by Jon Hollins
He strode easily down the road, feeling the weight of his war hammer bounce against his back. The autumn sun was high above him, the fresh smell of Athril’s Lake was in the air, and the promise of violence was before him.
The only grit in the oyster of his life was the crowd of three hundred peasants marching at his back. They kicked up dust. They muttered to themselves. And they detracted considerably from the clean smell blowing off the lake.
He looked over at Quirk. “I am knowing that Will is the mastermind, and all,” he said, “but are you thinking that we could be doing all of this without this lot?” He jerked his head back in the direction of the followers.
Quirk didn’t exactly grimace, but she didn’t exactly smile either. “I’m not sure,” she said, “that we get a say.”
Balur grunted. He did not like that answer. “Will has been gaining power,” he said, “very quickly, and without experience. Perhaps we should not be respecting his opinion.” It was perhaps more than he should share with Quirk. Not that he had many others to share the insight with. And Quirk struck him as the practical sort, especially after what she had done in Mattrax’s cave.
“I’m honestly not sure,” she said, “that Will gets much of a say either. You know as well as I that he’d rather be rid of the crowd.”
Not for the first time in his life, Balur wished he had an eyebrow to arch. What Quirk said was true. It was just not a very comforting fact.
Quirk seemed to get the idea anyway. “If they listen to anyone,” she said, “they seem to listen to Firkin.”
Balur chewed on that. “But Will is going to Firkin,” he said, “and is telling him what to do. And then Firkin is being doing what Will asked him to do.” Command, whether direct or by proxy, was command as far as Balur was concerned.
“Just because what Will wants and what Firkin wants are the same thing,” said Quirk, “doesn’t mean that Firkin is doing it because it’s what Will wants.” She let that sink in before adding the kicker. “The question is, what does Firkin want?”
Balur was liking that even less. Quirk was making it sound like a problem that could not be solved simply through the application of a flat metal surface to a curved bone one. Though perhaps if the curved bone surface happened to be beneath the skin of Firkin’s forehead…
On the other hand, that would mess with Will’s plan, and messing with Will’s plan had not been entirely beneficial the last time around. In fact, Firkin not following Will’s plan was largely what had led them to the point of having followers to be concerned about. So perhaps a little creative thinking on his part was not what the situation required at this moment.
In the end, Balur decided, he didn’t really like any of the options before him, and so he reconsidered his attitude. Perhaps, after all, this was not a good day to die. It was just a very, very good one for killing people.
Athril was a large and bustling town. The lake stood at the confluence of several rivers, and if one skirted its edge, and avoided the territory of the Leviathans, then it was an entirely navigable stretch of water. Certainly the taxes imposed by Dathrax were obscenely high, but the taxes everywhere were obscenely high. And compared to Will’s louse-ridden armpit of a village, Athril appeared positively metropolis-like.
The walls of the buildings were painted as often as they were whitewashed. People bustled through the streets too busy to pay attention to each other. Store owners called from the doors of shops—solid and with glass in their windows—rather than from rag-covered stalls. The occasional crowd of guards walked down the street, eyes watchful for all the mischief a cowed populace could summon.
Fishing vessels clustered on the shoreline, enjoying the safety of the shallows. Their owners sat in small groups mending nets and exchanging exaggerated stories. A crowded market square filled the air with a thrumming noise that was audible from the town center to the stockade wall, where at that moment three rather nonplussed guards were regarding Firkin, Balur, Quirk, and several hundred of their closest friends.
“You want to come in?” said one of the guards, as if he had never heard of such a thing, and as if his proximity to a gate were something entirely coincidental. He looked to his colleagues.
“I don’t know,” said one. “Dathrax never said nothing about no big crowds.”
“He said not to let in no one suspicious,” said the first. “I’m finding a crowd like this somewhat suspicious.”
“You can’t be generalizing just like that,” piped up the third guard. “For example,” he said, “that bloke over there is looking dead suspicious. But those two are just kids. I don’t think no kids are suspicious.”
“What if they’re dwarves?” said the second. “I’m reckoning dwarves are suspicious.”
“Now that’s just open racism that is,” said the third. “You can’t just go saying that all dwarves are suspicious. Very diverse people. Lot of different outlooks on the world. Some are arseholes to be sure, but some are lovely.”
“He’s into that short one over at the brothel,” said the second.
“So what if I am?” said the third. “I have diverse tastes, I have. I’m a man of the world. Should try yourself a short arse, and see what you’re missing.”
Beside him, Balur noted, Quirk was clamping her lips together with considerable force.
“The problem is,” said the second, “no one ever said what the definition of suspicious was. Open to too much subjectivity.”
“No it’s fucking not,” said the first guard. “Subjectivity is the whole fucking point. You’re a guard. A professional. You are paid to have a discerning eye in this arena. If you don’t, you’re not a guard, you’re a fucking bystander.”
“Now hang on, Joel,” said the third guard. “That’s a bit strong”
“I’m not sure it’s strong enough,” said Joel.
The second guard looked miserable. He fell back against the stockade wall, kicking at the dirt.
