by Logan Jacobs
Chapter 1
“One whiskey,” I said as I slammed a coin down on the bar and slid it across to the owner of the saloon.
He picked up the coin and squinted at it, and then at me. I knew his judgment on the latter was what really mattered. There weren’t many metallurgists or alchemists around, and they were the only ones that would have been able to sense whether your silver or gold was genuine, or just a dried cow pat with a temporary illusion applied.
I stared him straight in the eye. I was a stranger to this town, and he had no reason to trust me. But he didn’t have any immediate visual reason to distrust me either. I stuck to somber colors and plain cuts, practical clothes that were easy to move around in and didn’t draw undue attention, without any tokens or insignias to associate me with anyone’s lawfully employed household, criminal gang, or magic guild.
Yet the most compelling reason of all for the saloonkeeper to serve me hung at my waist in a scabbard. A length of skilfully forged steel like this indicated that I had more money than the vast majority of folks, and since I wasn’t dressed dandy enough to be a lordling who carried the thing for decoration, it indicated that I had more training too. Which meant that I could more than likely afford to pay for a drink, and that it probably wasn’t worth the risk of trying to deny me one.
I could see all of these calculations flicker across the saloon keeper’s grizzled face as his eyes roved over me and stopped on the sword. He grunted his assent through the luxurious gray mustache that mostly obscured his mouth, poured a shot of whiskey, and slid it across the bar to me without a word.
I wasn’t any kind of metalworker or illusionist. I didn’t have the magical ability to hoodwink anyone with false money. The particular magical ability that I did have, though, ensured that I could always satisfy my thirst with just one drink.
I clasped the dingy little glass in my hand and caused it to swell to the size of a pitcher. The liquid inside swelled proportionately along with the vessel. I clasped the pitcher in both hands, raised it to my mouth for a long swig, and then set it back down on the bar.
The two ranchers who were also seated at the bar looked over at the sound of the substantial thud that it made. They eyed my pitcher with surprise. It wasn’t a size that the saloon served. As a matter of fact it wasn’t a size that any saloon served. The nearest rancher’s eyes darted back and forth from my pitcher to the tiny whiskey glass in his hand until he seemed to recognize that it was a larger version of the exact same thing and figured out that I must have manipulated it.
“That’s a nifty trick, partner,” he chuckled. “Fill me up?” He held out his empty glass hopefully.
“Drink fast,” I instructed, and sloshed some of the whiskey into his glass.
“Drink fast why?” he asked after he tipped it back and drained it.
“Because when I’m no longer touching something it goes back to its rightful size,” I said. “What I really gave you was just a few drops, not a shot. If you had let it sit on the bar a minute, then that’s all that would’ve been left.”
“Well now, that’s a magic I’ve never encountered before, and I’ve encountered my fair share,” he said thoughtfully. “What do you do with a magic like that? Get drunk for cheap?”
“Among other things,” I replied as I took another swig of whiskey.
“What kinda other things, if you don’t mind my asking?” asked the other rancher as he held out his glass too. I filled it because I didn’t mind filling it. I didn’t mind his asking either, but that didn’t mean I was inclined to answer it forthrightly. “Thank you kindly.”
“All kinds of-- ” I began.
“Hey!” the owner of the saloon interrupted angrily. “Are you going to pay for that drink, mister?”
“What drink?” I asked as I stared into his eyes over the rim of my pitcher as I slowly raised it to my mouth again with both hands. “I already paid fair and square for this here.”
“Th-th-th-- ” the mustached man stammered as his eyes darted back and forth between my oversized drink and the rancher’s newly refilled one, unsure of how exactly to phrase his complaint. “The extra!”
“I didn’t get any extra from you, Dex, I got it from my new friend here,” the rancher cut in with a chuckle. “And he gave it to me freely from his own cup of his own will. Seems to me nobody owes nobody nothing that they ain’t already paid for.”
