The Far Far Better Thing

by Auston Habershaw

  It was there, digging a ditch in the dying daylight, that Tyvian formally met his new social circle. Now no longer in ranks and with Sergeant Drawsher nowhere in sight, the Delloran mercenaries began to chatter. The first thing that struck Tyvian about them was their age—he guessed he was at least fifteen years older than all of them. He knew it made sense—it shouldn’t have surprised him, given he was about their age when he joined up with Carlo diCarlo’s pirate crew—but there was something inescapably jarring in realizing he was, in the eyes of the young, an old man.

  An additional obstacle to forging any new alliances was that all of these young men were immensely, incurably stupid. They were young men from Dellor, and sometimes Galaspin, who had found marching to Eretheria with the Ghouls a more productive use of their lives than herding cows, breaking rocks, or coaxing plants out of the ground. Unless it had something to do with one of those three activities, they knew exactly nothing about anything.

  They disliked Tyvian immediately. His alias, as it turned out, was utterly unnecessary, as Sergeant Drawsher had seen to it that nobody would ever use his name again. He was “Duchess” for now and ever.

  “Oy, Duchess!” Hambone, a fat boy of perhaps twenty from Dellor who had been blabbering steadily about his family pig farm, was working his yard-long entrenching tool like it was a murder implement and his victim the earth itself. “Gimme a hand over here!”

  Tyvian felt about as motivated to assist Hambone as he would be a urine-soaked street person. “You need to scoop the dirt, Hambone. Stop making holes and start actually digging.”

  Some of the other bones snickered. Hambone threw down his tool. “I done more ditch digging before I was ten than you done your whole fat life!”

  Tyvian’s tool bounced off a stone. He kicked the stone aside. “And yet you remain terrible at it. Some would call that a miracle.”

  Hambone came closer. Despite evidently having marched hundreds of miles from Dellor, he somehow had never lost the stench of pigs. “You think you’re better than me, Duchess?”

  Tyvian looked him in the eye. “Yes. In every field of endeavor, from now until the day you die.”

  The ring twinged softly, warning Tyvian against hitting the boy. Tyvian didn’t, knowing full well the idiot was going to hit him first.

  Or try.

  Hambone stood there, fists clenched, fuming. Behind him, some of the other bones egged him on. “Knock him good, Hammy! Piss on his lordship’s arse!”

  Tyvian waited. “Well, are you going to try and urinate on my arse, or what?”

  Hambone swung. Even though monstrously tired from marching, Tyvian ducked the blow easily and ended the fight in as expeditious a method as possible—he hit Hambone in the knee with his entrenching tool. Not hard—just hard enough to make the boy’s leg buckle and for it to hurt really badly. Hambone fell on his back in the muddy depths of the latrine ditch, howling.

  The ring stayed mercifully silent.

  The other bones backed away from him, their eyes wide. “Weren’t no call for that,” one of them muttered.

  Tyvian ignored Hambone’s groans. “You’ve joined a company of hired killers called ‘The Ghouls,’ for Hann’s sake! How much bloody fair play did you expect?”

  Hambone flopped, trying to stand, but his knee gave way immediately and he fell back in the half-dug latrine. “Help! Oh gods, me leg! Ohhhh!”

  This time the ring did have an opinion. It gave Tyvian a hard jolt that snapped him out of his staring contest with the other fresh recruits. “Oh . . . very well, dammit.”

  He slipped an arm under Hambone’s armpit and helped him to his feet. Tyvian took a look at his injured knee. It was bulging and swollen—Tyvian guessed he’d maybe knocked the kneecap out of alignment or possibly dislocated the whole joint, though he didn’t think he’d swung that hard. Hambone leaned heavily on Tyvian’s shoulders—appropriately enough, he seemed to weigh as much as a prize hog. “It hurts! Ohhhh!”

  Grimacing, Tyvian walked the idiot to Eddereon, who was examining the blisters growing on one foot outside their tiny tent. He stood as they approached. “What’s all this?”

  Tears were rolling down Hambone’s flat cheeks. “He hit me! Ohhh! Right in the knee!”

  Eddereon looked at Tyvian. “Well?”

  Tyvian only nodded. “I hit him. Right in the knee.”

  “You better get him to the medical tent before Drawsher sees.”

