“Why not kill it?” asked Gabriel.
Clay, who had been thinking the same thing, could only shake his head in wonder. “Spectacle,” he said.
At last the Stormriders rolled in. There were five of them standing on a curtained flatbed heaped with treasure. Open chests spilled over with jewels and gemstones, coins glittered in hillocks at their feet. In case the band itself (all of whom were armed) weren’t enough to discourage the mob from rushing the cart, there was a full escort of pikemen whose scowls and long spears served to keep the crowd at bay. There were a number of women dressed as nymphs—which was to say they were pretty much naked—who scooped bronze coins by the handful from the wagon’s edge and tossed them to the roadside. Clay noted that the gold and silver coins were conveniently piled closer to the centre.
The band looked young to him at first, until Clay remembered he’d been barely eighteen when he and Gabe had first set out on the road. Their armour, at least, looked functional, if a little garish, and Clay suspected they were wearing more makeup than the Sisters in Steel. He also couldn’t help but notice the large number of young girls who had found their way to the edge of the street and were screaming hysterically as the boys went by.
Clay found himself smiling, recalling the first time he and his bandmates had paraded the spoils of their own Heartwyld tour down this very same street—not that there was much to recall, since they’d all been blind drunk at the time. Moog had slept through most of it; Matrick had fallen from the wagon into the crowd and was missing for three days.
“I’ve seen enough,” said Gabriel. He looked annoyed, suddenly, and Clay wondered if it wasn’t jealousy that had soured his mood. “Let’s get out of here before this crowd breaks up. Go pay Kallorek a visit.”
Clay rolled his neck to work out the kink from looking westward for the past half hour. “Sure thing. Where’s he at?”
Gabe nodded toward the southern hill, at the temple under construction at its summit. He scowled like a man gazing up at the noose meant to hang him. “Up there.”
Chapter Seven
Swimming with Sharks
There was a pond in the middle of Kallorek’s house. The water was so clear Clay could see the tiles that checkered the bottom, blue and white. There were no fish or frogs that he could see. No lilies, or rushes, or dragonflies skimming the surface. There was just … empty water.
“What the fuck is the point of this?” he asked.
Gabriel didn’t answer. He’d gone meek again, sitting in a wicker chair near the edge of the pond, bullied by his own thoughts. Fair enough, Clay supposed, since he’d come here to beg Kallorek for his sword back, which would have been awkward even if their old booker hadn’t also been in possession of something else that had once belonged to Gabe: his wife, Valery.
They hadn’t seen her yet, but they’d heard her voice as a servant led them here to wait. Gabriel had frozen at the sound like a mouse cringing at an owl’s screech.
One of the many knacks his own wife had instilled in Clay was seeing the bright side in any situation. To know that however bad things seemed there was always someone, somewhere, who had it worse. One look at the slump of Gabe’s shoulders, or the small, worried movements of his fingers in his lap, and Clay couldn’t help but feel like the most fortunate man in the room.
At least until Kallorek arrived. The booker swept in wearing a deep blue robe of silk so fine it flowed like water over the brink of his voluminous gut. Several heavy-looking gold chains were slung around his neck. Rings set with gaudy gemstones twinkled on every finger and pierced both ears. Clay had seen kings buried with fewer trinkets on their person.
“My boys!” Their host managed to pull Clay and Gabriel both into an awkward hug. His grey-shot beard, once as coarse as a horse brush, was now soft with scented oil and carefully braided. His ruddy skin wafted the scent of sandalwood and spring lilac above the earthen tang of sweat. He had an underbite so vicious that some folk had (out of earshot, of course) dubbed him “the orc.”
Kallorek released his grip at last, holding each at arm’s length and grinning widely. “Golden Gabe and Slowhand himself,” he said wistfully. “Legends in the flesh! Kings of the bloody Wyld, right? You’re looking fit as a fresh horse, Cooper. And you, Gabe, look tired. And old! Gods of Grandual, man, what’s eating you? Not booze again? Or scratch? Don’t tell me you’ve got the bloody rot.”
