“Yeah. Why not?” The Firbolg king’s smile faded as the guards from the keep arrived to take him to his solitary chamber. “Because there’s not enough to share,” he said within plain earshot of the soldiers. “You’re right, as always, sir,” Grunthor called out amiably as Achmed was led away. “ ’Ow about you just let me bite off the ’ead, an’ you can ’ave the rest?” The Firbolg king shook his head. “No,” he said without turning around. “It’s related to Ashe, so it probably tastes like mutton. You know how much I hate mutton.” The chambermaid who had taken the baby from the children let out a little gasp of horror and scurried away from the two monstrous men. The young duke, his nine-year-old sister, and the keep’s guards, long accustomed to the two of them, however, didn’t raise an eyebrow. When the Lord Cymrian had first commanded that all present be ushered to separate rooms and kept in silence until their meeting, most of the others had scowled. Each of the people who would be summoned in what Lord Gwydion had promised would be a short time hence had urgent business to discuss, terrible findings to report, and all were frustrated at the delay. All, that is, except for Sergeant-Major Grunthor, the giant Bolg commander, who nodded acceptance at the order and quietly followed the nervous human servant to his room. Once the door was closed, the Sergeant quickly surveyed the surroundings and, finding them to be acceptable, set about the task of cleaning his personal arsenal. In much the same way that some men collected drinking flagons or hunting trophies or concubines, Grunthor collected bladed weapons. He was, in fact, even more enamored of his assortment of blades than most other collectors, as each was the center of an interesting story, a memory of bloody conquest made sweeter in the reflection of steel. When his schedule allowed him the time, the giant Bolg commander, half Firbolg, half Bengard, and seven and a half feet of muscle beneath skin the color of old bruises, would shrug off the bandolier he always wore across his back and spread the weapons he had chosen to garner out on a table or his bunk, where he would polish them lovingly, often humming a battle cadence, off-key, under his breath as he did. He had taken the time to name each of them, and therefore felt a personal affinity with it, mementoes of the old world where life had been simpler, if not easier. He was humming to himself now as he unstrapped the massive bandolier, the creak of leather and steel fittings a nice percussive accent to the tune, a pleasantly gory folk song he had learned from his Bengard mother about the pillaging of a desert town. The first blade he pulled forth was both the longest and shortest weapon he owned, the tip of a polearm he had affectionately named Sal, short for Salutations. Sal was double-sided, a traditional spear point with a hatchet head on one side, missing the wooden shaft. Grunthor held the tip up to the light of the hearth fire in his chamber, enjoying the way it illuminated the long-dried blood in the channeled grooves chiseled into the weapon by time and wear. “ ’Allo, lit’le fella,” he murmured fondly. “Gotta get ya a aew pole soon—sorry to ’ave left it go so long.” The next blade to receive his attention was The Old Bitch, a spiny, serrated short sword named for a hairy-legged harlot he had been fond of in the old world. “Now, now, darlin’, no bitin’,” he murmured, carefully oiling the viciously sharp edges. “Usta say the same thing ta yer namesake, all them years ago. Course, she didn’t have no teeth, unlike yerself.” With infinite care he tended to the needs of each blade, repairing the leather bindings, polishing the steel, speaking in a low and gentle voice as he babied the weapon, almost as if he were speaking to a young child. Had the sight of him sharpening the edges of swords, filing the points of awls, or adjusting the metal scourges of his bullwhip not been so innately threatening, it would have made an amusing tableau to anyone brave or foolish enough to interrupt him. One by one, each item in his collection was patiently restored to its best possible shape, the Sergeant taking equal satisfaction in the task and me review of the memories. Finally he came to one last weapon, something he had been told by a First Generation Cymrian was called a triatine. It was a triple blade composed of three thin sides, smelted together at the core, each edge razor-sharp. It was clear to Grunthor that in addition to working well as a slashing weapon, one with length and sharpness enough to maintain distance from an opponent, it also could serve to remove a major core of flesh and muscle should it be applied, triangular tip first, with enough force, even more if twisted properly. This was the last weapon to be added to his collection in the old world, one that Achmed had removed from a dead soldier pursuing Rhapsody, and the only weapon he owned mat he had never used. Cleaning and tending to his weapons helped Grunthor organize his thoughts. He had been unable to find a moment in the course of his journey to Haguefort from the forest of Gwyn-wood in which he could speak to his king and best friend alone. Achmed had been utterly silent all the way home in the carriage that bore them, along with Rhapsody, her husband and newborn son, to this keep of rosy brown stone that was the duchy seat of Navarne. This place had been the first in which the three of them, minus Ashe, had found a true and unencumbered welcome in this new world, the Wyrmlands, this place to which they had run from the other side of Time.
