by Ari Marmell
“Maybe, but he’s been a good horse. Besides, Tyannon and the kids would kill me if I came home without him.”
/You know, this is really disgusting. You sound so domestic. What happened to you?/
“I got rid of you, for one thing.”
/And look where that brilliant decision led you./Another pause. /You kept me up here for seventeen years, Corvis. Your lusty little guide was a nice wake-up, but he won’t hold me long. Especially if you want me to start bouncing the two of us—not to mention a horse, of all things—across the countryside./
“I’ve thought of that already,” Corvis told him with a frown. He’d been hoping not to take this next step, but then, it wasn’t as if the place were filled with the cream of humanity’s crop. Sacrificing themselves to help stop Audriss was probably the only worthwhile thing any of them would ever do in their life anyway. “There’s a tavern in the village. There should be enough people there to keep you going for a good while.”
Despite his lack of a physical form beyond that of a small pendant, Khanda exuded a sensation that Corvis could only interpret as a raised eyebrow. /So generous, Corvis? That’s unlike you. You used to limit me to one or two at a time./
“This is important.”
/I see. And of course, it’s quite all right for the families of these people to lose them, just so long as your family stays safe./ Khanda chuckled scornfully. /And you want to believe you’ve changed? You’re the same person you always were, Corvis./
“I have changed,” Corvis insisted as he stepped through the illusionary wall and moved to break down the tent. Even with Khanda’s aid, the journey would take some time, and Corvis didn’t plan to abandon his only shelter. “I’m doing this for my family. Nothing more.”
/That may work for dear sweet Tyannon. It might work for Lilander and Mellorin, it might work for Davro and Seilloah, it might even work for Corvis Rebaine. But you can’t lie to me, Corvis. Remember what I am./
“Oh, I remember what you are, Khanda. That’s why I left you in a glacier for seventeen years.”
/And I remember what you are, even if you don’t. You’re vicious, you’re violent, and you’re absolutely convinced of your own superiority. You’ve got no idea how gratifying it is to find that you’re still the Terror of the East we all know and love. And if you wish, I’ll be more than happy to prove it to you./
“What I wish,” Corvis snapped between clenched teeth, “is for you to get us to the village before I freeze my ass off!”
He found himself angrier at Khanda than he’d ever been, so enraged it was all he could do not to shove the damn gemstone back into the ice. The blood beat in his temples, behind his eyes, a scream coiled at the base of his throat, demanding to be released.
But it wasn’t the demon’s words that galled him, that stoked the fires of his soul. It was, instead, his own fear that, just perhaps, Khanda was absolutely right.
GETTING OFF THE MOUNTAIN, Corvis knew, was not as easy as it sounded. Khanda’s abilities at teleportation were closely linked to the memories of his master, and Corvis wasn’t terribly familiar with the village through which he’d passed. Furthermore, Khanda was weak from his years of deprivation. The journey to the tavern, therefore, was a series of brief jumps—never farther than line of sight—between long stretches during which Corvis walked while Khanda rested. It was an unpleasant three days, but far preferable to the nine it took to get up the mountain.
/You know that I can’t do this if these people are at all on their guard,/ Khanda reminded him as they stood in a snow-covered doorway a few dozen yards from the tavern. /You wouldn’t be teasing me, would you?/
“I remember your limits, Khanda,” Corvis told him, trying not to think too hard about what he was about to do. For whatever reason, the simple fact that a human was expecting danger prevented Khanda from feeding upon his soul. Only people totally unprepared for any sort of harm made viable meals. “The only danger they face is the possibility of a barroom brawl or a nasty social disease from the whores. And most of them are drunk, at that. They should be easy prey.”
/Let’s find out about that, shall we?/
Ten heartbeats passed, twenty, thirty …
And the tavern erupted in a concert of agonized shrieks. Had the tavern’s floor opened up into the depths of hell, the damned themselves could not have raised so hideous a cacophony. It was followed swiftly by a wet ripping noise, as though someone had crumpled and then shredded a sodden mass of parchment. The screams ceased as abruptly as they’d begun, followed by a series of loud thumps as a dozen bodies fell lifeless to the floor.
