by Jack Porter
“I take it the townsfolk weren’t very helpful,” Ilana said. As usual, she wore her black corset that barely seemed to hold in her beautiful assets, black riding leggings, and a cloak thrown over her bat-like wings.
“We didn’t even get a chance to really ask around,” Sarina said with a rueful glance my way. “Because Jon decided to interfere with a slave.”
I bristled at that. “So I should have just stood there and let the half-elf get beaten, for looking my way, no less?”
Sarina shook her head and frowned as she fastened her pauldrons onto her shoulders. “There’s a bigger goal here, Jon.”
“For the greater good, then, is what you’re saying.”
Sarina looked up at me. “You know how I feel about the slaves. I just mean that we could have asked questions first and then defended the half-elf.”
“Not like there was time,” I muttered. “And anyway, you would have done the same thing. I saw the look on your face when that shrew pulled out the switch.”
Sarina’s face relaxed, and she almost smiled.
Ilana handed me the reins of my mare. “Too bad Jon seems to attract looks wherever he goes,” she said. “If he didn’t look so roguish, maybe he’d blend in a bit better.”
I ran my hand through my beard and then swept my hair back into its customary short ponytail. “I look roguish?” I asked with a small grin.
Ilana sighed and leaned forward to kiss me on the lips. “I’m not complaining,” she said. “But really, Jon, you do tend to attract attention.”
I kissed her back and then said, “I try not to.”
“Hmph,” Sarina snorted.
I grinned and looked at my horse, which tossed her head as if agreeing. “Those villagers wouldn’t be so eager to chase us out of town if they knew that we slaughtered a band of slavers last night, would they, girl?” I said, ignoring the fact that the villagers hadn’t really chased us anywhere.
My mare snorted and shook her head.
“What about ‘Firebolt?’” I asked the horse. After all these months, I still hadn’t found a name she liked.
The mare turned her head away from me to look at Sarina.
The one-time stable maiden laughed. “I don’t think that fits her, either,” Sarina said. “She’s brown.”
“Damn horse,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. Then I patted her on the neck and swung into the saddle. Ilana hopped lightly onto her mare, and Sarina mounted a gray gelding she had picked up on the road. It was a tall, surefooted horse of which she’d quickly grown fond.
Before we goaded the horses into motion, a small, frightened-looking boy ran up the road toward us, and I held up my hand to stop the girls from leaving.
The boy was dirty, barely skin and bones, and his eyes were as wide as saucers.
“Hold,” I told him. “That’s close enough.”
The boy stopped in his tracks, and he was clearly relieved at not having to come any closer to our party. I admit we looked formidable, although none of us would have harmed a child.
“Sir,” he said, glancing at Sarina behind me, “is it true you ride with a Hellhound and a succubus?”
I frowned, but nodded.
To his credit, the boy didn’t back down. “And your name is Jon?”
“Yes,” I said. “What of it?”
“I’m bid to tell you that you are to meet Ferlenna at the water sanctuary at midnight. She heard you were coming and knows why you are here.”
I put my hand on my sword and looked around, checking to make sure that no one was approaching, and that this boy wasn’t a distraction so that someone else could spring a trap. Ilana and Sarina made similar movements behind me.
“And how does Ferlenna know that?” I asked cautiously.
The boy nodded. “Because she says she knows you are looking for her, and she is able to help you. She also said to give you this jewel as a token of her good faith. You can return it to her when you meet.”
The boy held out a glittering green stone that hung on the end of a gold chain. It must have cost more than he’d ever see in his lifetime, and I was impressed that he hadn’t stolen it.
I glanced at Ilana, who nodded. “Is this woman by any chance a woman of immense age, with three missing fingers?” she asked.
The boy’s eyes widened even more at being addressed by a succubus, but he nodded quickly.
“So, she found us,” I said in a low voice.
“Not surprising,” Sarina said. “It is why we are here, after all.”
I nodded. “Tell Ferlenna we will meet her.”
The boy inched closer, stretching his arm to hold the jewel as far away from his body as possible. He held it up to me, and I leaned down to grab it.
Then he scurried backward. “She already knew you would agree,” the boy said. “And she waits for you there.”
I nodded. “Fine.” Then I reconsidered. By then, I’d gained a pretty good knowledge of the Slavers’ Bowl, but I didn’t know exactly where this water sanctuary was. So I dug around in a pouch on my belt and held up a few coins for the boy to see. “On second thought, can you lead us to her?”
The boy’s eyes grew even wider, and then broke out into a broad grin. He nodded, and I threw the coins to him.
“This way,” he said, and set a decent pace.
“Jon,” Ilana said quietly as she rode up beside me. “That was more money than he could make in a year of feeding pigs.”
“Good,” I said, knowing full well how much I had given the child. “Maybe he won’t always have to feed pigs.”
4
We had ridden a relatively short way and paused at the top of a rise, near an outcropping of boulders, when the boy pointed to a collection of buildings in the distance.
“That’s it,” he said. “The water sanctuary. The Order of the Perpetual Blessing live there. It’s where Ferlenna is waiting for you.”
