Young Blood Beak was disconcertingly unpredictable. At times he swaggered with the worst, relishing his newly won adult status and the resulting right to join in the raping and torturing. At times he tried to assert his royal status as the king’s son—Eye Eater would tolerate his antics for a while, and then deflate him with mockery. At other times, the youngster showed another side of himself, a keen intelligence and a desire to learn. He would trot for hours alongside one or other of the Krasnegarians, questioning shrewdly. He wanted to know how and why they had been at Kinvale, where Rap was, why Inos was going to visit his father, and a million other things. At first Inos pretended not to understand much of what he was saying, but as the days went by that excuse began to wear thin. She worried what dangerous information he was worming out of Kadie and Gath. She worried even more about the way he looked at her daughter. Several times he told Inos that in his opinion every chief should include at least one chief’s daughter among his wives.
For the first two days Gath sprawled on his horse like a tethered corpse. Then his head injury seemed to heal overnight, and he rapidly became his normal placid, contented self. Of course neither he nor Kadie had ever seen countryside like this. They did not know how it should be. The hills, the woods, the ruins were all equally new to them, and equally fascinating. They marveled that the weather should be so warm, although it was midwinter and the ditches were frozen solid. They were impressed by the comparative absence of snow and the dark furrowed fields. They were young and they were having an adventure. They hardly seemed to comprehend their mother’s abhorrence.
Welcome though it was, their lack of concern distressed and puzzled her at first. Eventually she decided that Kadie was armored by her romantic ideals, turning a blind eye to the atrocities just as she had ignored the bland tedium of Krasnegar. But Kadie had killed a man. Tentatively Inos inquired if that worried her.
“He was evil!” Kadie snapped.
“Yes, he was.”
“Then he got what he deserved, didn’t he?”
End of conversation. Romantic heroines were within their rights in slaying villains. Indeed it was their duty. A discussion of real-world ethics would have to wait for better days.
As for Gath—a seer had no need to worry about the immediate future; by nature he did not worry about tomorrows either. Inos was grateful for her nestlings’ immunity, but she knew that every day was moving them farther from the sea that was their only road homeward. War rode ahead of them and Famine trod behind. She could not believe that any of them would ever see Krasnegar again. She steadfastly refused to think about the dread prophecy a God had given Rap.
Six days’ riding . . . five nights huddled with her children under hedges or in stinking burned-out ruins, which did no more than keep the wind off. The goblins were indifferent to the cold. Some of them would sleep on the frozen ground without as much as a shirt. They existed on a diet of scorched meat. Inos was terrified that she might sicken and die, leaving her two fledglings alone in this hell of war.
At the sixth sunset, though, Eye Eater led his troop over a hill and into a valley that twinkled with campfires from side to side like a starry sky. Inos caught a glimpse of a spectacular row of arches against the darkling sky and guessed that it must be the famous Kribur aqueduct. At least she knew where she was, then, although the information was not very helpful. Kribur had always been regarded as being about three weeks’ journey east of Kinvale.
As the weary horses stumbled down the slope, a heavy rumble of noise arose to meet them—deep male voices, frightened cattle, and already the screams of victims. Inos was astounded by the size of the army. She knew roughly how much space a legion needed for its camp, and she thought these savages were packed in much more tightly than imps would be. Even so, the valley would have held six or seven legions, and a legion was five thousand men.
Lights flickered on the road ahead; the newcomers were about to be challenged.
“Tents!” Kadie shouted joyfully. “Mom, they have tents!”
“That’s certainly a welcome sight!” Inos called back.”I didn’t expect goblins to have tents, somehow.”
“They don’t,” said Gath, at her side.
She turned to him with a pang of apprehension—she knew the voice he used when he was about to hurl a lightning bolt. “Then who do?”
“Dwarves, Mom. They’ve joined up with their allies.”
“Gods!” Inos said. Gods save the Impire now.
4
Inos had met Death Bird a couple of times at Timber Moot, but those encounters had been brief, and he had been anonymous inside his winter buckskins, showing little more than two angular, suspicious eyes. She remembered him best from a faroff night at Kinvale, when she had spied on his farewell to Rap. The goblin had gone off from there to meet his destiny, and that same evening she had departed for Krasnegar to claim her throne. Then he had been a youth, callow and unsure of himself. Now she was a refugee, and he was a conqueror.
He was holding court in a burned-out barn. The stone walls remained; the roof had gone. In the darkness outside, a multitude patiently awaited his pleasure. Inside, a bonfire blazed, casting strange shadows on the sooty walls, showering sparks upward to the stars. He sat cross-legged on the ground, wearing only a leather loincloth. His huge chest and massive limbs shone wetly green in the flickering light. He had an unusually dense mustache and beard for a goblin, and tattoos obscured the upper half of his face—even now only the menacing glitter of his eyes was readable. The thick black braid of his hair hung over his left shoulder and down to his crotch.
Flanking him, forming a semicircle beyond the fire, were four goblins and five dwarves. Gray-skinned, glowering, graybearded, the dwarves wore chain mail and conical helmets. Dwarves were mostly shorter than goblins, but they seemed taller when sitting. They also tended to be broader, but none of these would match Death Bird in sheer bulk.
Inos stood in the doorway within a huddle of other waiting supplicants, and tried to work up a royal anger. She was a queen! She should be granted precedence over everybody else. This was no Imperial court, though, and she did not think outrage would gain her anything at all. She was exhausted, trembling with weariness, barely able to stand; she was also unbearably filthy and unkempt and very close to her physical limits. The stench of the greased goblins around her was nauseating. Only the presence of Gath and Kadie sustained her. She was needed!
This was the first meeting of the allies in the field, and the joint command had many matters to settle. Two chancellors held the door, one goblin and one dwarf, and they argued continuously in whispers—one harsh and guttural, the other dissonant, a couple of octaves lower. When the leaders heard two dwarvish petitioners in succession, the goblin won agreement that it was Blood Beak’s turn.
He stalked forward arrogantly, skirting the fire. He knelt before his father and touched his face to the filth of the floor. He sat back on his heels and waited.
Death Bird studied him for a moment, then turned to the dwarf on his right and said something that Inos did not catch. The dwarf responded in a sepulchral rumble, nodding. Introductions followed, but the words were again lost in barbaric pronunciation, the crackle of the fire, and the sea-swell noise of the great army outside. Inos wished she could just swoon and stay unconscious for a century,’like the enchanted princesses in Kadie’s romance books.
Why had she forgotten? She looked up at the pinched face beside her. She did not like what she saw—fatigue, and windbum, and a febrile brightness in his smoky gray eyes. He had spent a week in the saddle when he should have been in bed. “Gath? What happens?”
He was frowning, biting his lip. “Mm? Oh, they joke a bit, but they make us welcome.”
Relief! “Then why are you looking so worried?”
He blinked. “Am I?” He cracked a wry smile, but it barely touched eyes blurred with exhaustion. He looked very young, and vulnerable. ”Because I’m going to be worried.”
Weariness made her testy. “What does that mean?”
“Dunno. I’m going to foresee something bad soon.”
“What?”
“If I knew that then I’d know why I’m going to be worried, wouldn’t I?”
All the leaders’ eyes had turned to stare in her direction. Evidently Blood Beak had broken the news. He was scrambling to his feet, departing, and she could see his satisfied smile. Death Bird himself was inscrutable, but the dwarves were muttering to one another in disbelief. This was it.