Dogged the obsidian path, p.8
Dogged (The Obsidian Path), page 8
Resisting the urge to turn and lope after her and ask questions about what was in the jungle, I stayed at Balen’s side. I wasn’t here to go exploring or hunt fun new things. Until I had my answer, there could be no room for such distractions.
A low, frustrated growl slipped out and Balen darted a nervous look in my direction.
“Sorry.” I shook my head as if trying to dislodge all the thoughts and desires crowding for attention. “Wardogs aren’t meant for this. We don’t ask questions, and we don’t seek answers. Nhil and Henka should have sent someone else.”
“Will you ever give up?”
“No.” Not being good at something was no reason not to see it through.
“Then maybe you’re the right person for the job.”
“Wardog,” I corrected. “Not person.”
A trio of priests, two elderly women followed by a young man, passed us in the opposite direction. They wore vestments of blue and black bands that reminded me of a deadly viper, though that might have been due to the snake skeletons woven into their hair and robes. The women wore blue diamonds set into their flesh. At first, I wondered how they achieved that. When I got a better look at the younger man trailing along behind them, face a puckered wound where raw flesh still healed around the gemstones jammed into his skin, I had my answer.
They smelled like dead snakes and madness.
“Why do they do that to themselves?” I asked Balen.
“They worship a god called Skirt of Snakes, who claims to have given birth to the moon and stars.”
I looked up but of course it was daytime, and I saw neither moon nor stars. “That’s silly. If she was that big, she couldn’t live on a dumpy little island like this.”
Noting my attention, Balen said, “Her priests claim she didn’t give birth to these stars, but to those of another reality.”
“Convenient.” People always had such quick excuses as to why their beliefs made sense despite the evidence they did not.
“She fled here,” Balen continued, “after losing a war with some other god. Whatever she might have once been, she’s no more powerful than any one of a thousand local river spirits or elemental demons.”
I’d fought and killed enough elementals and demons to know they were two different things but said nothing. People didn’t like being corrected by wardogs. They got so caught up in labelling things they forgot that after you’d killed whatever it was all the labels became the same: dead.
I looked back, trying to find the woman with the earth elemental, but she was gone. For the tiniest shred of an instant, I wanted to chase after her and follow her around–even if it meant failing Nhil and Henka and Vigilant Aggression.
Balen led me to an establishment he said was called The Lessons Never Learned. He entered first, ducking his head to clear the mantle. I followed him in, almost dropping to all fours, my shoulders scraping the doorframe on either side. The moment I stood upright, a silence fell like a sodden blanket dropped on smouldering embers. Every eye turned in my direction. Mugs, raised halfway to open mouths, didn’t move. A scruffy-looking cat, little bigger than one of my paws, paused in licking itself. Eyes narrowing, it stared at me from underneath its raised rear leg.
I bared my teeth at the cat. “I’d gut you for a purse if I had coin to carry.”
With a bored look, the cat returned to licking and, as if that were some kind of signal, the people resumed whatever they’d been doing.
“Please don’t kill that cat,” Balen said, leading me to an empty table. “It’s over twenty years old and considered something of a good luck talisman.”
The fact the cat was older than me just made me dislike it all the more. The way it ignored me, intent on its own asshole, made me want to smear the walls with blood and scabby fur.
“That was a good line,” Balen said as he sat. “I didn’t know wardogs could be so funny.”
“Sigaria used to say that when we were pups. I always assumed she didn’t kill us because she had no coin.”
The cat curled up and pretended to sleep but watched me through a slitted eye.
Balen’s face did one of those weird, expressive things hinting at surprise and appreciation. “She sounds lovely.”
I hadn’t mentioned her appearance and was incapable of judging. “She smells right.”
“I do love a woman who smells right.”
Finally, something I understood.
“I’m assuming you don’t want a beer,” he added.
“No.” Grain was something prey ate and waiting for it to go bad and turn into a liquid did nothing to improve it.
