by Arthur Stone
There was much I still needed to teach him. And if ever I needed help, I could always lean on the Carps.
Chapter 17
Safari for the Unhinged
No Stat Changes
“Maybe I should start calling you the Shiteaters,” Ash said musingly. “It has a ring to it, and certainly fits you better than the Carps. Way better.”
Our four adversaries were trying to look anywhere but at the fort’s commander. At his last words, Tatai’s lower lip started quivering, the boy teetering on the brink of crying from the grave insult.
Ash turned toward me and Beko.
“Or should I reserve the name for the two of you?”
I shrugged.
“If Blackriver Fort is made stronger in any way from Beko and I being dubbed the Shiteaters, then let it be so. Then we all benefit.”
Ash gave me a long, strange stare.
“Who are you, really? Don’t give me any of that hogwash about running off from some farm. Sharp cheekbones, thin lips, blue eyes, self-assured manner. You’re no more a farmer than I am a strumpet.”
Infusing my voice with a dash of mystery, I explained.
“I am heir to the throne, traveling my lands incognito, forbidden from revealing my true identity. So, forgive me but I must plead the fifth.”
“Plead the what now? Oh, never mind. Strange as you are, boy, if there’s one thing I know it’s that you haven’t smelled manure even once in your life,” Ash stated with confidence. “And if you are a runaway, it wasn’t off a farm but from a traveling circus. I’d break your arms for all the ruckus you caused, but then what would you use to scoop shit out of our cesspits?”
“What if we avoid the scooping shit part altogether?” I inquired matter-of-factly.
“Oh nooo,” Ash said with a drawl. “You will be scooping shit, I assure you. With your bare hands. And your ghoul buddy will be scooping shit, too. And these Shiteaters here will help. All of you will have a chance to get to know one another better. Maybe you’ll even become friends and quit disturbing the sleep of honest folk. But I will have you fed for the entertainment you’ve provided. I haven’t laughed this hard since catching a jester show at a bazaar years ago. Quit spitting, Satat. I know that your mouth still remembers foul things, but enough already. Maybe this will teach you to keep your trap shut more often.”
“Beg pardon, but might we get on the cesspit cleaning in the second half of the day?” I inquired.
“What does it matter?” Ash asked, surprised. “The sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll finish. The stink doesn’t get better later in the day, you know.”
“Well, you see, I wanted to spend the first half of the day fishing. The fort’s supplies are low on fish, so I thought I’d catch a few kote. Of the fatter variety.”
Ash rolled his eyes.
“You really are a jester in training. You’ll make a great one, too—assuming you don’t get strung up for your jokes first... You know what, fine. I could use another good laugh. You have until noon. If you don’t catch any kote until then, you will switch over to shit-scooping duty, replacing the Shiteaters and filling out their quota in addition to yours. And then you’ll clean out my own private crapper while you’re at it. Without the Carps’ help—I’ll have them working on something else by then.”
“Understood,” I nodded calmly. “And what do we get if we bring back some kote?”
“The balls on this kid...” Hugo said with a shake of the first, his first contribution to the conversation.
“No kidding. As big as they come,” Ash concurred. “But I am a fair man. If you bring back even one kote, it is yours to do with as you please as you bless my generosity. And the Shiteaters will handle the cesspits on their own. If by some miracle you actually deliver, I won’t have good fishermen wasting their talents mucking about in shit.”
Though his last words dripped with mocking, I replied with a most serious nod.
“Thank you, Master Ash. The terms of our agreement are perfectly clear.”
“Clear, you say? Then get out of my sight. And don’t forget, by noon I expect to see all six of you in one pit. If you try any tricks, it’ll be my turn to play a trick on you, the kind that not even Hugo is going to laugh at. And Hugo is quite the jolly fellow. He laughed like mad when a swamp biter was gnawing on Vaegar’s balls. Note that Vaegar wasn’t laughing—and you won’t be laughing, either.”
* * *
“This is a good thing,” Beko said absently as we descended to the beach. “Now we’re going to clean the cesspits alone, without the Carps. I don’t want to do it with the Carps. It wouldn’t be good, being there with them. Sucks that it will be three pits, but better to clean three on our own than one with the Carps.”
“Their gang got a new name.” I reminded him. “They didn’t ask for it, but still.”
“I’m afraid to call them that,” Beko protested. “They’ll only beat us harder. And they will beat us, just you watch.”
“You said we were already dead, remember? Then why be scared of a few cuffs? And besides, I told you to forget about them. They are no longer a threat.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Just trust me. They won’t be going near us, at least in the immediate future.”
“Why?!”
“Because! Did you see how pissed-off Ash was? He didn’t like being dragged into our little rivalry. It was unbecoming of a man of his stature.”
“That was because we made a ruckus at night. We broke a rule.”
