wagon-traffic decreased, but the pedestrian traffic headed east increased dramatically. Most of the pedestrians were weaving, staggering, laughing. They all reeked of ale. In some cases, their clothes were dripping, as if they had lain full-length in it and drunk of it like dogs. Jack supposed they had. He saw a laughing man leading a laughing boy of perhaps eight by the hand. The man bore a nightmarish resemblance to the hateful desk clerk at the Alhambra, and Jack understood with perfect clarity that this man was that man’s Twinner. Both he and the boy he led by the hand were drunk, and as Jack turned to look after them, the little boy began to vomit. His father—or so Jack supposed him to be—jerked him hard by the arm as the
boy attempted to flounder his way into the brushy ditch,
where he could be sick in relative privacy. The kid reeled back to his father like a cur-dog on a short leash, spraying puke on an elderly man who had collapsed by the side of the road and was snoring there.
Captain Farren’s face grew blacker and blacker. “God
pound them all,” he said.
Even those furthest into their cups gave the scarred Cap-
tain a wide and prudent berth. While in the guard-post outside the pavillion, he had belted a short, businesslike leather scab-bard around his waist. Jack assumed (not unreasonably) that it contained a short, businesslike sword. When any of the sots came too close, the Captain touched the sword and the sot detoured quickly away.
Ten minutes later—as Jack was becoming sure he could no
longer keep up—they arrived at the site of the accident. The driver had been coming out of the turn on the inside when the wagon had tilted and gone over. As a result, the kegs had
sprayed all the way across the road. Many of them were
smashed, and the road was a quagmire for twenty feet. One
horse lay dead beneath the wagon, only its hindquarters visible. Another lay in the ditch, a shattered chunk of barrel-stave protruding from its ear. Jack didn’t think that could have happened by accident. He supposed the horse had been badly
hurt and someone had put it out of its misery by the closest means at hand. The other horses were nowhere to be seen.
Between the horse under the wagon and the one in the
ditch lay the carter’s son, spreadeagled on the road. Half of
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his face stared up at the bright blue Territories sky with an expression of stupid amazement. Where the other half had been was now only red pulp and splinters of white bone like flecks of plaster.
Jack saw that his pockets had been turned out.
Wandering around the scene of the accident were perhaps
a dozen people. They walked slowly, often bending over to
scoop ale two-handed from a hoofprint or to dip a handker-
chief or a torn-off piece of singlet into another puddle. Most of them were staggering. Voices were raised in laughter and in quarrelsome shouts. After a good deal of pestering, Jack’s
mother had allowed him to go with Richard to see a midnight double feature of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead at one of Westwood’s dozen or so movie theaters. The shuffling, drunken people here reminded him of the zombies
in those two films.
Captain Farren drew his sword. It was as short and busi-
nesslike as Jack had imagined, the very antithesis of a sword in a romance. It was little more than a long butcher’s knife, pitted and nicked and scarred, the handle wrapped in old
leather that had been sweated dark. The blade itself was
dark . . . except for the cutting edge. That looked bright and keen and very sharp.
“Make away, then!” Farren bawled. “Make away from the
Queen’s ale, God-pounders! Make away and keep your guts
where they belong!”
Growls of displeasure met this, but they moved away from
Captain Farren—all except one hulk of a man with tufts of
hair growing at wildly random points from his otherwise bald skull. Jack guessed his weight at close to three hundred
pounds, his height at just shy of seven feet.
“D’you like the idea of taking on all of us, sojer?” this
hulk asked, and waved one grimy hand at the knot of villagers who had stepped away from the swamp of ale and the litter of barrels at Farren’s order.
“Sure,” Captain Farren said, and grinned at the big man. “I like it fine, just as long as you’re first, you great drunken clot of shit.” Farren’s grin widened, and the big man faltered away from its dangerous power. “Come for me, if you like. Carving you will be the first good thing that’s happened to me all day.”
Muttering, the drunken giant slouched away.
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THE TALISMAN
“Now, all of you!” Farren shouted. “Make away! There’s a
dozen of my men just setting out from the Queen’s pavillion!
They’ll not be happy with this duty and I don’t blame them
and I can’t be responsible for them! I think you’ve just got time to get back to the village and hide in your cellars before they arrive there! It would be prudent to do so! Make away!”
They were already streaming back toward the village of
All-Hands’, the big man who had challenged the Captain in
their van. Farren grunted and then turned back to the scene of the accident. He removed his jacket and covered the face of the carter’s son with it.
“I wonder which of them robbed the lad’s pockets as he lay
dead or dying in the roadstead,” Farren said meditatively. “If I knew, I’d have them hung on a cross by nightfall.”
Jack made no answer.
The Captain stood looking down at the dead boy for a long
time, one hand rubbing at the smooth, ridged flesh of the scar on his face. When he looked up at Jack, it was as if he had just come to.
“You’ve got to leave now, boy. Right away. Before Osmond
decides he’d like to investigate my idiot son further.”
“How bad is it going to be with you?” Jack asked.
The Captain smiled a little. “If you’re gone, I’ll have no
trouble. I can say that I sent you back to your mother, or that I was overcome with rage and hit you with a chunk of wood
and killed you. Osmond would believe either. He’s distracted.
They all are. They’re waiting for her to die. It will be soon.
Unless . . .”
He didn’t finish.
“Go,” Farren said. “Don’t tarry. And when you hear Mor-
gan’s diligence coming, get off the road and get deep into the woods. Deep. Or he’ll smell you like a cat smells a rat. He knows instantly if something is out of order. His order. He’s a devil.”
“Will I hear it coming? His diligence?” Jack asked timidly.
He looked at the road beyond the litter of barrels. It rose steadily upward, toward the edge of a piney forest. It would be dark in there, he thought . . . and Morgan would be coming
the other way. Fear and loneliness combined in the sharpest, most disheartening wave of unhappiness he had ever known.
Speedy, I can’t do this! Don’t you know that? I’m just a kid!
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“Morgan’s diligence is drawn by six pairs of horses and a
thirteenth to lead,” Farren said. “At the full gallop, that damned hearse sounds like thunder rolling along the earth.
You’ll hear it, all right. Plenty of time to burrow down. Just make sure you do.”
Jack whispered something.
“What?” Farren asked sharply.
“I said I don’t want to go,” Jack said, only a little louder.
Tears were close and he knew that once they began to fall he was going to lose it, just blow his cool entirely and ask Captain Farren to get him out of it, protect him, something—
“I think it’s too late for your wants to enter into the question,” Captain Farren said. “I don’t know your tale, boy, and I don’t want to. I don’t even want to know your name.”
Jack stood looking at him, shoulders slumped, eyes burn-
ing, his lips trembling.
“Get your shoulders up!” Farren shouted at him with sud-
den fury. “Who are you going to save? Where are you going?
Not ten feet, looking like that! You’re too young to be a man, but you can at least pretend, can’t you? You look like a kicked dog!”
Stung, Jack straightened his shoulders and blinked his
tears back. His eyes fell on the remains of the carter’s son and he thought: At least I’m not like that, not yet. He’s right. Being sorry for myself is a luxury I can’t afford. It was true. All the same, he could not help hating the scarred Captain a little for reaching inside him and pushing the right buttons so easily.