Page 63 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Toward evening, we sat around their fire again, almost like nothing had happened. My hearing was mostly back, though a whine persisted.

“What was that anyway? What killed those bigguns?” I asked Bazl.

“Thunderdust,” he said. “It is the dried and powdered shit of the God Under the Mountain. He the half-giants hold sacred.”

“Great. Another mad western goddie. He have a name?”

“Is bad to name him if you do not worship him.”

“Fine. God Under the Mountain it is.”

I looked at the Egalitarians’ latest guest, one of the giants from the raiding party, whom Brat had sniffed out and a dozen others had subdued. It was the young daydreamer who’d been bird-watching. He’d lost his flowered crown, but it was him. Likely his woolgathering on the edge of the group had saved him or, rather, had dealt him this dubious fate rather than the more final one most of his clan had suffered. He didn’t look particularly saved, bound in thick chains against the tent and water wagon, which his great weight made lean. The catchpoles and clubs being too small for this bullock and his twelvish feet of height, they had used javelins dipped in a drowse-drug to sleep him, and it was with such javelins, and a few pikes, that they guarded him now.

“Is too strong for kynd—we sleep and then pass into death. But it is perfect for gegants. From goblin mushrooms,” Bazl said proudly when he saw me watch the young biggun nod and wake, nod and wake. When he said goblin, Bazl ducked his head at Brat, in case I’d forgotten what one was. I hadn’t. Brat hadn’t noticed her kind’s mention as she was, with top lip curled back, using her foreteeth to shave the flesh off a large, still-squirming toad.

Galva and I both took wine when offered it.

They asked her again if she would join the group, and again, she refused.

This time, perhaps for the loss of yet more of their number at the bigguns’ hands, they seemed to take it personally. We were sent to our sleeping cloths without further ceremony, and chained to the yellow wagon, which had again swallowed my magical ring and Galva’s shield.

The next days were hard.

Owing to the loss of camels, and thus the abandonment of the cage-cart, we were no longer to ride in partial shade but to march in the full embrace of the sun. This we did for three days, and by the end of that, I had been so badly burned, so deeply pinked, reddened, and browned, that I always looked older after. My hair grew in lighter, just a shade. New wrinkles took to the corners of my eyes, and my skin took on a thirst it never had before. Though, as you’ll hear, it wasn’t just the sun’s rough treatment that took the last of the boy out of me on the bad side of those mountains.

On the third day, the Free Company of the Pig and Squinny, riding and marching in loose order around the two remaining wagons, came to the place the Blood Road started. Red stones snugged together beneath our feet now and would lead us to the outpost town where we would be sold. There was a message in the way that road started so abruptly, or so abruptly ended for those going north: camps and wilderness lay one way, cities and laws another.

Laws may be written in ink, but they live on blood.

Now we met those who kept the laws.

We drew up to a quintet of Erydoni soldiers standing under a shade-cloth near a stone building—a barracks, I think. Hard by the barracks, birds cooed in cages. Pigeons. Three cages, each with five birds, and each with a sort of lever on its post. It wasn’t too hard to guess that several messages stood loaded to be launched in case of various kinds of trouble. Giants, flood, send whores? As good a guess as any.

I looked again at the soldiers as we drew near.

“Glurrisain,” I said in my mother tongue, which means a thing that shines or stands out in the best way. It’s Galtia’s best word for magnificent, and magnificent was how these geezers looked. They stood eight or nine feet tall, but unlike proper giants, hadn’t a great width. They looked like kynd, just bigger, and their skin had the olive tint you see in Beltians and Istreans. Also, their big, wide-set eyes sat handsome on their faces, which distinguished them from bigguns, whose eyes were lodged deep and smallish under heavy brows.

But their armor, and their dress, these were what drew glurrisain from my lips. Their armor was black, but the way it caught light betrayed it as something other than steel. I saw my own face in the first one’s breast-piece, like a ghost in a land of shadow. The mail that sat beneath the plate was of metal, as in the east, though blued; but the poitrines, gorgets, and greaves looked more like onyx or obsidian. Though it was neither of these.

This was my first glimpse of western blackglass armor, for none of it ever came east. Or rather, so little blackglass made it over the Thralls that in Manreach it was as precious as rubies and sapphire. But here? The Erydoni mined it from their black mountain by the ton and not only never sold it but forbade its export under terms so harsh that few tried, and none tried twice. It was something between metal, glass, and diamond. Nothing is more proof against hurt, and nothing better holds an edge.

In the east, I had only ever seen it in a ring I’d stolen during my days at the Low School—not that I got to keep it long once my masters knew I had it. As I said, blackglass is rarer in the east than goodwill for the taxman.

As we passed the soldiers, they watched us with mild interest, holding their helmets rather than wearing them, for the day was warm.

One of them smiled to hear me say they looked magnificent, and said, in something like my language, “You’ll do best to learn your masters’ tongue or keep silent. Arvisk is low talk here.”

He nodded at the young biggun who walked in chains behind us.

He meant his words friendly, I think, but his distaste for the giant uglied his fair face for a moment.

I saw now the spear he leaned on had a blackglass tip—nothing in the world had ever looked so sharp to me. They all had such spears, and blackglass shields on their backs, and while I couldn’t see through their leather scabbards, I guessed the swords at their hips would be the same.

These five weren’t nearly the size of bigguns individually, but their bearing made it perfectly clear who in the lands beyond the Thralls held the whip. Were these, then, the people of the western cities the giants who marched on Hrava mentioned, saying they might join in a war against Manreach?

Once we were clear, I looked at Galva, who by all rights should have now been pestering me for a translation. I wish she had been. Now, however, she looked undone. I think the sight of these serious, civilized karks so big, so well armed, and standing on a proper road, brought home to her the long odds against us ever getting back to Manreach.

Not only were we in bondage; we were in bondage to a great power.