by Jenner, M
“I take it you all want feeding?” Bell asked.
“Yes please, Bell,” Kern answered for the party, pulling out a chair from the great table and making himself comfortable.
Bell turned, wiping her hands on a towel. “And I suppose you would like a drink also?” she said, bending down to pull a keg out from a small kitchen cupboard, then taking four wooden mugs from the worktop.
They all thanked Bell and happily accepted the beverage – all, that is, apart from Nuran. He had fallen asleep within seconds of sitting down, his handlebar moustache flapping gently as he snored quietly.
Bell sat at the round centre table next to Kern. “So, where are you heading, O slayer of hill giants?” Bell asked with a wry smile.
“News travels fast, I see,” Kern answered.
“We hear most stories here. Was he really twenty feet tall with a club the size of a cow?” Bell asked sardonically.
“Oh, at least,” Kern replied with a smile. “I would say more like twenty-five feet tall.”
“Whatever it was, the town was truly grateful for your help. That giant had been terrorizing farmers for weeks – months even,” Bell said as she got up and poured another drink for herself and Kern. “So where are you boys heading?”
Kern thought for a moment before answering. “We’re looking for a party of orcs that ambushed some of the King’s guard a few weeks back. We should pick up their trail on the other side of the river, just north of Gateford Forest,” Kern explained.
“Oh, I see. What did they steal?” she asked, rising to stir the huge pot of stew.
“Just a couple of chests of gold,” Kern revealed casually, taking a mouthful of ale.
“Hasn’t the King got enough gold chests to accept the loss of a few?”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying all along,” Galandrik interrupted in a quiet voice; Ty had fallen asleep in the chair next to him.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Kern replied. “We were in a position where we couldn’t really say no. It doesn’t really matter how much gold he has or hasn’t got, we are still pledged to find the gold that was stolen,” Kern said, looking pointedly at Galandrik.
“My father will be back soon; I’d better get ready to serve dinner,” Bell said, moving back to the kitchen area.
“Your father is the ferryman?” Kern asked, surprised.
“Yes, he is – and I should warn you, he doesn’t like strangers,” Bell said with a half-smile.
At that moment the front door opened, and in walked the biggest man Kern had ever seen. He stood easily seven feet tall, and nearly as wide. His forearms were bigger than mead kegs; it must have come from pulling the ferry every day, Kern thought. A huge black beard, greying slightly with age, hung down halfway to his belt.
The Ferryman walked into the kitchen and Bell stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “More strangers?” the huge man said, in a deep and rumbling tone.
“Yes Papa, these are the ones who slayed the giant,” Bell said excitedly, hoping her father would pick up on her enthusiasm.
The Ferryman looked critically at the four strangers, two of them snoring gently. “This bunch killed a giant,” he said in a disbelieving tone. “Well, best they tell me all about it over dinner,” he chuckled as he walked to the sink to wash the dirt from his hands.
Bell placed the huge bubbling pot onto a stand on the table and added two loaves of freshly baked bread and a pot of freshly churned butter. Galandrik woke Nuran and Ty and they all took their places at the table, while Bell called Jay and Solomon in from the barn. Kern introduced them one by one to the ferryman, and the room was soon full of dinner-table chatter. Nuran twisted his handlebar moustache and began telling the tale of the giant’s defeat in his best story-telling voice.
Kern studied Jay and Bell; they looked almost perfect in complexion, not a blemish marking their faces. Bell’s skin in particular was like a sheet of shining silk. In the massive frame of the ferryman Kern saw years of hard work, and etched in every line across his ageing face. He looked every inch like the last survivor of a particular tribe of humans who lived in the eastern mountains, massive people who had been formed by nature and from years of hard work, carrying rocks out of the heart of the mountain when building their homes deep underground. Legend held that the tribe had moved on or died out many aeons ago, a result of the constant warring between dwarves, humans, and orcs. They had been forced out of their homes, but stories of this tribe of massive men and women were still told in towns and villages across Bodisha. There is no way he’s their father, Kern thought, but kept his views to himself.
