War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  One-eye felt a whisper of air brush along the back of his neck, and he reacted instantly, spinning around and wrapping his arms about an unseen something. He threw himself and the thing to the ground, and he felt a blade slash the inside of his elbow. He struggled with the thing and the other ogres ran to help. He felt the blade slash his wrist deep, then something punched him in the guts, and blood began to well out. Again and again he was punctured, until he lost his grip on the thing, and it slipped from his grasp. Blood was pouring from him copiously. “You have to catch it!” He grunted grimly. “Get hold of the fucker.” He came up to his knees, but could rise no further.

  Around and around the ogres went, seeking in vain for the invisible killer, and around and around in Gutcrusher’s head went the question. How can you fight something that you cannot see? He looked about the room desperately, looking for an answer.

  “After I have killed all of you I will take all of your shes.” The disembodied voice of Fargikiller mocked. “I will take Azha the Fury and she will give me many whelps.”

  “You lie!” Gutcrusher growled, but he watched helplessly as another young buck’s throat was opened by the invisible blade of the Blackwood killer. He ran to the spot, knowing that the ghost would already be gone.

  “Nobody talks about the queen like that.” Came a casual voice, and Gutcrusher looked to see who it was, for he did not recognize it as one of his boyos. A gigantic ogre in thick furs, carrying an enormous bloodstained iron pick, stepped from the stairwell and into the room.

  “I kill the pretender.” Fargikiller said from no place. “And she will be my queen, not yours!”

  “I don’t think so.” Ironspike said, walking purposefully forward. “I think you are all finished Fargikiller.”

  “Finished?” The voice laughed. “I’ve only started, fool. You will bend knee and name me king, Ironspike!” As he spoke he struck, stabbing deeply into the unprotected spine of Sharpfang. Sharpfang was a veteran who had joined the King’s Band at the same time as Splitnose and Hammers, and he had been rewarded with a steel galerus that protected his shoulder and a helmet, but his spine was not covered. His legs collapsed beneath him and he groaned.

  Ehnudra Who Bites had heard the commotion and left the other shes to see how her lover One-eye fared, for she had some instinctive foreboding perhaps. When she saw him kneeling on the floor, and the pool of his life-blood spreading about him, she ran to him and threw her arms around him protectively. He looked at her with his terribly pale face and grinned. “What a right good wench you are.” He declared, and then he coughed. There was blood in his mouth.

  “Come and try me, Fargikiller.” Ironspike said grimly, standing in the middle of the room. “I come to kill Gutcrusher maybe, but I’d be glad to kill you first.”

  “You stupid hill-man.” Fargikiller said, and another ogre whelp died clutching its throat. “I kill when and where I want. I am the Fargi killer. I will come to you in my time.” But Ehnudra saw a bloody bootprint appear on the floor. She screamed in fury and threw herself at the place where the bootprint was, wrapping her flabby but still ogre-strong arms around an invisible something in the air. Cuts and slashes began to appear in her flabby flesh, and she began to bleed, but she held tight to the ghost, growling her hate and frustration.

  “Enough of this.” Ironspike said, striding forward. “You even kill shes? You will never be king of shite, Fargikiller.” He walked to the weirwood staff, which stood erect near the center of the room, though no hand held it, and it had never moved from the place the Blackwood chieftain had put it. Ironspike took it from the floor and snapped it over his mighty knee. The living wood died and the broken staff emitted a blinding flash of witchy blue light.

  Fargikiller was suddenly and completely visible, holding a bloody knife and struggling in the arms of Ehnudra Who Bites. She grabbed the wrist of the stunned chieftain’s knife hand with both of hers, and within seconds he was pierced, bludgeoned or battered by every ogre who had weapon in hand and could reach him through the press of bodies of those determined to slay him. He did not have time to speak again, and Ehnudra bit his throat as he died.

  Gutcrusher wiped blood from the spear wound that Whiteskin had inflicted on him and turned to Ironspike. He lifted his blacksteel mace and readied his shield.