“We should probably get Rascal and go,” the warlord said, his voice grim. “It may take them a few minutes to work up the nerve, but someone’s going to come see what the screaming was about. I’d just as soon be gone before that happens.”
/Ahh,/ Khanda breathed, completely oblivious to his master’s concerns. /Oh, I haven’t dined like that in eons! I always enjoy a good feast, don’t you?/
“Khanda …”
/The children were particularly tasty, I thought. My compliments to their parents./
Despite the cold, Corvis could literally feel the blood drain from his face. “What children?” he asked in a hoarse croak.
/The whores’, of course. They kept the little brats in one of the back rooms while they plied their trade./
“How many?”
/Why, you sound sick. Are you feeling—/
“How many?”
/Hm. Four, I should think. It definitely tasted like four./
Corvis sank into a crouch upon the icy, snow-dusted ground. “Four children …” he whispered, his eyes locked on nothing at all.
/It’s not as if you—forgive me, your “people”—haven’t slain children before./
“You didn’t kill them, you monster! You ate their souls …”
/Why, so I did. How observant of you./
“I should have left you in that damn cave!” Corvis screamed, trembling in fury. “What by all the gods was I thinking?”
/You were thinking of yourself, Corvis. Just like you always do./ Khanda chuckled again, unmindful of his master’s hateful glare. /If nothing else, I’d say this quite handily proves what I was saying: You haven’t changed in the slightest./
“What?” Corvis leapt to his feet, snagging the pendant in one hand as though he would rip it from his neck. “How can you say this proves anything about me? You didn’t bother to tell me about the children!”
/And you, Corvis, didn’t bother to ask./
All that Corvis heard in his dreams for many, many weeks was the sound of Khanda’s mocking laughter.
Chapter Fourteen
“Oh.” Seilloah drew up straight even as the tent flap fell shut behind her, surprised to find the canvas chamber occupied. “So sorry to interrupt.”
“No prob’em.” The massive figure waved at her from the corner where he sat hunched amid various barrels and crates. His eye was bloodshot and unfocused, the entire tent reeked of drunk ogre breath—not, incidentally, all that different from regular ogre breath, save for the addition of its vaguely disorienting properties—and Seilloah could have sworn that even his horn was drooping. “C’mon in.”
“I was just looking for a touch of spirits to put a patient at ease,” she said even as she began perusing the cases, unsure why she was bothering to explain herself. “Going to have to amputate a finger, I’m afraid,” she continued sadly.
“That bothers you?” the ogre asked at the tone in her voice.
“The amputation? No. It’s just …”
“Jus’ what?”
“It’s already gangrenous,” she complained. “It won’t even make for good flavoring.”
The ogre blinked. “Oh.”
“It’s Davro, isn’t it?”
The ogre snorted. “I thought we all looked alike to you.”
“Not at all. Most of you are only bigger than a hill. You’re bigger than a mountain.”
�
��Heh. Yeah, I’m Davro.”
“Seilloah.”
“If you say so. You humans all look alike to us.”
“You know,” Seilloah said carefully, “you really aren’t supposed to be here. Lord Rebaine is quite strict about apportioning out the alcohol.”
“He can dismiss me if he wants.”
“Not happy with your service, Davro?”
The ogre’s eye narrowed, but he slowly shook his head. Seilloah never was certain, after that, whether Davro had actually decided to trust her, or was just too drunk to watch his tongue.
“This war isn’t what I expected, Sei … Sheilloo … Lady. I’ve been raiding since I could walk,” the ogre told her. “We all have. I had a brother who died because he was learning to wield a knife at the same time he was learning to eat solid food, and forgot which hand had the drumstick. We’re fighters; it’s all we are. But it’s been generations since we’ve had a good, full-on war. I grew up on stories of ’em, but I’ve never been in one before.”
“And now that you have?” she prodded, her voice strangely sympathetic.
