Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

“Would that be honorable behavior toward a guest?” he asked warily.

“Honor is decided at reckonings.”

“You’re lying!” Vork screamed.

“Oh, surely! I am a runt, and probably being soft in the head, also.”

“His father is not coming to the moot,” Gath said.

“This year!” Twist smiled his tangle of teeth meanly. “And there are brothers. But Thane Kragthong will have to come next year and challenge for revenge, is not correct? Must be waiving diplomatic immunity then. Or if he is sending up older sons first, then Drakkor is killing them off one by one.” He clapped his little hands. “Is no one better with an ax at a reckoning than my brother, not since Thane Kalkor, our father, many years ago.” He smirked proudly.

God of Horrors!

Vork whimpered. “Will he? I mean, blind me? Or cut off . . . do what you said?”

Twist chuckled. “Is depending how much your father is valuing you. Good son or not-much-good son? He is aware you are here?”

“Yes!”

“Then am hoping for your sake Thane Kragthong is now sending message, offering much land and peoples for return of son in good condition.”

Vork uttered a long wail. He doubled over and buried his face in his hands. He made muffled sobbing noises.

I did warn him this might be dangerous, Gath thought uneasily. And if Thane Kragthong did ransom his son at some incredible cost, what would he do to that wayward son when he got him back?

“And what about me?” This unforeseen living was very hard on the nerves.

“Ah.” Twist eased his crooked body on the chair as if he hurt. ”You are thane of Krasnegar!”

Gath’s world lurched. “No, I’m not! My mother is thane of Krasnegar!” Thanes got challenged to reckonings!

With axes. Against Drakkor? Oh, God of Slaughter!

The silver-faced cripple shook his head. “Holindarn was. Women cannot be thanes. Whether they are able to pass on titles to sons . . . is being argument usually settled at the moot.”

Gath should have thought of this! If Dad were still alive—but he had not reported on the magic scrolls for months, so he couldn’t be. And to expect the thanes to accept that a faun could ever be a thane was beyond the limits of Gath’s imagination anyway. Suppose Drakkor demanded that he surrender Krasnegar to him? He wondered if he’d turned the same milk color as Vork.

This journey had obviously been the worst error of Gath’s life, since he was not likely to have time to make many more. “Vork,” he said—and his voice sounded painfully hoarse, “how well can you swim?”

Twist laughed shrilly and passed into a painful fit of raspy coughing. There could not be much room in that shrunken chest for lungs. What a nasty specimen he was! “You are also,” he said when he caught his breath—”you are also son of Rap Thaneslayer.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are not knowing? Your father killed our father at a reckoning, in Hub.”

Vork raised his head and stole a horrified look at Gath, who wondered why the little hovel had suddenly become so cold. His feet felt as if the floor was deep in ice-water.

“That was a formal reckoning! Your father claimed to be rightwise-born ruler of my mother’s realm. My father was her champion, and he won!” Somehow that argument did not sound as convincing as he had expected it to.

Twist rubbed his hands in glee. “But reckonings do not set precedents! My brother can repeat my father’s claim anytime—only now it will be against you!”

Gath met the spiteful smirk as steadily as he could. “Then obviously he will kill me. I hope it gives him great satisfaction and wins him great honor.”

Twist pouted, as if disappointed by the reaction. “He does not need a reckoning. The matter is being a blood feud. Your father is sorcerer and was using sorcery to kill ours!”

Gath straightened up. “Oh, no! If my dad killed yours, then he did not cheat!”

“You were there?” Mockery gleamed in the ice-pale eyes. “No. But the wardens would have condemned him for using sorcery against a jotunn raider. Warlock Raspnex told me that your father was a sorcerer, also, and it was he who tried to cheat with sorcery and the Gods struck him down!”

“Oh, you talk with warlocks?”

“Yes I do. Besides,” Gath shouted, “I knew my dad! He never cheated!”

Twist smiled. “Even to save his life?”

Hateful, warped little runt! “No. Never! He never cheated!”

