by Logan Jacobs
“You shouldn’t underestimate your true character,” Lucinda said as she gazed deeply and earnestly into my eyes and completely ignored my second comment. “There is a hero inside of you. I know there is. Just waiting for the right circumstances… or maybe the right someone… to inspire him to even greater deeds than ever before. And when that day comes, he’ll put the money-grubbing mercenary to shame.”
I laughed. It didn’t seem worth discussing the subject with her. She glared at me for an instant, but then her expression smoothed over into an angelic smile again.
“So what’s the job and how much does it pay?” I asked.
“You need to save Richcreek from the bandits that raid us every month,” she repeated. “Otherwise, they will attack again in three days. They will steal all the potencium that we depend upon for our livelihood and kill anyone who gets in their way.”
“In three days?” I repeated. “What, did they send you a telegraph notifying you of the time and place you should expect them?”
“Three days from now will be the next full moon,” she whispered fearfully, as if that statement should have carried some kind of significance for me.
“Er… they’re a particularly superstitious gang of bandits?” I guessed.
“No, they’re werewolves!” she said, in a fierce whisper, as though it were simply too terrible to speak aloud.
“Well, that’s good news,” I remarked.
“How is that good news?” she exclaimed.
“Werewolves are extra,” I explained. “How many of them?”
“A lot!” She saw my eyes narrow and continued, “I-I think I heard the Mayor say fourteen. But it’s always such chaos when they come. They rampage through the streets-- if they find anyone outside, they tear them limb from limb-- they’re enormous, they’re inhuman monsters! There might as well be a hundred, we are so helpless against them.”
“The price for a hundred is quite different from the price for fourteen,” I informed her.
“Fourteen,” she said. “Please-- won’t you help us? We are doomed if you do not. The men, they tried to fight them at first. But it was no use. You cannot conceive of the hell we’ve endured these last six months. Richcreek was once a lovely and prosperous town, but now it is merely a haunted shell of itself. The monsters have murdered so many. And not only men, women and children too. My grandmother-- and my cousin--” Lucinda’s radiant gray eyes brimmed with water, and a single tear trailed down her ivory cheek.
“It will take some planning, I think, and some assistance from the men of your town,” I said. “Fighting fourteen men singlehandedly is one thing. Not a small thing. But fighting fourteen werewolves singlehandedly is another thing. Not an advisable thing for anyone. But, as long as Richcreek cooperates with me fully, I should be able to make arrangements to resolve your problem.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, a thousand times over,” Lucinda exclaimed as she seized my hand and clasped it in both of hers. That brought our bodies into rather close proximity, which I didn’t mind at all. “Truly, you must have been sent from above to be our savior. We will start out for home at dawn. Everyone will be overjoyed to see you.”
“I said I should be able to, hypothetically speaking,” I said wearily. “Haven’t you been listening to anything I said?”
“… We have no money to pay you,” Lucinda whispered. She hung her head. The moonlight gleamed off the strands of her dark red hair and turned them coppery. Then she raised her head, and twin trails of tears flowed from each of her eyes. Her face didn’t turn red or puffy. She wasn’t hysterical or sobbing or even sniffling. The only visible signs of her distress were the liquid, her eyebrows, which were raised together into an anguished peak at the center of her forehead, and her dramatically heaving bosom. I had to say she practiced a very picturesque form of distress. “Richcreek is a mining town. We mine potencium. And now that the potencium has been taken from us, we have nothing. We are barely scraping by. We have been reduced to the most pathetic and degrading poverty, and many families have left their homes to seek their fortunes elsewhere.”
“Your dress looks quite nice,” I said pointedly. “So do your gloves. And the ribbon in your hair.”
“You wouldn’t demand the very dress off my back, would you, Mr. Hale?” she gasped indignantly.
“I have no interest in wasting my time seeking a buyer for a lady’s dress,” I replied. “I merely observe that your manner of dress is symptomatic of not altogether dire financial straits, that’s all.”
“Oh, yes, that’s the kind of courteous talk to win a lady’s esteem,” the redhead sniffed as she thrust out her chest and placed her hands on her hips, perhaps with the intention of drawing attention to the narrowness of her corseted waist.
