by Dave Duncan
"My lord is kind," Benard said, but he said it to himself. If it happened it happened.
He still did not know why Guthlag had brought a fortune in gold along on a simple two-day outing, but he knew better than to ask. Besides, there were more interesting things to think about. The Anziel statue was like a sore tooth, impossible to ignore for long. The angle of Her gaze would be critical—
♦
After the second wine break, Guthlag's painkiller began making him talkative. "That drawing of your'n really took me back," he mumbled. "Handsome man, then, Satrap was."
"Even when I knew him. Must have been a vision in his youth."
"He wash at that, lad. Spec I wound be here if he hand bin."
"My lord is kind," Benard said blankly.
Guthlag cackled and elbowed his arm. "Stuff that! You ever heard tell of the fall of Kosord?"
"Just scraps and rumors." Much more than he had ever wanted to hear, in fact, but he was obviously about to hear more. Perhaps he would learn how Guthlag had survived when the rest of the defenders did not.
"Aye. Well the pyromancer foresaw it, o' course, lady Tiu. She saw Stralg's horde on its way. He'd seized Skjar an' Yormoth an' a few other cities already, and Kosord would give him control of the plains, so no surprise. Hordeleader Kruthruk had been predicting he'd try for Kosord next. Fine man, Kruthruk." Guthlag spat nostalgically. "Course Stralg was running 'bout a host an' a half by then, 'bout twenty sixty. Kruthruk couldn't field even a couple of hunts, so the odds would ha' been at least five to one."
"Would have been?"
"Aye. Well, the lady read it in the fire and announced the news, and State Consort Nars was the light of Demern on Kosord. A Speaker has to give true judgment, no matter what his own interests—his blessing and his corban are the same. Nars judged his city would fare better if it didn't resist. He ordered Kruthruk to take his men and go over to Stralg. Kruthruk refused."
Benard had heard that tale before and decided then that he would never understand Heroes. He still thought so. "Better death than dishonor?"
"Some of that," Guthlag admitted. "More that his brother had been a candidate for bloodlord, so Kruthruk wanted Stralg's guts for rat bait."
"Even if that meant all his men dying, too?"
"Their duty. Said he would let Weru decide. Stralg drew up his horde on the plain and they agreed to fight it out that night. Then the state consort insisted Kruthruk give his men the choice. 'Bout half of them went over to Stralg—knowing, o' course, that he would send them into battle first to let them prove their new loyalty."
Ouch! "That doesn't sound like very good judgment to me."
"Then you're no Speaker!" the old man barked. "Stralg was bound to win, see, and he razes cities that defy him. He'd be in a better mood if his own losses were lower."
"You're right, I'm no Demernist." Benard had often wondered if his father's title of doge had been the Florengian equivalent of a state consort. Who else but a Speaker could give his children away to a monster? "That's too cold-blooded for me."
"Thaz what been a Speaker izzle bout." Guthlag hic-cuped. "The cause was hopeless, so Nars's god told him he'd best serve his city by dying 'longside his troops."
Benard pointed to a mound in the distance. "What place is that?"
"Umthord."
"I thought we went through there? A priest told—"
"Naw. Stay on the levee."
Benard drove on, passing a line of near-naked peasants wielding hoes in the everlasting war against weeds. He waved and was ignored. The sky seemed oppressively big, out here on the plain.
"And the lady Tiu chose to die with her husband?"
"That she did. She drove the chariot and brandished a sword so that they would treat her like a combatant. Knowing what Stralg's horde did to women."
"Why? Surely even Stralg would not dare touch a Daughter of Veslih!"
"She said it'd be best for the city, because Stralg would never trust her and she couldn't trust him. Nils tried to tell her she was wrong and he couldn't do it! Saw him standin' there with tears running into his beard and he couldn't tell her she was wrong. So they went off together. But they had Kruthruk assign one man to guard Ingeld until the new overlord took over the city."
Ah! "How old was Ingeld?"
"Sixteen." Guthlag sighed.
