The Dragon Lords: False Idols Read online

  “What,” said the first priest, “in the name of Barph’s prodigious wang, was that?”

  But Firkin just smiled. He had bought the time he needed.

  His houseboy broke the silence. “The crowd is growing …” He hesitated, seemed to finally take in the tableau before him. The dead priest. The whole knife-to-throat affair. “They’re restless, master.”

  There was a scream from outside like the doors of the Hallows creaking open.

  Blood, whispered the voice.

  The High Priests exchanged glances that, if they were sober enough, might have been called nervous.

  There was a feeling like a fist hitting the house. Or possibly more like a hundred angry people being thrust at it by four or five thousand angrier people behind them.

  “They’re a rambunctious lot,” Firkin said again. “Should probably be getting out there.” He wasn’t sure if he was grimacing or grinning.

  The house creaked under the impact of another wave of humanity.

  “So …” said the third priest, reluctant to leave his murderous train of thought.

  “If Master Firkin don’t go out there,” said the houseboy, who was at least old enough to prioritize the threats to his life, “then the crowd outside is likely to come in here and tear everything and everyone apart till they get him.”

  “I really have been meaning to preach to them about that,” said Firkin. He wasn’t above lying utterly.

  The third priest hesitated, blade quivering against Firkin’s Adam’s apple. Then he sagged, let the knife drop. “Barph shit on it,” he said.

  Firkin’s sphincters all relaxed in simultaneous relief. He quickly cinched them again to stop this moment of victory from transforming rapidly into one of disaster.

  “Be seeing you then,” he managed as he stepped past the High Priest and toward the room’s door. Then the blade was back against his gut, bringing him up short.

  “This isn’t finished,” hissed the third priest. “We don’t just forget about this. You live now, but I want you to understand … You don’t need your balls to preach. You don’t need your toes. You don’t need your eyes. You can do without your fingers. We can take pieces of you. And if you don’t get back in line, we will. We are bigger, and stronger, and more resourceful than you. So shape the fuck up, if you ever want to piss standing up again.”

  Then the knife was gone. A moment later so were the High Priests.

  But as Firkin made his stumbling way out to the crowd, the whisper remained.

  25

  The Burdened Beast

  “No, Balur,” Quirk said for what had to be about the fifteenth time today.

  “But they are retreating!” Balur pointed out.

  “No.”

  Sixteenth time.

  “But now is being the perfect time to be using the bowels of their fallen companions to lasso them.”

  “No.” Seventeenth. Quirk’s mouth was a thin line.

  When he had been with Quirk in Kondorra, Balur had always been of the opinion that if she only extracted her head from her own arsehole, and set fire to a lot more people, she would be a lot more fun. Sexy fun at that. To be frank, Quirk setting fire to people was one of the hotter things Balur had ever seen.

  Sadly, the reality of the situation turned out to be total bullshit.

  It was now approximately three weeks since he had arrived in Birchester, at the foot of King Todger’s throne. It was three weeks since Quirk had interceded on their part. It seemed she had quite a lot of sway with King Todger. Mostly because of her ability to set fire to a lot of people.

  Once Quirk had managed to extricate them from the elven throne room with their bowels intact, Balur had had his own suspicions about Quirk’s authority, though.

  “You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?” he’d said.

  “With who?” Quirk had looked comically puzzled.

  “A man who is calling himself Todger.” Balur had shaken his head. “And I was always thinking you had standards. Now I am finding out it’s just a really weird kink.”

  “I did not sleep with Todger!” Quirk had seemed genuinely offended.

  “Blow him? Hand job?” Lette had joined in. “It’s all the same thing to them.”

  “I did not give the king of the elves a hand job!” Which had been when a lot of other elves had started to stare. Quirk had lowered her voice. “I’m not …” she’d muttered. “I don’t do that sort of thing. Not with anybody.”

  Lette’s brow had furrowed. “Really?” she’d said. “You should. It’s more fun than you might think.”

