The Hammer and the Blade (20 page)

  They ate with the guards, Egil with his usual volume of gustatory noise, Nix nibbling and still trying to figure out what to do about the sisters. He began to doubt his thinking. He'd seen them, and they did not look capable of working witchery. Perhaps it was the Wastes that was making him feel so off?

  But that thinking fled before the fact that he knew their names.

  "What's in your mind?" Egil asked.

  "The Hells if I know," Nix said.

  Rakon emerged from the carriage only once, to tell them to keep the fire low.

  "My lord?" Baras asked.

  "We don't want to be seen," Rakon explained.

  "By what?" Egil asked.

  Rakon considered his answer a long time. "By anything," he said, and returned to the carriage.

  Later, the eunuch emerged from the carriage to retrieve food for his master. Nix stood, hurried over, and tried to engage the plodding giant in conversation.

  "How fare your master's sisters?" he asked. He wanted to see them again, to look them in the eyes, to see if they were the cause of his discomfiture. "I can help you bear this food–"

  The eunuch, arms laden with a wheel of cheese and two loaves of flatbread, responded with only a vacant stare so otherworldly that Nix, for once, found himself at a loss for words. He stepped aside so the giant wouldn't walk over him.

  "He's a mute," Baras called from around the crackling fire. "And he'll welcome no help."

  Nix nodded, eyeing the eunuch as the man walked back toward the carriage. A scar made a pink line above the fold of skin on the back of the eunuch's neck, a scar too clean to have been caused by a weapon. Nix had heard of such scars before, though he could not quite remember where – something about magical chirurgy.

  "There's something off in that eunuch," Nix said, when he returned to Egil's side.

  "Everything about this is off," the priest answered, shoveling a chunk of cheese into his mouth. "The people and the place. Still need to eat, though."

  "Aye," Nix said, and did just that, though he found his eyes returning frequently to the carriage.

  After the meal, Baras posted guards and set the watch schedule for the night. The men not on duty lingered around the low flames of the fire, saying little, watching smoke rise into the air. Egil shook his dice and Nix endured nausea to work at the spellworm. He needed to get himself free, now more than ever.

  Everyone sat with weapons near to hand but the night got on peacefully.

  Above them, the cloud cover broke, revealing a wedge of sky between the cliff walls of the cut. They could not see the skeletal trees standing watch on the cliff tops above, but the branches rattled in the wind like dry bones. As the hours passed, the darkness grew predatory. The wind howled above them, whistling dark promises.

  "Heard lots of stories about you two," one of the young guards said to Nix. "Are they true?"

  "Lies, all," Nix said, stretching out his legs.

  "Can't all be lies," pressed the guard. "Tell us about one of these adventures you been on."

  "Very well," Nix said. "Once, Egil and I were forced to travel the Demon Wastes with some guards of a doltish cast. One of these, a young whoreson who couldn't grow a respectable beard, insisted on hearing stories from me. I strangled him while he slept."

  Uncertain laughter from one guard, silence from the rest, a frown from Baras.

  "Did I give away the ending?" Nix asked Egil.

  "I believe you did, yes."

  "He was just asking, is all," said another guard, perturbed. "To pass the time. No need to be a prick."

  "No need?" Nix said. "Really?"

  "Nix," Egil said, but Nix ignored him.

  "We're not here for your entertainment, boy, and we're not friends. Egil and I are prisoners. You're our keepers. Do I not speak the plain truth?"

  "It ain't like that," one of the young guards protested.

  Nix scoffed. "Can we just get up and walk home, then? We're a long day out of Dur Follin. Can we return if we wish?"

  Baras frowned in his beard, sipped his coffee. "It isn't personal."

  "So you say," Egil said.

  "The lumps on my head feel personal," Nix added.

  Baras shrugged, scratched his beard. "Have it as you will." He topped his tin cup with more coffee from the pot. "I offer no apologies. Duty is duty, and done is done."

  "Duty," Nix said, shaking his head, and Baras said nothing.

  "I think you've ruined the mood," Egil said to Nix.

  Nix waved a hand derisively. "Bah. What mood?"

  For a time, silence, then Jyme spoke, his tone incongruously light.

