by Mark Eller
Kat’s ax swung toward Mathew’s head.
Glace’s sword knocked the ax away. Her face filled with fury and fear, Kat swung the ax back up, hesitated, and let it fall to the floor.
Mathew carefully pulled himself free of Halberd’s remains, knowing he had close to a dozen newly broken bones. A separated shoulder writhed painfully beneath his skin and then oozed back into place.
Panting, Glace dropped the sword and fell to his knees. A dark bruise marred one entire side of his face. Kat’s face was streaked with angry, frustrated tears.
Mathew righted a chair and dragged himself into it. He knew he should be as weak as a ten days dead cat, but Halberd’s blood sang inside him. He felt giddy and pure and hated the feeling because he knew this completeness came from his curse’s hunger.
A chair scrapped against the wood floor, and then he heard the sound of slow, deliberate clapping intermingled with steady footsteps.
“Oh jolly good,” Sulya said, coming into view. The similian leaned over to study Mathew, her eyes reflecting perverse interest. “He only missed breaking a few bones. It’s a good thing you’re half-were because a full human would probably not live. As it is, you’ll heal.”
“You can leave now,” Mathew told her. His voice sounded weak. “The tavern is closed.”
“What! Because of this little fight? This isn’t the first time bodies have lain on your floor, nor the last.” Sulya looked speculatively around. “Though mind you, there aren’t usually this many. Well, never mind. I can’t leave because our negotiations aren’t finished.”
“We weren’t negotiating.”
“You were negotiating with Phrandex,” Sulya said, “and the twit works for me.”
She shook her head sadly. “I believed this was his first time out of Hell. I thought an easy success with you would finally bring him to Athos’ss attention in a less than humiliating way, maybe teach him to grow a pair. I never suspected you’d be crass enough to get the boy drunk.”
“This is a tavern,” Mathew pointed out. His shoulder no longer hurt, but his left forearm throbbed a great deal because it was the break his body chose to heal next. The bones shifted and snapped into place. “Tavern’s tend to serve drinks, even to young devils.”
“Unfortunately,” Sulya agreed. “Now, for starters, I really will let you kill my slave if you‘re still hungry for blood. He was a gift from a dear friend named Helnost, but only because he’s no longer useful.”
“Um.” Trying to straighten her clothing, Kat failed miserably. Both her sleeves were ripped away, as was half the fabric on one side of her blouse. Her body and hands were smeared with blood, though not with nearly as much as Mathew had on him. He felt some of the fluid seep into his skin.
“Are you going to kill me?” Kat asked. The edge of a gold coin glinted in her clenched fist. When she looked at Mathew her expression was fear intermingled with disgust.
“No,” Mathew answered. “I’m a little tired right now.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I don’t think I want to work here,” Kat said. “In fact, I think I’ll try to find any other job than whoring. This stuff is a little too rough for me.” She tried to pull her inadequate blouse closed. Once again, she failed. To almost anyone else her bare breasts would have been a distraction. To Mathew they were merely uninteresting.
Taking off his shirt, Glace gave it to her before dropping wearily onto a barstool. “You‘re a con,” he said. “Not a whore. If I thought you were a whore I’d have kicked you out right away. Haven’t used them in here since Mathew took over. In this place, whores only make the body count go up.”
“Caught me,” Kat admitted. “I thought I could maybe con you into giving me something to eat.”
Glace grabbed a piece of paper from the top of the bar. “Can you follow a map?”
“A little,” Kat admitted.
“Then follow this one. It’ll take you to a boarding house run by a woman called Mistress Brood. She sort of specializes in caring for lost kids. She’ll take you in, and she’ll see you learn a respectable trade if that’s what you want.”
Kat took the slip of paper from him. “I’ll think about it. No promises, but I’ll think about it.”
She turned and rushed away.
Mathew gasped when first one rib and then another snapped into place. His money, spilled from two knife pierced bags, lay spread out on the floor. Glinting gold, stained with red, it winked at him, making promises he knew it wouldn’t keep.
