Fool's Gold

by Jon Hollins

  “It’s making you look like a bit of a dick,” Lette offered up.

  “A prophetic dick?” Balur asked.

  “What are you doing up there?” She couldn’t help but smile as she asked.

  “Is being theater,” he said, mock-wounded. “I am having to sell myself as a prophet to fifty thousand armed men across a battlefield. I am needing to look the part.”

  “Balur,” she said, “you’re an eight-foot-tall slab of scaled muscle. I think that sells the idea.”

  She reached up, patted his tree trunk of a leg. Though he would never admit it, he was nervous.

  “I,” she said, “am going to be over there telling everyone within earshot about what a horrifying, murderous, merciless arsehole of an Analesian is leading these rebels. About how he crushes men’s skulls in his bare fists. I am going to make them piss themselves at the sound of your name.”

  He looked down at her, smiled fondly. “You are being very sweet.”

  She looked up. “Still tribe?” And she would never admit it, but she was nervous too.

  “Still tribe,” Balur said. “Even if you are being a total pussy now.”

  “I just made a grown man cry,” she offered up.

  “Did you do it by feeding him his testicles?”

  She sighed. “No.”

  “New Lette is still a pussy.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “Last one to kill a dragon,” she said. “That one is the real pussy.”

  He knelt down, put one massive hand over hers. “Deal,” he said.

  “Deal.”

  It was as good a way to say goodbye as any she knew.

  The crowd was finding its final position when she eventually found Will. He had been harder to locate than she thought, just another face in the crowd.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Erm…” He studied his hands. They were shaking slightly. “Let me see. My pretend army is in position. The fake merchant wagons are prepared.” He nodded at two farmer’s carts that had been outfitted with wooden frames and brightly painted cloth so that they resembled merchant’s wagons. “I haven’t shit myself yet. So I think this is as ready as I’m going to get.”

  “Quirk knows what to do?” she asked. The plan seemed like a flimsy thing now that she was about to execute it. As pathetic as a wooden sword held up to defend yourself from the widening jaws of a dragon.

  “She says she does. She’s the one driving that wagon.” He pointed. Lette did a double take. She hadn’t recognized the woman. Instead of one of her simple, plain dresses, she was wearing an outfit of billowing silks that boasted more colors than a Salerian whore’s painted face.

  “Where did you find that outfit?”

  “Oh.” Will found a smile from some deep reserve. “It turns out we have a traveling circus that joined a few days back. We cut up a couple of their tents.”

  She shook her head, put an arm around him. “Are you sure,” she said, “that this is really the first time you’ve tried to con a bunch of dragons out of their kingdom and their fortune?”

  He shrugged. “If it wasn’t, I think I’d have better control of my bladder.”

  She carefully removed her arm from around his waist. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go and put the fear of you into our enemies.”

  The journey took longer than either of them would have liked. The grasslands of the Kondorra valley offered little in the way of cover, and they had to cross half a league of it to reach the opposing army without being spotted.

  Hallows’ Mouth stared down at them as they crept around the northern edge of the battlefield, trying to keep hidden among the tall grasses, dashing from bush to bush. The volcano provided a hard, harsh edge to the field’s southern border, jutting abruptly up from the ground. Craggy cliffs of brown rock tore up through the earth, belching smoke and emitting ominous roars from their guts.

  The Consortium dragons remained conspicuously absent, as if they were trying to tell the world how little they thought of this upstart prophet and his upstart army.

  To be fair, they had good reason to think little of them. Their own vast army was arrayed before them, and it both outnumbered and outmaneuvered their opponents.

  The Consortium army had no problem with making itself as conspicuous as possible. They spread out like a tidal wave. Figures in gray armor, massing, spreading, staining the valley, as the smoke gathered overhead. Griffins rose into the air, roaring and calling, wings beating at the still air. The trolls sang war songs in deep baritones, full of grunts and howls. Trumpets and horns rang out. The sound of fifty thousand pairs of feet marching in time, the jingle of chain mail, the clank of swords, halberds being set. The rhythmic thud of tent poles being erected. The neighing of their cavalry’s horses. The growling of their war dogs. They dominated the plains, the sound of them, the stench, the sheer unfolding volume of them.

  Lette felt a heaviness in her chest. “How in all the Hallows are we going to spread word through all of them? It’s not possible.”

  But Will just looked at her. “The night we fought Dathrax. The night we didn’t kill him, and he almost killed us. The next morning thousands of people showed up in Athril. I wasn’t even sure what had happened and people from leagues away were coming to tell me all about it. Word spreads around here, and it spreads fast. And you and I will talk about it with everyone we see.”

  It was horseshit, she knew, but it was reassuring horseshit, so she let it slide.

  As they drew closer to the Consortium army, Balur and Firkin started to get the prophet’s army worked up. The fake dragon skull was visible across the plain. A group of men were dragging it back and forth through the dirt, whooping and screaming. Cheers and boos rose up in equal measure. Catcalls were hurled into the air, the details lost but the tone unmistakable. The tavern songs started up again, lewd and loud, and accompanied by gestures that were disparaging even from this distance.