Balur opened his mouth to make a suggestion. That was as far as he got.
“So you’re suggesting,” said Joel to the third, “that we divide them up into two groups, one suspicious and one not suspicious?”
“I think we have to judge them as individuals,” said the third. “It’s the only fair way.”
“That’s just not practical, Frederick,” said Joel.
Balur opened his mouth to contribute but once more they ignored him.
“In this case,” said Joel, “I think you have to judge the crowd as a single unit. It’s the only practical way.”
“I,” said Frederick, puffing out his chest, “am a man of principle. And that principle supersedes practicality.”
“Well,” said Frederick, “I think we know then why I’m a captain and you’re not.”
“It’s a corrupt system,” opined Frederick.
“Not corrupt,” said Joel, shaking his head. “Just an imperfect system in an imperfect world.”
It was at this point that Balur punched all three guards in the head. One, two, three. They slumped to the ground one after the other, stacking up like logs for the fire. Balur leaned forward and pushed the gates to Athril open. He then stepped aside and let Firkin lead the crowd into the town.
Quirk looked at him. “Very gentlemanly,” she said.
“Don’t have to be being civilized to be civil,” replied Balur, still looking down at the guards. Quirk’s smile pleased him.
38
The Worst-Laid Plans
A lot of people, Dathrax knew, envied dragons for their ability to fly. It had never made much sense to him.
Breathing fire? Yes, of course. There was majesty to that destruction. The long, savage claws? The sharp, inescapable teeth? Of course Dathrax could see the appeal of being able to rend one’s foes limb from limb, and of fearing very little in return. Also, the long, sinuous body. That seemed an appealing trait. To not be bound down by the bulk of other large animals. The dragon’s natural grace? Surely that was to be envied?
&nbs
p; But flight? Dragging his majestic arse across the sky, slow painful wing beat by slow painful wing beat? All the running to take off, all the planning to land, the painful stretch of the muscles between his shoulder blades? No, Dathrax had never truly seen the appeal of that.
There was the gold, of course. People envied dragons for that as well. And Dathrax could see the appeal of that. Gold was beautiful. Gold glistened. Gold soothed the soul. Gold held him tight as he slept at night. It wrapped its caring arms around him and fed his soul as he faced all the trials and tribulations this life brought him.
If only gold wasn’t so cursedly heavy.
Dathrax flew, and Dathrax was carrying a chest full of the gold he loved, but he increasingly wished that he wasn’t.
All of which went to explain why Dathrax—when only halfway to his island, but above his garrison of troops—let go of the large chest of gold and jewels he had been dragging home. It would, he decided, come to him along with the rest of his taxes at the month’s end. He had enough to tide him over until then.
And so he flew on unencumbered, the chest plummeting down in his uncaring wake.
39
A Sinking Feeling
Lette momentarily broke from Will’s lips when she felt a lurch in her stomach. Was it, she wondered, her conscience finally kicking in? Her rational mind? She stared around, but of course saw nothing but blackness.
Will snaked his hand back behind her head, his fingers tangling with her hair. “Come back,” he said.
“I’m fairly sure we’re plummeting toward the ground,” she said. She thought she should probably be panicking.
“A dragon’s holding us,” Will pointed out. “He’s not going to crash. He’ll just pull up.” He attempted to distract her by sliding his hands down onto her arse. To be fair, it was rather distracting.
It was at that moment that the chest crashed down into the Athril’s Lake garrison. Will and Lette survived thanks to the thick cloth padding that Will had painstakingly stitched to the inside of the chest. Quirk’s vials of Snag Weed potion, however, did not.
Almost instantly, the chest was filled with glass, fluid, and fumes. Lette had only the opportunity to say, “Oh shit,” before the fog filled her lungs, and she knew no more.
40
Waiting for Gods
Balur did not like to think of what he was doing as lurking exactly. Biding his time perhaps. A tactical pause in activities… maybe. If one was feeling fancy. An opportunity to drink far too much… Well, that went without saying.
Through the window of the tavern, he saw that the sun had dipped down to meet the surface of Athril’s Lake. Murky brown water was transformed to blazing fire.
It was not the only fire alight in Athril that night.
Balur had first ascribed Firkin’s success as an orator to the fact that the citizens of the Village receiving his message had been completely out of their skulls. His subsequent success as a preacher on the road… well, perhaps that was being because of the serious trauma that affected those accompanying them. Witnessing the murder of your lord and master, even an abusive lord and master… That could mess with a man’s head. Balur could be seeing that. And those who chose to flock to Will, and to listen to Firkin… Well, they had clearly been abused by the Dragon Consortium. Balur could see them not being of a mind to listen to reason, and perhaps preferring Firkin’s particular brand of insanity. But Athril was different.
Athril was, for the Kondorra valley, affluent. Athril was bustling. Athril, he thought while knocking back the second half of his pint, had pretty good beer. And unless his mark was very much off its aim, those three women over by the bar making eyes at him represented a well-established red-light district. What in the name of the Hallows the people of Athril had to complain about, he could not see. And yet they flocked to Firkin like flies to shit.
