by Alexey Pehov
How cunningly this bastard had worked everything! Right under our very noses, and nobody had suspected a thing! How could anyone ever think that a Wild Heart would be a servant of the Nameless One? It would be like saying the sun was green and ogres were charming creatures.
When he said he was going to visit relatives, he’d told his accomplices about us and then gone back to the inn. After that it was all very simple. The Nameless One’s lads broke into the inn and shot the staff, Markauz and the warriors took shelter in the kitchen, and Loudmouth staged his own death and cleared out with his helpers and our Key. Who would ever have made the connection between a Wild Heart and the Nameless One? No one! And we would never have heard about Loudmouth again—he would have disappeared and our paths would never have crossed if the servants of the Master had not taken the Key from him.
“A very long time ago, Harold.” He laughed. “You can’t imagine for how many generations my family has been trying to help the lord return to Valiostr.”
“But you’re a Wild Heart. How could you do it?”
“Harold, I really do like you a lot, but don’t talk to me about the Wild Hearts. I only gave them fourteen years of my life because the Nameless One ordered me and a few others of the Faithful to do it.”
The servants of the Nameless One call themselves the Faithful? Ha!
“And are there many of you among us?” Eel asked in a voice that was monumentally calm.
“Very well, I will answer you, my old friend,” the traitor said with a smile. “You can know that now, and you know why?”
“Because you’ll never get out of this cellar,” said the man with the purple nose, finally opening his mouth.
“Shut up!” Loudmouth snapped at his companion, then addressed Eel again. “There were six of us. The eyes and ears of the Nameless One among the Wild Hearts. Surprised? You’d be even more surprised if you knew their names. I’ll tell you one of them, just for old times’ sake. You remember Stump, Captain Owl’s deputy? He was the leader of our group. Unfortunately the faithful one never returned from the Desolate Lands.”
“It’s a pity that you didn’t stay there with him,” Eel said in a dull voice.
This time the Garrakian was unable to disguise his true feelings. A hedgehog could have seen how shaken he was to discover that traitors had wormed their way into the Wild Hearts. It was unbelievable!
“I would have, if you hadn’t saved my life,” Loudmouth said with a nod. “Well, anyway, that’s all in the past, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk. In the meantime, I just came to visit and find out if there’s anything you need. Give them water.”
The final words were addressed to Purple Nose. Loudmouth walked toward the door, but I called to him.
“Loudmouth!”
“Yes, Harold?”
“Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it? Fourteen years of life thrown away or serving the lord?”
“The second.”
“You don’t understand and you can’t understand. Not you, or the Wild Hearts, with whose tattoos I defiled my body. For you the Nameless One is evil. Pure, unadulterated evil, and nothing more.”
“My, what a fine talker you’ve become,” Eel muttered.
“You’re used to seeing Loudmouth whining and sleeping all the time, dissatisfied with the entire world, right?” He smiled again. “Loudmouth! If only you knew how sick I am of that name fit for a dog! For fourteen years I was a dog, for fourteen years I barked for your king. I have a name perhaps even more noble than the title that you conceal, Garrakian.”
“Noble birth won’t save you from me.”
“Anything can happen, but it’s not likely,” our enemy said with a frown. “As for your question, Harold, it was worth it. From the very beginning. If not for the Rainbow Horn, the Nameless One would have crushed the Stalkon dynasty long ago.”
“How can anyone hate a dynasty for all those hundreds of years? Your Nameless One really is insane.”
“The Stalkons made him what he is. They took the name of the finest magician of the Order and blackened it in the eyes of the people. Everyone turned away from him, everyone he loved. Including his own twin brother, his wife, and his children! He had no other choice but Kronk-a-Mor and immortality. And now he wants to take his revenge.”
“There’s no one he can take it on. They all died ages ago, and his brother Grok has been lying in Hrad Spein for a long time.”
“This conversation is not going to lead anywhere,” Loudmouth said with a shake of his head, and walked out of the cell.
