by Ben Stivers
The man who called out had greasy hair and hide like leather. With bones protruding in his cheeks and feet like a duck, Adam found it hard to believe the man might be as dangerous as Adam himself might be.
“Leave me be, if you know what is good for you,” Adam warned, but that sent the entire group into a round of laughter.
The hair on his arms tingled.
Deepen your pool. Do not allow the stream to breach its banks. The words spoke quietly, but firmly in his mind. For the entire world, he would have believed Wolf sat right next to him, whispering into his ear.
Adam kept emotion from his face while the men passed around a few flasks of some concoction, pouring it into their wide and chapped mouths, not worrying if it splashed down the front of them. They stunk of rotten fish and barnacles.
They did not hurry to spring upon him, so perhaps he had misread the situation. Drunks were drunks, no matter what their reasons. They invented obnoxiousness, and if they had not, they had certainly perfected it. Adam had found that true in the months he had spent boarding at the Lusty Wench.
He lightly tapped Artex in the ribs with his right foot and the horse began forward, attempting to skirt the swarm, but the sailors persisted.
One man reached for Artex’s bridle, but the large horse withdrew his head and whinnied, eyes wide, backing up slightly but pawing road, sending up dust plumes. His third stroke stomped the reaching man’s foot and the fool proceeded to howl and hop on his remaining uninjured appendage.
Adam felt no remorse. People could be stupid around horses, especially one as forewarning as Artex. A broken foot might help the man think before attempting to control such a horse again.
The multitude howled with laughter at the wailing man’s plight.
“Get back!” Adam shouted and noticed from the corner of his eye that one of the vendors had covered his wares and sprinted away. Whatever might happen next, the vendor did not desire to be a part of it.
Pushing what he hoped was an advantage, Alex tapped Artex on both left and right and gave a slight tug on the reins. Artex reared, moving several steps forward, pumping his front legs and threatening to brain anyone who entered his range. As he regained a four-footed stance, the crowd had ceded room, but had not substantially withdrawn, still blocking their path.
Adam decided that forcing his way through might cause the crowd to hurt his horse, so he reined Artex hard left and prepared to trot away. Someone threw a stone from the crowd that made an audible whisper of breeze as it clipped the edge of his ear.
He stopped. That night in the mountain ripped a scab from his past. With that single recollection, foaming waters of his personal stream rushed down the jagged slopes of his memory, threatening to burst through the infant veil of his discipline and let the waters rage forth. He glanced over his shoulder to the crowd. Months that had passed suddenly slid away, exposing the raw memories of burning bodies.
His voice sliced through the laughter. “Who threw that?”
The original sailor who had shouted at him was the main suspect, but another man, a few years older stepped out of the crowd. “I did! Get down off that horse. You ain’t nothin’ but a snot-nosed little whelp. I will give you a lickin’! I’ll make you wish you had never seen a seaman!”
“Oh, so you are a sailor?” Adam queried with a smirk on his face. “Your ship must tip to one side with that lard on your belly.”
The crowd erupted into hilarity again and then louder as Adam stepped from the saddle and put his feet on the ground. He loosely draped Artex’s reins over his saddle and whispered to the horse, “Go home.”
Artex regarded his rider and then trotted half a dozen steps away before turning around and refusing to continue further.
“I’ll mess up that purty face o’yours, but not that mouth,” the fat sailor rebuffed. Adam closed his eyes without turning back, reached his hand to the buckle of his sword belt and let it loose. He did not fear a bully, but he had no compunction to kill the man for drunkenness.
Focusing on his antagonist, he dove into his mental pool; let the cool waters quench him. Deeper he swam, feeling the coolness turn frigid, feeling the smothering and the onset of drowning. Then, he saw the tiny outlet at the base of the dam.
Dropping his sword to the ground, he slipped his hands into his pockets and slid a pair of his knuckledusters onto each hand. He twisted his neck, left and then right, then removed his hands from his pockets. Emotion and danger hid behind his young eyes as he faced his foe.
