The Conquerors Shadow

  Corvis shook his head as the breeze picked up, blotting out the low tone of the discussion behind him.

  THEY REACHED THE WOOD’S END just before dusk some four nights later, and Seilloah’s mount indeed awaited them. Corvis stopped and frowned, trying to find some tactful way to object. Rascal’s ears flattened, while Davro just snickered.

  For her own part, Seilloah smiled and sidled up to the creature, gently caressing its throat and patting it on the head. The creature rumbled, a sound that might have been a purr had this been anything resembling a cat. The massive tail slapped back and forth, sounding like window shutters flapping in a storm.

  “Umm, Seilloah …,” Corvis began hesitantly.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” she cooed. “That’s a good boy, yes he is!” She continued scratching vigorously at the rough skin.

  “Seilloah, it’s a lizard.”

  “How observant of you, Corvis.”

  “It’s a lizard the size of a cow.”

  “Yes.”

  Corvis felt he wasn’t entirely making his point. “Why is there a lizard the size of a cow?”

  “Because a lizard the size of a lizard wouldn’t make for a very good mount, would it?”

  Corvis blinked. “Well, no, but … Seilloah, a giant lizard isn’t exactly the most inconspicuous traveling companion.”

  “Are we being inconspicuous? I thought we were raising an army.”

  “Yes, but I’d rather not draw too much attention until we actually have the army.”

  “Oh, relax,” she said, laughing at him. “You’re wandering down the roadside with an ogre. How inconspicuous is that?”

  “Hey,” Davro protested.

  “But—”

  “If we have to go through any towns or cities, I’ll have him wait outside, all right?”

  Corvis sighed. “Have it your way.”

  Seilloah grinned evilly. “That’s the plan.”

  Grumbling something unintelligible, Corvis seated himself on Rascal’s saddle. Seilloah heaved herself onto the lizard’s back, and the animals set off at a steady pace, Davro marching alongside. Rascal, though he kept one eye on the strange creature beside him, made no overt objections.

  “I suppose I better get it over with,” Corvis muttered. “What’s his name?”

  “Rover.”

  Corvis shut up.

  INDEED, they drew some astonished looks from fellow travelers and were forced to circle around a handful of small towns they might otherwise have passed through, but their journey remained largely uneventful.

  Davro remained surly, Corvis defensive, and Seilloah vastly amused by both of them. The sun passed above their heads, the miles beneath their feet. The heat of summer grew heavier and more oppressive, and they knew it would only get worse. As they continued northwest, the air grew thick, heavy, and sticky. It was, Corvis remarked, akin to marching through a thin coating of jam. Throttled violently by the savage humidity, the dirt became mud, sucking greedily at Rascal’s hooves and Davro’s feet. Between the heat, the humidity, and the terrain, their progress slowed to a sickly crawl.

  It was just about noon, the sun beating down upon them through a sky as much moisture as air, when a few gnarled and twisted trees appeared on the horizon.

  “The road ends about a hundred yards farther on,” Davro told them, unbothered by an environment that was quickly sapping the strength of his companions. “We go north there, and follow the waterline.”

  “Wonderful,” Corvis rumbled, wiping vainly at the sweat pouring from his hairline with an equally drenched hand. “Tell me something, Davro, whose brilliant idea was it for your clan to live in a swamp?”

  “We’re a tribe, not a clan,” Davro said haughtily.

  “Oh, well pardon me bloody.”

  “And the heat doesn’t bother us much. Living here, neither does anyone else.”

  “I thought most ogres liked fighting everyone in sight,” Seilloah said, her tone sharp. Even the witch was miserable in the sodden atmosphere of the nearby swamp.

  “We do like fighting,” Davro told her, apparently forgetting that he’d distanced himself from “we” for nigh unto two decades. “But we want it on our terms and in their homes, not the other way around.”

  Corvis sighed. “So where are we going, exactly? The last time, I met you halfway, remember? I’ve seen maps, but I’ve never actually been there.”

  “As I said, we follow the edge of the swamp north, and then for about a dozen miles once it turns to the west. My tribe’s territory begins just a few miles north of—why are you staring at me?”

