David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

The rest of the Movers had joined them at the top of the hill by then.

“What is this?” asked Danco. His hand fell reflexively to his sword.

“Don’t,” Moira said. “They mean no harm.”

“Who are they?” asked Tabar.

“The children from Omnmount, along with those who were hidden in the cottages when we arrived.”

“What are they doing here now?” asked Gull.

She looked up at the stoic man and shook her head. “Surviving.” She took a step then toward the approaching mass of humanity. They stopped in their tracks, staring at her. Moira nodded at the boy Slug, who grinned in return.

“There is food in the storehouses,” she told them, raising her voice to all. “I will be taking some of what is in that one,”-she pointed toward the third rickety building-“but the food in the other two is yours to do with as you please.”

A hundred disbelieving smiles stared back at her.

“Can we get it now?” asked Slug.

“You can,” she replied. “All of you can.”

The wary, the bedraggled, and the starving tottered past her and her Movers. Moira watched them with a smile on her face, each thankful gesture warming her heart. When they had finally reached the first of the shacks, she finally let out a breath and confronted her Movers.

“So what are you all going to do?” she asked. “Return to Port Lancaster? Find your way in a new town, with new masters? I hear there are many about in need of quality swords.”

Rodin and Danco laughed at that, and Tabar chortled, but Gull simply stared at her with that deadly serious expression of his.

“We will do neither,” Gull said. “Our place is with you, Moira. You have proven yourself to be greater than any of us.” He withdrew his bloody longsword and crossed it over his chest. “Until you are bested, our loyalty lies with you.”

“With you,” said Tabar.

“With you,” said Danco.

“With you. . always,” said Rodin.

It was an answer Moira had somewhat expected, but she was grateful for it nonetheless.

“Here’s to making a new life for ourselves up north,” she said. “But first, if you truly are dedicated to me, you need to find me a trained bird somewhere. We can kill all the bastards we want to later, but right now I need to send the last letter to Catherine before she makes my life completely fucking miserable.”

Hope and faith were two things Bardiya Gorgoros had always possessed in abundance, but even those were beginning to fade. He was exhausted, disenchanted, and in a state of constant, spine-rending pain, a creature made to stoop day and night while chained to three wagons, alone though surrounded by people, the shadow of the Black Spire falling over him as the sun crawled across the late afternoon sky.

They are toying with you, nothing more, he thought, yet he found it difficult to believe that was true. And songs of joy no longer sprung from his lips. He couldn’t save his people, no matter what he sang to them. I have failed.

His brothers and sisters in faith milled about in front of him, serving watered-down wine and salt pork to soldier and elf alike. He looked on as Tulani Hempsman and a large group of Kerrian women, their gazes empty, slaved away over large steel pots, stirring and shifting a horsemeat stew. Behind them, just in front of the Black Spire, the men of his group worked under the watchful eyes of the elves, constructing a dais from disassembled wagons. Tonight there will be a feast, Clovis Crestwell had told him. The largest feast Dezrel has seen in a thousand years.

Of all his emotions, and there were many, confusion reigned supreme. They had camped in front of the Spire for nine long days, and each morning his people suffered a different form of torture. Some days it was constant insults and beatings, whereas on others the captured were wined and dined and treated as equals, even respected. One afternoon twenty married women were gathered up and taken by soldiers in the sand while their husbands, bound and gagged, were forced to watch. The very next day those same twenty fraught women were given fine elven silks to wear while they and their husbands were waited on hand and foot by the same soldiers who had abused them the previous day. After the sun set, none knew what would happen when it climbed the opposite horizon come morning. Some begged for death; other begged to be made servants, if only to know what would come from day to day.

And for all this, it seemed Bardiya was the catalyst. On the bad days Clovis would stand before him in the morning, proclaiming him evil, disparaging Ashhur’s teachings, telling the people that what was about to befall him was his fault. On the good days he was proclaimed a king among kings, men placing a crown of woven wicker about his head. He became an object, a giant human tool and nothing more, useful only when needed. When the soldiers were kind, he was ignored; when they were not, his people lined up before him to receive his healing touch. . a touch that seemed to be failing. With every man, woman, and child he mended, he found himself growing weaker, so much so that just yesterday he had failed to restore Jacco Bendoros’s broken leg. He now watched Jacco limp across the assembly, his leg in a splint. A soldier, the one with the small scar on his cheek, helped him along.

“Do you not see what this is?” shouted a voice, and Bardiya turned, the harness around his neck creaking. The voice belonged to the elven prisoner they called Ceredon, a hundred feet away, strapped to a plank above one of the supply carts, with his arms splayed wide. The elf had been kept up there day and night, yet unlike Bardiya, it seemed nothing his captors did could stifle his rebellious spirit. He continuously railed against everyone, screaming accusations and insults until his throat ran dry and he could scream no more. But then the meals would come, another elf climbing atop the cart to feed him hard biscuits and water, and he would be right back at it again. Strangely, he was ignored.

“You are all cravens!” Ceredon proclaimed, and then he laughed aloud. “Can you not see? This is your last meal! The beast will devour you, and then the scavengers on the dunes will pick through your remains!”

Bardiya turned even further at those words, gazing toward the near rise where once he had saved Kindren Thyne, the Dezren prince, from certain death. He could see nothing but shifting white sand along the ridge, though he swore that every so often he could see a glimpse of something moving up there. He thought of the distant pursuers he had noticed on the horizon as they marched, and then of Patrick DuTaureau, the longtime friend he had turned away when he’d come to plead with Bardiya for help. At night, when Bardiya lay awake, he swore he could hear the jangling of metal and shifting sand in the distance, drawing ever closer, and though he passed it off as a trick of the frigid desert winds, a part of him still hoped it was Patrick, come to help, come to save him from himself.

No! There is no one man who can save me. There is Ashhur and there is love, or there is nothing.

If only he could truly believe that. His back began to ache once more.

“Open your eyes!” the bound elf screamed to deaf ears. “The goddess will judge you, and she will judge harshly!”

“Do not listen to him,” said a gravelly, inhuman voice. Bardiya swiveled his head slowly, every muscle screaming in agony, until he saw a hooded Clovis Crestwell squatting beside him. The first child of Karak was wearing a white shawl instead of his armor. The loose fabric hung off him, and Bardiya could see just how sickly he truly was. More skeleton than man, Clovis’s every bone was noticeable beneath his parchment-thin flesh. When he moved, his joints seemed to creak, like a wet twig being twisted. His eyes were sunken deep, and his lips had retracted, exposing his blackened gums and oversized teeth. He was death incarnate.