The Axe and the Throne (57 page)

“Aye, go on,” Titon said.

Keethro still laughed so hard he probably had not realized he'd just missed his last opportunity to lure the shorter one into bed. The girls appeared to have had an honest fear of reprimand, and it must have carried a weight greater than reduced pay or rations.

“This is a strange land we have found ourselves in, Keethro.”

Keethro's laughter subsided, and he began to look around the room, craning his neck as if to peer around the corners. “Where has she gone? She will be back, no?”

“No, my drunken fool of a friend, I fear she has gone for the evening. It is perhaps better this way. You would have embarrassed yourself with a poor performance, and the tales would have traveled far and wide. It would ruin your chances with countless such southern women. Better that you sleep well tonight, eh?”

“She was like no other, though. You saw her, didn't you? She was a goddess in Jane's woman's dress.”

Keethro appeared to be getting worse rather than better based upon his slurred and senseless speech. “To bed with you. Tomorrow we go before this King Veront as champions of the arena. He will grant me a remedy for Ellie and perhaps a true princess for you—his own daughter, I would wager. Tomorrow will be a great day indeed.”

Keethro nodded and stumbled into his own quarters, leaving Titon to enjoy his first good night of rest in as long as he could remember. With the thinnest sheet he could find among the bed linens as his only covering, Titon laid upon the floor. Nondescript thoughts of pleasantness turned to dream as he drifted to sleep.

“M'lord.”

With reluctance, Titon came to realize the voice was not dreamt. He sat up and saw in his doorway the lovely silhouette of the shorter serving girl.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, not angrily.

“The king requested that I come and give you comfort,” she said. She did not move from the doorway. As Titon's eyes reacquainted themselves with a more wakeful state, he could see some sort of light fabric hung from her loosely. It was a far different attire than she had worn when serving the meal, if he remembered correctly.

“You may tell him I am quite comfortable, and thank him for his hospitality.”

The girl turned to the side as if to leave, but stopped. Her hand went to her face, but Titon's eyes went to the new shape that presented itself.
Perhaps Keethro was right in his assessment
, thought Titon, not wishing to remember how long it had been since he'd lain with a woman.
She is perhaps a goddess, now in matching dress.
He thought he heard her lament.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“The king does not ask us to do things lightly. If I disobey…”

“You have seen to my comfort as best you could. You're not disobeying,” Titon insisted, to himself as much as to her.

“He will not see it that way.” She shook her head. “And he may not trust you if you refuse.”

Titon could not help but groan in his displeasure, which seemed to frighten her.

“I will go,” she said, turning and making a hasty exit.

“Wait,” he called to her, remembering she only knew him as a beast who had just brutally slain over half a dozen men in the arena. Galatai women were no strangers to the realities of combat, but the thought of this southern innocent having borne witness to his slaughter gave Titon a sickening feeling.

He threw off his linen and went after her, catching her with both hands by her waist. It had seemed the least threatening place to grab her, yet at the same time, suggested otherwise. Titon released one hand and walked her back to the room, her stride shy but willing. He guided her to the bed where she lay on her back, staring at him with a maiden's trepidation.

Titon again groaned, this time under his breath as not to scare her. She was not to blame for this quandary, and he had no desire to see her distressed. He pulled the bedsheets over her, hiding her from more than just the threat of cold. She looked at him with confusion.

“He won't know the difference,” Titon told her as he got back onto the floor, wondering if sleep would even be possible at this point.

“He'll know.” There was desperation in her voice.

“There's no way for him to know,” he assured her. The honesty in his words must have put her to ease, as she did not protest further. Fighting the images in his mind and an unfamiliar self-doubt, Titon did his best to fall asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nekasr does not fear death
, Tallos reminded himself,
and around him the world burns.

The town Tallos and his group had been escorted to reeked of contagious despair. The only grins of the many people milling around belonged to the few men in armor. It reminded Tallos of a leper town he'd once visited for trade. The men who ran the lucrative business of housing the afflicted relatives of those with means laughed and joked among themselves while the infirm sat in despondency, awaiting death.

Even so, it did not do for him to be so troubled.
It was foolish to have scarred myself
, thought Tallos.
The gods must have laughed to see it done, knowing the complications it would cause.

It seemed a reasonable enough thing to blame his worry upon. Had he looked like any other man, being conscripted into an army might even serve his purposes. His intention, after all, was to wreak havoc—a task he had yet to begin—and a war seemed as good a place to start as any.

“Mighty Three be damned,” cried the man at the dais. “I have not smelled a stench so foul since praying at your sister's bush!” The many papers piled in front of him and his authoritative demeanor made him out to be the one in charge. “I am a master provisioner, yet you must think me an alchemist to have brought me this lot. Am I to turn shit to steel and find a place for them in an army?”

