“Let’s go,” Bryon hissed in his ear as he looked at Erik, then up at the Fin still standing and staring. The man now began laughing, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“Perhaps you should stay closer to your brother and me,” suggested Bryon. “The men who walk these streets don’t seem the sort we should be messing with.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Erik said, looking over his shoulder just to see if the Fin was still there. He wasn’t.
“I may like to fight,” Bryon said with a dry laugh, “but I’m not stupid.”
“Are you sure about that?” Erik muttered so that his cousin couldn’t hear him.
Chapter 30
THEY LED THEIR HORSES THROUGH the streets of Finlo, stopping at every tavern and inn they could. They walked what seemed to be the three main streets of Finlo running north to south, and then the three main streets running east to west. Everything was either full or seemed too expensive.
“Said the same thing,” Erik said, stepping out into the street to meet with his cousin and brother. “They’re full with men sailing east to join Golgolithul’s army, traders from Wüsten Sahil, or crews from ships from Crom. The innkeeper said there’s nothing in the main city of Finlo.”
“Damn it,” Bryon muttered.
Erik watched his cousin eye a busty woman walk into the inn, breasts about to burst from a dress cut too low, legs showing through slits cut all the way to her hips.
“Maybe we have to pay more. They’ll give us a room then,” suggested Bryon.
“This isn’t Waterton,” Erik said, “Or Venton.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bryon asked.
“It means the whores here will see your coin,” Befel said, “and stick a knife in your belly while you’re sleeping. I don’t think they’ll be as eager for your money here.”
“All whores are eager for money,” Bryon replied.
“Aye,” Erik agreed, “but there are more than enough fools in Finlo to pay. And they’re probably paying more. All that coin you found—all the money Mardirru gave us—will be gone in a few days if it was down to you.”
“And then we’ll be right back where we were,” Befel said, “sleeping on the streets.”
“No,” Bryon said, “we’ll be on a ship sailing east, taking us to our destiny.”
“The next ship doesn’t sail for a week,” Erik said. “We need to be careful until then, find a place to stay, and just keep our heads down. We need to find this Kevon fellow to help Befel. I doubt Golgolithul is readily accepting lame men as soldiers.”
“Where to then?” Bryon asked. “Where do we stay, oh wise one.”
“The innkeeper here said to try the eastern parts of Finlo,” Erik replied, ignoring Bryon’s sarcasm. “It’s older, and not many people stay there because it’s out of the way and no one wants to be there. He said there are a few inns, and we should be able to find rooms there.”
They headed back through the busy center of Finlo, and the farther east they traveled, the more dilapidated the city looked. Three story buildings towered over them, leaning and swaying in strong ocean breezes. Bits of stone would crumble and fall, and a clay roof tile broke loose and crashed right in front of Erik.
There were more beggars here, too. The center of Finlo seemed to have its fair share of drunks sleeping on the street and sunburnt homeless looking for a generous trader or sailor, but here, in East Finlo, these men looked as destitute as the buildings.
One man lay naked, leaned up against a wall, looking like he’d pissed and shit himself, while another chased after a small rat and then cursed the three Eleodums when it ran under their feet, and they blocked his path to pursue.
The man had no teeth, and his bones almost poked through his skin—and even Befel, with his hurt shoulder—could’ve bludgeoned him to death with his bare fist, but something in the man’s vacant, sunken eyes told them to move on. He didn’t even look like a man, Erik thought, as he stared over his shoulder, watching the man continue to rant and shake.
They found two inns but didn’t even bother to see if they had rooms. Erik and Befel had no interest in watching their bags and horses every moment of the day for a week, and Erik suspected Bryon had no interest in the whores, barely more than bones clothed by skin.
After trying one narrow street to another, Erik spotted a solitary, wooden inn with an accompanying stable just beyond a small outcropping of ramshackle housing and barely-surviving stores.
At what appeared to be almost the edge of the city, the inn sat on a small hill of sand dotted with tufts of fading grass. Without the protection of surrounding buildings, the breeze from the sea constantly whipped dirt through the air, building small, sandy mounds around its fence posts.
A shoddy thatched roof held up by several heavy poles made up the vacant stables. Old dried hay lay casually on the ground, and small pieces swirled in a little tornado as the thin planks that formed the back of the stables caught snippets of the ocean’s breezes and held them captive.
A waist-high fence made of weather-worn sticks, some too short to fit into the holes of the posts, surrounded the main building, and a short set of broken wooden steps led up to a closed door, several wood slats nailed across what used to be a window.
