by Victor Milán
Head still tipped back, the matador bit down again. Metal crumpled. Dark juices spurted out the sides of its mouth. It swallowed. Then, lowering its flanged gaze to the shocked onlookers, it roared in triumph.
The watching nobles sat their war-duckbills in horrified silence.
“And that’s monster for, ‘who’s next,’” said Florian from Jaume’s left.
From Jaume’s right Manfredo cast the Francés a quelling glance. But Florian was never quelled.
“Ah well,” he continued with a shrug, “at least the lad’s atoned for poor old Azufre.”
Jaume felt Camellia’s pulse racing through his thighs clamped on her cream-colored flanks. She was afraid of the monster, but also eager. She knew that even meat-eaters fearsome enough to take her kind down could be killed. She’d helped do it.
He turned in his saddle and called to his arming-squire, who rode behind the four knights, to hand him his spear.
“You can’t be serious,” Manfredo said. “The Nodosaur arbalesters will be here soon. Let them do their jobs, man.”
Jaume accepted the spear with a nod of thanks and a reassuring smile. From Bartomeu’s pallor and the tears streaming from his eyes, he wasn’t reassured.
“I must do this, my friend,” Jaume said to Manfredo. “You know why.”
He tested the spear’s heft. It felt unfamiliar: he did little hunting, except of miscreant knights. And that took a lance.
The monster-spear’s shaft was four meters long. Its head was shaped like a sword but flared at the rear into two forward-curving wings, razor-honed to cut wide wounds. Unlike a foot-hunter’s spear, it had no crosspiece; once it was driven deep, the rider let it go.
“You can’t!” cried Dieter, his face flushed pink above his white Companion tunic. Like their captain, and unlike the other highborn hunters, the four wore no armor. They understood what poor Mor Xurxo, now presumably awaiting his next turn on the Cosmic Wheel, had learned from today’s experience: even though the mightiest meat-eater couldn’t bite through plate, armor didn’t offer much protection. It wasn’t worth the encumbrance, much less the parboiling in the midspring heat.
“It’ll kill you too!” the Alemán wailed.
Jaume smiled. “If it does, I’ll die a beautiful death.”
“The Gallego’s wasn’t!”
Jaume clamped the spear between his elbow and his rib cage and, with his knees, nudged Camellia down the slope at a trot. Like any true montador, he had no need of spurs. Nor would he torture his friend with them.
“But there’s only one of you!” Dieter called after him. In his passion his Northern accent seriously mangled his Francés.
His fellow Alemán Machtigern let the steel-shod haft of his war-hammer drop across his shoulder.
“There’s only one Allosaurus,” he said.
Chapter 31
Volador Crestado, Crested Flier—Pteranodon longiceps. A large, tailless pterosaur with a toothless beak and long, bony crest; 1.8 meters long, 6-meter wingspan, 16 kilograms. Piscivorous. A noted seaport and shipboard scavenger.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“Why did I do that?”
Falk turned and smashed a bare fist into a piling of the sagging, abandoned pier. The poodle-sized juvenile crested flier perched atop it half unfolded its wings and croaked complaint.
“That’ll do a world of good, your Grace,” his goblin-faced companion said. “Now that your arm has healed, why not break your sword hand to show how mature you are?”
He hurled another of the flat shale stones that covered this unpopular stretch of beach west of the headland that upheld the Firefly Palace. It skipped once before vanishing into grey chop that was hard to distinguish from the grey sky.
The day matched Falk’s mood.
“You suggested I let Jaume break my arm,” he said sullenly. Above their heads, grey and white sea-skakes spiraled as if caught in a whirlwind, noisily disputing rights of salvage with the furred fliers.
“Yes,” Bergdahl said. “And I spread the rumors the blow was a foul one. I did it for the same reason I blackmailed my way into a job in the palace. And do you know what that is?”
“What?”
Another stone. This one vanished with neither skip nor visible splash.
“Because we have a plan,” Bergdahl said. “Your mother and I. You too, if you could be bothered to remember.”
