Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

GOATS OF GLORY Steven Erikson

Five riders drew rein in the pass. Slumped in their saddles, they studied the valley sprawled out below them. A narrow river cut a jagged scar down the middle of a broad floodplain. A weathered wooden bridge sagged across the narrow span, and beyond it squatted a score of buildings, gray as the dust hovering above the dirt tracks wending between them.

A short distance upriver, on the same side as the hamlet, was a large, unnatural hill, on which stood a gray-stoned keep. The edifice looked abandoned, lifeless, no banners flying, the garden terraces ringing the hillsides overgrown with weeds, the few windows in the square towers gaping black as caves.

The riders rode battered, beaten-down horses. The beasts’ heads drooped with exhaustion, their chests speckled and streaked with dried lather. The two men and three women did not look any better. Armor in tatters, blood-splashed, and all roughly bandaged here and there to mark a battle somewhere behind them. Each wore a silver brooch clasping their charcoal-gray cloaks over their hearts, a ram’s head in profile.

They sat in a row, saying nothing, for some time.

And then the eldest among them, a broad-shouldered, pale-skinned woman with a flat face seamed in scars, nudged her mount down onto the stony descent. The others fell in behind their captain.

The boy came running to find Graves, chattering about strangers coming down from the border pass. Five, on horses, with sunlight glinting on chain and maybe weapons. The one in the lead had long black hair and pale skin. A foreigner for sure.

Graves finished his tankard of ale and pushed himself to his feet. He dropped two brass buttons on the counter and Swillman’s crabby hand scooped them up before Graves had time to turn away. From the far end of the bar, Slim cackled, but that was a random thing with her, and she probably didn’t mean anything by it. Though maybe she did. Who could know the mind of a hundred-year-old whore?

The boy, whom Graves had come to call Snotty, for his weeping nose and the smudges of dirt that collected there, led the way outside, scampering like a pup. To High Street’s end, where Graves lived and where he carved the slabs he and the boy brought down from the old quarry every now and then.

Snotty went into the tiny one-stall stable and set about hitching up the mule to the cart. Graves tugged open the door to his shed, reminding himself to cut back the grass growing along the rain gutter. He stepped inside and, though his eyes had yet to adjust, he reached with overlong familiarity to the rack of long-handled shovels and picks just to the left of the door. He selected his best shovel and then the next best one for the boy, and finally his heavy pick.

Stepping outside, he glared up at the bright sun for a moment before walking to where Snotty was readying the cart. The three digging tools thumped onto the bed in a cloud of dust. “Five you say?”

“Five!”

“Bring us two casks of water.”

“I will.”

Graves went out back behind the shed. He eyed the heap of slabs, dragged out five—each one dressed into rough rectangular shapes, sides smoothed down, one arm’s-length long and an elbow-down wide—and he squatted before them, squinting at the bare facings. “Best wait on that,” he muttered, and then straightened when he heard the boy bringing the cart around.

“Watch your fingers this time,” Graves warned.

“I will.”

Graves moved the pick and shovels to the head of the cart bed to make room for the slabs. Working carefully, they loaded each stone onto the warped but solid planks. Then Graves went around to the mule’s harness and cinched the straps tighter to ease the upward pull on the animal’s chest.

“Five,” said the boy.

“Heavy load.”

“Heavy load. What you gonna carve on ’em?”

“We’ll see.”

Graves set out and Snotty led the mule and the creaking cart after him, making sure the wooden wheels fell evenly into the ruts on the road, the ruts that led to the cemetery.

When they arrived, they saw Flowers wandering the grassy humps of the burial ground, collecting blossoms, her fair hair dancing in the wind. The boy stopped and stared until Graves pushed the second-best shovel into his hands.

“Don’t even think about it,” Graves warned.

“I’m not,” the boy lied, but some lies a man knew to just let pass. For a time.

Graves studied the misshapen lumps before them, thinking, measuring in his head. “We start a new row.”

Shovels in hand, they made their way into the yard.

“Five, you said.”

“Five,” answered the boy.

It took most of the morning for the riders to reach the floodplain. The trail leading down into the valley was ill-frequented and there had been no work done on it in decades. Seasonal runoff had carved deep, treacherous channels around massive boulders. Snake holes gaped everywhere and the horses twitched and shied as they picked their way down the slope.

The cooler air of the pass gave way to cloying heat in the valley. Broken rock surrendered to brambles and thickets of spike-grass and sage. Upon reaching level ground, the trail opened out, flanked by tree stumps and then a thin forest of alder, aspen, and, closer to the river, cottonwoods.

The approach to the hamlet forked before reaching the bridge. The original, broader track led to a heap of tumbled blackstone, rising from the bank like the roots of shattered teeth with a similar ruin on the other side of the river. The wooden bridge at the end of the narrower path was barely wide enough to take a cart. Built of split logs and hemp rope, it promised to sway sickeningly and the riders would need to cross it one at a time.

The man who rode behind the captain was squat and wide, his broad face a collection of crooked details, from the twisted nose to the hook lifting the left side of his mouth, the dented jawline, one ear boxed and looking like a flattened cabbage, the other clipped neatly in half with top and bottom growing in opposite directions. His beard and mustache were filthy with flecks of dried spit and possibly froth. As he guided his horse over the bridge, he squinted down at the river to his left. The remnants of the stone pillars that had held up the original bridge were still visible, draped in flowing manes of algae.

Horse clumping onto solid ground once more, he drew up beside his captain and they sat watching the others cross one by one.

Captain Skint’s expression was flat as her face, her eyes like scratched basalt.

“A year ago,” said the man, “and it’d take half the day for alla us t’come over this bridge. A thousand Rams, hard as stone.”

The third rider coming up alongside them, a tall, gangly woman with crimson glints in her black hair, snorted at the man’s words. “Dreaming of the whorehouse again, Sarge?”

“What? No. Why’d ya think—”

“We ain’t Rams anymore. We’re goats. Fucking goats.” And she spat.

Dullbreath and Huggs joined them and the five mercenaries, eager for the respite the hamlet ahead offered them—but admitting to nothing—fell into a slow canter as the track widened into something like a road.

They passed a farm: a lone log house and three stone-walled pens. The place stank of pig shit and the flies buzzed thick as black smoke. The forest came to a stumpy end beyond that. A few small fields of crops to the left, and ahead and to the right stood some kind of temple shrine, a stone edifice not much bigger than the altar stone it sheltered on three sides. Surrounding it was a burial ground.

