by Peter David
I was officially a whore-lover. It didn’t feel too bad.
Chapter 5
Tacit was the one who taught me how to steal.
I enjoyed going about with him. I quickly learned that he was an orphan, and there was something attractive about that status. He answered to no one save himself, and whenever he came into town, it was always with a confident swagger, and coins jingling in a small leather bag that dangled from his belt. That self-confidence clearly translated into someone whom no one wished to cross, and it always amused me to watch the other kids give him a wide berth. I endeavored to imitate that swagger of his, but naturally with my lame and twisted leg, I was not overly successful.
Tacit walked a remarkably fine line with me. Since the day we met, he never made any mention of my handicap. One would have thought that he didn’t notice it at all. However, when we walked about in the woods, he would always manage somehow to slow down, allowing me to keep pace with him, without ever giving me the impression that he was holding back himself. He never wanted me to feel as if I was a burden.
He maintained his home in the Elderwoods. This alone was enough to give him a certain cache, for the Elderwoods was considered a sorcerous place, where creatures of myth were known to gallivant about. It was said once that an entire army of weavers was set upon in the Elderwoods and was, to the very last one, slaughtered by a mad king who had vowed to rid the land of weavers once and for all. Although he had supposedly annihilated them, they unleashed a curse upon him so comprehensive, so frightening and so terrible, that the mad king’s name of so long ago had been forever erased from the annals of mankind. His name disappeared from all histories, his image from all tapestries. He might just as well have never been born. A rather sad fate, really, for someone who set such store by trying to achieve fame for great deeds.
The slaying of wizards is a foolish endeavor, and should only be undertaken by those who are of a mind to commit suicide on a cosmic scale.
So supposedly the ghosts of the wizards strode the Elderwoods since that time. Tacit said that he had resided in the woods most of his life and had never seen any such evidence to support the rumor. He was not above, however, making use of this belief where he saw fit. For a number of shorter paths lay straight through the Elderwoods, and any number of travelers were inclined to brave the haunted forest for the purpose of saving some time. As a result of this tourist trade, Tacit would set traps and snares. But he was most adept at making his traps practically invisible, so that they could be ascribed to mystic forces.
Once, for instance, there was a rather portly merchant who was making his way through the Elderwoods with a most confident stride, until he stepped into a snare that hauled him upside down. Tacit had camouflaged the snare in such a way that it simply wasn’t visible against the backdrop of the trees overhead—particularly difficult to spot when one was upside down and thrashing about. Convinced that he was in the hands of implacable spirits, the merchant did the only honorable thing under the circumstances and passed out. Relieving him of his purse of coins was but the work of a moment. Tacit cut him down before we dashed off into the woods, leaving the terrified merchant unconscious on the ground.
“Why’d you let him go?” I asked.
“Because we’re more effectively served if he returns and speaks of his horrifying encounter with invisible creatures, rather than to speak of the cleverly camouflaged cable which snared him. Indeed, by the time he’s finished telling and retelling the story, I guarantee you he will have been accosted by twenty decapitated ghouls all pelting him with their severed heads.” He let out a low whistle as he emptied the contents of the pouch into his hand. Forty gold sovereigns poured out, the face of King Runcible looking at us in profile on each one of them. The coins glinted in the noon sun. “This,” he said, “was a wealthy individual.” He poured a little under half into his hand and offered them to me. “Want your share?”
“My share?” I looked at him askance. “Why should I get a share? You did all the work.”
“Maybe. But you shared the risk. We’re partners now, you and me. Partners and friends.” He chucked me on the shoulder. “Or haven’t you noticed.”
Truthfully, I hadn’t. I had simply taken to hanging about with Tacit, and as months had rolled over into years, I had always assumed that he kept me around more to kill boredom than out of any sense of loyalty or interest or any enjoyment of my company. “We’re friends?” I said, which was probably not the most brilliant comment to make.
“Well, sure we are! What’d you think?!” Seeing that I wasn’t reaching out for the coins, he took my wrist, opened my hand, and poured the coins into my palm. My fist closed reflexively on them and he smiled approvingly.
“Why are we friends?” I asked. “I mean … why are you my friend?”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head. “You do most of the talking,” I said. “I just sort of follow you about. I limp. I’m not much use.”
“How can you say that!” He perched on the edge of a rock and regarded me with open incredulity. A small insect nattered about in his face. He brushed it away without giving it any thought. “Why, you and me, we’re … we’re …”
“We’re what?”
He appeared to give the matter a good deal of thought. He scratched the side of his head and pondered the situation for a time more … and then he looked up and pointed. “Do you see that?” he asked.
I looked where he indicated. All I could see was a hawk flapping gracefully through the sky. “You mean the bird?” I asked.
He nodded, brushing a hank of his hair from his face. “Do you know how it flies?”
“It … flaps its wings.”
“And beyond that?”
There were certainly scientific answers to the question, but I had no clue as to what they might be. “It just … I don’t know … it just does. It flies.”
“It’s the same thing with us, then, isn’t it,” said Tacit. “There’s no reason to wonder why we’re friends. We just … are. And you know what I see in you, Po? That hawk.”
