His boyos were getting restless, and Fleshripper was lining them up for a move against him, Gutcrusher knew. Fleshripper was a young bull, all battle ready and hot, and one of these days Gutcrusher was going to have to put him down.
He grunted disgustedly. What he needed was a wench. Not these damn once a winter Aulig skags, rape 'em and eat 'em, but a real hot fighting wench. There wasn't any chance of it while he had a band of no more than two hands, of course. The wenches stuck with the big bands out west, where three or four tens of tens could be found with one chief. If he could get to the top of a pile of boyos that big he could have all the wenches he wanted, any damn time he pleased.
Spearshaker's idea was a good one, tying up Crusher's boys and his into a single band. The problem was obvious, though, even to a thick-witted ogre. Who was going to be top dog? Spearshaker obviously thought it would be him, seeing as he had the most boyos, but the Crusher had other plans.
He grabbed a piece of Aulig out of the pot with his bare hands and ripped a chunk of flesh off with his teeth. It was some poor pigsucker's thigh, from the knee to crotch, still half-raw. He liked this piece, since it had a nice, thick bone to hold onto while he gnawed on it.
"After we eat we go and see Spearshaker." He told his boyos. If any one of them dared to object he'd kill the bastard.
Four gigantic ogres met Crusher and two of his boyos at the riverbank. Crusher had his other three scattered out in the woods scouting for an ambush, and he knew Shaker had his boyos out doing the same.
Shaker stepped out to meet him. "You bring your boyos?" He asked. Spearshaker wore battle armor, old chainlink stuff he'd stripped off of some corpse somewhere. Gutcrusher wore only his loincloth, but he carried his steel-spiked mace in his right hand with purpose. Spearshaker's weapon, a great barbed spear nearly ten feet in length, was decorated with scalps, not all of them human.
"They're around here somewhere, same as yours I guess." Crusher replied. He had Balls on his left and the Ripper on his right. He'd brought his best boyos to the meet. He recognized one of Spearshaker's boys, Wolf, from an old fight they'd both managed to survive a few winters back. The other two ogres were strangers to him, but familiar types, battle-scarred and ready. The Shaker had brought his best boyos to the parley, too.
"You want to hook up our boyos?" Ogre parley tended to be direct and to the point.
"It’s a good idea." Crusher said, by way of agreement.
"What do you boyos think?" Spearshaker looked past Crusher to Balls and the Ripper as he spoke. Crusher caught the sidelong glance he gave to Wolf, and he recognized in it a signal. Wolf's muscles tensed as he prepared to spring at the Ripper.
"Treacherous dog!" Gutcrusher screamed as he spun his mace upward, catching Wolf's stone hammer before it could fall against Fleshripper's shoulder. Before Spearshaker could get his spear into the Crusher, Balls was there, coming around his chief's left side, and the old ogre managed to land a blow with his stone axe that rocked the Shaker's head sideways and left him stunned. Without following up the blow, Balls deftly knocked down a spear held by one of Shaker's other two lackeys.
Gutcrusher twisted neatly, having blocked Wolf's blow, and spun his mace behind his back and pumped it into Spearshaker's guts. He felt ribs crack and give way before the ancient spiked weapon as he drove it into his rival's vitals. No matter what happened now, the bastard was dead.
Ripper hurled his body weight into Wolf, knocking the ogre back in the mud. He met the Wolf's hastily thrust stone hammer with his own, knocking it sideways. Ripper was young and fast, but Wolf had years of experience behind him. Wolf sprang to his feet and the two crouched, facing each other, stone hammer to stone hammer, each ready to strike.
Spearshaker's lifeblood poured out of his guts even as Crusher ripped the mace free and turned to the other two behind the dead leader. They had common stone-tipped spears, and they readied them to catch his charge.
"Who's your chief?" He screamed as he whipped his mace up, still-steaming blood and gore hanging from its tip. This was one of the old weapons, and if he landed with it, even scratched them, they knew they would die.
"Gutcrusher!" Wolf shouted, still crouched and watching Ripper closely. Balls moved to box in the two facing Crusher. One of them threw his spear onto the ground and spat. "Gutcrusher."
