by J. S. Volpe
* * *
Bastard Jack reined his horse to a stop as soon as he heard the Millisin River bubbling in the darkness ahead of him.
He grunted. He couldn’t see the river—too many trees and shrubs stood in the way—but he’d traveled these woods often enough to know that if he continued down this wooded slope for another two hundred feet, the trees would fall away and the river would open out flat and broad before him, with the River Road Bridge just barely visible a quarter of a mile to the north.
Beyond the river was the southern wedge of the gorgim’s land, which the gorgim called Umperskap but most humans called Hump-a-scab. The wedge narrowed the farther south you went, dwindling to a mere half-mile across at its terminus on the edge of Spooky Swamp, a fetid, mucky wasteland of gnarled trees, stagnant pools of scummy water, and the muddy bones of all who had gotten lost there in the past. The swamp was what the Millisin ultimately turned into: As the river flowed south between Glí and Umperskap, it gradually grew wider and shallower until it became an equal mix of mud and water, and there you were in Spooky Swamp.
Spooky Swamp extended south for many miles, while Umperskap extended north for many miles. Which meant that anyone wishing to travel to Ghost Gulch in anything less than a week had to either slog through the swamp or cross the Millisin and then make their way unseen through gorgim territory.
Even something seemingly as simple as crossing the river would be problematic. Aside from the River Road Bridge, there were two other bridges in this area: the Briarwood Bridge, nearly two miles to the north, and the South Bridge, a mile and a half to the south. After the war with the gorgim a decade ago, which ended with the gorgim skulking back to Umperskap with their tails and various other posterior appendages tucked between their legs, the King had ordered that a guardhouse be built at the Glían end of every bridge that spanned the river, each guardhouse to be manned at all times by at least two soldiers whose job it was not only to keep the gorgim from entering Glí but to keep anyone from crossing into gorgim lands (some of the more human-looking gorgim had been used as spies in the past). Furthermore, the gorgim likewise maintained guardhouses of their own on the west bank of the Millisin, which meant that crossing the river via one of the bridges entailed sneaking past two different guardhouses.
The only place the river was shallow enough to ford was along its last quarter-mile before the swamp, but the thick mud composing the river-bottom had been known to trap the legs of both men and horses, and in any case, there was a gorgim settlement on the west bank, which made being spotted a near certainty.
Normally Bastard Jack wouldn’t mind the chance to bust a few gorg heads, but right now he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. He wanted to slide across the landscape like a hawk’s shadow all the way to Ghost Gulch.
Jack’s desire for secrecy had nothing to do with evading the other fortune-hunters from Moe’s; with the exception of the Yellow Pawns, who were crazy and violent enough to earn Jack’s respect, the tavern’s patrons were a bunch of worthless pansies. No, the reason was, he didn’t want word of his location getting back to the Snowman.
The Snowman made the Yellow Pawns look like kindly old grandmas. If the Yellow Pawns’ craziness and violence earned Jack’s respect, the Snowman’s utter fucking insanity and wanton cruelty earned Jack’s pants-shitting fear. No one else in the known universe could claim that.
The Snowman’s true identity was a mystery, for when he walked abroad in the land, he wore a large plastic snowman mask, a pre-Cataclysm relic he’d discovered somewhere. The rest of his attire likewise consisted of pre-Cataclysm items: a white dress shirt, red suspenders, black slacks, and brown leather wingtips.
And then there were the guns. The Snowman was the only person in western Glí to own working guns. He had a pair of semiautomatic handguns, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, and who knew what else. And somewhere—Lukano only knew where—he had unearthed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition for each of these weapons.
The Snowman owned far more than just guns, though. Collecting weapons was one of his hobbies. He was rumored to have a vast arsenal of swords, maces, crossbows, cannons, shock-sticks, and pretty much every other weapon ever made. It was said he could magically find old weapons the way dowsers find water.
But it wasn’t his weapons that made the Snowman so feared and loathed throughout the land. It wasn’t his mask or his mysteriousness or his spiffy sense of fashion.
It was the fact that his main pastime was torturing and killing people. He chose most of his victims seemingly indiscriminately; man or woman, young or old, smiling altruist or no-good shit, the Snowman might whisk any one of them away unexpectedly and spend hours or days or weeks carving them up in his hidden lair. Sometimes the butchered remains of his victims would be found dumped in a remote location (sometimes several locations, depending on the level of butchery involved); sometimes they’d never be seen again. For some reason Jack found the latter fate more unsettling; it was like being erased from the world.