  “Right.” Ironspike said. “Let’s get this shite over with.” He stepped forward with his fearful military pick in his hand and assumed a fighting stance. Gutcrusher braced himself. He was weak and he was bleeding, but he was ready for one last fight. This was the last of the great chiefs who opposed him, and once Ironspike was dead, the resistance to his rule would end.

  Ironspike dropped to one knee and looked up at Gutcrusher, and Azha the Fury who had come and was standing beside him. “Is that how it is done?” He asked. “Or do I have to say words or something?”

  Like all ogres, One-eye wished his body to lie forever undisturbed in the wild, so that generations might come and look upon him in his last glory, and like all ogres he was doomed to disappointment. But it was tradition that he get his chance, so when all was done they laid him out beneath the stars in that barren and stony land, and they gave him all honor that they knew, which was to take all of his loot, joke about what a stupid fucker he’d been and walk away. Sharpfang and the other ogres who had died lay beside him, but at a respectful distance. After the other ogres had gone Ehnudra Who Bites stayed with his body and there was water in her eyes such as she dimly remembered from her whelphood, but an ogress may not cry, and certainly that was not what she was doing, even though he had called her right good wench.

  But before that happened Gutcrusher walked with Azha the Fury to the balcony, and beside them stood Ironspike and the king’s great captains Wolf and Balls, and they looked down upon the mighty host of ogres below. “The great chieftains are dead, except for Ironspike, who has bent knee to me. You ogres have no chiefs now. Kneel and join the King’s Band, or die.” The king commanded.

  The hard and disciplined ranks of the Winter Mountain Band bent knee first, for their captains had prepared them for it. The ogres of Whiteskin’s band looked about in stunned silence, but their captain Spearstained had predicted in his mind that this might happen. He bent knee, and seeing him, the rest of them did so also. Together these two bands combined were mightier than any single band, and when the ogres of the Iron Bridge bent knee, the band from the Blackwood quickly followed. Thirteen painted nomads from the Waste had somehow failed to join in Madbastard’s last doomed foray into the Black Mountain. They looked like mislaid flowers among the grim colors of black, brown and gray worn by the other bands, but when they tried to kneel the ogres around them knocked them to the ground and killed them swiftly. There would be no more pick-a-nicks, they vowed.

  When all of that was settled, Gutcrusher spoke. “The times of chiefs are over. Now you’re going to have captains, and they will do what I order, but they will treat you fair. Every boyo here is going to get a fair share. You’re going to come when I call and fight who I say, and we are going to smash the world and take what we want!” The ogres roared their approval.

  Suddenly a hidden door appeared in the blank wall behind him. He looked and the door opened, and there stood the old crone. She cackled with glee. “Oh, you have done so well, my dark king. Now just one wish remains to fulfill.”

  Chapter 63: Hill Fort, Western Zoric

  “This place is crawling with spiders. I hate the cursed things.”

  “Well, spiders is better than spies.”

  “You really think anyone cares enough about what we’re doing to send spies?”

  “It’s a caution learned over a long life, Malkoom.” Hobrin O’root was an older man, his hair gray and his back somewhat stooped, although his arms were still strong, if covered in white hair, and his shoulders were thick. In his prime he had been a famed arm-wrestler and had won more than a few coppers at the fair. He might have been sixty-five, but he looked like a man in his fifties, a bit worn, per
haps, but still hardy. His clothes were simple homespun wool, and he did not look like a lord. Indeed, his holding was so small and so lacking in wealth that he was little more than a jumped up mayor, and not even a lord mayor at that. His eyes were Tolrissan blue, and but for them he might have been taken for a man of the hundred kingdoms.

  The man he was speaking to was both hearty and strong, for Malkoom D’Arouth had always been active. At forty-eight years, sometimes his feet troubled him when he’d been sitting for a while, but he could still pull a plow by himself, and sometimes he had to. His mule was more and more ganted up these days. All things eventually wear out, he supposed. He was a simple yeoman farmer, but he had a good bloodline and a good blade hanging from a peg above his bed. His eyes were dark brown, but his hair was fair. He, too, might have passed for either a dark Tolrissan or a fair Mortentian. The Arouths had not been reluctant to mingle their blood with the people they found here after exile. “And what business is so secret we must conduct it like spies, Hobrin?” He asked.

