Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  Gynedo kept lowering the wood. “You should have won tonight,” he said. “You lost because you put up a personal token. I’ll modify the game rules to disallow it. Or maybe that’ll be a separate game.” He showed Jastail a moment’s sympathy. “But I don’t like to see a gambler with your potential chained by his past. It makes you weak. And if I know your weakness, I’ll win every time.” He stopped the wood’s descent to the flame. “And you see, I’m a rather selfish bastard. I want the game to have real sport to it. I want to know I could lose. And unless you do something about this gods-forsaken wood, I’ll find a way to beat you no matter what we play.”

  “I’m not quite sure how you’d manage that,” Jastail said, smiling.

  “Trust me.” Gynedo lowered the cherrywood into the flame.

  “Fine!” Jastail blurted, more loudly than he’d intended.

  Gynedo smiled and pulled the wood away from the lamp with only a slight black sear. He tossed it to Jastail.

  After a brief inspection of the scorching, Jastail placed the stick back in the pocket against his chest.

  “Even bastards like us need to make peace with the past,” Gynedo remarked, smiling conspiratorially, “or we’ll never have the cool to play chances the right way . . . with the necessary indifference. Especially at high stakes.”

  Jastail returned the wisdom with a mock salute and shook his head, smiling, intending to heed every word the gambling boss uttered.

  “And I’d stay out of Fleur’s bed,” Gynedo added. “She’s a biter. She’ll leave teeth marks in you like that wood you carry.”

  Well, maybe not every word.

  #

  Jastail didn’t bother to knock. He simply went into the home of his childhood. Such as it was.

  It looked precisely as it had seven years ago, when he’d finally run from this place. He’d decided he wouldn’t let his mother send him with men anymore for a meal. The room closed in tight. Suffocating. It was warmed by a fire over which a pot of beans was always simmering. Cow bones were tossed in for flavor—whatever could be scrounged from the butcher’s waste barrel. And under the smell of the overcooked beans was the stench of armpits and unwashed skin.

  In her chair beside the fire sat his mother, Lona. Her face told of a recent beating. She wasn’t above bedwork herself if it came to that.

  “My dying gods. Jastail,” she exclaimed. “Come to your senses, have you. Returned home.”

  Jastail closed the door and took a seat opposite her near the hearth. Closer here, the beans smelled burned. He could also now see the small table beside her with its second shelf beneath. Lying there, covered in years of dust, was a volume of poetry by Tawl Tawminh. It was Jastail’s book. One he’d forgotten when he fled this place. One of his dark poets. A line rose in his mind: I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done.

  “A visit is all. I’m not staying,” Jastail said. He looked her over. Aside from the bruising, she didn’t appear ill or underfed. “You look well.”

  She produced a coin bag hung down between her breasts on a leather strap. She jangled the coins within. “No complaints.”

  “You working alone?”

  “Let’s talk about you,” she said, avoiding the question. “I’ve heard you ply the roads. Take folk and sell them on the blocks. That’s gainful work. I imagine your purse is a might heavier than mine.” She smiled, exposing a missing tooth. “I deserve some credit for that, you know. What you learned of human wages you learned from me.” She eyed him. “Might even entitle me to a cut of your take.”

  Jastail laughed out loud. “I don’t whore for you anymore, mother.”

  “Oh, lad. It wasn’t like that.” She waved a hand at him, as though he were talking foolish. “Each of us does what we must to get by. If you can’t swing a sword or keep a ledger, you do what’s left and be grateful to those who pay.”

  Jastail gave a politician’s nod of agreement. “You’re wise beyond your years. Survival is more important than . . . well, than love.”

  “I see, you think I didn’t love you. That it?” She put the bag of coins back into her blouse. “You come all this way to hear me say it. It’ll make you feel better, I suppose, if I tell you I didn’t want no baby when I was fifteen. Or that no good mother makes her little boy take a meal with a grown man who expects a little kindness in return for his generosity. Is that what you’d like to hear?”

  Jastail glared at her. A hundred vicious things entered his mind. But he held his tongue until he found his smile again, and flashed it brightly. “You’re a high breed bitch, all right.”