I flushed slightly at the thought. “That’s silly.”
“It’s not silly. That’s you, Po. That hawk.” The creature swooped and dove over us. “I can see it in you. You’re going to fly, Po. What matters a lame leg when you’re going to wind up soaring over all of them.”
“That’s what my mother’s always saying. That I have a destiny.”
“Well, perhaps your mother knows what she’s about, then.”
At that moment, a large splotch landed smack on my head. As I felt its warmth dribbling down the side of my face, I didn’t even have to wonder for a moment what it was. The hawk had shat on me.
To his credit, Tacit didn’t say anything. If he wanted to laugh, he did a superb job of suppressing it. Instead he pulled out a cloth and handed it to me, and I wiped the bird crap from me as best I could.
I looked up at Tacit and noticed that he had stiffened. Tacit’s instincts were second to none, and something had attracted his interest. His nostrils flared. Clearly he scented something. I tried to sniff the air but I detected nothing.
“Not great, heaping snootsful,” he chided when he saw me trying to detect whatever it was that he had noticed. “You have to be more attuned than that. Just relax, Po. Don’t think about smelling it. Don’t think about anything. Just relax. Relax and let the forest talk to you. When there’s danger, it will tell you right enough.”
We had had talks like this in the past. Tacit seemed determined to transform the limping whore’s son into a woodsman like himself, and the more I protested the uselessness of the endeavor, the more he seemed bound to proceed.
Once more, I tried to do as he said. I sat with my left leg crossed against my right thigh and tried to relax. There was a soft breeze blowing about me, and as I noticed the breeze, I also heard a gentle rustling in the trees and bushes. My imagination began to wander, and I forgot the immediacy of the situation. Instead I could al
most begin to fancy that I heard the Elders of the woods whispering to me, speaking secret things of destiny and fate, of craft and wisdom, of smoke …
… smoke …
“A fire,” I said slowly. “A big one.” And then I started to hear voices as well. “And a crowd.”
He nodded when I mentioned the fire, and then nodded again when I further opined that there were people about. “These are my woods,” he said, sounding rather possessive. “If people are loitering around, I want to know why. Besides, the last thing I’m interested in seeing are drunken fools letting a fire get out of control and level the Elderwoods. Haunted or not, trees hereabouts still burn.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. I shoved the coins into the pocket of my jerkin and followed Tacit as best I could. As always, he moved effortlessly. When he would push brush aside to pass through, it made no noise. Wherever he crossed, be it grass or dirt, he left no footprint.
There was still a great deal about Tacit that I couldn’t begin to understand. His woodcraft was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was almost magical, but he claimed no knowledge of weaving and indeed I’d never actually seen him perform any actions that could be ascribed to magic. I knew little about his early days, and one time I’d decided to press him on the matter. “Well,” he had said, “you’ve read tales of infants being abandoned in forests and raised by wolves?”
I nodded, and then had looked at him skeptically. “You’re saying you were raised by wolves?”
“No.” And then he had smiled impishly and said, “Unicorns.”
The disbelief on my face must have deepened. “Unicorns. You were raised from infancy by unicorns. That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes. It is.” That was all he ever said of his youth, and I never knew for sure just how serious he had been. But it was moments like this one, as he made his way through the forest with almost supernatural ease, that I hearkened to that conversation and wondered whether or not it was possible that one of those rare and wondrous beasts had indeed suckled him in infancy. It would explain a lot.
As for me, of course, I felt—as always—like a great, galloping clod. As I approached early adolescence, my lame leg had strengthened a bit, but not much. Whenever I endeavored to obtain any sort of speed, it was always as if I were lugging along a great sack of meat attached to my right hip. I had substituted a staff for my cane, however, and with Tacit’s guidance, had become rather deft in its use. It was longer and heavier than my cane, but my arms were strong from pulling myself along all these years, so the additional weight was of no consequence. Furthermore, it helped me to semi-vault distances rather than just limp along. Plus in those rare instances where other kids in the village decided that they wanted to have a go at me, it proved a rather nasty weapon. I was hardly a knight, or an entity to be feared, but one crack from my staff could make someone look like they’d been in a fight.
The smell of smoke grew stronger as I drew closer to it. Tacit had virtually disappeared into the forest ahead of me, but I kept gamely at it. Suddenly someone lunged at me from the side, clapping a hand over my mouth. Reflexively I started to struggle and then I realized that it was Tacit. “Shhhh!” he hissed in my ear.
Just over a rise, we saw the source of the fire.
There was a girl tied to a stake, thick ropes crisscrossing her breast. A massive amount of kindling had been clustered around the bottom, and the edges were already burning and crackling. The girl herself appeared nonchalant about the entire thing. She was dressed rather boyishly, mostly in gray leathers that looked fairly worn, including visible holes in the knees. She sported a black cloak. Her ebony hair was cut short and curled around her ears. Her face was round, except for her chin, which was rather prominent and, at that moment, outthrust in a wonderfully defiant manner. She appeared to be about Tacit’s age, maybe a little older.
