It Pays To Be Nice, Sometimes

"Sometimes. Well. We climbed up the head of this valley and then Lord Solmon stopped us. He tells us there's a village atop the slope, called Lurik's Rest. That it was full of elves." He spat into the fire. "We'd not seen many elves, not for a month or so? We'd been killing them steadily all summer."

"Why?"

"You ask that too often, wench." It came out as a soft snarl. "Sometimes, there's no 'why.'"

"But this time there is," she shot back, still with that placid smile, "isn't there?"

He cocked his head. "The elves... well, Duke Dubwin, Lady Parnel, Lord Solmon, all those people? They hated the elves. Tried to drive them out using the Three Ds."

Molly could see she was expected to ask. "Which are?"

"First, decrees. Proclamations about what they can do, where they can go. Taxation, shit like that. If they're wise, they leave on their own. The Second D is discouragement: letting the local humans and anocots and all those folks know it's okay to burn, beat, and mutilate their local elves. The idea is to let the elves know they're not wanted."

'That's terrible."

"Not as terrible as the Third D. That's where the Wandering Companies came in." He knocked his pipe against his boot, the fire starting to die. Viti had disappeared. "The Third D isn't Death, wench, though that's a part of it. It's worse than Death. It's desolation. No quarter. Rape, pillage, burning. Shitting in wells. Fields flooded with seawater. Corpses left unburied." He puckered his lips. "War's not pretty, girl."

She said nothing now, just watched, her smile fainter.

"We came up the slope into the town, tired and hungry. Full of elves: it was mostly women and children by then, the leavings of the villages lower down. They'd fled there, to Lurik's." He sighed. "A few men, just one or two. No horses, no alchemists. No medicine. Not a lot of food and water. They were suffering up there, and we made them suffer some more." His eyes weren't there anymore, by the fire on the road to the Penfold mines: no, they were far away, in the past, up in the high foothills of the Mountains of Mourn. At a place that had once been Lurik's Rest.

"We put them to the sword, of course. The men last: that's the way of the Wandering Companies, the part that's worse than mere Death. You tie the men up, throw them in a corner, and make them watch what happens to their families." He glanced up to see her face. "War, girl."

"I understand."

"Do you indeed. Well. We spent the whole afternoon at it, blood-sick, before Solmon had our lunch hauled up the slope. Everyone was dead by then, or dying, or about to be: some of our boys hadn't had their fill, but they would soon. I was wandering about the ruins, looking for a place to take a shit, but the wells were already all taken. So I was on the outskirts of the village, to the south where the Mountains poked up far into the sky, when I saw something moving up the slope.

"An elf-maid it was, and a few others. But the maid was closest, dangerously close to me, just staring down at me from behind a bush. You know those big eyes the elf-maids have, when they're just girls." He sighed, remembering. "But she wasn't watching me. She was looking away, into the remains of the house I was standing beside, with the others tugging at her robe."

He stayed silent, then, long enough that Molly cleared her throat. "What was the elf-girl looking for, in that junked house?"

Fewnick stirred, but still didn't speak; when he opened his mouth again, his voice sounded rougher. "I didn't know, and I didn't find out until the little thing finally let the others drag her away, up the mountain, about six of them. The only elves who made it out of Lurik's Rest that day, and she was the only one that looked back."

"Why did you not kill them, Fewnick?"

He arched an eyebrow. "I told you, I had to shit. Too much effort. And? Because I was busy looking into the ashes of the little house." He shook his head. "If she'd have come back, I'd have cut off her head. Her companions knew that. And when I kicked some of the ashes aside, I saw what it was she'd thought of coming back for."

"Jewelry?" Molly stirred, blinking in the woodsmoke. "Gold? An extra robe?"

"A doll." The roughness in his voice had gone away now, leaving nothing but sad wonder. "She was going to come back and die for an old burnt-out doll. No legs left on the thing. It looked as if it were made of sacking." He smiled now. "Dying for a doll. Can you imagine?"

"I grew up in a whorehouse." Molly's smile was back now. "My playthings weren't dolls, really."

"But she wanted it. I could see it in those elf eyes. They burned at me." He finally finished with the pipe. "I've not picked up a sword since, not really. Only to defend myself."

"Since that day?" Molly coughed. "An old wrecked doll put you off from soldiering? I'm surprised, Fewnick." She hesitated. "That's more heart than I'd have expected from you, I think."

