Fool's Gold (35 page)

“Oh.” Will wasn't sure why he felt mildly offended. Still, he allowed Lette to push him into the tent. He was just about to remove his shirt when Quirk joined them.

“Hey!” he said.

“What do you want?” asked Lette.

“A rational fucking plan,” Quirk said, without the slightest hesitation.

Will wondered if just tearing his hair out and flinging it at her would get her to let it go.
There was no plan.

Balur shoved into the tent after Quirk. “What is going on?” he asked. “Is it that we are all going to sleep in here?”

“No,” said Lette. “It is definitely not. It is being that you and Quirk are getting the hell out so I can sleep, wake up early, and abuse Will's body.”

“Hey,” said Will, then wondered what he was objecting to.

“A plan!” Quirk almost shrieked. She was, Will realized, genuinely furious. She quivered from rage. Smoke slowly drifted up from her palms.

Beside him, Lette went very still. All softness forgotten, as if it had never existed. Balur shifted his weight slightly.

“There are,” Quirk hissed, “ten thousand men, women, and children here. They are for some un-fucking-known reason paying attention to what you say, and specifically to what you badger Firkin into saying. Now when it comes to robberies, to getting all these people into this horrifying bloody mess, you are willing to sit all night figuring everything out. But, here, now, when it finally actually fucking matters, when lives are actually at fucking stake, you dodge the whole fucking question. And I will not have it any longer. You will think. You will make a plan. You will execute it. And knowing you bunch of half-witted morons you will almost certainly fuck it up, but at least, as I die in a painful and pathetic bloody mess, I will know that I kicked your arses into just fucking trying. To giving these people the leadership they are asking for, even if you are fundamentally incapable of providing the leadership they truly deserve.”

She stood panting slightly, staring at them each in turn, daring them to speak against her. A dull red light was shining from her palms.

The moment hung, absolutely silent.

Will tried. He truly did. He wanted so badly to have a plan. For there to be a way to fix this. But he hadn't spent years fantasizing about this. He had never spent his idle hours wondering what he would do if he were the head of a cult being chased by an opposing army sponsored by rich, murderous dragons. It was, he realized, a critical flaw in his imagination.

“I want to tell you I have something,” he said. “I truly do.”

“Not good enough!” Quirk yelled, shoving her hand out at him.

Will saw red. Bright, burning red, pointing straight at him. He flinched away, squealing in embarrassing fright.

Lette moved, lunging forward, a dark shadow in the gloom of the tent, the blade in her hand reflecting the red light of Quirk's palms. Even stumbling back, Will made out Quirk's surprised yell. A gout of yellow fire flared over his head. He yelled again, tripped on something. Balur yelled. There was another yell he couldn't place. Then he couldn't place much because he was on his arse, feet in the air, head buried in the sheets of his cot. He twisted, tangled further, sat up, head wreathed in sheets.

Everyone around him was yelling, shouting. Too many voices. A scuffle. Something slammed into his legs. He yelled, clawed at the blankets.

When he finally got himself free, Lette, Balur, and Quirk were standing in a semicircle before him. Quirk had her palm held out in front of her, a yellow flame dancing in her hand, casting a flickering light about the scene.

There was a tear in the tent wall. A chest lay, overturned, its contents spilling out. And lying on the floor, with Balur's not-inconsiderable foot planted in his back, was a young man.

Will stared at the man and tried to figure out where he had come from.

Through the tear in the tent wall, he supposed.

Lette was holding her short sword. It was pointed at the tiny part of the young man's neck that was visible between Balur's taloned toes.

He remembered her leaping between him and Quirk. Between him and magical fire. “You saved me,” he said, somewhat bewildered, but deeply touched.

“What?” said Lette, looking up at him confused. “No I didn't.”

Which was not exactly the tender message of love Will had been hoping for. “But…” he floundered. “You leapt. At the fire. Between me and it.”

“No I didn't,” Lette said again. “Quirk lit up the tent, I saw this tool's shadow through the fabric.” She indicated the young man on the ground. “So I slit the tent flap and grabbed him.”

“But…” Will kept coming back to that word. He looked at Quirk. The fire…

“She leapt at me!” Quirk protested. “It was self-defense!”

“I didn't leap at you!” Lette looked outraged by the very suggestion.

“Well, two of us clearly thought you did.” Quirk put her free hand on her hip.

“Well, two of you are clearly idiots.”

This had gotten very far away from tender messages of love. Will found he didn't have much left to say.

“Can I get up?” the young man on the floor said into the silence. His voice was muffled by the mouthful of dirt Balur was forcing him to eat.

“No, you cannot get up,” said Lette, her voice full of disgust. “We just caught you spying on us. What do you think we are, idiots?”

