(Previous Chapter)

Gandras, as seen through the eyes of anyone in this world, is a grand city. I mean in scale, not in beauty or the quality of its culture. No, the place is an absolute dump.

But through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who had never seen a town bigger than Krantz at a measly six or seven thousand people, well, the place was just gods-damned enormous. I remember being able to see the bloody walls almost as soon as we left Krantz, and that was a solid seven miles upriver.

We approached from the north, through the fruit country. The plains around Gandras are said to be some of the most fertile in the world, and I’ll believe it, as there is so much wine and cider produced in the city that the stuff is more common than piss—even the good stuff. Hell, one can pick up an exquisite brandy in the city for less than it costs to pay a beggar boy to shine your shoes!

At any rate, so massive and so famous is Gandras’ fruit production that even the fields outside the city have names, and one can generally tell a wine produced from grapes of Abalni from the wines of Obolon.

As for Gandras itself, an entire district is devoted to wine and cider and brandy production. That would be Arisi.

A word on the city, for posterity of course, as I’m sure any damned fool reading this drivel within a few years of the telling would know the layout of the city and some of its history: Gandras, and more specifically Samye Canton, was a free city until about ninety years ago. When I first arrived in Gandras, Samye had only been under Concord control for less than seventy, and the city bore all the sanitizing marks of an invasion.

Saint Zoran was said to have come from Gandras originally, and, having met with derision for his ideas, had found his way to Pruvykhu only after many years of wandering. It came as little surprise to anyone then that the Concord’s Inquisitors had been especially hard on the city after the conquest, with their renaming of everything remotely pagan being the least of the city’s troubles.

As it was, the seven districts of Gandras were renamed, each for one of the seven faces of the Concord’s faceless god—seven faces that are, of course, taken from the original seven pagan gods to begin with. Ironic how history works.

There’s Mealdesi, named for the Lord of Life, and the headquarters of the Concord’s government in Samye Canton. The Piliakilnis fortress in Mealdesi is probably older than Pruvykhu, but that hasn’t stopped the Concord whitewashing its walls and removing all trace of Samye’s past from its grounds, replacing centuries-old statues and tapestries with freshly sanitized marble images of Saint Zoran. The district, like each of the seven, is entirely walled in, a remnant of the slow expansion of Gandras.

Danguskis, named for the Lord of the Sun, is the northernmost district and also the home of the city’s barracks. It was through the north gate of Danguskis that Damek and I entered the city.

Arisi, as I’ve said, was the center of the city’s wine, cider, and brandy production, and is named for the Lady of Growing Things.

Wundantis, named for the Lord of Waters, is the second oldest district of the city behind Mealdesi. It is also the heart of the city’s religion, with temples to each of the seven faces of god to be found in the district’s Alkankort square. It is also the home of the majority of Samye Canton’s minor secular nobility, as the petty bans all wish to be seen as close to the god of the new religion.

Mijlantis is at the heart of the city, fitting for a district named after the Lady of Love. It is also the home of the Inquisition’s Augandwars fortress, built atop the hill that is Gandras’ highest point. Ironic bastards.

Pannosi is the southernmost district of the seven and named for the Lord of Fire. It is the city’s primary market district and the home of some of the wealthiest bastards in all Samye Canton.

Finally, there is Goliskis, named for the Lady of Death. It is there that all the worst sorts of this world congregate, in the place where only the Lady Golis cares for them. It is interesting to note that the Gurinsikort, the pauper’s region, is located in Goliskis’ western edges, hard up against the Pannosi fat cats. Also of note is the presence of some twelve theatres in Goliskis. Acting is hardly an honorable trade, after all.

And that is the craphole called Gandras, and Damek and I stepped into that turd early in the afternoon of an autumn day that is impressed on my memory like a hot iron on a cow’s arse.

I spent a long time gawking at everything I saw, at the cramped spaces, at the masses of people, at the size of the buildings. Eventually, Damek had to pull me aside down an alleyway and beat some sense into me.

“Focus, you little pisspot,” he growled. “You can’t walk around drawing so much gods damned attention to us. We’re in Danguskis, gods damn it, and if one of those Concord hard-arses pays us any sort of attention, it’s off to the pauper’s prison for us. In this city, the less you stand out, the more you fit in. Get it?”

“What’s that suppo—”

“Do you get it?” Damek snapped, slapping me upside the head. “No more questions until we reach Goliskis. Now, act like a blind man’s aid and lead me proper!”

I took his old, leathery hand and led him back into the busy Danguskis streets. People jostled us, caring little for the fact that Damek was blind and I a small boy. The city, as I was quickly learning, had little regard for the weak and infirm. There was a place for such people, and it was located in a small corner of Goliskis called the Gurinsikort.

It took us nearly half a watch before we managed to find our way to Arisi. As we passed by the large factories and distillation plants, Damek said, “If you ever need to get well and truly pissed, lad, you come here. There are corrupt bastards everywhere who’ll pass you a glass of fine wine for a song. This entire district is controlled by the Concord now. Used to be that the city’s liquor production was a private operation, one of the few truly private industries in the world, but that’s well and truly passed. But the thing is that most of the men and women who work here are the sons and grandsons of the men and women who worked here before the Concord arrived, and they remember what life was like before Saint Zoran’s monsters took over everything. As I said, you’ll find plenty of bastards in here willing to give wine away by the bottle just to screw their new masters.”

“Then why aren’t there more people walking about pissed out of their minds?” I asked, noting the surprising absence of drunkards.

“Just you wait until nightfall,” Damek replied. “There’ll be so many drunks in Arisi that the garrison of Danguskis chooses instead of lock the district gates rather than try to police the damned place.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see it all in action at some point.” He yanked hard on my arm. “But not now. Now, we have to get going, find us a place to sleep for the night. The sidewalk fills up pretty quickly in Goliskis, and the alleys ain’t safe enough to crap in after dark. But I know just the place for two enterprising bastards such as ourselves.”

“Sounds lovely,” I muttered as I continued to lead Damek through the wine district.

Gandras is a curious place in its layout. There is little that makes sense about it, and that is probably because it was built gradually over a period of many centuries. For example, despite the fact that Goliskis and Arisi share a wall, there is no gate from one district into the other because there was no city gate along that stretch of wall when Arisi, the older district, was originally added to Gandras. Instead, if you want to get from the wine district to the theatres, you have two options: either you enter Wundantis and then cut through Mijlantis—which is an option that appeals only to the clinically insane, given that it takes you directly past the Augandwars—or you can travel the length of Wundantis and then circle through Pannosi, which is the direction we took.

I can’t say much for Pannosi—or won’t for now—but as we passed into Goliskis, it seemed as though we had stepped into a different world altogether. I stumbled to a halt, and Damek tugged his hand free of mine to give me a moment.

“Looks like hell, doesn’t it, boy?” the old man said, his voice tinged with an odd emotion.

I turned my head to look at him. “How do you know?” I said. “You’re blind.”

“But I wasn’t always. I’ve told you as much before, though it’s damned clear you’ve got wool in that head of yours and not a single measure of brains. Damn it, boy! This place has always been a dump. But, gods, if it ain’t home to the best of us!”

“Home?” I asked.

