performer has to believe what he’s saying as he says it or the audience smells deception. It had made sense to me, and I knew it would make sense to them, but how much I thought all this cultural upbringing stuff was a sufficient excuse or explanation for what I had done, something that would rightly stop them from stringing me up and testing their spears on me, I couldn’t say.
But it did work. Kind of.
They didn’t string me up. Instead, they gave me a mission, which sounded like good news until I heard the details of what they wanted me to do.
Stringing me up would have been a lot quicker.
SCENE XIX
The Halls of the Dead
“The bridge guards bear out your story,” said Sorrail grimly, “but you can’t expect anyone here to believe that you have returned to Phasdreille of your own accord. Look at me when I speak to you!”
He took hold of my chin and yanked it up, slapping me hard as he did so. The guards around me hoisted me roughly into an upright, kneeling position, one of them dragging me by a fistful of hair. My cheek was so swollen with bruising that my left eye was a sightless slit. I looked at Sorrail with my right and gasped an attempt to speak. Blood spattered from my mouth in a fine spray, and a droplet fell on Sorrail’s white linen tunic. He scowled at it and then, almost casually, kicked me hard in the ribs. I collapsed onto the stone floor coughing and spitting blood.
I had no idea how long this had been going on: An hour? Two? I had been picked up by the bridge guard and brought directly to Sorrail who, assisted by his more enthusiastic troops, had beaten me periodically ever since. As I got my breath back and cleared my throat, I wheezed out my story again. “I told you already. I ran from the city and into the forest. I walked into a huge goblin army. Some of them saw me and came after me. I ran. I knew the city guards would take me in as a criminal and, with half a dozen bear-riding goblins on my tail, that seemed the best plan. I also thought that by bringing word of the enemy force, I might make up, at least in part, for my past crimes in the city. That’s all there is to tell.”
I sank to the floor again, coughing, exhausted by my narrative and feeling, more than ever, the ache in my jaw where I had been punched.
“These goblins,” Sorrail demanded, and as he came close to me I could smell his scrubbed body, still fragrant with the soap they made by boiling down goblin fat. “What standard did they bear?”
I thought for a moment. “A white half-moon—a crescent—on a red background.”
Sorrail looked at me, and though his gaze was hard and hateful as before, it held a hint of uncertainty.
“He could have seen that in the last attack on the city,” suggested a burly sergeant, scornfully.
“No,” said Sorrail, distantly. “That device is borne only by the mountain tribes to the north. They have not been seen here for many months, and certainly did not participate in any of our recent engagements. If they were here . . .”
His voice trailed off and he stood for a moment in silence. Then he squatted suddenly and spoke directly to my face. “These goblins, the ones riding the brown bears, were they—”
I cut him off, spotting the test. “The bears weren’t brown, they were black. Kind of charcoal but . . .”
“Kind of?”
“They looked black but they had, like, a sheen that was bluish and silvery, like steel.”
The guards looked at me, then at each other, then at Sorrail. His eyes burned into mine and he knew that I was speaking the truth. I could not have come up with that kind of detail unless I had seen them.
“And these were the only beasts they had with them?” he prompted.
“Yes. No. There were wolves, too, like the ones that attacked us when you found us in the mountains.”
He hesitated, caught slightly off-guard by this remark and the memories it evoked, perhaps because I had been unable to conceal the bitter amusement in my voice. Then I had taken him as a savior, someone who might keep the hand of evil from my throat. It was a nasty irony, but I think I was able to swallow that back before it