CH 9
Bill did not know where the drums were. Bill did not know much at all. He figured that his reason had been overwhelmed by his desire, but that didn’t make sense, he reasoned, because the only thing he wanted to do was find those naked ladies, it was the best he’d felt since... whatever had come before swimming and naked ladies... naked ladies, naked ladies, naked ladies, naked ladies, naked ladies...
***
Pickettstown more than met Nigel and Max’s previous assessment. It was a cesspit chokablock with street vendors peddling everything from enchanted shoestrings to roasted walnuts.There were hirsute wenches, professional panhandlers and sweaty mimes. There were a dozen barbers offering a half price bleeding with every tooth pulled. There were madmen who claimed to be ministers, beady eyed apothecaries and musclebound chiropractors. The aroma of the town was proof enough that every other person there was a drunk, a minstrel or a juggler. At every gate to the town there were herds of oxen, sheep and swayback horses. As night fell, the dozens of fires turned to scores and crackled with game and herdsmen’s meals. The already noxious air of the main thoroughfare turned to a pall of smoke as the vendors stoked and braised their skewers and shanks of meat and roiling fatty stews.
It made Max and Nigel hungry. Men in velvet and and feather splattered to the knees in the filth of the street wandered up and down singing and playing lutes and lyres. They were bards, moving in and out of the crowds and stalls gathering gossip and tidbits of news to carry back to the civilized end of the kingdom. Max didn’t say much to Nigel as they pushed through the throng up the street to a higher avenue the ran up the hill towards the homes of the founding gentry. A squat stone tower stood at the top of the first short hillock.
“We need to wait here for a while until Brock gets here.” Max motioned to the postal tower as they leaned heavily against the signpost at the intersection. The two of them waited for a little more than an hour, tucked out of sight against a shack in a couple doors down from the office. A small crowd gathered as the hour passed. Max gave his duffel to Nigel to keep track of when a huge buzzard flapped down on top of the postal roost. He ran over to the rider and exchanged a handshake before coming back to Nigel.
“Alright, it’s all fixed.” Max grinned with a touch of delirium. “That’s Brock Zadora, he flies for Feudal Express, I told him to buzz by Gynneth Mawr on his next trip around, told him to bring an extra bird and rider.”
“Max, I can’t tell if this a plan, or if you’re just making it up as you go along.” Nigel exclaimed as he watched Brock unload several large netted sacks of goods from the bird to a waiting contingent of customers. One of them was a ragged looking juggler, perhaps an adventurer who had lost everything on his way up. The rogue hero ran with his bundle as soon as he had it in hand as though he had never had any intention to pay.
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s a C.O.D..” Max shook his head as he watched the inevitable happen. Brock Zadora pulled out a small crossbow and dropped the man with a bolt through his thigh. A trio of even more ragged jugglers helped the man away and smiled mawkishly as Brock retrieved his package. By the time the injured man had been carried fifty feet to the closest barber, his purse was missing and the last gold tooth in his mouth was clenched in a pair of dental pliers. “Brock told me where to find the man in charge of the ale shipments. He runs a bar called the Lucky Panther in the center of the thoroughfare.”
“I think the bar might be safer.” Nigel gulped, his new fortitude was fraying in the atmosphere of Pickettstown. “Why don’t we get to it?”
It was a short, slow walk back to the tavern for both of them. The ten stones of gravesdust they had been carrying all day had them beaten nearly flat by the time they pushed through the doors to the tavern.
“I heard from Mr. Zadora that you are the man to see about a job on the ale carts.” Max leaned over the bar as he sat down heavily. “My friend and I would like very much to offer our services in that regard.”
“Volunteers!” Sal Berringer leaned back and slapped both palms on the bar. “And one of them has a staff. I’d wager you two for adventurers, am I right?” He picked up two glasses, set them on the bar and filled them both with whiskey.
“Travelers.” Max answered as he watched the whiskey. He realized suddenly that he hadn’t had a drink in three days. When Max glanced up from the glass and met Sal’s grin. He knew instantly that he had been measured like a regulation Tossing sheep by the tavern keeper.
“Well, I’m a minstrel, actually...” Nigel began as he was interrupted by the lance of Sal’s glare.
