“Innkeeper!” the man bellowed.
Peripherally, Borregad saw Grohd emerge from the darkness of the back room. The taverner started to move toward the back of the bar, but the man said, “No. Come ’ere first. We’ll drink after we’ve dealt with your cat.” Grohd hesitated. Borregad wondered why he wanted so badly to get behind the bar. Probing, he saw an image of a double-bladed axe in Grohd’s thoughts, and he tried to think of a way to get the keeper to it.
“Come here!” snarled the man in orange and brown. “Now.”
Reluctantly, Grohd came to the table.
“Good.” The man shifted, and dragged Borregad a little toward him. “Do you remember me, little man?”
“You’re called Fulpig,” answered Grohd. It was nearly a whisper.
“You have a good memory for a
fekh
of an Atlarman. If you know my name, then you remember what happened the last time I was here and you gave me trouble. So I know you won’t give me no trouble now.” He shook Borregad’s head, raised it, then slammed it against the table. “You see my hand, keeper? See what your cat did to it? Now, how’re you going to make up for that? Hmm?”
“You can—you can drink all you want for free. No charge for the whole evening.”
“And our meal?”
“That, too. Free.”
“What will we be drinking?”
Borregad heard a swallow click in Grohd’s throat. “Grynne.”
The man snorted. “Grynne. How about that, Abo?” he said to his companion, who giggled in response. “Well, that’s not good enough, you see.” The pressure on Borregad’s neck vanished, but before he could react, he was picked up by his hind legs. The room swung around; then the soldier jerked him up at chest height. Borregad saw the man’s free hand reach down and withdraw a dagger from his wide belt. “This animal here is good enough to drink grynne. You serve it to stupid animals! I know you don’t think of us as animals, so I
know
you’ll offer us something better than what the cat drinks.” The edge of the dagger touched Borregad’s throat. Borregad closed his eyes in expectation of death. “Otherwise,” said Fulpig, “I’m going to open up this animal now.”
“Yah,” agreed Abo. “We don’t drink with dumb animals.”
Grohd said, “I have only grynne, sir. There isn’t anything else.”
“Then, I hope you weren’t too fond of your fat ugly cat,
fekh
.”
“Please. We won’t cause trouble. Please, put him down.”
Abo moved forward suddenly and backhanded him. Grohd fell back against a chair. “Don’t give us orders, foolish. Bring us drinks.”
“Shut up, Abo,” snapped Fulpig. This was his game.
Borregad panicked as he felt a terrible urge brought on by the pressure in his head and by the dizziness of hanging upside down. He fought it back, but could not stop it. His stomach lurched, then lurched again. His mouth opened and he vomited.
Grynne and bile poured onto Fulpig’s boots. As he heaved a second time, Borregad knew he was certainly dead—the man would kill him now.
The outer door suddenly swung back. A cold wind gusted through the room.
In that instant all heads except Borregad’s turned toward the door; the scene became a tableau, the figures frozen in place until the change in the situation had been identified. The background noises in the room, unnoticed before, seemed to grow and dominate: the crackling of dried-turf blocks in the hearth at the back and the one at the side, behind the scattered tables, where stew liquid in a pot bubbled and belched. Everyone heard but no one noticed. They watched the door and waited for someone to enter.
Finally, a tall figure, wrapped in a black cape, came stumbling in. He seemed unaware of them. He busied himself at trying to find the door so that he could close it. From the way he swung his arm and the way he lurched at the door, it was obvious he was drunk. Even so, no one moved as he shut the door and started across the room.
Lyrec kept his knees bent beneath the cape and let his shoulders shrug. He wandered into a table, then backed away, giving the table a look of reproach. In doing so, he bumped into Fulpig. Turning around, he looked up into the bearded face scant inches from his own. “M’gods! There’s a bear in the bar!” He stumbled back. Then squinting, he smiled loosely and said, “I am ever so sorry, sir.” He belched and continued on. The second man blocked his way, and Lyrec looked deeply into Abo’s brown eyes. Abo was much younger than Fulpig. His face was shaven clean, but the chin was covered with tiny scars. Lyrec reached up and touched the chin. He clucked his tongue. “You poor lad. I, too, have had hiccups, but never while I was shaving. It must have been agony.” He patted Abo on the shoulder. It was a thin shoulder, without much muscle. That one would give him less trouble. He let himself lurch back then, and sat down heavily in the chair beside Fulpig. Borregad hung within easy reach, and Lyrec smiled at his friend. Then he slapped the table and hollered, “Tavern keeper! Drinks fer ever’body!”
