by Pemry Janes
Rock stared at the ground, the cup forgotten in his hand.
“Can I try the game?” Misthell had switched back to Thelauk.
She and Rock exchanged a puzzled look before he turned to the blade. “Um, Misthell, how would you throw the dice?”
“Good question. Now let me astound you with my answer!” Two dice, exact copies of the ones in Leraine’s hand, fell out of the sky. “Two and one. Let’s see you beat that.”
“When you cheat, you should have the courtesy to hide it,” Leraine said.
The illusory dice vanished. “Can’t blame a sword for trying.”
“I didn’t.” Leraine regarded the sword, then held out her hand to Rock for the cup. With that in hand, she got up and removed Misthell from his sheath.
“What are you doing?” His eye fixed on her.
“You wished to join the game. I am making it possible.” With that explanation she planted the sword into the earth.
Misthell whimpered, and a shiver ran up the blade. “What do you think you are doing?” The sudden shouting had some of the nearby mercenaries look up from what they’d been doing.
Leraine chose to show, rather than tell. She carefully placed the cup on the pommel, balancing it, and stepped away from the talking weapon. “You can bend. When you do, the cup will fall and the dice will roll out.”
“There is a handspan of me buried in the dirt. Do you know where that earth has been? How many animals have pissed and shat on this exact point? How would you like it if someone shoved some dirt into your mouth?”
“You can taste?” Rock’s forehead was wrinkled in thought, his struggle to follow their conversation obvious.
“Well, no,” Misthell said. “But that is beside the point. Which is that I was clean a minute ago and now I’m not.” Another shiver. “Oh no, was that a worm?”
For all his complaints and moving about, Leraine noted that he had taken care to keep the cup balanced atop his pommel. “Just throw the dice.”
The living sword remained still for a moment, then he flexed. “One and three, better than you. And you owe me another cleaning session for this.” Misthell’s eye was hard and aimed squarely at her.
Leraine blinked. “Another cleaning session?”
“Yes, you still owe me for getting me covered in all that vampire blood.”
She regarded the living sword. “I don’t remember agreeing to that. But how about we make it a bet?”
“Maybe. What would I lose if I . . . lose?”
Leraine tapped her chin. “What, indeed. How about a cleaning for a cleaning? You win, you get two cleanings. I win, I don’t have to do any.”
“Tempting, very tempting. Better one bird in your hand than two birds in the sky, they say. I, however, don’t have a hand, so I say give me those dice.”
She nodded. “Fortune favors the bold.” Leraine gathered up the cup and put the bone cubes back in.
“Is fortune not . . . depleting, too?” Rock inquired right before Misthell threw the cup.
It took her a bit to puzzle out what he was struggling to say. “Ah, I think you mean fleeting.” The living sword’s shout of dismay drew her attention back to the dice and she quickly saw the reason.
Still, she waited for Rock to say the numbers, four and three, and only then did she scoop up the dice. “Let’s see if I can do better.” She let the dice rattle in the cup, drawing the moment out, before releasing them.
“Three,” Rock said in Thelauk, “and three. You win.”
Leraine nodded and did her best not to smile. Cleaning weapons was necessary, even relaxing sometimes, but Misthell was not hers.
Misthell did not take it so well. “Again! One more throw. Come on, give me those dice.”
She glanced at Rock, who shrugged. Returning the shrug, she did as the living sword asked.
“Think positive thoughts, think positive thoughts,” the blade chanted with its single eye closed. He flexed, the cup toppled over. But he kept his eye closed. “I can’t look, what did I get?”
“Six and six,” Rock said. “Twelve.”
A shiver ran through the living sword. “Again!”
***
The air was filled with the bleating of sheep that flowed down the slopes of the Scindian Range, across the road, and into the long grass to the south. To call it a herd would do it no justice. It was a river of livestock that had washed over the caravan and was even now squeezing its way through.
