An unexpected character
I don't normally post excerpts out of order, but I had so much fun writing chapter six yesterday, that I wanted to share. Really, I enjoyed writing Puck (not sure if I'm going to keep that name, as it brings to mind too much literary baggage, but it's a good working name). Originally I thought of writing his voice like Pikey, but I knew I'd fail at that so kind of made up my own Southern Soul/African mix. It's neither of those things, I promise, but they were the influence that lead me to what I ended up with.
This chapter needs revision. It ends sharply, perhaps too sharply, but there was a screaming baby on the train and I couldn't write properly. The whole beginning of this book will require labor once I get to the end, but it's good enough to soldier on.
I also need to come up with a name for the tower of sorcerers that ruled the nation to the south before the people cast them down and established the Waodian Republic. Waodian makes me want to call it the Tower of Woe, but that's just SO cliche I can't even stomach to type it here much less in the actual manuscript.
Any suggestions?
Chapter 6
Donne's Stable was just as small as Herald's Crossing but of an opposite disposition. Where widowers and tradesmen paid the bills at Gander's, Taps made its money from boozers, whores, and soldiers of fortune. Mercenaries, bounty hunters, and swordfighters hung from chairs and crowded on benches. Taps didn't have pegs on the wall for weapons. The men-and most of the women-were armed.
A dead body covered in a thin sheet of frozen rain lay in the street just outside Taps's door. When the weather finally turned for the better, there would be more like that. They would look much the same. Shirt torn in half, belly split open, valuables gone if he had any to begin with. This one looked like a mountainman. There was little love between Strafford and Rockingham Counties after the Perre Massacre. If he had been fool enough to mention his home, that might have been enough for someone in these parts to call him out.
The doors slammed open, and the cold air raced in. Men howled, women shrieked, and a few threw bottles at the two newcomers. They shattered at Albrecht's and Cheshire's feet, splattering what remained of the alcohol within.
Taps's beer had soured earlier that month. Those too poor to drink anything else were curled up in the corner, vomiting on themselves. For everyone else, there were plenty of spirits to be had. Taps kept its own still nearby and made a whiskey that doubled as paint thinner.
Albrecht pushed the door shut. The ruckus died down, but the room did not turn its attention away. Newcomers were looked on like fresh meat hand-delivered by the butcher. Albrecht's thirty years put him at the peak of life. He might eke out another twenty before fever or a drought took him. Few in the four counties managed to make it past Cheshire's age.
Albrecht straightened his back and pushed his shoulders back to let everyone get a good look at him. His hair was cut short in a military style, but that didn't hide his receding hairline. He had most of his teeth. When he smiled, he stuck his tongue through one of the gaps. Brown coat stained black with weather over green shit and brown pants. The embroidery said he had money at one time, enough to spend on frivolous things like decorating his shirt. He would have seemed an equal to most in the room if he didn't stand shoulder to shoulder with Cheshire.
The old man showed his age. His hair was gone but for a ring of white from temple to temple. His skin was leathery, his eyebrows bushy, his ears bushier. He was shorter than Albrecht but twice as wide. His shoulders made corners like they were cut from granite and the rest of him seemed just as solid. A similar coat with similar stains covering his white shirt and brown pants.
For all that, everyone in the room made the same review and stopped in the same place. The men wore swords, daggers, and other weapons. Albrecht kept a crossbow slung on his back. Two bolts were tied to it along with a small leather pouch where he kept the string dry.
They made an intimidating pair, just the kind of meat this group liked to eat. A few men kicked away from their tables and lifted their legs over their chairs in slow dramatic fashion so everyone could see the swords on their hips. They looked at Albrecht and Cheshire like cats look at mice. Both stopped when the coughing started.
Albrecht grabbed his handkerchief from his pocket quickly, but not before the blood came to his lips. One man walked over to friends at another table-a table on the opposite side of the taproom-and struck up a random conversation. The other turned for the door and left.
Cheshire gave Albrecht a pat on the back, not to stop the coughing but to thank him from preempting the altercation. He stepped up to the bar where a tapmaster watched them both suspiciously. He didn't clean mugs like Tolly, but kept his hand beneath the bar on whatever weapon he had hidden there.
“Tapmaster,” Cheshire said.
“What do you want?” the tapmaster said. He didn't look at Cheshire. He looked at Albrecht still at the door, coughing into his handkerchief. “You can't stay here.”
