Clay recognized plenty of faces he hadn’t seen since his touring days. Here was Deckart Clearwater with his double-hafted hammer strapped to his back. And there was Merciless May Drummond, who had slain more giants than anyone Clay knew and had once borne an orc’s child just to settle a bet. Her kid was a merc, too, in fact, and ugly as the night was dark.
He saw Jorma Mulekicker fighting three men at once, and Aric Slake losing badly at cards. All five of the Skulk brothers were sharing a pitcher at one table, while the six members of the ironically named Seven Swords were arguing heatedly at one another. He saw Beckett “Greensleeves” Fisher embroiled in a game of Contha’s Keep, in which you took turns removing and restacking blocks from a tottering tower until it fell, at which point you finished what remained of your drink and started all over again.
“Slowhand Clay Cooper!” Nick Blood—the lesser half of the husband-and-wife mercenary duo known as Blood and Gloria—took Clay by the shoulders and shook him fiercely. “Heathen’s Bloody Cock, man, it’s really you!”
“It’s really me,” Clay verified. “How’s Gloria?”
“Dead,” Nick stated matter-of-factly. “Rot took her about ten years back.”
Clay swallowed the foot in his mouth before speaking again. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
The old mercenary shrugged. “Happens,” he said. “Anyway, I’m back in the game! I was supposed to be opening the Maxithon for the Screaming Eagles tomorrow, but I hear the gorgon found herself a new headliner.” He nudged Clay with his elbow and winked. “You’re a lucky bastard, Cooper. One day out of retirement and you’re the biggest show in town. That’s Saga for you, I guess. No one did it like you guys, man.”
Clay smiled like a man who’d won first place in a “Whose Life Sucks the Most” contest. “Good to see you, Nick,” he said, brushing by and making a straight line for the bar.
Matrick was there. Some idiot had given him a bottle and was letting him pour his own drinks. Consequently, the bottle was almost empty.
“Look who’s here!” the old rogue yelled over the noise, gesturing toward someone beside him at the bar.
Clay blinked in disbelief.
“Pete?”
“Slowhand, hey. Ain’t seen you round in a bit.”
A bit? “It’s been a while, yeah. You look … exactly the same,” said Clay, and boy was that true. Pete was a lifetime regular at the Riot House. He kept a room on the first floor and was a permanent fixture at the wood. He helped pick the place up in the morning, and in turn was fed three times a day and afforded an ostensibly bottomless tab. His hair was drawn into a queue at the nape of his neck, still as black as the plain short-sleeved jerkin Clay had long suspected was the only shirt the man owned.
“Matrick here tells me he was a king,” said Pete, who seemed thoroughly unimpressed by the fact. “Seems like a lotta hassle, and for what? A man needs food, beer, and a pot to piss in. Name one thing a king’s got that I don’t!”
Clay was about to start with an entire country when the bartender arrived—another relic from the days of old. Uric was a minotaur, a pit fighter who’d won his freedom in the days before arenas like the Maxithon had sprung up in every city. His once-lustrous beard had gone ratty and grey, his horns yellowed by smoke, and his voice scratched like a suit of shoddy chain mail.
“Drinks?” he asked.
“Beer,” said Pete.
“Whiskey,” said Matrick.
Clay raised a hand. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Three beers,” growled Uric, shuffling off.
“You run into Raff Lackey out there?” asked Pete, examining the dregs of his current drink.
Clay shared a hesitant glance with Matrick. “We did, yeah.”
Pete only nodded. “I’ll say a prayer for him tonight, then. Told him ain’t no bounty worth picking a fight with Clay Cooper.”
“I didn’t mean to …” Clay started to explain, but what could he say? Sure, I put a venomous snake to his throat, but how was I supposed to know it would kill him? “Things just got out of hand,” he finished lamely.
“As they do, Slowhand. As they do.”
When Uric returned with the beers, Clay seized the opportunity to excuse himself. Matrick followed as far as the gaming tables, where he spotted a game of tiles in need of a fourth and was warmly welcomed to the empty seat.
