“There’s nobody around!”
“These woods have eyes, Isu,” I said firmly, “and most of them are unfriendly. If anyone sees a horned woman hanging around this wagon, it’ll draw enemies as quickly as a pile of steaming troll shit draws flies on a hot day. If you’re anywhere but inside the wagon, totally hidden from the outside, that cowl stays on your head.”
She clearly wanted to wring my neck but was utterly powerless to do so. Elyse had warned me before about ordering Isu around too much, and she still didn’t trust the former death goddess. I didn’t entirely trust her either, but I needed her around to help me adjust into my new role.
“I’d cut your throat if you weren’t so…” Isu’s gaze became hungry, as though she might prefer fucking me to death rather than slicing my throat. She drew in a sharp, subtle breath as she stared at me and bit her lower lip.
I flashed her a grin. “You were saying?”
“Ugh!” She scrambled onto the wagon, as angry with herself now as she had been with me. I smiled as she clambered into the back, making a show of getting away from the rest of us.
“I think our resident necromancer needs some alone time,” I said.
“Permanent alone time,” Rami muttered and scowled.
“Enough of that now,” I said. “I want to hear about the smoke you saw.”
“It’ll be visible when we get over the top of the next hill and the trees stop blocking out the sky. It’s no forest fire. I’m certain it’s a settlement that’s burning.”
“I doubt it’s just bandits if a whole village has been burned down,” I said. “Perhaps Sergeant Rollar’s army has finally taken my bait and caught up with us.”
“And what are you going to do if they have?” Elyse asked as the oxen tugged the wagon toward the hill.
“I’m willing to make a little detour for that ogre sphincter Rollar.”
“Of course you are,” Grast said with a grin. “It’s about time the God of Death made an appearance again!” He clapped Cranton on the back, and the other man simply groaned.
The wagon rumbled over the top of the hill, and I spotted a massive pillar of black smoke darkening the horizon. Something big was burning, perhaps something even larger than a mere village. With so much smoke in the air, a whole town could be on fire. If this was the work of Rollar and his thugs, they had grown a lot more powerful since I’d last encountered them. Rollar had always sought ancient religious artifacts. Was it possible he’d found something truly powerful?
Our wagon descended the other side of the hill, and soon, the sight of the sky was blocked by the tall trees bunched close together on either side of the road again.
“What do you want to do, Vance?” Elyse asked. “Make a detour and investigate, or keep going?”
“Keep going,” Grast said. “At least, that’s my opinion. We have a God of Death on our side. Who can stand against us?”
Elyse ignored our driver as he pumped his fists in the air. “For what it’s worth, I think we should have a look,” she said. “There could very well be injured people there. Women and children who might need help.”
The prospect of helping innocents was heavily bolstered by the opportunity for more souls. I felt a smile pull at my lips.
“Onward!” I clapped Grast on the back, and he let out a belly laugh.
“What part of Prand is this, anyway?” Rami asked as the wagon rolled forward. “We’re not still in Erst, are we?”
“No,” Elyse answered. “We left the borders of Erst long ago. This is Sturn.”
“Sturn covers a huge area,” I said to Rami. “Most of it is wild, and the people are mostly farmers. I’ve never taken jobs up here because anyone who wants someone dead usually does it themselves.”
Grast took a hefty swig of grog before he chimed in. “Some of their faces may look like goblins’ backsides,” he grunted, “and it’s true that most have more fingers on one hand than teeth in their mouths, but I’ll be damned if backwoods Sturnians can’t play the finest dueling lutes in all of Prand.”
“If we hear any dueling lutes,” Rami said with a look of distaste on her pretty face, “I’d rather we give them a wide berth.”
Isu snickered. “Are you afraid, enjarta?”
“My people do not know fear.”
“Uh. . .” Cranton interrupted.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, er, going deeper into Sturn like this,” Cranton said nervously, his eyes darting from side to side, “that’s where most of the stories have been coming from. Tales of unearthly creatures, and savage bandits, and dismembered corpses and such like.”
I chuckled and punched him playfully on the arm. “C’mon, Craton, surely you know me better than that by now. When I see danger, I turn toward it, not away from it.”
“You don’t have a thing to worry about, little fella,” Grast said as he cracked his whip across the oxen’s backs and tugged on the reins. “Not when you have a death god and his ever-growing army in your corner.”
The oxen grumbled as they changed direction.
I noticed trampled bushes and the remnants of a campfire only a few yards into the woods. “Slow the wagon,” I ordered Grast after the wagon had turned the corner.
“Something the matter?” he asked.
“Rami,” I said, “I want you to scout ahead. I think we’re about to walk into a trap.”
It took her all of three minutes to assess the path ahead before she returned.
“You were right,” she reported. “Forty armed men in total. Half that number are on horseback. They’re wearing a strange assortment of armor. Some wear tabards with the Lord of Light’s symbol, while others are arrayed in equipment more befitting bandits.”
“That’ll be Rollar’s men,” I said with a smile.
“What do you plan to do?” Elyse asked me.
Isu’s dark lips curled into a smile. “Kill them. Take their souls. What else would the God of
