Fool's Gold (37 page)

She looked down at Lette. “Does that answer your question?”

Lette considered. On the whole, she found she believed Quirk. The woman simply wasn't that good a liar. She had her demons, but so did everyone. It was just that Quirk seemed to take hers so very seriously.

Also there was the fact that Quirk's reins appeared to be on fire.

“Yes,” she told Quirk. “That answers it. But there is one other question.”

Quirk ground her teeth.

“Cattak,” Lette said. “Who is he? What's he to Will?”

“Cattak?” Quirk sounded surprised. “He's a looter. He was acting as a scout for me. But now that we can see the Consortium's forces on our heels, there doesn't seem much need for him. I didn't know he and Will were still in contact.”

Which was another answer Lette hadn't wanted.

“So,” she said, “Cattak didn't help you build the dragon skull?”

Quirk twisted her head onto one side. “Some men did. Maybe they report back to Cattak. I don't know.”

“But he wasn't there personally?” Lette pushed.

“I didn't see him.”

“A looter?”

“Yes,” Quirk nodded. “That seems to have started back up again. I've seen three temples with their roofs missing since this morning. Lawl alone knows what use they think all the lead will be now.”

Lette nodded slowly. What use indeed?

In the depths of Hallows' Mouth, Kithrax raised his head. Gold coins tumbled from it. Below him, magma bubbled and rumbled. And yet, the sound of rumbling geological rage was still not quite enough to drown out the sound of Horrax's flatulent snoring. The squat brown dragon was oozing over the edge of one of the ledges that lined the volcano's central vent, drool spilling from his mouth to hiss and spit in the molten rock below.

He could kick Horrax, push him over the edge. Maybe he'd recover before he hit the magma, maybe he wouldn't. Kithrax wasn't worried about the consequences should Horrax survive the fall—he'd been itching for an excuse to rip out Horrax's throat for the best part of a century now. No, it was that he might subsequently be expected to administer Horrax's swampland territory to the west. Gods, the less he had to do to sully his life by interacting with humans the better.

Rather than sit there and wait for the murderous rage to overwhelm his senses, he shrugged fully from his nest of gold and pushed off into space, launching himself toward the open crater of the volcano, riding the thermals out through the volcano's rocky mouth, and drifting silently up into the night sky.

It was all spread out below him. The whole absurd pageant. The prophet's pathetic forces. The Consortium's own overwhelming army.

Why did they bother? Why did they struggle? What did they imagine they would accomplish? Did they imagine that there was some glory in dying this way? That when they arrived in the Hallows below, that Lawl would be down there waiting to shake them all personally by the hand?

“Well that was futile, but jolly good show all the same.”

Lawl was a lecherous, anarchic imbecile, and so were all the other gods. They had done nothing to save these morons when Kithrax and the rest of the Consortium had rolled into Kondorra, and they would do nothing now. His was the face of the future. This pathetic flailing below him was the last gasp of the past.

“Should eat them now.”

The face of the future gave a decidedly unbecoming gasp of surprise.

Bruthrax laughed as he swept past over Kithrax's right shoulder. Considering the size of the massive red brute, he could be surprisingly quiet.

“Should just go down there,” Bruthrax said. “End it now.”

Kithrax could not quite restrain himself from snapping at Bruthrax in anger.

“I'd enjoy eating some of them,” Bruthrax went on, ignoring Kithrax. “Always fight on an empty stomach, that's what I say.”

Kithrax got himself under control. He flapped up to fly parallel with Bruthrax, a sleek shadow to Bruthrax's crimson bulk. “That,” he hissed over the wind, “is because you're a fucking moron.”

Bruthrax laughed easily. “Without a doubt.”

Kithrax grit his teeth, and tried to explain using very small words. “We are above them. We are like gods to them. They are puny. They do not concern us. If, for a moment, they start to think they do, then this sort of shit”—he snorted fire at the masses below—“will become the norm. They can hiss and spit, and fuss like little infants, but we will ignore them.”

“Like you ignore Horrax?” Bruthrax laughed again, like thunder in the sky.

Kithrax ground his teeth again, harder this time. “I have my limits. Do you wish to find them?”

