Grudgebearer (6 page)

Frown deepening, she stalked down the ornate hallways of the prince's refurbished Royal Museum, past the workmen carrying furnishings and equipment to and from the secret Aernese exhibit hall and the equally new but well-publicized Vaelsilyn exhibit hall. Suppressing the desire to draw her sword and slash through the banner over the entrance to that exhibit, to let the archaic “silyn” portion of the banner fall to the floor, Wylant steered herself to the heavy blood oak doors of the museum's main entrance and out onto steps leading down to the Lane of Review.

Overhead, the moon rose high and a sea hawk flew across it: supposedly a good omen from Dienox. She spat and shook her head.

“General?” Jolsit, the captain of the guard, called to her from across the way. He, unlike Wylant, wore crystalline armor befitting an Eldrennai of the crystal order. Wylant noted with a rueful smile that, unlike many, Jolsit at least had the good sense to wear the enchantment over a mail shirt with boiled leather plates providing additional protection at his elbows, chest, and vitals. If a Zaur or an Aern came to blows with him, their magic-impairing abilities wouldn't leave him unprotected.

“Yes, Captain?” Wylant responded. She half-turned and waited, right hand on the pommel of her sword.

“Did the armor of Bloodmane really move?”

“It did,” she answered curtly. “If you'll excuse me, Captain.”

Jolsit responded with the customary fist double-tap against his breastplate in salute. “Of course, sir. But . . . General?”

She cocked her head to one side, a query she would have once conveyed with a raised eyebrow.

“I was told you were departing Port Ammond?” his mild tenor voice rose at the finish, making the statement a question.

“I would guess you intuited rather than being told, as I just made up my mind, but yes, I am.”

Jolsit flushed. “May I ask where you are headed?”

“To The Parliament of Ages to see Queen Kari.” Wylant wondered if Jolsit would ask for clarification. When he didn't, she snorted and told him anyway. “If Kholster is going to attack, he'll wait until after the Great Conjunction to do it. The Vael saved us six hundred years ago. I have to make sure that their representative has what it takes to do it again. This time, I fear the burden of peace will be carried by the Vael alone.”
Because Dolvek is an idiot.

CHAPTER 6

OLD SOLDIERS

Captain Conwrath looked up from his gruel to see five tall Grudgebearers stalking down the mountain road that led into the valley. At the sight of the one in the middle, his blood ran cold. Setting down his wooden bowl, gruel unfinished, the mercenary stood, knees creaking, and made his way to the edge of the lake where he washed his hands and scooped up two handfuls of bracing water to splash on his face.

Phantom scents of remembered fire, blood, and wheat seemed to fill his nostrils as the leader of the five reached the encampment on the other side of the bridge. The Dwarven-Aernese Collective side. The young female, the leader of the Elevens, and her fellow Elevens flocked around the five adults hugging and whooping. A sixth full-grown Aern came over the rise reverently carrying something Marcus couldn't make out.

“Izzat a bucket?” Japesh, Conwrath's second, asked as he walked over to crouch next to him.

“Could be.” Conwrath squinted at the other man in the morning light. Japesh had never looked the same since he'd started losing the hair atop his narrow head and trying to compensate for it with what scraggly growth of beard he could manage in uneven patches along his jawline. But Japesh was an old campaigner, so Conwrath had learned to overlook the man's odd appearance in favor of his sharp eyes. “You tell me.”

“Izzat an Aernese birthin' bucket?” Japesh said, sucking at his teeth.

“Never seen one, but if there's blood in it, I reckon that may be one.” Conwrath looked away from the straggler back to the Aern he recognized. Fiery-red hair, cut close to the skull like a Castleguard knight's or Hulsite marine's. A full beard, cut nearly as close to the skin. That bronze-colored skin. And those ears, long, pointed, and slightly higher up than seemed right for sentient folk . . . more like an animal's. Conwrath watched the Grudgebearer start across the bridge flanked by the leader of the little ones and marveled. “I swear, I don't think he's changed a bit in fourteen years.”

“New boots,” Japesh muttered. “New pants. Same mail. Same bloody warpick.”

