King Pinch n-1

by David Cook

  "A man can drink for lots of reasons, and most stories are lies," Pinch commented acidly.

  "They say bad hearts sour good wine. Is it a good wine, Master Therin?"

  The young man held the jug out in front of him considering an answer. "Tolerable, I wager."

  "Tolerable, indeed," the chamberlain sighed, taking the bottle back. He set the bottle to his weather-cracked lips and gulped and gulped, and gulped at it some more until the yellow stains of wine trickled from the corners of his mouth and clung in sweet drops in the coarse beard on his chin. At last he pulled the bottle free with a choking gasp. The old man shoved the bottle into Sprite's hands and began without preamble.

  "There's a lad I knew, must have been fifteen, twenty, years ago. He was a boy of a high family. His father was a noted captain in the king's guard and his mother a lady-in-waiting to the queen. She was pregnant when the captain was killed in the wars against the trolls. The lady wailed for the priests to beg their gods, but there was no bringing the captain back. She being a lady, though, the king and queen saw to her needs all the time she was with child. It was double tragedy that she died bearing her male child."

  "Wasn't there a priest who could bring her back, what with the baby?" Brown Maeve asked. Her veined face was swelling with a whimper of tears, for the sorceress could never resist a sad tale. "Where was her kin?"

  "She didn't have any," Cleedis answered after a long swig on the bottle he pried from Sprite's hands. "That's why she stayed at court. There wasn't any family to pray for her. It wasn't her wish to be raised; she hoped to join her husband. The king and queen pledged to raise the boy as their ward."

  Maeve gave out a little sob.

  Across the fire, Pinch glared at Cleedis in stony silence, eyes glinting amid the rising sparks.

  Cleedis continued. "Without mother or father, in some other place he would've been one of those little beggars you kick away on the street. That's how it would have been, you know, except that didn't happen to him.

  "He got lucky, more luck than he ever deserved-"

  Pinch spat.

  Cleedis persevered. "He was favored. He didn't have family, but he was taken in by nobility, a king no less. They dressed him, fed him, and educated him in the best ways. And you know how he repaid them?"

  Pinch spat, ferociously this time, and the gobbet hissed and cracked in the flames. Springing up, he broke from the circle of firelight, making angry strides past the startled guard whose sword half-cleared its sheath.

  The old chamberlain motioned the man back to give the rogue his peace. Pinch trembled at the edge of the firelight, hovering at the rim of the winter blackness.

  "He repaid them," Cleedis slowly dogged on, pulling back the attention of the rogue's friends, "he repaid them by stealing all he could and fleeing the city. Now, what do you think of that?"

  Man, woman, and halfling exchanged uncomfortable glances, their thoughts clearly centered on their tall master. He continued to scorn the warmth of the group.

  "Did he make a good profit?" Sprite asked nervously, but the joke fell flat.

  "Why stop the tale there, Cleedis?" murmured the upright man's voice from the darkness. "There's so many little embellishments you've left out. Like how the king thought his queen was barren and wanted a son for his throne. How he raised the boy with care and the best of all things-until one day his wife was fruitful and bore him a son, and then three more over the years. That was three more than he needed and certainly better than an orphan boy."

  The man brought his anger back to the fire and leaned close to share it with the others. Perhaps the old man didn't like his story shanghaied, or perhaps he could feel the pain in the other's voice. Whatever the reason, his joint-swollen fingers knotted painfully about his sword.

  "Or how he drove his queen to death once she'd whelped heirs for him. And then one day the dear old man woke up and decided he didn't need the boy he'd taken in, the one who wasn't his seed. All his life, the boy had lived in luxury, expecting and waiting, only to be pushed out by a group of mewling brats. How about that, Cleedis?"

  The rogue turned to the other three-short, plump, and broad-sitting like rigid stones in dumb silence.

  Smoothly a smile expanded on the rogue's face, oil spreading across the storm of his emotion. The coiled tiger's spring eased from his frame, and with a cheerful bow he scooped up the wine jug. "Good story, eh? One's as true as another, and they're both as true as a vagabond's tale."

