the tale. Jassion is-broken. I don't think he'll ever be an entirely rational person, though we can certainly hope that once he's caught up with your father, his temper might cool a little.'
'And you?' There was no mistaking the bitterness that flavored her words. 'What's your excuse?'
'My-?'
'The ogre wasn't a threat to us, Kaleb! I know why Jassion killed it anyway. I want to know why you didn't stop him!'
'I could tell you it wasn't my place,' Kaleb said slowly, 'that, appearances aside, I'm the servant in this expedition, not the master. I could,' he reiterated, raising a finger as her mouth opened to interject, 'but I won't.'
'Then why?'
'Do you remember what I told you about my magics? About never really having been afraid?'
She nodded.
'I've also grown accustomed to doing things the, ah, expedient way,' he admitted. 'When you have more power than everyone else, I suppose you start to view people as just problems to be dealt with. I've killed before, Mellorin. Sometimes a lot, and often without much more provocation than your uncle.'
'And you're satisfied with this?' she demanded.
He reached across the gap between the horses to rest a hand on her arm. 'I used to be,' he said. 'Now I think I want to do better.'
Yes, he thought as Mellorin tried, and failed, to repress a bashful smile. I believe I am, indeed, doing so much better. THEY STUMBLED UPON THEIR DESTINATION not long after, cresting a shallow rise into the hollow between a pair of great, grass-clad slopes only just too small to be counted among the proper mountains of the Cadriest range.
The valley sprawled wide, a cupped palm full of lush greens and bright golds, undulating where the edges of the hills failed to conform to even curves. A bucolic cottage hid shyly within the shadow of the leftmost hill, and beyond that stood a primitive but sturdy fence of wooden posts. It formed an enclosure sufficient to pen an enormous herd of barnyard animals, or perhaps one abnormally lackadaisical dragon.
It turned out, thankfully, to be the former. Scores of sheep, goats, and the occasional cow wandered about, on both sides of the fence and through an open gate. And it was only those animals that offered the newcomers any sense of scale for the whole tableau.
'You could hold a masquerade ball in that house!' Mellorin murmured after several moments.
Kaleb shrugged. 'That's a guest list I'd love to see.'
'Are we certain Davro lives here?'
'I'd say so,' Jassion answered. 'Even if Kaleb did bollix up the spell'-the sorcerer bowed sardonically at that-'I can't imagine any human hermit needing fifteen-foot ceilings.'
'I know,' she admitted. 'It just doesn't seem very-ogrey.'
'Are you sure that's not 'ogrish'?' Kaleb asked her. 'Perhaps 'ogresque'?'
Mellorin grinned; Jassion looked about ready to strangle something. 'Are you two quite finished?'
'Probably not,' Kaleb and Mellorin told him in unison.
The baron began marching toward the house, muttering a dozen separate imprecations. With a shared chuckle, the others fell in behind.
'I'm not seeing any smoke from the chimney,' Jassion said after allowing himself a moment to overcome his latest snit. 'But it's warm enough here that that doesn't prove anything. I'm hoping he's out, so we can catch him unawares, but keep your eyes open.'
'I-'
'Shut up, Kaleb.'
The rich tang of grasses and turning leaves gave way as they neared, overpowered by the musk of, as Kaleb later put it, 'Beef, mutton, wool, and leather in their hoofed larval stage.' This close, they could see a few swine as well, rooting in the mud beneath a trough behind the house.
A trough that dripped with the sludgy remnants of a very recent feeding.
The trio drew to an abrupt halt as the implications dawned. Hands dropped to hilts, or rose in readiness to cast.
It was Mellorin who, glancing just the right way through sheer happenstance, saw the spear arcing toward them. She screamed something garbled even as she dived to the soil. The weapon planted itself in the earth nearby, vibrating with a dull thrum, and Kaleb completely understood when he saw her eyes widen in alarm.
It looked very much like someone had just hurled a sharpened tree at them. The spear was two feet longer, and a third again as thick, as that wielded by the ogre in the swamp.
They turned-Mellorin and Jassion picking themselves up from where they'd thrown themselves aside-and there he was, emerging from the house's shadow. The tip of his horn surely cleared fourteen feet, and Mellorin could damn near have stretched out her saddle on one of his arms. In one fist he clutched a second spear, not quite as large as the first, and a weapon that was less a sword than a row of jagged steel teeth protruded from the other.
'All right.' His voice was the cry of the earthquake, the deep echo of the mountain hollows. 'I knew someone would find me eventually, so let's get this done with. I have cows to milk. You want to tell me what horrible atrocities you're here to avenge, or should we forgo the formalities and just start ruining each other's outfits?'
'Yep, he's definitely been with your father,' Kaleb whispered to Mellorin. Then, more loudly, as Jassion began to slide Talon from over his shoulder, 'No! Damn it, no steel!' Then, louder, 'Davro, we're not here to hurt you.'
'Good,' the ogre said, his advance never slowing. 'Because I'm pretty certain you won't.'
'Look,' Kaleb continued, backing slowly away, 'we just want to talk to you. Just talk!'
'He's not buying it, Kaleb,' Jassion growled.
'He's also no good to us dead,' the sorcerer reminded him. 'My name is Kaleb,' he shouted.
'Never heard of you.'
'This is Jassion, Baron of Braetlyn.'
That, finally, got a reaction. The ogre halted, nostrils flaring. 'You, I've heard a great deal about.' He cocked his arm, ready to throw, and Jassion tensed to spring aside.
Mellorin stepped forward, shrugging off Kaleb's hand as he reached to stop her, ignoring his hiss of warning.
'My name,' she said, holding sword and dagger out to her sides rather than before her, 'is Mellorin Rebaine.'
And the ogre finally froze-more out of shock, Kaleb surmised, than anything else.
'Mellorin Rebaine?' Perhaps uncertain he'd heard properly, Davro tilted his head, his horn and his shadow making him look very much like a bewildered sundial.
'Yes. I know you've no reason to love my father-'
The ogre unleashed a peculiar barking cough, and the others could only wonder in confusion. It wasn't until he wiped away a tear with the back of his sword-hand that they realized he'd been laughing.
'I see that you've inherited a certain gift for understatement,' he said finally.
She nodded. 'Among other things. But that's actually why we're here, Davro. Help us, and you might find some measure of retribution.'
Davro's brow furrowed, making the great horn quiver. 'Perhaps,' he said, planting the butt of the spear in the soil beside him, 'you'd better come in after all.
'But please use the scraper by the door, would you? I just swept the damn place.' 'I take it you're no great admirer of your father, then?'
Mellorin sat on the edge of a lumpy mattress that was apparently stuffed with untanned hides and untreated furs, and tried hard to breathe as little as possible. Kaleb perched beside her, offering no sign of his own discomfort save for the occasional flaring of his nostrils, while Jassion stood apart and made no attempt at all to keep the revulsion off his face. Davro himself squatted atop a broad stump that apparently served him as a stool. This close, and undistracted by the rigors of battle, Mellorin noted that each of his hands boasted only four thick fingers, and the deep red of his skin-which she'd previously attributed to sunburn, both on him and the ogre in the swamp-was his normal shade.