Surrounding her was about a score of what could only be termed angry villagers. They were waving torches, which would have been rather dramatic and underscored the mood had it not been high noon. Another one or two of them threw torches onto the kindling, and more areas started to go up.
A rather ratty-looking woman, toward the front of the crowd, appeared to be the ringleader. “You’ll never ensorcell anyone again, weaver … especially helpless young men!”
The fire was already starting to lick at the toes of her boots, but the girl who’d been identified as a weaver—a magic user, or wizard, if you will—didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by it. When she spoke, it was with clear contempt rather than any sort of alarm. Considering the straits that she was in, a touch less arrogance might have been advisable. “I told you, I ensorcelled no one! We had a dalliance, and that was all!”
“You’re lying! You’re a seducer and a thief!”
“He gave me the money of his own volition! He wanted me to have it; it was a gift!”
That was when I noticed that the ratty-looking woman had what appeared to be a ratty-looking son standing next to her. His gaze kept shifting between the weaver and his mother, and he didn’t seem able to abide the sight of either of them for long. His shoulders were hunched and if his manner were any more timid, he would have made the most skittish of deer look positively intrepid in comparison.
“He wouldn’t have given you any gift!” howled the mother. “He knows better! Don’t you, Edmond!” And she slapped her son upside the head for emphasis. Edmond nodded mutely but took a moment to cast a longing glance at the weaver. She, for her part, didn’t seem remotely interested in him. Instead the fire was drawing nearer and it had actually managed to snag, ever so slightly, her attention. The other onlookers, no doubt friends, relatives, or simply idiots with nothing better to do, shouted encouragement to the flames as if they were sentient and interested in anything the onlookers might have to say. “You bewitched my son and robbed him, and used the money for your own evil ends!”
“I used half of it to buy booze and get stinking drunk, and the rest of it I lost in a card game while I was three sheets to the wind! If I were as clever as you claim, don’t you think I’d’ve put it to better use than that?!”
From where I sat, it seemed a rather credible defense. But somehow the crowd howling for her blood—and looking for an afternoon’s entertainment—didn’t seem interested in the particulars of her hastily cobbled explanation.
Tacit was crouched next to me, and he turned and said intently, “I’m going to make a move here. Are you with me?”
“With you? Are you insane?” I looked at him disbelievingly. “That’s an angry mob. The girl’s a weaver that they’ve got a grudge against. Weavers can take care of themselves, and mobs take care of anyone they want to. She’s not our concern.”
He didn’t appear to have heard me. Instead he was studying the area of the conflagration, which was about thirty feet away from us. “There must be no threads in that area. That’s why she can’t weave a spell to help herself. Po, we can’t just stand by and watch them take the law into their own hands!” he continued with growing urgency. “If the girl has done something wrong, she should face true justice.”
“If she did something wrong, being incinerated for it is about as true as justice gets.”
“And if she didn’t?” he demanded.
“Then it’s her rotten luck! Tacit, listen to me! Number one, weavers aren’t to be trusted as a rule. And number two, I guarantee you that if the situation were reversed, and it was our necks on the line and she happened by, she’d continue on her way without giving it a second thought.”
“Well, then I guess that’s how we’re going to stay different from her, isn’t it,” he said.
The only weapon that Tacit ever carried was a short sword that was strapped to his thigh. I’d only seen him wield it for matters of a practical nature—skinning a recent kill, or hacking through some particularly impenetrable section of the forest. But when he drew it this time, the rasping of the metal as it slid from its sheath sounded particularly ominous. “Are you with me?�
� he said again.
I looked at the girl, the fire getting steadily closer. And I looked at the demented expressions of the townspeople. And I looked into the face of possibly the one person on the planet whom I considered a friend.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
A look of disappointment crossed his face, and then it hardened into anger. “Don’t you know the meaning of the word ‘bravery’?” he demanded.
“Yes, I do. Do you know the meaning of the word ‘foolhardy’?”
He was about to reply, and then a gust of wind fanned the flames higher. There was suddenly no more time, and nothing to be gained by trying to talk me into joining him in an adventure that was likely to get him killed.
He leaped out of hiding, crossing the distance between us and the girl with great bounds. She spotted him first, since she had the better vantage and was the only person in the immediate area who wasn’t fully focused on watching her burn. An expression of complete bewilderment crossed her face. The reason for her confusion was immediately evident to me; she was doubtlessly wondering if Tacit was insane as I thought him to be.
Some members of the mob caught sight of Tacit as he drew close and sounded an alarm. They must have realized instantly he meant them no good, a logical conclusion since he was charging them and wielding a blade. Several of them instantly formed a wall of bodies, blocking his path. Tacit swung his short sword, and they fell back but still obstructed his way. Suddenly he turned and dashed up the trunk of a large tree just to his right. The move completely befuddled his attackers, and then they understood as Tacit scrambled along a high and strong branch that stretched directly over the girl. Smoke was rising and it was getting harder to see her. She was starting to cough, but if she was at all afraid, she wasn’t showing it. I envied her. If I’d been in her situation, I’d have been screaming my head off.