The riders saw a man and a boy in the yard, digging pits, each one marked out with sun-bleached rags tied to trimmed saplings. A mule and cart waited motionless beneath an enormous yew tree.

“That’s a few too many graves on the way,” Sergeant Flapp muttered. “Plague, maybe?”

No one commented. But as they rode past, each one—barring the captain—fixed their attention on the two diggers, counting slow to reach…five.

“Five flags.” Flapp shook his head. “That’s probably half the population here.”

A small girl walked the street a short distance ahead of the troop, clutching in one hand a mass of wildflowers. Honeybees spun circles around her tousled head.

The riders edged past her—she seemed oblivious to them—and cantered into the hamlet.

Slim came back from the doorway and slid along the bar rail to lurch to a halt opposite Swillman. “Give us one, then. I’ll be good for it.”

“Since when?”

“Them’s soljers, Swilly. Come from the war—”

“What war?”

“T’other side of the mountains, o’course.”

Swillman settled a gimlet regard on the ancient whore. “You hear anything about a war? From who? When?”

She shifted uneasily. “Well, you know and I know we ain’t seen traffic in must be three seasons now. But they’s soljers and they been chewed up bad, so there must be a war. Somewhere. And they came down from the pass, so it must be on t’other side.”

“On the Demon Plain, right. Where nobody goes and nobody comes back neither. A war…over there. Right, Slim. Whatever you say, but I ain’t giving you one unless you pay and you ain’t got nothing to pay with.”

“I got my ring.”

He stared at her. “But that’s your livelihood, Slim. You cough that up and you got nothing to offer ’em.”

“You get it after they’ve gone, or maybe not, if I get work.”

“Nobody’s that desperate,” Swillman said. “Seen yourself lately? Say, anytime in the last thirty years?”

“Sure. I keep that fine silver mirror all polished up, the one in my bridal suite, ya.”

He grunted a laugh. “Let’s see it, then, so I know you ain’t up and swallowed it.”

She stretched her jaw and worked with her tongue, and then hacked up something into her hand. A large rolled copper ring, tied to a string with the other end going into her mouth, wrapped around a tooth, presumably.

Swillman leaned in for a closer look. “First time I actually seen it, y’know.”

“Really?”

“It’s my vow of celibacy.”

“Since your wife died, ya, which makes you an idiot. We could work us out a deal, y’know.”

“Not a chance. It’s smaller than I’d have thought.”

“Most men are smaller than they think, too.”

He settled back and collected a tankard.

Slim put the ring back into her mouth and watched with avid eyes the sour ale tumbling into the cup.

“Is that the tavern?” Huggs asked, eyeing the ramshackle shed with its signpost but no sign.

“If it’s dry I’m going to beat on the keeper, I swear it,” said Flapp, groaning as he slid down from his horse. “Beat ’im t’death, mark me.” He stood for a moment, and then brushed dust from his cloak, his thighs, and his studded leather gauntlets. “No inn s’far as I can see, just a room in back. Where we gonna sleep? Put up the horses? This place is a damned pustule, is what it is.”

“The old map I seen,” ventured Wither, “gave this town a name.”

“Town? It ain’t been a town in a thousand years, if ever.”

“Even so, Sarge.”

“So what’s it called?”

“Glory.”

“You’re shitting me, ain’t ya?”

She shook her head, reaching over to collect the reins of the captain’s horse as Skint thumped down in a plume of dust and, with a wince, walked—in her stockings as she’d lost her boots—to the tavern door.

Huggs joined Wither tying up the horses to the hitching post. “Glory, huh? Gods, I need a bath. They should call this place Dragon Mouth, it’s so fucking hot. Listen, Wither, that quarrel head’s still under my shoulder blade—I can’t reach up and take off this cloak—I’m melting underneath—”

The taller woman turned to her, reached up, and unclasped the brooch on Huggs’s cloak. “Stand still.”

“It’s a bit stuck on my back. Bloodglue, you know?”

“Ya. Don’t move and if this hurts, I don’t want to have to hear about it.”

“Right. Do it.”

Wither stepped around, gripping the cloak’s hems, and slowly and evenly pulled the heavy wool from Huggs’s narrow back. The bloodglue gave way with a sob, revealing a quilted gambeson stained black around the hole left by the quarrel. Wither studied the wound by peering through the hole. “A trickle, but not bad.”

“Good. Nice. Thanks.”

“I wouldn’t trust the bathwater here, Huggs. That river’s fulla pig shit and this place floods every spring, and I doubt the wells are dug deep.”

“I know. Fucking hole.”

The others had followed Captain Skint into the tavern. There was no shouting from within—a good sign.

The shorter, thinner woman—whose hips were, however, much broader than Wither’s—plucked at the thongs binding the front of the gambeson. “Sweat’s got me all chafed under my tits—lucky you barely got any, Withy.”

“Ya. Lucky me. Like every woman says when it’s hot, ‘Mop ’em if you got ’em.’ Let’s go drink.”

The soldier woman who walked into the bar didn’t look like the kind to give much away. She’d be a hard drinker, though, or so Swillman judged in the single flickering glance he risked taking at her face. And things could get bad, because she didn’t look like someone used to paying for what she took; and the two soldier men who clumped in behind her looked even uglier to a man like Swill—who was an honest publican just trying to do his best.

The woman wasn’t wearing boots, which made her catlike as she drew up to the bar.

“Got ale,” said Swillman before she could open her mouth and demand something he’d never heard of. The woman frowned, and Swill thought that maybe these people were so foreign they didn’t speak the language of the land.

But she then said, in a cruel, butchered accent, “What place is this?”

“Glory.”

“No.” She waved one gauntleted hand. “Kingdom? Empire?”

Swillman looked over at Slim, who was watching with a hoof-stunned expression, and then he licked his lips and shrugged.

The foreign woman sighed. “Five tankards, then.”

“Y’got to pay first.”

To Swillman’s surprise, she didn’t reach across and snap his neck like a lamp taper. Instead, she tugged free a small bag looped around her throat—the bag coming up from between her breasts somewhere under that chain armor, and spilled out a half-dozen rectangular coins onto the countertop.

Swillman stared down at them. “That tin? Lead?”

“Silver.”

“I can’t make no give-back on silver!”

“Well, what do you use here?”

He reached down and lifted into view his wooden cash tray. Its four sculpted bowls held seven buttons in three different sizes, a few nuggets of raw copper, a polished agate, and three sticks of stale rustleaf.

“No coins?”

“Been years since I last seen one a those.”

“What did it look like?”

“Oblong, not like yours at all. And they was copper.”

