Firebirds Soaring (49 page)

He was appalled. He muttered, “I don’t think I gave her that much. I don’t think she’d actually
kill
for me—”

“Think harder next time.” I gestured around us. “This is the most dangerous place we’ve ever been. Every second person here is a killer. We’ve got to watch for danger, listen for it,
smell
it; we’ve got to be ready for a sudden fatal touch—”

A hand slapped down on each of our shoulders, and I nearly screamed like I’d heard a piglet do in the last seconds it had of being a boar.

“Welcome to the war,” a voice boomed.

He spun us around. I looked into a grinning face with spaces between the teeth. He had bone buildup on his forehead from weapon impacts. If he didn’t have brain damage, he had a goddess on his side. “Finally, we go to Skandia and get to wage the battle of our dreams.”

“Graffin,” he added. “Out of the southlands, with Mad Rob’s troops. Whose outfit you with?”

“Savage Henry’s,” I said.

He stared at us blankly with his beady eyes. “Don’t know him. How many in your outfit?”

Gaanz said, “Just us. All the others died in training.”

“Fifty or so of them. Knives, garrotes, fistaxes . . .” I shrugged indifferently. “Two or three just with rocks.”

He looked dubious. “And where’s Savage Henry?”

“Training the next fifty.” Gaanz grinned. “And with any luck, he’ll get two more survivors.”

“Gods!” He stroked his curly black beard, looking us up and down. “And all he got out of it was you two?”

I nodded solemnly. “We don’t look like your usual warriors, do we?”

I had expected him to be polite, but he looked at my spindly arms and Gaanz’s massive manbreasts and said, “Not even a little.”

“Exactly.” I leaned forward, half whispering, “That’s Savage Henry’s genius. We’re special forces.”

“Don’t look like warriors at all,” Gaanz gloated.

“I see that,” he said, impressed.

“Nobody sees us coming,” I said quietly. “We don’t carry real weapons.” I gestured to our sides.

Between us we had a kindling axe, a small club, and a silver dagger that might in another setting have been used to slice helpings from a wheel of well-aged cheese. Beowulf would have sneered at us.

“Hmm. Yah. Well.” He backed away, looking at us suspiciously. “I favor the old training. Axes and swords, and most everyone who signs up makes it through.”

Gaanz shrugged. “That’s good enough for most, I guess.”

The bearded man walked away.

I said, “Did you have to make it sound so crazy?”

“Hel, I didn’t sound half crazy enough,” Gaanz said angrily. “You let these hyenas think you’re weak, they’ll rip out your spleen on your way to your
room
. It’s like playing cards with madmen. If you don’t bet the earth, they think you don’t have a hand. Best you remember that—”

But his jaw dropped, and he forgot what he was talking about.

A blond woman a head and a half taller than him was pushing her way through the crowded lobby. She was wearing a tight deerskin tunic and moccasins on her feet. Her arms and legs were bare except for bracelets of wolves’ teeth. She had silver ornaments in her ear: a star, a comet, an icicle, and a bear that was dancing on one foot.

She glanced at Gaanz and smiled dismissively and, for this crowd, politely.

Then she was gone, her perfectly toned body moving rhythmically and determinedly toward something we could not imagine.

Gaanz stared after her. “Sacred. Steaming. Moaning. Goddess.”

“Oh no.” I looked in anguish at him. “Don’t even try.” He turned and glared at me. “It’s possible.”

“You? And her? You wretched weasel,” I sneered. “You’ve weakened your body with every dangerous substance known to man. Look at her for a moment. She’s toned herself into a living weapon. She makes no secret of her triceps, biceps, quadriceps, glutes, and all the other major cords. She has muscles on her muscles on her muscles. Even if by some dark disaster she chose you, how would you survive? She’d wrap those legs around you and squeeze, and your ass would fall off.”

A voice behind us said, “I see you’ve met Sigrid.”

We turned around. He was six foot three, with uncut hair like a farmboy’s. Maybe he’d been one, a few years ago.

Now he wore a brown leather vest, a fine collection of chest scars running every which way, a loincloth, weather-beaten boots to match, and a short sword. He probably had a knife stowed on him, possibly two, in places I couldn’t see.

