"El Camino," Chapter Four

[ This is Chapter Four 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. ]

[ Last week, readers voted 60% in favour of Eyman preventing Faris from hiding a secret dagger on his person before they enter the Steward's Office in Cherry Springs. ]

- - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER FOUR

Locking eyes with his brother, Eyman shook his head, don’t do it.

Faris paused, dagger half-in, half-out of his vest. He raised his eyebrows as if to say, are you sure? It pays to be prepared, and we are here to get paid.

Eyman glared back, as if to suggest that he would sooner run the dagger into his own brother’s chest than carry it dishonestly.

Faris pursed his lips, as if to say, I have heard your counter-argument and I do not care for it.

Eyman hissed, “Ranulf would never have allowed it.” He did not take his eyes off his brother until this statement gripped Faris’ conscience and he was moved to slide the dagger back alongside the seat. Eyman held up his own sword demonstratively as he threaded the pink flag through its hilt, thinking, see, we are doing it the way Ranulf would have. We’ll be armed, but we’ll do it the proper way. To his mind, this deference to the people of Cherry Springs was respectful. Noble.

Looping his own pink-flagged sword over his head, Faris scowled back at his brother. He was all for being respectful, but not if it meant losing more blood than the other guy. There was a respectful amount of blood to lose, and there was a foolish amount. To date, Faris had managed not to be foolish. But he knew, too, that Eyman was right. It had been many years since last he had disappointed Ranulf, and that was another streak that—like the blood pumping through his heart—he wanted to preserve, whether Ranulf was there to appreciate it or not.

The Traveller rocked as Faris emerged. His heavy boots left deep impressions in the wet dirt. Rising, he adjusted his longsword, settling it against his leather armour. Eyman did similarly, shifting the scabbard around his waist so that, as it hung, it did not rub against the tassets that protected his thighs. They closed their doors with a heavy whud, whud sound that echoed down the street.

The entrance to the Steward’s office lay somewhere within the deep, dark shade of a front porch. With the goblin-head chest on his shoulder, Susa approached it walking backwards, fixing eyes with the men who dotted their own porches. The Steward’s porch creaked beneath Eyman’s boots. Out in the valley, coyotes chirruped and yipped.

In a small town like Cherry Springs, there was no need for the Steward’s Office to be large. There was hardly any need for a Steward to have an office. The town didn’t even really need a Steward. It was a job that could easily be split between a Mayor and a Sheriff. Regardless, the Cherry Springs Steward’s office was large, with a reception area, a set of stairs leading up, and, behind windows of privacy glass, the office of the Steward himself. Down a hallway, there was a back door, too, barred on the inside, Eyman noted.

An old, melted candle of a man with a nose like a hawk sat behind the desk nearest the door. Seeing the three armed men fill the space before him, his nostrils flared with distaste, as if the hawk were spreading its wings. He may have been displeased about the roughness of the three men, or perhaps because their arrival meant he might have to put down the thin book he was reading.

On either side of the room, two armoured men were wobbling to life as if they had just been inflated for the occasion, tightening the straps of their chest coverings, securing swords at their belts. They stood at a safe distance, but, like sheepdogs, clearly discouraged the new arrivals from moving further into the office. Eyman sized them up; they looked capable, but dim.

A man with a jet-black beard appeared at the half-open door to the Steward’s office. He straightened his vest as he, in turn, assessed the new arrivals. If he was trying to conceal his disapproval, he failed. “May I help you three?”

Faced with this steep embankment of unwelcoming faces, each of the members of The Party had the same epiphany at the same time: they assumed the path between the Steward’s front door and a sack full of coins would be straight and clear, and clearly it would not. They had half expected someone to be waiting with their reward. They would deliver the requested head of the Swarm Master of the Snake Toes Clan—severed and boxed for the Steward’s convenience—and directly be given a satchel of useful currency in exchange, roughly the same size as the goblin’s head. If Ranulf had a shortcoming, it was that he had never gone into great detail about how this part of the job worked. What was The Party supposed to say?

Whatever it was, they said it all at the same time.

“We’ve come for our money,” said Faris.

“We’ve finished your job,” said Eyman.

“Got your goblin head,” said Susa, shrugging the box on his shoulder.

One of the armed men scoffed, seeing them trip over each other’s words. Susa noticed this and remembered it.

Eyman asked the vest man, “are you the Steward?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the bearded man did, eventually, admit to being the Steward, emerging from his office and closing the door behind him. He would speak with these men here, in the reception area. Ranulf would have been insulted by that slight, but The Party did not notice. The Steward asked, with too much sugar dusting his voice, “how may the modest town of Cherry Springs make itself of service to three industrious men such as yourselves?” At the same time, he indicated the hawk-nosed man, who held out his hands to receive The Party’s weapons.

With a few quick thwips of some leather straps, Eyman and his brothers handed over their swords. Like his insistence on not carrying a hidden dagger, he hoped their ready compliance would put the Steward and his men at ease. The hawk-nosed man shut the weapons inside a security compartment, a sort of umbrella-stand-type-thing mounted on the wall which was not locked, but which would make it difficult to retrieve the swords in a hurry.