The spy said nothing.

“Well,” said Balur after a moment. “He is having a point.”

“Shut up,” Lette told him. She poked her short sword into the nape of the spy's neck. “Now talk. What are you doing here?”

More silence. Lette pressed harder with the sword. The young man yelped. “Spying!” he shouted. “What do you think?”

“Why is it you were spying?” Balur rumbled. He leaned forward slightly, adding pressure to his foot.

The spy's yelp was even more muffled this time. “You know the prophet,” he managed.

“We know the prophet.” Will rolled his eyes. “Well obviously…” Then a thought brought him up short. He considered it, tossed it away, and it bounced off an imaginary wall and hit him in the side of the head. He winced. “Wait,” he said. “Who do you think the prophet is?”

The spy spasmed on the floor. It took Will a moment to realize he was trying to shrug beneath Balur's crushing weight. “What I was trying to find out, weren't it?” he managed between mouthfuls of sod.

“Wait,” said Lette, prodding the man with her sword again. “You don't know who the prophet is?”

“You fancy telling me?” asked the spy hopefully.

“No,” said Lette, “because we're not—”

“Me,” Will shouted. “It's bloody me!” He couldn't believe this.

“—idiots,” Lette finished.

And perhaps, on second thought, Will could believe it. Firkin telling the looters in Athril that he wasn't the prophet. Their nonresponse. His ability to wander to Firkin's speeches unmolested. Cattak's nonchalance at his name. The man telling him to give the tent to the prophet…

The crowds had grown so fast, had amassed so many people who not been there that night at Mattrax's cave, that he had become lost in the crowd.

“Nobody knows who I am,” he whispered.

“What?” said the spy, trying to twist on the floor to get a better look at Will. “That guy? Are you serious?”

Lette reached out a hand, touched Will on the arm. “I know who you are,” she said softly.

And there it was, that tender message of love. So unexpected in this moment, and all the sweeter for it. But for Will it barely even registered. He was already miles away, staring into space, feeling the fireworks explode against the confines of his skull, a chain reaction of destruction and insight, everything suddenly falling into place.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Oh no. Oh Betra's sagging gut.”

Lette removed her hand.

“What is it?” Quirk asked.

“Oh, we are so screwed,” Will said.

“What?” Quirk pressed.

He looked up at her, despair in his eyes. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “I have another plan.”

The effect, Will thought, would have been much the same had he, at that moment, torn off all his clothes and started to whirl his member in a circle while shouting “Look at me, I'm a windmill!”

Quirk took a step back. “What?” she said. Despite it being everything she'd been asking for, she seemed totally unprepared for the eventuality.

Lette cocked her head to one side, contemplating, calculating. “What?” she asked, not surprised, though, just asking for detail.

Balur simply nodded.

“What?” echoed the spy from the floor. He sounded hopeful.

Balur applied pressure. The spy gurgled. There was a wet cracking sound. The spy spasmed and lay still.

“Gods!” Will shouted, stepping back from the sudden spray of blood that spattered his legs.

“Knole's knockers,” Quirk swore, wiping as blood spatter hissed in the heat of her flame.

“What?” Balur's face was the picture of innocence. At least, it was as innocent as a giant, blood-spattered lizard man's face can look while it's smiling at you with a mouth of razor-sharp teeth.

“The plan!” Lette snapped. “Focus on the fucking plan.”

“He just killed someone,” Will pointed out. Not unreasonably, he thought. “All over my feet.”

“He does that sort of thing all the time,” Lette said, and from her tone it sounded like this was indeed not the first time Balur had forced a man's intestines out of his anus in front of her. “It's like leaving a dog near a tree. Eventually something's going to get sprayed. We'll clean it up later. Now tell us what the plan is.”

“Well, I'm distracted now.” Again, Will was confident he hadn't wandered into the realm of unreasonableness.

“Look,” said Lette, mimicking a reasonable tone in much the same way that a shapeshifter would mimic a man before gutting him and stealing his family, “I have grown very fond of you these past weeks on the road, and I very much enjoy your, erm, swordsmanship. However, if you don't tell me this plan I will carve the tendons from your arms and use them to hang you from the nearest tree. Am I clear?”

Will swallowed very hard. “Yes,” he muttered. “Totally clear.”

“Good.”

“I don't know,” Balur rumbled. “Maybe we should be clearing it up now. Folk are always smelling a bit of shit when they are dying this way.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Lette said.

Balur shrugged ruefully. Still he bent down, peeled what was left of the body off the floor, and threw it out of the hole Lette had cut in the tent wall.

That, Will supposed, was as close as he was going to get to a cleanup job.

“Okay.” He sat down on the edge of the cot. “Let me think this through.”