"Aye, Gutcrusher." Said the other.
Gutcrusher walked over to where Spearshaker lay on the ground, still breathing slightly, face up in a pool of his own gore. "Hells to you, Spearshaker!" He shouted. Then he picked up the Shaker's own spear and began plunging it into the dying ogre.
"Pigsucker! Bitch! Dogrobber!" He shouted at the ogre, even as he stabbed him, again and again. By the time he was satisfied, there was little left that might have been recognized.
"Who's the chief?" He screamed.
A dozen voices joined in unison as more forms emerged and came into the clearing.
"Gutcrusher! Gutcrusher! Gutcrusher!"
Gutcrusher smiled and licked the Shaker's blood from his weapon. His breath frosted in the cold northern air.
Chapter 17: The Entreddi Encampment
Haim and Aelfric sat beside the fire, bellies full of spiced meat and rich Entreddi wine, watching the Entreddi and watching the stars invade the sky as night came on. It was early spring, so the light in the sky lingered long, but at last the stars conquered and the moon rode lofty and pale above a thin veil of high cloud.
"I feel safe here." Aelfric said into the darkness.
"Aye, well, you are that." Haim replied thickly. His voice had deepened with the three skins of wine he'd helped himself to during the night. "The dogs will tell is if aught comes along the road this night. If Elderest has sent folks this far up the road, we'll have enough warning to get well-hid. The Entreddi will see to that."
"Do you think they would turn us over?"
"Them?" Haim's voice was incredulous. "They got no use for noble folk huntin' men in the brush. Since we shed your fancy horse and clothes, I dasn't see how they could trail us this far up the road, anyway. Plus we been makin' good time."
"I don't know." Aelfric was worried. "The Duke's men seemed pretty eager to catch me."
"That was when you was in possession of your keep." Haim reminded him. "Now that they got you out of there, they won't be so keen to see you murdered. They keep you and your kin clear of Root’s Bridge for a year and a day and it’s theirs by right."
"That's the rule for stolen chattel, Haim, not a nobleman's fiefdom. Only the death of the principal and all his heirs will vest title by possession. That or a king's writ."
"You think the king won't give Elderest what he wants, what with you gone and your father dead?" Haim shook his head in the darkness. "Don't be a fool, Aelfric. From what you said it’s your father as the king owes gratitude to, not to you. You'd better get used to the idea that your land is gone. You're a free man on the road, same as me."
"There's no justice in it." Aelfric couldn't help complaining.
"Welcome to the world the rest of us live in, Aelfric. There ain't no justice in any of it, whether it’s a dream or no."
"If I could get to a king's eye, I could lodge a formal complaint. A written grievance won't be ignored in the King's City, they have to answer it somehow. I do come of noble blood, with a history of service to the King's House on both sides of my bloodline. My mother's line, House Askelyne, were some of the first settlers to come to this country from Tolrissa. My father's house…"
He was interrupted by the soft sound of Haim snoring. A few minutes later he, too, slept.
"Such babies." Jecha muttered, half to herself. Even though she sat on the other side of the camp from where to two young men slept, she'd overheard every whispered word. The heightened sense of hearing was just one of her gifts as seeress for family Haila.
"Aye, well, the highborn fellow seems to know his way around a sword, anyway." Tuchek was sitting beside her at the cook fire. He needed little sleep, and he liked the hours of dar
kness best of all.
"He'll need it." The old woman's voice was ominous in the darkness.
"Are you speaking prophecy or just predicting?"
"There's no difference, Tuchek. I know what I know, whether the bones tell me or not." She was still for a moment, then: "I know what I don't know, also."
Something in her voice caught and held the Aulig warrior's attention. "You passing something on, woman?"
"I shouldn't. Every time I put a thing in words, it seems to become certain fact."
"You are a seeress, Jecha." His voice was gentle in the darkness. Whatever was on her mind, he would need to coax it from her slowly. Tuchek knew the old woman well enough to know that she only told things in her own time and in her own cryptic fashion.
