The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (22 page)

“Yes sir.”

Though neither of them looked any less tense, Sarovy trusted that they would restrain themselves for now.  Gesturing with the page he had selected, he said, “Specialist.  I noted that you understand the language that Magus Voorkei and the Houndmaster-Lieutenant speak.”

The Corvishman blinked, then made a face.  “Yeh.  Sounds like real bad Corvish, so I guess it’s Gheshvan.  Ogre-speak.  I can follow it a bit.”

“
Then you will translate.”  Sarovy indicated the page.  “There are words on here that I do not understand, yet they sound like Gheshvan.  I would know what they say.”

Weshker blinked, then shrugged apologetically.  “I ken’t read, sir.”

“Then I will.”  Sarovy smoothed the page down on his desk and skimmed it for the term.  It was the file for one of the female Specialists, Miralda Carver, and contained little more than her name, rank and transfer history.  “Lagalaina,” he read.

Weshker furrowed his brows, then said, “Well,
laina
means woman. 
Laga
means…  It’s part of the word fer alcohol.  I think it’s like ‘drunk-makin’.”

“
Woman who gets you drunk?” Linciard said dubiously.

“
I dunno why they’d write that in Gheshvan, but ken I meet her?”

“
No.” Sarovy set the file aside, frowning, and pulled out another one.  “This one is…  Senvrakaenka.”

Weshker’s face went bright red, and he covered his mouth to smother a choke of laughter.  Sarovy narrowed his eyes and waited while the Corvishman’s shoulders shook, while tears sprang up, while he slid slowly down the camp-seat, unable to stay upright from the force of his unshared hilarity.  Finally he pulled his hand away and drew in a great wobbly breath, wiping at his eyes.  “Oh T’okiel, that was jes’ wrong.  Are yeh sure they en’t writin’ performance notes?”  Then he burst into another giggling fit and bent double.

Sarovy tapped a finger methodically on the page and traded looks with Linciard.  “Your translation, Specialist,” he said when he heard the Corvishman start breathing again.

“
Best penis!
” Weshker crowed, then slid right off his chair.

Sarovy stopped tapping.  Linciard made a strained sound and stared at the ceiling, and Sarovy glared at his files in a flash of anger.  He doubted that Weshker was making it up, but if they were indeed ‘performance reviews’…

“One more,” he growled, and yanked out another file.  “Ruengriin.”

The laughter stopped.  Below the lip of the desk, Weshker hiccuped once, then rose warily.

"Uh," he said, "if that's short fer ruengriinagagi, then that means 'people-eater'."

Sarovy glanced to the name at the top of the file.

Houndmaster-Lieutenant Kanor Vrallek.

For an instant, Sarovy saw Vrallek’s other face: the wide mouth unhinged like a snake’s, the serrated ridges of tearing teeth, the pale chitin and blood-red eyes.  A shudder went through him, and he blinked rapidly.

“We got stories about the ruengriinagagi,” Weshker went on, hauling himself back into his seat.  He looked edgy now, his flush gone.  “Say they come up from Wyndon or Darronwy in the east, runnin’ like men but faster, with packs of thiolgriinagagi followin’ ‘em.  Wolf-eaters.  Big horrid hounds.  They come up on our hunters an’ tear ‘em apart.  Some packs besieged Sengeth-Dai-Khul back in the day, ‘til the spirits drove ‘em off.”

“
That’s ridiculous,” snapped Linciard.  “Wyndon’s never sent cannibals after you.  Piking drunken Corvish assholes probably—“

“
They en’t cannibals, they monsters!”

“
Well, we never—“

“
Stop,” Sarovy said again, staring at Linciard.  The lieutenant shut his mouth.  Turning his gaze to Weshker, a cold iron feeling sinking in his gut, he prompted, “Hounds?”

“
Huge things, big as horses!  Or so they say.  En’t ever seen one or I’d be all et up, yeh know?”

Sarovy thought of the kennels where the hounds dwelt, in the shadow of the General’s cabin.  On some nights, their eerie howls echoed throughout the camp.  He did not recall ever seeing them in daylight, but knew that at night they were taken out to patrol among the barracks; all soldiers knew not to be out after dark without good reason, for they were not forgiving.

