by Robert Bevan
“I'm a dwarf!” said Dave.
“Shut up, Dave,” Stacy snapped, then turned back to Myrna. “I'll take the dagger. Do you have any silver caltrops?”
Dave disguised a laugh as a throat-clearing. “Come on, Stacy. They don't make silver caltrops. Think about it for a second. Silver is expensive, and caltrops are made for the sole purpose of throwing away.”
Stacy gave him a glare that she hoped would remind him of what she was currently purchasing, and why.
Myrna laughed. “I can see why you bring the dwarf along.”
Dave offered Stacy a smugly apologetic shrug. “I've been playing this game a while.”
“If you're planning to run away,” Myrna continued, “it's wise to leave someone slower, dumber, and fatter behind to be turned.”
Dave suddenly looked a lot less smug. “Seriously, lady. What the fuck did I ever do to you?”
Myrna poured a sack of caltrops out onto the counter. “Silver-tipped.”
Stacy leaned in to examine them. They were mostly black iron, but the very tips of them shined with silver.
“Is that really enough silver to be effective?”
“The tip is the only part that counts,” Myrna explained. “The rest of it is structural support. Trust me, when those flea-ridden rodent people step on one of these, they'll limp back to their feces-slathered sewer nest to lick each other's wounds.”
“That's not how –” Dave caught himself. “You know what? Never mind.”
Myrna smiled at him. “And don't you worry, Pork Chop. They're only five silver pieces more expensive than standard caltrops, so you shouldn't have to miss too many meals.”
“I'll take the dagger and the caltrops, thank you,” said Stacy. As much as she was enjoying watching Dave get flustered, she didn't know how much more abuse he could take before he lost his shit and ratted out on this woman.
“You've been good sports,” said Myrna. “The caltrops are on the house.”
Stacy smiled. “That's very kind of you. How much is the dagger.”
“Three hundred twenty-two gold pieces.”
Dave snorted out a little laugh.
Stacy saw Myrna's generosity with the free caltrops in a new perspective. There were few circumstances more embarrassing than trying to buy something that was way more expensive than she'd guessed it would be. She'd been in this situation too many times back in the real world, mostly at craft fairs, where they don't put price tags on their stuff. When they'd tell her the price, her face and heart would freeze. She knew they knew it was out of her range, but what could she say? “Oh? You believe the time, talent, heart, and soul you put into this piece of art is worth that much? I personally valued it at a tenth of that.” They knew she was thinking it, of course, but she couldn't insult them right to their face. Inevitably, she'd pull out her credit card and say a silent prayer that she wasn't too close to her limit. Then she'd change her mind and pray that the card would get rejected, which would allow her to roll her eyes and blame it on the bank, saving face and leaving without the piece of junk she really didn't want anymore.
This was one of the few more embarrassing circumstances. Myrna was looking at her like one of those craft fair people who could somehow see straight into her finances through the hopeless expression on her face, but there was no credit card to bail her out. She couldn't even write a bad check. All that she could do was admit that she didn't have the money, and that she severely undervalued Myrna's wares.
Or she could try the Bluff skill.
She took out her coin purse and poured five gold pieces and an assortment of lesser coins into her hand.
“Oh no!” she said. “Would you look at this?” She held the coins out to Dave, who looked embarrassed for her. “I must have left my regular coin purse back at the hotel.” She smiled at Myrna. “This is the one I keep for... um... snacks.”
Dave let out another snort behind her.
Stacy did her best to ignore him. “While I'm here, I might as well take the caltrops. I'll come back later for the dagger.”
“Of course,” said Myrna. “That will be one gold and five silver.”
Stacy picked the coins out of her hand and placed them on the counter. “There you go.”
Myrna nodded slightly as she scooped the caltrops back into their sack and set it down in front of Stacy. “I have another dagger. It's silver-tipped, like the caltrops.” She reached under the counter and produced a much less impressive-looking blade. “It will only cost you two gold pieces. And of course, it would save you that trip back to the hotel.”
If the first dagger Myrna had presented had a name like Night Cutter or Eviscerator, the one she now placed before Stacy would probably be called Stabby. It was perhaps the most utilitarian cutting instrument she'd ever seen. She almost felt obligated to apologize to whoever she had to attack with it. Hell, she'd be embarrassed to cut open a box with this thing. That said, she was buying it to use on Dave. If he made her use it, that was on him. Myrna had come through for her. Why couldn't the craft fair people ever offer her an out like that?
“Thank you,” said Stacy. “That's very thoughtful of you.” She swapped two gold and what was left of her pride for the shoddy blade and started heading for the door.
“There's a reason the king has put a bounty out on wererats,” said Myrna as Stacy and Dave stood at the threshold. “Some of them have armed themselves with strange new weapons. From what I've heard, they're mechanical in nature.”
Stacy nodded. “I've heard the rumors, too. We'll be careful.”
Myrna shrugged. “I've given you all the warning I can. What you choose to do with it is your business. My business is weaponry. If you do manage to pull off some miracle and survive an encounter with the rats, I would pay handsomely to get my hands on one of these new weapons. I have a gnomish acquaintance I'd like to have take a look at it.”