  “Sees what?” Drawsher emerged from behind a pike stand like a troll lumbering out of a hedge. “What happened here?”

  Eddereon and Tyvian exchanged quick glances. “An accident, sir. Digging the latrine.”

  Drawsher looked at the three of them, scratching at his unkempt beard. “Accident, is it? Hey, Hambone—can you walk?”

  Hambone shook his head, tears still streaming down his cheeks.

  “I can help him to the medical tent, sir,” Tyvian offered.

  Drawsher laughed in Tyvian’s face. “What for? Man can’t walk—he’s useless. We leave him behind come dawn.”

  The color drained from Hambone’s face. “What? You can’t! You can’t leave me here!”

  Drawsher leaned close to Hambone, as though about to whisper something conspiratorial. Instead, he sucker punched Hambone in the lower abdomen, folding the fat man in half like a bath towel. Nearby, a few other mercenaries laughed.

  The ring blazed on Tyvian’s hand. “You miserable son of a—”

  Drawsher had a dagger out in a flash and pressed it under Tyvian’s nose. “Am I going to get lip from you, Duchess? Eh?” He dragged the blade gently along Tyvian’s mouth. “If I am, I might as well take em now, eh?”

  Tyvian kept his eyes on Drawsher’s eyes. The play with the knife was scary, sure, but also wildly stupid. Tyvian could have put that knife in Drawsher’s own throat in two moves, three tops. His fingers twitched, wanting to. How many two-bit bullies like Drawsher had Tyvian put in the ground? Gods, too many to even bother counting. If there was a reason he was better at digging holes than Hambone, it was because of all the bodies he’d buried over the years.

  But I’m not Tyvian anymore, he cautioned himself. Play the damned part.

  Tyvian let his eyes drop from Drawsher’s. “There were wounded riding in a wagon today. I saw them. Why can’t Hambone ride, too, sir?”

  Drawsher withdrew the knife. He nodded. “Them’s blooded men—them’s true Ghouls, Duchess. This here bone would be wasted space. Space we need for supplies, for armor—for things what matter.”

  Tyvian looked down at Hambone, who was still wheezing and moaning on the ground. “What if I carry his load? What if I make up the space that he takes?”

  Drawsher cocked his head. “Well now . . . ain’t that noble of you, Duchess. Downright gentlemanly.” He slapped his knife home in its scabbard. “All right, then—bring him to the healer. But you carry his pack tomorrow, Duchess. And his pike. And anything else I say.”

  There was mirth in Drawsher’s bloodshot eyes. Tyvian nodded—he knew what it meant for him tomorrow. He licked his lips. “As you say, sir.”

  Drawsher grinned. “Another wrong breath from you, Duchess, and I’ll eat your kidneys, understand?”

  Tyvian saluted as best he could. Drawsher went back to his rounds.

  Eddereon patted Tyvian on the shoulder. “You certainly have a way with people sometimes.”

  Tyvian didn’t answer. He helped Hambone up.

  Hambone, pale, managed to say, “What in hell is wrong with you, Duchess? You trying to get dead?”

  “Tried, Hambone. Tried and succeeded.”

  The camp doctor—a hedge wizard and probably nonguild alchemist named Rink—managed to relocate Hambone’s kneecap and put the man’s leg in a splint. It was the back of a wagon for Hambone for one week. Tyvian, meanwhile, carried double the weight, plus a five-gallon water skin slung over one shoulder.

  Despite his inquiries, there was no indication of him being invited to Rodall’s command tent. Sergeant Draws
her had Tyvian all to himself.

  The first day, Drawsher circled him like a raven. The weight was overwhelming, the pace punishing—the sergeant was expecting a long day of beating the snot out of Tyvian Reldamar. The ring, though, had a few things to say about that. Saving Hambone from abandonment was enough to keep Tyvian upright and marching, the ring’s power driving every step. He was still exhausted, still punishing his body in ways he’d never considered possible before, but he kept up. Drawsher barely had an excuse to strike him.

  So, in a fit of pique, he assigned Tyvian latrine duty alone for three days straight.

  Despite being sandwiched in a tiny tent between three men every night—one of whom happened to be Hambone, with his distinct pig odor—Tyvian found himself falling asleep the moment his head hit his blanket roll.

