Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed
“What ho, yourself, holy man,” Hai Hai said irritably. “So what did your precious prayers tell you? Where in the three hells are we headed next?”
Mylovic pulled chair to table, smiled a far-too-wide smile and blinked bloodshot eyes. “Well, the temples here are ah…less than ideal in their facilities. The road gods’ idols in particular are poorly maintained and thus their wishes are far from clear here.”
Hai Hai eyed the priest’s stupid grin and twitched her whiskers in annoyance. “And I suppose it doesn’t help that you’ve got a head full of pinkpoppy incense, does it, priest? You reek of the stuff. Have you been smoking it since we left you this morning? The last time you tried to make gods-contact with your head full of pink puff-clouds you directed us to that abandoned mine and we ended up knee fucking deep in green gremlins!”
The priest spread his hands before him in a helpless gesture. “That wasn’t my fault, sweet Hai Hai, but we’ve had this argument too many times before. Anyway, all my gods-contact has told me is that vengeance and riches lie north along the Road of Three Lakes, and that we should leave tomorrow at first light.”
“North? Well,” Hai Hai said, her ears unstiffening in mild mollification, “that at least is good news. If I’m never south of the Green Cross again, it’ll be too fucking soon.”
Mylovic bowed his head “I am happy to bring you happy news. Now, will one of you pour me a drink? My…supplications have left my mouth parched.”
Hai Hai scanned the room in irritation. “Where is that half-witted serving boy, anyway? Such shitty service! That boggle-eyed innkeep is lucky these fucking bumpkins have never seen a real drinking-house. If they knew any better he’d be out of business.”
“Well, I’ll leave this to you two—I’m done here,” Zok said. He was surprised to find himself well and truly drunk already. It didn’t happen that often—he was a big man, after all, as experienced at drinking as he was at killing. Hai Hai was right—however unsubtle and bitter this town’s drink was, it did what it was supposed to do.
It wasn’t until he came to his feet that he realized he was more than drunk. He started to swoon. His head was heavier than black beer could account for.
Drugged!
Zok took a few stumbling steps. Then his head spun and he felt himself fall.
He heard shouting, and things being knocked over. The next thing he knew he felt Mylovic’s cool hands on him and heard the priest humming a hymn to the god of purity.
Instantly Zok’s head cleared, and his stomach stopped lurching. He came to his feet quickly, and saw the inn’s patrons fleeing. Hai Hai—whose rapid metabolism made her nearly impossible to drug or poison—had the innkeeper pinned against his bar, one saber on either side of his throat. The little bit of tipsiness she’d shown was gone now.
This idiot tried the old bad-beer-burgle on us!? Doesn’t he know warriors when he sees them? Zok remembered the seemingly clumsy serving boy bumping into him. Instinctively, his hand went to his purse. It was still there, and, digging in it, he found that it still held all the coins that Hai Hai hadn’t won from him.
Then he realized Fraja’s earring was gone.
Zok screamed like a wounded beast and knocked over two tables. He turned to the pinned-down innkeeper, whose eyes widened with terror.
Hai Hai sheathed one saber and yanked the innkeeper up by his greasy long hair. “You just fucked with the wrong folk, friend,” she shouted in the man’s face, clearly enjoying the chance to indulge in a bit of brutality. “Your drugged drink didn’t work. Now, I’ve still got my purse, so this isn’t a simple robbery, is it?” She shoved him toward Zok.
Zok grabbed the innkeeper by his shirt and slapped him hard enough to rattle the man’s teeth. “Where’s my wife’s earring?” he boomed.
Either the innkeeper was a very good actor, or he was genuinely confused. “Please! Please don’t hurt me, masters! I don’t know what you’re talking about! By the twin gods of truth, I swear it!”
Zok put his hands around the man’s throat.
Hai Hai’s whiskers twitched dangerously. “You tried to knock us out. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t chop your balls off before my friend chokes you to death.”
“My wife’s earring!” Zok shouted again. The innkeeper sputtered and his eyes bulged.
Mylovic put a calming hand on Zok’s shoulder. Zok loosened his grip.
