He offered Epik nearly half what he made at the Hog’s Toot, which was double what he expected, and the dwarf asked if Epik could work that night.
“You ever serve their kind before,” Jed grunted, pointing to the men around the bar.
“No sir, never.”
“They’re not like us. You see?” Epik could see. Their faces were hard to make out, shrouded in darkness and unkempt beards. They were tall, and they smelled of alcohol and smoke.
Epik always smelt of pine needles, no matter how much he washed.
“Not so good with the drink,” Jed said. “Do funny things when they have too much of it.”
“What kind of funny things?” Epik asked.
“Let’s see.” Jed scratched his beard. It was red, and the braids were coming undone. “Sometimes they’ll take a piss over yonder on the wall. Don’t even have the decency to stumble out to the alley,” he said. “And sometimes, they’ll sing.”
“They’ll sing?” Epik gapped. “But what’s so odd about that? We sing.”
“Aye.” Jed smiled. It was the kind of smile that Epik didn’t want to get too close to, teeth everywhere, coming from all directions. “But they do it all out of key and without any rhythm.”
“Without—,” Epik started.
“Aye,” Jed said again, nodding. “Some nights, I wear hearing protection. Can get you a pair with your first wages, if ya like.”
“Yes,” Epik said. “It does sound necessary.”
It was a family affair at the Rotten Apple. Jed’s wife, Snow, did the cooking. She was human and beautiful and had an odd sort of reverence for Jed like maybe he’d saved her from a particularly nasty situation in her past. She hung on his words when he was in the room, and looked out to the bar when his gruff voice made its way to the kitchen. But mostly, she kept out of sight, leaving pots bubbling on the stove and whole chickens roasting in the brick oven.
Epik found himself running over to them time to time, preventing the food from burning.
Gertrude, Jed and Snow’s daughter, served as hostess and part-time bouncer. She’d inherited her mother’s height, but her other features were of the dwarfish persuasion, giving her the look of a donkey without the hooves. She was hairy, most of it damaged and frizzy, though the stray hairs on her face appeared feathery and light. Her eyes had the golden brown sparkle of a cockroach in the sunlight. They were watery and large like chestnuts.
She immediately took a liking to Epik, finding spare moments to steal away to the kitchen and chat.
Epik had slid on a pair of oversized galoshes. Even his sturdy halfling feet could slip on the wet stone floor. He draped a mustard brown apron across his middle, only slightly oversized, and hand washed the plates and cutlery. Last night’s glassware still lay ahead of him when Gerdy slid inside the cramped kitchen.
Around the sink, shelves cluttered the walls. Epik filled them quickly with the freshly washed dishes, working up a good sweat on his brow between the exertion and the heat of the water—not to mention the open flames of the brick oven behind him.
Gerdy now stood between him and the back door that led to the alley. Even for someone used to living in small spaces, Epik’s collar began to feel tight.
“Dad says you’re from the Bog,” Gerdy said coyly. “How’s far is that from the Molars?”
“The what?”
“The Molar Mountains,” Gerdy said. “It’s where I was born and raised—before we moved to the city. There’s lots of prejudices down in the South, you know. They didn’t much like the idea of Mom and Dad, then, of course, me—they did not like me.”
“Oh,” Epik said. “The Bog’s south of here too. But I don’t remember any mountains. Or prejudices. I mean, except for…” he trailed off.
“Except for what? Dwarves?” she said.
“Yes,” Epik said sheepishly. “I mean no offense. Most halflings don’t like elves either. Oh! And they hate humans. But some are keen on wizards though.”
“Some?” she said accusatory. She was like an ugly dog. At first, it was easy to see only what Gerdy left to be desired, but the more they talked, the more she began to grow on him.
“Okay,” Epik said. “Just me. I’m keen on wizards.”
“Aren’t wizards just men with wands?” Gerdy asked.
Epik pursed his lips. “I never thought of it like that. Do you think it’s only men? Couldn’t a dwarf become a wizard?”
Gerdy shrugged. “Maybe.”
Epik studied the wine glass he’d been washing for the last few minutes. It was still as cloudy as when he’d first picked it up.
