In the Company of Ogres (30 page)
“Anything else?” asked Ned.
“No, sir, I guess not. Shall I tell the men you’ll be staying inside a few days longer?”
Something crossed Ned’s face. Some alien emotion wrinkled his brow and darkened his eye. “Yes. Just tell them ... tell them whatever you like.” His hands twisted the staff still tighter, and he frowned slightly.
“Yes, sir. I’ve got some paperwork to take care of.” Gabel saluted hastily and left. The image of Ned ran over and over in Gabel’s mind. Halfway across the citadel he stopped dead in the pouring rain. And he smiled.
Never Dead Ned was afraid.
It was really quite obvious. Gabel only had trouble placing the emotion because he’d never seen Ned afraid before. His most reliable emotions tended to be indifferent annoyance, disinterested indifference, annoyed confusion, and confused disinterest. Even when the dragon had attacked him, Ned seemed more confused than terrified. And why shouldn’t he be? What terror could force an immortal to lock himself in an empty office?
Thunder cracked the sky as Gabel stifled a sinister chuckle. “He’s not immortal anymore.”
The idea was certainly worth exploring, but he wasn’t one to act on his own. He considered himself more of a plotter, the mind behind the muscle. He couldn’t go to either Frank or Regina. They couldn’t be trusted. He needed someone else, someone who disliked Ned. Ogre Company was full of soldiers who wouldn’t mind seeing Ned dead, but Gabel couldn’t pick just anyone. He needed someone he could rely on. Someone who would kill Ned in the blink of an eye. Someone who could take the fall if Gabel was wrong and Ned was still immortal.
A line of soldiers jogged briskly beside him. They all looked soggy and miserable and ill-tempered. But one in particular possessed that hint of murder in his beady ogre eyes. Gabel pulled that one out of formation.
“Yeah?” asked gravedigger Ralph. “What is it?”
“What would you say if I told you I knew a way to insure that you would never have to run in the rain again?”
Ralph wiped at the water cascading down his slanted forehead to dribble in his eyes. “Who do I have to kill?”
Twenty-four
IT RAINED THE next day as well. And the next. And the next. Ned grew restless sitting alone in his office, but the dreary weather encouraged him to keep to his plan. It wasn’t much of a plan, but so far it’d worked. He’d gone four days without dying, a new record for him as commander of Ogre Company. He hadn’t even come close to perishing. The worst incident had been some possibly undercooked chicken brought for his supper on the second day. He’d sent it back with a sense of grand accomplishment. Nothing could touch him while he remained safely tucked away within these four bare walls. Nothing but boredom.
He tried conversing with the speaking staff, but none of the talks went well. The staff seemed to get more bored and irritated as time passed. Ned’s questions were met with snide insults. The staff, never particularly courteous, became downright obnoxious.
“How much longer do you think it’ll rain?” he’d asked it on the third day.
“How should I know? I’m a speaking staff, you idiot, not a weather vane.”
After that Ned stopped talking to it. He stuck the staff in the corner where he was positive it was glaring at him, though it claimed not to be truly aware. Nor did it possess any eyes. He’d turn it a few degrees every hour in hopes of getting rid of the feeling. It didn’t work.
By the evening of the third day, Ned’s boredom drove him to desperate ends to amuse himself: poetry. He’d never been artistic, not even to the slightest degree. He couldn’t draw or paint or play an instrument. And he couldn’t write very well either, but that was the great thing about poetry. It didn’t really have to be good. It just had to express something. Heck, it didn’t need to rhyme anymore, which meant just about anyone could do it. After an hour and a half of exhaustive inspiration, he set down his pen and read his defining masterpiece.
A heap of cushions,
The speaking staff mocks me still,
This poem is not good.
Ned cast aside his one and only work of literature. He whiled away the rest of the evening literally twiddling his thumbs and discovered, with mild interest, that one’s thumbs could actually cramp after too much twiddling.
By the fourth day, he was so bored that he considered sending for someone to talk to. But he didn’t really know anyone at Copper Citadel. Not well.
He thought of Frank. He seemed a pleasant, likable fellow. But he’d also killed Ned once already. Ned was pretty sure it’d been an accident. There’d been no reason for Frank to do it on purpose, but inviting a large ogre who had already proven how easily Ned could be crushed seemed a poor idea. He might just as well bash in his own head and get it over with.
Gabel occurred next to Ned, but was quickly dismissed. Gabel was a stand-up officer, but not the most interesting conversationalist. Plus it unnerved Ned that Gabel pretended to be an orc when he was obviously a goblin.
Regina and Miriam were natural choices. They were two engaging, attractive women. And they liked him, if the speaking staff could be trusted. That was the problem. He’d never been good with women. His strongest asset with the opposite sex was an assumption of complete and utter disinterest in him, which could be misinterpreted as a sort of relaxed confidence. He’d lost that now. Now he knew they liked him. Now he’d start trying. He’d say stupid things. Stupider things than normal. And he’d worry about those stupid things, which would lead to even stupider things. In the end he couldn’t have a normal conversation with a woman if he thought she was interested in him. There was just too much pressure.
He glared back at the speaking staff. It hadn’t a single piece of good advice to offer him, and the trivial observations it’d shared had only complicated his life. Too bad he didn’t know anyone capable of dispensing sound advice.
Someone knocked on his door. He considered not answering, but he was too bored not to. He opened the door a crack, not even wide enough to stick out his head.
Owens saluted. “You sent for me, sir?”
“I didn’t.”
“You will, sir.” The oracle held his salute. “Shall I wait here in the meantime?”
