The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 11b - Ill Met in Gallows Ferry

Harric pressed his back to the lodge and paused to let his eyes adjust to the dark. The Mad Moon still hadn't risen above the Godswall; he guessed there remained no more than a half hour of darkness before he bathed the cliffs and river in his fiery light. To his left stood the foot of the stable yard, where the Hanging Road entered through the south gate and split off behind the inn through the market place; to his right the yard flared into a wide carriage turn-about, bound on two sides by the inn and on the opposite side by the stable where Jacky slept, unaware of Harric's intention to wake him for a very long ride.

When he could see well enough to make out the outlines of the roofs against the sky, he began skirting the head of the yard, keeping the inn to his right and navigating mostly by memory. He hadn't gone five paces before he stumbled upon something and fell. Throwing out his hands to break his fall, he bit back on a yell, his battered ribs erupting in protest with the impact. What he found on the ground, however, was the unmistakable softness of a body. Groping, he found the face, where he felt no breath, but his hand came away sticky and smelling of blood. He shuddered, and wiped it off on the victim's breeches. Had this been one of the grooms that attacked him? Had Caris slain the man and dragged him here?

A scuff from across the yard made him crouch and freeze. He peered in the direction of the sound, and at first he saw nothing. Then he caught movement along the stable, though it was so dark he couldn't be sure whether he'd actually seen it or merely heard it.

He was in near perfect darkness at the foot of the inn, but some of the windows above allowed a faint and indirect candlelight to tint the darkness farther out in the yard. In one of these pale shafts two figures moved parallel to his course. One was tall and thick, the other short and broad, with the larger making considerably more noise — limping, perhaps? — with an occasional click of metal on metal, as from armor plates. The smaller figure moved with a rolling, loping gait Harric could not make sense of in such low light. Crawling? Hobbling on all fours?

"God's socks, this place stinks," one of them whispered. "Whole place is an open privy."

"Hush you, now," said the other, in an accent Harric had never heard. "We're not alone."

The figures stopped, and Harric froze. He couldn't have been spotted. The darkness beneath the eaves was complete, and he'd made no noise. He scanned the yard for evidence of some third party, but saw nothing, and guessed someone must have appeared in a window above him. The figures changed course directly for Harric, passing through a swath of candlelight in which Harric glimpsed a bald pate and long mustachios.

The Phyros-thief.

"Here is your man in the green belt," said the voice with the accent. "Was he a walking bruise when you left him?"

"No. Where is he?"

"There. Behind the barrels."

"Moons take your eyes, Brolli. I can't see any barrels."

"I'm here," Harric whispered. He stepped out, hope rising in his heart. "Here."

The old man drew near, breathing heavily and smelling strongly of ragleaf and oiled iron. "Moons, I'm glad we found you, son. There's been a mistake — "

"This is not good place to talk," the shorter one whispered. "Come this way."

 "Follow Brolli," said the knight.

Brolli led them to the head of the yard, in the deeper shadows against the inn. Harric caught confusing glimpses of him as they crossed swaths of candlelight. His proportions seemed wrong. The legs were too short for his prodigious upper body. He used his arms while walking, like a child playing at horse, but his legs followed his arms in a kind of hop or lope. A dwarf? Once it had been fashionable for knights to keep dwarfed men as squires, but the young Queen Evandora found it distasteful, so it fell from fashion. Could the old man be so backward he kept a dwarfed squire? It might be the reason for his outcast blackened armor.