Chapter Five
Rocks, Socks, and Sandwiches
“So where are we headed?” Clay asked, shortly before they were robbed on the road to Conthas.
“First things first,” said Gabriel. “I need to get Vellichor back.”
“You sold it, you said?”
Gabe nodded. “Basically, yeah.”
Clay could scarcely believe they were having this conversation. Gabe’s old sword, Vellichor, was perhaps the most treasured artifact in all the world. Several thousand years ago (or so the bards generally agreed) a race of rabbit-eared immortals called druins had narrowly escaped the cataclysmic destruction of their own realm by using Vellichor to carve a path into this one, which, at the time, was a land of savage humans and wild monsters. The druins had little trouble subjugating both, and quickly set about establishing a vast empire known as the Dominion.
The druins were led by their Archon, Vespian, who disappeared into the Heartwyld when the Dominion, many centuries later, was overrun by its own monstrous hordes. When Saga encountered him close to thirty years ago, the Archon had been searching desperately for his estranged son. Shortly after, Clay and his bandmates had found Vespian again—mortally wounded, he’d confessed, by the very son he’d been pursuing. The dying druin had given his sword to Gabriel upon one condition: that Gabe use it to kill him.
Gabriel did so, and the Archon, with his final breath, had said something too quiet to hear, in a language too ancient to comprehend. Whatever those words were, Clay was fairly certain they hadn’t been Sell this if you need to.
“Basically?” Clay could feel his anger rising, “So who did you basically sell your magic sword to?” Clay asked, attempting to sound less exasperated than he actually was.
Gabriel glanced over, obviously embarrassed. “Um … Kal has it.”
“Kal?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait—as in Kallorek? Our old booker, Kallorek? The one Valery—”
“The one Valery left me for, yes,” Gabe finished. “Thanks for reminding me. And I didn’t exactly sell him the sword. I was into some people for a fair bit of coin, and Kal offered to bail me out, only I had nothing to offer up as collateral. He said the sword would square us up, but that if I ever needed it to come and ask. So I’m gonna go ask.”
Clay hadn’t seen Kallorek in almost twenty years, and he wouldn’t have said he was looking forward to reacquainting himself with their old booker once again. Kal was loud, brash, and abrasive—sort of like Gabriel, except louder, brasher, and much more abrasive, without Gabe’s natural charm and disarming good looks to offset it all.
From what little Clay knew of the booker’s sordid past, Kal had been a goon-for-hire on the streets of Conthas before trying his hand at booking, which, it turned out, he had a knack for. It had been Kallorek who had introduced them to Matrick and convinced Ganelon to join the band, Kallorek who booked the gig that led them to Moog. If not for Kal, there’d have been no Saga.
Still, the man was as mean as a murlog with a mouth full of nails.
Clay wondered if Valery knew yet that Rose had gone to Castia. He hoped so, for Gabriel’s sake. If there was anything scarier than a Heartwyld Horde, the wrath of a vengeful ex-wife might just be it.
“So how about the others?” Clay asked. “Have you talked to Moog about this? Or Ganelon?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I came to you first. Figured you and I together would have an easier time getting the rest of them on board. They trust you, Clay. More than they trust me, anyway. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to re-form Saga, remember.”
“Yeah, well, you wanted us to fight in an arena,” Clay reminded him. “Against the gods-knew-what, with ten thousand people watching.”
“Twenty thousand,” Gabe amended.
“But what for? What’s the point?”
“I don’t know!” said Gabriel. “That’s just how it’s done these days. People want excitement. They want blood. They want to see their heroes in action, not just hear about it from some bard who’s probably making up half the story anyway.”
Clay could only shake his head in disbelief. Didn’t people know that stories, and the legends that inevitably sprang from them, were the best part? The gods knew that bards weren’t good for much besides getting themselves killed and telling lies, but they were undoubtedly masters of both. Clay had lost count of the times he’d bumbled his way through a messy, bloody, terrifying brawl, only to hear a bard convince a crowded tavern it had been the greatest, most glorious battle ever waged between man and beast.
In stories there were marches without weeping foot sores, swordfights without septic wounds that killed heroes in their sleep. In stories, when a giant was slain, it toppled thunderously to the ground. In reality, a giant died much the same way anything else did: screaming and shitting itself.
A part of Clay had always suspected the world beyond Coverdale was worsening day by day, but since he hadn’t planned on having much to do with the outside world—aside from pouring drinks and renting beds to folk passing through—he really hadn’t bothered to care. But now that he was rushing headlong back into it … well, he had a feeling things had gotten worse than he’d thought.
“The point is,” Gabriel went on doggedly, “if you tell the others we can cross the Heartwyld and bring Rose home, they’ll believe you.”
“If you say so,” Clay said. He saw a bird, or some other bright thing, flit between the trees in his periphery. When he turned to look, though, it was gone. “So what are the others up to?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “I mean besides Matrick, who I assume is still the king of Agria.”
Before Gabe could answer, a woman sauntered onto the road ahead. Her long brown hair was a mess of loosely bound braids exploding into frizzy tangles. Her clothes were in little better condition, but what they lacked in quality they made up for in quantity, layered upon one another with seemingly no regard for pattern or colour. A longbow was slung over her shoulder, and a single arrow dangled loosely in one hand.
“Mornin’ boys,” she said. “Lovely day for a stroll, ain’t it?”
“Or a robbery,” muttered Clay, scanning the forest to either side. Sure enough, he spotted half a dozen others hidden among the trees. All of them women, garbed in the same haphazard fashion as the one who’d blocked their path, and all of them armed, as it were, to the tits.
“Ya think?” she asked, with the lazy drawl of a Cartean plainswoman. “I prefer rain for a robbery. Not a downpour, mind you—more of a light drizzle. Suits the mood, I think. You ask me, it’s a shame to spoil a sunny day like this with something so crass as petty thievery.” She made a helpless gesture, and then leveled the arrow she was carrying at Clay’s chest. “Yet here we are: pettily thieving.”
“We have nothing you’d want,” said Gabriel, spreading his hands.
The brigand flashed a smile. “Oh, we’ll see about that. Now if you’d be so kind as to introduce your weapons to the road and have what’s in those packs out for us to see?”
Clay complied, flinging the Watchmen’s sword to the ground and upending his pack.
The girl whistled, stepping close to examine the contents. “Ooooh, socks and sandwiches! It’s our lucky day, girls! Come collect!” A chorus of hoots and howls answered from the trees, and her women poured onto the road like a pack of patchwork coyotes. They circled the two men, making threatening gestures with knives and spears and half-drawn bows. Gabriel, flinching with every feinted thrust, turned his own pack upside down.
To Clay’s surprise, it wasn’t empty. To the surprise of everyone else, it contained only a handful of rocks that clattered to the road at Gabriel’s feet.