn’t, of course. Clay had a nasty-looking puncture scar on his right thigh, testament to the hazards of tangling with such monsters. A manticore was nobody’s pet, and it certainly wasn’t fit to ride. As if slapping wings and a poison-barbed tail on a lion made it somehow a fine idea to climb on its back!

  “They worshipped us, too,” Clay pointed out. “Well you, anyway. And Ganelon. They tell the stories, even still. They sing the songs.”

  The stories were exaggerated, naturally. The songs, for the most part, were wildly inaccurate. But they persisted. Had lasted long after the men themselves had outlived who (or what) they’d been.

  We were giants once.

  “It’s not the same,” Gabriel persisted. “You should see the crowds gather when these bands come to town, Clay. People screaming, women crying in the streets.”

  “That sounds horrible,” said Clay, meaning it.

  Gabriel ignored him, pressing on. “Anyhow, Rose wanted to learn the sword, so I indulged her. I figured she’d get bored of it sooner or later, and that if she was going to learn, it might as well be from me. And also it made her mother mad as hell.”

  It would have, Clay knew. Her mother, Valery, despised violence and weapons of any kind, along with those who used either toward any end whatsoever. It was partly because of Valery that Saga had dissolved all those years ago.

  “Problem was,” said Gabriel, “she was good. Really good, and that’s not just a father’s boasts. She started out sparring against kids her age, but when they gave up getting their asses whooped she went out looking for street fights, or wormed her way into sponsored matches.”

  “The daughter of Golden Gabe himself,” Clay mused. “Must’ve been quite the draw.”

  “I guess so,” his friend agreed. “But then one day Val saw the bruises. Lost her mind. Blamed me, of course, for everything. She put her foot down—you know how she gets—and for a while Rose stopped fighting, but …” He trailed off, and Clay saw his jaw clamp down on something bitter. “After her mother left, Rosie and I … didn’t get along so well, either. She started going out again. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days. There were more bruises, and a few nastier scrapes besides. She chopped her hair off—thank the Holy Tetrea her mother was gone by then, or mine would’ve been next. And then came the cyclops.”

  “Cyclops?”

  Gabriel looked at him askance. “Big bastards, one huge eye right here on their head?”

  Clay leveled a glare of his own. “I know what a cyclops is, asshole.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I didn’t …” Clay faltered. “Never mind. What about the cyclops?”

  Gabriel sighed. “Well, one settled down in that old fort north of Ottersbrook. Stole some cattle, some goats, a dog, and then killed the folks that went looking for ’em. The courtsmen had their hands full, so they were looking for someone to clear the beast out for them. Only there weren’t any mercs around at the time—or none with the chops to take on a cyclops, anyway. Somehow my name got tossed into the pot. They even sent someone round to ask if I would, but I told them no. Hell, I don’t even own a sword anymore!”

  Clay cut in again, aghast. “What? What about Vellichor?”

  Gabriel’s eyes were downcast. “I … uh … sold it.”

  “I’m sorry?” Clay asked, but before his friend could repeat himself he put his own hands flat on the table, for fear they would ball into fists, or snatch one of the bowls nearby and smash it over Gabriel’s head. He said, as calmly as he could manage, “For a second there I thought you said that you sold Vellichor. As in the sword entrusted to you by the Archon himself as he lay dying? The sword he used to carve a fucking doorway from his world to ours. That sword? You sold that sword?”

  Gabriel, who had slumped deeper into his chair with every word, nodded. “I had debts to pay, and Valery wanted it out of the house after she found out I taught Rose to fight,” he said meekly. “She said it was dangerous.”

  “She—” Clay stopped himself. He leaned back in his chair, kneading his eyes with the palms of his hands. He groaned, and Griff, sensing his frustration, groaned himself from his mat in the corner. “Finish your story,” he said at last.

  Gabriel continued. “Well, needless to say, I refused to go after the cyclops, and for the next few weeks it caused a fair bit of havoc. And then suddenly word got around that someone had gone out and killed it.” He smiled, wistful and sad. “All by herself.”

  “Rose,” Clay said. Didn’t make it a question. Didn’t need to.

  Gabriel’s nod confirmed it. “She was a celebrity overnight. Bloody Rose, they called her. A pretty good name, actually.”

  It is, Clay agreed, but didn’t bother saying so. He was still fuming about the sword. The sooner Gabe said whatever it was he’d come here to say, the sooner Clay could tell his oldest, dearest friend to get the hell out of his house and never come back.

  “She even got her own band going,” Gabe went on. “They managed to clear out a few nests around town: giant spiders, some old carrion wyrm down in the sewer that everyone forgot was still alive. But I hoped—” he bit his lip “—I still hoped, even then, that she might choose another path. A better path. Instead of following mine.” He looked up. “Until the summons came from the Republic of Castia, asking every able sword to march against the Heartwyld Horde.”

  For a heartbeat Clay wondered at the significance of that. Until he remembered the news he’d heard earlier that evening. An army of twenty thousand, routed by a vastly more numerous host; the survivors surrounded in Castia, doubtless wishing they had died on the battlefield rather than endure the atrocities of a city under siege.

  Which meant that Gabriel’s daughter was dead. Or she would be, when the city fell.

  Clay opened his mouth to speak, to try to keep the heartbreak from his voice as he did so. “Gabe, I—”

  “I’m going after her, Clay. And I need you with me.” Gabriel leaned forward in his chair, the flame of a father’s fear and anger alight in his eyes. “It’s time to get the band back together.”

  BY TOM HOLT

  Expecting Someone Taller

  Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

  Flying Dutch

  Ye Gods!

  Overtime

  Here Comes the Sun

  Grailblazers

  Faust Among Equals

  Odds and Gods

  Djinn Rummy

  My Hero

  Paint Your Dragon

  Open Sesame

  Wish You Were Here

  Only Human

  Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  Valhalla

  Nothing But Blue Skies

  Falling Sideways

  Little People

  The Portable Doorr />
  In Your Dreams

  Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

  You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

  Someone Like Me

  Barking

  The Better Mousetrap

  May Contain Traces of Magic

  Blonde Bombshell

  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

  Doughnut

  When It’s A Jar

  The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice

  The Good, the Bad and the Smug

  The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

  BY K. J. PARKER

  The Fencer trilogy

  Colours in the Steel

  The Belly of the Bow

  The Proof House

  The Scavenger trilogy

  Shadow

  Pattern

  Memory

  The Engineer trilogy

  Devices and Desires

  Evil for Evil

  The Escapement

  The Company

  The Folding Knife

  The Hammer

  Sharps

  The Two of Swords: Volume 1

  The Two of Swords: Volume 2

  The Two of Swords: Volume 3

  * William Shatner; Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

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