Gabe and Ganelon were seated in a booth along one wall. The most fervent admirers had said their pieces by then, and the southerner’s glare managed to stave off those who weren’t quite drunk enough to dare his presence just yet. Clay settled onto the bench beside Gabriel.
Maybe because of Ganelon’s uncannily youthful appearance, or because they’d been sitting in a booth just like this, Clay was reminded of the day they’d first met Ganelon. Gabe had lured Clay to Conthas under false pretences, with the undisclosed aim of introducing him to a street thug turned booker named Kallorek. In a tavern called the Loose Moose, the Orc (as Kal was more commonly called back then) had in turn introduced them to a young pickpocket named Matty and a bard whose name Clay couldn’t have recalled now for all the icicles in Hell.
As chance would have it (Clay liked to believe the gods had better things to do than get a band going) Ganelon had also been in the Moose that evening. A few hapless drunks had taken one look at the southerner’s brown skin and vivid green eyes before giving voice to some disparaging remarks about his mother’s taste in men.
Ganelon put a knife in one, and when half the crowd jumped him Gabriel insisted he and Clay leap to the southerner’s defense, if only to make it a fair fight. Matrick joined in as well, and before the night was over Saga had won its first battle and lost—by accident, of course—the first of its many bards.
Clay smiled to think of it, which earned him a curious look from Gabriel as he glanced over. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“I was just filling Ganelon in,” Gabe told him. “About Lastleaf, and Castia, and Rose. He said he’ll help.”
Clay looked across the table. It was so strange to see Ganelon sitting there, twenty years younger than he ought to have been. The warrior scratched at the scar below his left eye. “What?” he asked defensively. “You thought I wouldn’t?”
“No,” Clay started, “I just figured …”
“That I’d be a little bit pissed?” suggested Ganelon. “That I’d wonder where my friends were when the Sultana’s men came to take me down? That I might resent having been turned to stone, sent to the Quarry, and then sold to a gorgon who plans on killing me in the arena?”
Clay took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, that,” he said.
Ganelon made a face and shrugged. “Well, I ain’t pissed. I don’t resent you … much. Way I see it, justice was served. Those who needed killing got killed, and I missed out on twenty years of sweet dick-all.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“You know what I mean, Slowhand,” Ganelon cut him off. “Wives. Children. Settling down. It ain’t really my scene.” He took a pull from his mug and wiped froth from his lips. “But here I am, and here we are, and Gabe’s little girl needs rescuing, so let’s get it done. Wouldn’t mind seeing Lastleaf, either. Sounds like he needs his ass kicked again.”
So that was that, then. No bitterness. No animosity whatsoever. As far as Ganelon was concerned, things were business as usual. He wouldn’t have called the southerner a simple man—far from it, in fact—but his pragmatism was astounding, even to Clay, for whom it was practically a religion.
Having concluded matters with Clay, Ganelon turned his attention to someone seated at the nearest table. “Somethin’ the matter?”
Glancing over, Clay recognized the platinum-haired youth he’d seen earlier that evening, sitting on the steps of the argosy that was blocking the gate.
“Naw.” The lad’s voice was an affected parody of the southerner’s drawl. “I was just trying to figure out what the big deal is with you guys.”
Gabriel slunk into the corn
er, and Ganelon stared without speaking, so Clay took it upon himself to respond. “We’re just a band,” he said.
“Just a band?” The youth sneered and shared a mocking laugh with the others at his table. There were two petulant-looking young men and a woman sporting a diamond-studded eye patch. “Well then, why the fuck are you headlining the Maxithon tomorrow instead of us?”
“We supposed to know you?” asked Ganelon.
The white-haired merc looked genuinely shocked. “You mean you don’t?” Ganelon shook his head. “We’re the Screaming Eagles, man. We’re the biggest band east of the Heartwyld.”
“Which means anywhere,” one of the others put in.
“I got that,” Clay said.
The scrawny frontman leaned forward on his seat. “You been under a rock or something?”
Ganelon didn’t quite smile. “Something like that, yeah.”
“We were supposed to fight for the gorgon tomorrow,” said the one with the glittery eye patch, who wasn’t actually a woman, Clay realized. “We came all the way from Drumskeep, and now we’re to sit with our dicks in our hands while some washed-up old-timers bleed on the sand?”
