by Deck Davis
Gunar stared not at the sky but out of the wagon, between the wooden bars that imprisoned them. “Something isn’t right.”
“It’s okay to be scared, Guny. Everyone is. There are more puckered up arseholes here than in a Dispolis interrogation cell. But we’re together, and we can do it. When night falls and they leave a few on guard, we rush this side of the wagon as one. The bars look weaker, and they won’t hold all of us pushing at them together. You were right, this was our best chance.”
“It’s not that. It’s him.”
Helena stared across camp now. “Oh.”
Way across the camp, Hips Maguire was standing outside his own wagon. He was talking to a man who was only as tall as his chest. This was a man who, even from across camp, gave off a pungent waft of smugness, and even a week of Toil heat and sparse rations hadn’t done anything to his waistline.
It was the bastard storm oracle.
Helena hadn’t wanted him to come, but Gunar insisted. He wanted to be safe. He could almost laugh at the futility now. The first time they’d brought a storm oracle with them, and they’d ridden into two storms at once.
“The pinecone-looking son of a bitch is up to something.”
“He’s going to make water,” said Helena. “You heard him ask.”
“They make the rest of us men piss out of the bars. Something isn’t right. We might have to do this now, Helena.”
“They’re all awake.”
“I can feel something stabbing in my gut. That rain cloud bastard is up to something.”
“They’re coming this way.”
The slave master strutted toward them, every step exaggerated, leaping over logs around the fire, pirouetting around those of his men who were getting into their sleeping bags. It was as though he lived life to music nobody else could hear. In any other circumstance, Gunar would have laughed at him.
The oracle followed him, waddling across camp with a look on his face that Gunar found hard to place. Relief? Smugness? Or was it just his normal disposition? Whatever the answer, he gripped the wooden bars and hoped squeezing them would displace some of his growing anger and keep him calm.
Hips stood in front of them, feet apart like he was about to do the splits, arms on his waist where twin daggers rested in sheaths.
“Which one of you lovelies is Gunar Helpetoy?”
The oracle coughed into his sleeve. “Hmm. Helketoil.”
“Sorry, Helketoil. C’mon. Which one of you is it?”
Gunar went to rise when he felt Helena dig her nails into his calf. “He never asked our names before,” she whispered. He stayed still.
Hips smiled wide, the fire not far behind casting a glow on one part of his face and making him look like he was wearing a half-mask. “I see, I see. None of you will own up to being Gundog Helpetoy, so I suppose I’ll just drop the matter and go back to my wagon and sleep,” he said. “Night-night, everyone. Don’t let the Toil-lusks bite.”
Hips spun on his heels and took two exaggerated steps back across camp, lifting his legs to chest height. Then he turned again, spinning and stopping and placing his hands on his waist. “Except, I wasn’t born when the sun rose.” He pointed at Gunar, who battled his hardest not to shrink under Hips’ gaze, as though the accusation of his identity was something to fear.
But then Hips moved his finger again, pointing from face to face.
“I could ask my oracle here to identify you, but I don’t like to do that. Knowing your names makes my job harder. If you make my job harder…let’s say that there are many miles left until we leave Toil. Time enough for bruises to fade, wounds to heal. Punishment now might not necessarily lower your value.”
Helena gripped Gunar harder now. Some of the caravaners cast wary stares his way, but none looked ready to give him up.
That did it for him. He wouldn’t repay their loyalty like that. He stood up. “I’m Gunar Helketoil.”
“Gunthrap Holpeall, aye,” said Hips. “I know you are. I wanted to see if you had the plums to tell me that, and it seems you do. Tell me, plummy, do you know this little fella?” he said, patting the storm oracle’ shoulder. The oracle squirmed away. “This little bastard with a face like a mule’s arse after being bitten by a rat. You know him?”
“Of course I do. We paid him to find us a path through the storms.”
“And that went well, didn’t it?”
“He led us into two storms at once.”
“Aye,” said hips, “Storms that I paid him to cast. See, he’s not a storm oracle; he’s a storm caster. I didn’t know he needed to travel with you to cast them, though. You can imagine my surprise when I reached the marker he set and found you all, and his slapped-arse-of-a-face was looking back at me like a puppy who just got caught shitting on the carpet.”
Gunar felt acid bubble in his stomach. It was rage, fear, and betrayal; a concoction of toxins that left his belly and made his throat burn. He felt weak now. He hadn’t just led his people into accidental disaster; he’d led them into a trap.
He stared at the oracle with a hate he’d never, ever felt in his life. He could gladly choke the man to death. Put his thumbs in his eyes and press until he felt them pop and the liquid run down his hand.
Maybe it was the hopelessness of it all that burned him so much. Their irons had been thrown into the forge before they’d even rolled into Toil. It was a trap. He just didn’t know if the oracle had told the slavers about the opportunity after Gunar approached him, or if the slavers and oracle had conspired for Gunar and the oracle to meet.
He racked his brains now and just couldn’t remember who had introduced themselves first, him or the oracle? It didn’t matter now, because Hips as curling a ring-adorned finger at him.
