Twilight of the Dragons (9 page)

T
rista was tall
, elegant, and incredibly beautiful. She wore a stunning green silk ballgown, which billowed out from her waist in a globe reinforced by wires to keep the shape. It sparkled with glittering sequins. Her shoes were a glossy green to match, exclusive items made to measure by Hitchkins of Drakerath. She wore a gold watch on one wrist, which shone with inset precious stones, and a diamond bracelet on the other, which sparkled as it caught the firelight from various flickering brands.

Trista's face had high cheekbones and nobility, cheeks flushed pink, lips painted with just the right pastel shade of green; her earrings glittered with yet more diamonds set in molten tears of silver. Her luscious blonde hair was piled atop her head, curls stacked and skilfully interwoven to add a foot in height to her already tall, athletic frame.

Music was playing.

It was a wedding march.

Trista stepped across the stone flags, heels clacking, and paused by a column at the rear of the church. The ceremony was in progress, the bride in white, the groom and his best man in dark grey. She clutched flowers. He clutched his own hands. They made a perfect couple. They were beautiful, and happy, and Trista could smell the stench of their perfection.

“Beautiful people,” she muttered.

A grey-haired old lady turned from the back pew and frowned at her.

Trista shrugged, lifted her glass of wine, and sipped, sighting on the perfect couple with their perfect lives and perfect minds and perfect jobs and perfect marriage, and she felt the hate coursing through her veins.

“Those fucking bastards,” she whispered. The old woman turned again, and tutted, scowling. “It'll never last.” Trista wiped away a tear and took another sip.

The newly wedded, how fucking sweet, their lives perfect. They are lucky beyond belief. They have a long bright sparkling future ahead of them. They will consummate the marriage and she will carry his seed and they'll have a plump bouncing baby girl, soon followed by a golden haired utterly perfect beautiful little brother. And the world will be so right for them. Their future will be an everlasting fucking dream.

The grey-haired old woman stood up, and turned towards her. Trista felt a secret blade emerge from up the sleeve of her ballgown, and appear, concealed, in her fist.

But…

But maybe their future won't be so perfect after all. Maybe he'll be out drinking, laughing with his friends, and end up in a savage bar brawl. Maybe he'll get stabbed in the guts, lie bleeding in the gutter, calling for his lovely new wife. But he'll die, and bleed everywhere like a spear-stuck pig, and where will she be then, I wonder? Will she move to his best friend, slip into his bed, between his sheets, like some whore at the sign of a silver coin? He'll touch her, as her husband used to touch her, and she'll sigh and coo, and they'll fuck, him sliding in and out, in and out, her cunt wet with her eagerness. How sick, how crass, we're all just fucking animals, there's no faith, no honour, no nobility, no fucking loyalty. We're all whores. All fucking whores. And every whore deserves to die
…

The grey-haired old woman was close now. Her mouth had opened, and suddenly her eyes dropped and saw the blade, glinting orange with firelight. Trista recognised the signs of an impending scream, and she tensed, ready to move fast…

“There you are,” rumbled Dek, stepping from behind a pillar, his hand on her shoulder. The blade flashed, a reaction, instinct, and a tiny droplet of blood appeared under one of Dek's eyes.

He stared hard at her.

“You've been watching me?”

“I've been watching you,” he agreed. Dek's eyes shifted from Trista's face, to the grey-haired old woman. Quietly, he growled, “Go sit down if you know what's good for you.” Then he grinned.

“What have I become?” whispered Trista, going from absolute anger to sudden deflation in one heartbeat.

“You're just troubled,” smiled Dek. “Like the rest of us. But you're getting better. I know you're getting better.”

“I'm a monster,” she said, and her tears wet Dek's shoulder.

“You're no monster,” he said, hugging her tight. “You have your reasons. I know that. But you
are
improving.”

“How? How the fuck am I improving?” she hissed.

Dek nodded, to where the bride and groom were kissing. People cheered and threw fruit and confetti.

“Because they're still alive,” he said. “Now come on. Come with me. We have a job to do.”

Trista nodded, and took Dek's rough, calloused hand, and allowed him to lead her from the church.

On the way out, he reached up, and touched the nick, his finger coming away with blood. He smiled, a grim smile, and stepped with Trista out into the light.