“What was stamped on ’em?” asked the short, bearded man who’d sidled up between the woman and Slim. “Whose face, I mean? Or faces—three faces? Castle in the sky? Something like that, maybe?”

Swillman shrugged. “Don’t recall.”

“One of these should do us for the night, then,” said the woman, nudging one of the silver coins in Swill’s direction.

“A cask of ale for you and meals, too, that would be about right.”

He could see that the woman knew she was being taken, but didn’t seem much interested in arguing.

The bearded man was eyeing Slim, who was eyeing him back.

The other man, leaning on the rail on the other side of the stocking-footed woman, was big and stupid-looking—Swillman could hear his loud breathing and the man’s mouth hung open.

Probably too dumb to understand what was going on about anything, from that empty look in his eyes and those snaggled teeth, yellow and dry jutting out like that.

Drawing the first three tankards, Swillman served them up. A moment later, two more women soldiers clumped in.

Slim scowled and did her usual shrink-back when people she thought of as competition ever showed up, but the bearded man just went and moved closer. “Keep,” he said, “give this sweet lass another one.”

Swillman gaped, and then nodded. He was already drawing two more tankards for the new women—gods, they were all cut up and bruised and knocked about, weren’t they just? All five of ’em. Addled in the heads, too, he suspected. Imagine, calling Slim a sweet lass! Bastard was blind!

The loud breather startled him by speaking up. “Seen no stables—we need to put up for the night. Horses need taking care of. We want somewhere to sleep under cover. We need food for the ride, too, and clean, boiled water. Is there a drygoods here? How about a blacksmith? Anyone work leather and hide? Is there a whetstone? Anyone selling blankets?”

Swillman had begun shaking his head with the very first query, and he kept shaking it until the man ran down.

“None of that?”

“None. Sorry, we’re not on, uh, any road. We see a merchant once a year, whatever he don’t sell elsewhere by season’s end, we can look at.”

Slim drained her tankard in one long pull and then, after a gasp, she said, “Widow Bark’s got some wool, I think. She spins something, anyway. Might have a blanket to sell. The stable burned down, we got no horses anyway. We got pigs, and sheep a walk south of here, near the other end of the valley, but all that wool down there goes into the next valley, to the town there—to Piety.”

“How far away is Piety?” the bearded man asked.

“Four days on foot, maybe two on horseback.”

“Well,” the breather demanded, “where can we sleep?”

Swillman licked his lips and said, “If it’s just a dry roof you’re looking for, there’s the old keep on the hill.”

They’d dug one of the pits too close to a barrow, and from one end of the rectangular trench old bones tumbled out in lumps of yellow clay. Graves and Snotty stared down at them for a time. Splinters and shards, snapped and marrow-sucked, and then Graves scooped up most of them with his shovel.

“We’ll bore a hole in the mound,” he said.

Snotty wiped his running nose and nodded. “I’m thirsty.”

“Let’s break, then.”

“They going up to the keep?”

Graves lifted the mud and bones and tipped the mess onto the ground opposite the back pile. “I expect so.” He set the shovel down and clambered out, then reached back to pull the boy out of the hole.

“They was looking at us as they went past.”

“I know, boy. Don’t let it bother you.”

“I don’t. I was just noticing, that’s all.”

“Me too.”

They went over to broach the second cask of water, shared the single tin cup back and forth a few times. “I shouldn’t have had all that ale earlier,” said Graves.

“You wasn’t to know, though, was you?”

“That’s true. Just a normal day, right?”

Snotty nodded. “A normal day in Glory.”

“I’m thinking,” mused Graves, “I probably shouldn’t have put up the rags, though. Soldiers can count that high, mostly, if they need to. Wonder if it got them thinking.”

“We could find out, when we get back to the bar.”

“Might be we’re not done afore dark, boy.”

“They’re soljers, they’ll stay late, drinking and carousing.”

Graves smiled. “Carousing? That’s quite the imagination you got there.”

“Taking turns with Slim, I mean, and getting drunk, too, and maybe getting into a few fights—”

“With who?”

“With each other, I guess, or even Swillman.”

“Swillman wouldn’t fight to save his life, boy. Besides, he’ll be happy enough if the soldiers pay for what they take. If they don’t, well, there’s not much he can do about it, is there?” He paused, squinting toward town. “Taking turns with Slim. Maybe. Have to be blind drunk, though.”

“She shows ’em her ring and that’ll do.”

Graves shot the boy a hard look. “How you know about that?”

“My birthday present, last time.”

“I doubt you is—”

“That’s what her tongue’s for, ain’t it?”

“You’re too young to know anything about that. Slim—that wretched hag, what was she thinking?”

“It was the only present she had t’give me, she said.”

Graves put the cup away. “Break’s over. Don’t want them t’drink up all the ale afore we get there, do we?”

“No, sir, that’d be bad.”

The sun was down and the muggy moon yet to rise when Flapp went off with Slim into the lone back room behind the bar.

Huggs snorted. “That man’s taste…can you believe it?”

Shrugging, Wither drained her tankard and thumped it down on the bar. “More, Swilly!” She turned to Huggs. “He’s always been that way. Picks the ugliest ones or the oldest ones and if he can, the ugliest oldest ones if the two fit the same whore.”

“This time he’s got it all and no choice besides. Must be a happy man.”

“I’d expect so.”

Captain Skint had gone to one of the two tables in the bar and was working hard emptying the first cask all by herself. Dullbreath sat beside her, mouth hanging open, staring at not much. He’d taken a mace to the side of his head a week back, cracking open his helmet but not his skull. Hit that hard anywhere else and he’d be in trouble. But it was just his head, so now he was back to normal and his eyes didn’t cross no more. Unless he got mad. As far as Wither could tell, there’d be no reason for Dullbreath to get mad here and on this night. This place was lively as a boy’s Cut Night after three days of fasting and no booze.

She and Huggs glanced over when a man and a snot-faced boy came into the bar.

“He ain’t so bad,” Huggs said. “Think he’s for hire?”

“Y’can ask him.”

“Maybe I will. Get his face cleaned up first, though.”

“Them two was the diggers.”

Huggs grunted. “You’re right. Could be we can find out who did all the dying.”

Wither raised her voice, “You two, leave off that table and come here. We’re buying.”

The older man tipped his head. “Obliged. And the lad?”

“Whatever he wants.”

Sure enough the boy moved up to stand close beside Huggs, wiping at his nose with a dirt-smeared forearm. His sudden smile showed a row of even white teeth. Huggs shot Wither a glance and aye, things were looking up.

