Greg Keyes - Lord of Souls

“Yeah,” the kid said, “but I ain’t a boy.”

Mazgar studied the short brown bangs, snub nose, and slight frame.

“The girl, then,” she corrected.

“It’s all right,” Brennus said.

“Come on,” the girl said, hopping out. “I’m seven now. I can walk as good as anyone and better than most.”

Brennus shook his head, but in the next step he stumbled.

“Well, considering that,” he sighed.

“Right,” Mazgar said. “We need you fresh when the wormies catch up to us, and that’s no lie.”

She expected a quip back from him, but he just nodded and started trying to clamber in. She gave him a little shove to help him along.

“There,” she said. Then she looked down at the girl. “Think you can keep up with me?”

“I can keep up with anybody,” she said.

“We’ll see about that.”

“You’re an orc,” the girl said.

“Is she, now?” Brennus said, perking up a little. “Here I’ve been thinking that somewhere out there a bear and a pig are living in wedded bliss.”

“What do you mean?” the girl asked.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” Mazgar said. “He’s only trying to get me to mash his face in.”

“Why?”

“Some people are funny that way,” she replied.

“Well, I’d like to see it!”

“Maybe when he’s feeling a little better. What’s your name?”

“Lorcette, but everybody calls me Goblin.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, they just always have. Mom always said I had ears like a goblin.”

“Huh,” Mazgar said. “Now that I look, you sort of do. Which one of these is your mom?”

“Oh, she’s gone,” Goblin said. “Died when I was six.”

“Mine died when I was seven,” Mazgar said. “At the sack of Orsinium. They say she killed thirty before death took her.”

“My mom didn’t die in a battle. She just got sick.” The girl cocked her head. “Who was your mom fighting?”

“Redguards and Bretons,” Mazgar replied.

“You became an Imperial soldier because of her?”

“I became a soldier because of her. I became an Imperial soldier because if it hadn’t been for the Seventh and Fifteenth legions, a lot more of us would have died. They put themselves in harm’s way for us, got the survivors to safety in Skyrim.”

“Kind of like what you’re doing now.”

Mazgar remembered the terror, the chaos, the walk that went on for weeks through bitter cold-and never having enough to eat. “Let’s hope not,” she said.

“What’s a wormy?” Goblin asked after a few moments of silence.

“What?”

“You said something about wormies catching up with us.”

“Yeah. That’s what I call ’em. They used to be people-then they died and some kind of witchery brought them back, and now they’re all full of maggots and such-so I call ’em wormies.”

She thought the girl would look scared, but instead she looked thoughtful.

“My mom is buried back there,” she said. “Do you think they’ll bring her back?”

“Nah, they like fresher bodies than that. Anyway, it wouldn’t really be your mom, just your mom’s body with a daedra in it.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“To conquer Tamriel, it looks like,” Mazgar replied. “But I wish whoever it is who had the itch to do that would have chosen less smelly troops.”

“I could say the same about some of his majesty’s elections,” Brennus said.

Mazgar was preparing a retort, but then she saw his eyes were closed. “Mauloch,” she muttered. “Even when he’s asleep.”

They marched along like that, with the girl prattling and keeping good pace. When night fell, however, she and Brennus switched places. The mage seemed much better for the rest, and Goblin dropped off pretty swiftly.

“You let that girl talk your ear off all day,” Brennus said, “and you never once looked like you were going to clout her in the head. That’s not like you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Remember that kid that hung around our camp on the way up-that little mountain town? The one you threatened to tie to a tree by his bowels?”

“Well, he was annoying.”

“About the same as this one, really,” he said. “Something’s changed in you.”

“In me?” she snorted.

“I think maybe you’re starting to think about spitting out a few little bear-pigs yourself, that’s what I think.”

“You’re more out of your mind than usual,” she said. “Children? Me?”

“Just an observation,” he rejoined. “You’re not getting any younger, and we’ve lost a lot of comrades. Makes you think.”

“Makes you think,” she said. “And way too much.”

“Still-”

“Rest it!” she snapped.

She must have said it louder than she meant to, for a number of heads turned her way.

She couldn’t tell if the look on Brennus’s face was smugness or contrition.

Humans.

A bit after noon the next day, Mazgar saw the high steeple of the chapel of Arkay peeking up through the trees below them. On foot they would have been there quickly, but the wagons were having a hard time going downhill. Mazgar felt the familiar itch of danger at her back growing more and more pronounced, and glanced often over her shoulder, though Coals and Merthun were on the rearguard and both were more than competent.

But it wasn’t Coals and Merthun who sent up the alarm-it came from the north, their left flank, from Na-Nasha and Glavius.

The two men arrived a few moments behind their signal.

“They’ll cut us off from Cheydinhal if we don’t hurry,” Na-Nasha said, wriggling his reptilian fingers oddly, as he often did when agitated.

“That’s it for the wagons,” Falcus said. He turned to the refugees. “We’re going to make it, but we’re going to have to run. Leave everything, you hear? Cheydinhal is just down this hill, not even half a mile.”

Mazgar dumped her backpack and reached for Goblin, but the girl shook her head. “I told you, I can run. Carry Riff Belancour, there-he’s got a funny foot.”

Mazgar nodded and took up the boy, who was probably about six and weighed half as much as her pack. The horses were cut loose and the most elderly put up on them in tandem. Mothers clutched their infants.

Falcus set the pace, a slow trot, and the boy on Mazgar’s shoulders giggled, obviously thinking it was all a game of some kind. True to her boast, Goblin kept up, running alongside her.

Falcus picked up the tempo a little as they burst into a field; the walls of Cheydinhal were visible through the next line of trees.

But the wormies were coming fast, toward their left flank, ranged in a rough phalanx, and Mazgar could easily make the calculation that they weren’t going to make it. A few of the townsfolk screamed or began to cry, but most broke into full-on, terrified flight.

Falcus began shouting orders, but Mazgar couldn’t make them out. A moment later, though, Na-Nasha, Coals, Casion, and Sugar-Lick broke off and formed a semicircle with Kuur behind them.

“Captain!” she shouted. “Permission to join-”

“Denied,” Falcus shouted back. “Keep with your charge. Make it count. Go!”

She exchanged a glance with Brennus.

“I’m with you,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.”

Mazgar glanced down at Goblin, felt the weight on her back.

“I don’t make the orders,” she snarled.

So they ran.

She looked back once before they reached the trees, because she felt the heat on her back and heard the dull thud of an explosion. She couldn’t see anything but black, greasy smoke and billowing flame.

They came through the trees into the clearing around the walls. The gate was off to the right. It was open, and a picket of about a fifty soldiers was formed up there.