“Who the f**k told you to open your mouth? If I wanted to hear a f**king minstrel I’d have one strung up by his heels right over the bar, singing like a canary.” Sal growled at Nigel, reducing him to a coiled shadow on his stool. “Now, business. Can you use that staff?”
“I can.” Max met Sal’s eyes and decided that it might have been a bad idea to have done so. But bad ideas were a trademark of Max’s, so it fit with the rest of his plan. “Can you put us on the next shipment to Gynneth Mawr?”
“I can. But tell me: why should I?” Sal took one of the glasses in hand. “And don’t say that reclaiming the village of Gynneth f**king Mawr from the giants is my civic f**king duty.”
“Because as much as I enjoy spirit...” Max grasped his staff and closed his eyes for a moment. He took the shot and pounded it back in a single motion, opening his eyes and letting out a long breath as he squeezed the small mass of Billingsgate’s silken pouch through the weft of space and into the pocket of Sal’s waistcoat. It was a dinky teleport, but it took about as much juice as Max got out of the whiskey. “...that sort of thing isn’t my preferred form of recreation.” He nodded at the Sal’s suddenly full pocket.
“Well...” Sal patted the pocket and thumbed the pouch open enough to stick his thumb in. He wiped it on the rim of his glass and took his shot in a single pull. A satisfied charge lit his eyes as he pulled out a third glass, filled all three and raised his own. “I believe you two have a future in the exportation of my wares.” He leaned in and whispered at a more intimate distance from his new hires.
“Getting there is easy. We have hordes of adventures turning up everyday to try their skills at the hill giants. As you can see, it’s done wonders for the local economy. Most die, but lucky for me, some s**t themselves at the first sight of one of those big bastards and come back here to drink themselves into my debt.” He gestured about the room of drunk, semi-conscious men. “A few, the smart ones, ride up there regularly and circle the place. They stick to the flooded side of the river and look for bodies.”
“You mean they rob the dead?” Nigel was disgusted, and he regretted speaking instantly.
“Yeah. They rob the dead, sweetheart. Keep sipping at your whiskey and shut the f**k up.” Sal didn’t smile when he spoke to Nigel. “More importantly, they rob the dead giants. Those angry sonsofbitches kill one or two of their own every week.”
“They’re after the forelocks, you see.” Sal tugged at his own greasy bangs as Max took his whiskey down with another quick toss. Sal grinned at the young man’s hand with a drink. “The Smith’s guild lost a lot of money when the giants came in and closed all of their mines up north in Gynneth Mawr. They’re paying five hundred crownes for every forelock brought in.”
Sal hugged the two men threateningly close to him as he leaned forward and directed their attention to a pair of men hunched over in the far corner of the bar. One was very large, a warrior for certain. He had arms bigger then either of Nigel’s thighs and a massive wide bladed sword sheathed on his back. His hair was shorn entirely and he wore a coat of iron mail that had rusted where the links met one another. The other was a small, rotund man in an odd slouching hat with a tassel on the end like a knitted fez. He looked like a wizard of some kind. His pink cheeks puffed after every long gulp he took from his mug of beer.
“You see those two?” Sal asked them. “That’s Bastard John (so named for his sword, of course) and Tommy Gin, his healer and fence. John doesn’t talk much, so Tommy does all the wheeling and dealing. Between them they’ve sold seven forelocks.”
“Seven? I know giants are a violent lot, but how many of their own have they killed?” Max looked sideways at Sal. He didn’t think that pair were quite as capable as Sal made them out to be.
“By my count there were seventy or eighty of those c**ksuckers that came in and stomped all over that town, about thirty of them were bitches, and they all ran for the hills once the jacks got them knocked up- that’s their way, you see.” Sal poured himself and Max another round. “If the women don’t run, the men will eat the young like f**king tomcats.”
“So that left forty or fifty, since then I’ve heard that at least thirteen of them are dead and lying in the fields west of the river.” He tipped his glass to the men in the corner. “And those two dangerous bastards have the best luck of anybody in this s**thole, seven forelocks in five trips. Five trips up and back, nary a scratch on either of them.”