  The three still sat nervous and quiet, vassals unable to fathom their master's mad caperings.

  Pinch threw back the jug and drained a long swallow, quenching the wine-dark thirst deep inside him. He then flung the uncorked jug toward his gang. "Drink and sleep, that's what you need!" he thundered.

  As they scrambled to catch the jug and stay wide of his moods, Pinch quickly settled close to his old fencing master till his wine-breath whisper tickled the old man's ear. "You need me or you'd not come this far. No more tales-"

  "You're forgetting the priests, boy," the other growled, never once breaking his stare into the darkness.

  "No more tales or you'll not wake up some morning. Do you think your guards can keep us away?"

  Cleedis blinked. "If I'm dead, there's no profit for you. That's all you want, isn't it?" The old man quickly shifted the terms.

  A contented sigh swelled in the rogue. "I'm sure you've got enemies in Ankhapur. Wouldn't they pay to see your head packed in a pickle pot?"

  He didn't wait for an answer, but left the old man chewing his words. "To bed!" he thundered once more as he herded his accomplices to the small ring of tents that was their traveling home. With cheerful wariness, they swarmed to heed him.

  In the fading firelight, Cleedis watched as his former student never once turned his back on his supposed friends. The old swordsman smiled-a cold, dark smile like the dead winter night around him.

  For the next three days, there were no more tales; not even any talk. It didn't take years of familiarity to read Pinch's mood. Even the coarsest soldiers knew there was a sour gloom hanging around the man. He spoke only when necessary and then barely more than a grunt. He ate quietly and drank without sharing. Most ominous of all was that he abided every inconvenience-the trails reduced to slicks of mud and slush, the streams of thin-crusted ice, even the stinging blows of sleet-with an impassive stare into the wilderness beyond. To his friends, it seemed the memory of Ankhapur roused in him a furious anger, like some furious scorpion retreating into its lair. If that were the case, nobody wanted to jab him lest they get stung.

  Sprite-Heels, who watched his old companion as closely as the rest, formed a different opinion, one that he kept to himself. The halfling knew Pinch better than anybody and sometimes he held the conceit that he understood Pinch better than Pinch himself. Sprite was sure he could read the machinations in the old rogue's eyes, could divide them into patterns and stages. First the thief studied a guard, never one close to him, but one who was detached and unaware of the rogue's scrutiny. Sprite knew Pinch was finding the weaknesses, the passions, and the follies that the long ride betrayed in each man: Who gambled and lost poorly; who drank when he thought the captain wasn't looking; who shirked his duties; who betrayed others. All these things became Pinch's catalog of the levers by which he could move the men, elves, and dwarves of their escort.

  After six days, the party came to a way-house on the southern road. It wasn't more than a rickety handful of a house and outbuildings enclosed in a palisade of sticks, but it offered protection from the icy sleet that had pelted them all day. The riders were frozen through to their bones. Even Cleedis, who by his station was better equipped than any of them, was chilled to his marrow. The horses were caked with mud and their hooves skittered across the sleet-slicked ground. It had been a painful lurching day in the saddle for everyone. The prospect of an inn, even a barn, right there in front of them, was a thousand times better than another night sleeping on half-frozen mud and pine branches.


  A boy splashed through the melting snow, shouting out their arrival, so that by the time the Ankhapurans reached the gate, a band of grooms and farmhands faced them on the other side. The inn's staff was armed with a smattering of spears, scythes, and flails, the weapons of a ragtag militia. The signboard over the closed gate creaked in the wind, announcing that this was "The House of Pity."

  "Where you be bound?" shouted one of the lot as he struggled his way to the front.

  "We are Lord Cleedis of Ankhapur and his escort," shouted back the captain of the guard, the one Pinch knew was a brute to his men. "Who are you?"

  "The landlord's cook," replied the cadaverously thin man who stepped to the front. He wore a greasy apron and carried a heavy cleaver, the uniform and tools of his trade.

  "So much for the food," Therin whispered to Sprite.