“Same smile.” Conwrath frowned.

Kholster wore rough black denim leggings (steam-loomed, if Conwrath had to guess) secured with a corded chain belt from which two medium-sized leather pouches hung. Aernese saddle-bags, he and his men called them. Kholster's hobnail boots thudded down like hammers on the bridge planks betraying the unexpected additional weight of all Aern.

“Metal bones,” Conwrath whispered to himself. A shirt of bone-steel chain with sleeves that came to ragged edges at mid-bicep caught the light less than it should have. Conwrath winced at the sight of skin visible through the fine-wrought links of chain—the Aern wore no gambeson.

“Lieutenant Conwrath,” Kholster called amicably, as if his Elevens hadn't killed and eaten seven full-grown men with whom Conwrath had been traveling the previous day.

Conwrath raised a hand by way of greeting and went to meet the Aern, Japesh quietly shadowing him. “Ho, Grudger,” he said as they closed the distance and clasped forearms.

Kholster nodded at the man's notched earlobe. “Captain now, I see.”

“Rae'en,” Kholster glanced at his daughter. “Captain Conwrath fought a group of Elevens a few years before you were born.”

“Did he surrender then, too?” Rae'en beamed. Conwrath saw a world of youthful arrogance in that smile. He'd seen the same grin on his adopted son Randall's face when he'd left to set out on this Khalvadian contract.

“No,” Kholster answered. “He and his men killed them, then brought their bone metal back to me in an ox cart.”

“Then why . . .” Rae'en balked.

“Why didn't I kill your lot?” Conwrath asked. He eyed the warpick peeking out at him from where it was slung over Kholster's shoulder. The head of the warpick was cruel, narrow, and hooked like a beak at one end, rounded with a flat edge at the other, exactly as Conwrath remembered it . . . except this time, the blood oak leaf engraving work on the head wasn't stained red and brown with blood.

Such a handsome thing when the blasted Grudger isn't trying to kill me with it
, Conwrath thought. Aernese warpicks served two purposes, one, the most obvious, as implements of death . . . the other, as works of art, signs of discipline and craftsmanship. This close to Kholster's weapon, the scar concealed beneath Conwrath's tunic, a scar which ran in a crooked line across his chest, itched like mad.

Grudge.

Conwrath caught himself on the verge of whispering the weapon's name and frowned. It was heavier than it looked, heavier than most warpicks, and made to be wielded two-handed, the haft slightly more than four hands long with a grip Kholster'd wrapped in leather the color of old bone. Conwrath knew all that without ever having held the weapon. He knew it like he knew his own hammer toes or the ache in his back when the nights grew cold. He'd seen it in action when Kholster had come to collect the bodies of the dead Elevens only to find that one of Conwrath's men had tried to withhold a femur.

He'd felt the spirit of the thing, heard it cry like a bird of prey, and had come close to wetting himself when he felt it deliberately decide not to kill him. The warpick had struck but a glancing blow, when it could have struck true and deep, gifting him with a scratch instead of a death wound.

Sometimes, Conwrath hated the little spark of long sight he'd inherited from his mother's side, but not that time, because that once it had let him learn the most important lesson of his life: if the Grudgebearers said they weren't angry about something—they weren't. If they offered to call a halt to hostilities, they meant it. Others could claim to let their word be their bond, but the Grudgers lived it or they stopped being Grudgebearers. He'd seen deep into the spirit of the being who'd forged that pick and Conwrath had seen true. Kholster didn't want to kill anyone, but he was willing to kill everyone. Every living thing. If he had to.

From that day on, Conwrath had made it his business to make sure he stayed off the Grudgers' Needs Killing list. He looked across the lake and took a deep breath as one of the adult Aern oversaw the cleaning of the bones before they were stacked and tied for their return to the families of the departed.

“I'm too old to fight Grudgers.” Conwrath shook his head. “Too fond of breathing and too wise to knowingly sign up alongside idiots with a Grudger's words against them. Besides, when I saw young miss come galloping over yon bridge like the Horned Queen herself was after her, I saw she was trying to spare these men's lives before they brought your words down on themselves. I knew the lay of the land then.

