That made the big man pause. “You’re right in a lot of ways, Gord. It isn’t likely you and I will be meeting again for a long, long time-if ever, to be honest, and I must be honest with a friend like you, boy. You’re right about those who seek me. Most folks don’t have murderers hounding them. You’re right about them thinking I’m Important. I’m not a prince, though, not anything even near it. I’m just a common man, sort of a soldier in a good cause. I have something those bad ones want to know, though. If they get it, then their side gets stronger and can do terrible things to good people. I must see that they fail, and then we have a chance of defeating their evil in the end.”
Gord hugged his friend around the waist, and Bru gave his narrow little shoulders a squeeze with his free arm. “I’ll think about you when you’re gone, Uncle Bru. You will beat the bad guys, I know it! No one’s as big and strong and tough as you are.”
“Luck be with you, lad,” the big man said. He gave Gord’s shoulders a last embrace, then went off.
Gord watched him walk away through misty eyes. Bru never faltered in his step, never looked back to where the small boy stood watching. In a minute there was no man in sight, but the waif stood as still as a post, staring along the street where his friend had been. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Far beyond his years in understanding, Gord realized that a part of his life, the only good part, had just gone. It was a permanent loss. From now on, it was Gord against the world, and he had no friend to help him, no teacher, no benefactor, no protector.
When he came back that evening, old Leena was furious that the boy bore nothing with him. None of her abuses or threats drew a response from him, so she finally seized him and shook the thin boy until his teeth rattled. At that a small leather bag dropped out of his smock.
“Eh! What’s this?” the crone said as she stooped over and snatched the thing up. It clinked in her hand, and her fingers shook in their haste to undo its tie and open it. “Holdin’ out on old Leena, were ya?!” She clouted Gord on the head with her fist, and the force of the clenched hand with the coin bag inside it knocked him flat.
He managed to lift his head and shake it a little so that the stars before his eyes went away. Gord saw Leena pouring a dozen silver coins back and forth between her hands, crooning “lovely nobles, pretty silver nobles” as she did so. Gord knew then that Bra had slipped the purse of coins into his blouse when they’d parted. Now Leena had them, but that didn’t matter-it was knowing that his friend had cared and given them to him that counted. Leena couldn’t take that away from him.
How long had it been? Three or four years? Gord couldn’t remember exactly, nor could he recall much about his long-gone friend. In fact, the boy seldom even thought about Bru anymore. Staying alive was difficult enough, and it demanded all the attention he possessed. All he had going for him was his speed, agility, and cunning. Everyone he met was bigger, stronger, and deadlier than he was. Gord hated it. He hated to think that even his foster mother, Leena, was tougher than he was, but the facts were inescapable. An old alley cat, or even the rat it hunted, was better armed to fight than he was.
“Get out and find us some food,” Leena would command. If Gord didn’t hurry to obey, the old hag would thump him with a stick, and he could do nothing but take it and then run off to do as she told him. Gord didn’t dare to try surviving without Leena. Most folks in the slums thought she was a witch, so they shunned the two of them, and that kept Gord safe to some extent.
“Hey, ya little runt! Get the hells outta here!” Other children of the district always yelled something like that at him, and Gord got away as fast as possible. A couple of times he’d tried to stand up to bullies instead of running, but he was too small, too skinny, and too weak.
“Watch that dirty little guttersnipe there-the dark one!” Most adults he encountered said something like that, especially when they had something to protect. Being honest with himself, Gord had to admit that their attitude wasn’t surprising. The only reason he would even approach other people was if they had food or something small he could grab and run away with.
A friend? There was no such thing in Gord’s life, really. Leena used him, and Gord used the crone, too. He was ready to admit that to himself. Had he really ever had a friend? Bru was but a hazy memory, and Gord actually wondered if he had imagined the whole episode with the big, bearded man. It didn’t matter. Now he was getting older and more sure of himself.
He might be little, Gord told himself, but he could use his wits and his speed to show them all. He needed no one but Leena. Through no generosity on her part, she provided him with a safe haven. One day he’d grow bigger and stronger, and then he’d leave the nasty woman to fend for herself. Gord would have a weapon, a big knife or something like that. He’d be fast still, but also tall and strong. Then he’d show them all, and pity the bully who dared to call him a runt or a coward!
“You lazy little dogturd! Why are you sitting there making faces at nothing? Get out of here and bring back something good for Leena to eat!”
He got up quickly and went out. He considered hurling insults back at Leena, but why bother? He was hungry, too, and anyway, when he came back she’d remember and make him sorry for his brash words. Gord decided to take his gathering-pot and head over to the brewers’ area to get their leavings. The walk was a longish one, and there were many places to avoid, but the boy managed to get there and back to his part of the slums in two hours.