“Loudmouth!” Eel roared, and I started in surprise.
“Yes?” Amazingly enough, he came back.
“Remember, I’m going to cut your heart out!”
He didn’t say anything, just glared intently at the bound Garrakian through slightly narrowed eyes, grinned crookedly and not very confidently, and went out again.
“Here’s your water,” said Purple Nose, putting two bowls down in front of us.
“And how do you expect us to drink with our hands tied behind our backs?” I asked him.
“Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not my problem. I’m not suicidal and I’m not going to untie your hands. Find yourself another fool for that. But I can give you a piece of advice: You don’t have to drink it, you haven’t got much time left anyway.”
“Why did you drag us all the way here? You could have finished us off in the street.”
“You ask Rizus that when he comes to count your bones.”
Purple Nose started walking toward the door.
“Hey, scumbag,” Eel called quietly to the jailer. The Garrakian’s voice simply oozed the contempt of a superior being for an inferior.
“Scumbag? Did you call me a scumbag?” said Purple Nose, clenching his fists.
He bounded across to the Garrakian, waving his fists in the air. Eel didn’t look away, and Purple Nose couldn’t bring himself to punch him.
“Do you want to know how you’re going to die?” Purple Nose asked with an evil laugh. “Your neighbors in the next cell are going to eat you. I’ll introduce you right now.”
Purple Nose walked across to the metal door and pulled the squeaking bolt open with an effort. Behind it there was a massive forged-iron grille, blocking off the entrance into the next cell. I was unpleasantly surprised to see something that looked like tooth marks on the lower part of the grille. Someone had tried very hard to gnaw their way through to freedom, and I disliked that someone very much indeed. It’s best to give creatures with teeth like that a wide berth.
Preferably at least a league wide.
“I haven’t fed them for three weeks, so there won’t even be any bones left. I’m leaving the door open so that you can enjoy looking at them. Once Rizus has had a talk with you, I’ll be glad to turn the lever in the corridor, the grille will rise, and someone will get eaten, heh-heh!”
Purple Nose gave that repulsive chortle again and left the cell.
“What’s in there, Eel, can you see?” I asked nervously.
“No, but I don’t like this.”
“I should think not, with a stench like that coming out of the place!” I agreed.
The smell coming from behind the grille made me feel a bit panicky. It wasn’t really all that harsh, there was only a slight whiff, but it was quite enough to put me on my guard.
That was the way rotten meat smelled. Carrion. Corpses.
“The sons of bitches have got one of the living dead in there!” I exclaimed in horror.
“We seem to have arrived at the same conclusion.”
I shuddered. To be eaten by a walking corpse brought back to life by the chaotic magic of the ogres that was still floating about above our world. What a terrible death!
Behind the grille it was quiet and dark. Not a single movement …
“If only my family knew how low I have fallen.” Eel suddenly laughed for no obvious reason. “First I joined the Wild Hearts, now I’m behind bars and about to
become breakfast for a lump of half-rotten meat! If my father found out, he’d have a stroke.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked in exasperation.
The Garrakian looked at me and laughed bitterly.
“I became a Wild Heart about ten years ago, Harold. The Hearts were my new family, and the Lonely Giant was my new home. I renounced everything in my old life and I became someone for whom I used to have little respect, whom I basically despised. In Garrak we’re not very fond of those you call Wild Hearts. You know why.”
“Who doesn’t know? Once upon a time in the hoary old days of Vastar’s Bargain, the Wild Hearts crushed the Garrakian ‘Dragon.’”
“For the nineteen years of my previous life I bore a different name. I changed my ancestral name, the name that my ancestors bore with pride, for the nickname Eel—what could be more terrible than that for a nobleman?”
I tried not to breathe, tried not to interrupt Eel’s story in any way. According to Marmot, no one in the Wild Hearts knew who he used to be and what he did before he arrived at the Lonely Giant.
