by Ari Marmell
"What the hell do you think you're-"
"How do you think Rebaine got his help in the first place, you idiot?" he hissed, casting a glance at Davro's rapidly reddening face. Then, to the ogre, "My apologies, Davro. My companion spoke without thinking. We would not, of course, attempt to force your cooperation."
Jassion glowered, but said nothing.
Davro himself nodded in Kaleb's direction, though his lone eye never left Jassion. "Apology accepted."
"Good." Kaleb stepped in front of Jassion, a clear signal that it was he, not the baron, with whom Davro would continue to deal. "We've no intention of interfering with your life here, or of bringing trouble-be it Rebaine or anyone else-down on your head. Please, just tell us anything that might help us in our hunt. We'll bother you no more, and you just might acquire some small measure of that justice you earlier mocked."
Inhuman shoulders rose and fell in a heavy shrug. "I'm really not sure what I can tell you. I've neither seen nor heard word of Rebaine since I left Mecepheum six years ago. He's obviously not with his family, so I have no sodding idea where he might've gone."
"That's it?" The words practically quivered as they escaped Jassion's tightly clenched teeth.
A second shrug. "Seems so." A pause. "Maybe if you've access to a sorcerer. After the war, Rebaine cast…" Broad lips quirked into a scowl around the two protruding tusks. "We haven't met, have we?" he asked Kaleb abruptly.
"I think I'd remember. Why?"
"I don't know. Something vaguely familiar about you-but then, all you two-eyed little dwarfs look the same to me."
"Maybe," Kaleb said, "but I can assure you, we've never met. You were saying?"
But it was no good. Whatever the ogre had seen in Kaleb-or imagined he'd seen-was apparently too much. "No, I don't think so," Davro told him, rising from his stool to tower above them. "I think it's time for you to go."
"Damn you," Jassion began hotly, "there's no way-!"
"I think there is." Somehow, without the twitch of a single muscle, the ogre's hand drew their attention to the massive blade at his side. "Go away. You want answers? Go ask Seilloah, the witch, if Theaghl-gohlatch doesn't eat you-and if she doesn't, for that matter. I still have cows to milk."
Without another word, Kaleb offered a shallow bow, and led both a puzzled Mellorin and a sputtering Jassion through the cavernous doorway. "All this way!" Minutes and some few hundred yards later, the baron remained furious enough to chew horseshoes into nails. "For nothing! Just more wasted time. We ought at least to make sure that damn monster pays for his own crimes before we leave!"
Mellorin scowled but chose, for the moment, not to respond. "I don't understand," she asked Kaleb instead. "He was about to tell us something. What happened?"
"I don't know," the sorcerer admitted with a much smaller shrug than Davro's. "Maybe he sensed something of my magics? Ogres aren't much taken with sorcery. Or maybe I really did remind him of someone."
"Or maybe he's just a lunatic!" Jassion snapped. "What does it matter?"
"It's just, if we could convince him to finish what he was saying…"
"He doesn't have to," Kaleb told her. "I know what he was saying." Then, "If you two keep staring at me like that, your eyes are going to pop out and roll away."
"You know?" Jassion squeaked.
"I'm almost certain that's what I just said. It's what I heard myself say. Perhaps I need to clean out my ears."
Despite his warning, the others continued to stare.
"During his various campaigns," Kaleb said with a sigh, "Rebaine cast a spell on his lieutenants, so he could find them again if necessary. It's a flimsy, tenuous magic, and no, before you even ask, I can't use it to trace him back. If the spell had been cast on me personally, I could probably do it, but as it is, the connection's just too faint."
"Oh," Mellorin said, disappointed. "I guess maybe we did come all this way-and kill that ogre," she added deliberately, "-for nothing."
Jassion, however, was frowning, not in his typical disapproving scowl but apparently in thought. "I admit, I know almost nothing about magic…"
Kaleb's eyes went comically wide. Jassion ignored him.
"But would such a spell last indefinitely?"
"No," the sorcerer told him. "A long time-decades, potentially, if no other magics interfered with it-but not forever."
