Chapter Thirty-Eight. The Outpost Arrives.
Thirty-Eight
The Outpost Arrives.
Merc puts himself in front of me, but leaves the broadsword holstered on his back. His hand finds instead the dirk at his hip, and he unsheathes it discreetly, keeping the weapon down by his thigh.
Peering around the meat of his biceps, I narrow my eyes against the low sunlight.
A man in a black top hat approaches from the west. He’s dressed in a formal gray and black suit, and astride a very fine black trotter.
All the silver flashes on the tack suggest—fine clothes aside—that whoever it is has some wealth. Yet he’s traveling alone.
So, like Julion, he’s either stupid, arrogant … or sufficiently dangerous that he doesn’t need a defender.
But unlike the golden nobleman, this is not someone to trust.
“Don’t say anything.” Merc shakes his head as if I’m already arguing. “At all.”
My impulse is to give him some lip—and not the kissing kind.
But the rider is on us, pulling up and halting beside our horse.
Under the lee of the top hat’s brim, he has dark sideburns, and the kind of smile that strikes me as a warning, as opposed to a greeting.
That I can’t see his eyes is a good thing.
A man like him will come to a violent end. It’s the way of things.
His chuckle is deep and velvety. “A pair of lovebirds in a poisoned stream.”
“What!” I croak as I scramble free of the water, jumping out on the opposite side from him. “Oh, crescent moon—”
“Relax,” he says. “All is quite well. Just a joke.”
As his foreign accent registers, I pat at my wet clothing the way Merc checks his weapons, for all the good that will do. If the water is indeed contaminated, it’s in me, on me. Still, I grab my hollow stomach and take special note of its equilibrium.
“Not much of a joke.” Merc also gets out of the stream, but unlike me, he chooses the side the rider’s on. “I think you need to be moving on, mate.”
If the other man’s dark grin is a warning, Merc’s stance is a fight already in progress. He’s no longer bothering to hide the dirk, either.
“Quite inhospitable you are,” the rider in the top hat drawls. “Then again, I gather you all have somehow managed to cross the Lake of Lost Souls. On that … old nag. A feat that requires a bit of grit.”
Merc says nothing, and I can imagine what his glare must look like.
The rider points to the south and west over his shoulder. “You’re going to the Outpost, then? For a rest and a recovery. You’ll find it not far off in that direction.” That chuckle returns. “Something tells me you’ll be just fine amongst the colorful characters therein.”
The man’s attention returns to me. “I’d keep her well in hand, however. There are many who will seek to sample what you have already enjoyed.”
Touching the brim of his hat, he inclines his head—and yet somehow remains unbowed. Then with a chk-chk between his molars, the black stallion lopes off in a canter that suggests those hooves have plenty more speed at their disposal.
Merc continues to stay where he is, until the rider has hooked up with a well-grooved road many lengths away, and continues forth toward the dark clouds that are gathering to the northeast. When my mercenary finally turns back to the stream, his eyes burn with aggression that’s not directed at me.
Wordlessly, I cross through the water, hop out, and gather the reins of our horse—who is not a nag.
Lifting up one of the saddlebags, I shove my other hand in and fish around, and when I feel what I was hoping to find, I pull out an empty cloth sack.
I imagine that the mayor or one of his sons probably kept a sizable load of provisions in it.
Orange fruit, going by the scent that lingers, no doubt an offering for the Sooths they went to see.
I really hope that muddy, bound pair made it back to the village safely.
With a jerk, I rip apart the bag, the flimsy seams releasing without much force.
When it’s all unfurled, I take off the blue turban, wrap my lower face and hair up with the sackcloth so that only my eyes show, and then replace what was on my head to hold the draping where it is.
As I tuck the tail end into the navy blue coat, I look at Merc.
“We should move along,” I say. “I don’t like the look of that weather.”
His face softens, though it’s nearly imperceptible: If I didn’t know him so well, I would think there is naught behind his hard, cruel exterior save more of the same.
Nodding at him, I gather the reins and mount up on the saddle’s leather ledge, landing in a soggy astride that feels unpleasant.
Compared to the heat, I’ll take it.
Merc remains where he is for a stretch of time, and I don’t rush him.
He’s scanning around, and then rechecking the road off in the distance, as if to make sure the rider in the top hat stays on his own journey—and keeps it separate from our own.
Only after that black stallion has disappeared somewhere around the base of the closest mountain in the range does Merc walk over.
As he swings up into the saddle, I release my hold on the reins and lean back to give him room. He settles with a solid thump, and our horse grunts beneath us. No doubt it wishes for a return to the lighter load of just me.
Merc directs our not-nag to the road the hatted man approached on, and the twin lines of packed earth suggest that stagecoaches travel the route with frequency.
I twist around and look back. The storm is continuing to gather strength, the bad weather ushering in great black and purple swells that will soon eclipse all the blue sky.
At least there’s still no hat man—and the breadth of the lakebed we’ve crossed astounds me.
I can’t see the far-off shore where we started the descent I didn’t take much note of, and all those gray boulders, gray rocks, gray stones, and gray pebbles are as inhospitable an environment as I could ever imagine.
