Blood of the Fold

They all wanted to look their best when they killed Jagang.

The block stone walls of the room were bare of everything but two hissing torches in brackets. As they waited, Ulicia could feel the anger of each of the others rising, along with hers and, too, their collective apprehension.

When the sailors, surrounded by soldiers, came through the portcullis, one of the two guards in the stone room opened the inner door into the fortress and with a rude tilt of his head ordered the Sisters through. The corridors were as austere as the entry room had been; this was an armed fortress, not a palace, after all, and it made no pretension of comfort. As they followed their guards, Ulicia saw no more than crude wooden benches and torches set in rusty iron brackets. Doors were rough planks with iron strap hinges, and there was not so much a single oil lamp to be seen as they worked their way into the heart of the stronghold. It appeared little more than barracks for troops.

The guards came to a large double door and turned their backs to the stone at each side after opening the doors. One of them pompously lifted a thumb, ordering them into the greatroom beyond. Ulicia vowed to her Sisters that she would remember his face, and he would pay the price for his arrogance. Ulicia led the other five women in as the sailors came up the hall behind, accompanied by the echo of boots on stone and the clatter of the weapons of the men guarding them.

The room was huge. Windows without glass high up on the walls revealed the lightning outside, and let the rain run down the dark stone in glistening rivulets. A pit to each side of the floor held roaring fires. Their sparks and churning smoke ascended to billow out the open windows, but still left a reeking haze to hang in the air. In a ring of rusted brackets around the room, torches spit and hissed, adding the smell of pitch to the stink of sweat. Everything in the dim room flickered in the firelight.

Between the twin crackling fires they could see, in the gloom beyond, a massive plank table set with a wealth of food. Only one man sat at the table, on the opposite side, casually watching them as he sawed off a chunk of roasted suckling pig.

In the murky, flickering light, it was hard to be sure. They had to be sure.

Behind the table, against the wall, stood a row of people who were obviously not soldiers. The men wore white trousers and nothing else. The women wore baggy-legged garments running from ankle to neck to wrist and cinched at the waist with a white cord. Except for the cord, the outfits were so sheer that the barefoot women might as well have been naked.

The man raised his hand and waggled his first two fingers, ordering them forward The six women advanced across the cavernous room, that because of its dark stone that swallowed the firelight, seemed to close in about them. On an enormous bearskin before the table sat two more of the absurdly clad slaves. The women behind the table, against the wall, stood hands at their sides, bodies stiff and unmoving. Eaci. of the young women had a gold ring pierced through the center of her lower lip.

The fires behind them popped and snapped as the six Sisters advanced into the gloom. One of the men in white trousers poured wine into a mug for the man when he held it out to his side. None of the slaves looked at the six women. Their attentiot; was on the man sitting alone at the table.

Ulicia and her Sisters all recognized him, now.

Jagang.

He was of average height, but stout, with massive arms and chest. His bare shoulders bulged from a fur vest opened in the middle, displaying a few dozen gold and jeweled chains lying against the hair in the deep cleft between his prodigious chest muscles. The chains and jewels looked to have once belonged to kings and queens. Silver bands encircled his arms above bulky biceps. Each of his thick fingers bore a gold or silver ring.

Each of the Sisters knew well the pain those powerful fingers could inflict.

His shaved head gleamed in the fluttering firelight. It matched his brawn. Ulici couldn't imagine him with hair atop his head; it could only diminish his menace. His neck looked like it belonged to a bull. A gold ring in the flare of his left nostril held a thin gold chain running to another ring at midheight in his left ear. He was clean-shaven except for a two-inch braid of mustache growing only above the corners of his smirk, and another braid in the center under his lower lip.

His eyes, though, were what riveted anyone upon whom they settled. There were no whites to them at all. They were a murky gray, clouded over with sullen, dusk> shapes that shifted in a field of inky obscurity, yet the there was no doubt whatsoever as to when he was looking at you.

They were twin windows into nightmare.