"So wouldn't Rebaine have likely cast the spell on Davro again, after his war against the Serpent? In case the old one eventually faded?"
"Quite possibly. Are you going somewhere with this, old boy? Thinking of taking up magic? It's a little late, and I'm not sure you've got the brains for-"
"It just seems to me, in my ignorance," Jassion said with a slow smile, "that if the first one hasn't dwindled yet, two such spells on the same subject might leave a heavier magical trail than one. Wouldn't they?"
Kaleb's jaw sagged, practically unhinging itself very much like a snake's. "I'm an idiot," he said to Mellorin.
"I just want it noted," Jassion announced smugly, "that I'm not the one who said that."
The sun had settled beyond the mountains by the time Davro returned to his house, carrying a bucket of milk large enough for Mellorin to have bathed in. His eye narrowed in a fearsome glower at the sight of her perched on his stoop.
"I told you to leave!"
"We did, Davro. Kaleb and Uncle Jassion aren't here. It's just me."
"Fantastic. That's two-thirds what I asked for, then, isn't it? What are you doing here, Little Rebaine?"
Mellorin rose. "I want…" She swallowed once. "I want you to tell me about my father."
"You're joking."
"No, I'm not."
"You're crazy, then. Go away."
"Davro…" She rose to her feet, which brought her barely up to the giant's waist. "I don't know what drove you to live out here, apart from your family and your tribe. And I don't need to, to know that it can't have been an easy choice.
"But it was a choice you got to make. I don't know my father anymore-I suppose I never really did-and that's not something I chose. It's something that was taken from me. I know he's not your favorite topic…" She smiled. "Understatement, again?" she asked.
Despite himself, Davro grinned back at her.
"Please, Davro, just tell me something about him. Then, I promise, I'll go."
The ogre set down the bucket with a deep sigh and dropped into a crouch. "All right," he agreed. "But just a little bit."
"Thank you."
"I suppose," he began, deep in thought, "it makes-" He yawned deeply, his head splitting into a gaping chasm of chipped teeth and jagged tusks. "I'm sorry, it must've been-" Yawn. "-a more tiring day than I-" Yawn. "-realized. It makes most sense-" Yawn, a few blinks. "-to start with-"
The ogre toppled with a crash that set a dozen startled sheep to bleating. His snores, sufficient to shake the earth and shame the thunder, began instantly.
An unwary mind, and a few moments of contact.
Mellorin's body flexed, bulged, and melted like candle wax. A moment of hideous distension and impossible shapes, and then Kaleb stood in her place, blinking rapidly as he acclimated to the change in height. Swiftly, he knelt at Davro's side, casting a second spell to keep the ogre deep in slumber. When he finished, he glanced around and found he remained alone.
"Hey! Are you two just going to leave me standing here with my bugger-stick in my hand, or were you planning on joining me anytime soon?"
A shuffling in the nearby grasses presaged a pair of silhouettes rising into view.
"I think I'm appalled. Must he say things like that?" he heard Mellorin ask plaintively.
"I don't know if he must," Jassion replied with unaccustomed humor, "but I've noticed that he very often does."
"Keep watch on him," Kaleb said as they neared. "He should be out for hours, but I've never tried anything quite like this. Fiddling with Rebaine's location spell shouldn't have any effect on the magics keeping him asleep, but let's not take chances
."
And then, despite his insistence in calling them to his side, Jassion and Mellorin could do nothing but wait as Kaleb knelt over the ogre's chest and muttered his incantations.
"So?" Jassion asked as the sorcerer rose, his expression weary, more than an hour later. "Did it work?"
"I'm not…" Kaleb shook his head and leaned against the wall of the towering house. "Maybe. A little."
"How could it work a little?"
"Even with the two spells layered on each other, the trail's so tenuous I can barely feel it. I'm sensing a slight pull, but it's about as precise as pissing into a crosswind. I can tell you that he's somewhere between south and east of here."
"Ah. So we only have to search about a third of Imphallion, rather than all of it," Jassion groused. "At this rate, Rebaine will be dead before we ever get near him."