“If we'd fought, Japesh and I might have made it through alive, but we'd have been the only ones.” Conwrath nodded at the bucket. “You're going to talk to the magistrate? Give him the whole show?”

“Yes,” Kholster said, his mouth set in a grim line. “If the magistrate can't be made to understand things then—”

“Then the Khalvadians will need a new magistrate.” Rae'en beamed.

“I suppose they might,” Conwrath agreed. “But let's hope he sees reason, eh? I only took this job because he's my wife's cousin.”

*

Ten days later, Conwrath sat astride his horse, taking a long pull of water from his canteen. Battered and beaten, the thing looked like something to be cast aside, but the Dwarven runes on the side made it worth ten times its weight in gold. The Dwarf who'd given it to him had tried to explain how it worked . . . something about magic drawing bits of water out of the air so small you couldn't see them. All Conwrath knew was, even in the driest of weather, it usually filled up at least three times a day.

In the oppressive heat of a Khalvadian summer, Conwrath caught himself silently thanking the Dwarf again. Japesh rode over and Conwrath held out the canteen. Japesh took a grateful swig and handed it back.

“Are we not supposed to notice the Grudgers back behind us?” Japesh asked, looking back toward the hill country.

“I wouldn't have spotted them.” Conwrath looked back and saw a cattle range, hills, and their big brothers—the New Forge mountains—wreathed in clouds off in the distance. “How many?”

“They're awful spread out, like the Grudgers do, but I'd say four or five. The two I've spotted wear skull helms.”

“Bone Finders.” Conwrath frowned at Kholster's back. “Then there are probably at least six. I thought these were all of the first One Hundred. Each of the Hundred gets his own Bone Finder.”

“Guardin' the bones of the Hundert then. Fair enough.” Conwrath grinned at the way Japesh said “hundred” but covered it up quickly by wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

Kholster walked far ahead of the group of humans and their cart, laden with the polished bones of their dead comrades now, rather than the goods and livestock they'd had with them before. Vander, the Aern with the bucket, walked at the back of the group, his bald head shaded by a broad-brimmed hat in which he'd cut holes for his ears like some of the carriage drivers did for their horses in the city. The other four adult Aern had ranged out like the four corners of a square.

Rae'en rode on the cart next to one of the hired hands, Sandis, asking endless questions about cattle and farming. Conwrath wondered if the young Grudger knew that the young man to whom she was chatting so casually was a new dad thanks to her fight at the bridge ten days back. Sandis had agreed to adopt the boy child, thus sparing his life. Conwrath smirked. If they told the Grudger, she likely would have said, “Congratulations.” Grudgers had few children and prized them all. No Grudger child was ever a burden. Not that Conwrath's adopted son Randall Tyree was a burden, exactly, he just didn't need a brother at the moment.

Conwrath shook his head, reminded of his cousin, the new magistrate. Breemson had been so pleased with himself to have finally risen through the ranks and become top man: not only a fully tattooed God Speaker, but magistrate, too. If he'd simply listened and put Conwrath in charge of the caravan or deigned to consult Shidarva. . . . Conwrath used water from his Dwarven canteen to dampen his fingers, rubbing at his eyes and wetting his cheeks and the back of his neck.

“No sense worry'n,” Japesh said, his eyes staring behind them as if he saw death or salvation in the distance and couldn't make up his mind which. “They'll listen or they won't. I'm betting if they won't, you'll be the man has to be the new magistrate.”

Conwrath raised an eyebrow.

“The Aern like you, Marcus.” Japesh spit. “With a few of them Hunderts at the gates, who else you think they'll be worried about pleas'n? Won't be me. My bones is too brittle.”

“And your ears aren't long enough,” one of the Aern—Conwrath thought his name was Vander—put in with a smile that revealed the doubled upper and lower canines of his people. The smile killed Conwrath's humor. The remark had been funny enough, but Marcus Conwrath had never been able to look at those teeth without picturing blood staining them a bright crimson. Blood was never funny.