by Russ Primo
Divine Debtor
Book 1
Russ Primo
Copyright © 2021 by Russ Primo
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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Chapter One
The bartender, Wex, leaned his huge body over the counter and gestured towards my bag, lying next to my drink on the inn's bar.
"You ready to settle up then, Pryvet?" he asked, not unkindly.
Although I'd been drinking at Wex's tavern nearly every afternoon for the past month, I knew that he wasn't talking about settling up my bar tab.
I sighed, looking at my bag, and at the stub of a tree-branch that struck out the edge of it.
“Looks like it, Wex,” I smiled.
"You're a man tomorrow, right?" Wex continued, rubbing down a wooden ale-mug with a coarse cloth that looked impossibly small, in his great meaty palm. "It's an important time in a Free Man's life! Even though you may be a foreigner, of course.
“Tell me, though, how far along are you on your Debt? I see the end of your Tally Stick in your bag there… Being a traveller and all, I expect you've bedded a few lasses already? The Free Women must be throwing themselves at you, what with you being all exotic and all."
I raised my eyes from the puddle of warm red wine in my goblet to look at the barkeep.
Not as yet, dear Wex. With a Debt as big as the one I’ve got, you’ve got to plan ahead.
Can’t be sleeping with women this far in advance, and getting them to distrust you, after all.
“Hell,” Wex continued, setting the mug down and hefting another with bits of old ale foam clinging to the rim. “Your accent is so strange, I sometimes think I can’t understand you!”
Even standing behind the bar, where the floor was dug out a further two feet from the tavern stones, Wex's head sailed high above my own. His shoulders, likewise, were about as wide as the four hundred year-old oak under which the town women gathered to talk about which man owed what Debt to The Mother, and which of them would let him bed her, to repay it.
Wex's hands? I've head dinner-plates used to describe large hands, and found it a usually useful metaphor.
But, not for Wex.
I knew that Wex was a human, and not a giant like he appeared.
I knew this mostly because I'd already heard tales of his Debt from four young men in town.
It's common knowledge, in the Free Isles, that only human men have to settle Debts with The Mother. Everyone else gets off Scott Free.
Whoever Scott is.
As it happens to the Free Islers, on the day that a man comes of age, he finds a branch just for him waiting outside his door.
This branch will have either one or more broken ends on it, and for each crack in the wood, he must lay with a woman until she is pregnant.
The rub is that he can barter with The Mother (their goddess) for a reward, in exchange for his satisfying this Debt. Mostly, men bartered for some magic specialty.
If I hadn't heard a million times how Wex had bedded the two most gorgeous women one the whole island before his Debt came due, I would certainly have pegged him as being on the Giant spectrum.
It certainly helped that the specific magic he bartered for, in exchange, was brewery magic.
Which makes him damn near the best bartender I’ve ever met.
Wex's hands were half the size of the adventurer's tables in the inn, which could seat twelve stout men, or eight and their women, if each man only had one.
In the Free Isles, especially with men who had incurred large Debts, the number was usually more like two or three.
Any more than three women, and a man was likely to run into problems.
My Debt was much more than three.
"Please, Wex," I groaned, rubbing my eyes to squeeze a little more liquid courage into my brain, "Just pour me another cup. My mind's a bit too clear, now, and I need to think up a way to handle this."
Wex smiled consolingly, his massive lips opening like an eight hundred pound dam gate, and laid his hand on my shoulder.
For his huge size, Wex was really a softie.
Or, at least he'd taken a liking to me, for some reason, during the six weeks that I'd been in Clanesse.
His enormous mitt on my shoulder was as light as a songbird's, before he ducked down to fiddle with something at his feet, saying, "You're a man now, Pryvet! You’ve found your Debt, and I won't have you drinking warm wine anymore today. It's the good stuff for you! Just watch you don't have too much!"
With a single, smooth motion, he swung up the cellar door, raising all sorts of soot and dirt that went flying around his face.
It mattered little to Wex that I wasn't from the Free Isles, nor that foreigners were not supposed to incur such Debts, on reaching their majority. Secretly, I was thankful that he didn’t see too much in my having come to the Isles over my birthday, the most dangerous time for a foreigner to visit, lest The Mother lay a Debt upon him.
But, fortune favors the bold, and if you incur a Debt with The Mother, you also incur a possibility to barter for her Gift, and I had things that I wanted.
I wanted magic.
I wanted power.
I wanted a way to find the wizard who’d set my home to the torch, killed my parents, mutilated my friends, and banished me to the wilderness.
And now, with my Debt as large as it was, I found myself in a good position to engage in barter with the goddess of the Free Isles.
The Mother would have to hear me out.
"Remember," Wex whispered to me, leaning in close and gesturing down the bar with his eyes, "A little drink is good, and a little more can be better.