He had always kept his distance from the others, always been calm and cool, never talked much, and he was magnificently skilled with the twin blades of the nobility of Garrak. Eel was a mystery. Rock, Ice, Unapproachable, Tight-lip—those were the few nicknames that Kli-Kli had given the warrior.
It was rather surprising to find Eel pouring out his heart to me. He wasn’t in the habit of making sentimental confessions, and some of the Wild Hearts still thought he would take the secret of his appearance at the Lonely Giant with him to the grave.
“My father is a Tooth of the Dragon,” Eel went on. “Do you know what that means?”
A bemused nod was all I could manage. According to a centuries-old tradition, only a close relative of the king could become a Tooth of the Dragon, and that meant that Eel had royal blood flowing in his veins. He was no ordinary little nobleman, not even a duke. He was an archduke, directly in line to inherit the throne if the king’s line should suddenly come to an end.
“My father, Marled van Arglad Das, cousin of the king of Garrak, is already the sixth Tooth of the Dragon in our family. A great honor, thief! The highest honor that can possibly be bestowed on a noble of our kingdom.”
I’ve heard that more than once before. All a Garrakian nobleman needs from life is the supreme glory of preserving the honor of his family line, the ancient traditions of the nobility, and other similar nonsense that I really don’t understand all that well. The noblemen of Garrak are total crackpots when it comes to the words “honor” and “loyalty to the king.”
“I’m the eldest son in the family, so I was due to become a Dragon’s Tooth, too. I was due…” Eel ground his teeth together.
“What stopped you?” I asked cautiously.
He looked at me, and I could see an entire lake of ancient pain splashing about in his eyes.
“What stopped me?” he repeated thoughtfully. He was obviously not there with me, but somewhere very far away, in the past. “Youth, overconfidence, and, I suppose, arrogance … In those days I thought I could take everything from life. The eldest son of a Tooth of the Dragon, the king’s nephew—I had a fine military career waiting for me … I did everything that I wanted to do. I thought I was number one, the best at everything, and many other people thought the same. And anyone who held a different opinion went to his grave after a duel. I was untouchable and far too reckless. The favorite of the nobility, of the women … I! I! I! That ‘I’ was what ruined me in the end.…”
“What happened?”
“That’s not important. It all happened many years ago. I made a mistake, disgraced myself, my father, my family, and my king. And disgrace can only be erased by death. So I died. Ulis van Arglad Das ceased to exist, and Eel took his place.… It was probably the best thing for everybody…”
He snorted.
“That night I died and preserved the honor of my line. No one ever found out that when the moment came, I couldn’t plunge the dagger into my own throat and I remained alive. Nobody, not even my father, and especially not the king, although I think that my younger brother has his suspicions.… I left the country.… No ancestral name, and no way of ever going back to Garrak. I had nothing left, apart from my weapons and the ability to use them. I went to the far side of the Northern Lands and became a Wild Heart. I became that for which I, the first warrior of the Dragon of Garrak, had previously had little love or respect. Here no one asked about my past and … but I’ve become very talkative today,” the Garrakian said, pulling himself up short. “I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you.”
“Forget it.”
“And you forget about this conversation. I should never have started it.”
“But you did start it, after all.”
He paused for a moment.
“I told you because I want to ask you to do something for me,” Eel muttered, and looked up at the ceiling. “If I happen to die, and you survive, give my ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ to my younger brother. He has far more right than I do to carry the ancestral blades of the line of van Arglad Das.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that,” I said after a pause. “The two of us are in the same boat, and we’ll be eaten together.”
“Just promise me,” Eel said.
“All right, I promise.”
“Thank you. I won’t forget this.”
Of course you won’t forget it, I thought. It would be rather hard to forget anything in the amount of time that pitiless Sagra has measured out for us.
Someone twittered behind the grille separating us from the next cell. Eel and I both turned our heads toward the strange sound at the same moment.
