by Frank Tuttle
ANTHOLOGY 1: THE FAR CORNER
Frank Tuttle
Published by Sizzling Lizard Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Sizzling Lizard Press
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Other Tuttle Titles Available Here At Smashwords
Wistril Compleat
Mallara and Burn: On the Road
Table of Contents
Foreword
Keeping the Peace
The Harper at Sea
Waking the Master
The Truth About Arphon and the Apple Farmer's Daughter
One Such Shore
Tinker Bell, Cannon Dale, and the All Wheeling Nick of Time
Other Tuttle Titles
Foreword
In this collection of short stories, you'll find a pair of Jere the Harper tales and read the story of a young woman on a long sea voyage that takes an unexpected turn. You'll meet a house which is learning to do more than merely sweep and keep the home fires burning. And you'll discover the bicyclist's guide to the realm of Faery, where the road hazards sport fangs and wings and the shadows hold much more than mere darkness.
In short, you'll cover a lot of ground. Thus the title "The Far Corners." From points unknown on the Great White Sea to the back-alleys of an urbanized Tir Na Nog, this is an anthology of people (and others) on the move.
"The Harper at Sea" first appeared in Issue #10 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. The last story in this collection, "Tinker Bell, Cannon Dale, and the All Wheeling Nick of Time," was set to appear in an anthology of bicycle-related stories that fell victim to the collapse of the economy a few years ago. "Keeping the Peace" is arguably the primordial ooze from which the Markhat series sprung; it's set in the aftermath of the Troll war in a place called the Kingdom. Even though the protagonist is a woman, I think I hear bits of Markhat in her speech.
Yep, this is a mixed bag, but it's one I believe you'll enjoy. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
PS -- My email address is [email protected]. I love hearing from readers, so let me hear from you too. And of course I have a webpage, where you can view my blog and see what's up with my writing -- go to www.franktuttle.com.
Keeping the Peace
by Frank Tuttle
Twenty-two days. I slogged and cursed and paddled and pushed through twenty-two days of War-wracked Troll swamp to find the place, and now that I had found it, I had to fight back a powerful urge to let loose a firestorm spell and burn the whole stinking place down. It was a Troll gak-house, thatched roof decorated with human skulls. From the each skull a skeletal hand protruded, in accordance with the same Troll religious observance that had started the War in the first place. A dozen of the skulls still clacked their jaws and waggled bony fingers and bobbled about on their stakes, the victims of the lingering and horribly failed protective spells the Kingdom had used in the first days of the War. One skull even sang, the same choked plea for mercy, over and over, his dying words stuck on his rotted lips.
From inside the gak-house came the sort of noises only Trolls make -- wet bass grumbling too deep to be human, ear-splitting peals of barking Troll laughter, and the hurricane-intensity wheezing and groaning that Trolls call breathing. It was a Troll gak-house, and no mistake -- a gak-house two hundred miles from the nearest Kingdom garrison and the kind of military clout required to remind the Trolls that, despite their penchant for decorating structures with the remains of slain enemies, our races are finally at peace.
I looped my skiff's tie-line around a piling and stepped out onto the mossy stone wharf. The water made loud sucking noises, as if it was sorry to see me go, but was looking forward to seeing me again soon. Face down and dead still, goes the joke, is how human traffic on the Slow River travels through Troll country.
I counted forty steps to the gak-house. I stopped outside the opening, noted that it was covered by a filthy Kingdom flag decorated with Troll obscenities, and stroked my silver-tipped field wand for luck.
The flag was flung aside. A Troll trundled past, leaning and weaving, so full of gak and sump-weed that the sight of a human woman clad in a Kingdom sorcerer's robe didn't even make him growl. Thump-thump-thump splash, and he was past and off the pier and paddling for home. I blew him a kiss, thumbed my wand to full burst, and ducked under the flag and into the bar.
Trolls like it dark. It was. Trolls also like it hot and loud. The house was both, until my presence filtered through the grunts and the gak and the weed. Then things changed.
By Troll standards, the room got deathly quiet, with only churning stomachs and heaving lungs competing with the swamp bugs for grand prize in the ugly noise sing-off. I stood still and waited for everyone to get a good look at me before I spoke.
"I'm looking for a man," I said, and waited while my wand translated Kingdom into Troll. "A human man. The Kingdom --" I waited for a chorus of growls and snarls to subside "-- will pay many acres of precious land for information about this man. He looks like this."
I gestured, not because it was necessary but Trolls are awestruck by even simple magics and if I'm in a roomful of skull-fancying Trolls I like to keep them awestruck.
An image took shape beside me. I watched Troll faces, tried to read recognition in gnarled, leathery features or deceit in unblinking coal-black eyes.
I saw neither.
"I ruined four pairs of boots for this," I muttered. Dutifully, my wand translated, even ignoring me when I gave it the squeeze-sign for silence.
As the echoes died, I heard a snicker. Trolls don't snicker. I let the image beside me collapse and squeezed the wand tight.
"Thought this was a Troll place," I said, with no translation.