So did Benard. He couldn't imagine Ingeld at sixteen, for he kept seeing her as she had been six years ago, when they were lovers.
"Kruthruk picked me," Guthlag said, "oldest man in the host. Talkin' makes me thirsty."
Benard reined in again. The night battle outside the walls had been a massacre, they said. He hadn't known about Kosord's Werists fighting on both sides and slaughtering one another, but he could believe it. After that, even, the citizenry had tried to contest Stralg's entry, leading to riots, retaliation, and the bloodshed Tiu had died to avert.
"Drive on!" Guthlag belched and wiped his mouth.
Benard remembered the brake, whapped the onagers. "How much defending did you have to do?"
"Enough." Such modesty was unheard of in a Werist.
"The rioters broke into the palace, didn't they?"
"Faugh! The rioters were just extrinsics with spears. I splattered some gobs of flesh around an' after that the rest stayed well back. But Stralg's warbeasts was more serious. I took out three of them before their packleader got there and called them off. When Stralg himself arrived, I was still blockin' the door, still in battleform, all reekin' of gore. He had Horold in tow. Told me he wanted to talk to Ingeld, an' she came out."
The lady had seen much trouble in her life, but that interview must have been one of the worst moments. She had never told Benard this. He had not even been born then. It was shocking to realize all the things that the world had gotten up to before he was there to see.
"This was the jade stair?"
"Naw, the west door."
Benard tried to conjure up the scene. He knew the passage well enough ... narrow and straight, about fifteen steps ... he counted them in his memory and there were fourteen ... darkness, rushlights flaming and smoking, making shadows dance. Much blood, Stralg and his men crammed in at the bottom, perhaps a few bodies... Ingeld defiant at the top and the monstrous Guthlag-thing crouching beside her. Or looming over her—it would not be wise to ask the man to describe his warbeast. Bleeding...
Guthlag growled. "Stralg said she could marry his brother and swear to be loyal, else he'd give her to the troops, which was it to be?"
"So she accepted the handsome Horold?"
"No. Ah, you'd have been proud of her, lad! She laid out some terms of her own. One of them was that I be spared. So I was. Stralg himself said I'd earned that."
"Praise indeed!"
Guthlag sighed nostalgically for what must have been the greatest moment of his life. "Ah, the Fist's a Hero's Hero. 'Member you asked about battleform? Well, here's your answer: Yes, we can put it on anytime we want, but snot allowed. Man changes form without orders, he's headin' for a load of what your friend the Pimple's goin' through right now. And, my lad, changing's not something done lightly. It hurts! All your joints grind, your bones bend. A man needs to be mad to go through with it. Or really scared. Doesn't matter which in a real fight, because them already changed will turn on shirkers, so when the leaders form, we all form."
"What other terms did Ingeld demand for her marriage?"
"Hard to say." Guthlag scratched busily. "In battleform, anything more'n simple words gets pretty tricky. Lost a lot of blood, too. An' I was trying to watch half a dozen Werists, wondering what to do if they all came up the stairs at me at once. So I didn't get much of it. Something to do with sons ... And her husband was to go free."
"Her what?" Benard squealed, causing the onagers' long ears to pivot in alarm. The old man's chuckle told him he'd reacted as required.
"So wash it to you if lady was married before, my lad?"
"Nothing." He glanced at Guthlag and saw that his denial did not
convince. How many people knew or suspected that he'd once been Ingeld's lover? "What was his name?"
"Ardial Berkson. A Speaker, o' course. Nars's chosen heir."
"How long had they been married?" Had she had any say in her father's choice? Had she loved him?
" 'Bout a sixday. He was standin' on other side of her, cool as bronze. Anyway, when Stralg balked at something, she said, 'Packleader, kill me.' I was packleader of the red, then, see?"
"No! Oh, no, that's too much! I've known I've swallowed a lot of whoppers in my time, but that one chokes me."
"Watch your teeth, boy," Guthlag growled. "I'm telling you Mayn's truth. We had it agreed. I was to kill her rather than see her taken alive. That wasn't the final code word, though."