“Impressive.” Max put his third shot back and set the glass on the bar. He looked out the narrow window into the darkening street. The ale carts were loading up and the herdsmen were whistling and smacking at the mangy looking cattle about they were hustling around in the stockyard. There were four men on horses, all of them lean from their quests, suited up in well fitted mail, shields across their backs. Max recognized the coat of arms on their shields and their tunics as that of the three hundred and twenty seventh Doanish Rangers. He’d served with them in the calvary, they were not men who spent their time at trifles. “And that’s the shipment, loading up right there?”
“Every barrel of ale and every head of cattle that comes through Pickettstown passes unmolested because I ensure their safe passage.” Sal poured another shot for himself and tucked the bottle away. “But I do not believe I’d have the two of you head out tonight.” He paused and smiled suspiciously at Max and Nigel.
“Both of you look to be beaten flatter than hammered s**t. I’d opine that you’ve had a trek getting here.” He knocked on the bar twice. A half dozen broken down looking young-ish women came out of a back room. “I have a room to let, it’s occupant has yet to return from his trip north, so I can put you two heroes up tonight.” Sal offered with a grand sweep of his hand toward the doors on the landing upstairs.
“We’d be grateful for that.” Max thanked Sal. He knew he could count completely on his new acquaintance to ensure their safety - until he could rob and kill them on the most amenable terms. Max actually liked doing business with men who were as morally bankrupt as the ‘knights’ his uncle raised him around.
“Will either of you need a private fitting this evening? I have Layla’s been waiting all day for a gentleman such as yourself to take in his breeches.” Sal motioned to the bevy of waiting seamstresses on the staircase that led to the rooms.
Nigel looked scared. Nigel was scared. He had no intention of his first time being with a wench so thoroughly used. The seamstresses all looked haggard and either underfed or overfed. He surmised correctly that it was important to pimps to maintain a stable that could account for the needs of individual riders.
“Not tonight.” Max shook his head and then looked at the ladies. “Tomorrow, dear ladies, tomorrow you’ll find me refreshed, until then I must disappoint you. I am truly sorry.” He bowed as he finished his mock apology.
The wenches tittered and covered their mouths girlishly. Nigel’s fright at the thought of bedding one of those women was tempered by his amazement. Even worn out seamstresses became infatuated and rosy in Max’s presence. Had he the strength left he would have been jealous, but as it was, Nigel just walked up the stairs and found the door to their room.
“You should take the mattress.” Max took Nigel’s bag and lute before he dropped his own burden. “I’ll be fine on the floor.” He set the load down uncomfortably.
“Thanks.” Was all Nigel managed as he sat on the bed and fell sideways, unconscious.
Max was totally shagged as well. But he knew he had work to do before he could get to sleep. He opened the window of their room and looked into the alley below. The ground was covered in straw and garbage. It was obviously being regularly used by some number of jugglers as a sort of makeshift hostel. He dropped both bags of dust out the window and followed them to the ground.
***
Bill had no sense of time nor self. He embodied a single feeling as romantic as it was strange. He’d never felt as good in his life, and had he the brain to know it, he would have realized that he never would again.
***
The sun was starting to light the eastern peaks as Max cut two slits in the last of the parchment rolls full of dust. He’d popped the bungs from sixty casks with his knife, slit each parcel and dropped it into the beer before slapping the cork back in. Finally finished, he put the last parcel in the cask and replaced the cork. As he crawled around the line of waiting kegs, out of sight from the madness of the main street, he didn’t see the guard’s knees until he’d run into them.
“What’re you doing back here, juggler?” The broadly built man in a leather cuirass asked gruffly as he turned Max’s face up to him with the knotted end of his club.
“I was... admiring your boots, cap’n.” Max answered with a stupid grin. He was glad he had pocketed a few of the trinkets he’d found in Billingsgate’s coach.
“My boots, eh?” The guard looked down and saw that a tiny sachet of gauzy material tied with a stained ribbon was sitting on the toe of his boot. He kicked it up into his hand and looked it over and saw that it had five crownes tucked inside. “Oh yes, they are nice boots.” He nodded curtly, touching his club to the visor of his metal cap.
Max stood up and began to brush the filth off of his knees before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead he remembered that he had one last task. Max followed the sturdy guard as he made his rounds past the stockyard. He scooped handfuls of grain into the duffle bags until they were almost as heavy as they had been. He left them in the alley and covered them with enough straw to hide the sacs of grain. Climbing the wall of the tavern was agony, and by the time he made it back into the room, he fell onto the bed on top of Nigel and simply passed out.