  “Okay,” said Lette, “I know I haven’t been in the Kondorra valley that long, but I have traveled a fair amount. And the people here are fucking insane. Do they have any idea what’s about to happen to them if a fight actually starts? They’re going to be slaughtered.”

  Will shrugged. “You oppress a people for long enough, it starts to get to them, I suppose.”

  “Or you just breed them weird.” Lette had seen oppressed people before. To her the “breed them weird” argument seemed like it held more water.

  “Where are you from, by the way?” Will asked suddenly. “I can’t believe I don’t know that.”

  Lette could. She never found herself to be a particularly interesting subject. Still, Will had probably earned the information, and given their prospects of survival, he would likely be taking it to his grave.

  “Salera,” she said. “The capital. Essoa. My father was a fishermen, and my mother a seamstress.” She dropped as much of a curtsy as she was able to, crouched behind a scrubby bush. “I was to sew dresses for fine ladies, thank you kindly.”

  She watch Will try to process that. “A seamstress?” he said. “Had they met you?”

  “I was a child, Will,” she pointed out. “I hadn’t had much of a chance to kill anyone at that point.”

  “Now you’re making up for lost time?”

  She shrugged. “Being a seamstress didn’t stick.”

  He nodded; that seemed to make sense to him at least. “How does one go from being a seamstress to, erm”—he gesticulated stabby motions with his hands—“doing what you do?”

  “I ran away at thirteen. High jinks ensued.”

  She saw him doing the mental math.

  “Don’t ask how old I am,” she warned him. Still it was fun to watch him match the woman he knew to the girl she described.

  “Did you…” He struggled with the wording. “Did you leave anyone behind?”

  She nodded. “My parents. Four brothers. Two sisters. Six aunts. Five uncles. Twenty-seven first cousins. Couple of second cousins. I didn’t k
eep track of all of them.”

  She saw Will’s eyes go wide, searching her for hurt. But there wasn’t any. It was fifteen years gone since she had said farewell to them, and she had long had time to make peace with the decision.

  “You miss them?” he said.

  “I think their lives are more peaceful without me, and mine is less peaceful without them, which is how I like it.”

  He nodded slowly. “I miss my parents every day.”

  She rested a hand on his shoulder. “I chose to leave mine. That makes a difference.”

  He nodded.

  “Enough of this sharing, emotional bullshit,” she told him. “Let’s go raise some hell.”

  “The fuck you want to do?”

  Lette forced herself to not grit her teeth. For “raising hell,” this was a poor start.

  She and Will had managed to circle around to the back of the Consortium’s army forces. Now they stood outside a bloodred tent, trying to look earnest, while a large sergeant at arms strode back and forth in front of them, succeeding mightily in looking like an arsehole.

  “To enlist,” said Lette. She held her hands clasped in front of her. She made puppy eyes.

  “Why the fuck I want to enlist two undisciplined shits like you on the eve of battle?” said the sergeant. He scratched at stubble, disturbing several flies that were sunning themselves on his pockmarked cheeks. “We outnumber those bastards five to one.”

  “Well,” said Lette, as innocently as she could, “does it help that I can do this?”

  She gave the sergeant credit that he managed to get his hand onto the hilt of his sword before she had him on the ground with a dagger at his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed painfully against the edge of the blade.

  A few nearby soldiers whooped and hollered. None bothered to raise a finger.

  “Erm.” The sergeant beneath her swallowed. “Sure. Yeah. That would probably… Yeah, we could use you.” She slowly stood up from where she had been straddling his chest, ghosted the blade back up her sleeve. The sergeant massaged his throat. He glanced over at Will, a little nervously. “What about you?” he said. “Can you…?”

  “Me?” Will scoffed. “I was the one who taught her to do that.”

  “Oh.” The sergeant considered that, and whether he wanted another demonstration of the skill. He decided against it. Lette tried to keep her sigh of relief inaudible.

  The sergeant pointed. “Green tent, five rows that way. Tell them Gurn sent you. They’ll kit you up.” He rubbed his throat. “Then just find somewhere useful to be at the front. We’ll be setting up for the rest of the day. Take care of those bastards tomorrow morning, be roasting meat over their corpse fires by lunchtime.” He nodded. They were dismissed.

  Keeping her smile tight and demure, Lette walked away, following a step behind Will.

  He taught her how to do that. She was going to kick his arse for that.

  “Oh,” said the sergeant to their backs, and she went still.

  Dagger to his throat, three more into the crowd at random. Sow confusion, then run. Use the tents as cover…

  “One more thing,” the sergeant went on. “Stay out of the way of the trolls. Those wankers are fucking mental.”

  72

  Pressure Building

  Balur had never been a huge fan of deception. If you were wanting a fight, you were going up to a man and you were punching him in the face. You did not point one way, hope he turned, and sucker him in the kidneys. That was not a fight. That was not a test of your mettle. That was a way to show that you kept your balls in a little purse and had forgotten what you were meant to do with them.

  And, this—what he was doing now. This posturing and pretense. It had sounded like a good way to stay alive. But now that it came to it, it was just deception and horse dung.

