Random approached the Magus who sat, cross-legged in the open, greeting the rising sun with his arms across his lap.
‘May I interrupt?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ grumbled the Magus.
‘My apologies,’ Random said. ‘But I need some information.’
The Magus snapped his eyes open. ‘If you do not let me do this, I will have fewer arrows to my bow when they come again,’ he said.
Random bowed. ‘I think we should turn and go back.’
The Magus frowned. ‘Do as you must, merchant. Leave me be!’
Random shook his head. ‘Why shouldn’t I turn back?’
Harmodius’ voice was savage. ‘How do I know, you money-grubbing louse? Do as you like! Just leave me alone!’
Old Bob was already mounted and Guilbert stood by his horse with a short, oddly curved bow across his saddle. Today was his turn to ride point.
Old Bob gestured tp Messire Random. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘We press on for Lissen Carak,’ Random said.
Old Bob rolled his eyes. ‘What the fuck for?’
Random looked back at the Magus. And shrugged. ‘He made me angry,’ Random said, with simple honesty.
Old Bob looked at the pile of dead boglins. ‘You fought ’em before?’ he asked.
Random nodded.
‘Take every man to the pile and make him look at them. Careful like. In daylight. Make every man touch one. Make every man see where they’re weak.’ He shrugged. ‘It helps.’
Random hadn’t thought of any of those things. So he ordered it done, and stood there while Old Bob hauled a corpse off the pile.
The guildsmen flinched as he slammed the body down.
‘Don’t be afraid, lads,’ Old Bob said. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Fucking bug,’ said one of the cutlers.
‘Not bugs. More like-’ Old Bob shrugged. ‘Get the Magus to tell you what they’re like. But look. They have hard parts and soft parts. Hard on the chest. Soft as cheese here under the arms.’ To demonstrate, he took his arming dagger and thrust it into the muddy brown skin, which extended like membrane from the soft-hard chitinous armour of the torso, under the arm with no effort at all. Green-black ichor covered his blade, but none leaked out.
‘A thrust is always deadly,’ Old Bob said. He struck, and his heavy dagger blade punched through the thing’s tough shell, and a putrid odour filled the air. One of the salters vomited.
Old Bob walked over and kicked him. ‘Do that when you’re fighting and you’re fucking dead. Hear me? Look at it. Look at it!’ He looked around at the startled apprentices. ‘Everyone touch it. Take one off the pile for yourself, and try it with your sword. Do it.’
As Guilbert rode to the head of the column, he muttered to Harold Redlegs – loud enough to be heard – ‘Because the old Magus made him mad? That makes all sorts of sense.’
It didn’t make any sense to Random, either.
But an hour down the road, Harmodius rode up next to the merchant and bowed in the saddle.
‘My pardon if I was brusque,’ he said. ‘Sunrise is a very important moment.’
Random laughed. ‘Brusque, is it?’ he asked. But then he laughed. It was a beautiful day, the woods were green, and he was commanding the biggest convoy of his life.
Riding to war beside a living legend.
He laughed again, and the old Magus laughed, too.
Thirty wagons behind, Old Bob heard their laughter and rolled his eyes.
North of Albinkirk – Peter
The Sossag People had gathered almost their full fighting strength and brought it south across the wall. Ota Qwan said so, ten times a day, and the second full day in camp, he saw the whole fighting strength of the Sossag gathered in one place, the great clearing a mile south of camp. He stopped counting men when he reached several hundred, but there had to be a thousand painted warriors and another few hundred unpainted men and women. He’d learned that to be painted was to declare a willingness to die. Unpainted men might fight – or not, if they had other immediate interests, like a new wife or new children.
Peter had also learned that the Sossag had little interest in cooking. He had tried to win a place through efforts with a copper pot and a skillet, but his beef stew with stolen wine was eaten noisily and quickly by the band with which he travelled, the Six River Sossag who also called themselves the ‘Assegatossag’ or ‘Those who follow where the Squash Rots’ as Ota Qwan explained.
They ate it, and went about their business. No one thanked him or told him what a fine meal it had been.
Ota Qwan laughed. ‘It’s food!’ he said. ‘The Sossag don’t eat that well, and we all know what it is like to grow hungry. Your meal was excellent in that there was enough for everyone.’
Peter shook his head.
Ota Qwan nodded. ‘Before I was Ota Qwan, I understood what it was like to cook, to eat well, to dine.’ He laughed. ‘Now, I understand many things, and none of them involve fine wines or crunchy bread.’
Peter hung his head a little and Ota Qwan slapped his back.
‘You will earn a place. Everyone says you work hard. That is all the People expect of a newcomer.’
Peter nodded.
But that night he made a number of new friends. Dinner had been a simple soup with some seasonings and deer meat that Ota Qwan had contributed, and one of the reptilian monsters had come, sniffed the carcass of the deer, and made its strange crying noises until Skadai came at a run.
Peter had been afraid, but it had left them in peace, the deer meat had gone into the soup, and all was well.
When the soup was served, two of the boglins came out of the woods. They were slim without being tall – when they stood erect, they were only the height of a tall child, and their heads were more like insects then men, with the skin stretched tight over light bones perched on bodies with a bulbous armoured torso and four very mammalian appendages. Their legs were thin and heavily muscled, the arms whipcord-tight. They were hideous, and just watching one move was the stuff of nightmare. They didn’t mix much with Sossag, although Peter had seen Skadai speak to a group of them.
They also seemed to come in three types – the commonest were red-brown and moved very quickly; the second type were clearly warriors, with a more heavily armoured carapace and paler, almost silver, skin. The warriors were almost as tall as a man, and every appendage had a spike. The Sossag used the Albin name for those ones – wights.
And finally, there was what seemed to be a leader class – long and thin, like great mantis creatures. The Sossag called them priests.
These two creatures were both lowly workers, each carrying a bow and a spear, naked except for a quiver and a canteen. Peter tried not to watch the liquid sliding of plate on plate in their lower abdomens. It was disturbing.
They stopped by his fire. Both rotated their heads in unison, their strange lobe-shaped eyes seeing the fire and the man together.
‘Guk fud?’ said the nearer of the two. His voice was scratchy, almost a screech.
Peter tried to get past his fear. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘U guk fud?’ said the other one. ‘Gud fud?’
The first one shook its head and abdomen – an alien display, but Peter understood it was showing impatience. ‘Me try fud,’ he screeched.
Peter still didn’t understand their shrieks, but the pointing claw-hands seemed to indicate his stew pot.
None of the Sossag were rising to help him. As usual, they had eaten to satiety and now lay on the ground, virtually unmoving, although every one of them was watching him. Ota Qwan was smiling – a hard, cruel smile.
Peter bent, turning his back on the creatures, and poured stew into a bowl. He added a little wild oregano and handed it to the nearer of the two monsters.
He took it, and Peter watched him sniff the bowl. He wished he hadn’t. Watching the thing’s not-entirely-inhuman nose split open to reveal a cavernous hole in the face with spiky hairs-