Bad Faith

by Jon Hollins

  He’d known the sentries wouldn’t do much good. Still it was better to have them. It would give the Analesians something to focus on.

  It was dark as pitch when the screams started. Balur cursed, scrambled up, started running. It took a while, but he had wanted Cois as close to the center of the camp as he could manage. It would take the Analesians longer to get to hir there. It would give Will longer to pull a miracle out of his ass.

  In Balur’s mind the best-case scenario would have been to run headlong into a scene of bloody chaos. Unfortunately, what he arrived at was a scene of carefully coordinated slaughter. The Analesians were systematically moving through the rows of guards that were forming up, killing them one by one with very little apparent effort.

  Balur grimaced. As much as he loved a good fight, this was going to be no fun whatsoever.

  He roared. He charged. He sank his claws and teeth into scales. He bit. He tore. He clawed.

  And his opponent did it right back to him.

  Someone hit him on the side of the head with a fist like a war hammer. He reeled away, lashed out with his tail, felt it collide with hard muscle. Strong arms gripped it, wrenched it painfully. He stepped into the maneuver, buried his knee in his target’s guts. They doubled over, opening their jaws to savage his underbelly. He drove his elbows into their spine. They flicked their tail up to smash into his skull.

  Again. Again. Again. They threw claw and tooth, fist and tail against each other. An unending deluge of crushing blows, with only one purpose: to see who was stronger, who would be left standing.

  And if he survived this, all Balur could do was throw himself against the next Analesian in line.

  But the desert made Analesians strong, and Balur had not lived in the desert for a long time.

  A blow snuck through his guard, collided with the side of his temple, spun him around, landed him facedown in the sand. His snout twisted with an agonizing wrench. A foot landed in his spine, applied pressure. His vertebrae screamed.

  Someone shouted his name, which was nice, he supposed. It was nice to be mourned. And it was good to go out fighting.

  Then the weight was gone, and he was sucking in air, even through the pain in his snout. He heaved himself to all fours. Still he didn’t die. He got to his knees. Still he didn’t die. Then he was on his feet.

  Everything was curiously silent. He turned around. And … oh gods … he was never going to live this one down. No matter that Will was semidivine these days. No matter that he possessed speed, strength, and skill that no human should possess. No matter that he was half-purple. There was simply being no way that Balur could ever be living this down.

  Will had saved him. Will stood with the throat of an Analesian warrior in his hand. Will stood facing down a tribe.

  And … Well, when the gods pissed it poured. Of all the tribes in all the deserts …

  “Balur,” growled one of the Analesians. “Exile.”

  Balur nodded to the speaker. “Ralk,” he said. Ralk was bigger than he remembered him. A full foot taller than the last time they’d set blazing eyes upon each other. Broader in the shoulder and chest too. He looked down on Balur now, yellow eyes in a coal-black face, scales a series of sharp triangles like a skin of teeth.

  “You are not being worthy to speak his name,” another Analesian spat at Balur.

  He picked the face out of the crowd. “You were always being a lickspittle, Alack.”

  Alack balled his fists, curled his legs.

  “I will kill you where you stand.” Will sounded almost bored.

  Alack hesitated. And Balur wasn’t entirely sure how Will had killed the lizard man who had been crushing his spine, but it must have been mighty fucking impressive.

  There were about twenty Analesians standing before them, hulking shadows looming out of the black night. A full war party. Balur recognized perhaps half of them—their sloping foreheads, their flickering tongues, their craggy hides. The rest were younger members of the brood. Perhaps he had known them once. Perhaps they had looked up to him. Once.

  His old tribe. His tribe before Lette. Before Cois. His first tribe. His people.

  What a bunch of dickholes they were being.

  “Be stepping aside, Will,” he said. “I am having things to kill.”

  Ralk laughed, long and loud. It was an obviously false laugh, but Ralk clearly didn’t care if anyone knew that.