  She winked conspiratorially. “That I am, my boy. That I am. No one gives a good gods damn about me, and I give back the same.”

  He decided a little honesty wouldn’t hurt. “I did love you. At first, anyway. You knew it. And you used it to convince me that I needed to go with that first meal-man. You said he’d want some kindnesses from me, and pay me for it.” Jastail fell deeper into the memory. “You said that I’d do it if I loved you. Because we were starving, and we needed the scratch to buy meat. You sent me out with him, and a hundred more like him, asking me to do it because we were all each other had. Needed to do hard things to make our way, you said.”

  She nodded to it all, her eyes distant, wearing that particular frown of one hearing something entirely sensible. “Rough times in the beginning.” Then her eyes focused again. “But look how far we’ve come, eh?” She grinned a wicked grin. “You doing hard trade on the road and no doubt flush with coin. And me? Well, I do better than most. Learned a thing or two, besides.”

  Rough times.

  He regarded her for several moments. Damn hells how he’d looked forward to this. “Tell me these things you’ve learned. Educate your son.”

  She gave a coarse laugh, and rocked forward in her seat to share her secret. “A crew of five I have working the taverns and bedhouses. Young waifs. I pay one strong-hand to keep them from running, and to keep them safe from the kill-sex types. And I pay a second man to be sure the first doesn’t get no ideas about taking my girls.”

  “Girls then?” Jastail said, feigning surprise.

  Her devilish grin widened. “That’s just what I call them. I offer the company of both lads and lasses. Payer’s choice,” she said proudly. “And I keep the crew small. No permanent home, neither. That way, I slide under the lawguards, who make examples of madams who set up expensive brothels with baths and lace. Hells,” she laughed, “a few of my best patrons are lawguards. They get their turn free.”

  Jastail listened. All this he’d learned already for a few coins in a nearby tavern.

  A silence settled between them. Just the low crackle of fire and warm smell of beans.

  “You must have lost a few drabs, to learn that you needed protection,” Jastail observed.

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s a good thing, then, that in all those times you sent me with buggers, none of them damaged me so badly I couldn’t keep taking meals.”

  “Unavoidable risks, really,” she answered, with a proprietor’s tone. “I had no money for a strong-hand then.”

  “And you’ve operated all this while without any real challenge.” Jastail sat back, speaking as though he truly marveled over her prowess and ability. “Until now.”

  She eyed him with suspicion. “How’s that?”

  “What I mean to say is, I’ve taken ownership of your working waifs.” He flashed his grin again, mocking and bright.

  His mother stared back a long moment, dumbstruck. Then her own devilish smile rose on her bruised lips. “A game? You’re all grown up, and come to see if I can hold my own.”

  She produced a small knife with a serrated edge.

  Jastail chuckled low over the threat.

  “Don’t think because I’m your mother that I won’t use this.” She spun it over the top of her hand in a deft movement he hadn’t seen before. “Or that I don’t know how. Now, what’s th
e game?”

  Jastail leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and spoke with dripping earnestness. “No game. Just doing what I must . . . to get by.”

  “You’re an ungrateful whoreboy.” She waved her dagger threateningly. “What you done back then ain’t hurt you none. And it gave us coin to struggle through the lean years. What’s wrong with that?”

  He reached into his inside pocket and drew out the length of cherrywood. He stared at it a moment, then tossed it at her. She caught it with her free hand, and looked it over. Realization slowly bloomed in her face.

  “What do you call it, mother? A ‘bugger’s bit’?” Jastail saw in his mind a rapid stream of men, their wanton nervous smiles, the sweat on their upper lips, their white puckered flesh.

  Any bit of guilt or regret slipped from her face. “Poor boy. Carrying his little piece of wood around all his life. Thinks he had it rougher than most.” Her expression hardened. “You’re going to return my drabs, or I’m going to open you like a fall pig. Don’t test me, Jastail.” An idea lit her face. “And better yet, you and me, together. We could run quite a crew of drabs. You pluck ‘em from the highway, I’ll keep ‘em on their backs.”