Eurik could only see the one driver, who cursed every time the giant goats shuffled in their harness. Not that he could hear the words used, the blatting was that loud. The driver shook his fist at one of the men that appeared to be shepherding this tide of wool and hooves.
He rode a small, shaggy horse and wore a stiff, wide-brimmed hat, a thick leather coat that reached about mid-thigh, and tall boots. A piece of red fabric was loosely wrapped around his neck. The man’s skin had a coppery tan more like his or Silver Fang’s than that of any Irelian or Linesan he’d come across.
“They’re called ruteskieper.” Silver Fang had to raise her voice, even sitting right next to him. Most of her words were in Thelauk, except that last one. “They wander these hills and claim it as theirs.” She gave the mounted man a side-eyed glance. “Some say their ancestors fought with Leaping Thunder. But if so, they have long ago ceased being People.”
Eurik looked at the . . . ruteskiep again. He appeared singularly unimpressed with the driver’s ire. The rider held a polearm of some kind across his saddle, a long shaft with a pronged head. Though with the prongs pointing to the side like that, Eurik guessed it wasn’t meant to kill. He also wore a long knife, or a short sword, at his side and there was a coil of rope attached to the saddle.
They hadn’t seen the sun all morning and now thick droplets began to fall from the dark clouds. All around, drivers and guards scrambled for their cloaks. But the ruteskiep simply hunched a little more into his coat as the rain fell. Silver Fang, too, retrieved her cloak while Eurik himself could only try to hide at least a little under the wagon’s covering.
“I told you to buy a cloak,” Silver Fang said, the left corner of her mouth pulling up. “But no, you were so confident you could make shelter whenever necessary. Well, be my guest.” She gestured at their surroundings; he couldn’t even see the ground.
Eurik still looked for a spot, but he feared that if he hopped off the wagon his feet wouldn’t even hit the ground. Instead, he’d be carried away on sheep back. And if the sheep weren’t here, the caravan wouldn’t have stopped.
So he could only nod. “Yes, fine, you were right. I’ll buy one first chance I get.” It was early summer but the day had not been warm to begin with. Now, the rain had soaked through his clothes in a ten count and ran cold fingers down his back.
“This is a merchant caravan. I’m sure someone has a spare cloak he or she is willing to sell.” Silver Fang looked at him, then opened her cloak. “Come, we can’t—” The rain ceased as swiftly as it had appeared. After a glance up, she pulled back her hood but didn’t get rid of her cloak quite yet as a few stray drops still spattered on the wagons.
“I do hope we won’t be stuck here the rest of the day,” Eurik said. He tried to concentrate on that, rather than the shivering cold. The wagon jostled as a few sheep were pressed against it.
Silver Fang looked over at the ruteskiep. “I doubt it will take that long.” She shook her head. “This herd is already a large one, and protecting and guiding it would take an entire sept. Not that horse people have such.”
“How about a game of cups to pass the time?” Misthell’s guard had some raindrops on it, but right now they looked more like beads of sweat.
Eurik shook his head. “You have created a monster.”
“It is not my fault he has the worst luck I have ever seen. Or that he does not know when to quit.” Silver Fang turned to the sword. “You already owe me several favors. Favors you can not make good on.”
“And you should give me the
chance to lessen that burden.”
Silver Fang dismissed Misthell’s reasoning with a snort and a shake of her head. “I have heard many stories about living swords. None mentioned how demanding they can be.”
“Take it from me, there’s a lot the stories don’t mention,” Eurik said.
At last, the tide of sheep slackened. The ruteskiep clicked his tongue and set his horse in motion. He tugged the brim of his hat at Silver Fang as he passed them, then kicked the animal into a canter. Barking dogs with long snouts and fur dappled with black and brown harried the stragglers.
“Let hope our journey will not get any more exciting than this,” Eurik said as they watched the ruteskieper at work, communicating with whistles more than words.
Silver Fang grunted. “I very much doubt it. In a few days we’ll reach Fort Caeston. The land after that . . . even the ruteskieper are cautious when they tend to their flock there.”
