She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. There's a way to behave, no matter how life is treating you. My father would be ashamed of me."
"I doubt that very much."
She felt something loosening inside her, knotted emotions too complicated to sort out all at once. But she sensed that the feeling, part pain and part relief, might bring tears to her eyes if she let it, and she clenched herself to keep that from happening.
"Anyway," she said, her voice a little thick, "I don't promise to be ‘cordial.' But I will do better. Are you able to take up our task again?"
Holg fingered the talismans dangling from his wrinkled neck. "With a little more rest, I will be. Ghethi—the healer here—helped me considerably, and once I was awake, I was able to petition the spirits for myself."
"If you need more time—"
"No. We may not have it. Eovath allying with the xulgaths, summoning and commanding that three-horned reptile ...I don't know where it's all headed, but it's worrisome. We need to stop it—and him—before it goes any further. The question is, how? Now that he knows you're here, we've lost a considerable advantage."
She frowned. "The best plan might still be to shoot him from ambush."
"You may be right, but it's possible that if we knew more, we'd could conceive a better strategy. Let's go talk to our new friends."
Holg gripped his staff and used it to clamber to his feet. Kagur resisted the impulse to help him. He wouldn't want her to, and this was an opportunity to judge how much of his strength he'd truly recovered. It turned out to be at least enough to make it up on the first try and keep his balance without swaying or staggering once he did.
He murmured a prayer, and golden light flowed like water through the incised grooves on his staff. Then he recited the incantation a second time, squeezed Kagur's forearm at the end of it, and, as she had in Lady Ssa's marketplace, she suddenly understood the bits of conversation drifting in from outside the cave.
Thus prepared, they went out into the sunlight. Holg's staff swept back and forth across the ground, and all the folk who hadn't yet seen him up and about clustered around for a look at him.
"Kagur and I are grateful for your hospitality," the shaman told them, "and when we have time, it will be our pleasure to answer all the questions you must have about peculiar strangers like ourselves. But for the moment, we have urgent matters to attend to." He turned his head. "Vom? Ghethi? Are you here?"
Actually, they were close at hand. The shaman's milky eyes had simply failed to pick them out of the crowd. At Vom's suggestion, they all settled themselves at a spot at the edge of the flat space, with a magnificent view of mountainside, jungle, and the central lake spread out below them. Nearby, Denda chipped arrowheads, Bok carved the shafts, and Rho and Tlee plucked the brown and green birds.
"Your people were alarmed when they saw my weapons," Kagur said. "Because you know of a giant with blue skin and yellow hair, and you don't like him."
"Yes," said Vom.
"Please," Holg said, "tell us about that."
The burly warrior frowned. "We don't know where he came from. The same place as you?"
"Beyond ‘the edges of the world,'" the old man said. "For now, please, just believe there is such a place and go on with your story."
"We heard tales of the giant before any of us saw him. A lone man wandering, only twice as tall as any man should be, with blue skin and an axe that shined like water in the sun. He slaughtered everyone he met, and not even the strongest warrior could stand against him."
Kagur scowled. "I'll ‘stand against him.'"
"Please," said Holg. "Let Vom continue."
"By the time one of our own folk spotted the giant from a distance," the big man said, "something had changed. He was marching with a band of xulgaths."
"Your enemies," Kagur guessed.
Ghethi's mouth twisted. "We have many enemies. Other tribes of men often and the orcs always. But the xulgaths are the worst."
"They live on the pyramid in the middle of the lake and in the cities along the shore," said Vom. "Humans and orcs live in the highlands. And we all fight in the forests in between."
Kagur nodded. "Where the food is."
"And we are food to the xulgaths," Vom replied, "and slaves, too. They capture us to row the boats that carry them around the lake."
Holg absently rubbed the purple ridge of a new scar on his temple. "I wonder why creatures who would naturally take Eovath—the giant—for a human being, albeit a freakishly big and strangely pigmented one, would welcome him as a friend."
"Because they worship Rovagug, too," Kagur suggested.
