The Sellsword (12 page)

The mercenary who had spoken first spoke again. “Begging your pardon, and I’m not sayin’ you’re wrong or anything, but what differences would those be?”

Rivven said, “Here’s one,” and with one swift, sure stroke, she drew the curved scimitar from her back and removed the first mercenary’s head from his shoulders, sheathing the weapon again before it hit the floor.

The other mercenaries hurriedly searched through their pouches, knapsacks, and pockets for their contracts.

Rivven stalked off to the bar, helping herself to a drink while she waited for the collection of ragtag mercenaries to sort themselves out. The Ergothian had eliminated all of her current employees in the town, even Captain Annaud. She needed a fresh set of eyes, ears, and sword arms.

Turning around at the bar and leaning back, she pointed a thin finger at one of the more professional-looking hired swords before her. “You. Congratulations. You’re my new captain. In a few minutes, some local people I paid well are going to show up here with a few … used dragonarmy uniforms. Put them on, pack up all of your gear, and get ready to head out.”

The new captain saluted nervously and immediately started ordering the others around, going over travel details. Rivven smiled, looking at the headless body on
the tavern’s wooden floor. Discipline, she thought. It’s all about discipline. She walked outside the tavern with her mug of beer and called up to her dragon.

“Give them another twenty minutes,” she said. “Then set fire to the place.”

Her business at the Monkey’s Ear Tavern attended to, Rivven Cairn went off in search of a good fish vendor.

V
anderjack tightened the straps on his new magical armor and fastened his cloak around his shoulders.

Theo and Gredchen were poring over a map, practically fighting each other to see who would retain hold of the yellowed parchment. The baron’s aide had the advantage of height, but Theo was quick and wily, and by the time Vanderjack walked back to them, the gnome had claimed more than two-thirds of the map.

“What do you think?” asked Vanderjack, showing off his new acquisition—the finely crafted scale mail, with its attached shoulder plates and leather accents. “I’ve worn dragonarmor before, but never as nice as this.”

Gredchen looked at him with disgust. “I can’t believe you actually took that from Captain Annaud’s corpse,” she said. “Besides, every suit of dragonarmor’s made for a specific individual. It won’t fit you properly.”

Theodenes shrugged, looking up from his map. “The armor seems to have decided quite the opposite,” he said.

“It’s definitely magical,” Vanderjack grinned. He shifted from one fighting stance to the other and ended
with a little dance. “Snug as a glove and light as a feather! Worthy payment for having to fight the man.”

“Not that fighting him accomplished anything more than attracting attention and killing that poor cook,” Gredchen reminded him. “And if you haven’t noticed, at least some of Pentar’s been burning for the past eight hours.”

Vanderjack looked back in the direction of Pentar, at least a dozen miles away at that point. A plume of black smoke was rising into the sky. He’d seen many of those before, during the war. It was the calling card of the red dragons.

“We’ve put plenty of distance between them and us,” Vanderjack said. “And I’ve already said over and over I feel badly about the cook. Badly, I feel so badly. Theo, haven’t I already said I feel so badly about him?”

“I don’t believe you,” Theo said sulkily. “And that’s going to count against you when it’s time to pay up. Now, if you don’t mind, we have ascertained something of a route.”

Gredchen didn’t lose her disgusted expression as she exhaled and indicated a point on the map. “This is one of Baron Glayward’s maps from about twenty years ago,” she said. “Before a few places were established, or burnt to the ground by the dragonarmy. Here’s where we are, a half day’s journey from Pentar.” She looked up and pointed past Vanderjack at the line of trees several hundred yards away. “And that’s the edge of the Sahket Jungle.”

“It’s a mile away according to this,” Vanderjack said, looking at the scrawled notes on the parchment. “Is it growing bigger or something?”

Theo rubbed his hands together. “Yes, it’s quite fascinating,” he said. “The Sahket Jungle is, by all accounts,
growing at a steady rate. In the next few decades, it will meet the coastline and cover almost all of the northern regions of Nordmaar.”

“Fantastic,” said Vanderjack, lifting one eyebrow. “Even if the Red Wing’s not gone by then, the rainforest will have taken over.”

“According to the map,” Gredchen continued, “the town of Willik’s about twenty or thirty miles that way”—she pointed away from the setting sun—“which puts Castle Glayward roughly the same distance again afterward. We may just have enough supplies to get us to Willik.”

Vanderjack frowned. “Isn’t that Cheron Skerish’s little town? It’s bad enough he’s an ogre, but I’ve heard he’s also some kind of shaman. My vote’s for Rangaar,
here.”
He pointed to a small dot about five miles east of where Willik was, deep in the jungle. “Nothing dangerous in Rangaar, I hear. Just a lot of spice merchants.”

“You’re afraid of ogres, Vanderjack?” Gredchen teased. Vanderjack observed that when she actually smiled, there was a faint hint that somewhere in her family tree there had to be somebody at least reasonably attractive. Of course, then she’d drop her smirk, and return to being one of the ugliest creatures, this side of a hobgoblin, that Vanderjack had ever traveled with.

Gredchen pointed once again at Willik. “Rangaar’s fine, but it won’t have what we need, and all of these towns are in red dragonarmy territory, so there’s never a guarantee. Trust me; we should go to Skerish’s town.”

Theodenes snatched the map away a final time and held his face very close to it. “My estimate is that in our current position, it will take us five days to get there.”

“That’s factoring in the jungle?” Vanderjack asked.