“Now hold on, Parys,” said the other. “Didn’t these guys kill a dragon in its sleep, like, a hundred years ago? Show some bloody respect!”
Derisive laughter followed.
Clay glanced over, afraid Ganelon’s temper would boil over, but the warrior was still holding his beer, so that was a good sign. When he sets it down, I’ll panic, Clay figured. He tacked on an easy smile, hoping to smooth things over before they escalated further.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think Dinantra has something pretty nasty in mind for us tomorrow.”
White Hair crossed his tattooed arms, looking emphatically unimpressed. “What could she have planned for a bunch of washed-up heroes? A few crippled kobolds? A blind cyclops? Or maybe she intends to make you all just stand around and see how long before one of you dies of old age.”
More laughter. Clay hid his faltering grin behind a sip of beer. “Maybe,” he said.
White Hair wasn’t finished yet, though. “Kings of the Wyld—isn’t that what they used to call you? Where did the gorgon even find you guys? Last I heard you were scattered to the wind.”
“I heard one of you died,” said Eye Patch.
“I heard one of you fancied boys!” crowed another. “Which one prefers the sword to the sheath, eh? The blond one, I’ll bet. He’s the prettiest.”
Clay rubbed at his beard, in danger of misplacing his smile altogether. “Listen, fellas, I’m sorry we stole your show. I really am. I’m sure the Screeching Eagles are a—”
“Screaming,” White Hair snarled.
“Screaming what?”
“It’s the Screaming Eagles. Not the ‘Screeching Eagles.’”
Clay frowned. “Are you sure? Because the sound an eagle makes—”
And quite suddenly the boy was on his feet, sword in hand. “I know what a fucking eagle sounds like!” he screamed, which drew the attention of every table nearby, and in the ensuing silence Clay heard the quiet but ominous thud of Ganelon setting his beer down on the table.
The story of how the Riot House burned to the ground was chronicled by several bards, a few of which were actually present on the night in question. Even those privileged few, however, were accused of distorting the truth, embellishing facts in an attempt to promote their account as the “definitive” version of the events that inevitably led to the all-consuming fire. What is known for certain is that the fight between the Screaming Eagles and the reunited members of Saga, which in turn gave rise to a full-scale brawl, was only the beginning.
In her ballad House in Flames, Tanis Two-fingers suggests that several members of the City Watch, initially dispatched to quell the barroom battle, acquitted themselves with such prowess and ferocity that they were recruited by a booker and went on to become the band known by the admittedly uninspired name The City Watch. Fire and Feathers, written by the renowned poet Jamidor, provides a detailed account of the pillow fight that raged between the fifth and sixth floors of the ill-fated inn sometime after midnight.
Is it true that Matrick Skulldrummer, the renegade king of Agria, was responsible for the fire? The song Drinking and Dragons proposes that after consuming a quantity of liquor sufficient to render a small giant impotent, he vomited onto a candle and set an entire table ablaze. Others maintain that Arcandius Moog was at fault. The wizard and celebrated alchemist allegedly summoned an elemental ifrit to resolve an argument about whether demons are hatched or naturally born—a futile gesture, since everyone knows they are hatched.
Regardless of its origin, the resulting fire brought about the end of an era. The Riot House was never rebuilt, and among its ashes there remains but a single testament to its decades of debauched existence: a small, innocuous tombstone to mark the grave of what (remarkably) was the night’s single unfortunate casualty, a man known simply as Pete.
The inscription reads as follows: WHEN WE SEEK TO RULE ONLY OURSELVES, WE ARE EACH OF US KINGS.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Maxithon
In retrospect, getting blind drunk the night before fighting for his life in the arena had been a terrible idea. Clay’s stomach gurgled like a cauldron left to boil. His head was pounding, and the not-so-distant thunder of thirty thousand people screaming beyond the shadowed corridor in which they stood wasn’t helping. Nor was the fact that the Maxithon, despite being fastened by four mighty chains against the river’s current, was floating. The effect was subtle, but unnerving, like standing in the hold of some colossal ship.
Clay decided to add vomit everywhere to the long list of things he’d rather not do today, right beneath get killed.