A life on the march sure messed with the bent of soldiers, Wither reflected. Camp followers were mostly people with nothing left to lose and lives going nowhere, and plenty of scrawny orphans and bastards among ’em, and so a soldier’s tastes got twisted pretty quick. She thought the older man looked normal enough. A grave digger like every other grave digger and she’d met more than a few. “Swilly, more ale here.”

The digger was quiet enough as he drank and he showed plenty of practice doing that drinking.

Wither eyed him a moment and then said, “Five graves. Who up and died?”

He glanced at her, finished his tankard, and then stepped back. “Obliged again,” he said. “Snotty, you coming?”

“I’ll stay a bit, Graves.”

“As you like.”

The man left. Wither stared after him, and then turned to say something to Huggs, but she had her hand down the front of the boy’s trousers and he was clearly old enough to come awake.

Sighing, Wither collected her cup and went over to join Skint and Dullbreath. “A piss pit of a town,” she pronounced as she slumped down in a chair. “Captain, you scrape an eye o’er that keep on the hill? Looks like it’s got a walled courtyard. Stables.”

Dullbreath looked at her. “It’s a Jheranang motte and bailey, Wither. That conquest was a thousand years ago. The Jheran Concord’s been dust half that long. I doubt a single inner roof’s standing. And since we’re on the border to the Demon Plain, it was probably overrun in the Birthing Wars. Probably stinks of ghosts and murder, and that’s why it stays empty.”

“It stays empty because this valley’s been forgotten by whoever rules the land, and there’s nothing to garrison or guard. Upkeep on a pile like that is a pig.”

Dullbreath nodded. “That too. Anyway, it should do us fine. Nice and quiet.”

“For a change.”

Skint stirred. “One more round for the lot,” she said, “and then we ride on up.”

Wither rose. “I’ll tell Huggs t’get on with it, then. Boys that age it’s short but often—she’ll just have to settle with that.”

The Broken Moon dragged its pieces above the horizon, throwing smudged shadows on the empty street, as the troop dragged themselves back into their saddles and set off for the ruin.

Graves stood in the gloom between two gutted houses and watched them pass, his shoulders hunched against the night air. He heard a noise behind him and turned. Herribut the blind cobbler edged closer, and behind him was a half-dozen villagers—most of the population, in fact.

“Y’think?” Herribut asked.

Graves scowled. “Ya, the usual. First pick’s mine, as always.”

Herribut nodded. “Lots drawn on after ya. I won.” He grinned toothlessly. “Imagine that! I never had a touch of luck in my whole life, not once! But I won tonight!”

“Happy for ya, cobbler. Now, alla you, go get some sleep, and be sure to stopper your ears. Nobody’s fault but your own if you’re all grainy-eyed and slow come the morning pickings.”

They shuffled off, chattering amongst themselves.

Exciting times in Glory, and how often could anyone say that without a bitter spit into the dust and then a sour smile? Graves stepped out into the street. The soldiers had reached the base of the hill, where they had paused to stare up at the black, brooding fortification.

“Go on,” Graves whispered. “It’s quiet. It’s perfect. Go on, damn you.”

And then they did, and he sagged in relief.

Nobody invited any of this, so nobody was to blame, not for anything. Just came down to making a living, that’s all. People got the right to that, he figured. It wasn’t a rule or anything like it, not some kingly law or natural truth. It was just one of those ideas people said aloud as often as they could, to make it more real and more true than it really was. When the fact was, people got no rights to anything. Not a single thing, not air to breathe, food to eat, ale to drink. Not the sweet smile between the legs, not a warm body beside you at night. Not land to own, not even a place to stand. But it made it easier, didn’t it, saying that people got the right to a living, and honest hard work, like digging graves and carving capstones, well, that earned just rewards because that’s how things should be.

The boy came out from the bar, weaving his way into the street. The woman had gotten him drunk besides stained in the crotch.

Graves set out to collect Snotty and take him to his solitary shack close to his own house. Couldn’t be nice, he imagined, to end up just being abandoned by his ma and da when they were all passing through, and left to survive on his own. That was three years back, and Graves knew the boy had latched on to him to fill the holes in his growing up, and that was all right. To be expected. The boy would be in no shape for anything come the morning, but Graves would pluck a thing or two for him anyway. It was the least he could do.

The cobbled ramp climbed the hillside in three sharp switchbacks that would have cramped any supply wagon and likely made a mess of stocking the keep. The path was overgrown and cluttered with chunks of masonry, but otherwise picked clean.

Sergeant Flapp shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as his horse clumped up the sharp incline. That whore still had teeth, damn her, and that ring had been way too small. His snake felt strangled. He noticed, in passing, that all the anchor rings on the walls to either side had been dug out and carried off, leaving rusty-ringed holes. “They stripped this place right down,” he said. “Doubt we’ll find a single door, a single hinge or fitting. And now they’ll probably sneak up and try and rob us tonight.”

“They wouldn’t be that suicidal,” Wither said.

Flapp belched. “Maybe not. That Slim was one eager whore, though.”

They rounded the last turn and came within sight of the gate. The portcullis was gone, as expected, all that iron, and the arched passageway yawned black as a cave mouth. Flapp followed Skint in. The drop chutes and murder holes were all plugged with muddy, guano-streaked martin nests, and they could hear the birds moving restlessly as they rode past.

The passage opened out to a yard overgrown with brambles. A stone-lined well marked the center, all its fittings removed. To the right was a low building running the length of one high wall. “Stables,” Flapp said. “But we’ll have to use the last of our fodder.”

Skint pointed to a stone trough close to the stables. “Wither, check that, make sure it’s not cracked. Huggs, collect up the water gourds and rig up a rope—let’s see what we can scoop from the well. Flapp and Dullbreath, you’re with me. Let’s check out the main house.”

That building was built to withstand its own siege. No windows on the lower floors, a narrow aperture preceding the doorway, arrow slits on the two squat towers flanking the inner facing. The slanted roof, they saw, was slate-tiled and holed through here and there.

“I’d wager the towers are solid and probably cleaner than anywhere else,” said Flapp.

They dismounted. Walked toward the entrance.

The slow drumbeat of horse hoofs on the cobbles had awakened them, and now, in scores of chambers in the keep, figures stirred. Long, gnarled limbs unfolded, slitted eyes glittered as heads lifted, jaws stretching open to reveal rows of thin, vertical fangs. Twin hearts that had thumped in agonizingly slow syncopation for months now thudded faster, rushing blood and heat through tall, rope-muscled bodies. Talons clicked at the ends of unfurling hands.