“I thought we were talking business?” I said dryly.
“You can’t really be so hardhearted! Don’t you care about anything but money?”
“Well, yes,” I replied. “There’s my horse, Theo. Although, he’s a bit of an ass. Not an actual donkey, mind you, an asshole. I still love him though.”
“You’re a horrible man!” Lucinda accused me.
“Well, you’re a highly irrational woman,” I said, “and I’m not sure I’d want you as my employer anyway. So, I guess that’s that. Good luck with the werewolves. And, you do look beautiful in that dress, by the way.”
I turned on my heel and headed for the inn where Theo was stabled. I’d arrange to have my due payment delivered to my room there. I knew that after witnessing the way I dealt with Gold Tooth Jimmy and his men, the whimpering townsfolk of Highridge weren’t very likely to cause any further problems about coughing it up.
“Wait!” Lucinda called after me when I’d taken two steps.
I stopped and turned to look back at her.
She hurried up to me until there was only a foot of space between us and gazed up at me tremblingly. The irritating creature really was a vision of loveliness, all huge gray eyes and marble face and rich auburn curls wrapped up tight in blue silk.
“Isn’t there anything I could offer that would convince you to help us?” she whispered. “Anything at all?”
I raised an eyebrow.
She placed her hand on my chest and stood on her tiptoes to raise her face up closer to mine. “Can’t you think of anything, sir?”
“Lucinda, you need to understand, I’m not as free with my werewolf-killing favors as you seem to think,” I said. “You’ll need to find someone a lot dumber or more desperate for that one. But, I am rather free with my other kind of favors, when it comes to beautiful young women. So if you care to join me tonight, I won’t charge you for that kind of help.”
She slapped me across the face.
“Okay, well, you know where to find me if you change your mind before morning,” I said as I turned to go into the inn.
“Wait!” she yelled again.
I stopped, but didn’t bother to face her. I was getting real tired of this game.
“Five hundred gold pieces,” she blurted out.
“Five hundred?” I repeated as I turned around. “That’s about what I’d charge for fourteen ordinary men, if I had to travel over a day’s ride to get to ‘em. Richcreek is about a day and a half from here, isn’t it? And, we’re not talking men. We’re talking werewolves.”
“It’s all I was authorized to pledge,” she said desperately. “We can’t afford any more than that.”
“Well, that’s a real shame,” I said. “You have a good night, Miss.”
“How much?” she asked.
“A thousand gold pieces,” I said.
“You’re worse than all the bandits and monsters themselves!”
“I guess the kind of werewolf that’s been visiting your town must be a much more pleasant breed than the kind I’m accustomed to, then,” I said with a shrug.
“… You have experience with werewolves?”
“I’ve encountered a few before.” When I said a few, that’s exactly what I mea
nt, but I made my tone so smugly nonchalant that she was sure to assume I was understating the number.
“I’ll give you seven hundred,” she said with a heavy sigh. “And that’s if I sell some of my own jewelry, on top of the town’s share of the payment.”
“Nine hundred,” I said.
“Eight, and that’s my final offer!” Lucinda jabbed her finger at me for emphasis.
“Done,” I grinned and stuck out my hand.
Lucinda hesitated. Then she reached out and shook it.
“We leave in the morning, at the first crack of dawn,” I said. “I’ll meet you in the stables, and we can saddle our mounts together. Don’t be late.”
She nodded. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“I could say the same,” I replied. “Eight hundred for fourteen werewolves… that’s got to be the bargain of the century, girl.”
Her eyes flashed and her mouth opened as if she were about to make a retort, but then she seemed to think better of it. “Good night, Mr. Hale.”
“Good night, Lucinda,” I replied, and we both walked into the inn to our separate rooms.
Chapter 3
The next morning just before dawn, I brought out an apple from the inn’s kitchen to the stables and fed it to Theo while I recounted the events of the previous night to him.
