by RW Krpoun
“What’s that you’re drinking?” Shad asked Jeff, having stuck to a weak cider.
The Jinxman took a swig from a clay pot and sloshed it thoughtfully from cheek to cheek before swallowing. “They call it bula. I would say you could duplicate it with four parts really cheap tequila, two parts bad gin, one part sweet cranberry juice, and three parts brake fluid. I expect that this is what is keeping their teeth so white: the tartar just dissolves. I’m guessing it runs about ninety proof, and they haven’t developed the idea of cutting it. Not that it’s safe to add anything without a clinical trial first, I bet. I’m pretty sure you could run an M-1 main battle tank using this stuff as fuel. Probably wouldn’t need to ever change the fuel filters.”
“Smooth, huh?”
“Like a well-greased proctology exam. Kinda gives you the sensation of acid going down, and of being gut-shot when it hits bottom. It is possible that I’ve drunk worse, but major areas of my brain are shutting down so I can’t access the specific memories.”
“Good to know.”
Later in the evening the formal dancing ended and children capered across the flattened grass, screaming and cavorting as their elders drank, gossiped, and laughed. Shad stuck to cider, and noted that Derek and Quails had vanished, and later Jeff and Morning Flower were absent.
The overall atmosphere was a happy one, a carefree time of feasting and good humor of a people well-secure in their environment and culture. Shad had seen social gatherings in several cultures in his lifetime, and this one was memorable for its honest simplicity and good cheer.
He awoke the next morning in their lodge, Six Deer snuggled close under the blanket; none of the others were present, but he was not surprised. Kissing Six Deer on the forehead he gently extracted himself from her embrace; she muttered sleepily and rolled onto her side, emitting a delicate snore as he quietly dressed and eased out of the lodge.
After completing his morning abolitions he went in search of the other Black Talons. The site of the drinking competition was littered with the unconscious forms of Fred’s competitors, most passed out in puddles of various extrusions, but no sign of the Scout. Several small boys who were prowling the area gathering up discarded bula pots obligingly pointed him towards the creek.
He found Fred sprawled in the water fully dressed save for his boots, hat and gun belt, which two enterprising boys were currently carrying into the upper reaches of a tree. The Scout was lying face-down, water lapping at his shirt collar, his face resting in soft mud.
“Fred, you alive?”
The big man grunted.
“The reason I’m asking is that some kids are tying your stuff really high up in a tree.”
“Bashtids. Hit me with sticks,” Fred mumbled without moving.
“Looks like you won the drinking contest.”
“Lashdt man standing.”
“Why are you in the creek?”
“Went to sleep and some sumbitch took a shit in my pants.”
“That makes sense. Get some rest, and try not to drown.”
The Scout muttered something inaudible.
Shad found Jeff not far away, clad only in his trousers, sitting on the ground cradling his head in his hands. “How are you doing, buddy?” the Shootist boomed cheerfully.
“Don’t talk,” Jeff whispered painfully. “Just cut my throat quietly.”
“Hungover, huh?”
“A lobotomy would be welcome. Or Death.”
“Listen, head over to the creek. Fred’s in the water and someone should keep an eye on him. Especially since the kids are taking advantage of his immobility.”
“OK.” Jeff started to stand, thought better of it, and laboriously began to crawl to the creek.
Shad wandered back to the celebration area where the boys were now piling the bula pots on top of the passed-out warriors, along with discarded bones and clods of dirt. Casting about he spotted Derek walking between the lodges carrying a shallow basket.
“There you are.” He caught the savory smell from the basket. “What do you have there?”
“Flat bread and roasted bits of buffalo-help yourself. I was looking for you.”
“Where did you end up?” Shad asked as he created a sort of all-meat taco.
“With Quails,” Derek flushed.
“Good for you. C’mon, we need to check on the others. Plus the smell of food should about kill ‘em.”
Jeff had collapsed on the creek bank near Fred and was snarling at the boys who, having stashed Fred’s belongings sixty feet up a tree, were now jabbing the nearly-helpless Jinxman with long branches.
“That’s a tradition,” Derek observed as the two chose a shady place to sit and eat breakfast. “If you pass out or are otherwise incapacitated by drink outside your lodge, you’re fair game for the kids. You notice the Celts all managed to stagger to a lodge before dropping.”
“Yeah, except for the six who tried to out-drink Fred. They’re getting buried alive.”
The pair finished their meal and watched the boys torment Jeff for a while. “So, you still deeply in love?” Shad asked.
Derek blushed again. “She is a very nice lady. But you’re right, I’m not going to be around. I can’t offer her a future.”
The Shootist grinned. “Got freaky on you?”
The Alienist rolled his eyes. “I’m a grown man, for crying out loud. So are you-you should try to act it once in a while.”
“All I’m saying is you have the look of a man who got over being in love at the double-time.”
The Radio Shack manager tried to look dignified, but a snicker won through. “She was like an air traffic controller, man. Talked me through the entire business.”
“Did the whole pre-landing checklist, eh?”
“And a safety briefing before we started.”
“Some like that sort of thing.”
“Yup. How was yours?”
