James West - Reaper Of Sorrows

“Why?” Loro asked, distracted by a buxom serving girl.

She in no way seemed eager to attract attention, nor inclined to offer her flesh for coin. A soldier slapped the girl’s rounded backside. She squealed, dropped her serving tray, and ran from the common room. Ribald laughter followed her, as did the gazes of the other serving girls, all who looked as if they would rather be anywhere else.

“Something’s wrong here,” Rathe said.

Loro scowled into his empty mug. “Aye. My cup’s run dry!”

The old one-legged barkeep replaced the empty mug with another dribbling foam over the brim. Loro flipped him a copper, and the wizened fellow tucked the coin into a leather purse at his belt, then clumped off to serve a grubby miner at the other end of the bar.

Everything about Valdar seems wrong . Rathe supposed the barkeep could wear a brooding scowl all the time, but it seemed out of place, considering his custom had doubled with the arrival of Hilan men. Of the miner, he took no pleasure in his ale, but rather quaffed mug after mug in bitter silence. Missing three fingers on one hand and two from the other might have accounted for that, but Rathe thought not. He had seen men drink so before, in a bid to drown the memory of the loss of something dear. Moreover, from the serving wenches to the barkeep, to the miner, all moved through the smoky tavern as if in a daze, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped.

“I am going to talk to the prisoners,” Rathe said again. Save for the woman who had tried to make a eunuch of Mitros, he had doubts the others could tell him anything of worth.

Loro gulped from his mug. “Go ahead,” he grumbled. “I am of the mind to find a wench willing to let this old boar nuzzle her teats.” He squinted around the tavern, then back to Rathe. “It’s never too late cast all this soldiering and vengeance aside and go find our fortunes elsewhere. Mercenary or brigand, caravan guard or trader, opportunities abound in the west, all along the shores of the Sea of Muika, and beyond on the isles of Giliron.”

For the first time since Loro had mentioned that scheme, it did not offend Rathe to hear it. And for the first time, he actually imagined living such a life. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “But now is not the time.”

“Suit yourself,” Loro said. “You change your mind, don’t forget I put you up to it.”

“I won’t,” Rathe agreed.

He made his way out of the stifling tavern and into the frosty night. A double handful of cloaked soldiers from Hilan and Valdar lounged on stools at either side of the door, drinking and jesting. A few eyes met his, nods were exchanged, and the men turned back to their companions.

Rathe drew his dagger and made a show of cleaning his nails, peering at the shadows from under his eyebrows. Since arriving to Valdar, it had crossed his mind that Treon might have put a watch on him. If so, the spy was stealthy. Save for a half dozen goats wandering by on the street, the village slumbered. Of course, even during the day it had seemed bereft of normal activity.

He sheathed his dagger and stepped off the wooden walkway, heading for the prisoner wagons. For expediency, Treon had ordered the traitors locked in the wagons overnight. Since giving that order, Rathe had not seen Treon or Mitros.

“What do you want?” one of two guards demanded when Rathe came near. Unfortunately, he was one of Mitros’s men, depriving Rathe the luxury of easily sending the man off.

Seeing no point in explaining himself twice, Rathe waited for the other guard to join the first. The spirited woman who had assaulted Mitros crawled closer to the bars of the nearest wagon. Her wide eyes glowed in the moonlight, as did the guards’ bared swords.

“I have come to interrogate the prisoners,” Rathe said.

“And who are you?” the second guard asked.

“Second in command of the winged Reavers,” Rathe said.

“Ah, the Scorpion, is it?”

“I have been called that.”

“Don’t look like no king’s champion to me. What say you, Gadein?”

“Well, Caisel,” Gadein said in a philosophical tone at odds with his dullard’s low, sloping brow, “I says he’s too pretty by half to be aught but a highborn’s plaything. What happened Scorpion, did your lord tire of poking his scepter into your sweet mouth?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Rathe chuckled, stepping forward.

Put off by his light manner, their swords rose too slowly at his approach. Rathe swatted Gadein’s blade aside and slammed his fist into the man’s throat.

“Wha’ the-” Caisel managed, before Rathe wheeled and drove the heel of his hand into the man’s nose. Bone exploded, and Caisel dropped his sword and reeled away, hands clamped over his face, blood squeezing between his fingers.

Rathe spun back to a gagging Gadein and clubbed him across the back of the neck, dropping him to his knees. A viscous kick shattered the man’s jaw and sent him to the ice-crusted mud-

He whirled at a scraping sound, found Caisel coming, lips and chin coated in a running fan of blood, sword raised high to strike off Rathe’s head. In one motion Rathe dropped low, stepped inside the man’s swing, and drew his dagger. Just before his blade liberated the man’s intestines, he reversed the dagger and drove the pommel into Caisel’s groin. An explosive grunt sprayed blood from his mouth, and Rathe pummeled him again, ending whatever hope the brute had of siring children.

Wheezing, Caisel staggered back, hands cupping his groin. Rathe stalked after him, mind afire with a hundred ways to destroy his enemy. Caisel made a whimpery noise and fled. Rathe followed a handful of paces before convincing himself that slaughtering idiots was not his purpose this night.

Turning back to the wagons, he sheathed his dagger, and wiped Caisel’s blood off his brow and cheeks.

“Have you come to free us?” the dark-haired woman asked. The others, all pressed against the bars of their rolling prison, gazed at Rathe in varying states of bewildered madness.

“What’s your name?”

The woman gazed at him in confusion. “Erryn.”

“Well, Erryn, why would I free a traitor?”

“I am no traitor,” she snarled. “None of us are.”

“Then how did you end up here?”

“Mitros decided that if I would not bed him or his pet wolves, then I was not worth keeping in Valdar. These others are here because they are witless, and so a burden. If Sanouk had not ordered us brought to Hilan, we were to be hanged.”

“Tell me about Valdar and Mitros,” Rathe invited.

“Are you mad? Caisel, that goat’s festering bunghole, will already be back at the barracks, telling how you attacked him. There’s no time. Free us!”

Rathe tapped his toe, waiting. She might be right about Caisel, but he hoped the man was proud and shrewd enough to decide that it was better to keep quiet about how one man had bested him and Gadein.

Erryn shoved her face as far as it would go between the iron bars, trying to see up the road. Nothing stirred. She sat back with a disgusted oath, lines of dirty rust running up her cheeks. “What do you want to know?”

“I have been in many villages,” Rathe said, “but I have never been to one quite like Valdar-”

“I was a child when Lord Sanouk came north,” Erryn interrupted. “Until then, Valdar was like any other village, save that we serve Onareth by mining gold, rather than growing turnips. After Lord Sanouk came he named that pig, Mitros, Reeve of Valdar. Since then, we have been slaves to the brigands we once helped defend the north against.”

“You are saying that Mitros conspires with brigands?” Rathe asked, considering what Aeden had told him and Loro outside Valdar.

“No, you fool, I am saying Mitros is a brigand. Him and all his men once skulked in the forests, preying on shipments of ore when they could, and raiding caravans when they could not.”