The Conqueror's Shadow (29 page)

/You know that I can't do this if these people are at all on their guard,/
Khanda reminded him as they stood in a snow-covered doorway a few dozen yards from the tavern.
/You wouldn't be teasing me, would you?/

“I remember your limits, Khanda,” Corvis told him, trying not to think too hard about what he was about to do. For whatever reason, the simple fact that a human was expecting danger prevented Khanda from feeding upon his soul. Only people totally unprepared for any sort of harm made viable meals. “The only danger they face is the possibility of a barroom brawl or a nasty social disease from the whores. And most of them are drunk, at that. They should be easy prey.”

/Let's find out about that, shall we?/

Ten heartbeats passed, twenty, thirty …

And the tavern erupted in a concert of agonized shrieks. Had the tavern's floor opened up into the depths of hell, the damned themselves could not have raised so hideous a cacophony. It was followed swiftly by a wet ripping noise, as though someone had crumpled and then shredded a sodden mass of parchment. The screams ceased as abruptly as they'd begun, followed by a series of loud thumps as a dozen bodies fell lifeless to the floor.

“We should probably get Rascal and go,” the warlord said, his voice grim. “It may take them a few minutes to work up the nerve, but
someone's
going to come see what the screaming was about. I'd just as soon be gone before that happens.”

/Ahh,/
Khanda breathed, completely oblivious to his master's concerns.
/Oh, I haven't dined like that in
eons
! I always enjoy a good feast, don't you?/

“Khanda …”

/The children were particularly tasty, I thought. My compliments to their parents./

Despite the cold, Corvis could literally feel the blood drain from his face. “What children?” he asked in a hoarse croak.

/The whores', of course. They kept the little brats in one of the back rooms while they plied their trade./

“How many?”

/Why, you sound sick. Are you feeling—/

“How many?”

/Hm. Four, I should think. It definitely tasted like four./

Corvis sank into a crouch upon the icy, snow-dusted ground. “Four children …” he whispered, his eyes locked on nothing at all.

/It's not as if you—forgive me, your “people”—haven't slain children before./

“You didn't kill them, you monster! You ate their souls …”

/Why, so I did. How observant of you./

“I should have left you in that damn cave!” Corvis screamed, trembling in fury. “What by all the gods was I thinking?”

/You were thinking of yourself, Corvis. Just like you always do./
Khanda chuckled again, unmindful of his master's hateful glare.
/If nothing else, I'd say this quite handily proves what I was saying: You haven't changed in the slightest./

“What?” Corvis leapt to his feet, snagging the pendant in one hand as though he would rip it from his neck. “How can you say this proves anything about
me?
You didn't bother to tell me about the children!”

/And you, Corvis, didn't bother to ask./

All that Corvis heard in his dreams for many, many weeks was the sound of Khanda's mocking laughter.

“Oh.” Seilloah drew up straight even as the tent flap fell shut behind her, surprised to find the canvas chamber occupied. “So sorry to interrupt.”

“No prob'em.” The massive figure waved at her from the corner where he sat hunched amid various barrels and crates. His eye was bloodshot and unfocused, the entire tent reeked of drunk ogre breath—not, incidentally, all that different from regular ogre breath, save for the addition of its vaguely disorienting properties—and Seilloah could have sworn that even his horn was drooping. “C'mon in.”

“I was just looking for a touch of spirits to put a patient at ease,” she said even as she began perusing the cases, unsure why she was bothering to explain herself. “Going to have to amputate a finger, I'm afraid,” she continued sadly.

“That bothers you?” the ogre asked at the tone in her voice.

“The amputation? No. It's just …”

“Jus' what?”

“It's already gangrenous,” she complained. “It won't even make for good flavoring.”

The ogre blinked. “Oh.”

“It's Davro, isn't it?”

The ogre snorted. “I thought we all looked alike to you.”

“Not at all. Most of you are only bigger than a hill. You're bigger than a mountain.”

“Heh. Yeah, I'm Davro.”

“Seilloah.”

“If you say so. You humans all look alike to us.”

“You know,” Seilloah said carefully, “you really aren't supposed to be here. Lord Rebaine is quite strict about apportioning out the alcohol.”

“He can dismiss me if he wants.”

“Not happy with your service, Davro?”

The ogre's eye narrowed, but he slowly shook his head. Seilloah never was certain, after that, whether Davro had actually decided to trust her, or was just too drunk to watch his tongue.

“This war isn't what I expected, Sei … Sheilloo … Lady. I've been raiding since I could walk,” the ogre told her. “We
all
have. I had a brother who died because he was learning to wield a knife at the same time he was learning to eat solid food, and forgot which hand had the drumstick. We're fighters; it's
all
we are. But it's been generations since we've had a good, full-on
war
. I grew up on stories of 'em, but I've never been in one before.”

“And now that you have?” she prodded, her voice strangely sympathetic.

“‘Snot what I expected,” he said again, belching once in punctuation. “Raidin' for food and cattle and goods, killin' warriors who stand against you, that's all fine. But he's got us burning neighborhoods and not takin' anything from them. Stringin' up body parts like flags, executin' chained prisoners. What's the point in that, Lady? Where's the honor in it?”

“It's not about honor, Davro. It's about fear. You see, if—”

“Don't care. War was suppose' to be the purest form of fightin'—that's what I grew up believin'—but it's not pure at all. And I have to wonder, if this is what Chalsene wants of us … How pure can
he
be?”

“So maybe your devotion belongs to another god, Davro.”

“Oh, right.” Another snort, which turned into another drunken belch. “And what other god would have an ogre?”

Seilloah only smiled.