The priest cast a sympathetic grimace on the innkeeper’s pain. “My friends have been wronged here. If you know anything at all, good sir, I suggest you tell them. They can be most…unreasonable. The five gods of fury have nothing on Hai Hai when she’s of a mind to hurt someone.”
The innkeeper cast a wild look around him, as if he might find answers amidst the inn’s rafters and tables. “The boy! It must have been the new boy, Sorgo! He’s only been working here a fortnight, masters! I know him not! I swear I know nothing of drugs or burgling!” The man began to weep and burble. “Please! Please, masters!”
Hai Hai sheathed her second saber. “I think he’s telling the truth.” She seemed disappointed.
Zok drew a deep, steadying breath. “Well, someone just drugged us. Someone who didn’t give a gods’ damn for my coin just stole something specific from me. Something very important. If it wasn’t done on your order, it was still done under your roof. Tell us about this boy.”
The words spilled forth in a sputtering stream “He…He’s called Sorgo, masters. A street-boy. The Hireguard took him in a few years ago. They gave me his work-chit for a year as repayment for a debt.”
“Where is he now?” Hai Hai asked.
“I…I don’t know. Most days he’s here until I close, but…” the man gestured helplessly at the empty room and overturned tables.
“He’s your boy but he doesn’t live here?” Zok asked, sounding calmer than he felt.
“No, master. I’ve no room for him, and no obligation to feed him. He still sleeps at the Hireguard’s hall. Still does some cleaning and such for them before he does his duties here each day.”
“Well, we’re gonna find him, you can be gods-damned sure. And if he points his grubby little finger back this way, innkeeper, you’re dead. You stay closed for now. Shut your door, don’t go anywhere and don’t say a gods-damned word to anyone, you got me?”
“Yes! Yes, yes, of course! Anything you say, masters.”
Mylovic leaned in and brushed a hand over the man’s shirt, smoothing out wrinkles. “Some advice, good sir: Do exactly as my friend says. Don’t think to run or to call on the Hireguard. I swear by the twin gods of truth that it won’t end well for you if you defy her.”
The innkeeper swallowed loudly, then nodded.
“Now,” Zok said. “Give us directions.”
Half an hour later they walked the squalid streets of a town that seemed half-empty, Hai Hai drawing stares with each step. As they neared the Hireguard hall, Zok realized they needed to be more discreet. At his urging Mylovic mumbled a prayer to the gods of sight, and the stares stopped as the priest’s eye-slide spell took effect.
Under the spell’s hold, a gaggle of giggling boys playing some stupid chase-game plowed past the companions, half-heedless of what they were doing. Again Zok found himself snorting with disgust for the young. In his day, in his home village, boys that size would be learning to work a blacksmith’s bellows, or to lift a broadsword.
A buxom, black-eyed lass passed by and Zok’s irritation melted away. Without meaning to, he followed her swaying hips with his eyes, which earned him a “back to business!” poke in the gut from Hai Hai. Mylovic, meanwhile, paid the girl no notice. Like all priests, he’d had his desire for women magically shorn from him in exchange for his strange powers. The gelding rites were supposed to strip a priest’s bodily desires, but it seemed to Zok that Mylovic had merely replaced his lust for flesh with a doubled lust for poppy-smoke and nose-dusts.
Finally they came the grey stone hall of the Hireguard, one of the largest buildings in town. As with many smal
Zok gestured his companions into an alley with a view of the hall. He took a long appraising look, then turned to Mylovic and jerked a thumb back at the hall. “You’ve seen my wife’s earring many times, man. Can you use your prayers to tell me if it’s in there?”
Mylovic nodded once and took Zok’s thick wrists in his own small, soft hands. The priest spoke in a more forceful voice than his normal lilt. “Keep your eyes open, but picture the thing you’re looking for now, Zok Ironeyes. Now turn your palms upward.”
Mylovic closed his own eyes and screwed up his face in concentration. He started to sweat, and seemed to stop breathing. After a few long moments, he exhaled loudly, released Zok’s wrists, and nodded.
His voice was his own again. “The god of lost things says that what you seek is indeed in that building, my friend.”
Hai Hai’s shiny eyes narrowed. “You’re sure about this, holy man? This isn’t some poppy-chomp-fueled guess, is it?