It seemed that no time at all had passed when they awoke to a bang at the door and startled. Neither of them knew how both of them had ended up on the same bed. By the second knock they were standing on opposite sides of the room. After a blurry, confused few seconds they realized they were still fully clothed, which left them somewhat less alarmed. Nigel began to speak, but Max shook his head and shouted at the door.
“What do you want!?” Max tried to sound hoarse and still drunk, it wasn’t much of a stretch.
“Thought you boys might like to break fast.” A small voice tainted with the mewling singsong of a Farrenweld accent called through the door. “John and I heard that the two of ya’ll were joinin’ the wagon train headed out tonight. We thought we could show you the ropes.”
“How kind of them...” Nigel raised an eyebrow suspiciously at Max.
They headed downstairs with the small fellow in the strange knit hat and sat down to a pile of oats and charred rabbit provided by the odd pair of adventurers. Bastard John was already seated, he had already begun eating, the bones of at least three rabbits and... something else were scattered on his plate. He had a large mug of beer, possibly the same mug they had seen him with the night before, in his left fist.
“Sal mentioned you two were new recruits, John and I wanted to bring you fellows up to speed on how we get things done ‘round here.” Tommy’s accent grated Max’s nerves, but he hid it well under the shadow of fatigue he was still wearing. The four hours of sleep hadn’t done much more than take the edge off of his aches.
“We appreciate that.” Nigel smiled graciously. He was, if nothing else, capable of mimicking honesty and propriety. “And thank you for inviting us to share your meal.”
“Oh, its nothin’, we’ll all be raking it in by tomorrow afternoon.” Tommy winked and John said nothing. He just stared at Max until he looked out the door as shouts and applause rang from the thoroughfare. “Oh, perfect timing you two. The carts are back from last night, come have a look.”
Max and Nigel walked over to the door and grimaced at the sight of the returning wagon teams. One of the Rangers Max had seen the night before was being helped out of a wagon with his right leg tied to a short staff. Had it not been, the mangled limb would have bent in half under the man’s weight. As the muleskinners washed themselves in the troughs a contingent of boys came out and slopped water from buckets into the back of the carts. A few jugglers were in on the cleaning act too, pushing brooms through the wagons to sweep out the remaining blood and gore. A dead cart manned by a team of four scrawny men in rags rolled up and piled out the corpses from the mud beside the wagons as the cleanup continued.
“Yeah, it gets pretty dang messy up there.” Tommy winked again. Max thought the little man was more dangerous than his ridiculous accent might betray. “You two oughta’ listen to John and me, we’ve been at it a while.”
“Sal said that the two of you had collected seven forelocks, that’s thirty five hundred crownes, isn’t it?” Nigel offered with a smile.
“Well, it’s more like thirty two after expenses...” He waved a hand at John who grunted approvingly. “This one can eat.”
***
Bill discovered the source of the drums. It was the thrum of the water made by the splashing of supple limbs, unbridled lust and thousands of tentacles. It was glorious, divine and extraordinarily weird all at once. It might as well have been heaven, as far as Bill could conceive.
***
A great deal of relief sloughed through Max as he saw that the casks he’d doctored the night before were being loaded up. He and Nigel were fixing the last of their gear on the lead wagon. Max rode on the left of John and Tommy while Nigel took the buckboard. He noticed that their new friends seemed anxious as he and Max loaded up. Max dropped off the wagon and stepped over to Nigel.
“Without looking right at our new chums, try to see of they look happy when I come back.” Max leaned over and whispered as he stepped down the alley behind the Lucky Panther.
John and Tommy both tried to appear calm, but each of them tucked a slight smile into their chins as Max came around the corner loaded down with the duffle bags. Max heaved the bags onto the buckboard and patted them before dodging John’s glance and getting back on the wagon.