“But, more than that, and you're more likely to go limp than to rise up! And then your Debt becomes more difficult. If, of course, you catch my drift."
So saying, he chuckled to himself and disappeared down into the cellar.
I sipped the last of my wine, not needing to ponder at all his words, nor his less-than-secretive gesture.
Of course he was gesturing at Kacie Gladwyn, who sat at a table with some other women on the other side of the stone inn's main room.
Kacie Gladwyn… Now there's a girl someone like me could sink into.
The inn's window's were high and small, so the light that made it down to us lowly patrons was thin and feeble.
And yet, in spite of the thin light, Kacie's hair shone as bright as a wheat-field on an Autumn day.
Her bright blue eyes, likewise, looked like the pristine sky that shone down upon that wheat.
And, her breasts, well…
The white cotton blouse that she wore was loose and flowing, but even that couldn't hide her gorgeous bosom from my eye.
Her breasts were high and pert, and I wagered that if I were closer, I could see her nipples poking through the fabric, like little pebbles in a fresh snowfall.
She must have seen me appreciating her, for she glanced my way and blushed,
tucking her hair out of her eyes and back around her ear before returning to the women at her table.
Behind the bar, down whatever trap-door Wex had disappeared, came the low, aquatic sound of a cork being popped off a nearly-full bottle, followed by the further tinkling of glasses being adjusted, peeked through, or otherwise disturbed.
It sounds like he’s getting started already.
"You all right down there, Wex?" I called, leaning over the bar so my voice would flow down the stairs into the cellar. "Sounds like you’re celebrating without me!"
"Aye, lad!" Wex called back from somewhere down there in the darkness. "It's a mite tricky to see down here, so I had to do a little… a little testing!"
Ah yes. ‘Testing.’
Well, if it were me in his shoes, instead, I’m sure I’d be doing just as much ‘testing’ as Wex.
Can’t be too hard on the old guy!
I glanced behind myself and smiled at Kacie, who was looking in my direction curiously.
It was too bad, about the customs in Clanesse.
For a Debtless man to speak to a woman, even if that man was a foreigner (and so might not even incur a Debt), was totally unheard of.
I'd been keen to strike up a conversation with Kacie since the second day after I’d arrived in town.
Hell, Pryvet, you stayed because you wanted her so bad, to begin with!
Kacie lived with a group of women who were, I would say, somewhat overprotective of her.
Certainly, they were older, had all helped satisfy men’s Debts, and cared very much for their traditions.
A gray-haired woman had chased me off with a broom, raising high hell with her screeches, the first time I tried sneaking into Kacie’s window.
A black-haired mage nearly lit me up like a piece of dry kindling, hurling a blazing fireball at the old twig-and-berries when she saw spotted me admiring Kacie’s rear.
And I was pretty sure a white-haired potion-master had tried to poison my beer when I tried striking up a conversation with her at the bar.
By the way Kacie blushed when I tried that conversation, I think it was worth it, nearly getting poisoned.
After all, what was a prize like Kacie Gladwyn, if there wasn’t some risk involved?
"Would ya watch where y'er going, ya gallump!" Wex cried from down in the cellar, as it sounded like he swung his leg staunchly into something very hard.
Probably the stairs.
Several curses later, and Wex’s great, shaggy head loomed up out of the cellar's darkness, sporting a swelling red bump on the top, and a brilliant row of grinning teeth.
"Sorry about that, Pryvet!" he cried, hauling himself up out of the narrow cellar doorway. "Normally, it's one of my wives that goes down there. The women are, well… they're smaller than I am, fortunately. Couldn't imagine how they'd be much bigger, of course! They fit better in those tight spaces!"
From the way Wex's eye wandered around me, as though he were trying but failing to focus on my face, it seemed that the samplings Wex claimed had been necessary were taking their toll.
With a start, he hiccoughed and looked down at his hands in surprise, as though he'd forgotten he held anything at all.
"Well!" he cried, hefting both bottles up and slamming them quite hard onto the counter, "At least I succeeded in finding the good stuff!"
Although I'd had two glasses of wine already, my eyesight was much clearer than Wex's.
Where his vision seemed to bounce off the bottles every time he nearly laid eyes on them, they only shimmered a little for me.
And, I had to say, it certainly did seem that Wex was treating me.
The bottle in his right hand was dusty, made of mottled green glass, inscribed with motifs of tree branches and little birds, flowers, and other animals.
A deep red liquid that sloshed heavily inside it as Wex set it down, as though the liquor were heavier than other kinds.
But, for all that the first bottle screamed its wealth in its presentation, it was the other bottle that really drew my eye.
This bottle was much smaller, only a little larger than my fist, and looked to be made of plain, clear glass.
