“We’re going where?” The Barbarian shouted. It was bloody typical. He had just got himself settled in this nice comfortable billet with a couple of jolly fat-bottomed whores and a decent supply of grog and tobacco and the army had to go and spoil it. It was enough to make a man sick. There were days when he really regretted leaving Segard, and this was one of them.
“We’re going East. Best get used to it,” said Weasel, looking as relaxed as he always did. He looked around the room where a dozen of the Foragers lay sprawled on their bedrolls. “Sergeant Hef asked me to spread the word. Seems like the Imperial hordes have crossed the border and are hot for blood.”
“Wankers,” said the Barbarian. “It’s bloody typical- I just got myself settled into a nice comfortable…”
“I know, I know,” said Weasel, looking like he’d heard all of this a thousand times before, intolerant bastard that he was. “Two or is it three plump lasses and a tavern with a good fire and a nice line in roasted rat, and now the army has got to go and spoil it all by giving us our marching orders. Who could have seen that coming?”
For a lanky thin bastard, Weasel did a pretty good impression of the Barbarian’s voice and manner or at least the other’s thought he did. They all laughed. The Barbarian glared around the room just to let them know he was not to be mocked, at least not by anybody but Weasel. They all looked away, abashed by his glare. They knew he could take any six of them, even though most of them were half his age. Actually he could take any ten of them on a good day and the way he felt now…
“You think we’ll be fighting any more dead men?” Toadface asked. Like all of the Foragers, he had grown heartily sick of the walking corpses. The Barbarian did not blame them. In his homeland. bodies remained decently in the ground when buried, and there was none of the need for burning you got in these devil-infested southern lands.
Weasel spread his huge long fingered hands and shrugged, pantomiming a total lack of knowledge.
Handsome Jan stopped admiring his profile in his shard of mirror long enough to say, “It seems like we’ve doing nothing else but deal with bloody sorcery since we crossed the Kharadrean border.”
“Since before that,” said Toadface, licking his lips with his long tongue. “Since the mountains and Achenar.”
The words filled the room with silence. None of them liked to remember that evil place and the Elder World demons that had filled it. They had all of them lost a bunch of friends to the spiders, and the Barbarian had come damn near to losing his life. He still carried the scars from where those huge claws had bitten into his flesh and it was not like he didn’t already have enough scars.
“I’m guessing we’ll see a deal more dark sorcery before this campaign is out,” said Weasel, always one to delight in bringing bad news. “The Sardeans are famous for it.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Toadface. “Like that bastard Jaderac up there in the graveyard, and that Nerghul thing that almost killed us all back in Morven. There are times when I think this whole bloody company is cursed.”
“Well, at least we’ve got the Inquisitor with us,” said Handsome Jan. “That fire of his put paid to the shadow-spawn.”
“I put paid to them with my blade,” said the Barbarian.
“Funny, that’s not how I remember it,” said Weasel.
“Well, I did my part, which is more than some here can say.” The Barbarian glared around, daring anyone to gainsay him, and as usual no one did.
“When do we move out?” Toadface asked.
“Day after tomorrow,” said Handsome Jan.
“No way,” said Weasel. “It’ll take weeks to get the provisions ready, and for the Terrarchs to make up their minds as to what to do.”
“Maybe the Sardeans will be here before then,” said Handsome Jan dubiously.
“Only if they come on dragon-back,” said Weasel. “It’s scores of leagues to the Eastern border, and the roads will be muddy as hell with the spring rains.”
“You don’t think they have enough dragons to move their entire army, do you?” the Barbarian asked. He didn’t mind fighting many things and he feared nothing, but the concept of roughhousing it with a dragon gave him pause.
“No. They’ll all be hibernating anyway, if our own are anything to go by.”
“Reckon there’ll be much plunder?” Handsome Jan asked.
Weasel shook his head. “Imperials will grab any they find on the way in, and Eastern Kharadrea is as poor as an honest magistrate anyway.”
“If the Imperials do have anything we can always take it from them,” said the Barbarian. He did not like to think that they might have to fight a battle without any prospect of loot. It was one of the few things that made a soldier’s life worthwhile.
“Nice that somebody is looking on the bright side,” said Weasel. “Now if I have answered all your questions, I am going to go and get a drink.”
“Smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said the Barbarian. “I think I’ll join you.”
As ever Rena’s lush human beauty astonished Sardec. She looked lovely in the new green dress she had bought in the market. It had probably once belonged to some rich merchant’s wife. There were a lot of them selling clothing and jewellery to raise money for food on the black market. Times were hard all over.
She twirled around, raising the hem of the skirt slightly with her hands so that it swirled around with her. Her ankles were revealed, an effect which he found surprisingly erotic after all this time. He forced himself to clear such thoughts from his mind. This conversation was going to be hard enough as it was.
“What do you think?” she asked, a smile lighting her face.
“It looks fine, very nice.” Something in his tone must have told her something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We got our marching orders today,” said Sardec, making his voice as grave as he could. “The Imperials are over the border. We are going to meet them.”
Her smile vanished and she slumped down on the bed. Her hands clutched the quilt crumpling it. “How long till we go?”
“I do not want you to go,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“You do not want me?”
“It will be dangerous. There will be very little food. There is plague in the East, far worse than here.”
“I want to go with you. Don’t you want me to come?”
“Aren’t you listening, woman?” he said, exasperation and concern making his voice rougher than he would have wanted it to sound. “I said it will be dangerous.”
“I don’t care how dangerous it is.”
“I do. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“But you might be hurt, killed even.”
“I am a soldier of the Queen. It is my job.”
“And I am a whore. It is my job to follow the army.”
“You are not a whore to me,” he said, unable to say what she really was to him. If truth be told there was no future to their relationship. She was a human, he was a Terrarch. There could be no marriage. Even putting aside all the problems of birth and class, there was the fact that he might live a thousand years if he did not fall in battle. She would be lucky to live past forty, the way the world was now.
“I want to go with you,” she said.
“I can’t allow you to do that,” he said. “If anything happened to you…”
“What?” There was imperiousness to her tone that no human should ever use to a Terrarch. He ignored it, trapped by his inability to express how he really felt, to take the risk of saying what she meant to him, of putting himself in her power, of risking ridicule not from the world, but from this one particular human being.
“I just do not want anything to happen to you,” he said lamely. He forced business-like briskness into his tone. “There is gold in the purse on the dresser, and script that can be drawn on any bank.”
“So it does come down to money. I am to be paid off,” she said unreasonably.
“I just want to make sure you are all right,” he said. “That you can pay for safe passage back to Talorea when the passes are open, and that you will have enough to live on once you get there.”