“Still, he can’t be bothered resolving such quarrels. But he was glad to be entertained. He even christened the Carps with a new name as thanks.”
At that, Beko gave a spiteful chortle.
“Yes. That was rad. It will keep my spirits high when we’re cleaning out cesspits.”
“Let the Shiteaters clean out cesspits. Their new name is perfectly suitable for the job. You and I are going to be fishing for kote.”
“I thought you were joking about that.”
“Why would I be? Why do you think we bought all that stuff from Guppy yesterday? It was all in preparation to hunt kote.”
“Hunt kote?” Beko’s voice was full of skepticism. “With a couple of holed spoons, bronze hooks and some copper wire? How are those things going to help us hunt kote?”
“When it comes to hunting, it’s all about the hunter, and not his hunting tools,” I gestured to my head pointedly.
Beko sighed. “If we work quickly, it’ll take us four days to clean out all three cesspits. And they promised to feed us, too. I’m almost happy, all things considering. At least the Carps won’t bother taking shit duty from us.”
* * *
Kote were smart—as far as fish could be smart. A young specimen could do something stupid at times—or one that was deeply agitated, like my victim back at the crossing of Redriver. Like all other creatures of ORDER, kote amassed attributes and a certain set of talents. It was those talents that kept them out of fishing nets and traps, ignoring delicious baits concealing treacherous hooks. Coupled with an excellent scent for poisons, kote were a near-perfect blend of caution and aggression that made them dangerous yet damned difficult to kill.
My one encounter with kote had been an exception to the rule, as the group had swarmed the bloodied rags intended to entice them. Those had been an ineffective trap—merely sufficient to deal non-fatal damage to the mouth of one specimen. And it would have survived the big “splinter” if not for its numerous agitated brethren. It was still unclear how creatures that were solitary by nature had been driven there in such numbers. That could have contributed to their erratic behavior, resulting in the victim’s demise.
At any rate, ORDER had recognized my mite in the fish’s killing, netting the corresponding reward.
I had also taken note of how kote reacted to movement, which confirmed reports of their behavioral patterns.
I had also discussed the matter at length at the fort, primarily with Megaera. Strange
as it was, she seemed to know a great deal about Blackriver and its wildlife. She had even recalled dropping a ring in the river once. The plain copper ring should have been easily recoverable from shallow waters, but the river had other plans. A long shadow appeared out of nowhere and swallowed the ornament before it hit the river floor.
The story had helped me put all the pieces together.
A brightly polished spoon without a handle. One end tethered to a massive hook, the other to a ring of wire, tied to which was a thin string of frayed stalks of old wild leek, individually secured. Fresh stalks were strong enough to use as hanging rope, as poor old Rogalos could attest. Beko and I had tried pulling on them with all our might, but that had only made the knots stronger.
I tied the other end of the tackle around my waist to keep it secure. I had a backup kit just in case, but that would be the last one—we had no money to buy any more. And it would take additional time to prep, which we had little of. Noon would come sooner than expected, and cleaning out cesspits, especially with my bare hands, was an item I desperately wanted to remove from today’s agenda.
Watching me stray into the water, Beko asked in a crestfallen tone.
“Your plan is to hunt kote with that?”
“Got any other ideas?”
“Yes. Let’s go start cleaning latrines. Ash was right: the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
“Hunters don’t clean latrines. Watch, all these kote are going to be ours.”
My calculations were simple. In this area—and perhaps in all of Rock—trolling predatory fish wasn’t a thing. Float and ledger fishing were ubiquitous, but not trolling. Hooked bait fish was tried, but the clever kote avoided the cunning offering like the plague, while other prey that might normally jump on the tasty morsel avoided these waters for fear of themselves getting gobbled up by the river’s deadliest predators.
My first attempts at casting didn’t amount to anything. I wound the super-heavy spoonbait overhead, then sent it on its way, away from the bank. Alas, it wouldn’t fly as far out as I wanted it to, nor did it submerge easily—all of which amounted to a waste of precious time.
It was time to shift tactics. We moved closer to the mountain, where the pebbled beach transitioned to clusters of boulders, some of them quite large. One such boulder with a relatively flat surface was peeking out of the water some twenty feet off the shore.
Placing the cord in a coil on the boulder’s surface, I began winding the line again. This time it moved to a decent distance, roughly thirty paces away. Drawing it back was easy enough; making it “frolic” as it did so to provoke a predator attack was the challenging part.
I spent the first hour on training alone. My efforts were improving, but said improvements applied merely to the theory of fishing. Practical results were still nonexistent—not one fish had taken the bait or even followed it to the rocks. I’d been changing positions after three-four fruitless attempts, but had nothing to show for my efforts so far.
What was the matter? Something off with the spoonbait, maybe? But the hungry kote had reacted to a plain copper ring dropped into the river. Could they be sensing the hook somehow? But how? This method of using a piece of metal was unknown in this world. So how could the fish know to stay away from the shiny gadget?!
