Terminus Rex (4) by Kevin Wright

Author:Kevin Wright [Wright, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2024-04-27T13:10:59+00:00

Chapter 25.

...beyond the limestone breaks in the Scab-Lands. Only stars shone, reflected off the waters of the long-water. I made my decision, escaping as the Skull-Collars slumbered.

The cliffs were high, precipitously so, and it proved most difficult, but I surmounted...

—Oral account of Eleanor Glynn Emeric; Lady of the Grey Waste

THE Moveable Feast, as the camp’s tavern had come to be known, was certainly moveable. Feast, though? As of late? That was a bit strong. Their best fare? A sliver of river pike or boiled chicken wing, if you were lucky. We’d survived the migrating giant horde, and it was my third night trying to drink Leotis’s face from my mind, ever present, always waiting, haunting me every time I closed my eyes, that smooth, pale orb full of dead serenity, ensconced in his mother’s arms. I was glad I didn’t know her name. Glad I hadn’t asked. Glad it wouldn’t toll like a funerary bell in the back of my mind every time I heard it. But I bore no proof versus Leotis...

The Ester-Venn guides, back with us by the grace of God, were tearing the Feast up, ripping back shots of some concoction they’d lugged in themselves. They called it airag, and it stank of rank milk, which is what I was fair sure it was.

One bloke was squatting low and springing like a cricket, hopping, dodging, dancing about as the others clapped and pointed and guffawed.

I kept to the corner, drinking stiffly priced weak sauce.

The Jaffa slaughter hadn’t been connected to the Komtur Murders. It was just another bit of nasty spread out across the Grey Waste. A dash more of reaver madness, with horror and terror to boot. There was plenty to spare. There always was.

The Teutonic Lords were still clammed up about Ring-Wyrm and whatever she’d spilled. I was fair sure it was mainly blood, but there might’ve been some truth sown in.

Karl sat passed out, snoring lightly, his shaggy head propped up on the table by his wide fist, lulled by the warmth, the booze, the drone of some Teutonic shepherd’s voice as he recounted his doldrums to no one of consequence, which in this case, meant me.

“...and then the poor fucker runs hisself straight into one of them, uh, them rocks what’s propped up all in a circle.” Diener Ellard took a quick pull off his flagon, continuing on without missing a beat. “Snapped a horn off at the skull and sure as shiny shit broke his own neck. Damnest thing I ever seen.”

I nodded along, hypnotized by the drone of his voice. He was the twentieth

diener I’d questioned today. Diener Ellard played shepherd to the few goats and sheep left to the Teutonics. He’d been on guard duty the night of the Coin-Master’s murder. He didn’t seem to have anything useful to offer, but at least he was talking.

“Man o’ man, been losing stock every day since we left Haceldemn.” Diener Ellard slapped the table. The word yokel came to mind. “It’s why the price of meat’s through the beaming roof, it is.

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