The drizzle thickened toward rain. Head down, arms crossed over my chest, I walked behind the Lord Righteous. An icy trickle traced my spine from my plastered-flat hair to the crack of my ass. Shivers started below my ribs and rippled out into my legs and up to my neck.
At least it was rinsing off the old blood. That was some consolation.
Sure it was.
Markham walked with a long swinging confident stride. He didn’t seem to notice the rain running inside his collarpiece. Maybe the armor had drains in its heels.
I might start to hate the bastard.
I stared up under dripping eyebrows at his back, cataloguing every joint in that rain-beaded armor where a fighting knife’s spearpoint might drive through into flesh. Not from any ill intent. Just on general principle.
Mostly.
He led me past the kennels toward a broad, flat field that steamed gently in the rain. Closer, I could see that the field was checkered with square panels of iron grillework though which the vapor leaked. At the edge, the grilles were set into stone over the mouths of ten-by-ten pits cut fifteen feet deep into the escarpment’s bedrock. The vapor—
Breath and body heat.
“Um,” I said, “you got some kind of ladder or something? Or do I just jump?”
“No need.” Markham waved a gauntlet ahead. “Your ogrillo has a visitor already.”
Out in the middle of the iron and stone field stood a pair of hulking trusties, immense shoulders hunched to their ears, and an uncomfortable-looking Knight Attendant. One of the trusties held what looked like a short siege ladder: a metal pole that sprouted rows of pegs a couple of spans apart along opposite sides.
Markham stopped at the edge of the field. “I leave you here, Freeman. Put yourself in the care of yonder Knight Attendant.”
“What, you’re not gonna walk me home?”
“Your possessions will be delivered to the Pratt & Redhorn hostelry. Any page can direct you. Good evening.” He executed a crisp about-face and marched off into the rain.
I shrugged and set out across the field.
Some of the grilles had tarps draped across them. Most did not.
Orbek’s didn’t.
The trusties and the other Knight Attendant were staring down into Orbek’s pit. The rain half-muffled growls and grunts and low-throated snarling howls. Helm tucked under his right arm, the Knight watched with the grimly blank look of a man refusing to flinch from a distasteful obligation. The trusties both had trifurcate lips drawn back from filed-blunt tusks: grins or sneers, I couldn’t tell. Yellow eyes slitted, steam curling from snouts, one massaged the stump of a fighting claw with his opposite hand. The other rubbed his own crotch through his burlap pants, unself-conscious as a dog licking its balls.
The howls rose into yelping. Sounded like pain. Didn’t sound like Orbek. “What, you make him kill his own dinner?”
“Not exactly, Freeman.” The Knight stepped to one side to let me pass.
“Then what’s that fucking noise?”
A faint crinkle twitched at the corners of the Knight’s eyes. “Exactly.”
It wasn’t until I got to the edge of the pit that I suspected a Lipkan Knight of Khryl could actually have a sense of humor.
“Oh, for shit’s sake.” I rubbed my eyes. Headache thundered in my skull. “I didn’t need to see this.”
What I didn’t need to see was Orbek and his other visitor.
Fucking.
A middle-aged ogrillo bitch, naked but for a pair of battered boots, stood braced wide-legged, facing the near corner like a boxer leaning on the ropes between rounds, while Orbek pounded her from behind.
Orbek was on another planet: eyes squeezed shut, spasms in his massive neck jerking his tusks ripping at the rain. The bitch’s dugs swung and bounced like wattles on a spastic turkey. Another spasm of yelping brought her head up and she met the eyes above and she howled even louder: performing, exaggerating, a sardonic lip-curling mockery of passion, thick purple tongue lolling between her tusks, green-yellow eyes wide, fierce, challenging—
Like she was daring us all to jump in and have a whack at her too.
I looked over my shoulder at the Knight Attendant, whose expressionlessly polite stare somehow managed to look like a smirk. “Let me guess. You asked what he wanted for his last meal. He said, ‘Cooze.’ ”
The Knight snuffled something close to a laugh without cracking his deadpan. “The Pens is a jail, not a brothel. This is a conjugal visit.” He nodded down at them and offered an apologetic rattle of a shrug. “Likely their last.”