“Spent many a night in these gutters, lad. But tonight, well, tonight I introduce you to the finest establishment in Crapville. Tomorrow will be early enough to begin teaching you how to make a living, as per your mother’s wishes.”

“That bitch!” I said, half angrily, half gratefully. Truth was, I hated her gods damned guts for sending me into a place like the Gurinsikort of Goliskis. “Well, damn,” I muttered moments later. “Let’s get the hell on with the rest of my life.”

“The most sensible thing you’ve said since we met,” Damek replied. “Now, lead me down this main road until we come to the third street on your left. You know which one your left is?”

“Of course,” I snapped. “I’m not a damned idiot.”

“But you do a hell of an impression of one,” Damek replied. “So humor me.”

I took his left hand and said, “This is left.”

“That’s your right, moron.”

“Your left, grandpa.”

My skull ached for a long while after he cracked good me with his walking stick—doing so openly now that we were in the one part of the city that the Inquisition seemed determined to leave alone to rot, the one part of the city where nobody gives a damn about anything. Gods, but I’ve seen rape happen in the middle of the streets of the Gurinsikort and not a single damned soul stopped, no one gave any indication that something untoward was taking place. They’re a hard bunch of bastards in that part of the world, let me tell you.

“Fine,” Damek noted after he’d cracked me one. “You know which left is. Well, you take the third left and then the second right. Our home for the night will be the first door on the right once we round that corner. Think you got that, puss-for-brains?”

“There wouldn’t happen to be a sodding pole or two along the way I could lead you into, would there?” I asked hopefully.

“Keep that up, and you’ll be wearing my stick up your own arse before the night’s through.”

I took him by the hand and proceeded to guide Damek through the streets of Goliskis. Dark faces, furled in shadow, gazed at us from doorways and out of windows. The sun was creeping down into the west with the onset of night, and all sorts of bastards were preparing themselves for an evening of drinking, sin, and crime.

I managed to lead Damek straight to the home he’d mentioned, and the old bastard raised his stick and rapped three times on the solid wooden door. When I say “solid,” I mean the thing was built like a door on a gods-damned fortress. The wood must’ve been eight inches thick if it were an inch, and the lock and hinges looked like they could withstand a right battering.

I asked Damek about it, and he said, “Lady Alzeta has had some trouble in the past with undesirables. Keeps the place bolted up like a citadel to deter any more, and she has faithful friends who’ll knock the crap out of anyone who tries.”

“Sounds like a charming woman,” I said ironically.

“And you’d better damned remember it, too, you mouthy little prick! Lady Alzeta is the best friend you’re likely ever to have in this world—after myself, of course.” He paused, waiting for a response, then repeated, “Of course!”

I cleared my throat. “Of course, of course,” I said quickly, then muttered, “Bastard!” beneath my breath.

“Call me what you like,” Damek said with a smirk on his face, “but I’ve raped you about a hundred times less than any other bastard in my position would have.”

“But you haven’t…oh!” I said slowly.

Just then, a small wooden slat in the door pulled back and a pair of ancient eyes peaked out at us. I saw the eyes widen momentarily, and then the slat slammed shut and the bolt was drawn back.

An ancient crone who could make a cow’s arse look beautiful stood in the doorway, studying the two of us. “Damek, you son of a bitch,” she croaked.

“Right back at you, Lady Alzeta,” Damek exclaimed, throwing open his arms to her.

She cackled as she received his embrace. “Good to see you, you old bastard. Come in, come in. Who’s the runt?”

“This is Rio,” my master replied. “Dumbest bastard in all Samye Canton, but he’s got a pair of eyes, so why the hell should I complain?”

Lady Alzeta ruffled my hair affectionately. “Welcome, little Rio. Doesn’t look half bad,” she said to Damek, as she shut the heavy door behind me.

“Only picked him up a few weeks ago. Mother got chased off by the Inquisition.”

“He’s the one, eh? Poor bastard. Still, adds one more who’ll be there when the revolution finally comes.”

“Like hell it will. Inquisition and the Concord have us clamped tighter than a duck’s backside—”

“And that’s watertight!” I said, finishing off one of Damek’s sayings that I’d heard a thousand times already.

The old man glared at me for the interruption, but Lady Alzeta giggled—or, rather, cackled, as I don’t think her throat was capable of much else—and said, “My, but he’s got a mouth on him and not afraid to speak!”

“Damned annoying if you ask me,” Damek said. “Now, is anyone else in?”

“Not yet,” Lady Alzeta said as she turned and led us deeper into her domain. “Not yet, but Cross-eyed Taras and Rurik Nine-fingers are due back soon. Ban Volos will be in later, as will Crazy Kenya and his boy Mladen, who were out to see about working an angle on some letter they received by mistake.”

“Gods,” Damek said, “but they’re all still together? I thought for certain the bastards would’ve dispersed long before I got back.”

“Not much place to go anymore,” the lady said forlornly. “But Mladen won’t be half pleased to have a mate to keep him company while the bigger boys are out drinking and carousing.”

“I want to drink and carouse too,” I said.

“Now, now,” Damek muttered, “we don’t want a repeat of Krantz. Can’t go about disappointing all the whores of Samye. It’d reflect poorly on me.”

“Still the horny bastard, eh?” Lady Alzeta asked. “Gods, Damek, did you drag this poor sod into one of your dens?”

“Call it an education,” my master replied, “and I sure as hell don’t need a lecture from you on how I train my aids.”

“Gods, no,” she said, holding up her hands, “but if he were my boy, I’d take better care of him. Looks so young and innocent.”

“I’m the biggest and damnedest bastard you’ve ever met,” I declared, puffing out my chest and donning the meanest glare I could.

“Are you now?” asked Lady Alzeta, a glimmer of amusement flickering in her still-sharp eyes. “Well, excuse me, little master.”

Damek grabbed me by the back of my neck. He pressed his lips against my ear and hissed. “What did I say outside about watching your mouth? Piss her off and we sleep on the streets, and you won’t like what happens to little boys on the streets in this part of the city. Apologize and accept the lady’s compliment.”

I shook myself free of Damek’s grasp and looked up to Lady Alzeta’s smiling face. Clearly she’d heard everything the old bastard had muttered in my ear. I looked down at my feet and mustered the most shameful face I could. “Sorry, Lady Alzeta,” I mumbled.

“Gods, you really are a moron, aren’t you?” Damek said. “Cut the amateur dramatics and look the lady in the eye. No one wants to see a whiny pissbody pretend to be remorseful.”

I ground my teeth, met Lady Alzeta’s eyes, and said, “Go to hell, old man. And shove your remorse right up your arse. You’ve been nothing but a boil on my bum since we met!”

Lady Alzeta exploded with laughter, and Damek, who must’ve been about to club me to death with that stick of his, joined her as soon as he saw that I hadn’t in fact angered her.

“Son of a bitch, Damek,” Lady Alzeta said after she regained control. “You really can pick them. The boy eats free tonight for that beauty! Make yourselves at home. There’s a cot or two upstairs that may only be lightly infested with fleas, but I offer no guarantees.”

She turned away and hurried off to busy herself with other matters. As soon as she exited the room, Damek snatched my arm again and squeezed hard.