  "Well, open the gate, lackey, and give us a room for the night. My lord is not accustomed to waiting in the mud." The captain was flushed with impatience to be out of the foul weather.

  With slow deliberation, the cook peered first into the woods on one side and then on the other, searching the shadows and the darkness for something. Finally he turned back to the captain. "Can you pay?

  "Can we pay?" the officer sputtered. "Pay depends on service, lout!"

  Now the cook slowly, and again very deliberately, looked over the riders, counting out the number on his fingers. When he'd counted both hands, his face furrowed in concentration until at last he nudged the man next to him with over-broad secrecy. Heated whispers flew until at last the second fellow held up his own hand and the cook continued to count. The captain barely suppressed his rage at this dawdling.

  "Twelve!" Pinch yelled out when the count was clearly above three hands.

  The cook and groom paused, looked at their hands, looked up, looked back at their hands, and then very slowly and deliberately began the count again.

  The captain twisted in his seat to glower at Pinch, and for the first time in nearly a week the rogue beamed a wickedly cheerful smile and stoically endured the icy discomfort.

  Behind Pinch a chorus of snickers and snorts struggled not to break into a round of guffaws.

  When the pair's count reached three hands, every eye of the cold and wet escort turned on Pinch. The rogue only nodded and smiled.

  "Three!" chimed Sprite's high-pitched voice.

  The count began again.

  The guards edged in closer, this time watching all four vagabonds.

  At two hands, Maeve could stand the ludicrousness no longer, and a hysterical cackle burst from her lips. It pealed down the wooded lane.

  The count began again.

  The captain wheeled his horse back through the mud. "If they say anything-" he paused in midsnarl, realizing he could not carry out a threat against his master's guests. "Well," he finally continued with teeth chattering, "don't let them!"

  Now the guards, sensing a pattern, paid particular mind to Therin. The big Gur smiled back at their fixed scowls and pointedly kept his mouth closed. The count passed one hand and he did nothing. Maeve, Sprite, and Pinch waited to see what he would do.

  Two hands.

  Therin didn't say a word.

  Three hands.

  The big man beamed in calm silence.

  Seventeen…

  Eighteen…

  Nineteen…

  Therin stretched his arms in a broad yawn. The guards reacted with the singing steel of drawn swords. The rude militia splashed back from the palisade fearful of a fight.

  The count began again.

  Pinch, Sprite, Maeve, and Therin all looked at each other and smiled.

  It was moonset before all the horses had their fetlocks washed, their coats curried, and their mangers filled with moldy hay. The soldiers plodded back into the commons. Pinch and his crew came up last; in this, like all things, the last of everything.

  In a night the color of simmered wine, the sway-backed inn breathed vaporous smoke from every crack in its wooden skin. As the men slouch-shouldered their way through the door, Therin drew off the last pair with the tempting rattle of dice. If the guardsmen expected a fair game, they didn't stand a chance; the Gur was a sharper with the barred bones. A quiet corner in the barn and a few hours of work would leave them poorer but probably no wiser.

  The chairs inside had all been claimed, the benches overfilled with troopers. The small commons had little space for a squadron of troopers, but the innkeeper still managed to squeeze a few more customers into the space. Unimaginably, one more table was found for the three scoundrels. It barely fit at a corner in the back, which was all to Pinch's liking.

  "Sour beer's all that's left," the landlord said, more as defense than apology. The spare man sloshed a kettle of brew onto the table, a stump-footed little creature of tin. Cold scraps and stale bread were the only choices left for dinner.

  As they ate, the senior rogue let his eyes wander lest he notice the poor pickings before him. Since he was bored with the study of guardsmen, whose lives offered no imagination, Pinch concentrated on the non-Ankhapurans in the hall, a whole two tables' worth. It was clear from their seating-one table near the door, the other by the fire- that the two groups traveled apart. Those by the door Pinch had seen when he first arrived. The other party could only have arrived while he was stabling his mount.

  There was a worth in studying the other guests, after all. If any were wealthy, there was always profit to be had in visiting their rooms before the dawn.