Grohd looked at him, then at the soldiers. Fulpig nodded, and he walked quickly around to the back of the bar.
Lyrec looked back at Borregad as if seeing him for the first time. “Ugly little beast,” he announced to no one in particular. He lowered his gaze to the floor and Fulpig’s boots. “And sick, too. What’re you going to do with him?” He raised his head and met Fulpig’s angry gaze for the first time. “Hmm?”
“We thought we’d eat him.” He glanced over at Abo; when he turned back, there was a vague smile on his lips. “Want to join us?”
Lyrec rubbed his beard, pulled his lower lip down, then let it snap back. “Oh, dunno. He looks a little tough.”
Fulpig laughed. “Probably. But we been camped on Mormey Marsh for a week—out on the tor. It’s been raining nearly every day and all we’ve had to eat is saddle grain. You know what happens to saddle grain when it gets wet? You spend your whole meal picking maggots off your plate. So we don’t care if he’s tough as a plank.”
“Mormey Marsh, eh? Ah, you’re from Ladoman.”
Fulpig snorted, then spat. “You’re not from around here or you’d know that just by our colors. Who else wears orange and brown?”
Lyrec pursed his lips. “Pumpkins do.”
“What?” Fulpig gaped. No one spoke to him that way.
“Put the cat down,” Lyrec said. The drunkenness was gone from his voice.
Fulpig moved the cat over so that it hung between himself and the insolent drunkard. Then he leaned over and twiddled his dagger around the cat’s head. “You got a reason?” He would have added “fekh,” his favorite insulting term, but this time the word died in his throat.
“Always. He’s mine. Besides, as if you haven’t noticed by now, he’s pickled—you’d get sick off him.”
“Is that right?” Fulpig twisted Borregad around and sneered into the large blue eyes, now almost completely black in fear and rage.
“I’m trying to do you a favor. Put him down now.” Lyrec waited. When Fulpig made no move or reply, Lyrec leaned one arm on the table and cupped his chin and said, “Well, I tried.”
Borregad snaked up suddenly. He swung out a splayed forepaw and stripped the skin from one side of Fulpig’s nose. Fulpig howled and flung the cat away. He clutched both hands to his nose, blood flooding between his fingers.
Abo had his dagger out, but seemed uncertain as to whom he should attack. He looked from the cat crouching under the table to Lyrec, then at his partner staring at him furiously, and bellowed, “Kill it, you bastard!” though the effect was somewhat lessened by the twang of his pinched nostrils.
“Where’d it go?”
Borregad was no longer under the table.
Fulpig, still holding his nose with one hand, pointed his dagger at Lyrec. “Where’s your cat, damn you?”
Lyrec reached up and fiddled with the feather in his hat. “I did warn you. No one here wanted trouble except you two. No one at all.”
“Answer
me!” Fulpig thrust the dagger at Lyrec’s eyes.
“All right. He’s on your” —Fulpig shrieked and twisted madly around— “back.”
Borregad leapt from Fulpig toward Abo, back arched, screeching fury, claws extended like tenterhooks. Abo fell back against a table. He stabbed uselessly at the cat; Borregad dodged the dagger and closed his jaws over Abo’s wrist
.
He dropped to the floor before the soldier could act and darted into the darkness of the back room.
Fulpig cursed. He turned back to Lyrec, this time to cut
his
throat. But Lyrec’s hand closed over his wrist.
“All right,” he said, as if admonishing children. “Borregad’s had his fun, now it’s time for everybody to go.”
The Ladomantine soldier tried to free his hand, then to stab Lyrec against the force of his grip. His eyes met Lyrec’s again. He saw a terrible promise there—and eyes that had gone silver, like pools of mercury. But his anger was beyond sanity or safety, and he fiercely tried to stab again.
Beneath Lyrec’s hand, Fulpig’s wrist made a quick sound like ice cracking on a pond. His face turned to chalk behind his black beard, his eyes bulged, then rolled, and he fell in a faint beside his dagger.
Abo began to edge toward the door.
Lyrec said, “Put your dagger away and see to your own wrist, Abo.” He stood with a great sigh and bent down, lifting Fulpig with ease. He set the body down on a table spattered by blood and grynne. “You came in on horses?”
Abo nodded. “Stabled.”
“Go get them and I’ll help you load your friend.”
“But we haven’t eaten. We’re hungry.”
