Titanuus’s Spine appeared to be very much like that except its peaks were jagged and dreadful.
Abraham snorted in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “This sucks.”
Evening started to fall. The Henchmen’s faces were already weary. No one had said a word in three days, hardly. Even the chatter by the campfire had been muted, as if all of them were on a long, quiet march to death row.
“Orders, Captain?” Horace said.
“Let’s make camp.”
“Aye.”
Once that camp was set, Abraham rounded up the company by the campfire. “It’s time for a little fellowship by the fireside,” he said.
The Henchmen gathered. Some stood, while others sat. As always, Horace and Sticks remained to his right and left. “That includes you Red Tunics, too.”
The Red Tunics, the pie- and dimple-faced Twila, along with the other two young gangly men, slunk over. None of them ever spoke to the Henchmen, aside from acknowledging orders.
He held up the scroll that Leodor had given him. “I’m going to keep it simple. We’re going to try and retrace the steps of the other campaign. Certainly, that large of a group won’t be that hard to follow. And according to this writing, we’ll need to ask the people that reside along the base of the Spine if they know anything about the fenix.” He opened the scroll and stared at it. “Uh, it appears that there are several tribes, or villages, that worship it. And I don’t think they would worship something that they haven’t seen.” He thought about his own faith. “No, wait, I take that back. Anyway, that’s the plan. But I’m open to suggestions.”
No one said a word.
“Come on. I know that at least one of you has something to say.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. He patted the pommel of Black Bane. “Someone say something.”
“Er… well, Captain,” Apollo said in a very gravelly voice. He scratched his scruffy beard. “Seeing how we are about to journey into the mountains and face a certain death, would it be possible to unwind one last time? You know, wet our tongues on some rum and ale.”
“You want to go on a bender?”
“No, I want to get drunk and maybe cozy one last night with a trollop.” Apollo scanned the women. “Seeing how all of these prudes are spoken for.”
Iris lifted her hand. “I’m not spoken for, but I wouldn’t sleep with you for a thousand shards of silver.”
Twila perked up. “I would.” She shrank back down under the stares of the Henchmen. “Sorry.”
“Is this where the group stands?” Abraham asked. “You want a night of carousing? Huh.” He used a serious tone. “Do you?”
“I do,” Vern said after a brief silence. “And we haven’t had a break since our last journey. We came back with our arses in hand and were tossed in Baracha.” He touched his black-and-blue nose. “Then you show up all smiles. So, yes, I would like to go on a bender, as you say.”
“We need to have our wits about us. We can’t traverse the Spine hungover and drunk. We need to be sharp,” Abraham said. “With our luck, we’re bound to be in a fight before we know it.”
“I fight better drunk,” Apollo said.
“Aye, me too,” Prospero agreed.
“Great, I have team Nick Nolte on my side. Anyone else?” he asked.
Tark lifted his hand. So did Cudgel, Vern, and Dominga.
“Oh, I see what the problem is,” Abraham said sarcastically. “We’ve been failing all of these missions because we’ve been stone-cold sober.” He looked at Horace. The beefy man shrugged. “We all know better than that. Besides, we’re at the mountain’s bottom. There’s nowhere to go and get your freak on. Sorry, Apollo.”
Vern took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, “We aren’t far from Hackles, Captain.”
“Hackles?”
Horace whispered in his ear. “It’s one of the last stops at the base of the Spine. We’ve been there some time ago. Perhaps half a league up the shoreline. We’ll still be on course before we enter the mountains.”
Abraham took a long, hard look into the tired eyes of his command. Some held his gaze. The others looked away. He’d seen faces like that before in the locker room after a losing streak. Sometimes, a team played hard, but it wasn’t working. Sometimes, people just tried too hard, and it wasn’t happening. Everyone was stiff and rigid. They needed a break. They needed to loosen up. They needed one last night on the town.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get this camp broken down. We’re going to Hackles!”
