Reaching a sun-drenched clearing, Brown John rose in his stirrups, astounded.
Gath stood at the center, his axe in one hand, the door of Sharatz’s cage in the other. The cage rested on the ground in front of him. Inside it the wounded she-wolf trembled and bled. Her left foreleg was broken. There were cuts about her eyes, hide hanging in strips from her throat, and mangled bloody clumps of fur on her rump.
Suddenly the she-wolf leapt out of the cage, stumbled, rolled fitfully and struggled upright on three legs. She circled wildly, spinning with her wounds bubbling red. Abandoned to her agony, she lurched in one direction, then in a second. Fear still hard in her, she picked a third direction and dashed on three legs past Sharn into the surrounding dense shadows.
Sharn, sitting on his haunches, watched the she-wolf without moving, then looked back at the new intruder. Head erect. Steam furling from his mouth. A thin strip of pale violet cloth which had obviously belonged to Sharatz’s violet cape hung from a fang.
Brown John sighed in relief, dismounted and started towards Gath. The whites of his eyes bulged under brows climbing for the top of his head.
“Holy Zard!” he gasped. This was appropriate as it was in reference to the God of Blood.
What had been six hard, angry riders that morning now lay about in the shade at the edges of the clearing in peaceful silence. The scatter of gore and limbs was so spectacular Brown John could not refrain from measuring it. He estimated ten pieces.
Golfon accounted for five. The severed stump of his right hand still clutched his spear, which was stuck at an angle in the acid green grass. Beyond that lay his body. It had wandered into a tangle of exposed hemlock roots and tripped on one. He had lost his way because his head was fourteen feet further off. He had bitten off his tongue, which lolled on the ground beside one of his teeth.
Vitmar had lost only an ear and thumb. He was facedown in the grass, limbs spread wide, still brown and warm in the sunshine. The three men-at-arms had died intact, except for one who had lost a chunk of shoulder.
Brown John wagged his silver head, toddled over on shaky bowlegs to a rock rising out of matted green grass, sat down and counted again. The total this time was twelve.
Sharn rose, held the strip of cloth stuck on his fang to the ground with a paw, then pulled his head back, ripped it loose.
Brown John’s eyes were puzzled. Where was the owner of the violet cloth? He stood, edged towards Gath to ask, and a drop of hot blood splattered on the back of his hand.
“Holy Zard!” he gasped again, and looked up.
Sharatz was stuck among the high branches of a fir tree. Both pieces of him. They were approximately of the same size and weight. That made fourteen pieces.
Brown John stumbled out from under the dripping corpse, looked at Gath.
The sharp frenzy of battle was still as fresh as budding thorns in his young eyes. He spit his words, “You sent them.”
Brown John started to deny it passionately, but stopped himself, and instead spoke in a slow, thoughtful tone. “No, I did not send them. But in a way I am responsible. My sons and I took the bodies of the Kitzakks you killed and had them butchered into totems. These chiefs,” he indicated the dismembered bodies, “in their fear and cowardice, had hoped to appease the Kitzakks by returning the bodies for proper burial. As they were not able to do this with the parts now spread throughout the forest, they rode into Rag Camp and demanded that I tell them where you live. They foolishly hoped to negotiate with the Kitzakks by offering them your head. I, of course, did not help them. I have not the faintest idea of where you live. Nor do I wish to find out. And, believe me, if I had known, I would not have been so shortsighted as to tell them and earn your anger.”
Gath waited, then deliberately tossed the cage door aside. It landed with a brittle crack, and Brown John jerked nervously. Some play appeared behind Gath’s shadowed eyes. He moved to Brown John, lifted the bloody blade of his axe, wiped it on the tunic covering the old man’s trembling belly. As he did, his low, coarse voice demanded, “What else?”
Brown John answered anxiously. “I, and my sons as well, tried to stop them and they beat us brutally.” He indicated his wounds.
Gath ignored them and moved to Vitmar, squatted over him with his back to Brown John. As he unbuckled the dead man’s dagger belt, he asked indifferently, “And?”
Brown John shuffled uneasily. “Only this. I regret that they found you before I could warn you. You did hear the horn?”
Gath slung Vitmar’s belt over his shoulder and stood, turning slowly to Brown John. The axe rode his fist as easily as the eagle rides the sky. The veins on his chest and arms stood out as if gorged with fluid stone. Dappled sunlight and shadows played about his face, adding mystery and a shimmering savage light to his brawny menace. His wide, flat lips, spread in a sardonic smile, allowed a low mocking laugh to escape. When he spoke all the play in his eyes and voice was gone.
“You are right. You are responsible. Your minstrels sent them.”
Brown John flushed. “Yes,” he said weakly. “That is a fair conclusion, but I assure you, that even without our vulgar songs and antics, the tale of your heroics would have soon spread throughout the forest.”
“No, you bandy-legged bukko!” His tone was a threatening whisper. “You took a great risk making me the clown of your stories. If I were not so fond of your wine, my axe would have talked to you about it long ago. Now your foolishness brings these arrogant chiefs who want my head and hurt my friends… while you sell what you call my magic to weak and gullible fools.”
“I assure you,” Brown John pleaded, “there is no mockery in our tales, nor the least desire to cause you displeasure or discomfort. Only praise. Glory. I…”
“Do not flatter me, bukko,” Gath interrupted with an ugly whisper.
