James Axler – Shadowfall

“Mebbe and mebbe not. Just that I never liked a man thought himself so clever.”

“Right,” Dean said loudly, making everyone turn to look at him. “His kid’s the same. All smart ways of saying things to put you down and make you feel small.”

“What did I tell you, lover?” Krysty whispered.

Ryan didn’t answer her. “Let’s go eat.”

RAINEY WAS WAITING, leaning against the frame of a door. “In here.” He gestured with his thumb. “Baron said he was going to come down and join you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Mean he won’t?” The sec man rubbed a finger along the side of his narrow hooked nose. “Baron has a funny way of talking. You probably heard that. But he’s straight as a crossbow quarrel. Steadfast, loyal and true, that’s Baron Weyman.” He grinned. “But he sometimes loses track of time. He’s got a collection of predark coins up in his rooms. Takes them out and stares at them through a bigger-glass. Hours on end. Anyway, come and sit down, and I’ll tell the kitchen staff to get their asses into gear.”

THE REFECTORY TABLE WAS a good thirty feet long, carved from a single length of wood, and easily the finest article of furniture that they’d so far seen in the ville.

The dishes were brought out by a gaggle of giggling young women, most of them unable to stop staring at Jak, while the albino teenager completely ignored them.

The food was of much better quality than they’d eaten in the brushwood gypsy camp. The soup, so thick you could almost have sliced into it with a knife and fork, was flavored with delicate herbs and pulses. Salmon in a pastry shell was smoked over oak chips and served with leeks in a cream-and-wine sauce.

“If the main course is going to be pork, then I’ll take a rain check on it,” Mildred said, getting a laugh from the others.

Rainey leaned forward. “Better to eat those mutie porkers than be eaten by them, Dr. Wyeth.”

Jamie had appeared and joined them, explaining that his father would be down shortly. He was sitting next to Dean. “Pigs are one of the most omnivorous of creatures on the planet, you know?” he said.

Dean looked across the long table to his father for help, but Ryan shrugged his shoulders. Doc quickly came to the boy’s assistance.

“Do you know the roots of that word, Master Weyman?” he asked, a kindly twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

“You mean the derivation?” The lad looked down at his plate and blushed. “I think it’s probably Latin. Is it?”

” Omnis , meaning ‘all.’ Vorare , meaning ‘to eat.’ Our word ‘devour’ comes from it. Omnivorus . The Latin is almost exactly the same word. Means that pigs eat everything.”

“Including people,” Mildred added.

“We hunt them when we can. But it’s dangerous for the horses,” Rainey said. “Pigs get in close and rake them along the belly with their tusks. And out fall the guts. Messy death.”

“We would also hunt other prey.”

Rainey stood, as did the boy, seeing Baron Weyman move forward out of the shadows that lurked like spilled night around the flanks of the dining room.

Ryan also pushed back his chair, levering himself upright, looking around to make sure that everyone followed suit. Trader and Dean came equal last.

“What other prey, Baron?” Jak asked once everyone was seated.

“You were lucky not to encounter a camp of scabbies near the sulfur springs. Not to mention the ragtag horde that has moved into the fringes of my land.”

Ryan studied Weyman, able to see him properly for the first time.

The baron was older than you’d expect for someone with a son of eleven summers. He sat slightly stooped, with powder-gray hair that hung neatly to his collar. He had a faint mustache and beard, with white eyebrows, pale blue eyes the same hue as Doc’s and a pallid complexion that suggested he rarely went outdoors. He was wearing a dark maroon jacket of brushed satin over a startling white lace shirt. His pale cream linen breeches were tucked into silk slippers of crimson and gold.