The wind turned. A stench hit Falk, one that watered his eyes and loosened his knees. Not a quarter kilometer west of here, the conjoined sewer systems of La Merced, the palace, and the great Sea Dragon base on the city’s eastern side emptied into the Channel, far beneath the surface. The tiny creatures that tinged the chop there pink quickly digested the sewage, nourishing some of the richest fishing waters in the Channel. But not even the poorest fisherfolk could tolerate the stink.
“You may have heard rumors of the danger that the Grey Angels will take note of those frisky, promiscuous heretics in Providence, and might at any moment loose one of their fearful crusades to purge the Tyrant’s Head from sin, as they haven’t done in centuries.”
Falk felt little interest in anything but his own misery. His head beat like a tercio kettledrum. His stomach had been sloshing unpleasantly even before the wind shifted.
Bergdahl showed jumbled brown teeth in satisfaction.
“My doing as well. The plan proceeds, my lord.”
Falk swallowed pride and bile. “If I haven’t undone it. And us.”
“Stop wallowing in your self-pity like a fatty in shit. If the bitch had gone to her father, your Scarlet Tyrant chums would’ve dragged you to him in chains hours ago.”
Falk looked at him. He felt something like hope light within him. And quickly smothered it: he knew how hope betrayed. He had learned as a child, often and well.
“You really think so?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“Likely enough. I found you readily enough in that rat’s-asshole waterfront dive. You’re not exactly inconspicuous, with your size and coloring and those blue eyes. Moreover, you stink, lord. Coming from me, that’s almost a compliment. It’s no mean achievement for a man of your station.”
“Perhaps you should remember yours!” Falk snapped. Then he regretted it. It felt as if he’d clapped himself over the temples with a pair of blacksmith’s hammers.
“Oh, I do, lord. Do you?”
Falk looked away out over the uneasy water.
“But you’re far from in the clear,” Bergdahl went on relentlessly. “The cunt will tell her trim-tail little friends. Court gossip won’t undo you as rapidly as pissing off the Emp would. But it can undermine you, just as surely. Do you want to have suffered a broken wing for nothing?”
“No,” said Falk, all sulky. “So what can I do?”
“Why, rely on your wise servant’s cunning, of course. Which fortunately exists in abundant supply.”
“As does your cheek,” Falk grumped.
“Which also serves your Grace, no matter how it chafes your ass.”
Falk hung his head. It took great effort to hold it upright, anyway. The cries of flying creatures, feathered and furred, were like needles driven into his brain.
“Attend,” Bergdahl said, adopting a tutor’s lecturing tones. “I’ve worked my skinny ass off to learn. So now it’s your turn, however much your head pounds from your self-indulgent folly. Felipe’s a tough nut, and that’s a fact. He drinks nothing stronger than wine or beer, neither to excess. He has no interest in herbs to give him good feelings or pleasant dreams. He’s practically celibate since his bitch wife died pupping another useless daughter. He has a high-priced courtesan in to visit discreetly, once a week.”
That pricked Falk’s interest. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that very well. No matter what his mother said. And for some reason he always found himself needing desperately to show the fact before this … creature.
“What about her?” he asked eagerly. “Does she offer us an angle?”
Be
rgdahl shook his head. “Not the slightest. Mondragón’s spies watch her like harriers stalking a scratcher in a dooryard. No, the truth is, our beloved Emperor has no useful vices.”
“None? What about his love of comfort?”
Bergdahl cackled. “Even in Alemania, your Grace, love of food and ease hardly rises to the level of a vice. Unless one takes it far higher than Felipe does. No, for weakness, we must look to his family. He has two daughters, after all, and dotes on them both. When he can be bothered to recall he has them. And the younger one, the blond-mopped guttersnipe—she’s notoriously careless about her own safety.”
“No! We keep our hands off Montserrat. I can’t imagine anything enraging Felipe more than trying to get to him through her.”
Almost lovingly Bergdahl reached to stroke Falk’s unkempt beard. “I knew that,” he said. “I was merely testing you. You passed, for once.”
Falk scowled and yanked his head around. Freeing his face from Bergdahl’s fingertips was like breaking an adhesion.