The slaughterers of the garrison five hundred years ago, demons from the cursed plain beyond the mountains, awoke once more. A night of swift blood awaited them. A few soft-skinned travelers, such as haplessly sought shelter in this place every now and then. Food to share out, a mouthful of pulped meat—if that—and there would be fierce struggle over even such modest morsels. They’d eat everything but the bones and they’d split the bones and suck out the marrow and then leave the rubbish outside the gate before dawn arrived.

The imp commanding the demons ate its way out from its woven cocoon of human hair and scrambled, claws skittering, on all fours down the south tower’s spiral staircase. Nostrils flaring at the sweet scent of horse and human meat, it clacked its teeth in hungry anticipation. Shin-high, the creature wore a tiny hauberk of scaled armor, a belted sword at its hip not longer than a bear’s canine and nearly as dull. Its head was bare, victim to vanity, permitting its bright stiff shock of white hair to stand fully upright. Its eyes, a lurid yellow, flared with excitement.

Its fiends were awake, but the time for summoning must wait. The imp needed to see the victims with its own eyes, needed to feast on their growing fear. Needed them, indeed, trapped and then devoured by that terrifying realization. A silent command unveiled dark sorcery, swallowing the gatehouse in a swirling miasma of foul vapors, vitriolic and deadly. No, there would be no escape. There never was.

Soon, so very soon, the slaughter would begin. First the humans, and then the horses.

Dullbreath halted in the center of the broad, high-vaulted, pillar-lined hallway just inside the keep’s narrow entrance. He sniffed the air. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “This place was overrun, Captain. Plenty died in here.”

Skint glanced back at the man, studied him for a moment, and then turned her attention once more to the far wall with its row of gaping doorways.

Flapp scanned the mosaic floor and frowned at the black, crumbly streaks all over it. He looked up to peer at the ceiling, but it was too dark to see much of anything up there—no obvious gap open to moonlight, though. “Smells kinda scaly in here.”

Huggs stumped in. “Captain, we got a problem.”

“What?”

“Horses getting edgy. And some kind of ward’s sprung up at the gate. Stinks, burns the eyes and throat just getting close. Probably kill us if we tried to push through.”

“Someone wants us to stay the night,” Dullbreath said, his breathing loud and whistling in the chamber.

“Lonely ghosts?” asked Flapp.

Dullbreath shrugged. “Could be.”

“All right,” Skint said, “we pick us a room with one way in and one way out—”

“Ghosts go through walls, Captain—”

“Huggs, how’s the wound?”

“Wither dug it out. It’ll do.”

Skint nodded and looked around once more. “Fuck ghosts,” she said, “this ain’t ghosts.”

“Shit,” said Huggs, and she walked back outside.

“Stay here, Dull,” ordered Skint. “Sergeant, fire up that lantern and let’s go find us a room.”

“Never thought you cared, Captain.”

The first three chambers along the row in front of them were dark, stinking hovels with passages through to secondary rooms—and those rooms opened out to both sides, their facing walls revealing the keep’s heavy stones where rotted sheets of plaster had peeled away. The two mercenaries did little more than peer into those back chambers. The fourth room was an old armory, picked bare.

Flapp lifted the lantern and said, “See that? There, far corner—a trapdoor.”

They walked to it. The brass ring was gone and the wood looked rotted through. “Give it a prod with your sword,” Skint said.

“You sure?”

“Do it.”

He handed her the lantern and withdrew his long blade of blued Aren steel. As soon as he touched the tip to the door, the planks crumpled, fell in a cloudy whoosh through the hatch. They heard sifting sounds from below.

“That ain’t been used in a long time,” Flapp observed.

Skint edged closer and brought the lantern over the hole. “Iron ladder, Sergeant. Looks like the looters lost their courage.”

“I’m not surprised,” he replied.

“Still drunk, Sergeant?”

“No. Mostly…no.”

“We might want to take a look down there.”

He nodded.

“I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him, “we got ourselves a demon.”

“That’s the smell all right.”

They heard clattering from the main hall.

Skint led the way back to the others.

Wither and Huggs had brought in the crossbows and dart-bags and were pulling and dividing up quarrels. Dullbreath was ratcheting tight the cords on the all-metal fist-punchers, smearing gobs of grease into the thick braids.

“Light the rest of the lanterns, Sergeant,” said Skint, tightening the straps of her gauntlets. “Where’s my helmet, Withy?”

“Behind Dullbreath, Captain.”

“Everybody suit up. The night’s gonna start with a bang. Then we can get some rest.”

“I thought we’d left crap-face demons behind us,” griped Huggs.

“One got out and squirreled up here, that’s all.”

“A magic-shitter, too.”

“It’ll show, we drive it back, corner it, and kill the fucker.”

The others nodded.

High in the rafters, the imp stared down at the five fools. Soldiers! How exciting. They had managed well reining in their panic, but the imp could smell their acrid sweat, that pungent betrayal of terror. It watched as they assembled their weapons, went over each other’s armor—what was left of it—and then, arranging the five lanterns in a broad circle, they donned their helmets—one of those badly cracked, the one on the taller of the two men—and, slotting quarrels into the crossbows, settled into a circle well inside the ring of fitful light.

Sound defensive positioning.

The demon they were now discussing could come from anywhere, after all, any of the doorways, including the one leading outside. Could come from the ceiling, too, for that matter. And the imp grinned with its needle teeth.

All very good, very impressive.

But there wasn’t just one demon, was there?

No. There were lots. And lots. And lots.

The imp awoke sorcery again, sealing the keep’s doorway. One of the women caught the stench of that and she swore. That one had a nose for magic, she did. Too bad it wasn’t going to help.

Still grinning, the imp summoned its fiends.

In the stable, the horses, sensitive to such things, began shrilling and screaming.

Flapp saw the captain lift her head, as if trying to hear something behind the maddened horses. A moment later, she straightened. “Collect up the lanterns. Time to retreat to our room.”

Burdened with gear, crossbows cradled, the lanterns slung by their handles over the stirrups, the group moved in a contracting circle toward a lone gaping doorway.

Flapp was the first through. A quick scan, and then a grunt. “Clear.”

The others quickly filed in.

Huggs made to speak, but the captain silenced her with a gesture, and then, when Skint had everyone’s attention, she hand-talked, fast, precise. Nods answered her all around. Lanterns clunked softly on the floor.