A man limped to our table, the left side of his hip mangled by some past injury. “Balen Sofame, it’s been too long.”
“Captain Sofame, now. Kyyrish met an unfortunate end.”
“He get drunk and fall off the BlackThorne?”
“I ripped his head off,” I told the broken man. “Balen wants a beer and food that isn’t fish. I want a bowl of water.”
A moment later, a mug of ale sat before Balen, and a dented tin bowl of water before me.
Balen picked up the mug in both hands, leaning forward to sniff at the foam. “This first sip is always the best.”
“Water is much the same.”
“And the more you have the better you feel.”
“Just like water.”
“If you have enough,” Balen said, studying me over the brim of his mug, “you feel the sudden need to fight or fuck.”
“Wardogs always want to fight.”
“The way it loosens inhibitions is a thing of beauty.”
“Inhibitions?”
“Those thoughts that stop you from doing things you know you aren’t supposed to.”
I looked at the cat.
“Maybe it’s best your inhibitions stay intact,” Balen decided.
Wardogs were raised with strict rules. From our first words we knew what we lived for and what was expected of us: Wardogs were born to die. We were the meat and muscle of the Demon Emperor’s will. First through the portal, last to return home.
We are war.
Though I’d never given it much thought, I knew we were more than that. We lived. We took mates. We loved our pack and our Kennel Master. We had inside lives that we never talked about. Talking your inside stuff so it became outside stuff was a people thing. Wardogs knew that what mattered was being. Saying a thing out loud didn’t make it more true and keeping it inside didn’t lessen it. People lived out loud and I loved them for that, even if I had no interest in taking part. They talked like they’d cease to exist if they stopped. It was oddly comforting. I’d long ago learned that I slept best when people were talking in the background.
“Inhibitions are why many people still live,” I said.
“Drunks rarely—”
“I’m talking about wardogs. For example, inhibitions are what stop me from killing people who interrupt me. And people love interrupting others.”
“You just interrupted me.”
“Yes, but you can’t kill me.”
“Because you’re under the emperor’s protection?”
“No, because you’re tiny, weak, and slow.” I’d fought and killed thousands of people in scores of worlds. Some were faster or stronger than others. None were a match for a wardog.
“I might surprise you,” Balen said.
“If you killed me, I would indeed be surprised.”
“Ha! I knew wardogs had a sense of humour! If you’re dead, you can’t be surprised.”
“Unless the destruction is complete, death takes time. Captain Kyyrish’s eyes were still blinking in surprise when I tossed his head into the ocean.”
I remembered the first time I tore something’s head off and lifted it so I could watch it look around, the lips moving in silence. Even in their last moments, people kept talking.
The broken man delivered stew next. He put a bowl in front of Balen and a wooden bucket in front of me. I checked the doors and windows to see if Sigaria had somehow followed me here and was watching. When I neither saw nor caught her scent, I checked to judge Balen’s reaction. Already eating his own meal, he seemed utterly unaware of the amazing thing that had happened. Moving the spoon out of my way, I gobbled down the people food before anyone realized their mistake and took it away. After, I licked the bucket clean. Every meal was great, but people food was something special. There were strange things in there we rarely got to eat, like potatoes, mushrooms, and carrots. Wardogs ate raw meat. People food was cooked and spiced. I didn’t know the names but loved the flavours.
The broken man returned after we finished. Raising an eyebrow at the bucket, he said, “Stew was good?”
“Best meal ever,” I answered, deciding I liked him. He’d be in so much trouble if Sigaria found out what he fed me but had risked her wrath anyway. “What are the little black flakes?” I asked.
“Pepper?”
“Pepper,” I repeated. “Best pepper ever.” I made a note to remember pepper. Somehow, I would bring some home so the others could try it when Sigaria wasn’t around. Maybe, if I somehow managed to do exactly what they wanted, Nhil and Henka would let me keep this broken man. He could make meals for all the wardogs.
