Bad Faith Page 18

  “But,” Quirk went on, “if he is here—and believe me, it pains me to say this—then he is probably our best ally against Barph. Especially if he has a few thousand people at his back.”

  And suddenly a lot of things that had been said started to add up in Will’s head. “Wait,” he said. “Your ally? You’re here to fight Barph?” He pointed to the assembled dragons. “They’re here to fight Barph?”

  “Barph didn’t just screw you over personally, Will,” Quirk said with a sigh. He thought the sigh was a touch unnecessary.

  “You expect us to ally with him?” one dragon scoffed.

  Will rolled his eyes. “She expects me to ally with you.”

  “I expect,” Quirk snapped, “you to be united by a common goal. Barph is the enemy. Or, of course, we could all fight each other and leave Barph alone to rule over our corpses. The longer this conversation goes on, the less I care.”

  Lette whistled. “Holy shit, Quirk,” she said. “You brought a dragon army to Avarra to wreak war on the heavens?”

  Balur grunted. “I am going to have to be reassessing how badass academics are being.”

  Afrit just stood behind Quirk and virtually vibrated with pride.

  And, it had to be conceded, that was a pretty astounding feat. And as much as Will would have liked to rally the refugees and lead them in battle with these dragons, as much as he would have liked to paint the ground with their blood, he could also see their value as allies.

  He looked up at the vast reptilian, alien faces staring down at him. “So,” he said. “A truce? An alliance?”

  The dragons looked to Quirk, and somehow, Will realized, she really had impressed them.

  “I swear an alliance with him will actually be less of a pain in the arse than trying to go against him,” Quirk said. “And it might even be helpful.”

  The lead dragon—a massive black beast, not the small blue-white dragon Quirk had ridden—snorted. That seemed to be as much of a concession as the dragons were willing to make.

  “All right then.” Lette clapped Will on the back. “Seems like it’s about time for you to come up with a really stupid plan.”

  They separated themselves from the main bulk of the dragons and refugees. The world’s most absurd war council. Will, Lette, Balur, Afrit, and Quirk, and three of the dragons: Netarrax, Pettrax, and Rothinamax. They were large, belligerent, elderly creatures of a singular distemper. Exactly, Will supposed, the sort of leaders you would expect from a society that favored bullying over diplomacy.

  Quirk’s blue-white mount tried to accompany them, but the largest of the older dragons kicked her away. The smaller dragon sent pitiful looks after Quirk, and Will saw the former academic swallow something that looked a lot like guilt.

  They stopped a hundred yards away from the crowds. It was absurd, really. The dragons were so large they’d done little more than simply turn around. Still, their enormous bodies formed something of a barrier that allowed for privacy.

  The three dragons lowered their heads until they were close to Quirk’s and the others’.

  “Discussion is stupid and human,” Netarrax started immediately. “The only true speech is action, and the only thing we have to say is the sound Barph’s heart will make as we rip it from his body.”

  “Oh good,” Will said. “You’re incredibly stupid.”

  It was not, he knew, the most constructive thing to say, but in his defense it was hard to let an entire childhood of oppression go just like that.

  “I shall demonstrate what we have to say to Barph on you,” said Pettrax, exposing his claws.

  “I swear,” Quirk said, turning to Afrit, “the only reason I’m going to try and stop them from killing each other is because I want to make a good impression on you.”

  “Oh good,” said Lette. “Two people can be condescending at once now.”

  “Look,” said Quirk, loud enough that the dragons would pay attention, “we are not here to play power games. We are here to ensure Barph dies. A singular purpose. Remember?”

  “And the way to do that is to rip his heart from his body,” said Netarrax.

  “Point us at him,” said Rothinamax, “and we shall end him.”

  Will didn’t know what line of bullshit Quirk had been feeding these dragons, but the time had come for some reality. “He’s a god, you ill-begotten spawn of iguana jism,” he snapped. “The god. He killed forty or more of your kind back in Vinland without breaking a sweat.”