Gray-scaled, trailing cobwebs and shedding mortar dust, the demons poured like foul water down a cataract, round and round the spiral stairs of the north tower. Ten, twenty, thirty, their jaws creaking, fangs clashing, lunging on all fours, tails slithering in their wake. They spilled out onto the landing, talons screeching across the tiles as they rushed the single lit doorway two-thirds of the way down the corridor.

Cries of rising bloodlust shrilled from their throats, a frenzied chorus that could curdle a lump of lard and set it quivering. The imp dropped down from the rafters and scurried into their wake, in time to see the first of the demons plunge through the entrance.

It howled—but the cry was one of blunted frustration.

The imp slipped under, over, and around the mob clamoring at the doorway, leapt through to find itself in a room with naught but demons lashing about, gouging the walls in fury.

The lanterns had been kicked against the walls.

The five humans were gone.

Where?

Ah—the imp caught sight of a gaping hole in the floor.

With frantic screeches, it commanded the demons to pursue, and the one closest to the trapdoor slithered through, followed quickly by the others.

Clever humans! But how fast could they run?

Not fast enough!

The imp awakened the rest of its children, and curdling howls erupted from countless chambers.

The first demons swarmed down the ladder to the first subterranean level—there were a half-dozen such levels, a maze of narrow, low-ceilinged, crooked passageways bored in the hill’s enormous mound. Storerooms, cisterns, armories, cutter surgeries, and wards. It had been centuries since the demons last scoured these tunnels.

The imp sensed their sudden confusion—the stench of the humans went off in each of the three possible directions, and then two more at a branch ten strides along the main corridor. They had panicked! Now each fool could be hunted down, dragged to the grimy, greasy cobbles in a burst of blood and entrails.

Chittering with excitement, the imp sent demons after every one of the pathetic, wretched things.

A demon slunk noiselessly down a cramped passage, nostrils glistening, dripping in answer to the sour smell of a human hanging like mist in the dark air. Jagged black jolts ripped through its brain in waves, a jarring hunger that trembled through its elongated torso, shivering down its gnarled limbs to softly clatter its claws and talons.

The long sleep was an ugly, cruel place, and awakening was painful with savage need.

It came upon a foul woolen cloak, lost in the quarry’s frantic flight. The demon crouched and breathed deep, stirring memories of centuries-old slaughter. Lifting its head, it reflexively spread wide its jaws, and crept forward.

At a sound behind it the demon spun around.

A studded, gauntleted fist smashed into the demon’s face, crushing its snout, sending shards of splintered fangs into the back of its throat. The fist drove home again, snapping the demon’s head against the wall. And again, and again.

Sergeant Flapp’s fist was a blur, a rapid mallet that repeatedly pounded the pulped mess that was the demon’s head while his other hand held the thing up by the neck. When the meaty, crunching sounds gave way to the hard impact of a skull plate driven flat against the stone of the wall, he stepped back and let the twitching fiend slide to the floor.

He could hear more coming up the corridor.

Flapp collected his cloak and set off down the narrow side passage he had been hiding in—watching the demon sidle past—only moments earlier.

Three demons skidded around at the intersection and sprinted on all fours, voicing deep growls that would shiver the hair off a pack of wolves. The lead one’s head exploded in a spray of blood and bone as Wither’s quarrel took it between the eyes. Sprawling, its limbs entangled the demons behind it and they howled in fury.

Ten loping strides down the passageway, Wither stepped back out of sight, into the side corridor—a narrow chute barely wide enough to let her pass. Wedging the crossbow crossways at chest height just within the entrance, she took two steps back, drawing her two longswords, and waited.

The first demon’s forelimbs wrapped claws around the corner to slow it down as it lunged into the chute.

The iron crossbow brought it up short, clipping its lower jaw and snapping its head down.

Wither selected that inviting bald pate as a suitable target and swung down with both blades.

Brains splattered the walls.

The demon suddenly crowding behind it shrieked as a quarrel tore through its neck from farther up the main corridor. Gasping red froth, it staggered back and decided on a noisy death.

Wither kicked the virtually headless demon away and, sheathing one sword, wrenched loose her crossbow, and then set out down the chute.

Twenty paces along the main corridor, Huggs dropped the crossbow stirrup, set her boot toe on it, and tugged the cord into lock, wincing as the wound in her shoulder flared with pain. Slotting a new quarrel, she plunged into the gloom. Of course, demons could see in the dark, and some of them could see any hot-blooded beastie, but when hungry, they preferred to follow their noses and that was a savage yank on their leashes (not that they had leashes, not these ones anyway).

And their eyes, why, they blazed and made perfect targets.

She could hear more coming. Some would take off after Wither. The rest would latch on to her tail. She hurried off.

Crowded by four of its fellows, a demon crouched in an intersection. Human trails led into opposing corridors. It hesitated. The one behind it snarled and darted to the left, and then skidded to a halt as it stumbled on a discarded cloak. It grunted in confusion, and then whirled—

The man with the jutting yellow teeth launched himself from the corridor to the right, throwing all his weight behind a sword thrust that punched through the demon in the intersection, piercing both hearts, the hilt slamming hard against ribs. Leaving the weapon there, he ducked down, twisting to drive one scale-armored elbow into the next closest demon, caving in its forehead.

The remaining two demons collided with each other in their eagerness to reach him.

Dullbreath stepped back, and then drove a boot into the heavy balls dangling between the legs of one of the creatures. As it sank back with a grinding groan, the last demon was suddenly unimpeded and with a shriek it flung itself at the man. He caught its throat with both hands and squeezed in a single lightning-quick clench that crushed the demon’s windpipe. Throwing the twitching thing aside, Dullbreath drew his hunting knife and sliced open the throat of the demon he’d kicked, since he was feeling merciful.

Sheathing the knife, he tugged loose his sword, collected up his crossbow, and set off, snagging up his cloak along the way.

One hand trailing along a wall—keeping herself straight as she ran mostly blind in the darkness—Huggs felt the sudden gap to her right. Sliding to a halt, she backed up—fighting sounds from somewhere down there. Savage-sounding stuff, maybe even desperate.

She knew she had a few and maybe more coming up behind her. Whoever she helped out might curse Huggs if she led them down after her—trapping Huggs and whomever else between two slavering mobs.

Oh well. She hefted her crossbow and darted down the side passage.

She heard a solid thunk—like the world’s biggest crossbow—and that worried her, until she heard demonic shrieks of agony and rage.

Someone’s found a new toy?

Clattering claws behind her, closing fast, and that wasn’t good.

Huggs halted, crouched, raised her weapon, and waited until she saw the gleam of the first demon’s eyes. Took that one down easy. Dropping the crossbow, she drew her sword into her right hand, her crack-finder into her left.