"Perhaps." He spat once more into the fire and scratched at his armpit. "But no. It wasn't the doll, girl. It was the look in that elf-maiden's eyes. It was the hatred there, and the need to come back for something she cared about." He pondered, watching their fire die. "She wanted to kill me because of what I'd taken from her. Who was I, to cause that kind of hatred? That's what I wasn't ready for."

"Weren't you?" Molly's voice came gently, soft. "And yet you'd already killed many. Were you a different man back then?"

His eyes went hard. "Do men change?"

"You'd know before I would." She curled her slim legs beneath her and leaned into him. "Thank you for telling me, Fewnick." She kissed his rough cheek, ignoring his flinch, and swept fluidly to her feet. "Good night."

And now here she was, sighing above a cliff, watching for... who knows? Dust clouds, Gelsen had said. Her mind imagined lines of orcs converging on the mouth of the Piss-trough from whatever dank holes they lived in, whether refugees from the distant Orcwar or the grim harbingers of a broader invasion, as they extended their bestial clutches toward the lands of men...

But that's not what Molley was thinking about at the moment. Just now, and ever since she'd felt that rough cheek beneath her smooth lips, she was more concerned with her empty pussy. Quite simply, she was craving Fewnick's alchemical cock.

It had started at dinner that night, when Parnes had set them on this adventure, with Jolarion's crack about sucking the man's balls. She'd handled the dig well, with her usual cool confidence, but the sudden wash of needful imagery had dampened her underthings in a quite unexpected way. Her mind, even as she'd stared across the table and challenged the elf, had suddenly imagined the stringy alchemist squatting over her face, his balls dangling...

Enough, she told herself, shifting her position among the rocks. Focus. Molley had never had any real illusions about sex. She'd had plenty of men since she'd turned eighteen when the fancy struck, and before that? Well, there are few mysteries when you grow up in a brothel. But she wasn't used to pondering like this. Wondering. Pining, even.

It unnerved her. And as she stared across at the base of the great mountain, where a smudge of dark haze on the air told her where the mine's cookfires were, she felt a sudden strange twinge for the man waiting near there with the bow.

She sighed and glanced up at the sun. Gelsen would have met with the Lady Durnwig... yesterday? And perhaps he'd be returning today? And Lupak of the Iron Hand, with his two helpers, should be arriving at the local castle tomorrow sometime, which meant another day or two for Molley on jerky and hard bread...

She consoled herself with the thought that, when all was said and done, she'd have at least eight, maybe ten quartos. Legal quartos. Then a few more jobs for Gelsen, and... what? More adventures? She knew she'd need to keep moving, regardless of everything else: she hadn't liked the look in that fucking anocot's eyes when he'd mentioned the magic sum of seventy quartos.

Though, surely, the authorities in Giltan's would have raised it to eighty by now.

Either way, no matter how her pussy and, maybe, her heart might crave a gruff alchemist with a troubled past, she'd need to move on. She peered into the late-morning haze, thinking about Jolarion on the far side, squinting out at the same view she was. She wondered idly how far out she could see onto Windscour, the mighty plains appearing tabletop-flat as they stretched below her, though she knew they held many hidden rises and falls in which an orc could hide, perhaps quite effectively.

Moving by night. That's how Gelsen imagined they were doing it. He'd told her not to focus far out, where even orcs were too smart to leave a dust cloud. No, he'd thought, they were already close in. "The minemaster says his men have been killed sometimes on successive nights, other times singly, days apart." He'd scratched some figures in the earth at the base of the valley, frowning.

"Every three nights, on average," Fewnick had muttered, "though that doesn't account for the ones on back-to-back nights."

"Which has only happened twice." The lord had sighed. "Well. I'm off to collect forty pieces of gold from Her Ladyship, with an option on more." And then he'd climbed back onto his horse and clattered off, leaving his band to watch.

And shoot.

That's what was supposed to deter the orcs: an arrow or two, then perhaps a nighttime charge by an enraged valkyrie. Molley and Jolarion were much too far away to help; their role was to raise the alarm, and Fewnick had given them a device for just that purpose. "Pull the cork on the flask," he'd instructed them both, holding up one of a half-dozen little earthenware pots. He'd mixed them the night before in a desolate camp in the foothills, from some powders taken off the leather case he'd loaded onto one of the packhorses. "The air will mix with what's inside and make a wisp of smoke. Green sometimes, red others. Purple. We'll be watching from below." And at night, he'd gone on, the wisps would still be visible as a glittery streak in the dark, provided there wasn't much moon.

