“Who’ll draw first blood this time around?” Ooskar yelled.

  “Sure money’s on Zu,” Fara shouted to an invisible crowd. “Ulula and Ziggend are in at four bends.”

  “I’m putting six on Sinza,” Hordran said.

  “You always bet on the underdog,” Fara scolded. “It rarely works out.”

  “But when it does, it sweetens the victory, lass.”

  Ooskar reached out as if collecting bets from the beyond, his hands disappearing only to reappear filled with bones and chunks of metal. He handed them off to Fara, who handed them to Hordran.

  “And what am I to do with these bends?” the sly codger asked, slipping them into one of his innumerable pockets.

  Fara was furiously scribbling names and wagers. “Last call!” she cried.

  Bringing in the latest haul, Ooskar counted down on his fingers. “Right, how long before the conflict? Care to give some insight, Yog?” Ooskar turned his burned face to Yechvan, seared-out eye sockets staring in his direction.

  Yechvan glanced around the tent to catch sight of Ooskar’s otherworldly bettors. “You all are still at it, even in death?” He caught neither whisper nor wind of any other spirits. Zu, Ulula and Grask remained sound asleep.

  “Of course, boy. How else would we while away our time in the bleak of Trilan’s Realm?” Hordran winked.

  “On the western flank, we used to joke that you were even taking bets on which of the three of you would die first.”

  “Good money was on Fara.” Ooskar jabbed a thumb at her.

  “Hey,” she complained.

  “Alright, send these wolves away. We can pick up with the next round of bets later,” Hordran said.

  Ooskar turned back toward the edge of the tent and made shooing motions.

  “Maybe we’ll catch a tip or two.” Fara nudged Yechvan with her elbow. Rather than bumping flesh and bone, her arm passed through his, sending a thready chill along his skin and jolting his heart. He recoiled, wiping at the uncomfortable brush, which clung to his arm like a giant spider’s web. A disturbing reminder to keep his distance from the phantom visitors.

  Oblivious to Yechvan’s discomfort, Fara sat on the stump beside him, her throat smeared with bubbling blood. She had been strong and virile in life, much like Ulula, but she’d had eyes only for Ooskar and Hordran. The three blooded companions were rarely apart, much like their orc mothers and human fathers, who had been known as the six-headed hydra. Their four living parents still resided in the northeastern reaches of Banx, spreading the gospel of Rodes with their remaining children. They had built a temple to the goddess of lust on the banks of the River Kyl, where people from across the region came to pay homage and partake in the revelry. Rodes encouraged all manner of vices: drinking, gambling, drug-induced hallucinations, to name a few.

  Their three firstborn children, Ooskar, Fara, and Hordran, had joined the fight against the Five Nations—against the wishes of their parents, who were pacifists. The trio had been twenty years Yechvan’s senior. For most of the war, they had bolstered morale, sharing jokes and passing out mead and pipes and telling raunchy stories about their unconventional upbringing. When Ooskar’s face had been burned in the battle of Shuju Pass, Fara and Hordran had fought on, and bravely, but the life had been taken out of them. All three perished that awful night.

  “Boy, are you listening? Of course not.” Hordran’s heart pumped in his open chest cavity, spectral blood spurting between broken ribs with every beat only to sizzle and vanish when it splashed onto the dirt. “No one ever listens to me.”

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  “Whinge more, would you?” Fara scolded. “He’s probably just worrying over his maps.”

  “Working to ensure the fewest number of souls join the ranks of his guilty conscience, no doubt,” Ooskar added.

  “You tell everyone you hate war, but we know the truth. War is what made you, boy,” Fara said, a term of both endearment and derision they had often used with Yechvan. “You were forged in the heat of Algernica’s breast, a hardened warrior by the age of ten. Since coming to Trilan’s Realm, we’ve heard the stories of your accomplishments. Hard as Zu, they say. So why do you pretend elsewise?”

  “I am no pretender,” Yechvan shot back. “It’s true, I was crafted to be a killer, trained from the moment I arrived at the capital. We all were, all the qish’s wards.”

  “That’s why we liked you from the beginning,” Ooskar said. “We believed you and Zu would lead us to victory, before ever you took command.”

  “I think we were hoping to make it out alive, though,” Hordran said.

