The Miscreant (7 page)

Claire turned and saw the three young men standing near the back next to Matt. “Lies, they are his friends and are just trying to protect him!”

Garran wagged his head and gave Claire a disdainful look. “Claire, really, Curtis? He has the mind of a child.”

Matt grinned and shouted, “Yeah, but he’s got the dong of a horse!”

Pastor Larkin rapped on the table. “Mathew Bodine, you will conduct yourself better!”

“What? I’m just saying he should affix a wheel to that thing to give his back a rest.”

Curtis grinned idiotically, the hall erupted in laughter, and the pastor pounded his desk as if he were nailing it back together.

“Regardless of whether or not these assertions are true, they do not prove your activities were consensual, so I see no need to have them testify. Do you have any other evidence that will prove beyond doubt that yours was a mutual relationship?”

Garran looked at Claire. “Claire, since you did so many nice things for me, especially to my penis, I’m going to give you one last chance to withdraw your accusation and admit the truth.” Claire crossed her arms and looked away. “So be it.” Garran pulled out the note Claire had written him. “Pastor Larkin, would you please give this to Mayor Alessi to verify it is written in Claire’s hand?”

The pastor motioned to one of his “bailiffs” to pass the note to Butch. The mayor took the scrip and studied the writing, his face reddening to ever-darker shades with every word.

“Mr. Mayor, is that your daughter’s handwriting?” Pastor Larkin asked.

Butch swallowed several times and worked his jaw, but he could only nod as the words refused to leave his constricted throat.

Garran asked, “Would you please read it aloud for the council?”

Butch pinched the paper between his thumbs and index fingers and made to shred it. “Like hell I will!”

“Mayor, destroying evidence is a punishable crime!” Garran warned.

“I’ll rot in jail before I let anyone see these words!”

Butch tore the small sheet into fours, shoved it into his mouth, and started chewing. Three bailiffs took ahold of him. One tried to retrieve the paper and nearly lost a finger for his efforts.

“Mr. Mayor!” Pastor Larkin shouted and drummed on the table.

“That’s all right, Pastor,” Garran said, “I have it memorized. The letter reads: My dearest Garran, last night was amazing. When you used your mouth on me, I thought I was going to die. If you are the devil, then I am ready to denounce God if you would…”

Claire stood and shouted. “I withdraw my accusation!”

Garran played his eyes across the assembled crowd. “Hear that, ladies? Ready to denounce God for some of this.”

“That is enough out of everyone!” the pastor shouted. “In light of the mayor’s actions and Miss Alessi’s recanting, it is the judgment of this council that all charges be dismissed against Garran Holt.” He turned to Claire. “Miss Alessi, levying false accusations, particularly of this magnitude, is a very serious offense. Mr. Holt would be within his right to lay charges against you for which you could face severe punishment. I hope Mr. Holt agrees with me that the humiliation you suffered today is sufficient to teach you never to do such a thing again.”

“Yeah, sure,” Garran answered.

He had had enough of the council hall and was ready to enjoy his freedom. Besides, Claire was unlikely to face any sort of real punishment. Garran picked Ada out from the crowd, met her eyes, and returned her smile. Besides, he had better things to do with his time and did not need the distraction, but first he would write up a consent contract. He might be an idiot, but he was no fool.

CHAPTER 5

If Garran thought his ordeal was over, he was quickly disabused of such a notion. Dwight and two of his friends waited for him outside and grabbed him by each arm when he stepped from the town hall building. Two more pushed Matt away.

“What the hell are you doing?” Garran demanded.

“You’re going back to your room, and this time you’re going to stay there until I let you out,” Dwight answered.

“The hell I am!”

Garran lashed out with a foot and kicked the man holding onto his right arm in the crotch. The struck man cursed and stumbled, but he did not release his grip. With several shouts of profanity, they forced Garran facedown into the street and twisted his arms behind his back.

“You’re going to do as you’re told, boy! For once in your life, someone is holding you accountable for your actions.”

“You can’t do this! I didn’t do anything!”

“You done plenty!” Nina shouted. “All your life I let you get away with running wild, making excuses for your behavior, and blaming it on not having a father.”

“Maybe I would have had a father if you hadn’t latched onto the first floating piece of garbage to come along and save you from spinsterhood!”

Dwight jerked his chin, and the men yanked Garran to his feet. “If he struggles, break his damn arms.”

The men forced him to walk but stopped when Claire ran up and slapped Garran in the face. “I hope you burn in hell, Garran Holt!”

“Damn it, I just got that to stop bleeding!”

Garran’s captors forced him to move around Claire and frog-marched him to his home, up the stairs, and into his room. They shoved him forward hard enough to propel him to the middle of the room and secured the door. Dwight had installed a simple crossbar on the outside. There would be no escaping that way. Still, this was a bedroom, not a prison, despite their intentions. It should not take much effort to break free.

Matt called up from below his window. “Garran, so what’s the deal?”