  “They were not us.” Netarrax, the massive black dragon, was, it seemed, as stubborn as he was stupid.

  “You’re right.” Quirk surprised Will by cutting back into the conversation. “They were younger, stronger, and more powerful.”

  The dragons stared. That they had apparently not expected.

  It was time for some harsh truths. “A direct assault on Barph will lead to death, and probably some condescending laughter on his part,” Will said.

  Quirk’s nodding was particularly aggressive on this point.

  “Barph is strong because of belief,” Will said, while the dragons worked out exactly how offended they wanted to be. “Because people have faith in him. We need to take that away.”

  “Exactly.” Quirk picked up the argument’s thread, carried it deeper into the dragons’ hesitation. “We need to take exactly what Barph told you all to do to defeat the old gods, and use it to defeat him,” Quirk said. “It’s honestly the only viable way to take down a god.”

  “Wait …” Will held up a finger. “Barph did what?”

  “Backstory,” said Quirk. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “I say we try ripping his heart out first,” said Netarrax, pulling Will back to the here and now, “and then if that doesn’t work, we try the humans’ way afterward.”

  “And I’m saying that if you do that,” Will said, “then there won’t be an afterward because you’ll all be dead.”

  “Listen to us,” Quirk said. And Will expected to hear a pleading note in her voice, but there was only command. “You will still get to rip out Barph’s heart. You just need to … to …” She looked to Will.

  And what exactly were the specifics of destroying faith in Barph?

  “We need to tour all of Avarra,” Will said. “We need to convince people to not worship the arsehole god who’s destroying their lives. And once we’ve done that, then you should sharpen your claws.”

  “All of Avarra?” Afrit’s question was, Will thought, a little poorly timed.

  The dragons exchanged looks. Will got ready to knock heads.

  Balur took a half step forward. “There will be being violence along the way, right?” he asked.

  “Finally,” said Netarrax. “Someone who speaks sense.”

  “Yes,” said Will, and he heard a coldness even he hadn’t expected in his own voice. “Don’t worry. I am certain there will be a lot of violence along the way.”

  27

  The Man without the Plan

  Barph couldn’t resist actually licking the Barphetic Cathedral’s walls. Power crackled in the back of his mouth. He felt his left leg trembling slightly.

  He very much doubted that Will had meant the murder of a small army as a blood sacrifice, but he had done it on the grounds of Barph’s own cathedral, grounds consecrated in his own divine name. Plus Barph wasn’t picky.

  Barph shook his head. Will had really outdone himself. The Hallows in tatters, a city destroyed, a cathedral bathed in blood. Honestly, Barph was a little jealous—he wasn’t sure he could have done better himself.

  The god walked into his cathedral, stretching his senses out as he did so, feeling the pulse of the city, of the lands around it.

  Gratt—Lawl’s creature if ever there was one—was assembling an army nearby, conscripting the once-dead into a massive fighting force. He had set up his troops to attack any rival generals who crawled out of the portal. He was forcing order and control upon this city.

  And there, out on the outskirts, was Will. W
ill actually fraternizing with dragons. Forming an alliance with them. Another little pocket of order, of rule; another flaw in his perfect empire of disorder.

  People, Barph realized, were screaming. They were running toward him, waving their little arms in the air. They flung themselves at his feet. His priests. They called his name. They prayed. Their hands scrabbled at his ankles.

  Saving them, that was the gist of it. Gratt’s army prowled their streets. Dragons were in the skies above their heads. They wanted him to undo it all. To put the dead and the Hallows back together. To rebuild what they knew. To set his plans to rights.

  He felt them, these forces massing against his vision. He felt the threat they posed to him. He felt the hatred the actors behind these events felt for him.

  “Save us,” his priests wailed. “Save everything you have achieved.”

  He looked at them, at their wide imploring eyes. “We love you,” a priest screamed.

  Barph trod on the priest. He felt the man’s bones crack beneath his heel.

  The priests stopped praying.

  Barph stared at them in contempt. Did they truly not understand … still?