D
ek drained
the wine flagon in one, belched, and launched it at the flagstones where it shattered into a hundred jagged pieces. He clenched and unclenched his fists, brows furrowed, battered, broken features clearly annoyed as he digested the words he'd just endured. One half-stitched wound below his eye had opened, and slowly disgorged beads of blood that left a trail like crimson tears down his face.

The landlord stepped over, and pointed. “None of that, son,” he said.

Dek stared at him, and went to rise, but Trista reached out, her palm against the brutal pugilist's shoulder, pushing him back down.

“We'll pay for it,” she said.

“By fuck we will,” growled Dek, scowling.

“Dek?”

He met Trista's cool, unnerving gaze, and looked away. She was incredibly beautiful, her cheeks flushed pink, lips painted, diamond earrings glittering with reflection from the open, roaring fire; her head was piled high with luscious blonde curls, her teeth white and perfect and often smiling. And yet,
and yet
here was possibly one of the few people in the whole of Vagandrak, Dek would not broker an argument with. You did
not
fuck with Trista. Trista was a simple and brutal incarnation of knife-death.

“Yeah? Well? Tell him. Tell that fat, dumb, drunk bastard to close his mouth, or I'll knock out his few remaining teeth. He just won't let it go, Tris. Just won't fucking let it go, week after week, every time I think
that's it, he's moved past it,
he just brings it up again like a bad coin. I'm sick of it. Sick to my bones.”

Trista leaned close. “I know, Dek. But we've been through hard times. You know that. It's just Narnok's…
way,
his way of getting over it.”

“Getting over what I did?”

“Yes. And the rest. The torture which followed. The facial scarring. That bastard Xander putting out his eye with acid. It's like, like
you
are his pressure release valve. Without you, I'm not sure what he'd do. It's almost like you've became his reason to live, to fight, and to hate.”

“Well, I'm fucking sick of it,” complained Dek.

He looked up, tattooed fists clenching again as Narnok half-staggered across the busy tavern. The Fighting Cocks was crowded on this late afternoon. It was the day following Labourers' Pay Day, and Vagandrak was awash with ditch diggers, stone breakers, builders, cesspit cleaners, all eager to enjoy their single day off. Usually with a generous measure of alcohol thrown in.

Narnok.

The giant axeman sat, and his stool creaked. His face was a nightmare mask of crisscrossed scars. One eye was a milky white, obviously blind, and he had thick-banded tattoos, many of them military in origin, up his wide arms and across his neck.

He grabbed his tankard, and downed the dregs, then belched. He rubbed his hand through his beard, then turned his good eye on Dek, and surveyed the shattered flagon.

“You have an accident?”

“No.”

“What's wrong with you?” Narnok scowled.

“Leave it,” said Trista, and glanced across to Mola, who was asleep on one arm, drunk and useless. Mola was snoring. Trista kicked him hard on the shin under the table, but the snoring simply changed pitch and tone.

“It's you, ain't it?” scowled Dek, unable to help himself. “Same fucking moan, same fucking argument. All the fucking time, it's all I fucking hear, you banging on about Katuna and how I, well, you know…”

“Fucked her.”

“See, there you go again…”

“You fucked my wife, Dek. What do you want me to do? Forget about it?” rumbled the huge axeman, and now he'd flushed red with anger and Trista sighed because she could see the argument, and possibly the fight, the eternal fight, looming large and very real. She noted that Narnok had shifted slightly, and was leaning more towards his double-headed axe, butterfly blades on the flagstones, haft against the wall. “You want me to forget that your stupid, battered mouth closed around her nipples, suckling away like a greedy babe at its mother? Perhaps you'd like me to ignore your hand on her quim, fingers sliding inside, that's my wife, Dek,
my fucking wife,
and you had your fingers inside her cunt-honey.” His temper was rising incrementally. “So, Dek, my old friend, my old chum, you want me to forget you sliding your cock inside her greased quim, do you? Pounding away at her, like some sailor at the docks with a cheap whore? You want me to FORGET IT?”

They both surged to their feet, jaws clenched, fists cracking, heads slamming together as they stared and stared hard, deep into one another's souls.

“Let it go, brother,” said Dek. “Or by the gods, I'll fucking pound you to the dirt.”

“I'd like to see you try.”