“Listen, you dumb bastard: don’t ever antagonize that woman again. Do you hear me?”

“Antagonize? Damek, the woman was laughing her arse off louder than she would if she caught sight of that little dangle between your legs.”

“So you think you’re a big shot now, the biggest bastard?” Damek’s grip grew firmer still, and I began to squirm. “You are nothing but a dumb shit, and by the gods, I will throw your arse out on the streets if you make me look bad again.”

“What the hell are you on about?” I asked, though my voice was more whiney than demanding as my arm began to grow numb.

“That woman and this gang are the only thing standing between us and the rest of this damned corrupt district. Do you hear me? Goliskis is not Maluns. There are bastards outside that door who eat little turds like you and spit out the bones.”

“Then why the hell bring me here?”

“Because every man—even me—needs a family. Without a family, even one comprised of that old bitch and the quintet of morons who live with her, you will have no screen against hard times, no screen against the rest of this world.”

“Are you going soft on me?”

Damek hit me hard in the face with his fist, and only his continued firm grip on my arm kept me from hitting the floor.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I spat blood onto Lady Alzeta’s nice, clean floor. “I think, deep down inside, you love me.”

“Bah!” Damek released my arm, and this time I did hit the floor, clattering my head against the wood. “Just try not to screw things up,” he said as he turned and made his way to the stairs.

(Previous Chapter)

Constipation is the thief of time; dysentery waits for no man!

Such were the wise words of Damek in the days following our eating of the grapes. It was a saying that he got from his father many years before, and a saying that we both tried the truth of for nearly two whole days.

Damek thought it prudent that we camp in another one of his frequented forest clearings until both our bowels stopped dripping uncontrollably. Despite the vaunted experience of his gut, Damek spent as much time as I did with his britches down around his ankles as he squatted in the bushes.

Out of some malicious instinct that kicked in after we fell foul of those grapes, I said to him, “Seems like the grape picker was the bigger bastard after all, eh? Bastard got us both good, even you, Damek!”

“If my guts weren’t turned to water, boy, I’d crack my walking stick hard across your arse.” He paused to work his way through another fit. “But truth is I’m not so young as I once was.”

“Then why’d you eat the grapes if you knew you’d be hanging your arse in the bushes like me?” I asked.

“Because only an idiot gives up on free food in the life we live. Mark me, boy, take what you can get when you can get it, and always spend the money you’ve got on any sort of pleasure you can afford. Life’s too short and pointless to waste it on hoarding resources.”

After the first day, our bowels were mostly dried up, but we still struggled with the sudden, uncontrolled urge to drop our pants again. We drank plenty of water—at Damek’s insistence—but ate nothing at all, not least because any food would slide right through us the moment we swallowed it.

Damek promised me a grand old party once we were through the worst. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we will walk to Krantz. It’s a nice little place, about seven miles north of Gandras—the last real town of note between us and our destination. We can recuperate there. I’m well known in town, and we are going to need proper food after this.”

A stay in town sounded like an unheard of luxury after the agony of an arse burning to crap but unable to empty an already dried up well. “Is there someplace better than a barn or servant’s quarters we can stay?” I asked. We’d never yet had a proper bed to sleep in—or, at least, I hadn’t, as the few times we’d been given lodging out of charity, my master had ordered I either sleep at his feet or on the floor. Sleeping at his feet always resulted in me sleeping on the floor anyway, as the bastard kicked like a gods damned mule in his sleep.

“We’ve got a few warrins saved,” Damek said. “Remember what I said about hoarding just now? Well, I’ll qualify that by saying sometimes a little bit of saving allows one to splurge at the opportune moment. It just so happens I can get us a good price on a room at the tavern. I’m well known there, as I’ve said. Hell, we can even get you a bath to wash the smell of shit out of you!”

“You do realize that you smell just as gods damned foul as I do,” I said.

“Yes, but I can live with my smell. It’s your bloody stench that I can’t stand.”

We limped into Krantz on the third day after eating the grapes. We must have looked a right pair of wraiths: tired, sore, and little more than skin wrapped over a frame of bones. Hell, I know we looked terrible because we didn’t even bother to beg and people were still throwing favors at us.

I accepted a loaf of bread from the local baker, and Damek received two warrins in coins from passersby.

“We should get the squirts more often,” I said at one point. “Beats the hell out of actually begging for a living.”

Damek didn’t have the energy to raise his stick at me. “There’s no gods damned way I want to go through that again anytime soon, and you shouldn’t either. You’ll be dead long before you get any real pay off. That’s no way to live, and an even worse way to die. Trust me, boy; I’ve seen men and women crap themselves into the afterlife. It ain’t pretty.”

We made our slow, labored way to the tavern, the second largest building in Krantz—after the Inquisitors’ house, of course.

The place had three stories and was constructed from a mixture of stone and wood, with the ground floor providing the solid, stone base and the upper two floors being constructed of the lighter wood materials. On either side of the entryway, the owner had nailed up the enormous skulls of two oxen, and I might have been left in consternation at their function were it not for the fact that a mule was tethered to the horns of one of the skulls.

As we approached, Damek ushered me over towards the skull that was not currently in use. He lifted his hand searchingly for a moment before finding one of the ox’s horns, which he gripped tightly.

“Look at this, boy. Look at this poor bastard who was little more than a slave in life and is now a perpetual slave in death.” He rubbed his palm along the length of the horn, as though in sympathy of the poor creature it had once belonged to. “Such an evil use, a crude use. Few there are who would want to lock horns with you, yet here you sit doing the work of others.”

“What’s that you’re saying, old man?” I asked as his voice drifted into a curious, almost distant tenor.

“Shut up, boy. One of these days, you’ll receive a visit from these horns. You’ll receive an ill reward from it too, and you’d wish rather to have this point rammed up your arse than to be in that place.”

“Your brain must be addled from having the squirts too long, you crazy old bastard,” I said. “How the hell is that dead thing going to do anything to me hung up there like that?”

He reached out and slapped me upside the head. “If you were less of a cocky moron and more willing to take a crazy old bastard’s warning, you might learn something. Instead, you’ll look back on this memory one day and think to yourself: you know what? Old Damek was right. I am a gods damned moron and always will be.”

With that, he released the horn and felt after the door to the tavern. I lingered for a moment, looking at the ox skull on the wall, before shaking my head. “Bastard’s gone mental,” I muttered. “Sodding hell, mother. What have you done to me that you hooked me up with this madman?”

I followed Damek into the tavern, which was dark and smoky and smelled of ale, urine, and vomit, and all that despite the fact it was still only the first watch of the afternoon.

A red-haired woman with breasts the size of my head and a dress that was far too tight and far too revealing turned at the sound of our entrance and approached Damek.

“Damek, you old bastard!” she said in a tone that was halfway between glee and annoyance.

Damek cocked his head as she spoke, and then a wicked grin spread across his face. “Hello, Olena, my dear. It is me, indeed.” He spread his arms wide to her.

She struck him instead.

“Where the hell have you been, you bastard?” she spat, though there was still something of the glee to be caught in her voice.

Damek must have heard that too, for he threw back his head and laughed a laugh I’d never heard from him before. “I’m a wanderer, Olena, my dear. I go here and there—”

“And screw any bitch who’ll spread her legs for you in between,” Olena finished.