“We just want supplies.”
“General Store's just down the way,” he nodded back out the door.
“Sure and it is, but we don't want nails or shovels. We need food, wine if you have it, boiled water if you don't.”
“We're all out.” The tapmaster began to look back and forth between them, Albrecht then Cheshire and back again. He breathed rapidly and flinched every time someone in the taproom flinched.
“What's your name, neighbor.”
“You're no neighbor of mine,” the tapmaster snapped. He pulled his hand from beneath the bar. He held a wooden cudgel with three nails driven through the head, sticking out the opposite side. If he didn't crack a man's skull, he'd give him lockjaw with that thing. “Only neighbors you keep are in the graveyard.”
“There's no need for that,” Cheshire said. He used that same voice when Dancer was spooked during a storm. “We're not here to cause trouble.”
“Give him one, Marc!” a patron cheered. “Right across the head!” A few others joined in.
“What happened to Jan, Marc? He owned this place last time I passed through. Jan knows me, Marc.”
“He died,” Marc said. He held up his cudgel like a charm against evil. “Four years past he and his whole family died of pox.”
It was a wonder the townfolk hadn't burned Taps to the ground if Jan died of pox. Cheshire hunted the only thing that could wipe a village off the map faster. A village would not dare an outbreak.
“And you're scared of me?” Albrecht said incredulously. “A man dies of pox, and you worry about my cough?”
“Took me two years to convince the village elders to let me reopen this place. Last thing I need them hearing I'm giving table to consumption and a soul stealer.”
Cheshire stopped. Albrecht stopped. Their jaws fell open.
“A soul...” Cheshire tried to say, but he could not fathom it. No one had seen a soul stealer since Waodian tore down XXX Tower and formed a republic. The XXX sorcerers were hunted to extinction.
Albrecht started to laugh. His mouth opened wide. His teeth were stained red. Marc lunged over the bar and swung. Cheshire caught him by the wrist and forced him back. A number of patrons stood from their tables, weapons in hands.
“We'll have none of that,” Cheshire said. “Salted pork, bread, cheese, hardtack if you have any. I can still smell the goose you cooked over the fire, so don't tell me your stores are empty.”
With his other hand he threw three coins onto the bar top. “Wine or boiled water. The sooner you get what we need, the sooner we'll be out of your establishment.”
Marc looked at the coins on the bar. The Strafford mint was clear pressed and visible. The prospect of money-local money worth its full value-eroded his resolve. He pulled his wrist deliberately. Cheshire let him go. He put his cudgel away and pocketed the coins. He gave them both a dirty look then disappeared into the kitchen.
“Well done,” Albrecht whispered. The two turned around. Some of the men who stood, finding no altercation, had returned to their drinks. A few had weaved their ways between the tables and stood at the edge of the dining area, a pace away from the bar.
“Not finished yet,” Cheshire whispered back. He tapped his side with his thumb, checking his coat. If things turned sour, he didn't need it getting in the way of his dagger.
“You so' eata?” one of the patrons asked. He smiled at them after. To show his friendliness, obviously. His mouth was a hollow pit. The few teeth remaining were black and gnarled. The rest of him fared little better. His skin was pock-marked. He was emaciated. His bones not only poked out his skin but through the rag that acted the part of a shirt. He wore no boots. He walked barefoot. The skin was black, the nails long like claws.
He was a tinker.
Cheshire smiled back. “No, I'm not a soul eater. I'm just old.”
The tinker looked him up and down. He stepped forward and gave Cheshire a closer look, like the truth of his nature might be seen with closer inspection. He reeked like onions and cow shit. Cheshire did not move away, but opened his mouth and stopped breathing through his nose.
“You ol',” he said after his examination. “You real 'ol. Mayb' too ol'.”
Albrecht began to cough again. Cheshire wanted to stomp him on the foot, but the man was already doing hi best to swallow the noise. The tinker heard it and gave Albrecht a similar examination. He turned back to Cheshire.
“You eata he so'? Keep you 'live mayb'?”
The tinker thumbed a knife on his belt. Cheshire looked over his shoulder. How many makes would come to his side if he or Albrecht put a blade in his belly? The taproom watched attentively. What games of chance had been played on their arrival had ended. Now the games bet on whether there would be a fight and who would win.
The door to the kitchen opened and Marc appeared with an armful of parcels and a stone jug hooked on a finger. He stopped when he saw the men at the bar.