“You speak in past tenses?”

Something took hold of Gath’s heart and wrenched. “I fear my father is dead!” he whispered.

The skald’s head moved. His neck was so bent that a nod was hard to distinguish from a shake. It seemed to be a shake. Hope? Could this agony be hope? “You’re a sorcerer!” Gath shouted.

Twist’s youthful face contorted in horror and he threw up his hands. “If you are saying outside this house that Thane Drakkor keeps a tame sorcerer, then he will be required to kill you! Or kill you if you are saying our father was, even.”

Unbearable hope! Gath could barely spit out the words.

“That’s not shielding, you’re blocking my prescience! You sing with a harp when you can hardly breathe because your chest is so twisted you are a sorcerer and you are saying my dad is still alive?” Gath leaped across the little room and fell on his knees before the cripple’s chair. “Dad’s alive? Really? You are telling me this truly?”

Vork shrieked in alarm. “Gath, you’re crazy! If he was a sorcerer he wouldn’t go round looking like that!”

“Yes, he is!” Gath said. “Aren’t you, Twist? You’re a real sorcerer and you know about my dad? Please. Twist, please!” He was almost crawling into the skald’s lap.

Twist reached out a hand no larger than a child’s and playfully ruffled Gath’s unruly hair. “King Rap is alive, Thane Gath. He is leading the war against the evil usurper.”

The candle winked out of its own accord and the kettle began to boil furiously.

3

Gath had come to Nordland to ask the Thanes to hunt down sorcerers, and he had found an actual sorcerer already. Truly the Gods were with him!

And Dad was alive! Gath never seriously considered that the skald might be lying when he told of Warlock Olybino and dragons. Sorcerers had no need to lie. Two or three days later, Twist commented on that.

The pair of them were back in his hovel and Twist himself was kneeling by his water bucket, washing. Undressed, he looked as if he had been stamped on by a giant in his childhood and ground underfoot.

Gath sprawled on the roll of bedding, nursing a very unbalanced stomach and the worst hammering headache of his life. Skuas had been nesting in his mouth.

“You, Atheling,” the skald said, “are a most unusual mundane.”

Gath groaned, detecting a lecture coming. “Because I’m dead and can’t stop suffering?” The backs of his eyes hurt the worst.

“Because you are probably the world’s greatest expert on sorcerers! No, I am being serious! You saw Atheling Vork. His teeth were chattering when he learned about me, and yet his own sister is a sorceress. Mundanes are never knowing what you know.” Twist grinned, drooling and showing his awful bird’s nest of teeth.

“What do I know?”

“How sorcery works. How the sorcerous think. I have been watching. I drop a hint on the water and you yank out a trout every time.”

“But I traveled for months in a wagon train with five sorcerers. There were six on board Gurx.”

The skald chuckled. “And how many mundanes have ever done that? You are without guile, yet keep your own counsel, which is being a most unusual combination! You are having a slight talent of your own. You invite confidences. I say you are the greatest mundane authority on sorcery the world has ever seen!”

Phooey! “When are you going to restore my prescience?” Gath asked grumpily.

“I am sorcerer here,” Twist said shrewishly. “I do not like competition. Besides, you are not wanting it back at the moment, Son of Rap. You are much happier not knowing how long you’re going to feel like you are feeling now.”

Time seemed to stop moving while Gath was in Gark. The sun rolled around the sky without ever setting. Longships came and longships went; the feasting in the mead hall never stopped. Men ate when they felt hungry, drank all the time, and slept when they did not mean to.

By the time Gath and Vork reached the hall, that first day, greasy carcasses sparked and smoked on creaking spits, Thane Trakrog and the crew of Seadragon were already two-thirds drunk, and the great sunlit chamber rocked with mirth and boasting. Gulls soared through, riding the wind. Swallows jabbered angrily but unheard from the high rafters. A few goats wandered unnoticed within the crowd, but there were no dogs. Jotnar hated dogs.