My imagination was starting to draw ominous shadows of the three structures into which the fort’s residents relieved themselves. I even felt a twang of anger at the builders for not erecting latrines outside the walls of the fort. Why couldn’t they have built them over the river? There were near-vertical precipices on three of the four sides. Doing so would have avoided the issue of cesspits altogether.
I glanced up at the sun. The spoon-shaped luminary was itself trolling toward the zenith at alarming speed.
And when it got there, the latrines would cease to be mere shadows in my runaway imagination.
That would be bad.
Very bad.
The most epic of failures imaginable.
The line snapped, suddenly taut. Oh, screw you, fish! My anger swelled. This was yet another of the numerous times the spoonbait got caught in underwater rocks or driftwood. At first I had mistaken these for a predator taking the bait, but the differences were immediately apparent. My tackle remained idle instead of mimicking the hooked fish’s jerking movements.
So it was now. I pulled and pulled, but the spoonbait didn’t move an inch. It seemed stuck for good, probably buried in some drowned log. And if so, I would have no choice but to start working on a new tackle.
I shouldn’t have moved closer to the cliffs. This section of the water was filled with driftwood brought in by the current. And that was just the wood you could see from the surface.
I stepped back to the edge of the rock and pulled, putting all of my weight into it. The maneuver had worked to liberate a lodged spoonbait once before, so it was worth another try.
But it was no use. Though the line grew as taut as a string from some giant’s violin, the tackle just wouldn’t get dislodged.
What happened next caught me completely unprepared. Something on the other end of the line succeeded where I had failed. In other words, it pulled with such force that I lost my balance and went flying off of my isle of rock, submerging fully into the water.
Only yesterday I wondered idly if I knew how to swim. Well, now I could answer with certainty that I could at least float, if not swim. It seemed improper to claim I was swimming when, in fact, I was being pulled by some unseen force on the other end of the line.
So great was the force pulling that I would have thought I’d fished a nuclear submarine. But given that submarines were unknown technology in Rock, this couldn’t be it. It had to be a kote, naturally, only I had expected a far more modest haul, considering the reports that large predators weren’t known to come so close to the island.
Perhaps the locals preferred to understate rather than exaggerate. Weird how their cousins back on Earth did the exact opposite.
What a crazy world.
I could whip out a knife and cut the line, only rummaging in your pockets is rather inconvenient when all your energy is focused on not getting dragged down to the river floor. The kote was dragging me straight toward a tree sticking out of the water. That would be my chance to grab on to something and try to put up a fight.
I wasn’t going to abandon my seemingly only chance to avoid latrine duty.
Twisting like an Olympic gymnast at just the right moment, I grabbed onto a slender bough with both hands. It snapped instantly, plunging me back underwater. But I dove right out to bear-hug a different one with both arms and legs, taking full advantage of the few extra seconds of the line slackening as the fish began to round a large submerged boulder just up ahead.
Now I just needed to hold on. Nothing else, just hold on. I was done riding the monster fish like a jet ski.
Sans the ski.
My only chance was for the kote to exhaust itself and lose vigor. Perhaps then even my meager strength would be enough to drag it ashore. We’d been riding along the riverbank all this time—I needed to swim only a dozen yards before my feet should find bottom.
Breaking out into open water, the fish jerked violently forward, pressing me into the snag so tight, I could feel every bump and crack on the old wood with all of my body. Thankfully, the kote was trying to pull me through a barrier that not even a croc could break easily. Not in a million years would I have hung on with my own strength—it was only my position, securely behind the wide log, that made it possible. But I would take credit for recognizing my one chance and scrambling to take that position.
What is wrong with me? I was patting myself on the back for hanging on to life by a thread in a situation that only an imbecile would get himself into. A situation in which the apex of evolution was being drowned in a cold spring river by a primitive fish.
“Geeeeed!” the voice was coming from ashore.
I turned my head to see Beko, frozen at the edge of the water
and staring at me with eyes round with horror.
“What?!” I wheezed, struggling to keep my position against the leg-locked log steady.
“I can’t swim, Ged!”
“Am I asking you to?”
“But Ged! It’s going to eat you!”
“No! We’re going to eat it! Get ready to help me pull it out!”
“Goodbye, Ged!” the ghoul kept spouting his nonsense in between sobs, either ignoring or failing to understand my words. “Do you want me to show you mine, Ged?! Before you die? You’re my friend, Ged, so I think I can show you! You won’t be able to tell anyone, anyway!”
I really was curious to see what it was Beko guarded with such dedication, stealing only occasional furtive glances at his treasure. Alas, the moment wasn’t disposed to curiosity. The fish finally stopped pulling stupidly in one direction; the line slacked again, its subtle movement indicative of the languid current instead of the kote swimming.