“Did you hear that?” I asked the warrior in a voice that was somehow too loud.
“Yes,” he answered morosely. “That’s even worse than hungry corpses.”
Worse than hungry corpses? Hmm! The Nameless One’s followers couldn’t really have stuck a h’san’kor in there, could they?
“Couldn’t you just tell me and not make me even more nervous than I already am?” I asked.
“Look!”
Eel somehow managed to hook an overturned bowl with the toe of his boot and smash it into the grille, sending a shower of fragments flying into the air.
The sparrowlike twittering changed to a menacing hiss, and four creatures threw themselves against the grille from out of the darkness with all the fury and hatred of hungry demons. One of the vile beasts tried to bite through the iron bars, and the mind-numbing grating sound ran round the cell, bringing my skin up in goose bumps. I turned cold and started praying to Sagot that the barrier would withstand those teeth.
The bars held, but there were notches left in them. Those teeth were famous throughout the whole of Siala. They effortlessly reduced the old bones of dead men in graveyards to dust.
“Gkhols, may Sagot save us!” I screeched. “That bastard has tamed gkhols!”
Eel didn’t say anything to me, he was studying the beasts that had come dashing to the bars.
Several long, weary, and rather unpleasant minutes passed. We observed them, and they observed us. The gkhols’ interest, unlike ours, was strictly gastronomic.
Not many city dwellers, coming upon a gkhol somewhere in an open field, would realize just who the spirits of evil had put in their path. They are quite rare now, and can only be found in the most desolate spots in Siala: in old abandoned graveyards and burial sites. They are scavengers and corpse-eaters who prefer human flesh, preferably after it has been lying in the open air for a week or two, but they don’t disdain other carrion. Gkhols, especially solitary gkhols, are cowardly, and so they’re not terribly dangerous for a full-grown man, unless he happens to be stupid enough to fall asleep beside an old burial chamber. But a solitary gkhol will easily kill a child, even a ten-year-old.
The situation changes drastically when the corpse-eaters gather together into a herd after going hungry for a long time
. When they are in a state of rabid hunger, the beasts simply go berserk. Every child knows the story of the two knights who set out for some war or other and ran into a dozen gkhols who hadn’t eaten for a year. As you might expect, all that was left of the knights was their armor, and even that had been thoroughly chewed.
So what could two bound prisoners expect? Gkhols who hadn’t had a bite to eat for three weeks wouldn’t leave a single scrap of us behind.
One of the vile creatures had taken a grip on the bars with its little hands and was gazing fixedly at us, and thick, sticky spittle started dribbling out of its mouth.
How come they had managed not to eat each other in there?
The gkhol cast a carnivorous glance at me, leaned his head over to one side, and twittered derisively. He reminded me of a fledgling of some exotic kind of bird. Although, in fact, that idiotic chirping is the only thing that gkhols and birds have in common. Gkhols actually look like very unhappy and fairly harmless creatures, even if they do have a few odd features here and there.
They are small, no larger than a newborn child, with smooth, ash-gray skin, huge bloodred eyes like saucers, a disproportionately large head and small body with a protruding belly, short crooked little legs, long thin arms, and wide-spaced yellow teeth. People who have never seen them before and don’t know what it is they’ve run into are likely to feel sorry for them, or laugh, but certainly not feel afraid.
And that has been the death of many bold fools who have turned their back on such an apparently harmless creature when it was hungry.
“Eat!” one of them said suddenly, looking straight at us. “Eat-eat-eat! Eat! Aha! Eat!”
Like ogres, gkhols carry a few shreds of brain in their heads. The ogres, the only race from the Dark Age to have survived into our times, have degenerated from the most powerful race in Siala, the creators of the first new magic in the world—shamanism and Kronk-a-Mor—into stupid and extremely ferocious monsters. The gkhols, on the contrary, have grown cleverer and cleverer from century to century. But too slowly, fortunately.
