by Jon Hollins
“The wrath of the gods,” Quirk snapped back.
“Be fucking the gods.”
They had woken Balur, it seemed.
The lizard man stumbled out of his tent. They all took a moment to take in the sight of him. Someone had started the rumor that small donations of gold and jewelry could curry favor with the prophet. Balur—probably the source of the rumors—had immediately set himself up as the person to whom all such donations should be given. Which went partway to explain the purple robe draped over his shoulders, the reams of necklaces around his neck, the bangles and baubles at each of his wrists, and the seven tiaras perched upon his broad, flat head. He looked like a cross between a king, a whoremonger, and a dragon’s midden heap.
“The gods have been fucking with us, and been showing us no favors,” he said. “Why should we be showing any to them?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Quirk said with a shrug, “perhaps because of the vast power differential?”
“Two dragons are being down,” Balur said with a cocky grin. “And I am still standing.”
“One was unconscious while you bludgeoned it to death,” Quirk pointed out. “The other was eaten by mutant fish, and you only survived because Will saved you.”
Balur didn’t actually redden—his scales were too thick for that—but there was a definite stiffening to his posture and a glare of outrage that seemed to suggest reddening would go on if it could.
“I will be looting some lead, and will be cramming it up your arse,” Balur spat back.
“Look,” said Will, throwing up his hands. “We’ve had this conversation thirty times so far, and every time we just insult each other, posture, and then realize that even if we did want to do something we couldn’t because we’re outnumbered almost a thousand to one. So,” he concluded, turning to Quirk, “if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to go to bed.”
He stepped toward Lette’s welcoming smile.
“Wait,” said Quirk with disappointing insistence. “That isn’t the news.”
“It’s not?” said Will, hoping he’d heard wrong.
“No,” said Quirk, from three feet away, and very clear indeed. “It’s not.”
“Then why are we arguing about it?” Balur asked, not unreasonably.
“Because your partner—” Quirk said, acid on her tongue.
Will held up his hands. “Can’t we just pretend we all argued for five more minutes and feel shitty about ourselves so we can skip to the bit where Quirk gives us the actual news?”
After much surreptitious glancing, the other three finally nodded. Will sighed.
“Quirk,” he said, “please, what is your news?”
She pushed both hands through her close-cropped curls. “So,” she said, “the Dragon Consortium is pulling together an army to destroy us.”
She delivered it like a tired waitress would deliver a mug of stout to a man who had ordered the same thing a thousand times before. Her tone was so flat it took a moment for the size of the news to sink into Will. And then he realized the news was so large that only the tip of it had soaked into him. The rest of it was still poised above his head, waiting to drown him completely.
“A fucking army?” He tried to double take but the moment had passed. He resorted to staring wildly around as if somehow the army would appear from nowhere, stand there, and let him gawp incredulously at it. “An actual army?”
For him? The Dragon Consortium was raising an army for him? In a truly messed-up way, that was almost flattering.
“They’re dragons,” Lette said. She was holding up her bedsheet with both hands now. Clearly she had not dressed for such a protracted discussion. “They’re massive, fire-breathing lizards that could obliterate us as soon as look at us. Why in the name of the gods do they need an army?”
And then it hit Will.
“We’ve killed two of them,” he said quietly. “They’re scared of us.”
“Yeah,” said Quirk. “That’s great. You’ve scared them so much that now they won’t be satisfied by just killing us, but only by raising an army to kill everyone whoever came within a one-mile radius of us all. That’s brilliant. Very good job.” She spat onto the ground.
“How many dragons are there being left on the council?” Balur asked, staring off into the night. “I am always meaning to be asking that and I am never getting around to it.”
“Is now really the time?” said Quirk, at the same moment as Will said, “Five.”
Balur gave his iron clock hand an assessing look. “Their time has come…?” he said, tentatively.
“I will fucking gut you right here and right now,” Lette told him.
Balur shrugged. “That is being fair.”
Quirk grabbed her forehead. “Why in Knole’s holy name did I even bother telling you? What did I expect? Why would an army marching down upon us be in any way galvanizing? Let’s just sit around scratching our crotches for another few days. The imminent death of everyone here shouldn’t be any cause for concern!” She spat again.
Will liked Quirk. She was smart and had a good moral compass that he could grab hold of at times when Balur and Lette were ganging up on him. But he had had enough of her right now. “Did you ever consider for a moment that the imminent death of everybody here might be what is causing some of the paralysis?” he barked. “That a little added pressure might not be exactly what is needed?”
Quirk actually hesitated there. Apparently she had not considered that.
“Look,” Will said to Quirk, “you want a plan, we stick to the one we’ve got. We keep running away. They’re a big army, we’re a small group. We can move faster and we’re more agile than they are. We can outrun them indefinitely.”
Quirk made a contemptuous sound. “Agile?” she said. “Our followers number in the thousands, and not a single one of them is a well-trained, well-paid, professional soldier. They’re going to slaughter us.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Lette hissed. “Morale at the camp is going to be bad enough when this news hits without your words of encouragement.”
“Can’t Will be coming up with a plan?” Balur suggested.
