*****
Vykers, in Pursuit
Arune was aware that Vykers thought her temperamental, that she sulked too much. But she had never known him to sulk until now. And she was sick and tired of it. It had been going on for days, and she had had enough.
How long you planning to keep moping?
Fuck off.
You fuck off! Arune shouted back. What could he do to her, anyway? You’re acting like a big baby!
Vykers didn’t respond.
Tarmun Vykers, destroyer of empires! Nobody pouts with such magnificence.
I said fuck off.
Or what?
Bitch.
Bastard!
Vykers couldn’t help himself: he laughed. Is that meant to be an insult? I’m proud o’ being a bastard. I work hard at it.
I don’t think you have to work that hard, Arune muttered. I think it comes naturally.
Out of nowhere, Vykers blurted, The thing is, if there’d been a second wave o’ those knights, we’d’ve all been killed, ‘cause I was out cold.
You did pretty well for a man with a hole through his gut.
Pretty well ain’t good enough. When I was whole, I coulda taken those fuckers all day. After an extended silence, he added, But I’ll never be whole again. That’s the hell of it.
You don’t know that.
And because I’m weaker now, Three got himself killed.
You don’t know that, either.
And the Frog? Who in all hells knows what’s going on with him. If he ate Three…
Why don’t we focus on things we know?
Such as? Vykers asked.
The Queen’s alive.
Heh, Vykers grunted, unimpressed.
The Frog’s alive.
Is he? That’s good.
And you’re alive. She could tell the Reaper was feeling better already. Oh, and, uh, that woman you’re so fond of is alive, as well.
As was his wont, Vykers changed tack again. We gettin’ any closer to Her Majesty?
She remains at least a week’s travel south of us.
Dead south?
More or less.
And again, he changed tack. You think you’ll be able to give me more warning next time those knights show up? Seems like a couple of ‘em escaped and I’m bettin’ on another visit from an even larger group any time now.
You don’t have to worry on that score. The Historian and I have been erasing our back-trail.
So, nobody following us, then?
I suppose someone could stumble onto us by accident.
That’d by okay by me, Vykers growled. Only thing makes me happy anymore is puttin’ fuckers in the ground.
Vykers, Vykers! Arune thought to herself. You are one crazy son-of-a-bitch.
*****
For all its differences, this mysterious new land had much in common with home, Vykers thought. For instance, they had vultures back home, and they clearly had vultures here, as well.
“That’s an ill omen!” Hoosh declared as he spied the birds circling in the distance.
Vykers shot him a look of contempt. “You think there’s anyone alive doesn’t know that?”
The Fool bit his tongue, for once.
“Then why say it?” Vykers asked.
“Sometimes, it helps dispel anxieties to give them voice.”
“Sometimes,” the Historian agreed.
Peacemaker, thought Vykers. Hey, Shaper, he called to Arune, got anything to tell me?
The birds you see in the sky are a fraction of those at work on the ground.
Ain’t that always the way? What’re they at, anyway?
More of the knights we faced.
And they’re dead? Wonder what killed ‘em this time.
My guess? They ran afoul of whoever’s taken the Queen. Maybe we’ll find one of her captors’ corpses among the dead.
Vykers brightened. That’d be nice. I’d like to finally get a look at one of ‘em. See what’s what.
They weren’t on any road, as such, but riding more or less straight south over rolling grasslands, dotted with occasional clumps of a kind of shrub Vykers had never seen before. The attack had taken place right out in the open, much as it had on the beach where Vykers and his crew had landed. There were dead knights everywhere, but no immediate sign of their adversaries. The Reaper spurred his horse in amongst the corpses in order to disperse the vultures and, it turned out, rats that had congregated to eat.
“Oof! Such an odor!” Hoosh complained.
“Yeah, I been hoping you’d take a bath for some time now,” Vykers said.
“After the last one you gave me?” Hoosh might’ve risen to the Reaper’s bait, but he’d simply turned the jibe aside.
“What is that?” the Historian asked, pointing to a small skirmish between several vultures and something scrabbling along the ground.
“Makes no sense they’d go after a rat, with so much meat lyin’ about,” Vykers said. Sliding off his mount with a grunt, the Reaper drew his sword and shooed all the birds away. What he saw in the space they’d vacated left him fumbling for comprehension. “What in the countless hells…?”
“It’s a hand!” the Fool declared.
“I can bloody well see it’s a hand!” Vykers spat. “But why’s it still alive?” He pulled back his arm as if he meant to spear it with his blade, but the Historian stopped him.