Nuran finished the story with a flourish; Ty thought privately that the events seemed slightly more interesting now than they had at the time.
“That’s a very good story,” the bearded man rumbled. “So where are you heading now?” He used a chunk of bread to wipe clean the bottom of his wooden bowl. Kern gave the same response he had given Bell.
The ferryman stroked his massive beard, thinking deeply; at length he spoke. “I bet you that gold has been taken to the orc town in the southern mountains. The name slips my mind at the moment, but that’s where their loot is usually taken. If your gold has been taken there, I doubt you will ever see it again. Getting into that stronghold would be like climbing into hell itself. Apparently they store all their loot there in great piles until their Queen Valla visits. Then she picks what she wants, and dishes out the rest. And if she’s not happy with the selections, she throws her orc captains into the gold-melting pots,” he finished, ladling out another bowl of stew in the awed silence. “Stew’s lovely, Bell; a little more pepper would have been nice, though,” he said, smiling.
Bell slid the pepper pot across the table. “Add it to your own, father, not everybody likes it!” The ferryman chuckled as he added more than enough pepper to his bowl.
Galandrik shook his head slightly to dispel the image of flesh in a vat of bubbling, molten gold. “I hope the gold is there; we can crush some orc skulls!” he said, hitting his chest with his fist.
Ty looked across the table at the dwarf and shook his head. “What are you going to do, knock on the front door?”
Nuran chuckled as Galandrik answered angrily, “Maybe I will, thief!”
“Look, we don’t know where it is. That’s only what…” Kern looked at the ferryboat man with dismay. After being introduced only twenty minutes earlier, his name had already slipped Kern’s weary mind.
The huge man smiled at Kern’s embarrassment, and quickly put him out of his misery. “Call me Finn.”
“It’s only Finn’s suggestion,” Kern finally finished, nodding his thanks to the huge man.
“Even so, it sounds feasible,” Ty said. “If it is true, what will we do?” Ty added.
“Go tell Conn he needs an army for his precious gold?” Kern shrugged.
“Or a dozen dwarves!” Galandrik chuckled.
They had each finished off two bowls of stew and a few jugs of ale by the time Bell began clearing the table. “Would you like a hand, Bell?” Nuran offered gallantly.
“No thank you, I can manage. Jay, please show the men to their rooms.”
Around huge yawns, they thanked Finn and Bell for their hospitality, and left the payment for the meal and lodging on the table. Then, picking up their weapons, they followed Jay out the back door and across a small field full of vegetables to another wooden building. Jay opened the door and gestured for them to enter. Entering, they saw a square room with eight sets of bunk beds, laid out like a military barracks. At one end of the room was a washing bowl and towels; at the other, a large window faced east, showing the moonlight bouncing off Lake Col in the distance.
A slight wind rippled the calm water of the lake, and an occasional fish broke the surface to snatch up low-flying insects, making widening rings on the water’s surface. It was just possible to make out the black shadows of the Eastern Mountains beyond the lake, rising up in the darkness like mighty black finge
rs with snow-white nails.
Solomon went for one last check on the horses, while the others bedded in for the night. “Are we doing a night watch?” Galandrik asked around a yawn.
“You can if you want. I’m hitting the sack. If anybody gets past that monster of a man to get to us, we aren’t going to stop them,” Ty said as he lay back onto a bed.
“It was him I was thinking we watch for!” Galandrik quipped.
“Oh. OH! I’ll take first!” Ty said, leaping up as they all laughed.
They sorted out the watch order, and Ty did indeed take the first sitting. He sat looking out the window, but before long the view got monotonous. Lovely, but boring, he thought, looking around the darkened room. His gaze fell on the backpack at the foot of his bed. Idly looking through it, he found the same type of box Kern had – unbeknownst to Ty – found in his own pack. Slowly he opened it, finding four potion bottles, each in its own separate compartment, filled with hay to prevent any damage en route. Carefully picking one out, he examined it closely. It was a glittery blue liquid in a bowl-shaped bottle, the long neck plugged with a cork stopper. On the side of the bottle was an inscription. Angling the bottle this way and that in the faint moonlight, he could finally make out what looked like a string of bubbles, starting small at the bottom and getting larger towards the top of the potion bottle. Ty couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and he placed it back into the box.
