by Logan Jacobs
“Oh,” she laughed. “I don’t really remember for sure anymore. It was a week ago. But I think Lil just whined too much that her feet were getting sore. I know what it was with Betty though. She was trying to cozy up to Abraham. She should have known better than that. She wasn’t the first to try it though. They always think he’ll protect them from me for some reason.”
“Ah, I see. So how many….” I trailed off. I wondered whether the trout or the eel stew would be fresher. I didn’t like the texture of eels, but the stew did have some vegetables mixed in to make it all more palatable.
Lizzy finished swallowing an entire kidney pie, licked the remnants off her eyebrows with her tongue, and smiled at me.
“You don’t know,” I answered my own question. I set down the honey mead and picked up a fork.
“Do you know how many men you’ve killed?” she asked. She did have a point there. But still.
“Well, I didn’t eat any of them!” I pointed out.
She shrugged. “Seems like a waste to me.”
I sighed and cast my eye over the table with the resolve to select an unappetizing dish at random. I realized that between the efforts of the gnome and the she-wolf, there was not a single crumb left. Just glistening plates and tureens. One looked like it had a dribble of blue slime on it.
I looked over to Willobee’s seat to see what his reaction was to Lizzy’s self-confessed habits and realized that it was empty.
“Oh no,” I groaned. “I never should have trusted him.”
“The gnome? Do not worry, Vander, I will hunt him down for you,” Lizzy growled. “No one will ever betray you and get away with it. Not while I’m around.”
And not while you’re still hungry, I thought. “I’ll check the stables and the rooms upstairs,” I said. I stood up and shoved both my chairs in angrily. “You search this room.”
She raised her pretty little freckled nose in the air and sniffed. The room reeked so badly of sweat, stale beer, and piss that this seemed to me like a rather masochistic thing to do. Then she turned her face toward a back corner, and her long ears pricked up.
“There,” she said, and stood up. She looped arms with both of me and sauntered over toward the table where Willobee sat playing cards with a gang of ruffians while being serenaded by a third-rate band of minstrels. There was a large stack of empty mugs beside him. There was a large, colorful pile of my gems in the middle of the table. And even the musicians were playing with such inordinate enthusiasm that I just knew it couldn’t be a complimentary performance.
I gritted both sets of teeth as I approached him, but Lizzy got there first.
She prowled up behind him and growled in his ear, “I simply cannot understand what in all the Barrenlands you think you are doing with gems that do not belong to you. Gnome.” She spat this last word as if it were an insult. The five words before that, she pitched at a volume to attract the attention of the entire table, and it worked. Seven or eight ruffians of assorted shapes and sizes stared at Lizzy, squinted while they processed what she had said, and then turned their beady and bloodshot eyes to Willobee.
For a moment he quaked in his velvet slippers. Then he shot up, stood on top of his chair in order to be eye-level with us, and reached out to drag one of me and Lizzy in close to him. “Lizzy, distract them,” he whispered. She looked at me. I nodded.
She sashayed past us and started to circle the table. She ran her claws lightly up spines, ruffled them through hair, and swept her tail against the bodies that she passed as she announced in her husky voice, “Evening, gentlemen. I suppose I should introduce myself. They call me the Salacious She-Wolf of Ambria. Or just the Wanton Wolf for short. I must warn you if my partners cannot please me I devour them. But if I let them live, they never stop begging for more. You lot look like you’d be awfully rough customers. That’s exactly how I like them.”
While the gamblers’ eyes glazed over and some of them started openly salivating, Willobee whispered in my closest ear, “Please don’t get angry, Master. It’s not what it looks like. I know what I’m doing. I made a mistake earlier, and that was, ahem, spending a little more than is altogether prudent on honey mead. Really excellent stuff. I hope you are enjoying it by the way. But this, now this is me fixing my mistake. I happen to be extraordinarily blessed when it comes to the matter of playing cards. Gnomish luck, it is. Give me a chance to make this up to you, dear Master?”