“I don’t care which of you it is, but one of you needs to pay me for a whiskey,” Dex said stubbornly.
“That makes no sense,” I said. “The fact that I enlarged the whiskey you gave me originally has in no way diminished your existing stores. I didn’t take a drop more from you than I paid for. In fact, if you really want to discuss it, I’d say your pour was a bit on the stingy side.”
“It’d make sense if you understood the laws of economics!” Dex said hotly. “You shouldn’t’a been able to do what you did do! And if you hadn’t’a done what you did do, these fellas both woulda been on their next drinks by now, and as the proprietor of this establishment, I’d’a been the party responsible for furnishing said drinks! So you just cheated me of two sales! And if you think you can just sit there smirking at me and keep pouring free whiskeys in my saloon right under my very own nose--”
“What, are magic users not welcome in this saloon?” I asked loudly. Heads turned toward us at several of the tables in the room. It was getting towards evening, and this town was on the large and prosperous side, so there were probably nearly thirty people there. So odds were there were a couple other magic users, and even if there weren’t any, there were certainly folks with magic-using friends or family who were interested in hearing Dex’s response.
“No, no, of course magic users are very welcome here,” Dex said hastily as he made placating hand gestures toward the room at large. “Very welcome. Thieves, however, are not!”
“It’s not thieving to share my own damn drink,” I said. I reached over to his side of the bar, grabbed a bottle of whiskey, and made it shrink to the size of a thimble. Then I held it out on the palm of my hand for him to see. “Now, if I took what was yours and reduced it… that would be thieving, wouldn’t it? Or destruction of property. Whatever the hell you want to call it. That would be a crime, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would!” he snapped. “Change it back or I’ll call the sheriff!”
I set down the thimble-sized bottle of whiskey back in its place, and it slowly started to grow back to its former size.
“If I shrank the sheriff, he wouldn’t be much good to you anymore, would he?” I asked solemnly. As a matter of fact, humans and all other living creatures, even plants, were unaffected by my ability. It only seemed to work on inanimate objects. But no one in the room knew that. “And if I shrank this entire saloon, and everyone inside it got crushed to death by the contracting timbers, that would be pretty damn bad for business, wouldn’t it?”
Dex’s mouth opened to make a retort out of habit even though he clearly didn’t have any words prepared yet. He stared at me and was probably trying to decide whether I was bluffing. If I really could have done the things I said, then my ability would have been freakishly powerful, one of the most powerful in the world. Of the organic kind, anyway. Sorcerers and their magics were another category altogether. But even though the odds were in Dex’s favor, my impenetrable poker face apparently convinced him that it was better to play it safe than sorry, and he shut his mouth without letting any more threats or insults escape out of it.
That was all I wanted from the man. A little respect, and a lot of peace and quiet. So once he gave it to me I figured I’d let him off the hook.
“Fortunately for you, I don’t think I could do that,” I sighe
d, “without spilling my drink.”
I grinned to show him that I had no imminent homicidal intentions.
There was a pause, and then Dex forced a laugh. The two ranchers whose glasses I’d refilled laughed, too. A few of the other customers who were eavesdropping from the nearby tables laughed, and then they went back to their conversations and their card games.
Which isn’t to say that they didn’t keep a sly eye on me after that, because they did. It wasn’t just about my magical ability, which probably didn’t faze them too much, since the cleverer ones would have a pretty good idea that it wasn’t likely to be as powerful as I had claimed. It was also about the sword at my belt that they surely would have noticed when my argument with Dex first made them look my way. There weren’t too many people who carried around a long blade like that. And maybe it was also partly just my face and build and the way I carried myself. Women liked to tell me that I had a dangerous look about me. Men didn’t like to tell me that, but their expressions and their body language often communicated as much anyway.