THE SKY WAS IRON
that day. The horizon remained cloaked behind a curtain of grey, and the somber clouds lurked low and heavy, weighing down upon the air.

Autumn had supposedly begun some weeks ago, but summer wasn't yet prepared to draw its extended visit to a close. Throughout most of Imphallion, the pounding heat abated only somewhat, and while the temperatures might have cooled, the humidity rose so high that merely opening one's front door seemed to pose a risk of drowning. The vast majority of the kingdom was, to put it bluntly, miserable.

Misery, however, is relative. In Vorringar, the supply far outstripped the demand, and it didn't show any signs of letting up.

It wasn't the heat, though the townsfolk muddled through their day in clothing as light as decency would allow. It wasn't the humidity, though every individual in Vorringar wandered about in a miasma of unevaporated sweat and droning mosquitoes. The roads through town refused to dry, and every footfall tracked thin mud across the town's many floors; the scent of unwashed bodies, persistent perspiration, and rotted vegetation blanketed the community in an aura nearly visible to the naked eye. But the citizens of Vorringar would have happily borne all of this—and a great deal more besides—if the soldiers would just go away.

Every room at the town's two small inns, every spare room in the private homes, even the floor space of the roomier shops—anyplace one could conceivably billet—one of the assembled mercenaries could be found. And still it wasn't room enough. Vorringar was surrounded on all sides by the tents, campfires, and bedrolls of thousands of warriors. The town was very near to running completely out of livestock, to say nothing of their fast-dwindling supplies of alcohol.

Seilloah, her eyes red and bleary, her brown dress rumpled like an
unwashed bedsheet, sat slumped at the end of a long table in the town's largest tavern. It was named the Prurient Pixie, presumably the result of a fit of whimsy, or perhaps drunken stupor. The tavern had become the unofficial command post from which she and Davro did their damnedest to control the anarchy they laughingly called a “marshaling of forces.” They'd figured that setting up shop in a tavern would make them most easily accessible to the gathering mercenaries.

That had been, they now realized, something of a strategic blunder. Seilloah and Davro had spent the past weeks dashing around town putting out fires—and not always figuratively. Any problem the mercenaries had, they went to their own individual company commanders, and the commanders came to Seilloah. Any problems the townsfolk had with the soldiers, they brought to Seilloah. In the last seven days, the witch managed less than twenty hours of sleep.

“What am I doing here, Davro?” she asked him, shouting to be heard over the dull roar of the taproom. “I'm not any good at dealing with people! Why do you think I made a practice of eating them, and then moved to the woods?”

The ogre, using one of the tavern's largest ale barrels as a stool, shrugged. “I've been trying to figure that out for a while myself. I know why
I'm
here; I wasn't given a choice in the matter. You were.”

Seilloah's expression rode the line between anger and despair. “I can't believe I was stupid enough to get involved in this.”

“I don't think you're stupid, Seilloah.”

“No?”

“No. Crazy as a frog on a hot stove and maybe experiencing the early stages of senility, but not stupid.”

“Davro, please stop comforting me.”

For a few minutes, they listened to the hubbub around them, enjoying the rare opportunity to just sit.

“A frog on a hot stove?” she asked finally.

“Hmm? Oh. Just an ogre expression. See, if you drop a frog on—”

“I get the image, Davro. No need to paint it for me.”

“Beggin' your pardon, m'lady, have you got a minute or so?”

“And here we go,” she whispered. Then, forcing her mouth into something approximating a polite smile, she looked up.

“What can I do for you, Teagan?”

The man before her was hulking and broad-shouldered, though not tall. He wore a thick beard, brown with occasional rogue highlights of red, and his hair was tied back in an ornate braid. He wore several plates of armor haphazardly strapped atop a saffron-yellow tunic, and a small round shield with a wicked spike protruding from its center on his left arm.

“Nothin' you can do for me personally. I'm here on behalf o' my boys. We all are.”

“We all” referred to the other two people standing one each to his right and left. Seilloah didn't even have to look to know they were there; recently, they always were.

The soldiers she and Davro had gathered belonged to an uncountable number of mercenary companies. Some were tiny, a handful of men who'd gathered for mutual profit; others claimed hundreds of men at their disposal. Of them all, three were considered preeminent, kings in the fraternal order of mercenaries. The leaders of those companies had appointed themselves spokesmen for the soldiers en masse. Teagan was one; the two who lurked behind, content to let their boisterous comrade open the conversation, were the others.

One was a woman, a fact Seilloah found shocking. Female soldiers were by no means unheard of, but she was startled that an entire mercenary company would accept one as their commander.

But however she'd done it, the woman called Ellowaine proved worthy of the position. Her company thrived under her command, and by now she'd instilled a fanatic loyalty in her soldiers. She was gaunt nearly to the point of emaciation, yet strong enough to toss an armored man over her shoulder and carry him for miles—something she'd actually done when her lieutenant had taken an arrow in the stomach. She wore a chain hauberk and cap, under which she normally tucked her uneven blond tresses. A heavy crossbow hung at her back, and her favored weapons—a pair of razor-edged hatchets—swung at her waist.

And finally, Losalis, the third member of the impromptu triad. The man was an ebon-skinned boulder, seven feet in height and wider even than Teagan. He was bald, though he, too, wore a full beard, and his left eye was a lighter shade of blue than his right. At some point in the
past, he'd lost his left hand, about halfway up the forearm. Losalis compensated by bolting a triangular shield to his armor; it extended a dagger's length beyond the stump, and he'd honed the edge into a brutal blade. He wore an unusual combination of metal plates and heavy leather, and in his good right hand he wielded a frighteningly long saber.