He stared at the foreign word, then at the stack of Specialist files.

Before he could reach for them, someone pounded on the door.

Weshker yelped and dropped off his chair to hide in front of it.  Linciard, looking annoyed yet uneasy, glanced from the door to his captain, one hand hovering by his regulation sword.

Sarovy shook his head and stood, hands flat on the desk.  “Enter,” he said.

The door swept open.  Bracketed in the archway, almost too large to fit, stood Houndmaster Vrallek, grinning.

A shiver went up Sarovy’s spine, but he kept his face composed.  The others had seen neither the file nor the Houndmaster’s other face, so after a moment of registering his identity, they both relaxed somewhat.  Weshker pretended to have been picking something up from the floor and stood, straightening his mud-flecked black uniform coat self-consciously.

“How can I help you, Houndmaster-Lieutenant?” said Sarovy with studied neutrality.

The Houndmaster tilted his head in an odd, speculative manner.  Under his oilskin, he was in proper uniform dress but somehow still managed to look disreputable and brutal—perhaps the harsh planes of his face or the notched weapon-straps slung across his chest, holding his decidedly non-regulation axes.  His ruddy brown eyes swept the room and its occupants, then fixed on Sarovy, and again the captain felt that wavering of the world between them, as if he stared through a window made of water, every ripple distorting the image.

They spent a moment locked, then the Houndmaster snorted and looked past Sarovy’s shoulder, not submitting, just breaking the stare.  “Need to talk to you, Captain.  Alone.”

Sarovy frowned.  “I am in a meeting right now, Houndmaster-Lieutenant.  Can it wait?”

The Houndmaster’s jaw twitched in annoyance.  It looked as if he was clenching his fists behind his back, and the iron in Sarovy’s gut grew heavier as he swept Weshker and Linciard with a dark look.  Both men blanched instinctively but did not move.

“
No, sir,” he said.  “Don’t think it can.”

“
Then, if you insist, I will meet you outside shortly.  Dismissed.”

Vrallek grunted, then made a bad approximation of a salute and retreated, yanking the door shut with enough force to make the unlit lamp rattle on Sarovy’s desk.

For a moment, all was quiet in the office.

Then Lieutenant Linciard said, “Sir?  It’s not him, is it?”

Sarovy said nothing, only stared at the door.

Weshker and Linciard traded nervous looks, momentarily united.  Then, wringing his hands together, Weshker said, “Um, yeh en’t sendin’ me to bunk in the Specialists’ barracks, right?  I can stay here, right?”

Sarovy sighed.

*****

It was still drizzling when he stepped out to meet Houndmaster Vrallek.  From the look of the sky, it would never end.

Vrallek had taken up a position at the edge of the vast assembly yard.  Blaze Company’s barracks bordered it, giving them an unobstructed view of the rebuilt War Gate and the miserable huddle of slave tents further south.  Right now, most of the yard was clear, the afternoon watchmen just dark flecks atop the wall, but to the west a few men slogged long circles through the mud as their commander hollered curses.  Rain could not forestall punishments.

“What is it you wanted, Houndmaster-Lieutenant?” Sarovy said as he approached.  The Houndmaster glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to the runners.

“
Let us walk, Captain,” he said.

He did not wait for Sarovy to come abreast of him, but started off immediately, long strides setting him ahead in a burst.  Sarovy narrowed his eyes; he hated being challenged, especially indirectly.  Nevertheless he pursued Vrallek, his own steps clipped but rapid and light enough that he caught the mud-hampered Houndmaster quickly, then passed him.

The Houndmaster grunted in his wake.  “You dance like a bird on the wing.  Delicate thing, for an officer.”

“
Is that your concern?” Sarovy said, keeping up the pace.  He did not like the feel of Vrallek’s eyes on his back, but would not stand to be led.  “You think me not man enough to command you?”

“
Man enough?  Heh."

"Then what?"