He could hear Dinantra addressing the crowd. Her voice, altered by magic to carry across the arena, was promising a show unlike any they had seen before. The gorgon hadn’t yet revealed what Clay and his bandmates would be fighting, only that it had been brought “with considerable danger and great expense” from the “darkest depths of the Heartwyld,” which could have meant pretty much anything.
“Maybe it’ll be an owlbear,” said Moog excitedly. The wizard seemed unfazed by the exploits of the previous night. “Can you imagine if it was? Be a shame to have to kill it, though. Terrible shame.”
Clay didn’t bother asserting that owlbears didn’t exist. They’d been through it before, many times. The wizard had once offered “proof” that such creatures were real by showing them a crude drawing in an old book of what looked to everyone but Moog like a bear with comically large eyes.
The gorgon had fallen silent. There was a brief fanfare, followed by a resounding cheer, and from that noise emerged a single word booming over and over again, ceaseless as the ocean surf, echoing like a deep drumbeat down the long stone corridor, so loud it shook the dust from the ceiling and set the ground trembling beneath their feet.
Saga, Saga, Saga.
Clay caught Moog and Matrick sharing an eager grin. These two idiots are actually enjoying this, he thought, while trying to suppress his own … well, he certainly wouldn’t have called it excitement, since excitement implied an optimism he didn’t particularly feel about what awaited them in the arena, but there was, admittedly, something undeniably thrilling about hearing their name on the lips of so many thousands of people.
Ganelon cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck from side to side.
Gabriel sat ahead of them in the tunnel, slouched against the wall with his head between his knees. When the crowd began chanting he stiffened, and his head rose like an animal catching wind of its prey. After a moment he stood, his shadow slender against the bright tunnel mouth.
“It’s time,” he said, and then, “Are we ready for this?”
“Ready,” Matrick confirmed.
“Yessir,” said Moog cheerily.
Ganelon grunted, “Sure.”
Clay sighed and shrugged. “Guess so.”
Gabe nodded, turned, and led the four of them up the gently sloping corridor. Clay listened in a hangover-induced daze as the crowd’s incessant chant grew louder, as the tunnel mouth grew wider, brighter.
And then Gabriel stepped into the sun’s partitioning light and the chant dissolved into a wordless, furious roar.
Like each of them, Saga’s frontman had been suitably equipped for the occasion. The armour provided for him was lacquered white and gold, impressive looking but too ornate for Clay’s taste. The sword he carried was a poor imitation of Vellichor, huge and heavy, hideously grey. Gabe’s hair had been washed and brushed out by one of the gorgon’s slaves, so that except for the slump of his shoulders and the haunted look in his eyes he somewhat resembled the “Golden Gabe” this crowd was expecting to see.
Moog went out after him. The wizard had been given proper robes to replace his soiled one-piece pyjamas. He bore nothing but the bag slung over his shoulder, and he waved with both hands at the circling thousands.
Matrick was next. The king wore a black leather vest studded with iron rivets, which he couldn’t quite fasten over the bulge of his stomach. The jewel-encrusted hilts of Roxy and Grace gleamed at his waist, and as he stepped into the arena some of the more patriotic Agrians in the stands began singing his name as well.
Clay grimaced. If Lilith doesn’t know yet that Matrick is alive, he thought, then she will very soon.
Ganelon walked out ahead of Clay. Dinantra had given the southerner back his axe, which she’d purchased from the Quarry along with Ganelon himself and had kept in her personal treasury these past nine years. Clay couldn’t help but stare at it as he followed along: twinned black blades swept like a wyvern’s wings down either side of the haft. Each wicked edge was traced by a filigree of druic script that pulsed blue-white only when the weapon was hefted by the warrior himself. Whenever he did so, the axe itself began whispering quietly, urgently, in a language even Moog didn’t recognize. If used by anyone else, the weapon was as deadly as any other razor-sharp length of metal, but in Ganelon’s hands it was a thing of awesome lethality. It was called Syrinx, and asking the stoic southerner how he came to possess such an artifact was as likely to garner an answer as asking a goat for directions to the nearest library.
Kings of the Wyld Page 20