Chapter One #3
Now, however, I’m hoping I can take advantage of the opposite.
By popping a chunk of thaumite like a happy pill and then conspicuously not exploding, I can demonstrate my bona fucking fides to Maeve and Barlav.
Wilders can look like all kinds of things; the idea that one could pass for human isn’t too implausible.
Worth trying, anyway. What’s the worst that can happen, I get brutally murdered?
* * *
Somewhat to my surprise, I do not get brutally murdered. At least not immediately.
Barlav grabs me, not gently, and twists my arms behind my back.
He frog-marches me through the ring of tents to the central fire, with Maeve making vaguely distressed noises as she follows behind.
The rest of the raiders quickly gather round, two dozen or so variously armed orcs, wolves, and lizards versus little naked me. I’ve stared down worse odds.15
Up until this point, I’ve been too busy dying to pay much attention to the details of the camp.
The gear is your basic raider mishmash: half wilder-made stuff—lots of leather, bone, bits of shell and carapaces from beasts—and half looted human junk, not particularly well cared for.
I have to admit that it doesn’t get my hopes up.
But this riffraff somehow manages to squash the civilized Kingdom, with its knights and castles and flush toilets, every single time.
Which is why I’m here, right? Get on the winning team for once.
There are a few family-sized tents and a lot of smaller ones, some little more than a ratty hide on a couple of sticks.
Out of one of the nice ones comes an orc woman who has the unmistakable air of someone In Charge and with no patience for your shenanigans.
She’s big, a head taller than my admittedly below-average height, with her hair shorn down to a thin stubble and curling tusks carved with elaborate abstract patterns.
She stares at me and scowls, and I stare back and try to look like a harmless little bunny.
I kind of want her to step on me and make me lick her toes, if we’re being honest. What can I say? Something about a girl who can wrap her fingers all the way around my neck does it for me. Her biceps are as big as my thighs.
“What the fuck is going on?” she says. “Who’s this?”
“Looks like a human,” one of the other orcs says.
“Might be a spy for the Guild,” a wolf mutters.
“I caught her sneaking into camp,” Barlav says.
“She said she wanted to talk,” Maeve puts in, raising her stock with me about a million percent.
“Nivo and Myr are supposed to be on patrol,” the leader snaps. “They’re in for a kicking when they get back.”
Sorry, Nivo and Myr. You did a fine job killing me the first few times.
“She says she’s a wilder,” Barlav goes on. “Took a piece of thaumite right in front of us.”
“Wilder?” The leader’s eyes narrow. “Seems human to me. Must be a trick.”
“She speaks properly,” Maeve says. “Not that human gibberish.”
“I do,” I say, judging this to be the time to put my verbal foot in the door. “And I am. A wilder, I mean. I know how I look, and I thank you for not leaping to judgment”—this time— “and giving me a chance to speak.”
“No one said you could speak,” Barlav says, shaking me. I ignore him.
“To be perfectly honest about my intentions,” I tell them, “I am on something of a quest, and I’m looking for companions. I can promise excitement and plunder and such. Hear me out?”
“What the fuck?” the leader says, staring at me as though she’s discovered a talking cockroach.
“What kind of quest?” Maeve says.
“I’m going to become the Dark Lord,” I say. “And you can get in on the ground floor.”
There’s a long pause, then a round of laughter.
“Just another fucking madling,” the leader says, waving her hand as she turns away. “Get rid of her, Barlav.”
I try to say something else, but a knife is already sliding across my throat. Barlav holds me by the hair as blood sprays, then lets me flop face-first into the dirt.
At least, I have time to think, he keeps the fucking thing sharp.
* * *
Well. Crap. I thought we were making progress there.
Still, better than last time. I’ve got a chink into which I can insert a lever. I just need to figure out which lever is going to be most effective. And I have at least an idea.
See, in the Kingdom there’s so much talk of wilder bands raiding the frontier you’d think that was their primary occupation.
But the wilders would much rather stay as far from humans as possible—we’re aggressive and unpredictable and probably smell bad.
The dreaded raider bands that the Guild is always clashing with are the lowest of the low, wilder-wise, forced to live next to a bunch of genocidal lunatics because they’re not tough enough to carve out a place anywhere else.
Consequently, it’s a safe assumption that things are not going great for sexy bald orc lady and her merry band.