  His efforts had two additional side effects. The first and less consequential one was that Hambone had now become his friend. He seemed to think getting his kneecap knocked askew with a small shovel was the best thing that ever happened to him. “Weren’t for you,” he said one night over the evening’s share of mutton stew, “I wouldn’t be riding the wagon. Be out there with you lot, marching my legs down to nothing.”

  “Just say the word,” Tyvian said, “and I’ll knock you on your arse again. Anytime.”

  Hambone had found this hilarious.

  The second side effect was that Tyvian’s time digging the latrine alone allowed him space to think over his predicament in private. While marching, he was too concerned with staying in rank and not dropping his pike (or Hambone’s), but in the cool of the evening, alone with his stupid little shovel, Tyvian could take a deep breath and forget, for a moment, that his new name was Duchess and he was the unpaid foot soldier of Banric Sahand’s invading army.

  Like his sticking up for Hambone, Tyvian’s plan to fake his own death had been a selfless act to its core—it had to be, since if it hadn’t, he would have died as he plummeted off the roof of the Peregrine Palace into the lake below. As a selfless act, however, it had lacked a certain degree of postmortem planning. He had informed Eddereon to fish him out of the lake and hide him away until he recovered, but had also tasked him with finding a means by which they could leave the country unnoticed. This, he had to admit, Eddereon had done, albeit in the least pleasant way possible.

  But now what?

  Tyvian had no intention of remaining a member of the Ghouls for one moment longer than necessary. It was only a matter of time before orders from on high would put him (and Eddereon) in an untenable situation vis-à-vis the ring. As it stood, Tyvian knew full well that the mutton they were eating each night wasn’t from any kind of elaborate baggage train—the Ghouls were stripping the countryside bare of every chicken, lamb, duck, and cow they could clap their gauntlets on. The villages they marched through locked their doors and shutters as they passed. Sometimes at dawn, Tyvian could see the oily columns of smoke rising to the sky—farms that had been burned by Captain Rodall’s foraging teams the night before.

  The idea that his mother was still alive and imprisoned in Dellor struck Tyvian as wildly improbable. Sahand was not known for his mercy and, even if his mother were alive, it was only because the torture she was enduring was so elaborate that she had not yet been permitted to expire. Running to Dellor—on foot, incidentally—would accomplish very little except put them in Dellor, which by all accounts was one of the least pleasant places in the West. No, Tyvian was not the one to rescue Lyrelle. The woman was on her own.

  That fact, though, had yet to penetrate Eddereon’s wooly brain. Late at night, while Hambone snored and their other tent-mate, a giant of a man by the name of Mort, evidently wrestled bears in his sleep, Eddereon and Tyvian would sometimes whisper to one another.

  “You can’t be serious about going to Dellor,” Tyvian said one night, throwing Mort’s huge hand off his face.

  “She’s in danger, Tyvian. She’s your mother,” Eddereon said, his eyes barely visible in the slash of moonlight that squeezed between their tent flaps.

  “I’m telling you, as her son, that Lyrelle Reldamar has never wanted help from anybody, least of all me. If she wound up in Dellor, it’s because she knew she would. That means she’s either dead already, or well on her way to a triumphant escape. The last thing she needs is your schoolyard heroics.”

  “Tyvian.” Eddereon reached out and grabbed his arm. “Don’t you owe her this much?”

  “Owe her? We’re square, believe me.” Tyvian yanked his arm free. “Besides, why do you care anyway? What do you owe her?”

  Eddereon’s eyes grew damp. He wiped away a tear with one filthy thumb. “Because, Tyvian—I love her.”

  So there it was. Lyrelle Reldamar had gotten her hooks so deep in Eddereon’s idiot heart that he was about to cross a featureless wasteland and assail an impregnable fortress all in the hopes she wasn’t skinned, stuffed, and adorning Banric Sahand’s trophy case.

  It was clear Eddereon could not be relied upon. That meant it would soon be time to ditch him, too.