“Conju—that’s his wife?”
“I take it you and your—mmm . . . brother—aren’t close?”
“Son of a bitch.” I shot the Knight a baffled look. “Since when do ogrilloi get married?”
“I’m sure I cannot say. Some new Ankhanan silliness, I’d wager.” The Knight inclined his head in a sketch of a bow. “With apologies in advance for any offense, it’s well known that Ankhanans are mad.”
“Yeah.” I waved at the trusties. “All right. Open the lid. I’m going in.”
The Knight inclined his head an inch farther. “Now?”
“Unless you’re enjoying the show.”
“Erm. Please, Freeman. As you will.”
“Yeah, me neither.” I leaned over the grille. “Orbek!”
Ogrillo eyes popped open, met mine, and bugged wide. “You.”
“Me. Get off her. And for shit’s sake put your pants on.”
A long stare, fading from angry to mournful, eventually turned into a shrug. The young ogrillo’s beer-barrel chest swelled and sank: a resigned sigh. “Might as well. One big fuck-me bucket of icewater, you are.”
“I’d say I was sorry if I, y’know, was.”
“Yeah.” He grinned back his lips to expose the ivory curve of his tusks. “Shoulda figured you’d show up, little brother.”
“Yeah. You shoulda.”
The Knight murmured, “He doesn’t seem entirely happy to see you.” I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
Going down the ladder made my head hurt worse. The gaslight from outside reached only halfway down, and the gloom below had a reddish tinge. The stone walls of the pit were gray-green with old damp. The drizzle had slackened again, but the iron grille condensed moisture from the thick foggy air; every second or two I’d get a plash from fat rusty raindrops.
The cover of the shit bucket standing in the corner didn’t quite fit, but that stink drowned in the acid reek of unwashed ogrillo: a chewy funk of sweat and pheromones and animal sex. By the time the trusties had withdrawn the siege ladder and clanged the grille back into place over his head, I was half blind with pain. I sagged against a slimy wall and tried to sort through the thousands of things I probably shouldn’t say.
Orbek was still lacing up the side of his breeches. He’d let his bristly spine ruff grow: he now had a reddish Trojan-helmet brush sticking straight up from his crest ridge. He’d gained weight, too: massive curves of new muscle rippled under the grey skin of his bare chest and shoulders, though he had still another five years or so before he’d hit full mature size.
Not much chance of that now.
When we’d met, in the Ankhanan Donjon, Orbek had been only seventeen. Three years? Was that all? Christ, we’d been through a lot since then.
I had to say something. I thought about seeing Orbek off at the Palatine station three months ago. On his way home, he’d said. Back to the Warrens for a while. Look up old friends. Take a vacation.
Visit family.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Ankhana?”
The young ogrillo pulled his side laces tight and tied them off. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“I’d have a wiseass answer for that if my head didn’t hurt so bad.” I gazed up into the green-glowing drizzle through the grille. “I have this dream, y’know?More like a fantasy. That once, just once, somebody I care about is in trouble, and when I show up to help, they’re actually
happy to see me.”
“That why you’re here?” Orbek’s voice was dark as coffee. “To help?”
Drizzle condensed to rain and dropped from the grille into the silence between us. The fist in my head thumped the inside of my skull once. And again.
I sighed. “Yeah, well, it’s a dream I have. That’s all.”
Orbek spat into his hands and slickened his spine ruff; it sprang back to vertical, wet and gleaming. “Pull up a floor, hey? Don’t look so good, little brother. Better sit before you fall.”
In those yellow eyes was a wariness that could instantly trip hostile; this somehow made everything easier. I can always fall back on being an asshole.
I squinted at the ogrillo bitch. “Kinda old for you, isn’t she?”
The bitch had slagged her way over to a bundle of soggy blankets that seemed to be the pit’s closest thing to a bed, and she lay on them now, watching incuriously, one big-knuckled hand rubbing idly between her legs. “Call her Kaiggez,” Orbek said softly. “I’d introduce you, but I dunno who you are today.”
