Of Bone and Thunder (2 page)

“They're going to make us go back up, I fucking know it,”
Crossbowman Yustace Vooford said from farther up the mountain, spitting the words out. The lanky baker's assistant-turned-soldier carried a chip on his shoulder as big as one of his bragged-about loaves.

“Keep it down,” Carny said, waving at Voof to lower his voice. “It was a few arrows at most.”

“A few arrows?” Big Hog said, using his crossbow to point up at the mountain. “You might be about the only one of us that can read, but as sure as my crotch itches like a witch's in a ditch full of thistles, you can't count.” The pig farmer—large, beefy, and forever red-faced and sweating—shook his head, rattling the chain mail curtain that hung from the back of his helm.

Carny tried and failed to get the image of the itchy witch out of his head. “Fine, more than a few,” he said, lowering his voice in the hope that Big Hog would take the hint. “Still, the rag flew on, so we're good. Right?” He pushed his helm higher onto his head to allow the air to get at his scalp. The liner slid back, releasing a stream of sweat. Carny wiped his brow with the back of his bare forearm.
I might as well be wearing a damn forge on my head.

Sighing, Carny bent over and wiped his arm against his dun-colored trouser leg and wished they could take the heavy linen things off. Trousers were too hot for this weather, and the cloth kept getting bunched up underneath the bronze greaves protecting his shins. An oozing rash now covered him from knees to ankles, the yellowy-pink liquid pooling in the bottom of his ankle-high leather boots. That in turn made his feet slip in his boots, spawning blisters on top of blisters.

“We ain't been good since before we got here,” Voof said. “I didn't ask to come here and fight in this war. None of us did, but here we are. And why? I'll tell you—”

“For fuck's sake, Voof, leave it for one afternoon, would you?” the Weasel said, emerging from the side of the path while pulling up his trousers. Thin with sharp features and a sharper tongue, Crossbowman Alminga Meerz was the one soldier guaranteed to find the wrong thing to say at the exact wrong time to Voof.

“They'd fucking like that,” Voof said, staring hard at the Weasel. “Mark my words, it's what they've always wanted.”

Everyone in Red Shield and the Second of the Seventh knew Voof's views on the Kingdom's war in Luitox and the conscription of men into the army. The thing of it was, Voof's views were shared by most, but his seething rage made it difficult to agree with him at the best of times.

Carny didn't bother responding. Voof would rant until he ran out of breath or someone put a fist down his throat. Carny reseated his helm on his head by dropping his chin to his chest and letting the helm fall back into place. Anything that saved a few precious drops of energy was worth its weight in silver. He grabbed the front of his dark green aketon and pulled it away from his skin as he sucked down lungfuls of hot air.

The aketon was more agonizing than listening to Voof. The jacket's thick quilting filled with horsehair provided exceptional warmth, which in this land was like wearing a blanket of coals. Defying the army's dress code, the entire Second Javelin had cut the sleeves from the garment. It was either that or keep passing out from sun vapors. What remained, however, were the eighteen two-inch-by-two-inch steel armor plates woven into the linen casings, which were sewn into the aketon to protect chest and back. It was an additional twenty pounds that Carny would have just as soon done without, but high command would turn a blind eye to only so much defiance.

“Look!”

A single arrow wobbled into the sky from the top of the mountain, trailing a wisp of red smoke. Carny had seen it before.

“The slyts are ghosting,” Big Hog said. “Ten to one says half of them will be back down at the beach by nightfall at their little stands selling us that piss beer and dog on a stick.”

Carny reached for his neck.
Slyt
sounded like
slit
, which always made him picture a thin razor against his throat. Carny figured their nickname came from their greeting
I ga slyt
, which was really just “hello.” Every slyt he'd met always started with
I ga slyt
. He called them slyts now, too. It was better than trying to learn their fucked-up names.

Carny took it as a cue and turned and started walking down the mountain. As the enemy had so kindly announced their intent to leave it seemed only fair that Red Shield do the same. Other soldiers started to move with him.

“Shield will remain in place!” Red Shield leader Wallseck Sinte shouted, bellowing like they were on a parade square.

“Fucking told you,” Voof said.