“What do you care about it?” Damek asked, his voice dripping with manufactured hurt. “You’re a gods damned prostitute yourself.”

“And yet you keep coming back,” she replied. Then Olena seemed to notice me for the first time and the way I clung closely to Damek’s side. “Who’s the brat? Not yours, I hope, you horny bastard.”

“Gods, no. I’d never sire such a damned moron as this. He’s the son of an old friend—”

“She a whore too?”

“Yes,” Damek said, “but not to me. She took up that profession years after I knew her. Anyhow, brainless little sod is my blind man’s aid.”

“Ah,” Olena said, “the latest in a long line of the little bastards, though this one smells considerably more like a crapper than any of your previous servants.” She waved a hand dramatically. “Though I swear by God’s seven faces that you don’t smell so good yourself.”

“Which is why we need two baths,” Damek declared.

“You got warrins?” Olena asked. “There’s no charity here anymore, I’m afraid. Least of all for you. Old Kuba doesn’t take kindly to us girls giving discounts to favorites.”

“I’m a favorite?” Damek asked. “Gods, you don’t know how much that means to me.”

Kuba, as it turned out, was an enormous bastard—I mean in sheer physical size, not in the quality of his bastardry. He was also the owner the fine establishment that we found ourselves in.

Olena supplied us with two large tubs of steaming hot water and a couple of bars of tallow soap. Damek made me wash all over and then wash all over again. He sniffed at me then declared, “Gods, but you’re the smelliest bastard I’ve ever met. The smell of piss and shit hangs about you like a disease. But, hell, you smell a damned sight better than you did before, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, and you’re a regular bucket of roses,” I said before receiving my accustomed sharp whack to the head for the insult.

“Gods, but it’s good to be clean,” Damek declared. “Now, to find some sustenance.”

Kuba made Damek count out the quarter and half warrins before he provided us with any food or drink. He made Damek count out an advance on a room for two days as well.

“Like I said,” Damek remarked to me afterwards, “I’m well known and well liked in this town. Old Kuba’s a mean spirited bastard, but he has a soft spot for me.”

“He just made you pay for two day’s lodging, watching like a greedy hawk all the time,” I said.

“That’s how I know he likes me,” Damek replied. “Bastard demands three nights’ pay at the least from anyone else. He refunds if you leave before, but he’s had trouble with underpayment in the past. Bastard.”

Olena brought us our meal: two bowls of stew made from the meat of some mystery animal—at least, I could tell the damned stuff wasn’t made of beef, pork, chicken, deer, or any game foul I’d ever tasted before. We used the bread we’d been given earlier to mop up the dregs from our bowls.

“Where’s your sister?” Damek asked of the red-haired whore when we were about finished with our meal.

“Olha’s still here,” Olena said. “Should be down soon. She’s been sleeping off a busy night.”

“Does that mean—”

“Yes, it does, you nosey little bastard,” Damek snapped at me. “Don’t insult the nice lady by reminding her all the time of what she does for a living.”

“It’s all right,” Olena said. She pulled her arms in to her side, causing her considerable bosom to heave outwards, almost escaping the scant confines of her dress. She leaned in towards me. “How old are you, boy?” she asked.

“Twelve,” I said.

Olena batted her eyelids. “Twelve? You talk like a big boy for a twelve-year-old. Are you a big boy?”

I cast a panicked glance at Damek, who was grinning wildly at the confused look taking over my face. I felt a hand grope in between my thighs, and I jumped in my seat. Olena drew back up and sighed. “Alas, no. Still a child.”

Damek could not contain his laughter.

We hung around in the tavern for the next watch. When Olha arrived for work, Damek quickly propositioned her as well.

I would never have picked Olha and Olena for sisters. Olha was blessed with far fewer curves than her sister, and her dark hair was typical of the Samyein, robbing her of the sense of exotic that saw Olena prove so popular with Kuba’s customers. But Damek joked crudely with me that the two of them made an irresistible and stamina-sapping team, and I was forced to forego our nice private room for the cold, hard benches of the common room as the three of them grunted and growled through the night.

Gods, but I was glad we finally left that place four days later. We had not a warrin left to us, but we were at last on the final stretch to Gandras. In the midst of our journey southward, I’d become increasingly certain that my mother had made one almighty cock up in giving me into Damek’s service. I was also growing increasingly determined to break away from the blind man’s company as soon as I could.

But not before I taught the old bastard a lesson.

And that would require more money and wits than I presently had access to.

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

When I woke the next morning, my mouth was so dry it felt as though I hadn’t had anything to drink in a thousand years. Surprising as it may be, given the home I was raised in, I can’t say that I’d ever drunk as much wine as I had the night before. My tongue grated like sand and my saliva dribbled thickly like a watery dough.

I crawled down through the rushes to the river and slurped greedily at the water, bent over like a dog and not bothering to pay attention to the world around me. I drank so much and so quickly that I began to vomit, and the heaves only added to my thirst as the bile burnt up my throat. Needless to say, being a dimwitted moron in those days and quite unaccustomed to recuperating after a night of too much drink, the cycle of drinking too much water followed by vomiting followed by extreme thirst again proceeded for some time.

Eventually, however, I managed to retain enough water to feel marginally satisfied, though my throat burnt like a whore’s shrieks in the ears. But my immediate needs were filled, which meant I could finally turn my thoughts to other matters.

Like the fact that half the gods damned morning had already passed.

Given that Damek had roused me roughly from sleep before the dawn on our first two nights together, this struck me as an unusual and probably poor turn of events. I stood up from among the rushes at the river’s edge and looked back to where we’d spent the night on the bed of dried reeds.

There I saw old Damek snoring away like a baby hopped up on maigarrin leaves. I approached him warily, not because I thought he might be dead—he was snoring so loudly they must’ve heard him in Gandras—but because I feared some trick. Two days with the old bastard had taught me some form of caution at least.

“Damek,” I called softly.

I’ve never understood why people speak softly to the sleeping when trying to wake them. I mean, you speak softly if you’re trying not to disturb them, but when you’re trying to wake the bastards up from the depth of sleep’s clutches, why the hell not yell? Anyhow, that was wisdom I came by years later, and I was not yet confident enough to put to use Damek’s own wise technique of kicking said sleeping person.

“Damek,” I called again. “Are you awake?”

“No, gods damn it,” he said. “I’m bloody sleeping. Go find a sharp, pointy root to sit on. If you disturb me again, I’ll rape you my gods damned self.”

I leapt back, heart racing. I was not going to be idiot enough to press Damek on the issue. Whatever he might be, the previous day’s business had raised the possibility that his threat might be partway genuine.

As I backed away from him, noting that the sun overhead had likely been up for an entire watch and that Damek would likely beat the crap out of me later for not putting more effort into waking him, I turned my eyes on the canvas sack.

The old man had been using it as a pillow earlier in the night, but it had slipped out from underneath him, allowing me free access to it. I paused and waited until I heard Damek snore again, and then began to creep closer, this time with the intent of rummaging around for some food.

Undoing the drawstring was an agonizingly slow process, as I did not want any of the glass vials and clay pots within to rattle about and so wake the bastard whose head was scant inches from the bag.