  “Why are you here?” Will had broken in, which had rather disappointed Balur, who had enjoyed the track they were on.

  Quirk had looked momentarily relieved at the abrupt change in topic, then narrowed her eyes. “Why are you here?”

  Will had put on his earnest face. “It’s our plan,” he’d said. “We want to help.”

  Quirk’s eyes had remained narrow. “Help with what?”

  “With killing the dragons.” Will had looked confused by the question.

  “Why?”

  Balur had not been convinced that with her eyes narrowed that much, Quirk would actually be able to see anything, let alone signs of subterfuge.

  Will had persisted with his puzzled expression.

  “Really?” Quirk had finally widened her eyes just so she could roll them. “Because I’ve never seen any of you do anything out of self-interest, right?”

  “Hey,” Lette had broken in. “We’re not total arseholes. We’re not going to let the whole world burn just because no one’s paying us. We live here too.”

  And that, Quirk had actually accepted. And Balur supposed he did too. He had occasionally wondered why they were bothering.

  “But why did you come here?” Quirk had asked finally.

  Lette’s face had fallen. “There’s nowhere else, Quirk. It’s all gone. The dragons have taken over. They’ve fought a different war this time. Not blood and tears, but hearts and minds. They’ve lied their way into power. And apparently every legitimate ruler in Avarra has been such a colossal dick that the people of this world have been happy to let them do it.”

  Quirk had thought about that too, then nodded, and then grimaced. “You won’t be able to organize an army here,” she’d said. “That’s not how the elves work. They’re more of a loose collective than any sort of traditional nation. A lot of individual tribes retreated here after the Century War. And yes, Todger is the chief of the biggest tribe, but he’s also mostly a figurehead that the other tribes can shake at the outside world when they need to appear like they have a traditional king. Plus none of them care if the rest of the world goes to shit. As long as the dragons stay out of the Vale, they’re fine. I’ve been able to operate here, because Tamar borders the Vale. I make guerrilla raids, and keep their border clear of trouble. But that’s all I’ve been able to manage.”

  Which was when Balur had started to get excited about the possibilities of Quirk as a guerrilla fighter. This, though, was his eighth raid into Tamar, and it was also the eighth raid where Quirk had not allowed him to have any fun.

  Balur picked up a rope of intestine from the floor and swung it experimentally. “I am thinking it would be perfect for the lassooing,” he said, looking around for support.

  A couple of the elves shrugged. They, for the most part, seemed to like him. They respected what they referred to as his “murder boner.” There had been a few dustups over his tendency to buy up all the best women at brothels, but given that he outweighed most elves by a factor of three or so, those had all been resolved relatively quickly.

  Quirk hadn’t been any fun about those incidents either.

  “We are giving chase,” he said, trying to lay it out for her in a way she might understand. “We are capturing them. We are tearing the arms and legs off all but one of them, and then putting that one in a cage made of his friends’ body parts. There is being a lot of weeping and self-defecating.
Then after a day or two he will be telling us everything we are wanting to know. I have been doing it before. It is being very effective.”

  He looked around hoping to have swung popular opinion a little further.

  “Shut up, Balur,” said Lette.

  “Shut up, round-ear,” he barked back. There were a couple of laughs at that. And a few of the elves did look like they thought making a cage of human limbs could be a fun way to pass the time.

  “We don’t need to know anything,” Quirk hissed. “We know where Diffinax is. We know where the Diffinites have set up camps. They aren’t the ones hiding. We are. If they find us, we are utterly screwed. So when they run, we slink back in the shadows, so that they can’t hit us back. Fear and doubt. Those are our weapons. Diffinax wants everyone to believe in his omnipotence. We undermine that belief. We kick out the supports. And slowly we wear down his power base. And when he’s teetering, that’s when we push him over. Tactics, Balur.” She looked at the whole group. “Tactics.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Come on.” A dark-skinned Tamathian called Afrit, who seemed to have been fulfilling the role of second in command until Lette’s arrival, circled a finger in the air. “Let’s wrap this up and head home.”

