Part 16

Dedicated to Y. E. Zhigulsky

1

News

Nikto, Prince Arel, Vitor Kors, Lis, Karina and habir Verniy returned to the Fort from the Limit. They entered the main chamber of the tower, and Tol, who was sitting at the table with Dick Nedwill, jumped up joyfully, knocking over the jug, which, fortunately, was already empty.

“How glad I am to see you!” He shouted. “Finally! I already miss you!”

He ran up to them heavily, raking Lis into an armful:

“Al! Has Nik cured you?”

“Yes,” said Lis somehow not very cheerfully, gently pushing tall and powerful Tol away from him.

“Great!” Tol didn’t catch the tension and joyless mood of his friend, froze for a moment:

“Al, what’s with your head?! What's with your hair?”

“I made it darker,” Nikto answered for Lis, seeing that he was not at all inclined to chat with Tol. Nikto removed the mask to reveal his painted face, and Tol froze, staring at him. Kors saw that at first blatant surprise flashed in Tol’s eyes, but very quickly it was again replaced by joyful delight:

“Nik, bugger me! What the war paint! Ten out of ten! I barely recognized you!”

Nikto laughed, showing black teeth and a shiny ring resting on them.

“Nik! How did you hook the ring to your teeth?!” Tol roared with delight. “I want such one too!”

“I'll show you later, okay? There under the upper lip there is a place where to hook it,” Nikto smiled.

Kors also took off his mask, in the end, he shouldn't have been embarrassed by Tol and his commoner assistant, who had the nickname Coal. Tol immediately glanced at his jewelry and the hook that wrapped around his chin. Kors clearly understood that Tol liked it very much, but he was ashamed to voice it and turn to Kors. He still considered Kors a stranger, not one of them, and was wary of him.

“Let's drink to your return!” Tol began to pour wine into mismatched and not very clean goblets and glasses piled on the table. The first goblet, apparently out of old habit, he handed to Prince Arel, who silently, without changing his haughty expression, took it. Then, according to the rules of etiquette, Tol handed the cup to the lady, Karina.

“You can open your face and have a drink,” Lis told her. Karina has already, in general, learned how to drink and eat, only slightly raising the upper part of the cape and slipping a mug or piece of food under a hard front apron, but if Lis allowed, why bother. She immediately lifted the cloth and took the glass from Tol. Everyone drank, and Lis, lifting the bottom of the mask, too. Having drunk, Tol happily and involuntarily raised his hand to his lips, intending to wipe his mouth with his sleeve, pulling it up a little, but at the last moment something stopped him, he froze, and, lowering his hand, took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips with it. Kors chuckled.

“Al, why don't you take off your mask?” Tol asked, pouring wine over the second round without a pause.

“I can't yet, Nik is still treating me,” said Lis, shaking his head, and turning, looked with his yellow eyes with black edges, glistening in the slits of the mask, at Nikto. He looked, as it seemed to Kors, with some resentment.

“Yeah,” Tol drawled in some confusion, but immediately cheered up, overshadowed by another thought:

“And I have a new tattoo!”

And he began to unbutton his jacket and shirt under it with passion, showing them his next tattoo. On Tol’s chest was now a naked and very curvy woman who was lying on her back with her raised legs wide apart. On top of it, instead of a lover, a large black panther perched on its mouth in a fierce grin.

Seeing the beauty’s breasts, huge and round, like balls, Vitor Kors quickly turned away to cover his mouth with his hand and not laugh out loud. Nikto seemed to have said absolutely sincerely:

“Tol, how cool! Who was inking you? Unclean Shukul?”

“Yes!”

“Very cool! I want such one too!”

“Tol, how many days have passed in the Fort since we left?” Lis interrupted their enthusiasm sharply.

“What day is it?”

“How should I know!” Obvious notes of anger and irritation appeared in Lis’ voice.

Tol looked at him in confusion.

“You have been gone for three days, sir Atley Alis,” Dick Nedwill intervened quickly and defused the situation.

And Lis, turning to Nikto, looked at him SO…

“No need to burn me with a glance,” Nikto immediately reacted. “Desmod and Marbas have not come yet, and without them there is no point to hit the road.”

“When will they come?!”

“Soon! And let the wounded recover, we will have more people.”

“While we wait here for your unclean and heal the wounded, Kudmer will call for help from other cities!”

“And if not? Let's wait for word from Samer from the Marmer squad. He will scout out what is happening in Ore town and its environs.”

“While he scouts, Kudmer will have ten thousand help! Speed and surprise were our trump cards, we had to not let them come to their senses! Now, no. Now everything has gone to shit!”

“Lis, go fuck yourself!”

“Fuck, I do it more often than go out in the fresh air!”

“This… this Kudmer has time to gather anyone, you panic again!”

“No, well, of course, Kudmer is a fat, self-confident fool, but not to such degree!”

“It is an additional concern for him, to wait for you and to feed the foreign army of many thousands. He will only send for help when he sees us!”

“Well, okay, suppose he is confident in the inviolability of his walls, and this is so. We will storm them, and the army that has come to his aid will grab us by the ass!”

“Don't run ahead of the horses, Lis!”

And Nikto, as if looking for support, looked at Kors. He was taken aback, he clearly didn’t expect that Nikto would turn to him for help in a conversation. Because, according to Kors, Nik himself did a good job of “ransoming”, all the more, doing it in the style of those with whom he argued. But it seemed that he wanted some clever arguments in his support. Kors froze, and Lis, as luck would have it, also looked at him:

“Well, speak! Don’t stand in my throat, fall further!”

“Alis, slow and steady wins the race,” Kors hardly uttered, “and haste makes waste.”

Kors was terribly ashamed of what nonsense he had just said. But, having felt the emotions of Nikto, he realized that he was quite pleased with him, and diligently memorized the expressions, while correctly putting them on the shelf to the phrase: “business before pleasure”.

“We will capture this Ore town just like that edge Fort across the river, remember?” Nikto told Lis.

“What?!”

“Only you and I will change places.”

“Are you nuts? We got fucked up in that Fort!”

“Under Ore town all the land is dug for many kilometers. I and my unclean ones will go to their very heart through holes through which no man can crawl. We will take over the city from the inside. And you will be outside!”

Lis fell silent, considering the words of Nikto:

“Nik, this is too risky.”

“When was it different with us?”

Lis, seeming to calm down a little, turned to Tol.

“Well, have you done anything?”

“You bet!” Tol was delighted, seeing that the tension had subsided. “Come on, I'll show you how I put things in order here. You know, Lis, I have an ideal here!”

Lis just shook his head in annoyance.

They went out into the yard. Kors and Nikto put on masks again, and Karina covered her face with a cape.

Kors with disgust, since the mask hid the expression on his face, looked at the naked, torn corpse of Tishka. On the body, the softest and, apparently, the tastiest parts were eaten off by the wolf. The face was eaten, there were no eyes, lips, cheeks. The genitals were eaten away, the soft tissues on the forearms and thighs had bite marks from powerful jaws. The abdomen and chest were opened, but the entrails were not touched, the predator ate only tender liver and the boy’s heart. The mutilated corpse of Tishka, exposed for all to see, looked reproachfully at the living with empty eye sockets. On a board nailed above his head, it was written: “Went AWOL to the lake” and was painted a lake with blue paint and a huge figure of a grinning wolf with black paint. It was drawn very well. It could be said, intelligibly.