“It doesn’t look like you are having much luck, gnomish or otherwise,” I grumbled, with another glance at the pile of my temple’s gems heaped in the middle of the table.
“Dear Master, I assure you, this is entirely to be expected. The game has barely begun. I beg of you, just give me a chance to play and you will not regret it.” Willobee’s huge glowing eyes began to well up with tears. “I could never forgive myself if I allowed my carelessness and weakness for quality honey mead to impoverish my Master. In accordance with gnomish law, I would be forced to commit ritual--”
“Play your damn game,” I interrupted him.
“Thank you, kind Master,” Willobee said. He wiped away his tears and plunked back down in his seat.
I looked for Lizzy. A hunchback was attempting to pour handfuls of gold coins down the front of her gown while she backed away from him.
“Pah, for that piddling amount?” she scoffed. “The Earl of Ganniver offered me--”
“More, I have much more in my room,” the hunchback said eagerly.
I wrapped my arm around Lizzy’s waist and pulled her into my side. “She is mine,” I told him.
The hunchback protested, “But she just told us she was--”
“On offer for the highest bidder?” I asked. “Well, I am the highest bidder.”
He sneered at me. “I very much doubt that. I am not lying about the gold. Upstairs, I have more than her weight--”
“Well, I am throwing my sword into the balance,” I hissed, laying my hand on Polliver’s hilt.
The hunchback hesitated. Then he grunted and backed off to return to his seat at the table and pick up the hand of cards he had laid down.
I placed Lizzy between Willobee and myself to keep her out of reach of the attentions of the other gamblers. I also sat on the other side of Willobee to make sure no harm befell the gnome either.
“So, will we be dealing you three in?” one of the gamblers asked. He was missing a lot more teeth than Lizzy’s one.
“No,” I said shortly. “I do not play cards.”
“I don’t either,” I said through my other mouth. “Proceed as you were.”
“I much prefer other sorts of games,” Lizzy drawled.
So they continued playing without us. I had never played cards at the temple, since it was not permitted, and I did not really understand the rules of the game, which seemed to be dependent on the symbols written on the cards that the players exchanged with each other and to involve a lot of bluffing. But what was perfectly clear to me was that Willobee’s luck, just as he had promised, took a sharp turn for the better almost as soon as Lizzy and I arrived. This may have been partly due to Lizzy’s help. Without getting up from her seat at all, she made eyes and adjusted her garments and murmured comments to his opponents at inopportune times which often caused them to make poor decisions to the detriment of their wallets.
Slowly but surely, with each turn taken, the pile of coins, jewelry, and gems in the middle of the table began to migrate over to Willobee’s spot. The other gamblers noticed this trend too. Some of them had the nerve to accuse him of cheating, accusations which he rebuffed with as much passion and eloquence as if he were making a plea for the fate of a besieged kingdom.
Others threatened violence, implicitly or explicitly. When they did that I both had to stand up and stare them down. It was partly this that deterred them from pressing the issue. It was also partly Lizzy’s coaxing. It was also partly the fact that most of them who had been present from the beginning of the game had confidence the tides would turn again.
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“He’s just a stupid gnome,” said one man with pointed elvish ears. “This is a lucky streak, but do not doubt it will end soon. Have you forgotten this is the same gnome who wagered half his pouch that his next hand would have two glarnomaths in it?”
Eventually, even though they were seething and had lost half their fortunes or more, they would always sit back down and decide to keep playing.
There was one among them, a big red-haired oaf with a brutish scowl who was taking a particularly hard hit.
Eventually he admitted, “I have no more money left.”
“Then I guess you’d better leave,” said the gambler next to him. Around the table, there was nodding and a lot of tension. I could see some hands sliding down to knife hilts, and I got the feeling that a lot of times the losers in these games did not walk away quietly.
“But I have something else more valuable,” he said quickly.
“All right, what’s that exactly?” the hunchback demanded.