But no one looked like they planned to sidle up to me or start anything, so I just enjoyed my drink and allowed the two ranchers seated next to me to engage me in conversation. At first they wanted to talk about me-- what I used my power and my sword for, where I’d come from, why I was in town, and a bunch of other questions, some of which I had no intention of discussing with strangers-- but it wasn’t hard to divert them into talking about themselves instead. I’d found that was most people’s favorite subject. Even in cases when there wasn’t hardly much to say on it. Soon I had the two of them, they turned out to be brothers called Billy and Bob, regaling me with tall tales of how they’d been ambushed and captured by a tribe of marauding Savajuns.
Billy even pulled off his boot to show me the stub where his right big toe had been chopped off, supposedly as a means of Savajun torture. But I’d never heard tell of any Savajun practice like that, whereas I had seen a number of similar injuries that came about as the result of a lapse in concentration while chopping wood. Besides, there weren’t many folks who were cunning and woodcrafty enough to give the Savajuns the slip once captured, as Billy and Bob claimed to have done. But that didn’t mean their tale wasn’t amusing.
“So after that we crawled for seven days and seven nights, expecting a tomahawk in the back of the skull all the while,” Bob said. He glanced down a little wistfully at his empty glass, and I refilled it from my bucket-sized drinking vessel, which I’d had to enlarge again as the ratio of whiskey to glass crept downward. Most of the time, the art of making friends required pretending that you were just like other folks, and setting people at ease around you, and being patient and kind about their most inexcusable shortcomings, and I’d never picked up the knack of that. So I didn’t mind that Billy and Bob’s friendship seemed to come cheap, for the price of a few drops of whiskey and a listening ear.
“Crawled, was it?” I asked. “But you said you stole that mule from the tribe when you left, didn’t you? So couldn’t you have ridden it, if your toe was paining you too greatly for walking?”
Billy and Bob exchanged glances.
“Well, you see, turned out the mule made too much noise,” Billy replied. “Crashing through the brush and all that. And, ah, yeehawing at the slightest bit of startlement. So we had to slaughter it. A damn shame, but there wasn’t nothing for it.”
“Wasn’t in vain, though,” Bob assured me as he wagged his finger for emphasis. “Wasn’t in vain at all. We roasted the meat and feasted that night.”
“And then, we crawled inside the rest of the carcass that was left over with all the discarded organs and what not and used its fading warmth to keep from freezing that night,” Billy added enthusiastically.
“You both fit in that mule together?” I raised an eyebrow and pointed at each of them in turn. “Not even a horse we’re talking here. Just a little ol’ mule. Well, must’ve been awful cozy quarters for you gents, huh?”
“Now I sure as hell don’t know what you’re trying to get at here, Mister-- Mister-- ” Bob’s indignant sputtering subsided as he got distracted by the realization that he didn’t even know my name. “Mister… er, what is it anyway?”
“Hale,” I said. “Halston Hale.” That was my name now, anyway. The name I’d chosen. The name that I liked to leave on everyone’s lips in all the towns that I passed through in the hopes that it would start traveling on ahead of me to all the towns I hadn’t reached yet and rustle up a few buyers for my services ahead of time.
“Hmm, that sounds mighty familiar, although I can’t say where from,” Billy mused as he squinted at me in puzzlement and started to stroke his chin.
“Halston Hale the famous mercenary,” I prompted. “Famous” might have been overstating the matter a bit, but it was really only a matter of time. I was the best there was in the business. Most potential clients just hadn’t been properly notified of that fact yet.
“Mercenary?” Billy repeated, evidently in just as much confusion as before.
“You know, a hired sword,” Bob elbowed him in the ribs and nodded his chin at the sword that hung conspicuously from my belt. “What else did you think he’d be? Without a stitch of knightly colors on him? And not smelling like no rosewater neither?”
“I happen to smell very pleasantly of sagebrush and tobacco,” I stated.
“Well, I guess it happens you do, but I reckon there’s a bit of eau de horse mixed in too,” Bob replied with a wink. There was more than a bit of “eau de horse” mixed in with his scent and his brother’s, so I guess he’d know what he was talking about on that count.
