Death's Collector

by Bill McCurry

  Desh paced me as we descended into the valley. “Limnad will be staying here.”

  I looked around and nodded. “Well, it is her river, and from what we’ve seen, I doubt any magical being can survive north of it. I think I might miss her.”

  “I’ll be staying here too.”

  “Research?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Or… intensive research?”

  Desh smiled the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his face. “Let’s say that I’ll become the world’s greatest expert on spirits.”

  “If you live.”

  “If I live.”

  “I know I don’t have to warn you about anything, but I do have a suggestion.” I held up my hand before he interrupted me. “Someday you should leave this river long enough to learn the blacksmithing trade. Some enchantments don’t take well on cloth, leather, or loose bark.”

  At the riverbank, I thanked the soldiers, embraced Limnad, and nodded an enigmatic, sorcerer-like nod at Desh. Then Ella, Pres, and I rode out to ford the river, Ella beside me and Pres on her other side. Halfway across, when the water was up to a horse’s chest, a guttural grinding noise rose all around us and the swift water began churning. It wasn’t just churning near us. The surface of the whole river had become choppy as far as I could see in both directions.

  I hauled the reins and kicked my horse to ride back out of the river. My mount still breathed and her eyes rolled, but where running was concerned, she may as well have been carved out of marble. I spotted Limnad almost flying across the water with Desh in her arms. Within moments, she had disappeared upstream. That’s when I knew something horrible was about to happen.

  The water erupted thirty feet in front of me, and Krak, Father of the Gods, rose up to stand in the river. The water grew calm, but only in a circle around his ten-foot-tall self. I didn’t feel any breeze, but wind sure brushed through his majestically disarrayed silver beard and hair. He wore the Father’s Robe, a plain garment whiter than anything else in existence. He was known to brag about that. His right hand was clenched in a fist.

  Gods do not often manifest in their person, but when they do, it’s an event of some note. This appearance of Krak’s was the second time a god had manifested in my lifetime. The first was when Lutigan visited the Land of Karwell to attend a victory celebration in his honor and to impregnate an astounding number of young women. Not all manifestations have been so cheery. Almost a hundred years ago, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named showed up to destroy Clefmeet, the third largest city in the world. I’ve never seen the ruins, but supposedly lots of the residents still exist there, deathless, and suffer a broad variety of tortures.

  Krak had last manifested over three hundred years ago, when a king beseeched him to grant his people victory. Krak destroyed both armies for not fighting hard enough. Having dealt with Krak a number of times, I knew how badly this could go. I wanted to run, cry, and vomit all at the same time.

  “Bow down!” Krak boomed. “I am the damned Father of the Gods! What kind of manners did your parents teach you? I should disembowel them right this moment.”

  I bowed, and I expect everybody else did too.

  “Better. Now, give me your swords. You, over there on the riverbank! Come here with your swords. Just toss them at my feet and go back over there!”

  As I threw my sword, I almost giggled. It felt like the Father of the Gods was shaking us down in some dim alleyway.

  After everyone, including Moris’s soldiers, had thrown their swords, Krak screamed, “Who is holding out? I will smash you flatter than worm shit!”

  Ella said, “This sword belongs to another. I cannot surrender it.” Her voice warbled a little, but she sat tall.

  “Ella,” I hissed. “Give him the sword!”

  Pres said, “Do it. On behalf of the queen, I give you leave to relinquish the sword.”

  Ella crossed her arms and looked around at everything except Krak. “No. I have made an oath.”

  Krak smiled. “Young woman, the Blade of Obdurate Mercy is not meant for you to bear. Nor your queen. Give it to me.” He yelled, “Because I can destroy you with a thought!”

  Ella’s entire body was trembling, but she gave a tiny head shake.

  “Murderer, if you like this woman at all, save her life now. Convince her.”

  Krak wasn’t known to hesitate when he could kill instead. I stared at the god, and then I squinted at Ella. “He can’t take it away from you. You’ve got to give it to him. And he can’t hurt you while you’re carrying it.”