“I suppose it has the looks of an inn,” Erik offered as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Aye,” Bryon replied. “An abandoned inn. It doesn’t even have a name.”
He pointed to a faded sign, now empty of any lettering, thumping against the wall and causing the iron rings that held it just above the door to creak.
“Do you think we should get a closer look?” Erik asked.
“I suppose,” Befel replied as they walked past a long-abandoned frame erected to build another group of stores and homes.
“How is this shit heap still standing?” Bryon asked incredulously as Erik looked to his right and saw a wretched-looking man sleeping amongst a pile of trash.
“Are you the only tenant here?” Bryon laughed, but the thin, stringy-haired drunk didn’t even stir.
“Bryon,” Befel said, “I think it best you stay out here with the horses. Just in case our friend wakes up or any of his friends come to visit him.”
“Aye,” Bryon agreed.
Erik watched Bryon walk the horses to the stables, the animals sniffing and poking at the hay and Bryon smiling childishly. One horse snorted.
“I don’t know what to tell you, boy,” Erik heard Bryon say as he rubbed sand out of the beast’s mane.
“He’s nicer to the horses than he is to us,” Erik suggested.
“Probably because they are only a little smarter than him!” replied Befel with a grin.
A moldy smell consumed the inside, along with darkness of shuttered windows and a few unlit candles. A mixture of water, spilled drinks, and no doubt blood had rotted the floorboards, and they creaked and moved when Erik and Befel walked across them. Erik looked straight ahead, never down, worried a floorboard would break and reveal what was underneath. He had no desire to know what horrors might lay there.
There were a few round and crooked tables, and the bar was narro
w, long enough for two men to stand behind it. Three shelves lined the wall behind the bar, enough room for a myriad of different liquors, but held only four, featureless bottles of, what Erik presumed, to be the same liquid.
Befel coughed self-consciously, and a fat man with a bald head and black beard peppered with gray appeared through a doorway at the end of the bar. He appraised his two prospective customers as he leaned against the wall, his heavy, sausage-like fingers tapping on the loose wood planks of the bar.
“G’day,” the bartender finally said with a raspy voice as he looked at the Eleodums with squinted eyes. He scratched his chin through his beard and wiped his hand on a shirt that might once have been white, but was now one of varying shades of brown.
“How can I be of service to you?” he asked with a certain formality, surprising the brothers with his polite manner. His smile showed missing teeth and a black gum line.
Befel spoke. “We wish to purchase a room and some stables for the coming week.”
“You don’t have the look of a Fin, and you don’t have the look of a sailor, and you want to stay on the eastern side of Finlo for a week, do you?” questioned the bartender. “M’boy, these parts of the city are not fond of young outsiders. Even the women in these parts will chew you up and spit out young, good-looking lads such as yourselves. Why don’t you let me recommend you to a decent place in the center of the city?”
“This will do just fine,” Befel replied. “We’ve been there.”
“Nah,” the bartender said, suddenly less welcoming. “I don’t think so. Don’t really feel like having guests.”
“There’s no more room anywhere else,” Erik said. “I mean, there probably is here in East Finlo, but they seemed to be inhabited by a lot of those people who aren’t too fond of young outsiders.”
“You two look like you could handle yourselves,” the bartender replied.
“Maybe, but we just don’t want any trouble,” Befel said.
The fat man studied the boys for a moment and then pushed himself off the wall.
“All right. Fine,” he said with a shrug. “And what might your business be?”
“Our business is ours to know,” Befel replied, perhaps a little too harshly.
“Aye, that may be so lad. And in some city tavern in Goldum or Waterton, or even in the center of town, that might be a good enough reply to my question, but this is my place, and you don’t have the look of the men that normally stay at my place. That makes your business my business. You can leave and go somewhere else, or you can tell me why you want to bed down here and have as pleasant a stay as possible.”
The bartender now hunched over the bar, crossed his arms, and stared intently at the brothers.
Erik looked at Befel. His brother nodded slightly.
“We are headed east. To Golgolithul,” Erik said.
Actually, I should be headed north, to Mother and Father. To Beth and Tia. To Simone.
“Ah.” The barkeep laughed. “You’re leaving with the rest of those fools to serve Fen-Stévock. Well, if my dingy inn is your last resort, then fine. You can stay here. There will be more men showing up here in four days, but until then you will be alone, and it will be quiet. Just the two of you?”
“There is another,” Erik replied. “He’s with our horses, in the stable.”
“How many horses?” the bartender asked.
“Five,” Erik replied.