  “You?” he said. “Exile? Be killing us? When this human was having to save you from young Bolloxt? The runt was having you on the ground. You were being the runt’s plaything. And you are thinking you can be taking us?” His tongue licked the air, long and lasciviously. “You are being weak, exile. You have always been being weak. You will always be being weak. The soft lands of the humans will be killing you before long.” His tongue flickered up in amusement.

  More people were coming now. People with torches and drawn swords. They were wild-eyed and confused. The sand smelled of blood.

  “Hold!” Will called, holding out his hand toward them. “Hold!”

  “No, little human,” said Ralk, stalking forward. “This is being the way of the desert. Tooth for tooth. Claw for claw. This is being a place of strength. This is being a place for shedding weakness. Be letting them come. Be letting them find their strength. Or be letting them see if we are finding them wanting.” He opened his mouth, showed jagged teeth.

  Oral hygiene. That was another thing humans had brought to Balur’s life that he had a hard time being sad about.

  “We are not here to fight you,” Will tried.

  “Then you are being here to be being killed by us. To be letting us drink your blood and be feasting upon your flesh.” Ralk had always been a monotonous bastard.

  “Shut up,” said Balur, stalking past Will, coming face-to-face with Ralk. “You are posturing like a broodling still trying to figure what he should be using his prick for. He is here to be recruiting you to his great fight against Barph. You will be refusing.”

  He looked over his shoulder to Will. “See, that part is being taken care of. Now we are fighting. And we shall win. And those who are left will be stronger for it. Then we shall either be repeating this process or be leaving. Because I was telling you this was being a stupid idea.”

  He turned back to Ralk. “Now,” he said. “Be ready.”

  But Ralk did not spread his arms and straighten his tail. He did not prepare for combat. Instead he straightened up and turned his back on Balur. “No,” he said.

  Balur couldn’t actually believe it. He’d known Ralk was a prick, but …“Coward!” he roared at Ralk.

  And then Ralk turned and Balur brought back his fist, but before he could strike, Ralk had him by his injured muzzle and was twisting and heaving, sending Balur to his knees.

  “No!” Ralk roared. “You are not daring! You are not daring say that to me! Not you, exile. Never you. He who was not being strong enough to accept his tribe’s weakness. He who was betraying the codes of battle. He who was betraying his new kin. He who was slaying those with their guards down. Simpering lickspittle of the brood mother’s teats. Will-less child. Exile. Never you. I am not deigning to fight you. You are not being worthy of me. Killing you is showing no strength on my part. I would rather be fighting a human than you.”

  Balur struck and struck at Ralk’s arm, at the hand that ground against his wound. But Ralk’s arm did not move.

  And here, in front of all of them. In front of all the gathered crowds … his weakness revealed. Gods …

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Someone was shouting. And gods … But of course a god was here, and that was the problem.

  “Stop it!” screamed Cois.

  Cois trying to defend him. Fuck.

  “Oh, look!” Ralk crowed, still not releasing Balur. “She who would be sullying herself with the exile has come to beg for his life. To be pleading for us to spare his weakness.”

  Balur tried to growl at Cois to stay back. But Ralk’s thumb kept his jaw firml
y closed. He hissed and spat into the bigger Analesian’s palm.

  “Oh, tall, dark, and scaly,” Cois said, “I think I have a little more than you can handle.”

  Ralk laughed. And even as Cois made things worse, Balur loved hir.

  “I am thinking,” said Ralk, “that once I am being done killing your boyfriend, then I shall be showing you what a real Analesian is being.”

  “I am thinking,” said Will, “that I’m going to kill you and see if there’s someone smarter I can talk to.”

  Ralk grinned. “Now that is being a challenge,” he said, “that I would be willing to be accepting.”

  Will cracked his knuckles. Ralk dropped Balur to the ground. Balur tried to pick himself up quickly, but his limbs betrayed him with their shaking.

  “No,” someone said for what had to be the hundredth time since this whole pissing conversation began. Apparently Lette had decided to join the chorus.

  Ralk’s question came out more as a bass growl.