Seeming pleased with himself, he wandered back toward the bar.
When Balen dropped coins on the table I got a good look at the tattered and frayed pouch he carried them in and glanced at the cat. It continued pretending to ignore me.
With a regretful sigh, Balen stood. “We should get a good night’s sleep. In the morning we’ll see if we can sell any of what’s in the hold or take on anything we might sell in Aszyyr.”
I followed him from The Lesson Never Learned and onto the street. The sun had set while we ate. We headed back toward the docks, Balen keeping up a comforting stream of chatter. He talked about his home, an island called Redyns, and how someday he was going to find a wife and make a fortune so his children wouldn’t have to risk their lives on the dangerous oceans.
“You know,” he blurted, in the middle of describing the boat he dreamed of owning, “I’ve never made this walk sober before. It’s darker than I remember. Stinkier too.” He gestured down an alley. “I threw up in there once.”
“I can still smell it.”
“There’s no way wardogs don’t have a sense of humour.”
Ahead, four figures stepped from another alley. Though leached of colour in the dark, I saw them well enough. There were three large men, two wielding iron-headed cudgels, the third with a sword hanging at his hip. A smaller female followed them. Rat-lean, she carried one of those annoying fencing blades hidden behind her back. Finally, at the rear of the group stood an old man leaning on a walking stick. Something about his face looked wrong; his eyes had none of that yellow hollowness I saw in most elderly people.
Balen, telling me about how once, when he was a little boy, he packed up his favourite toys and told his mom he was going to ‘go on adventures,’ noticed them but didn’t react.
Words were air.
Body language spoke louder.
Everything I saw said one word: violence.
“Balen,” I said, interrupting him and gesturing with a claw.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Addressing the five people facing us, he called out, “I’ve made this walk alone and stumbling drunk a dozen times but now that I’m with a wardog you’re going to try and rob me?”
“We only want the dog,” the woman told him. “Walk away and live to see tomorrow.”
“A Sofame never abandons a friend.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Earlier, Balenwick Sofame said I could call him Balen, as his friends did. I’d already decided I liked him, but such an honour made him special. Standing at my side against superior numbers, however, made him something new, something I’d never before had. Sure, I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with wardogs in scores of worse circumstances and never once worried about them fleeing; wardogs were born to die, and we were born knowing it. People were different. I’d seen countless armies break and scatter before me. Even hardened soldiers abandoned friends and family in a mad effort to save themselves.
Half focussed on the five people before us, and half trying to understand what I felt for Balen, too late I realized what the old man was. One gnarled hand clutching his walking stick, he slashed viciously curved shapes in the air, snarling words in a language never meant for human throats.
“Sorcerer,” I managed before my blood turned to ice.
Strength leaked from me, my muscles suddenly numb and weak. My skull throbbed like that time I stole a frozen dessert from the mess hall the people ate at. Chest tightening, heart desperately trying to shove cold and thickening blood through my veins, I fell to my knees.
“You really should run now,” the woman told Balen.
Instead of running, he bent, plucked an eyeball-sized rock from the ground, and threw it. I heard the pebble hiss past my ear and felt some small jealousy; wardog joints were not well formed for throwing. The stone smashed into the old man’s nose with an explosion of blood and sent him reeling backward. He dropped his cane, both hands trying to stem the flow.
Though no longer freezing, my blood still pushed through my veins like winter slush. Shivers shook me as I struggled to find the strength to stand. Balen yelled something and hurtled past me, slamming into the three big men. Brave and impressive as it was, two of them sidestepped him with ease. He only hit the third because the others had blocked Balen from his sight. I had time only to think, He’s better at throwing than fighting, and then the two big men were on me.