“Dwight’s locked me up again and barred my door.”

“Do you think this is what he was talking about not mattering what happened at your trial?”

“I guess.”

Garran heard a door slam open below, and Dwight burst out of the house. “Get out of here, you little rat!”

“Screw you, Dwight, you don’t own me,” Matt challenged.

Matt beat a hasty retreat when Dwight rushed at him with an axe handle. “If you come back, I’ll have a word with your father!” He glared up at Garran. “You’re not getting any help escaping this time, and if you do get out, I’ll break your damn ankles!”

Garran responded by peeing out of the window and laughing uproariously as he chased Dwight back into the house with his stream of justice. As fun as that was, Garran needed to take Dwight’s threat seriously. If he did escape, there would be no coming back. It was quite possible he had finally burned the last of his rather flimsy bridges.

Dwight pounded on his door with a heavy fist. “That just cost you a day of meals, you little shit!”

“You can’t do that! There are laws, and I have rights!”

“I’ll pass on your complaints to the mayor, but something tells me he’s not likely to be sympathetic to your plight.”

Garran sat down heavily on the edge of his bed. “Well, this sucks.”

***

Boredom was worse than any torture Garran could imagine. Dwight quickly learned to use the kitchen door during his comings and goings to avoid being bombarded with whatever Garran could fit through the bars covering his window. Matt came by occasionally, usually after dark. Dwight had made good on his promise to tell his father to keep his son away from the house. After a week of incarceration, Garran finally decided it was time to make his escape.

Fashioning a pry bar from a chair leg and the hinge from a chest, he worked several floorboards loose, pounded the nails flat, and set them back into place to prevent his mother from seeing them when she brought his food. He needed to wait until his mother left the house, which, unfortunately, was not often. Shortly after Nina brought him breakfast that morning, Garran saw her and Dwight walking away from the house toward the center of town. This was likely to be his best chance at escaping.

He pulled up the loose floorboards and began kicking at the ceiling boards. The wooden slats grudgingly gave way beneath his pounding boot heel with the screeching of nails protesting their forced removal. He held his foot in check a few inches above the hole in his floor when he heard the kitchen door open and voices emanating from below. Garran gathered up the floorboards and put them back in place.

The heavy crossbar clattered to the floor outside his room, and the door opened. Dwight and two of his drinking buddies stepped just inside the room. Garran could tell by the grin smeared across Dwight’s face that whatever his reason for coming, it did not bode well for him.

“Let’s go, boy,” Dwight commanded.

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going outside, and that’s all you need to know.”

Garran kept a wary eye on the three men as he stepped past them into the short hall atop the stairs leading to his room. If this was a trick and they jumped him, he had three nails hidden in his hand with the points poking up through his fingers. They might give him a beating, but he would do his damndest to take out some eyes in payment.

Dwight and his retinue guided Garran toward the center of town, and his anxiety increased when he noted an unusually large gathering of people in the village square. His stomach lurched and sent bile coursing up to his throat when he saw the armed soldiers in the center of the gathering. Did the mayor and council lie about his exoneration regarding Claire and were sending him to prison? When they reached the town square, Dwight gave him a shove and propelled him toward the waiting soldiers.

“Garran Holt?”

The man who spoke was a grizzled veteran, given the scars on his hands, face, and likely numerous places concealed by clothing and armor. He was shorter than Garran was by a couple of inches but sported a bit more mass. His hair and beard were a ruddy hue streaked with gray. His creased face bespoke of a character that demanded discipline and was adept at receiving it.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?”

The man stepped closer. “My name is Cyril Godfrey. I am the commander of one of the king’s labor camps. Your parents have relinquished their custodial duties to me. You will work in the labor camp until you come of age where you will be given the option of leaving or continue working as a paid laborer.”

“This is bullshit! I don’t want to work in your goddam labor camp!”

“It is not up for discussion. Failure to follow the rules or attempt to escape is a criminal offense that can result in additional terms of indenture.”

“This is slavery!”

“We prefer the term vassalage.”

“I don’t give a damn what you call it!” Garran spun to face Dwight and his mother. “Are you serious?”

“It’s for your own good,” Nina said. “You won’t stay out of trouble, you don’t accept any punishment for wickedness, and you refuse to get along with Dwight.”

“He’s an abusive drunk who enjoys beating us both, and your solution is to sell your son into slavery? You know what? You deserve each other. Do you think you’re going to have a nice happy home because I’m gone? I was the only thing keeping him from beating you worse than he does already.”

“He mostly hit me when I had to come between the two of you! You provoke him, and I’m tired of having to suffer because of you.”

Garran gritted his teeth and looked over his shoulder at Cyril. “I’m the king’s property now, right, so you have to protect me as such?”

Cyril ducked his head. “That’s right, to a point.”

“Good.”

