The Dragon Lords: Fool's Gold, page 44
And there were two other corpses. Two dead bodies lying at the heart of the rough circle described by the battle.
Slowly the thought that he had killed a dragon soured in Balur’s gut. Victory tasted like ashes in his mouth.
Then he spat. It turned out there actually were ashes in his mouth.
He tried to ground himself in the world. To get out of his own head. The noise that sounded like a celebration turned out to be exactly that. A hundred yards back from the scene of the fight, in every direction, were the survivors. There were more than he would have expected. Fifty thousand perhaps. At least forty-five. And truly, only ten or fifteen thousand dead was staggeringly good considering the beasts they had been up against. The sudden outburst of pent-up rage, it seemed, had all been too much for the dragons. They had been engines of destruction, no doubt, but they had not had the chance to warm up.
So he could understand the survivors’ desire to celebrate. He could understand the ale being poured, the minstrels playing, the rowdy chanting of choruses, the cheering, the laughing, the sudden camaraderie between forces that had hours ago been ready to tear each other limb from limb. He could understand it all.
He just could not join it.
No one approached the dragons’ bodies. Only that lone, raging figure hacking away. Everyone else stayed back, so he was alone as he approached the center of the field. The place where two wagons had burned. Where lead had—inexplicably—caused the Consortium army to switch sides.
He was alone as he approached the spot where Lette had died.
It was difficult to find the exact place, but he found a place churned up with mud and splattered with blood and gore. It was black with ash, and the lead lay nearby. It would be doing for now, he thought.
He stood, ignoring the celebrations, and for once in his life embraced silence and thought. Thoughts of Lette, of his tribe, of his being alone in the world.
“I was killing a dragon, Lette,” he said to the ashes. “Just like I was saying I would. Dragonslayer. That was a job you were never suggesting for me.”
He could almost hear what she would tell him. Because I’m not a suicidal fuckwit, arsehole. He smiled at the thought.
“They’re talking about you, you know,” said a slurred voice from behind him.
Balur wheeled round, instinctively grabbing for his hammer. But it was lost, lying at the bottom of a lake. And his clock hand was still buried in the brains of the red dragon.
But it was only Firkin. Thin, and dirty, and drunk.
“Flap, flap, flap go their little jawbones,” he went on. “So much flapping you’d think they might fly away, you would.” He cocked his head to one side. “Probably be calling that a miracle if it happened. Be saying you caused it. Miracle of the flap-flappy jaws.”
He shook his head irritably. As if trying to dislodge a fly from his nose. Or, this being Firkin, possibly a whole colony of flies from the tangle of his beard.
“They would be saying it was me?” Balur half-repeated.
“Well,” Firkin hawked and spat. “You’re their prophet now, aren’t you? Great big fucking thing. They like that. On and on about size, like it is of great import. Physical stature isn’t everything, I tell them. Got to go around a few blocks, know what to do with it. But, oh no, eight feet tall has them all hot and sweaty and flapping away. Oh prophet this. Oh prophet that.”
The prophet. They are still thinking I’m the prophet. Balur had to give it to the natives of Kondorra. They were stubborn when it came to hanging on to their delusions. You almost had to admire that sort of blind tenacity.
“Will was being the prophet,” he said. “And Will is being dead.”
Firkin looked at him oddly. “Will?”
Balur rolled his eyes. “Tall for one of you pink fleshy things. Blessed with an ability to be coming up with godawful plans. The one who was stealing my kill of Mattrax. The one who was going and prophesizing this whole mess.”
“Mess?” Firkin’s frown deepened.
“Yes,” Balur growled. He was losing patience with being questioned. “Dead bodies. Dead friends. Blood being everywhere. That is being a classic definition, I am thinking.”