Silence. I eased my grip on my wand and made a grand gesture with my free hand just for show. "Good is the guesting in this house," I said. My words rolled out in Trollish bursts of bullfrog thunder. "I thank you. Now I leave. I'll be near, though, should any of the Folk wish to speak privately."
I backed out of there. At the door, I paused long enough to tear down the tattered old flag they'd defiled. I still think it a tribute to the Kingdom's military reputation that I didn't wind up a platter of Trollish bar snacks.
The skiff rocked gently in the thick brown water. I flashed it for snakes, waited for the smoke to clear, and set off for camp amid a cloud of frustrated mosquitoes who could smell me but couldn't penetrate my pest shield. A fat yellow moon looked down, probably wondering why I was in such a hurry.
Trolls don't snicker. Honest men don't hide out in Troll gak bars. For the first time in two long years of mucking across pestilence-ridden quagmires teeming with snakes and sneaky enclaves of Truce-breaking Trolls, I had a lead.
Now, all I had to do was live through the night.
* * *
The coward moon set. The swamp was a mad cacophony of hoots and grunts and whistles and slithers. Something not too far away was knocking cypress trees flat as it ambled past.
Fifty feet away, my fetch crouched by a moldering knotwood stump and peered out into the dark. Every few minutes, I tugged at the fetch's spell, so that my double appeared to droop and start, as though dozing off but fighting it.
I waited and watched, wondering idly if my hair had that much grey. And hour passed. Then, just as my fetch dozed off again, a man -- the man -- stepped silently ou
t of the reeds and leveled a wide black crossbow at my double's chest.
I mouthed a Word. Slumbering spells awoke and enveloped the real me. New spells crept stealthy about, quietly taking shape in the shadows. I bit my lip and waited for the crossbow to click and jerk, my arms tensing, killing word on my lips. I didn't think it would take him long to realize he'd murdered a fetch, and that I lurked somewhere nearby in the dark.
But the crossbow just shook. For ten long breaths he tried to hold it steady. I watched his face. He knew he had to shoot. He knew who I was and whose orders I followed and what I came to do -- but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to loose the bolt.
I soothed my wand. He lowered his big Mauser crossbow. My fetch slumbered peacefully. After a moment, he turned and started back through the reeds, still quiet as a cloud, or a ghost.
"You're not much good at murder," I said aloud, through my fetch.
He stopped, froze, didn't turn.
My fetch shook her head. "Imagine that. The Devil of Deften, overcome by his conscience at last. What's the matter, General? Couldn't find a Troll to do your killing for you, this time?"
He turned then, his face going white under the soot he'd smeared across his skin.
The fetch spoke again. "I arrest you, General Fenthon va Nerlon va Darl, in the name of the Kingdom and the Crown. The charge is desertion. And treason. And seven hundred and twelve counts of murder."
He dropped the Mauser. "I will not resist," he said, his voice barely audible above the night songs of the swamp. "Seven hundred and twelve?"
"The population of Defton's Mill," I replied. "Surely you remember -- lovely little town, nice inn, you fed it to the Trolls during the War."
He shook his head, mute.
"You deny this?"
He shrugged, and let out a sigh that became a wet, hacking cough.
"I've always denied it," he said, when the fit was done. "I betrayed no one. I had no traffic with Trolls during the war. I fought as best I could." The muscles on his neck grew taunt. "Seven hundred and twelve?"
My fetch nodded. "More or less," she said. "It was hard to count the townsfolk, afterwards. Trolls are such messy eaters."
He tensed, as though struck, but said nothing. My fetch stood, brushing soggy bits of swamp off her damp pant-knees.
"Do you have anything to say? For the record?"
Beneath the soot, a little color crept back into his face. "I won't waste your time, soldier," he said, staring at the ground. "The truth can't save me now, any more than it could six years ago." He clenched his fists and spat. "I've lost my lands. Lost my House. Lost my name. I'm tired of hiding. Tired of running." He looked up, stared my fetch hard in her eyes. "Take me back. Let them hang me. Let them."
"Why didn't you shoot me, just now?" I asked, through the fetch. "You had me dead cold, and you know it."
"I am not a murderer," he said, wearily. "I came here to kill you. Damn near did." He swallowed, nearly broke into another coughing fit, went red in the face but held it back. "But I am not a murderer."
My fetch frowned. "If you spared me thinking that might sway a court to mercy, General," I said, "you're wasting your time. They plan to hang you, and if you get a trial at all it'll be because they needed the time to build an unusually tall gallows."
He lifted a grey, bushy eyebrow. "I would keep such comments to myself, soldier," he said. "Talk like that won't be popular, back in the Kingdom."
"We're a long way from Regent Street," I said. "And the War was done six years ago. And yet after six years, they're still looking for you, General, though I get the impression they'd be much happier if all they found was a pile of nice quiet bones."
"Why tell me this?" he said.
I shrugged. The fetch mirrored me. "Just making conversation, General," I said. "Might as well get to know each other. It's a long trip, north up the Slow."
He spat and shook his head. "Sorcerers. Crazy, the lot of you." He toed his fallen crossbow. "What makes you think I won't change my mind about a bit of murder?"
