by By The Sword
"Ha!" Theo said.
"And when he hears the whole story, he'll be upset because Zorin's back in his kingdom. Plying his trade, so to speak. The king, the gods love 'im, he'll have to send out part of his army—which isn't all that big in the first place, since we're such a small kingdom in the second place—to try to drive Zorin away again-Right?"
Hercules agreed, although it took him a moment.
Theo said, "You wish."
Nikos sighed. "And that means he'll want us—you and me, that is—to be a part of that army. On account of what we've already done. And I can't be, you see. I have a business to run. I'm not a professional fighter—"
"Got that in one." Theo sneered.
"—and I have a young son to take care of. Why, any one of Zorin's men would see through me in an instant, and then who would take care of Bestor? Who would keep him from living in the streets and becoming an urchin?"
"Nikos..." Hercules began.
"I'd probably have to carry a sword, too."
"Nikos."
"And wear armor and things. I hate armor. Have you ever had to wear armor, Hercules? It binds. The leather's not so bad, I guess, but to wear one of those breastplates? Forget it. I mean, you can barely breathe in the stuff."
"If you're a man," Theo said, "you can breathe."
"No," Nikos said, ignoring the raider, "I don't think I can do it."
Hercules had been afraid of this. The innkeeper's nerves had been twanging like the strings of a badly tuned lyre ever since the sun had been high. Now that they had to find a decent place to camp for the night, simply touching him on the shoulder would probably send him shrieking off the wagon and into the hills.
"Maybe you won't have to fight," Hercules said calmly.
Up ahead, he noticed a small stream near a stand of oak, not far off the road.
"I won't?"
"No, my friend, you won't. I'll see to it."
Nikos sagged in relief. "Oh."
"Besides," Theo scoffed from the back, "you'd be dead in an instant, one look at Zorin and his fire.
Cowards are like that. They die easily."
He laughed.
His men laughed.
Nikos reached down into the gap beneath his legs, pulled out his club, turned, and whacked Theo none too lightly on his skull. "Peace-loving men," he said smugly in the abrupt silence, "don't have to take any crap from a man who can't keep his stupid horns on."
The fire was low and warm, the stars high and cold. Beyond the reach of the flames, the stream babbled softly. The horses had been unhitched and led away to be tethered in a rich grassy area, the raiders were still in the wagon bed, snoring, and Nikos had wrapped himself a furry cloak and was even now mumbling, "Not a fighter," in his sleep.
Hercules took the first watch.
He sat with his back against a half-buried boulder, a similar cloak borrowed from Nikos' pack around his own shoulders, listening to the night.
Listening for sounds that didn't belong.
He didn't expect Zorin, or any of his men, to try to rescue the raider trio. From all he had heard these past two days, the man would just as soon let them die. But King Arclin ought to be able to garner useful information from them; enough, perhaps, to better protect his people.
From all Nikos had told him, Arclin was a fairly content man. Others in his position might well cast a covetous eye on any or all of his neighbors. A kingdom this small, however, was not only easy to defend, it was easy to govern. And with a small population, most of it doing rather well, there was little threat of rebellion.
King Arclin was not as famous as, say, Midas, or other kings of renown, but even Hercules had heard of his vaunted army. Fierce. Veterans all. Canny about using their numbers to the greatest effect. And un-waveringly loyal to their sovereign-It appeared to be the perfect situation.
So why, then, Hercules wondered, did he feel as if he were about to make a major mistake?
He yawned, and stretched.
He wasn't, he told himself as he shook his head sharply. This was no mistake, it was good sense. Give the king needed information, make sure he understood it was from the people at Markan, and the people of Markan would have a ruler in their debt.
Perfect sense.
He scowled briefly.
What you are is, you're tired, right?
Right.
You need a decent night's sleep, you know you're not going to get one because there's no way you'll be able to depend on the innkeeper to stay awake for more that five minutes, and so your brain is working overtime. Creating problems where there aren't any so you'll have something to do while you watch the fire, and the shadows.
While you listen to the gentle voice of the stream.
While you listen to the sound of a night bird gently fluttering its wings from one hunting ground to another.
The horses shied; one of them whickered quietly.
Night bird?
He listened more closely, then slowly, without making a sound, used the boulder to prop himself into a watchful half crouch, using the huge rock as his shield.
What night bird has wings that flap that loudly?
Theo the Mangier snorted in his sleep.
The horses shied again, this time more urgently.
Cautiously, Hercules peered over the rock, but could see nothing but the dark. The moon was gone, and the fading firelight didn't reach very far in any direction now. When he stared too long, things began to move out there where he knew nothing was.
He rubbed his eyes, checked again, and again saw nothing out of place.
When he turned back, all he could see was a lump that was the sleeping Nikos, and beyond that, the near side of the wagon, over which poked two metal-ribbon helms and a pair of dented horns.
He heard the wings again.
A signal? Men sneaking in through the grove? Ordinary bandits, or had he been wrong about Zorin?
He reckoned there was a good fifty feet between himself and the club Nikos had left on the driver's seat.
He listened.
He braced himself.
The wings stopped, and a slightly high voice complained, "You know, Hercules, for a demigod, you're a hell of a hard man to find."