The constables had been after the Snowman for years, but none of them had made a fart’s worth of progress. Just the opposite: The only reason Avery was chief constable now was because both of her predecessors had been murdered in their beds in the dead of night. And not murdered quickly either. No, those deaths had taken all night long and had been caused by the slow removal of various body-parts, one at a time. The Snowman appeared to have kept a few of the pieces, too; neither Chief Constable Alhamazad’s left eyeball nor Chief Constable Yalu’s penis were ever found.
That was what happened to those who made it onto the Snowman’s shit list. And that was why Jack was so scared: He was now on the list, too.
Two weeks ago Jack had been spying on the main road into Bangle, on the lookout for wagons carrying anything that might be of value. When he saw a wagon bearing a large wooden crate, he figured it was worth a look.
Jack had galloped from his hiding place, boarded the wagon, slashed the driver’s throat, and taken the wagon to his hideout, where to his amazement he discovered that the crate was full of beautiful dwarven swords. He sat there for over an hour just holding them up one by one in the lantern light, smiling at the gleam of the oiled, blue-gray steel, delighting in the smell of the leather-wrapped hilts, marveling at the sharpness of their blades. He had felt like a kid again.
The next day he had set about selling them. It took him only three days to sell all but the one that he had decided to keep for himself. He made over six thousand Glíands.
He spent the next few days spending most of the money. He bought a new horse—the very one he sat on now—he bought new clothes, a new wagon, an entire sack of tobacco, and lots and lots of celebratory ale.
And then just two days ago the word came down the grapevine that the Snowman was very upset because he had failed to receive a shipment of valuable weapons he had gone to great lengths to obtain, and that he meant to “have a few words” with the individual responsible for the loss of that shipment, an individual whose identity the Snowman had managed to ascertain beyond all doubt.
Since then Jack had been lying low while he wrapped up his affairs and made plans to flee as far from Glí as possible. Alas, he didn’t have the funds to travel as far as he would have liked. He had spent all but about three dozen of the Glíands he had earned from selling the swords, and that wasn’t enough to take him much farther than Istenhame. He had been debating whether or not to risk a few quick coach jobs when Ichabod stumbled into Moe’s with his tale of gold—enough gold to get Jack all the way to Shandar.
All Jack had to do now was stay out of sight on his way to Ghost Gulch, grab the gold, and be on his merry way.
Of course, there was the matter of whatever was guarding the gold, but Jack wasn’t worried about that. He figured he could take care of pretty much anything that came his way. He had once killed a troll with nothing but a rusty knife and his own two hands. Whatever was guarding the gold, whether it was man or beast or machine, Bastard Jack w
as gonna tear the fucker five new assholes.
He started to grin at the idea, but then a dreadful thought occurred to him and the smile transmogrified into something more like a grimace of terror.
What if it was the Snowman himself who was guarding the treasure? What if it was, in fact, the Snowman’s treasure?
Jack sat there still as a statue for a moment as a shiver made its slow icy way down his spine. Then he frowned and emitted a sort of snorting grunt. No, that skinny little faggot Quackenbush had clearly indicated that the name of whatever was guarding the gold began with an M.
Unless Ichabod was trying to say something like “madman,” thought a tremulous voice in the back of his mind. Or “maniac.” Or—
Jack balled one hairy hand into a fist and socked himself hard in the right eye. The pain shut that stupid fucking voice up in a wink.
No, Ichabod had been trying to say something else. There were a million words that began with M. Besides, the Snowman wouldn’t keep his base of operations way out in Ghost Gulch. Nor would he give a shit about a lump of gold.
Bastard Jack shook his head. The Snowman situation was making him uncharacteristically jumpy. His thoughts kept running away from him. He needed to just get going and stay out of sight of anyone and everyone, even those disgusting gorgim.
And the only route that would accomplish that was Spooky Swamp. No one lived in Spooky Swamp except a few hermits and trogs.
Of course, once he was through the swamp, he would then have to pass through Dead Man’s Forest. He’d never been there, didn’t know anyone who had, but the stories said it was full of monsters. Jack didn’t care. Monsters were something he could understand. Monsters weren’t the Snowman.
Spurring on his horse, Jack turned south toward the swamp.