  “No,” Lette said again. She had a torch, Balur saw, and was striding toward the center of this whole shit show. “We do not deign to fight with you. You who betrayed the codes of battle. You who attacked brood mothers after the fight was won. You who murdered babes. You who abused his victory. You who lied to his brothers and exiled a good warrior to hide his shame.”

  Ralk, it seemed, wasn’t done growling.

  Lette turned to the gathered crowd. “They accused Balur of being dishonorable. They exiled him for this accusation. But what is dishonorable to the Analesians? What do the codes dictate they do when the warriors of two tribes clash? When a defeat has been acknowledged?” She turned to Ralk. “Do the two tribes not then come together in peace? Do they not evict the weak and join their strength together? Does not the slaughter stop?”

  Now she turned to Balur, finally picking himself up off the ground. And he wished Lette would be quiet. None of this would change anything. This was history. This was all still stupid.

  “They say Balur did not stop. That is the crime they lay at his feet. To continue fighting for his clan once his defeat was acknowledged.”

  “They say the truth,” Balur rumbled before Ralk could do it himself. He would own this. It was true.

  Lette nodded. “They do. They do. But Ralk would like us to forget why you fought. He would like to hide his own crimes. Because you were not the only one who continued to kill once the fight was over, were you?”

  She looked over at Balur. He grimaced at her. He saw no point in this. The Analesians would not suddenly throw up their arms in horror and abandon Ralk. Whatever else he had done, he had delivered victories, and that was all Analesians cared about.

  Lette rolled her eyes at him. “Come on, big guy. Play for the crowd.” Then she wheeled on Ralk again. “And Ralk here—big, strong Ralk—didn’t fight warriors, did he?”

  Ralk’s growl ended, and he leapt. His massive talons aimed straight for Lette’s throat. And gods hex him, he was fast for a big lizard.

  Balur was moving, but gods, he was too slow.

  Will wasn’t.

  Somehow he slipped past Balur. Past Lette. Somehow he traversed space that should have been impossible to traverse that fast. And then his fist was connecting with the tip of Ralk’s snout, and the big lizard man’s momentum was reversing, his body only catching on slowly, performing a cartwheel in the air and landing him on his arse.

  Surreptitiously, Will nursed his knuckles.

  Ralk stared up at Will, dazed.

  “Ralk—” Lette said, and Balur finally noticed that she wasn’t talking to the other Analesians here, all of whom were staring at Will and Ralk in amazement. Lette was talking to the gathered human crowd, telling them a bedtime story. “—with victory declared, with the fight over, went to the defeated tribe’s brood pits. Went to their young. And he proceeded to slaughter the brood mothers. The caretakers of the young. Then he killed their young. The innocents. After peace was declared, he murdered babes. And so Balur attacked Ralk. He defended the defenseless. His people. His tribe. He defied the laws and the rules to do what was right. He stepped the fuck up. Because that is who he is. That is why he fights with us. It is why we fight with him.”

  And now, finally, she turned to the Analesians. “And if you want him,” she said, “then you’ll have to come through us.”

  The crowd roared. Even with their dead at their feet and the scent of shredded organs in their nostrils, they cheered. And for just a moment, Balur felt just a touch of pride. These people.

  This new tribe of his.

  At Will’s feet, Ralk growled again, started to pick himself up.

  “Fuck it,” Balur heard Will mutter.

  Then Will kicked Ralk in the temple. Ralk’s head flew around, and there was an audible crack from his neck. Then the lizard man fell limp to the ground.

  His new tribe.

  Balur roared. He fucking roared. And he saw that lickspittle Alack, his brood brother, he who had been first to condemn him. And he saw the lizard man’s eyes go wide. Because while the desert made Analesians hard, some had flaws that betrayed that strength.

  Balur waded into the crowd of Analesians. And yes, he had lost this fight once, and yes he was injured, and yes he hurt, but gods piss on it, he was back in the desert, and the desert made you strong or it killed you. And he would not die today.

