by Victor Milán
“Because if you don’t, we’ll slaughter you and all your men, and I’ll whistle up a wind elemental to drop your head in Pundar’s pigsty with a note attached.”
“When did you learn to summon elementals?” Farlorn hissed out the side of his mouth in elf-speech, which half-ogres as a rule didn’t understand.
“Never,” replied Zaranda in the same tongue, which she grasped well enough but could only speak in pidgin. “Now shut up.” She swung down from Goldie and stepped to the side to stand facing the half-ogre, legs braced and hands on hips. The wind stroked her face and ruffled her hair. The springtime smell would have been quite refreshing except that Goldie was quite right about Togrev: he was a half-ogre, manifestly, and lived up to their usual standards of hygiene.
Togrev rumbled deep in his cavernous chest and swung down from his massive mount. Goldie flared her nostrils and blew out a long breath. Zaranda fought to keep her own shoulders from sagging in relief.
“And when I beat you, pathetic woman-thing?” the bandit chief demanded.
“If you win, you and your men go free. If you lose, your men still go free. This is really a pretty good deal I’m offering.”
“Are you sure this is wise?” asked Farlorn out loud.
“No,” Zaranda said, “but it’ll be very soothing to my anger, one way or another.”
Togrev scratched his unshaven chin and pondered.
“ ’Ware magic, Lord Commander!” the morningstar man exclaimed. “She’s a witch, I tell you!”
“How is that fair?” the half-ogre asked in aggrieved tones. “You’ll just cheat and use some witching tricks. You could never best me otherwise. I am Togrev the Magnificent!”
“Compared to what?” murmured Farlorn.
“If you agree to meet me alone, with no outside interference from either side, I shall forbear to use any magic against you. I’ll forgo even the blessings of my priest. Does that satisfy you?”
For answer the half-ogre swung his great axe in a wild flourish that ended with it poised above his head. The passage of air through inlets cut through the head made it moan like a lost soul.
“Prepare to break!” he roared.
“Not so fast,” Zaranda said with a firm shake of the head. “My priest.”
Togrev glowered at her. Then he nodded. “Let the fat pig go.” His men gaped at him “Do it!” he roared. They let go of Father Pelletyr and stepped away as if he’d grown hot in their grasp.
The priest brushed himself off. “I forgive you,” he murmured to his erstwhile captors.
Stillhawk herded his captives up the rise. They joined the dismounted morningstar man and the four who had held the cleric on one side of the combat ground. The Dalesman—who was as sparing with words as any speaking ranger—looked rebellious when Zaranda signed him to put his nocked arrow back in its quiver. Her eyes met his and held them for a moment. He nodded and complied.
As Zaranda was turning her head to look at her opponent once again, he charged with speed surprising in one so huge. Which still wasn’t very fast in absolute terms, but it had served him well in the past, taking enemies by surprise and stunning them into momentary—and fatal—inaction.
Zaranda was molded of different metal. Without hesitation, she threw Crackletongue up to meet the axe. She did not try to block the strike; had she done so, the weight of the axe and the man behind it would have broken her arm and its blade would have cloven her, regardless. Instead the flat of her saber struck the haft right behind the bit, guiding the monstrous moaning weapon past her as she pirouetted aside.
At the instant of meeting, her sword emitted a snarl and shower of blue sparks. Crackletongue did that on making contact with creatures consecrated to evil, thus confirming something Zaranda had already surmised.
With her help, the axe blade bit deep into the soft flesh of the hillside. Zaranda rolled her wrist and slashed forehand for the great corded neck. Togrev roared and threw his body back and to the side. Crackletongue’s tip sparked as it bit, but it did no more than cut skin, cauterizing the slight wound as it left it.
Flash-fast, the half-ogre had wrenched free his axe, throwing out clods of earth, and whipped it into guard position before his metal-scaled breast. Zaranda sprang away to face him, half-crouched, Crackletongue held out before her, muttering and flickering with magic.
“Not bad,” she said, “You’re quick for such a wad of blubber.”