Ingeld was capable of it, Benard decided, like her mother. Whether she would have been capable at sixteen was another question. "Obviously Stralg believed her."
"Stralg had a seer with him. Asked if she was bluffing. Seer said she wasn't. So he agreed. She went to his brother whose looks musta' helped some. Handsome as a god, he was. Ardial wash an ugly cuss an' fishy cold, like all Speakers. He just bowed and walked away between the Werists, stepping over corpses. I was allowed to swear fealty to Horold. First thing he did was order me never to put on battleform again."
It took Benard a moment to realize what his companion had just said. He glanced again at the twisted hands and knees, the pain-racked face. Werists had no need of Sinurists because they could heal themselves in battleform.
"He's probably long forgotten that order. Can't you ask to try?"
"Werists don't beg, boy."
Surely self-defense must be a permissible excuse? Had Guthlag brought the gold along as bait for an ambush so he could battleform in a fight with bandits? No, that was absurd. Was Benard supposed to try and run away with it and be hunted down?
"This journey isn't easy for you, lord. Why didn't you send someone else?"
The resulting pause was so long that Benard thought the old man wasn't going to answer, but eventually he growled, "Came along because Satrap told me to. Said I was the one who had to keep track of you anyway, and I was the only man in his host he could trust not to gut you soon as his back was turned."
"That was kind of him."
"Aye. He wants to do it himself, see?"
Benard knew that. "At least Horold's honest. Did he mention when?"
"Naw. He did say I gotta run you down if you try to escape."
"I have no intention of—"
Guthlag cackled unpleasantly. "Just as well, because it shard to think about anything in a chase sept the game, un'stand? Catch something an' not kill it—snot likely."
Benard stared straight ahead, but his stomach was churning. "I do not intend to try running away."
"That's what her ladyship told me." The old man affected a prissy falsetto. " 'I'm just afraid dear Benard will never abandon all that marble,' she said. 'The darling boy thinks of nothing except his art.' "
"Ingeld did not call me a darling boy!"
"No. She called you a bullheaded idiot."
At last, Benard saw the plot. How could he have been so blind? She had said marble to the Werist, but marble was not the problem and they all knew it. The problem was Horold wanting to kill him. She wanted Benard to run away.
"So the real reason you came was because Ingeld asked you to and this gold came from her, yes?" Meddlesome woman!
The old man cackled drunkenly. " 'Gotta do something to save him,' she says."
A kind thought, maybe, but Benard was hurt that she had tried to buy him off, even if she had not seen it that way. He would not go unless she went with him. Why couldn't they see that sometimes it took more courage to do nothing? True, he rarely went to see her, because the satrap undoubtedly spied on her through his seers, but the thought of never seeing her again was unbearable. One day she would understand that the only way to save his life was to run away with him.
He waited until Guthlag needed another drink, which was not long.
He reined in. There were several boats in sight and more coming, all with bare masts and oars out as they let the current swing them around a great curve, close in to the bank. As the Werist raised the almost-empty wineskin to his mouth, Benard leaped from the chariot. He went down the bank in three great strides that almost smashed his ankles, and launched himself in a dive that should have cleared the fringe of reeds and landed him in the water with a spectacular belly flop.
Something intercepted him in midair. It must have beaten him to the water's edge and turned there, because it threw him sideways and landed him flat on his back in the reeds. He looked up at monstrous open jaws and fangs like chisels, eyes glaring, talons out, and a foul blast of hot wine fumes.
He was going to die. It was going to tear his face off. Guthlag had warned him what happened in a chase, warned him a warbeast was too stupid to understand language. But there were brays of terror in the background and a frenzied rattling. The onagers had panicked at the sight or smell of the warbeast.
"The chariot!" Benard screamed. "The gold! Get the gold!"
The talons touched his forehead and stopped. Benard lay petrified, staring up at the horny, hairy paw that would be the last thing he would ever see. The Guthlag-thing raised its head to look after the fleeing team and chariot. It uttered a snarl of fury and was gone, flying up the bank and racing off after the onagers like a giant cat.
