I hoped that I would be able to restore that leg sometime. In the past, I had brought severed hands back into existence. But a leg would require far more power than I had now.
Everybody else had been making plans without me. Most of the slaves and children had been stolen from various parts of the northern kingdoms, and many of those parts lay close by. Smif volunteered to see that those people found their way back home. He felt it would begin to make up for the wickedness he had done as Memweck’s servant.
Halla would return her nephews to their home in the farthest east. That meant she would cross the Bending Sea with the rest of us before heading east through the Empire.
Memweck had stolen the rest of the children from Bindle, twenty in all. Whistler and Bea would travel south to bring those children home. Pil had decided to escort me back to Bindle too. When I found out about it, I argued and bitched at her—not because it was a bad plan, but because I wanted to act contrary. However, after making two mean comments and throwing a bowl at her, I found I was too tired to sustain a rebellion.
We left the next day. Whistler, who was much recovered, had found a cart and a donkey to pull it. Halla loaded me in, and despite being the conqueror, I departed Memweck’s home in as little glory as one could imagine.
The weather had turned to true springtime, and we traveled down the mountain for three bright, cool days. We reached the open land above Caislin, and the new grass had erupted with a legion of red and blue wildflowers. Since we wanted to make a big, big circle around Caislin, Smif left us for the city to begin finding the homes of the slaves and children. Captivity had dazed many of them, so finding their homes would prove a prodigious task.
Two more days of travel brought us to Paikett in the afternoon. The cart had banged and jounced me all the way down, but Pil had developed the knack of binding my arm and shoulder to cushion it against the worst jarring. My leg still pained me, and my missing foot hurt, but I was healing well.
We rode toward the Paikett docks, hoping to find a ship to take us across the sea next week, after the threat of spring storms had passed.
“Watch your ass,” Leddie said. “This is a fancy place for an ambush. I ambushed you here, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Halla said, sitting tall and squinting toward the harbor. “We killed most of your men.”
“But I helped!” Leddie cackled like a crow.
When we were a hundred feet from the dock, a tall man stepped out from behind the warehouse. He wore a shaggy fur coat and a cowl made from what looked like a bear’s head, although the fur shone like silver.
Another man, so short as to be almost square, ambled onto the dock from the other direction. His blond hair hung in a long braid. He wore a full, clover-green coat over a yellow shirt, with orange trousers and shiny black shoes.
A third man climbed straight up onto the dock from the harbor side. He was average height with long, loose arms and huge hands. Two vicious scars cut across his face, and he wore scuffed armor made of some oddly pink leather, along with tall, crimson boots. He also wore a feathered hat similar to the one we had found in the crypt.
None of the men smiled, waved, or even moved once they took a stance. All of them carried swords in their hands.
After a silence I found uncomfortable, the short one in the green coat called out in a ringing voice, “Murderer, we are Gondix, Paal, and Zagurith. Memweck was our brother.”
THIRTY-SIX
Three gaudy people had blocked our way to the Paikett docks. Still sitting on my butt in the cart, I peeked out between Leddie and the donkey to examine Memweck’s brothers.
I considered the possibility that they might all have the same human mother as Memweck and also a human father, or fathers. That would make them regular people, although flamboyant. But that was a foolish hope, and I knew it. These sons of Lutigan had been sired on human mothers, likely different mothers, since Lutigan was known to be as randy as a dozen sailors. That made them demigods like Memweck. They were probably some of Lutigan’s personal shield men. If they wanted to hurt me, my best move was not to squirm and moan while they did it to avoid upsetting them.
The short one said, “Make yourself ready to die, for we are the hands of divine vengeance.”
I called out from the cart, “Divine vengeance has three hands, eh? That must be convenient. Human vengeance only has two hands, and there’s never any place to hold a beer.”
The short one paused. “Are you being sarcastic?” He turned to the one in pink armor. “Is he being sarcastic?”
The one in pink grinned for a second. “Yes, he’s being sarcastic. He’s probably voiding his bowels in terror, but he’s not timid. He wouldn’t be if he killed Memweck.”
The one in silver fur shrugged. “Yep.”
The short one squared off with us and lifted his bare chin. “When we tear off your arm and make you eat it, you will not concern yourself with counting hands, will you?”
I yelled, “Just hold on a second! Before you start tearing, let me get a better look at you. Halla, help me down from here.”
Halla lifted me out of the cart, and I hopped one-legged toward the demigods using a heavy stick for balance. I employed those seconds to make plans. By the time I stopped sixty feet from them, my best plan so far was keeping my eyes closed when they killed me so I wouldn’t see how horrible my death was.
“So, let me consider