Gabriel tried for a smile and failed spectacularly. “I’m just tired, Kal. And old. And …” He faltered, going a shade paler than he’d already been. “I need to speak to Valery, and to … ask you a favor.”
Kallorek looked momentarily suspicious, but his grin quickly returned. “In time, yes? When you’ve kicked the dust off your boots! Let’s open a keg first, and eat. Are you hungry?”
“Starving!” Clay blurted.
“Of course you are!” Kallorek clapped his meaty hands together. “You two hit the pool. I’ll have some grub ready when you’ve had time to freshen up a bit.” When his guests made no move he gestured toward the pond behind them.
Clay glanced over his shoulder and back. He shrugged.
“The pool,” said Kallorek, pointing. “The pool, right there.”
“You mean the pond?”
“I mean the pool,” growled the booker. “Get in. Swim.” He accompanied these words with effusive gestures that set his jewellery ringing.
Clay examined the pond. “Swim to where?” he asked.
“What do you mean swim to where?” Kallorek’s brow deepened.
“Is it a healing spring?” Gabe asked. He flexed his arm, wincing as he extended it fully. “Because I think my elbow—”
“Listen, fuck your elbow!” Kallorek blew up. Clay had forgotten how short the booker’s fuse was. That big toothy smile one moment, and the next …“It ain’t a spring, or a pond, or a godsdamned sea nymph’s bathtub. It’s a fucking pool. Just a pool! You swim around in it to relax.”
Clay was wise enough to know that suggesting Kallorek make use of the pool himself would only provoke him further, but Gabriel wasn’t—and so the moment he opened his mouth Clay shoved him hard into the water, where he splashed and spat and scrabbled like a dog for the shore.
Kallorek’s rage dissipated; he burst into a fit of laughter that left him wiping tears from his eyes.
“You’re right,” said Clay. “I feel better already.”
Say one thing about Kallorek: The man was as vile as a two-headed toad. But say another and it was this: That fat bastard sure knew how to eat.
The meal lulled Clay into a near-euphoric daze for which he was doubly grateful, since Valery (in a daze herself) had opted to join them at the dining room table. She didn’t say much, but loosed a lot of long sighs, and giggled here and there at something only she found funny, like when two of her maple-glazed sprouts stuck together, or the sound her knife made when she clacked it again and again and again against the honey-crisped skin of her rolled pork loin.
Clay’s eyes were drawn time and again to the scars half-hidden by her shirt sleeve. He’d heard from Gabriel that Valery had been dabbling with scratch—a drug made from the venom of dazeworms and introduced to the system by cutting tiny nicks in the soft skin on the underside of one’s arm. It looked as though she were using still, since a few of those wounds were raw and red.
Watching her now, Clay could hardly believe this was the same woman Gabe had fallen in love with so many years ago, the woman many claimed was singlehandedly responsible for breaking up the greatest mercenary band in Grandual’s history. She wasn’t, of course—that had been a different woman altogether—but although Valery hadn’t been responsible for sinking the ship, she sure as hell had punched a few holes in the hull.
Gabe and Val first met at the War Fair, a triannual festival held among the ruins at Kaladar, the ancient seat of Dominion power. For three riotous days in late fall, every band, bard, and booker in each of the five courts gathered to fight, fuck, and drink themselves blind. Valery, h
owever, had been attending in protest. She’d been part of a faction called the Getalongs, who held the idealistic—if unpopular—opinion that humans and monsters could peacefully coexist. As a roundabout means of getting their point across they decided to set fire to Saga’s argosy, the house on wheels the band used as a base of operations.
The Getalongs were driven off before any harm could be done, but Valery was taken captive by Gabriel, who insisted she attend the party he was hosting within. Clay remembered how absurd she’d looked sitting amidst so many rowdy, hard-bitten mercenaries: tall and wisp-thin, with ivory skin and hair like fine-spun gold. She’d been wearing a dress that was little more than a shift, and there’d been a wreath of flowers on her brow. Like a princess in the company of orcs, Clay had remarked at the time, though he was quite sure no one heard him say so.