  If he was giving up the hero business, though, what else was there for Tyvian to do? He thought of one of his conversations with Xahlven—the Oracle of the Vale, he had said, knew how to find the Yldd. Find the Yldd and he could remove the ring. He could go back to being himself again—a new beginning, as it were. No more lowly moralistic concerns, no more requisite acts of heroic daring. He looked at the ring in the firelight one night over dinner. It was caked with grime, blackened by the day’s efforts. Were it not for it, he would be dead. Of course, were it not for it, he would also never have found himself on that palace roof in the first place. There was so much he owed that trinket and so much it owed him, that it had become pointless to pass blame. Besides, he believed his mother when she had told him it was really just a storage unit for and amplifier of his better self. There was no sense arguing that, on some level, all the things he had done at the ring’s coaxing were things he thought were right.

  But that didn’t mean he needed to keep it forever.

  Again, that feeling of freedom sought to overwhelm him. If he disappeared one night—if he crept off and got away—there was literally no limit to what he could do. No responsibilities, no debts, not even any enemies! Carlo diCarlo always said he knew how to get to the Vale—hell, if anybody knew something like that, it would be Carlo. All Tyvian needed to do was give the Ghouls the slip, get to Freegate, and then begin the next chapter in his life. The thought of kicking back in Carlo’s house, a glass of cherille in his hand, while one of Carlo’s girls rubbed the kinks from his back and the cramps from his legs . . . gods, it was enough to keep Tyvian going the whole next day with a smile on his face. Not even Drawsher’s bawling could crack it.

  Tyvian began to develop his plan for escape. The primary obstacle was Rodall’s hounds—fooling hounds like that was nearly impossible without sorcerous intervention. At minimum, he was going to need about five gallons of human urine. Fortunately, he knew just where to get it—he had to dig the damned latrine every night. Even with all that piss, though, that would only buy him a half hour or so before they found the trail again. He set his mind to remembering his Eretherian geography—he’d smuggled things through this country so many times, he knew plenty of bolt holes and hideaways. He just needed a safe haven . . .

  “Duchess!” Drawsher kicked him in the foot. For the barest second, Tyvian thought that maybe his plan to escape had been found out. But then he noticed Drawsher’s expression—that unique kind of bitterness that arises when a bully has to admit they are wrong. “Captain is asking to see you. Hop to it.”

  Tyvian crawled out of the tent and stood, stretching his aching back. “What’s this about?”

  Drawsher pointed toward the command tent. “Don’t keep the captain waiting, scrub! Move it!”

  Tyvian walked toward the captain’s tent with an easy gait. “What’s the matter, Drawsher—weren’t you invited?”

  “Kroth take you, high-born shit-eating . . .”
The sergeant made as though to chase him, fists balled, but something kept him at bay. Probably the fact that if Tyvian showed up to Rodall’s tent late and with a black eye, Drawsher would be the one limping for the next week.

  Tyvian savored the sergeant’s impotence as he went to answer his employer’s call. He felt so good at that moment, he even felt the desire to whistle coming on. Then he remembered exactly where he was going and his mood sobered. After a week of marching and no word, what the hell could Rodall want now?

  Rodall’s tent had no guards posted—just two of those enormous dogs curled up and sleeping on the mat before the door. Their heads popped up when Tyvian was five paces away and they watched carefully as he approached. One of them growled—a higher-pitched version of Hool’s growl, but nevertheless pretty menacing. Tyvian stopped in his tracks.

  Rodall whistled from inside the tent. “Let him in, boys.”

  Rodall was still wearing his armor—Tyvian was beginning to suspect the man slept in it. His tent featured a folding table with a huge map rolled up and lying across it. Tyvian didn’t flatter himself to think that Rodall had hidden his company’s exact location and disposition for his benefit. The captain was about to receive a visitor, then—a visitor he did not entirely trust.

  Rodall looked at him and pointed to a weapons rack in the corner of the tent. “Get a sword and stand behind me. I want the weapon bared and point-down in the ground between your legs—don’t say a damned thing, but keep your eyes open and be ready for anything, understand?”

  Tyvian saluted. “Yes sir.”

  As Tyvian was doing as he was asked, Rodall caught him by the elbow and whispered in his ear. “If you breathe a word of anything you’re about to hear to anybody . . .”

  He let himself trail off, leaving the punishment to the imagination. Tyvian didn’t have to imagine very hard.

  Tyvian got to his “imposing bodyguard” position just in time to hear Rodall’s hounds growl at a new visitor. Rodall drew a dagger from a scabbard and slipped it into his boot. Then he slid gently into a chair, the table between him and the door. He whistled his dogs off. “Come in.”