He was smiling and acting friendly. That was good. As powdered-up and potioned-out as Gaanz and I were, we couldn’t take much more aggression without screaming.

“She’s wounded five men,” he said admiringly.

In this crowd, that was a pretty sorry tally. “When?”

“Since she arrived yesterday afternoon. Two were in the hot springs. It was pretty funny.”

“Ha,” Gaanz croaked, surrendering instantly his gland-driven dreams of her.

“Ha,” the warrior echoed. “I’ll be proud to serve beside her.”

The warrior raised his right hand to us, palm up. “Balarec,” he said, and clasped each of us to his chest in turn, slapping our backs twice in the Mighty Man-Hug.

“Dook, and this is Gaanz.” We looked at him in awe. Compared to the blood-drinking middle-aged mercenaries that staggered across the main room periodically, he seemed like a decent sort.

“So,” I said casually. “How many men have you killed?”

“Three. Only bandits, on the way here.” He looked sad. “They only attacked us for the food. Who can blame them?”

“Hmm.” Gaanz looked at him oddly, though the Mad God knew that Gaanz had little left in him but odd looks. “Are you looking forward to the war?”

“Forward? Not really.” He fingered the hilt of his sword. “But the way I hear it, Skandia’s threatened us. The Pre-Eminence says—”

Gaanz belched. “Doesn’t he, though? I hear the Eminence tells him what to believe.”

Balarec said, “Don’t speak that way.” But he didn’t reach for his weapon. “Together they’re leading us there to prevent Skandia from attacking us here.” He added quietly, “They say that even at the Althing, Skandia has considered attacking us.”

“Vultures,” I said. If he thought I was speaking of Skandia, so much the better.

He nodded, pleased. “To think of them hating us so much, hating our
courage
”—it was the official line—“so much that they would cross the Five Seas to attack the innocent. . . .” He was genuinely, deeply angry.

I looked around the main room at the weapons, the scars, the piercings, and the tattoos. Evidently the innocent had checked in silently and gone to bed early.

Gaanz said, “And there they are.”

 

First came the Honor Guard, war-hardened men with eagle eyes and swords held at identical height. The cheering started immediately.

In the middle came the Eminence, looking neither to right nor to left. His satin robes rippled around him, making him out of place among all these leather- and metal-clad men and women. He looked fatter and balder than his image on the coins, and much colder than the metal. One half of his face tried to smile. The other half didn’t bother.

Behind him, waving to the cheering crowd, was the Pre-Eminence. His laurel wreath was slightly crooked, and he didn’t care. He grinned at every cheer, and he reached across his guards to touch the people who crowded around him worshipfully.

Even with my brain addled and smeared with substances best left untouched, I felt vastly superior to these sweat-drenched products of constant oily, evil Praise and Encouragement. They were drowning in it, unaware.

“Why’s the Pre-Eminence doing that?” Gaanz said.

Balarec stared at him, astonished. “Because he’s leading us into Skandia. We’re attacking them before they attack us.”

“He’s sailing with you?” I said, seriously impressed. In person, the Pre-Eminence looked like the kind of man who would lead people in a two-step after a bottle or three of wine, but not in an attack.

“Well, no, not quite.” Balarec shifted uncomfortably. “He’s leading Kalchys, and that means he’ll lead us in the war.” He looked away from us, focusing suddenly on someone over our shoulders. “I should talk to some other people.”

I said, “What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Welcoming people, especially the raw recruits.”

“Why? Who told you to?”

“Nobody.” His eyes were gentle again. “But they’re new here, and they’re not sure what comes next. And when we’re over the Five Seas and fighting, we need to know that we’re all brothers and sisters in arms.”

He slapped our shoulders. “Including you. We’ll look after each other, you’ll see.” He strode away, saying over his shoulder, “Give my regards to Savage Henry.” And he winked.

We hadn’t known he’d heard that discussion.

Gaanz and I watched as he threw an arm around an anxious young woman with a longbow and a quiver of three dozen arrows. After a second, she smiled like sunlight. Balarec hugged her shoulders, hard, and moved on.

“Dumbass,” Gaanz said bitterly, watching Balarec pat a nervous young man on the shoulder to calm him down.