“Theo would consider that a compliment,” I muttered.
“Theo, who’s Theo?” Billy asked.
“My horse, of course,” I said.
“Ah, a jokester,” Bob smirked at me.
“I mean it quite literally,” I told him.
“But a horse can’t have opinions--” Bob started to protest.
Before I had a chance to explain to him that alas, a horse could indeed have all too many opinions, the swinging doors of the saloon banged open and a dusty, freckled, frantic mess of a boy burst in.
“Ain’t you a bit young to be patronizing a saloon, Phil?” an elderly gentleman near the doors asked him with a chuckle.
“Bandits are attacking!” the boy hollered at the top of his lungs. He looked like he was close to tears. “It’s Gold Tooth Jimmy and his gang! Somebody, help!”
“Well, look at that, this is your chance to be a hero!” Billy declared as he clapped me on the shoulder. “Halston Hale, the hero of Highridge-- doesn’t that have a lovely ring to it?”
“I’m not too fond of it because it’s bound to give some folks the wrong impression,” I replied.
“What do you mean, the wrong impression?” Bob asked.
“The impression that they can avail themselves of my services for free,” I answered.
“They’re burning down the inn and a couple of houses and they dragged off Emmy Collins and they hit Roger White over the head, and he ain’t moving no more and my ma says they’ll burn Highridge to the ground!” Phil shouted in one breath. “She told me run for help, and I knew this is where there’d be the most men this hour. Somebody help, we have to stop them!”
The boy wasn’t talking to me in particular because he had no idea that I existed. However, more and more of the other saloon customers’ eyes were starting to drift in my direction. It was time to make my sales pitch.
I stood up from my stool and turned to face the saloon at large.
“Well, since none of you are leaping up to defend your town against these gaudy-dentured hooligans, that leads me to surmise that you would prefer for someone else to step in and do your dirty work for you?” I asked.
There was dead silence. Wide, frightened eyes stared back at me. There was resentment in some of them. Some of the men hung their heads in shame and wouldn’t meet my eyes at all.
“Please do,” a pl
ump, ringleted matron spoke up finally. She clasped her hands together theatrically. “Highridge is a civilized town where all the men have civilized jobs. Violence is not our domain.”
“Don’t you have a sheriff here?” I asked incredulously.
“Well yes, we do, and a deputy too, but what do you expect them to do against the likes of Gold Tooth Jimmy?” the matron exclaimed. “Please, can’t you help us?”
Other voices joined in the pathetic chorus.
“You have a sword!”
“You’re a magic user!”
“I reckon I probably can help y’all,” I said.
“Won’t you, please?” she continued. “We’ll be forever indebted to you!”
“No, that you certainly will not,” I said. “I require payment for any job upfront, precisely for the purpose of precluding that unpleasant possibility.”
The customers looked unhappy. Dex, behind me, gave a sort of disdainful snort-- as if he were eager to start pouring everyone’s drinks for free, as if he hadn’t just been bitching at me a few minutes ago for “robbing” him of a potential sale.
“How much?” someone asked me after a few moments, in a tone of deep suspicion.
“They’re burning the town right now!” Phil yelled. “Can’t we haggle over this afterward?”
“Standing over corpses that no longer pose any threat to Highridge wouldn’t be a very good bargaining position for me, would it now?” I pointed out. “Right now in your moment of danger, every one of you knows exactly how much it’s worth to you to be saved. Later, once you’re safe again, well, seems to me you might start forgetting. Rationalizing down the price. Calculating on how much you can afford to give, instead of everything you stand to lose. No. You pay me now or never.”
“You’re taking advantage of us in our moment of crisis, you coldhearted man!” a woman wailed.
“No, actually, I’m giving you all the chance to take advantage of my presence here in your moment of crisis,” I corrected her.
Then I sat my ass back down on the barstool, raised my glass of whiskey to my lips, and took a slow gulp.