  "It was for me," he said.

  "Was what?" Nix asked, leaning back, his hands behind his head, staring up at the clearing sky, the stars. Minnear would rise soon. He did not relish sitting in the dark of the Demon Wastes under the Mages' Moon.

  "Personal," Jyme said. "It was personal for me."

  Nix smiled darkly. "Of course it was. Egil
personally
knocked the sense from you. Wait…" He sat up and looked across the fire at Jyme. "Did you mean that as a
jest
?"

  Jyme was smiling, and Nix's frustration went out of him in a rush.

  "Egil, is it possible that Jyme,
Jyme
, has a sense of humor?"

  "Come now, no need for insults…" Jyme began.

  "I've seen demons and devils," Egil said. "More than a man should. Even bloodied a few, so I know much is possible in this world. But this notion of Jyme having a sense of humor strikes me as preposterous."

  Chuckles around the fire, certain this time, and including Jyme.

  "I was just pissed, see?" Jyme said, setting down his tin cup. "You beat me down in front of my men. I didn't know you was all right, then. I just wanted to get even."

  Nix toasted him with his coffee. "And instead of getting even you got a trip into the Wastes. Well played, Jyme."

  More chuckles, except from Jyme, who looked sheepish. He nudged a log with his boot. "Who's got the luck, right? I suppose I'm as much a prisoner here as you two. They made me come, too."

  "True enough," Egil said philosophically, then, "Listen, you caught me in a foul mood right then, back in the
Tunnel
. I had other things on my mind. We'd just bought a shithole, after all. Apologies for the punch."

  "None needed," Jyme said, waving it away. "I was owed it. I was rude to that girl and for no reason."

  The current of the priest's more forgiving nature caught Nix up in its wake. To the young guard he'd embarrassed, he said, "And a foul mood infected me as well, just now. With that story, I mean. Apologies. I vow not to strangle you."

  The young guard inclined his head and Jyme raised his cup. "Well, done is done, as Baras said."

  Nix shook his head. "Gods, I was quite happy disliking all of you,
you in particular, Jyme
, and now you've gone and fouled that up. One day in the Wastes and I don't know who to despise. I almost wish I'd never taken your coinpurse."

  Jyme's mouth fell open. "Back at the tavern? That was you what took my coinpurse? I wondered where that went."

  Nix nodded absently, eyed his hands, which so often worked of their own accord. "When you bumped me outside of the
Tunnel
. I put it into the hands of an old man I saw on the street."

  "Alms," Egil said.

  "Pshaw," Nix answered. To Jyme he said, "I'll repay you when we return to Dur Follin."

  "Well enough," Jyme said. "There were, uh, fifteen terns and two royals in there."

  "Ha!" Nix said. "There were exactly nine terns and three commons and you haven't seen a gold royal since the Year of the Jackal."

  More laughter around.

  Despite the situation, Nix found himself warming to the men. The Wastes had birthed quick camaraderie from shared menace. Before long, he'd find himself liking Rakon and his sisters.

  Or perhaps not.

  "Well," Jyme said, looking up at sky. "You won't have to repay if we don't get back to Dur Follin. And right now, I don't see how that happens."

  "There is that," Egil said. The priest stretched his long legs out before him and crossed his hands behind his head.

  "There is that," Nix agreed.

  "None of that now," Baras said, though the words sang a false note. "We'll be fine."

  Egil tipped back the rest of his coffee, shook out the cup, and nodded at the supply wagon. "Here's what I say. Women and fine ale seem much more than only a day gone, the night is cold, the fire feeble, and we're all going to die out here in the Wastes. Before we do, I say we make the best of it. Since this coffee tastes like piss, I offer we look to the beer in that wagon."

  "The priest speaks with wisdom," Jyme said. "How about some beer, Baras?"

  Baras considered, nodded, and two of the younger guards quickly rose, smiling, and made for the supply wagon.

  "Meanwhile," Egil said, "why not tell them of that time in the Well of Farrago, Nix, when that door defied your talents?"

  "It was a
hatch
, whoreson, which you well know."

  The guards returned with two small beer barrels, cracked them, and started to pour.