“‘Snot what I expected,” he said again, belching once in punctuation. “Raidin’ for food and cattle and goods, killin’ warriors who stand against you, that’s all fine. But he’s got us burning neighborhoods and not takin’ anything from them. Stringin’ up body parts like flags, executin’ chained prisoners. What’s the point in that, Lady? Where’s the honor in it?”
“It’s not about honor, Davro. It’s about fear. You see, if—”
“Don’t care. War was suppose’ to be the purest form of fightin’—that’s what I grew up believin’—but it’s not pure at all. And I have to wonder, if this is what Chalsene wants of us … How pure can he be?”
“So maybe your devotion belongs to another god, Davro.”
“Oh, right.” Another snort, which turned into another drunken belch. “And what other god would have an ogre?”
Seilloah only smiled.
THE SKY WAS IRON that day. The horizon remained cloaked behind a curtain of grey, and the somber clouds lurked low and heavy, weighing down upon the air.
Autumn had supposedly begun some weeks ago, but summer wasn’t yet prepared to draw its extended visit to a close. Throughout most of Imphallion, the pounding heat abated only somewhat, and while the temperatures might have cooled, the humidity rose so high that merely opening one’s front door seemed to pose a risk of drowning. The vast majority of the kingdom was, to put it bluntly, miserable.
Misery, however, is relative. In Vorringar, the supply far outstripped the demand, and it didn’t show any signs of letting up.
It wasn’t the heat, though the townsfolk muddled through their day in clothing as light as decency would allow. It wasn’t the humidity, though every individual in Vorringar wandered about in a miasma of unevaporated sweat and droning mosquitoes. The roads through town refused to dry, and every footfall tracked thin mud across the town’s many floors; the scent of unwashed bodies, persistent perspiration, and rotted vegetation blanketed the community in an aura nearly visible to the naked eye. But the citizens of Vorringar would have happily borne all of this—and a great deal more besides—if the soldiers would just go away.
Every room at the town’s two small inns, every spare room in the private homes, even the floor space of the roomier shops—anyplace one could conceivably billet—one of the assembled mercenaries could be found. And still it wasn’t room enough. Vorringar was surrounded on all sides by the tents, campfires, and bedrolls of thousands of warriors. The town was very near to running completely out of livestock, to say nothing of their fast-dwindling supplies of alcohol.
Seilloah, her eyes red and bleary, her brown dress rumpled like an unwashed bedsheet, sat slumped at the end of a long table in the town’s largest tavern. It was named the Prurient Pixie, presumably the result of a fit of whimsy, or perhaps drunken stupor. The tavern had become the unofficial command post from which she and Davro did their damnedest to control the anarchy they laughingly called a “marshaling of forces.” They’d figured that setting up shop in a tavern would make them most easily accessible to the gathering mercenaries.
That had been, they now realized, something of a strategic blunder. Seilloah and Davro had spent the past weeks dashing around town putting out fires—and not always figuratively. Any problem the mercenaries had, they went to their own individual company commanders, and the commanders came to Seilloah. Any problems the townsfolk had with the soldiers, they brought to Seilloah. In the last seven days, the witch managed less than twenty hours of sleep.
“What am I doing here, Davro?” she asked him, shouting to be heard over the dull roar of the taproom. “I’m not any good at dealing with people! Why do you think I made a practice of eating them, and then moved to the woods?”
The ogre, using one of the tavern’s largest ale barrels as a stool, shrugged. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while myself. I know why I’m here; I wasn’t given a choice in the matter. You were.”
Seilloah’s expression rode the line between anger and despair. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to get involved in this.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Seilloah.”
“No?”
“No. Crazy as a frog on a hot stove and maybe experiencing the early stages of senility, but not stupid.”
“Davro, please stop comforting me.”
For a few minutes, they listened to the hubbub around them, enjoying the rare opportunity to just sit.
“A frog on a hot stove?” she asked finally.
