When Benard judged that he was safe from pursuit, he found himself a ramshackle bench in a wide clearing and sat down to recover his breath and prepare a plausible story. He had done the first and was making progress with the second when a couple of Heroes came into sight through the trees. Then others. They saw him waiting and ran forward.
Yes, this was going to be bad. The blue-sashed flankleader was Vars Varson, who had been a cadet in the Kosord palace guard the last time Benard saw him and was even nastier than his friend Cutrath Horoldson. By the time he and half a flank of warriors arrived, Benard was on his knees, head humbly bowed.
“Looks like our lucky day, lads,” Vars said. “Where’s the woman?”
“I’ll tell the satrap,” Benard said and was slammed to the ground.
The flankleader licked his knuckles. “Nork, you’ve got a good bugle. Tell Big Pig.”
One of his men screwed up his face as if he were doing something painful, and released a howl that could not have come from any normal throat: “We got the mudface!” He followed it with a series of trumpet blasts to help Horold locate him. He might have been audible in Tryfors.
Vars kicked Benard. “On your feet, vermin!” Then he said, “Now try and stay there!” and went for him with a blur of punches. Benard’s efforts to parry, dodge, and retaliate met with no success at all. He could have broken Vars over his knee like a twig if he would have stayed still for it, but a Werist was a trained fighter. A Hand was not. He found himself lying on the grass, hurt and bleeding.
Vars said, “Your turn next, Ranthr. Just don’t kill him, quite.”
His men laughed at the sport. They took turns kicking Benard until he got up, then seeing how many hits they could get in before he went down again. When he could no longer stand, they just kicked-kidneys, belly, head, face, groin. A really good scream earned extra points. He was going to die. Ingeld! Ingeld!.. His ordeal seemed to go on long enough to boil every pot in Vigaelia, one at a time, but eventually someone locked fingers in his hair and hauled him up to a kneeling position. He found himself peering blankly up at the tusks and snout of Satrap Horold.
“Where is my wife?”
Benard mumbled, “At a farmhouse on the Milky River, lord.” He kept his eyes on the satrap’s killer hooves.
“And what are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you, lord.” Benard no longer worried whether he looked truthful or not. Nothing was going to show on the bloody pulp of his face. He had lost several teeth and could not see straight.
“Why?”
What was the story now? Oh yes… He spat out more blood. “Because she’s pining, wasting away. She has to go home to her city or she’s going to die!”
“You do know you are going to die, don’t you?”
“My lord is kind.”
“Not so as you will notice.” Horold laughed. The day was looking up for him, after a bad start. “Did you get her with child?”
Benard vaguely remembered deciding that a straight denial would not be believed. “Yes, but she lost it. She said her goddess rejected it.” Horold would like hearing that.
The satrap laughed again. After a season away from his palace bathtub and scent bottles, he reeked like a burning manure pile. He turned to a follower. “Packleader, summon the boats.” The result was another flurry of long-distance howls, answered from afar.
“Who raided my camp last night and stole the seer?”
Through shattered teeth, puffed and bleeding lips, Benard mumbled, “Lord, I do not know.”
Horold probably kicked him then, for he found himself flat on the ground again, with the world spinning overhead. His mouth was full of blood and broken teeth.
“Bring him,” Horold said. “Don’t hurt him any more or you won’t leave any fun for me.”
There were no riverfolk in the satrap’s boat. Either he had just seized it and thrown them out, or they had taken fright and fled. After a lifetime of campaigning all over Vigaelia, Horold was quite capable of fending for himself on land or water. Being no stranger to ambushes, either, he had sent six boats on in line ahead and had another six or more bringing up his rear.
The pallid Milky was a winding stream and the gusty wind kept changing direction also, but he had no need to raise sail or run out the steering oar. He had lots of manpower available. Sixteen Werists walked alongside, hauling the boat. When they set out the Wrogg had been shoulder-deep, so they had stripped, leaving their palls and shoes aboard. Now they were having trouble moving the boat over the Milky’s shallows and were pale blue with cold, whole-body goose bumps. Horold didn’t care.
He lounged in the stern. Benard sat amidships, tightly bound to the mast, fading in and out of consciousness and in too much pain to pay attention anyway. That last blow had jangled him completely, so he was seeing double and hearing waterfall noises. He was also sitting in a scarlet puddle, copiously passing blood. Yesterday he had asked the gods to send Horold to join his brother, now it looked as if Benard himself would lead the way. That was traditionally what happened to those who cursed.
“Prisoner!” Horold roared, for the third or fourth time.
Benard managed to lift his head and half open one eye. “Lord?”
“I said that if this is a trap, I will kill you first. Understand? I’ll rip your balls off and tear the rest of you into little pieces.”
He would probably do that anyway.
Benard peered around at the fuzzy, blurred, and duplicated landscape. It had been farmland the last time he looked, and now it was bulrushes and swamp, with patches of willow, dogwood, and bungweed. The little town of Milk had come and gone. There was still no sign of the New Dawn rebels, but at least the satrap’s flotilla had not run into Free Spirit, which had been his greatest fear.
“How far to this farmhouse?” the satrap demanded.
Benard’s mouth was so swollen he could hardly speak. If he waited any longer he wouldn’t be able to say what he wanted to say. It would doubtless kill him, but this folly had already gone on too long. Life hurt too much.
“There is no farmhouse,” he mumbled. “This’s an ambush. Your reign is ended, monster. My brother Orlad killed your brother Therek yesterday. Him and a few others to help.” He vomited more blood and the world spun again. “There was fighting in Tryfors later. Don’t know if your sister got her deserts yet or not. But she’s going to. These woods are stiff with rebels. New Dawn, they call themselves.”
“You’re delirious!”
“I lied about the baby. My daughter will rule Kosord after Ingeld.”
The giant uttered a deep roar. He rose to his feet, enraged and enormous, raising a hand armed with massive claws. “Florengian trash!” He took two steps forward.
The warriors splashing along beside the boat had been listening to Benard’s mumbled diatribe and were curious to see how their hostleader would dismember him. They were less attentive than they should have been to their surroundings, so many of them failed to battleform soon enough when a hundred war-beasts erupted out of the rushes. Men hit by two or more war-beasts apiece died quickly. Up and downstream, the attacks came moments later, but those crews had seen what was happening and had time to react, so those battles went on longer. The results were the same in the end, though.
Guthlag Guthlagson had long maintained that Satrap Horold would never dare battleform again unless it was a matter of life and death. That day had now arrived. His warbeast was more like an eight-foot bear than a boar, armored in yellow fur and wielding claws like meat hooks, but it did have two dagger-sized boar tusks. He disemboweled his first two attackers, then toppled under a pack of them. The boat fell apart when the mountain of flesh hit the side, but the water was too shallow for it to sink. The mob had to tear him apart to kill him.