The Werewolf and the Wormlord Read Online Free Page B

horses were shuttled across the Riga Rimur.
    As Alfric and his orks were waiting for the last of the horses to arrive, a zana came dancing toward them across the waters.
    ‘Look!’ said Cod. ‘What is it?’
    ‘A zana,’ said Alfric. ‘One of the wild rainbows of Wen Endex. Have you never seen one before?’
    ‘No,’ said Cod, watching the zana come nimbling up the riverbank.
    The ork’s unfamiliarity with this phenomenon is not surprising, for the zana are rare once one moves any distance from Galsh Ebrek. Zana are not really rainbows, for the colours displayed by the splay of a zana are red, gold, green, blue and pink. Furthermore, unlike rainbows they can be touched, though it is unwise to do so because they sting.
    ‘Yow!’ cried Cod, having just been so wounded.
    ‘Did you touch it?’ said Alfric.
    ‘Yes,’ said Cod. ‘And it bit me!’
    Morgenstem picked up a handful of mud and hurled it after the retreating zana. Hit by the mud, it hummed, shattered into spectral splinters, then reformed and slid onwards.
    ‘Are you hurt?’ said Alfric.
    ‘Yes,’ said Cod, who was not disposed to be brave.
    So Alfric was forced to sympathize, and gentle the ork’s hand to soothe the pain.
    Meanwhile, he noticed they were drawing a lot of odd glances from the passing foot traffic. In theory, while She was on the loose, night was far more dangerous than day. In practice, since the Yudonic Knights were constrained by custom to walk the night until She had ceased her depredations, the nights were actually safer. With so many knights out hunting Her, bandits and such preferred to strike by the winterlight sun. Thus those who travelled favoured the dark.
    Among those who went past were old men and older woman stooped beneath huge burdens of firewood. Others laboured past carrying buckets of water balanced on shoulder-poles, buckets filled from the river just upstream from the dungdump. Some muttered to themselves, but none insulted the orks to their faces. Still, Alfric was glad when the last of the horses came ashore and he was ready to proceed.
    ‘What’s in the barrels, master?’ said the ferryman.
    ‘A ransom of jade from the Qinjoks,’ said Alfric. ‘The annual tribute from King Dimple-Dumpling.’
    ‘Wealth of the orgre king, eh?’ said the ferryman.
    ‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘You should have taken your chance. You could have been rich for life.’
    Then both laughed, and Alfric led horses and orks towards the city gates.
    As has been said, Galsh Ebrek lay on (and, when the rain had been exceptionally heavy, at least partially in) the Riga Rimur River. Once it had been a walled city, but the swampy ground and the periodic delinquencies of the Riga Rimur had conspired to defeat the stonemason’s art; with the result that nothing remained of the masonry of lore and yore but for the massive bastions of the Stanch Gates. In place of stonework battlements, a rickety pale enclosed the city, this enclosure being largely notional due to the extent to which the fence had been vandalized by lawless wreckers in search of firewood.
    While the city proper was very much a lowland affair, it was backed by a huge upthrust of rock. Mobius Kolb was the name of this mountainous granitic crescendo, and its bare and barren slopes were notable for the majestic monuments to power which they supported.
    Atop the lowest shoulder of Mobius Kolb there stood the monstrous battlements of Saxo Pall. There dwelt the Wormlord, Tromso Stavenger by name, lord of Galsh Ebrek, king of Wen Endex, emperor of the Qinjoks and ruler of the Winter Sea. Old the Wormlord was, so old that many thought him close to death; though others disputed this, saying the king was known to have purchased the secret of immortality in his youth.
    Higher yet, on a ridge of rock exposed to the full force of the gaunt winds of the Winter Sea and the haggling rains of all seasons, stood the expansive outworks of the Flesh Traders’ Financial Association of Galsh