Chapter 6
Underneath the Surface
At last they rolled into Fort Caeston and Eurik got his first look at the border. There was grass, trees, the forested slopes of the Scindian Hills to his left, and not much else. The only clue that the Linesan Empire stopped here was the end of the paved road. Someone had done their best to continue the work where the road crews of the Linesans had stopped but the difference in workmanship was easy to spot.
The caravan drove by the fort before leaving the road and moving onto a field where other merchants had already set up their own camp. Human, mostly, but there were a few round tents like the ones Ghajir and his people used. But that wasn’t what caught both his and Silver Fang’s attention.
Hitched to some of the wagons were statues of gleaming bronze and blue crystal. They resembled the giant goats pulling their own wagons and they moved. “What are those?”
“I do not know,” Silver Fang said. She slipped off the wagon before it had even come to a stop and Eurik quickly followed. “I know they can make metal limbs and the like—my tooth is merely a small example of their skill—but this is something else.”
She stopped several yards away from the things, hardly noticed by the metal beasts’ owners who had gathered around Ghajir and another dwarf. Some of their conversation drifted over to Eurik, but he could not understand a word of it.
Curious, he sent his awareness out through the earth and into one of the bronze constructs. “There’s steel inside, like a skeleton,” Eurik reported. “More bronze. But the crystal . . . I’ve never felt anything like it. And there’s pieces of it everywhere, with the biggest chunk in the head, and there’s someth—”
Silver Fang turned her back to the mechanical goats in favor of looking at him. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, not in denial, but to get his thoughts going again. “Nothing, just surprised. I sensed something alive in there. At least I think I did. It’s hard to tell with how odd that crystalline material is. It’s solid, yet not. It moves without leaving its place.” Eurik knew he wasn’t making much sense, but that was because it didn’t really make sense in his own head.
“Something alive,” the Mochedan said. She looked over at one of the constructs, scrutinizing it. “There would not be much room in it, not with all the other things you say are in there. Perhaps a rat or a mouse snuck into one.”
“I suppose that could be what I felt.” But he knew that was not it. The life he’d sensed had been inside the crystal and it had no gaps or openings. Not even a crack wide enough to let a gnat in, let alone an entire mouse.
“Felt what?” Ghajir’s voice came from close by, startling him when he was about to examine one of the other constructs.
“I felt something alive in those metal goats,” Eurik said.
Ghajir looked up at him, his eyes hidden behind those dark disks of glass again. “You can sense the goat’s brain?”
“Goat’s brain?” Silver Fang sputtered. “You put a part of an animal in there? Why?”
Ghajir tipped the brim of his hat up and looked up at her. “Because it doesn’t work otherwise,” he replied. “Why else would you put a part in? Though I’m skeptical about the manufacturer’s assurances that they’ve got the problem licked. I’ll be waiting until the second generation of goatematons comes out before I replace mine. Let my impatient colleagues work out the bugs, I say.”
“What sort of insects could plague a metal animal?” Misthell sounded curious, but his voice grew more concerned with every question that followed. “Do they eat metal? What do they look like? Where are they?” The blade rattled in his sheath. “Eurik, there’s a bug behind me. Kill it, kill it now before it multiplies and eats me alive!”
“Do not worry, I made a mistake in translating,” the dwarf said. “It is an idiom, it means . . . mistakes in manufacturing or design. There are no metal-eating insects—that I am aware of.”
“Never read about them either,” Eurik said.
Misthell was not so easily reassured. “You’re sure? Couldn’t you squash it just in case? I don’t like the way it is eying me.”
“I am not killing harmless insects for you, Misthell.”
“Fine. But if you wake up one morning and find me covered in metal-eating moths I reserve the right to say I told you so.”
“Regardless,” Ghajir interrupted. “I came over here to inform you that you can’t raise those field fortifications here. Our agreement with Linese forbids us from erecting any defensive structures near theirs, and though you are under Captain Slyvair’s command, your contract is with me.”