“Pretty, isn’t it,” Sulya breathed into his ear. “Gold gives you power and things, but it won’t buy you friends as good as Glace, and it won’t take the disdain out of a woman’s eyes when she sees you. Empty promises, Mathew. That’s all your riches offer; empty promises and a chance for death. Come to Grace, Mathew. You’re needed there. Zorce wants you to be king.”
With its blood and vitality drained away, the half-troll was now a small and wizened being, a caricature of what it had been before. Its strength was a joke of the gods, an ephemeral giving too easily taken away.
“What can Zorce offer me that I don’t already have?” Mathew demanded.
“More money,” Sulya said. “More power. A reason for living.” She gently licked blood from the corner of his wolf black lips and then kissed his nose. The fullness of her allure washed over him. The power of an ancient similian reached for his soul as Sulya tried to make him her own. Normally, Mathew would have fought against her allure. Not this time. Not when her aura parted around him, sank to the floor, and seeped away. Nothing of magic could touch him while he was so filled with half-human blood.
“Mathew, darling,” she whispered. “Remember. Athos is a god. He can give you back your face. All you have to do is be his king— and tell us why a spawn named Jolson went to Grace.”
She kissed him once again and then pulled away. “I’m done with Helnost’s discarded slave, my darling. Kill him, release him. I don’t care. He’ll see either use as a torture.” She smiled. “Think about our offer.”
She walked to the tavern’s door, turned to study Mathew for a moment, and left.
“I didn’t hear.” Glace said. “What does she want?”
Mathew ran his hand over his blood encrusted muzzle and wondered how long he would have to serve the Hell gods before he could touch his face and feel skin instead of fur.
“She wants us to go to Grace,” Mathew said. “I will be king, and you my minister prime. We leave tomorrow, and we’ll bring our little Fox with us. I’m not through with her yet.”
Chapter 2-- Scruples
Eyes half open, Caleb listened to the sounds of young life and smelled the mixed fragrances of baking bread on a too early autumn day. The afternoon’s sun beat down on him, and it was a good thing because cold weather sometimes bit deep into his old bones.
Caleb flexed his arthritic foot gently against Greenswale’s only boardwalk so his chair would continue to slowly rock. Off in the distance, he heard the faint echoes of children at play, and his granddaughter sang inside the bakery while kneading bread. Beside him, the stranger sat stiffly in a straight back chair.
“You will give me food,” the stranger quietly said, “or I will kill you.”
Caleb continued rocking and half-smiled at the foolishness of young men.
“Now that’s a strange way to open a conversation,” he chided. “You’ve been sitting here for the last half hour, and the first thing you can think to say is you’ll kill me. Does that seem like the right way of introducing yourself?”
“I do not care about introductions,” the stranger replied. “I am hungry, and I am being hunted by demons. I need what you have if I am to live.”
Caleb rubbed a thoughtful hand across his chin. “Now that,” he said, “is better. We now know you’re hungry and desperate. We know you’re running, and we know you need help to escape from demons.” He turned his head, opened his eyes fully, and studied the stranger. “We also know your clothes aren’t much more than ra
gs so you‘ve been cold lately. Can’t help you there. Clothing is hard to get in these parts. You won’t find many people willing to part with any what with winter coming on. Your best bet is to visit the miller who lives more than two villages up the road. Word has it she owns a few chests filled with a bunch of castoffs. Was I you, I‘d be careful because she‘s supposed to be something of a vamp.”
“I can take the clothes you wear,” the stranger said. His voice remained flat, but shadows swirled within his eyes. A younger man might have felt menaced, but not Caleb. He was too close to death’s door to care.
“You could,” Caleb agreed, returning his head to its former position. “Wouldn’t do you much good. You’re almost a foot too tall for them, and there are thirty men-folk in this village who are of an age to do something unpleasant if you get feisty. Besides, it won’t be long before these clothes are too light for the weather, especially with it having been all toppy turvy lately. Nope, your best bet is to throw yourself on my mercy and ask for a bit of help.”