  “Of course, you dolt.” Fara slapped him on the arm. “No one wants to die in battle.”

  “What about Algernica’s followers—”

  “You know what I mean!” Fara slung a handful of bends at Hordran. They scattered to the heavens and out of sight, but he crawled through the dirt searching for the spilled money.

  Ooskar scratched his chin between his forefinger and thumb while shuffling bones on the table. “How do you reconcile yourself with yourself?”

  “I—” Yechvan began, but he forced the harsh retort back down his throat. “It is one thing to feel the warm, sticky blood of my enemy washing over my own hands in a fight for survival. That is a risk I chose for myself. It is another entirely to make life or death decisions for others. As much as taking a life on the battlefield changed me, I was woefully unprepared for what it meant to send men and women under my command—men and women I loved—to their death. To your death.”

  “Zu wasn’t prepared neither. But he isn’t so tormented,” Fara argued. “How do you explain that?”

  “I can’t. Nor do I care to,” Yechvan replied. “I can say only that the war changed me. Irrevocably.”

  Hordran said, “What is it about killing a man—”

  “Or a woman,” Fara interrupted.

  “I was getting there.” He glowered at her. “So, what is it that changed you, as you said, irrevocably?”

  Yechvan shrugged, smiled a sad, crooked smile. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be speaking with you at this very moment.”

  “Or…perhaps we visit you because you have been chosen,” Fara said cryptically.

  “Had I been chosen, Yun wouldn’t have been able to read my stars.”

  She shook her head. “Not if you were chosen by a lesser god or a demigod or a godling.”

  “Stop tugging him along.” Hordran collected the last of the ethereal bends and stood, brushing his knees. “You know he wasn’t chosen. At least not in the way you mean.”

  “What are you talking about?” Yechvan asked.

  Ooskar leaned in. “You see, there’s chosen and then there’s chosen.”

  “Well,” Yechvan scoffed, “that clears things up.”

  “Oh, shut up, you dolt.” Fara smacked Ooskar on the back of the head. “Always trying to be fancy.”

  “And never succeeding,” Hordran cackled.

  She continued, “What he is trying to say, in his bumbling way, is that there’s chosen from birth, like Zu, and then there’s those who garner the attention of the lesser gods—”

  “And demigods and godlings,” Hordran cut in.

  “I was getting there,” Fara bit back.

  “Most like, you’ve drawn their attention by your proximity to Zu.” Ooskar’s eyeless stare fixed on Yechvan once more. Unsettling.

  “But I’ve seen the spirits since I was young,” Yechvan said.

  Fara explained, “Could be that they noticed you even then. Perhaps one of them had insight into what you would become. Or perhaps Hondau—”

  “Tch!” Hordran interrupted. “Don’t accuse the gods by name. It’s bad luck.”

  “We’re already dead,” Fara said. “How much worse could it get?”

  “It can always get worse,” Ooskar mused. “Always.”

  “Fine. Could be the god of the humans didn’t care for what the orcs were doing to his people: killing, subjugating, breeding with them. Could be he or one of his lackeys wasn’t happy with your good fortune, granted at Eroa’s behest. Could be he got jealous and wanted to manipulate the future, so far as he was able.”

  “But if he was already manipulating my future, why was Yun able to read my stars?” Yechvan wondered.

  “Who knows?” Hordran shrugged, juggling four bends.

  “We certainly don’t know the particulars,” Ooskar said. “Only that these things are possible.”

  “We don’t even know that for sure,” Fara countered. “We just know what we’ve learned since dying. They call us cublings because we’ve only been dead a few years. Some of the spirits we’ve met along the way lived during the First Age.”

  “I guess once you’re dead, you’re dead,” Ooskar said.

  “Oh, enough of your idiocy!” This time, Fara drew a concealed knife from her boot and flung it at Ooskar.

  So it went for the better part of the night, with laughter and arguments and merriment and more arguments—but not a wink of sleep for Yechvan.

  The mysterious conversation left him with more questions, questions with ominous undertones. Surely Yun was more knowledgeable than the ghosts of three dead soldiers who might be little more than figments of his imagination.

  At least, Yechvan thought grimly, they weren’t lamenting losing their lives or blaming him for the role he’d played in it.