"Tell me again, Tuchek, about your journey north of the Redwater."
"Which one?" He knew the answer before he asked, of course. There had only been one journey that mattered.
"When you broke the magic."
He chuckled slightly. "I did no such thing, Jecha. I've told you before, I was only a guide."
"Tell me anyway."
"All right." He opened the doors of his memory, bringing back events he had not thought of in over a decade.
"They came to me in Northcraven, when I was one of the foresters there. Two men, well, actually half a dozen men if you count their bodyguards and sellswords, but only two who were of importance. They were foreign, of a like I'd never met before or since. Dark skinned like Auligs, with the same dark hair and eyes, but their faces were thinner, more like Tolrissans. Their hair was curly, too, like their beards. They said they were from some place called Araquesh."
"What did they tell you about Araquesh?"
"Nothing but that it was a big desert, surrounded by some ancient cities. They said the place was thick with wizards, too."
"And were they wizards, Tuchek?"
"Aye, that they were. The younger one, the hothead who was the true leader in the undertaking, his name was Rashad something or other. He was a priest of some sort, shaved his face and head every day."
"Rashad Ibn Al-Hijab." Jecha's voice was very knowing.
"Aye well, that might have been it. His partner was a bit older, a bit of a rogue, really, and his name was …"
"Derbas-Al-Dhulma."
"Yes, that was the name. Flashy black eyes and a thick wooly black beard."
"Go on."
"They wanted to go north of the Redwater, past the Wintry Hills, up into the Great Wild. No one would guide them, for no Mortentian or foreigner could ever get past the Cthochi up there."
"But you were different."
"Aye. I was the only one of the foresters who'd ever been north of the Cthochi Territory, and I knew full well that it doesn't go all the way to the North Sea, nor to the Rhuman Ocean. Being Cthochi myself, I knew I could get through their lands, too."
"Why did you guide them, besides the gold?"
"Oh, there was plenty of gold, I saw that. They had a merchant prince along, a fellow named Bunderkim, and he paid for everything. Still, I wouldn't have done it for just the money, no matter how much they offered. It was just too bloody dangerous. No, it was the story they told, and the things they showed me."
"Now we reach the heart of it, Tuchek." Jecha's voice was animated. "The story they told you. Tell me, now."
"I haven't told anyone in years, Jecha. I never even told you all of it. Some things shouldn't be spoken about."
"But now is the time, Tuchek. Now it is time for you to tell me the whole story."
"Why, witch-woman?"
"The stones have told me this much, I believe."
"You believe? You mean you aren't sure?"
Jecha spat on the ground. "I didn't cast them, Tuchek. It was a true throw, but not by me. I know that you are bound up in it somehow, and that you have something important to tell me. Something important to the whole of the Entreddi, and the Cthochi, too. What could it be but that business? That's why I need to know."
"All right, Jecha." Tuchek frowned. "You saved my life once, and your people more often than that, so I will trust you with it.
"It was late spring, early summer, and the land was as green and rich that year as I've ever seen it. The foresters had been having a quiet time of it, for whenever the hunting is good the Cthochi don't bother raiding east of the Redwater, and the Duke had enough to deal with planting and getting ready for a full harvest. This was six or seven years after the big war and things were calm. When the foreigners showed up, I don't know, but it was plain they'd been in Northcraven for at least a month discreetly looking for a guide to take them north. I found out about it tracking down some foreign gold they'd been spending.
"The long and short of it is that I met with them, and after some discussion, I agreed to take them north of the Redwater and get them a meeting with the Cthochi. If the Cthochi would guide them further, they could get on to what they were looking for."
"And what were they looking for, Tuchek?"
The Aulig squirmed uncomfortably. Even the near total darkness he could feel her penetrating stare. "The tomb of Marten."
Jecha shuddered involuntarily. "You didn't leave them with the Cthochi, though."
Tuchek shook his head. "No." The Aulig sighed. "I took them all the way there."
"Why did you change your plan?"