In the Lusty Wench, Arthur had just returned from arranging the last payments for the wagons and wages of the stonemasons. Wolf was nowhere to be found, and Shanay had left early to caucus with an elderly stonemason who had participated in setting the aqueducts in Rome.
Elizabeth had cooked breakfast, and kept the pork on the side of the fire to stay warm, hoping the four of them would appear before putting the fresh eggs to the flat pan.
“Well, at least there is someone to appreciate my hard work,” she teased.
Arthur smiled and expressed his gratitude. He had known Elizabeth since she was an infant. Her father had not erred in her raising.
Arthur took a seat at the first table he came to and Elizabeth placed a steaming piece of pork in front of him on a metal plate.
“Eggs will be ready shortly.”
He shoved the first piece of meat into his mouth and found himself grateful not to have to do his own cooking. If she had learned from Wolf, Wolf had never exhibited that worthy talent.
Abruptly, the entry gates flew inward, banging against the walls. Arthur sprang to his feet with his sword halfway drawn before he could stand. Angry with himself at being surprised, he wondered how he could have been so careless. Usually, patrons crossed the threshold of the Lusty Wench at sundown, not dawn. Yet, that pitiful excuse brought no satisfaction.
A man with an awkward hat socked to one side of his head had entered. He was a mishmash of spindles and thread, thrown together to resemble a man. He jabbered so hastily, Arthur could not understand him.
“Rave!” Elizabeth shouted. She ran to the animated man’s side and looked back at Arthur with reassurance. “He is a friend, one of my street informants. He is excitable. Let me calm him.” The man visibly trembled and stuttered. “Easy, Rave. Take your time. Tell me what it is. What has you so agitated?”
Rave visibly gathered himself, drew in a deep breath, met Elizabeth’s eyes and managed a single name.
The mob chanted “Septus”, evidently the fat man’s name, but Adam ignored the drone. His focus pinned to a single individual.
Septus extended his coarse-haired arms into the air in a great show and shouted for his flock. He waved his hammy fists around and squared off with Adam. “You’re comin’ onna m’ship, boy. A good lil’ miss like you can cozy me on long trips.”
Making a lewd gesture with his hips, he struck a grotesque grin without many teeth. What few he did have, lingered in every direction and were yellow as ale.
Adam kept his mind to the task at hand, letting the man talk all he wanted. Words could hurt, but they could not kill you.
Septus jabbed a fist at Adam, who circled light-footedly, first left, and then to the right. On Septus’ third jab, Adam ducked to the left, and landed a thundering uppercut to Septus’ belly with his right fist. If he had struck a rock, Adam could not have been more surprised. That lardy flab felt thick as a cow’s rump.
Untroubled, Septus grunted and threw a roundhouse. Adam slipped away and Septus’ wild punch threw him into the bog of sailors. Unlike a bog, however, his friends shoved him back to the middle of the action, yelling jeers at Septus as though gold awaited them at the end of this rainbow. Angry, Septus charged Adam, but instead of punching, he threw his arms around Adam’s body and heaved him off his feet.
Adam thought his spine had snapped. The crowd cheered, but changed its tone, if not its volume, when Adam punched Septus three times in the forehead. Iron on skin, the knuckledusters delivered exactly the
effect for which he had cast them, forcing Septus to drop him. Blood flowed into Septus’ eyes and onto his cheeks.
“I will kill you!” he shouted, though his words were not quite as crisp as before. Again, he tried to grab Adam, but Adam skirted away. The crowd surged toward him, but suddenly, there was Artex, rushing into the startled throng and forcing them to back away from the fight.
One man tried to bolt around the horse, but Artex awarded him a hind kick to the chest that sent the man backward into a pile of his friends. The crowd opened to let the flying body through, then closed back over it like a wave.
Septus landed a blow to Adam’s face, splitting his lip. Blood ran hot into his mouth and he swallowed it and cursed himself for breaking focus. As Septus swung again, he stepped onto his forward right foot. Adam leapt into the air, using Septus’ own knee as a lift. He vaulted forward above Septus’ fist, spun with the brace of Septus’ knee and landed a sledgehammer back-fist to Septus’ nose. Like hot metal on an anvil, the nose slid visibly sideways across his face with a crack.