  "But well enough," Nix said, his cup sloshing with beer. "I'll tell them about that hatch,
and
about how you nearly pissed yourself when…"

 

Hours later, their bellies full of beer, Egil and Nix sat around the glowing embers of the small fire. Nix's storytelling had put everyone at ease for a time, but the moment he stopped, the sense of foreboding crept back into camp and took a seat at the fire.

  The guards without watch duty had either gone to their tents to sleep or snored on their bedrolls near the embers. Above them the wind howled, and Nix swore he heard voices in the gusts, a mad muttering that made his skin crawl.

  "This is an unholy place," Egil said. The priest stared into the fire, dice in hand but idle.

  "No argument from me. Shake those dice, will you?"

  "Eh? Oh." Egil shook the dice, his habit when tense, but he kept at it only a short time. As he put them away, he said, "I've been thinking about what you said. The woman's voice you heard?"

  "And?"

  "We've both heard of Oremal and the mindmages, Nix."

  "We're far from Oremal."

  "Yes, but what's to say such magic is limited only to Oremal?"

  "They're not even conscious."

  "And yet they seem to be affecting you somehow. To what purpose we don't know, but it seems reasonable to assume a sinister intention."

  Nix could only shrug. He could not disagree.

  "We have to do something," Egil said.

  "Like what?" Nix said. "Even if I could harm a woman – which I can't – the spellworm would prevent it. His sisters are the very point of Rakon's charge to us."

  "Maybe we tell him what they're doing. Maybe he can stop it."

  "I don't trust him any farther than I can spit," Nix said. "He'd turn it further to his advantage somehow."

  Egil toed the embers with his boot. "So, what then?"

  "We get the horn for Rakon or we slip the compulsion."

  "I've had no luck on that last," Egil said. "I've just made myself sick."

  "Likewise. But either way, we get clear of this and far from the Norristru family as soon as we can. Then maybe we try our luck out west, stay away from Dur Follin for a time."

  Egil sighed and stood. "If that's what we must do, that's what we'll do. And now I've prayers to say and then sleep to find. I'll note only that if you start acting odd due to the sisters' witchery, I'll kill you quickly. Well enough?"

  "Fak you," Nix said with a smile.

  Egil chuckled. "In the morn, then."

  "In the morn."

  Nix sat before the fire, trying to solve the puzzle of his situation, and succeeding only in irritating himself over his inability to do so. At length the eunuch emerged from the carriage, bearing Rusilla as easily as Nix might have carried a child. Her face was turned toward Nix, the vacant eyes on him, her hair a red curtain falling from her head. Seeing her caused Nix's heart to thump. His eye itched, watered, and he wanted to scream at her to leave him alone.

  The eunuch placed Rusilla in one of the tents, saw that she was blanketed, then did the same with Merelda. Once he had them ensconced, he tied their tent closed and took station just outside, arms crossed over his huge chest, eyes unblinking and staring at nothing.

  Nix wanted very much to face Rusilla again, to look into her eyes, get to the bottom of her game, but the eunuch afforded him no opportunity. The man didn't move and showed no signs of fatigue. He might as well have been carved from stone. Once, Nix rose and made as though to walk in the general direction of the sisters' tent.

  Instantly the eunuch had his knife in hand and his vacant gaze fixed directly on Nix. Nix diverted to the supply wagon and took another loaf of flatbread from the sack. He returned to the fire and stared at the flames, his left eye pained.

  "Leave me be, woman," he said.

  He listened to the wind and his eyelids soon grew heavy. He fell asleep to the crackle of wood and the pounding of his pulse in his skull.

 

Nix dreamed of an ancient, dilapidated mansion. He stood in a long hallway, where dim light flickered. Paint peeled from cracked plaster walls. The lines of the cracks, the whorls and spirals, called to mind the indecipherable script of a madman. Dread settled on him, a heavy, dire foreboding.

  "Hello," he called, his voice small and high-pitched, girlish.

  At his utterance the plaster and cracks in the wall wrinkled, shifted, finally coalesced into the outline of a pair of huge eyes. Paint and plaster chips rained to the floor as they opened, bloodshot and terrible. Pupils dilated as they fixed on him, their regard judgmental, terrifying.