"El Camino," Chapter Five

[ This is Chapter Five in an ongoing, improvised prose story about three adventurers trying to find their way after the head of their party has died, as well as trying to get paid from a town full of miserable racists. Chapter One; Chapter Two; Chapter Three; Chapter Four. ]

[ 71% of voters asked the party to force their way past administrative hassle and get the Steward to pay up. ]

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Steward had explained what the three adventuring men must do: they must leave the head, leave this office, and wait. He covered his nose to protect himself from the acrid smell that crawled from the box, but did not take his watering eyes off Eyman and the two others who had, unfortunately, brought him the head of Grinnel, the Swarm Master of the Snake Toes Clan.

Eyman and his brothers would not leave the office without the money that belonged to them—the valuables that had been left in the Steward’s safe keeping during their sojourn—and the money they were owed—for bringing the Swarm Master’s head back, as asked. What he did not know is how that would happen, whether his brothers agreed that this must happen, or whether anyone knew how to make this happen. As he considered his options, the silence in the room began to accumulate. That would frighten the Steward and his guards. The more frightened they became, the more eager they would be to draw their swords. So while Eyman knew it would give precious time for the silence to build, he conferred with his brothers. He looked to Faris. The large man clenched his fist. Faris was as frustrated by the Steward as Eyman was, and was ready to channel that frustration directly through his knuckles. Susa answered Eyman’s unspoken question by closing the lid of the box. Either Grinnel was coming with them, or he wanted to let the air clear before whatever happened next. The only sound in the room was the squeaking of the lid’s hinges, encrusted in dried blood.

Ranulf had given lessons on many things—etiquette, automobile maintenance, road cooking, quick and easy medicine, good places to punch enemies, honourable ways to simply be—but he had never spoken about hesitation. Instead, whether he meant to or not, he set an example of a life lived without it. He could never have taught a lesson on the subject, because it was something he had never experienced. He had not thought twice about rescuing the infant Wood Elf. He did not take time to weigh out pros and cons when he had taken the two young brothers into his care. Ranulf decided quickly. He carried out plans immediately. He was almost always successful, in large part because he had taught his companions good places to punch enemies.

Eyman, however, had hesitated. The guards had seen him and his companions weighing their options. If the adventurers decided that their best option was “bloodshed,” the guards were now ready. One had shifted his weight to his toes. They both stood ready to draw their weapons. Eyman cursed himself. Ideally, by the time the goblin-head box had closed, both the guards would already have been ejected through the front windows, but that opportunity had passed. He had wasted too much time. He would have to find some other way to leave the office with what he wanted.

The box clicked shut.

“What other work do you have?” Eyman asked.

This question surprised the Steward. Responses tumbled around behind his eyes like balls in a lottery, before the one that plopped down out of his mouth was an addle-brained repetition of Eyman’s question, “what… other work do we have?”

“This is a lovely town,” Eyman said with an unconvincing smile, “but while we wait for you to identify Grinnel’s head as Grinnel’s head, we might as well make the best use of our time. You wanted to send a message to those goblins, we’ve sent that message. They’ll be scared now. Now it’s safe, your farmers can prepare their fields for Spring. You must know someone who could use some extra help. We’re no stranger to farm work.”

The Steward snapped, “our own boys do our farming.” It seemed a plain statement, but it was said with acid, which Eyman and his brothers heard. It confirmed how intensely unwelcome they were, goblin-slayers or not.

The Steward seemed to have trouble deciding which foot to stand on. He had been nervous when the party of adventurers had arrived, and had only grown more so. Even Faris could see the man was breathing more heavily. “How many goblins did you leave alive?” asked the Steward, swallowing hard. He saw the varied colours of the grime caked onto the men’s clothing, he noted their bruises and cuts. “Did you… kill them all?”

Eyman shrugged. “No more than a handful,” he said. “You wanted the head of the Swarm Master. We did the job. There were maybe, what, fifteen casualties?”

Susa snorted. “A dozen, tops. Two along the approach, the arms captain, the big one, a few during the fighting.”

“The one that jumped in front of the car,” said Faris.

Susa nodded at that. “Ahh, right.”

“The Breath Wyrms,” Faris reminded him.

“Not goblins,” Eyman pointed out. “He only asked, how many goblins.”

For a brief moment, the Steward looked like someone struck by the shock of bad news. He swallowed hard, then said, “leaving no more than, how many? Did you get a good sense?”