She fidgeted some more. On the whole, it had been a momentous week or so. It had started in Lord Huckin's dungeon, under a death sentence on top of the same kind of sentence from Giltan's Port, and now here she was as a professional adventurer, doing... what? Cushioning her elbows against the same rocks she'd lain on yesterday, that's what.

But she'd already earned around three thick, heavy pieces of gold for all that. Three quartos could buy her a horse and carriage, plus maybe even an extra horse. And that was nothing to sneeze at. And so, Molley the Lash sighed and, once again, turned her bored gaze on Windscour.

* * *

The little army overtook Lady Durnwig's entourage at dusk, just as the Witch's Tit was drifting into view on the slow curve of the road, shining before them with the setting sun full on its west face. Her retainers had already gone ahead to set up her pavilions for the night, kindling her cookfires, for no matter how carefully Gelsen urged haste, she'd insisted on "traveling properly," as she put it.

"My house, Lord Gelsen, is not as landless and destitute as some," she'd declared venomously, before tacking on an addendum to make sure he got it, "like yours."

"Of course, m'lady," Gelsen sighed mildly. She'd been canny, though, even shrewd. A formidable woman, and not as bad-looking as the rumors said. He fidgeted with his reins, thinking of the oozing slowness with which Durnwig and her personal guard were moving. Regardless, he told himself, he'd ride on tonight to meet up with Fewnick and Thansy, see what had happened since he'd been gone. He thought sourly of the dinner he'd be forced to eat with Her Ladyship, deducted (of course) from the pay due his people. As her chamberlain had explained to him most carefully.

"We must watch our expenses, my Lord Gelsen," he'd told him unctuously before they'd set out. "The mines have made Penfold rich, but if (as you say) orcs are attacking those mines? We can no longer count on them." He'd shrugged as if it was all just fate. "And we are beset on all sides by enemies. My Lady is still dealing with the aftermath of refusing Duke Loxengale as her husband last month. Then there was Lord Huckin of Prossfield. Just a couple days ago, that was, and he was not amused."

"That would have united his realm to yours," Gelsen mused, "at considerable profit to His Lordship." He thought about Huckin's weed-grown walls and nodded.

"So My Lady realized. She has no wish to be used for her mines. She wants to be happy." The seneschal sighed. "Politics are so sordid." He hesitated. "Were you, perhaps, looking for an advantageous marriage, my lord?"

"I am looking for sixty more quartos, Master Chamberlain. Nothing more."

"Of course." The man bowed in the saddle, the little string of horses spreading out along the trail, and it was right around then that the jingling of harness spread toward them on the west wind behind.

Gelsen, riding toward the rear of the line, thought at once of flight; the sound of armed men on a narrow trail, while traveling with a rich noble, is not a welcome noise. His senses came to life despite four hard days in the saddle, despite the painful negotiations with Her Sluggish Ladyship. He glanced behind, quickly, hoping the sound was carrying far and that he'd see their pursuers far behind, but by the time he'd twisted in the saddle Lady Durnwig's rearguard had already spun around and pulled their swords. One of them lifted a silver bugle to his lips to sound the alarm, but before he could blow a note an arrow took him through the throat.

"Fuck," Gelsen grated to himself. Powerless, he looked ahead of him, seeing nothing but a choked trail and a slow, winding progression of oblivious people in yellow Penfold tabards. Behind waited the Lady's knights, now staring down at where their bugler was tumbling out of the saddle in a sickening, boneless slither, his eyes wide and scared and very, very confused as they looked down at an arrow shaft where no arrow shaft should reasonably be. Another bugle sounded instead, a triumphant one, from the pursuit. "Fuck!" he seethed again, his hand going to the hilts of his sword, but of course there was no use at that point: a column of heavily armed men was rounding the last bend.

At their head was a grim man with a bandaged ear, beside a loudly flapping banner bearing a snarling blue dragon.

* * *

When Lady Durnwig's minemaster heard the scree slide off the long, gentle slope west of the smelter, he cursed loudly. "No way," he snarled at his assistant, "there's just no way those fucking basilisks are messing around again above the smelter."

