by Jon Hollins
“You’re worried about him,” said Lette. “You’re worried about spies from the Consortium. So you’re standing here and keeping an eye out for them. Because you care. Because beneath that tough grizzly exterior, you have the soft, squishy heart of a six-year-old girl.”
“He was losing my hammer,” Balur grunted, with a vehemence that made the travelers on the road into town look up and shy away. “He is being lucky that I have not ripped his intestines out of his arsehole and throttled him with them.”
Currently Balur appeared to be armed with a savage piece of iron, which had perhaps once been a fence post.
“But you are guarding him,” said Lette. “You’re doing it anyway.”
Balur grunted, used his scanning of the crowd as an excuse to not meet her eye. Lette thought. “Not for Will’s sakes then.” The pieces fell into place.
“For mine,” she said.
Balur ground his teeth. Finally he just said, “We are being tribe.”
Lette, though, felt anger rising. “So,” she said. “You’re not protecting him. You’re protecting me.” It was not a question, but she expected an answer all the same.
Balur just stared at the crowd.
“That one,” he said. “Concealing a sword under his cloak.”
“He’s come to fight,” Lette snapped. “For Will. For what he represents. And you are deflecting. You say we’re tribe. And I know what you mean by tribe. I know the importance of that word to you. But if we’re tribe, the only member of it that needs protecting is you before I unseam you and piss on your guts.”
She closed on him, didn’t take her eyes off his face, daring him to test her.
He glanced at her, knew it for a mistake, looked away fast, but not fast enough.
“I don’t need your fucking protection!” she snapped.
The crowd definitely heard that one. They paused, started to bunch. “Keep fucking moving,” she snapped, not sparing them a look. “Before I chop your balls from your bodies and send you all chasing after them.”
That seemed to do the trick.
Balur, though, still wasn’t meeting her eye.
“I don’t—” she started to repeat.
“Old Lette didn’t need protection,” Balur said.
That put a stumble in the step of her argument. “What do you mean, ‘old Lette’?” she asked.
Balur shrugged. It looked like two continents trying to get it on with each other. “I am meaning the Lette who we left behind in Vinland. The Lette who was pocketing a sack full of gold, and spitting in a god’s eye. I am not meaning the Lette who is making puppy eyes at some fool of a farm boy. I am not meaning the Lette who is hesitating before she is planting the blade hilt deep. I am not meaning the Lette who is worrying about a herd of fools”—he nodded savagely at the crowds—“before she is worrying about herself. I am meaning the Lette who I was working with, and was living with for ten years, who I was trusting my life with. I am meaning the Lette I am waiting to see return.”
He ground his teeth hard. The metal of his fence post was groaning under the pressure of his grip.
Lette felt herself thrumming, like a bowstring after the arrow is loosed. But she had yet to work out where the arrow had been aimed.
“So,” she said. “I am not supposed to have ambition? I am not supposed to have goals? That’s what people do, Balur. They live. They desire. They strive to change. I am trying to make myself better.”
“Better at what?” Balur snapped. His voice was full of contempt. “Better at being one of these cattle?”
“Better at being someone who can sleep at night,” she spat back, not giving him an inch. “Better at being someone who can look her reflection in the eye.”
“Oh,” Balur scoffed. “So you are having a conscience now?”
Lette hesitated. That was a little close to the bone. “No,” she said. “But I’m trying to grow one.”
Balur looked at her. Yellow slit eyes boring into her. “Truly?” he said. He sounded as hurt as she felt. “You are truly wanting to be more like them?” Again he swept a hand at the passing crowds. They were shying away from them, pressing into the far wall of the archway, looking straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact.
“Well…” she said. “Not exactly like them. Like them with balls. And brains.”
Balur laid a hand on her shoulder. Her knees asked politely if that could never happen again, please.
“We are having that,” Balur said. “We are having balls. We are having brains. And we are having fun. We are having success. That is why we are being tribe.”
Lette looked at him. The big, brutal psychopath, more loyal to her than she ever had any right to deserve. And she said something she knew would cut him to the core.
