They introduced themselves, one by one, and he admired their courage the way a man buying slaves admires strength.
‘Where is the sorcerer, Thorn?’ asked the bravest. ‘We have come to see him.’
Thorn bowed, the way no Sossag would ever bow. ‘I am he,’ he said.
‘You are one of our own shamans!’ said a man with the scars of nine kills on his right ear.
But the very bravest one shook his head and bent his knee. ‘He is Thorn. I served him this spring, against the rock.’
The old shaman smiled. ‘And we failed, you and I. And you took your warriors and left me.’
The warrior nodded. ‘It seemed best, lord. You were defeated – and you were not my lord, but merely an ally.’
‘Bold talk,’ Thorn said.
‘Now the matrons send me to make peace,’ said the brave one.
Thorn brushed aside the man’s protections, and skimmed his name from the muddle that was his thoughts. ‘You are Ota Qwan, who took the place of Tadaio as paramount warrior,’ he said. He altered the tenor of his voice to make it sound more like Ota Qwan’s own voice. ‘You were the bravest warrior at the fight at the ford.’
The other warriors looked at Ota Qwan with suspicion.
He glanced at them, and Thorn took their names from his surface thoughts.
‘Do the Sossag offer the same sort of lies and betrayal they offered in the spring? I need them not. I have the Huran as my own.’ He didn’t smile, but merely leaned forward like an elder making a point. ‘Ah – you were a lord among men in the south, as well.’
Now the other warriors edged away from Ota Qwan.
He shrugged. ‘Mighty Thorn, we know you have sent the giants to destroy our villages.’
Thorn smiled. ‘No,’ he said.
Ota Qwan took a breath. The other five looked at each other.
‘No,’ Thorn said. ‘I am not some man with whom you can negotiate. These are my terms. You – Ota Qwan – will come and be my captain. I need a man – a man of war – to command my forces. It was for the lack of such a man that I failed at the rock. Among the Huran there is no warrior as redoubtable as you. And you have wide experience in the south, as well. In exchange, I will give you powers beyond anything you can imagine. And I will, if you like, lift my hand from the Sossag, who are merely one hut circle of near-animals in an endless forest of them. I need no more punishment for the Sossag than to leave them to their own devices.’
The least brave of the six – and he was very brave – sprang to his feet. ‘You lie!’ he said.
Thorn laughed and stripped away his soul and subsumed it. The man’s flesh fell with a thump.
‘Lying is for the weak,’ he said. ‘I have no need to lie. You others? Will you serve as my captains?’
Ota Qwan forced a smile. He was nodding.
He has already decided to serve me, but now he will posture a little, Thorn thought. Men bored him.
‘Why would I serve you? I do not crave power.’ The man met Thorn’s human eyes. ‘You have nothing I want.’
You lie, Thorn thought. Then he skimmed along the man’s thoughts again, like a man braiding a child’s hair, feeling the knots, the burrs, the places where the hair hadn’t been brushed. He ran tendrils of power through the man’s head and he read a name.
Orley.
He laughed aloud. It was as if he was destined to attain his desire. Everything fell into his hand. Or had the black place done this?
He no longer cared.
Ota Qwan recoiled from the laughter.
Another of the six drew his short Alban sword.
Thorn cast.
An amulet on the man’s chest flared – the man’s blade cut, and cut well, severing Speaker’s left hand. Blood spurted.
Thorn stumbled out of his chair – and then raised his left arm into the man’s second slash. He sprayed blood into the man’s face and blocked his sword by catching it in the bone of his left arm.
He burned the man’s amulet to dust with one burst using a concoction of minor workings he had designed to baffle amulets. It was foolish of him to forget that these powerful warriors would have some protections.
He touched the man on the arm, and cast a gentle curse that excited every nerve on the man’s skin. Every single nerve.
The man fell screaming, and began to thrash with no regard for his own body – bashing his head, dislocating a shoulder as he lost control of every function. His screams ripped out, one laid over the next like a shingled roof. The remaining four Sossag paled.
Thorn picked up his severed hand and put it back on the end of his arm. Healing was the least of his powers – but this he did to show them. He spent a day’s power profligately, to replace the hand on his arm. It was, after all, merely a form he wore, like a cloak.
The Sossag trembled.
‘I am like a god, am I not?’ he said, conversationally. ‘If any of you would like to try and kill me, I am here. Ready. At your pleasure, as men say.’ His comments were punctuated with the screams ripping out of his victim.
‘You torture prisoners – come, I know you do. You do it to prove their courage. Well – this one has failed, wouldn’t you say?’ He smiled.
The man on the floor had voided his bowels and bladder and still he thrashed, as if in the grip of a monster, and he screamed so fast it didn’t seem that he could catch a breath. As they watched, he fetched his head against the marble table that held the eggs, and one hand was thrown out – touched the rightmost egg, and he was subsumed before their eyes, reduced to ash.
The egg flared for a moment – a purple-black light shot from it, and then it was still.
Even Thorn was taken aback. He stepped over to the eggs, paused to don his most heavily armoured semblance, and looked carefully in all the spectra he could command.
The eggs were drinking potentia. They emitted none.
Thorn knew a frisson of fear, and he backed away from the eggs. But he – even he – dared not show fear in front of his potential servants. So he forced a cruel laugh.
‘Fascinating,’ he said aloud. He whirled, keeping his skeletal tree branch arms well clear of the eggs.
The four Sossag had drawn into a corner, and a thousand moths fluttered around them.
‘Anyone else? You are all free to go. But if you will stay, I will make you great.’ He nodded his head.
Ota Qwan sighed, as if releasing something he held to be valuable. ‘If I serve you, lord, will you hold your hand from the Sossag?’
Thorn nodded. ‘If they serve me loyally.’
‘Will you give me Muriens? The Earl of the North?’ asked Ota Qwan. The lust that flared in him was like a moth being born from its chrysalis. This naked need for revenge – this was the true man.
‘More – I will order you to take him. That will be your first task. And when he is taken, then you may have him.’ Thorn nodded again.
The tallest of the three warriors was also the youngest. He shook with fear, and yet he stood tall. He stepped out of the cloud of moths surrounding Ota Qwan. ‘I will not serve you,’ he said. ‘I have no power of arm or thought to harm you – b-b-but I will n-not serve.’
Thorn watched him, unmoved. In this form, he could shrug off a bolt from a siege engine. He had.
‘Ota Qwan?’ Thorn asked.
‘Call me Orley,’ he said, and plunged a basilard into the young warrior. He turned to the last man, a Western Door Sossag called Guire’lon, even as the younger man’s heels drummed on the rock, trying to outrun death. ‘Go and tell them that Ota Qwan died here, for the People. Tell my wife. Tell the matrons.’ He smiled a horrible, lopsided grin. ‘I will go back to being Kevin Orley now.’
Ticondaga – Giannis Turkos
Turkos left the great fortress no happier than he had arrived, and headed north as fast as he might go. He’d asked the Earl to support him against the Northern Huran, and the Earl, for his own reasons, had declined. And then ordered him off his lands.