He made to continue, to lead us the rest of the way, but the girls and I had other ideas. There was still some time to midnight, so we decided to wait, letting the boy go on ahead as he wished.
Technically, we were still within the Slavers’ Bowl, a plain between three groups of mountains. Up until recently, it had been full of roving bands of slavers who raided and demanded tribute from the towns and villages within the Bowl.
But ever since the Dark Elven Ruler Nya and her warrior elves had taken over the slavers’ market at Blackwharf, and then later challenged the Wraith King’s forces at Crowmore, relations between the elves and humans had been surprisingly strained. Even though the humans lived in terror of the Wraith King’s slavers and sorcerers, they also despised the elves. And because Nya had yet to cede control of Crowmore back over to the humans, the humans were ever more distrustful of her motives for seizing it from the Wraith King in the first place.
It was a long-standing, generations-long enmity between the peoples, but tensions had been higher throughout the Bowl because of it.
The Order of the Perpetual Blessing was a human order, and, even though none of us were elves, Ilana and I rode elven horses, and I wore elven clothes and armor, and carried an elven sword. Therefore, it seemed only prudent to wait.
At midnight, we approached the water sanctuary carefully. Again, with my magic, Sarina’s Hellhound, and Ilana’s claws and wings, we were a formidable enemy when we chose. But our purpose was not to murder humans. As far as we were concerned, anyone not directly involved with the Wraith King was someone we needed on our side.
Besides the diminishing slave trade, the Slavers’ Bowl was agricultural, mostly, and it had a greater percentage of above-ground streams than anywhere else in Hell within a thousand leagues. Or so I had been told. But of course, the water was still cursed, just as it was everywhere else.
The Order had evolved to sanctify the water before it was used for crops. Their communities and temples were always located upstream of a grouping of farms, and always manned by at least one priest or priestess. If anything happened to e
ither one of them, the other was there to take their place. It was perhaps one of the most important aspects of the culture within the Slavers’ Bowl, and those in the Order were treated almost as royalty. They were fed from the farms, and their adepts were treated better than any royal child in a castle.
It also meant the water sanctuaries could serve as a good, neutral meeting ground. Even the slavers tended to avoid them because without the Order, the people would starve, and then the slavers would have no slaves.
Funny the way this world worked.
Anyway, it meant the Order—and anyone staying with them—was generally afforded a certain protection.
But as we drew nearer, I knew that something wasn’t right.
This was one of the Order’s larger communities, a little hamlet almost, and even in the relative darkness, to me, the smoke rising from the small wooden and stone dwellings became clear. It wasn’t long after that before we could all see the bodies littering the ground.
Immediately, Sarina jumped off her horse and transitioned into her Hellhound form. She left the gray gelding to fend for itself, and Ilana and I rode swiftly toward the destruction.
We soon came to learn that no one had been left alive.
Men, women, children, young, old. No one had escaped the weapons of their attackers.
Ilana and I dismounted. “It hasn’t been long,” I said, kneeling next to the body of an old man. “This one is still as warm as I am.” The heat of Hell could have accounted for that, but the blood around his body was also fresh.
I stood and spat on the ground, away from the corpse that had been left to rot under the harsh red sky come morning. “Fuck!”
If we’d ridden straight there rather than waiting for midnight, we might have been able to do something to help.
Ilana stared at the body of a young boy. I didn’t ask, nor did I want to know if it was the same boy we’d met earlier, the one who had delivered Ferlenna’s message and guided us here.
Sarina was covering a lot of ground, sniffing around, checking everything out. She gave a short yip and we both looked over to what she had found.
She stood next to the water wheel, where the body of an extremely old woman had been hung with her arms and legs splayed. Upon approaching, I saw that she had so many folds and crinkles around her eyes and face that her skin looked like a wadded-up piece of paper. On her right hand, she had three missing fingers.
“Well, shit,” I said. “That must be Ferlenna.”
She had been tied to the water wheel and disemboweled. Her intestines hung from her opened belly all the way to the water, spoiling it all downstream. And some of her innards had gotten hung up in the water wheel, suggesting the wheel had been turning when they killed her.
Ilana went to examine the body while I scanned the horizon for enemies. If they had just been here, they could still be here.
“How much you want to bet they came here because Ferlenna was here, because she was going to meet us?” I asked.
Ilana turned and frowned at me. “I don’t want to bet you at all, Jon, because you are probably right.”
“It was rhetorical,” I said. Even though we’d known each other for months, I often said things the girls didn’t understand. Mostly cultural references and turns of phrases, though. “This can’t be circumstantial.”
“Which means someone at the village knew we were going to find Ferlenna,” Ilana said, “and perhaps even knew we were meeting her here tonight.”
“If they had known we were on the way, why didn’t they wait for us?” I asked.
“Because you are too powerful?”
“Maybe,” I said, not truly convinced. It usually didn’t stop slavers from fighting us, no matter how quickly we slaughtered them. “One thing seems certain, though…”
“There’s a spy in the village,” Ilana finished for me, and I nodded.
Sarina was following a trail with her nose now, and I watched as she rounded a house farther away. But she must not have found anything because she returned moments later and nudged my shoulder.
