The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [15]
Four humans in particular-four who stood in a riven chamber somewhere above. Patiently the longfangs began to stalk…
"Done yet, Gurkyn?"
"I'll let ye know, Mararr," the man bent over the fire said sourly into the flames that were threatening to blacken his nose. "I'll let ye know."
Mararr bent over the sizzling meat, peering. "Aye, it's right dead, Gurk," he said calmly. " 'Twill be done soon now."
Gurkyn Oblarram hissed in irritation. Careless parents might have given him a name that sounded like a drunken man spewing up a meal of live frogs-but it was not the deed of a friend to remind him of it. A swift and biting tongue never makes up for strong-shouldered good looks and height.
"Why don't ye go somewhere and conquer a kingdom, hey?" he snarled accordingly, without looking up from the swiftly charring rabbit he was holding in the flames. "This'll be done soon… Ye'll have just enough time!"
The armaragor wearing the baldric of many short swords stepped a quick pace back, to be quite clear of any sudden jabs with a hot cooking-fork, and chuckled. "I'd miss that tongue of yours, if I wasn't around to hear it." Mararr lifted his eyes to fix the cook with a calm, level gaze, and added, "I'd let it cool for a bit, if I were you… Even after all that wine back in Sirlptar, you've not quite made leather of your lips and tongue yet."
Gurkyn grunted. "It'd take a bebolten longer list of feasts to wear out my mouth than we've enjoyed since seeing Aglirta again. A graul and bebolten list!"
There were several growls of sour agreement from the dark forms drifting closer to the fire on all sides. Several empty stomachs raised complaints of their own as an echo, and their owners huddled their cloaks closer around themselves and out of hard habit glanced around at the night. They had left the Vale as proud and mighty soldiers of Blackgult, every man of them, tasted bloody battles and defeats on the isles their master had hurled them against, and found their weary ways home from the ruin of Blackgult's dreams only to find their master dead or fled, his barony fallen, and themselves declared outlaw by Blackgult's greatest foe, the Baron Silvertree.
The moment they'd set foot outside Sirlptar-and an honest warrior's purse doesn't last long in that crowded, expensive city-every barony had hunted them. Scores had found swift graves in as many days, and the rest had learned to flee and lurk.
As they were lurking still. The returning men of Blackgult had been treated as vermin and brigands until even those sickened by having to behave so became sneak thieves and slayers in the night, brutal and savage in their bladework and swift to seize what was not their own. The Vale was alive with baronial troops, barons' mages in risen power, and Serpent-worshippers armed with poisoned blades-and those who'd survived all these had become hardened men indeed.
Wherefore many of them were huddled here this night, around an upland-and carefully shielded with ramparts of now-scorched turf-campfire in Silvertree not far from Flowfoam Isle, gathered to hear some hope.
One of their number, a bold armaragor known to all as "Bloodblade," had sent word around the lurking outlaws that he had a plan that might mean a brighter future for them all. Some of them guessed what choosing this spot to tell them might mean… but they'd been desperate men long before a man had stepped out of legend to declare himself the Risen King of Aglirta, and they were beyond desperate now.
A much-scarred giant by the name of Lultus lifted one bushy eyebrow. "Be that rabbit done yet? Iffen I wanted to eat fire-black, I could rummage old firepits, I'm thinking, without the daring of coming down here, right onto the points of this new king's blades!"
Gurkyn growled wordlessly and turned his fork from the fire, letting the carcass on it trail aromatic smoke into the night. The shadows that were men moved closer, drawn by the smell, and there