“You, Mr. Helketoil,” he said. “Come here. Jones? Let the man out.”
Helena gripped his thigh now as if she could stop him going. “Guny…”
“You heard the man. He knows who I am,” said Gunar. “That bastard of an oracle told him.”
“Come on, I don’t bite much,” said Hips. “Not unless you’re a slender-bodied whore with golden hair. Even then I just lightly nibble.”
A lanky slaver with a goatee beard and scars on his forehead unlocked the cage. Gunar climbed down and almost lost his balance, feeling surprised at just how weak sitting in the wagon had made him.
The glow of the fire shone on the faces of all the watching slavers and slaves, making masks of them all, yellow and orange and red ones that looked like shadows of a demon. The moon watched, full and rounder than Gunar had ever seen it.
They were silent then. Slavers and slaves alike, their lips closed by the fingers of tension.
“First, I’d like to show you all that loyalty is rewarded,” said Hips, patting the oracle on the shoulder.
He drew his right dagger and slit the man’s throat.
The oracle fell to the ground, smashing into it nose-first, rolling and choking and gripping his neck with both stubby hands as blood flowed like champagne into a nobleman’s glass.
The caravaners gasped from their wagon. A boy cried and buried his face in his father’s chest. A couple of slavers laughed, while the others looked at the oracle who was flopping like a beached fish.
“Unfortunately, this man was not loyal. He betrayed you all to pad his purse, and I hope I have avenged that for you.”
Then he nodded to the scar-forehead slaver, who approached the oracle, batted his hands away, and opened his robe before pulling out a bulging coin purse. He tossed this to Hips, who spun in a circle and then caught it, before holding the purse aloft like a magician revealing the end of a trick.
“Since the coins were mine, in the beginning, I’ll take them back. Though, some of these will belong to you, Gunar. After all, you paid the man to guide you through the storms he knew he was going to create, yes?”
What game was this man playing? The tension between the caravaners and slavers crackled almost as loud as the fire, yet Hips was smiling.
<
br /> “How much did you pay him?” said Hips.
“Five gold.”
“Five gold! He charged half that to create the very storms he promised to keep you safe from. A pathetic bastard, I’m sure you will agree. Five golds! My gods…”
Hips opened the coin purse and he took a gold coin and flicked it to Gunar. It landed by his feet, and the fire cast an orange glow over the queen’s silhouette printed on it.
He did this five times, counting in the Gertch language of his ancestors as he did. “Ons, zi, tri, vor, fif.” By the end, five queens stared at Gunar from the ground.
“Your matter with the oracle is settled,” said Hips. “And there’s no more bad blood. Apart from his, of course. His blood was rotten to its essence, and it will poison the toil ground. But from a consumerist standpoint, your issues are settled. Any lawmaker in the land would agree. Now, My Helketoil, we move onto my problem.”
“What do you want?” shouted Helena. “We’ll pay anything.”
Hips stared only at Gunar. “You see, Mr. Helketoil, let’s say I have ten cows, and one of those lovely heifers is corrupting the others. It’s ill, and it is threatening to spoil the rest. If that happens, I couldn’t sell the meat, could I?”
“There are families in that wagon. Children,” said Gunar, bile rising in his stomach and making him feel sick.
“And you’re a bad cow. The oracle told me what you were planning, Mr. Helketoil. I can’t have the rest of my stock corrupted.” Hips nodded to someone behind Gunar.
Pain flared on the back of his thighs. His legs buckled and he fell onto his knee caps. Then agony sprang in his skull and his vision flickered, and he heard a squealing sound in his ears.
When that died he heard Helena shout, but she’d slipped into her native tongue, one she hadn’t used in years, and it was like her voice was coming from far, far away.
Hips walked to him now, his waist slinking this way and that, like a snake given legs and told to strut. He held a second dagger in his hand, and the flicker of fire flame showed the blade clean, that this wasn’t the one used to kill the oracle.
He held the dagger aloft. “I hope you all understand the significance of this,” he said. “I’d hate to teach this lesson to deaf ears.”
The last thing Gunar saw was a silver blade coming at him, and then hot, searing agony spread across his throat.
Nobody was watching when Gunar’s body slumped onto the ground. They were looking, but they weren’t really seeing. The caravaners had known him as their leader for so long that it was impossible to comprehend his current state.
For Helena, the spread of utter insanity had started and her mind was rolling in fits and tumults that carried her far, far away from anything that would approach logic.
The slavers were already bored. Killing wasn’t a sport for them and they got no enjoyment from watching it. To them, the blood spurting onto the ground might as well have sounded like coins falling from their pockets and tickling away down an alleyway to fall into a gutter.
They understood that the oracle had to suffer because a man who would betray a whole host of families and who could summon storms when strong enough was not a man you let live. The other guy had been cargo. All the slavers owned a share in the price his flesh brought, and it would earn them nothing if he was dead.
Knowing not to argue with Hips, they busied themselves in getting ready for bed, even if it would be a nightmare to try and sleep while the cargo was gasping and crying and screaming.