“O Sweet Hai Hai. I swear, a man not blessed as I am by the three gods of patience might grow tired of your constant doubting.”
“Both of you keep your mouths shut,” said Zok, who was in no mood for his companions’ bickering banter.
“So what now?” Mylovic asked. “Do we announce ourselves and tell them how their houseboy has wronged us? The Hireguard aren’t exactly known for their openness or honesty.”
Hai Hai snorted. “No, they ain’t. So the lawful approach won’t work. We could crack that nut,” she said softly, echoing Zok’s thoughts as she gestured toward the hall, “but it would make a thousand-gods-damned lot of noise.”
Zok nodded. “We’ll be as quiet as we can. We go around back.”
He started to move, but Hai Hai’s paw on his shoulder stopped him. “Zok. I know you don’t want to hear this, but as your sword-sister I have to say it: This is only a trinket we’re hunting here. We can go in there. And we can reclaim what’s yours. But that won’t bring your Fraja back.”
Zok looked at Hai Hai, and he knew there was murder in his grey eyes. “I’m going in. You two don’t have to come.”
Mylovic smiled negligently. “In for a card, in for a tile, I say. I’m with you, O gigantic one.”
Hai Hai’s ears stiffened and she studied Zok a moment. “Your wife must have been quite a woman. Quite a woman. Of course I’m with you, too. Let’s do it.”
Making their way in without being noticed proved easy enough. A simple alarm-ward which Mylovic neutralized, and an unimpressive stone wall that even the priest surmounted with a little help from Hai Hai. The Hall wasn’t really built to prevent entry—Zok doubted that anyone in this town of cowards had ever even tried this.
A moment after they vaulted over the wall two guards wearing the shield-and-jewel Hireguard livery rounded a corner, nearly bumping into Zok. The fools broke off their chatter and stood slack-jawed for a half-moment before fumbling at their scabbards.
Clearly, the mercenaries weren’t used to intruders, as they tried to handle the threat themselves instead of sounding the alarm. Hai Hai gutted one with her sabers before he even got his weapon out. The other was quicker, but Zok knocked his sword away and cut him down in two strokes.
They hid the bodies behind a scraggly bush, then found a cellar entrance. It was unguarded and unlocked. Zok found himself almost disappointed by the mercenaries’ laxity.
They filed inside and found the cellar empty. Zok wasn’t surprised. A piss-pot, half-dead town like this barely warranted a Hireguard hall in the first place. No doubt this one was manned by a minimum compliment of men.
But, he saw by the light-shaft seeping in at the cellar door, that didn’t mean that the place was devoid of wealth. The high-ceilinged cellar held earth-apples sacks and ale-casks, yes, but there were also lockboxes here, and porcelains, and bound chests meant to hold valuables. It made no sense, but there was the evidence before their eyes.
Hai Hai whistled softly. “Well, well, well,” she whispered. Her glance flicked to an open stairway at the far wall, which likely connected the cellar to the rest of the building, then returned to the lockboxes.
“This isn’t what we’re here for -” Zok began, but Mylovic cut him off.
“No, my friend. But this wealth—we’d be fools not to take notice.” Greed was the only thing that ever united Hai Hai and the priest.
A great pile of iron barrels and ebonwood chests sat in the corner. Hai Hai stooped to examine a chest, running a furry finger over the lock.
“Wait!” Zok shouted, sensing something was wrong.
Hai Hai jumped back, but it was too late. There was a great nerve-shearing metallic screech, like the gates of all three hells thrown open at once. The barrels and boxes quaked and shifted as if lifted by an unseen hand. Zok and is companions watched in horror as the containers tumbled onto one another and rose, melting together and resolving themselves into something vaguely man-shaped. Something eight feet tall and twice as wide at the shoulders as Zok.
Hai Hai, the first to shake off her shock, drew her swords.
“Foxshit and fire! A thief-smasher! A fox-fucking thief-smasher!”
Zok gripped Menace’s hilt. “Mylovic, can’t you do something here?”
The priest shook his head. “It’s warded against supplication-spells. I’m no use here.” He backed away several steps.
