Page 62

Then I saw them.

Coming from the direction in which I saw a flash before the sky dropped fire and death on us.

Kynd and camels.

The Spanth looked, too, and swore. Or at least I think she swore, she was half-turned away and I didn’t see her mouth so well.

The Egalitarians were coming back.

“Fothannon, I see your mischief, and praise it, even as it skins my arse,” I said, climbing back into the cage and chopping as well as I could at the chain binding Galva’s leg to her seat. The chain was tough and short, and I had no space for a proper swing, besides working with just the one arm. Galva was giving me directions, I think. I looked at her mouth long enough to catch Harder! and laughed at what I’d have said back to her.

At least you’re not saying deeper.

For which she’d have surely slapped me.

Ah, the Wostrans were getting closer and I wasn’t doing shyte to the chain. I now saw that a corner of the square piece holding the loop was not quite flush on the wood, so I switched to trying to pry that bit loose with the edge of the hatchet. Now I was getting somewhere.

Could I hear Galva’s voice just a little through the ringing?

“Yes! Faster! Yes!”

I chuckled again, for I’m a child.

I kicked at the hatchet’s back to drive it under the iron mounting, then pried. It came half-loose. I looped the axe around the chain and put my back into heaving at it, and it came free, even as I slipped in Galva’s sick or the giant’s blood or both. This hurt my bad arm enough to water my eyes, but I hadn’t the luxury to squirm on the ground and cry about it as I wanted to do.

I bore the pain and climbed out.

I was just to helping Galva through the hole in the cage when Bazl, Szymnal, Brat the half-tame goblin, and another two slavers rode their smelly camels up in a cloud of dust. Bazl came all the way up to us. I watched his mouth in case he spoke, which he did.

“Hello again,” he said to me, adjusting his false nose. He took a waterskin from his saddle bags and offered it to Galva, who had just wriggled free of the cart.

She took it and drank hard, then passed it to me.

It tasted like it had been poured over a fat man’s arse-crack and down the back of his bollocks on a hot day, but, for all that my mouth hated it, my throat was glad of it.

“Hello,” I croaked at him.

He looked at me, unbound, and at Galva, recently freed, and at the hills I might have run for alone.

“Rannam Tinky, hummity-nop sasha-cump,” I thought he said.

“WHAT?” I yelled at him.

He figured out I was near deaf and shouted back in turn.

“I AM THINKING. YOU ARE NOT. SUCH A CUNT.”

It felt like my head throbbed with every word his mouth made.

“Yah, well,” I said and then added, strictly out of worshipfulness and only after a long drink of arse-bollock-water, “fuck you right in your whistly nose-hole, you judgmental kark.”

To close the matter, one of the coin bags slipped out of my belt and jingle-thumped on the ground.

I watched a youngish Egalitarian woman climb the cage-cart and straddle the massive arm, looking at the rings on the giant’s fingers. She only found one worth the effort of stripping and soon bore this one down to Szymnal, who passed it to Bazl. It was quite a lump of silver, that ring. Bazl looked first through its opening, which a Pigdenay rat could have crawled through, then considered its single stone. Nothing too valuable that, just a hunk of jasper or the like, though pretty enough.

The other bigguns were likewise looted, their more valuable bits and bangles now added to the yellow wagon. The other, larger wagon, which held tents, food, and water, had been flipped on its side, so its remaining four camels (two were dead) hadn’t been able to tug it about.

Szymnal had already relieved me of the coin bags in my belt and my ring of Catfall. Again, I was left with the half stone of Norrigal’s, and I had to wonder if he could even see it. Having relieved me of what valuables he could see, he made a meaningful glance at my backside, to which I curled my lip in distaste and shook my noggin no. He raised an eyebrow and inclined his head as if to say, Are you quite sure? It seems like something you might do. I pursed my lips and shook my head most solemnly, practically an oath. His nod said he didn’t believe me but that he wanted to splonk that foul pocket as little as I wanted it splonked. Truth was, on a better day, I would have put that Catfall ring up my arse.