“They’re my tribe too.”
Balur was eight feet tall. He was covered with armor thicker and stronger than any steel plate. He could wield a two-handed war hammer like it was a child’s plaything. He had a mouthful of teeth like knives. He weighed more than half a ton.
And she had just taken all the fight out of him.
He took his hand off her shoulder, stepped back, almost a stumble.
“We’re tribe, Balur,” she said. “But I’m human too.” She shrugged. “Always will be. Can’t shake it.”
A ghost of a smile passed over Balur’s face. It looked like the smile had enjoyed a particularly grisly death.
“Was always knowing there was being something funny about you.”
It was her time to lay a hand on him. His forearm was thick and heavy beneath her palm. “This isn’t the end, Balur,” she said. “You know that, right?”
He nodded. “Just the beginning of the end.”
She looked away. More words wouldn’t help. Balur wasn’t really a words sort of person. Unless she spelled it out for him in a message made of body parts, perhaps. But, ultimately, that was the sort of thing she was trying to avoid these days.
“At least,” she said, “I’m not the one going about armed with a fence post.”
“It is not being a fence post.” Lette knew they were through the worst of it because Balur was willing to sound offended. “It is being the hand of a temple clock.”
She sighed. And he questioned her desire to change. “You defaced a god’s temple for a weapon?” she said.
Balur shrugged. “Well at this point it is being clear that we have pissed off every deity in the heavens above. I am figuring, at this point, fuck it.”
She tightened her grip on his arm. “Yeah,” she said. “Fuck it all.”
62
Planning for the Funeral
They all met back at the garrison. Even Firkin. Will wasn’t sure how they all knew to go there. They’d not spoken about it. They’d made no plans. And yet, as he wandered in, kicking at stumps of charred wood, and the hoops of shattered barrels, there were Lette and Balur coming in through the remains of the fort’s western gate; Quirk was already squatting on what was left of one of the barracks buildings, and Firkin—alone for once—was coming in from along the shore of the lake.
Was it some sort of bond? Something they had forged back in that cave near his farm? Did it tie them all together, keep them in the same orbit? Or was it just that this was the epicenter of today’s disaster, and its gravity simply pulled them irresistibly in?
He watched Lette as she approached. Watched her watch him. He wasn’t sure where they stood. She had taken the loss of all their coin badly, had stormed off shortly after Firkin had presented him with the sacked city. Their nascent romance seemed like it was going to have trouble surviving.
But as they all closed in on Quirk, Lette stepped away from Balur slightly toward him. Not much more than a step. But enough for his hopes to raise their head up off the bar and take a look around.
Quirk watched them all approach. “What are you doing here?” She was still having trouble finding her calm, it seemed.
Will almost laughed. “I don’t think any of us have a clue,”
he said. “Not the slightest idea.”
“I am having a clue,” said Balur. He sounded slightly offended. “I am looking for a better weapon than a clock hand and then I am getting the fuck out of here.”
“To be fair,” Lette chimed in, “that is the best plan I’ve heard in a while.”
“Ah,” Quirk nodded. “The abandon-everyone-and-try-to-save-yourself plan. How noble.”
Balur shrugged. “I am never professing to be noble. And I am not sure you are being full of altruism, based on what it was you said last night.”
Quirk’s jaw clenched. “I am being conflicted, all right?”
“And judgmental,” Lette added.
That, Will thought, probably wasn’t helping. Still, just standing there and not saying anything wasn’t contributing much either.
“I don’t know if we can just run from this,” he said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to let us. Not the Dragon Consortium. Not the crowds here.”
“Maybe you cannot be escaping here,” said Balur. “But I am not being any prophet. No one is wanting me to stay.”
“I’m not a prophet either,” Will snapped. “But that doesn’t seem to be helping me out.”
“Debating whether you are a prophet or not doesn’t make much difference if everyone believes you’re the prophet.” Lette sounded tired, he thought. Though perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. They all looked tired. All except Firkin, at least. He looked pretty much like he always did. Like he’d been founded marinating at the bottom of a beer barrel just around the point when unnameable things had started to grow on him.