Just then, a movement caught Ty’s eye from outside the window. Placing the box back into his backpack without looking, he kept his gaze fixed on the view outside. He saw movement again – a mammoth black bear running towards the lake. That bear would make an impressive wall trophy or rug, he thought to himself, but killing it would be harder than killing the giant.
Suddenly the bear stopped and turned, looking straight towards Ty. Even though the distance between them was great, he still felt it was staring right through him. The bear stood up on its hind legs and roared, rattling the glass on the window. Ty slipped down on the floor in fright, pressing his back to the wall, the window just above his head.
The bed closest to Ty was Solomon’s, and he was awakened by the noise. He swung his legs out of the bed briskly, then stood looking down at Ty.
“What was that, and why are you sitting down there?” Solomon asked quietly, so as not to wake the others. Ty didn’t answer, just pointed a shaky finger up towards the window. Placing both hands on the windowsill, Solomon stared out. “There’s nothing there,” he said, looking down at Ty and shrugging his shoulders.
Ty turned on his knees and slowly rose up until his eyes were just visible over the sill. He looked out the window, eyes darting left and right. “There was the biggest bear, Sol, and he was staring right at me. I swear he knew I was here,” Ty said, and Solomon could see the honesty in his face.
“Maybe you nodded off and dreamt it?” Solomon suggested. “Or maybe there was a bear, and he’s gone to the lake to get some fish for supper,” he smiled.
Ty stood up and stared out of the window.
“Yeah, maybe, Sol. You’re probably right,” Ty agreed. With a friendly slap to Ty’s shoulder, Solomon went back to bed.
Ty stared out the window but saw nothing for the rest of his watch. As the time neared for Galandrik to take his turn at watch, he risked a quick look through Solomon’s backpack. He found nothing of interest there, and finally went to wake Galandrik. He never mentioned the bear.
They were all awakened in the morning by Solomon, who’d had last watch. “Bell is doing up a breakfast before we leave, if anybody fancies some. I would recommend it because we won’t get any more good ones for a few days. It’ll be hard rations only, or whatever we can kill.”
“Let’s eat. I’m starving!” Ty said, grabbing his leather jerkin from the bottom of his bed.
“You’re always hungry – you should be twenty stone by now!” Kern jested from across the room.
“I burn it all off; that’s why I’m so slim. Input, output,” Ty answered, glancing in Galandrik’s direction.
“All dwarves have a belly!” Galandrik said, frowning at Ty.
“I never said anything!”
“You didn’t have to; I could read your little mind! But one must feed a furnace,” Galandrik said, putting on his armour as the others left the cabin chuckling.
Soon they were all seated around the table in the main cabin. Bell placed a large dish in the middle, heaped with eggs, bacon, and last night’s leftover stew. She brought out loaves of bread, wrapped in paper for freshness, a small crock of freshly churned butter, and a dish of fruit preserves.
Soon the whole table was eating heartily. “Your horses are ready for you, and the ferry is too. As soon as you’re finished, father would like to get on his way,” Bell said, placing a pot of hot lemon tea on the table.
“We’ll leave as soon as we finish, Bell; your generosity has been more than we could have asked for,” Kern said. When they all had finished breakfast and thanked Bell, Ty slipped his hand inside his secret pocket, making sure no one was watching. He slipped out a gold piece from the pocket hiding the farmer’s money, deliberately tossing the coin onto the table to make maximum noise.
“There you go, my good lady. That should cover breakfast with some left over to buy yourself and Jay something nice.”
Everybody knew that the gold piece would cover far more than breakfast, dinner, the rooms, and the horses, but no one said anything. Bell picked up the coin and bit it, then slipped it into her pocket.
