by Logan Jacobs
The miner was sprawled out on his back. I couldn’t even tell what color his shirt used to be, it was so caked in dried black blood. His stomach had been ripped wide open, and his entrails were spilling out. That’s what the flies were feasting on. I could see the white of his ribs through the pulpy, rotting mess. There wasn’t even a weapon in his hand.
I withdrew from the lean-to while Theo and I proceeded to search the rest of the camp, and although there weren’t any other corpses, many of the buildings bore telltale claw and tooth marks of the same appearance as those that Silas had shown me outside the bank in Richcreek.
“Well,” I said to my horse, “I think it’s fair to say that this wasn’t a delphoria mining camp.”
I saw no further reason to linger there. We left the ravaged settlement behind and continued on in the same direction we’d been going, hopefully, towards Bluegarden.
“Funny how what seems like the dubious choice turned out to be the safe choice for that other camp,” Theo said.
“Selling delphoria is a prison offense,” I said. “The werewolves might not care to enforce that, but it may come round yet to bite them in the ass.”
“You do enough things that are prison offenses,” Theo pointed out. “Hanging offenses actually. Not everyone you kill is someone the law would want dead.”
“And who exactly has the power to enforce the law against me?” I asked.
“Maybe you won’t run into any one man this far out west who’s your match,” Theo said, “but what if you run afoul of a sheriff in a big town who’s got a whole army of deputies?”
“That’s what your legs are for,” I replied. “I ain’t fighting no army unless I’m getting paid well enough to do it.”
“Do you think that whoever’s stealing all the potencium-- some sort of evil sorcerer I suppose-- commands a whole army of werewolves?” Theo asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Werewolves aren’t easy to create, so that’s hard to imagine. But whatever he’s using all that potencium for, I’m sure it’s nothing nice.”
“And you think the victims will see your big sword and fall on their knees and start throwing coins at you?” Theo asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “But you know, I don’t really trust people who are willing to kneel.”
“Your father didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t,” Theo said.
“He even trained the monkeys and tigers in the menagerie,” I scoffed at the memory. “But when you force people to kneel to you, if they don’t want to, well, you’re encouraging them to lie to you. That has consequences.”
“You didn’t lie to your father, even when all your siblings readily did,” Theo said.
“And that had consequences,” I said.
“Sounds like you just sighed,” Theo snickered.
“Nope,” I scoffed. “The past is the past.”
“Unless it catches up with us,” Theo said.
“Well, I’ve got the fastest steed, so that is doubtful.”
“Well yes,” Theo said as he tossed his mane around. “I am quite magnificent. Beautiful and handsome to behold say all, fast as the wind say most.”
“There you go,” I chuckled.
We could no longer see the ill-fated camp behind us anymore, it had vanished from even the horizon. Most of the time, that’s how I felt about my old life, too.
For a few hours, Theo and I wandered on. We didn’t encounter any other people or animals of note. I did see a deer that would have been good eating, but I never killed any game as large as a deer, because I rarely stayed in one place long enough to eat something like that, and even if I’d had access to a smokehouse, it was too much meat for Theo to carry. So instead the doe just poked up her head, poised to run, but something about us made her decide not to, and she just stared wide-eyed as we sauntered past. I wondered if I was the first human she’d ever seen, and Theo the first horse.
Then it began to grow dark, and we found a sheltered spot and bedded down. Midway through the next day, we reached Bluegarden.
I realized fairly quickly what had given that town its name. It wasn’t that the people there had such an abundance of water that they could raise fields of tulips, seas of rich blue petals in the midst of the desert. But they had cacti sprouting up between the buildings, and this particular type of cactus flowered with tiny pale blue blossoms.
It was almost as large a town as Richcreek, and from the fact that it appeared to be prosperous and in good repair, I concluded that it wasn’t a potencium mining town. There were people strolling about between the buildings. I saw a cart roll by too.
“Well, time to go talk to some folks,” I said.
“You mean you’re heading to the saloon?” Theo asked.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I could tether you, but that post is in direct sunlight right now. If I just leave you here, you won’t wander off too far, will you?”
“Nah, I’m just going to go sample some of those blue flowers, they look tasty,” Theo replied.
“Just don’t get a mouthful of prickles,” I warned him.
It was always safe to leave my valuables in Theo’s saddlebags while he hung around in the open. Anyone who wanted to steal them would have to catch Theo first, and I’d yet to meet the man or horse who could do that if Theo didn’t want to be caught. It didn’t matter that at twenty years of age, he was supposedly past his prime, even though talking horses lived well longer than the normal kind.
I swung down off his back and walked down the streets of Bluegarden until I came to a building labeled with a sign that had a festive dancing woman painted on it. She was fully clothed, so I figured it was the town saloon, not the brothel.
It was still early in the day, and there weren’t many people inside, just three ranchers and the barmaid. She had a ruddy complexion, round cheeks, and a ready smile. I wondered if she owned the saloon and the sign had been intended as a representation of herself.
I walked up and seated myself on one of the barstools right next to the ranchers, so that they’d know I wanted to talk. They were all a bit older and gruffer-looking than Billy and Bob back in Highridge had been, but they nodded to acknowledge me civilly enough.
