A Soft Barren Aftershock by F. Paul Wilson
He paused, waiting for another wisecrack from Vic, but none came. He continued.
“They can gauge a net’s strength. Don’t know how, but they do it. Maybe it’s those few fish always traveling in the lead . . . if they find the net too strong, if there’s no chance of them breaking out, they must send out some kind of warning and the rest of the run avoids it. Sounds crazy, I know, but there’s one inescapable fact I’ve learned to accept and apply, and it’s made me the best: The weaker the net, the bigger the catch.”
“So that’s why you fired me when you found out I was repairing the nets with wire.”
“Exactly. You were hunting for a shortcut with the chispies and there aren’t any. You made the net too strong, so they decided to play the game somewhere else. I wound up with the worst season I ever had.”
“And I wound up in the water and out of a job!” Vic began to laugh, a humorless sound, unpleasant to hear. “But why didn’t you explain this then?”
“Why didn’t you come to me when you wanted to experiment with my nets? Why didn’t you go buy your own tear-proof net and try it out on your own time? I may have overreacted, but you went behind my back and betrayed my trust. The entire crew went through pretty lean times until the next season because you broke the rules of the game.”
Vic laughed again. “A game. I must be drunker than I thought—it almost makes sense.”
“After forty years of hauling those winged devils out of the water, it’s the only way I can make sense out of it.”
“But they get caught and die, Albie! How can that be a game for them?”
“Only a tiny portion of the run challenges me at a time, and only a small percent of those go into the freezer. The rest break free. What seems like a suicide risk to us may be only a diversion to them. Who knows what motivates them? This is their planet, their sea, and the rules of the game are entirely up to them. I’m just a player—one who figured out the game and became a winner.”
“Then I’m a loser, I guess—the biggest damn loser to play.” He rose to his feet and faced out toward the running lights of the Gelk Co I as it lay at anchor a league off shore.
“That you are,” Albie said, rising beside him and trying to keep his tone as light as possible. “You built the biggest, toughest damn net they’ve ever seen, one they’d never break out of . . . so they decided not to play.”
Vic continued to stare out to sea, saying nothing.
“That’s where you belong,” Albie told him. “You were born for the sea, like me. You tried your hand with those stiff-legged land-roamers on the Council of Advisors and came up empty. But you and me, we’re not equipped to deal with their kind, Vic. They change the rules as they go along, trying to get what they want by whatever means necessary. They sucked you in, used you up, and now they’re gonna spit you out. So now’s the time to get back on the water. Get out there and play the game with the chispies. They play hard and fast, but always by the same rules. You can die out there, but not because they cheated.”
Vic made no move, no sound.
“Vic?”
No reply.
Albie turned and walked up the dune alone.
“ALBIEEEEEE!”
One of the dockhands came running along the jetty. Albie had just pushed off and was following his crew into the early morning haze. He idled his scow and waited for the man to get closer.
“Guy back at the boathouse wants to know if you need an extra hand today.”
Albie took a deep breath. “What’s he look like?”
“I dunno,” the dockhand said with a shrug. “Tall, dark hair, a piece missing from his right—”
Albie smiled through his beard as he reversed the scow.
“Tell him to hurry . . . I haven’t got all day!”
And out along the trench, the chispies moved in packs, running south and looking for sport along the way.
DEMONSONG
“Ho, outlander!” cried the burlier of the two men-at-arms stationed before the city’s newsboard. His breath steamed in the chill post-dawn haze. “You look stout of arm, poor of cloak, and lame of brain—this notice from the prince should interest you!”
“He’d have to be an outlander to be interested,” his companion muttered through a gap-toothed leer. “No one from around here’s going to take the prince up on it.”
The first scowled. “The prince ought to go himself! Then maybe we’d get a real man on the throne. Musicians and pretty-boys!” He spat. “The palace is no longer a fit place for a warrior. Wasn’t like that like that during his father’s reign.”
The other nodded and the pair walked off without a backward glance.
The outlander hesitated, then approached the elaborately handwritten notice. He ran long fingers through his dusty red hair as he stared it. The language was fairly new to him and, although he spoke it passably, reading was a different matter. The gist of the notice was an offer of 10.000 gold grignas to the man who would undertake a certain mission for Prince lolon. Inquiries should be made at the palace.
The outlander fingered his coin pouch; a few measly coppers rattled within. He didn’t know the weight of a grigna, but if it was gold and there were 10,000 of them . . . money would not be a problem for quite some time. He shrugged and turned toward the palace.
The streets of Kashela, the commercial center of Prince Iolon’s realm, were alive at first light. Not so the palace. It was well-nigh midbefore Glaeken was allowed entrance. The huge antechamber was empty save for an elderly blue-robed official sitting behind a tiny desk, quill in hand, a scroll and inkwell before him.
“State your business,” he said in a bored tone, keeping his eyes on the parchment.
“I’ve come to find out how to earn those 10,000 grignas the prince is offering.”