“No!” Will said before anyone else could jump in and argue in his favor. “My past two plans have got us in this mess by killing two dragons.”
“Exactly,” said Balur, nodding. “That is what I am thinking. You come up with five more plans and we have nothing to worry about.”
Will shook his head. “No,” he said. “No more plans. We stick to what we’re doing. We just keep running away. Eventually they’ll give up.”
“The average dragon,” Quirk told him, “lives for about two thousand years. I’m not sure you’ll wait them out.”
Will shrugged. “I don’t care. No more plans. Not one more. I’m done.”
67
One More Plan
Seven more days passed. News of the Dragon Consortium’s army continued to percolate into their camp. Estimates of its size came in. Fifteen thousand men and horses. Thirty thousand. Forty. Fifty. There was talk of siege engines, war wizards, griffin riders, a contingent of troll mercenaries.
Their own numbers grew, Lette’s prediction playing out as the ragtag group hit and surpassed ten thousand souls. But their growth rate never outpaced the rumors of the Consortium’s army. No matter how many empty fields they passed, how many abandoned villages, there never seemed to be enough of them to make a stand.
Will lay inside his tent, Lette’s arm curled around him, her head resting on his chest. He could feel the soft gusting of her breath steady and slow across his skin. His fingers tangled with her red hair. She smelled of the road, of sweat, and dust, and sex. There was the dull throbbing of exertion in his crotch.
It was funny, he thought—they didn’t even talk about the gold anymore. None of them. Not even Quirk, who had insisted it was so critical for keeping their followers housed and fed. They seemed to have hit a critical mass of bodies and goodwill. People came to them loaded with corn
, bread, milk, livestock. Several makeshift canteens had evolved, which doled out food to the masses. Usually he found some left outside the tent. Somewhere along the way they had picked up some pretty good cooks.
Outside the sun was rising, beginning to lighten the walls of the tent. The camp would be breaking soon. Every day they pushed on fifteen or twenty more miles. An aimless wandering flight, not quite sure of the location of the army they were fleeing from, not quite sure what safe harbor they were heading to.
Maybe this will last forever, Will thought. Eternally fleeing. Never resting, but never having to stop and face things either. Maybe we can just drag this out without end. Lying there with Lette’s sleepy weight pinning him to the cot, he thought there were worse ways life could play out.
A noise at his tent flap drew his attention away from theoretical futures to the very practical present. Quirk was sticking her head into his tent.
“Will,” she said in a soft tone, “you need to come and see this.”
He wanted to ignore her. While the edge on Quirk’s anger at all of them had blunted somewhat of late, being with her was still like carrying a hive of bees around with you—constantly concerned you were going to drop it on the floor and unleash rage.
Still, he carefully extricated himself from beneath Lette. She moaned slightly, rolled in her sleep. Will loved these unguarded moments. The softness in her, normally so well hidden, momentarily exposed. He kissed his fingers, brushed them through her hair, then pulled on his shirt and went to face the day.
“What is it?” he asked. Quirk was pacing back and forth in front of his tent.
“Come with me,” she said and turned away from him, forcing a path into the stumbling crowds camped around them.
The journey was not a brief one. The camp was vast now, stretching off for half a mile in almost every direction. Livestock milled down the narrow aisles between tents and carts, stomping past the campfires where bowls of porridge and corn steamed and bubbled, and slices of toast were being burned. The cooking smells mixed with the stink of privy holes, the musky funk of unwashed bodies, the scent of churned-up earth.
They had camped between the edge of a forest and the rise of a small hill, one of the gentle folds in the land near the floor of the Kondorra valley. Quirk led him up the slope of the hill to where a small knot of men was waiting.
“Cattak,” she said as they drew closer, and one of the men tugged at a forelock and bobbed his head.
“Quirk, ma’am,” he said back to her. He was a man of about forty, thick-limbed and hard-featured. A scar carved its way across one eye, down into a thick thatch of stubble. His jet-black hair was swept back from his tan face. His hands, Will noticed, were heavy and callused. A workingman, but what work, Will wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Cattak,” said Quirk, finally turning to face Will, “was one of our camp’s most prodigious looters. He and his men here could strip a church of all its valuables in two hours flat.”
“Healthy work ethic,” said Cattak, tugging at his forelock again. The men at his back, all of whom seemed to have been cast in the same mold, nodded their heads and mumbled agreement.
“I approached him,” Quirk went on, “because I thought I could put that work ethic to less sacrilegious use.”
“Only too happy to find another way to oblige,” said Cattak. “Anything we can do to help the prophet.”
Will gave an embarrassed smile. “Thanks,” he said.
Cattak looked up at that, a darker spark shining through his humble demeanor. “You one of them that know him then?” he said.
“Erm…” said Will, not sure how to respond.
“Cattak,” said Quirk, “this is Will.”
“Oh,” said Cattak with absolutely no spark of recognition. “Nice to meet you then, Will.” He stuck out a hand. Will took it, shook. He had the distinct impression that if Cattak wanted to break every bone in his palm then he could.
“Cattak,” said Quirk once more, “show Will what you showed me.”
