Balur did not like to think of what he was doing as lurking exactly. Biding his time perhaps. A tactical pause in activities… maybe. If one was feeling fancy. An opportunity to drink far too much… Well, that went without saying.
Through the window of the tavern, he saw that the sun had dipped down to meet the surface of Athril’s Lake. Murky brown water was transformed to blazing fire.
It was not the only fire alight in Athril that night.
Balur had first ascribed Firkin’s success as an orator to the fact that the citizens of the Village receiving his message had been completely out of their skulls. His subsequent success as a preacher on the road… well, perhaps that was being because of the serious trauma that affected those accompanying them. Witnessing the murder of your lord and master, even an abusive lord and master… That could mess with a man’s head. Balur could be seeing that. And those who chose to flock to Will, and to listen to Firkin… Well, they had clearly been abused by the Dragon Consortium. Balur could see them not being of a mind to listen to reason, and perhaps preferring Firkin’s particular brand of insanity. But Athril was different.
Athril was, for the Kondorra valley, affluent. Athril was bustling. Athril, he thought while knocking back the second half of his pint, had pretty good beer. And unless his mark was very much off its aim, those three women over by the bar making eyes at him represented a well-established red-light district. What in the name of the Hallows the people of Athril had to complain about, he could not see. And yet they flocked to Firkin like flies to shit.
It had started almost as soon as they were through the gate. Firkin had begun to work himself up into a lather. There had been deep breathing, the beating of his pigeon chest.
“Citizens!” Firkin had shrieked. “Countrymen! Fellow oppressed people! I bring you the word of the prophet!”
For their part, the populace of Athril had shown a surprising willingness to listen to this twaddle. They had laid down their daily wares and left the comfort of their homes and shops and come out to listen, muttering in what sounded a lot like assent.
Balur had immediately put some distance between himself and Firkin. Quirk, he had been pleased to see, had stuck close to him.
He was well aware of everything he had said about keeping an eye on Firkin, about the promises he had made assuring Will that things wouldn’t get out of hand. But there was keeping your word, and there was sticking your neck out and asking for a sword to fall upon it.
Balur wanted to get rich, no doubt. He particularly wanted to get rich through minimal effort, and the thieving of gold from Dathrax. However, he did not see that goal as being mutually exclusive with the long-term survival of Firkin and the populace of Athril. If they wanted to get themselves all worked up, and all stabbed by a bunch of guards, well, that was fine with him. In fact, the more of the populace the guards were busy stabbing, the less likely they were to be stabbing him as he broke into their garrison.
That particular chain of events had not, it seemed, percolated into the consciousnesses of Athril’s populace. To be fair, they didn’t know Will and Balur were using them as a distraction to break into the garrison, but they still showed remarkably little concern about abandoning their daily lives and throwing themselves into full-blooded rebellion.
Balur had not been entirely sure what he thought of that. On the one hand, it was good that the plan was proceeding so easily. But what such behavior promised beyond the short term… Balur was not entirely sure about that.
Balur did not like the long term. Thinking about the long term generally seemed to involve not doing what one wanted to do in the short term. Thinking of tomorrow’s hangover took the joy out of tonight’s drinking. Thinking of tomorrow’s itchy red rash took all the fun out of tonight’s whoring.
Balur was a creature of action, and the long term often seemed to demand inaction. Therefore, Balur was of the general opinion that the long term could go fuck itself. But Firkin and Will—and the fervor they both seemed to generate—were forcing him to think about it.
To ease his discomfort, Balur slammed his fist down upon the bar. “Beer!” he bellowed. And then, in case that had been unclear, he added, “Beer!”
“Wouldn’t it be easier,” said Quirk from the seat beside him at the bar, “to go into this clearheaded?”
“Clearheaded?” asked Balur. He looked around the tavern. He cocked his head to one side. He could hear at least four conversations that included the word prophet going on at this moment. “If I was clearheaded, then I would be the only one in this town.”
Quirk graced him with a slight smile. “Yes,” she acknowledged, “but sardonic bravado aside, wouldn’t be it be easier to break into the garrison if you were sober?”
“Sober?” asked Balur. The mental effort of trying to process that caused his face to scrunch up, eyes and nose swarming together. From Quirk’s expression, he guessed she thought he was making light of her. But the idea had genuinely never occurred to him.
Liquid of any sort was precious in the Analesian desert. What liquids were available were rationed out in a manner largely determined by merit. Warriors merited fluid. And most of the fluids that the Analesians possessed were alcoholic.
Now, confronted with this new concept, Balur attempted to match his idea of sobriety to his idea of combat. The results were not appealing.
“No.” He shook his head violently. “No.” He said it again, hopefully this time with the emphasis he felt the words deserved. Just in case, he said it a third time. “No!” He shuddered. “You would do that sort of thing sober?” He looked at Quirk with horror. “You are being barbaric.”
Quirk looked at him quizzically, then shook her head. Balur started to make significant inroads into his next pint. He cast another look to the tavern window. A man was running by. It took Balur a moment to realize that he did not have flaming red hair.
His head was on fire. He was pinwheeling his arms, and screaming as he ran past.
Balur narrowed his eyes. He had not been to Athril before, and the ways of humans were still, even after all this time, somewhat foreign to him. However, in his experience, setting fire to your own head and then shrieking in horror at the experience was not the sort of thing humans tended to do for fun.
The man disappeared out of sight leaving only a trail of dissipating smoke. Still, if Balur cocked his head to one side he could make out distant sounds of shrieking, and of large, important pieces of architecture breaking.
He switched his narrowed gaze to Quirk. “Are you hearing this?”
“I was rather hoping,” said Quirk to the glass of white wine she had been nursing for the past hour, “that I might be imagining it.”
Balur set his many teeth into a savage grimace. There was but one explanation. And when Balur found him he was going to kill him.