  Ella began panting, sweat coating her face. “I shall continue then.” She dismounted her statue of a horse and began wading toward home, chest deep.

  Krak probably couldn’t manifest north of the river. Nothing godlike seemed to exist there now, so if she made it to the riverbank, she’d be safe. Of course, safe was a shaky concept when the most powerful being ever known might yank you into small bits and hide each one in a remote part of the world. “Hurry! Wade faster!”

  “Enough!” Krak opened his fist, and the impossibly searing light of the sun instantly vaporized twenty-five soldiers, along with their horses, a great quantity of water, the riverbed to a depth of sixty feet, and a hilltop two miles away. He pointed at the remaining soldiers. “If you don’t want that to be you, kill her and bring me her sword!”

  The soldiers’ horses started moving again, and they charged into the river toward Ella.

  My horse was still petrified, so I dove into the water and reached Ella in a few moments. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her under. She twisted like a seal and put me in a headlock, but I grabbed the hilt of her sword. She bit into my ear and clamped down, but I swept the blade free in one movement. I surfaced, pulling her up by my ear, which I felt tear a little. I found myself wishing that she wouldn’t fight so hard while I was saving her life, but she was defying Krak, so expecting her to go easy on me was a foolish hope.

  I threw the sword at Krak. He raised his hand, and every non-divine being in the river became motionless. Ella was still biting down on my ear.

  “Finally! I should turn you all into garfish for wasting my time. And then turn you inside out for being a bunch of disobedient, whining back-warts.” Krak raised the stupid god-named sword and pressed the crosspiece to his forehead. “Murderer, come here.” He released both Ella and me, and she let go of my ear before spitting blood into the water.

  I waded to Krak. I often anticipate what’s about to happen, maybe not in detail, but in general terms. This time, I had not a whisper of a fart of a rumor of a clue what might happen next.

  Krak held the sword out to me. “This is yours now, Murderer. Don’t screw around and lose it.”

  “Why?” I shook my head. It made no sense. “That is, why, Father Krak?”

  “Wherever you take this sword, the way will open. Men will be able to reach through to the gods again.” Krak held up his fist—the one that destroyed twenty-five men at a time.

  “And gods will be able to reach through from your side too, huh?”

  “Of course.” Krak smiled.

  I almost spit in the river, but I held onto my temper. “To hell with it. I don’t want it.”

  Krak shouted, “You’ll take it and be happy with it!”

  “Give it to Desh. He’s young. He wouldn’t know a shithouse full of scorpions if he saw one.”

  “Murderer, you could make a fence post burst a blood vessel!” Krak lifted his hands, and the river started rising. “All right, you grunting toenail, I offer you a trade.”

  I laughed at him. And laughed. I didn’t stop until it was embarrassing for everybody.

  Krak lifted the river until the water reached my neck. “You will carry the sword for us, and in exchange, I will give you knowledge.”

  “I’d laugh again, but I peed myself last time.”

  “You will carry the sword, or I will snap you in half like a bean! You have no choice!”

  “Father of the Gods, you know what it’s like with sorcerers. We al
ways have choices, even if they’re all bad.”

  The river water fell back down with a sucking splash. “Very well, smartass. I offer you this choice.” Krak pointed across the valley. “If you don’t want to trade with me, I will drop that hill on everybody here. But if you do agree to trade, I will give you the knowledge first. Then, if you think it was a good bargain, you will take the sword. If you think it was a bad bargain, you may go free without the sword.”

  I didn’t see how I could lose, which meant I was almost certain to lose. But I’d never heard of any sorcerer getting a deal like this. I couldn’t turn it down. “All right, give me this unfathomable knowledge.”

  “When you first assumed your debt with Harik, he did not know that your daughter would die soon anyway.”

  “Did it matter? The pretentious twat would have done the same damn thing regardless.”

  “He would have. But since he didn’t know, you could not have found out from him. No matter how clever or subtle you were, you couldn’t have saved her. It was not your fault.”

