The Republic of Selegania Boxed Set: Volumes One through Four

by Daniel Lawlis

  Righty was more than happy to be the answer to their prayers, but only if he could be a secret benefactor.

  As was usual, Righty was lost in thought while in full motion, Charlie galloping wildly towards Sivingdel, happy to be out for an early morning ride.

  Around six hours later, Righty made it into town and went straight towards the place he had seen the young toughs. His gut was starting to rumble a little bit as waves of nervousness flowed over him. He knew these were the last kind of people he wanted to do business with, but nonetheless he felt he had little choice.

  As he got near the area where he had seen the five toughs last time, he was surprised to see them back in the exact same spot, and was half-relieved, half-worried. Had he seen no one, he could have turned his horse right back around towards home and told himself in all honesty: Well, you tried.

  He didn’t like the looks of any of these toughs. Not that he had before, but they looked particularly vicious today. But it was the ringleader who caught his attention the most: Mr. Short-Cropped. He almost instinctively gave him the same vicious look that had partially subdued the young punk last time, but that wouldn’t necessarily further his purpose, which was to negotiate.

  So, instead, he adopted a confident, yet unaggressive bearing.

  He didn’t exactly like getting off Charlie without a place to tie him to, so he figured he was just going to have to hope he didn’t go galloping off at the first sign of trouble.

  All five toughs were now standing and looking at Righty with great hostility. Mr. Short-Cropped stepped ahead of the rest and with an insolent look said, “Whaddya want around here, fool?!”

  “I’m here to talk business,” Righty said in what he hoped was a confident but unthreatening tone.

  He was standing about ten feet from the young punk.

  The punk walked another couple feet forward. Righty didn’t budge.

  “Haaa-haaaa-haaa!” he laughed. But it sounded artificial to Righty. Probably for the benefit of his sidekicks.

  “I want to sell you Smokeless Green. I’ve brought a sample for you so that you can see I’m interested in making cash and am not here to waste your time.”

  As he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew the bag with the bulb in it, Mr. Short-cropped flinched slightly and then quickly restraightened his arrogant posture.

  Before he could utter another silly laugh, Righty tossed it at him and said, “Give this a whiff, and see if you’re still laughing.”

  The young punk’s eyes narrowed, and he put his hand into the bag gingerly, as if he was afraid a scorpion might be in there, rather than Kasani’s finest substance on earth.

  After he pulled it out and smelled it, his eyes immediately changed. In fact, they changed several times. First, they revealed surprise, as it this was certainly the last thing Mr. Short-Cropped expected to have happen to him today. Then, his eyes turned greedy. Then, wolfish.

  Perhaps Righty, in all fairness to Mr. Short-Cropped, is at least partly to blame for what came next. Righty had the ability—although he did not yet fully know the truly bottomless depth of it—to uncannily hide the hulking monster that lurked within him. Yes, he knew he could usually exhibit a calm, unthreatening demeanor when that was what he wished, but he had no idea how poorly that could cause individuals to underestimate him. It was something he would become more cognizant of in the future. Had he simply let Mr. Short-Cropped see his real eyes, things would have turned out differently.

  “Let’s rob this dude!” Mr. Short-Cropped shouted out and went running wildly towards Righty, the others not far behind him. In a split-second, Righty was back in boxing mode. As soon as Mr. Short-Cropped got within striking distance he immediately morphed from a calm man into a savage beast. He punched Mr. Short-Cropped right in the stomach, grabbed him by his head, turned his back towards him, kneeled, and threw him over his head. He was surrounded now, so he knew there was going to be no quarter.

  He moved towards a long-haired, wild-eyed punk, and as he prepared to deliver a ruthless body blow, he sensed at the last second the tough was getting ready to back up. He suddenly sprinted forward while simultaneously delivering his body blow, and to his satisfaction he found he could still deal with Runners. That had been one of his specialties. He heard ribs snap like twigs underneath his merciless punch.

  He felt a punch to the face, but it was nothing. It felt like a feather’s caress compared to the blows he had been accustomed to taking in the ring. He answered back with a left jab that smashed the tough’s nose and sent a geyser of blood shooting out.

  There were two left, and their faces had surrender spelled out across their eyes. They were trying to look tough but instead looked like they were about ready to hightail it out of there at any moment. Then, they looked distracted.

  They were looking at Mr. Short-Cropped who was doubled over and puking his guts out, every once in a while gasping for air, creating a horrible gurgling sound, as he inhaled his own vomit. Mr. Long Hair was lying on the ground and wheezing. Blood was oozing from his mouth, compliments of a punctured lung.

  “Now, I can bash all your brains in, if that’s how you want to play it, you young punks!” Righty began. “But I thought maybe you were out here loafing around with nothing to do because maybe you’d like to earn a little easy money. Sorry I interrupted your day!”

  And having said that, he put his left foot into a stirrup and leaped on top of Charlie. He was about ready to leave when he heard “Wait!”

  He turned around. It was Mr. Short-Cropped. His stomach was still twitching a little, and his face was covered with dust and vomit, but he was standing.

  “Let’s talk business.”