I had my tongue pointed out for maximum concentration and my eyes screwed up in anticipation that I was about to get one hell of a beating. With the mouth of canvas bag open, I was free to slip my hand inside and begin feeling around for a crust of bread or something.

“You’d better be searching for a damned pot of rundils salt, boy. If your hand is in that bag for any other gods damned reason, I’ll beat you so hard your brains come out your arse.”

I froze, hand stuck halfway down the bag with no intent at all of searching for a pot of rundils salts, which I recalled vaguely from my mother’s collection was a powder popular with men who drank far too much and far too often.

“Are you ignoring me, you piss pot, runty arsed, cat shagging bastard?”

“No, Damek,” I answered quickly. “No, I’m…I’m…”

“Looking for rundils salts?”

“Yes.”

“Like hell you were, boy. Gods, but my head doesn’t half hurt. I feel like duck shit. No, worse. Like duck shit scraped off a boot that’s trod in cow, mule, and sheep shit on the way.”

He finally managed to turn his face up to look at me, and his milky white blind eyes were shot through with pulsing red veins and framed with marvelous black rings.

“Gods, Damek,” I said. “You look like hell.”

“Well, you’re just a bucket of roses yourself, you cheeky little bastard. Are you looking for those rundils salts already?”

“Uh…no.”

“Then hop to it, you useless cock. Get me something to help with this gods damned hangover or when I’m up, I’ll flog your scrawny arse from here to Gandras and then sell you to a brothel for half a warrin.”

“Oh, come on!” I exclaimed. “I’m worth at least two.”

Somehow, despite his hangover and his blindness, Damek found it in himself to whip his walking stick back over his head and crack me right on the skull. “The salts, boy!” he demanded.

I found the tub of grayish powder, from which Damek took a sizable pinch and dropped it right onto his tongue. His face screwed up and he coughed and sputtered. “Gods, that’s miserable damned stuff,” he exclaimed. “Don’t just stand there, you useless turd! Get me some bloody water to wash this poison down.”

I drew out the water skin from the canvas sack and handed it to an ungrateful Damek. He swallowed down several mouthfuls, though not nearly as greedily as I’d done earlier. He was far more experienced, you see, at recovering from a night of drinking. I for one had not had the wits about me to think of the rundils salts at all.

At any rate, the old bastard was soon on his feet, and we were underway by noon, though without breakfast, the miserly sod cursing me all the way down the road for not waking him sooner, for being a miserable traveling companion, and for being a gods damned wastrel—among other things.

We made it to Wundansads after dark, and Damek set us up in the luxurious accommodations of an old barn, right next to the cows and the mules, who sniffed and farted all through the night such that neither Damek nor I got much in the way of restful sleep.

I won’t go into detail regarding what happened at all our stops on the way down to Gandras. Suffice it to say that we visited each and every town, making an agonizingly slow pace in our journey to the center of Samye Canton. Damek continued to fluctuate between beating the crap out of me for crimes I did not commit and imparting morsels of wisdom that seemed every bit as erudite and—therefore—impractical and stupid as Batur’s Sausawan wisdom had.

Generally, we stayed about three days in each town, though sometimes Damek would hang around longer if he’d found a particularly lucrative cow to milk—and, gods, there were some cows to be milked! Occasionally, though, we’d be run out of town on the first or second day, in which case old Damek would drop his drawers when he felt we’d come a safe distance and wave his wrinkled arse at the townsmen as a sign of his affection.

But through it all, I wondered at the old bastard’s principles. I’m hardly the most principled man myself, and I was the son of a thief and of a whore, but I struggled to define Damek’s boundaries.

My father, for instance, never stole grain from those townsfolk who were regular customers of my mother’s druidic healing practice. I think this was because he didn’t want to risk angering my mother, but it could have been for other reasons also. In the end, my father had a line he would not cross for whatever reason.

Batur was freer with his theft, stealing from anyone and everyone, especially given that my mother was open for all sorts of business when the big Sausawan was among her regulars. But Batur stole with a charitable heart. He never kept his excess grains for himself—and he was big enough that it probably took considerably more than his wages could afford to feed him, such that he could be forgiven for in fact keeping and eating his stolen wages. Instead, he would bring the stolen flour to my mother to help feed her and me, and eventually my sister Senka.

Damek, however, seemed to enjoy scamming people simply to prove to himself that he was the gods damned smartest and biggest bastard around. He seemed willing to say or do anything for and to anyone—prayers, curses, herbs, favors for old widows, and so on.

The incident with Masha in Balunkrants was hardly the sole instance of its kind, and the women only got uglier and older than she. Hell, the old bastard was not above servicing men too, the Concord frowning on any business of that sort as a violation of nature—the very nature its priests teach us we must transcend anyway.

I could drone on and on for hours about Damek’s practices, but I think it is enough for now that he made me feel increasingly uncomfortable. He claimed he never stole, but he would lie blatantly in order to accept donations, and this to him was not theft but merely an act well played. He would spend an evening in the village tavern collecting all the dirt on the townsfolk and then blackmail the poor bastards in exchange for food or warrins. Wherever we went, he found some way to turn every situation to his advantage, and I was still innocent enough of the world to think him a bastard of the worst sort.

At any rate, weeks passed as we continued our slow progress ever southward, Damek collecting a pitiable amount of food at each stop, and me getting thinner and thinner as a result of being denied proper nourishment—mostly because I failed to contribute, so the old bastard said, to his work.

“Why the hell do you keep me around, then?” I asked finally, growing sick and tired of being bullied. “If you’re so gods damned upset with everything I do, and if you think I’m a useless dog turd, why the hell drag me across the sodding countryside?”

“I made a promise to your mother, boy,” he said.

“But what’s that to you? You just told a woman with a sick baby that that deggin leaf will purge the little thing of its fever.”

“What’s your point?”

“We both know that deggin leaf is burnt to clear a home of pests.”

“So you’re a gods damned druid now, are you?” he snapped. “Listen, you little prick: I promised your mother I’d take you to Gandras. It’s what she wanted, and there is a bond between us that your limited little moronic brain cannot wrap itself around. If that means I have to poison a gods damned baby to do it, I’ll bloody well do it.” He paused. “Besides, the deggin leaf won’t harm the child. It has to be burnt, as you said. What it will do is cause the babe to vomit, which will help purge whatever poison is giving it the fever to begin with. Little bastard is close to death anyway, and I don’t have any enaiss root in this magical bag of mine, else I’d have given that women some of it instead.”

We were on the road at that time, about ten miles out of Gandras, and the two of us sulked a good long while. But we were coming to the outskirts of the Gandras fruit and wine district, and our tempers did not last long. For miles about the city, fields are dedicated to growing any and every fruit imaginable. And most of that fruit is destined for the fermentation pots of Gandras’ Arisi district, the center of Samye Canton’s wine, cider, and brandy production.

It was now well into the autumn harvesting season, and everywhere we could look, there were fields of grape vines with workers picking the biggest damned bunches of grapes you’ve ever seen.

“Now, watch this, lad,” Damek said, seating himself down on a stone beside the road. “Keep an eye on the foreman. He’s the bastard in the black.”

“How do you know?”