  I looked down. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I’d always known it was my fault. Not believed it, but known it. I was a sorcerer, so it had to have been. I must have missed some clue that Harik let slip, and it would have let me save her. I held out my hand to take the sword without looking up, because I sure wasn’t going to let that sack-of-shit god see me cry.

  I took the sword, and Krak returned to whatever birthday party or orgy he had planned next. Moris’s remaining soldiers turned back for home in a somber mood. Pres, Ella, and I rode north into the Kingdom of Glass, and I avoided riding next to Ella.

  On the second evening after the river tragedy with Krak, Ella looked at me across the campfire. “I accept your decision to take the sword. I understand why you didn’t defy Krak. In fact, you were brave. Stupider than a bin of scrap iron, but very brave. And I apologize for your ear.” She tossed a couple of sticks into the fire. “You’re a terrible person, but I don’t mind that. I understand why you ensured that Vintan was dead at the cost of leaving Pres mutilated. I understand, and I want to forgive you. But I cannot forgive you. That is the way I feel, and I can’t help it.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Again. My conversation skills have grown poor.”

  “I know what to say.” Pres walked into the firelight carrying more wood. “Ella, your friend Bib didn’t stab you in the heart like my friend did to me. That’s a virtue.”

  “Pres…” Ella waved him away.

  “Of course, he did save my life, so you have to be harsh with him for that. And he saved your life too, so you should be exceedingly harsh.”

  Ella glanced at Pres’s arm. He had the firewood balanced tenderly since he lacked a hand.

  Pres dropped the wood and raised his stump. “I could rule the kingdom holding this arm behind my back, if that would make a difference.”

  “Or wear a puppet on it,” I said.

  “Yes, a horse puppet.”

  Ella stared at us.

  Pres said, “If you don’t have to look at my stump, will you forgive him?”

  Ella opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head.

  I said, “Who knows what may happen? After you get home and I leave again, it may be easier to change your mind. I’m told my company is more enjoyable in theory than in practice. More than one woman has fallen in love with me from a distance.”

  Ella smiled and tossed a stick at me. Then she lay down facing away from the fire.

  A few days later, we reached Crossoak. All the citizens were hiding in their sturdy homes, and no one even peeked out. I wrote out directions for finding the coins I had hidden in the woods all around, and I left them under a rock in front of Sunflower’s door.

  Not far north of Crossoak, a column of riders came into sight, trotting downhill toward us under the Glass banner. We rode at an easy pace to meet them. The lead man waved at us to stop, and we stopped right away. “Who are you, and what’s your business on the king’s road?” said a barrel-shaped man with a singer’s voice.

  Before I said anything, Pres spoke up. “I am Crown Prince Prestwick. Since my father is dead, this is my road and I’m here on my own business.”

  Barrel Man leaned back and stared for a moment. “Well, pardon me for being a filth-scraping ass, Your Highness. Please forgive me, Your Highness. I don’t want to get any red-hot barbed swords stuck up my bottom for being a scabby, disrespectful weasel. Am I forgiven?”

  Pres glanced at me, but he had decided to snatch the reins for himself, so I shrugged. He said, “Yes, of course.”

  Barrel Man bellowed, “Shut it, you jerk-jawed oaf! A boy giving me orders. Corporal, disarm them.”

  “Bugger me with dried-up mackerel!” Stan walked up from the back of the column. “Here I figured you three was nothing but worm turds by now. Captain, this really is the prince. I swear, I saw him giving folks orders and everything. And his governess, a righteous woman, I didn’t even try to lure her off for a quick roll. And—”

  “Corporal, attention!”

  Stan stood up just a little straighter but hung on to his normal air of disinterest.

  “You will shut that rancid shit-canyon in your face until I tell you to puke out whatever limp thoughts you have fermented in that rotting horse turd you call a skull! Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “You flogging well better, because you’re nothing! You’re like one of those little dogs with big ears and no balls. Now take their slut-rutting weapons before I have you sliced open and dragged all the way back to Glass!”