“Energetic and grateful. Too young to be a widow, that’s for sure. There’s some hard stories around here.”
“Yeah. But they’re good people.”
“That they are.”
The pair sat and watched the boys badger the hungover Jinxman for a while. “I’m getting tired,” Derek observed. “Too much riding, too much fighting. I could stay here and hunt bison, find a lonely widow, really relax.”
“There’s a lot to be said for that,” Shad nodded. “We could use the Roman Nose as a base while we take down three more Death Lords.”
“Yeah.” Derek watched as the boys pelted the cursing Jinxman with mud. “But we won’t.”
“We could, though. We have a choice.”
“Not really. There’s choices, and there’s excuses. We excuse what we do by saying we made a choice, when in fact there was no choice at all. We could have weaseled out of Iraq, we could have danced to the Council’s tune in the Prison, or we could hunt Death Lords here. But that’s not us; in the end, we always do the same damned thing.”
“We’re heroes.” Shad tried to say it with a straight face and failed.
“I don’t think so,” the Alienist said thoughtfully. “I think we’re just four guys who take John Wayne far too seriously. We never do the smart thing.”
“Could be,” Shad rubbed the scar along the left side of his neck. “On the other hand taking the easy route doesn’t mean you’ll sleep any better. I went to Iraq because I couldn’t stand the idea of someone else going in my place.”
“Who knows,” Derek sighed. “The older I get, the less I really understand.”
Shad slapped him on the shoulder. “At least you’ve lived long enough to get older. When we get back and you’re trying to keep that store in order you can think back on all we’re done and wonder how the hell we pulled it off.”
“Actually, back home I think about the people we helped,” Derek stood, brushing off his pants. “We saved Quails’ life and helped a lot of the Expedition survive.”
For an instant the face of the young muleskinner he had shot flas
hed before Shad’s eyes, but he forced the memory away as he stood. “That’s a good idea. Anyway, I’m still hungry, so let’s see what is available to eat.”
“Should we help Jeff?’
“Nah. He’s serving as an entertainment for children and a dynamic example of the perils of strong drink. Its good for his soul.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Black Talons spent four more days with the Celts before heading north. Jeff and Derek worked on their charms and hex-sheets, Fred hunted, and Shad fished, something the Celt children found fascinating.
Their departure coincided with the two clans packing up and going their separate ways because the grass in the area had been grazed short. For the horse-based Celts, grass for their mounts was always the key issue.
The clan had presented the Talons with plenty of food, and Dreams, Quails, Morning Flower, and Six Deer saw them off amid the early morning hubbub of the camp packing up and moving.
Dreams caught Shad in a great bear hug. “Be careful, my friend,” he said softly. “I have used my sight, and I do not understand what I was shown. Your future is a very confused path.”
“Thank you,” the Shootist said with rare sincerity, thumping the healer’s back. “Keep safe and well, Dreams.”
“That was the best time we’ve had away from the real world,” Jeff mused when the Celts were out of sight. “Better than when we were working for the brewery in the Prison.”
“Yeah, it was good,” Derek agreed wistfully.
“Today marks sixty-six days in-country,” Shad announced. “Ten days into a third lunar cycle. More importantly, we’re about a week into what we would call September, and we’re riding north. We need to wrap this business up and get home before the snow flies; failing that, we need to rat-hole enough money to last out the winter in civilized conditions.”
“Stay the winter?” Derek was appalled.
“Maybe six hours real time,” Fred reminded him. “We could still be home before dawn.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“We’re about ten days from the crossroads, and another five or six to Bloodseep,” the Shootist continued. “Hopefully we’ll level before we get there. In any case, we need to sell off our loot and re-equip.”
“We’re still drawing our daily XP,” Derek noted. “And those Death Lords carried a pretty hefty bonus. Leveling is in our immediate future.”
“Good. Anyway, that’s what I have by way of a plan: head to Bloodseep, gear up, and then figure our next move once we level.”
“Pretty basic, but it’s a plan,” Jeff conceded.
“So we ride!” Derek yelled, standing in his stirrups.
“Of course we ride,” Shad frowned at the Alienist. “We’ve ridden everywhere. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I was just…you know, the dramatic moment…Lord of the Rings…,” Derek flushed. “Drama?”
“You have two settings: gay or retarded,” Jeff shook his head.
“We can’t take you anywhere,” Fred grunted.
Derek flipped everyone off.
They quickly settled down into their travel routines. The days were getting slightly shorter so they pushed a little harder than usual to make their daily allotment of miles. Unusual for the four , they tended to ride in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. The stay with the contented Celts had awakened feelings that had been long-buried under the needs and demands of four strangers in a strange land going about violent duties, and these feelings had to be dealt with before they fully returned to their normal mindset.
It didn’t help that the plains stretched away on all sides to the horizons so that twenty five or more miles spent in the saddle seemed to produce no progress; the four seemed trapped on an endless sea of waving grass and herds of bison. It reminded Shad of accounts by survivors of Napoleon’s Grand Army and the German Wehrmacht about the invasion of Russia, where they talked of marching for days on end without ever seeming to get closer to their goal.