"Perhaps, although the similar creatures I heard about in my youth worshiped the demon lord Zevgavizeb. I suppose the two entities could have forged an alliance. Each is a spirit of bloodlust in his way."
"Or maybe Eovath's craziness prompted him to try to make friends with the xulgaths, they responded by attempting to kill him, and after he butchered enough of them, they decided a partnership would have its uses after all."
Vom grunted. "I don't understand everything you strangers say. But it makes sense if the xulgaths saw the giant as a sign or a blessing from the demon they worship, or if they just decided to use him as a weapon."
"Why is that?" asked Holg.
"They've taken him to live on the pyramid. That's their holy place. And they've been raiding human villages more often, like they believe the time has come to wipe us out."
"Are they succeeding?" the blind man asked.
Vom shrugged. "It's hard to know. But there are stories that the giant and xulgaths together have destroyed some tribes."
"Partly because the giant commands the great reptiles of the jungle," Ghethi said. "The xulgaths have always known arts to call and control them. Perhaps they taught the magic to him, and he learned to cast it even better than they do. For he always leads several of the beasts into battle."
Holg nodded. "That's the sort of gift the Rough Beast would bestow."
Kagur glanced back at the peaceful scene behind her, at Denda and the young people working to craft her arrows, children playing catch and scampering about, and a women scraping a sheet of hide with a stone. "What will you do if the xulgaths come here?"
"Fight," said Vom. "if we think we can win. Otherwise, flee upward into the highest crags."
"Where the xulgaths will likely still hunt us down," Ghethi said.
Vom gave her a sour look. "Then pray to the spirits that something happens to the giant before the xulgaths look our way."
"Me," Kagur said. "I'm going to happen to him."
"I trust so," said Holg, "but we still need a strategy."
"My thinking hasn't changed," Kagur replied. "We've just heard that Eovath comes into the jungle often. I'll shoot him the next time he does."
"Eovath comes into the jungle at the head of patrols and war parties," Holg replied, "with flying reptiles and probably other beasts playing outrider. In addition to which, he now knows you're here. I don't say your scheme is impossible. You have a knack for accomplishing difficult feats. But it's unlikely."
Kagur scowled. "Then what's your idea?"
"For starters, reinforcements."
It took Kagur a moment to interpret that. Then she turned back to Vom and Ghethi and said, "Excuse us. Holg and I need to talk alone."
Both the bearded man and the wise woman frowned. They didn't like being abruptly excluded from the discussion any more than Kagur would have appreciated it in their place. But neither made any objection. Rather, Vom nodded brusquely.
Kagur and Holg repaired to a patch of shade where ten paces separated them from the nearest potential eavesdropper. Keeping her voice low, she said, "No."
"Eovath found himself an army," Holg replied. "We could use one, too."
"These folk are brave. But they're no match for these xulgaths and Eovath and packs of huge reptiles."
"Neither are we, by ourselves. But if we all join forces—"
"I sa
id no."
Holg frowned. "I understand that you don't want to place them in danger. But they already are, and they can either work with us to eliminate the threat or sit and wait for the xulgaths to come for them. Which option gives them the better chance?"
"I don't care about placing the Dragonflies in danger. They aren't my tribe." Her tribe was dead. "But killing Eovath is my task. It's bad enough that I had to involve you."
Holg smiled a crooked smile. "It's just as well you didn't promise cordiality."
She grimaced. "I shouldn't have said it that way. But you're a tribesman of the tundra. You understand what I mean."
"I do, and I sympathize. But as I keep telling you, you have to accept that our mission is about something greater than revenge."
"Why? I kill Eovath either way."
"As I've also told you, we have patterns running through our lives."
"And?"
"And a person needs to know when to follow a pattern and when to break it."
Kagur sighed. Holg's mind worked in a twistier fashion than hers, and as was so often the case, she hadn't understood him. Yet she couldn't help feeling he'd somehow won the argument, perhaps simply by heaping on the glib and cryptic utterances until, befuddled, she could no longer see how to continue.