The man to whom he spoke was the quietest of the four horsemen, relegated to see Tallos and his five companions to the town after their supplies and mounts had been reappropriated. He just shrugged and turned his horse around, leaving Tallos and the rest with the boisterous provisioner.

Surrounding him and his dais was what remained of a village. It had not been destroyed, but it certainly was no longer what it once must have been. Every home and building had some combination of piles of clothing, chests, and metal cookware just outside the front door, which Tallos guessed had previously belonged inside. Hundreds of men were arranged in a queue that extended down the full length of the main road, filing slowly into a large central building. The women were in clusters outside various houses.
What must they do with the children?
Tallos wondered if new parents were exempt from this treatment and how such an army would eat if they did this to every farming village. But it was the castoffs that awakened his fire, reminding him of how he had found his own home similarly ravaged.

“I'll take a look at the girl first,” said the provisioner. “Over here, you little tart.”

Lily looked first to Kelgun who refused to meet her glance, then she reluctantly walked to the dais.

“Nope, don't look at him. I'm your master now. Turn around, would ya? There ya go. Hmmm…” The man appeared to be truly considering his options. “Well, you and your old lover or father or both are in luck. You're too ugly for entertainment. You're a washwoman if I've ever seen one. Head that way.” He pointed to a home with the largest cluster of women at it.

“Do something,” Dusan demanded of Kelgun, and too loudly.

“What's he going to do, boy?” asked the amused provisioner.

Lily limped off, keeping her head down, and made no backward glances. Tallos purposefully avoided looking toward Dusan.
And around him the world burns
, he said again to himself.

The provisioner turned his attention to John. “I bet it's you that stinks. You big ones always turn ripe before the rest of them.” Tallos found it a bit hypocritical considering the source, who easily bested John in girth. “I should know,” cried the man, with a laugh and slap of his belly.
Perhaps not.
“What is it you do, big boy?”

John did not appear to wish to meet eyes with the man, not that any should want to. The provisioner's patchy beard did little to hide his saggy jowls, and his left eye was either lazy or trained to look elsewhere.

“I am a tinker's apprentice, m'lord.”

“Haha! Wrong on both counts I'd wager. I'm no lord and you're certainly no tinker's apprentice. You know how many times I've heard that one? You damn fools think you can just say tinker and avoid service to the kingdom?”

“He is my apprentice.” It was Wilkin's old weakened voice. Not even he had been spared from this process. The men-at-arms had forced him to leave his donkeys and supplies at the entrance to the village, and without them he looked little different from any other decrepit man.

“Oh is he now? And I assume you are a master tinker, traveled 'round the realm six by seven times by now, eh? Oddly enough, when I look at the two of you, I see an overgrown boy and his grandfather who both think they've got half again as many brains as they actually do. No, I don't believe my recruiters would be foolish enough to bring me a real tinker, do you? But even if you can tinker, you can surely read and write, no?”

Wilkin stared at the man a moment and then nodded, resigned to accept his ignorance.

“Okay, old man. You are assigned to notes and queries. I warn you though, if you get there and they find out you lied about writing in order to get out of harder duties, they'll chop off your fingers. And if you can't read, they'll gouge out your eyes. You still remember how to read and write knowing all that?”

Again Wilkin stared at him, then nodded.

“Ha! Well don't you come crying to me when they do, not that you could manage without any eyes, I suppose. That way.” He pointed toward a lonely home with one guard at the door about a hundred paces away. Wilkin shook his head in disbelief and began to shuffle to where he had been directed.

“Okay, big boy. You look like you can lift a shield. Infantry division is that way.”

John just stood there, dumbfounded.

“Go on now, no need to play stupid—that won't help either. You can be dim or simple and still raise a shield.”

“You are a fool,” blurted John. “You have just sent the realm's best tinker to copy letters. Do you know the fate to which one is condemned who harms a tinker?”

The provisioner glared at John with more contempt than anger. “Guards,” he called while keeping his eyes firmly fixed upon his challenger. “I think we've got a malcontent. Find a home for him.”

Two mailed men with differing tabards, one showing a keep before a river and the other a series of branching rivers that Tallos had previously mistaken for lightning, seized John by the arms and dragged him to a metal cage in plain sight from where Tallos and the rest stood. John did not struggle as the men hoisted him up and sealed him inside the birdcage-like contraption. Tallos wondered how long it would be before John's look of defiance changed to diffidence as the thirst set in.

“Gepner.” The deep, angry voice came from behind, and all turned to see what sort of man may have made such a sound.