Septus staggered. His arms flailed for several backward steps.
Striking blindly, he threw another roundhouse, this time from the left. Adam rewarded him with a stunning fist to the neck by the ear that dropped Septus to one knee.
Victory’s frigidity soaked Adam’s bones, but he did not yet feel clean.
From out of nowhere, arms reached around Adam and threw him off-balance. He rolled, came back to his feet and spun to meet another of the men who flashed a shiv. The newcomer looked skilled at using the nasty little implement he carried and he pressed quickly.
Adam maneuvered for position while Septus slowly staggered to his feet behind his friend.
“Carve him, Piz!” one man encouraged from the now faceless crowd. Piz stalked straight to Adam and thrust his shiv forward, intending to quicken the end of the match. He dodged, forcing Piz to compensate and overextend. Adam clutched Piz’s hand and with his other hand, grabbed Piz’s arm above his elbow, drove his knee into Piz’s arm, creating a lever. The arm snapped like a dry twig, making the crowd exclaim.
With a large sliver of bone jutting out of his forearm, Piz hollered and released his shiv. Adam shoved his opponent onto the ground. The crowd quieted. Whatever they had expected, this had not been it.
Adam returned his attention to Septus. The bigger man had regained his feet and stumbled in Adam’s direction. The shiv lay on the ground between them.
Adam nodded. “Pick it up.”
Undeterred, Septus accepted the offer and circled Adam. Slowly they rounded one another, waiting for the first opening and the endgame to begin.
“Are you going to dance around and bleed to death fat man, or are you going to fight?” Adam challenged. The water of his pool now boiled. If the crowd cheered, he no longer heard them.
Septus lunged with the best attempt at a war cry he could muster with his eyes and mouth full of blood. Adam waited until the last possible moment and then slid up under the large man’s extended arm, hoisting him over. Using Septus’ weight to his advantage, Adam slammed his rival to the hardened street. The shiv flew away, but Adam flipped onto the bigger man’s chest and struck him in the face, the knuckledusters tearing flesh each time.
Septus thrashed weakly. Each blow landed increasingly solid.
Time crept. Flesh burst. Bones crunched. Teeth flew.
Septus’ arms limply fell outward. Still, Adam bashed him, watching the man’s eyes whither, watching his life flow out.
Again, a new voice whispered for the next several blows.
Suddenly, his drawn back arm met instant constraint. An irresistible force hauled him away from his victim. The rage within Adam howled. He wrestled to break free, tried to negotiate a position that would allow him to fight back with the newcomer. When he did break free, his focus said he had been granted that privilege.
He whirled, his hand clutching his belt knife. His eyes came to rest on the one person he did not want to see.
When Arthur arrived on the scene, one man lay in the street moaning while Adam hammered the face of a fat man, lying in the road. The man did not fight back, which meant consciousness had vacated.
Arthur grabbed his son, wrestling him away, understanding the battle lust that had taken the lad. He waited until he felt confident that he controlled the situation, and then released Adam.
Adam whirled with murder in his eyes and his hand on his knife.
“You won. It is over, Son,” Arthur said with firmness in his voice. “Let him go.”
Adam’s eyes fluttered, then cleared, but his hands quivered. The shouting of the crowd had faded to a murmur and the mariners melted back into the rising mist. Their moment had passed.
A third man lay on the ground where the crowd left him, moaning with broken ribs. Artex stood nearby, looking as though he had wandered into the excursion quite accidently, completely innocent of whatever he might be charged.
Piz slowly rolled back and forth in the street, a fetal position nursing his shattered limb.
Three steps away, Septus lay motionless on the street, his head resting in a permanent rut. His face looked like a long abandoned building, falling down, collapsing on itself. If any bones were not broken, it would not be because Adam had yielded them to mercy.
Looking at Arthur, he said, “I did not want this. I wanted to ride away—but I did not.”