"Once we'd gotten away from the city, they told me their whole story. They said they weren't looking to take anything from the tomb -if I'd have thought that I would have killed them myself, or at least left it to the Cthochi to do it- they were trying to leave something there."
"What?"
"A sword. They showed it to me once we'd crossed the Redwater and I'd spent enough time with them to earn their trust. It was a broad sword, big enough to use either one or two handed, and all covered with runes and the like. They said a powerful wizard was looking for it, and if he got it, he'd have the power to kill anyone he pleased."
Jecha smirked, and in her voice Tuchek heard it. "With one sword?"
"It was black metal, like an ogre weapon." He explained. "But much worse. You know how the ogres have weapons they can scratch you with and its certain death? Well this one had that power for sure, but much more than that. Even in Northcraven, where the magic is deader than it is here, it was full of power."
"How do you know?"
"Rashad, the priest, when he showed me the weapon, demonstrated its power. He stuck it into a tree and killed it."
"So it poisoned the tree?"
"Not just the tree, although it certainly did that. It killed the wood and the life in the wood like the tree had been felled and left lying to rot for fifty years. The grass around the tree turned black -not dried out brown but dead black- and even the dirt beneath the tree was ruined. Birds that had been nesting in the tree fell out of it, stone dead. A couple of trees nearby caught the disease and died later. 'Across the sea this weapon is much more potent.' The priest said."
"Why did you seek out the Tomb of Marten?"
"The priest said that putting the sword there was the only way to ensure that his enemies never got hold of it. I dug around a little, in one of the dead cities north of the Redwater, and we found a map to the Tomb. Everyone knows Marten was entombed on Mount Ossith, but I found the actual location. I took the men there and they got rid of the sword."
"Not without some danger, I'll warrant."
"Not without some danger." Tuchek agreed. Even ten years later the journey stood stark and horrible in his mind. "It was midwinter when we reached the tomb, and late spring when we came back. Along the way we lost half the men we went in with to the Muharl. There were some other foreigners involved in the matter, too, some agents of this wizard who wanted the sword, and we had some trouble with them also."
"So it was not your intention to break the magic?"
"I didn't even know we'd done that, to tell the truth, until you told me later, Jecha. I still haven't seen much evidence of it."
"No." Jecha's voice was steady, even though her heart was beating furiously. "It would take a seer to notice the change in magic here, in Mortentia, where magic is nearly dead anyway. Across the rest of the world half a hundred of the greatest sorcerers ever known simply died. Many more were left half-witted, and one great empire was nearly destroyed."
Tuchek looked into the fire and considered her words. "Too bloody bad for them, I guess." He finally said, with a small laugh. "I never held much with magic, anyway."
"What does this old story have to do with us anyway?" Tuchek's voice was patient, but he was plainly getting tired of talking.
"I don't know, Tuchek." She replied. "But I think it has something to do with the death that is following you and the others."
"What death?"
"It is in the stones, Tuchek. Death comes with a great swordsman and two others, and death comes here. Perhaps there are two great swordsmen, I cannot see clearly. But you are the only great swordsman I know, Tuchek. Let me admit it, I was somewhat less than happy to see you."
Tuchek smiled wearily. "You needn't fear death, Jecha. Life is only a dream anyway."
Chapter 18: The Finding
Dethil walked in a shadow world, half real and half imagined. In less than a second all that he had ever known of emotion in his simple existence had been consumed by a passion such as he'd never felt. At some level even his dimwitted mind felt that something was amiss, but he was powerless to resist the feelings that overcame him. Gold he imagined, in heaps and columns reaching from floor to ceiling, a mountain of gold just for him. No one would laugh at him anymore, not with the riches of a king at his hand.
He would buy a house, a great big house surrounded by a green field. He would learn to ride horses and he would buy only the finest ones. He would dress like a lord or a bishop, and he would have serving men come and do everything for him. He even imagined, although he scarcely dared, a woman. A beautiful woman who would come because he was rich but who would stay with him because she saw him for what he truly was. She would do some of the things with him that Paet and Cherl talked about so knowingly; imagined things that made him blush and feel funny.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 13