“Talk it through.” Lette was insistent. Beside her Quirk nodded.

“Okay.” Will nodded. “So I'm thinking… spies. It's obviously easy for them to get spies into our camps.” He looked off through the now bloodstained slit in the tent wall and grimaced. Lette nodded in agreement. “That's not really a surprise,” he went on. “There's ten thousand of us. That's an impossible number to really keep track of. But,” he said, feeling the first edge of a smile grace his lips, “the Consortium army has five times that number.”

“I'm having trouble seeing that as a positive,” Quirk said.

“My point is,” Will said, “is it would be easy to get people into
their
camp.”

“So your idea is we slowly slip ten thousand people into their army and hope they don't notice?” Quirk looked more than a little dubious.

“No!” Will was a little disappointed that that was the response. Certainly his plans had had flaws, but…
Screw it.
He tried a different tack. “Look, why does anyone work for the Dragon Consortium?”

“Because they are being actual men, who know that life is only being lived to the fullest when your blade is sunk into the chest of another man, and his blood is spilling over your hands and onto your feet?” Balur hazarded.

“No,” Will told him categorically. “The Consortium is in fact incredibly stable. Nobody really wants to attack a nation run by dragons, and the dragons sweeten that pot by being fantastic merchants.”

“Then they are signing up because they are being lazy cowards?” Balur tried again.

“They're bullies,” Quirk put in.

Will had to concede those two points. “Well, okay, yes, those are good reasons. But not the ones I was thinking of.”

“This is a being a guessing game now?” Balur said. “We are going to be irritating the Consortium army with brain teasers until they go home?”

“Money,” Will said irritably. “Money and fear. That's why you work for the Dragon Consortium. Because it's about the only way to make real cash in this stupid, bloody valley, and because you're scared that if you don't work for them you'll end up on the wrong end of a three-foot-long canine.”

“I am still saying it is because of the cowardice,” said Balur.

“I just said fear,” Will said. “Like just now.”

Balur grunted.

“If this goes any slower,” Lette told him, “I'm removing a few tendons on principle.”

“Gods,” Will swore. Why did everyone think additional pressure was helpful? “Okay, listen. They rule with fear and coin. So what if we take those away from them?”

“Then we'd be killed in the attempt because of the army of fifty thousand heavily armed troops we're facing?” Quirk suggested. “This is seeming recursive.”

“Just listen,” Will said.

“Stop asking us questions then,” Quirk snapped back.

Lette started dragging the flat of a knife's blade back and forth along the leg of her britches.

“Okay, fine then.” Will took a breath. “We don't have to actually take the gold and the fear away. We just have to make the troops think that they're gone.”

“How are we—” Balur started.

“I'm getting to that,” Will almost shouted. He pushed hair away from his forehead. It was slick with perspiration. “They already think we're led by a powerful dragon slayer. But there's a difference between having heard that, and actually seeing it. For decades, no one in Kondorra has truly believed, deep down, that the dragons can be killed. That's part of the Consortium's strength: our despair. Anyone who's bought into the idea that a dragon really can be killed—they're with us now. The people who need more proof—we're fighting them.”

“What proof?” Lette asked. She was more caught up in it now. “We left the bodies weeks back on the road.”

Will smiled. “Well… maybe we're not entirely honest about what we show them.” He looked at Quirk. “You've studied Mattrax and Dathrax enough to know what a dragon skull might look like. I figure, we kill a few cows, mash their carcasses together, and parade our decapitated dragon's head around in front of them. We make them see what we've done.”

“We have not been decapitating a dragon, though,” Balur said.

“I know.” Will reached out and patted Balur's arm. Despite his exhaustion, he was caught up in this now. “But we trick them.”

Balur narrowed his eyes. “Trickery,” he said as if the word left a bad taste.

“Think of it like sneaking up on them then,” Will said. “We're sneaking up on the enemy so we can stick our blade in his back.”

Balur thought about that. “So we can be feeling his blood on our hands?”

“Attaboy.” Will smiled. Halfway there.

“What has any of this got to do with spies?” Lette was definitely hooked, but she was yet to be netted as well.

“Well,” said Will, “we've taken care of the fear, at least as much as we can. So now we take care of the gold.”

Quirk chewed her lip as she listened.

“We need to infiltrate the Consortium army's camp. We need to start spreading rumors. We tell them that the Dragon's wealth is a lie. That they're actually out of gold and have been hiding it.”

“Who would believe that? How would that happen?” Lette was still skeptical.

Will's mind whirred. And then the final pieces clicked into place. But he was careful to keep the smile off his face. “It doesn't really matter,” he says. “We just need to put the thought in their heads. We tell them…” And then, as if it had just occurred to them, which he supposed it really had, “… that dragon's fire turns gold into lead. That's why they keep taxing people for more of it, why they seem unable to ever have enough.”

