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‘I wish you’d not mentioned wool,’ Ravast said in a growl. ‘Stapp was too eager to promise taking our flocks into his care. I do not trust that man.’
‘And when she stands beside you,’ Garelko resumed, ‘yet says nothing? Is that the warmth and comfort of companionship? Shall we bathe in her moment of sentimental foolery? That roaringly impossible instant when she’s forgotten all our past crimes? In saying nothing, she wields a menagerie of power. For me, why, I’d rather the whip of her words, the tirade of her temper, the crash of crockery against the side of my skull.’
‘You are a beaten dog,’ Tathenal said, laughing again. ‘Garelko, first of her husbands, first to her bedding. First to flutter and fold to the slightest wind of her displeasure.’
‘Let us not speak of her displeasing winds,’ said Ravast.
‘Why not?’ Tathenal asked. ‘A subject we three can share in a welter of mutual sympathy! The true curse of our union is her love of cooking, so dispiritingly mismatched to her talent. Have we not eaten better these three nights upon the trail? Is this not why not one of us has suggested we hasten our pace and so catch up to her? Are we not, in fact, revelling in the glory of well-made repast? My stomach is too dumb to lie, and my how easy it sits right now!’
‘Women,’ said Garelko, ‘should be barred from every kitchen. Our wife’s enthusiasm keeps her slim, when better she wallow in fat with grease painting flabby lips.’
‘Hah,’ growled Tathenal. ‘Even Lasa cannot bear too much of Lasa’s cooking. This is none other than her conspiracy that ensures her svelte demea
nour. You have the truth there, Garelko. Should we ever catch her, we’ll turn this table. We’ll truss her up and chain her well away from the kitchen. We’ll give her a taste of decent food, and watch how she billows to our ministrations.’
‘This seems a worthy vengeance,’ said Ravast. ‘Shall we vote on this course of action?’
Garelko halted on the trail, forcing the other two to do the same. He swung round to face them, offering up an expression of disdain. ‘Listen to you bold whelps! A vote, no less! A course of action! Why, with such resolve we three could throw back a thousand charging Jhelarkan. But see her regard slide over us, and all resolve crumbles like a well-made pie!’ He wheeled round again, shaking his head as he resumed the march. ‘The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.’
‘It need not be that way, Garelko!’
‘Ah, Ravast, you are a fool. How things need to be weigh as nothing to how they are. Hence, our bowed dispositions, our harried reflections, the flighty birds of our eyes.’
‘Not to mention your nestly hair.’
‘Assuredly that, too, Tathenal. And it’s a wonder I have any left.’
‘Less a wonder than a nightmare. Were you prettier in your youth, Garelko? It must have been so, since I am still waiting to witness a single moment of pity in our wife.’
‘Before marriage,’ Garelko said, ‘I was desired far and wide. I caught the eyes of mothers and daughters alike. Even our man-lover of a king could not keep his hands from me – and who among us could deny his eye for beautiful men?’
‘He’s the lucky one,’ muttered Ravast. ‘Or, was. Famous lovers should never grow too old. Better they die of burst hearts in a thrash of supple limbs and leaking oils. Such swans creep into the sordid.’
‘And still he preens,’ said Tathenal, ‘and so embarrasses us all.’
Garelko threw up a dismissive hand. ‘The fate of every ageing king. Or queen, for that matter. Or, to be fair, every hero.’
‘Bah!’ retorted Tathenal. ‘It is the fate of the young who cease being young. And so it is all our fates.’
‘And this is what now haunts our wife?’ Ravast asked. ‘Does she so fear the loss of her wild beauty that she would make death stand in the place of ageing?’
‘Suicidal defiance?’ mused Tathenal behind Ravast. ‘There is a certain charm to that.’
‘Charm and Lasa Rook do not sit well together,’ said Garelko. ‘Slovenly lust? Yes. Seduction and the promise of manly dissolution? Of course. Manipulation and sudden vengeance? Absolutely. That smile and those eyes that could make even a man-loving king tremble? Oh, we’ve seen it ourselves, have we not? Why, I do not imagine—’
Garelko stepped round a sharp bend in the trail at that moment, and the scene before him cut the words from his tongue. Following a step behind, Ravast looked up and halted.
Before them, on a broad ledge, a reptilian monstrosity had been feeding on a massive, skinned carcass, and now it lifted its gore-smeared head to face them. The beast’s hiss sprayed all three Thel Akai with a fine mist of blood.
As the creature’s long neck curled, raising the head high, Garelko brought round his iron-shod staff from where it had been slung across his back, and leapt forward.
Reptilian jaws stretched wide and the head lunged down.
Garelko slipped to one side and drove the heel of his staff into the beast’s right eye.
Roaring, it pulled its head back.
Battleaxe in his hands, Ravast ran up on to the sloped side of a boulder, gaining height as he did so. Seeing the creature lashing out with an enormous taloned hand, Ravast launched himself from the boulder. Axe blade met that sweeping hand, the edge driving between two fingers, slicing through the webbing and then deep between the bones.