“Quite,” said Theodenes, “though there is a good road east. It leads through the Sahket Jungle, into Willik, continues past that town to Rangaar and, finally, North Keep.”

“I like a good road,” Vanderjack said. “That works for me. Let’s go.”

The three of them gathered their few belongings together and fell into line on the road leading into the Sahket Jungle. Theodenes walked ahead of Vanderjack and Gredchen, swifter than his little legs would suggest he could, his keen gnome eyes picking out potential problems in the dirt path such as quicksand puddles or the spoor of a dangerous animal.

Gredchen kept the maps and occasionally called out landmarks or an estimate of how far they had gone. They were the baron’s maps, after all, and with some convincing, Theodenes stopped fighting Gredchen for them and let Gredchen manage them.

The sellsword came up behind the other two, his hand on Lifecleaver, waiting for the Sword Chorus to reappear. He hadn’t fought a battle or engaged in any kind of violent encounter without them for many years. The thought of them vanishing forever made his nerves twitch.

The sellsword felt as if he were walking along a damp, green tunnel. Broad-leaved trees dominated the lower levels of the jungle, rising to about twice his height. Between them, enormous trunks, wide at the base and tapering upward, reached far above the smaller trees and formed the canopy above. Vines, creepers, and flowering plants clustered about the larger trees, and while the road was cleared of vegetation, those who maintained it hadn’t bothered to keep the branches from knotting together overhead.

Several hours passed; daylight threatened to turn into night ahead of schedule. Theodenes would stop from time to time to pull a leaf from a creeper near the road or run his fingers through the packed mud and dirt below their feet or sniff at the air. The sellsword remembered Theo being an excellent tracker—for a gnome.

Had he not been ruminating idly, Vanderjack would have noticed the sudden emergence from the trees above of something large and hairy before whatever it was had scooped up Theodenes and swung away, screeching.

“Ackal’s Teeth!” shouted Vanderjack, running up to Gredchen. “Get down, we’re under attack!”

The baron’s aide did as she was told, crouching low and off to the side, beside the base of one of the enormous banyan trees. Vanderjack stood over her, his sword drawn out—still no Sword Chorus. “To the Abyss with you, then!” he swore. “I’m still the best swordsman in Nordm—”

He was cut off as another large shape slammed into him, knocking him clear off his feet and on top of Gredchen. He fought for his breath, but it was just as elusive as the ghosts.

“Watch it!” shouted Gredchen. “Who were you talking to, anyway? Do you think those things are in a mood to negotiate?”

Two more shapes dropped from the trees. Vanderjack got a good look at them: apes, much bigger and larger than he was, with strong, muscular legs and two sets of arms. Their broad mouths were filled with teeth, trailing spittle. Their eyes were red and fixed on the sellsword and his erstwhile traveling companion.

“Girallons,” muttered Vanderjack. “Perfect.”

As the four-armed apes charged at him, Vanderjack decided that, magic armor or not, another blow
like the last one would probably do more than knock the wind out of his lungs. Images of a disemboweled mercenary and his similarly eviscerated traveling companions danced in his mind. A reclaimed breath later, Vanderjack’s world exploded in hair, claws, and a great deal of cursing.

Theodenes flew through the trees.

One moment the gnome had been ascertaining the likelihood of a certain fruit-bearing vine to provide edible comestibles; the next he was whisked away in the hairy arms of a gigantic ape. The creature was unlike anything he’d seen before, or rather, it was very much like something he’d read of before but never dreamed of glimpsing in real life.

Girallons were enormous, four-armed simians written about in some of the bestiaries Theo’s expedition had taken with them to the Isle of Gargath. The books had spoken of their wickedly sharp claws, huge fangs, formidable strength, and multiple arms, and that they were capable of lifting a gnome-sized object from the ground and carrying it off through an arboreal environment at great speed.

Well, thought Theodenes. That much is very true.

The expedition to Gargath had not come across any girallons, for which Theodenes had been grateful. Doing battle against such things as behirs and saber-toothed tigers was bad enough. At least then, thought the gnome, he’d had his weapon with him.

For Theodenes’ multifunction polearm was missing. He knew he’d had it on him at the time he was taken, but in the rapid treetop transit that ensued, it had slipped out of his hands and tumbled into the darkness
below. That presented the gnome with a problem of titanic proportions. He was going to have to deal with his girallon captor without the aid of any martial tool, and given the nature of his lifequest, that was quite a substantial setback.

The girallon swung and leaped and ducked and threw itself from branch to branch, all of its limbs in feverish use other than the one firmly grasping Theodenes. Every so often that limb would toss Theo ahead to free up the arm for complicated maneuvering as the girallon ducked under a low branch; then the limb caught the gnome on the other side.

After four such hair-raising toss-and-catch episodes, Theodenes resolved to make the best of an awkward situation and use the next instance to break free of the creature. He hadn’t seen any other girallons, so it was possible the beast was alone. If it had friends, perhaps they were at that moment dealing with Vanderjack and Gredchen. Anyway, Theo was alone, so was the girallon, and it was time to act.

Dusk was swiftly approaching, so Theo was grateful that the next time the girallon threw him ahead through the trees came sooner than later. The creature swung Theo around and hurled him in a high arc across a wide gap between trees. That was the opportunity he was waiting for.

Spinning end over end, he gained his bearings, reached out for a hanging vine, and grasped onto it successfully before the curve of the arc headed downward. The force of the arrested movement almost tore his arm out of its socket, but he found himself whipping about and flung to the side, away from where the girallon was headed and into a thick mass of creepers and fronds.