Lette still looked dubious.

“Then,” Will said, letting his smile out a little, “a wagon arrives. It's a merchant. Except not really a merchant. It's another of our spies. They say that they're there to demand payment. That the Consortium hasn't been good on its payments.”

“But why would a merchant come all the way out here?” Lette asked. “It doesn't make sense.”

“They wouldn't,” Will agreed. “But Hallows' Mouth is only three days from here.”

“Hallows' what?” Balur looked at him askance.

“Hallows' Mouth,” Will repeated. “The volcano where the Consortium all meet. And if they've put an army together to hunt us down, you can be sure they've met.”

“Oh.” Balur nodded sagely.

“Remind me,” Lette said, “why they meet in a pissing volcano?”

“Because they are having style,” Balur said before Will could answer. In the end, he supposed that was pretty much the answer.

“And explain to me,” Lette went on, “why in all the Hallows you would want to do this on their doorstep?”

Will had done it. He had finally found something that made Lette go up an octave. Her demeanor of professional detachment shattered and spilled to the floor, in tiny shards of disdain and ennui. She stared at him incredulous.

He held firm.
This would work,
a voice inside told him. Because it had to work. It had to be flawless. Or they would all die.

“We have to do it there,” he said as calmly as he was able. “We have to appear fearless. That's how we undermine our enemy's fear of the Consortium, by not having it ourselves. By appearing utterly, unshakably confident.”

“But we are not being that,” said Balur. Even he seemed dubious about this level of audacity.

“Of course we're not,” Will said. “But it's a con. This whole thing is a con. If we don't sell it, we don't get the gold.”

And just like he knew it would, that drew them up short.

Balur cocked his head on one side. “We are getting the gold?”

Will grinned. “All the goddam gold.”

Balur looked at Lette. “Okay,” he said. “I am not knowing about you, but I am being willing to hear out the rest of the plan.”

Lette was looking at Will the same way a cat would look at a mouse that suddenly revealed it was brandishing a broadsword.

“So,” Will said. “That's the scene. We're parading about right before the Hallows' Mouth, marching into their stronghold, bearing the decapitated head of one of their own at the front of our hugely outnumbered army. We officially don't give a fuck. We are fearless. Why are we fearless? Is there nothing to fear?

“Meanwhile they're hearing these rumors that all the gold is gone. A merchant even showed up demanding payment. The rumors are everywhere—”

“Stop painting the gods-cursed scene and tell us about the gold, Will.” But despite her tone, Lette was leaning forward. She wanted him to convince her.

“Suddenly the prophet's line bulges,” he said. “Shouts go up. The tension has been unbearable. Everyone's attention is drawn. I don't care how disciplined a soldier you are. You look.

“But in the end it's nothing. Just a feint, or night maneuvers. So you go back to what you were doing. But in the morning, all the gold in their pay wagons is gone.”

Balur clapped. “We are stealing the gold.”

Will nodded. “Right under their noses. Right during that feint, we take it and we run. And they find all their gold is gone in the morning. And there's chaos. Because there's no fear. There's no gold. So there's no army. There's rioting.”

“And then,” Lette said, with a sour expression, “the dragons, who are right there, because we walked right into their laps, burst out and kill everyone.”

Will let himself smile one last time. “Well…” he said. “They come out certainly. They come out, and they face sixty thousand humans. All of us. My followers. Their own. And, yes, the dragons are powerful. But we really have seen they can be killed. We really have seen them die. We
could
have one of their heads at the front of our army if we wanted it. They take us on, and they lose.”

Silence. He waited. Waited for them to take it in. Waited for the challenges. He felt an odd sense of calm, sitting there in the flickering light of Quirk's single flame. He was ready for this.

“Who are we sending?” Balur rumbled at last. “Who do we send to spy and steal? Who do we trust?”

“We trust no one,” Will said simply. “But remember,
they don't know what we look like
. That spy didn't even know I'm meant to be the stupid prophet in the first place.
We
can go.” He pointed. “Lette and I.
We
infiltrate.
We
spread the rumors.
We
steal the gold. Quirk”—he smiled at her—“shows up as the merchant. It's low risk. Low violence. Just needs a trustworthy face.” He tried to read her expression, but despite the flame in her hand, she managed to keep to the shadows.

“And you.” Will nodded to Balur. “You stay here. Pretend you're the prophet's general. Or the prophet himself. I'm not sure. That might be more believable to most people here than it being me. You organize the feint, the distraction. You provide cover for Lette and myself to steal the gold. Simple.”