  Jastail shook his head and offered her an incredulous grin. “You’re a high breed bitch, all right.”

  He leaned back and drew the curtain away from the windows once and let it fall back. A moment later, four of his men quietly entered the shanty house, steel drawn.

  She stared at each man in turn, her eyes coming to rest again on Jastail. “What then? You going to kill me, take over my operation?”

  Jastail noted that she hadn’t lowered her knife. He shook his head as one might to shush a complaining child. “Absent gods, no. I’ll be selling them to clients from the Bourne. They pay well for young girls.” The boys he’d likely cut loose, leave them to their odds.

  His mother shot him an angry frown, her lips drawing into a snarl. “That’s bad business. I can earn a hundred times their sell-price in a few years, making them work the taverns.” She calmed herself, adopting a negotiator’s tone. “Let me keep on as I have. And I’ll cut you in for one coin in three. That’s more than fair. Hard to turn down a deal such as that.”

  He marveled at her tenacity. Maybe he’d gotten a bit of that from her. Again he leaned forward in his chair, to watch her face when he shared his next bit of news. “You won’t have time for this nonsense anymore, mother. You see, the Bar’dyn prize something even more than young girls. Pay well for it.”

  He paused. The fire hissed beside them.

  She’d already begun to nod, understanding, when he explained, “Wombs, ma. They pay handsomely for wombs. Girls will grow into their use. And you,” he pointed between her legs, “bless you, you pushed me out at a tender age. There’s still good bearing years in you.”

  He was almost too slow when she lashed out with her knife. Almost. He swayed back in the chair, and brought his arm around in a swiping motion to push the blade away. She recovered fast, and stabbed quick at his belly. He kicked out and knocked her down beside the pot of beans.

  Casually, his men came forward, their blades pointing at her.

  “Does selling me off make your ass hurt less, whoreboy?” She still held his length of cherrywood, and wagged it at him. “You’re a weak mule. Here, take your bit. You’re going to wear it all your days.” She barked a single bitter laugh.

  To his own surprise, he took the cherrywood from her hands, then motioned for his men to take her out. She thrashed for a moment, then put on an air of dignity that looked preposterous in her little shanty.

  They exited quietly, leaving Jastail beside his boyhood hearth. He sat staring into the embers of the fire a long while, a strange mix of peace and hollowness in his chest.

  He didn’t hear the knock at the door. Or rather heard it distantly. The third time the knock came it was cracking loud, urgent. He got up to answer it, pulling the door back to see an overweight man in a leather smith-apron calling on his mother’s home late in the evening.

  Jastail’s gut tightened. “Can I help you?”

  The man didn’t fidget from foot to foot. He didn’t lick his lips or need to wipe sweat from his brow. He was altogether comfortable. This wasn’t his first time calling at this door. He only looked at Jastail, then past him when the patter of feet came from deeper within the shanty home.

  Jastail turned to see a boy, maybe six, maybe seven. The lad had a careworn look in his eye. A bit of fear, too. And he looked, for all the gods-forsaken world, like a young Jastail. A brother. Did she have another child to replace me?

  The boy’s face showed a hint of confusion when he saw Jastail, but a heartbreaking familiarity when he saw the man at the door. He glanced toward the hearth. “Where’s mother?”

  Jastail fingered the grooves in his length of cherrywood, feeling like he might lose his own moorings. He considered the words of one of his dark poets, but left them alone.

  Instead, he stepped into the doorway, near the caller, and stared him dead in the eye. Just above a whisper, he said, “Don’t ever come back here. If you do, I’ll find you, and I’ll use your own tools to brand the words ‘boy bugger’ on your forehead.”

  The big man managed a momentary look of defiance, but must have seen something in Jastail’s eyes. He nodded once and scurried away.

  Jastail went back into the shanty home, and quietly closed the door. The boy was staring at him, still looking confused, but now worry also showed in his young face.

  Jastail shook his head. “There’ll be no more meals with strangers. You don’t owe anyone that sort of kindness anymore.”

  The boy’s eyes filled with tears. He hung his head, and quietly began to sob.

