by Jon Hollins
“Just because you won’t stop being such a pretentious prick about it being profane!”
“Well, I am just thinking that it is standing to reason that to be a champion one must—”
“That is exactly the gods-hexed attitude I’m talking about.”
And then Will tapped her on the shoulder, and she almost cut his throat.
“Erm,” he managed, “so … I think I found the champion.”
39
The Champion and the Thief
Lette and Balur brought dual interrogative stares to bear on Will. “Well,” he said, “unless you can think of any other golden archways full of light that might be hanging around down here.”
He showed them the way. As they drew closer he saw the arch was more ornate than he had initially thought. It was indeed made of gold, and it did indeed ripple with reflected firelight, but he had not seen the delicacy and the detail in the carvings. Gold had been fashioned into branches and ivy, as if an entire bower had been dipped into molten metal and preserved. It was breathtaking in its beauty.
Will couldn’t help but reach out and tap a metal leaf as he passed under the arch. But instead of the soft tink of fingernail against metal, it rang out with a sonorous chime, bright and clear, like a church bell on a summer morning.
They all came to a very abrupt halt.
Fucking divinities, thought Will. They just couldn’t let anything be simple, could they? They had to show off. Every pissing time.
Somewhere in the glow beyond, something rumbled. There was a gravity to the sound, a weight that went beyond human, a rumbling that echoed in Will’s gut, and his mind, and … somewhere else too? It was a sound too profound to be wholly of this world.
“Okay,” whispered Lette, “that’s of divine origin. Pay up.”
Balur spat back out into the gloomy dirt of the cave. “Be pissing on that. You are having no proof.”
“You know what?” Fear and irritation were both scrabbling at the inside of Will’s bowels. “How about you two stay here and piss about, and I go in there and sort it out?”
Balur and Lette looked at each other. Then Balur shrugged. “You are knowing what? I am being fine with that.”
Lette slapped him on the shoulder. “You ass. You are meant to be a hulking great barbarian, hungry for blood and glory. You don’t let a farmer go to the slaughter.”
Balur shrugged. “It is being like a miner bringing a canary below the earth. If the farmer can be defeating it, it is not being worthy of me fighting it.”
“You have an ego the size of—”
Will made a decision. And part of it was that he just couldn’t take it. He had come too close to death, and now he was too close to victory. This permanent bickering was too much. He loved Lette, he truly did, but right now he just needed … gods.
And part of it was … he loved Lette. And “a farmer” had stung just a little bit, because even if he thought of himself that way, it was nice that she didn’t. And he had caught the look in her eyes when she had caught him as he almost fell to his death among the stairs, and he remembered the look they had exchanged last night. And maybe they could recapture something. But not if he was just “a farmer.”
So he stepped through the arch and into the space beyond.
It was less glorious than he had expected. The gold stretched no farther than the arch. The floor and walls were the same rock that enclosed the world outside. But candles and torches had been shoved into the walls, giving the space a soft warm glow, and living ivy grew on the walls, lending it a softness that had been absent from the labyrinth outside.
The space was less imposing than that impossible cavern. It stretched back perhaps fifty yards and was at best half as many wide, and the ceiling was visible twenty yards above his head, vaulting but at least a conceivable distance. Broken columns lined the walls, interspersed with statues worn by age until they were almost featureless. The remnants of a few friezes were on the walls, a few faded figures peering through centuries of collected grime and smoke. Sections of a crumbling mosaic still dotted the floor, brief flashes of red and blue among the dust and dirt.
Will glimpsed all this in a moment, and had the impression of a space more careworn than battered or broken. The place felt redolent with age. This was a home.
And then he saw what it was home to, and he stopped thinking about the space at all.