“True,” I said, “but we’ve found out the Truth. We know, out of all the useless screaming misbirths here, what a hero is.”

Gaanz turned away. “It’s what we’re not, right? Good thing.”

“Let’s go to the room,” I said. “You need to relax and get substance-free. And frankly, the lizards in this room are starting to bother me.”

 

The room was sumptuous and imperial at the same time. The bed-clothes were purple with Tyrian dye. The countertops were marble. The walls had bronze bas-reliefs of ancient victories. The innkeeper was right: it was a place for a general and his consort.

Gaanz threw his shirt over a sword sticking out of a bas-relief. “Can you feel the war in this room? As your senior advisor, I suggest we take some Pax, just to stay balanced.”

I agreed. The atmosphere in here was depressing me.

But the lobby had depressed Gaanz more. Why couldn’t we—on mead laced with Warre or Self-Glamoring like a courtesan splashing scent—have even the faintest sense that we had half the worth of Balarec, walking down the hall embracing brothers and amazons in the stupidest cause since the Laughing God embraced the Pitying Goddess?

But I was more worried about tomorrow. “We’ve been young and irresponsible.” I held up three pellets full of liquid Forecaste. “It’s time we thought about our future.”

Gaanz shrugged. “Forecaste isn’t much of a ride, unless your future is raving mad. We’ll probably see ourselves arguing our way out of the bill for the room.”

Before I could stop him, he threw all three pellets straight into his mouth.

He dropped to the floor, screaming like a slaughtered lamb and hugging himself. Tears were coursing down his cheeks.

I forced two Pax lozenges and three Sleepers into his mouth before they even made a dent.

Then he went to sleep in the fetal position. I sat up and thought about the future.

 

 

 

II

In the morning I woke on the floor. I looked at the doorway and saw that my bed was up against the door, wedged under the doorknob.

The lock on the door was broken, and the bed had been moved in three inches. Heart’s-Oil is powerful enough on its own, and mixed with Thighwarme . . .

I shuddered. We needed a different inn, and quickly.

Gaanz woke up the third time I picked him up and dropped him. “G’way.”

“That’s what we’re doing.” I snapped a Waker under his nose, opened one of his eyelids and tilted his face toward the door.

Either the Waker or the view made him alert. “You slept on that last night? How did you stay off the floor?”

“I
was
on the floor. I wedged the bed in place to fend off the innkeeper. Now she’ll fillet me on sight. We. Have. To. Go.”

Surprisingly, he understood. “Gods, she’ll
castrate
you.” He looked appalled. “Maybe even me.”

Things were going badly. The room looked like some disastrous alchemical project involving whiskey and were-wolves.

We scampered in the ruins and packed. We abandoned our extra clothes and our bags, packing the potions and liquids on our bodies. Had we really started with enough to fill a wagon bed? Babbling God, where had it all gone, and so soon? Clearly, this place was evil and had sapped our will like a ghoul battening on an innocent.

I said, “Do you remember what you saw under the Forecaste? ”

He shook his head. “No.” He lowered his eyebrows and snapped, “Whatever you think I saw, probably you hallucinated the whole thing under a mix of Follies and brandy.”

I denied it loudly, but then admitted that it was possible.

But my cold, naked, briefly sober mind was afraid that it wasn’t probable.

 

We cringed away from the innkeeper as we settled up. “You’ve missed the opening ceremonies,” she said coldly. “The Pre-Eminence will speak shortly in the Hall of Heroes. As I’ve told you, weapons are not permitted.” She turned her back on us, and we were glad.

I was far too sober. As we moved away from the desk, I said to Gaanz, “I’ll be right back.” He seemed happy enough to be rid of me.

I stepped behind a pillar, poured MisSpeak into my palm, and slapped it over my nose and lips, inhaling deeply. It wasn’t a problem yet. I would be coherent for several moments more.

When I came back, Gaanz looked suspiciously at me. “What did you just do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “How about you?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” And he let the matter drop.

The lobby was nearly empty. The Pre-Eminence was in a corner, reviewing a scroll. His laurel wreath was still crooked, and his lips were moving. He glanced up and waved happily to us. “Hel of a speech coming,” he said.

Beyond him, the Eminence was moving from door to door of the Hall of Heroes, turning a key in the locks.