She was already mastering the awful pronunciation. Amusement flickered on some of the ugly green faces even before Giant Feller translated.
Then young Blood Beak scowled and jabbered something. Everyone looked at Gath.
“Need captive,” Giant Feller explained apologetically. He pointed to Blood Beak. “Is killing ‘soldiers all day. Has not shown worthy, er, manhood marks.” Then he nodded at Gath, and shrugged. “Is only man left.”
Inos recalled with horror how close Death Bird had come to earning his tattoos by killing Rap. She sensed a horrible irony, as if the Gods were about to play a monstrous joke on her—like father, like son!
“Is son of friend of Death Bird!”
“Die slow. Is great honor.”
“Oh, no it’s not!” Inos screamed.
5
The rose garden was the worst. After that, nothing could ever seem bad again.
The Kinvale rose garden had been one of the wonders of Julgistro. Every summer gentlefolk came leagues to view the rose garden. In the golden days of youth before her father died, Inos had played skittles there; she had listened to music on warm evenings, and blushed at Andor’s polished compliments. Now women were being raped wholesale there. Small fires burned where men and the remains of men lay staked out between the bushes, mingling an acrid smell of burning rose twigs with savory odors of roast meat. Spectators applauded and offered advice as boys continued to dismember the living in ingenious ways. In the background, the great house was a blackened ruin, still dirtying the sky with smoke.
Upright, Gath was so dizzy he could barely walk, but to show weakness before goblins was to invite instant execution. He staggered along, leaning on Kadie. Inos followed, trying to make sense of Giant Feller’s guttural jabber.
It had been a very close-run thing. She had protested that Gath was already too weak to make a suitable victim for Blood Beak, but the young lout had decided that a king’s son was ideal material for a king’s son to work on. Only when the case seemed hopeless had some goblin soldiers arrived with a husky young gardener they had just discovered hiding in a hayloft. Gath had been saved, but Inos was certain she would never sleep again. That other boy’s face would haunt her forever, and the certainty that she could not have rescued him would be no comfort, because she had lacked the courage to try.
Now she was being treated as an honored guest, being shown the rose garden. Not being taken to Death Bird. Death Bird was not at Kinvale, which seemed to be a minor training exercise, or perhaps a rest and recreation posting. Death Bird was at the front.
“Imp soldiers will come soon,” she said cautiously.
Giant Feller laughed, showing yellow teeth. “No imp soldiers.”
She was not fool enough to mention the IXth at Shaldokan. She would let the invaders discover that for themselves! But she soon learned that the situation was much worse than she had realized. Giant Feller had no qualms about telling her the de tails, he boasted of them. The goblins had not come through the defenses at Pondague, they had outflanked them by an unmapped pass and fallen on the Imperial forces from the rearmassacre! They had ambushed the IXth and XXIst legion: somewhere south of Kinvale—more massacre! The entire imp ish army in northwest Julgistro had been wiped out, or so he insisted. Now Shaldokan itself was invested. It would fall within a day, he assured her, and then the goblins would cross the frozen Paddi River. The road to Hub lay open before them.
Yes, it was bluster, but barbarian flavoring did not hide the taste of cold truth. This was Death Bird’s destiny, which had been predicted for twenty years. The Gods’ decree was being fulfilled at last and there was nothing any mortal could do abou it, except maybe the imperor. The ultimate limits of the disaster had always lain outside even Rap’s ken.
Inos thought of the unlamented Proconsul Yggingi who had started this war in trying to acquire a word of power that did no exist. She thought of Rap’s misgivings about the coming of the millennium. She thought of the dwarvish evil he had seen brewing in the ambience . . . Anything was better than thinking of the people dying all around her in the rose garden.
That night the royal guests from Krasnegar were entertainers by the goblin chiefs in the Kinvale stableyard. Death Bird’s deputy in the Kinvale area was his nephew, Quiet Stalker, an unusually tall goblin, and dangerously young. Inos did not like the way he looked at Kadie, but then she did not like the way any goblin looked at—or to—anyone!
