My dream, anyway.
All they know about humans is hunting us, hurting us, and eating us. They must be thinking, what’s that skinny little sonofabitch doing just standing there?
Is my face in shadow? I hope not. I hope they can see me smile.
They eye me with predatory wariness. I can almost smell what they want to do: circle me, check me out, get a good sniff, a nice leisurely hyena lookaround before they mob me for the kill. But like I told the partners: sure, they’re predators, but they’re not animals-and they’re too goddamn smart to get within easy bowshot of the perimeter wall until they have some idea what’s going on.
Which is good. Every second they hesitate is another second for Pretornio to work his wargod juju on the porters. Which is the point of this charade, after all. Well. .
That’s what I told the others, anyway.
Is it so wrong to want one jack-racking balls-to-the-wall setpiece before I die?
That’s all I’m after. One good fucking scene.
This better be it. Don’t think I’ll get another.
Hot. Cold. Numb. Tingling. My heart stutters. My right kneecap jumps like a rat trapped inside my leg. There’s a roaring in my ears that makes no sound at alclass="underline" I can hear my breath going short and smoky, hear the ghost whisper of the bone-dry breeze, hear some kind of prairie chicken scratching at the scrub twenty yards away. My nose feels like it’s packed full of sand, but I can still smell sunbaked dust and my own sweat. This could be fear. I can’t tell. Can you be so scared that it makes you happy?
And not just happy: I’ve got a hard-on like I could break boards with my dick.
Now one Black Knife starts forward from the vanguard. He struts a little, easy, loose-jointed with exaggerated arrogance. Dominance display: I can almost smell the testosterone. Some of the tension uncoils in my guts. The swagger’s overdone.
This’ll be an up-and-comer. A bachelor out to rack up style points in front of the big dogs. I’ve seen better. Shit, I’ve done better.
Y’know, given laboralls and cosmetic surgery, this puppy’d be right at home in my old neighborhood. That must be why I’m turning comfortable out here: the Boedecken badlands aren’t all that different from the streets I grew up on. I’ve spent most of my life surviving pack-hunters more dangerous than these.
Watching him swagger toward me, I know exactly what the rules are.
He stops a little more than halfway here, squints my way, then shrugs and turns his back to me. It’s an ogrillo dare, part of his dominance display: dismissing me as a threat.
I keep smiling. My cheeks hurt.
All four of them.
Still giving me his back, he ostentatiously strings his recurved compound bow. A theatrical flourish extracts an arrow; he holds the bow high over his head as he nocks the arrow and draws the string, making sure I get a great view. Then in one smooth motion he turns and fires and I just stand here grinning like somebody stapled my lips to my teeth.
The arrowhead chips sparks off a stone an arm’s length in front of my left foot.
Like I said: I know the rules.
His squint turns appreciative, and his trifurcate upper lip draws back from his tusks. Hoots that might be approval come faintly from the pack of Black Knives back at the fold. He paces toward me, nocking another arrow. From seventy yards or so, he lets fly. The arrow hisses past my right ear.
This fucker can shoot.
I open my hands invitingly, beckoning for him to try again. Closer.
Those hoots from the Black Knives are louder now. They’re starting to sound derisive. The bowstud’s face darkens, and he calls to me: “Paggnakkid razlim nezz, paggtakkunni.”
Y’know, it never occurred to me that these cocksmokes might not speak Westerling.
He paces in another twenty yards, and there’s nothing theatrical about him now. He draws and fires without aiming and I let breath hiss from my lips and my legs go slack and my arms flop loose and I look at his eyes beyond the arrow’s sizzling rush as my right hand flicks up from thigh to face and closes on the arrowshaft, which burns skin as it skids to a stop along my palm. Its steel point stares at me, an inch from my eye.
No speakee? No problem. This is what you call nonverbal communication.
I spin the arrow through my fingers like a baton. Should pretty well conceal the electric shiver jolting out of my adrenals. At Garthan Hold, training arrows have sandbag heads.
Hoo.
Live points are. . a whole different world.
Hoo.
All right, then.
Now. More nonverbiage-
I balance the arrow, head down, on the tip of my left forefinger, and have an agonizing half second’s vision of just how stupid I’m gonna look if I don’t pull this off before I shrug a silent Fuck it anyway and let fly: leaving the arrow to hang in a blink-long Wile E. Coyote pause in midair, I throw myself into a backspin that whips my right heel through a horizontal arc to strike the middle of the arrowshaft. The shaft snaps around my heel.
The halves tumble away from each other to clatter into the rocks. The prairie chicken thing takes flight with an indignant skrill.
Ogrillo eyes track the pieces’ skitter, and when they skip back to me I spread my empty hands-
And take a deep curtain-call bow.
Hot staggering fuck. How good did that feel?
My grin isn’t fake anymore. I’ve got the flavor now. The scent’s in my nose and it’s setting my head on fire. This is what it’s all about. This right here.
This is Being a Star.
Is anything better?
Huh.
Except-
Where’s my goddamn applause?
Maybe my applause is the deliberate caution-just short of open reluctance-with which the ogrillo puts down his bow and slips his quiver off his belt. The way he pulls his spear before he starts toward me, like he needs the weight of its shaft in his hands to keep his pecker up. Maybe it’s the thick dry slide of his plum-colored tongue around his tusks, and the way he never takes his eyes off me as he approaches.
Applause enough, I guess.
The Black Knives behind him edge closer, working their way down the fold. They spread into a wide arc like an infantry skirmish line, flanks curving toward the city.
If Spearboy here doesn’t start the party pretty damn soon, the Black Knife line will envelop the little rise where I stand. Which is gonna suck for me, star or not. Maybe I should have let Marade handle this part after all.
A last stand on a hilltop surrounded by ogrilloi is probably her idea of sex.
As Spearboy stalks up the face of my rise, that whole “should have let Marade” idea starts sounding better and better.
He’s huge.
Secondhanding a couple Hammets and the Barand have not remotely prepared me for this fucker’s sheer immensity. Up close, in the flesh, it’s like turning a corner and bumping into something that ought to be extinct.
Seven feet tall. Four feet wide. Wrinkled grey-green hide that covers biceps bigger than my head. Those sun-yellowed tusks. His goddamn fingernails. .
Fighting claws like shortswords. Filed sharp.
Painted black.
That spear of his, more like-what do you call it? — a bill or something: eight or nine feet long, and at least three feet of it is blade as wide as my hand, with a rear-pointed barb on each side, to unhorse riders. Or yank a victim within reach of his fighting claws.
I shouldn’t have left my sword with Stalton. And I should have put on my fucking armor.
And I should have remembered that despite secondhand memories of being Hammet and Barand from those Adventure cubes, I’ve never fought an ogrillo before. I should’ve been thinking more about living through this than about how cool I was gonna look standing out here with nothing but a fucking knife up my sleeve. .