Many miles' hard ride to the east were two mountains whose upper slopes had been scoured for aeons by the sword's edge of constant howling winds. Nothing grew there; everything that tried, died. The ground was bare rock and scattered boulders, and what little earth there was had been trampled into what felt like stone underfoot.
The peaks were jagged, slicing clouds and parting the wind.
During winter there was snow; the rest of the year there was no rain.
Animals from the fertile plain below seldom made the journey up, and birds never flew there; they took the long way around.
Between these nameless mountains was a narrow valley, so protected by them that it seemed another world entirely from the surrounding countryside. Lush grass, a stream that broke from the near vertical back slope to vanish into a pool midway along, a scattering of broad-crowned trees, and a temperature night and day that was preternaturally constant.
The only entrance was between two huge slabs of rock oddly marked by striations of white and dull red, the gap itself protected by a fifteen-foot gate of thick, unyielding wood banded in rust-pocked iron, with a brace inside made from three trunks lashed together. A quartet of sentries in fur and leather stood on a wood ledge above the gates, each with a bow and lance. A second quartet patrolled the grove of sycamore sixty yards away, down an easy slope that didn't stop until it reached the plain, nearly a mile away.
In the valley itself there were many lights from large fires, some in pits, some from torches, all reflecting off the polished stone of the north and south slopes. Midway along, near the south wall, a corral held nearly half a hundred horses; another beside it held cattle and oxen. Pigs and chickens roamed a fenced yard on the north side of the stream. There were no huts, only tents, but of these there wer
e many.
Enough to hold a population of two hundred, maybe more.
There were no children.
There were no women.
The largest tent was at the valley's head, not far from where the mountains rejoined in a solid wall of rock.
The tent was black, all of it, from the overhang at the entrance to the pennants that flew from poles poking through the top.
It was guarded by twenty men, none of whom were without battle scars of one sort or another, all of whom would have laid down their lives for their leader.
In the tent, at the rear, was a high-backed, thronelike chair raised two steps on a dais. Both chair and dais were covered with luxuriant fur that seemed alive in the shimmering light provided by the fire burning in a huge pit dug in the center of the hard-packed floor, and by lamps hanging from the tent poles.
From the chair , Zorin studied the last of seven men who had been dragged before him in chains this night.
The others had been carted away after only a few easy questions. Of the dozen men who remained inside—Zorin's inner council—not a one reacted to what screams they eventually heard.
The last man, stripped to the waist, his chest and back red with welts, couldn't look anywhere but at the ground. His arms were behind him, lashed around a short pole stripped of its bark; his hair hung damply over his face.
"You were lucky," Zorin told him kindly. "It's not all my men who find travel so swift and easy."
The man swayed, but didn't fall.
Some said Zorin's hair had been fashioned from the wings of a giant raven, a reference to its color and the way it swept upward when it reached his shoulders. Some said his beard had been fashioned from the raven's breast, a reference to its color and how thick and soft it looked.
No one ever asked what had happened to the raven.
"And you say it was, what, pretty much one man, a single man who beat you?"
The man shivered as if from the cold. Except the tent was hot, the pit's fire roaring with freshly added wood, its smoke billowing through a hole in the peaked roof.
"What?" Zorin leaned forward, cupping a hand around one ear. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."
"Y-yes," the man stuttered.
"And this man. His name is . . . what?"
"Her-Her-Hercules, my lord."
"I see."
Zorin leaned back, crossed one leg over the other at the knee, and looked toward his lieutenant standing below him. "Crisalt, is this true?"
If Zorin's color was born of the raven, the color of Crisalt's hair and mustache had been fashioned from the raven's blood.
"As far we can tell, my lord. That's what all of them told us anyway."
The prisoner who had once been a raider finally collapsed to his knees.
Zorin ignored him. "And this Hercules took three prisoners, is that right?"
"That's right. There was Theo, and... let's see ..." Crisalt hesitated, closed one eye in concentration, and shrugged his apology. "I don't remember the others."
"It doesn't matter. They're dead anyway."
Crisalt agreed. "But Hercules is taking them to King Arclin."
Zorin's hand waved the point away. "Who cares?"
Crisalt agreed again.
Zorin considered the tips of his fingers for a few seconds, then rose and stepped down from the dais to stand over the prisoner. "And.. ." His voice rose slightly. "And Hercules told you to tell me that this village..." He paused, looked over his shoulder, snapped a finger.
"Markan," Crisalt told him.
' 'Yes, yes, Markan. That Markan is now under his protection, and I'm to keep my distance?"
After a long hesitation the prisoner nodded.
Zorin could see the blood drying on the man's back, could see the pattern of lashes a whip had laid across it. He crouched down and balanced on his toes, rocking slightly as he hooked a finger under the man's chin and forced his face up.
He smiled.
The prisoner shuddered.
"And what," Zorin asked softly, "do you think he meant by that, man?"
The prisoner tried to speak, but Zorin's finger held his mouth closed.
"A threat?" Zorin frowned, but kept his voice low. "What a shame." He lifted the face higher, straining the man's neck muscles. "Do you think he knows what happens to those who threaten Zorin?"
