Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)

by Nicholas Eames

these mercs aren’t even in real bands! They just hire a bunch of nameless goons to do their fighting while they paint their faces and parade around with shiny swords and fancy armour. There’s even one guy—I shit you not—who rides a manticore into battle!” “A manticore?” asked Clay, incredulous. Gabe laughed bitterly. “I know, right? Who the fuck rides a manticore? Those things are dangerous! Well, I don’t need to tell you.” He didn’t, of course. Clay had a nasty-looking puncture scar on his right thigh, testament to the hazards of tangling with such monsters. A manticore was nobody’s pet, and it certainly wasn’t fit to ride. As if slapping wings and a poison-barbed tail on a lion made it somehow a fine idea to climb on its back! “They worshipped us, too,” Clay pointed

In stories there were marches without weeping foot sores, swordfights without septic wounds that killed heroes in their sleep. In stories, when a giant was slain, it toppled thunderously to the ground. In reality, a giant died much the same way anything else did: screaming and shitting itself.

so I assign an agent to each band. They book the smaller gigs—goblins and whatnot—while I give the big contracts to those I think can handle it. My cut is half, the agent takes ten, and the band splits whatever’s left over.”

Back then, Kallorek had split a 15-percent share with Saga’s five other members. The remaining ten was supposed to have belonged to their bard, but since none of Saga’s bards lived long enough to collect their share, it was chiefly used for what Gabe had called “adventuring essentials”—which was to say booze, tobacco, and the company of indiscriminate women.

“Vanguard’s still touring?” Clay asked.

He looked tired, but Clay supposed that might have been due to the fact that he’d been fast asleep when four men had burst into his room through a magic mirror and started swinging at one another with shields and hammers and absurdly incongruous erections.

You face their army on the field of battle and vanquish them.” “Who says vanquish anymore?” Moog breathed. People who vanquished things, Clay supposed.

“Lucky,” said Gabriel. Clay glanced at him sidelong. “I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.”

“Judge them for what they wished to be,” he begged the Father of Gods, “not what the world made of them.”

Here were the gambling holes, the scratch dens, the smokehouses; here the seedy taverns, the wild brothels, the raucous inns. Here were the pawnshops and fence stalls, the moneylenders and the rowdy, run-down theatres where the actors were twice as drunk as the standing crowd and half as entertaining.

The place was a hovel, but not the cozy hovel of the sort inhabited by poets and scribes, crammed with bookshelves, candles, and antique curios. Nor was it the sparse kind of hovel, occupied by little more than a ragged blanket and a straw-stuffed mattress: It was a kobold’s hovel, and that meant shithole.

so Clay found himself counting before

Barret whistled. “Good on ya, lad. Good fucking on ya. Worth settling down for, tits like those …” He fell silent, gazing out at the red-gold sky as if he’d said something profound and needed time to contemplate the wisdom in his words.

“Give up the sword,” said Shadow, “or I will take it, and do Lastleaf the favour of killing you besides. It may be that his vision exceeds our own. The Dominion had its time, and now the Courts. Perhaps the age of fey and fell things is at hand.” “Here we go,” said Matrick, groaning as he got to his feet. Moog was already rifling through his pack. “Friggin rabbits,” he muttered. “So friggin dramatic all the time …”

But what does a mirror know? What can it show us of ourselves? Oh, it might reveal a few scars, and perhaps a glimpse—there, in the eyes—of our true nature. The spirit beneath the skin. Yet the deepest scars are often hidden, and though a mirror might reveal our weakness, it reflects only a fraction of our strength.

Gabe snapped out of his stupor. “Rose, I—” “Dad, go home.”

Kit nodded. “It was—until a plague tore through the village and killed every man, woman, and child in the tribe. I was left alone to do whatever gods do once all who believe in them are dust.” “Such as?” Moog prompted. “I did a lot of hiking, actually. And swimming. And I whittled things out of wood, though I never really got good at it.”