“Albrecht,” Cheshire said with a measured tone. “Take our supplies to the wagon.”
“Cheshire, no.”
“It's all right. Mister Tinker and I are going to discuss the purchase of one of his donkeys.” Cheshire jingled a purse at his belt. The tinker eyed it like a starving man eyed a steak. “We have a long journey ahead of us and my friend here needs a mount. Do you have a donkey for sale, Mister Tinker?”
“Mista Tinka?” He scratched his chin with his other hand. His two hands moved back and forth in rhythm. One scratched his chin then the other rubbed his knife. One then the other. “Mista Tinka.” He smiled then whirled around to the taproom. “Mista Tinka!”
Some men cheered. Other men groaned. Money changed hands.
“Don't go puttin' on no hairs, Puck,” someone shouted. A swordfighter sat with his feet on the table and a stem of grass in his mouth. “Ain't no misters in Taps.”
“Mista Tinka!” he shrieked. The knife came out. Hands giving over money stopped as the outcome of bets became uncertain.
“Mista horseshit.” The swordfighter put his feet down and pulled a dagger twice as long as Puck's knife.
The tinker's shoulders tensed. Cheshire grabbed him on the shoulder before he could lunge.
“Misters are men of business. You're a man of business, aren't you Mister Tinker?”
“Bidness.” Puck nodded his head.
“Then let's do business. I want to buy a donkey and you have one to sell.”
Cheshire looked to the side and saw Albrecht standing at the end of the bar, foodstuffs in hand. He scowled at him. Albrecht scowled back.
“I don't buy a beast without inspecting it first. How about you show me this donkey and we can settle on a price.”
Puck looked at the swordfighter and bared his teeth.
“I com' back, Louie. I com' back an' we fin' dis.” Puck stepped to his left, keeping his knife between him and the swordfighter. Two other tinkers stood from a nearby table and headed for the door. Puck looked up at Cheshire.
“Dey com' make sho' you no eat mah so'.”
“Fair enough.” Cheshire nodded his head and the group of men headed out of Taps together.
The wagon was just outside the door, surrounded by a gaggle of urchins, bare chested and bare footed, shivering in the cold. They looked at the wagon,t he horse, the tack. They looked for anything small that could be pulled off and sold.
“Get on out of here!” Albrecht bellowed. His voice scraped with phlegm. “Get on!” The boys started but did not leave. He pulled a couple apples out of a bag. That caught their attention. He threw them down the road, and the boys bolted after.
Cheshire gave the wagon a quick once-over to make sure nothing important was missing. Dancer's harness was half unbuckled, but they couldn't reach the taller straps. The pin holding the wagon hitch was missing, but he found it sitting in the mud. It had teeth marks on it. They must have checked to see if the metal was worth selling. Rusted iron wouldn't have fetched them a bag of nuts. He picked it up, wiped it off, and slide it back into place. He refastened the harness as well.
“We bidness now,” Puck said from behind them. He looked repeatedly over his shoulder to Taps. Cheshire looked too, but no one followed. Perhaps the tinker was anxious to finish his business with Louie the swordfighter.
“Where are your donkeys?”
“'Round da way, yonda.” Puck pointed to the end of the main street. There was a livery there with a corral.
Albrecht packed their supplies in the back of the wagon and tied them down with twine. He hopped on the back. Cheshire hopped up onto the buckboard and kicked the brake free.
“We will meet you down there, then.” He gave the reins a snap and Dancer hopped into motion, pleased to be away from the cloying hands of urchins. The tinkers followed alongside, giving the wagon appraising looks of their own. Albrecht's coat fell open not accidentally. He made sure they saw the weapons on his belt.
“What man have no beast o' he own?” one of the tinkers asked. The other men laughed and began speaking in a language wholly their own. Cheshire listened but did not understand a word. Tinkers would sell their own children for the right price, but they guarded their language like a priceless artifact.
They were either mocking Albrecht or discussing how to kill the two of them and make off with Dancer and the wagon. Probably both, knowing tinkers. Cheshire clicked his teeth a few times and Dancer picked up her pace. The tinkers did not hurry to follow.
Cheshire reined up Dancer at the gate to the corral. The sign said Guleph's Stable. It was one of six corrals in town. When he had been a child, they had all been Donne's. That man died and his sons split them in half. They died and their sons split those. Another generation and Donne's Stable would have more liveries than all its other buildings combined.