I figure if I can credibly promise to deliver better times, they might be willing to get aboard the train to Dark Lord Central.
The trick there is credibly, of course, since my current state doesn’t do much to instill confidence.
But I have my stupid little magic trick, and maybe that’ll get me somewhere.
Thus my next few forays aren’t so much serious attempts as fishing expeditions.
I get their attention and ask leading questions until somebody’s patience runs out and they gut me with a meat hook.
Back again, different questions, scribble in the mental notebook until Barlav twists my head all the way around with a crunch like a bite of breakfast cereal.
Back again, so what do you guys like for breakfast, ow ow ow. You get the idea.
Eventually, after a great deal of pain and suffering:
“What the fuck is this?” says sexy bald lady. Her name is Tsav, as it turns out.
“Looks like a human,” says Strak. Strak is an asshole.
“Might be a spy for the Guild,” mutters Fezginorix. He’s a wolf-wilder and basically a softie. I want to pet his adorable ears.
“I caught her sneaking into camp,” Barlav says. I have negative feelings toward Barlav, thanks to him being the one who keeps killing me.
“She said she wanted to talk,” Maeve says. She’s the best.
“Nivo and Myr are supposed to be on patrol—” Tsav begins.
“Nivo and Myr have good eyes,” I interrupt, “but not good enough to spot me. I know what I look like”—frankly I’ve stopped paying any attention to my bedraggled nudity at this stage— “but I’ve come here to offer you a spectacular prize.
Anyone who joins me will have more thaumite than they can eat, I swear here and now. ”
A little bombastic, yes, but it feels like the right tone for the situation. Everyone glares at me.
“Who in the name of the Old Ones are you supposed to be, then?” Tsav says, brow furrowed.
“My name is Davi,” I tell her. “And I’m going to be the next Dark Lord.”
No grins this time. I fix Tsav with my best intense stare, trying to make my eyes go all swirly. Some of the others laugh but she doesn’t.
“Madling,” Barlav says into the silence that follows.
“When was the last time any of you had your bellies full?” I say before Tsav can speak. “When was the last time you had more than a chip of thaumite?” And, finally, the trump card. “When was the last child born to this band?”
Wilders don’t need thaumite just to throw fireballs at one another like humans.
It’s part of their basic life cycle. Every wilder needs a certain amount of thaumite just to exist, and so wilder children can’t be born unless the mother has enough to spare.
A wilder can live for a long time without thaumite, but any wilder band lacking a supply is doomed to eventual extinction.
“What exactly would you know about it?” growls Fezginorix, whom I am hereinafter dubbing Rix because wolf-wilder names are too long.
“I know a great deal,” I tell them, channeling the late Tserigern’s mysterious-old-wizard act.
“I know your last raid over by Bentpenny Lake netted only a sackful of chickens before the Guildblades chased you off.” Barlav had blurted that one out two lives ago, right before sticking a knife in my ear.
“What if she’s Guild?” Strak growls, and for a second, I think this round is a bust too. But Tsav comes to my rescue.
“Guild wouldn’t fuck around being clever for the likes of us,” she says. “They’d just ride in here and start hacking.” She glares at me, but there’s an element of curiosity in it now. “How do you know all this?”
“The same way I know I’m going to be the next Dark Lord.”
“Spidershit,” she says. “There’s been three Convocations in my lifetime, and none of ’em raised up a Dark Lord.16 There’s no one with the stones for the job, not anymore.”
If only that were true. I wiggle my eyebrows mysteriously. “This time there will be a Dark Lord. I have seen it, and I’m never wrong.”
“And you say it’ll be you?” Barlav says with an explosive snort. “Even if you are a wilder, you look about as tough as a day-old pup. I could squash you under the heel of my boot.”
Finally, what I’ve been hoping-slash-dying for. I favor him with a mad grin.
“Is that a challenge, then?”
Everybody goes quiet. Challenges are no laughing matter.
Barlav’s lip curls. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as you are.”
“Fine.” He hawks up a mighty loogie and spits it at my feet. It looks like green scrambled eggs. “I challenge you, ‘Dark Lord.’ Just because I’m tired of listening to your prattle.”
I look around at the others, especially Tsav. “If I win, I get some food, clothing, and a chance to explain my offer to everyone in peace.”
Tsav raises one eyebrow at Barlav, who gives a theatrical sigh and nods.
“Then it’s a challenge,” Tsav says.
* * *