  Righty had never considered himself to be one of those people who belabored the point. A problem had arisen. He had pounded it into smithereens. Now, an opportunity arose. Why live in the past?

  “All right,” Righty said. “But let’s get one thing straight,” and as he said this he put his hands into his pockets and extracted them covered in brass knuckles, “the next time you won’t get back up.” He then quickly reinserted the brass knuckles back into his pockets.

  He continued. “You don’t need to know who I am or anything else about me. I brought you a free sample to show you I mean business. Tell me how many more of those bulbs you want me to bring next time—up to ten—and I’ll be here. It’ll be 700 falons each. You can turn that into 1,000 falons per bulb on the street—that is, if any of you punks have connections.”

  “We do,” Mr. Short-Cropped said. “And to be honest, we can get 1,200 falons for one of those bulbs by the time we break it up and sell it in smaller quantities. That stuff is selling like crazy.”

  “That’s your issue. All I’m asking for now is 700 falons. How many bulbs do you want me to bring and when.”

  “Bring ten tomorrow.”

  “That’s short notice. I’d need payment for half upfront.”

  Mr. Short-Cropped studied Righty closely.

  “If we’re gonna do business, I need to be able to call you something.”

  “Call me Brass. It’ll serve as a reminder to you of my friendly warning.”

  Mr. Short-Cropped chuckled. His sidekicks were looking at him closely.

  Mr. Short-Cropped pulled out a bag and counted out 3,500 falons, all in one-hundred-falon bills. He approached Righty.

  “Mr. Brass, be here tomorrow at the same time, or you’re going to have some people looking for you that are a lot tougher than me.”

  It caught Righty’s attention that the message sounded more like a concerned warning than a threat.

  Righty grabbed the bills and looked at them closely while not letting Mr. Short-Cropped get out of sight.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow with ten bulbs at 6 p.m. and will be expecting five more of these bills. If you jump me again, I’ll kill every last one of you.”

  Mr. Short-Cropped didn’t offer a rebuttal but instead held out his hand.

  Righty looked him closely in the
eye and then grabbed his hand hard.

  A nudge to Charlie’s side pivoted him around, and a gentle squeeze with his knees prompted him into a full gallop. Before he did so, he noticed Mr. Long Hair had created a rather nice pool of blood around his mouth, and he was no longer twitching.

  That mattered little to Righty. He had seven weeks’ worth of pay in his pocket (at his new hourly rate) and the promise of the same amount tomorrow. Things were looking good.

  Chapter 19

  As Righty neared the same meeting spot on old Charlie where he had made five weeks’ worth of pay yesterday and planned to repeat today, he found himself feeling grateful he had decided to put chain mail on. The story in the Simmers family was that a couple centuries ago the family had a great knight, of whom Righty was a direct descendant. Sir Edward was his name, and Righty had named his son after him.

  Righty had inherited the chain mail, and although he had always found it aesthetically pleasing, he had never even dreamed he would put it on with the intention of actually putting it to use. The day of knights, swords, and armor had passed quietly into the history books and folklore, not due to any technology that had replaced them but due to the strictly enforced prohibition on swords and armor.

  Nonetheless, he knew he was entering into a world seldom seen by the average citizen and felt certain daggers saw their fair share of usage around here and suspected in his gut that even swords might occasionally still be wielded, even if their possession had been outlawed for centuries. He felt a bit like an explorer on a new continent.

  As he drew near to the area, he saw to his satisfaction that Mr. Short-Cropped was there, sitting on the same bench where he’d seen him in their last two encounters. He noticed he was one man short, confirming, apparently, that Mr. Long Hair had attempted his last mugging.

  But as he got closer, Righty felt unnerved by the fact that Mr. Short-Cropped wasn’t looking at him even though it was plain as day there was a man on horseback riding up to him and that that man was the person he had done business with the day before. Mr. Short-Cropped’s three surviving sidekicks were there.

  Righty arrived just feet away from Mr. Short-Cropped, got off his horse, and got ready to ask him if he had turned into a mute during the last twenty-four hours, but before he got the chance Mr. Short-Cropped looked up at him from his seated position. His face and body were expressionless with the exception of his eyes, which seemed to say, Sorry about this.

  Righty immediately swiveled around, and the situation seemed relatively straightforward to him, as he saw men emerging from behind various large trash items in the city’s trash heap. Mr. Short-Cropped and his cronies stayed seated on their benches, and their appearance told him someone else had made the decision and that they weren’t itching for Round Two with the guy who had shattered one of their noses with a single left jab; killed one with a single punch to the ribs; and turned their leader into a vomiting, wheezing whipped pup with one solid punch to the gut.

  No, someone else was itching for a bite at the apple.

  After Righty swiveled around 360 degrees multiple times it seemed reasonably clear he was going to be dancing with five guys this evening. Three were hulks—tall, broad-chested, and thick in the shoulders. One was tall and slender. And the last was a short little runt but with mean eyes—the kind you’d expect to see on an overgrown spider.

  “So you’re tough stuff?” the biggest one said, cracking his knuckles. Righty was now surrounded.

