Free Perilous Seas by Dave Duncan Page B

were the most intensely blue eyes Rap had ever met. They burned like
fragments of sky, full of cold and deadly fire. They smiled with the joy of
madness. Lesser jotnar, like Gathmor, might rouse themselves to killer frenzy.
Kalkor would never lose it.
    And
this notorious killer Kalkor, Thane of Gark, was a distant relative of Queen
Inosolan and supposedly holder of a word of power handed down from their remote
common ancestor, the sorcerer Inisso.
    “You
are Rap.”
    “Aye,
sir.” It hurt to speak. It might hurt much more not to. “I have
some questions,” Kalkor said. He was shouting, as Blood Wave balanced
momentarily on a high green crest, and the wind shrieked in the rigging,
hurling a stinging salt spray with the rain. Even his covered nook did not keep
him dry. “You will answer them truthfully. “ Blood Wave pitched her
bow down and began the long slide into the next valley.
    Rap
nodded and almost fell over backward. He managed another “Aye, sir.”
It was quieter in the troughs, so he needn’t shout.
    Then
a sudden shadow, and he looked up with farsight. The troll-like Darad loomed
over him, scowling monstrously. He was stooping to see in under the helmsman’s
deck, steadying himself against the edge with one giant furry paw. The hair on
his shoulders stirred in the wind like ripe barley.
    Kalkor’s
attention left Rap and fixed itself on the newcomer with no change in its
disdain.
    “You
promised he would be mine!” Darad bellowed.
    “Did
I?” Kalkor waited for a moment, and then repeated, “Did I?”
in a slightly more pointed tone.
    “Yes!
You said he would be mine. You gave him to me! A gift to me! “
    “I
don’t remember. Are you sure?”
    Kalkor
had not raised his voice any more than necessary to let it be heard over the
wind, and his calm, steady smile did not vary by a twinkle, except when rain or
spray blew in his face. Darad likely had little more intelligence than a
starving dog and no compunctions at all about anyone else’s life or
death. Yet apparently his own fate still mattered to him, for he flinched
before Kalkor’s unspoken threat.
    “Well
... I thought so, sir. Must’ve misunderstood you.”
    “You
do that quite often, Wolf. Don’t you?”
    Incredibly,
the ogre cringed even further. “No, sir I mean, aye, sir ... I mean I’ll
not do it anymore, sir.”
    “I
certainly wouldn’t advise it.”
    Darad
hesitated, lips moving, and then growled, “But you remember this, Thane:
He’s a liar! He’ll lie to you.”
    “I
don’t think so.”
    The
giant hesitated, puzzled, knowing he had been dismissed and yet unwilling to go
away and leave Rap babbling of sorcerers and Sagorn and Thinal and Andor and
Jalon. Had he really expected Kalkor to kidnap Rap for him from a jotunn
settlement, and then never want to know why?
    “He’s
mad, too. Imagines things.”
    “Darad,”
Kalkor said in the same conversational tone as before, “it is my custom
to present gifts to my guests when they depart. Would you care to choose
something now? Something heavy?”
    The
monster took a moment to work that out, and then his eyes turned toward the
ranks of green hills marching at the ship. “North for Pandemia,”
Kalkor said, “but I can’t give you any clearer directions, because
I don’t know.”
    Darad
turned and rushed off downhill, along the gangway. The blue fires came back to
look at Rap. The quiet smile almost seemed to want to share amusement; but that
would be a dangerous assumption to make.
    “I
see I have more questions to ask than I thought I had. His stupidity is
disgusting. Now ... Have you ever seen one of these?”
    The
thane reached behind him and produced a gruesome artifact that Rap had not
noticed tucked in there. The handle was a wooden cylinder, short and polished,
possibly even smoothed by long use. Attached to one end were many fine chains,
each about as long as a man’s arm. They looked as if they might have been
dipped in black mud, and dark pellets still clung