  A Taste of Agony

  Tim Marquitz

  “A Taste of Agony” is set in my upcoming fantasy series, Tales of the Prodigy that features my outlaw, eunuch assassin Gryl, the protagonist from my Neverland’s Library companion story, “Redemption at Knife’s Edge.” Trapped in hostile territory just after the resolution of the Avan-Thrak war, Gryl lives off the land and the spoils of his once ally, the chaotic Thrak berserkers. When a chance encounter with a group of renegade Shytan knights offers him a chance at a warm meal and a few nights of relative peace, the possibility of coin in his pouch, Gryl finds himself unable to refuse. He soon learns, however, that no matter how far removed from the war he might be, the past is never far behind.

  ~

  Gryl snarled low in his throat, dispersing the wispy breath against his palm. After a sevenday on the hunt, he’d found his quarry…and more.

  Crouched atop a gentle rise, the sullen droop of snow-burdened pines masked his presence. He glared through the swirl of white flakes at the chaos unfolding below. The clash of steel fractured the air like thunder, and the frantic shouts of men followed. Gryl had expected the Thrak berserkers—it had been their clumsy trail he’d followed—but the cluster of Shytan soldiers this far north was a surprise; a most unpleasant one.

  His stomach grumbled, echoing mournfully inside the shell of his leathered cuirass. He’d been counting on the spoils of the Thrak to provide his next meal, but the appearance of the Shytan left a hollow emptiness gnawing at his guts. It had been many days since he’d eaten last. It would be even longer thanks to his former enemy encircling the two berserkers. Too weary to imagine the Shytan losing to the pitiful beasts, Gryl settled in to watch.

  The largest of the knights wielded a serrated falchion, its edge dripping with ichor. While little more than a butcher’s tool, he put it to fair use. He stood behind two of his companions, darting between them to carve chunks of wet flesh from the berserker’s mottled torso. The Thrak howled, frothy spittle gleaming in its sharpened maw. Its blue-tinted flesh gleamed in the dim haze of light. Spatters of red and black dotted the whiteness at their feet.

  The Thrak whipped its bone blade in a wide arc, an ivory halo blurring above its furred head as it brought its weapon to bear. The closest knights parried in
tandem, leaning into each other to absorb the beast’s fury, turning the blow aside in a clash of pale splinters. Their banded mail rang with the impact. The third took advantage and cleaved the life from the berserker’s muscled frame. The Thrak would soon fall.

  Its horde mate, however, would not meet its end so easy.

  Gryl watched the second of the berserkers bury his blade in the unprotected neck of a knight. The man’s head snapped sideways with a muffled pop, his eyes wide though none of his agony escaped his throat. His head tore free of his shoulders to the wretched dirge of ripping cloth, his braided hair writhing like serpents in the air. The head fell into the snow, gouts of red conquering the crystalline canvas in rhythmic spurts. The knight’s body toppled after, stumbling sideways into his brother-at-arms.

  Despite being off balance, the second knight managed a desperate parry against the berserker’s follow up stroke. Bone clanged against steel, the man’s arms shuddering as he was driven back, boots sinking ankle-deep in the snow.

  The knight’s companion—a twig of a boy, only just coming into his manhood—stood his ground and thrust a barbed spear into the Thrak’s muscled side. The point sank between the berserker’s ribs, but the beast turned, twisting the haft. Gryl watched as the boy struggled to pull his weapon free, but the spear was held immobile, caught in the Thrak’s flesh.

  “Hold him, Kel,” the knight shouted, pressing forward with his broadsword.

  The blade found meat, slicing into the berserker’s shoulder until it thunked into bone. The beast roared, the sound setting Gryl’s ears to ringing, and lashed out at the knight. Mountainous knuckles collided with the man’s face. The sharp crack of broken bone sent him reeling. He spun about and fell to his knees with a shriek, hands clasping at his cheek and jaw. Gryl saw his one remaining eye whirling in in its socket, the other half of his face an oozing sea of ruby waves. A line of blood ran from the knight’s ear. He was dead, but had yet to realize.