The old man’s head snapped up at Glaeken’s unfamiliar accent. He: saw a tall, wiry, red-headed man—that hair alone instantly labeled him a foreigner—with high coloring and startlingly blue eyes. He wore leather breeches, a shirt of indeterminate color girded by a broad belt that held a dirk and longsword; he carried a dusty red cloak over his left shoulder.
“Oh. A northerner, eh? Or is it a westerner?”
“Does it matter?”
“No . . . no, I suppose not. Name?”
“Glaeken,”
The quill dipped into the well, then scratched out strange black letters on the scroll. “Glaeken of what?”
“How many Glaekens do you have in this city?”
“None. It’s not even in our tongue.”
“Then Glaeken alone will do.”
The air of finality to the statement caused the official to regard the outlander with more careful scrutiny. He saw a young man not yet out of his third decade who behaved with an assurance beyond his years.
A youth with oiled locks and dressed in a clinging white robe entered the antechamber then. He gave Glaeken a frankly appraising stare as he sauntered past on his way to the inner chambers.
“Captain of the palace guard, I presume,” Glaeken said blandly after the epicene figure had passed from sight.
“Your humor, outlander, could cost you your head should any of the guard hear such a remark.”
“What does the prince want done?” he said, ignoring the caveat.
“He wants someone to journey into the eastern farmlands and kill a wizard.”
“He has an army, does he not?”
The official suddenly became very interested in the scroll. “The captains have refused to send their men.”
Glaeken mulled this. He sensed an air of brooding discontent in palace, an undercurrent of frustration and hostility perilously close to the surface.
“No one has tried to bring in this wizard then? Come, old man! The bounty surely didn’t begin at 10,000 gold pieces.”
“A few squads were sent when the problem first became apparent, but they accomplished nothing.”
“Tell me where these men are quartered. I’d like to speak to them.”
<
Glaeken made no immediate reply. He fingered his coin pouch, then tapped the heel of his right hand against the butt of his longsword.
Finally: “Get a map and show me where I can find this wizard.”
Glaeken dallied in one of those nameless little inns that dot the back streets on any commercially active town. His sat by the window. The shutters were open to let out the sour stench of last night’s spilled ale, and the late morning sunlight glinted off the hammered tin goblet cheap wine that rested on the table before him. The harlot in the corner eyed him languidly . . . this foreigner might prove interesting. A little early in the day for her talents, but perhaps if he stayed around a little longer . . . .
A commotion arose on the street and Glaeken peered out the window to find its source. A squat, burly, misshapen hillock of a man with a square protruding jaw was trudging by, a large, oddly shaped leather case clutched with both arms against his chest. Behind him and around him ran the local gang of street youths, pushing, shoving and calling. The wooden heels of their crude boots clacked as they scampered about; all wore a makeshift uniform of dark green shirts and rough brown pants.
“Ho, Ugly One!” cried a youth who seemed to be the leader, a lean, black-haired adolescent with a fuzzy attempt at a beard shading his cheeks. “What’ve y’got in that case? Give us a look! It truly must be something to behold if you’re clutching it so tightly. Give us a look!”
The man ignored the group, but this only incited them to greater audacity. They began pummeling him and trying to trip him, yet the man made no attempt to protect himself. He merely clutched the case closer and tighter. Glaeken wondered at this as he watched the scene. This “Ugly One’s” heavy frame and thickly muscled arms certainly appeared strong enough to handle the situation. Yet the well-being of the leather case seemed his only concern.
The leader gave a signal and he and his followers leaped upon the man. The fellow kept his footing for a while and even managed to shake a few of the attackers off his back, but their numbers soon drove him to the ground. Glaeken noted with a smile of admiration that the man twisted as he fell so that he landed on his back with the case unharmed. Only a matter of a few heartbeats, however, before the case was tom from his grasp.
With the loss of his precious possession, the little man became a veritable demon, cursing, gnashing his teeth, and struggling with such ferocity that it took the full strength of eight of the rowdies to hold him down.
“Be still, Ugly One!” the leader commanded as he stood near Glaeken’s window and fumbled with the clasps on the case. “We only want to see what you’ve got here.”
As the last clasp gave way, the case fell open and from it the leader pulled a double-barreled harmohorn. The shouts and scuffling ceased abruptly as all in sight, rowdy and bystander alike, were captured by the magnificence of the instrument. The intricate hand-carved wood of the harmohorn glistened in the sun under countless coats of flawlessly applied lacquer. A reed instrument, rare and priceless; in the proper hands it was capable of producing the most subtle and devious harmonies known to man. The art of its making had long been lost, and the musician fortunate enough to possess a harmohorn was welcomed—nay, sought—by all the royal courts of the world.
The squat little man redoubled his efforts against those restraining him.
“Damage that horn and I’ll have your eyes!” he screamed.
“Don’t threaten me, Ugly One!” the leader warned.
He raised the instrument aloft at if to smash it on the stones at his feet. In doing so he brought the horn within Glaeken’s reach. To this point the outlander had been neutral, refusing to help a man who would not help himself. But now he knew the reason for the man’s reluctance to fight, and the sight of the harmohorn in the hands of street swine disturbed him.