“Thank you very much, you are more than kind,” Bell said with a smile.
She stood on the doorstep and waved them off as they led their horses towards the ferry. Finn was untying the mooring ropes as they approached him. Without turning he said, “There are slots for your horses to keep them calm as we cross; lead them on one by one.”
After the horses had all been secured, Finn climbed aboard. The huge man stood on the side of the ferry, where a rope was threaded through two snatch blocks at either end of the wooden vessel. He seated himself on a chair at the left side of the deck and started to pull; slowly the ferry started to move forward.
Standing at the front of the barge, Ty saw a wooden rack, nearly as tall as Kern, with ropes hanging down; every six inches down the rope was a fish hanging from a hook. There must be fifty fish there, Ty thought with surprise. Kern walked over to him and stood staring at the fish. “They’re fresh,” Kern observed. “Pity we’re not staying for tea.”
Ty stared at Kern, thinking about the fresh fish and remembering what he had seen the night before. He studied the huge man pulling the ferry across the river. “When do you think he caught them?” he asked.
“I don’t know, maybe he got up early,” Kern answered.
“It must have been bloody early to catch fifty!” Ty said, crossing his arms.
“Maybe he went night-fishing,” Kern said with a laugh, not realizing that Ty was thinking the very same thing.
“I think maybe he did,” Ty said softly.
“Oh come on, Ty, I was joking. Pulling this all day, then spending all night fishing? No one could do that,” Kern said, shaking his head.
“What about if he could…” Ty stopped mid-sentence, knowing how stupid he would sound.
“Could what?” Kern asked.
Ty turned and walked away, muttering, “Never mind, you wouldn’t understand.” He stood leaning on a barrel, then took out his dagger and started scratching the wooden lid.
Shaking his head, Kern walked over to Galandrik. “I think Ty is losing the plot,” he said. “Right, so if you think a king wouldn’t miss two chests full of gold, why do you think he has us looking for it?”
“I don’t think we are looking for gold,” Galandrik explained. “I think we’re looking for two chests, but what’s in them may be a different matter.”
“Yes, that’s a good point. I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Kern said, patting the dwarf on the shoulder as he walked away. Further down the ba
rge, he saw Nuran and Solomon playing dice on a barrel lid. “Count me in next hand,” he said.
“Five silver pieces a go?” Nuran answered.
“Is that all?” Kern said with a smile, and placed a bag of coins on the table.
Ty glanced up at the ferryman and after only a moment Finn turned, as if he had sensed the thief’s eyes on him. Ty turned away without meeting his gaze, and did not look at him again.
Two hours and many dice rolls later, they reached the far side of the bank. Waiting there was a fat man sitting on a cart; in the distance they could see the fringes of Gateford Forest. “Is he a friend of yours?” Kern asked Finn.
“Yes, he buys my fish every third day,” Finn answered.
“You do a lot of fishing?” Kern asked idly, looking up at Finn.
“You seem to want to know a lot. Can a man not put a few nets out and make a few silver coins?” Finn said in his gravelly voice.
“You are right, sir, it is none of my business. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
The ferry finally stopped at the bankside. Finn jumped down and tied the mooring ropes to the jetty poles. “Your nets, I see, have been catching nicely, Finn,” the man on the cart said, climbing down.
They led the horses off the ferry and bade Finn farewell – all except Ty, who did not even look back. Before they mounted up, Solomon and Kern unrolled a map and began tracing paths across it with their fingers, heads bowed in concentration. When the pair were finally in agreement on what route to take, they all set off southwesterly towards Gateford Forest.
After a good three hundred paces, Ty finally turned back to look at Finn, knowing that even if the ferryman was what he suspected he was, he could never catch him now. Finn had been loading the fish on the cart with his back to the traveling group, but at that precise moment the ferryman stood up straight, turned, and stared. Ty could feel the fierce gaze burning through him, just as the bear’s had done the night before. Shivers ran up his spine and he looked away quickly, wrapping his cloak tightly around him.