Then, she suddenly whipped around and began to snarl in the direction of the road. I spun around, too, only to see a youth, probably in his early teens, halted in his tracks.
“He wears the clothing of an acolyte,” Ilana said.
Sarina didn’t stop growling, but she didn’t attack, either.
The teen backed slowly away, taking in the three of us standing over all the bodies, and it wasn’t difficult to surmise what he was thinking.
“He believes we did this,” I said.
The boy, upon hearing me speak, turned and ran for his life. At least, I’m sure that’s what he thought he was doing. I had no intention of following him. It didn’t matter if the villagers thought that we did this. They already hated us. It had been a problem nearly everywhere we went in the Bowl, no matter how many slavers we killed.
“Time to go,” I said. “Let’s find the bastards who did this.”
5
We found their trail not far upstream, but the scent that Sarina caught wasn’t orcs or Hellhounds, but humans. And then we found horse tracks in the mud beside the water.
“Orcs don’t ride horses,” I said. “So, what are we dealing with?”
Ilana shook her head. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
We waited until Sarina picked up the scent again on the other side of the river and then waded across to follow. The other side was stony and hard, but we were able to urge our horses into a canter to keep up with Sarina, who kept her nose to the ground. Soon, she climbed upward, leaving the riverbank and heading into the low hills that bordered this area.
At the top, she crouched down, and I knew she’d found something. Leaving our horses where they were, we ascended the hill to meet the Hellhound. Crawling the last few feet, we peeked over the rise.
A band of horses and humans camped below us. I counted twenty armed individuals, men and women both. There were the obvious signs of banditry, too, with a few bags of stolen goods still tied to their horses’ saddles, weapons, and of course, blood-soaked clothing. Anger flared inside my belly as if I’d swallowed hot coals. The humans should only have one enemy—the Wraith King—not each other. But these cutthroats were out to prey on anyone weaker than themselves.
They had set a couple of scouts, but they were too busy to notice us. The woman was sitting on the man’s lap, riding him slowly and languorously. Their swords lay beside them on the ground, unheeded.
I turned and nodded to Ilana, and with a flap of her wings, she rose into the air. There was barely a sound as she ascended into the sky. Sarina and I watched as one second the couple was having the time of their lives, and the next, Ilana was falling on them with her daggers out. She made quick work of the woman, slitting her throat before she could make a noise and then letting her fall to the ground. Before the man realized his lover was dead, Ilana had grabbed him, and, holding her dagger to his throat, flew him into the air.
When she landed next to me with the man, he looked terrified. His dick was still hanging out, and Ilana smirked. She shoved him to the ground, and Sarina placed her snout over his face, baring her fangs.
“If you’re quiet,” I said, “I won’t let the Hellhound tear you to pieces. I’ve heard it’s quite painful.”
The man made an effort to cover himself, but then he looked over at Ilana, and his eyes glazed over. His dick responded quickly to the succubus, and that gave me a thought.
“How do you wish to die?” I asked him. “With fangs and teeth, or by a succubus? One is definitely quicker than the other.”
“I don’t want to die,” the man whimpered, and his eyes darted from Sarina in her Hellhound form to Ilana the succubus.
“But you will,” I said, “probably. The question is how painful you want it to be. And we’ll determine that by the information you give us.”
He gulped and licked his lips. “What do you want?” he asked quietly.
>
“I need to know if your party is responsible for the slaughter at the water sanctuary.” I knew they were—his own clothes were bloody and he had a fresh cut on his forehead. But I wanted to test his truthfulness.
The man’s eyes grew even wider, and he looked like he wanted to run. Seeing his hand twitch, Sarina placed a heavy paw on his chest and growled with soft menace.
“Well?” I asked, and Ilana put the dagger to his throat.
He glanced at her, his eyes trailing to her breasts. This ignited more fire within me, so I drew my own dagger and held it close to his dick. “Eyes front and answer the question. Was your party responsible for the deaths at the water sanctuary?”
The man’s eyes darted to where my dagger hovered just above his balls, and he let out a soft wail as his erection faltered. And then, he pissed himself. The stream fell to the side, and I shifted to avoid it.
“I see that we’ve picked an idiot,” I said, nodding to Sarina. She placed her jaws on his throat and then, seeming to think better of it, moved down to his belly.
“No, wait!” the man hissed, finally finding his voice. “I’ll talk. Yes, we did it.” He looked miserable, a fact that only made me happy.
Sarina moved just a hair’s breadth away from him, and I stared him in the eye.
“Why?” I asked.
His lips trembled, but he continued. “The seer said Ferlenna needed to die.”
“What seer?”
“She belongs to the warlord. She’s the one who told us where to find Ferlenna.”
“And is this warlord down in the camp below?”
The man shook his head.
I considered the man. “Who is the leader of your band?” I asked, feeling angry and pressing my dagger closer to his balls, so he could feel the cold steel of it about to pierce his skin.
He breathed rapidly as if about to panic, and then said, “We don’t have a leader. We answer only to ourselves.” The man’s face grew a bit harder. “We’re tired of always being asked to take sides, so we don’t. The warlord only provides support when we ask it, and he doesn’t ask for anything in return. Usually. Except this time.”