“Five horses?” the bartender seemed surprised. “That’s a fair number of horses for two . . . three young lads such as yourself.”
Erik just nodded.
“Well, for three young lads and five horses, that’ll be twenty-five Finnish nickels.”
Erik looked in the purse Mardirru had given back to him. The gypsy had certainly given them back more than they had paid—even some gold and silver—along with two large rubies. Erik smiled inwardly as he rifled through the silver coins, finally producing twenty-five of them, laying them on the bar.
“Will this do?” he asked. “I don’t know how much a Finnish nickel is worth.”
The bartender looked at the coins Erik had spilled onto the bar, and his hand hovered over them for a moment before he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He pushed back four coins.
“That’ll do,” he said with perhaps a tinge of regret. “And, in the future, don’t ask the man you’re paying whether or not you have enough money. Most men aren’t as honest as me.”
The large hands of the bartender scooped up the coins and placed them in the pouch of his apron as Befel and Erik walked out to Bryon.
“Well,” Befel said, “we have a room and stables for a week. It was expensive, especially for a place like this. We will be the only ones here for four days.”
“Why four days?” Bryon asked.
“More men will be coming, the bartender said,” Erik replied.
“Why?” Bryon asked.
“I don’t know,” Erik said with a shrug, “I didn’t ask.”
“You should’ve,” Bryon said.
“What does it matter?” Befel asked.
“I don’t know. I just want to know how it is a bartender knows a bunch of men will be showing up to his inn—especially a place like this—in exactly four days,” Bryon replied. “We should find out.”
“Good luck,” Erik said.
One look at Bryon and that bartender would probably find himself in a fit of laughter, especially if Bryon tried to get tough. Those meaty hands and thick forearms—they reminded Erik of Del Alzon, and that wasn’t a man to be trifled with.
“I think we should take turns staying with the horses,” Befel said, pointing to two ragged women hanging a few paces from the inn’s fence.
“I’ll stay with the horses,” Bryon said. “I rather like their company. It’ll give you a chance to rest your shoulder, Befel. Erik, maybe you could give me a break every once in a while.”
“I think you just relish the idea of scaring off ragged-looking whores and drunken bums,” Erik said.
Was he really concerned about Befel’s shoulder?
“Perhaps,” Bryon replied with a small, malicious smile.
“I’ll talk to the bartender,” Erik said, “and see if I can’t find out why these other men are staying here since you’re so eager to know.”
“Meanwhile, I need to find Kevon,” Befel said.
Chapter 31
BEFEL WALKED BACK TOWARD THE center of town, following what seemed like the main road, so full that he found himself squeezing past people. Much like Venton, the ensuing dusk and waning light seemed to beckon people to come out of their homes and crowd the city. He walked past what looked to be the busiest tavern in Finlo, a place called The Drunken Fin, and made sure to give it a wide berth.
With some help from people who looked friendlier, he found his destination, a shop with a pair of scissors painted on its tabard. As Befel opened the door to the shop, he heard the light tinkle of a bell.
“I’ll be right with you,” someone said.
Befel saw an older man in the back of the shop dragging a razor a
cross another man’s face, rinsing the blade off in a wash basin every several strokes. Befel sat in a cushioned chair toward the front of the shop and waited until the man with the razor wiped a towel across his client’s face. The now clean-shaven man stood, dropped several coins into a bowl sitting atop a table next to the barber, and walked past Befel.
“So,” the barber said in a deep, raspy tone, “what can I do for you?”
“Are you Kevon?” Befel asked.
“Aye,” the man responded.
“You double as a surgeon?” Befel asked, getting up from his seat.
“From time to time,” Kevon said.
“Can you look at my shoulder?” Befel asked.
“Come have a seat,” Kevon commanded, and Befel complied, pulling off his shirt before he did so.
Kevon examined his shoulder, groaning loudly when he saw the cauterized wound.
“Does that hurt?” Kevon asked, prodding and poking at the skin around the wound.
“A bit,” Befel replied, biting his lip, “some places more than others.”
“I can tell,” Kevon said. “It is very red and warm right here. Infection. It probably hurts more there.”
When Befel winced and took a quick breath as Kevon pushed on the spot he was talking about, the barber nodded.
“You burned it shut?”
“Yes,” Befel replied. “I didn’t have needle or thread available. It was the only thing anyone could do. I know it was probably stupid, but . . .”
“Stupid indeed,” Kevon said, “but resourceful if you had no other options.”
The barber inspected the wound closer through a smoothly cut, round piece of glass.
“What is that?” Befel asked.
A Chance Beginning Page 15