“I know Will. I know messes,” Firkin snapped with surprising anger. “I know fuck me, I’m a poor sad lizard stuck with a valley that worships me like a god. Oh boo-hoo all the way home.” He hawked and spat. “I’ve been sad. I’ve lost whiskey bottles, you whipper of snappers. I know pain, like you cannot believe. But I still have my balls in my britches. Didn’t know you gave yours to the lady friend. Did she lend them to Will so he could plow her?”
Balur was in what he might have described, if he had been inebriated enough, as a fragile mood. Firkin’s shit was not something he had patience for at the best of times. And fragile moods were far from the best of times.
He crossed to Firkin in two paces, had him by the neck, then had him off the ground. “Be listening, you little turd,” he hissed. “I have been losing my tribe today. And I am mourning my tribe. And I am not being above snapping your neck.”
“Alone,” cackled Firkin. “A lonely lonesome. I was alone once. Happened to me too. Few hundred years is what it feels like. My memory is a little hazy. I was drunk for most of it. Most of before it too, truth be told. It’s brilliant being drunk, did I tell you that?” Feet dangling from the floor, Firkin seemed almost oblivious to Balur’s hand at his throat.
“Don’t think I was killing any dragons when I was drunk,” he said. “Don’t remember the adoration of thousands. Don’t remember any worship at all. Might have paid for it once or twice. Hard to be sure. Might explain where all the money went. Might not. It’s brilliant money. Little bits of copper and you give them to someone and he gives you booze. And you pour it into yourself and you just don’t give so much of a shit anymore. Have you tried booze?”
“I have been trying booze,” Balur growled at Firkin.
“Wasn’t sure,” Firkin said, attempting to nod, and doing a pretty poor job of it. “What with you being such a limp-dicked little crybaby and all.”
Balur was actually shocked at that. He dropped Firkin and stared at him as if he was something rabid.
Who said that? Who, with a hand around their neck?
He reached for his hammer again, found it absent again, cursed again. Still, he could kill Firkin with his bare hands. It might even be more satisfying that way.
“Tribe!” Firkin yelled. “You are having no tribe?” He was scrambling back as Balur advanced. Even he could recognize this level of danger. “You are crying over losing a tribe of one? What did they do in the Analesian desert? Teach you to count up to the number of dicks you have?”
There was an audacity to that that even Balur could admire. He would maybe take some pride in tearing Firkin’s spine from his body and flaying the man with it.
“You have a tribe of fifty thousand souls, you dolt!” Firkin screamed as Balur finally stood over the man. “You lost one and gained every other stupid fuck in this valley. You are number-one tribe man now, dumbarse! You say tribe, they say fuck yes, oh prophet of the tribe! You say go do tribe-y things, they find out what they are being, and then they do them. It’s all tribe, all the time now, baby. Tribe of the prophet. You prophet. Prophet is dumbarse, but nobody is giving a shit because of all the prophety shit.” Firkin appeared to notice that Balur was no longer attempting to kill him, dusted himself off a little bit, and said in a more reasonable tone, “And the dead dragons.”
Balur was hesitating. He looked up at the inhabitants of the Kondorra valley. Drunk on victory and dragons’ blood. Just like any good tribe should be.
“Why are they thinking that I am their prophet?” he asked.
Firkin had the audacity to look outraged.
“When five big, old, flappy fuckers land down from the sky and go about torching everything, and everybody stands around clutching at their drawers trying to keep the poop from sliding out, and then one giant bastard is letting out a roar like he just got a hard-on he can use to beat a dragon to death—people go and notice that sort of shit.” He nodded sagely. “For I am wise in the ways of the gods and I know such things.”
Balur found his rage rekindling. “You are being about as much a priest as I am being a prophet. If there ever was being a prophet, he is being very burnt and toasty right now.”
Despite being around three feet shorter than Balur, Firkin did his best to look down his nose at him. “People,” he said, “say you are a prophet. You say you are not. You have one vote. They have fifty thousand. You are a prophet. That’s democracy.”
