Book 6: Chapter 39 - Celebration (RAW)

The dwarves harvest the glowcap beds, great fields of glowing haze. They bruise each cap with a white, tame mold, the ‘sweetmaker.’ A few days later, they harvest the fungus. The wort is cooled in stone vats before it is racked into mushroomwood barrels. Months later, or when it is judged ready, a Brewmaster will tap the barrels.

- The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney, 376 AC.

I let the magic go, and it slinkered away like an unruly child. Unwilling, but it obeyed.

Victory’s blessing lay soft as velvet on my shoulders; the numbers sang it, sweet and incontrovertible. Level twenty-nine was glory writ large and absolute. Without a second thought, I placed all of my free attribute points into Strength, for Strength was speed and ruin both; it made a monster of me and, in addition, added a modicum of Health. My skill point I placed into Advanced Mana Regeneration, thinking to maximize this skill before focusing on something else. 

Good, all was right with the world.

Only the path to level thirty gaped ahead like a void, near sixteen thousand points. The world whispered what it always did: continue the slaughter, and I found myself easily convinced to its cause. I did not much care for Dwarves in any case. 

Looking down, I saw that decay had done its tidy work on Klaust Solaxe: a drift of gray where there was once a Dwarven corpse. Reduced to nothing but dust, as we all were. I claimed his helm and his black greataxe, one in each hand. I almost skipped down the ziggurat steps two at a time, resting my new weapon upon my shoulder. I think I had found a very nice exploit when it came to dealing with the Dwarven judicial system. Might was very much right.

As I descended, god from the high places, I felt the press of the temple loosen, as though some invisible hand had lifted from the stone song here. A lightness rang through my bones like a struck bell. This place had lost much of its oppressiveness, as if a great weight had been lifted. Something sang in my soul that this was justice. Something sang that I had corrected a great wrong. Something sang that I had corrected a great wrong. Justice, my soul insisted. 

Yet the darker depth within me stirred and muttered caution. Unlike the weak things I had broken thus far, the Runed Warrior had had teeth. He had been a truly evil thing, blasphemy hammered in Adamantium and fungal, aberrant flesh. Rare, perhaps; no nation, no society could make many monsters like this. Could tolerate monsters like this in any great number. But if a society could make one, it could make another. And if it could make another, then prudence—no, logic—demanded the society be ended. The hungry black inside me rumbled assent. It was a simple mathematical proof.

My Dwarven escort stared as if beholding the overturning of a law of nature, as if the sky had decided to fall sideways. An absolute had been broken. One of them mouthed a prayer to the Earth Mother or some other nonsense. It was a waste of breath. Cordelia only smiled, hands clasped, whispering gratitude to a listening Avaria. I let her keep the illusion, for once, the meddling of a Divine bent toward my convenience. I would unmake the gods in their turn, oh yes, but perhaps Avaria could be kept for last. Mercy, or perhaps my way of saving the best suffering until last.

“I am innocent, it seems,” I told Cordelia, and let the grin spread like a wound across my face. “Or, at the very least, absolved of all crimes.”

The group of Dwarves flinched as one. Herd animals, pathetic.

“Proof,” I added, tossing Klaust’s helm into their midst. “We return to our kind before you Dwarves contrive some fresh treachery.” 

The throw was not kind. They fumbled and swore.

“Why you—” snarled the one with the face that begged to be punched, his pudgy hand leaping for his weapon. Yes, do it. Give me the excuse. Let me end you, little creature.

His comrades dragged his arm down and bent their heads, shame-faced and breathing like bellows. Fortune, that fickle old trollop, had chosen them tonight. Still, I could be gracious when it amused me to be better.

“Cordelia, assist me,” I said, light as summer rain.

A lesser man might have savored the intimacy of a beautiful woman’s practiced hands at his buckles and straps. I felt only the brisk competence of long habit. Women had armed and unarmed me more times than I could count; necessity grinds the shine from such wonder. The greataxe settled across my back with the dark promise of future work.

And so, garbed in the invincible armor of Al-Lazar, I walked with Cordelia through the streets of Bronzegate, the citizenry gaping at the weapon I had claimed. For I had become a statement of absolute justice.

None dared stand in my way.

The guards at the gate let me pass without resistance, whispering to each other about my glory. Their fear was barely hidden beneath their eyes. I think they knew it, I think they knew that their doom had found them and that he was but counting the time.

But for now, I would follow Damien’s lead. I owed him that at least.

***

Damien’s Dragon had pitched its camp just outside Bronzegate, a scatter of white-and-grey pavilions upon hills the color of rusted blood. Smoke from cookfires threaded the evening, carrying the smells of tallow, onions, and oiled leather. Somewhere beneath the red stone, the earth grumbled. The ground shivered, a cat stretching in its sleep, and I was grateful for the open sky over my head. Entombed within the earth’s embrace had been a long, private fear of mine.

A perimeter guard met us—mail neat, eyes bright, the easy stillness of men who have made a career of watching and waiting. I did not know their names, but they had the look of the solid sort: boots planted, knuckles scarred, questions short. A countersign, a nod, and we were ushered toward the command pavilion stitched with the mark of a Dragon, black silk catching the late light.

Inside, heat bled from twin braziers. Leader of this small army, Damien de Savant straightened at our entrance, relief cracking his beautiful face. Beside him, his Wing Leaders—Raedric, all whipcord and angles, and Nassain, thick through the shoulders like a smith—snapped sharp salutes.