“I can’t tell you, because you wouldn’t appreciate just how valuable it is until you actually laid eyes on it yourself,” the red-haired man replied.
“Very well. Then show us,” the elven-eared man said.
“I can’t do that neither. Don’t have it in here. I’ll be more than happy to show you though if you’ll follow me right outside,” he offered.
“Do you take us for fools, Osric?” the elven-eared man exclaimed. “I did not come here to be clubbed over the head by an oaf who lacks the wit to play cards. Or even make up a convincing story as to why, exactly, I should follow you outside in the middle of the night. I came here to have a nice night and enjoy a hot mug of honey mead. Now please leave before things turn even uglier than your face.”
“Wait,” Willobee said. I both turned to look at him. The honey mead had turned his round little face beetroot red, and his beard looked like a drowned lavender rat. I had a bad feeling that I wasn’t going to like whatever came out of his mouth next. “I, Willobee of Clan Benniwumporgan, will back him. Osric. The oaf.” He pointed, in case anyone remained in any doubt as to whom it was that he referred.
“You’ll back him?” the hunchback repeated. “Why?”
Willobee pulled out an enormous emerald from my pouch and held it up as he slurred drunkenly, “Yes. Osric will continue to play. If he loses again, and one of you collects, you can choose to take whatever it is that he’s wanting to show us. Or you can choose to take this. In the tragically improbable event that I win, I will claim his secret prize. Or take my chances with his club,” he concluded dramatically.
The gamblers exchanged glances. It did not take long for them to make up their minds. Osric the penniless was suddenly welcome at the card table again.
It also did not take long for Willobee to make the “tragically improbable” come true.
“Well, well,” he said as he reached for the stack of coins and jewels in the middle of the table. “I believe I have had enough entertainment for the night.” While the rest of the table stared in dull shock, he hastily scooped up all his shiny winnings. Once again, I did not really get a good look at where, exactly, he was stowing them away. “Good night, good night, fine gentlemen,” Willobee chirped. His voice suddenly sounded perfectly crisp and coherent. “Osric? If you would be so good as to lead the way to this prize of yours?”
Osric looked around at his circle of acquaintances as if for help. None of them would meet his eyes. He sighed and slumped his shoulders. “All right,” he muttered. “I’ll give it to you and good riddance. A gnome. A fucking drunken gnome. It’s exactly what she deserves.”
As Osric led Willobee, Lizzy, and me out of the inn, one of me kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t have any clubbing in mind, and the other kept an eye on the other gamblers we were leaving behind to make sure none of them took it into their heads to follow as their lifetimes’ savings waddled away.
Osric led us toward the stable. I started to get excited. A good mount was exactly what I had been wanting ever since I left the temple. Luna and Chrysanthemum were exemplary ponies, to be sure, but they were--well--ponies. I needed a destrier to charge into battle against Thorvinius’ forces.
“In there,” Osric muttered.
One of me grabbed him and set a knife to his throat. He yelped. “I’ve got Osric,” I yelled into the darkness of the stable, “so if you want him alive you’d better not do anything stupid.”
“It’s not an ambush!” Osric protested. “Why don’t nobody trust me none?”
Willobee shifted back and forth on his stubby little legs and looked up at me nervously. “Er, shall I be, um, accompanying you to collect my prize, Master?”
Lizzy sniffed the air. “I don’t smell nothing but horses and horse shit,” she said with a shrug.
She followed close on my heels as the one of me that wasn’t securing Osric cautiously entered the stable and peered around.
There were several horses inside. At first, I thought there was a naked woman standing in the middle of them.
Then, I realized that she was a female centaur.
Her horse legs were hobbled, her human wrists were bound with a rope to a post of the stable, she was shivering in the cold with only a rag tied around her body for a breast cloth, and she was heaving with silent sobs.
“Miss?” I exclaimed as I went up to her. She gasped in fear and stopped crying to stare at me.
“Well, she smells exactly like a horse,” Lizzy said defensively from behind me.