Giant Feller explained that Krasnegar had a female chief. The freakish institution presented social difficulties and provoked much garbled discussion. In the end Quiet Stalker issued a decree, which was then translated: Inos and Kadie would eat in the corner, away from the central fire that was the place of honor Gath would sit with the chiefs as official Krasnegarian delegate
Gath’s ash-pale face broke into a smile at that news. “Barbarians!” his sister whispered furiously.
“Sorry, Kadie. You just have to accept that you’re naturally inferior! ”
“Furs off!” Giant Feller said.
“What?” Gath stared in horror at the strip of leather the goblin was offering him. As the fire blazed up in the middle of the courtyard, the assembled chiefs were pulling off their buckskins. That shoelace was formal wear.
“Now we’ll see who’s inferior!” Kadie crowed, and flounced off to the designated women’s quarters by the water trough. Shuddering with cold, Gath removed Inos’ fur robe and his doublet and his sweater and his shirt and his undershirt. He handed them to his mother with an appalled glance, and she turned to leave while he still had pants on. There was nothing else she could do.
Grunts of surprise from the goblins . . . “Say about arms!” Giant Feller demanded.
“Had a fight,” Gath admitted. The chiefs crowded around to admire the raw swellings on his knuckles and the purple-yellow bruises covering his forearms. Suddenly he had some status.
Inos headed for the horse trough. When she looked back, he was clad in the skimpy loincloth, kneeling close to the bonfire. The goblins’ skin looked dark green in firelight. Gath’s gaunt shape was a shimmering pale wraith in their midst, but already turning pinker. His far side, which she could not see, was probably blue.
“Oh, well, the doctor did say to keep him warm,” she said. But Kadie was past seeing jokes. Kidnapped princesses were fine in romances. Rap had always joked that Kadie, were she ever to be carried off by a handsome imp on a white horse or even a jotunn in a longship, would not merely enjoy every minute of it, but would also instruct her captor in the correct procedures. Reality was different. She was understandably crushed by the goblins’ barbarity. Her eyes were dry, but they had a strange, jittery look to them. Pale and shivering, she huddled close to her mother, and barely nibbled the abundant roast cow that was brought across to them. And yet she was coping very well for her age.
Inos kept an eye on Gath. He was managing to sit erect. He had no need to make conversation, of course, only stay conscious.
And Inos herself, who had so royally blundered into calamity? She decided just to keep her mind on the children. Nothing else was as important—not her kingdom, abandoned and perhaps falling into chaos, nor her husband, lost somewhere in an Impire tottering before the onslaught of the millennium, nor the uncountable victims of this war. She could do nothing about any of those. She must concentrate on the twins and herself. They were three penniless refugees among thousands, perhaps millions, and they had no way home. This was the worst disaster of her life.
After the food came the entertainment, which was provided by Death Bird’s son and the gardener. Then a couple of captured legionaries were brought in and the chiefs took turns with them. Fortunately, Gath was not invited to share in the fun, although he had to watch. Inos and Kadie were luckier, being required only to listen. For Inos this yard was a scrapbook of happy memories of life and fun among the Kinvale horses. She knew every stall in the stable, and could remember most of the horses that had inhabited them all those years ago. Now it echoed with screams that went on and on and on, for hours. Die! she kept thinking. Die! Die!
It was still not as bad as the rose garden.
Finally, when the last man choked to death on his own blood, Inos and Kadie were summoned to the center, to stand outside the circle of chiefs. The men sat cross-legged on the dirt, grinning up at her with their angular eyes and fearsome teeth. As warriors, they had much to grin about. She positioned herself as close to her son as she could, trying not to look at the caked blood in his flaxen thatch. Logs crackled and sparked on the fire—chair legs and picture frames, mostly. She was on the downwind, smoky side, of course.