by Bill McCurry
“Too much time.” Ella looked away from me and scanned the horizon.
I plopped down onto my butt. “I have slept two hours since we crossed the Blood River yesterday morning. You’ve slept less than that.”
“It is a hardship, but we can withstand it.” She marched toward her horse.
“We can.” I stood and trotted after the arrogant idiot. “We can also be so tired out when we catch Vintan that he destroys us by wiggling his finger.”
Ella looked at me and cocked her head. “No.”
“Let me say it another way. Should we be excessively fatigued when we overtake Vintan, he shall obliterate us with the slightest gesticulation.”
She smiled, which oddly made her look more tired. “All right, I deserve that. But you do not understand.”
“Sorry, darling, but you are the one who doesn’t understand. You don’t understand your task. I expect you did at one time, but everything has changed.”
Ella stepped back. “I suggest you explain that immediately.”
“You set out to rescue the prince from a raiding force of Denzmen. Now you have to keep him alive when Vintan decides to kill him.”
“Why should Vintan kill him after preserving him through this entire journey? It makes no sense.”
“I heard Vintan commit to it. He promised the God of Death. And he can do it. He’s a dangerous man.”
She raised her eyebrows. “More dangerous than you?”
“Probably. When we fought, I got broken up like a bunch of green sticks, and he rode off like he was going to a party.”
She looked down, scratching her forehead, and then pulled her shoulders back. “Very well. I intend to stab him in the liver and carve off his intimate parts. How shall we do it?”
“The first thing we do is sleep for three hours. If we sleep one hour, we might as well stab the prince in the heart ourselves. That may be an exaggeration, of course.”
“Are you lying to me about this?”
“No. I admit I’ve lied to you on occasion, which is one of my failings, but I’m being dead truthful about this. If you’re going to lead us, lead us on the correct errand.”
“I pray you’re not lying. You may be powerful, but as you have admitted, you must sleep sometimes.” She walked toward the others. “Sleep three hours, not one!”
I whispered, “No.”
Limnad sighed and muttered something I couldn’t hear.
Eighteen
I am a coward when it comes to magic. If I can figure out a way to do something like a regular person, I stay away from magic like it was a whore with five diseases and a knife in its garter. I have met sorcerers who used magic for damn near everything of consequence. They thought it was beneath them to dig a well or throw a drunk out of the tavern by hand. But in my youth, I saw brave sorcerers use magic lavishly and trade often with the gods. Soon they were burdened with cruel debts, emptied of feeling, and hardly human at all.
Sorcery is a dangerous occupation, so I decided to become as proficient as possible at killing folks with plain, uncomplicated steel. For twenty-five years, I’ve used steel to kill people who were trying to kill me, and since I’m still alive, I suppose that decision was sound.
I knew things were bad for us when I realized I wasn’t even considering steel to solve our problem. We had followed the trail for nearly two days straight since our three-hour nap, through wooded hills and canyons smelling of cedar and chalk. The trail was now running parallel to a cliff’s edge. In a place where a steep hill jutted out not far from the cliff, the Denzmen had built a small wooden keep that blocked the whole space from hillside to cliff’s edge.
No horse could climb over the tall, jagged hills, but we still had many options. We could ride some number of miles along the hills to find a way over, or ride miles back to find a way around the canyon. We could set our horses free and climb over the hills, or ride straight through the keep, killing as many Denzmen as required. Or, we could wait a few days for the army to arrive and watch it smash through the keep. Or, we could go back to Smat’s village and drink some of their wine, which wouldn’t please Ella, but I liked to keep all options available.
Ella and I had climbed partway up the hill and were peeking around the edge to examine the keep. I said, “I was just thinking that going back to that village and drinking wine is an option we shouldn’t toss out.”
She whacked me on the shoulder. “You are not as entertaining as you believe yourself to be.”
The trail ran through a gate in the middle of the wall closest to us and through a similar gate in the far wall sixty paces beyond. Parapets ran along the top of each wall, and six men stood on each parapet.
Ella asked, “What are the men on the parapets holding?”
“Crossbows.”
“Ah.”
“Not the crank kind—the kind you load with your foot in the loop.”
“That makes no difference.”
“They’re loaded.”
“Stop flaunting your eyesight,” she said.
“Just flirting a little. We might die before sundown, so if there’s ever a time to do it, this is it.”
“Hush. Now is the time to craft a stratagem. Not to flirt.”
“Are you asking for my opinion?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Please, please favor me with your martial prowess, Bib, that I may gaze with awe upon your magnificence.” Ella rolled her eyes. “So, stop acting like an ass. What do you think?”
“You’re going to love this.”
Before we started the forest fire, we made sure the healthy wind was blowing toward the keep. Wind direction would make this tactic possible. Rain must have been scarce for a while, because the trees and brush were dry. The Denzmen had cleared a large area around their keep, so the fire wasn’t likely to burn it down. But if I commanded a wooden structure and saw a lot of mysterious smoke nearby, I’d want to know what the hell was going on.
About fifteen minutes after the fire grew to a sizable blaze, four soldiers hustled around the hill where Ella, Ralt, and I waited to ambush them. Three of them were dead before they even saw us, and the fourth only had time to call us grunting bastards before he died.