“One moment!” the man said, with uncharacteristic emotion. “I believe I recognize…”
As he stared more carefully at it, Vykers did, too. “Well, I’ll be buggered.”
“It’s Her Majesty’s hand,” the Fool confirmed. “I’d know those rings, anywhere.”
The Reaper scanned the area. “You see any sign ‘o the rest of her?”
She’s not here, Arune replied.
Can you tell me why that thing’s still moving?
I’m working on that right now.
Vykers was not a squeamish man, nor was he particularly superstitious, but he was surprised when the Historian bent over and gathered the hand into his own, especially since it continued to wriggle and twitch the whole time. For reasons he did not fully understand, the Reaper was more interested in the Historian’s reaction to the grisly find than in the hand, itself.
“Well?” Vykers inquired.
The Ahklatian turned the thing over and over in his hands. “It’s a clean cut.”
“To hells with the cut. Why’s it still alive?” Vykers asked for the second time.
The other man turned his black eyes towards the Reaper and held his gaze. “It would appear,” he said, “that there is more to Her Majesty than we have been led to believe.”
Suddenly, the disembodied hand went rigid, a lone finger pointing in the direction the group had been travelling.
Arune?
Sorry. I don’t…I can’t figure this one out.
“She wants us to follow her captors,” Hoosh offered.
“Just when you think life can’t get any fuckin’ weirder,” Vykers muttered.
*****
Although they hadn’t yet reached midsummer, Vykers noticed the sun set earlier than he might have expected back home. The Historian assured him there was a perfectly sensible reason for this, but every time he began to explain it, Vykers lost interest and stopped listening. Days were what they were.
Of more concern to him was the scarcity of game. When it was available, it wasn’t as easy to catch without Three’s particular talents, so that whenever the Reaper got hungry, he was necessarily reminded of the death of his friend and of his own culpability in that event. And subsequently lost his appetite.
Arune, however, needed Vykers to eat. Remember the time I summoned that wild pig for you? she prompted.
What, back in that cave? O’ course, I remember the…You offerin’ to scare us up some supper, then?
That or Svarren. Take your pick.
They got Svarren over here?
Why wouldn’t they?
Huh, Vyker
s sent, Well, I’d just as soon eat before any more fighting.
Why don’t we make camp, so I can search out something suitable?
Now? We got a good two hours o’ sunlight left.
It’ll be a lot harder for game to find us if we keep moving.
There any fresh water nearby?
Arune searched for a bit. There’s a small stream a couple hundred paces to the left.
“This is far enough,” Vykers said aloud, for the benefit of the Fool and the Historian. “Who wants to make a fire?”
“I’ll do it, of course,” the Historian said dryly.
Anyone lurking out there in the grass, waitin’ to ambush us?
No one.
Where’s that chimera got to, and what’s taking him so long to bring the Frog back in?
I think…Arune began. I think the Frog ate the new chimera. Killed him and ate him, I mean.
Vykers was stunned. What?
I said, I think the Frog ate the other chimera. The boy’s…presence, for want of a better word…seems much stronger and more substantial…and…I’m not sensing the chimera any more.
Vykers shook his head, called over to the Historian. “What was that saying about flies and the gods?”
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”
“Aye, that they do. And sometimes, they just fuck with us.”
The Historian regarded him quizzically. “Is this apropos of anything in particular?”
“I got no idea what you just said. I’m just wondering what’s become of the Frog’s all.”
“He’s out there,” the Ahklatian answered, affirming what Vykers already knew.
“Well, maybe if we can scare up some good grub, he’ll come home for dinner.”
They did, but he did not. Vykers pushed that worry aside and slept.
In the morning, his hand reached for his sword before he’d even opened his eyes. The ground was trembling – not as it had when the grebbers had attacked, nor even as it might during a stampede. No, this was the deep, rhythmic rumble of an army on the march.
Shaper?
They’re miles away. Likely to cross our path but never draw near. And the Historian and I can make sure their shapers never see us.
Can you lift me up again, like you did in battle?
A gentle, almost flirtatious laugh from Arune, and then Vykers was ten feet in the air and rising. At thirty feet, he said, Good enough, by which he really meant “Stop the fuck right there!”
Sure enough, cutting across his group’s intended path at a distance of several miles was the unmistakable shape of an army at march.
I want a closer look.
I was afraid you’d say that, said Arune. Nevertheless, she propelled her host through the air until they were both within a mile of the unknown troops.
So it’s some of the same ones we been fightin’, Vykers observed. Only a helluva lot more. And I’ve gotta admit I like their ranks and formations. They look well trained.