“No donkeys,” Albrecht rasped behind him. Cheshire heard the quiet whisper of steel coming free.
“They were poorly armed for an ambush,” Cheshire said. He looked back over his shoulder and watched the tinkers approach.
“Never have I known tinkers to travel with so few. The rest of them are around here somewhere, most like.” Albrecht searched the shadows and Cheshire couldn't help but do the same. If an ambush waited, it was masterfully hidden.
“Yonda!” Puck shouted as he crossed into the stable yard. “Round da way, yonda!” He pointed at the hill behind the corral.
“Does he think us fools?” Albrecht whispered. The tinkers saw his open blade and stopped Puck who was not paying attention. They traded words in their strange togue.
“You eat mah so' afta all?”
“You promised me donkeys,” Cheshire said. “And tell me to go over a blind hill.”
“I say yonda,” Puck complained. “How you confused by yonda?”
“Go get them,” Albrecht said. “Bring them here out in the open.”
More discussion, more heated than before.
“I cain'. You eata dah so's o' da wimen.”
“The what?” Albrecht said to himself.
“The women,” Cheshire answered. “The women are tending the donkeys and the wagons. He thinks if we send for them, I'll eat their souls.”
Albrecht shook his head. “That makes no sense. If we go over the hill, you could just eat their souls there. What does it matter if they're there or they're here. Their souls get eaten all the same.”
Cheshire cleared his throat, grabbing Albrecht's attention.
“I can't eat souls,” he said to Albrecht but looked at the tinkers who watched them both with wide eyes.
“Yes, I understand that, but if they believe you do, what possible difference could it make if they come here or we go there?”
“Tinka wimen know pow'ful magi',” Puck said. Albrecht turned to look at him. “Magi' no work in da towns. Tinka wimen no com' ta towns. Keep der magi' safe.”
“So if we go over the hill,” Cheshire said, “and I turn out to be a soul eater, the women can work their magic on me. That seems fair.”
“That seems what?”
Cheshire snapped the reins and Dancer leaped forward. Albrecht stumbled back and caught himself at the back of the wagon.
“Cheshire, what are you doing?”
“There are seven of them, Albrecht. Dancer is past her prime, just like me. She can't haul your ass all over the counties. You need something of your own to ride.”
The wagon circled the corral and crested the hill. In the depression beyond, wagons and carts sat in a circle. Men, women, and children worked and played among them.
This chapter needs revision. It ends sharply, perhaps too sharply, but there was a screaming baby on the train and I couldn't write properly. The whole beginning of this book will require labor once I get to the end, but it's good enough to soldier on.
I also need to come up with a name for the tower of sorcerers that ruled the nation to the south before the people cast them down and established the Waodian Republic. Waodian makes me want to call it the Tower of Woe, but that's just SO cliche I can't even stomach to type it here much less in the actual manuscript.
Any suggestions?
Chapter 6
Donne's Stable was just as small as Herald's Crossing but of an opposite disposition. Where widowers and tradesmen paid the bills at Gander's, Taps made its money from boozers, whores, and soldiers of fortune. Mercenaries, bounty hunters, and swordfighters hung from chairs and crowded on benches. Taps didn't have pegs on the wall for weapons. The men-and most of the women-were armed.
A dead body covered in a thin sheet of frozen rain lay in the street just outside Taps's door. When the weather finally turned for the better, there would be more like that. They would look much the same. Shirt torn in half, belly split open, valuables gone if he had any to begin with. This one looked like a mountainman. There was little love between Strafford and Rockingham Counties after the Perre Massacre. If he had been fool enough to mention his home, that might have been enough for someone in these parts to call him out.
The doors slammed open, and the cold air raced in. Men howled, women shrieked, and a few threw bottles at the two newcomers. They shattered at Albrecht's and Cheshire's feet, splattering what remained of the alcohol within.
Taps's beer had soured earlier that month. Those too poor to drink anything else were curled up in the corner, vomiting on themselves. For everyone else, there were plenty of spirits to be had. Taps kept its own still nearby and made a whiskey that doubled as paint thinner.
Albrecht pushed the door shut. The ruckus died down, but the room did not turn its attention away. Newcomers were looked on like fresh meat hand-delivered by the butcher. Albrecht's thirty years put him at the peak of life. He might eke out another twenty before fever or a drought took him. Few in the four counties managed to make it past Cheshire's age.