“So that’s what all the damned ruckus was about,” he snorted. His strong jaws chomped energetically as he swished his long, luscious tail in contempt. He was a magnificent black Friesian, rippling with muscle, who was unfortunately well aware of exactly how beautiful he was. “I suppose you expect me to carry all that extra gold now?”
I held up the bulging sack in response and flashed him a grin. “Only until we get to Richcreek. It’s a potencium mining town, we can trade it in for a few vials then.”
“Potencium, that’s all you ever think about,” Theo grumbled. “You’re an addict.”
“It’s not delphoria,” I said. “It doesn’t warp my senses or rot my brain. It’s just a form of nutrition. Like water or food.”
“Well, you start getting addled and crotchety when you haven’t had it,” Theo said. “And you go to foolish lengths to get it. Seems like a drug to me.”
“Like you with apples?” I snickered.
“Apples are much more delightful than potencium,” he snorted.
“If I don’t take it, I lose my magical ability,” I reminded him. “If I lose my magical ability, I can’t fight. Not superhumanly well, anyway. And normal folks could get killed. And if I get killed, you get sold off to another master. One who might whip you or make you wear degrading costumes. Is that what you want? To wear a top hat and coattails and be made to recite poetry for children?”
“Or I could be a free horse,” Theo suggested. “I could roam the wild green hills and graze at will. I could race the wind and slumber beneath the boughs of trees.”
“You wouldn’t survive a single day as a free horse, and you know it,” I scoffed. “You’ve had plenty of chances to escape, but secretly you don’t want to. You like apples and warm hay. You wouldn’t know the first thing about how to find resources or escape predators on your own.”
“I could join a herd of wild horses, and they could teach me,” Theo retorted.
“But you hate other horses,” I said.
“I don’t hate other horses!”
“Oh yeah?” I asked and pointed to the white mare stabled in the stall next to his. “What’s her name then?”
“How the hell should I know, when the dumb bitch can’t even talk?”
“She must have some kind of horse language,” I persisted. “Horses do communicate with each other, even though they don’t normally use human speech. You could talk to them if you wanted to, horse to horse. You just don’t care to. Look at her, with those big brown eyes. She looks like a very sweet creature.”
“With shit-all for brains,” Theo replied haughtily. “I’m not like you, Hal. I don’t try to mount every mare I see. Someday I will find a fellow intellectual who is as wise as she is fair, but until then, why waste my time?”
“First of all, I guess you mean another talking horse, but when talking animals mate, don’t their offspring turn out drooling idiots half the time, since you’re all pretty much cousins or something?” I asked. “And second of all, I don’t ‘try’ to mount every girl I see. They just have a tendency to throw themselves at me--”
“Who are you talking to?” a female voice demanded, and I looked up to see Miss Lucinda Fairfax glide into the stable. She was wearing the same dress as before and had her hair arranged in the same style, but she had added a straw bonnet and a lace shawl to her outfit. Her gray eyes were narrowed, so I guess she had heard at least the last few sentences of my conversation with my horse.
“Emperor Theodosius the First,” I answered.
“Ha, ha, ha,” she sneered.
“Precisely what about that amuses you?” Theo inquired coldly.
Lucinda leapt back a step, clapped her hand to her chest, and let out a little gasp. Her reaction wasn’t just satisfying, it was also rather adorable.
“Y-you have a t-talking horse?” she stammered.
I said nothing because the question had already answered itself clearly enough.
“… Who are you really?” she asked as she stared at me. “Halston Hale? What kind of hired sword can afford a talking horse?”
“You’re late, let’s get going,” I said.
Lucinda hesitated. Then she walked over to white mare next to Theo and started saddling her up.
Once she was ready, we set out. Lucinda led the way since she was the one who knew where Richcreek lay.
The sun was just starting to rise above the horizon, and it turned the sky all kinds of flaming colors above the indifferent, scrubby plains. Theo liked to talk about rolling green hills, but I didn’t think the desert was half bad myself. It might have been harsh and unforgiving, it might have been filled with plants that could prick you and insects that could sting you, but it had power and dignity. And it didn’t hide its nature. Venture out at your own risk, its barren golden face seemed to say. If you were bold and resourceful and planned ahead, then you and the desert could develop a sort of mutual respect. If you were weak or even just unlucky, then it would bleach your bones and add them to its collection.