“You know, at this point I would welcome a firefight just to break up the monotony,” Jeff announced as they took their noon meal five days into their journey.
“This is like watching paint dry,” Shad agreed. “I really miss motorized transport. Ten days of exposure to the weather when you could drive it in four hours with surround-sound music.”
“Now that we know that there are different variants of these places, if we ever do this again lets find the one where people got banished from the Twentieth Century,” Fred nodded.
“We’re living a cross between an adventuring group and the Old West,” Derek protested. “You’ll never get to do anything like this again!”
“I didn’t want to do it in the first place,” Shad said bluntly. “And I still don’t. Clint Eastwood never had to ride all over hell-they just jumped ahead to the next screenshot.”
“Red Death Redemption required you to ride a lot,” Jeff observed.
“Yeah, and you always walked in the Fallout series,” Derek pointed out.
“That’s because I was sitting in an eight hundred dollar recliner in front of a seventy-three-inch HD TV,” the Shootist shrugged. “Holding a peg forward on a controller just isn’t the same thing.”
“And there was always stuff happening,” Fred nodded.
“Still…this has its moments,” Derek sighed.
“So did Gen-Con,” Jeff grinned. Derek promptly flipped him off.
As the four mounted and turned their horses north Shad stretched and scratched his chest. “Derek, give us a rant. What’s gotten under your skin lately?”
“The Black Library,” the Radio Shack manager answered promptly. “I get it that they are cutting back and not supporting the fantasy side of War Hammer anymore, and that’s fine. But why the hell did they have to destroy the setting and kill off every major character in their last series of novels? What was the point of it? The setting has been around for over thirty years, so there’s always the hope that someday they’ll reopen or sell the line.”
“They lost me when they kept switching authors for the Gotrek and Felix series,” Shad agreed. “And then quit the progression of the central story.”
“Just when it was getting good, too,” Jeff shook his head. “I really enjoyed the necromantic siege.”
“If they would only listen to gamers they would be doing so much better,” Derek sighed.
They sighted Celts twice on their travels, groups of mounted men in the distance, but the prairie-dwellers were not inclined to make contact and the Black Talons did not wish to press their luck-they had encountered two groups of friendly Celts, but that was not a trend that could continue indefinitely.
They sighted Horde scouts on three occasions and immediately picked up the pace each time in the hopes of avoiding contact.
Ten days after leaving the Roman Nose people the Black Talons reached the crossroads.
“Look at that,” Jeff swept his hat towards the road. “Back home that would barely be considered a road, but here its civilization.”
“None too soon,” Derek rubbed his face. “I am so sick of riding a horse, sleeping on the ground, and pemmican stew.”
“I’m sick of looking at you guys,” Shad shook his head. “I’m getting my own room when we hit Bloodseep.”
The morning of the third day on the road to Bloodseep Derek woke them early. “Who else leveled up?”
“Why is it still dark?” Jeff snarled.
“I leveled up. Did you?” the Alienist refused to be deterred.
“Yeah. Now shut up.” The Jinxman burrowed back into his blankets.
None of the three was willing to budge until the sun cleared the horizon. Only after morning ablutions were finished and a stark breakfast consumed were the Black Talons willing to address the new issues as a group.
“I went with Alienist,” Derek advised, eyes glowing. “I will be able to use a range of tactical light spells once I work up the hex sheets. I took a derivative of Undead Lore specializing in the Death Lord
s, and another point in Rifles and Carbines.”
“Stayed with Scout, put a second point into Tactical reload, took a point in Folklore,” Fred reported.
“Stayed with Shootist, and put two more points into Otherworld Lore,” Shad yawned.
“I stuck with Jinxman, and upped my Tek Lore to three,” Jeff said sadly. “Now I can put Armor charms on you that last until you’re hit, so they’re there if we get jumped. I really would like to boost my tactical skills.”
“Next level, Shad said absently. “If three points doesn’t get us what we need to know we’ll have to choose a different method.”
“I wonder how Cecil does it?” Fred leaned forward as he braided his rat tail.
“Academic is a class,” Derek explained. “It opens a huge variety of skill subsets. Plus he gets XP for actually studying and teaching. The skills we take are just broad-stroke sort of things.”
“Besides, history isn’t like nuclear physics,” Shad pointed out. “You can learn it yourself by reading. It really helps to have a well-researched reading list and extensive reading in associated fields so as to have context for interpretation, but still, it boils down to reading.”
“You were a history major in college, weren’t you?” Derek asked Shad.
“Military History and Political Science, yeah. I spent thousands of dollars to focus on stuff that could not possibly translate into viable employment,” the Shootist nodded. “In the end the Army taught me more practical skills and lessons that the university ever did, and the Army paid me to learn them.”
“Makes you wonder if a college education is really worth anything,” the Alienist mused as he cleaned his mess kit. “I got my degree in computer science, but by now what I learned is so obsolete I couldn’t use it. If I had a do-over I would have taken accounting.”
“I have a degree in Education,” Jeff pointed out. “But I teach Shop using the training principles the Army instilled in me, and the practical skills my dad and uncles taught me. So the only purpose of my degree was to qualify me for applying for a teaching position.”