Carny halted. The smell of the sunbaked jungle washed over him and he gagged. It was like breathing in hot dung. You didn't just smell it—you absorbed it. The heat of Luitox did something to the air so that every odor stuck to your skin like putrid honey. He breathed through his mouth and did his best to stand perfectly still.

Salvation, in the form of base camp with its white, sandy beaches; cool ocean waves; and all those eager, lithe whores camped just outside it was only fifteen hundred more yards down this path. Fifteen hundred precious yards.

Carny turned and watched as Sinte came to a halt. Sinte stood upright without leaning against the angle of the mountain. It looked unnatural and it bothered Carny. The rest of Red Shield's twenty-four soldiers, just one of six patrols from the Second Javelin combing the mountain for slyts, were sensibly hunched over as they descended toward the beach, but not Sinte. He wouldn't give the jungle the satisfaction. It was as if he feared one flaw, one deviation, would cause his whole world to crumble. He shaved his square jaw twice a day and his head once. From his polished bronze greaves to the gleaming steel shield marking his authority strapped to his back, he shone like a beacon announcing that wherever he stood, that dirt belonged to the Kingdom. And the Kingdom bowed to no one and nothing.

“Listowk, what the hell was that?” Sinte asked. He was six feet tall and muscled like a wild boar, and his voice reverberated off the foliage and set brightly colored birds to flight.

The second-in-command of Red Shield, Lead Crossbowman Ugen Listowk, shorter, wider, and quieter than their leader, shouldered his crossbow and ambled back up the path toward Sinte. He winked as he passed Carny. Carny offered him a weak smile. Where Sinte shined, Listowk absorbed. Leaves and other bits of foliage somehow always got stuck to the LC's helm and straps while dirt dulled his greaves and bare arms whenever they went on patrol. The man, ancient at forty-one and still only a lead crossbowman, was a slow, plodding bush. The joke around the shield was that if he ever stayed in one place for more than a few candles, he'd take root.

Listowk came to a stop a few feet below Sinte and saluted, or possibly scratched his head under his helm. Sinte stared at him, his eyes darting between the many different bits of flora.

“It was clear, SL, not a slyt in sight,” Listowk said, leavening his voice with the exhaustion they all felt. “We scoured that mountaintop for a good quarter candle. We looked under logs, up in the branches, and peered through the bushes, but didn't find a thing.”

Sinte used his crossbow to point back up to where the rag had flown over. The sun made the oiled ash wood shimmer. “Then where did all those fucking slyt archers come from? They flying them in on invisible rags?”

Listowk spit in the dirt and appeared to think before responding. He made it look painful. His nose scrunched up, his eyes squinted, and the mustache covering his upper lip curled like a furry caterpillar being roasted on a fire. “Well, I've heard tell them slyts way inland have some strong thaumics. That's deep, dark green out there. What I hear, army ain't ventured there 'cept for a few rag hops, so no telling what they got.”

Sinte stomped his boot on the ground. “Druid's balls, Listowk, don't give me that mystic-slyt shit! They're nothing but savages that are a damned sight better at hiding than you are at finding!”

Listowk shrugged. “The slyts are crafty. You ask the boys, they'll tell you. We didn't see a damn thing,” he said, pointing toward the eight men of the shield who had searched the mountaintop while the rest, with Sinte, patrolled just below it looking for new paths. “Carny, you see any sign of the little bastards when we was up there?”

Don't get me in the middle of this
, Carny silently pleaded. Yes, they'd climbed to the top of the mountain as ordered, and yes, they'd looked around, mostly for snakes and spiders. Going up this damn mountain day after day had become one big grind. They'd been up it fifteen times in the past three weeks alone to clear of it slyts. The first few times, they'd actually spent a half candle hacking and crawling their way through the undergrowth in search of the bastards. They had to be hiding up there somewhere, but all the patrol came away with were bug bites and a growing sense of pointlessness.

“Couple of frayed bowstrings, a piece of arrow shaft, but not a slyt to be seen,” Carny said, hoping that would be the end of it and knowing it
wouldn't. “Even kicked around in the dirt looking for ash from cook fires, but didn't find any.”

“Then you're as fucking blind as Listowk,” Sinte said.