Four more sets of blazing eyes rushed upon her.

“Drop flat!”

Huggs did.

A thunderous whoosh raced over her. Sudden mayhem up the corridor, as a huge pig of a barbed quarrel ripped through three of the damned things, gouging a shoulder of the fourth one. Laughing, Huggs leapt to her feet and charged it.

With a squeal, the demon fled as fast as three working limbs could take it.

“Shit.” Huggs halted, jogged back, peered in the darkness. “Who?”

“Wither—listen, found a whole storeroom of these fuckers. Siege arbalests.”

“Lead the way, darling.”

“Watch your step up here. Lots of bodies.”

“Right.”

Captain Skint shoved the faceless mess aside and pushed through the doorway, stepping clear and then turning to meet the first of the demons that lunged into view at the threshold. Her sword tip opened a wide grin in its throat. The next one, clambering over its fallen kin, lost the top of its head, bisecting its relatively small brain, which stopped working in any case.

Three more squeezed through and Skint took a step back to clear some room and let them in.

Talons slashed with murderous intent, but caught empty air. Jaws snapped on nothing. Surges to close and grapple missed again and again. The woman was a blur of motion to their eyes. A demon’s head jumped free of the rest of it, and the stumpy neck poured blood everywhere. Another shrieked as something kissed its belly and it looked down to see its intestines tumbling out—withered, empty things, like starving worms. Collecting them up, it waddled to the doorway—but that was blocked as dozens of demons struggled to press through the doorway. The disemboweled demon snarled and took two fatal talons to its eyes for its ill manners.

Skint helped a demon leap into a wall, and when it fell to the floor, she stamped her heel into its throat, then jumped away to avoid its thrashing.

She cast a gauging regard upon the swarm of gleaming eyes jammed in the doorway, and then stepped forward and began hacking with her sword. Sometimes, finesse was just stupid.

Flapp balanced on the crossbeam and watched as the third and last demon passed underneath. His quarrel buried itself in the back of the thing’s head, and as it fell, the sergeant flung the crossbow at the nearest beast—which had twisted around, eye flaring like coals—and saw it bounce from the demon’s flat fore-head even as Flapp plunged off the edge to land on the floor, two short swords snapping out but held points-down.

He rushed the demons. Blades slashed, intersecting wrists and forearms, slashed some more, cutting through hamstrings and other assorted, necessary tendons. He drove his head forward. Helmed bridge guard slammed with a happy crunch into a forehead, and then Flapp was past them both—they flopped and writhed behind him all messy with blood. He spun around and made quick work of them, and then retrieved his crossbow, only to snarl when discovering its bent arm. Flinging it away, he trundled down the corridor.

He could hear fighting.

He went to find it.

They could make out a mob of the bastards swarming a doorway, which meant someone was cornered, or, rather, had let themselves get cornered, which meant it was the captain. Grunting beneath the weight of the arbalests both women held, they sent two bolts tearing into the crowd. Torn bodies and pieces of meat flew.

And then, with a scream, Huggs charged the rest. Cursing, Wither dropped her arbalest and unsheathed her swords, setting off after her. By the time she reached the writhing mound, Huggs was buried somewhere beneath the heaving press of snarling demons.

Wither started chopping off limbs, heads.

She saw the captain’s sword tip lunge from the doorway, driving deep between two widening eyes, and a moment later Skint kicked her way into view.

The demons broke, a half dozen bolting with shrieks up the corridor.

Where someone else hit them.

Wither started dragging bodies off Huggs, and found her pounding on a knife she’d driven through the top of a demon’s head, but its jaws were still clamped tight around her left thigh.

“You idiot!” snapped Wither, “get your hands away so I can pry it loose. Gods below, we could have stood back and cleared the whole mess with a couple more bolts!”

Huggs spat blood. “Why should Skint get all the fun? Get this fucking thing off my leg!”

“I’m trying—sit still!”

Sergeant Flapp arrived. “Three got away!”

“There’s more,” said Skint.

“You said one!” Wither hissed, finally loosening the demon’s death-bite.

“So I was off by a few. Where’s Dullbreath? Anyone see him?”

“Not since we split,” said Flapp.

“Same here,” added Wither, and Huggs nodded as she sat up.

Skint swung her sword to shed gore and blood from the blade. “They’re on the run now. So we hunt.”

Her soldiers checked their weapons.

Flapp saw one of the arbalest bolts and kicked at it. “Nice.”

“Got a whole room of the damned things.”

“I need me a replacement.”

“We’ll take you there, Sergeant—”

“Take us all there,” said Skint. “Then we split up again. Rendezvous in the main hall up top, and don’t dally. Someone’s running this army, and I want it skewered.”

“Follow me,” said Wither.

Whimpering, the imp picked its way around yet another heap of demon corpses. Poor children! This was a slaughter, a terrible, grievous, dreadful slaughter!

And now they were hunting the survivors down—nowhere to hide!

Human stench everywhere, down every passage, every twisting, turning corridor, every cursed chamber and rank room. There was no telling where they were now, no telling what vicious ambushes they’d set up.

The imp crouched, quivering, hugging itself, and crooned its grief. Then it shook itself, drawing free its tiny sword. Enough of these evil tunnels and warrens! To the ladder! Flee this cruel place!

With renewed determination, and a healthy dose of terror, it scampered.

Breathing hard, the demon froze, nose testing the pungent, bitter air. Its eyes were wide, seeking the telltale bloom of body heat—those cursed cloaks, they’d been sopping wet, cold to the touch, blind to the demon’s eyes; and the iron chain wasn’t much better. Even so, there was no way a human could sneak up on it. No way.

It needed to find somewhere to hide. A privy hole, maybe. A crack in a wall. Anywhere.

The demon edged forward, and suddenly the human stench was overpowering. Mewling, it slowly straightened—and then turned around.

The bearded face hovering a hand’s width in front of its snout elicited a piercing scream of horror from the demon.

“Looking for me?” And then a red-stained studded fist rammed into its face. Twice, thrice, eight, nine, twelve times.

As the demon crumpled at his feet, Flapp grunted and said, “Didn’t think so.”

The two demons, boon companions for centuries, clutched each other, sharing a puddle of rank piss pooling around them, as two female humans stepped into view. Ferocious barbed bolts flung the two demons apart like rag dolls.

Wither began working the crank to reload her weapon, whilst Huggs limped forward. “You see them? Fucking pathetic.”

“You’re getting soft, Huggs.”

“Loaded?”

“Yes.”