  “Follow until the swamp turns back toward the west?” Seilloah asked in a strangled tone.

  “That’s what I said. So?”

  “Davro,” Corvis explained, his voice beseeching; almost, an unkind observer might have said, whining. “That swamp must stretch fifty miles before it tapers off! At the rate we’re traveling, that’s four or five more days in this godsforsaken place!”

  “Closer to six,” the ogre conceded with a shrug. “Remember, it’s another twelve or so miles after that.”

  “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “You’re the one who wanted to come here,” Davro snapped at him. “This is your doing. You deal with it.”

  Corvis sighed, then, and took a moment to cast an apologetic glance at Seilloah, who was glowering darkly at him. “All right,” he said, resigned. “Let’s get this misery over with.”

  “In a minute,” Davro said, sudden glee evident in his voice. “I just thought of something.”

  “Arhylla help us all,” Seilloah muttered.

  “Not us all, Seilloah. Just him.”

  Corvis’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about, Davro?”

  “One of the reasons you requested I accompany you,” the ogre reminded him, “was so I could help you talk to my tribe, get them to accept you as the Terror of the East, returned from obscurity, to lead them all into glory. So you wouldn’t have to pay for their help.”

  The former warlord frowned. “Not quite how I’d have put it, but—”

  “If that’s the plan,” Davro continued undaunted, “they have to see you as the great warlord, Corvis Rebaine, from the very start. A lanky, grey-haired human won’t impress them.”

  A voice began to scream in panic in the rearmost chambers of Corvis’s mind, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was saying. “So?”

  “So, my people guard their lands well. Carefully. The scouts and guards will probably have their eyes on us as early as tomorrow.”

  Corvis suddenly understood exactly what his companion was suggesting. “Davro, you can’t possibly be serious …”

  The ogre was openly grinning now, his entire face stretched, his horn jutting obscenely from above his eye. “I am indeed. And you damn well better do it, too, or even I may not be able to convince them.

  “Besides, what’s a little heat to the Terror of the East?”

  With a groan that came all the way from his toes, Corvis swung down from his saddle, made another futile attempt at scraping the sweat from his face, and began, with obvious reluctance, to open his saddlebags and unpack his black, heavy, stifling armor.

  Seilloah skillfully directed her lizard to step beside the ogre as they watched Corvis, grunting and swearing, buckle on the first pieces of the bone-and-metal contraption. Davro glanced at her and smiled.

  “Yes?” he asked, his tone chipper.

  “Are you happy now?” she asked him, her own voice hovering somewhere among sympathy, anger, and amusement.

  “Not by a long shot,” he told her seriously. “But a damn sight closer than I was ten minutes ago.” And then he settled in to watch, determined not to miss a minute of Corvis’s suffering, and began—badly and out of tune—to whistle.

  HIS NAME WAS URKRAN. One of Davro’s tribe, he was in fact a cousin of the long-lost warrior. Put a good sword in his hand, and he could take the head off a live snake, blindfolded. Give him a solid spear, he c
ould put it halfway through a tree trunk at fifty paces.

  Today Urkran stood watch, eye constantly alert, scouring the edges of the tribe’s territory. In all living memory, no enemy had ever caught the ogres by surprise, and this, with an unknown army conquering anything and everything it came across, was not the time for that traditional diligence to lapse.

  From his post by a gnarled cypress on a small knoll jutting from the marsh, Urkran spotted a trio of figures moving sluggishly but steadily along the waterline. It was difficult to make out any details at this range—the swamp frequently belched up a film of sticky mist—but he determined that two were mounted, while the third, much larger, walked beside them.

  Urkran squinted, peering intently through the mists. The larger figure in the group might be an ogre, but it was impossible to be certain. His fists clenched on his spear, the sentry slogged into the swamp, moving rapidly and with surprising silence. Three strangers didn’t seem to pose any great threat, but duty demanded he make certain.