“All right then.” Cattak nodded, turned to Will. “Keep your head down,” he said. “Don’t want them spotting us.” He promptly dropped to his belly in the long grass that covered the hilltop. A second later, Will was the only one on his feet.
Feeling slightly self-conscious, he got down onto his belly, and found himself staring at Cattak’s retreating feet, as the man wormed his way toward the crest of the hill. Hurriedly he worked his way after him.
Quirk dropped back to be level with him. She was wearing a dull brown dress today, he noticed. Had she chosen it as being better to hide the grass stains?
“What’s going on?” he asked, without a tremendous amount of hope that she’d actually let him know.
“I’ve had Cattak and his men acting as outriders,” she said. “I’ve been trying to redirect the energies of the looters, and the gods knew we needed scouts of some sort. We were running blind from an army, Will. It was absurd.”
Were? Was? Will wasn’t sure he liked the use of the past tense there. But then they were at the crest of the hill, and he was looking down into the valley beyond.
The land flowed down in a straight run to the river Kon. It was a sweep of patchwork fields, green and yellow dotted with the red of poppy and the blue of lavender, the whole thing punctuated by copses of trees scattered like emeralds. The river lay beyond, reflecting the sun like a line of liquid silver strung through the world.
It was a beautiful sight, and Will didn’t pay it the slightest heed, because sprawled all over it was the Dragon Consortium’s army.
He felt the air go out of him, tried to get it back, couldn’t. His mouth fell open, stayed that way. He tried to take it all in, couldn’t.
All the rumors had been true. All of them.
Fifty thousand men. A contingent of griffin riders, their beasts massive and majestic, tugging at leashes, stretching vast wings in the rising morning heat. War wizards, their tents crackling with lines of violet puissance. A contingent of troll mercenaries lolling against the siege weaponry. One massive brute scratched his back against a trebuchet; another picked at his teeth with a ballista bolt.
Finally Will managed to put everything into words. “Fuck,” he breathed.
“Pretty much,” said Cattak by his side. He sounded sanguine about it.
Will turned to Quirk, seeking someone less stoic about staring death in the eye. “We’re fucked,” he said to her, expanding on his theme.
“Yes,” she said, still a little too matter-of-factly for Will’s tastes, though he could hear the buried panic beneath her words. “We need a plan, Will,” she said. The panic was clearer there.
“We run,” he said. “We run like fuck.”
“We’re already running,” she pointed out.
“Okay then.” He nodded. “New plan. We run faster.”
So they ran.
News of the Consortium’s army spread through the camp like wildfire. Panicked cries were rapidly hushed, the smarter, steadier heads knocking sense and quiet into those more prone to alerting vast armies to the presence of their enemies. As quickly and as quietly as possible goods were thrown into carts, animals were herded, dirt was kicked into privy holes, ashes scattered onto fires, and tents were bundled into squares of stained fabric. There was no time to truly disguise that the camp had been there, but Will was glad that at least a token effort was being made. It showed that people had the right attitude at least.
All the while, runners came back and forth from Cattak giving updates on the Consortium army’s maneuvers. Will stood beside Quirk listening in.
Lette mostly involved herself in stopping Balur from leading a charge on their enemies. For once the lizard man and Firkin were united on an issue.
“We should smite them!” Firkin had squealed upon hearing the news. “With our”—he had stared at the ends of his arms—“smitey bits.”
“Fists?” Will had suggested.
“Good enough!”
“Look,�
� Lette had interjected, “I know deranged cults are all about the suicide thing, especially when it’s on a grand scale, but I for one am going to use your intestines as a skipping rope should you attempt to rabble-rouse on this one.”
That had given Firkin pause. Unfortunately Balur was more than willing to crack Firkin in order to make an omelet. Especially a bloody omelet of war.
“Do not be listening to her,” he had said. “It is being your divine duty to unleash the wrath of the heavens upon this army. You are being the pointer finger of the prophet or some such bullshit. You are knowing you want to.”
“He is not knowing shit, Balur.” Lette’s voice brooked no argument. “He’s a violent drunk.”
“He is being a right-minded holy warrior. You are being pussy.” Balur was apparently in a brooking-argument kind of mood.
Lette had opted for a long-suffering look. “Not wanting to commit violent suicide is not the same as cowardice.”
Balur shook his head. “I am not understanding humans.”
Lette didn’t seem to care about that. Even now, though, a good hour and a bucket of Will’s fear-sweat later, Balur was still pacing around the camp demanding they go “cut the head off the beast.”
“No, Balur,” Lette said yet again.
“How about just the genitals.”
“Sit down and shut up, Balur.”
Another of Cattak’s runners approached. Will tuned out the bickering. “They seem to be organizing their scouts.”
“Shit,” said Will. “How close are we to departure?”
So far, it seemed, the Consortium forces were ignorant of how close their prey was. Will wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.
“We can leave anytime you want,” said Cattak’s runner. He was another hard-faced man, eyes lost in a network of sun-stained wrinkles. “Just a case of how much you want to leave behind.”
“What if we ran now?”
The man squinted as he descended into thought, hiding his eyes even deeper than Will had imagined possible. “Depends,” he said eventually.
“On what?” Will snapped, because apparently he was the only one with a sense of urgency around here.