It had started almost as soon as they were through the gate. Firkin had begun to work himself up into a lather. There had been deep breathing, the beating of his pigeon chest.
“Citizens!” Firkin had shrieked. “Countrymen! Fellow oppressed people! I bring you the word of the prophet!”
For their part, the populace of Athril had shown a surprising willingness to listen to this twaddle. They had laid down their daily wares and left the comfort of their homes and shops and come out to listen, muttering in what sounded a lot like assent.
Balur had immediately put some distance between himself and Firkin. Quirk, he had been pleased to see, had stuck close to him.
He was well aware of everything he had said about keeping an eye on Firkin, about the promises he had made assuring Will that things wouldn’t get out of hand. But there was keeping your word, and there was sticking your neck out and asking for a sword to fall upon it.
Balur wanted to get rich, no doubt. He particularly wanted to get rich through minimal effort, and the thieving of gold from Dathrax. However, he did not see that goal as being mutually exclusive with the long-term survival of Firkin and the populace of Athril. If they wanted to get themselves all worked up, and all stabbed by a bunch of guards, well, that was fine with him. In fact, the more of the populace the guards were busy stabbing, the less likely they were to be stabbing him as he broke into their garrison.
That particular chain of events had not, it seemed, percolated into the consciousnesses of Athril’s populace. To be fair, they didn’t know Will and Balur were using them as a distraction to break into the garrison, but they still showed remarkably little concern about abandoning their daily lives and throwing themselves into full-blooded rebellion.
Balur had not been entirely sure what he thought of that. On the one hand, it was good that the plan was proceeding so easily. But what such behavior promised beyond the short term… Balur was not entirely sure about that.
Balur did not like the long term. Thinking about the long term generally seemed to involve not doing what one wanted to do in the short term. Thinking of tomorrow’s hangover took the joy out of tonight’s drinking. Thinking of tomorrow’s itchy red rash took all the fun out of tonight’s whoring.
Balur was a creature of action, and the long term often seemed to demand inaction. Therefore, Balur was of the general opinion that the long term could go fuck itself. But Firkin and Will—and the fervor they both seemed to generate—were forcing him to think about it.
To ease his discomfort, Balur slammed his fist down upon the bar. “Beer!” he bellowed. And then, in case that had been unclear, he added, “Beer!”
“Wouldn’t it be easier,” said Quirk from the seat beside him at the bar, “to go into this clearheaded?”
“Clearheaded?” asked Balur. He looked around the tavern. He cocked his head to one side. He could hear at least four conversations that included the word prophet going on at this moment. “If I was clearheaded, then I would be the only one in this town.”
Quirk graced him with a slight smile. “Yes,” she acknowledged, “but sardonic bravado aside, wouldn’t be it be easier to break into the garrison if you were sober?”
“Sober?” asked Balur. The mental effort of trying to process that caused his face to scrunch up, eyes and nose swarming together. From Quirk’s expression, he guessed she thought he was making light of her. But the idea had genuinely never occurred to him.
Liquid of any sort was precious in the Analesian desert. What liquids were available were rationed out in a manner largely determined by merit. Warriors merited fluid. And most of the fluids that the Analesians possessed were alcoholic.
Now, confronted with this new concept, Balur attempted to match his idea of sobriety to his idea of combat. The results were not appealing.
“No.” He shook his head violently. “No.” He said it again, hopefully this time with the emphasis he felt the words deserved. Just in case, he said it a third time. “No!” He shuddered. “You would do that sort of thing sober?” He looked at Quirk with horror. “You are being barbaric.”
Quirk looked at him quizzically, then shook he
r head. Balur started to make significant inroads into his next pint. He cast another look to the tavern window. A man was running by. It took Balur a moment to realize that he did not have flaming red hair.
His head was on fire. He was pinwheeling his arms, and screaming as he ran past.
Balur narrowed his eyes. He had not been to Athril before, and the ways of humans were still, even after all this time, somewhat foreign to him. However, in his experience, setting fire to your own head and then shrieking in horror at the experience was not the sort of thing humans tended to do for fun.
The man disappeared out of sight leaving only a trail of dissipating smoke. Still, if Balur cocked his head to one side he could make out distant sounds of shrieking, and of large, important pieces of architecture breaking.
He switched his narrowed gaze to Quirk. “Are you hearing this?”
“I was rather hoping,” said Quirk to the glass of white wine she had been nursing for the past hour, “that I might be imagining it.”
Balur set his many teeth into a savage grimace. There was but one explanation. And when Balur found him he was going to kill him.
41
Talking His Way into Trouble
Firkin was having fun. In fact, he had been having fun ever since they dosed the bread in the village. Truly it was difficult for him to remember the last time he had had this much fun. To be fair, he had difficulty remembering quite a lot of things. Including, from time to time, his own name. But he was fairly certain that his reduced circumstances had not allowed for this much fun in many a year. But here, now, praise be to all the whoreson gods in their mighty Pantheon, he was having so much fun he just might shit himself.
“Brothers!” he called. “Sisters! Very close cousins! Fathers! Mothers! Those who confuse the boundaries between them! The prophet has come!”