“My turn. Keep an eye peeled, Withy.”

“Count on it.”

The imp could hear random death-cries echoing down the corridors, each one trembling through its scrawny, puny form. Reaching the iron ladder, it clambered upward as fast as its little limbs could carry it.

Not fast enough.

“Got ya.”

A mailed hand snatched the imp up, plucked it from the railing.

The imp squealed and thrashed about, but it was no use. It struggled to bring its sword to bear, but the man reached with his other hand and broke the imp’s sword arm. Snap, like a twig. Broke the other one, too, and then both legs. That really hurt!

Helpless, the imp dangled limp in the man’s grip. He stared down at it, breathing loud, mouth hanging open.

And then he bit down on the imp’s head and held it in his mouth as he climbed the ladder.

That breath! The imp cringed, even through its agony of broken bits everywhere. That breath!

As soon as they reached the top, and the man walked out of the armory, along the corridor, and out to the main chamber, the imp sent forth a frantic cry, a sorcerous plea bristling with desperate power.

Mommy! Mommy! Help me!

None left. Of course they could not be entirely certain of that, but they’d scoured every possible hiding place, rooting out the snarling oversized rats and chopping them to pieces.

Skint led them back to the arbalest armory, where they loaded up on bolts, including the assault quarrels with their looped ends, as well as bundles of thick cables. The walk back to the ladder was slow and awkward, with all the blood, corpses, and gore cluttering the passageways. By the time they strode out into the main chamber, Dullbreath was waiting for them. He nodded to a small figure pinned by a tiny sword to the floor in the center of the room.

“Still breathing?”

“Hard to say. Hard to kill for real, those things.”

“All right. Good work, Dullbreath. Let’s get ready then.”

The girl who walked in through the keep’s doors clutched a bundle of plucked flowers, her blond hair drifting like seed fluff. Her large eyes settled on the tiny figure of the imp nailed to the floor, and she edged closer.

Her expression fell as she looked down on her dead child. Kneeling, she set aside her flowers and reached out to brush that tiny, cold forehead.

Then, as she straightened, five soldiers stepped out from behind pillars, each bearing loaded arbalests.

The girl raised her scrawny arms and vanished inside a blurry haze. Spice-laden clouds rolled from where she stood, and the soldiers stared as she awakened to her true form, burgeoning, towering at almost twice the height of an average man, and easily twice as wide. Fangs as long as short swords, a mass of muscles like bundles of rope, hands that could crush armored soldiers as if they were frail eggs.

Huggs snorted. “A demon, huh? That’s not just a demon, Captain. That’s a fucking Harridan!”

“Commander of a legion,” added Dullbreath. “What were they thinking?”

The demon opened its maw and howled.

The sound deafened them, shook plaster loose from ceiling and walls.

The soldiers lifted their weapons. And fired.

The bolts pounded deep into the giant beast, and each dart snaked cables behind it—cables bound around the base of a pillar. The hinged barbs on the heads snagged deep in the demon’s flesh. Shrieking, it sought to pull away, but the thick ropes snapped taut—to tear loose of any one of the quarrels would break bones and spill out organs and who knew what else.

“Reload,” growled Skint.

And so they did.

Dawn’s light slowly stole in through the entrance, crept across the floor of the main chamber.

“Last crate,” said Flapp in a ragged, exhausted voice.

He went around, passing out the last of the bolts. Cranks clanked, but slowly.

Wither stepped up to squint at the pin-cushioned heap of mangled flesh huddled in the center of the chamber, and then shrugged and returned to her arbalest.

Five weapons clanged. Five bolts sank into the body.

“Quivered some,” observed Flapp.

“So would you,” said Huggs. “No whimpers though. Those stopped some time ago.” She turned to the captain. “Could be it’s finally dead.”

“Prod it with your sword,” Skint commanded.

“Me and my big mouth.” But Huggs drew her weapon and edged closer. She gave the thing a poke. “Nothing.” She poked harder. Still no response. So she stabbed. “Hah! It’s dead all right.”

Arbalests dropped from exhausted arms.

“Saddle us up, Withy. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“You got it, Captain.”

Graves had been up all night. No amount of beeswax could have stoppered up that seemingly endless chorus of screams and howls from the keep. It had never been so bad. Ever. Those soldiers, they’d died hard. Damned hard.

He rigged up his mule and cart and led the procession—a quiet bunch this morning, for sure—up to collect the remains and whatever loot came out with it. Work was work, wasn’t it just. People did what they did to get by, and what else was life all about? Nothing. That was it. It and nothing more. But, dammit, he didn’t want the boy to spend his whole cursed life here in Glory, didn’t want him taking over when Graves gave it up, not stepping in when Slim finally swallowed her ring and choked to death—the gods knew she wasn’t going to die naturally. Didn’t want any of that, not for the boy.

After sending a few scowls at the bleary-eyed but ever-greedy faces arrayed behind him, he tugged the reluctant mule up to the first of the hillside’s switchbacks.

And then stopped.

As the first clump of horse hoofs sounded up ahead.

The captain was in the lead. The others followed. Every one of them. Five, aye, five one by one by one by one by one.

Graves stared.

As she passed him, Skint flung a bloody mass of something at him. Reflexively, he caught it and looked down at the wilted remnants of flowers. Dripping red.

The sergeant was next. “Five graves? Not enough, sir, not by a long shot.”

Wither added more as she rode past, “Try about ninety-five more.”

Huggs snorted. “And a big one, too, and I mean big. Oh, and a tiny one, too.”

Dullbreath halted opposite Graves and looked down at him with jaded eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Graves, we kill those fuckers for a living.”

He rode on. They all did.

Graves looked down at the flowers in his hand.

People do what they do, he reminded himself. To get by. Just that, to get by.

“Two days to Piety,” said Flapp as they rode along the track on the slow climb to the distant valley mouth.

“And then—”

“Captain,” called out Dullbreath from the rear.

They all reined in and turned.

Slim was riding a mule after them, the old whore rocking back and forth like she’d never learned how to ride, and that struck Flapp as damned funny. But he didn’t laugh.

“We got us a camp follower,” said Wither. “I don’t believe it.”

Flapp opened his mouth and was about to say something, and then he stopped—he’d caught a glint of metal—from way up the trail they’d come down yesterday. “Captain! I saw a flash of steel! Halfway up to the pass!”

Everyone stiffened. Stared, breaths held.

“There! You seen it?”

And the look Skint turned on him was twisted into a mask of unholy terror. “He’s still after us! Ride, soldiers! To save your lives, ride!”