“What can I get for you, Mister?” the barmaid asked.
“Four shots of whiskey,” I said. I nodded my head toward the other three customers. “One for each of us.”
Now I had their attention.
“Right you are,” the barmaid said as she raised an eyebrow and started pouring.
“Howdy, stranger,” the nearest rancher said as he stuck out his hand. “I’m Pete.”
“Halston Hale,” I replied as I shook his hand, and the other two introduced themselves as Cal and Christian.
“What brings you to these parts?” Cal asked me. He glanced at my sword. Everyone always did.
“The town that I passed through last, Richcreek, had some problems of the wolfish variety,” I said. “And other folks pointed me this way. So I wanted to know if you’d been having similar.”
“Wolfish variety?” Christian furrowed his brow in confusion.
“Werewolves,” I said. “They kept getting attacked. Every full moon.”
The barmaid had set a whiskey in front of each of us by then. I drank mine without enlarging it. I had plenty of coin to buy more and didn’t want to distract my companions from their trail of thought by demonstrating my ability, unless my ability became relevant to the conversation.
The three ranchers exchanged glances. Significant glances.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Pete muttered.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Most people considered werewolf attacks to be quite a surprise, and an unwelcome one at that.
“If he’d been sending out werewolves,” Pete answered.
“I’m sure he’s trying to expand his power base,” Cal agreed.
“People in Bluegarden like to act like it doesn’t affect them, but it will sooner or later,” Christian added.
“Oh, he doesn’t have a clue what y’all are jabbering on about,” the barmaid observed. “You’d better tell him about Lord Gorander.”
“Lord who?” I asked. “I didn’t think there were any lords this far out west.”
“Well, I don’t think his title comes from the crown, I think he made it up himself,” Cal said.
“Well, he’s not a fucking lord then, is he?” I asked. I winced a little on the inside at the thought of how Theo would call me out for that lingering monarchist impulse. “So why would anyone call him by that false title?”
“He’s a powerful sorcerer,” Cal explained. “Not someone you’d want to cross.”
“Someone who might send a werewolf to tear your head off if you did,” Pete said.
“I was right then,” I said.
“Right about what?” Christian asked.
“I thought it was probably a sorcerer stealing all that potencium-- that’s what he sent the werewolves out to do,” I said.
“I suppose that’s how he’s been able to maintain it all,” Pete said.
“Maintain what?” I asked. I caught the barmaid’s eye. “Another round, please. Tell me from the beginning. Who is this Gorander character, and what other kinds of hell has he been raising? I want to know everything about him.”
“We’re hardly the right men to tell you, seeing as we don’t know everything about him ourselves,” Christian said as he drained his glass. “But I guess we can make a start of it.”
“Most of what we know is hearsay,” Pete added. “A month ago, there was a man, not a Bluegarden man, but a man from Fairhollow a few miles south of here. He came staggering in here on a frothing horse looking half-starved and half a lunatic. And he gasped out all kinds of tales about the horrors that had befallen him and everyone else in Fairhollow. He wanted us to get together a militia or something. He wanted us to free his fellow townsfolk that he said Lord Gorander had enslaved. But the more he talked, the more it became clear that if even half the things he said about the sorcerer’s evil powers were true, then we didn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning that fight, not just a few dozen of us with our axes and pitchforks. The men of the town argued all night about whether we should go.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“I can’t hardly say whether we would have, except that all the while the fellow from Fairhollow seemed to get sicker and sicker,” Cal said. “At first we thought it was just on account of the exhaustion, you know? But then he wasn’t just pale and sweating and shaking anymore, he started coughing up blood. We got worried and moved him to a storeroom and called over the doctor. But the doctor didn’t know what was wrong. First, he thought it was tuberculosis, then syphilis. His symptoms kept changing. It seemed like some horrible new disease no one had ever heard of. Then he broke out in a pox, and we were convinced he’d brought the plague to town like how they’d had in the dark ages. He died before dawn.”
“We buried him in an iron coffin, and we quarantined everyone who’d been in that room with him in their homes for a month,” Christian said. “But then a strange thing happened.”
“He broke out of the coffin?” I asked.
“No,” Christian said. “Nothing. Nothing happened. Not a single other soul fell sick, even though he’d been drinking and talking with us and trading air all that night.”
“So we figured it was a curse particular to him,” Pete concluded. “Laid on him by the sorcerer, for escaping and seeking help.”
“And did you investigate the situation after that?” I asked.
“No, we may not be especially clever, but we ain’t nobody’s fools,” Cal snorted. “If you’d seen how that fellow died? You wouldn’t have to ask why nobody was none too eager to go riding into Fairhollow.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“You’re not pondering on it, are you, partner?” asked Pete. “What’s it to you anyway?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “A very good question. This town, Fairhollow-- is it a prosperous place, would you say?”
“Was,” Cal said grimly. “One of the biggest frontier towns I’ve ever seen. Probably twice as big as Bluegarden. But I don’t know what’s become of it now. And I don’t think that man was just a raving lunatic, either, because it used to be folks from Fairhollow would come by a few times every week to do trade with us, but that stopped altogether. We’ve seen no one since him.”