  Balur sighed, then headed after the rest of the raiding party, all loping back toward the Vale.

  He caught up with Lette, who was forming a rear guard. “This is being pussy bullshit,” he said to her.

  Lette shook her head. “Quirk is being cautious in the face of overwhelming forces, Balur. It’s the sensible play.”

  Lette, Balur knew, had some strange aspirations toward living a less vigorous and rewarding lifestyle. One that involved things like kindness, and softness, and being stabbed when your guard was inexplicably lowered. But surely despite even that she could see the folly here. “When has caution been winning a war?”

  “Recklessness has lost more.”

  “Reckless!” Balur threw up his hands. “We are being three miles from the nearest Diffinite camp. She is wanting to erode Diffinax’s power base but where are being the witnesses to this victory that might be helping with that? Diffinax’s power base is solidifying faster than we are eroding it. We are needing a grand gesture, and we are needing to be making it fast.”

  In front of them, a pair of elves were running, heads down. One raised a fist at Balur’s words.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Lette said.

  The elf glanced over his shoulder. His name was Ethen. Balur had seen Lette sparring with him several times. He was fast and aggressive—a good man to have beside you in a fight. He had taken several lives today and their blood was painted across his cheeks in a thin spray.

  “The Analesian is speaking the truth,” said Ethen.

  The elf beside him, Sallell—a fine shot with a bow, in Balur’s opinion—turned to look too. “Quirk has given us victories. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “She’s a round-ear,” Ethen said.

  “And that’s blind prejudice,” said Sallell. “She’s proved herself. And she’s proven she won’t spend us like someone else’s coin.”

  It was Lette’s turn to raise her fist this time.

  Balur decided that it was being his opinion that people who used bows were cowards who were afraid of getting someone else’s liver on their hands.

  “We should let Diffinax know who opposes him,” said Ethen, unrelenting. “We should make him howl our name in rage.”

  “And then,” Lette pointed out, “he can chase you home, burn your forest to the ground, and ensure that Vinland is the only place holding out against the dragons. Well done.”

  Sallell flashed a smile at Lette.

  Balur grunted. But he decided to remember for later the flash of defiance he saw in Ethen’s eyes.

  They regrouped in Elmington. It was a small village, a few miles across the border of the Vale, serving as this week’s staging ground for Quirk’s raids. Their band of a hundred or so warriors was standing around and engaging in their two favorite pastimes: whittling wood and talking shit. Balur had tried to get a few games of dice going, but the elves had laughed it off as an odd human custom he had picked up. He’d needed to bite off the faces of several Diffinites before they forgave him for that one.

  And then the face-biting had gone and made it impossible for him to talk people into setting up a fighting ring.

  So, despite his monumental lack of interest, Balur traipsed after Lette, Quirk, and Afrit to the debrief they were having in a large room, suspended between several oak trees. Its floor creaked ominously beneath Balur’s weight. Will looked up from a table full of charts as they came in.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  The elves, for their part, ignored him. Will did a poor job of hiding his disappointment. Personally, Balur didn’t understand why some of the elves hung on to their hatred of humans so hard. They had been able to retreat to a forest at least. The Analesians had been stuck with a gods-hexed desert.

  “Fine,” Lette said eventually.

  “You won?” Will was a clucking mother hen.

  “Of course we were winning,” said Balur, mildly insulted by the question.

  “Stop fretting.” The elf Ethen had accompanied them, and was looking at Will as one would a child who had just shat upon the kitchen floor.

  “Everything went well, Will.” Quirk at least smiled at the farmer. It was she who had invited him to come along with them, who had asked him to sit in and help plan with them. And no one questioned Quirk, no matter what the shape of her ears was. She had proven herself a warrior, even if she was part of a group that had historically been titanic dicks to the elves. Will, on the other hand, had not.

  Will returned Quirk’s smile. And Balur could not, at least, question his enthusiasm for the fight. Even if he let others actually fight it.