Albrecht straightened his back and pushed his shoulders back to let everyone get a good look at him. His hair was cut short in a military style, but that didn't hide his receding hairline. He had most of his teeth. When he smiled, he stuck his tongue through one of the gaps. Brown coat stained black with weather over green shit and brown pants. The embroidery said he had money at one time, enough to spend on frivolous things like decorating his shirt. He would have seemed an equal to most in the room if he didn't stand shoulder to shoulder with Cheshire.
The old man showed his age. His hair was gone but for a ring of white from temple to temple. His skin was leathery, his eyebrows bushy, his ears bushier. He was shorter than Albrecht but twice as wide. His shoulders made corners like they were cut from granite and the rest of him seemed just as solid. A similar coat with similar stains covering his white shirt and brown pants.
For all that, everyone in the room made the same review and stopped in the same place. The men wore swords, daggers, and other weapons. Albrecht kept a crossbow slung on his back. Two bolts were tied to it along with a small leather pouch where he kept the string dry.
They made an intimidating pair, just the kind of meat this group liked to eat. A few men kicked away from their tables and lifted their legs over their chairs in slow dramatic fashion so everyone could see the swords on their hips. They looked at Albrecht and Cheshire like cats look at mice. Both stopped when the coughing started.
Albrecht grabbed his handkerchief from his pocket quickly, but not before the blood came to his lips. One man walked over to friends at another table-a table on the opposite side of the taproom-and struck up a random conversation. The other turned for the door and left.
Cheshire gave Albrecht a pat on the back, not to stop the coughing but to thank him from preempting the altercation. He stepped up to the bar where a tapmaster watched them both suspiciously. He didn't clean mugs like Tolly, but kept his hand beneath the bar on whatever weapon he had hidden there.
“Tapmaster,” Cheshire said.
“What do you want?” the tapmaster said. He didn't look at Cheshire. He looked at Albrecht still at the door, coughing into his handkerchief. “You can't stay here.”
“We just want supplies.”
“General Store's just down the way,” he nodded back out the door.
“Sure and it is, but we don't want nails or shovels. We need food, wine if you have it, boiled water if you don't.”
“We're all out.” The tapmaster began to look back and forth between them, Albrecht then Cheshire and back again. He breathed rapidly and flinched every time someone in the taproom flinched.
“What's your name, neighbor.”
“You're no neighbor of mine,” the tapmaster snapped. He pulled his hand from beneath the bar. He held a wooden cudgel with three nails driven through the head, sticking out the opposite side. If he didn't crack a man's skull, he'd give him lockjaw with that thing. “Only neighbors you keep are in the graveyard.”
“There's no need for that,” Cheshire said. He used that same voice when Dancer was spooked during a storm. “We're not here to cause trouble.”
“Give him one, Marc!” a patron cheered. “Right across the head!” A few others joined in.
“What happened to Jan, Marc? He owned this place last time I passed through. Jan knows me, Marc.”
“He died,” Marc said. He held up his cudgel like a charm against evil. “Four years past he and his whole family died of pox.”
It was a wonder the townfolk hadn't burned Taps to the ground if Jan died of pox. Cheshire hunted the only thing that could wipe a village off the map faster. A village would not dare an outbreak.
“And you're scared of me?” Albrecht said incredulously. “A man dies of pox, and you worry about my cough?”
“Took me two years to convince the village elders to let me reopen this place. Last thing I need them hearing I'm giving table to consumption and a soul stealer.”
Cheshire stopped. Albrecht stopped. Their jaws fell open.
“A soul...” Cheshire tried to say, but he could not fathom it. No one had seen a soul stealer since Waodian tore down XXX Tower and formed a republic. The XXX sorcerers were hunted to extinction.
Albrecht started to laugh. His mouth opened wide. His teeth were stained red. Marc lunged over the bar and swung. Cheshire caught him by the wrist and forced him back. A number of patrons stood from their tables, weapons in hands.
“We'll have none of that,” Cheshire said. “Salted pork, bread, cheese, hardtack if you have any. I can still smell the goose you cooked over the fire, so don't tell me your stores are empty.”
With his other hand he threw three coins onto the bar top. “Wine or boiled water. The sooner you get what we need, the sooner we'll be out of your establishment.”