The Henchmen, one and all, let out a roar.
55
Hackles was a shabby seaport city where maybe ten thousand inhabitants thrived. According to local legends, it was the place where Titanuus had dumped his bowels when he died. The inky green seawaters were as foul as a dead sea. It was nothing compared to Swain in Kingsport. The rickety wooden buildings bowed and swayed against the wind. The floorboards on the porches creaked underfoot. Fishermen bandied about, singing songs about the sea, with jugs of wine hooked in their fingers. Others shuffled along, groaning about stiff backs and griping about the big fish they’d missed that day. The docks were small, and so were the vessels. The foamy seawater that beat against the rocks on the shore smelled strongly of salt and seaweed. Hackles was a rotten town.
The Henchmen loved it.
The tavern’s regulars were a bunch of fishermen, mostly older, with thick beards and long-stemmed pipes. They grumbled and hunkered down over their drinks. Many eyes widened at the sight of the Henchmen, who came in with full armor and steel on their hips. Hackles wasn’t much of a town. It was a place where many came for solitude, but it provided a little excitement from time to time when strangers passed through.
Within the hour, the Henchmen had nestled in. Apollo and Prospero practically dove into the first tavern they came across and vanished inside. The high-pitched squeals of women erupted from inside. Cudgel and Tark were the next to enter, followed by Bearclaw and Vern. By the time Abraham made it inside, all the men had giggling women sitting on their laps or hanging on their arms. The women’s scant clothing revealed a lot of paint coating their nubile bodies. The body paint sparkled in the candlelight. The serving women brought tankards of ale and goblets made of steel. Apollo and Prospero opened their mouths wide, the women poured, and they guzzled it down.
Abraham took his seat at a corner table. Horace joined him.
Watching Apollo and Prospero, Abraham said, “And to think that they were Guardians once. Weren’t they beholden to a higher standard?”
“We aren’t Guardians anymore,” Horace said as a curvy waitress set down two tankards of ale on the table. He gave her a nod and a wink and watched the sway of her generous hips when she walked away. “But even Knights celebrate victory, the same as others do. Including me. You remember that, don’t you?”
“I think you’ve known for a long time that I’m not the same Ruger that you’ve always known,” Abraham said.
Horace guzzled his beer. “Ah! What do you mean, Captain?”
“My strange behavior. Mannerisms. You know that I’m different.”
Horace buried his chubby cheeks behind his mug and shrugged.
Ruger pressed the issue. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? And the men do too, don’t they?”
“It doesn’t matter what we think. You are the Captain.” Horace set his goblet down and wiped his forearm across his mouth. “And I advise the Captain not to talk like this.”
Abraham took a long drink of the warm and bitter ale. “This isn’t very good. It tastes like boiled bark.” He set it aside. “Horace, look at me. We have to talk this out. You and I were close once, right?”
Horace’s neck rolled a little. “Aye, Captain. We all were, before the disgrace. We are loyal to you and the crown.” He showed his intense eyes. “It doesn’t matter who is in charge inside that body. We gave our word. We’ll follow you to the depths of the ocean. Our word is honor. We don’t need a brand to keep it.”
&nbs
p; Abraham rested his forearms on the table. “Even if I’m possessed?”
“Don’t say that. I don’t know what you are, but at least you have your spine back.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “No pun intended, as you would say.”
Ruger smiled. “I said that? When?”
“Not so long ago. Many times. You speak funny words time to time.”
“Well, at least you are used to it.”
Abraham thought he might talk more about who he really was but opted not to. The Henchmen were devoted men of their word. He was convinced that they would keep it.
“So that waitress gave you an approving look. Are you going to go for it?”
“Go for what?”
Abraham nudged the man. “Bed the woman. Copulate.”
Horace’s eyes were attached to Iris, who was sitting at the bar with Sticks and Dominga. They were all having a laugh. “No.”
“You like Iris, don’t you?”