It took about four hours for the wagons to reach the ruined inn that sat at the old ferry landing south of the Gynneth Mawr. The area was littered with trash and destroyed casks, there were dead cattle and the remnants of the same strewn about. Worst of all were the old gallows and thieves cages hanging throughout the area. It was the middle of the night and the torchlight threw horrible shadows through all of the old wreckage. Max knew that all of the towns at the edge of mining country were peppered with debtors’ cages and stocks. It was the strict policy of the management of the mining and collections guilds that prospectors would take out their dues as well as the cost of their equipment and provisions as loans that they would repay through the fruits of their claims. If they fell behind they had a choice of working the guild run mines or facing the stocks. Most chose servitude, as the gallows and the cages were not inviting options. A faint thrill ran through him at the sight of the ruined stocks. He knew that whatever happened next, he would not be spending a minute bent over in debt to those damned lawyers.
“This is the drop point for the cattle and the ale.” Tommy told them. “It’s pretty safe about this time.” He paused as a pair of men carrying a mortally wounded third slogged through the reeds where they had been waiting nearby.
“The survivors tend to stick to the marshes and hide until they see the torchlight.” Tommy told Max and Nigel as John picked out the sturdiest of the three men. He unsheathed his four foot blade and blocked the man from getting into the wagon.
“How many?” John’s voice was low, a whisper caught in a grindstone.
“What?” the man was practically babbling. Obviously meeting the giants had taken a toll on his psyche. “How many dead?”
“How many giants are there?” John’s voice scratched at Nigel’s eardrums, he was reminded of the men who had been in Pillywizet’s shop.
“Oh, ahhhh.... we... counted thirty... one, yeah thirty one of ‘em up there.” The man was shaking with cold from sitting in a swamp all night. John raised his sword and put it back in its sheath.
“That’s good news.” Tommy and John both smiled. “That means there’s two more bounties waiting out in them wet fields just on the other side of the river.”
The wagons were unloaded and the cattle left to wander and graze. John waved the rest of the wagons off as he and Tommy pulled the empty cart into the shattered hollow of the old inn. They stood at window and waited for the early dawn to break.
“Now, timing is crucial.” Tommy gestured out the broken window toward the bluff that what was left of Gynneth Mawr sat on. As early light began to filter in, they grey shades of the landscape broke into the crinkled edge of the far peaks and the blasted structures of the town on its mount. “The giants sleep until about an hour after sunup. Now that we have the horses and the wagon unhitched, we’ll pole the ferry across and ride through the filed and find them new dead.”
“We’ll mount up any second now, if it ain’t light enough we won’t find them dead giants out in all that water. If it’s too light by the time we make it back here, the giants will already be on us.”
The farmer’s fields across the river had flooded from a dam of rubble and refuse that had been pushed over the cliff that served as the western edge of the town. Gynneth Mawr was meant to be a stronghold, it had been a booming town with the copper strike and both the church and the smith’s guild had put a great deal of men and coin into seeing it built and defended. Max let his adjusting eyes search what he could see of the ruins from his low vantage.
The keep sat at the southern edge of the bluff, and the smithy’s furnaces sat on the western cliff such that the slag could be dumped over the side into the river below. An unfinished wall ran the rest of the way around the town, it was dotted with small post towers and looked like it probably butted up to a large outcrop of granite on the east side of the town. Max focused on the flat peak of that outcrop.
“Isn’t it getting awfully light already?” Nigel asked. He looked at the shape of the destroyed town emerging from the misty dark. The western edge of the town that leaned over the cliff above the river was a sliding pile of broken roofs, rubble, trash and what he could now see was an enormous, trailing slop of the giant’s leavings. The fields were flooded by this fecal dam in front of them.
“Not quite yet. Hold your horses, little guy.” Tommy grinned wickedly at Nigel. Nigel felt it was foolish for Tommy to be calling anybody little. He looked back at the town as the sun peeked out over the far mountains. He could see where the keep had been kicked in by the horde of giants, it sat opposite the square from the temple of Helios. Nigel thought about the fact that somewhere beneath that temple spire, a large stone was holding his classmate’s remains firmly in place. He would not have made it this far had fate not pushed him into it, nor if Bill and Max hadn’t pulled him out of his own mess. It felt ironic to Nigel that this was most likely the last sunrise he would ever see, and it shone down on a township of broken stones and piles of feces.
“Any minute now...” Tommy said almost to himself.
Max continued to focus on the far point of the granite outcrop on the far side of the blasted town. He blinked a few times to recharge his senses and looked up through the holes on the roof at the morning clouds overhead. He turned to the pair of men who had shown them north. Each of them smiled as he blinked sleepily.