I went up to her and drew a dagger which made the centaur shy back in terror. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I’m just going to free you. Who did this to you? That man outside? The red-haired one?”
“Osric?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes. Him,” she nodded. She allowed me to cut the rope from between her wrists.
“Well, what is your name?” I asked as I knelt down to untie the hobbles from her legs.
“What if she is the trap?” Lizzy interrupted. “What if she’s working together with Osric and she’s going to kick your skull in as soon as you untie her?”
“That doesn’t seem very likely,” I replied. Besides, I thought, I have another skull anyway. The centaur, of course, did not kick my skull in.
“I am Ilandere,” she said shyly. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Well, that makes two idiots,” Lizzy grumbled. “You don’t know she needs rescuing. And she doesn’t know that you’re rescuing her. You could be worse than Osric for all she knows.”
“Don’t listen to her,” I said to the centaur. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. My name is Vander.”
“His name is Qaar’endoth,” Lizzy corrected. “Qaar’endoth the Unvanquished. Fourth son of the Fairlands, defender of the righteous and destroyer of the malevolent, twenty-three times incarnated, sire to untold thousands, first earth-walker since the age of Luma.”
I turned to look at her in astonishment. “You remembered all that?”
She ignored me and told the centaur, “And I am Elizabeth, the first of his disciples.”
“Well I think technically, Willobee--” I began.
“If you’re done crying, let’s get out of here,” Lizzy said to Ilandere.
Lizzy stalked out of the stable. I reached for Ilandere’s hand and led her out beside me.
In the moonlight, I finally got a good look at her.
She was unusually small for a centaur, but even so, the combined height of a horse up to the withers and a petite human woman’s head and torso still put her at a little over seven feet tall, so my head only came up to her shoulder. Yet it was hard to imagine a more fragile-looking creature. She was very pale, very slim, and had delicate doll-like features with large dark eyes. Her silvery blonde hair cascaded to her waist. As for the horse part of her, her pelt was a beautiful dappled silver roan, and her flowing tail was white. Despite her ethereal beauty and the fact that she was almost entirely naked, she looked so fragile
and vulnerable that the sight of her did not make me think of anything except wanting to protect her.
“You see?” Osric crowed. My other self still held a dagger to his throat, but he looked relieved to see Ilandere, and to see the way that Willobee and I and even Lizzy despite herself were mesmerized by the sight of the centaur. “She was everything I promised and more! Now let me go.”
“Ilandere,” I asked her, “what should I do with this man? It is your choice.”
“What? I held up my end of the bargain!” Osric protested. “Look at her! Don’t you like her? She’s yours to keep now!”
“I--I--” Ilandere stammered, her slim white hand rising to cover her rosebud mouth.
“I’d spill his guts if I were you,” Lizzy advised her. “He captured you for a slave, didn’t he? That isn’t what a gentleman does. Not one bit.”
“Oh, I don’t want to do that,” Ilandere exclaimed. “I don’t want someone else to suffer just because I suffered.”
“See, that’s admirable philosophy and all, but the thing is, the two are directly related in this case,” Lizzy said impatiently. “You aren’t just bullying some innocent on account of being in a rotten mood. You’re punishing the exact individual who did you wrong in the first place. Can’t say fairer than that, can you Vander?”
“No, can’t say fairer than that,” I agreed.
“Please don’t!” Ilandere cried. “I hate seeing bloodshed. Let him go. Just-- just tell him never to do it to anyone else. It isn’t nice. And I was so scared.”
Lizzy grimaced. “She’s pretty, I’ll grant you that, but Vander, do you really and truly want to bring her sort along? On a revenge quest at that?”
“Again, that isn’t up to me, Lizzy,” I said. “It’s up to Ilandere. Ilandere, would you like to come with us?”
“Yes, please. I don’t want to be left alone,” she said. She was still looking nervously at the one of me who had the knife to Osric’s throat, so I lowered the knife, backhanded him, and yelled, “You heard the lady! Get out of here! We better never see your face again!”