Horace opened a hand and flung it outward. “What’s not to like? She’s a ravishing sight. I like the way the red in those auburn locks comes out in the sunlight. Her homely smile makes my heart sing.”
“You should go talk to her.”
Horace shook his head. “No. I’ve tried that. I’ve stopped that. She’s a stubborn mule, that one.”
“Have you ever tried to make her jealous?”
“What do you mean?”
Abraham reached out and grabbed a waitress passing by. She was the same one that had served them. He swung her around onto Horace’s lap. He put a pair of silver shards in her hand. “Listen, gorgeous, you stay on his lap and make that woman jealous.”
The curvy woman threw her arms over Horace’s shoulders, hugged him tightly, and said, “My pleasure!”
“Captain! Captain!” Horace said. The waitress shushed him with a full kiss right on the lips.
Abraham grabbed his ale and giggled. If what was happening wasn’t real, then he might as well have some fun with it. He drank. I just wish the ale tasted better. He left the table and crossed the floor. The tavern had two bars, one on the sea side and the other on the side of the Spine. Both bars offered large outdoor porches, making an excellent view of the Spine and the choppy waters in the Bay of Elders. He moved to the mountain side and took a seat on a stool, at the loneliest corner of the bar.
The Spine was nothing but black rock mountains jutting upward toward a dark-blue sky filled with faint, twinkling stars. He saw no sign of constellations like the Big Dipper, Draco, Orion, or even a North Star to go by. He sipped his brew. This is not my world. Where in the heck am I?
Sticks joined him. “Nice night.”
He answered with his gaze fixed on the skies. “Yeah.”
“So, will I be joining you tonight?” She put her hand on his arm. “It might be the last chance we have to enjoy ourselves, too.”
He dropped his eyes to hers. Sticks had eyes as hard as stone, but a softer side of the woman waited deep inside. She was right. That night might have been his last time to have fun. He wondered if this was what it felt like before a soldier went to war, not knowing whether or not they would come back. He liked her. He didn’t want to hurt her either. He took her hand and said, “Yeah.”
She rose up on her toes and leaned in for a kiss.
A commotion of high-pitched voices came from the sea side of the tavern. The scuttle of boots rushed toward new screams.
Ruger and Sticks moved in behind a pack of angry fishermen, who started shouting obscenities. Another group climbed up over the porch railing. They were men and women, dripping wet from head to toe. Ruger got his first good look at the invaders. They were fish-like people with slanted black eyes, covered in skin like fish scales from head to toe.
“Myrmidons,” Sticks said.
56
The myrmidons climbed over the railing one by one. Water slipped down their sleek bodies, making puddles on the plank floor. They walked like men, with green-silver scales and black fins for ears on their sleek heads. Their eyes were black, with large white pupils in the middles. Not a strand of hair was on any of them. They were all scaled, bald, and sleek. They wore strands of seaweed for dress and carried no weapons but had very long black fingernails and sharp, spiny ridges on their backs. They spread out into the tavern, bumping into everyone they passed.
“Watch it, fish-face,” Cudgel said right after an oily-scaled myrmidon jostled his table and knocked over his tankard.
Abraham dropped his hand to his sword. “What is it about these seaside taverns?” he asked Sticks. “Every time I enter one, trouble comes.”
“The myrmidons are nothing but trouble.” She hooked her arm in his. “They’ll go away. Just ignore them before they do.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what you always told us.”
Abraham rubbed his eyes. He—or rather, Ruger—had recollections about them. The myrmidons were an ancient race of seafaring people, small in number, who kept to themselves in the caves along the seashore and the smaller islands. They were great swimmers and fishermen and still mostly men despite their amphibian appearance.
“I guess so,” he said. “I just hope our crew doesn’t get all riled up over them.”
Very quickly, the myrmidons made their presence known to everyone in the tavern. They dragged away chairs and tables, creating their own spots. They kicked back, swung their legs on the tabletops, and leaned backward on two chair legs. The waitresses were pawed at and victim to bubbly-voiced catcalls.
