Part 11 (1/2)

The Bone Face cried out. His head lolled down with the pain. Blood mixed with saliva drooled out the corner of his mouth. He looked up, rage in his eyes.

s.h.i.+m held the b.l.o.o.d.y tooth out for him to see. ”I'm fully prepared to hold you prisoner for a future exchange. But it's going to cost you some information. I am not a man that will be delayed.”

The translator relayed the message in that sour, Bone Face tongue.

The Bone Face replied.

The translator arched an eyebrow. ”He says only a woman would think of taking a tooth.”

s.h.i.+m simply shook his head. ”Perhaps we should cut off something more important to him.” He pointed at the man's groin. ”Tell him we'll take one, and if he still doesn't talk, we'll take the other.”

The translator relayed the message.

Arogth looked at the second man. s.h.i.+m's performance was having its intended effect upon him.

”Where is your s.h.i.+p?” asked Argoth.

The translator spoke.

At that moment, a messenger rode into the meadow at full gallop. He called out to two soldiers searching the saddle bags of a Bone Face horse for the location of the warlord. One pointed in s.h.i.+m's direction. The messenger galloped through the tall gra.s.s to s.h.i.+m and pulled up to a halt.

”What is it now?” s.h.i.+m asked.

The messenger looked down at the prisoner. ”My lord,” he said. ”May I suggest a more private place?”

s.h.i.+m sighed. ”Probably more council instructions. Very well.” He turned to one of the men with him and pointed at the Bone Face who had lost a tooth. ”Lay out all our tools for them to see. A little think should do them good.”

”Forgive me, Lord,” the messenger said. ”But I was asked to give the message to Lord Bosser as well.”

”Very well,” said s.h.i.+m. He turned to Bosser and Argoth. ”Why don't you both come?”

They walked a number of yards away and stood in the gra.s.s.

”What is it then?” asked s.h.i.+m. His voice was so dry it made Argoth thirsty.

”Sleth have attacked at the village of Plum,” said the messenger.

Argoth tensed. That was where Purity, one of the members of the Order, lived. Had she been exposed? Lords, had she revealed the Order?

The messenger then related to the three of them how the territory lord of the Fir-Noy had organized a hunt, how the children of Sparrow the smith had escaped, and how a nightmare creature had killed one of the families in the village.

With every word Argoth's heart sank.

When the messenger finished, s.h.i.+m told him to take a message to Lords of the Fir-Noy and dismissed the man. When the messenger rode off, s.h.i.+m whistled through his teeth.

Bosser grunted and stroked his moustache the way he did when he was in deep thought.

”What do you think?” asked s.h.i.+m. ”Yet another Fir-Noy scheme to purge the Nine Clans of the Koramites, or have the Bone Faces begun to move their wizards?”

Bosser shook his head. ”I do not trust the Fir-Noy, but even they wouldn't make something like this up.” He spoke in the common Mokaddian, but his Vargon accent was still thick, rolling his r's and turning his v's into f's. He sighed. ”Dreadmen with failing weaves, Koramite spies, sleth. We're a kingdom of dust. Perhaps it's time to flee these sh.o.r.es.”

s.h.i.+m's anger rose. ”Flee? By all that's holy, I will stand my ground. I've spilt my blood here, sired children on these hills. I will triumph or die trying. I will hear no talk of flight.”

”There are young ones with full lives ahead of them,” said Bosser.

Argoth knew Bosser was thinking of his own children. The Bone Faces would make them chattel. They would rape the women and force those they thought were pretty into being concubines. And when they had finished, they would draw the Fire of the people to build their armies. They would levy taxes of Fire until people begin dropping like flies.

”Perhaps it isn't Bone Faces at all,” said Bosser. ”Maybe the Stone-wights have produced this.”