“Industry standard, boy. These farms are about as close to slavery as the Concord will allow us to come. Men and women are equal, the Czelniks like to tell us, so slavery is an evil. But then they’ll exploit the hell out of every poor sod they cross paths with. We make more money in a morning from begging than any one of these sad bastards makes in a day from slaving away in the hot sun picking fruit. Pay attention, Rio: if you end up in the fields, you’d better know what’s the quickest and easiest way to kill yourself, because you ain’t going to last long.

“Anyhow, keep an eye on the foreman for me. If he comes this way, say something quickly.” I picked out the man in black who was policing the workers as Damek rummaged through his canvas bag, finally drawing out a small loaf of bread that he’d stored away the previous day.

A worker eyed us curiously as he picked grapes. Damek spoke, though he couldn’t know the man was there: “Anyone here interested in making a trade? A bunch of grapes for this bread. Feed your family for a night, and get one over on those bastards you work for. They’re not your grapes after all.”

The curious worker took the bait, glanced across the fields to gauge the location of his foreman, and then dashed our way. “Take the grapes,” he said. “My wife and kids thank you for the bread.”

“Good man,” Damek said, making the exchange. “And we’ll pray the blessings of Mealde and Ari on your household.”

When the man returned to his place in the work line, Damek asked, “How’s that foreman?”

“Hasn’t seen us yet,” I replied.

“Right. Let’s eat these grapes quick like. They’ll turn to mush if I stick them in the bag. A little treat for you today, my boy. Can’t say I don’t take care of you, eh?”

“But that poor bastard’ll get in trouble for this.”

“Not unless his master is so damned neurotic that he’s counted every bloody grape growing in these fields. I’d wager the Grand Czelnik’s own treasury that no bastard is crazy enough to do that. The only problem is in us getting caught.”

“Then shouldn’t we move out of sight?”

“Why? Eating these grapes is an act of rebellion every one of these field hands wants to do themselves but is too damned scared to try. Look around. I’ll bet there’s a good lot of them watching, eager for you and me to screw the man and ready to live vicariously through us.”

“So, how do we do this?” I asked.

“One at a time, boy. Fair’s fair. You’re watching the foreman for me, something I can’t do for myself, so we split the grapes.”

“Really?” I asked with sardonic enthusiasm. “You mean, equal pay for equal work?”

“Don’t get cute, you little prick. Remember, I’m older and meaner than you are. I can muscle you out of the grapes easily enough.”

That said, Damek plucked a single grape and popped it into his mouth. I followed suit and was rewarded with a burst of flavor fresher than any I’d experienced in my short life. There’s nothing quite like eating fruit fresh off the tree.

Anyhow, Damek’s second go at the grapes resulted in him plucking two at once. I opened my mouth to protest but then thought better of it.

Be the bigger bastard, I told myself.

And so I took three grapes.

Which is how it proceeded, both of us going at a mad pace, Damek taking two and me taking three, stuffing our mouths and barely chewing lest we miss out on a single grape apiece.

When the last grape was gone, Damek grinned wildly at me. “You’re a little bastard, do you know it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked defensively. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, you’ve been doing one on me, my little friend. You’ve been taking three grapes at a time, or I’m as brainless a turd as you are.”

“Well, you were taking two at a time,” I accused.

Damek continued to grin. “That’s how I knew you were taking three, boy. I know that I was taking two, but you didn’t once complain, did you? That’s because you were outdoing me.”

“So, I’m the bigger bastard,” I declared, sensing that Damek’s mood was not shifting towards the dangerous sort that preceded a beating.

“Sadly, no,” Damek said. “You see, you’re only the bigger bastard when the other person is fully deceived. I knew what you were doing, and I let you do it. Do you know why?”

“Because you finally felt a change of heart after beating the crap out of me all those times?” I asked.

“No, because those were some bad grapes. Bastard in the field thought he’d trick us, and you’ll have the squirts later for it. My stomach, well, let’s just say it has more experience in these matters.”

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

It was a long time before Damek would talk to me again. It was only midmorning when we left Balunkrants unexpectedly, and Damek pushed us hard to put as much distance between ourselves and that little town as we possibly could as quickly as we could.

I suspected for a long time that the bastard wasn’t even counting his steps, so as I was rather bored from walking in absolute silence, I did it for him. He rebuffed any and all attempts I made at conversation, but his mind was clearly occupied by the fact that I knew what had happened. And how could I not? I’d lived with a whore of a mother for three years. I knew all the signs and most of the euphemisms people used for that sort of business.

We walked right on past the noonday sun, never stopping to eat any of the leftover bread I’d taken from Maluns and never pausing for a drink of water. The old man’s canvas sack was noticeably heavier, however, though I hadn’t seen Masha give him anything before we left, so he must have pinched the items in question or received them from the lady while I was out running pointlessly after river water.

At any rate, not long after noon, we passed a large party of travelers on the road: two gentlemen travelling by horse with another half dozen riding on a pair of wagons behind. They were also accompanied by twenty mercenaries divided between the vanguard and rearguard.

Damek had heard them coming long before I could see or hear them, and he muttered, “That sounds like a good number of folks. Probably Masha’s husband and whatever business associates he took with him to Gandras.”

After staying on the road for a little while longer ourselves, Damek declared, “Right, time to get to the side of the path. Let’s sit ourselves down and take the time to look properly miserable. Find us a bit of shade at least, Rio.”

The forest was not quite so close to the road on the south side of Balunkrants as it had been north of the town, but about fifty paces back there was a bend in the road where the trees were considerably closer than elsewhere. I led Damek back and seated him in amidst the gnarled roots of an ancient oak. We hid his canvas sack deeper in the roots behind him, lest the travelers think it funny to torment and rob old beggars, or lest they get the idea we actually had food and money and so pass on without laying down a donation for our prayers.

I seated myself on a hard root next to Damek to wait. The oak dug into the meat of my thigh, and I couldn’t help but squirm. In order to pass the time a little with some amusement, Damek said, “Squirm a little bit more and let that knot get into your crack. That way you’ll know some of what it means to be a catamite and so stop trying my patience all the damned time!”

I told him that I didn’t like the sound of that idea. “Then sit still, you fidgety little turd, and try to look more desperate. If those rich bastards coming up the road see you uncomfortable on that root, they might get the idea that you’re more accustomed to padded mattresses than the hard earth.”

“But I’m not comfortable,” I whined.

“Then learn to act like it. Hell, boy, you’re not going to get anywhere as a beggar if people think you have access to a better life. If you sit your arse calmly and with all comfort on that knot and never give a hint that your backside is chafing, those rich men will think to themselves, Oh, that poor little bastard. He has such a hard life that a knot in the arse is a comfort to him. People who think that are easily parted from their warrins, hoping to buy you and me a little bit of comfort for the night. Savvy?”

“So, begging is about faking?”

“I call it acting, lad. It might not be the most honorable profession in the world—acting that is—but it comes with a damned sight more respect than fraud. You and me, we’re performers. Our role is to make the fat bastards of this world feel just a little bit guilty. Too guilty, and they’ll beat the crap out of us and run us out of town so they don’t have to look at us all the time. But a little bit guilty, now there’s a payload in the off. Men and women who feel a little bit guilty feel remarkably soothed when they toss you a warrin. They feel they’ve paid some sort of debt to society. And the best thing is that they’re happy to keep on giving every time that guilt builds up inside.”