It was very clear to Grunthor that war was brewing. Whether with traditional forces, or those beyond the realm of his experience, or both, he was ready, eager, in fact, to see combat, to test hiss mettle again, after so long of being out of practice as a field commander. Unlike Rhapsody, who longed for peace when it w as unrealistic, and Achmed, who never believed in the possibility of peace, Grunthor found peace to be a nuisance, a time when weapons got rusty or not kept at the ready, when soldiers let their guard down, or trained without fear as an incentive. His mother’s Bengard race had long ago accepted the concept of constant war, invented and internal if necessary, as the best possible state of existence, because it meant a heightened sense of awareness, a sense of shared sacrifice. And, of course, fun. As he oiled the little short sword he had named Lucy, a crooked grin came over his swarthy face, allowing a meticulously polished tusk to protrude from below his bulbous lip. Lucy was the sword he had given to Rhapsody so that he could teach her, centuries ago, to handle a blade. She had become a credit to him as an instructor, and wielded a historic weapon of her own now, but the image that was still dearest to his heart was of her, shorter than himself by the length of his arm and only possessing a third of his mass, holding back from attacking him with too much force in their earliest training sessions. He could have crushed her like a cricket without dirtying his boot much, but instead he had come to respect her, to appreciate her and her talents, if never really understand her. His grin faded as he remembered the more recent sight of her, pale and gray from loss of blood and the internal ravages of bearing a wyrmkin child a few days ago, the offspring of her husband, a man who had dragon’s blood running in his veins. She and Achmed had emerged from the ossified corpse of her father-in-law, Llauron, a manipulative man Grunthor had never trusted when he was in human form, and whose transformation into the ethereal existence of the dragon state had done nothing to change that opinion. Even Llauron’s death, which Achmed had indicated had saved them both from the rampage of the dragon Anwyn, was, as far as the Sergeant-Major was concerned, not a tragedy. It was the least the old man could do. Seeing her in the forest, wan and bloodless, as she disappeared into her husband’s carriage, from which she did not emerge except to enter the keep of Haguefort, had left him feeling unsettled, a state to which he was not accustomed. With a vicious snap of a leather bandolier binding, Grunthor resolved to make certain he had a moment to assess her condition and speak with her before they parted again. He was putting away his weapons when a knock came at the door. True to his word, Ashe had kept the waiting brief. Grunthor placed the bandolier over his shoulder and made his way down the hall behind the guards to what he hoped would be a fruitful planning for a massive military adventure. He found it impossible to repress humming a cheerful tune at the prospect. While Grunthor was cleaning his weapons, the Bolg king was instead using his time in wait to observe a small flock of castle swallows, winterbirds that nested year round in the crags and crevices of Haguefort’s high walls, and to muse over old losses. The chirping of the birds seemed brighter in tone as they wafted higher on the wind, their calls to one another tickling the sensitive nerve endings in Achmed’s scalp. That in and of itself was not unusual; virtually anything that lived or moved registered its vibrations somewhere in the Bolg king’s skin. The web of veins and nerves that scored every inch of his body surface was the major factor in his ability to sense prey when he was hunting, and to be irritated by everything else when he was not. But what Achmed was noticing as he listened to the birdcalls was that one particular musical interval, a high trill that was repeated every eight heartbeats, seemed to nullify the irritation of all the other birdsong against his skin, drowning the pinpricks in a soothing buzz that actually felt almost pleasurable. He recognized the sensation. It was the same feeling he experienced most of the time when he was around Rhapsody. Achmed exhaled slowly. There was the irony; though he was consistently perturbed at the choices the Lady Cymrian had made over the millennium and a half he had known her, as irritating as her openhearted, empty-headed idealism was to him. there was an innate musical vibration about her that soothed the constant torment that life visited upon his every waking and sleeping moment. As soon as the thought came into his head, the door opened, Rhapsody came into the room; Achmed knew without looking because the ache in his skin was suddenly abated, quelled by the musical vibration she brought with her wherever she went. He did not turn even as she came to the window. “Where’s the screaming thing?” he asked, watching the swallows fly in formation over the balcony railing, banking on the warm updrafts. “I thought it had been cemented permanently to your breast.”