I could feel the Knight Attendant watching through the dripping grille above. I nodded to the bitch. “Dominic Shade. Don’t get up. I don’t like hugs and there’s no fucking way I’m gonna shake that hand.” Her expression was unreadable. “Korloggil nas paggarnik, paggtakkunni? ” she said softly. “Perrlag Nazutakkaarik rint diz Etk Perrog’k?”The wet trickle down my spine got colder. I do know a few words of Etk Dag, nowadays. One of them is Nazutakkaarik. It’s a nickname. A title. The Black Knives had called me that. A few of them. Toward the end. When only a few were left.
I shifted my weight, sliding my back along the wall toward the corner. “He told you who I am.”
Orbek smirked around his tusks. “She don’t talk Westerling, little brother. Says she’s happy to meet her brother-in-law.”
“Brother-in-law my ass.” A creeping flush of anger drove off some of the chill. I squeezed my voice down to a blurred snarl, mindful of ears above. “What did she really say? ‘Tell the Skinwalker he’s welcome in the Boedecken’?”
“Hnh.” Orbek’s smirk never flickered. “We don’t call it Boedecken. We call it Our Place.”
“You got a hell of an attitude for somebody who’s gonna die tomorrow.”
“Maybe I should snivel like a human, hey? That make you happy? Because you being happy, that’s what I live for.”
“I didn’t come all this way to be fucked with, big dog.”
“Rather fuck with her, little brother.” The young ogrillo spread hands the size of frying pans. “Wanna watch some more?”
“Oh, sure. Like that horse cock of yours won’t give me nightmares already.” I shook my head. “You got nothing better to talk about than the old days? About the—what do you call it? The Horror?”
“Talk? Haven’t been talking.” White flame glowed in the back of his eyes: nighthunter retinas catching and concentrating the dim gaslight that reflected down off the rain-shined walls. “Been listening.”
“Uh.” Like any sucker punch, it didn’t really hurt. But it rocked me. It knocked me to pieces and stirred up the chunks.
Orbek lowered himself to the blankets beside her, his back against the wall, one huge arm curling protectively around her shoulders. She snuggled down into his lap and kissed the inside of his forearm.
He twitched his tusks. “Back then, she’s terkullik. Crèche-maid. First bred and nursing. See this?” With his free hand, he stroked a rumpled sheet of black scar that spread up her left thigh to her flank. Where her left hind dug should have been was only a dark knot. “Know where she gets it?”
“I can guess.”
“Don’t have to. She gets it carrying pups out of the fire, little brother. You know which fire. Dead pups.”
The light in the back of his eyes shimmered like moonlit ice. “Her dead pups.”
She reached up and caressed his arm, drawing it around her face. Her thick purple tongue oozed out and licked fog-beads from the stump of his fighting claw. Her gaze held no anger. No hostility. Only a fiercely concentrated watchfulness: one predator staring down another.
Over the body of our prey.
Those stirred-up chunks suddenly clicked together into a new shape. “Oh,” I said. “I get it now.”
“Do you?”
“Sure. Got yourself a Black Knife bitch.” I lowered myself into a somewhat hip-creaking version of an ogrillo squat. “She’s up the pipe, huh?”
His tusk-display went fierce. “I’m only half eligible.”
“How many? You know yet?”
“Four. We go to a norulaggik for a sniffie before I get bagged. She says three bucks and a bitch.”
I let myself smile, really smile, for the first time since I boarded the steamboat below Thorncleft. “Orbek. Stud-daddy Black Knife.”
The hairless meat of the ogrillo’s brows drew together. “How come you go happy all the sudden?”
“You fucking knucklehead. Ever stop to think I might have something to say about Black Knives coming back to the Boedecken? Think about who I am, for shit’s sake. What’d you think I was gonna do when I found out? Throw you a party?”
The young ogrillo seemed to draw in upon himself: a smaller target. “Guess what? Don’t think about you.”
I inclined my head toward the steady stare of his bitch. “She does.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “she’s got reason.”
“Shit, Orbek, I came all this way worrying I might have to kill you.”