“You’re either one crazy bastard, Damek, or some sort of bloody genius,” I said.

“To you, boy, I’m both,” he replied. “Now, can you see them yet?”

I answered that I could and received a sharp command to shut up and start acting comfortable while being raped by the knot on the oak’s root. Given my immense discomfort, this was no mean feat, and the mayor of Balunkrants and his companions took a hell of a long time in drawing level with us.

The mercenaries in the vanguard cast the two of us weary looks, as though they suspected some sort of trick that would lead to an ambush being sprung. I had no idea of such things, but Damek told me later that robbers were fairly common on the road to Gandras. When I asked him whether we should be afraid, he simply told me that the robbers had more to fear than we did—or had I forgotten that my blind master was also a druid?

Anyhow, as soon as the vanguard had passed, Damek began to wail: “Coins for a prayer, masters? Any prayer you like. I know many a good one. Prayers for agues, prayers for sores, prayers for fevers and cramps and snores.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at Damek’s practiced rhyming.

“Prayers for your wives, prayers for your cocks, prayers against hunger and holes in your socks. Anything, masters.”

One of the men on horseback held up a hand to stall the train. He angled his beast in our direction and approached. “No, no,” he said in response to some muttered comment from his companion on horseback. “We’ve met with success in our recent business, so it is only right that we give thanks to Lady Ari, our God’s aspect of agriculture and trade.”

“Old man,” he said as he came to a stop at the edge of the road, “say a prayer of thanks. We have prospered in our business. Direct our gratitude to God on our behalf.” He drew up his purse, made a show of rummaging about in it, and then tossed a coin in Damek’s direction. It landed squarely in the blind man’s lap without him moving.

The man I took for the mayor of Balunkrants looked at me, eyebrow raised. “Is something wrong with your master, boy?”

“Yes, ban,” I answered. “My master is blind.”

“Ah,” he replied, “then take this as well.” He fished out a second coin and tossed it at me this time. “That one is free, lad. No prayers needed, though if your master feels so inclined, he can pray for our safety the rest of the way to Balunkrants, and for my wife also. She has been alone these two weeks, and no doubt misses me terribly. We’ve been trying for a child for months; pray to Mealde too, if you would.”

I managed to hold myself back from making a comment along the lines of She don’t miss you half as much now as you think, or She’s been trying help the process along a bit, but I found some measure of restraint I never knew I possessed and said, “Thank you, ban. We will pray for you three days and three nights.”

As soon as I said that, Damek began a prayer of thanksgiving to Ari. The mayor was satisfied and returned to his companions, waving them onward again. Once the last man of the rearguard had passed us by, Damek ceased his praying and stuck out his hand. “Give me that coin, Rio.”

I hesitated and Damek added, “You want a clubbing from my walking stick?”

“No,” I said and placed the coin—a full warrin—in his outstretched palm.

“Two warrins,” the blind man said, rubbing the silvers together. “And for no work at all. This is half a day’s pay for fieldwork. In the future, lad, don’t go overboard with your offers. I’d hate to build up too many neglected prayers, and offering continuous prayer for three days and three nights is a hell of a lot to shirk.”

“You mean—”

“Hell, boy! Don’t even ask that question. Of course I don’t complete any prayers. As long as those bastards think I’ll be praying for them, all’s well. But the reality is that he probably knows I’ll only pray so long as he can hear me and will stop the moment he’s out of range. Men like that hardly care about spiritual matters, though it certainly behooves them to make a show of it.”

“Because they’re all bastards?” I asked.

“Indeed. Now, help me up. I’d like to cover half our remaining distance to Wundansads before we stop to camp.”

“How far is it?”

“Seven miles from Balunkrants, and we’ve come about two miles since leaving, I think. Maybe more.”

“Seven thousand two hundred steps, or thereabouts,” I said.

“Damn, Rio,” Damek replied. “Initiative? From you?”

“Do I get a crust of bread to chew on while we walk as a reward?” I asked hopefully.

“Ha! Not till pigs crap gold, lad. Now, let’s go.”

When we finally stopped to camp for the night, it was in another clearing along the river like the one where we’d spent the previous night, only this time the riverbank was not nearly as steep and there were rushes growing everywhere. Damek ordered me to pick some to make a poor straw mat for us to sleep on.

As I worked, the blind man opened up again in conversation. “Think about those bastards we passed earlier on the road. Think about the life they have, the wealth they must possess. You and me, Rio, we will never get our hands on that many warrins. But, gods, if it isn’t worth dreaming about. It’d take a hell of a lot of work, let me tell you, and I for one am no friend of hard labor.”

“Damek,” I asked cautiously, “what the hell happened back there in Balunkrants this morning?”

He was silent for a time and I suspected I’d offended him. But then I realized that if I’d offended him, he’d have cursed me or beat me. Instead, he said nothing and did not move, and I began to suspect that he was having difficulty finding the words to explain.

“What did I tell you before we entered Balunkrants?”

I thought back. “You said something about giving people something for their money, even just a prayer, even if it is a poor exchange.” I paused, and when Damek didn’t reply I added, “Does this have something to do with that hand sign you used? I didn’t see you make it when the mayor passed by.”

He sighed. “In a roundabout way, lad. Our dear Masha was hardly the most innocent and helpful maid in the world, let me tell you. Turns out, as her husband said when he passed us by, she ain’t getting pregnant. In exchange for some food and not reporting us to the Inquisition, the lady required a…uh…seed implant.”

I eyed him dubiously for a few moments before what he’d said sunk home. “You have food for us?” I asked.

“Correction,” he said. “I have food for me. And wine.”

“What about me?”

“I didn’t see you do anything to help the lady’s…fever,” Damek snapped.

“Fever? I thought—”

“Oh, just shut the hell up already, you noisome turd. I can’t stand all this whining. ‘Damek, I’m hungry.’ ‘Damek, I’m sore.’ Go play with your cock or something; whatever little pricks like you do.”

He turned his attention to the canvas sack, from which he retrieved a crust of bread that looked like the leftovers of our breakfast at Masha’s. This was followed by a clay jug with a cork stopper in its mouth. Damek wasted no time in pulling the cork and tipping his head back for a long swallow.

I sidled over to him, but the blind man slapped a protective arm down around his wine jug. “No work, no food,” he said.

“But I had to run for water while you performed your seed implant,” I said.

“And did we use that water?”

“No, but that wasn’t my fault.”

“No excuses,” he said. “You failed to contribute, so you don’t get anything to eat. The rules are simple, Rio. If you don’t like them, you can find yourself a rich master and set up shop as his catamite. You’re quite experienced after that root today.” I glowered at him as he set to on the bread.

As he chewed, I eyed his open jug of wine greedily and began to formulate a plan. I searched for an old, dried reed among the pile we were seated on and began rolling it firmly between my fingers. It hollowed out quickly, making a nice long straw. Now for a distraction.

“What’s in Gandras?” I asked. “Why are we going there? Why not someplace else?”