Stacy felt a wave of dread. “You want to reproduce them.”
Myrna smiled. “It's only a matter of time before someone does.”
“You're probably right. We'll keep that in mind. Thank you.” Stacy dragged Dave out the door.
“What's the hurry?” whined Dave as he stumbled out onto the street after her.
Stacy pushed him toward the inn. “Just one more thing we've got to take care of now. Not only do I have to figure out what I'm going to do with you, and where the hell Cooper ran off to, but now I've got to find a way to get all those guns you and Tim brought into this world off the street before people figure out how to start making more.”
“First of all, that was all Tim. I had nothing to do with the guns. Secondly, what makes you think it's your responsibility to singlehandedly steer the course of this world? Where do you get the hubris to think that you even can? Myrna's right.”
“About you being a fat cowardly piece of shit?” That might have been a little harsh, but Dave was poking his pudgy little fingers into Stacy's last nerve.
“About the inevitability of this happening whether we want it to or not. Imagine how much money we could make by getting in on the ground floor of the gun industry. We'd be more powerful than kings!”
“Waddle your ass inside, your majesty,” said Stacy, indicating the front door of the inn across from Arby's.
She paid a gold piece for a room on the top floor with a view of the street and strict instructions not to be disturbed.
“Why... did it have... to be the... top floor?” panted Dave after two flights of stairs. “You're not going to hang me out the window, are you? Because –”
“Vaulted ceilings,” said Stacy as she nodded approvingly at the large beam running along the center of the ceiling in their room.
Dave laughed. “Just like a woman. All this shit going on, and you're worried about the interior décor of this shitty inn.”
Stacy pulled a coil of rope out of her bag. “This is more about function than form, but thanks for making me feel a little better about it.” She held one end of the rope and tossed th
e coil over the beam. “Come on. Let's get you hoisted up there.”
“What?” said Dave, looking a lot more interested in the vaulted ceilings than he was a few seconds ago. “You're seriously going to suspend me from the ceiling?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were joking about that.”
“I've had a long day, and I'm a little irritable right now. Not in a very jokey mood.”
Dave rolled his eyes, but waddled toward her. “We've already been through this. You know I can escape the rope, and you know a six-foot fall isn't going to kill me.”
Stacy tied the rope around Dave's ankles. “I wish you'd get it through your head, Dave. Nobody's trying to kill you. If you would have come with me to the Whore's Head, we could have locked you in the cellar like civilized people, and you wouldn't have to go through this.” When she was happy with her knot, she stood up. “You should probably sit down.”
Dave sat down. “But if the fall isn't going to kill me, then what makes you think I'm not going to run the second you fall asleep?”
Stacy started pulling hard on the other end of the rope, and Dave started ascending feet first.
“First of all,” she said as she heaved. “You won't know when I'm asleep. I'll be wearing a Cloak of Elvenkind and night vision goggles. I'll see you, but you won't be able to see me.” She pulled the rope twice more, then rested when her face was level with Dave's upside-down face. “And second, if I am asleep when you attempt your daring escape, I'm counting on your screams to wake me up when you land on the caltrops.” She gave Dave's horrified face a pinch on the cheek before hauling him up the rest of the way.
After Dave's rope was tied off and the caltrops were spread on the floor below him, Stacy put on the goggles she'd taken from Dolazar, and the cloak given to her by Mayor Merriweather.
“Sorry it has to be this way,” she said to Dave as she lay on the floor mat that served as a bed in this place. “We'll see if we can't work out a better arrangement tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.”
The mat wasn't cushioned at all, little more than something to separate the sleeper from the floor. Still, she was tired enough to sleep in a bathtub full of angry porcupines right now. Unfortunately, that wasn't a luxury she could afford. She felt good about the rope and caltrop setup, but it certainly wasn't a foolproof containment system by any stretch of the imagination. Given five minutes and the motivation to do so, Stacy was sure she could figure out a way to escape it.
Dave didn't have Stacy's high Intelligence score, but he had a lot more than five minutes to work with, and plenty of motivation.
She stared at him for a few minutes, then silently got up from her mat and tiptoed to the window. Arby's was still open, but there was no sign of Cooper outside. Where the hell had he run off to. She hoped he hadn't gotten himself arrested or something. One more item on the list of pain in the ass things she had to take care of, and without so much as a wink of –
“Stacy?” Dave whispered.
Stacy jumped, and had to press her lips together to avoid instinctively answering him.
“Stacy? Are you awake?”
She turned around, relieved to see that he wasn't looking her way. He was staring at the mat.
“Stacy, are you there? I have to pee.”
If he really needed to pee, he wouldn't bother whispering. He was trying to get some kind of reaction out of her to see whether or not she was sleeping. The question was, what did he intend to do now that he thought she was.
Dave twisted and jerked his upper body, struggling to rotate counter-clockwise until he was finally facing her. It took all of her Will to keep herself from gasping.
Had he spotted her? Did he know?
He turned to the door, and Stacy let out a silent sigh of relief. He hadn't been looking at her. He was looking at the window she was standing in front of, checking out the exits, mentally preparing his escape.