“Now, if we widen the circle of his family,” Bergdahl said, “we see definite promise. Felipe’s in far from good odor in his own Tower. Some kinsmen and women deride him behind his back as ‘that bastard of a Ramírez’—even here in La Merced. Others—”
“Others are afraid his stirring up trouble inside the Empire will undermine the Delgaos’ death grip on the Fangèd Throne,” Falk said, actually contriving to sound bored and feeling indecently proud of the fact. “They even have allies within Torre Ramírez, who fear that if Felipe kicks over the Imperial cart, Spaña’s apples will go tumbling too. No need to bug your eyes at me like a hermit crab, Bergdahl; I have eyes and ears too.”
Bergdahl pulled his head back and narrowed his eyes, which had in fact been bulging. Then he gave off a laugh that set his weird little pouch of a belly jiggling vigorously against the leathery wasteland of his torso. That startled the crested flier, which stretched its wings and took off flapping low over the Canal.
It had flown no more than a hundred meters offshore when the head of a sea monster shot up from the waves at the end of a long neck and bit it from the air.
Bergdahl applauded. “That’s rare! That’s rich. At last you’ve shown me up.”
Falk managed to smile.
“If only you’d kept your cock behind your codpiece, who knows what you might have learned?”
Falk’s brief good feeling fled.
“Here, now, don’t blame me for telling you the truth, your Grace! It’s the girl. That whore of a Princess led you on. Don’t you have the sense to see it? She wanted you to make a fool of yourself.”
Falk felt his forehead knot and his cheeks get hot with several kinds of anger. “Why would she do that?”
“Who knows why the cunts do anything? The Creators put ’em here to torture honest men, and all the rest of us as well. I saw how she ground that round ass of hers against your wedding tackle at the dance.”
Falk’s frown deepened. His memories of last night were a haze at best. He felt that Bergdahl’s words soiled him, somehow. But she sure wasn’t shy about rubbing up against you, was she? a voice whispered from the back of his mind.
“Whose fault is it?” Bergdahl said, thrusting his face close to Falk’s. Unlike most men, he could look his master in the eye without craning. “Look at yourself. Smell yourself, standing here covered in vomit and regret. You’ve utterly debased yourself, sucking down booze to drown your fear. And why?”
“The Princess.” It was almost a question.
“The Princess. The nasty little quim had no right to lead you on like that. She doesn’t understand that things have costs. Where’s your Northern pride, your Grace?”
“My pride,” Falk growled. He straightened a little.
“She’s trifled with you. Degraded you. Shouldn’t she be made to pay for that?”
Anger-flames surged higher inside Falk. He welcomed their burn.
“Yes,” he said. “She should. It wasn’t right what she did. And her betrothed, Count Jaume, he’s a great fighter. But he’s—he’s a man lover. She shouldn’t spurn me just for being a true man.”
“Ah, but she’s turned her back on her pretty boy,” Bergdahl said. “As she often does in bed, no doubt. You almost beat him—would have, except for our plan. Yet she still looks at you as nothing more than a plaything. Will you lie down and let her trample your pride in shit for a lark?”
“No.”
“Do as I tell you then, lord,” said Bergdahl, “and you shall have everything you desire. Including the Princess Melodía—and justice!”
* * *
“I am Seigneur Yannic.”
Rob and Karyl’s first visitor was a tall man, thin, with squinty dark eyes and brown hair that looked as if it had been cut around a bowl placed over his head. He wore a long white gown trimmed in scarlet. He had arrived aboard a high-strung brown-and-buff great strider.
“This is Seigneur Melchor, and Seigneur Percil. We’ve come to take command of Providence’s army.”
Yannic’s fellows regarded Karyl and Rob with bored hauteur. Behind them lounged the dozen mail-clad foot soldiers, house-archers, and shields who had escorted them.
The town lords had arrived at Séverin farm.
“You’re doomed to disappointment, then, gentlemen,” Karyl said. “One, it’s not yet near an army; two, I’m already in command. This is my lieutenant, Rob Korrigan. You and your men are welcome to volunteer as simple soldiers, if you wish.”