  He had created perfect anarchy. Perfect disorder. He had undone Lawl’s rule utterly. And it had been … so, so boring. So utterly dull.

  But this. This kicking over of all his plans. This destruction of all he had done. This was anarchy. This was what he had needed. He required an adversary. Because when did one revel? When did one truly laugh, and carouse, and be thankful to be alive?

  In victory.

  And Barph knew now that Will and Gratt would be the perfect vehicles for his victory.

  28

  As Unstoppable as a Runaway Steamroller Heading Toward a Kindergarten

  Two weeks later, and a hundred leagues farther south, Will stood and stared down the slope of a Batarran hill at a small village. The fields around it had been largely turned to mud, and one home was a smoking ruin, but compared to many settlements he’d seen since his return to Avarra, this one seemed remarkably whole. It was also notable for being built at about 50 percent of the size of all the others.

  He turned to Quirk, who was standing beside him. “You’re seriously telling me,” he said, “that you’ve never been to a dwarf enclave.”

  “I study megathaumatofauna,” Quirk replied. “And mega is almost as problematic a term to use when it comes to dwarves as fauna.”

  Will sighed. Well then …

  He signaled back to Lette to hold their forces while he and Quirk descended. There was no obvious resistance to the appearance of several thousand refugees yet, and he didn’t want to spook anyone, no matter how much it made Lette purse her lips.

  He and Quirk were still a hundred yards out when the dwarves started to appear, filing out of low doors, peering up at them. Will felt a sense of unreality staring at them all. He’d heard all the remaining dwarves in Avarra had retreated to the Verran hills. He’d never expected to see any here.

  The dwarves had formed a rough, shuffling mass by the time he and Quirk reached the village’s edge. As they got within ten paces, a burly figure was ejected. He was just over four feet tall, which met with Will’s expectations closely enough, but in defiance of stereotypes, he was clean-shaven. Will would have guessed he was in his mid-forties perhaps.

  “We ain’t got much,” the dwarf said without preamble. “We ain’t got gold. We ain’t got jewels. We ain’t that sort of dwarf.”

  It was not the beginning Will had expected.

  It also made him want to ask a lot of questions, but he knew that what he really had to do was establish that they came in peace. “We—” he started.

  The dwarf, however, seemed to have a different shape for this conversation in his mind. “We don’t dig,” he spat. “We don’t delve. We ain’t got mining carts. We don’t sing baritone working chants in unison. We ain’t that sort of dwarf.”

  Will and Quirk took the time to exchange a look.

  “We didn’t—” Quirk started.

  “It’s racist,” the dwarf said. “That sort of attitude. Bringing those sorts of assumptions. We don’t all spend our time prettifying dungeons. Some of us are artists, not just artisans. Some of us paint. Some of us sculpt. Some of us work with nature. Julia”—he turned and pointed—“creates bowers that no elf could even pretend to aspire to. Bet you didn’t think she could do that, did you?”

  “I …,” Will said, then looked at Quirk again. “I guess I hadn’t thought that about her. No.”

  “Pissing round-ears.” The dwarf hawked a gob of phlegm on the ground. Which struck Will as a bit absurd, as the tips of dwarven ears, if not quite as round as humans’, were far from resembling the sharp points of elvish ears.

  “Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about her at all,” Will tried. “I hadn’t really thought about what any of you do. But, I guess …” He looked about her. “Well, I hadn’t seen any evidence of a mine, so I thought maybe you were farmers.” He shrugged.

  “I’m a farmer!” said one of the dwarves in the crowd, jumping up and down with his hand raised.

  “He is,” said the lead dwarf. “And he creates the most beautiful fruit baskets you could possibly imagine.” Still, he seemed slightly mollified.

  “Thanks, Davitt!” called the farmer from the crowd.

  “Davitt?” Will smiled at the lead dwarf. “My name is Will. This is Quirk.”

  “Round-ears,” was all Davitt said.

  “Yes,” Will said, with an edge to his voice, but Quirk shot a look at him that made him hesitate before pointing out that for a dwarf so concerned with racism, he seemed happy to throw around racial slurs himself. “But all we truly came to say is that we mean you no harm. Neither physically, nor with any foolish assumptions.”