An impressive paunch strained the seams of Togrev’s hauberk, but he was by no means a wad of blubber. For some reason Zaranda had found the few ogres and half-ogres she’d had dealings with—none friendly—were one and all sensitive to suggestions that they were fat. An angry foe was seldom a clearheaded one. And if the brute’s that agile, she thought, I need all the edge I can get.
He seemed to be right-handed. She circled that direction, clockwise around him. He began pivoting to face her, and at the same time edging toward her. Then he snapped the great axe up and back as if it were a jackstraw, cocking for a strike.
She lunged. The half-ogre screamed like a wounded horse as Crackletongue’s tip sank a handbreadth into the bulging triceps of his left arm. There was a sizzle and stink of burning flesh, and then Zaranda hurled herself past her foe, twisting her sword as she ripped it free, trying to do the maximum harm.
It wasn’t enough to incapacitate the tree-trunk arm. With blood streaming black from a wound too large for Crackletongue’s sparks to close, Togrev swung the axe in a howling horizontal arc. Once again his reaction time surprised Zaranda. She had no time to parry, could only jump backward with arms flung high to keep them from harm’s way.
Father Pelletyr cried out in shared anguish as the axe blade kissed her flat belly. The marauder section of the audience stamped and hooted approval. Goldie whinnied alarm.
“I’m fine,” gasped Zaranda. Her awareness of her own body was good, good enough that she needn’t glance down to know that the axe had done no more than lay open skin. Which was good, because had she glanced at herself, she would have died.
With shocking speed the half-ogre brought the axe around and up and down. Zaranda had to throw herself into a shoulder roll to avoid being split in two as the axe plunged deep into the earth.
Togrev snatched it free again, hurled it high, and ran at his foe as she rolled up onto one knee. His face split in a jag-toothed grin. He had her now; she was in no position to shift left or right fast enough to escape him, nor could she run away. The axehead seemed to scream in triumph as it descended for the killing blow.
Zaranda dived for the monster. She ducked her head and somersaulted forward. As she and Togrev passed in opposite directions, Crackletongue licked out and caressed the back of one great knee.
Togrev vented a pain-squeal like that of a cracked organ pipe. He went crashing past her like a boulder down a Snowflake peak. His wounded leg simply folded beneath him when he put his weight upon it. Zaranda’s blow had hamstrung him.
Once more he showed himself hateful-quick, slamming the butt of his axe-helve against the earth like a crutch, saving himself from rolling headlong. He got his uninjured right leg beneath him, came back upright, took three great hops away and pivoted, leaning on the great axe.
Zaranda got deliberately to her feet. The half-ogre stood snarling at her, his left leg booted in scarlet.
“Now,” she said, “let’s finish this.” She started forward.
“Randi!” Goldie screamed.
By reflex Zaranda dived forward. As she did, something struck the back of her head with jarring impact and clawing pain. She went sprawling on the grass.
Sparks fountained behind her eyes. Her head rang like a dwarven smith’s forge. She blinked to clear her vision, saw Togrev looming over her like a colossus, great axe poised above his head. He had only to fall forward to cleave her in two.
Behind her she heard malicious laughter and the sliding song of a spiked morningstar head circling on its chain. Her right hand, miraculously, still held Crackletongue.
She looked back at the marauder who had struck her from behind, flung her left arm toward him, forefinger pointed.
“Twenty feet and six!” she gasped. A light like an orange-glowing crossbow bolt flashed past the morningstar man’s left hip.
He hooted shrill triumph through his nose. “Missed!” He swung the morningstar.
The light-bolt flew twenty feet away and six feet up, then exploded. Laughter turned to scream as the fireball’s fringe engulfed the man with the morningstar.
Zaranda turned her head. Togrev was in the process of toppling toward her, his axe making the air itself scream pain. With all the power in her flat-muscled belly, Zaranda jackknifed, thrusting Crackletongue into his gut.
Her magic blade bit through the overlapped steel plates of his hauberk and the thick leather beneath, through sweaty, hairy skin and then fat to muscle bunched beneath. And there Crackletongue’s magic and Zaranda’s strength failed her. The saber would penetrate no farther.
Zaranda’s presence of mind had not deserted her, though. She guided the butt of her basketed sword-hilt to the earth beside her, then rolled clear as Togrev’s own momentum completed the task of spitting him.