A myrmidon who stood seven feet tall lumbered through the tavern. His large hands had webbing between the fingers, and he wore many large gold chains over his neck like a gangster. His long arm was hooked over a female myrmidon. She was a beautiful and sensual thing with a necklace of violet pearls that dangled down between her plunging seaweed neckline. She winked at Abraham. The male stopped and looked at Ruger. The small black fins above his earholes bent downward.
In a bubbly voice, he said, “Keep your eyes from my lady if you want to keep them.” He showed his hand, which could cover Ruger’s entire face. The black claws on the tips of his fingers extended another foot.
Abraham sneered and said, “Go back to your lagoon, ya goon.”
The spiny ridges on the myrmidon’s back flexed up and down like dominoes and rattled like a snake’s tail. He pointed a quill-like fingernail at Abraham’s eyeball. He waved it back and forth. “No, no, no, no. Don’t taunt Flexor. It will be your doom.” He pulled his hand back, and the fingernail retracted. Flexor and his woman strode to the bar and sat down.
“Flexor. What the heck kind of name is that?” Abraham said. “Sounds like a rubber toy or something.”
“If we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone,” Sticks said. “Let’s take a walk down on the shore since the night is so nice.”
“All right,” he said.
He scanned the room. Despite the myrmidons’ loud voices and raucous mannerisms, the Henchmen seemed to be fitting in just fine.
“Just let me have a word with the men.”
Bearclaw and Vern were playing cards at a table with two women between them. Vern rolled his toothpick from side to side. Bearclaw studied his cards and didn’t bat an eye.
Abraham leaned over Bearclaw’s shoulder and said, “We have bigger fish to fry. See to it that our men don’t get into any trouble.”
Bearclaw nodded. “If the fish men don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.”
“Make sure they don’t bother you.” He looked at Vern. “Or you.”
“Can I bother them?” a pleasant-looking waitress with flaxen curls asked. She scooted beside Vern with both hands under the table, massaging Vern’s thigh. Her green eyes were smiling at Abraham. “We don’t get many brawny men in these parts.”
“Just keep them happy.” Abraham moved over to Horace.
The waitress Abraham had put on Horace’s lap was sitting in a chair beside the husky warrior with her elbows on the table and chin on her
hands. Horace was frowning like a bearded bullfrog.
“He’s not very playful,” she said. “Can I use this silver for something else?”
He shooed her away. “Sure. What’s the matter, Horace?”
He followed his stare. Across the room, a myrmidon appeared to be getting flirty with Iris. The big country-girl smile on her face suggested she was enjoying it.
“Ah. Listen, it will pass. For now, make sure the company stays out of trouble.” He blocked his view of Iris. “Do you got it? I don’t want any steel drawn.”
Horace leaned to the right and looked around Abraham. “I got it.”
He slid through the room and had to change course because a pair of myrmidons swung their legs across the gap between the tables and blocked his path. They made bubbly laughing when he went around them.
He caught up with Sticks and said, “They really are a bunch of annoying jerks, aren’t they?”
“Jerks? You mean obnoxious by that, right? Like you used to be?”
“Right,” he said.
They made their way down the wooden steps leading to the beach. The beach was covered in seaweed, and the foamy waters stank of strong salt and something like sulfur.
“Ew, this isn’t exactly going to be the walk on the beach that I was hoping for,” he said.
“Me either, but at least it’s with you.” She clasped his fingers in hers. “Even if it stinks.”
Angry shouts erupted from the tavern. Abraham’s head whipped around. A commotion had started in the rickety tavern. He and Sticks raced back up four flights of broken-up stairs. He cleared the final eight steps in an incredible leap and landed on the seaside porch. The Henchmen and myrmidons had collided in a wrathful tide of angry bodies.
The King's Henchmen: The Henchmen Chronicles - Book 1 Page 20