Page 23 of Fortune's Blade

The father looked like he agreed, but then he looked down. And saw the sadness on his daughter’s face. I did not try to read her thoughts, but they came anyway: she had been there when the creature was born, the first birth she had assisted with; she had helped to pull the little creature from its mother, for it was weak and could not assist in the birthing process as its siblings had done; and she had tenderly nursed it for days afterward after the mother rejected it, and now it was her pet.

I didn’t ask anything else. I fixed its condition with the application of a small amount of power, coaxing the little hole to close, and she happily carried it away. And I finally managed to taste what I had been smelling in gusts all morning.

But someone else was hungry, too, and the ogre’s small eyes had fixed onto my newest bribe with obvious intent. He said something to Ray, who sighed. “Hand it over,” he told me.

“Hand what over?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant, and took another bite.

The ogre growled louder, and raised his spear again, but I was not intimidated. At least not enough to give up my prize. Not all of it.

“Tell him I will share,” I offered generously—and futilely, because the ogre was shaking his head even before Ray translated.

I didn’t know if he had picked up some English somewhere, or had simply guessed, but as Ray confirmed: he wanted it all.

He could not have it all. My stomach grumbled, the food I had eaten being barely enough to replace the power I had been expending all morning. Healing was tiring, and I was hungry. And I did not think that he would shock me.

Not over a sandwich, at least. Not when it might put me out of business for the rest of the day, fey weapons being what they were. And what kind of money would his master make then?

Of course, I could be wrong, I thought, as he suddenly lunged, spear outstretched ahead of him, and faster than his squat strength would indicate.

“What are you—give him the bloody hot dog!” Ray said, grabbing for it. Or maybe he was trying to pull me away from the spear, which the ogre was using more like a fighting staff that for its intended function, possibly not wanting me to drop his dinner.

Not going to drop it, I thought, ducking and dodging and stuffing it in my face as fast I could, which was pretty darned fast. I had learned a long time ago to eat on the run or in a fight, and this was old hat to me. But not, it seemed, to the ogre, who was getting progressively more upset as his dinner vanished in front of his eyes.

“Give it up!” Ray yelled, as the ogre got tired of the game and fired a blast at me, which missed when I dove for the ground and hit the side of the tent instead.

If it had been leather, it might have simply been scorched, but it was not. And the cheap fabric designed to keep the sun off our heads was no match for a lightning bolt. It went up in flames, and not just the side of the tent, but the top as well when Ray punched the ogre and the latest silver blast went scraggling upward.

Fire rained, people screamed, and Ray grabbed the spear. I don’t think he’d planned on that—he looked pretty surprised to find it in his hand—but rather it had been a reflex to stop the flood of lightning. Which it did.

It also left him the target of both ogres’ ire.

And one of them had another spear.

But Ray was nothing if not resourceful, and he had no intention of fighting creatures three times as big and far more savage than he was. Instead, he turned the spear’s lighting on the tent’s central pole, which exploded in a hail of wooden pieces, freaking out his vampire nature. Or perhaps that was the bellow of the older troll, who grabbed for him and succeeded in getting his spear back, but lost us in a sudden stampede of people and animals.

The crowd that had formed the line broke in a tangle of running, panicked bodies, part of which trampled the ogres and headed toward us, only we were no longer there. I realized that Ray had grabbed me only when he sat me down outside one of the nearest tents, which I guessed had been caught in that initial blast as well, as it was burning, too. The crowd caught up a second later, and we took off along with them, running at a breakneck pace while I stared back at our former captors.

They were looking around in frustration and bellowing at the sky, while the tent burned merrily behind them.

“We owe a great deal more money now,” I observed.

“Yeah, only they gotta find us first.”

Ray grabbed a hat off a nearby stall, whose proprietor was distracted by the chaos, plopped it onto my head and towed me into the thick of the faire.

Chapter Eight

The faire was even more extensive than I had thought, when only seeing part of it from the trail. It was so big, in fact, that the burning cluster of tents behind us soon faded from sight, leaving us in the midst of chaos, but a very pleasant chaos. And one full of food!

The vendors’ stalls, drinking tents and entertainment venues were closely packed, with no apparent rhyme nor reason for how they had been laid out. It looked like everyone just set up wherever they liked upon arrival, and latecomers had to squeeze in as best they could. The result was a higgledy-piggledy mess of pens of bleating animals; stalls of vendors selling jewelry, fabric, clothes, furs, spices and dyes; blacksmiths doing repairs on old weapons and hawking new ones; buskers singing, dancing, juggling or telling tall tales; and food and drink purveyors of all types.

I abruptly stopped in front of one of the latter, gaping at the massive amount of meat grilling on an enormous rack over a crackling fire. I could only see the wares intermittently, as billowing clouds of smoke were obscuring the entire booth half of the time and explained why there had been no general uproar at our escape. People probably thought that someone was merely having a bar-b-que.

And someone was, I thought in awe, licking my lips and moving closer to the mesmerizing sight. There were ribs, but not of pork. They were in huge slabs, as if they came from a beast far larger than any pig. Or cow, for that matter, although they looked more like beef ribs, being almost unbelievably meaty and dripping with fat.

They smelled spicy, as if some tantalizing sauce had been spread on them, or maybe a rub. Because they weren’t finished yet, although a pile of cooked ones towered nearby, being chopped up by another ogre, although this one was far smaller and more friendly looking than our guards had been. His bald head was covered in sweat, he had a greasy leather apron covering his clothes, and a bright gold earring in one floppy pointed ear. And he was wielding a cleaver no less capably than any trained warrior, slicing through the meat and divvying it up in hearty chunks for hungry faire goers.

But that wasn’t all that was on offer. Because the little booth also had coil upon fat, meaty coil of sausages, some bright red with flecks of white, some brown and fragrant with spices, some ghostly pale and filled almost to bursting with what was probably fowl. Like the goose-like creatures on hooks in the back of the tent, many still in their feathers, where a harried looking ogre woman was scalding and plucking them as fast as she could. Others, already denuded, were strung on spits over yet another fire for those who liked their lunch whole.

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