Garran reached back, plucked the dagger hanging from Cyril’s belt, and flung it at Dwight. The weapon tumbled end over end before sinking to the hilt in Dwight’s thigh. Dwight’s eyes flew open wide, and he released a howl of pain that quickly succumbed to rage. He lurched toward Garran, hands extended to throttle the boy, money be damned. He would gladly give it back to kill the whelp. Two soldiers stepped between him and Garran with drawn blades.

“That’s the king’s property, and I cannot allow you to cause it harm.” Cyril glanced at the knife sticking out of Dwight’s leg. “That there is my property, and I’ll be wanting it back.”

Dwight stood before the tips of the soldiers’ blades, his mouth agape and desperately trying to form words which refused to come. He cast his eyes down at the hilt protruding from his thigh, gripped it with both hands, and pulled it out with a strangled cry.

Cyril took back his dagger, wiped the blade clean on his trouser leg, and slipped it home in its sheath. The boy’s reaction was not unexpected if a bit more extreme than most. Young men’s first reaction was often to run or hurl themselves at the ones who sold them. Cyril considered himself a good judge of character. It was one reason he had survived long enough to retire from the regular army and command one of the labor camps. He knew within seconds that Garran was going to cause a fuss. Even so, the boy managed to take his dagger. Had he a mind to, Cyril had no doubt he could have plunged it into him instead of his stepfather. He had never seen someone move so fast in his almost thirty years of service. This one required some watching.

“Are we done here?” Garran asked. “The stench of failure and betrayal is making me sick.”

Cyril nodded, and he and his men escorted Garran toward the edge of town. A wagon and several mounted soldiers stood waiting on the road leading out of Wooder’s Bend. Two men occupied the wagon’s bench, and five more sat in the bed. Given the men’s roughshod appearance, Garran took them as indentured as well. One of the soldiers shoved a stuffed burlap sack into his arms.

“It’s your clothes,” the man said when Garran looked at him with arched eyebrows.

Garran did not know when his mother had taken the time to pack a bag, but it was obvious she and Dwight had laid out this plan of theirs some time ago. It explained Dwight’s ominous warning. The bitterness of betrayal filled him like no emotion ever had, but as the wagon pulled away and his small town slowly receded, he felt a sense of relief and even anticipation at finally doing something other than filching booze, chopping down trees, and sullying bored girls. The last one he would miss, but the world was full of loose women. It should not be difficult to find them.

The only true regret he felt was when Matt broke from the trees lining the narrow road and waved. Matt had endured his abrasive and often selfish personality like no one else. He had been his best friend, and now Garran had to leave. Replacing Matt was certainly going to be a much greater challenge than finding a new source of getting drunk and laid.

The youngest man in the wagon, perhaps a year Garran’s junior, was the first to speak. His clothes were poor even by Garran’s modest standards, but he had a quick, friendly, guileless smile.

“Hi, my name’s Colin Atterly.”

Garran shook the proffered hand. “Garran Holt.”

“What are you in for?”

“I may have knocked up the mayor’s daughter. You?”

Colin laughed. “Nice. I’m guilty of being poor in a very large family. When you have six brothers and four sisters, I guess selling a few of them off makes sense.”

“Ah, it’s probably good I’m an only child, or they would have had to bring extra wagons. I’m sure my mother would have sold the lot of us.”

“You’re an only child and your family sold you to the work camps? Ouch.”

“To hell with them. It’s a free ride out of town as far as I’m concerned.”

One of the older men said, “Likely to be a free trip to your own unmarked grave.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Guild has hired mercenaries to attack the camps to disrupt the building of the king’s road. I’ve heard they killed nearly a third of the workers over the last year. That’s why they started indenturing free folks by paying families to sign over custodial rights like they done to you and Colin.”

“What brings you to the camps? I thought it was voluntary even for prisoners?”

“Not anymore, but I volunteered to get out of my cell. Better to die in the open than live in a cage. I was a member of the Free Traders. The Guild had me arrested and charged with conspiracy against the crown. It only took a few dinarins to have the court find me guilty. The name’s Frank, Frank Kamis if you feel inclined to carve my headstone.”

Frank seemed a decent enough fellow, but Colin was his age and there by similar circumstance. It was easy to spark and maintain conversations with him to pass the hours and days-long travel. The other men were real convicts, guilty of robbery, murder, and everything in between. Garran was not indisposed to talking with them, but neither was he quick to attempt to make friends. They spoke amongst themselves, apparently preferring to keep to their own kind just as Garran did.

Three days out of Wooder’s Bend, their small retinue met up with a larger contingent near a crossroads leading to the various small mountain communities scattered throughout the region.  Garran counted close to a hundred men including the two score of soldiers tasked with guarding them. The biggest surprise was the nearly dozen women occupying two wagons. It was obvious that their guards maintained a higher vigilance on them, not to keep them from running off but to maintain a barrier between them and the men. One group of women worked at cauldrons set over fire pits cooking meals while a second group scrubbed and mended clothing.