The Best of Glen Cook by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Glen Cook
ISBN: 9781949102178
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

III

Lord Hammer stopped.

We had come to a forest. Scattered, ice-rimed trees stood across our path. They were gnarled, stunted things that looked like old apple trees.

Fetch came down the line, speaking to each little band in its own language. She told us Kaveliners, “Don’t ever leave the trail once we pass the first tree. It could be worth your life. This is a fey, fell land.” Her dusky little face was as somber as ever I had seen it.

“Why? Where are we? What’s happening?” Chenyth asked.

She frowned. Then a smile broke through. “Don’t you ever stop asking?” She was almost pretty when she smiled.

“Give him a break,” I said. “He’s a kid.”

She smiled a little at me, then, before turning back to Chenyth. I think she liked the kid. Everybody did. Even the Harish tolerated him. They hardly acknowledged the existence of anyone else but Fetch, and she only as the mouth of the man who paid them.

Fetch was a sorceress in her own right. She knew how to use the magic of her smiles. The genuine article just sort of melted you inside.

“The forest isn’t what it seems,” she explained. “Those trees haven’t died for the winter. They’re alive, Chenyth. They’re wicked, and they’re waiting for you to make a mistake. All you have to do is wander past one and you’ll be lost. Unless Lord Hammer can save you. He might let you go. As an object lesson.”

“Come on, Fetch. How’d you get that name, anyway? That’s not a real name. Look. The trees are fifty feet apart. . . .”

“Chenyth.” I tapped his shoulder. He subsided. Lord Hammer was always right. When Fetch gave us a glimmer of fact, we listened.

“Bellweather named me Fetch. Because I run for Lord Hammer. And maybe because he thinks I’m a little spooky. He’s clever that way. You couldn’t pronounce my real name, anyway.”

“Which you’d never reveal,” I remarked.

She smiled. “That’s right. One man with a hold on me is enough.”

“What about Lord Hammer?” Chenyth demanded. When one of his questions was answered, he always found another.

“Oh, he chose his own name. It’s a joke. But you’ll never understand it. You’re too young.” She moved on down the line.

Chenyth smiled to herself. He had won a little more.

His value to us all was his ability to charm Fetch into revealing just a little more than she had been instructed. Maybe Chenyth could have gotten into her.

His charm came of youth and innocence. He was fourteen years younger than Jamal, child of the Harish and youngest veteran. We were all into our thirties and forties. Soldiering had been our way of life for so long we had forgotten there were others. Some of us had been enemies back when. The Harish bore their defeat like the banner of a holy martyr. . . .

Chenyth had come after the wars. Chenyth was a baby. He had no hatreds, no prejudices. He retained that bubbling, youthful optimism that had been burned from the rest of us in the crucible of war.

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