Marc looked at the coins on the bar. The Strafford mint was clear pressed and visible. The prospect of money-local money worth its full value-eroded his resolve. He pulled his wrist deliberately. Cheshire let him go. He put his cudgel away and pocketed the coins. He gave them both a dirty look then disappeared into the kitchen.
“Well done,” Albrecht whispered. The two turned around. Some of the men who stood, finding no altercation, had returned to their drinks. A few had weaved their ways between the tables and stood at the edge of the dining area, a pace away from the bar.
“Not finished yet,” Cheshire whispered back. He tapped his side with his thumb, checking his coat. If things turned sour, he didn't need it getting in the way of his dagger.
“You so' eata?” one of the patrons asked. He smiled at them after. To show his friendliness, obviously. His mouth was a hollow pit. The few teeth remaining were black and gnarled. The rest of him fared little better. His skin was pock-marked. He was emaciated. His bones not only poked out his skin but through the rag that acted the part of a shirt. He wore no boots. He walked barefoot. The skin was black, the nails long like claws.
He was a tinker.
Cheshire smiled back. “No, I'm not a soul eater. I'm just old.”
The tinker looked him up and down. He stepped forward and gave Cheshire a closer look, like the truth of his nature might be seen with closer inspection. He reeked like onions and cow shit. Cheshire did not move away, but opened his mouth and stopped breathing through his nose.
“You ol',” he said after his examination. “You real 'ol. Mayb' too ol'.”
Albrecht began to cough again. Cheshire wanted to stomp him on the foot, but the man was already doing hi best to swallow the noise. The tinker heard it and gave Albrecht a similar examination. He turned back to Cheshire.
“You eata he so'? Keep you 'live mayb'?”
The tinker thumbed a knife on his belt. Cheshire looked over his shoulder. How many makes would come to his side if he or Albrecht put a blade in his belly? The taproom watched attentively. What games of chance had been played on their arrival had ended. Now the games bet on whether there would be a fight and who would win.
The door to the kitchen opened and Marc appeared with an armful of parcels and a stone jug hooked on a finger. He stopped when he saw the men at the bar.
“Albrecht,” Cheshire said with a measured tone. “Take our supplies to the wagon.”
“Cheshire, no.”
“It's all right. Mister Tinker and I are going to discuss the purchase of one of his donkeys.” Cheshire jingled a purse at his belt. The tinker eyed it like a starving man eyed a steak. “We have a long journey ahead of us and my friend here needs a mount. Do you have a donkey for sale, Mister Tinker?”
“Mista Tinka?” He scratched his chin with his other hand. His two hands moved back and forth in rhythm. One scratched his chin then the other rubbed his knife. One then the other. “Mista Tinka.” He smiled then whirled around to the taproom. “Mista Tinka!”
Some men cheered. Other men groaned. Money changed hands.
“Don't go puttin' on no hairs, Puck,” someone shouted. A swordfighter sat with his feet on the table and a stem of grass in his mouth. “Ain't no misters in Taps.”
“Mista Tinka!” he shrieked. The knife came out. Hands giving over money stopped as the outcome of bets became uncertain.
“Mista horseshit.” The swordfighter put his feet down and pulled a dagger twice as long as Puck's knife.
The tinker's shoulders tensed. Cheshire grabbed him on the shoulder before he could lunge.
“Misters are men of business. You're a man of business, aren't you Mister Tinker?”
“Bidness.” Puck nodded his head.
“Then let's do business. I want to buy a donkey and you have one to sell.”
Cheshire looked to the side and saw Albrecht standing at the end of the bar, foodstuffs in hand. He scowled at him. Albrecht scowled back.
“I don't buy a beast without inspecting it first. How about you show me this donkey and we can settle on a price.”
Puck looked at the swordfighter and bared his teeth.
“I com' back, Louie. I com' back an' we fin' dis.” Puck stepped to his left, keeping his knife between him and the swordfighter. Two other tinkers stood from a nearby table and headed for the door. Puck looked up at Cheshire.
“Dey com' make sho' you no eat mah so'.”
“Fair enough.” Cheshire nodded his head and the group of men headed out of Taps together.
The wagon was just outside the door, surrounded by a gaggle of urchins, bare chested and bare footed, shivering in the cold. They looked at the wagon,t he horse, the tack. They looked for anything small that could be pulled off and sold.
“Get on out of here!” Albrecht bellowed. His voice scraped with phlegm. “Get on!” The boys started but did not leave. He pulled a couple apples out of a bag. That caught their attention. He threw them down the road, and the boys bolted after.