  He stood astride Quirk’s thaumatic cart. Jewels and furs were draped around his shoulders. Firkin stood at the foot of the cart, screeching and yelling. The thronging crowd pressed toward him, reaching up, trying to touch him.

  He was their prophet. They adored him. They worshipped him. They would do whatever he said…

  Before him, the dragon’s skull—the deceptive, horse dung skull—made another pass of the crowd. The crowd screamed hate and adoration in equal measure.

  Balur knew that many lives depended upon him sticking to the plan, upon him only playing the part of the aggressor, and never actually following through. But part of him yearned to give the order, to lead the charge forward, to immolate himself in the thrust and cut of combat. How many could he be taking with him? What was the size of the path he could be carving through their forces?

  His willpower wavered. He felt the bellow building in his chest, the red starting to occlude his vision.

  But Lette was over there. She was depending on him to hold the line.

  He let the breath out.

  On the plus side, at least he could spend his afternoon taking out his frustration by hurling the vilest insults he knew at the enemy.

  73

  Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell

  Lette had to admit, the uniforms the Dragon Consortium supplied were damned fine. She had, over the years, been attached to a number of armies, controlled by a number of different men and women. City garrisons defending against barbarians, as well as rioting citizens. Bandit horse lords battling against members of their own extended families. Dukes and earls looking to expand their territory. She had even joined one army so that she could spend a year being promoted until she was in proximity to her assassination target.

  In her experience, all armies, no matter their purpose or financial backing, had one thing in common: their universally shitty uniforms. They scratched, itched, hung wrong on your frame, bunched in inexplicable places, and generally only served to make you feel like an idiot.

  The Dragon Consortium, however, seemed to exist at a greater tier of wealth than any she had previously been exposed to. The uniforms—black cotton with two batlike wings in gray stretched over the breast—fit neatly over the chain-mail shirt with which she had been provided. The helmet was well padded and snug. Even the boiled-leather boots fit her well.

  Will clanked after her, moving as if wrapped in thick bundles of cloth.

  “How do people fight in this stuff?” he whispered to her as they left the green supply tent and headed out into the army proper. “You might as well fight with a baby pig tied to each arm.”

  Lette sometimes worried that being a farmer had damaged Will’s analogies.

  “How about,” she suggested, “you take off all your armor, I’ll hit you with my sword, and then when you’ve finished scooping your entrails off the floor, you hit me with your sword, and we’ll see who comes out better?”

  Will kept his grumbling inaudible after that.

  “So,” he said finally. “This is your territory. Where do we start with the lying?”

  “One of the important things to remember about being a soldier,” she told him, “is that it’s boring as shit. Bored people talk about anything they can. So we just need to find a gathering. Dice games. Cards.”

  They found what they were looking for in less than a minute. A large group of soldiers gathered in a circle. Eight sat facing each other, one shaking a dice cup. Another thirty or so were all standing around, catcalling and placing bets.

  Lette dug an elbow into his ribs. “Put everything you have on me.”

  She enjoyed his bewildered stare as she stepped up to the circle.

  “Any of you pussies got balls big enough to take on a girl?” she said with a grin, as she wedged her way between two large men.

  They looked at her in much the way they would look at a turd that had fallen from the sky and landed between them.

  “Closed game,” said one, cracking his knuckles.

  She reached to her belt, detached a purse, and tossed it into the center of the dice circle. It landed with a heavy clink. As long as no one opened it and discovered it was full of copp
er sheks, then everything should go fine. And Lette had no intention of letting anyone get close to the coppers.

  The other eight dice players were all staring at the purse.

  After a moment the knuckle-cracker nodded. “Room for one more,” he grunted.

  She took stock of the opponents quickly. Three others the same size, stature, and intelligence level as the knuckle cracker. A woman who looked angry that she was no longer the only person with a set of tits at the circle, and two men, built on more slender frames, but with no signs of any greater intellect to balance out the loss of muscle weight. Only one other man, who was watching her carefully. There was at least a flicker of intellect behind his eyes. Unsurprisingly, the largest pile of coins was in front of him. But he had also been careful not to take so much as to actually piss off those of a knuckle-cracking disposition.

  She let her first roll of the dice fly randomly. But she judged their weight and bounce as she shook the cup. She watched how the dice rolled, how they landed in the dirt. A lord and two swords. Not a terrible roll. Not enough to win the round. She saw the other woman smile. Lette picked the dice up, rolled them in her palm, felt the weight, the imperfections in their sides.

  The round concluded. She pulled the only gold bull left in her purse out, tossed it to the knuckle-dragger who had lucked into throwing three queens.

  It took her three more rounds to be certain she could roll pretty much anything she wanted. None of them had eyes as quick as her hands, and while the other woman had a larger chest, Lette had undone a few more buttons.

  She glanced up at Will. He was staring at her instead of betting. He had infiltrated an army raised entirely to crush him and everything he stood for, and he was still distracted by a bit of skin. Men were all idiots. She arched her eyebrows at him, picked up two of the silver drachs she had won, and rubbed them together slightly.

  Will came back to life, leaned over to the man beside him, and started talking.

  Lette didn’t win much at first. Just enough. She played slowly, and methodically.