Balur’s patience was done. “That is being horseshit, and the last shit of yours I shall be listening to, unless you are shitting yourself in terror as I am murdering you, or in an involuntary reflex when you are dying. Because that is happening sometimes.”
Balur sort of wished he didn’t know that.
“Do you want a fucking tribe or not?” Firkin spat.
Which brought Balur up again.
Fifty thousand… Humans, yes. But fifty thousand. Perhaps forty-five. But all his tribe. His. An Analesian could do a lot with forty-five thousand soldiers. A lot of…
What? Good? Bad?
He wasn’t sure, but he did have a sneaking suspicion it could be fun.
But Lette…
Lette was dead. His tribe was dead. And an Analesian without his tribe was dead.
He had been without a tribe before, though. He had been dying before in the desert. And he had found a new tribe then.
Firkin rolled his eyes. “Walk with me,” he said in magnanimous tones. “Meet your people. Tribe. Whatever.”
So Balur walked. Against his better judgment perhaps, but what other choice did he truly have? To die? To mourn, and weep, and drown his sorrows. Until… when? What then? A time when nobody cared?
People cared now. They cheered as he approached. They roared. They hooted, and hollered, and screamed his name.
“Prophet! Prophet! Prophet!” The world shook with their cries. And then, as he drew closer still, they fell silent. They drew back. They bent their knees. They bowed their heads.
Balur came to a stop in the middle of the crowd. And as he looked out, all he could see were women, men, and children, down on one knee with their heads bent. Before him, Firkin was the only man standing. He spread his arms, spun around. A broad smile was smeared across his face. The message was clear.
See what I give you.
Balur looked back at the corpses of the dragons, and where Will and Lette lay dead, nothing more than piles of ash.
What would Lette have really wanted for him?
A whore, an ale, and a good fight, you big dumb lizard, he heard her voice inside his head.
How about an army? he asked that echo from the Hallows.
Close enough.
Quirk found him a few hours later. He was in Will’s old tent, which a few enthusiastic worshippers had found and erected over him. They had made him a throne, and brought him a dragon’s horn full of ale, and someone was working on the whore, and he was pretty confident it wouldn’t be hard to find a fight.
She pushed her way through the tent flap flanked by the guards he had posted—large men previously of the Consortium army. They were armed with halberds, and he liked the way it looked when they dropped the weapons to form an X blocking people’s path. Above the tent he had posted one of the remaining griffin riders, just because it looked awesome.
Still, mighty tribe leader that he might be, he found himself rising up and running forward to seize Quirk in a great hug that took her off her feet. He was surprised at how good it was to see her. But she was someone who had been there since the beginning, someone who had walked the same path as him.
“Quirk!” he boomed. Then to the startled-looking guards, “Ale! Much more ale!”
Still bundled in his arms, Quirk cleared her throat. Balur set her down with a twinge of embarrassment. “It is being good to see you,” he said by way of explanation. Though he wasn’t sure a prophet should have to explain himself. “I am being excited by my vision of this happening,” he said to the guards, then realized he was explaining himself, which didn’t seem prophetlike either. “Ale!” he shouted again for good measure.
Quirk was straightening her clothes as best she could. She was still dressed as a merchant, though now the clothes were ripped and stained.
“So,” she said when she had finished. “You seem to have made yourself at home.”
“These people are being my tribe,” Balur said. “And I am being their prophet, it is turning out. I am being as surprised as anyone is being. But it is being quite convenient.”
Quirk took that in without passing judgment. Balur liked that about her.
“Will?” she asked eventually. “Lette?”
Balur felt a cloud pass in front of the sun of his day. “They are not making it,” he said quietly.
Quirk seemed genuinely shocked by that. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I didn’t expect… It just seemed… He was so confident.”
Balur nodded. “He was being a prophet after all. I was seeing it with my own eyes.”
And so he explained it to her. How the wagons had been chased through the Consortium army by the dragons. How they had broken free. How the dragons had surrounded them, set them on fire. How the lead had come spilling out. And then how—
“Wait,” Quirk interrupted him. “Lead?”