Eurik nodded. “I understand.”
“Excellent. Then I wish you two a good day and to enjoy tomorrow. The goats need a day of respite and there’s little need for guards so close to the fort.”
The dwarven merchant said his goodbyes and ambled off to supervise the setting up of the camp. Silver Fang’s attention returned to the goatematons. “I do not like this. To trap an animal’s spirit like that.”
“I don’t think they tried to do that.” Though what had he felt then?
Her head swiveled to regard him. “Do you believe in the spirits? In their existence? I search my memory but cannot recall you ever saying you did. Or did not.”
Eurik said nothing for a moment. Patheos had advised him to be quiet, but after everything they had been through Silver Fang deserved the truth from him. “Believe? No, I don’t. I do not doubt that your great spirits exist—there’s enough evidence that they do—but it doesn’t follow that every animal has a spirit.”
“Evidence.” She tasted the word. “I see.” The Mochedan’s attention returned to the goatematons.
“Is it not the same for everybody? Do people not believe in the gods because they grant their priest power? Do you not know your Great Serpent exists because it grants you power?”
“Rock.” She sighed. “I do not have faith in her existence. I have faith in her purpose, her actions. I believe that they are right, even if I do not understand why.”
“I see,” he said, echoing Silver Fang. Eurik wanted to ask her how that connected to the question of whether or not there were any spirits trapped within the bronze goats, but something stopped him. He got this feeling, a hunch, that she wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical debate about the existence of any sort of spirits. Not right now. “I’ll set up our shelter.”
Silver Fang nodded, but said nothing and remained there, staring at the goatematons, while Eurik walked over to Ghajir’s camp.
***
“Wake up,” Leraine said, lightly kicked Rock’s foot for emphasis.
A startled Rock bolted up. “Wha—Silver Fang.” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, then looked out past her at the sliver of sky he could see from inside the stone shelter. “The sun’s been up for hours.”
“Three,” she confirmed. “But you need to wake up now, since it is your turn to make breakfast.”
“My turn? What are you talking about, did something happen to Ceran?”
“He went into the fort with the res
t of the Gored Axes and every other human in the caravan. They are making offerings to their gods for a safe journey.” A hint of annoyance crept into her voice; like Rock, she’d learned about this after the fact and she was getting hungry. “Nobody sane lets a dwarf cook for him and I do not think Captain Slyvair cooks at all.”
Rock slid out of his shelter and put his boots on. “And the reason you can’t cook?”
“And leave you to cook for yourself when you can do so for the both of us? What sense does that make?”
“You could cook for both of us?”
Leraine shook her head at such foolishness. “No, it is your turn. I did breakfast the day we reached Parmenorum, remember?”
Frowning, Rock got up and slid Misthell into place. “Right, yes, my turn?”
“Your turn,” she affirmed. “Afterward, we can get some sword training in.”
“Actually, I was thinking of going into the fort myself and see the sights.”
“What sights? It is a Linesan fort. There are rows and rows of identical buildings stripped of all decoration. It is ugly, even by their standards.”
“Yes, and I’ve never seen one before. Not from the inside. This is going to be my last chance for a good long while and I’d like to take it.”
She shrugged. “Do not expect me to accompany you,” Leraine warned him. “I will train you until high sun, you can go see the nonexistent sights after that.”
***
Eurik thrust the wooden practice sword forward, but Silver Fang’s switch tapped his inner elbow and the back of his knee before he could react. “You still commit too much,” she told him, standing on his right and scrutinizing his form. “It takes too long to recover when you do it like that. Your enemy only needs one opening to end it. And relying on special abilities to cover for your mistakes is a bad habit. Do it like this.”
He straightened out while Silver Fang demonstrated the thrust again. “Move forward instead, get in close with the enemy. You can use that rock gauntlet of yours to block her weapon, get it out of the way, then your blade slides in.” Her thrust was quick and didn’t cover much distance, but Eurik had to wince at what it would do to a person. “Now you try.”