“They don’t believe I’m the prophet,” Will protested.
This was met with a narrowing of eyes. And so he told them of visiting Firkin, of what had transpired.
Narrowed eyes switched their attention to Firkin. Firkin drew himself up, stuck out his pigeon chest, and attempted to look at them haughtily. The overall impression was that of a man suffering the last bitter extremes of constipation.
“The people come!” he said in a declarative voice. “They come not for me. They come not for you. They come not for Will. Nor Balur. Not Lette.”
“You will be telling me who they are coming for,” Balur informed him. “Or I will be showing you what your intestines taste like.”
“They are coming for the prophet,” Firkin told them. As if they were idiots. As if he hadn’t already pissed Balur off way too much.
“Will is the prophet,” Quirk pointed out.
“He told me he wasn’t,” said Firkin, looking wounded.
“I’m not!” Will thought this point bore repeating until everyone knew it.
“Then why is your flap trap clitter-clapping like someone took a piss in it?” said Firkin shrilly.
“So they don’t care who’s the prophet?” Lette look confused.
“And you do?” Quirk asked Will.
“What?” He threw open his hands. “You have the sole right to being conflicted right now?”
It was Balur’s turn to look confused. “I am not understanding this word. Conflicted?”
Lette sighed. “Imagine there was a whore you really wanted, but she’ll only sleep with you if you kill the troll. But if you kill the troll you also kill the whore. That’s conflicted.”
Which taught Will that teaching should not be in Lette’s future.
“Why is the whore dying?” Balur looked offended by the sheer concept. “That is making no sense.”
Lette shook her head. “It’s just the principle. I’m trying to illustrate it for you.”
Balur shook his head. “Well on principle I am lying to the whore about the troll, bedding her, then killing them both later.”
Lette rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.”
From her expression, Quirk’s opinion of them all didn’t seem to be improving.
But Will’s mind was moving down a different track. “Wait,” he said. “Maybe there’s something in that.”
“Signs of a very toxic childhood environment?” Quirk hazarded a guess.
“What if I lie to the crowd and tell them I’m the prophet now, and then just bail on them later?” Will said.
“Then you’ll have the moral compass of a weasel,” Quirk commented, but Will wasn’t paying any attention to her anymore.
“Why would you even do that?” Lette looked at him as if he was publicly shitting his britches.
“So the crowd will listen to me when I tell them to get the hell out of here. So they’re not sitting ducks for the Consortium when they come raining fire down upon our heads.”
Lette weighed that. “We do need to leave here.”
“Wait,” said Balur. He even raised a finger.
“What?” snapped Lette, which Will thought was uncalled for.
“Is conflict always involving whores?” asked Balur. “Because if so…”
“Shut up,” Lette told him.
Okay, thought Will, maybe it was called for.
“And then what?” Quirk spoke as if the mercenaries hadn’t. “When you get far enough from here, you betray their trust, reveal you have no clue what you’re doing, and take cover in their numbers, hoping the dragons kill them and pass you by?”
Will deflated slightly. “It sounds bad when you put it like that.”
“Trust me,” Quirk told him, “it sounds bad however you put it.”
“I am thinking,” Balur rumbled on, “that some whores may have been conflicted about me.”
“I swear,” Lette told him, “I will remove your guts and fashion them into a timepiece for that hexed clock hand…”
“Words!” Firkin suddenly screamed. “Round and round and round like a cat held by the tail. Screaming, and scratching, and biting, and pissing words. But never releasing them to go sailing headfirst into the wall.” He turned on Will, thrust out a bony finger. “You!” he screeched. “Are you this fucking prophet or not?”
“There is no prophet.” Lette made a final bid for sanity. “You made him up. Then people thought it was Will. And everything went to shit.”
“It went to shit waaaaay before that.”
For the first time Will wondered whether Quirk had been drinking.
Balur was shaking his head. “I have lost track completely. Is there being a prophet or not?”