Balur shrugged. “It was making the Consortium army crazy. Mad. Just like he was saying. Like he was prophesizing.”
“Lead?” Quirk said again.
“Yes,” Balur said, a little testily this time. “That is not seeming to me to be being the big point here. The army went crazy. He had prophesized—”
“Lead?” Quirk said again, her voice ratcheted up to an even higher notch of incredulity.
Balur threw up his hands.
Quirk shook her head. “I mean, I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense. Gold doesn’t turn to lead. Not alchemically. Not magically. It doesn’t happen. It’s impossible.”
Balur narrowed his eyes. “Impossible? You are meaning it was a miracle?”
Quirk hesitated, then shook her head again, more definitively this time. “No,” she said. “Not a miracle. It’s just…” She paused again. “Impossible,” she said.
“Well,” said a voice over by the tent flap, “there may be a chance I could explain that.”
Balur spun. And then stopped.
Then the whole world stopped.
Mostly it stopped making sense.
Grinning, Will stepped into the tent.
92
Excuses and Explanations
Will’s expression, Balur thought, could best be described as smug. Then after half a second he revised his opinion. It could best be described as the sort of smug that should be removed from someone’s face by force. Balur stepped forward to do just that.
But then Lette slunk into the tent behind Will, gave him a half grin, and said, “Hey.”
The next thing Balur knew, he had her in a bear hug and she was yelling that he was going to break her ribs.
“You are living!” he cried.
“Not for much fucking longer, you arse. Put me down.”
She was turning a little blue, so he did as she asked. Still, it didn’t feel to Balur as if quite sufficient a fuss had been made. He turned to Quirk. “She is being alive! They are both being alive!” he boomed. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the volume of his voice to truly express the depth of the emotion welling in him. There had been a void and now it was full again. A piece of him he thought lost forever was returned to him. He thought his grin might split his face, and he didn’t care.
“Yes,” Quirk said carefully. She was studying both Will and Lette, as if searching for flaws. “The thing I’d like to know is, how?”
Will’s smug expression was coming back, but Balur found he didn’t mind it so much this time. He placed a vast hand on Lette’s shoulder, left it there even when her knees buckled slightly.
“Okay,” said Will, “about that.”
“Yes,” Quirk agreed, “about that.” She sounded like a disapproving Analesian brood mother to Balur’s ear. What she had to be so sour about, he had no idea.
“So,” said Will, and Balur could tell he was bursting to tell them, but hesitant too. Most likely because he feared reprisal for jerking all their chains. Balur quietly reserved the right to beat Will’s head down into his neck once all was explained to his satisfaction.
“Well,” Will started again, “obviously the plan was a little more complex than the one I told you all about. But in my defense my feet were buried in the guts of a spy when I came up with it and I was feeling a little bit paranoid. If the Consortium knew of any part of it…”
He read their expressions and clearly saw that he wasn’t winning anyone over. “Look, Lette already beat about five or six shades of shit out of me over the whole thing.”
Lette nodded. Balur tousled her hair affectionately.
“Do that again,” she told him, “and I’ll take that hand and use it for a spittoon.”
He smiled happily to himself.
“I really was worried about the spies,” Will said. “I swear.”
Balur was getting tired of this. “Be stopping making the excuses and be telling us how you are being alive before I am making you dead again.”
“Well,” Will said, “all of you know bits of it.” He pointed to Balur. “You knew I’d come to you and said I’d changed my mind and that you should mobilize the whole army to attack. You must have suspected I’d gone to other people?”
“Why must I have been suspecting that?” That seemed like an unreasonable leap of logic to Balur.
Will gave him a pleading look, but before Balur could explain to Will that assumptions made asses out of you, and anyone else Balur chose to blame, Lette hit him with “I still don’t see why a whole attack was necessary. And I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me.”
