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 amp; 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
“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
“That why you’re here?” Orbek’s voice was dark as coffee. “To
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.