"Might it be someone coming, Master?" The assistant peered around the big shoulder of rock where they were hollowing out the new foundation for next year's blast furnace. "That's the trail out of the Stews. From the castle. And those weirdo mercenaries? Didn't they have a lord or something that was due back from Her Ladyship around now?"

"Maybe." The master brooded. "I don't care for approaching morons loosening the trailbed up there. The last thing I need on my hands is an injured lord, even if he did bring his own alchemist. Go see what's up."

"Yes sir." The Assistant Master sighed, closed up his ledger-book, and shook the fire-hood off his long hair before beginning the long trudge toward the gate to the mineworks. Definitely, he told himself, definitely, that's the weird lord returning...

He was right, but he was also wrong.

The Master was seven parts shocked and three parts irritated when his Assistant came sprinting back toward the ledger table. The shock came from seeing the man run; he'd never moved at anything faster than a half-determined slog in the past four years. The irritation came from the fact that the scree was still falling off the trail, more of it than before, and he squinted at the little man. "What the fuck?" he demanded. "Was it a basilisk? And why are you running?"

"It's... it's..." The Assistant stumbled to the rocky ground, panting, with every miner in sight gazing curiously at him from under their hoods. "It's a disaster!" he wailed at last, coughing in the dusty air, and the minemaster had just time to look up as Lord Huckin of Prossfield led his men down toward the gate.

The House of Huckin was a long way past its prime by now, but its Lord could still make a very good show when he chose to. Mounted on a dappled-grey charger caparisoned with his emblems and honors, he trotted nimbly into the mineyard. He kept an excellent seat, straight-backed and with his heels down, his armor burnished to a silvered glow. Behind him trailed a line of shining knights under his dragon banner, their herald on a high-stepping horse alongside.

But it was the end of the line that had caused the Assistant Master's collapse. They could all see the shocking sight of Her Ladyship walking -- walking - among a shambling crowd of her own warriors, all with empty scabbards and downcast eyes. Her golden banner, far from fluttering high above her head, was being dragged in the dust under the hooves of that high-stepping horse ridden by Lord Huckin's herald. Finally, Her Ladyship's horses followed, most still high above on the rocky paths, nervous without their riders.

"What the fuck?" muttered the minemaster, wondering what the hell he should do. Her Ladyship had come out to visit just once, years ago, and her heralds had arrived the day before to warn the miners that they should clean up their language and, perhaps, not look at Lady Durnwig's noble décolletage. This? This was... well, odd. "I'd heard Huckin was planning on marrying her, but I didn't know it had already happened." Still, this seemed wrong: why was she walking? And why were her warriors unhorsed?

"Sir... Master..." the Assistant bleated, but his master was already striding toward the oncoming Lord of Prossfield with a grim scowl. His eyes caught one man, still mounted and armed, but looking curiously alone and downright furious amidst five of Huckin's burliest soldiers: Lord Gelsen? Whatever his name was, who'd arrived with that little band the other day.

"Can I ask what's the meaning of this?" The Master was not a particularly brave man, but it bothered him when his work was interrupted. He stood astride Huckin's path, his sturdy legs spread with his hands on his hips, and those legs stayed right where they were even after Huckin's longsword came sweeping through his neck, sending his head bouncing and rolling down the stony mineyard in a great spray of red blood.

"No, you may not." Huckin reined up, his warriors spreading into an ominous semicircle around him, staring grimly down at where the Assistant Master groveled. "You. You're in charge now?" The Master's headless corpse toppled like a felled oak, and his assistant looked up from the puddle in his breeches.

"Y-yes?"

"Do you want to ask me what is the meaning of this?"

"N-no."

"Wonderful. I am the Lord Huckin of Prossfield. And, I suppose, of Penfold now. So listen. Look around you at all your men, gawking at me instead of working. Then, look at your Master's head, still looking surprised after I cut it off. Now, ask yourself: what kind of expression will be on your detached head if you don't get these men back to work, and I mean now?"

Self-preservation, apparently, was an instinct at the forefront of the Assistant Master's addled wits, for he at once dragged himself over to the crowd of miners gathered by the smelter and began whipping them back to their work as the new Lord of Penfold glanced self-importantly around.