The Houndmaster’s heavy steps stopped.  Sarovy halted, half-turning to regard him.  Vrallek stood with shoulders hunched, brows drawn low over his deep-set eyes, wide mouth bent in a frown.  Even from their few steps’ distance, it was impossible for Sarovy to ignore how much the man outmeasured him in height and girth and muscle; his weight sank him ankle-deep into the mud where Sarovy moved unhindered.  His hands hung open, nonthreatening, but one of them could cover Sarovy’s face with finger-span to spare, and the gleam in his eyes told Sarovy that he was quite aware of it.

“
You know,” he said, voice rumbling in his throat like a small avalanche.  “You saw.”

Sarovy’s hand fell automatically to the hilt of his heirloom sword.  The vision had shaken him, true.  Yet the realization that something within the Army had been hidden from his perceptions for twelve years only to be revealed now—after his tangle with the Guardian and that other white-winged force—shook him on a far deeper level.

He had been loyal.  Devoted.  And the Army had lied.

He had struggled with the feeling even before Weshker’s arrival.  From the moment the General had told him about the deal with the Shadow Cult, a shard had lodged in his heart.  Bitterness.  Insult, that he could have given his life to this cause only to find it a mirage.

Sometimes he wished that he had been mindwashed of it all.  But instead, the General had raised him to the captaincy, entrusted him with new mysteries, new lies and secrets.  He disliked them, disliked what they began to imply.

But he had been placed in command, and would carry out his task.

“Yes, I saw,” he said, releasing the sword-hilt.  “You will explain it to me.”

Vrallek sneered, showing a mouthful of jagged yellow teeth.  “I’ll explain nothing.  You have no hold over me, little bird.  I follow my own chain of command.”

“Yet you were assigned to me,” Sarovy said coolly.  “The Crimson General set you beneath me, with only him as my superior.  Tell me, who else holds your leash?  Colonel Wreth?  Another ruengriinagagi?”

At the word, Vrallek bristled, his eyes going flat and hard.  “Do not pry at that which you are not meant to know.  I called you out to warn you.  We do not take kindly to it.”

“I am your commander.  By the word of the General, I—“

“
General Aradysson is too fond of you humans,” Vrallek snarled.  His huge hands had curled into fists, but by the rigidity of his stance, Sarovy knew he was holding himself back.  The gravel of his voice had deepened, darkened, like something belched up from the furnace of the earth, and red flooded his eyes—the illusion failing.  “He wants to be one of you, and it has made him a fool.  Placing a human above us, as if you could contain us?  You are prey, little bird.  Food.  All your pitiful kind are.”

As he grinned, his jaw seemed to stretch, mouth widening, serrated teeth showing behind attenuated lips.  Pain streaked through Sarovy’s head.  Those starburst eyes held him, the color shedding from the Houndmaster’s face to show the monster again, the carapaced beast in Crimson uniform.  “I admit you’ve got balls, trying to stand up to me,” the Houndmaster continued, his words vibrating in Sarovy’s skull, “but that won’t matter once I feed them to you.  Sever your hamstrings, your shoulder tendons, let you marinate in your fear…  I used to snap the spine, you know, but it’s so much more appealing when they can feel it, when they can squirm and scream.  Even better when they’ve tried to run.  Turn, Captain.  Turn and run.”

Sarovy took a step back, then forced himself to halt.  Shudders gripped him from heel to head, a pure visceral reaction to the malevolent passions that emanated from the Houndmaster.  The words were mere seasoning; his stare, his smile, the quiver of anticipation in his heavy form, all spoke more of violation and murder than anything born of language.  There was no doubt in Sarovy’s heart that the moment he turned, he would be taken.

But that was not what this was about.

“Are you challenging me?” he said through gritted teeth.

Vrallek’s eyes narrowed.  “I will crack your bones and suck the marrow—“

“
Are you challenging me?
”

The Houndmaster stared, then closed his mouth, brows heaping like thunderclouds, skin flickering between ogre-blood red and corpse-pale.  Finally, with great reluctance, he said, “No.”

“Then you will submit to my authority,” Sarovy said, keeping his teeth together lest they chatter.  “Like it or not, I am your appointed master, and you will show me the obedience and respect that position demands.  Do you understand?”