Benard went the other way, hit the water, and started swimming with all the power he had, foaming through the water toward the nearest boat. It would give him a ride back to Kosord. Guthlag would not abandon the gold to follow him. No matter what Ingeld wanted, Benard Celebre was not going to run away from a little turd like Cutrath, nor a big turd like his father either, and she would just have to learn to live with that fact.
Eighteen
PAOLA APICELLA
stood by the door, not daring to go out on the balcony lest the crowd down there see her and harm her, mindless rage-beast that it was. Torches flamed and sputtered in the night, the fires of war. The battle was reaching in through windows and over walls; she could hear missiles striking shutters, strife downstairs—voices raised in fury, sounds of destruction, animal howls as Werist tangled with Werist.
Behind her, the child slept the sleep of innocence in her crib. One wavering flame above the little bronze lamp revealed a room of luxury, full of lustrous hangings, soft mats, plump quilts. Palaces were very fine, but it was time to leave. Paola crossed the room to the lamp. She held it to the hangings, and when she had sent fire licking up those in three or four places, she tipped oil and burning wick on the sleeping platform. The bedding leaped eagerly into flame and acrid clouds that stung her eyes and throat. Now the defenders had more than the attackers outside to worry about.
She scooped up the child, so heavy now! She was not soon enough, for something heavy dropped on the balcony in a scrabble of claws. A monstrous black shadow towered up against the glow outside, then shimmered and shriveled and became a very large Vigaelian, soaked in blood and sweat, naked except for a brass collar. He was panting almost too hard to speak.
"She-fiend!" he gasped. "What have you done? Give me the brat." He strode forward, one hand reaching for her throat and one for the child. "We need you no longer, chthonian."
She had done what was needed. The babe was weaned and now the woman had seriously upset the satrap by setting his palace alight, so he was going to kill her.
Hate!
He reared back. "Stop that!" He tried again, and this time he fell back farther. "What are you doing? Stop it!"
Hate-hate-hate! She advanced, still clutching the child, who also had strength that the woman could draw on. The Werist backed away, screaming curses, trying to fend her off with wild swings of his fists, although she was not even close to him. He came to the doorway and his screaming took on a new note.
"Weru! Holy Weru! Help me!" He backed right out onto the balcony, howling in terror. The crowd-beast
recognized him and screamed its rage. Missiles pattered like hail. A bronze-tipped shaft sprouted from the Werist's chest. Then another. He twisted around, displaying the feathered ends, staggered a few steps, took two more hits, and toppled over the balustrade. The mob cheered him all the way down.
Paola turned back into the smoke and hurried the child away to safety.
♦
A clap of thunder like the end of the world jerked Frena upright and awake. She gasped for breath, hearing the drumming of terror in her heart. Sweat trickled down her face. No reek of smoke making her eyes burn, no raging mob outside, but the vision had been as clear as life itself. Where? When? Apicella escaped... What was the name the seer had mentioned? Jat something. Satrap Karvak, another of Hrag's sons... died during the sack of Jat-Nogul...
Another stunning thunderclap sent Frena dashing, naked, to the window. One should be careful what one prayed for, Horth always said. She had prayed to the Old One to save her from having to visit the Pantheon.
A bad enough storm could do that, but she did not want to see half of Skjar leveled in the process. Usually the canyon sheltered the city from the worst winds, but it could channel them, too, and waves could do even more damage. Rarely a storm surge lined up with the gorge and caused massive flooding and destruction. Again the heavens roared.
The rainy season was about to begin in earnest.
♦
All morning a curtain of black rose steadily up the sky. By noon the waters had turned from bright blue enamel to lead, and an ominous swell was fondling the quays as if testing their strength for the battle to come. Everything movable had been trussed or stowed or battened, and most ships had been towed around to the safety of Weather Haven. Thunder rumbled constantly.
"We'll all die!" Ni whimpered.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Frena snapped. "You've seen storms before. This house is built of stone! It's the safest place to be."