The champion of Lawl lay slumped at the far end of the hall. Indeed, he was almost all of the far end of the hall. He was vast, far larger than the giants Will had heard of in tales. If he had been standing he must have been twenty feet tall at least. Everything about him was massive. His shoulders were broad the way a grassy plain was broad. His arms were thick the way that trees that had seen the pantheon breathe life onto the earth in the dawn of creation were thick. His breath gusted out, and Will saw all torch flames in the room flicker with it. He felt it blow over his skin like the warm breeze of distant bellows.
The champion was encased in armor, a suit of charcoal gray steel embossed with bright gold filigree. Not an inch of skin was visible. Within the vast helmet narrow opening, where a face might be, there was only shadow. And Will found he was not wholly sure that there was skin beneath that steel. Maybe the steel was the skin. Maybe Lette was right and this was a wholly divine creation.
How did they kill something like that?
And then he heard the deep regular rumble of its breath, and realized that perhaps they did not have to.
He turned back to the archway. Lette and Balur were standing there, staring at him. “It’s asleep,” he whispered.
He looked back, and now that the initial shock was over he saw the champion more clearly. He was sprawled on his back, propped up by some of the columns, legs spreading across the hall. One arm flopped out down the length of the cave toward him, the palm laying faceup, fingers curling toward the ceiling like the corpse of some vast five-legged spider. And between those fingers, lying on that palm …
A golden chalice.
It was a stunning thing, studded with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. And it would have looked large in any palm but the champion’s. And all Will had to do was to walk down to the end of the room and take it.
“I can see Barph’s Strength,” he said back over his shoulder. And then with a growing sense of certainty and elation, “I can get it.”
He started to shuffle forward, placing one foot before the other as silently as possible.
“Get back here!” Lette hissed. “You’re a gods-hexed farmer, and I wouldn’t trust you to sneak up on a chicken. Let a professional do this.”
But that only spurred Will on harder. Perhaps he could not wield a sword, but he could do this. He would prove his gods-hexed worth to her. He would show her that he was not to be dismissed. That she could count on him for more than a half-thought-out plan formulated in a tavern, with ale to strengthen his resolve. He would take Barph’s Strength from this so-called champion, and he would turn the tide of this war. Him. Alone. And maybe, just maybe, she would remember why she had loved him.
He inched forward. He would not rush this. He would do this right.
There was a scuffle behind him.
“Get off me,” he heard Lette snap.
“He is doing it now. Just let him get swatted and then we shall be having our great battle.”
“Your greatest battle is squeezing your swollen head through most doorways.”
Will shuffled forward. He did not remember fifty yards being this far.
“It is being easier to get my swollen head through a doorway than your fat arse.”
“Let’s see how many doorways you get through while you’re trying to hold your guts inside your wilting stomach.”
“Shh!” he hissed back at them. Doing this right was hard enough without their squabbling.
Merciful silence fell. Twenty more yards. One foot in front of the other. Scanning the ground for anything that might crunch, or crack, or give him away. Ten more
yards. The champion’s breath wafting over him now. He could smell it, stale and thick, and he grimaced. Divine champion or not, this creature smelled little better than Firkin did on a hot afternoon.
Just a yard away. He held his breath. The palm laid out in front of him. A snort, half a snore from the champion, and Will almost shat himself. The fingers on the massive hand twitched and the chalice wobbled.
For a moment everything was still. Even Will’s heart in his chest. The champion let out another grumbling sound, then farted massively. The chamber rang with the sound. Will threw up an arm to cover his face and tried desperately not to gag as the stench billowed over him. His eyes watered.
Champion of what? Fucking gastric belligerence?
The champion burbled once more, then settled. Will stood, slowly breathing into his elbow, waiting for his eyes to stop streaming.
It did not help that he could hear Balur snickering.
Finally all was still once more. The palm was still laid out before him. It was the size of a dinner platter, and as thick as his thigh. Each finger was as big as his forearm. The chalice, large and ornate as it was, looked fragile in that massive hand.
He won’t even notice it’s gone, Will told himself. Its weight is nothing to him.