This meant nobody watched as Gunar’s blood seeped into the cracks in the desert.
Such small cracks, wrinkles in the ground so commonplace that most Toil travelers didn’t pay them any notice. The blood found its way into these rivulets and followed them down, down, down, deep into the desert until they reached cavities big enough for mice, and the further until they widened into tunnels big enough for a man, then ones big enough for something more insidious to creep through.
Gunar’s blood found its way into the lusk warrens deep underground. It seeped into the warren of an ancient lusk, one as old as the sand it made its home in. One who other, younger lusks lived near. Not together, but near, so that they could bring him tributes of rats and rabbits and let him gorge, and in turn, he would protect them if they were to ever need it.
The blood of this poor man reached these tunnels and its scent spread through them until it reached nostrils that hadn’t smelled the blood of man in a long, long time.
Now an ancient lusk opened his eyes and he breathed in and he knew that, for the first time in years, something lay on the surface that was worth breaching for.
Bear was tired. He’d followed his nose for many miles now, for many suns, and his belly felt tight like the time he’d sucked rotten marrow from a fox that had been dead for too long.
He’d nourished himself on four lizards who had been fleeing from something, and who had stumbled into his path. He carved one of them open with a great swipe of his right, fully-clawed paw. The other three attacked on instinct but he killed them and he feasted on their skin and flesh and he drank their blood and he snapped their bones and sucked the marrow, knowing it was fresh.
With the heat of blood in him he carried on, sun after sun, and sometimes he thought about Pup and he felt something inside, a darkness like the night when only the moon looked down, and Bear wondered now if there was a place for Pup to look down from and watch him.
Soon the smell he was following began to change. It grew stronger, and he came to realize that he was following many smells, not just one. Not just the scent of the man who had harmed Pup, but others.
No longer weak, Bear sniffed the air again and set out, and he could feel fury pounding in his ears and urging him on.
CHAPTER 38
Jakub heard screams. Even from his vantage point, it was hard to see what was going on, and the slavers’ fire was dying. It was night now, and nobody in Toil would let a fire die when the night cold set in. Something was distracting them, and the screams were part of it.
As far as he could make out, the cries were coming from the far-left side of camp, where he could make out the silhouette of a wagon against the darkness.
Was it Gunar and the others screaming? He hated to use logic when logic tasted so sour, but it had to be. It was hardly going to be the slavers screaming.
At least they wouldn’t be able to see him. He’d first approached the slavers from the south, but the terrain was flat and so, as weary as he felt, he made a diversion west and then north again, climbing a series of rocky hills so that he could look down on them. Len the lusk was underground, and when Jakub opened his map he saw that the reanimated creature was directly below the camp, ready to breach when he commanded it.
That would be a destructive diversion, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something else, something to add to the chaos and let him free the caravaners. Once they were out they could lend numbers to the fight, even unarmed. Together with Len rampaging and the panic a fully grown lusk would cause, they could overpower the slavers.
He checked his spell list to see what he could use.
Glyphline 1: Soul Harvest
Essence Grab [2]
Draw soul essence from the dead for use in necromancy.
Health Harvest [2]
Convert soul essence into a healing wind
Wilting Touch [1]
Touch a living thing to take some of its essence
Glyphline 2: Resurrection
Major Creature Resurrection [1]
Raise creatures of any size from the dead (does not include humans or other beings of similar intelligence)
Last Rites [2]
View the last minutes of a person or beast’s life.
Death Puppet [2]
Temporarily reanimate a dead or dying person and step into their body.
Spirit Transfer [1]
Transfer a dead person’s spirit into a vessel
Glyphline 3: Death Bind
Summon Bou
nd [2]
Summon your bound animal from the Greylands.
Glyphline 4: Raiser
Reanimate [2]
Bring a person or creature back from the dead, with limited cognitive function. Not true resurrection.
Corrupted Soul [1]
His Soul Harvest glyphline was useless right now because there was nothing to drain essence from, and he didn’t need to heal himself. Perhaps Wilting Touch would help if he got close enough, but getting close was the problem.
His Death Bind glyphline was also a no-go, because the only spell he possessed on that line was to summon Ludwig. As much as he’d loved to see his friend, the only thing Lud could do would be to sneak into camp and gather intelligence. That would be useful, but it’d leave no essence for anything else.
That left his Resurrection and Raiser glyphlines. One of the spells nestled within them had to be the answer.
Major Creature resurrection and Last Rites wouldn’t work – there was nothing to resurrect, and no dead person whose last few minutes of life he needed to view. Same with Reanimation; no corpse, no party. Ditto Spirit Transfer.
Damn it. Being a necromancer didn’t help when there were no corpses in sight. Was he just going to have to let loose with Len and hope for the best?
While he’d been trying to make a plan, the shouting in camp had carried on. Slavers had surrounded what he assumed was the wagon where they kept Gunar and the others. Were they trying to break out?
He needed to get closer. He quickly checked his gear. He had his dagger in a sheath on his belt, the bottle of Firelick in his bag, and he held his sword in his right hand. With nothing else to take, he set out.