And supplied, Arune offered.
They woulda given the End a good challenge, I’ll wager. What do you figure, twenty-five, thirty thousand?
I wonder where they’re going.
Doesn’t matter to me, long as it’s away from us.
That doesn’t sound like the Vykers I know.
Yeah, Vykers agreed, so softly the Shaper couldn’t swear she hadn’t imagined it.
~EIGHT~
Yendor, House Fyne
It was the latest in a series of lousy plans, but it was all Yendor could come up with on his own and under the time constraints he’d set upon himself. He needed to do something – and soon – in order to contribute to his team’s mission, even though he hadn’t seen any of the other fellows in days and days. Weeks, probably. But his drinking tended to wash away great chunks of his memory, so he was never as confident of the date as he might otherwise have been.
“Mark me,” he said in a drunken drawl to his new friend Moult, “On our next roof patrol, which I do think falls on Fiersday – or has it passed already?”
“Nay, friend, ‘tis the night after next,” Moult offered.
“Just so!” Yendor beamed. And then frowned, confused. “Er, what was I speakin’ of?”
“Fiersday.”
Yendor giggled himself helpless. “Yes, yes, Fiersday. Fiersday. On our next roof patrol, which, now I do bethink me, falls upon this Fiersday…”
“Ya said that, already,” Moult pointed out, “Unless I’m deeper in me cups than I thought.”
“Did I now?” Yendor remarked. “And did I perchance essplain the sinifficance of it?”
“O’ what, Fiersday?” Moult pulled on his nose, wiped his chin and said, “I can’t recall. Can we have it again?”
Yendor wasn’t sure if he meant the bottle of Skent or the plan, but he obliged with both, passing the bottle and repeating the plan. “On our rooftop patrol, we’ll have occasion to pass the big oak – you know the one?”
Moult nodded. Or he may’ve had the hiccups.
“A nimble fella might climb hisself into that oak and, from thence, into one o’ the other trees, one o’ them blossoming ones that grace His Lordship’s private garden.”
“Where’s the profit in that?” Moult demanded. “Unless you fancy a bushel o’ smelly flowers.”
“What I fancy is a bushel o’ secrets, friend Moult. Ain’t you never heard the very true saying ‘Knowledge is Nobles?”
“Mmmm. Can’t say as I have. What’s it mean?”
Yendor groaned at his friend’s apparent dimwittedness. “It means that secrets are worth money, to the right person. Great heapin’ gobs o’ money.”
Having finally gotten the drift, Moult broke into a lopsided grin. “I like money, all right.”
“Who don’t, eh? But there’s more in it than mere money, my lad. There’s all the Skent you could ever drink.”
Moult was skeptical. “Just for climbin’ into a tree?”
“Well,” Yendor admitted, “there’s a bit more to it than that. You’ll need to find a sturdy, bushy branch where you won’t be seen and spend the night there, so as to catch as many secrets as you may.”
“Spend the night?” Moult gasped, incredulously.
“And you’ll be taking a bottle o’ my very best Skent to keep you warm the whiles.”
Again, Moult grinned. “How can I say no to that?”
“The next day, afore sun up, you climb back to the roof and return to our barracks.”
“How do I know I won’t be caught by the morning shift?”
“Because,” Yendor articulated with extra effort, “I’m going to do something so stupid, the guards’ll have to deal with me. Which means they won’t see you.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m planning to take a good, long piss off the roof and into the street.”
“Ach!” Moult spat, “They’ll dock your pay for that. You might even get flogged.”
Yendor put on his most brave face. “It’s true, friend, that I’ve given myself the most dangerous task, but I could hardly ask you to take such a risk, could I?”
Yes, it was an awful plan, exactly the kind of mindless skullduggery that drunks found so brilliant while intoxicated and so shamelessly idiotic upon sobering up. The trick, Yendor knew, was never to sober up.
*****
Aoife, at Sea
Life aboard the cog had gone from difficult to impossible since the onshore battle that had concluded with Vykers’ departure and Aoife’s accompanying banishment to the ship. A number of the crew were still seething about the unexpected loss of their mates and, without the rest of Vykers’ party aboard to protect her, the A’Shea felt more threatened than she had in ages. Added to this was the fact that she was the only woman in Mahnus-knew-how-many leagues, a detail the sailors never failed to bring to her attention in ways both subtle and brazen. Oh, she could defend herself; the point was, she didn’t want to be compelled to do so. The captain
was on her side, too, but she doubted how long that might last when the days at sea became weeks, and the weeks, months.
As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) Page 27