  “Hambar’s dead.” The old man replied. “Been dead now three, four moons. Murdered in Mortentia City.”

  “Well, ‘tis a tough town, that one.” Malkoom replied. “And many a man murdered there.”

  “Aye, but word is he was kilt for debt. Him kilt, his boys run off and the land taken.”

  Malkoom’s eyes narrowed. “The land taken for debt and him kilt? That don’t seem likely. I knowed him from nappies. He were the best of us, and Hambar always paid his debts honorable. If’n there was a claim on the land, I don’t see him not giving it up fair and square.”

  “That’s just it. This is the word from court. Some D’Ellishelles was there, and they heard the king himself call him out on it. Practically named him a murderer.”

  “Who?” There was menace in Malkoom’s voice, and it echoed among the cold stones of the ancient hill fort. This was a bastion of defense, basically a round keep surrounded by a thick round wall with a single gate and moat beyond that, but it was no dwelling place. It was as old as the oldest of the Hundred Kingdoms, and had been here for as long as living memory. The drawbridge had rotted to nothing, and the two of them had placed a fallen log across the space it had once occupied in order to access this meeting place. “Who done the murder?”

  “The Duke of Elderest. That Maldiver D’Cadmouth.” Hobrin replied coldly. “I guess he was holding the debt and Hambar went to the king to get it forgiven. The king granted it, but Hambar never made it home, and the boys was run off before he was due. Nobody seen the killing, but it’s plain as day who done it. He always was a stupid man.”

  “Do them D’Cadmouths imagine we’re all dead, then? By the sixteen saints, do they account us as nothing?” Malkoom shook his head in disbelief.

  “Aye. I think they do, Malkoom. And to be fair, ‘tis long since any of us darkened the streets of the King’s Town. Could be they don’t think nothing of us at all no more.”

  “And the Black Duke, they don’t care nothing about him no more, neither?”

  “I think we’re a fairy tale now. Something to skeer the children with. They don’t remember, or if they do, they think we’re powerless. A fallen house.”

  Malkoom reflected bitterly for a moment that if that was the opinion of the first families, it might be right. The House of Arouth in its many iterations was scattered now, and they weren’t a major family anywhere. Most were little more than farmers and tradesmen like himself. Some saw that as the Black Duke’s curse coming true, but Malkoom figured it was just the way of things. Eventually, like his mule, everything wore out, even a reputation such as the Arouths once had. Still. “What about the boys?”

  “Now this you’ll like.” Hobrin said. “The oldest boy, name of Aelfric, seems he went for the Free Companies up Northcraven way, and he’s been in a battle. He’s the commander of the company now, the Red Lions or some such. I guess he took after Hambar, for there’s them that says he won the battle himself. Kilt some forty-thousand Cthochi, if you believe it.”

  “It’s a lot to believe.” Malkoom replied skeptically. “But you know how those numbers are. Everyone blows them up to make a raid look like a great victory. Still, if’n he’s been run off by Elderest, and Hambar kilt, you can bet he’s a marked man.”

  “Aye, that’s what I was thinking. He could use some family around.” Hobrin agreed. It would mean a lot of riding about, but he could make sure some of the younger fellows went.

  “What about the other one, didn’t Hambar have a younger son? I seem to recollect sending money for him to go to school.”

  Hobrin nodded. “Aye, Levin was his name. Not such good news there. He’s gone missing from school. I guess he wasn’t really giving it much attention, nor they to him, so nobody can account for his whereabouts. It’s likely he’s been disappeared a’purpose.”

  “Damn the man.” Malkoom replied, his ears warming with anger. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “I don’t guess we can let that go unanswered, Malkoom. I think there’s a reckoning due on Hambar’s account, most likely the boy’s, too. I’ve sharpened my axe.”

  “I love you, uncle, I truly do, but this ain’t a matter for your axe no more. Time was, you’d been the first I’d have thought of, but now? We’re going to need a younger man.”