A cudgel slammed into my shoulder, and I barked laughter. The sorcerer’s magic left me numb. Another blow landed on the other side and my laughter cut short with a grunt of pain. Seeing a leg before my eyes, I grabbed it, crushing the joint in my grip. Another cudgel blow landed on my back as the woman barked angry orders at the old man who’d fallen over backward. She looked from Balen, who wrestled with the swordsman, to where I crouched, still holding onto someone’s ankle. With a flourish, she brandished her needle-thin sword and stalked toward me like a creeping rat.
I really didn’t like her.
Sometimes, Vigilant Aggression used to read poetry to me. It was all garbage. Words had meanings and the purpose of those meanings was so that we could know what the words meant. I told him that using a word with one meaning to mean something entirely different made all words meaningless. He liked that, said something about wardogs being literal creatures. I remembered him reading a poem where anger was expressed as heat. At the time I thought it was stupid. No matter how angry you got, you’d never boil water. Here, kneeling weak and hunched as these people tried to shatter my bones, I thought perhaps I understood.
My rage warmed me.
I rose with a roar, someone’s ankle still clutched in my claws. Turning, I saw the wide-eyed terror of one of the cudgel men. Once again, I berated myself for not taking a weapon from the armoury. Sometimes I wondered if people were right and wardogs really were as dumb as they said. Then the cudgel man blinked at his friend, hanging squirming upside-down in my grip, and I remembered I had a weapon. I swung the man I held into the other, hearing leg bones and segments of spine break as they bent the wrong way. Again and again, I bludgeoned him with his companion until both stopped making mewling sounds and lay limp.
Sharp pain lanced into my lower back, and I flinched away, turning to find the woman with the little fencing sword facing me.
I stared at her, incredulous. “Ow.”
“I just stabbed you in the liver,” she said. “Even if I don’t stab you somewhere more fatal, you’ll die a slow and painful death.”
I’d eaten my share of liver but had no idea if I had one or where it might be.
The rat woman ducked under my attempt to smash her head from her shoulders and stabbed me again in the chest. She retreated out of my reach before I knew what had happened.
Annoyed, I looked down at the tiny red patch. She’d be stabbing me all day before I lost enough blood to noticeably slow.
“Just missed the heart,” she said, grinning a mean rat grin with her little rat teeth.
I really didn’t like her.
Thinking of Vigilant Aggression’s constant tricks, I said, “Wardog. Not people.” I pointed closer to the centre of my chest. “Heart here.”
She lunged, as I knew she would, and I let the thin blade puncture my paw so I could angle it somewhere less dangerous. It hurt, but pain passed and wardogs healed fast. With my free hand, I grabbed her nasty rat head and smashed it against the nearest wall, turning the bone to mush.
“Are you hurt?” Balen asked.
I turned from the mess I’d made on the wall. He stood, breathing hard, leaning against a sword like it was a walking stick. Behind him, the old man coughed and gagged on the blood he’d swallowed from his pulped nose. The man whose sword Balen leaned on dragged himself toward the nearest alley. When I realized my friend had no intention of finishing the job, I found one of the dropped cudgels and stomped after the wounded man.
“We should—”
I smashed the iron cudgel through the back of the man’s skull, leaving an indentation in the road beneath where his face had once been.
“—ask him who sent him,” Balen finished.
Straightening, I examined the weapon I held, giving it a few practice swings. I felt silly. It was too short and light to be effective.
Dropping it on the corpse at my feet, I said, “Why do we care who sent him?”
He and his friends had failed to rob us and now lay dead or, in the case of the sorcerer, soon to be dead. If they were part of some larger thieving guild, I doubted anyone else would bother us. At least not tonight.
“Her Skirt is Snakes rules the island,” Balen said. “Even fallen gods know that trade is the lifeblood of civilization.”
“Blood is blood. Civilizations don’t bleed.”
“Right,” he agreed. “I’ve been here a dozen times, and while the price of ale amounts to theft and pickpockets lurk in every corner, this isn’t a violent place. There are rules.”