For a while Zaranda just lay on her belly, tasting grass-flavored air and bits of dark, moist soil that had found their way into her mouth. They tasted good. Even the dirt.
Finally she rolled over and tried to sit up. Her head began performing interesting acrobatics, and she almost fell back. A hand grabbed her biceps and held her up.
She nodded weak thanks and looked up. To her surprise it was Farlorn who held her, not Father Pelletyr. The priest was hunched over, shoulders heaving as if he were gasping for breath. He clutched the center of his chest. His face was red.
With Farlorn’s help Zaranda picked herself up. She nodded again, patted the half-elven bard’s hand to signify that he could let her go. He hesitated, then did so and stepped back.
Stillhawk had an arrow nocked and drawn back to his ear, holding down on the surviving captives, who had all gone the color of new papyrus or old paper behind their sundry whiskers and coatings of grime. They were staring at the smoking corpse of the morningstar man, their eyes like holes in sheets.
“That’s right,” she croaked. “He was right. I am a witch. A wizard, in any event. But unlike him, I’m one who keeps my faith. Now go.”
The marauders cast a final look at Stillhawk, then lit out running over the gently rolling hills.
Zaranda turned back to Father Pelletyr.
“Randi,” Goldie said, “he doesn’t look too good.”
“Father, are you all right?” Zaranda asked.
“I’m fine.” He waved a hand at her. “It’s just—these pains in my chest and left arm. They soon shall pass, martyred Ilmater willing.”
“If you say so.” Zaranda walked over to her mare. What she intended as a hug turned into a grab for support as her knees momentarily buckled.
Goldie held her head up, shying from Zaranda’s attempt to stroke her cheek. “You take some crazy risks, Zaranda,” she said with exaggerated primness.
Zaranda realized the mare was humiliated by her earlier panicky lapse into horse. She laughed and scratched Goldie’s neck until she found the itchy spot horses always have, and the mare arched her neck and bobbed her head in pleasure. Zaranda hugged her again and let her go.
The erstwhile lord high commander of the Barony of Pundaria lay in an unmoving mound, Crackletongue protruding from his broad back. The curved blade no longer crackled and sparked with magic. Dead meat knows no alignment.
“All right, then,” Zaranda said. “Who’ll help me turn this carrion over and reclaim my blade?”
“Have you heard?” the peasant asked. He had a large and colorful wart on the side of his nose and a leather bonnet pulled down over his ears. His garments had been patched until they were more quilt than clothing and still more hole than fabric. “There’s a strong man rising in Zazesspur town. And high time, too. He’ll bring order back to the land.”
“Aye,” said another, equally ragged, who was chewing a tufted stalk of timothy grass. He pawed through the assortment of brass implements and cooking vessels Zaranda had spread upon a horse blanket beneath an oak tree that shaded one patch of the tiny village green. He wore a tattered and shapeless felt hat against the noonday sun. “We need strong government, an’ that’s a fact.”
The rest of the throng of prospective shoppers nodded and murmured assent. Like the two who had spoken, and like the village and farmhouses themselves, the villagers had a dusty, threadbare, ground-down look.
The caravan’s mules grazed on the grass of the common—for which the local mayor had exacted an advance fee—while their drovers and riders watered themselves in the village’s lone tavern—for which the local mayor also exacted tariff, inasmuch as he was the tavernkeeper.
Zaranda had left the bulk of the train encamped in a laager and made a detour through the city of Ithmong with a few muleloads of nonmagical luxury items—spices, dyes, vials of scent, incense-cones. They found an increase in prosperity and decrease in paranoia since the ouster of Gallowglass, with his tyrant’s dreams and schemes. Zaranda had parlayed the wares into a dozen new mules loaded with more conventional goods such as tinware, pins, nails, and bolts of colored cloth to trade to the peasants and village folk along the route to Zazesspur.