Argoth wondered. The Stone-wight ruins had never been fully explored. When the first settlers had arrived in this land, they found a number of ridges and cliffs riddled with the ruins of extensive warrens. The Teeth, a six-mile ridge of limestone hills that looked from a distance like the maw of some fearsome fanged animals, was the biggest. These weren't nasty holes in the ground, but long pa.s.sages with many chambers. Over the years, many parts had eroded and fallen in. Pools of water stood in what once must have been grand halls. Bats littered the floors in many chambers with mounds of excrement. But what was left showed the mysterious race had carved with intelligence. For lack of any other name, the settlers called the vanished race Stone-wights.

n.o.body had seen a living stone-wight. The carvings and bones found in the warrens gave a good idea of what the creatures looked like. They walked upright, some with the long hair of a musk ox, but they were clearly not any breed of human. Their heads were too long for that, as were the short tusks found in a few of the skulls.

Some said the stone-wights were the same type of creature that inhabited the desolate solitudes in the lands of the Kish. The Kish called those creatures ungar. But Argoth had tracked one many years ago, back in his dark days. He'd never caught the creature, but he had glimpsed it, and it looked nothing like what was carved in the walls of the stone-wight caves. Some saw evidence the stone-wights had wors.h.i.+pped Regret and claimed the other Six Creators had obliterated them for their wickedness. This had led Koramite and Mokaddian parents to tell dreadful tales of stone-wights to their children to keep them obedient.

But if the stone-wights had been so wicked, so dedicated to undoing the creation, then why had they delighted in carving so many beautiful things of the world above their lairs? Argoth had seen a people vacate a land because of pestilence or drought. Perhaps this same thing happened to these ancient inhabitants. Argoth suspected the woodikin, who inhabited the wild lands beyond the Gap, knew the true tale, for woodikin were recorded in at least one of the carvings. But humans had not been able to extend their borders much into the wild lands. But even if they could learn how to survive those places, there was too much hate between human and woodikin.

It was true what looked to be records had been found in the stone-wight caves, but n.o.body could interpret the language. It was as foreign as the tongue of fishes. The stone-wights were a race whose history had been swallowed up by time.

Yet something did live in the caves. The warrens were uncanny places. Odd lights were seen in some of the windows. It was said some pa.s.sageways whispered. But that did not deter the curious. A scattering of treasure was found along with the bones of odd beasts. But as the first settlers delved deeper, people began to enter and never return.

”Nothing has ever come out of the ruins but bats and snakes,” said s.h.i.+m.

”That's not true,” said Bosser.

s.h.i.+m waved off his objection. ”If anything lives in those warrens, then it's had decades of opportunities to come out and feed. Someone would have seen it before. No, this is something else.”

”Whatever it is,” said Argoth, ”it finds us in a precarious state of affairs. We can only hope for an emba.s.sy from Mokad.”

”Mokad,” said s.h.i.+m in disgust. ”Our Lords in Mokad will send nothing. The war with Nilliam has them on their hind legs. Any new Divine they might have raised has been sent to fight. If they were going to help us, they would have sent a Divine months ago. No, we cannot count on them.” He rubbed a weathered hand across the stubble on his jaw in frustration. Then he paused. ”But that doesn't mean we're lost. Sometimes extreme situations demand extreme measures.” He put his hand on Argoth's shoulder.

”What measures?” demanded Bosser. ”What have we left undone?”

s.h.i.+m looked meaningfully at Argoth. ”There are ways to combat both dreadmen and wizards, aren't there Captain? There are alliances that can be made.”

”Alliances?” asked Bosser. ”Mungo will not lend their wizards to help us.”

”I'm not talking about that type of an alliance. If the events at the village of Plum were not the result of some Bone Face plot, then that means there are . . .” He paused to find the right words. ”Other powers abroad.”

s.h.i.+m had come perilously close to speaking treason. But then s.h.i.+m was always one to take risks. s.h.i.+m's eyes glittered in his leather face. Argoth knew that look. He'd seen it a hundred times as he and s.h.i.+m had fought and drank and laughed together.

Neither Bosser nor Argoth spoke.

”Such things would require great delicacy,” s.h.i.+m continued.

”What are you talking about?” Bosser asked. ”Allying with sleth?”