  “Sorry,” Stan muttered to me as he held out his hand for my sword. “I’d appreciate you handing it over and not cutting me in two, seeing as we’re old friends and I shared my wine with you.”

  “Here you go, Stan. It’s not your fault.”

  “Goddamn right it’s not,” he said. “To hell with this corporal bullshit. Thank you, miss, and you too, Your Highness. You try to save an officer from ruin, and it’s nothing but insults. If Your Highness don’t mind, could you see that the captain ends up dangling from the battlements by his tits, or something just as nasty? I’d count it a favor.”

  Captain Barrel Man called out to the soldiers behind him, “This far south is far enough. Reverse column! We’re going home!”

  The soldiers cheered while Stan carried away our weapons. I didn’t even consider fighting. I wanted to be there when Captain Barrel Man got back to the capital and showed his bosses the fine prisoners he’d taken.

  Thirty-Four

  Profanity is better than poetry in almost every way. Profanity is direct, easy to understand, and unambiguous. Poetry is evasive, obscure, and often confusing. I recall a poem that seemed to be about a boat, but I found out later it was about someone’s grandmother remembering how she fell in love with a farmer. Those three stanzas about the boat were metaphorical.

  I’m not opposed to metaphors, but I prefer them to have impact. When a poem talks about drifting among the scraping reeds at sunset, I have a good idea what that means, but I can’t say that I care. I don’t care who’s drifting, I really don’t care about the reeds, and if it’s sunset, I just want to know where I can buy something to drink.

  But when I say, “You slack-jawed, alarmist turd, gods damn you to the shriveled tits of your grandmother!” that is a metaphor with impact.

  Captain Barrel Man and I found common ground in our love of profanity. His real name was Captain Baldir, and for eight days, he cursed everything in sight without once repeating himself. It was better than a concert. I came to understand that when he cursed, he meant no ill. Cursing was his way of recognizing that you were a living creature like him, so really it was an act of love, almost religious.

  Ella wanted to cut Baldir’s throat in his sleep, steal some horses, and race ahead to the capital. Pres never showed that the verbal abuse bothered him, or that he even noticed it. He preferred that we behave ourselves until he reached home. Even tho
ugh Pres was just eleven years old, he was the prince, and this was his kingdom, so we did as he said.

  We rode up through the mountains onto high plains full of tall, yellow-green grass to the horizon. The only trees we saw stood around occasional lakes and ponds. By the second day, we began passing ranches and farmhouses built of sod or mud-brick buildings, and the day after, we passed a few villages. My headache had become a flock of iron chickens pecking inside my skull. Every village must have had a few child-beaters or rapists for me to kill, but I respected Pres’s commands. I let them live, and instead of killing, I just drank whenever Stan shared his wine ration with me.

  The capital stood at the heart of the kingdom. As we rode toward it, we saw more timber and more people. Farms, villages, and towns lay closer together, and it was rare for us not to have some dwelling in sight. The prince’s subjects didn’t seem to care about forty soldiers and three captives riding straight through their towns, so they must have seen that sort of thing often.

  Pres’s ancestors had built the capital on high ground, with the castle at the summit. The city appeared bigger and busier than the community around the Eastern Gateway, but the castle looked dumpy and a little sad.

  “Pres, what’s this city called?” I asked.

  “Glass.”

  “And that up there is…”

  “Castle Glass.”

  “Why didn’t your mother name you Glass? You could be the Crown Prince of Glass, future King of Glass, Ruler of the Glass Kingdom, who lives in Castle Glass and buys his shoes in Glass City.”

  “I could have you beheaded. You know, if you weren’t the most dangerous man in the world.”

  “I could have said that you buy your gloves there.”

  He and I laughed hard, which we needed. Ella didn’t laugh. She kept adjusting and readjusting the reins and brushing dirt off her sleeve when she wasn’t staring at the castle.