He couldn't tell if the man had suddenly been taken by a seizure or was only trying to shake his head.
It didn't matter.
He snapped his hand up so fast, not even Crisalt could tell exactly when the prisoner's neck snapped, or when, precisely, the flesh parted at the hollow of his throat.
Zorin watched the man topple to one side, stared at the body and blood in distaste for a moment, and stood. Slowly. Making sure the others saw how annoyed he was.
How angry he was.
How enraged he was.
"Crisalt."
"Sir!"
Zorin returned to the dais, but instead of taking his seat again, he walked around to the back. To a large iron chest wrapped in silver chains.
Red light glowed from cracks in the metal.
Crisalt joined him.
"Any word?" Zorin asked as he scratched thoughtfully through his beard.
"Not yet, no."
"What do you think?"
Crisalt was the only man in Zorin's army who dared speak his mind. He was also the only man who knew when to speak his mind, and when to keep his big mouth shut.
He grunted noncommittally.
"Good point." Zorin caressed one of the silver chains.
The chest seemed to vibrate.
"Tell me something, my friend."
The only sound in the tent was the voice of the fire.
Crisalt didn't move, didn't speak. When his leader spent valuable time staring at the chest instead of planning the next attack, there was bound to be trouble. It never failed.
"Why do you suppose a man who tends oxen would call himself Theo the Mangier?"
Well, hardly ever failed.
"Self-esteem," said Crisalt instantly.
"Really?"
"It was his first time, you know, my lord. He probably needed something to build up his courage."
"Ah." Zorin nodded his approval. "Not a bad idea."
"No, my lord."
"But he did fail, didn't he?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Which means he has to die, doesn't it, Crisalt?"
"Yes, my lord."
"So tell me, my friend . . . how do you kill someone who calls himself the Mangier?"
Crisalt was stumped. Zorin's expression gave nothing away, nor did his hand cease caressing the silver chain. Not that it was all that important. Theo the Idiot would be interrogated by the king, would escape the dungeon thanks to a few well-placed dinars here and there, would come hightailing it back to the valley, and would be bloody lucky Zorin didn't pull him apart personally, limb by limb, before anyone said,
"Hello, Theo, Where've you been?"
Several minutes passed.
Neither man said a word.
Shadows on the tent's back wall crawled like snakes toward the top.
"I will tell you something, old friend," Zorin said, in a voice Crisalt had never heard before.
"I'm listening."
Zorin turned his back on the chest. "If it hadn't been for those two thieves, I would probably be shaking in my boots right now."
Crisalt couldn't believe it.
Zorin tapped the man's sternum hard with a finger. "Hercules is no man to fool with, make no mistake about it. Never, never underestimate him, Crisalt. Never." A glance at the chest. "Even with the fire, he won't be easy to kill."
Crisalt did his best to keep his face a blank.
Then Zorin grinned. "But make no mistake about this, either, old friend. He will die. He will die."
Hercules sat heavily on the ground, one hand pressed to his chest to make sure his heart didn't get away.
His lungs weren't working
all that well, either, and it was all he could do not to pick the boulder up and smash it over the head of the man who stood before him, grinning like an idiot.
"Scared you, did I?"
"Go away," Hercules said.
"Can't. Have a message for you."
Hercules reached for the boulder, changed his mind, and sagged against it instead, hands limp on his thighs. "All right, all right. But"—he pointed sternly—"don't you ever do that again, you hear? You do and I'll pluck your bloody wings off. One by one."
Hermes, Messenger of the Gods, Master Thief, and occasional all-around pain in the ass as far as Hercules was concerned, pouted. "That's no way to talk to an old friend, is it? I haven't seen you in absolutely ages." Lithe as a cat, he sat cross-legged on a patch of grass, jamming his caduceus into the ground beside him and causing its wings to flutter in agitation. The two snakes that coiled around the golden shaft only hissed resignedly; they were used to being ignored, and treated shabbily to boot. "Why, the last time I saw you was . . . when? Oh my goodness, I can't think how long ago it was. Do you remember? It'll come to me, though. Just give me a sec, I'll bring it back."
Hercules glanced over at Nikos, looked back at Hermes, and wondered if there could possibly be a family connection. He wouldn't have been surprised.
Hermes was, even for a god, of average height, a little on the skinny side, with almost blond hair that curled gently from under his winged cap. He was also prone to fussing when he wasn't sneaking around with messages or stealing things or inventing things—like the lyre. Which, just two years earlier, he had tried to improve by adding a copper gizmo, which, when struck by lightning, would make the lyre virtually scream. The problem was, as Hermes had been the first to admit, the lightning also fried the player. One-note songs, evidently, were not destined to survive, or be popular at weddings.
Still, Hercules decided, it was good to see him.
Unlike some other gods and demigods he could mention, Hermes was basically honest, reasonably fair, and could be counted on to do as he promised.
But he was also a sartorial failure.
Tonight, for example, he had opted to match his silver, winged cap with a puffy, silver kilt that barely reached to midthigh. That wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the pearls on the kilt, whose design—resembling a bald man with one eye—probably had some significance other than its appearance suggested.