  “I was looking at this map of the plains to the southwest.” Will grabbed a map off the table and thrust it toward Quirk. “I’m thinking a series of coordinated attacks. All at the same time. We have the timing of a lot of their patrols now. We could prepare the area overnight. Use tar and pitch to draw symbols of the gods on the ground. Barph’s flagon. Lawl’s scepter. Klink’s open palm. Then we could strike, kill the patrol, and torch the designs. We would have to get close to some of the encampments, but imagine … all across the country the seven symbols of the seven gods flaming to life at the same moment. Imagine the way people would talk.”

  Quirk smiled. “I like it. I like it a lot. But it will have to wait until after we go back to Birchester and resupply.”

  Will leaned forward. “The iron is hot now. The sooner we strike—”

  Quirk shook her head. “We cannot impose on the people of Elmington any longer. We’re taxing these villages beyond what they can support.”

  “We don’t need that many to remain—” Will started.

  “I said—”

  And at that point, Balur couldn’t take it anymore.

  He slammed his fists down on the map table. Its legs punched through the wooden floor and dangled above the ground thirty feet below. In Balur’s estimation, the craftsmanship of the elves was highly overrated.

  “What,” he said, “in the actual fuck?”

  There was quite a long silence. To Balur’s mind this just condemned them all further.

  “Emblems of the gods? Out in fields? Waylaying patrols?” He stared at them. “This is being how you are planning to topple an empire? Do you also bed whores by staring at their thighs from across the room? This is being so very fucking pointless.” He turned and pointed at Quirk, the epicenter of this whirlwind of bullshit that had somehow caught Lette and Will in its grip. “You,” he said. “You are being a literal fucking torch we could be using to burn a path straight to Diffinax’s doorstep.”

  “Where we’ll lose.” Quirk didn’t back down an inch. “We need an army. And for that we need the Tamarian people.”

  Balur batted the objection aside
. “I have been killing a dragon before. I can be doing it again.”

  He remembered blood and heat. He remembered balancing on the knife edge of death. And yes, he remembered fear. But he also remembered surviving. Could he guarantee victory? Of course not. No one could. But he could guarantee that if they lost they would die standing on their feet.

  “That,” said Quirk, looking him directly in the eye, “was luck.”

  Balur lost a few seconds. The next thing he knew he had Quirk by the neck and a lot of people were pointing swords at him.

  “Put me down, Balur.” Quirk’s voice, while constricted, was calm.

  “Say that again,” said Balur. He was breathing hard. His vision seemed narrow. “I am fucking daring you.”

  Flame burst to life in Quirks hands.

  “Put me down before I melt your eyes.”

  And there she was. She was hidden deep, beneath books and bullshit. But there was a savage inside Quirk. Balur smiled long enough that she would know what he saw, know why he was letting her go.

  He put her down. Around him elves put their swords and bows away. Ethen, he noticed, had never drawn his blades. He filed that away too.

  “Be melting Diffinax’s eyes,” he whispered. “Fight him like you fight me.”

  “We operate,” Quirk said, her voice strident and harsh, “from a position of weakness. We do not challenge him until we operate from a position of strength. I will not risk one of the two remaining nations that stand against these dragons on the strength of your fucking murder boner.”

  Balur stroked self-consciously at his neck where small purple frills sometimes gave away his arousal. In his defense it had been really, really hot when Quirk had threatened to melt his eyes.

  “To be in a position of strength,” he said, trying to mask his embarrassment, “you have to be strong. We are being weak. We are being cowards.”

  “That’s not fair,” Will cut in.

  “Shut up, round-ear.” Enough voices said it, it was almost a chant.

  Will stared around, wounded. “But … I … I’m defending you.”

  “We are fighting back with what we have,” Quirk said, ignoring Will. “And we are building momentum. That takes the time it takes. It takes the focus and discipline it takes. And if you don’t have those qualities then I cannot use you in this fight.”