held the bloody tooth out for him to see. “I’m fully prepared to hold you prisoner for a future exchange. But it’s going to cost you some information. I am not a man that will be delayed.”
The translator relayed the message in that sour Bone Face tongue.
The Bone Face replied.
The translator arched an eyebrow. “He says only a woman would think of taking a tooth.”
Shim simply shook his head. “Perhaps we should cut off something more important to him.” He pointed at the man’s groin. “Tell him we’ll take one, and if he still doesn’t talk, we’ll take the other.”
The translator relayed the message.
Arogth looked at the second man. Shim’s performance was having its intended effect upon him.
“Where is your ship?” asked Argoth.
The translator spoke.
At that moment, a messenger rode into the meadow at full gallop. He called out to two soliders searching the saddlebags of a Bone Face horse for the location of the warlord. One pointed in Shim’s direction. The messenger galloped through the tall grass to Shim.
“What is it now?” Shim asked.
The messenger looked down at the prisoners. “My Lord,” he said. “May I suggest a more private place?”
Shim sighed. “Probably more council instructions. Very well.” He turned to his captain. He pointed at the Bone Face who had lost a tooth. “Lay out all our tools for them to see. A little think should do them good.”
“Forgive me, Lord,” the messenger said. “But I was asked to give the message to Lord Bosser as well.”
“Very well,” said Shim. He turned to Bosser and Argoth. “Why don’t you both come?”
They walked a number of yards away and stood in the grass.
“What is it then?” asked Shim. His voice was so dry it made Argoth thirsty.
“Sleth have attacked at the village of Plum,” said the messenger.
Argoth tensed. That was where Purity lived. Had she been exposed? Lords, had she revealed the Order?
The messenger then related to the three of them the tale of Master Sparrow and Barg, the harvest master.
With every word, Argoth’s heart sank.
When the messenger finished, Shim told him to take a message to the lords of the Fir-Noy and dismissed the man. When the messenger rode off, Shim whistled through his teeth.
Bosser grunted and stroked his mustache the way he did when he was in deep thought.
“What do you think?” asked Shim. “Yet another Fir-Noy scheme to purge the Nine Clans of the Koramites, or have the Bone Faces begun to move their wizards?”
Bosser shook his head. “I do not trust the Fir-Noy, but even they wouldn’t make something like this up.” He spoke in the common Mokaddian, but his Vargon accent was still thick, rolling his r’s and turning his v’s into f’s. He sighed. “Dreadmen with failing weaves, Koramite spies, Sleth. We’re a kingdom of dust. Perhaps it’s time to flee these shores.”
Shim’s anger rose. “Flee? By all that’s holy, I will stand my ground. I’ve spilled my blood here, sired children on these hills. I will triumph or die trying. I will hear no talk of flight.”
“There are young ones with full lives ahead of them,” said Bosser.
Argoth knew Bosser was thinking of his own children. The Bone Faces would make them nine-fingered chattel. They would rape the women, force those they thought were pretty into being concubines. And when they finished, they would draw the Fire of the people to build their armies. They would levy taxes of Days until people began dropping like flies.
“Perhaps it isn’t Bone Faces at all,” said Bosser. “Maybe the ruins have produced this.”
When the first settlers had arrived in this land, they found a number of ridges and cliffs riddled with the ruins of extensive warrens. The Teeth, a six-mile ridge of limestone hills that looked from a distance like the maw of some fearsome fanged animal, was the biggest. These weren’t nasty holes in the ground, but long passages with many chambers. Over the years, many parts had eroded and fallen in. Pools of water stood in what once must have been grand halls. Bats littered the floors in many places with mounds of excrement. But what was left showed the mysterious race had carved with intelligence. For lack of any other name, the settlers called the vanished race stone-wights.
Nobody had seen a living stone-wight. The carvings and bones found in the warrens gave a good idea of what the creatures looked like. They walked upright, some with the long hair of a musk ox, but they were clearly not any breed of human.