"All right," she growled, "we'll ask them." And for some reason, during the few steps back to Vom and Ghethi, she came around to thinking it the right choice and resolved to ask persuasively.
"I told you," she said, "that Holg and I came here to kill the giant. Will you help us?"
Vom frowned and fingered a tuft of his beard. "We've never been afraid to fight the xulgaths. But now ..." His eyes widened abruptly. "You have Denda making the little spears that fly from your ...spear thrower. Can we make spear throwers, too? Enough for every warrior in the tribe?"
"No," Kagur said. "I mean, if I found the right kind of wood, then yes. But it would take too long for your folk to learn to shoot."
"That's not a judgment on you," Holg added. "It takes a long while for anyone to master the bow."
Vom grunted. "Then we'll have to fight the xulgaths as we always have." He forced a smile. "Why not? We've beaten them before."
"Wait," Kagur said as a notion struck her. "Maybe there's a better way."
Holg cocked his head. "Tell us."
"Eovath lives on the pyramid. Why not attack him there where he doesn't expect it?"
"That would require penetrating a whole city of xulgaths," the old man replied. But his tone wasn't dismissive.
"Xulgaths who keep human slaves," she said. "At night, sneaking, we can avoid notice."
Vom shook his head, and Kagur recognized the regret in his frown. He was about to reveal the flaw in her scheme as she'd pointed out the defect in his.
"We live in the highlands and hunt in the forest," the big man said. "We don't have boats."
"Who does?" Kagur asked.
She didn't like Vom's answer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Skulltakers
The four shriveled heads sat in a row on poles driven into the earth. The fresher ones stank and sweated slime, and insects crawled in and out of the openings in their flesh.
Vom glowered at the boundary markers. He surely recognized at least one or two of the twisted, rotting faces.
Kagur sympathized with the anger no doubt burning inside him. But it wouldn't do anyone any good to let him stand here and feed the fire. She tapped him on the shoulder and, when he turned his scowl on her, waved to the trail that ran on past the rotting heads.
Vom nodded curtly, and the four of them stalked on. He led, carrying a spray of sweet-smelling flowers with long white petals tinged pink at the base. Supposedly, they constituted a request for a peaceful parley. Kagur and Holg followed, and Dalk, a Dragonfly with a broken nose and a missing upper incisor, brought up the rear.
The trail wound downward through the transitional zone between highland and lowland. Though tree-ferns were scarce, true trees were reasonably common, as was brush. In time, Kagur spied a green face with two fangs jutting up from an underbite glowering at her from the other side of a thicket.
She stifled her initial reflex, which was to nock one of her new arrows and let it fly. Meanwhile, the watcher ducked out of sight.
"They've found us," she murmured.
"Then it's time for this," Holg replied. He signed to Vom and Dalk that he wanted a halt, then murmured the prayers that would enable him and Kagur to converse with the orcs and the Dragonflies, too.
When he finished, he grinned at the cave dwellers. "Now, if the orcs hack off our heads, Kagur and I will be able to understand when you say, ‘I told you so.'"
Vom's lips twitched upward into a grudging smile. "Everything's good, then."
As they marched on, Kagur spotted more orcs along the trail, each glowering from what was nominally a hiding place, although they became less and less concerned about genuine concealment as the humans penetrated deeper into their territory. Vom brandished the white flowers at them in a way less suggestive of peaceful intent than contempt. Like he meant to convey that if they ignored the sign and attacked, they were even more despicable than he'd imagined.
It wasn't how Kagur would have conducted herself in his place, but maybe it was proper etiquette among the peoples of the highlands, for the orcs didn't throw any javelins or stones.
They did start to call out, though: the word "humans" over and over again. Kagur decided that, infused as it was with scorn and ill will, it was all they needed to say.
As the path began to climb again, the taunt came more and more frequently, until it was like a drumbeat, and it was plain dozens of orcs were snarling it. Then a final scramble up a steep bit of trail brought Kagur and her companions into the orc village.
