The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [55]
With a sigh, the procurer examined his belongings. They held no delights unfamiliar to him, but 'twas something to do until darkness came-and all the slaying and similar fun began.
"I seem to have been crouching behind bushes and trees forever," Fang-brother Khavan complained in a whisper.
Scaled Master Arthroon gave him precisely the cold and withering sort of look he'd expected. "When the Great Serpent comes, those who've been unwilling to do what's needful will be those considered expendable. You'd do well to remember that, Fangbrother."
Khavan nodded and flexed his cramping, protesting legs by extending one in a slow, soundless parody of a dancer's deep kick, and then drawing it back and doing the same with the other. The pain lessened but little.
They were crouching in the deep gloom of a thornvine-filled thicket behind Bowshun, on the edge of a little clearing where Aranglar the Weaver and his wife Thaelae split and stacked their firewood, kept their privy, and tossed things that had rotted. The happy couple were in the clearing now, but decidedly not engaged in any of the activities they customarily used it for.
Instead, they were trying to kill each other.
Grunts and shrieks of effort, triumph, and pain mingled with the crashings of their bodies rolling in underbrush, dead leaves, and formerly tidy piles of kindling.
Kicking, punching, and gouging, Thaelae and Aranglar tore at each other's hair, tried to smother each other, attempted stranglings, butted each other like enraged bulls, and even tried to batter each other's limbs and heads against handy trees-while ignoring a handy ax buried in Aranglar's chopping block. Gasping and shuddering, they snarled and spat, wild-eyed, and literally raked and tore with their fingers at each other.
Fangbrother Khavan winced, more than a little sickened-and well aware that Arthroon was watching him. The weaver and his wife were streaming blood from dozens of places, now, and Thaelae had just gouged out one of Aranglar's eyes with hideous ease.
Khavan set his teeth, gorge rising, and risked a look at his superior. The Scaled Master was smiling, obviously amused at Khavan's discomfort.
"Come, Brother Softguts," he purred. "We've seen enough of this particular plague affliction. There's someone else I want a look at. Keep low and quiet unless you'd like to lose your eyes too."
Skulking around the fray, the two priests scuttled hurriedly back to Aranglar's cottage.
"Why the rush?" Khavan gasped. Arthroon's reply was to throw himself flat behind moss-covered rocks, catch hold of the Fangbrother's leg with cruel force, and drag his fellow priest down to join him.
"Three people live in yon hovel, not just the loving pair we've been watching," he murmured, ignoring Khavan's gasps of pain. "That gives us a good chance of seeing a different plague effect than mindlessly seeking to slay, taking hold of the third person. Right about… now."
The ramshackle back door facing them banged open, and an old man lurched out, his wrinkled and unshaven face twisted in pain. He retched, clutched at his ribs, bent over, and spewed what looked like a very large meal onto the ground, groaning like a woman astonished by the pains of her first hard labor. Then he stumbled off down the narrow track that led to the stream and the deeper forest beyond.
"Who-?" Khavan asked, more in an attempt to appear alert and interested than out of any true interest.
"Thaelae's aging father," Arthroon replied, rising like a hunter stalking a beast of which he must be wary-and yet get very close to, to make his kill. "Follow quietly. 'Twould be very unwise to let him see or hear us, if my suspicions are correct."
Like wary ghosts they drifted along