Everyone, Will realized, was looking at him. He didn’t understand how this kept happening. He didn’t have any answers. And his guesses seemed to have a pretty consistent history of being wildly off base. And yet here they were again.
He tried to lay out the facts for himself. The undeniable, unavoidable truths of the situation. Dathrax was dead. Word was spreading. Had spread. People were already flocking to Athril. The Consortium would therefore know soon enough. Then the Consortium would descend upon them all and kill them. That last step would be particularly easy if they all stayed in one place. He could slip away and abandon everybody here, but if he did he would have an unconscionable number of lives on his hands. And there was no real guarantee that he would survive much longer than the crowd. He could instead assume the role of the prophet, and drag the crowd with him. And all that would achieve would be delaying the inevitable.
It was, he was forced to conclude, a shitty list of facts.
Still, delaying the inevitable was the option that seemed to keep him alive the longest. And that’s what life was anyway, wasn’t it? Staving off the inevitable for as long as possible. If he could delay the inevitable for another fifty years, then he’d probably be ready to be killed by dragons by then.
Of course if he could delay the inevitable by five minutes he would, at this point, call himself impressed.
“Yes,” he said to them all. “I am the prophet.”
Lette looked at the ground. Quirk looked like she couldn’t care less. Balur looked like his mind was back on whores.
“Well,” said Firkin, “I wish you’d mentioned this earlier. It makes for a very confusing ecclesiastical message.”
Will couldn’
t give less of a shit about that. He plowed on. “Okay, first things first. I decree we need to leave the city. Get on the road.”
Firkin looked at him hard, mouth working. “You say?” he said.
“Yes,” said Will.
“What about the prophet?” Firkin looked deeply suspicious.
“I am the prophet,” Will insisted. “Everything I say, the prophet says.”
“Everything you say?” Firkin checked.
“Yes.”
“Well,” Firkin said, shaking his head, “I am the high priest of the prophet, his spicy mouth upon this bland and flavorless world, and he didn’t say shit to me about that.”
“I just said it!” Will protested.
“You weren’t the prophet then,” Firkin said, a sly look in the corners of his eyes. “When you were the prophet you said you weren’t.”
“Well, I am now, and I’m saying I am.”
“You weren’t the prophet,” Firkin countered. “So you can’t say you’re the prophet. Only the mouth of the prophet can decree the word of the prophet. Only I, the utterer of his sumptuous words, can say—”
He cut off abruptly as Balur slammed the flat of the clock hand into the back of his skull. He dropped bonelessly to the floor.
“Hmm.” Balur examined his improvised weapon. “I suppose I could be getting used to this.”
63
Making Like a Hooker and Blowing This Joint
Eventually, after what Balur referred to as “some light encouragement,” Firkin got up in front of the crowd and announced that the prophet “in his wisdom of prodigious length and most satisfying girth” had decreed that they “abandon the sight of this most holy battle and sally forth, questing for fresh combat.”
It was a little off script, and Lette had to spend five minutes restraining Balur from killing the filthy old man. They were moving, she told him, and that was enough for her.
Still, as she stood upon one of the remaining garrison walls to oversee the exodus, Lette couldn’t help but feel that it was all too little, too late.
There were just so many of them. It was a crowd that no longer numbered in the hundreds but in the thousands. Every single man, woman, or child who had fallen in Athril seemed to have been replaced by at least ten newcomers. People had uprooted their entire lives. Herds of cattle, sheep, and goats all followed the crowd out of the town. People sat upon wagons loaded with chickens, turkeys, and other poultry that Lette would only have been able to discern by taste. Minstrels wandered, singing songs of the prophet, of his great feats, and of the dragons he had struck low. Soothsayers stood, causing eddies in the crowd, as they cast stones and predicted the downfall of the Consortium. Priests for all the various gods were scattered about, laying claim to the prophet. That Lawl had inspired him, or Toil, or that he was the herald of Barph’s long-awaited return. Fistfights broke out between religious factions. They’d even picked up more than one string of whores, and there was one woman with a cart loaded with work shirts onto which she had crudely stitched the word “Profit.” From the looks of things, the one she was making was considerable.