A great booming yawn echoed over the open fields with the first shafts of sunlight. All four men felt their bowels quiver at the noise. First one giant stood up among the wrecked buildings, then a few more as they woke up to piss off the cliff into the river below. The sound of the giants answering nature four or five at a time sounded like a waterfall crashing just upstream from them. One by one the huge brutes scratched at themselves and stumbled down the steep hill, treading over the low patches in the unfinished stone wall, and headed to their cache of ale and doomed cattle. The giants were ungainly piles of muscle and flesh, each of them was four times as tall as any man. Hair coursed over their leathery skin in great matted rivers that converged on their backs like dense shrubberies. It seemed odd to Nigel how disproportionately built they were. Their arms were longer than their legs, and their shoulders were quite broad, yet their heads were no larger than their massive fists. However, as Nigel imagined it would, the ground literally shook as the beasts approached.
“I think we’ve waited too long...” Nigel said as he heard John’s broadsword leave its sheath.
“Nope.” Tommy Gin grinned at he men as he produced a small steel crossbow. “Perfect timing is what this is.”
“I think they mean to relieve us of our bags, Nigel.” Max said as he took his staff in his free hand. The giants were lumbering (as they must) closer, dust sifted down from the broken crossbeams of the collapsed floor overhead.
“You’re a smart one, Sal told us you were... but I reckon he mighta’ gave you more credit than he shoulda’.” Tommy pointed the crossbow at Nigel as John stepped back to give himself room to swing his mighty blade. “And what we’re fixin’ to do is a piece of mercy, really. You drop them bags and run like hell, maybe you can get far enough to hide somewhere safe before the giants get you.”
“The longer you wait the better chance they’re gonna get you.” Tommy continued. “And you ain’t never gonna make it with them heavy old bags of yers.”
“Ah, this is kindness, Nigel.” Max almost smiled to his friend. “And I thought there was no such thing as honor among thieves.”
“Well boy, if you don’t get real soon, John’s let fly with that blade of his, and this little bugger’s gonna catch one right through his eye.” Tommy leveled the bolt of his crossbow at Nigel’s face. “But we’d prefer not to do that.”
“No. I’m sure it would be better if we were eaten rather than killed.” Nigel offered smugly. He was trying not to panic, he tried to believe that Max had figured something out. If he hadn’t then why had he been so careful about the bags? “You don’t want there to be questions, dead adventurers are common enough, unless they have crossbow bolts driven through their heads, of course.”
“That’s right.” Tommy kept smiling from behind his weapon. “And them giants are like dogs, they’ll run down anything that moves or gets their attention. Lucky for John and me they’ll be too busy with them cows to look in here for us.”
“Fine!” Max snarled as he threw his bag down. He shook Nigel’s off his shoulder and set it next to the other. “You really have put together quite a plan. If we run we die, if we stay we die, either way you get the goods. You win.”
The giants were only a few hundred yards off, in less than a minute they would be right on top of them. John used the tip of his great sword to gingerly flip the edge of one bag open. His blade dislodged a small stream of dry corn.
“What the hell is this crap?” Tommy would have been screaming, but had the sense to keep from calling in the giants.
“Just what you asked for.” Max gave the men a crazed grin and a rude gesture. Nigel was ever so slightly relieved to see Tommy lower his weapon in shock.
John drew his blade back and swung in a wide arc before Tommy could stop him. Tom had brains enough to understand that if either of their victims screamed they’d all be dead. John did not, and before his little friend could prevent it, the blade was slicing through the air. Max sent a hail of whistlesnaps up through the roof of the inn that popped and sang a hundred feet overhead as he dove at Nigel. Max’s shoulder hit Nigel at the waistline and threw them both to the ground as the sword went over their heads. Tommy’s eyes popped with terror while John raised the sword like he was about to chop a piece of wood. He had those squirming juggler bastards on the floor in a heap. John knew he wouldn’t miss a second time. He might even split the two of them with one blow...
A pair of hands as big as church doors crunched into what remained of the second floor and ripped away their cover. The dust sprawled under the putrid wind of the giant’s breath as he sniffed at the four men on the floor of the inn. The twisting snake of brambling hair that stretched from temple to temple above the giant’s eyes bent towards his nose in the middle as he reached down for the first course of his breakfast.
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