  Davitt’s eyes narrowed. “You making fun of me? Because I’m short?”

  “I swear he’s not,” Quirk jumped in. “Will is often foolish, but he is also painfully sincere.”

  Davitt grumped. “Well,” he said after a while. “You seem all right for round-ears. But I swear, you ask me to forge you a mithril blade and you’re going to be shitting blood for a week.”

  “Thank you,” Quirk said, keeping her smile polite.

  “But you want something, right?” said Davitt. “Otherwise you would have rode on past, and I wouldn’t be stuck out here trying to pretend we’re not all shitting in our britches.”

  Will smiled at that. And Davitt seemed to catch that it was genuine smile, because he returned it.

  “Well,” Will said, “let me ask you this: Are you having any trouble with Barphists?”

  Will watched from an upper-story window as Barph’s priests walked into the dwarven enclave. He was crouched low, down on all fours—not just to keep out of sight, but also because the roof of the dwarven building was only five feet above his head. His sword was drawn.

  There was no organization to the Barphists as they sauntered in. Will supposed that was by divine writ. There could be no leader. There could be no formation.

  Will had, in the later part of his life, considered himself something of a rebellious sort. If you had asked him prior to his personal acquaintance with the gods which of them he found the most sympathetic, he would have answered, “Barph” without a second thought. Barph was the god who flailed against the rules, who fought for his right to kick back and drink and carouse and leave all his responsibilities for another day.

  That, though, Will was beginning to realize, required that there be something to flail against. Order and chaos had to fight each other to find balance. When order was killed and chaos allowed to run rampant …

  One of the Barphists stopped, turned, and studied the front of a dwarven house. It was small and neat, with potted plants lined up outside and shutters on each window, each painted with a surprisingly lifelike lily. The Barphist nodded, then set about the shutters with her club. By the time the house’s occupant was outside, hands in her hair, most of the shutters lay in ruins. />
  Ignoring the screaming woman, the Barphist also took the time to smash a couple of windows. She stepped back to admire the effect.

  Much more chaotic, Will was sure.

  The house’s owner didn’t seem to appreciate the new aesthetic. The Barphist decided to give her a more nuanced understanding by rearranging her face to the same parameters.

  The club went up, the club went down. So did the dwarf. Blood sprayed from her mouth.

  Will knew that he should hold. He knew that the Barphists were not, as Lette had described it, “in the snare.” They needed them farther down the street. He knew that they had told the dwarves to act as if nothing were different. He knew that he had just preached moderation and patience to the dragons, who were all over a low rise, straining at the leash Will had sent Quirk to put on them.

  But he didn’t care. All the other Barphian priests were engaged in acts similar to this bully with her club: knocking down doors, knocking down anything that was lined up too neatly, and knocking down anyone who tried to stop them. One priest had a produced an oil flask and was fussing with a tinderbox.

  Will had seen too many villages that had received this treatment. They weren’t razed to the ground. Not beaten into ruin. But they were villages tortured to the edge of survival. They were villages left crippled and clinging to subsistence: a few houses burned, not quite half the windows smashed, the well water soiled, but still on the edge of drinkable. He had seen villagers’ spirits broken and their wounds left to fester.

  This village had held out longer than most. It was not easy to stumble over. The dwarves had fended off one pack of zealots. But Davitt had told him that a Barphian temple in Vinter had been sending scouts over the border on longer and longer raids. Forty or more priests had been spotted in the area the previous day.

  The ambush had been hastily arranged, but Will was certain they had the numbers to win. He had close to two hundred of his followers hidden around this village. All of them waiting for his signal. All of them waiting for the Barphist to enter “the snare.” They were leaner and harder now than when he’d found them. Food had been scarce on the trip down, mostly scavenged and stolen, and often coming with losses. Barphists had ambushed them. Gratt’s once-dead had harried them. Their weak had been winnowed from the pack.