“You’re back!” Damien breathed, the word almost a prayer, before he remembered himself.

“You say that as if you expected a different result,” I said, rolling my shoulder where Klaust’s black greataxe had rested for a time. Despite my great Strength, it was still a heavy weapon.

“I know little of Dwarven custom, less of Bronzegate’s laws,” Damien admitted, “but I know of the Runed. Most condemned here meet them once—on their last day. It is a miracle you have prevailed.”

“I have been in the habit of those lately,” I answered, letting the corner of my mouth tilt. “Miracles, I mean.”

“It is good you have returned. Good, you have survived,” Raedric said, tongue already shaping a spit before he remembered where he was and swallowed with a grimace. “These stunties need teaching.”

“You have proved with blade what a Flight of Dragons could not,” Nassain added, shifting as if the weight of debt itched beneath his cuirass. “I would have taken your sentence, had they pressed it.”

“Then it is well you did not,” I told him. “One of the Runed is no easy work. Not even for me, at least.”

“It was the will of the Goddess,” Cordelia said, as serenely sure as a prophet. She stood straight as a spear beside me, armor catching the brazier-glow, that blunt honesty of hers wielded like a holy seal. “Her trials are never for our failing.”

Her certainty fit around me like a too-tight collar. The woman believed in me more than I believed in myself. She had faith.

“With all these happenings,” Damien said, looking away for a moment, “you might yet make a believer of me.”

“It is never too late, Lord de Savant,” Cordelia returned, and the smile she gave him could have thawed iron.

I had heard rumors Damien preferred the company of men. True or not, even a buggerer of boys would have softened under that smile.

The tent flap banged, and Larynda burst in. The guards had learned not to bar her when she took a notion; some storms you do not stand before. It also helped that if they did so they would have to answer to me.

“You’re alive!” she squealed, bright as the sun after rain.

“You sound almost disappointed,” I said, offhandedly, rolling my shoulders and letting some of the stiffness drain from them. I would use a Heal spell when I had a minute to myself.

“I heard from—” she began.

“The Lord Herald Gilgamesh has business with Lord de Savant,” Cordelia cut in, voice calm. “He will explain to you in good time.”

Larynda pulled a face at Cordelia’s turned back, the sort of expression small girls make.

“What happens now, Damien?” I asked. “After all this, is it worth it? This contract with the Dwarves? Doom walks among them.”

“You have foresight?” Raedric’s eyes lit, eager as a hound. “Do you see the morrow, Gilgamesh?”

“No,” I said. “Not as you mean. But there’s a profound wrongness here. A rot that is in the air, in the water, in the ground. In the people. There is something not quite right… a twisting.”

It was good to use superstition against primitives.

“Your words have weight,” Nassain allowed. “Yet a commander cannot break a contract on a feeling. Still, we need not be blind to an oncoming danger. Soldiers value their lives, and I value my life more than anything.”

Damien sighed, the sound of a man weighing coins against coffins. “I owe it to the men, and to Bronzegate, to hear the contract’s heart. A simple task, they said: eliminate some… unruly segment. Easy, and for it, thirty talents of Mithril.” Even the word seemed to silver the tent with greed. “Enough to keep the men happy for years. Dwarves do not mislead lightly. It is not their way.”

“Then we hear them. “All of it. Terms and their edges. A lure rich enough to bring a thousand men is a lure rich enough to hide hooks. I fear treachery—or, at best, a truth hidden. We should be ready for either. Remember, I heard you complain often enough that Al-Lazar was only meant to be a peace-keeping mission,” I warned gravely.

“My caution will be to bring you to Lord Arngrim and his Earls,” Damien replied, doubt and desire warring in his eyes. “I do not think they would risk offense against one who felled a Runed champion. We meet them tomorrow. For now, against every expectation, their markets are open to us. Resupply is underway. I’ve allowed the men in groups of five each hour—enough to brighten spirits without losing the camp to disorder. We’ll see what manner of soft comforts Bronzegate provides and what whores they keep to tickle a soldier’s fancy is their own affair. Forgive my wayward tongue, Lady de Aserac.”

“No offense taken,” Cordelia said, all softness at the edges and steel at the core. “I have heard worse. Most of it aimed squarely at me.”

“Your grace in all things does me shame,” de Savant replied with a small bow.

“Think nothing of it, Lord de Savant.”

“Guess I don’t count as a lady,” Larynda muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

“Cover your ears if you are offended,” I told her, smiling despite myself. “Though I have heard worse from you and Elwin.”

Another breath from the deep earth rolled under our boots; the tent ropes hummed, pins creaked. Damien clapped his hands as if to scatter the tremor like flies.

“No, this will not do,” he declared formally, a commander again. “Gilgamesh returns having done a thing most thought impossible. He is alive, and that is cause enough for celebration.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Raedric said, eyes kindling. “The road’s been long and dull besides.”

“Hear,” grunted Nassain.

“Then I’ll have the cooks scrape together a feast,” Damien decided. “If Gilgamesh can conjure miracles, our cooks can manage a fine feast. The Dwarves sold a good amount of their ale—fine stuff, I’m told. Stronger than some spirits. Mind your cups; it climbs the spine like fire and burns the throat and belly. We will at least not be wanting for strong drink!”

“Hurrah!” Larynda crowed, already alight with it. “Perhaps I can see Gil dance again!”

Damien traded a look with his officers, a flicker of disbelief chased by resignation, then shrugged. “I have seen stranger things, but that I would not miss.”