"He may not be the only one," Kaleb said.
"At least it's something," Mellorin interjected, not in the mood for another argument. "It's more than we had before."
Kaleb offered her a gentle smile.
"There's another option, isn't there?" Jassion asked. "As I recall, Rebaine was known to have had four lieutenants during the Serpent's War. We've only found three. We could try to find-Ellwyn? Something like that."
"I thought you were getting tired of traipsing all over the map hunting for these people," Mellorin said.
"I am. But I'm not sure how traipsing all over a third of the map looking for Rebaine is any better."
"Ellowaine."
The baron and the warlord's daughter both blinked. "What?"
"Her name," Kaleb said, "is Ellowaine. She's already been dealt with. She can't offer us anything new." And that, no matter how Jassion insisted and Mellorin cajoled, was all he would say.
"Fine!" Jassion, clearly, felt he'd had enough. "Let's conclude our business here, and we can be on our way." He moved toward the slumbering ogre, hand closing about Talon's hilt.
"No!" Mellorin hadn't even realized she'd spoken until the faint echo came back with the sound of her own voice.
"Oh, come off it!" her uncle snarled. "You want to snivel for the life of some random ogre, that's your call. I needn't understand it. But this is Davro! How many did he slaughter under Rebaine's orders? How many more will he kill if we let him live?"
"He doesn't look like he's all that interested in killing anymore," she noted, gesturing at the surrounding vale.
"This is not up for discussion," Jassion said coldly. "And you need to learn to think with your head, rather than your heart."
Gales of uncontrolled laughter burst from Kaleb's throat. He doubled up, clutching his stomach, and only the wall kept him upright. "That, coming from you," he gasped when he could finally breathe, "is hypocrisy that even the gods must envy. I expect that you've carved out a place of honor in Vantares's domain, where the entire pantheon will come to learn at your newly angelic feet."
Even beneath the chain hauberk, in the dim light of the moon and stars, they saw the baron's shoulders tense. His hands, as he raised Talon, vibrated with suppressed emotion.
"You," Kaleb said far more seriously, "are not going to kill that ogre. It is, as you said, not open to discussion."
"And why might that be, sorcerer?" Jassion demanded. At least for the moment, he'd stayed his stroke. "Surely not because you're hoping to win more of my niece's misdirected favors?"
Mellorin gasped, and there was no telling whether the spots of crimson across her cheeks were birthed by embarrassment or fury-or perhaps both. Kaleb held out a pacifying hand but otherwise remained focused on the baron.
"Because, m'lord Cretin, if we can't locate Rebaine in any reasonable amount of time, we may have to come back and repeat my efforts to track his spells back from Davro. And for that, he has to be alive."
They heard Jassion's ragged breathing as he struggled to decide.
"Look around you," Kaleb continued. "Davro's obviously not going anywhere. Once we've dealt with Rebaine, you can always come back and do whatever you feel needs doing. But for now-think with your head."
Jassion, with an audible hiss, slammed Talon back into its sheath. He spoke no word to either of them as he headed toward the horses, leaving his companions to hurry in his wake. THe dark night and mountain trails made for treacherous, nerve-racking travel, but they could not afford to make camp too near Davro's vale. It seemed unlikely that the ogre would come after them once he awoke, but the beast knew this terrain better than they, and it wasn't a risk any of them cared to take. The thought of a single sentry meeting up with him, while the others slumbered unawares, was the stuff of nightmares.
Albeit very short nightmares.
Jassion had gone some ways ahead, seeking a hollow or a clearing broad enough for them to bed down, and Kaleb took the opportunity to bring his mount alongside Mellorin's own palfrey.
"Could you really kill him?" he asked gently. She, at least, did him the courtesy of not pretending confusion.
"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I don't even know if I actually want him dead. But I have to see him pay for what he did. I know that you and Jassion are planning to see that that happens, and I want to help-or at least to be there."
"Because of what he did to Imphallion? Or for abandoning you?"
"It's all the same thing," she insisted with a sidelong glare-one that answered the question far more truthfully than her words. Kaleb chose not to pursue it further.