Ella said, “Change clothing with them. I’ll keep watch.”
We didn’t strictly change clothing with the Denzmen. We put their outer clothes on over our own. Then I kept watch while Ella wriggled into a soldier’s clothing, and Ralt dragged the bodies out of sight. We hid again.
Twenty minutes later, six Denzmen stamped into view, scanning the area and more cautious than their dead predecessors. Vigilance didn’t keep them alive, however, and soon I helped Ralt drag these bodies off to join their friends.
Ralt said, “It’s like having a barmaid bring you beers. You think they’ll send another round?”
“That would be considerate of them. Let’s see if they do. We might get bored waiting, though.”
Sadly, half an hour passed without another patrol for us to slaughter.
I said to Ella, “What do you think, General? Should we wait or strike?”
“Let us begin the attack.”
We crept along the hillside as far as we could without being seen from the keep. A minute later, Ella slapped my shoulder and nodded. She marched toward the keep, head down, and I followed along with Ralt, just three soldiers coming back to report.
When we had closed within fifty paces of the keep, I whispered, “Limnad, it’s time.”
I heard crashing, banging, horses squealing, and men yelling. That was Limnad inside the keep smashing everything she could reach, terrifying everybody, and generally creating hell. I glanced at the parapet, and every man on it was looking inside the keep. At that moment, half of a spinning wagon hurtled into the air and dropped back inside the keep.
Ella arrived at the gate first, but she stood aside. I reached with both hands and pulled blue strands out of the air. Then I grabbed the gate and wove the strands all through the grating. Over the next ten seconds,
I aged the wood until the gate was entirely rotten. The three of us hurled ourselves against the slats and broke it apart. We also knocked down a soldier running toward the gate. I stabbed him in the throat and paused to grab his small shield. With crossbowmen all around the keep, a shield wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The gate’s destruction was the cue for Desh and Stan to gallop our horses up toward the keep. I hoped they were paying attention.
I left Ella and Ralt to clear the gate’s debris and hold it against any Denzmen who tried to retake it. I ran up the stairs to the parapet to kill the six crossbowmen before they punctured Desh and Stan. Limnad could only create havoc inside the keep for so long before someone got lucky and stabbed or shot her, so as I ran up the stairs, I said, “Limnad, retreat.” The sounds of wood crashing stopped right away. There must not have been much more than splinters left out there, anyway.
I had counted on Limnad’s antics to pull one or two men off the parapet, so when I stepped off the stairs and saw at least ten crossbowmen lined up, I reconsidered things for an instant. The smart move would be running right back down the stairs. But I also saw our horses charging toward the keep at a good clip, and the crossbowmen would have them in range before long.
Of course, I wanted to kill them. And to be honest, I was glad that more of them had arrived. I’d get to kill them too. Or, they might kill me, which might not be the worst thing, either.
The parapet was wide enough for two men to squeeze past, but not to fight side by side. That was perfect. All of them must have fired at Limnad, or maybe into the air trying to hit anything at all, because now they were reloading as fast as they could. The first man was looking the wrong way, so I opened his throat and tossed him over the parapet. The second man saw me but froze. I pierced his heart. The third man was looking down, struggling with the bowstring. I thought about beheading the fool but just sliced his neck instead.
The fourth man shouted, and everybody else looked up. He tried to block me with his unloaded crossbow, and then bash out my brains. Poor tactics. I used a thrust through his belly and a journey over the parapet to teach him better.
The next man had dropped his crossbow and was drawing his sword. I was a little close, so I smashed his face with the shield and shoved him over the side. The man after that struggled, one hand on his sword while the other was holding his crossbow. I stabbed him in the eye and moved on.
I looked ahead and saw four more men. Two had drawn their swords, and the two behind them were hurrying to reload like I was a demon vomiting acid. I blocked a cut from the next soldier, and the man behind him did a ridiculous thing. He reached around his friend and threw his sword. Maybe he thought he was using his friend as a shield, or maybe fear had made him insane. I didn’t much care, because the sword hurtled into my view at almost the same moment it touched my shirt.
If that man had thrust his sword around his friend instead of throwing it, I would have died right there. Instead, it whirled past my shield and struck close to my heart. He’d thrown it spinning, so instead of killing me, it plowed a ragged furrow up my chest, skirted my throat, and sliced an inch deep across my shoulder.
I’m not the toughest man I’ve ever known, nor even among the top hundred. However, I have been cut more than my share, possibly because I’m arrogant and foolish about letting an insult pass. I felt the blood splash but not much pain right away. I swung a casual arc and sliced the nearest man’s neck. I shoved him aside, only to see the coward who’d thrown the sword sail over the parapet to the ground outside the keep.
The next soldier had reloaded his crossbow and was raising it. Behind him, the last man had almost finished reloading. I lifted the shield as I lunged, and the soldier fired, striking near the shield’s center. The bolt hammered the shield from three feet away and ripped it off, breaking my arm as it went. At the same time, I stabbed that soldier in the throat, and he collapsed straight down.