  Alack dropped his weight, lunged. He was lean and lithe, strong and fast.

  But he did not have a sword.

  And then he did. Lodged in his throat.

  It was cheating, perhaps, Balur reflected, as Alack gurgled at him. It was not the Analesian way. Their way was red of tooth and claw. But Balur had been gone from the desert a long time. And in the end, a reach advantage was a reach advantage.

  “Who is being next?” he roared.

  There weren’t any volunteers.

  “That is what I am fucking thinking.” Balur spat blood at his feet. Gods, his snout was messed up.

  Finally one of the Analesians dropped to his knee. “We acknowledge your strength,” he said to Will. “We bow to your tribe’s superiority. We beg to be joined with you.”

  Balur spat again. “No,” he said, not giving a shit what Will had been about to say behind his back. “We reject your request. We do not want you. You are not strong. You are not our tribe.” He turned to look at the people gathered around him. Petty and weak and stupid, but also good and hopeful and—above all—bound together by common dreams and aspirations.

  “This,” he said. “This is my tribe.”

  It was, Balur was fairly sure, a glorious moment. It might even be a bardic moment. There was some gods-hexed poetry in it.

  And then Will went and rather undercut everything by putting his hand on Balur’s shoulder and saying, “Remember how I said this thing wasn’t a democracy …”

  46

  Can’t We Have an Upbeat Chapter?

  Gratt’s once-dead forces caught up with them again the day after they left the desert, and entered Verra.

  It was not a large force, but the ambush was well prepared, and there was a sense of desperation to the fighters in spite of the numbers they faced.

  Will’s followers had bedded down at another farmstead, this one inhabited and very grateful to receive an alternative to Barphian dogma, even if the large pack of Analesians that now traveled with Will did give them some pause.

  Lette woke early, the morning light still a barely realized dream. Will was gone, off on his nocturnal wanderings, and her bedroll was cold. She lay there for a moment, waiting for a cockerel to curse, but the crowing didn’t come. That was not what had wakened her.

  She went to the window, and then she heard what it was that had roused her from her slumber.

  The clink of chain mail.

  Most of Will’s followers were enthusiastic amateurs in the fighting game. They had learned a lot in their months sojourning around Avarra, but still most of them were distinctly lacking in armor, and of those who pos
sessed it, few were in the habit of donning it first thing in the morning.

  She listened. Fifty bodies perhaps. Making their stealthy way through the camp.

  Lette made judgment calls one by one in her head. If she called out, a lot of people sleeping in makeshift tents would die. Will’s followers would win eventually. The algebra of battle was wildly in their favor. But a lot of them would die. If she set about them by herself … fifty was a lot of people. Five she might have felt confident about, but fifty … She didn’t know where Balur was. He’d been sulking ever since Will had overridden him in Analesia and recruited the lizard men to his cause.

  The lizard men would be prepared for battle almost instantly, but their tents were pitched at the outskirts of the camp, far enough away that they wouldn’t scare the animals …

  The animals …

  Verran farms, it turned out, had some very interesting animals …

  As quietly as she could—and far more quietly than the men creeping through the camp looking to assassinate Will—Lette slipped out of the room.

  Ten minutes later, Lette made considerably more noise.

  The beast beneath her bucked and squealed and gnashed vast tusks, and then it just fucking charged.

  Verran war pigs. Holy shit.

  She had heard of them, of course, but she’d never had a chance to see them up close before. Most of her mercenary wanderings had taken her to the east, not the west. And she appreciated that the east had been a profitable place, that it had allowed her to face down dragons twice, and that it had led her to the man she loved. But at the same time, she was beginning to think she had made a mistake in missing out on war pigs until now.

  They were vast slavering beasts the size of oxen, covered in sharp bristles and thick drool. Their mouths were nightmare slashes of broad yellow teeth, and they had the eyes of true psychotics. Lette would never have gotten on the back of one if she hadn’t had the farmhands with her. She had roused them as she made an exit from the farmhouse. There was no need for the once-dead to find them sleeping there.