“So they’d have plenty of money,” I mused. “And you think they’d be willing to pay me to rescue them?”
Pete laughed out loud. “First of all, you did hear the part where he’s a sorcerer, didn’t you? Powerful enough to lay a death curse on a man?”
“I’m a magic user too,” I stated. “So I have some degree of natural immunity.”
“I don’t care if you’re a magic user,” Pete said. “Unless you’re a sorcerer too, you have no chance.”
“Leave that part to me,” I said. “What concerns me right now is, the good people of Fairhollow would be willing and able to pay for assistance?”
“I don’t know about that,” Cal said. “If they were in their right minds, to be sure. But that fellow who escaped to tell the tale… he said they were all enslaved, not just in body, but in mind too. The mind magic didn’t work as well on him because he was a magic user, and his ability had to do particularly with knowing a lie when he heard it. But as you can see, that didn’t stop him from falling sick. So, don’t expect the townspeople to be of any help to you. They’re Lord Gorander’s slaves now. He has them all mining potencium for him, day in and day out.”
“Guess maybe the mines are running dry, or at least not turning up as much a buzz as he wants, if he’s sending werewolves out to raid surrounding towns now,” Christian remarked. I thought the same.
“You know, even if there’s no more potencium left, and even if the people of Fairhollow won’t pay, that dead fellow said that the palace was full of treasures,” Cal said thoughtfully. “Full of wondrous objects that the sorcerer either stole or created himself. So if you could really defeat him, which you can’t, well, I’m sure you’d find it well worth your while, financially speaking.”
“Which way is Fairhollow?” I asked. “I know you said south, but can you draw me a map? Unless, of course, one of you wants to guide me there. I’d pay you.”
The three ranchers exchanged glances.
“We’ll draw you a map,” Pete said. “Izzy? Give us one of them rags, will you now?”
“Where are you from, stranger?” the barmaid asked me, as she ignored Pete. “Guess they makes the men bolder there than they do hereabouts, hmm?”
“East,” I said shortly.
“Ah, one of them with a tale that you hope won’t catch up to you, out here.” She smiled at me the way most women did. “Whatever it is, it don’t worry me none. I assure you I’ve heard worse.”
“Damn it Izzy!” Pete said impatiently. “He’ll be dead in a few days, or the sorcerer’s mind slave, which is just as good as. Whereas Cal and Christian and I will still be here with coin in hand to buy your beer!”
“All right, all right, keep your britches on, if you want to stay welcome here then,” she muttered and stuck her tongue out at him. Then she pulled out a stained and tattered rag from behind the bar and tossed it at him.
Pete pulled out a stick of charcoal from his pocket and started drawing out a map. He labeled one circle “Bluegarden” and another “Fairhollow,” and added trees and a river with a bridge in between.
“The way between is fairly forested, you’ll have to look out for bears and Savajuns,” he informed me. “Now, it isn’t so dangerous when you go in a group, for trading purposes, and you’re all well-armed, but one man traveling alone… well, I wouldn’t recommend it, I know you won’t listen to me, but just mark that I did my neighborly duty by saying it. And that bridge, there. You’ll come to the river north of the bridge most likely, so just you keep heading down that way until you see it. And after y
ou cross over, it’s not more than another few miles to Fairhallow, so you’ll be well and truly in Lord Gorander’s territory then.”
“Thank you kindly,” I said.
“Who are you anyway?” Izzy the barmaid asked as she wiped down a dusty glass. “What kind of person shows up hankering to chase after werewolves, and then when he finds out that there’s an evil sorcerer involved, just gets more of an itch to see for himself?”
“You a bounty hunter of some sort?” Cal guessed. “No one put a price on Lord Gorander’s head, though.”
“I’m a killer,” I said. “A professional killer. And being a sorcerer doesn’t make you unkillable.”
“What’s your magic power anyway?” Christian asked me. “It must be something good, to make you this cocky.”
I reached out and laid my hand atop his hat, which he hadn’t removed indoors. It grew until the brim came down over his eyes.
Pete laughed a little. “You can make people’s hats too big for them? I don’t think that will have Lord Gorander quaking in his boots.”
I shrank the hat until the wool squeezed Christian’s forehead, and he yelped and his hands flew up to try to claw it off his head. I immediately restored it to its usual size, and he whipped it off and panted. There was a red mark around his temples where the hat had been.
“It comes in handy more than you’d think,” I said, and tipped back the rest of my whiskey. Then I grabbed the rag with the charcoal map drawn on it. “Well. Evening, gents. You happen to think of anyone you’d like to put in a pine box, just keep me in mind. Ask around for Halston Hale.”
“I’ll remember that,” Izzy said with a wink.
“Oh, and just who are you going to have killed, Izzy?” Cal scoffed.
“Customers who don’t mind their manners!” Izzy retorted.
“Izzy, we are never anything but sweet as pie--” Pete began. I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence, because the door closed behind me.
It didn’t take me long to find Theo, who was munching the blue flowers off the top of a cactus. Actually, as I looked around at all the nearby cacti, I wondered if those were in fact the last blue flowers left in Bluegarden.