commmmbaaat,” he said, as his eyes grew rapturous.
Nastra made a distorted smile.
“Maybe I won’t do your combat,” Ravon said lightly. He’d been wondering what he would do when Stonefist ordered him to fight. It might not be a bad way to die: Ravon against a few orcs and goblins. But then again, it would mean contributing to Stonefist’s sadistic pleasures.
The forge master frowned. “Then Captain die. I cut your heart out.”
No heart in there, Ravon thought, but have at it, you sack of pus.
The pleasantries concluded, Stonefist heaved himself from his chair. Ravon was a big man, but the forge master stood a foot taller.
“Stonefist show you a thing, yah?” Waving Ravon to follow, he lumbered toward one of the forge portals.
“Foul bitch,” Ravon muttered to Nastra as she walked at his side. Skinnier even than most elves, she still possessed a fluidity that might be called grace, if she hadn’t been a sadistic freak of a gnoll’s minion.
“I pissed on your bed this morning,” Nastra crooned. “Think of me tonight as you dream.” As she walked, her hundred keys clinked like bells.
“I do think of you. You perform all my delights, lady elf. Think of that.”
She hissed in response. Oh, how the vile creature would love to carve him up a little with the handy knife on her belt. It was one of Ravon’s few remaining pleasures to provoke her. Even Stonefist liked to see her taken down a notch.
They came to the egress gate in the forge wall, the place where the weaponry would soon pour forth. To Ravon’s surprise, the process had begun.
A great, burnished sword blade, edges honed and glittering, protruded from a portal. The blade was emerging from the door so slowly that Ravon could barely tell it was moving. A tendril of smoke slipped out as well, as though the forge was passing intestinal gas at the effort. But it was still in testing mode. Ravon tried and failed to imagine the hellish environs of a fully enlivened genesis forge.
Stonefist eyed Ravon. “You fight my goblins with sword, yah? Kill and kill, to see if sharp?”
Stonefist had long promised Ravon a good fight with the forge’s first product. A little celebration, as it were. With this weapon, by the look of the sword’s ensorcelled iron, Ravon might last a few minutes even if out- numbered. But he said, “I’d rather fight you, Stonefist. Someone easy.” He shrugged. “If it were up to me.”
Stonefist’s expression darkened. He bent over Ravon, pointing a meaty finger at his chest, his breath fit to knock Ravon flat. “You kill goblins. You kill what I say you kill.” His voice boomed. “You kill lady elf. You kill halfling Finner. Whoever Stonefist say!”
Lightly bringing the gnoll’s attention back to the sword, Ravon asked, “When will it be ready?”
“Soon,” the gnoll muttered. Then, regaining his mood, he said, “How you like sword?”
“Good so far,” Ravon said.
Stonefist nodded over and over, muttering half to himself, “Took much dragonshards. Two years of dragonshards to make. Big pile. Now out come good-so-far sword! Ha!” Stonefist threw wide his massive arms. “Soon come big important visitor. He watch forge get born!”
That was news. The high lord coming. Ravon flicked a glance at Nastra, whose long and almost handsome face showed no sign of surprise, only a patient, cold longing to watch a captain of Karrnath fight to the death. Well, she hadn’t overseen the killing of any slaves for a couple of days.
Ravon wondered who the big visitor would be. Wondered if he would live to see it. Hoped he wouldn’t. “You’ll need a bath, then, Stonefist,” Ravon said. “With company coming.”
Stonefist grinned, showing an impressive rack of teeth. “By Dolurrh, Stonefist miss you when you dead!” That brought on a fit of barking laughter. Even Nastra joined in, as ugly a mewling sound as Ravon had ever heard.
He heard Stonefist’s guffaws all the way up to the fourth level, the slave barracks. Just before he turned into his quarters-by the grace of the Sovereign Host, a private cell-he heard keys jangling and turned to see Nastra slinking around the corner and down the crabbed and steep north stairs. Had she followed him, spying? He wondered where the creature was going. Nowhere to go, surely. This lovely forge was the end of the line.
