of sorcery. It might have been his imagination but it seemed to him that the wizard turned and looked in his direction. The twilight and the mask made it impossible to tell his expression.
Of all of the Foragers, only the Barbarian had grown less miserable as they reached the heights. The colder it got, the happier he looked. The chill air reminded him of the bracing cold of his beloved homeland, although of course, it was not to be compared in any way favourably to it. Rik suspected the Barbarian merely took pleasure in the fact the rest of them were uncomfortable. It provided him with a chance to boast loud and long about the hardihood of his people and, more importantly, himself.
Those not on sentry duty wrapped themselves in their greatcoats, broke out pipes and threw themselves down by the fires. Most chewed tough biltong. Weasel toasted some rock hard bread on the end of his bayonet. They had set fires in hollows in the woods. Rik dumped the last of the branches he had gathered beside the fire and slumped down to rest.
Corporal Toby strode to the fire. Rik looked up at him. From this angle his craggy features and huge body looked even more monumental. “You dropped this,” he said in a voice only slightly less loud than a musket being fired. He handed Rik something and then strode off. Rik looked at the small cold metal object in his palm. It was a tunic button. “Thanks,” he said to the departing back.
He opened his pack and fumbled through it looking for a needle and thread, then, despite the chill, he took off his tunic, wrapped his greatcoat back around him and, by the fire’s flickering light, began to sew.
Leon sat across from him, an odd look on his face as he surveyed their surroundings. He looked out of place and wary, a city boy from Sorrow, the night out of doors in this chill place making him uncomfortable. He caught Rik’s expression and said; “Not like night in the Old Quarter is it?”
“No,” Rik said. “It’s not.”
He was half fearful that Leon was going to allude to their time running wild in that city of thieves, and that the lieutenant would hear. He looked around but the Terrarchs were sitting apart, holding themselves as aloof as always.
“We’re a long way from home, Rik,” Leon said. It had been a long time since Leon had called him by his real name twice in one day, and the fact that he did so just then seemed a measure of his unease.
“We are indeed, Leon.” Rik stressed the name, hoping his old friend would take the hint.
“You think there really are giants and spider devils in these mountains?”
Rik felt the others around the fire shift and give the conversation their attention. He guessed such thoughts were on everybody’s minds. “If there are, I am sure Master Severin can deal with them.”
“How can you be so sure? What makes you such an expert?” asked Pigeon, puffing his chest out and walking splay-footed in the way that had given him his nickname.
“Because he knows,” said Leon. “He has read more books than anyone here, maybe even including Master Severin.”
That claim provoked quiet mirth from those that did not know Rik well. The Sergeant said; “It’s most likely true. Never seen anybody read like our Halfbreed. You’d think he was studying to be a lawyer or a sorcerer or one of those other mysterious things.”
Rik wondered if this was some sort of warning. It was the sort of thing an Inquisitor would like to know about. It also showed something of the Sergeant’s ignorance.
It was not that Rik would not have read a grimoire if he got the chance, it was just that he never would. They were things their owners took a lot of pains to keep out of other people’s hands. Rik could only dream of getting a hold of one someday. The Old Witch had taught him some things during what he laughingly thought of as his apprenticeship to her. She had even claimed he showed more than a trace of the Talent but that was when she had been deep in her cups, and oddly sentimental. That had been before the business with Antonio that had driven Leon and himself to flee the city in the company of Death’s own angels.
“I like to read. What of it? You’ve all been pleased enough to have me read you stories from the chapbooks of an evening.” That too was true. They were all of them fond of a story, those who could not read most of all.
“Where did you learn to read, Halfbreed?” asked Pigeon.
“In Shadzar,” Rik said, using the old name for the Place of Sorrow. “In the Great Bazaar.”
“Bet that was not all you learned,” said somebody from the dark. The fruity voice sounded like it belonged to Handsome Jan. Sorrow did not have a good reputation even among the regiments. They might be the gutter scum of the Realms but even they had to feel superior to something, and that something was the inhabitants of Sorrow.
“Was you a thief?” asked someone else.
“Everybody in the Place of Sorrow is a thief,” said Gunther. “If they are not a whore. It is a vile cesspit of every sort of wickedness.”
There was no sense in denying that. Rik felt a strange nostalgia for the covered courtyards and mazy alleys of his home. At least they were warm. He might still have been there now but he had taken the Queen’s gold crown and gone for a soldier.
Of course, if he had not, after the business with Sabena and the jewels, Antonio and his men would probably have had him hanging from a meat hook and Leon with him. Not even the Old Witch could have saved them, if she had been of a mind to, which she most likely was not. She had gotten strange in the later days, as all human sorcerers were said to eventually.
And Antonio was the most powerful crime boss in the city, rich enough to buy immunity even from the Magistrates. It had probably not been such a good idea to sleep with his mistress, Rik reflected. It had been a worse one to help her steal that magic crystal from Antonio’s strongbox.
“It’s a fun place,” said Weasel, just to be contrary. “I enjoyed our time there.”
“That’s because you fit right in,” said another shadowy figure out in the gloom. Weasel just chuckled as if he could not agree more.
“I knew a Terrarch whore there once…” he continued.
“There’s no such thing,” said one of the chorus.
“There is too, least she looked like one of the Exalted…”
“Means nothing, so does Halfbreed,” said somebody else.
“Maybe it was him in a wig,” said Pigeon.
Weasel chuckled again. “I think I would have noticed and so would your mother, since she was right between us.”
“Weasel’s your daddy, Pigeon,” said somebody and then looked up at the sound of footsteps. The Barbarian approached, bringing the hill-man Vosh. Weasel made a place for him by the fire and offered him some biltong and a swig from his special flask. The stranger took it gratefully. Weasel got right down to business.
“What are you doing here with us, Vosh?”
“It’s bad up here, Weasel,” said the stranger. He had the soft lilting accent of the hills. Rik nodded as his suspicions were confirmed. There was no way the stranger could have known Weasel’s name if they had not met before. The hill-man had been with the Lieutenant and the wizard all day.
“Things are always bad in the hills,” said Weasel.
“It’s been worse since the wizard came.” That quietened them. Nobody liked the thought of a wizard being up there, particularly not if they were going to have to fight against him. Wizards were always bad news.
“Wizard?” said Weasel, and even he looked a little worried.
“Renegade Terrarch. Showed up late last autumn. Whispered something in the Prophet's ear and we all had to obey him without question. He turned the old manor house into a hellhole with his experiments. It was bad enough before he started digging the mine. After that…”
“Sounds bad,” said Weasel softly. No one else dared say anything at all. “Mine? Was there gold there?”
“We never saw any. It’s in a cursed unholy site too, near the ruins of Achenar, the old city of the Spider King.”
“What’s this wizard wanting? Why come to the bloody mountains for the middle of winter?”
“Don’t ask me, but it’s no good he’s been up to. He takes people down into the mine and they don’t come back up. At first it was strangers, but then it was our own — people the wizard said were going to betray us. The Prophet agreed. Of course he would, being more than half a wizard himself.”
“I can see where this is going,” said Weasel. “One night he started looking at you slantwise. So you decided