The Lake of Lost Souls. How apt, and I’m glad I didn’t think too much about the name as we headed down into that basin.
As I turn back around, every instinct I have tells me we’re heading into another kind of inhospitable.
“What are the clouds doing?” Merc demands.
“Coming fast.”
As anxiety travels up my spine and fuels unhelpful thoughts, I tell myself that I’ve seen many a storm before—except all I can think of are the black bands in the Fulcrum.
I pray to the crescent moon the things in the sky really are just clouds, however gloomy and dark they appear—and not evil energy come to hunt us.
But the top-hat man proves to be right. Soon enough, a sizable town kindles on the horizon, and when we reach the farming fields on its periphery, the low stone plot fences and orderly lines of mature plantings are a surprise that shouldn’t be one.
No matter the debauchery, people need to eat.
At the moment, nobody is working the rows of bright green bushes, but they are well looked after, without weeds or leaves damaged by pests.
And as Merc lingers his attention on the crops, I wonder if he isn’t making an expert’s assessment of the beans and grains.
My heart aches for him.
Grazing pastures with over a dozen horses working at the grass come next.
These meadow lots are separated by rail fences, and after them come the first of the structures.
The stables are flat-roofed and closed up, the weathered boards the gray of the lakebed, and in their midst, trees have been allowed to grow up, perhaps to offer a buffering from the sun.
These arboreal specimens are like none I’ve ever seen, tall, bushy, and triangular, the branches spindled with dark green spikes, their trunks craggy from what appears to be a perpetual molt.
Though voices thread over on the breeze, I don’t see anyone. Merc hears the chatter, too, his head turning the moment the conversations register in my ear.
He still has that dirk out by his thigh.
“We’re being watched,” he says softly.
My eyes shift all around, but I can see nothing in or between any of the stable buildings. “Where—”
“Up.”
That’s when I see the camouflaged blind, set about halfway to the top of the nearest tree. I don’t know how he saw it, but there’s another. And … another, up ahead.
“I guess they take their horses very seriously,” I say in a lowered voice as thunder sounds out behind us.
“It’s about the gambling. You have to be careful with sore losers and big winners alike.”
“Oh.”
And now we arrive.
The town is nothing that I imagined. “Outpost” suggests a couple of grungy buildings huddled together while men and women do dirty deeds in not-so-secret ways.
This is very nearly a city. There are too many houses, shops, and trading posts to count, and the road breaks off into different routes that run into the thicket of commerce and residences.
There’s no charm to any of it. Unlike my village, where the lanes are cobblestone, and lanterns hang by rounded doors, and the stuccoed facades come in colors, everything here is weathered wood and utilitarian.
There’s also a battened-down look to it all, no open windows or doors, anywhere.
Something tells me it’s not because of the heat or the approaching weather.
Faded signs announce that there’s a grain merchant, a mercantile and clothier, and finally, something that piques my interest: Herbist. And interspersed among these going concerns are unmarked porches that I assume are attached to homes—
Another roll of thunder reaches my ears, and I glance over my shoulder again. A flicker of orange lightning teases the undersides of the dark clouds that continue to close in fast, and dread makes me shiver. I’ve never seen it that color before.
“Everything here is made to hunker down,” Merc remarks. “And going by the condition of the wood siding, I’m thinking it’s bad weather—in addition to bad manners.”
“Do you know where we’re going to stay?”
“No, but something will turn—”
Up ahead, a pair of men crash out of a set of double doors, and Merc has to pull up our steed. The two drunkards are in mid-slug, their sloppy fists and slippery boots the kind of thing I’m well used to from the pub, except this is the late afternoon, not midnight.
There are two other sets of doors under the short overhang, and those exits break open, shaggy-haired people dressed in well-worn clothing spilling out into the lane.
The audience is little different from the combatants, and up on the second floor, seams open all along the facade, faces peering out of shuttered windows.
There are a lot of beards, and the women seem as tough as the men.
“Ye bastard! She’s mine—”
A leveled, sailing fist makes contact by luck, rather than skill, and the accusation is cut off by a crack that makes me think teeth have been compromised. Assuming there were any in that mouth to begin with.
The knockout flop is like a bag of oats tossed off a cart, and the concussed lands with the same finality—though he’s face down in the dirt, he doesn’t lift his head for air.
The victor lifts both arms over his head and starts to dance around, at least until he trips over the boot of his foe, loses his own balance, and lands across the knocked-out guy.
Same flop sound. And he also doesn’t get up.
At this point, there’s a long pause, the audience falling silent. Then the arguing starts, all kind of fingers pointing to the men who’ve passed out in the street. The volume of the voices rises until there’s a sharp whistle from a fat, mustached man who looks annoyed.
“He fell first, that’s what it be!” he says.
Fates, it’s like Mr. Lewis, just with hair.
The announcement brings all kinds of grumbling, but coins start changing hands as people turn away and reenter the building. Upstairs, the curious faces retract, and the second-story shutters close up, tight as ticks.
That’s when I notice the faded sign mounted just above the overhang: WIDOW’S PEAK INN & TAVERN.
“We stay here,” Merc announces.