Deep in the night, ear-splitting yowls erupted down the fortress corridor. Instantly awake, Ravon sprang from his pallet. From cell block eleven, he heard the rasping shouts of goblins and slaves chanting “Finner, Finner!”
Cursing, Ravon stalked down to the slave barracks in time to see a dozen goblins surrounding a bloodied Finner. One of them yanked a fistful of hair from Finner’s head and, grinning, raised it aloft like a captured flag. The slaves stomped and hollered as Finner fell to his knees in a coughing fit.
In the tumult, no one saw Ravon stride in until he grabbed a goblin by his leather belt, holding him a foot off the floor, kicking and growling. He swung the creature around, slamming him into another goblin and clearing a wide swath.
His fit ended, Finner stared at the palm of his hand and a few bloody teeth he’d coughed up. By the Devourer, here was a fine mess. Ravon had promised Finner’s lieutenant that he’d keep an eye on the young halfling. Finner had served tirelessly as the officer’s steward despite a set of bad lungs that would have kept lesser men from service. Ravon owed it to the lieutenant, he supposed. The man had died in his arms on the battlefield.
Still holding the goblin by the belt, Ravon growled, “Anybody want this sack of shit?”
The goblins fell silent, their grins fading to resentful scowls.
“No?” Ravon flung the creature aside and walked over to Finner. The formerly cheering slaves now looked properly ashamed. To watch a fellow slave savagely beaten… Ravon shook his head, glaring at them. The urge rose to slay two or three goblins before the others fell upon him. But then, that would be too much like the old Ravon and it was so much easier not to be him.
He helped Finner back to his private quarters-a rat hole with a slit for a window-and dumped him in a pile of straw.
Finner gazed up at him, but this time without the puppy look. The beating bashed the puppy out of him, no doubt. Still, there was that gratitude in his eyes.
“By the Dark Six, get some sleep,” Ravon muttered. Then, to escape Finner’s groveling, he stalked into the cell warrens, the walls secreting the usual bubbling pustules like a body with the plague. Eventually he found some solitude on a balcony used for dumping refuse. He sat until a glimmer of dawn seeped into the jungle and the blasted ground near the forge. Fumaroles in the cracked land coughed up sulfurous wisps. On the far side of the clearing, an early morning detail was hammering away on something. A reviewing stand. Getting on time for the end of the world. But if the genesis forge was ready to deliver itself of millions of arms, and if it took two years of accumulated magical dragonshards to create half a sword, where were the stockpiles, the hoards of powerful shards and objects of enchantment? He’d dared to ask a forge artificer once, in a rare hallway encounter. The elite mage had wrinkled his nose at Ravon’s odor and murmured, “Endless stocks, below. Endless.”
He meant the giant graveyard. But somehow Ravon doubted there was enough enchantment below for all that would soon be rolling out of the genesis forge.
A noise startled him. Nastra stood at the door.
He turned back to gaze out over jungle. “So did your goblins report me?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Well, they started it.”
There was nothing much to say to that, nor did she respond, but rather watched at Ravon’s side as the jungle brightened from black to sewage green.
Below them, Stonefist had come out onto the turning rims and with his henchmen flung a helpless gnome off the ring to his death four stories below. Then another. The guards’ laughter came trickling up.
“Stonefist’s at it early,” Ravon muttered.
Nastra remained silent for a moment, before saying, “How bad was Vedrim’s dungeon?”
“Not pleasant. No hot and cold running water. Lousy food.”
“I’ll bet the count has especially creative tortures.”
That was true, but he wasn’t going to give Nastra any pointers. “It’s an art with him.”
Another gnome went sailing off the ring to his death. Nastra murmured, “It can make a monster of you.”
He turned to her. “What can?”
She stared at him with cold, flat eyes. “Torture.”
Was she accusing him of monstrosity? He stifled a guffaw. “What’s your excuse, lady elf?”