It was penny-ante commerce, and Zaranda would be doing well to break even. She didn’t care. It was a cheap way to garner intelligence and goodwill, and besides she felt for the people of the Tethyr countryside. Between bandits and big-city ambitions, only a rare armed caravan such as hers ever reached them. Otherwise the countryfolk had no access to goods beyond what they made themselves, which was why every mobile soul for miles had come pouring into town as news of the caravan’s arrival spread.
Goldie stood to one side watching the proceedings with interest. Now she cocked an eye at the grass-chewing peasant who had proclaimed the need for strong government.
“Why do you say that?” she asked. The man only goggled at her slightly; word that the caravan leader rode a talking mare had spread quickly through the village. “That’s like saying you need more locusts.”
“Now, Golden Dawn,” Father Pelletyr said, munching a cold chicken leg, “you shouldn’t talk that way.”
“You don’t think I should talk at all, Father.”
“Now, child, you know that’s not true—”
“Begging your leave,” the peasant said pointedly around his grass stalk, “but our neighbors have more wealth than we.”
“Truer words never saw daylight,” agreed his friend in the cap. “A good, strong government would take it from them and give it to us.”
“Why should they do that?” Goldie asked.
The locals looked at her in consternation. “Because we are hardworking and worthy sons and daughters of Tethyr.”
“Aren’t they the same?”
The crowd began to give the mare hard looks. “Do not trouble yourself overmuch with her babblings, good folk,” Farlorn said suavely. “She’s merely a dumb animal.”
The peasants looked at each other, then nodded and went back to their shopping.
“I’ll show you a dumb animal, you ringleted gigolo,” Goldie grumbled.
“Goldie!” Zaranda said sharply.
The bard laughed. “Would you rather be thought a dumb animal or someone whose opinions are so seditious she should be chopped up into food for hounds?”
For once Goldie had no answer. Father Pelletyr beamed indulgently as he bit into a raw onion he’d bought from a farmer—more early yield from the long Southern growing season. “They’re right, anyway,” he said. “A good, strong government is a benefit to all.”
“Isn’t envy a sin in Ilmater’s eyes?” Zaranda asked quietly. The cleric looked blank. She decided not to press it; the crowd might decide she was better off as dog food, and while she was intrepid, by her reckoning she’d faced enough angry mobs in her lifetime.
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The inn door opened. Three men emerged into the brilliant midday sun, managing at once to saunter and swagger. They were typical Tethyrian bravos in garish costume, with puffed blouses and extravagantly padded codpieces, which tended to turn any sort of walk into a swagger. They arranged their broad-brimmed hats and floridly dyed plumes and walked across the road to the green.
Stillhawk watched them closely with his brooding dark eyes. He had sealed his bow in a waterproof case of some soft and supple hide that Zaranda suspected to be kobold skin—the elves had some folkways that seemed pretty abrupt by human standards. A man of the Dalelands, and an obvious ranger at that, was a substantial novelty in the sparsely forested Tethyrian plains. Zaranda feared he might excite the villagers unduly if he wandered around with an elven longbow strung and ready for action. He wore his long sword, also of elvish make, scabbarded at his hip.
He dropped a hand as dark and hard as weathered wood to the hilt and looked a query at Zaranda. Stand easy, she signed to him.
The newcomers carried swords with elaborate hilts and blades so broad they each had two deep, wide fuller grooves—which lightened weight and increased structural integrity and hadn’t a blessed thing to do with letting blood flow, as the ignorant would have you believe. These swords weighed about five pounds each, which was in the upper range for anybody of human strength to wield one-handed and expect to live. Daggers they had as well, daggers in profusion: broad-bladed daggers, slim poniards, misericords, dirks, toadstickers, and hunting knives with grips of kobold bone. These blades hung all about their harness as if, come combat, they anticipated sprouting extra arms and fighting in the manner of the intelligent octopi rumored to haunt the rocks off the coast of Lantan in the Trackless Sea. But enough of blades.
There was nothing intrinsically sinister about the three. Their garb, outlandish and weapon bedizened as it was, was no more than what was fashionable among Tethyrian bravos, particularly soldiers-of-fortune—which these appeared to be. Their gait was fairly steady, which indicated they likely hadn’t imbibed enough in the tavern to make them boisterous. They could turn into trouble, but didn’t constitute automatic menace.