At any rate, she and Gabriel had been at each other’s throats right from the beginning. Clay had heard it said that some couples were like fire and ice, but although Gabe and Val held opposing ideologies they were more like identical clashing swords. On fire. In an ice storm. What had begun as a playful interrogation by Gabriel for the amusement of his guests became an intense discussion, then a heated argument, then a violent shouting match, during which Valery made a second attempt at burning down Saga’s war wagon by hurling a lamp at Gabriel’s head.
By morning they were madly in love.
Val left the Getalongs, which proved a timely decision, since a week later they accepted an invitation to feast with a tribe of wild centaurs without realizing they were intended as the feast. She accompanied Saga on their following tour, often clashing with Kallorek when it came to determining which gig they would tackle next. More and more often Gabriel conferred with Valery on matters that concerned the entire band, which suited Moog and Clay just fine, but didn’t sit very well with Matrick, or Ganelon, who endured her condemnation of his violent nature the way a mountain endures a goat scampering up its backside—until, that is, the first flower showed up in Gabriel’s hair …
The sharp nudge of Gabe’s elbow in his ribs prompted Clay to realize he’d been asked a question. “Yes. No. What?” he asked, effectively covering all his bases.
“How old is your little girl now?” Kal repeated. “Talyn, was it?
“Tally. She turned nine this summer.”
“Tally? That short for something?”
“Talia,” Clay told him.
“Mmm.” Kallorek appeared less interested in Clay’s answer than in heaping beef gravy onto a slab of thickly buttered bread. “And how about yours, Gabe?”
Gabe, positioned opposite the booker, sat straight-backed with his hands in his lap, having barely touched his food at all. “My what?” he asked.
“Your daughter,” said Kallorek around a sloppy mouthful. “Her and that gang of rejects she calls a band came round, what, seven or eight months ago? Said they had a huge gig lined up—but didn’t need a booker, mind you—and were looking for handouts. Asked if I could spare some gear.”
“Rose was here?” Gabe asked.
Kallorek licked gravy from his fingers. “I told her I’d think on it, but I ain’t running a charity, you know. I’m a collector. A curator of rare and beautiful things.” Perhaps unconsciously—but perhaps not—he took Valery’s hand in his own. She blinked and smiled as though a butterfly had flitted past her nose, but said nothing. “Anyway, the little runt stole a few priceless relics and took off in the night. Haven’t heard a peep from her since.”
Gabriel looked over pleadingly, but Clay was in the midst of a long, lingering sip of wine that he planned on stretching out for as long as it took his friend to explain what had happened to Rose and what they planned to do about it.
As Gabe did so, Clay watched over the lip of his cup as Kallorek’s bushy brows climbed toward his greasy scalp. Valery listened in silence, her expression unreadable, occasionally rubbing at the cuts on her arm. At the mention of Castia her eyes widened, and for an instant there was something—a glimpse of grief, faint as the wail of a prisoner echoing up dungeon stairs—before her gaze drifted off into nowhere. When Gabriel had finished Kallorek sighed and tugged at his braided beard, while Valery fashioned a placid smile and murmured to no one in particular, “That’s nice.”
Poor Gabe looked as though he’d been stabbed. Clay half-expected that disbelief to boil over into anger, but Gabriel just shook his head and returned his attention to the untouched plate before him.
Kallorek called for a servant to take Valery to her room. The three of them ate dessert (a chocolate pie topped with chopped almonds and whipped cream) and sipped sweet red beer in mildly uncomfortable silence. Afterward, Kal offered to show them around his estate, which had originally been intended as a grand temple to the Autumn Son.
“They sunk a lot of coin into it,” he told them, “but were halfway finished when someone had the bright idea of putting one right down in the gutter.” The gutter was what those who lived on the slopes in Conthas called the valley bottom. “And there’s no sense walking up a hill to talk to a god when he can hear you at the bottom just fine, now is there?”
“Why build the temple at all?” Clay ventured. “Seems cheaper just to shout at the sky.”