“I see none of these people,” the stranger said.
Caleb nodded. “Now that is a fact, Jolson. Most of them are taken up with a fellow who came into the village with six wagons and some drivers last night. They’ll be holding a meeting in the hall shortly, but I want nothing to do with the man’s nonsense, and that‘s exactly what I told Vista‘s beau, Dern.”
Jolson‘s breathing stilled. “I never told you my name.”
“Ain’t many people running around with a green hook attached to the end of their arm,” Caleb explained. “A woman named Tessla came through here a while back. She said you might be by, and we had best see you safely on your way. She said there’s an important task for you to do, and maybe something important you need to learn.” He chuckled. “Truth is, I pretty much stopped looking. Long as it took you to get here, seems you’re not in much of a hurry.”
“She’s wrong,” Jolson said. “I’ve no task but to survive, and I’ve little knowledge on how to travel this upper world. I frequently become lost.”
Caleb chuckled. “Most folks would consider survival to be some important, just as they would spending some time figuring out how to get from one place to another. This Tessla, now, she told me some other things about you. Can’t say I liked what I heard, but we here in Greenswale don’t pay much mind to what somebody has done in the outside world so long as he behaves himself here.” He raised his voice. “Vista!”
“Yeah!” his granddaughter answered from inside the bakery.
“We got us a lost and hungry man out here. You got anything you can feed him?”
“I’ve salt rolls just out of the oven,” she called back. “I can throw a slab of smoked ham in the middle of a couple of them.”
“Now see there,” Caleb said to Jolson. “All you had to do was ask. Wasn’t that a lot easier than getting folks all riled up by threatening them?”
“I never thought of asking,” Jolson admitted. “Is it a common practice?”
“A lot more common than threatening to kill folks,” Caleb answered. Releasing a groan, he painfully levered himself out of his chair. His arthritic foot had seized up again, and his back ached so much it refused to straighten. Being old, he reflected, was one long ordeal of constant small pains, but those pains were a price he had been more than willing to pay these last several years since they allowed him to live long enough to see his granddaughter grow into a fine young woman. He rubbed the back of his bald head with a work crippled hand and reached for his cane.
“Let’s go see if she can throw another of those things together for me. I don’t remember the last time I bothered to eat. Afterwards, we can go down to the hall and let people get a look at you. Somebody might have some extra clothes, though I doubt it. Still, the weather’s gone strange. Winter‘s coming early, and you could easily freeze to death in another week or three.”
* * * *
Caleb hobbled his way past the wood slab door Jolson held open for him. Giving the hook handed man a thin smile of appreciation, he worried about a new pain in his left hip. The short walk had been almost more than he was capable of making. If he continued failing at his present rate he might not make it to spring. This worried him because he wanted to last long enough to see Vista married and with child.
After working his way to the first table that got in his way, he waited patiently until one of its occupants emptied a chair for him. The room, he saw, was not as full as he had expected. Only twenty or so of the village’s men were here, which meant the women-folk had talked some sense into the heads of those who were missing. The hall’s occupants sat around square oak-topped tables, smoking on long pipes, turning the hall’s air into a thin white haze. Kerrad Traveler, the trader, sat causally on the front table’s surface, a confident expression on his face. Three of his drivers stood nearby.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Dern said to Caleb. “You said you were too old to invest in anything new.”
“Won’t live long enough to see any return,” Caleb agreed, accepting a spiced ale from the young man. The concoction would tear up his stomach something awful, but by the gods, when a man was too old for a drink he might as well be dead. He gestured toward Jolson, who stood at his back. “Have a fellow here I want to show around. Jolson is running from something nasty. He needs food and money and maybe some clothes.”
The young man frowned. “Don’t have any clothes to spare. Have a copper or two he can have, and I might have a couple extra eggs.”
“I’ve some potatoes that are growing spots,” Rafin Knacker added, “and I know my brother can spare some oats.”