Recalling last night’s terrors, Rob wondered how much of Karyl’s calm certainty was a show. It was a convincing show, he had to admit. Perhaps when Karyl felt himself in his element—as he did here, at the head of an armed band, however motley—he might not need to pretend. Might his fears and memories only swarm to haunt him when he saw no foe or crisis to overcome?
Yannic’s small, thin-lipped mouth wrinkled to a sphincter in his long, imperious face.
“What? What?” demanded Lord Percil in a high nasal voice. His big head with its receding frizz of black curly hair dwarfed his wisp of a body. His little legs had stuck straight out to the sides of his huge black courser stallion when he rode up. “What nonsense is this?”
“No nonsense,” Karyl said. “Just truth.”
“How can that be? We’re nobles. You’re—you’re landless vagabonds!”
“Landless vagabonds who’ve been given charge of building an army from scratch, my lord,” said Rob. He decided he liked this noble less than most. “Besides, isn’t everyone equal in Providence?”
Percil turned red.
“Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding,” Melchor said. His brown slouch hat shaded plump brown-bearded features that melded at the bottom into several chins in lieu of a neck, the top couple sporting a neat goatee. His sturdy white marchador, though pretty as such creatures went, struck Rob as a greater nod toward practicality than the other town lords had in them. The hilt of the sword that hung from his belt was simple, worn, and unadorned, as was its scabbard.
“Intolerable!” Percil stammered.
“Ridiculous,” snapped Yannic. “We’re in charge here, and we’ll brook no nonsense.”
“No,” Karyl said. “You’re not.”
His tone kept calm but the words still cracked. Yannic jerked back as though Karyl had offered to strike him.
“Why waste breath on the scum?” said Percil. “We can settle this simply enough. Men—”
Rob laughed. “Is it that eager to die you are, then?”
Percil froze and said no more. “We have guards,” said Yannic. “Who’s going to threaten us?”
Lucas stepped up beside Karyl. “We stand with our captain.”
That’s far from a unanimous sentiment, I’m sure, thought Rob, who was trying to loosen his axe-head case unobtrusively. He glanced around. To his surprise several other men had stepped up behind Karyl. The tall, blond-moustached woods-runner, Emeric, had an arrow nocked though not drawn, pinned to his shortbow by a brown fin
ger.
“Be careful starting anything you don’t know how will end,” Karyl said.
“Ah, wise words,” Melchor said. “Perhaps this man’s a mendicant monk, as his humble garb suggests. In any event, why put ourselves to bother, my friends, when we can simply go back and sort this out with the Garden Council?”
“Very well,” Yannic said, without decompressing his lips. Percil just glowered like an angry baby vexer.
They mounted and rode away. Once they got out of easy earshot, they began to argue animatedly. Their house-troops, stone-faced, turned about and marched off behind.
Rob tipped his head near Karyl’s. “Will the Council listen to them?”
“Probably.”
“What if they decide those noble nitwits should lead the militia?”
“If they really wanted to do that, they’d have done it. Still, if the Garden Council does hand them command, I’ll happily go on the road again.”
“You’d give up without a fight?”
“It’s not my fight.”
Ignoring Rob’s sputter of fury, he turned away and nodded to Lucas, then to Emeric and the recruits who stood with him.
“Thank you,” Karyl said. “Now get back to work. We’re wasting light.”
Chapter 32
Terremoto, Earthquake—A call too low for humans to hear, employed as a weapon by crested hadrosaurs such as halberds, morions, and sackbuts. Can panic or stun; a mass terremoto, properly focused, can deal lethal damage to the largest meat-eater and instantly kill a human. Effective to thirty meters, forty en masse. Favored ranged weapon of Nuevaropan dinosaur knights, whose armor and training helps them resist its effects. As it takes a hadrosaur several minutes to recover from giving a terremoto, it can normally be used only once per battle, to disrupt an enemy formation during a charge.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
A hush had fallen over the watching grandes.
Few of Nuevaropa’s nobility were physical cowards. But there was nothing glorious about Dom Xurxo’s death. It was ugly. Now they watched with open admiration as their Condestable rode down the slope toward the bloody-jawed monster.