He exhaled very slowly, tried to let calm enter him, saturate his mind. It didn’t work. He blew out another breath. His nerve continued to fail to show up.
“Get on with it then,” hissed Lette from the doorway, which really didn’t help because the last thing he needed right now was more sound to wake this monster up.
But the monster didn’t wake up, and Will did become more and more aware that the whole point of this stupid, stupid exercise was to impress Lette, and just standing here, desperately trying to keep the shit out of his britches, was probably not going to achieve that objective.
He closed his eyes, realized how stupid that was too, opened them, reached out, and snatched the cup from the champion’s massive palm in one quick darting motion.
And he had done it. He held the chalice in his hand. He could feel liquid sloshing inside it. He could feel gems pressing into his skin. The smoothness of its metal. The heat emanating up from the champion’s palm. He thought he heard Lette gasp a little.
He had fucking done it.
And then the champion’s fist closed like a bear trap snapping shut, and held his arm like a vise.
40
Peace Talks
“So, that was pretty much a shit show.”
Quirk looked up and found Afrit looking down at her. She looked away. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
She was sitting in some abandoned ruin of a temple in some abandoned ruin of a district in Vinter. Her arse rested on crumbling sandstone, and her knees were pulled up to her chest, a half-empty wineskin sprawled on the ground between her feet. The other half of its contents had been spilled down her throat. Around her the beaten and bloody members of Firkin’s faithful lay slumped in similar states of depression and drunkenness.
Quirk stared at the wilting, flaccid wineskin. It wasn’t good wine. The back of her throat burned with its sour bite. Gods, it wasn’t even a good wineskin. It was leaking slightly along one seam.
“I feel like such a fool,” she managed.
Afrit put a hand on her shoulder. Quirk looked up at her. And there was sadness written across Afrit’s face. Not hatred. Not accusation. Not disgust. Sadness. Fucking sympathy.
“No,” she said. “That’s not right. That’s not deserved. I don’t feel like a fool. I feel like …” She swallowed. “When I was with Hethren,” Quirk said to Afrit, “I killed so many people. Hundreds. More probably. But I don’t know if I ever killed as many in one day as I did today. I feel like a fucking murderer.”
“Hey. Hey. Hey.” Afrit put both hands on her now, holding her by the arms. There were ugly murmurs coming from around them. But Quirk was pretty sure they were deserved too. Hiding from her mistakes … that was just more cowardice. Just another betrayal of these people.
“You’re drunk,” Afrit said in the same soothing voice. “Let’s get you out of here, get some fresh air.”
Quirk pulled away. “Not drunk enough,” she said. “I still know what I did.” She reached down and shook the wineskin. It sloshed lazily. “Useless piss is what this is.”
“Come on,” said Afrit, steering her gently, and Quirk did not truly have the energy for any more fistfights today. So she gave in and allowed herself to be steered.
The cold air of the Vinter night bit at her after the stifling environs of the temple. Its narrow corridors were packed with bodies. All the dregs of Firkin’s supporters had washed up here, at this broken-down temple. All of them had been routed. All had been hacked at, and pushed back, and scattered. No one was sure where Firkin was.
She and Afrit stood next to each other staring out at a city littered with the dead.
“Back in Tamar,” said Afrit, not quite looking at Quirk, “back home.” She licked her lips. “We talked about power. About how it was good to be nervous about power, you and I, to not truly want it. We talked about how power corrupts.”
Quirk opened her mouth. She didn’t even mean to. It was simply automatic. Because that felt unfair. Everything she had done, she had done to try to protect these people. Everything she had done had been selfless.
But, no. She was not here to argue her case. She was here because whatever her intentions, this had become an absolute shit show.