“And you’ll stay hungry for the trouble you’ve caused. Try Tandragh or Llendid, soldier. Of course, you won’t reach them before morning …”
Abo scowled. He rubbed a finger up and down his long nose and stared sulkily at Lyrec. Finally, he turned and hurried out the door.
Grohd whooped in delight. “Where’s that cat of yours—I want to give him the biggest bowl of grynne he’s ever seen. I’ll give him a keg of it.”
Borregad came out from the shadows and leapt onto the bar. He sat expectantly, preening his paw. For the moment at least he was enjoying his new body.
“By Voed’s black beard, I’ve always wanted to see them bested. They were going to kill you, you poor fat pussycat—” he tugged at the cat’s ear “—d’you know that?” He glanced at Lyrec, noted the rueful inward look in those black eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”
Lyrec shook his head. “I’m sorry we had to do that. I was hoping to get them out of here somehow.”
“Well, you did get them out.”
“And in a day or two when we’re gone, this one will be back. I’m afraid of what he’ll do, even with a broken arm. At the very least he’ll burn down all of your buildings. I could see it in his mind—his eyes. He’s done it before. You must know that.”
Grohd stood mutely and considered this for a time. Softly, he said, “Well, we’ll see. We’re a tough people, we Secamelanes. No one comes around burning our homes without a fight.” He reached under the bar and brought out his small double-bladed throwing axe. Hefting it, he said, “I can take off his ear from across the room with this. We’ll see who gives and who gets.”
The door opened and Abo entered nervously. He had wrapped a piece of brown linen around his bleeding hand. He skirted Lyrec as he came up beside the table where Fulpig lay.
Lyrec said, “Here, I’ll help you load him.”
Abo took a step back. “Forget it,” he said. “I can carry him myself.” He rolled Fulpig over, placing a dangling arm around his neck then hoisting the body up. But Fulpig’s dead weight dragged him down, and both bodies disappeared beside the table. Grohd snickered.
Lyrec moved around the table and pulled the unconscious body off Abo. He waited for the youth to stand, then helped to drape the body over Abo’s shoulder. Lyrec held the door open while Abo lumbered out with his burden.
“They’ll be back,” Lyrec muttered. He had heard it in the boy’s mind, too. How long? he wondered, and how many? Silently, he addressed the cat:
Borregad, you stupid drunken oaf.
He sat down and removed his hat. “What happened to dinner, Grohd?”
The bald taverner replaced his axe and moved off to gather bowls and utensils.
Lyrec looked to Borregad.
I’m sorry I blamed you. It wasn’t your fault, I’m sure. I just wish we could avoid trouble.
Noble sentiment. But we’re here to
find
trouble, remember?
It’s not the same.
It is.
They’re mortals. They’re more like Miradomon than they are like you or me. Furthermore, we didn’t come here to save lives, to save their world. We came here for revenge. And that makes us all the same.
No. It’s different.
Borregad’s blue eyes stared at him levelly.
We’ll see.
Chapter 4.
The moon was creeping above the trees when the coach rattled and bucked across the rutted tavern yard. The coach made a “J” at the end of the yard and drew up outside the stable. Before it had quite stopped, Grohd and Lyrec came out of the tavern.
Grohd’s lips parted in a wide grin as he saw Reeterkuv, the driver, atop the coach, handing down luggage.
“We’ll have good times tonight,” he had earlier promised Lyrec. “The stories you’ll hear … Reeterkuv can keep you laughing all night with his tales about the people who’ve ridden on his coach. Ask him to tell you about the fat woman and the cheeses!”
The fat woman and the cheeses—the innkeeper chuckled to himself just remembering it. Oh, there would be high times this night, indeed.
The coach was little more than a box on four wheels, drawn by four horses. No ornamentation or scrollwork added to its frame. The windows were drapeless holes. It creaked and rocked as the passengers disembarked. They seemed gray in the twilight, like statues. Then the first of them to get out—a young man wearing a physician’s medallion—set down his baggage and began to slap at himself. Chalky dust erupted at each slap, revealing dark clothes beneath. Even so, the physician’s face and curly hair remained ashen. He appeared all the more unworldly, grim and spectral for the contrast. This was true of the other passengers as well. Things were not as they should have been.
A tense silence hung over the scene. People getting off coaches usually make a great deal of noise: they curse their aching backs, grumble about the horrible roads, or even praise the driver for getting them to their destination alive. There’s a collective sense of humors about such a group because they’ve grown relaxed in each other’s company during the long journey.