“It’s probably not prudent of me to ride off into the desert like this with a strange man that I know nothing about, other than the fact he’s good at killing,” Lucinda remarked.
If she expected reassurances from me on that count, she wasn’t going to get any.
“We are the ones trusting you,” Theo snorted. He was my stalwart companion and invaluable steed, but the creature just didn’t have any concept of maintaining a dignified silence. “You could be leading us into an ambush. Or just to the goddamn middle of nowhere if you mistake our course. Women tend to be terrible at directions.”
“Is he always this rude?” Lucinda asked me.
“He’s rarely this polite,” I replied.
“I don’t know how I found myself in such company,” she sighed.
“You sought us out,” I replied. “I’m surprised you have such short term memory issues.”
“I know you must think it isn’t very ladylike behavior, for me to have traveled into a strange town all by myself like that,” Lucinda said.
“I do not mandate ladylike behavior from my female companions,” I told her.
“I bet you don’t,” she said with a scowl. I ignored that. If she wanted to carry on a conversation, which she clearly did, at the expense of spoiling a perfectly golden desert silence, she was going to have to learn to be civil about it instead of seizing every possible chance to hurl an insult or sarcastic jab at me or my horse. Within five minutes of talking to the girl, you could tell she’d been badly spoiled all her life due to being born with a combination of wealth and beauty, and probably mistook making a quarrelsome arse of herself for being “fiery�
� and “headstrong.”
Women.
“I suppose you are probably wondering what compelled me to do such a thing,” Lucinda prompted after a minute.
“Werewolves,” I said. “That’s what you told me.”
“Yes, but why me?” she persisted. “Why would Richcreek have sent a young lady to be their scout for a suitable defender? Well, the answer is that they have been sending men for months, who have ridden off to all the other towns within a hundred miles, and come back with other men in tow, all to no avail. The warriors they have hired have either been frauds who tried to cheat us and run away, or failures whom the werewolves found no more difficult to eat than my grandmother.”
“Funny, my grandmother was also eaten,” Theo remarked nonchalantly. “She was sent to the knacker when she got old.”
“I’m sorry, that must have terrible for you,” Lucinda said awkwardly.
“Not particularly,” Theo said. “I didn’t have a relationship with her. She never said a word to me.”
“Well, maybe you were lucky,” Lucinda said. Since she was riding ahead of me, she had her back to me, but I could hear a hint of amusement in her voice. “My grandmother said many words to me, none of them kind.”
So apparently, this unreasonable woman and my cantankerous horse were going to bond over their mutual lack of grief over their grandmothers’ violent deaths. Hmm. Life was full of surprises.
“What about you, Mr. Hale?” Lucinda craned her head around to ask me.
“No, my grandmother wasn’t eaten,” I said.
“No, I meant, what was she like?” Lucinda persisted. “Or your mother, or your father, what were any of them like?”
Well, if I was going to be obliged to carry on a conversation, it was better for us to talk about her rather than me.
“So, the men of your town failed to hire a suitable warrior,” I prompted. “And they thought you might have better luck?”
“Not exactly,” the haughty redhead replied. “It was sort of an impulsive decision, really. You see, last month’s hire spent the whole day before the full moon drinking himself halfway into a stupor, insisting all the while that he fought best when he ‘felt invincible,’ only to get his head torn off that night without launching any defensive campaign at all, unless you count burping in the werewolf’s face first. He was to blame for his own actions, of course-- but the deputy who hired him was also to blame for failing to screen the candidate properly, in my opinion. And I told everyone as much during a recent town meeting. And they all lost their tempers at me! They wanted to know what I’d done, exactly, to contribute to a solution? They wanted to know if I could tell a hard-drinking swordsman from a sword-owning alcoholic? They wanted to know why ‘women were allowed to speak at these meetings at all’? And so on and so forth. So finally I stood up and announced that I would find Richcreek a savior myself!”