“Hmm? Oh. Just an ogre expression. See, if you drop a frog on—”
“I get the image, Davro. No need to paint it for me.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, m’lady, have you got a minute or so?”
“And here we go,” she whispered. Then, forcing her mouth into something approximating a polite smile, she looked up.
“What can I do for you, Teagan?”
The man before her was hulking and broad-shouldered, though not tall. He wore a thick beard, brown with occasional rogue highlights of red, and his hair was tied back in an ornate braid. He wore several plates of armor haphazardly strapped atop a saffron-yellow tunic, and a small round shield with a wicked spike protruding from its center on his left arm.
“Nothin’ you can do for me personally. I’m here on behalf o’ my boys. We all are.”
“We all” referred to the other two people standing one each to his right and left. Seilloah didn’t even have to look to know they were there; recently, they always were.
The soldiers she and Davro had gathered belonged to an uncountable number of mercenary companies. Some were tiny, a handful of men who’d gathered for mutual profit; others claimed hundreds of men at their disposal. Of them all, three were considered preeminent, kings in the fraternal order of mercenaries. The leaders of those companies had appointed themselves spokesmen for the soldiers en masse. Teagan was one; the two who lurked behind, content to let their boisterous comrade open the conversation, were the others.
One was a woman, a fact Seilloah found shocking. Female soldiers were by no means unheard of, but she was startled that an entire mercenary company would accept one as their commander.
But however she’d done it, the woman called Ellowaine proved worthy of the position. Her company thrived under her command, and by now she’d instilled a fanatic loyalty in her soldiers. She was gaunt nearly to the point of emaciation, yet strong enough to toss an armored man over her shoulder and carry him for miles—something she’d actually done when her lieutenant had taken an arrow in the stomach. She wore a chain hauberk and cap, under which she normally tucked her uneven blond tresses. A heavy crossbow hung at her back, and her favored weapons—a pair of razor-edged hatchets—swung at her waist.
And finally, Losalis, the third member of the impromptu triad. The man was an ebon-skinned boulder, seven feet in height and wider even than Teagan. He was bald, though he, too, wore a
full beard, and his left eye was a lighter shade of blue than his right. At some point in the past, he’d lost his left hand, about halfway up the forearm. Losalis compensated by bolting a triangular shield to his armor; it extended a dagger’s length beyond the stump, and he’d honed the edge into a brutal blade. He wore an unusual combination of metal plates and heavy leather, and in his good right hand he wielded a frighteningly long saber.
Losalis, despite his bulk, was the most soft-spoken of the three commanders. Oh, he laughed and joked with his men often enough. But Seilloah noticed that he never spoke on matters of any import without taking a moment for contemplation, and she never once heard him brag of his prowess. Either he didn’t care if anyone knew of his accomplishments, or he assumed they already did.
“Have a seat,” she offered them all, gesturing at the chairs surrounding the table.
Teagan shook his head. “I prefer to stay on me feet, if it’s all the same to you. Makes our talkin’ look more official to the boys, see.”
Seilloah raised an eyebrow. “The rest of you?”
Ellowaine frowned. “I’m quite all right here, thank you.”
“I’ll stand,” Losalis said, his voice deep but quiet. “Not meaning any discourtesy, you understand.” He waved his shield in the direction of one of the chairs. “A man my size simply grows tired of pulling splinters from his rear end.”
Davro chuckled softly from behind Seilloah, thumping a fist lightly on the barrel. “Don’t I know it!”
Seilloah nodded once. “Very well. What is it this time?”
“Well,” Teagan said, “you see, m’lady, there’s a few unpleasant thoughts goin’ round the boys right about now. Unfortunate rumors, and so forth. You know how soldiers can be.”
Seilloah forced her smile to grow wider. “A soldier once said to me, ‘Gossip’s the only thing what can move through a barracks faster’n a cheap whore.’” Internally, she shuddered. The man who’d said that had been slime of the worst sort, and he hadn’t tasted very good.
Teagan guffawed, and Losalis allowed himself a brief smile, but Ellowaine merely crossed her arms.