The scratched and dented metal pot was about three-quarters full of the grain mash the beer makers had thrown out. The stuff wasn’t good to eat, but it was useful for another purpose. Using some of the sloppy mash as bait, Gord set a trap for the pigeons that were everywhere in the slums. A pair of them made a good meal, and Leena couldn’t eat more than the breasts of two, so there’d be plenty for him to have also-if he got them. The rest of the stuff he saved for rat bait. He hated to eat the dirty rodents, but sometimes he managed to trap one, or drop a big stone on one. Then they had rat to eat. Leena would skin it and gut it and toss it into the iron kettle to boil. The slumgullion of rat and near-rotten vegetables was one of the better meals she made.
Bubbling coos brought his attention back to the here and now. A half-dozen of the blue-gray birds were on the ground nearby, pecking at the soggy mess that Gord had set out for them. Gord peered out of his hiding place around the corner of a shack, holding a long piece of leather thong in his hand. That item was one of his prized possessions. The thong was tied to a short stick. The stick supported an old door, so that the structure formed a lean-to. Under this “shelter” Gord had placed most of the bait. The birds were working their way under the trap now, having first pecked up all the mash that was not directly beneath the door. Gord waited impatiently, and when it looked as if four or five of the pigeons were inside the trap, he jerked the thong with all his might.
Squawk! Thump! Flap-flap-flap-flap… Only four birds were winging away!
Gord ran over to the door and levered it up after jumping on it to make sure the two pigeons beneath it would not be able to get away. He twisted each neck thereafter, just to be certain again. After tucking his prized catch into his baggy outer garment, a poncholike thing that was tied with twine around his waist, Gord headed for home. Tonight, at least, Leena would be happy, he would have a full belly, and all would be well. Maybe he was a runt, and he was weak. But he was smart, and that made up for it. Let them call him a coward, but inside Gord decided that it was better to be gutless and alive than brave and dead.
So the days slipped past in this way, one by one. Each brought its own load of troubles, its own little triumphs or petty tragedies, into Gord’s drab existence. With each incident his perspective changed. The difference was minute, so infinitesimal that it couldn’t be noted. Only when reflecting back from one season to the last could the boy begin to detect change. He wasn’t growing much in height. There was no great increase in Gord’s girth of bleep. Yet he was growing better fit to survive. A year passed, then another. Things were becoming harder and harder in the slums. More crazy folk were dwelling in the district these days, and there were more homeless boys, wandering scavengers, more competition.
“Why are you trying to starve me to death?” Leena whined that question frequently these days. Gord was having trouble finding food these days. It was early winter, and in addition to being hungry the crone was feeling the cold and damp. Gord almost felt sorry for the poor old woman in her endless suffering-only he suffered too in his own way.
***
“Wake up, Leena,” Gord said one day as he entered the little shack the two of them had moved into at the start of the cold season. “I found a half-loaf of dark bread and a store of winter apples someone must have forgotten about!” He was proud, because the sum of what he’d brought home was sufficient to feed both of them for several days. “The apples are in a burlap sack, and the sack in a box.” Firewood and food in one fell swoop! Leena remained still, lying under her rag-heap by the cold ashes of the little stove of tin and stones they had fashioned.
In his eagerness to share his good news, Gord didn’t worry about being punished for waking her up. The boy grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her gently. “Come, on, old woman, your provider has plenty to keep you from starving to…” Leena was cold to his touch, and her normally gray color was ashen. “Leena? What’s wrong? Leena!” The old woman made no response. There was no movement, no flutter of the eyelids, no breathing. Gord released his grasp and shrank back.
Her death was a terrible blow to Gord. The crone had been mean and miserable, and had beaten him, but only as an expression of her own despair. For all her faults, and for as little as Leena had taken care of him, she still had been his only parent, his foster mother, his one human constant. Her protection was a key factor in Gord’s survival, too. All that she was, and all that she was to him, had disappeared in the space of an afternoon. Gord was only twelve, but his reaction to Leena’s death showed that he had understanding beyond his years.
Two tears ran down Gord’s cheeks as he sat back on his heels and stared at the corpse. He quickly wiped them away with his sleeve. He was a man alone now-or he had to try to be that. He had to deal with the reality of things here and now, and it was necessary to do so immediately. There was no such thing as burial, not in the Slum Quarter. Many a body he had seen simply tossed out into the street. Some were removed by the carts of the cleaners, most were dragged off by mongrel dogs to provide their food. Rats ate what dogs left, people killed some of the dogs and rats, and the cycle of life went on.