“What is it, Otis?” The provisioner did not appear to be pleased by the interruption.

“They said there was a girl.” The man that approached was a brute. He dwarfed the guards and the mounted men who had captured Tallos's party, weighing easily half again that of the largest, and he wore a type of armor not shared by any of his fellow conscription officers. A cascade of spade-shaped pieces of water-hardened leather overlapped each other to form a hard yet pliant suit that shifted with his motion as he strode forward. His face was also well armored, albeit by overlapping scars. He had a sword of the finest steel in hand and was flipping it around as if it were weightless, not threateningly, but rather like a boy who'd acquired a new trinket. Tallos knew that sword—the one whose blade always shone with brilliance no matter how it was abused. A glance toward Kelgun revealed he'd recognized it as well. His face spoke his sour contempt.

Otis stopped a few paces before the provisioner and sheathed the sword. “Where is she?”

If Gepner was afraid of this giant, he did not show it. “You would not care for her. She's ugly. Ugly and too old for your tastes.”

“I'll be the judge of that. Now where is she?”

Gepner flicked his head at a young assistant who took off with haste. “You are making my job as provisioner very difficult,” complained Gepner. “You ruined the last two. They won't so much as speak now, let alone do any washing.”

Otis let loose a gravelly laugh with his hands clasped over his enormous gut. “Battles are won with armies, not washwomen. And I was promised the flesh of war.”

“The war has not even begun.”

“For me it has,” insisted Otis.

Lily had a look of hope in her eyes as Gepner's assistant brought her back. That hope died, though, when she saw Otis staring at her.

Otis made a vile noise in the back of his throat and shot a blob of phlegm toward Lily's knees. Clearly appalled, she tried to avoid it, but it struck the side of her roughspun trousers.

“I told you she—”

“She'll do,” Otis interrupted. “The recruits are busy eating. Come, girl. Let us speak in private.” He walked forward with a hungry smirk and grabbed Lily by the back of the neck, his fingers nearly touching at the front of her throat.

“No!” Dusan had managed to sound even younger than he was in his desperate objection.

Otis turned to face him with mirth. “What's this? This your little sweetheart, boy? Or do you merely wish to take her place?”

“She's my sister! Let her go!” Dusan rushed forward but stopped prior to getting too close to his enormous foe.

Otis chuckled and rubbed his bald head with a meaty hand. “Tell you what.” With that same hand he took hold of Lily again by the waist and hoisted her above his head. Her struggle came to an abrupt stop as if he'd threatened to break her neck with his other hand. “Get me to drop her, and you can do with her as you like.”

Dusan looked to Otis as if to question his sincerity and was met with a raised brow of enticement.

“We don't have time for this.” Gepner's protest was made irrelevant as Dusan bolted forward. No doubt expecting to be met with a kick, he then dodged to the side. Otis nearly dropped Lily as he laughed so heartily, watching Dusan jump into the muddy slush to avoid a blow that never came.

Dusan was quick to his feet, however, and leapt forward, landing a kick to Otis's stomach. Their difference in weight was so extreme that the force sent Dusan backward. Otis already looked to be boring of the game, but Dusan resumed his attack. Risking a potentially fatal kick from the giant, Dusan stood in front of him and punched Otis square in the jaw, difficult as it was for him to reach. Otis merely shook his head, prompting Dusan to hit him again, this time with a windmilled shot to the nose. The strike caught Otis's attention, and he shoved the boy backward violently with a foot. Dusan landed on his back, his head slamming onto the only hard patch of ground in sight.

“Do I now have your permission to skewer your ugly sister, boy?”

Otis's taunt seemed to crush the already defeated Dusan. He staggered to his feet with sulking shoulders, looking downward. Otis snorted amusedly and turned his attention to Gepner. It was the opening Dusan must have been hoping for, as he sprinted forward, flinging mud at Otis's face and grabbing the hilt of the giant's sword with both hands. The ring of steel sounded as the blade was pulled upward, to the tip, then rung out again as Otis grabbed Dusan's hands and shoved the blade back into its sheath.

Dusan backed away, the apprehension on his face shared by all those in attendance. Lily had fallen to the mucky ground.

Gepner laughed openly. “You dropped her. The boy bested you.”

Otis's angry stare gave place to a solemn look. “I am a man of my word. You can do with your sister as you like.” Dusan just stared dumbly, not believing the words. “Tomorrow, after I've split her in half.”

This time when Dusan screamed and charged, Otis put a boot in his belly. Dusan spun and fell to his stomach. With his foot, Otis shoved Dusan's face deep into the mud. He then wiped the mud off his own face.