  It was hard for Hobrin not to take offense at the words, but the tone and voice of the younger man were gentle. He sighed, reading the truth in what Malkoom had said. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Me.” Malkoom replied. “Me and a few likely lads. We’ll head to the King’s Town and see what offers. Likely we’ll need to go to Elderest to see it done.”

  “Might start a feud, you know.”

  “Aye, but most likely not. We’re a fallen house, don’t you know.” The words were bitter. “They’ll handle it in the courts, most likely. Put a writ on us or some such. I’m not worried, though. I can be careful, and if I get found out, there’s the Green Hills to fall back to.”

  Hobrin nodded grimly. “Aye, but be careful. And I think we’re going to need spies in the King’s Town again. We’ve been away from the game too long, if they think they can wipe their feet on us. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Well, reputation can only last so long.” Malkoom replied. “Then it has to be earned again. Meantimes, you’ll have the running of things here. Mayhap you can get the rest of the O’roots to finally come to supper.”

  “Sure, when they concede the use of the Green Hill well.”

  “It’s on their land.”

  “My grandfather dug it, Malkoom.”

  “Aye, and that’s what, seventy years back? And neither of our families using it because we never could come to terms? And not a one of us coming to sup if the other is there and two men dead over the fucking thing?” Western Zoric was a land of long feuds, and neither forgiveness nor compromise held any place in the thoughts of its fierce inhabitants.

  “Well, it’s our well.”

  “How about fuck the well? How about I go and throw a dead ox down the well so neither of our stubborn stupid families can use it? We need to unite on this. There’s been one of us killed, and we need to answer.”

  Reluctantly the older man nodded, then he sat and considered for a long time. “I suppose I can concede the well. We don’t run sheep nigh the green hill no more anyway. You know, I think this is the kind of thing we been needing, Malkoom. Something to bring the family together.” He finally said.

  Malkoom grinned fiercely. His dark, saturnine features took on an almost wolfish look. “Aye. Nothing works so well as plotting murder to bring them all home.”

  Chapter 64: Mortentia City, Mid Kastanus

  Lanae moved Sentinel to the uppermost level of the eyrie, and Darkfeather across from him, wanting to put as much distance between the two eagles and the eyrie’s entrance. She posted a notice at the center of each of the eyrie’s five levels, at the entrance to the stairwells so that they could not be missed, instructing the othe
r king’s eyes to similarly nest their eagles on the upper levels.

  Of the twenty eagles that had been housed here when Lanae first became a king’s eye, only nine remained. Sentinel was hers, of course, for he would no longer permit any other rider, and Darkfeather was still half-wild, and could not be safely ridden by anyone. Well, truthfully she thought maybe she could handle him, but certainly none of the other girls had the experience to handle a moody eagle.

  The other seven eagles were Skywolf, Crimson, Birdie, Whitecrest, Wetwing, Harrier and Miracle. Skywolf’s feathers had a red-brown coloring, and he was an easy eagle to manage, although he was not very strong, and only the lightest of riders could get more than one flight out of him without a long rest between. Crimson was a good and strong eagle with dark red coloring. He was perhaps the strongest of the eagles other than Sentinel, and a good, reliable bird. Birdie had two clusters of white feathers around his neck, like two collars or necklaces, and tended to disobey commands when he was hungry, more so than the others. Whitecrest was a good bird, of neutral brown coloring except for a peak of bright white on the crest at the top of his head, who tended to nest quickly and then spend hours staring out at the sky. Wetwing had golden-brown coloring and a thick silver ring around one ankle, and he was the oldest of the eagles. He was still good for two long flights, but he was slow in the air and tended to like the cold air of higher altitudes, making him a challenge to ride without thick leathers. Harrier and Miracle were the youngest and smallest eagles, and both were fit and agile, but not terrifically strong.

  There were twelve king’s eyes living at the eyrie, despite the low eagle numbers, for Bansher had been reluctant to discharge too many from their duties when the seven eagles had been killed at once. Bansher and the king had been desperate to maintain the illusion that there were still plenty of eagles to work the king’s will, so the eagles were overworked and the riders were taking flights in shifts. Some of the newer girls had never even flown a full mission.