Bruthrax executed a lazy, carefree barrel roll. “You think you're above all of us,” he said. “I get that. It's okay.” A shrug rolled the length of his sinuous body. “But you're not. You're down in the shit with Horrax. Just like all of us.” He swooped down toward the gathered troops. “Shit like this will keep on happening. They'll keep on fighting. It's stupid and pointless, but so is life. It's probably especially stupid and pointless for the people living under your rule.”

He rolled away.

Kithrax knew he should abstain from sniping and bickering. It was below him. But he was tired, and offended by Horrax, and Bruthrax, and the poxy little prophet below him. “I'll gnaw the resistance out of their guts,” he snapped.

Bruthrax cast a glance back over his shoulder, circled Kithrax once in a slow circle. “Then you'll end up having to kill them all, and you'll rule over nobody. Though perhaps you'd prefer that.”

And with that he flapped away.

Will was already getting dressed when Lette woke in their cot the next morning. He was dressed as plainly as ever, a rough work shirt, dull brown britches, leather boots that had seen better days. A farmer. A young farmer even. In his early twenties. And he was about to lead ten thousand men into battle. And they didn't even know it.

“Good morning,” she slurred through the last vestiges of sleep.

He turned, looked at her, smiled. “Good morning,” he said. “At least, well… I suppose the morning is all right. But by midday we should be in position. Which means a lot of maneuvering to make sure everyone is where we need them to be. And it'll take the Consortium army time to get organized. So I suppose it will be a little after midday when we enroll in their army. So I guess the morning—”

“Will?” She cut him off. He was adorable still, but his nervous rambling was too much.

“Yes?” He pulled himself back from the brink of mental chaos.

“Where were you last night?” The tent had been empty when she had come to bed close to midnight. And she had fallen asleep before he came back.

“Oh,” he said. “Talking to Cattak. He was coordinating. Getting Quirk's merchant's wagon ready. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but he is a surprisingly crafty man. Heart of an artist.”

“Hmm.” She nodded. “Will?” she said again.

He had bent to pull on his second boot. He looked up at her. “Yes?”

“Why would anyone need lead from the roofs of three temples two days before a battle?”

She watched him carefully. The way his brow furrowed. The way he looked away from her, down at his boot. He tugged it on hard and sharp.

“No idea,” he said. “Why?”

“Because that was what was looted the night before last.”

“Oh.” He stared off at the tent flap. “No idea.” He shrugged. “Hope perhaps. Or belief. Planning for a day after today.” He smiled. “That would be nice.”

Despite herself, she smiled as well. That would indeed be nice. The idea of a future. Of quiet times. Of days that weren't full of marching and fear.

But those thoughts were a trap.

“Cattak was a looter,” she said, leaning back on the bed, stretching broadly.

He didn't start. Didn't jerk around. No sign of surprise at all.

“Yeah,” he said. “That's what Quirk told me. But he's reformed now.”

That's what Quirk told me
.

So he assumed she had gone to Quirk. Which of course she had. And if he had expected that, he could have expected this question. Which could explain the lack of reaction to her questions.

It could…

She decided to push it, show her hand completely. What would she be losing at this point? A few hours of companionship?

“Quirk said she didn't see Cattak when she was working on the dragon skull.”

He did move at that. A grim certainty set in.
The fucking liar
. She prepared to beat the truth out of him.

“Shhhh!” he hissed at her. He stepped toward where she was lying.

Lette hesitated, caught off-balance. What was he—

“Don't talk about the skull,” he whispered, bending down to place lips so close to her ear that his breath tickled. “We don't know who's listening. And no, she wouldn't have seen him. She was putting all the bones together. He was off slaughtering and stripping cows down to the bone.”

An explanation for everything. Simple and neat.

Too neat?

Maybe, but it seemed a step beyond Will to have planned that far. And what could he hope to gain from deception anyway?

Sell one of us out to save his own skin. They don't know who the prophet is. They don't know it's supposed to be him. He could go over there, sell out Balur. Sell out me. He'd have me surrounded by the enemy. A lot of gold would go his way…

She pushed the voice away. If Will's plan was betrayal, if the plan died, if they didn't try the plan… all the outcomes were the same.

So whatever the plan was, whether it was what he said it was or not, she might as well go forward anyway.