“Gerdy,” a posh voice whispered loudly—or screamed softly—from the curtained entryway of the kitchen. Standing there was the most beautiful girl—halfling, human, elf, or otherwise—that Epik had ever seen. Her golden blonde hair wound in tight ringlets down her shoulders. Her eyes were green with flecks of blue like looking at the sky through trees. They pierced Epik’s heart and then his lungs and then finally, without mercy, his stomach.
Now, Epik had dated a few girls back in the Bog. He dated Rose and Sarah, Sweeta and Olive, and even the snotty Primberly. Each he’d taken out on exactly one date—always to the Hog’s Toot. Always they ended badly.
There was something terrible about bringing a girl and spending money at the place that he worked. Soul crushing wasn’t the right word—no, it most definitely was the right word.
Somehow, each date had ended with Frank Biggle showing the girl home, while Epik closed the bar on his night off.
“Oh, hey Mye,” Gerdy said. She hopped down from the counter, landing gingerly on her feet like a cat. “Myra,” Gertrude pointed to Epik, “meet Epik. Epik, this is Myra, my friend.”
Myra smiled at Epik brightly. “Oh, hello little fellow,” she said. But the blonde girl focused her attention on Gerdy. “Your dad’s looking’ fer ya,” she said. And when Gerdy made it to her, she whispered in her ear, “you hired a half man?”
Gerdy looked back at him guiltily before the two bounded out of the kitchen. Maybe it was Epik’s imagination, but he could swear her tongue hung crookedly out of her mouth. Her brown bushel of hair trailed behind her, wagging—no—swaying from side to side.
“He’s a halfling,” Gerdy answered her before the two were out of earshot.
The dinner service began in earnest. Snow was in and out, carving meat, and dipping bowls of stew; Jed brought back trays laden with empty dishes and drinkware. Epik hustled to get through it all. When the tempo slowed, Jed appeared in the entryway, his brow furrowed; the braids in his beard loose as a child’s shoelaces.
“Lad,” he motioned to Epik. “It seems everythin’ I suspected about this town is true: it has a drinkin’ problem. Can ya give me a hand out here?”
The bar was slammed; its long tables filled with patrons, an ass planted on every barstool.
Jed pointed to the taps. “Mead’s this one. Ale's the other two.”
“Wine.” He pointed to a long shelf of wine bottles stacked behind the bar. In a small supply room to the side of the bar, sat yet more barrels of mead and ale, Epik took off his galoshes and set them inside the dimly lit space.
The Hog’s Toot had never been half this crowded. There were men everywhere, dwarves too; a goblin sat alone at a table to himself in the back. Men lined the walls, and a crowd of them circled the dartboard in the lit room.
At the bar, the crinkled face of the gate guard greeted Epik. He raised his mug to the halfling. “Cheers,” he said halfheartedly.
Jed began filling mugs, handing them to Epik in fours, two to each hand. Jed did the same and led them to the spare room. Tables lined the wall, giving the men ample open space for the game of darts.
“Put out your hand,” said a man standing in the center of the room. He had about twice the muscle and height of any other man in the bar. Another stood by the dartboard itself, squat compared to the other but still with biceps threatening the seams of his shirt. He was disheveled and stupidly drunk but
did as he was asked. His hand spread apart, touching the chalked outline of the numbers around several targets.
The man in the center of the room, with the dart, squinted slightly, he leaned his weight to his back foot, and pushing it forward, threw the dart. It landed just between the man’s pointer and middle fingers, catching the slight bit of webbed skin between the two.
The drunk man barked out a laugh, then pulled the dart and his hand away, examining it. A slight trickle of blood flowed freely down to his wrist.
“Coe, please tell me that’s not what you were meaning to do,” he said, putting his hand closer to his face.
“Something like that.” Coe grinned.
He dressed in blacks and dark forest green. A wide-brimmed hat shrouded much of his face in shadow though Epik could make out his dark beard, trimmed close with most of his chin and cheeks exposed between the coarse hair. A golden locket hung from his neck. Coe slunk into a chair at a round table in the corner of the room next to three dwarves who were drinking cheerily.