They froze. Trista had risen, a shining, silver, razor-sharp knife in each hand. Blades touched throats. Her words were calm, and measured, and soft, and sweet, but her eyes were raging. Inside her soul, there was a furnace that would never go out.

“I love you both,” she said, ejected on sweet breath, and with a smile that could break a million hearts. “And you know I would never kill you. But I swear, if you do not cease this foolishness, I will cut you. Both of you. Deep and bad. Not enough to kill, but enough to make you
wish
you were dead.”

Slowly, Dek and Narnok backed away, still scowling, faces like a summer thunderstorm. They sank to their stools.

“Well, it's him, ain't it, Tris,” grumbled Dek.

“If he hadn't done it, I couldn't complain about it,” moaned Narnok.

“Shut up!” hissed Trista. “He'll be here soon, and he needs our help, and what's he going to think if this is the sight he's presented with? He's an
Iron Wolf,
by the Seven Sisters. Have some decorum for a brother, will you?”

Dek nodded, and picked up another wine flagon, taking a hefty swig.

Narnok rubbed his beard, and belched. “Remind me again who he is?”

Trista sighed. “Kareem Maff. Fought at Desekra against the mud-orcs. Kiki knew him. Spoke very highly of him. Said he had a demon in his soul.”

“Well, I don't remember no Maff fucker,” said Narnok, scowling, and taking a heavy drink of ale.

“I do,” said Dek, quietly. “He was a dangerous motherfucker. Dark skin, big bushy beard. Sergeants kept ordering him to shave it off, but he refused. Did ninety days in military prison, still wouldn't shave that fucking beard off. They sent in three Staffs to do it for him, and he broke their noses and cheek bones. Good lad. Salt of the earth.”

“Did you fight him in the Pits?”

Dek shook his head. “No. He was more… moral than that. Wouldn't fight for money. Only to the death.” Dek looked up. “So don't piss him off, all right?”

“I have no need to pick a fight with this man,” growled Narnok. “After all. He didn't shag my wife.” He gave a narrow smile with thin, scarred lips.

“You see, Tris?” moaned Dek. “See what I have to put up with?”

At that point the door to The Fighting Cocks opened, and Kareem Maff stepped in. He was over six feet tall, massively broad, and carried himself like a natural athlete, a warrior. His dark eyes swept the tavern and most turned away under that dark, intense gaze. Then he spotted Trista, and his face cracked into a smile, and he moved across the tavern in much the same way as a galleon glides through a collection of bobbing, useless rowing boats.

“Trista!” He held out his hand, and she shook, her small, white fingers engulfed by fists easily as big as Dek's.

He surveyed Narnok and Dek coolly, not fazed in the slightest by their size, demeanour, oozing menace or reputation. He grinned then, a full-teeth grin, and sat down. The stool creaked.

“You're as big as I remember,” said Trista, and gave a little flutter of her eyelids.

Kareem beamed. “Well, that's a very nice thing to say, Trista. You're certainly as beautiful as I remember…”

Dek leant forward. “What the fuck is this? Have you come to lick pussy or is there a fucking reason for your visit?”

Kareem eyed Dek up and down, face slowly dropping into a frown. “Hey. Friend. I have a problem, and came here to talk to Trista about said problem. I don't need no broken-toothed simpleton interjecting on the conversation. Now, if you don't like me and Tris smiling at one another, I suggest you
fuck off
and find a whorehouse.” He smiled. “Somewhere they like to pander to your kind.”

Dek kicked back, but Narnok grabbed him. With momentum and power, Dek dragged Narnok halfway down the table.

“What the fuck does that mean?” snarled Dek. “
My fucking kind
?”

“Calm down, calm down,” beamed Narnok, still holding a flagon.

Kareem shrugged, and looked at Trista. “I thought you said they were cool?”

“No.” She pursed her pretty lips. “I said they were headstrong, and a little insane, but salt of the earth and usually willing to help a fellow Iron Wolf. Especially one who fought on the walls of Desekra.”

Kareem nodded, and stood, stool scraping. He eyed Dek, gaze narrowing. “You're quick to anger, my friend,” he said. “So I'll be saying goodbye. I didn't realise my brothers would be such a prickly fucking bunch. I ain't come here to fight. I came here for help. Because I need it and I thought my Iron Wolf brothers would be the ones to turn to in, like, my times of trouble.”