Kallorek looked at him as though Clay had suggested putting out a fire by tossing a few logs on it. “Shout at the … What the fuck are you on about, Slowhand?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“At any rate,” Kal went on eventually, “the priests up here went bankrupt, so I swept in and bought the place for the price of the nails.”
They toured an open garden, following a stone path between apple trees heavy with fruit. There were guards patrolling the compound walls—a necessary deterrent, Kallorek explained, since the chapel now housed his increasingly valuable collection of rare memorabilia.
“You still handling mercenaries?” Clay wondered.
“Of course,” Kal assured him. “But it ain’t like the old days. The whole operation is too big to handle myself, so I assign an agent to each band. They book the smaller gigs—goblins and whatnot—while I give the big contracts to those I think can handle it. My cut is half, the agent takes ten, and the band splits whatever’s left over.”
Half? Clay would have choked had he still been eating. Things had changed drastically since he’d been touring. Back then, Kallorek had split a 15-percent share with Saga’s five other members. The remaining ten was supposed to have belonged to their bard, but since none of Saga’s bards lived long enough to collect their share, it was chiefly used for what Gabe had called “adventuring essentials”—which was to say booze, tobacco, and the company of indiscriminate women. Considering what mercenaries were paid nowadays, it was little wonder Kallorek could afford to live as he did now.
“So who do you book for?” Gabe asked as they neared a pair of tall bronze doors. “Anyone we’d know?”
Kallorek chortled at that. “Everyone you’d know. I’ve got agents all over Agria. There ain’t a band west of Fivecourt doesn’t owe me a slice. Well, except your old pals Vanguard, actually.”
“Vanguard’s still touring?” Clay asked.
“Most of ’em,” said Kal, without bothering to explain what that meant.
Vanguard. Now there was a name Clay hadn’t heard in a long while. Barret Snowjack and his eclectic bandmates—Ashe, Tiamax, and Hog—had been friendly rivals of Saga back in the day. To hear they were still on the road, still fighting after all these years … well, it made Clay’s back hurt just to think of it.
“If someone runs a gang of kobolds out of a sewer,” Kal was saying, “I make all my cupboard-handles silver. If they turn in the bounty on a basilisk broodmother, well, I add a new wing to the house.”
“Or put a pond in it,” said Clay.
“You mean a pool,” the booker was quick to correct.
“What did I say?”
“You said pond—”
“Where’s my sword?” Gabe interrupted.
Kallo
rek scowled. “What’s that now?”
“Vellichor. Where is it?”
Kal’s face was hard to read. He looked like a parent deciding how best to discipline an unruly child. They’d arrived at the massive bronze doors, and the booker hauled one open, beckoning Clay and Gabriel to follow him inside. “This way,” he said.
Chapter Eight
Vellichor
He led them into a vaulted chapel lit bright with mirrored lamps. The pews had been removed, and the stone floor was laid with rich carpets. The hall itself was in disarray, haphazardly cluttered with shelves, display cases, weapons racks, overflowing chests, and wooden dummies half-clothed in armour scraps.
“Excuse the mess,” said Kallorek, surveying the room. “I’m still sorting it all out. Hey, look at this.” He plucked a helmet off a dummy’s head. It sported a pair of long cheek guards that jutted like poison-laced mandibles. “This belonged to Liac the Arachnian. Poor Liac got devoured by a crypt slime a few years back. This here was all that remained.” Kallorek replaced the helm and ran a hand over the coat of red mail beneath it. “The Warskin,” he said reverently. “The impenetrable armour of Jack the Reaver. No sword or spear can pierce it, they say, but syphilis got through all right. Poor Jack.”
He waded farther into the room, pointing out artifacts as he named them. “There’s the Witchbow, and here are the gauntlets of Earl the One-Handed.” Kallorek waved at a bookshelf set against one wall. “Those were written before the fall of the Dominion. And these boots were worn by Budika, the Sea Wolf of Salagad. So many precious treasures!” he exclaimed. “But none so prized as this …”
Kings of the Wyld Page 6