“Well there you go, Jolson,” Caleb said. “Most of your needs are taken care of right there.”
“Um.” Jolson appeared uncomfortable. “Thank you.”
Caleb thought those the most insincere words he had ever heard.
“You seem hesitant,” Dern noted. “Is something wrong?”
“I have recently been changed,” Jolson said. “I am finding it difficult to adjust.”
Rafin nodded. “We all change, given time. Look at me. I’m a respectable grower with six acres to my name. I’m nothing like the impulsive scamp I used to be. Time did its job, but you don’t look so old. What happened to change you?”
“I gained a conscience,” Jolson admitted. “I find it a very disturbing thing to own even though I have sealed it away within a small portion of my mind.” His statement was answered by an uncomfortable silence.
Kerrad Traveler pulled back his cape’s heavy, fur-lined hood. Tugging at the tails of his woolen shirt, he cleared his throat to gain attention. “If you don’t mind, I need to get through this now. I’ve other places to visit if I can’t get the grain I need here. This mine I’m carting for is an important find. Plenty of people want to work it, but they have to eat, and they’re quickly running out of food. These are desperate, hungry people sitting on a gem mine the likes of which I’ve never heard of before. I’ve no doubt we can get a promise of half their find for a few wagon-loads of grain and maybe one of salt.” He peered at them with steady eyes. “Think of it. We’ll all be rich. This mine has jewels of every type you can imagine. Two or three gems would be enough to pay for the grain and salt. Everything else would be pure profit, and the profit will only get better when the miners are forced to come to us again.”
“Something I don’t understand,” Dern muttered almost too low for Caleb to hear. “Why does everybody coming through here want our salt?”
“I doubt we have enough grain for you,” Hasty Wags broke in. “Most of our crops are still in the fields. It’ll take at least a couple days to get most of it harvested. Besides, the grain’s intended to feed us and provide seed for next year’s crop. Some of us will go hungry halfway through the winter if we give it all to you now.”
“Nobody will go hungry.” Kerrad leaned slightly forward. His voice became insistent. “Think of the gems. With those you can buy all the food you desire. Come spring, your
wives and children will be fat and strong while those in the neighboring villages will be scrawny and too weak to work their fields. A few more gems will buy those fields and hire workers. Before long, the people of Greenswale will own everything for miles around. This is an opportunity. Only a fool would pass it by.”
Snorting, Caleb hoped nobody was idiot enough to listen to this hornswaggle. “Pipe dreams,” he scoffed. “There ain’t nobody dumb enough to give us all those gems for a few loads of grain. You’ve given us pretty words, but it’s all you’ve done.” He looked at his neighbors and felt grateful Jolson had sat down beside him outside the bakery. Jolson sitting had led to them being here, and being here meant he could attempt to protect the interests of people he’d watched over since they were children.
“Words are nothing but sound, same as passing gas,” he told his friends. “Nothing’s left behind once the air clears.”
“There is this,” Kerrad said, holding up his hand to display a jagged pale pebble. “This is a diamond. The miners let me have it so I could show you a sample of what they have to offer.” He held out his other hand to halt a protest. “Yes, I know it doesn’t look like much now, but that’s just because it hasn’t been cut and polished yet. Fact is, this single stone is worth more than everything I’m asking you to deliver. I could get ten times what I’m asking if I sold it in Grace. King Vere would probably buy it from me himself.”
“Grace is a long way from here, Dern pointed out. He held up his hand. “Throw me the thing.”
Chuckling, Kerrad tossed the pebble across the room. Dern caught it, held it up, and studied it with a careful eye. It was, Caleb saw, at least a half-inch across. More than anything else, it looked to be the kind of stone that was a bit shiny beneath its outer crust.
“Sure is different,” Dern observed. “Ain’t never seen nothing like this before. Are you sure it’s a diamond? Looks a little bit like salt.” He licked the stone and grimaced. “Nope, it ain’t salt.”