The last man raised his weapon to shoot me in the chest. I was just too injured and too far away to thrust with any kind of control before he fired. My left arm was useless, so I dropped my sword, jumped at him like a crazy man, and grabbed the reloading loop on the end of the crossbow. I hauled the weapon around as it fired, and the bolt flew away outside the keep. I hoped it would kill the bastard who’d thrown his sword. I smashed the crossbow into the Denzman’s face, pulled my long knife, and punched it twice into his heart.
I hoped Ella and Ralt were having an easier time than this.
I sheathed my sword, held onto my broken arm, and trotted back down the stairs, waiting for my body to realize what had been done to it. Ralt met me at the bottom step and pursed his lips. “If you wasn’t walking around, I’d bury you.” He led me back toward the center of the keep, which looked almost ankle-deep in splinters. Desh was guiding our horses across, and Stan was guarding his rear, facing two Denzmen. As I watched, Ralt stabbed one from behind, and Stan finished the other. The far parapet was clear, and Ella was running back down the stairs from it.
“Come on!” Ella shouted, running through the gate, and all of us followed.
Just outside the gate, I asked Ella, “How many men do you think they still have?”
She shrugged. “Four? Twenty? I cannot give you a useful estimate.”
“All right, leave me a horse and go.”
Ella shook her head. “Hah! You’ve made a great many foolish statements today, but that one triumphs. I’m not leaving you. You might collapse before I ride one hundred paces.”
“Stay then, but stand away.” I pulled a blue strand out of nothing, then another, then four more. I pushed them one-handed into the keep’s wall just beside the gate. Swords rang off one another inside but I didn’t look.
“Stay out from under the gate!” I yelled. Within a few more seconds, I had rotted all the wood beside the gate.
I shouted “Run!” as I sprinted away. The gate and wall collapsed to one side, blocking the opening. The parapet over the gate and wall clattered down into a pile of timbers.
I looked back. “They won’t be riding after us for a couple of hours. So, bring the victor his mount!”
“Your faculties have been scrambled,” Ella said as she was making a quick sling from one of the Denzmen’s clothes. “Come along and do precisely what you’re told.”
I nodded. The pain hit just then, and I felt like those timbers had fallen on top of me.
Stan said, “Here, mount yourself up on my nag, since you just about got yourself sliced in half. It’s only till you get yourself better, mind you. I ain’t riding your nag forever. Its back is bony, and my ass ain’t fat like Ralt’s.”
“Thank you, Stan.” I mounted, glad to have a saddle, and we trotted south. I tend to get morose after the satisfaction of killing passes, but this fight began producing some especially excellent grouchiness.
A bit later, Ella rode up beside me. “So, we succeeded. However, don’t indulge in arrogance simply because your plan worked. It was imperfect in many respects, one of the most significant being that you were nearly killed.”
I didn’t look over at her. “All right, I won’t.”
“That was flirting. It’s sad you failed to recognize it.”
Just then, talking felt like work—like digging a moat with a spoon. “Consider me to have flirted back. Imagine that it was really good.”
“Bib, is something other than your wounds plaguing you?” Ella reached out to touch me.
I edged my horse away from her. “Nothing a few dozen drinks won’t cure.”
“Look at me!” Her face was flushed. “Is it something about that wretched spirit saying your heart has turned to ash?”
“Hell, pay no attention to that.”
Ella slapped her leg. “So, it is, then.”
“I said it isn’t!”
“No, you said pay no attention.”
Now I felt like I was digging a moat with a stick. “I’m tired. Like Stan said, I got sliced in half.”
Ella edged her
horse toward me and reached, but I rode away from her touch again. She took a brisk breath. “Very well. We’ll speak of this another time.”
“I hope not.”
What I meant to say was, “I hope not, because I might have to give Limnad permission to hold you under a waterfall until you die.”
I might not have meant that literally.
Nineteen
Living trees don’t like getting burned up. They prefer to grow. However, dead wood wants to rot. Sorcerers find it difficult to make dead wood grow because the wood is done with all that. Your body wants to be healthy instead of sick, so healing is straightforward. Bugs want to nest and find food, not fly off to sting somebody, so it can be a lot of work to make them sting.
If I’m going to use magic, I try to make things do what they already want to do. It’s a lot less work.
Trees aren’t the only things that don’t like getting burned up. In fact, hardly anything likes getting burned up, so a sorcerer who can only burn things has a lot of work ahead of him. In just the same way, nothing wants to be suddenly made not to exist. I can’t think of a single thing that wants that. Since Vintan was a Breaker and all he could do was make things not exist, he would probably be using up a lot more energy than me to get things done. So, that was in our favor.
The general idea works with people too. People will tell you they want to change, but they’re lying. If they wanted to change, they would already have started changing, and they wouldn’t be talking about all this changing bullshit. The world can make them change when it takes someone away from them or smashes their illusions into bits smaller than a gnat’s dick. But people who want to change on their own are too busy doing it to waste time talking about it.
That’s why I didn’t want to talk to Ella about this love of murder coming from inside me. The world, through Gorlana, had shown me that about myself, so maybe it would also make me change. I didn’t want to ruin my chances by acting like one of those people who talks about changing but just stays the same way forever.