  “You broke Sammy’s nose, killed Streak, and roughed up Tats, who was then stupid enough to give you thirty-five bills for nothing but a promise. The way I see it—”

  In a flash, Righty pulled out a bag with five bulbs in it and threw it to Mr. Big Mouth.

  “The promise has been fulfilled, sir,” Righty said with an unnerving calm.

  Mr. Big Mouth looked at Righty angrily but couldn’t resist inspecting the contents. It didn’t take long for him to see that Tats, a.k.a. Mr. Short-Cropped, had invested wisely.

  “Well,” Mr. Big Mouth started back up, with an angry look on his face, “you just saved Tats one hell of a beating or worse. You, my friend, are a different case.”

  “How do you figure,” Righty inquired.

  “You owe me a bulb for breaking Sammy’s nose without my permission, two bulbs for wasting Streak without my permission, and two bulbs for roughing up Tats. You see, around here, things either happen with my permission, or they don’t happen. So, the way I see it, if you’ve got five little round, green friends to go along with what you just tossed to me, you and I just might get along after all and do a little business together. I don’t know what got into Tats’ head the other day, but 700 falons is a bit tough to swing. We’ll be paying you 400 falons per bulb, and—”

  “Shut your damn mouth,” Righty said calmly.

  Mr. Big Mouth had a nasty-enough sneer on his meaty face before Righty proffered this interjection, but the snarl that formed on it immediately thereafter made the former look like a coy smile.

  “Hahahahahaa.” Mr. Big Mouth started laughing. “Are you hoping to die, fool, or are you just plain stupid?”

  “Tats already told me you can turn each of these around into 1,200 falons. That’s more than a 40% profit margin if I sell each to you for 700 falons, and that’s more than fair; in fact, it’s too damn generous. The price stands for 700 falons each on the five bulbs I’ve got with me, but the next load’s going to be 800 falons each.

  “Now are we clear, or is there a problem here?” Righty said in a low, ominous tone, still not raising his voice.

  “Son, you better have an army hidden somewhere around here, because after I beat the piss out of you I’m going to find out who the hell you are, where you’re getting supplied at, and I’m going right over your head to your supplier, and if you’ve got a wife and kids you’re gonna wish you’d never met Big Frank! I’m gonna—”

  While Big Frank was giving his lecture, Righty had calmly inserted both hands into his shirt pockets. There, he had dressed his meaty hands with the pair of brass knuckles he had warned Tats he would use next time.

  Righty stood about six feet tall, weighed around 240 pounds, and was chiseled as if made out of granite from the years of toiling away with lumber. But even if his physique had been on display as a warning, like a flared hood of a cobra, it couldn’t have begun to truly warn a potential adversary of the strength he would be contending with in Righty Rick.

  Righty sprinted forward, cutting off Big Frank in mid-sentence. The brazenness of the attack made it completely unexpected. Big Frank raised his hands in defense and took a few steps backward, trying to buy himself a few seconds of time to get in a better defensive posture or perhaps receive aid from his comrades.

  It was a tactic Righty had learned to counter with expert precision. He was used to his wild lunges forward not being well-received by opponents, who would often quickly backpedal trying to escape the madman they found themselves facing. For that reason, Righty very rarely set his sights on the location of the man at the time he commenced the attack.

  Instead, mind, thighs, and knuckles merged with the perfection of a triangle and focused instead on some point behind the adversary. Righty was uncannily adept at appraising just how fast a man could backpedal and adjusted his target point commensurately. His subconscious mind told him Big Frank would probably manage to backpedal four feet before Righty would be in striking distance, and he sprinted forward accordingly, avoiding the mistake so many Pursuers make in boxing against Runners by chasing them only to the point where they were standing at the time the pursuit began, thus allowing the Runner to constantly backpedal and wear out the Pursuer.

  As Big Frank went backpedalling with a look of shock and anger in his eye, Righty didn’t even slow down for a second until he was well within striking range and then shoveled five brass knuckles deep into the left side of Big Frank’s ribcage, pulverizing bone like a sledgehammer.

  But Righty was smart enough to know this was no
friendly sparring match like the one he’d had yesterday. If he didn’t show these brutes they were within the presence of an alpha wolf whose fury they did not want to be within one mile of, he was going to leave Janie a widow.

  Thus, not even a half-second passed between the bone-pulverizing uppercut to Big Frank’s ribcage and a crushing left hook to the other side of his ribcage, quickly followed by a right hook to Big Frank’s left kidney, which Righty squashed like a watermelon.

  Those who had studied Righty’s fighting style closely knew that it wasn’t that he was morally opposed to going to his opponent’s head. It was just that he looked at an opponent’s body like a meal. The torso was the steak and potatoes, and the head was dessert. However, by the time Righty finished eating the steak and potatoes, the fighter was usually collapsed onto the canvas, thus robbing Righty of the dessert of which he would have happily partaken.

  Righty knew that whether he lived or died today didn’t depend on whether he whipped Big Frank. Frank was a goner. But he had to do it in spectacular fashion or else he just might soon have some unwanted company.