Snow, somehow alerted by the whooping and laughing of the crowd, strode over to the other, a bandage and ointment in her hand.
“More little people?” the man scoffed. “What, Jed, are you breeding again? I thought you were only into my kind.” He pointed to Snow but looked side-eyed at Gertrude as she showed a couple to their table by the door.
“No, Collus,” Jed said as a means of introduction, “believe this one came up from the Bog only this morning. You heard of it?”
“Believe I have.” Collus, Coe, took another dart he had stashed in his pocket and began to use it to clean out his nails. “That makes you a halfling, am I right, lad?”
Epik nodded. He slid the mugs on the table. Coe grabbed his ale eagerly and took a large gulp. He had an air about him that Epik didn’t like. It reminded him of someone.
From the chair, Collus leaned back, taking a second to aim before sending the dart, fingernail gunk and all, hurling toward the board. It whizzed past Epik’s ear on its way, hitting the center with a low thunk.
“That’s right,” Jed said. “A halfling.” Jed seemed to have sensed a bit of trouble; he hustled the rest of the ales onto the table for Coe’s bleeding friend and the dwarves.
“The name’s Epik,” said Epik with as much bravado as he could muster. If he’d learned anything in a bar for the last eight years, it was not to take a drunk’s crap, even if this man didn’t seem very drunk. But more importantly, Epik had sworn to himself not to let another Frank Biggle into his life. And the air about this man was Biggle through and through.
“The halfling has a name.” Coe laughed. “One day I may even learn it. But today’s not that day.”
He spun one last dart around in his hand, tapping it against each finger. “Care for a game, halfling?” he asked.
Jed pressed his hand into Epik’s back, scooting him forward. “The boy’s gotta work,” Jed said.
“Another time then. I’m always on the lookout for a new competition.”
The last dart flew.
“Just puttin’ you through the ringer,” Jed said. “Coe’s a Ranger. Believe he goes down south often. Scouts out routes for the army. Takes care of pests—orcs, mountain lions, what have you, anything troublin’ a farm or town. And he’s not someone to trifle with.”
Jed sent Epik back to the kitchen, out of sight.
But even with the unpleasantness, things were going unusually well for his first day. He’d found a job and now a place to stay: a motel, just like they did in the stories he read. It was called the Dayz Inn, probably because it looked better in the day than it did in the night when the rats and other vermin scampered about—murderers, thieves, and newspaper deliverymen.
All in all, it went far better than Epik’s mother had expected.
“You’ll have your throat cut, and all your money stole the second you enter that godforsaken place,” she had told him. His mother wasn’t much for things outside the Bog, come to that, she wasn’t much for things inside it either.
His mother had known this day was coming. Still, when she saw him packing, she had to protest.
“What makes you want to go off to the city just now?” she had asked. “You talked about eight years, what’s eight more?”
“Eight more?”
“Or nine. You could stay here another nine if ya like. I’ll even lower your rent.”
“But you don’t charge me rent. There’s just not much for me here in the Bog,” Epik had said. And Epik saw it in her eyes, that she knew as much as him that this was true.
Epik had never told his mother about the wizard. And now, he’d left her there alone in the Bog. He sat down, thinking maybe he should write her a letter, but he thought better of it, knowing it’d only make her worry about him more, and blew out the lamp.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow, I’ll find a wizard. Tomorrow, I’ll find adventure. Tomorrow, it’s only a day—oh, never mind, the clock was well past midnight.
6
Something Wicked Comes This Way
In the same squat building, on a different dark night, the same cloaked figures gathered—including the optional one.
Nacer sulked under his cloak. Things at the castle were at an all-time low—which wasn’t really saying much.
But after the day’s proceedings, the Grand Counselor was tired. Doling out punishments didn’t give him the same pep in his step as usual. Now, he had a prickling feeling in his stomach. A feeling he remembered from childhood. Guilt? The thought that he may have done something wrong?