“Could not?”
“Would not.”
“Get your horse,” Arthur replied without reproach. He knelt beside Septus and waited for Adam to return. “Where is your sword?”
“Over there.”
“Why?”
Adam looked confused by the question and finally replied, “He was unarmed at first. I—.”
“I didn’t teach you a skill so you can leave your tools lie in the dirt and bust up your knuckles.”
Abashed, Adam nodded. “Is he dead?”
“Not yet,” Arthur replied. “Not for want of skill, though. That one over there too?”
“He tried to stab me with this,” and Adam toed the shiv, lying on the street where it had landed.
Arthur laid his hand in the dirt and felt the undertow. The situation had the markings of coincidence, but Arthur had long ago put that word from his vocabulary. His son should count his stars that he had survived. Underneath the surface of the evidence, Arthur sensed a malevolent presence in Ploor, but the festering lay shrouded.
“Leave them here. The town will take care of them,” Arthur replied. Putting his arm around Adam’s shoulder, he walked him away.
From several buildings, curious eyes watched. Whispers ran like wind.
Midmorning crept away by the time Wolf arrived back at his tavern. He had made a few shrewd trades with the captains of two ships for the raw materials he needed for his growing ale establishment. He trusted them, though how they came about their goods, he never asked.
Feeling rather well of the day, he passed through the gates to find Adam and Arthur sitting at Wolf’s table, furthest from the door. Drying blood covered much of Adam’s leathers, his fingers were bruised and on the table were a set of knuckledusters. His sword rested against the wall, and Wolf thought back as to whether he had seen Artex on the street when he stepped onto the porch.
From a kettle over the fire, Elizabeth carried hot towels while Shanay stitched a gash on Adam’s right cheek.
Thinking that he had better things to do than have his spine ripped out by an angry mother, Wolf turned around and started to leave.
“If you try to leave, I will break your leg,” Shanay commented without looking his way. “When I get done with this, the five of us are going to have a talk.”
Arthur raised one eyebrow and passed Wolf a wry grin. Evidently, he had gotten an ear full already, but for Arthur that probably skipped like a flat stone across a pond.
Elizabeth had a stern expression on her face that told Wolf he had better take a seat. She set the towels on the table and fussed over Ada
m who sat quietly with his eyes closed.
Wolf considered if having a broken leg might be less painful than the lecture they were about to receive.
Afterward, Arthur and Wolf sat on the porch of the tavern, letting the women stay inside with Adam to clean him up and ensure the sutures held without having to be redone. To his credit, he had protested that he wished to go with Arthur and Wolf, and the men agreed that they would wait, but thus far, the lad had not managed to escape.
“What happened to that ‘take no prisoners’ redhead that bashed you in the face over a speck of food?” Wolf asked. “She suddenly gets all womanly over a little dust up?”
Arthur chuckled. “First of all, it was more than a dust up. Secondly, she hit me in Hellsgate because Blade bit her, not because of the food. Her temper gets the best of her sometimes. Now that Adam is here, I don’t expect that will change.”
“Are you sure?”
Arthur shrugged, looking up at a passing white cloud. Evening still lingered hours away. The day had gone fast, and most men would rather stick their hand in a forge than the tongue-lashing the two of them had received.
“I did not know he had left,” Wolf said, leaning forward, picking up a small pebble and tossing it across the road. Elizabeth had given him a disapproving look throughout Shanay’s tirade about Adam riding out by himself.
Arthur sucked in his lips, pursed them to one side and replied, “When I was his age, I spent most of my time alone. She makes much of nothing. Adam should have been more careful, but he survived the lesson. My mother would have said much the same as Shanay if she were here. I remember my father’s struggle as I grew. As for Adam, a few cuts and bruises are good for a man coming of age. I arrived in time to deter the mob. None of us can be with him every breath of the day. He can take care of himself.”
“How did the other guy look?” Wolf asked casually, looking off into the busy street.
Arthur smirked, pulling a wheat stem from his pocket and inserting it between his teeth. “There was more than one. There were three.”