Ned contemplated the odd nature of fate. He hadn’t planned on sending for Owens, but now that the soldier had arrived, Ned supposed it would be convenient to invite Owens in. Ned had found some guidance in their last conversation. True, his attempts to follow the advice had ended with him being crushed by an ogre, but that was as much Ned’s fault as anyone’s. If he wasn’t going to blame Frank, Ned certainly couldn’t blame Owens. The oracle was sure to be more polite than the speaking staff at the very least.
Ned invited Owens in, and Owens was polite enough to wait for the spoken invitation before stepping inside.
“How can I be of service, sir?” he asked.
“Don’t you know?” Ned asked back.
He walked over to the corner and took up the staff. He still felt safer holding it, though he had no proof it had any magical powers besides the ability to point out how dumb he was.
“I’m an oracle, sir,” replied Owens, “not a mind reader.”
Owens had read Ned’s mind on occasion, although that wasn’t really what he’d done. Technically he’d heard words that were going to be spoken while they were still merely thoughts, thus transforming them into words that were never spoken except in some theoretical future that never came to pass. It was a paradox. The same sort of paradox that summoned an oracle to Ned’s door before he’d thought of the idea himself, but giving him the idea to summon Owens, which Ned didn’t need to do since Owens was already here. In other words, the past was a product of the future, and the future was rendered obsolete before it ever happened. Just thinking about it gave Ned a bit of a headache.
He stopped thinking about it. He didn’t need to understand Owens’s powers. He suspected Owens himself didn’t understand them. Causality was far too fragile a thing to undergo deep inspection in certain circumstances.
Ned didn’t care about whatever Owens might hear either. Owens’s ability to hear the future was little more than a parlor trick in the end. Its only reliable use was in speeding up conversations. But Owens still had a level head and a good attitude, what little Ned knew of the soldier, and Ned needed the judgment of someone he could trust. Someone other than himself, whom he trusted least of all.
He composed his thoughts, deciding what to tell and what to keep to himself. He waited for Owens to reply, but the oracle just stood there smiling.
Ned cleared his throat and thought very deliberately about speaking the words this time. Owens still didn’t respond.
“Is something wrong?” asked Ned.
“No, sir. Why do you ask?”
Ned plopped down in his pillows. Funny how irritating life could be. Owens, who usually answered questions before they were asked and interrupted constantly, was now oblivious. Which meant nothing other than slight frustration for Ned, who apparently had to actually say things to have the oracle hear them.
“Do you feel okay?” asked Ned.
“Very well, sir.” Owens’s smile widened. “Better than usual.”
“You just seem off your game.”
“Well, sir, I don’t hear all the future. Just little bits here and there, and sometimes the reception is better than others, depending on probability matrixes and spatial juxtaposition and personal relevance. Basic oracle theory, sir. I’m sure you’re not interested.”
“And you’d be right,” replied Ned. “I called you here”—although I didn’t actually call you, he added mentally—“to ask for some advice.”
“That’s what I’m here for, sir.”
“Terrific. You’ve probably been wondering why I’ve locked myself away in this room for the past few days.”
“Not really.”
“But it’s been four days. Four days all by myself with the barest physical contact. That hasn’t made you curious?”
“No, sir. It did seem a bit odd, but I assumed you had your reasons. Or perhaps you just went mad. It’s happened before. With other commanders here, I mean. One took to calling himself Lord Dragonstrike and convinced himself he could summon thunderbolts. Pure nonsense.” Owens stroked his long beard. “But then again, he was killed by a bolt of lightning, so maybe he was onto something.”
Ned tried to lean forward on his perch of pillows but couldn’t get the leverage. “Some of the other soldiers must be wondering.”
“A few, sir, but for the most part it’s not a topic of conversation that comes up often.”
Ned felt vaguely insulted. And unimportant. It was one thing to hide away from the world. It was quite another to discover the world didn’t miss you when you were gone.
“But I fought a dragon.” He held up the staff, although the gesture was lost on Owens. “I defeated it with this stick.”
“Yes, the staff.” Owens nodded slowly. “There’s been some discussion of that.”
“But it’s just a piece of wood.”
“It slew a dragon, didn’t it, sir?”
“I slew the dragon.”
“Yes, sir. With the magic staff.”
Ned scowled at the speaking staff. He could envision it smiling smugly. He didn’t like thinking himself an accessory to the staff in the dragon incident, though that wasn’t far from the truth. He propped it against his shoulder with a sigh of resignation.
“Here’s the situation, Owens. I don’t want to die again, but I’m tired of being in here. So I was wondering if you had any suggestions.”
“Go outside.”
“Is it safe out there?”
“Is it safe in here?” replied the speaking staff.
Owens cocked his ear in the direction of the new voice. “Is that the staff?”
“Yes, it is,” said the staff.
Ned asked, “How did you know it could speak?”
“I didn’t, but there’s been some debate over whether it might. I guess Lewis owes Martin two silver coins.”
Ned slouched. There’d probably been more discussion about this piece of enchanted wood than about him, and he was not only resentful, but a little jealous.
“The staff has a point, sir,” said Owens. “The dangers of the world are many and varied. Just because you’re hiding in here doesn’t mean they still won’t find you.”
Ned rolled off the pillows and went to the window. It was a warm, sunny day. Soldiers engaged in various training exercises throughout the citadel. Regina was busy showing a class how to properly use a battle-ax, while Frank taught another group the finer points of wrestling. Everyone seemed busy, and it was probably safe to go out. For a few minutes at least.
“Do you really think it’ll be okay?” asked Ned of either Owens or the staff. He didn’t care which.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, sir,” said Owens. “Life’s too short not to enjoy it while you can.”
The observation didn’t fully apply to Ned, an immortal. But he couldn’t make himself hide in this office any longer. If he was really, really careful and retreated back to this sanctuary at the first sign of trouble, then how dangerous could things be? He thanked Owens for his advice and gingerly, with great care, stepped out the door.
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