Hai Hai, though, moved forward, her sabers slashing fast as lightning at the thing’s iron-and-ebony hide. Zok had seen their spell-sharpened steel slice a man’s hand off at one pass. But at each blade-stroke the lumbering thing before them merely jerked about a bit harder, as if annoyed by the bites of an insect.
Still, Hai Hai’s thrusts and slashes kept the thing distracted and off-balance. It focused its pulverizing punches on her, and she was fast enough to stay one step ahead of its strikes.
Until she grew tired. Then the fight would turn.
But Zok wasn’t afraid. Menace had been forged in the fires of the Daggerpath Mountains to fight both men and magical beasts. The broadsword glowed golden in his hands as he leaped forward.
The thief smasher’s barrel-fists slammed down like massive hammers once, then twice, missing Zok by a hairsbreadth each time. Its attention was split now between him and Hai Hai, which meant they had a chance here.
Zok swung hard at the thing’s arm, and Menace burned even brighter. Blue sparks flew as Zok’s sword sheared away half an ebonwood arm.
The thief-smasher thrust out an iron-bound knee and caught Zok square in the chest. He shouted out in pain, then fell to the floor, struggling to catch his breath.
Hai Hai leapt over and stood before Zok protectively. She jabbed her sabers in and out of the thing’s ruined half-arm like rapiers, and it backed off a few huge steps, apparently more vulnerable on its insides.
Zok fought past his pain and struggled to his feet. Behind him he heard Mylovic mumbling, though the priest had said his invocations were useless.
Hai Hai pressed her assault, forcing the creature to turn its back on Zok. The thief-smasher guarded its wounded arm, though, and Hai Hai’s little leaps grew slower. A few more minutes of this and the thing would pulverize her.
Zok dug deep within himself for the battle-madness he needed. He shot forward again, Menace cleaving out ahead of him. Again the blue sparks flew, and a great gash opened in the thief-smasher’s barrel-back. The creature turned and seemed to stare at Zok, though it had no eyes. Zok braced himself for another assault.
But just then Mylovic ceased his mumbling and the air grew thick with scents of rust and rot. There was another shearing sound like the one that had brought the thing to life, then the thief-smasher collapsed in a pile of chests and barrels. Zok and his companions barely managed to hop out of the way of the debris.
Zok turned to Mylovic, who was panting. “It was only the thing’s outsides that were warded. On
The priest’s words were cut off as the door at the top of the stairway burst open and six Hireguards, swords drawn, stormed down the stairs. Zok met their charge, planting his feet on the stairway so that only one man could come down at a time. He drove his sword through the foremost swordsman’s shield-and-jewel tabard, through chainmail, through innards.
The man fell, tripping up the man just behind him. Hai Hai leapt about at the stairway’s exposed side, her sabers darting in and out, and wherever she leapt men bled.
The other mercenaries struggled to step clear of their now-dead compatriots’ bodies, but Menace met them as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Zok took a few blade-grazes, but soon half a dozen Hireguards lay dead.
“Well, we’ve been found!” he boomed to his companions. “So let’s find what we came for and get out of here!” Stepping over the dead men, he scrambled up the stairs.
Another knot of Hireguards stood in the building’s large mainroom, weapons at the ready. But they weren’t what interested Zok. As he heard his companions rush up behind him he caught a glimpse of a mousy-haired little figure behind the armed men. The little shit who had stolen his wife’s earring. The boy spotted Zok, squawked, and ran up another stairway on the room’s far side.
Zok growled at the four men before him just as Hai Hai and Mylovic reached his side. Hai Hai’s blades dripped with gore, as did Menace, and godsflame played between Mylovic’s palms. Zok imagined they made for quite a sight to the sort of weak-seeded cowards that passed for mercenaries this far south.
And, indeed, though they had a great advantage of numbers, the mercenaries looked terrified. “The Empress! The Empress sent them! She knows!” one of the men shouted. Zok had no idea what the fool was blathering about, but the rest of the men looked even more afraid at these words.
As one, Zok and Hai Hai surged forward, swords slicing out. Two men fell screaming. Then the rest broke, shoving each other out of the way as they made for the door.
Zok ignored them, heading for the far staircase to the second floor without saying a word to Hai Hai or Mylovic. He took the stairs three at a time, heedless of any possible threats.