Will sat up, tousled her hair. “Stop worrying,” he said. “We're totally going to see five dragons die today. It'll be great.” And with that, he slipped away.

The morning passed much as Will had predicted. He had let Firkin loose among the crowd, and the old man was in fine fettle, screeching out words of praise as he staggered through their numbers, a wineskin swinging from his hand.

“Say they can rain down fire on us, do these dragons. Didn't see Dathrax raining anything down. Just saw him raining down. In little pieces. All chopped up by the prophet he was.” Even Firkin's hiccups and belches rang out over the crowd's noise.

“Bunch of fat liars!” he screeched. “Bet their fire is a lie! Couldn't roast a sausage if their lives depended on it. And they'll depend on more than sausages tonight! Will depend on us! And we're not dependable! Can only depend on us to go stabby-stab-stab.” He thrust his wineskin at the heavens. Wine slopped down onto him. He licked at it as it dripped down his chin and into his beard.

“Liberation! Reparation! Inebriation!” Voices rose with his, chanting. Lette wondered if the crowd knew what they were saying.

A man elbowed her. “Why ain't you singing.”

“Because I'm not a fucking idiot,” she told him, and as his face curdled, put a fist into it.

She went to find Balur instead.

He was perched on the back of Quirk's thaumatic cart, searching through piles of armor and jewelry as it trundled along. The whole crowd was wheeling around to the east, to put the river Kon at their backs. It was a poor defensive position, truth be told, but Will's hope was that it would provoke the Consortium army into forming up to the west. And as there was no plan to actually fight, the poor defensive position didn't really matter. It just provided a buffer zone to exist between the armies while they put their plan into action.

Balur plucked a bejeweled helmet from the back of the cart and held it up to her. “It is being some farmer's family heirloom,” he said. “The old man had been hiding it from the dragons for thirty years. Then he was hearing about a prophet, and was getting some hope, and was giving it up like it was his redheaded stepchild.” He perched it on top of his head. “Is it making me look prophetic?”

“It's making you look like a bit of a dick,” Lette offered up.

“A prophetic dick?” Balur asked.

“What are you doing up there?” She couldn't help but smile as she asked.

“Is being theater,” he said, mock-wounded. “I am having to sell myself as a prophet to fifty thousand armed men across a battlefield. I am needing to look the part.”

“Balur,” she said, “you're an eight-foot-tall slab of scaled muscle. I think that sells the idea.”

She reached up, patted his tree trunk of a leg. Though he would never admit it, he was nervous.

“I,” she said, “am going to be over there telling everyone within earshot about what a horrifying, murderous, merciless arsehole of an Analesian is leading these rebels. About how he crushes men's skulls in his bare fists. I am going to make them piss themselves at the sound of your name.”

He looked down at her, smiled fondly. “You are being very sweet.”

She looked up. “Still tribe?” And she would never admit it, but she was nervous too.

“Still tribe,” Balur said. “Even if you are being a total pussy now.”

“I just made a grown man cry,” she offered up.

“Did you do it by feeding him his testicles?”

She sighed. “No.”

“New Lette is still a pussy.”

They grinned at each other.

“Last one to kill a dragon,” she said. “That one is the real pussy.”

He knelt down, put one massive hand over hers. “Deal,” he said.

“Deal.”

It was as good a way to say goodbye as any she knew.

The crowd was finding its final position when she eventually found Will. He had been harder to locate than she thought, just another face in the crowd.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Erm…” He studied his hands. They were shaking slightly. “Let me see. My pretend army is in position. The fake merchant wagons are prepared.” He nodded at two farmer's carts that had been outfitted with wooden frames and brightly painted cloth so that they resembled merchant's wagons. “I haven't shit myself yet. So I think this is as ready as I'm going to get.”

“Quirk knows what to do?” she asked. The plan seemed like a flimsy thing now that she was about to execute it. As pathetic as a wooden sword held up to defend yourself from the widening jaws of a dragon.

“She says she does. She's the one driving that wagon.” He pointed. Lette did a double take. She hadn't recognized the woman. Instead of one of her simple, plain dresses, she was wearing an outfit of billowing silks that boasted more colors than a Salerian whore's painted face.