  The two men seated near the door were garbed in hard-used traveling clothes, the type favored by old hands at the caravan trade-long riding cloaks waterproofed with sheep fat, warm doublets colored with the dried salts of sweat, and thick-sided boots stuccoed with yellow mud. Practical clothes for practical men with no obvious vanities that would mark them as good coneys to be snared.

  The men themselves were as hard as their clothes. The first, who always kept an eye to the door, Pinch dubbed the Ox. He was huge, with a belly that rolled out beneath his doublet and quivered with any shift of his frame. The trembling flesh ill-concealed the, massive muscles of the man, though. Every time he reached for the capon that sat on the table between the two men, his swollen biceps threatened to burst the stitching of his doublet's seams. Though his face was clean shaven, it was nearly obscured by a wild mass of hair that hung in snarls and tangles.

  The other man Pinch quickly dubbed the Lance-the Ox and the Lance, they were. The Lance was no more slender than Therin, though his shaved head made him look thinner. What truly distinguished him was that every move was a sharp strike using the minimum of effort for the maximum of gain. The Lance didn't tear at the capon, he dissected the choice meats from it with complacent ease.

  It wasn't their dress or their frames that raised a caution in the rogue, though. There was a way about them that only those in the trade, for good or ill, would recognize. The way one always watched the door while the other discretely scanned the room; the way neither let both hands be filled at once; the way they held themselves on their chairs.

  "Maeve, Sprite," Pinch whispered as he casually tore at a chunk of bread, "those two, what do you make of them? Hellriders?"

  The halfling feigned a stretch as he leaned back to get a better look at them. "In disguise and come this far? Not likely."

  Maeve set down her drink. "Hellriders is mean ones, Pinch, but I ain't never heard of them coming after someone on the road."

  "Maybe not." The rogue stroked the rim of his mug. "Can you read them, Maeve?"

  "Here? With all these people?"

  Her leader nodded.

  The wizard rolled her eyes in exasperation. "It ain't wise to use powers when you might get caught."

  "Maeve, you know you won't. You're too good," Pinch flattered.

  The woman harrumphed but was already digging out the material she needed. Pinch and Sprite pulled their chairs close to screen her from the others. The mystic words were a chanted whisper, the gestures minute tracings in the
air. An onlooker would have thought her no more than a person distracted by her own inner dreams.

  Without really looking at them, Maeve turned her unblinking gaze on the two men. This was riskiest part of the process, Pinch knew. A stranger staring at you the way Maeve did was always cause for a fight. When at last she blinked, Pinch was just as happy no one had noticed.

  "You've got them dead on, Pinch. They're in the trade and none too happy tonight." Maeve smiled as she turned back to her dinner. "Got their nerves up, what with a room full of our handsome escorts. Don't know what they make of us, but they've set their eyes to the other company here. Ain't no more but some terrible thoughts I won't say in public."

  Sprite sniggered. "Wouldn't have been on you now, would they? Or was you just hoping?"

  Brown Maeve swivelled away from the halfling with a snap of her greasy, unwashed hair.

  "Heel your dog, Sprite-Heels," Pinch rumbled. "You're none too sweet scented yourself.

  "Maeve, pay this ingrate no mind. Those that count know your quality." Pinch put a soothing hand on Maeve's shoulder. "Now, dear Maeve, can you read me the other table?"

  Her face a sulky pout, Maeve let her blank gaze wash for a moment toward Pinch, only to be warned off by the fierceness of his glare, shadowed by the curve of his tender smile.

  "The other table, Maeve," he directed.

  The witch-woman sighed and lolled her gaze where he nodded.

  Meanwhile the old rogue studied their target. It was a small table by the fire, where sat a lone traveler, unusual enough in a countryside where few traveled alone. That wasn't the least of it, either, for the traveler was a woman-not unheard of, but just that much more distinguishing. The inn was in the land between lands, an area just beyond the reach of anyone who could claim it, and thus had been laid claim to by highwaymen and beasts of ill renown. The lone traveler who stumbled into this void was prey for any stronger ravager.