“Forgive me.” Brown John dipped his head in a slight bow. “I am accustomed to dealing with dancing girls and jugglers who require an excess of praise and protection from hard truths. From now on I will attempt to keep my language simpler and to the point.”
He moved gingerly around the blood dripping from Sharatz’s stumps, parked himself on a rock and spoke with a semblance of confidence. “How may I call you?”
“By my name.”
“Of course. Then let me tell you, Gath of Baal, why I have involved myself, my family and the Grillards in your business.” He paused, wet his fingers, slicked his hair away from his eyes. “I have created the totems and sold them for a more serious reason than even you, with your keen sense of observation, might suspect.”
Gath’s eyes hardened in warning, and he scratched his kneecap with the flat of his axe blade.
“Ah yes, forgive me, the words of flattery come habitually. But allow me to continue, please. The silver I have collected is to be used to employ a war master, a champion, to defend Rag Camp… to keep my people from having to sing their songs and tell their jokes from behind the bars of Kitzakk cages. To put it as plainly as I can, I am offering you a job.”
Not waiting for a response, Brown John untied a heavy pouch from his belt and tossed it to Gath. The Barbarian did not bother to catch it; it dropped in the tall grass at his feet, breaking open to spill silver on the bloody ground.
Taken aback, Brown John, not daring yet to meet Gath’s gaze, peered at the coins saying, “I intend, of course, to hire other mercenaries from the Soldier’s Market in Coin to serve under you. The best in the forest.”
Gath said in his low thick tone, “We in The Shades do not use silver… or mercenaries.”
Brown John looked up, smiled lightly, then said just as lightly, “That, then, will change. With the Kitzakks riding this way, you will need better weapons, stronger armor, and the strongest men fighting beside you.”
“I have what I need.”
“Yes,” said the Grillard quickly, “I can see you seriously believe that.” He hesitated, then stood facing Gath. “But there must be something I can offer you? More wine? Women?” Gath did not reply. Brown John edged forward hopefully. “If it is women, I dare say, I can supply the most beautiful and eager girls ever to lie on a blanket.”
Gath eyed him with disgust and slung his axe on his back.
Defeat washed across Brown John’s flushed face, but he forced a warm smile. “Then… then all I can do is ask you to help us… my people… out of friendship.”
“Friendship!” Gath grunted with a harsh thick growl. “I have no friends who stand on two legs.” He moved across the glade, stopped and picked up the strip of violet cloth then looked back. “But I will still buy your wine.”
Brown John smiled lamely.
Gath studied the Grillard a moment, then marched into the forest, Sharn at his side.
Brown John started to follow, but gave up. He mumbled unpleasantly, then shouted recklessly, “Barbarian, if you think your pride and arrogance will protect you from the Kitzakks, you are sadly mistaken.” Defying the humiliation which had turned his bumptuous cheeks apple red, Brown John advanced to the edge of the clearing, propped a fist on his hip, raised the other over his head and shook it with the bravado of a commander standing at the head of forty regiments of foot and ten of horse. “Do you hear me? Your pride is not enough. You, the tribes, none of you can survive alone.”
The sounds of undergrowth being crushed by booted feet were the only response he got.
Brown John had an answer for it. He shook a scolding finger and shouted louder, “And do not think I will quit! Not for a moment. Just because I have been beaten, peed upon and rudely rejected, do not think I am unable to see past these trifling humiliations to the greater truth. I may not have your animal power, Gath of Baal, but I have a different gift. I see things coming. Yes! And I can assure you I have not failed to measure the import of the fact that today, for the first time, the Kaven, the Cytherian and the Barhacha rode together. Don’t for a minute think that I am blind to that miracle, or that I fail to recognize it for what it truly is, a portentious omen of an even greater unity to come! Perhaps even a triumphant one!”
Brown John stared at the forest shadows. Only silence answered him now. He muttered to himself, then the bravado went out of him. It shortened him by half a foot. He glanced about at the scene of slaughter, moved to the spilled silver, got down on his knees and began to pick up the coins.
A short time later, when he rejoined his waiting sons, he was leading his horse and deep in thought. When the bastards started to inquire as to what had happened, he silenced them with a lifted hand and thought some more.
After a long while he looked up, said, “You will find some bodies, six to be exact, in a clearing about fifty yards up ahead.” He pointed it out. “Bury them, so that no man or animal will find them. Ever. Bury their armor with them, and make sure you find all their parts. There are, I think, twelve or fourteen, perhaps more. I do not remember clearly.”
Bone and Dirken gave each other a sober glance, then mounted and rode off leaving their father alone.
Brown John stood silently, thinking again. As he did, he smoothed his hair with a hand and tucked it back over an ear with a thumbnail, but this failed to groom his troubled mind. The furrow of wrinkles creasing his forehead dug so deep they grew dark. His brow drooped so low that his bushy white eyebrows tickled his cheeks. Feeling their touch his scowl grew even deeper. Then the words came to him.
It was a line of dialogue from A Fig for the Ice Queen, a line he had delivered on countless occasions on countless stages. But now, as he said them aloud to no one, there was no trace of fiction in the words, no trace of the actor in his tone or in his suddenly boyish smile.
He said, “I’ve got it. I’ll get the girl.”