Faris burst with a laugh. “A lot.“

“There were many more than the estimate you gave to our late colleague,” Eyman said. “We expected there to be twenty or so, but they must have bulked up their numbers since last you counted.”

“Or you only ever saw part of their clan,” Susa told the Steward.

“I guess so,” the Steward said quietly. He whispered, “sorry,” and Eyman got the sense that the Steward was not apologizing to him, but that he had sent his “sorry” elsewhere, maybe somewhere inside.

Eyman made an empathetic gesture, saying, “let’s sign up a contract, and we’ll go see what we can do about the rest of these goblins.” Suspicions nagged at his mind—what, exactly, was this Steward up to?—but what he wanted most was to stop standing around in the reception area of this building, so he would keep things cheery until he could force an opportunity.

“No need,” said the Steward, holding his hands up. “We can shake on it.”

“You were so keen on the contract, before,” said Susa.

“An informal extension,” said the Steward. “You’re clearly true to your word.”

Not a moment ago, there were hoops galore that needed to be jumped through. Now, they could “shake on it?” Eyman was convinced, now, that the Steward was hiding something. He said, “then I’d like to access our safety deposit box.”

“Your belongings will remain safe with us, don’t worry,” said the Steward.

“Not worried,” said Eyman. “We need gas money.”

“How much?” said the Steward.

Eyman did not hear generosity in the Steward’s offer. He heard a man quietly demanding that they leave, now. He heard a man refusing to let him any further into the office, daring to refuse them access to the safety deposit box that held their belongings. He heard a man begging him to please go die on a goblin blade.

Eyman hid his suspicions. He stepped forward with a smile and extended his hand. “Mighty kind of you, then. We’ll shake.”

Here was his opportunity. The eyes of the guards would be watching his outstretched, moving hand, Eyman knew. So would The Steward. That meant Eyman had a luxurious half a moment to signal his brothers. He did so. A look toward Susa, full of meaning. A shrug of one shoulder, that Faris would see. They would be ready.

Eyman almost couldn’t believe the Steward moved to return the handshake. He was reaching into a bear trap. Eyman felt sorry for the fool.

Eyman gripped the Steward’s hand—like taking a fist full of green spring grass—and clapped hold of his arm. Almost lifting him from the floor, he shoved the Steward into the the nearest guard before that man could draw his sword. Eyman stepped around, behind the guard and put as much force as he could into the man’s back, hoping to wind him. The first goal was to make sure no one called out to summon help.

At the same time as Eyman’s hand met the Steward’s, Susa lofted the goblin-head box toward the other guard. He did it casually, as if tossing an apple toward a friend. The result would be messy, which he did not like—he would have preferred to strike the man himself—but his leather armour was tight after the morning’s journey, out in the wet air, and he wasn’t sure if he had as much reach as he normally would. Mid-air, the box tilted open and the head of Grinnel, Swarm Master of the Snake Toes clan, poured out toward the guard. He might have stumbled backward into a waist-height cabinet, but Susa was there to make sure the guard slammed, viciously, into the waist-high cabinet. He crumpled to the floor, his metal armour clattering like fallen cooking pots.

Faris kicked the front desk into the old, melted-candle man. The desk rose in the air—it was lighter than it looked. It closed over the old man like a giant hungry mouth. When the desk settled, the man was on his back on the floor, gasping, legs pointing toward the ceiling. Faris knelt and subdued him, then spun to help Eyman. He snatched Eyman’s dizzy guard like he was picking up a spinning plate, capturing him in a choke hold.

Eyman held the guard’s sword. He did not have to point it at the Steward to use it as a threat. As his breathing settled back to normal, he asked the Steward, “where’s our stuff?”

The Steward reluctantly unlocked a door of iron bars, opening onto a small room that held a table and an array of unmatched chests secured to each other and to the wall. The Steward was unforthcoming about which chest, exactly, had been the one Ranulf had used, but it was soon a moot point.

In the corner of the room was a pile of assorted objects: a leather-bound notebook, a drawstring satchel, a disordered pile of letters among the ribbon that had bound them together, a familiar favourite wooden pipe weathered by long use, and, at the top of the pile, a flash of green that immediately drew Susa’s eye.