“Silence,” he whispered. There was a sudden and barely perceptible void of sound from his side of the room now. No breathing or creak of rope against wood. He mouthed a couple of words after that, presumably to make sure his spell was working.
It was definitely a wise first step. He was by no means the stealthiest person in the world. But that didn't solve the problem of the caltrops. How did he intend to –
Oh, no. Dave, you're not going to...
The sweat running up his face. The tightly-shut eyes. The already-pained grimace. He was absolutely going to.
Taking the shape of a dire rat, he disappeared into his clothes as his feet slipped out of the rope's knots. Stacy winced as he landed hard on the caltrops, then rolled and flailed like a man on fire as they tore through his clothes and bloodied his fur. His screams certainly would have woken half the city if he hadn't magically silenced himself. When he finally rolled away from the caltrops, he changed back into his normal form.
Naked, panting, and bleeding from several deep puncture wounds, he clapped a hand over one nipple and said something that Stacy couldn't understand at the angle she was watching from. His caltrop wounds closed, though the streaks of blood on his pasty white skin remained.
He got to his feet, eyes raging with fury. Though his footsteps were silent, Stacy could feel them as he stomped toward the mat with clenched fists.
His angry gaze shifted from the mat to the knife beside it, which Stacy had left there to help sell the ruse. It was conceivable that she'd hold it while she slept, but she thought that seeing it there on the floor would remove any doubts as to where she was.
He changed into his hybrid rat-person form, then got down on his hands and knees. Leaning in close to where he thought she was, he sniffed the mat. Quickly at first, then longer deeper sniffs, like he was savoring her scent. He even opened his pointy-toothed rat mouth like he wanted to bite her. Then his hand moved quickly to catch a tendril of drool before it would have landed on her, and he pulled back.
Good call, Dave. You might have gotten in a bite, but it wouldn't have ended well for you.
He changed back into his dwarven form, picked up the dagger, and got back on his feet. Holding the dagger like an ice pick, he raised it like he was going to plunge it straight into her. That's when his penis started to extend.
Stacy watched with disgusted fascination as Dave jerked himself off over where he thought she was sleeping. She couldn't make out all the words he was shouting as he furiously tugged himself, but she made out a few whores, bitches, fucks, and cunts. Was this what Dave was like behind closed doors? Or was this the wererat talking?
Then another thought occurred to her. If he tried to ejaculate on her, which very much looked to be his intention, it was going to spray all over the mat, and he'd know she wasn't there. That wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world, but as long as she was resigned to pulling an all-nighter, she was hoping that she'd at least be able to tail him and see what he did with his newfound freedom.
If she was discovered, it would be a good idea to strike first and hard with some hits that told him she wasn't fucking around anymore. With him in possession of the dagger, the only things in this room that could deliver that kind of message was the caltrops. If she held them the right way, she could position one of the spikes between two of her fingers and deliver some painful punches to Dave without hurting herself too bad.
She was almost looking forward to trying it out, but Dave turned at the last second and squirted on the wall near the mat. It made sense. As much fucked-up satisfaction it might have given him to deliver his payload on her, it wasn't the safest way to wake up a badass bitch who could kick his ass.
His deed done, Dave put on his shredded blood-stained clothes, packed up as much of Stacy's shit as he could quickly gather, and left through the door.
Stacy gathered what he'd left behind, which pretty much amounted to the rope and caltrops, then looked out the window. When she spotted him on the street, she slipped out the door nearly as silently as he had, and followed him into the night.
Chapter 48
“I don't think this is the right island,” said Chaz. It was pissing down rain, and they'd been trudging through this soggy shithole of a forest for hours. It must have been morning, because he could now see about twenty feet of puddles and dead forest in every direction. Everything was brown and wilted. The rain did little to cool his skin, seeming to mingle with his sweat rather than wash it away. The oppressively humid air and stench of rotting fish made breathing difficult. He felt like he was walking through Cooper's anus.
“This is the place, all right,” said Julian resolutely, as if he could make it true by believing it hard enough. “I'm sure of it.”
“I am sure, too,” said Fazul. “One hundred percent.” He glanced at the bottle in Chaz's hand.
Chaz took a swig from Fazul's bottle and handed it back to him. “You mean you really want it to be. Neither of you has ever been to Nazere before. How can you be so sure?”
Fazul looked to Julian for a response, which didn't inspire much confidence in Chaz.
“Look at the trees,” said Julian, squinting up through the rain. “They're all dead, even the ones still standing up. Not a single green leaf on any of them.”
Chaz followed his gaze. The trees were just as Julian described. “Okay, so this place sucks. That doesn't mean it's Nazere.”
“It's been frozen for decades, and only recently thawed out. That would explain the devastation.” He gestured to the forest floor. “Look at these saplings growing everywhere. Give this island a few years to get back on her feet, and it'll be the tropical paradise it used to be before the Ice Queen got here.”
Fazul nodded and took another drink from his bottle. “But where are all the women? Why have we not seen your friends yet?”
“The mud is slowing us down,” said Julian. “And we don't know where they are, or even where we are. Plus, it's still early in the morning. Everybody's probably still asleep. Keep your ears open. They should start stirring before – Look!”