The habitation was on lower ground than that of the Dragonflies, low enough to support a fair amount of grass and even a couple fruit trees. A single mossy cave entrance, maybe leading to one communal living space, opened in the ground that sloped on upward on the way to ultimately merging with the wall of the Vault itself.
Dozens of orcs had turned out to glower at the humans who'd arrived under sign of truce. Kagur assumed one of the watchers on the trail had run ahead to alert them. A fair number of the creatures showed signs of human blood, which, in her eyes, only made them that much more repulsive.
As she and her companions strode to the center of the open space, the green-skinned creatures encircled them. "Humans!" they chanted, emphasizing each syllable. "Hu-mans! Hu-mans! Hu-mans!"
Vom ran cold eyes over the ranks of green faces. Then he spat in the dirt.
The chanting stopped, but apparently only so the orcs could move on to a different sort of harassment. Several particularly big creatures, one wearing a necklace of dried human ears and another with his hair plastered and reeking with old, clotted blood, prowled forth from the ring of onlookers to inspect the visitors at close quarters. Vom and Dalk matched them sneer for sneer, and Kagur followed her companions' lead.
It was easy enough. Her expression simply mirrored the loathing she felt on the inside.
She attracted the attention of the orc with the dried gore stiffening his twisting, tangled spikes of hair. Up close, it was apparent the reeking mane harbored a thriving community of bugs.
For a moment, a flicker of genuine curiosity supplanted the ritual hostility in the orc's expression as he registered her exotic appearance. Then he jabbed his finger at her longbow and thrust out a filthy hand.
Kagur pretended to hesitate. Then she swallowed and held out the weapon.
When the orc reached for it, she simultaneously snatched it back and punched him in his snout of a nose. He reeled backward and groped for the flint knife thrust in his loincloth. His fellows roared.
Shouting at the top of her lungs, Kagur called them all the filthiest and most imaginative obscenities she knew, and from the looks of it, Holg's magic did a fair job of translating. Surprised and maybe even int
rigued or amused by insults different than any they'd ever heard before, the orcs fell silent.
When she ran out of epithets, Kagur sucked in a breath. "We came to talk. Listen or try to kill us, but don't waste my time striking poses!"
Clad in only a ragged kilt, a female orc stepped forth from the crowd. She was at least as big and brawny as any of the males, and deeply scarred where some animal had clawed her left breast away. She carried two flint knives tucked in her garment, and a club with stone chips jutting from the head dangled from her grimy hand.
She fixed her bloodshot eyes on Vom. "Who's the screecher?" she asked.
"Kagur of the Blacklions," Vom replied, "and the other stranger is Holg of the Fivespears." He turned to them. "This is Ikolch."
As far as Kagur had been able to determine, the tribes of the Vault didn't formally acknowledge a single chieftain the way the folk of the tundra did. But she inferred that Ikolch was a leader among her people the way Vom was influential among his.
Ikolch spat. "I never heard of those tribes."
"Knowing how stupid orcs are," Kagur said, "I didn't think you would have."
Ikolch snorted. "I like the way you throw insults around, screecher. I wonder, if I eat your tongue, will the knack pass to me?" She shifted her glare back to Vom. "What do you want?"
"With the blue giant to help them," said Vom, "the xulgaths are killing whole tribes. The Dragonflies mean to stop it. But we need the Skulltakers' help."
The orcs stood silent for a moment, as if Vom's words were so strange it took time to decipher them, and then burst into laughter.
Kagur waited for their mirth to run its course. Then she sneered and said, "Cowards. Like all orcs."
"No!" Ikolch snapped, seemingly genuinely affronted for the first time. "But the xulgaths are mostly raiding humans. Why should we care?"
"Have you considered," Holg asked, his tone mild and his stance relaxed amid all the truculence, "what would happen if the xulgaths did succeed in slaughtering all the humans?"
Ikolch leered. "Orcs would have more room and more food."
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