He picked it up. It was paper, folded in the shape of a rearing dragon, mouth wide. He hadn’t seen it in years, since he had made it for Ranulf. He did not guess that Ranulf had kept it, never mind that he might prize it dearly enough to lock up with the rest of their valuables. For a moment, he was not standing in the secure lockup of a steward’s office. The grass was green beneath his feet and birch trees rustled in the wind. Last night, after lessons, Ranulf had told him and his brothers the story of The Great Beast Bar-ssam Olif, and Susa had been so transported by the story that he carefully crafted this paper token of the dragon, as a gift in kind to the man who had seeded his imagination with the vivid tale. As Ranulf received the fine thing in his rough, granite-like fingers, he said, “I hope you didn’t stay up late with this. What’s most important?” and Susa had responded, “rest,” as he knew the answer to be. But he saw the old man smile and tuck the dragon inside his vest, close to his heart, and he knew Ranulf valued the gift. He just didn’t know he still had it.

The paper dragon was on a pile in the corner because that’s where the Steward—or one of his men—had discarded it, after they had separated out the shinier, more universally valuable items Ranulf had locked in the safety deposit box. Faris found their modest savings in a chest in the Steward’s office. There, Susa also spotted a sparkling tinderbox engraved with the silhouette of the Alean mountains. Two years ago he had seen it in the hands of Rulles of Lycett, a leggy lone adventurer—a fellow half-Wood-Elf—they had met three hundred miles to the east. How many of the other  items lining the office—the silver tobacco tin by the door, the spyglass in the top desk drawer, the jewel-lidded canisters beneath the window—had once belonged to hard-working sword hands who thought their precious items would be safe here? How many others had trusted this patently untrustworthy Steward?

How many had expected to return quickly from an easy job? Just as Ranulf and The Party had done, they would have arrived in town and asked after work. Many would be inexperienced, perhaps just starting out on a risky but—so they had heard—potentially profitable new line of work. Maybe they had been told the same story Ranulf had heard, that a handful of goblins routinely harassed the town. They might have been told the same story, “take the head of the Swarm Master. That will send the message. That will scare them away.” Perhaps it had been the Steward himself who had advised them, “travel light. Don’t carry currency to the goblins. Keep your valuables secure here.” How many goblins would they have been told to expect? How many had there actually been? The Party had estimated just under a hundred. That would be a steep challenge even for a hero of legend or a skilled hunting party. The goblins would swallow up a young adventurer like a pebble in a pond. Eyman and his brothers had only succeeded because of careful observation, calm demeanours, Ranulf’s disciplined teaching, and years of practice, and still it had cost them dearly.

Some strange details began to make sense. The Steward had told them the goblin encampment was five kilometres north of the Stiff Grip Gate. While there was a bustling Snake Toes Clan outpost there, it was clear that the Swarm Master was elsewhere. At the time, The Party had chalked that up to simple civilian ignorance. One goblin outpost looked like another. Now, though, it seemed as if the Steward had meant to send them into a trap. A less-experienced adventurer might have taken the information at face value, and waded straight into the outpost.

Another strange detail: the reward had been a little too high for a town as small as Cherry Springs to offer. Of course it had been. They never expected to pay it out.

Eyman made a sour face. It was an especially cruel racket, exploiting adventurers. They rarely even had much of value on them. Rulles would have had his tinderbox and a few coins, but little else. Yet, in a secret compartment upstairs, Faris had found another chest—he had a nose for it—full of shining silver coins. Either one successful man of the road had been much richer than any of The Party could possibly imagine, or the Steward had fed many, many adventurers to the goblins. What made it sadder, still—thought Eyman as he dragged the Steward upstairs, his bound ankles clonking on each stair—is that this was probably no elaborate scheme. Most likely, the first party to hunt the goblins had failed, and the Steward was left with a lockbox that would never be unlocked. Then another. Eventually, he was probably propositioning adventurers not on their likelihood of success, but the likelihood that they would fail and leave nice things for him to claim for himself.

Now that the Swarm Master was dead, what would the rest of the Snake Toes Clan do? If they had ever really been raiding the town—if that hadn’t just been a story fabricated by the Steward—how severe would their next raid be? Goblins were smart enough to be able to track The Traveller through the snow and the mud, all the way to Cherry Springs. They’d know where their assassin went. That was probably why the Steward had blanched to hear that so many goblins had survived; why he had developed a sudden, sweaty interest in having those goblins killed; and why he was weeping to himself as Eyman and his brothers left him bound and gagged in one of the upstairs rooms. Of course killing the Swarm Master would not frighten the goblins away. It would only enrage them. There would be a goblin blade at his own throat only too soon.

Eyman stood at one of the upstairs windows, staring down the length of Cherry Springs’ one street. He wondered whether he should tell them to expect visitors.

To Be Continued…