Swords & Dark Magic Read Free Page B

of the troop, clutching in one hand a mass of wildflowers. Honeybees spun circles around her tousled head.
    The riders edged past her—she seemed oblivious to them—and cantered into the hamlet.

    Slim came back from the doorway and slid along the bar rail to lurch to a halt opposite Swillman. “Give us one, then. I’ll be good for it.”
    “Since when?”
    “Them’s soljers, Swilly. Come from the war—”
    “What war?”
    “T’other side of the mountains, o’course.”
    Swillman settled a gimlet regard on the ancient whore. “You hear anything about a war? From who? When?”
    She shifted uneasily. “Well, you know and I know we ain’t seen traffic in must be three seasons now. But they’s soljers and they been chewed up bad, so there must be a war. Somewhere. And they came down from the pass, so it must be on t’other side.”
    “On the Demon Plain, right. Where nobody goes and nobody comes back neither. A war…over there. Right, Slim. Whatever you say, but I ain’t giving you one unless you pay and you ain’t got nothing to pay with.”
    “I got my ring.”
    He stared at her. “But that’s your livelihood, Slim. You cough that up and you got nothing to offer ’em.”
    “You get it after they’ve gone, or maybe not, if I get work.”
    “Nobody’s that desperate,” Swillman said. “Seen yourself lately? Say, anytime in the last thirty years?”
    “Sure. I keep that fine silver mirror all polished up, the one in my bridal suite, ya.”
    He grunted a laugh. “Let’s see it, then, so I know you ain’t up and swallowed it.”
    She stretched her jaw and worked with her tongue, and then hacked up something into her hand. A large rolled copper ring, tied to a string with the other end going into her mouth, wrapped around a tooth, presumably.
    Swillman leaned in for a closer look. “First time I actually seen it, y’know.”
    “Really?”
    “It’s my vow of celibacy.”
    “Since your wife died, ya, which makes you an idiot. We could work us out a deal, y’know.”
    “Not a chance. It’s smaller than I’d have thought.”
    “Most men are smaller than they think, too.”
    He settled back and collected a tankard.
    Slim put the ring back into her mouth and watched with avid eyes the sour ale tumbling into the cup.

    “Is that the tavern?” Huggs asked, eyeing the ramshackle shed with its signpost but no sign.
    “If it’s dry I’m going to beat on the keeper, I swear it,” said Flapp, groaning as he slid down from his horse. “Beat ’im t’death, mark me.” He stood for a moment, and then brushed dust from his cloak, his thighs, and his studded leather gauntlets. “No inn s’far as I can see, just a room in back. Where we gonna sleep? Put up the horses? This place is a damned pustule, is what it is.”
    “The old map I seen,” ventured Wither, “gave this town a name.”
    “Town? It ain’t been a town in a thousand years, if ever.”
    “Even so, Sarge.”
    “So what’s it called?”
    “Glory.”
    “You’re shitting me, ain’t ya?”
    She shook her head, reaching over to collect the reins of the captain’s horse as Skint thumped down in a plume of dust and, with a wince, walked—in her stockings as she’d lost her boots—to the tavern door.
    Huggs joined Wither tying up the horses to the hitching post. “Glory, huh? Gods, I need a bath. They should call this place Dragon Mouth, it’s so fucking hot. Listen, Wither, that quarrel head’s still under my shoulder blade—I can’t reach up and take off this cloak—I’m melting underneath—”
    The taller woman turned to her, reached up, and unclasped the brooch on Huggs’s cloak. “Stand still.”
    “It’s a bit stuck on my back. Bloodglue, you know?”
    “Ya. Don’t move and if this hurts, I don’t want to have to hear about it.”
    “Right. Do it.”
    Wither stepped around, gripping the cloak’s hems, and slowly and evenly pulled the heavy wool from Huggs’s narrow back. The bloodglue gave way with a