The wary cold distance started to drain out of Orbek’s eyes, and he half-relaxed with a friendly snort. “No worry there. Champion’s got the killing part handled, hey?”
“Easy enough to fix.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. Walk into that arena and kiss her feet.”
Orbek’s head lowered like a boar’s. “Can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.”
Tusks swung side to side. “Black Knives don’t kneel.”
“My ass. That’s what knees are for.”
His head ratcheted lower. “Can’t.”
“What are you afraid of? The shit with Kopav? It’s handled, Orbek. I’ve squared it already.”
Orbek’s head jerked back up, and that wary light flicked back into his eyes. “You know about Kopav?”
“Everything I need to.” I cast a significant glance up toward the fog and the night. “I have a highly placed source.”
“Him?” Orbek’s nod was slow, understanding. His gaze still teetered on the edge of hostile. “Huh. What’s He want with me?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t give a shit. We’ll worry about Him after you live through this, huh?”
“I take a shot at Him once. You know that? Well, almost. On Assumption Day. Maybe He holds a grudge.”
“Maybe He thinks He’s doing you a favor.”
“And maybe khoshoi fly out of my butt. Needs to mind His own business, hey?” The young ogrillo’s arm tightened around the bitch’s meaty shoulders. “So do you.”
“You are my business, knucklehead. Give the cocksuckers what they want, then take your wife home and live happily ever goddamn after, will you?”
“Terlukk pagganik rez haggallo, paggtakunni,” the bitch murmured with an air of lazy malice. “Utoppik negge tesslent jeroppik Black Knife? Pok ler Limp Dick?”
“Black Knife ekk,” Orbek growled under his breath. “Paggano rez hagallo Black Knife. Keptarrol Black Knife.”
“What’s that about?”
He muttered, “She asks what she should tell my boys when they’re born. Is their clan Black Knife? Or Limp Dick?”
I scowled. “Doesn’t speak Westerling, huh?”
“Don’t ain’t same as can’t, little brother.”
“I get that. So what’s with Lady Macbitch? Why’s she busting what’s left of your balls?”
“She wants Black Knives to live free. So do I.”
“Free. Right.” I jabbed a finger at Orbek’s huge chest.
“I know you, big dog.”
“You know shit.”
“Come on, kid, you’ve been talking about how you’ll never have pups since the day you adopted me. It was the reason you adopted me. Remember?”
“I remember lots of things.”
“What did she tell you? No fight, no fuck? Shit, Orbek. You don’t think this is a little extreme?”
He snorted. “Are you the right guy to jab somebody on going too far—” Lips curled back from long hooked tusks. “—for his wife?”
I had to look away. A second or two passed before I could squeeze the bloom of pain in my chest down into its usual fist-size ball of barbed wire. When I could talk again, I said, “You think she loves you? She doesn’t give a damn for you, Orbek. She’s playing some game of her own.”
“Love? She loves what I love. She dreams what I dream. That’s her game. Mine too, hey? That’s why we marry. She loves Black Knives. She dreams being free. Together, we dream Black Knife freedom. Together we make our dreams true. Forever.”
My headache came dripping back with each splash from the grille. “Maybe you’d better explain this to me. Small words, okay?”
Orbek disentangled himself from the bitch and rose. Suddenly the pit felt a lot smaller. “My fight with the Champion ain’t cause I don’t submit. It’s cause I don’t have to. We fight over whether Black Knives have to submit. To Khryl. To His Law. Get it? To say Kopav was self-defense, I gotta get down and kneel. Give my life to Khryl. Gotta say I live or die by your law.”
He shook his head, lips curling in a snarl of revulsion. “Kopav’s submission makes me Black Knife kwatcharr. If I submit, so does my clan. We belong to Khryl, then.”
“That’s idiotic.”
“You think so? When the Khulan Horde falls at Ceraeno, what happens to Boedecken ogrilloi? They got my same choice: submit or fight. They submit. And now here they are, hey? You see much of how Khryl’s ogrilloi live? It’s no fuck-me joke, little brother.”
“I haven’t been laughing.”