“Where did you find that outfit?”

“Oh.” Will found a smile from some deep reserve. “It turns out we have a traveling circus that joined a few days back. We cut up a couple of their tents.”

She shook her head, put an arm around him. “Are you sure,” she said, “that this is really the first time you've tried to con a bunch of dragons out of their kingdom and their fortune?”

He shrugged. “If it wasn't, I think I'd have better control of my bladder.”

She carefully removed her arm from around his waist. “Come on,” she said, “let's go and put the fear of you into our enemies.”

The journey took longer than either of them would have liked. The grasslands of the Kondorra valley offered little in the way of cover, and they had to cross half a league of it to reach the opposing army without being spotted.

Hallows' Mouth stared down at them as they crept around the northern edge of the battlefield, trying to keep hidden among the tall grasses, dashing from bush to bush. The volcano provided a hard, harsh edge to the field's southern border, jutting abruptly up from the ground. Craggy cliffs of brown rock tore up through the earth, belching smoke and emitting ominous roars from their guts.

The Consortium dragons remained conspicuously absent, as if they were trying to tell the world how little they thought of this upstart prophet and his upstart army.

To be fair, they had good reason to think little of them. Their own vast army was arrayed before them, and it both outnumbered and outmaneuvered their opponents.

The Consortium army had no problem with making itself as conspicuous as possible. They spread out like a tidal wave. Figures in gray armor, massing, spreading, staining the valley, as the smoke gathered overhead. Griffins rose into the air, roaring and calling, wings beating at the still air. The trolls sang war songs in deep baritones, full of grunts and howls. Trumpets and horns rang out. The sound of fifty thousand pairs of feet marching in time, the jingle of chain mail, the clank of swords, halberds being set. The rhythmic thud of tent poles being erected. The neighing of their cavalry's horses. The growling of their war dogs. They dominated the plains, the sound of them, the stench, the sheer unfolding volume of them.

Lette felt a heaviness in her chest. “How in all the Hallows are we going to spread word through all of them? It's not possible.”

But Will just looked at her. “The night we fought Dathrax. The night we didn't kill him, and he almost killed us. The next morning thousands of people showed up in Athril. I wasn't even sure what had happened and people from leagues away were coming to tell me all about it. Word spreads around here, and it spreads fast. And you and I will talk about it with everyone we see.”

It was horseshit, she knew, but it was reassuring horseshit, so she let it slide.

As they drew closer to the Consortium army, Balur and Firkin started to get the prophet's army worked up. The fake dragon skull was visible across the plain. A group of men were dragging it back and forth through the dirt, whooping and screaming. Cheers and boos rose up in equal measure. Catcalls were hurled into the air, the details lost but the tone unmistakable. The tavern songs started up again, lewd and loud, and accompanied by gestures that were disparaging even from this distance.

“Okay,” said Lette, “I know I haven't been in the Kondorra valley that long, but I have traveled a fair amount. And the people here are fucking insane. Do they have any idea what's about to happen to them if a fight actually starts? They're going to be slaughtered.”

Will shrugged. “You oppress a people for long enough, it starts to get to them, I suppose.”

“Or you just breed them weird.” Lette had seen oppressed people before. To her the “breed them weird” argument seemed like it held more water.

“Where are you from, by the way?” Will asked suddenly. “I can't believe I don't know that.”

Lette could. She never found herself to be a particularly interesting subject. Still, Will had probably earned the information, and given their prospects of survival, he would likely be taking it to his grave.

“Salera,” she said. “The capital. Essoa. My father was a fishermen, and my mother a seamstress.” She dropped as much of a curtsy as she was able to, crouched behind a scrubby bush. “I was to sew dresses for fine ladies, thank you kindly.”

She watch Will try to process that. “A seamstress?” he said. “Had they met you?”

“I was a child, Will,” she pointed out. “I hadn't had much of a chance to kill anyone at that point.”

“Now you're making up for lost time?”

She shrugged. “Being a seamstress didn't stick.”

He nodded; that seemed to make sense to him at least. “How does one go from being a seamstress to, erm”—he gesticulated stabby motions with his hands—“doing what you do?”

“I ran away at thirteen. High jinks ensued.”