  The marsh gasses and surrounding miasma swirled as he moved through them, eddies forming around his legs. It was a common phenomenon in this fog-shrouded fen, so it was only when Urkran felt a sudden chill on his thighs and saw the sheen of blood coalescing on the water’s surface that he realized something was terribly wrong.

  The raucous call of a carrion crow was the only audible sound as Urkran vanished beneath the murky, sludgy waters. The liquid rippled outward, mist swirled and spiraled as though agitated. Slowly, a thin trickle of blood rose to the surface, pooling and twisting as it gradually mixed with its environment—and then, with far greater rapidity than it had appeared, the crimson stain shrank, vanishing once more beneath the murk.

  The travelers, unaware of the drama playing out twenty yards to their left, continued on their way, the faint sounds of bickering drifting through the miasma to vanish into the swamp.

  Smoothly, two forms broke the surface of the water. The first was Urkran; his eye was stretched wide with shock, his breathing shallow, his formerly red skin a sickly shade of pale. Here and there, a few stubborn spots of blood clung to his limbs or his clothes. His weapons were gone, embedded in the mud, not that they’d have done him any good. He was too weak even to turn his head, much less raise a hand in defiance of the creature slowly murdering him.

  The other form emerging from the heavy murk was his killer. Less than half the ogre’s height, it appeared almost human. A face that didn’t quite qualify as round—puffy, perhaps, was a better word—was topped by a matted mane of black hair, plastered to his scalp by the surrounding waters. His eyes were cold, piercing, and tinted with the faintest hint of crimson. His lips, fish-pale and thin, gaped open to reveal perfectly white and straight teeth.

  The thing leaned over the ogre, those narrow lips a hairbreadth from Urkran’s ear. Placing his mouth against the ogre’s cheek, it inhaled. Urkran moaned in revulsion as he felt the pores of his skin stretch wide, felt his own blood flow through the newly opened gaps. He shuddered as the creature’s tongue danced over his face, determined not to miss a single drop of the ogre’s draining life.

  He tried to thrash, to fight, to prove he wasn’t dead yet, that this hideous thing hadn’t killed him, that he was still an ogre. A loose flopping of his limbs as they hung in the water was the best he could manage. When the air in his lungs was finally depleted, he lacked even the strength to draw another breath. His chest burned, and yellow spots danced at the edges of his vision.

  “Oh, my,” the thing beside him said, its tongue quickly flicking over its lips to lap up the last few dewdrops of blood; the faint slobbering would have made Urkran shiver, but his body lacked the energy for even that. “I seem to have taken a bit more than I intended.”

  It bent once more toward Urkran’s ear, as though confiding a dark secret to an age-old friend. “I don’t think Mithraem would be happy with me if I let you die before I accomplished my assigned task,” it said, its voice little more than a whisper, a breeze of wind reeking of rancid blood. “It’s a shame, too. I’d grown accustomed to this form. I’ll miss it. Ah, well, such is life …” It giggled briefly. “Such is life!” it repeated, cackling. “Oh, that’s rich.”

  A dark mist gathered around the creature’s head, as though it was returning to its prior insubstantial state. But this was different; even Urkran, on the verge of blacking out, could see that. For rather than shifting into mist, the thing appeared to be exuding it. From its mouth, nose, eyes, ears—even from beneath its fingernails—the mist flowed; and even as it emerged, the body it left behind began to putrefy, rotting from the inside out. The face sank inward, splitting apart as things inside bubbled rapidly to the surface. Thick, noxious fluids drained from the shriveling corpse, pouring into the marsh. Gobbets of putrescent flesh—literal pieces of the corruption that had infested the body-rained downward, bobbing about on the water.

  And then nothing remained but the nauseating smell of decay and a vaguely man-shaped stain, slowly dispersing into the stagnant waters. The body, and the mist, were gone.

  For long moments, “Urkran” floated benignly, limbs splayed to provide buoyancy. He allowed himself a full five minutes to recover from the ordeal; that sort of thing was always immensely tiring. Then, with a swift jerk, he was upright, his feet planted firmly in the mud.