That done, the Steward signalled to the armed men, and they eased their posture, stepping back, giving The Party more space. Eyman admired this silent coordination and wondered if the guards were more capable than he would have guessed, or if it was just this one routine they had polished. Out there, during a fight or an ambush or a stealthy approach, he and his brothers knew how to coordinate silently, but he was surprised to see others move the same way, inside the wood-panelled walls of a municipal office. And then he remembered to be offended, because he and his brothers had come with good news, and this reception was much more hostile than he expected.

Once more, into the tense silence, the three members of The Party spoke at once.

“Your town can rest more easily,” said Eyman.

“You’ve got our swords, give us our coin,” said Faris.

“Do you want to see it,” asked Susa, un-shouldering the goblin-head box.

The Steward winced at the jumble of words. “Who did you say you were?”

Eyman stepped forward. “We are the Four Swords of The Traveller.” As soon as he said it, he sighed, because with a sting of emotion, he realized exactly what the Steward would say.

The Steward did not disappoint. “There are three of you.”

This offended the three men, who replied all at once.

“Correct,” said Eyman, slowly, with a galaxy’s worth of patience.

“Show some respect,” said Susa.

“It’s a bit of a sore point,” Faris said sarcastically, an indignant understatement.

“There are only three of us now, yes,” said Eyman, casting his eyes down. “You met our fourth, a man named Ranulf. He accepted a job from you, on behalf of our party. We have finished the job, but he did not survive the encounter.”

“A shame,” said the Steward, who did not overflow with sympathy. If anything, he looked more suspicious. “What job was this?”

Eyman didn’t understand why The Steward showed no sign of recognition, hearing Ranulf’s name. He would help the Steward to remember. “He took it only five days ago. A man with a grey beard. Short-ish.”

Faris indicated Ranulf’s height with his hand.

If the Steward recognized the description, he did not show it. He repeated his question. “Which job did he take?”

“This town’s not big enough for more than one job at a time,” said Susa.

“The Snake Toes Clan,” said Eyman. “They had been killing and raiding at the homesteads nearby, you wanted them dealt with. We have done so, and have brought the head of their Swarm Master.” Eyman dusted his hands together. Question answered. The Steward would now burst into a firework show of gratitude and congratulations.

He did not. The Steward only nodded as if Eyman had suggested that today might be a nice day to tend to the garden. Did Eyman see a clever glow behind his eyes? Recalling this moment later, he was certain that he had. But the mind is funny like that.

“So you have a head,” said the Steward, “and you have the contract?”

“Hm?” said Eyman, lifting his chin.

“You have the head of a goblin, I thought you said, and you have a copy of the contract that our office would have made with your…” now, the Steward affected the thinnest veneer of sympathy, “with your departed companion?”

There was a contract? Eyman knew nothing about a contract. He looked to his brothers and saw they, too, knew nothing about a contract.

“If not,” said the Steward, “I’m sure it won’t take long to find our copy. And it will specify you three by name, right? Or the name of your group?”

Would it? Did it have to? Eyman didn’t know. He had the sinking feeling that the Steward was putting up hurdles between him and the reward that rightfully belonged to them.

“We have the head,” said Eyman, carefully enunciating each word. It was proof positive of a job successfully completed.

“Do you want to see?” said Susa.

The Steward backed away. He did not. “I’m sure if you leave it with us,” he said, “we’ll be able to verify it in due time.“

“Excuse me?” said Eyman, lifting his chin higher.

The Steward became frustrated. “You don’t expect me to be able to tell one goblin head from another, do you?”

Susa barged forward and dropped the goblin-head box on a bureau next to the Steward. The wet bottom of the box—melted snow mixed with other, more colourful, more viscous fluids—squelched against the furniture’s polished wood. Susa opened the box with a creak of the lid’s hinge. “The head of the Swarm Master of the Snake Toes Clan,” Susa pronounced. The men of the Steward’s office all cringed backward. The smell almost melted the windows.

Sympathetically, Susa closed the lid of the box, though the smell had taken on a life of its own and was making itself at home.

When the Steward recovered, he saw the, “well, there you have it,” expressions worn by Eyman and his brothers. Through the sort of short, reluctant breaths one breathes when the smell of the air makes one sick, he said, “you have to understand. Look at this from our point of view. That could be any goblin head. And you three, you could be anybody. Now, I do, in fact, remember the man you described, we shook on this job last week. ‘Ranulf’ sounds like it might have been his name, sure. And this might be the right goblin head, but if it is, and you’re not Ranulf, or you’re not with Ranulf, what happens if I pay you out? Maybe Ranulf shows up tomorrow and demands to be paid, too. Then what? Or maybe you killed Ranulf on the road and took the head. Then we would be rewarding banditry, and we cannot do that. Or say you are indeed companions of Ranulf, but this is just any old goblin head. Then I’ll have paid you, sure, but our problems with the Snake Toes Clan remain.”

Eyman’s mouth almost hung open, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“So just leave the head,” said the Steward, “and give us time to verify it.”

“How long?” said Susa.

“Two or three days at least,” said the Steward. “Longer if none of the men can testify to it, and we need to find a magic worker to reanimate the head. It will give you time to locate the contract.”

TO BE CONTINUED…