“I know.” Afrit’s words softly spread into the silence Quirk couldn’t fill with excuses. “I know.” She nodded, but still not quite meeting Quirk’s eye, staring into the space over her shoulder, the glimmers of yellow light leaking out of the battered temple. “You had all the best reasons. You weren’t doing it for yourself. You hadn’t asked for the power. It was given to you. Forced upon you, even. Right?” A smile flickered nervously across Afrit’s face. “I’m a student of practical politics, Quirk. I know this story.” And for a moment her eyes did meet Quirk’s. “It’s a pretty common argument really.” She shrugged. “History never seems to judge them kindly.”
Quirk blew out a breath. And this was a knife that cut very close to the bone. And it hurt. But she would not flinch. She would not.
But Afrit seemed out of words. Quirk, licked her lips. “So …” she said, and then that was all she had. Her mouth was dry. Thought stalled out. And then because it was, in the end, probably better to say it out loud than to just keep it in her head, even if it was harder: “What in the Hallows do we do now?”
Afrit hummed and hawed. “Well,” she said after a pause, “historically speaking, typically what happens is the masses turn on you, and some sort of punishment is meted out.”
“Oh,” said Quirk, discovering she felt rather sanguine about that. “All right then.”
Afrit grimaced at the world over Quirk’s shoulder. “That’s always seemed a bit of a cop-out to me, though.” She pushed a hand through her dark curls. They had once been contained in neat braids, but in the months on the road and in the Vale her hair had grown into an unruly thicket. It was a good look on her, Quirk had thought. “The story I always like to teach, instead,” Afrit went on, “is about Thadderick of the Vost duchy. The Five Duchies are always such a shit show they’re always great for examples. Anyway, at the time we’re talking about, the Nettat duchy was the strongman, and it was throwing its weight around a lot. And its favorite tactic was to beat up on the Vost duchy. Nettat was making a threat to the other three duchies. It was saying, this could be you. Piss us off and we’ll beat up on you like we’re beating up on Vost. And it worked. The Vost duchy was weak, and the other three duchies stayed in line for fear of turning the Nettat duchy’s fury on them.
“Obviously for the people in the Vost duchy, this was a pretty bad situation. And so it created a number of resistance groups. And the most successful of these was led by a man named Thadderick. And here I normally give a number of lectures about how he ended up in cha
rge of all the resistance efforts, but just suffice it to say that he did. It’s one of the rare cases in history where competence outweighs a lack of ambition. And so he drew up his battle plan, and he led the united resistance forces of the Vost duchy against the Nettat duchy.”
She fell silent for a moment. “It was a disaster, by the way” she said. “Thadderick blew it massively. Despite him being ostensibly in charge, the resistance was a fractured mess. The whole attack was terribly coordinated. Thadderick didn’t have it in him to command them all.”
“This,” Quirk commented, “is not the best pep talk I’ve ever received.”
Afrit smiled, her first genuine one of the evening. She even met Quirk’s eye. “Academia is not known for encouraging its succinct storytelling.” She massaged the back of her neck. “But next Thadderick did something that’s almost unique in history. He gave up his power. He admitted to his mistakes, and instead he formed a truly democratic resistance army. Every general he had stood above suddenly had a vote that was worth just as much as his. And what’s more, he didn’t limit this to just Vostonians. It was open to everybody. It was open to the Corr duchy, the Tull duchy, and the Setow duchy too. All of the duchies could unite. All could be powerful. And just for a moment, for just long enough … it worked. They came together. All of them. And they kicked the Nettat duchy’s arse so hard, it’s still not able to sit down three hundred years later.”
Quirk nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “I get it.”
Afrit reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Good.” And for just a little while they stayed like that and Quirk felt peaceful for the first time in … gods, how long?
Then Afrit caught her eye. “I’m sorry. I have to check,” she said. “I meant that you need to—”
“Yes, yes.” Quirk sighed. “I’m going to talk to gods-hexed Firkin already.”
He showed up the next morning. He seemed as uncertain as anybody of where he’d been. “I dabble in being located in space and time, all right?” he snapped when Quirk pushed him. “I can’t be held accountable for keeping track of both. It’s a lot to know. Anyway, where am I?”