  He’d have to retrieve the weapons; it would look bad if he returned to the tribe without them. Large as they were, it took but a moment of digging about in the muck to locate them. Once equipped, Urkran resumed his original task of slogging toward the shore. He must get back before the new arrivals spoke with the chieftain at any great length.

  His feet once more on solid ground, Urkran peered after the travelers, his single eye gleaming a deep red in the diffuse light of the day. Then, his first few steps awkward as he gradually accustomed himself to his new proportions, he set off after them.

  Chapter Nine

  “Gods damn it to every curdled, lice-ridden hell!” The Terror of the East shoved his way through a mob of civilian prisoners overseen by several of his guards—not too difficult, really, since they cringed away even as he neared—and stalked across the open courtyard. His boots alternately rung on the bloodstained cobblestones and squelched on the flesh of the fallen—many of the enemy, yes, but far more of his own soldiers than there should have been. “What were you thinking, you idiot? Do you actually use that head of yours for anything other than keeping your horn out of your throat?”

  /You tell him, you raging font of fury, you!/

  “How many times do I have to order you to shut up, Khanda?”

  /At least one more, obviously./

  Corvis clattered to a halt, the expressionless skull staring up into the faces of multiple ogres, all of whom snarled down at him with varying expressions of fury.

  “Watch your tongue, little human,” Davro barked first. “You will not speak to—”

  Gundrek raised a hand. “Davro! Uld tharosh vir! Nem Rebaine akka.”

  “Che, szevok.”Still scowling, the larger ogre retreated, leaning back against a wooden wall coated with the smoke of distant burning neighborhoods.

  The ogre chieftain nodded. Then, “What’s your problem, Rebaine?”

  Corvis crossed his arms and snarled, a sound audible even from behind the helm.

  “Lord Rebaine,” Gundrek corrected, with only a hint of reluctance.

  “My problem, Gundrek? My problem is that I’m standing in the middle of a field of bodies that includes over a hundred of my own men!”

  “This is war,” the ogre said with a shrug.

  “Oh, is it? I’m so bloody glad you noticed! And do you know what soldiers like you and your ogres are supposed to do in a war?”

  “You mean besides kill the enemy?”

  “You’re supposed to follow orders, you half-wit! And you were very specifically ordered to head off the defenders over at the temple of Kassek to keep them off Commander Ezram’s flank!”

  Again, the old ogre s
imply shrugged. “This force looked like the larger threat.”

  “This force was the larger threat! I’d taken that into account! You left us open, Gundrek!”

  “Honor demands—”

  “No. Honor demands that you abide by your agreements.” Corvis stepped away. “Swear to it, Gundrek. You and all your lieutenants.”

  “Swear to what?”

  “To obey. You swear to obey my orders—swear in the Night-Bringer’s name!—or you’re out of this war.”

  A rumble of anger rose like thunder from the assembled ogres. “And how are you going to make us leave, exactly?” Gundrek challenged, his voice suddenly low. Instantly Corvis’s own soldiers tensed, bristling suddenly with freshly drawn blades.

  “Soldiers,” Corvis said simply. “And Sunder. And a demon who, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t ever tasted an ogre’s soul before and might relish the opportunity.”

  /Actually, they’re really pretty rancid. I—/

  “Or,” he continued, “you swear to do what you’ve already agreed to do, and you continue to enjoy as much fighting as you could possibly ask for.”

  Long was Gundrek’s stare. The courtyard was utterly silent, save for an occasional prisoner’s whimper. Until, finally …

  “Very well.” First Gundrek, then the other ogres, and finally Davro bowed their heads. “Kvirriok thenn, Chalsene voro—”

  “In Human, if you don’t mind,” Corvis interrupted.

  Gundrek’s scowl deepened so far it was a wonder his horn didn’t droop over his eye, but he nodded. “Fine. Witness our oath, Chalsene, called Night-Bringer. I, Gundrek, swear that I and my tribe shall obey the orders of our general, Corvis Rebaine, for the duration of the war—to the extent,” he added, with a quick glare, “that any soldier could be expected to do so.”

  “It’ll do,” Corvis said. He turned, cold eyes sweeping the courtyard.