Now there were rule breakers, rule benders, tinkerers, and testers in every sect. And the magical community was no exception. The first arrest of the day came immediately after the morning’s proclamation had been read. A wizard with a minor hearing problem turned a matchbox into a grandiose tent full of magical heirlooms and artifacts—his usual display. The fact that none of it was the real deal mattered little to the watchmen who arrested him, who’s children would happily get presents of dragon’s eggs and the wands of Merlin that night.
How there were twenty of Merlin’s wands, all in the hands of some grubby and altogether not very magical wizard, none at the Watch understood. But then again, they suspected a powerful wizard like Merlin might need an assortment of instruments dependent on the task—even some butchers, they recalled, had two, maybe even three knives.
The next arrest was a bit more involved. A woman was taken in for brewing up her morning pot of coffee. Though she claimed not to be a witch, she had trouble explaining the wart on her nose.
The law would later be amended. Without the magic of coffee, the kingdom would simply not run.
More run-ins with the law followed.
Some hours later, an order of mages put up a fight with the Watch who honestly weren’t paid enough to dodge fireballs or be turned into toads. The wizards disappeared into a billowing cloud of smoke, leaving only singed and jumpy guards in their wake.
Nacer had had a busy day. The court was full. The dungeons were seething. And it was this conspiracy’s fault. He’d come to this meeting out of spite, mostly.
“Ah, you made it,” Master Investor said to him. How the man under the cloak could tell all of the others apart, Nacer was unsure.
“I did,” he replied. And, Nacer thought, I’m here to snuff you out. The timing of it all—it felt too coincidental. And Nacer was regretting his involvement, still struggling to figure out how and when he did sign up. Was this man, Master Investor, making a play for the throne? Has to be, Nacer thought.
“Settle down, you lot,” the Master’s voice cut through the whispers like a dull knife through cold butter. It wasn’t sharp, but it got the job done.
Silence.
The men, and what Nacer had decided was most definitely a dwarf, took their seats.
“An exciting day,” the leader said. He turned his shrouded face to Nacer. “I trust we didn’t keep you too busy?”
“Well, actually—“
&n
bsp; “That was rhetorical,” Master Investor put in. “I trust you lot have seen the proclamation’s effect. We’ve all but snuffed out the magical population. If they’re not in prison, they’ve left town, vacating shops and carts. Homes.”
“Here, here,” some men around the table chorused. Others clapped, the dwarf among them. And two of the figures raised their paper cups of punch half-heartedly, tipping them toward the head of the table. These were the few men who’d noticed that today’s refreshments were yesterday’s leftovers.
“Yes,” Master Investor said snidely. “Here, here.”
After a few moments of continued praise, silence.
“This leaves us to the next phase of the plan. Misters Alchemical, did the supplies come in today?”
Two of the figures at the other end of their table began nodding their hoods. “They did, sir,” one of them confirmed.
“Good,” the tall figure of the Master Investor bowed his head in approval. “I’ll warn you,” he said. “This is where things get sticky—dangerous even.” He pointed down to the dwarf. “Mister Food and Drink, I take it your man is in place?”
The smaller of the conspirators sniggered. “Funny you should say man,” the dwarf said. “But yes, I suspect he’ll be in place soon. Right weird thing, meetin’ two of ‘em in one week.”
“Two of what?“ Nacer asked, out of hand. He was used to getting his questions answered without much effort.
The leader seemed briefly taken aback; he sat bolt upright, the folds of his cloak stretched. But the man gathered himself quickly and slouched back down in his seat, the folds creasing again. Who is he? Nacer wanted to know.
“There’s no need to discuss our private matters amongst the group. Each of us gets our jobs done—with as little detail as possible. And in the end, we all get rich.”
“But why Food and Drink?” Nacer chided. “Shouldn’t a ranger be sent to gather the trolls? His part makes no sense.”
“A ranger is not skilled in the subtle art of commanding a beast. It’s all kill or be killed with them. What we needed, and what Mister Food and Drink was able to find, is someone of a bit shadier sort. Someone who knows how to speak the beast’s own tongue. You can find almost any sort in a tavern, that is, if you’re willing to look.”
Hero in a Halfling Page 4