The horn abruptly switched hands.
The leader spun in surprise and glared at Glaeken.
“You!” he yelled, leaning in the window. “Return that before I come in and get it!”
“You want to come it?” Glaeken said with a tight smile. “Then by all means waste no time!”
He grabbed the youth by his shirt and pulled him half way through the window.
“Let go of me, red-haired dog!” he screeched.
“Certainly.” And Glaeken readily replied, but not without enough of a shove to ensure that the youth would land sprawled in the dust.
Scrambling to his feet, the leader turned to his pack. “After him!”
They forgot the man they were holding and charged the inn door. But Glaeken was already there, waiting and ready.
He smiled as he met their attack and laughed as it moved out to the street where he darted among them, striking and kicking and wreaking general havoc upon their ranks. But these youths were hardly novices at street brawls, and when they realized that their opponent, too, was well experienced in the dubious art, they regrouped and began to stalk him.
“Circle him!” said the leader and his followers responded with dispatch. Before the menacing ring could close, however, the pack found itself harassed from an unexpected quarter.
“Ugly One” was upon them. Having regained his feet and sized up the situation, the little man charged into the pack with the roar of an angry bull. He was enraged to the point of madness and a smiling Glaeken stepped back to watch as the street youths were hurled and scattered about like jackstraws. A complete rout seemed inevitable. It was then that Glaeken glanced at the leader and saw him pull a dirk from within his shirt and lunge.
The blade never found its target. Glaeken moved and yanked the pack leader off his feet by his long hair; he pulled the knife from his grasp and extended his grimy neck over his knee. All fighting stopped as everyone watched the tableau of Glaeken and the pack leader.
“You should be slain outright,” Glaeken said, toying with the dirk over the terrified youth’s vulnerable throat. “And no one would miss you or mourn you.”
“No!” he cried as he saw the cold light in Glaeken’s eyes. “I no meant harm!”
Glaeken used the point to scratch an angry, ragged red line ear to ear across the leader’s throat.
“A good street brawl is one thing, my young friend, but if I see you show your steel to the back of an unarmed man again, I’ll finish the job this scratch has begun.”
So saying, he lifted the youth by his hair and shoved him toward his companions. The green-shirted pack and its frightened leader wasted no time then in fleeing the scene.
“Ugly One” turned to Glaeken and extended his hand. “I thank you, outlander. I am called Cragjaw, although I assure you I was not given that name by my parents.”
“No thanks called for,” Glaeken said, clasping the hand. “A street brawl at midday is a good spirit-lifter.” He did offer his own name in return.
“I’m prefer quieter ways to amuse myself,” Cragjaw muttered as he stooped to pick up the empty leather case.
The barmaster was sheathing a dirk of his own as they reentered. The contested musical instrument lay on the bar before him.
“I guarded the harmohorn well while you were out on the street!” he shouted to Cragjaw.
“And what would you have done with it if he hadn’t been able return to claim it?” Glaeken asked with a knowing grin.
The barmaster shrugged and eyed the horn as Cragjaw returned it to its case.
“I suppose I would have had to sell it to someone . . . I have no talent for such an instrument.”
Glaeken threw a coin on the bar. “That’s for the wine,” he said turned toward the door.
Cragjaw laid a hand on his arm. “At least let me buy you cup before you go.”
“Thanks, no. I’m riding the East Road and already I’ve tarried long.”
“The East Road? Why, I must travel that way, too. Would you mind a companion for a ways?”
“The roads are free,” said Glaeken.
“You’re a Northerner, aren’t you?” the shorter man observed.
“In a way, yes.”
“You never told me your name.”
“It is Glaeken.”
Glaeken . . .” Cragjaw paused before continuing. “Stories circulate among the wine cups in the back rooms of the court of Prince Iolon—in whose service I am presently employed as a musician—and in the taverns about a man named Glaeken. He’s said to live in the Western Isles and is supposedly young and flame-haired like yourself.”
“Interesting,” Glaeken remarked. “And what are these tales?”
“Well, he is called Glaeken-the-Laugher by some and it is said that he once led the dreaded Nightriders who pillage vast areas of the Western Isles.”
Glaeken nodded for his companion to continue.
“I know only what I’ve heard, but ‘tis said that each of these raiders rides a monstrous bat with a body the size of a horse and wings like ketch sails that sweep the night. The tales tell of an evil king named Marag who was the favorite target of the Nightriders and who sent many champions against them with the quest to bring back the head of the Nightrider lord. But shortly after each set out, a monster bat would fly over Marag’s hold and drop the latest champion’s body into the courtyard.
“Finally, a man named Glaeken, who had refused to be the king’s champion for many years, was called into Marag’s court. And there in a steel cage suspended from the ceiling sat the damsel in whose company this Glaeken had been often seen. Now, they say that Glaeken had no serious future plans for the young lady but felt somewhat responsible for her present predicament. So he traveled to the pinnacle fortress of the Nightriders where he challenged and beat their lord in a contest of swords.”
“And did he bring the head to Marag?” Glaeken asked.