"Thank you for, um, for back there," she said then, with a vague wave back the way they'd come.
Again he smiled at her. "For what? I was just following the most rational course."
"Of course you were," she said stoically, and then she, too, broke into a smile. "But are you sure it wasn't maybe, just a little bit, to earn my 'misdirected favors'?"
"Hideously misdirected," he told her. "But for them, I'd have done far more."
Driven by a single shared thought, they leaned over the narrow gap between the horses. Lips pressed tightly together, they drank deeply of each other, and for once, nobody appeared from nearby to interrupt.
Chapter Sixteen
She marched the city's outermost streets, oblivious to the muttering and joking of the men in loose formation behind. She knew she could count on them to watch her back if trouble appeared, and that was all she asked. Beyond that, she cared as little for what they had to say as they did for her.
Nobody who'd ever met or even heard of this woman would have mistaken her, for she looked very much today as she had for over a decade of violence and carnage. Her blond hair was perhaps longer in back than once it was, tied in twin braids that reached to her shoulder blades, but it hung unevenly at the sides. She remained gaunt, almost to the point of appearing ill, yet more than strong enough to outmuscle enemies who outweighed her twice over. A pair of short-handled hatchets hung at her waist, and over her chain hauberk she wore, not the tabard of a true Cephiran soldier, but a simple crimson sash crossing her chest from the left shoulder. Clasped with a cheap tin gryphon, it was the standard "uniform" of all non-Cephiran mercenaries who served the invaders.
The mark of a traitor to Imphallion, some would say-a few had said, to her face-but if she cared, it never showed. What had Imphallion done for her?
Emdimir itself, in fact, had changed more in weeks than she herself had in years. The streets, recently so crowded with refugees that the dirt had practically been compacted into stone beneath uncounted feet, now hosted only sporadic traffic. Nowhere in Cephiran-occupied Imphallion did the populace enjoy those freedoms that the invaders had initially permitted their early conquests, such as Rahariem. No longer did citizens go about their business in greater numbers than their occupiers, living daily lives as though little untoward had occurred. No longer did Guildsmen and nobles of the region govern with only occasional nudges and directives from Cephiran officers.
No, the destruction of Rahariem's western gates, and the rise of the abortive insurgency, had shown the occupiers the error of merc
y and kindness. Men- and women-at-arms-both Royal Soldiers of the Black Gryphon, and mercenaries of varying nationalities and scruples-patrolled the occupied cities in overwhelming numbers. Gatherings of Imphallian citizens were restricted to five or fewer, with violators immediately relocated to the constantly inflating work gangs, whether or not they were of proper age or health for heavy labor. Shops providing basic goods and services were permitted to remain open, but between the restrictions on public assembly and the fact that Cephiran soldiers took what they needed for whatever price (if any) they felt like paying, most merchants found it more cost-effective to keep their doors shut.
She'd heard rumors that a few stubborn pockets of resistance remained back in Rahariem, but they were little more than outlets for angry youths to hurl waste and scrawl defiant slogans. The fools seemed incapable of understanding, the mercenary mused, that far from doing any good or inspiring others to rise up, they were merely providing the invaders with the excuse and motivation to crack down all the harder.
The people in Emdimir and other more recently conquered communities were more pliable. But still, their movements were restricted, their curfews enforced.
Her patrol route took her along the impoverished and half-ruined neighborhoods, near the outer wall that, when faced by the Black Gryphon, had served as no defense at all. Most of the citizens had been moved away from the gates, either deeper into the city or out into temporary camps meant to ease Emdimir's overcrowding. Those few who remained worked daily, beneath the watchful eyes of Cephiran taskmasters, to reinforce those walls against possible Imphallian counterattack. Choked with the dust and sweat of ongoing construction, this was a particularly unpleasant part of town.
Which was precisely why she'd received this assignment. The Cephirans might use Imphallian mercenaries, but they weren't about to trust them with anything important. She scowled, swallowing a surge of resentful bile so familiar in flavor that it might have been a favorite meal. After everything I did for them…