"What makes you think you'll live if you do?" I made the fetch grin. "You're dangerous, General. So am I. But try if you want. Maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe you'll walk away. But when I don't report, they'll send someone else. Someone worse. And so on, until you meet your match or run yourself to death."
The swamp howled and shrieked and plopped and bellowed.
The General just stood there, bathed in sweat, enveloped in a cloud of greedy mosquitoes testing his tattered pest shields.
My fetch shrugged. "Think it over," I said. "I've been on your trail two years now. I can wait an hour, or two."
"Two years? For me?"
"That's right, General. Two years. My predecessor also spent two years on you. The Regent wants your head, General." My fetch chuckled. "My predecessor hinted privately once that the Regent's interest in you isn't necessarily born of a public-minded zeal to see the traitor of Defton's Mill punished. My predecessor was beginning to believe that something else was motivating the Kingdom, this time."
The man kept his face blank. "Your predecessor is given to flights of fancy, is she not?" he asked.
"Not since she walked into that alley in Gault," I said. "Crime is such a problem in the New Cities, these days. They'll kill you for a pair of coppers, I'm told. Or for talking too much."
"You take heed of that, soldier," said the General. "You take heed. Same thing might happen to you."
I grinned. "It might. It just might. But I'm careful with my theories, General. Especially my theories about the Regency, and why it wants you dead."
He glared. I could almost see him measuring the distance to his Mauser, wondering if he could drop and roll and put a bolt between my ribs.
"They say you met secretly with a Troll scout, General. They say you traded the town for your safety. They say you watched while they slipped through the walls one night, and then you ran away. It's a good story. It's even plausible, to a point. And since -- and not many people know this, General -- and since the only other survivor turns out to be the new Regent's second son, who will dare to question it?"
"Shut up, soldier," rasped the General.
My fetch frowned, gestured with a raised forefinger. "Say, for instance, that word got around that it wasn't you that fed Defton's Mill to the Trolls. Say it was a certain frightened young lieutenant who never dreamed he'd ever wind up being heir to the Regent's crown." My fetch began to pace, wagging her finger like a school-master. "The Regency that arose after the War is still fragile. A scandal like this -- well, it might topple, General. Perhaps you are aware we've been on the brink of civil war since practically the eve of the Truce?"
"Nonsense," he said, but he had to lick dry lips to get the word out.
My fetch shook her head. "You had a Troll-talk spell. The only one, as far as anyone knew. Did you know the lieutenant had one, too?"
"Nonsense," he repeated.
"Not at all," I said. "When did you figure it out?"
"You're insane," he said.
"Hardly," I replied, stopping the fetch ten feet from the man. "One of you made a deal with the Trolls, General. I don't believe it was you, now." My fetch smiled. "You're just no damned good at murder."
He cursed and dived for his Mauser. It spun away from his hand, vanished in the reeds. He leaped to his feet, reached for a short Vendish sword, then his ornate needle-bladed House dagger, then what looked like a blowgun. All fled his grasp, spun away into the hot wet night.
"Calm down, General," I said, when he was done. "I don't want a civil war in the Kingdom any more than you do."
He glared.
"That's what's kept you in the swamps, isn't it?" I said. "Fear that the truth might finally get out? Fear that someone would put you to the question, and get an answer they never expected, and couldn't conceal? Fear that the Kingdom would be trading one big war for a dozen smaller ones?"
He flexed his empty hands, stared off after his lost arsenal.
"Yo
u're too smart for your own good, soldier," he muttered. "You really think the Regency will let you submit your report and just walk away? From this?"
"I'm counting on it," I said. "After all, General, if you're dead and gone none of it really matters any more, does it?"
He shook his head. "I'm not dead, soldier," he said, slipping into a fighter's stance. "Not yet."
The fighter's stance was just a feint. He let fly a spell, standard Army issue mayhem with the addition of a thermal element common in the East during the last days of the war. Ten years ago it might have knocked me flat. As it was, I merely brushed it aside like a wind-drifting cobweb.
I tugged a spell, and my fetch smiled. "There is a sort of beauty here, in the swamp," she said. "You see it best by moonlight, I think."
The General frowned. "Madam, have you been bitten by something recently, or were you born daft?"
I laughed. "Hardly, General," I said. "I'm merely commenting that one can find beauty in the most unlikely of places. This swamp, for instance." I took the fetch a single dangerous step closer to the General. "It seems you've also found allies here. You, a human, living amid Trolls."
The General snorted. "They don't hold grudges," he said, with a shrug. "They know I've a price on my head. By their lights, that makes me an ally. That's as far as any alliance goes."
I shrugged. "One does what one has to do," I said. "That's what I'm pondering now. Just what is it I must do, General? What must I do about you?"
"Follow your orders," he growled. "That's what soldiers do."
"Soldiers, perhaps," I said. "But come now. I'm merely a daft sorcerer. You said it yourself. There's no telling what I might do. Take you in, perhaps." I made my fetch frown. "But this swamp. It truly is beautiful, in the moonlight. It makes me wonder whether I might just take that beautifully-engraved dagger of yours back to Regent Street and claim I found it on a skeleton who was, incidentally, wearing your boots."