“I must take your valuables, Leena,” the boy said as he shifted the old woman’s body this way and that. All he found were two near-worthless iron coins. “Even this tiny wealth I must have,” he said to her earnestly, as if she could hear. “I am alive, you are dead, and I might need it.” Although the boy knew it was foolish, he carefully wrapped the frail body in the worn blanket Leena had treasured as shawl and cloak. That done, Gord set his jaw and moved the corpse out of the shack. Well up the narrow lane, in a place where there was a rubble-strewn yard, he finally let go. Leena’s funeral was over. There was no more to it. Gord went back to the hut, closed and wedged shut the small door, and carefully made a little fire to warm himself by. The night was frosty, and the thick scattering of bright stars in the sky indicated it would get colder too.
“You won’t need these rag-blankets anymore,” he said aloud, as if old Leena were still there to hear. “I’ll take charge of my inheritance now too,” he added, as he lifted the old wooden box out of the hidey-hole Leena always made under where she slept.
Gord had known about the box for several years, ever since the day he had accidentally discovered Leena’s current hiding place while groping around under her bed for a scrap of food he had dropped. She wasn’t in their shack at the time, so he took the opportunity to leaf through the pieces of parchment he found inside. None of them had meant anything to him or even interested him, so he had simply put the whole batch back in the box and replaced the container in the hole. Leena had cuffed him soundly and cursed him viciously when she realized the box and its contents had been handled-and threatened to do much worse to him if he ever touched the box again. Since he didn’t have any use for the thing anyway, it was not at all difficult for him to leave it alone, but he had not forgotten about it.
Clutching the small coffer, and with a thick mattress of rags around him, Gord crooned himself to sleep beside the slowly dwindling flames of the fire.
The next day he moved from the hut to a cellar beneath the ruins of an old building, fairly near the old site where he and Leena had dwelled. Gord thought it would be a good idea to move, because as soon as the rest of the neighborhood found out that Leena had died, the other boys would terrorize him even more than they did already. His new place was small, dark, and difficult to enter for anyone or anything larger than the size of a small boy. An old chimney provided ventilation for a fire, and the little space was easy to warm. It suited his needs perfectly, and he was happy at having found such a good place so quickly.
But if Gord had been very lucky on this day after Leena died, his fortune turned round thereafter. He had to be very careful when he went out, because the gangs had heard that the old witch with the evil eye had looked in a mirror and killed herself. Gord didn’t realize how much indirect protection Leena had provided him until he had ventured forth on a few expeditions after she died. The boys that used to beat him up and take what he had salvaged still did that, of course, whenever he couldn’t avoid them. The difference was in the slum-gangs that formerly had merely cursed him from a distance and thrown rocks at him. They too were now confronting him directly, roughing him up, and stealing from him. It became harder and harder to garner anything worthwhile anywhere, and finding food was becoming a major task. By spring Gord moved again, seeking better pickings.
The gangs of the sprawling slums stayed within their own confines. Within the crumbling district they were virtually supreme, because nobody outside the slums cared. The place was home to the homeless, the insane, the flotsam and jetsam of the city. If the local economy ever began to flourish again, then the Slum Quarter would shrink as laborers increased and property was rebuilt, refurbished, repaired for those who contributed to the city’s wealth. In truth, the slums were a preserve, a place for the misfits and useless to dwell within the walls of Greyhawk, but the place had not been intentionally provided for that purpose. They existed simply because nobody cared about the area at the time. Many of the constructions therein were abandoned now because of slow trade, a weak economy, and lack of demand. No one stayed there if he could go elsewhere, unless he was a crazy person or a wanted criminal.
Of course there was an economy, of sorts, within the quarter. There were food shops, peddlers, stores selling old clothing and used things, places to buy small beer and sour wine, and all that. There were three relatively thriving places within the Slum Quarter, but they were the haunts of those forced to dwell there because of being wanted criminals, or else the territories of those who chose to deal with the slums for some related reason. If a denizen of the slums had money to spend, he could enter these three islands of activity, but when his coins were gone he had to leave. There was no safety in these places of activity, no safety anywhere in the quarter, unless you bought it or were strong enough not to be threatened by roving gangs of boys, muggers, crazy men, and the rest of the feral folk of the place. Needless to say, Gord stayed well away from the active parts of the quarter.
Three gangs claimed territories that virtually surrounded the place where the boy dwelled. It would be no use to go elsewhere, for no other place would necessarily have fewer threats. Gord had to deal with the threats, the predatory neighbors of all sorts, as a matter of course. Without Leena to frighten off the gangs, Gord was in trouble. Although he had become very clever and wise from having dwelled in the slums since infancy, the prospect of his staying alive was dwindling. Without allies or a protector, he was nothing more than prey for the other boys.
Not only was he small for his age, but Gord was also not very strong. It was more a case of late development than innate weakness, but the harsh environment made no allowance for that. Because he was subject to being bullied by virtually any gang boy, Gord was an undesirable potential member as far as the gangs were concerned. He might be clever, but that threatened the leadership of the gang. He might be fast, but speed and agility weren’t considerations in the society of a group of homeless boys, unless these characteristics were associated with toughness and fighting ability.