A series of wicker branches wrapped around it in thin bands, and a long cord extended from the top, so that it might be carried around one's shoulder during a long trek. At first, in the inn's thin light, it didn't look like there was anything inside the bottle. But, as I looked closer, I was able to make out a crystal clear liquid catching the light oddly within.
Before I could ask him about either, he'd grabbed firm hold of the cork in the expensive looking bottle and yanked it out with such gusto that it pulled a gob of the thick liquid out along with it, which slipped over the lip and began oozing down the side.
A firm blast of the most foul smell smashed outwards from the bottle, fairly punching me in the face with its pungency, and I yelled out in alarm, "Wex, for the love of god put that cork back in! The wine smells like death!"
Whether he was too distracted by the smell himself, or whether he was so tipsy that he simply couldn't process it quickly enough, Wex merely looked at the oozing liquid with a pleasant, confused expression, his great brow furrowing like two clouds passing beyond one another, and his fingers lifting slowly from the bottle so that he could examine the thick liquid.
I cried out in despair, launched myself out of my stool, yanked the cork out of his hand, and slammed it back down over the bottle's mouth as quickly as I could.
Meanwhile, Wex's ooze-covered fingers continued their way up to he great, hairy nose.
Behind me, I heard the table full of women, and my beautiful Kacie titter appreciatively.
Chairs scraped against the stone floor as the inn's door opened behind us, and Wex called out a slurred greeting to the new entrants.
“'reetings, lads an’ ‘asses," the massive man half sang, ooze-covered fingers nearly to his nose now, and the hairs within wrinkling already, as though they were still sober and wanted nothing to do with this plan of Wex's. "I'll ask you to leave your swords and bows by the door there! Wolves are a real threat on the road, but the only threat in my bar is whatever's happened to this wine!"
So saying, Wex took a great inhale, and I was given the front-row seat to watch the great man's face turn the green of a forest's canopy, as his drink-addled mind realized its foolish mistake.
He looked like the stories of first-time sailors that I'd heard back on the mainland, before I set out on my travels through the Free Isles.
Men there were said to turn as green as algae before a storm, the first night they spent on deck. And Wex was certainly just the picture of it, to my eyes.
Normally, I don't like to laugh at other people's misfortunes. But, I think even Wex himself would admit that this misfortune was entirely self-inflicted.
I laughed and I laughed, my arms wrapping around my stomach for support, and my chest heaving so much that I nearly fell off of my stool.
I laughed so hard and for so long that I didn't even notice Kacie sit down on the empty stool to my left until she said, "What in The Mother's name was in that bottle, Wex? It smells like a pig that's been left to root in shit for three days!"
Chapter Two
"I think,” Wex gulped with a grimace. “That it may be just that, young Kacie. Except that I think shit-covered pigs probably smell better.”
With Kacie next to me, I felt my raucous laughter subside to bubbly mirth.
"What's in the other one, Wex?" I chuckled, watching Kacie as she leaned over the counter on her elbows, the fabric of her white blouse nearly thin enough to see through, if only the light inside the bar was clearer. "Hopefully something not quite as foul!"
Wex was still reeling from the horrific smell, and Kacie sat her body flat on the bar, reaching over to grab the smaller bottle with a thin, graceful arm, her frizzy hair staticing against the dry countertop and setting itself to dancing in the thin light.
She pulled the old cork easily from the clear bottle easily, not s
pilling any weird sludge at the same time.
"Well that's promising," I chortled, feeling my stomach lighten as Kacie's delicate features swelled in pleasure, sniffing at the bottle’s neck. "Wex, were you trying to poison us?"
Kacie and I laughed as Wex, clearly putting on a show for us now, reeled backwards, slamming into the wall of booze behind him and feigning light-headedness.
“Poison? You two?” Wex gasped, smacking the back of his hand to his forehead in mock-shock. “In my bar? Why, I’d never think!”
With a small, timid smile, Kacie passed me the bottle, our eyes meeting just briefly before she cast hers downwards, her lips parting oh so slightly as though she needed a deeper breath.
I wonder if she finds my gaze too intense to manage?
I smiled to myself, happy that, whatever the reason, the older women had allowed Kacie to join me, now.
Sighing contentedly, I inhaled deeply from the bottle's neck.
The scent of peaches washed over me, rising from the liquid within like a siren's song rises from the ocean water, tickling me and swirling around my head.
I blinked in surprise.
It's not that I'd expected it to smell awful, per se… But I had just been nearly knocked out of my chair by the prior bottle.
In between blinks, I saw that Kacie had unclasped the top two togs on her blouse, letting the pretty swell of her breasts stand against the white, snowy fabric, like little havens of warmth in the winter.
None of us was paying much attention to the newest entrants into the inn (I hadn't even looked around to see who they were. My attention was of course on Kacie and her perfect chest).