Carny looked at his shield leader and shrugged. Sinte knew everything. It didn't matter if it was what was in the stew or which slyt whore had the liveliest tongue—his pronouncements were always made with such conviction that everyone just agreed.

“Yeah, maybe,” Carny said, turning his head to look at the beach and the water down below.
So damn close.

“Fucking useless, the lot of you,” Sinte proclaimed. “Do you know what kind of shit I'm going to hear when we go back down there and report that all we found was a couple of bowstrings?”

Carny smiled, then quickly frowned lest Sinte see it.
Sinte said
when
, not
if
!
Glory on high, they were not going to go back up.

“There's another rag!”

Carny turned. At first, he couldn't see a thing. Then he noticed a dark smudge low over the ocean.

“It's a seabird,” he said, hoping against hope he was right.

“Naw, it's a rag,” Listowk said. “Low and slow, but it's a rag.”

Carny looked down at the beach before looking back out to sea. The dark smudge was bigger than before.
Fuck.

“Any bets on what happens if this rag gets shot at?” Voof asked.

No one answered. Carny slammed his crossbow against his thigh and hung his head.
So damn close.

“LOOKY, YAH? WE GOTS
some rolly blues up yonder! Gone git mad-jiggin' afore we hits Loot-ox!” the rag's co-driver shouted over his shoulder. He raised and lowered his three-fingered right hand in the air for extra emphasis.

Jawn Rathim lifted his head and was immediately buffeted by a rushing wind laced with heat and sulfur. Strands of his long brown hair, no longer carefully combed and tied in the back, fluttered freely. He sneezed and squinted, looking around to see if anyone else understood the man's colorful patois. It was a wasted effort.

Two rows of military officers and crown representatives rode single file on either side of the rag's spine. They sat on saddles—really just leather-padded wooden planks affixed to the rag's scales with finger-sized spikes. Facing forward, all had their heads down to keep them out of the wind. In one amazing case, an officer appeared to be fast asleep.

“Choke 'em straps up an in, yah?” the co-driver said, waving his abbreviated hand around for emphasis.

Hope he flies better than he talks
, Jawn thought. An assumption that at least the rag's driver would be of more refined material was wrecked on that man's fist-sized wad of chewing tobacco crammed into his right cheek. It was, as the driver had so eloquently informed Jawn before takeoff, so he could “enjoy ma vittles side by each wit' ma chaw.”

The rag's wings began beating faster. Jawn instinctively flinched as the wings rose up like two sea behemoths breaching on either side of him before rumbling back down. The wind rushed past his head like heavy, invisible waves eroding him bit by bit. A not-so-gentle force began to push Jawn down into his saddle as the rag started climbing higher into the sky, her long torso undulating with the strain. She coughed, spewing out a shower of sparks that stung Jawn's face. That was followed by a billowing cloud of
inky black smoke that temporarily obscured everything from view. Jawn closed his eyes and held his breath for a few moments. When he opened them again and inhaled, the air was clear save for the ever-present heat and smell of sulfur. The rag was coughing more frequently now. The scales beneath his ankle-high leather boots were getting hotter, too, but he couldn't tell if that was from the broiling sun high above his left shoulder or the rag's guts heating up from the inside.

Jawn craned his head around to check the position of the sun. He calculated they'd been in the air almost two full candles since taking off from Swassi Island on the second leg of their cross-ocean flight from the Kingdom to Luitox. Though it was correctly pronounced “Lew-tow,” not “Loot-ox,” as the co-driver kept calling it, Jawn was keeping his mouth shut. The crew might have been a pair of bumpkins from some deep, dark forest province where the sunshine had to be carried in by buckets, but they apparently knew how to control and fly a ten-ton rag. That earned them his respect.

Jawn winced as the rag dipped and then jerked back up. He clenched his fists as a searing pain lit his lower back muscles on fire. He'd debated staying on Swassi for a few days to rest and get used to the heat. The half day he'd spent on a different rag just getting that far had been painful enough. Besides, his orders to report to the Seventh Phalanx gave him another week to get there. Wandering around Swassi for a candle, however, had changed his mind and he'd taken the next rag out.