Cheshire gave the wagon a quick once-over to make sure nothing important was missing. Dancer's harness was half unbuckled, but they couldn't reach the taller straps. The pin holding the wagon hitch was missing, but he found it sitting in the mud. It had teeth marks on it. They must have checked to see if the metal was worth selling. Rusted iron wouldn't have fetched them a bag of nuts. He picked it up, wiped it off, and slide it back into place. He refastened the harness as well.
“We bidness now,” Puck said from behind them. He looked repeatedly over his shoulder to Taps. Cheshire looked too, but no one followed. Perhaps the tinker was anxious to finish his business with Louie the swordfighter.
“Where are your donkeys?”
“'Round da way, yonda.” Puck pointed to the end of the main street. There was a livery there with a corral.
Albrecht packed their supplies in the back of the wagon and tied them down with twine. He hopped on the back. Cheshire hopped up onto the buckboard and kicked the brake free.
“We will meet you down there, then.” He gave the reins a snap and Dancer hopped into motion, pleased to be away from the cloying hands of urchins. The tinkers followed alongside, giving the wagon appraising looks of their own. Albrecht's coat fell open not accidentally. He made sure they saw the weapons on his belt.
“What man have no beast o' he own?” one of the tinkers asked. The other men laughed and began speaking in a language wholly their own. Cheshire listened but did not understand a word. Tinkers would sell their own children for the right price, but they guarded their language like a priceless artifact.
They were either mocking Albrecht or discussing how to kill the two of them and make off with Dancer and the wagon. Probably both, knowing tinkers. Cheshire clicked his teeth a few times and Dancer picked up her pace. The tinkers did not hurry to follow.
Cheshire reined up Dancer at the gate to the corral. The sign said Guleph's Stable. It was one of six corrals in town. When he had been a child, they had all been Donne's. That man died and his sons split them in half. They died and their sons split those. Another generation and Donne's Stable would have more liveries than all its other buildings combined.
“No donkeys,” Albrecht rasped behind him. Cheshire heard the quiet whisper of steel coming free.
“They were poorly armed for an ambush,” Cheshire said. He looked back over his shoulder and watched the tinkers approach.
“Never have I known tinkers to travel with so few. The rest of them are around here somewhere, most like.” Albrecht searched the shadows and Cheshire couldn't help but do the same. If an ambush waited, it was masterfully hidden.
“Yonda!” Puck shouted as he crossed into the stable yard. “Round da way, yonda!” He pointed at the hill behind the corral.
“Does he think us fools?” Albrecht whispered. The tinkers saw his open blade and stopped Puck who was not paying attention. They traded words in their strange togue.
“You eat mah so' afta all?”
“You promised me donkeys,” Cheshire said. “And tell me to go over a blind hill.”
“I say yonda,” Puck complained. “How you confused by yonda?”
“Go get them,” Albrecht said. “Bring them here out in the open.”
More discussion, more heated than before.
“I cain'. You eata dah so's o' da wimen.”
“The what?” Albrecht said to himself.
“The women,” Cheshire answered. “The women are tending the donkeys and the wagons. He thinks if we send for them, I'll eat their souls.”
Albrecht shook his head. “That makes no sense. If we go over the hill, you could just eat their souls there. What does it matter if they're there or they're here. Their souls get eaten all the same.”
Cheshire cleared his throat, grabbing Albrecht's attention.
“I can't eat souls,” he said to Albrecht but looked at the tinkers who watched them both with wide eyes.
“Yes, I understand that, but if they believe you do, what possible difference could it make if they come here or we go there?”
“Tinka wimen know pow'ful magi',” Puck said. Albrecht turned to look at him. “Magi' no work in da towns. Tinka wimen no com' ta towns. Keep der magi' safe.”
“So if we go over the hill,” Cheshire said, “and I turn out to be a soul eater, the women can work their magic on me. That seems fair.”
“That seems what?”
Cheshire snapped the reins and Dancer leaped forward. Albrecht stumbled back and caught himself at the back of the wagon.
“Cheshire, what are you doing?”
“There are seven of them, Albrecht. Dancer is past her prime, just like me. She can't haul your ass all over the counties. You need something of your own to ride.”
The wagon circled the corral and crested the hill. In the depression beyond, wagons and carts sat in a circle. Men, women, and children worked and played among them.