Damek stopped chewing, took a swig of wine from the jug, and set it back down, his arm protectively about it once more. “Gandras,” he said finally, his voice distant, almost longing. “It is a hard place, a place filled with selfish men and unprincipled women. But it’s a prosperous place too. Remember what I said about guilt earlier?”

“Yes,” I replied. As he talked, I moved very slowly to set my hollowed reed into the mouth of the wine jug. I feared Damek’s extraordinary senses would find me out if I so much as twitched, and so I exerted all effort on ensuring the straw didn’t even touch the clay jug.

“Gandras,” Damek was saying, “if you are smart about it, lad, it’s like having a license to mint warrins. There’s money to be made everywhere, and a man hardly has to work for it if he knows what he’s doing.”

“Why don’t you train me to become a druid instead, like you and my mother?”

As he began answering this one with another long-winded explanation, I put my mouth to the straw and sucked.

The wine, while hardly cool, exploded into my mouth and filled me instantly with pleasure—the pleasure of outfoxing the old bastard, the pleasure of, for the first time in my life, being the bigger bastard. In reality, the wine was the cheap, bitter sort that is hardly suitable to be compared to cow piss, let alone be drunk greedily. But I drank, determined to make the blind bastard pay even a little bit for his treatment of me.

“I swore to your mother that I would not train you to be a druid,” Damek was saying as I sucked at the wine. “Your mother did not wish that curse on you. She forbade me, even, as part of our agreement. In time, perhaps, I’ll teach you some things, but we’ll have to see.”

He cocked his head in my direction suddenly, and I ceased sucking on the straw at once. “Are you even listening to me, you wastrel?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied quickly.

Damek sniffed at the air between us, smelling at my breath, and he quickly snatched the wine jug away. Thankfully, I still had hold of my straw and drew it out as he moved it. The blind man took a long drink before swirling the jug around and listening for the slosh within. Then, he clutched it tightly between his legs.

I sighed.

He continued our discussion as though he had not just caught me stealing his wine. Maybe he only suspected, and I think that was really the case, otherwise I would hardly have escaped a beating for my transgression.

“Your mother thought you had it in you to make a living in Gandras.”

“What?” I asked, surprised that my mother would say any such thing. “Like a tradesman or a shop keeper?”

“I said living, boy, not honest living. There’s money to be made off the rich and powerful in Gandras, and your mother thinks you have the gift for it. That’s why she hooked you up with me: I’ve been doing this ever since I was a young man freshly run away from home.”

“So you’re going to teach me to be a thief?”

“It’s remarkable how quickly you fluctuate between being attentive and being completely and irredeemably dense. Gods damn it, Rio, but you must have a bloody empty cavern inside that skull of yours with a walnut sized brain that can only absorb so much.”

He took a swig from the wine jug before returning it to its protective home between his legs. “We’re actors. We don’t break into houses and steal. Hell, that’s risky business. People keep swords and crossbows and all sorts of nasty things to lay waste the bastard who dares breach the sanctity of their home. All you and I will be after is sowing guilt and reaping warrins. And for that, we’ll be all things to all men, which is where the acting comes in.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, genuinely confused by Damek’s simultaneously elaborate and vague explanations of his—our—business.

“Of course, you don’t,” he muttered.

And then he tipped the wine jug back and swallowed every last drop in a single gulp.

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

Damek roused me from sleep the following morning before the first birds had begun to sing in the trees around us.

“Wake up, you lazy bastard,” he said as he shoved at me with his foot. “Can’t lie abed all the gods damned day when there’s work to be done!”

This was the second morning in a row now that the old man had woken me before the dawn. The previous morning, lying in my mother’s hovel, it had been understandable, as Inquisitor Koldan and the posse were coming to begin their hunt for my mother. This morning, however, the early waking was most unwelcome.

“Gods, Damek,” I said, “but why the hell do we have to get up when it’s still dark. Who are we going to beg from at this gods forsaken time of the morning?”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” he said. I could tell by the blind man’s tone that something was annoying him. That did not bode well for the day. “You forget that we have about a mile of walking to do before we even get to Balunkrants. Plus, people are more willing to hand money out to beggars in the morning, when the prospect of the day’s earnings has yet to be replaced with the cold, hard reality that today—like every other—will end with a thin soup and some stale bread because you’re too gods damned poor to afford anything else despite busting your arse in the fields for three long watches!”

I paused, watching the man closely. We drifted into an awkward silence before I said, “You were—”

“My father,” Damek offered before I even got my question out. “He was a poor man. Now get the hell up and let’s be off. We can’t sit here fart-arsing around all day long!”

“What about breakfast?” I asked.

“Do you see a plate of ham anywhere around you?” Damek snapped.

“Uh…” I looked about on reflex. The fire pit was cold now, the fire having burnt low sometime during the night. There was little evidence that anything so delicious as a slice of ham was lying around waiting for me to devour it. “No,” I said finally.

“Exactly! So let’s move your arse already and get to Balunkrants, where we can find ourselves something to eat.”

“What about the bread from yesterday?”

“Enough questions!”

Damek allowed me only so much time as was needed for me to empty my bowels and bladder before we cut our way through the forest again for the road. As soon as we made the pathway to Balunkrants, the sun only just beginning to grey the horizon by this time, Damek began lecturing me on trust and honesty once more.

“Let’s get one thing straight: we’re heading into civilization again, and this time you will be walking along as my servant. I’ll be trusting you to lead me right. More importantly than that, I’m going to trust you to keep your damned trap shut unless I give you permission to speak. I have a delicate, well-refined method to my begging. Observe, and maybe by the time we reach Gandras, you will have learnt a thing or two.”

I didn’t really give a damn about what he was saying. My stomach grumbled so loudly, and the hunger pains pulled so strongly upon my mind that I couldn’t have focused on what the old bastard was saying even if I’d wanted to.

He rambled on for a good while before he realized I was completely ignoring him. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked. “We’re not even five miles away from Maluns and you’re already acting like a bigger moron than you were when I found you.”

“It’s just…” I mumbled. I fell silent until I steeled my nerves against the hard stare coming from Damek’s blind eyes as he waited for a reply. “What are we doing here anyway?”

“We’re here to get food, you dense little twit. Perhaps we’ll even drum up some cash to help finance the next leg of our journey to Gandras. But it doesn’t matter one damned bit why the hell we go anywhere, leastways not to you. I’m your master, and you’d better get used to treating me as such—especially when we’ve got an audience, do you hear?”

I sighed and received a smack to the head with Damek’s walking stick for my troubles. We walked the final mile to Balunkrants in a cold, hateful silence. I don’t know what the hell was going through old Damek’s mind, but I know what went through mine, and they were not happy thoughts. I wanted to kill the gods damned bastard. Failing that, I wanted to lead him into a ditch, beat the crap out of him with that bloody walking stick of his, and then bugger off with the canvas pack he clutched so possessively.

Sadly, I did not get my chance. I was scared, really. Having learnt that the bastard was a druid had put paid to any plans I might’ve had of doing one. But that fear didn’t stop me from daydreaming as we walked.

When we finally came to the outskirts of Balunkrants, the sun was already lighting the world and the signs of business being open for the day were everywhere.

The town was larger than Maluns, though not by too terribly much. It was also a mill town, which contributed to its size, but it was also a bit more important than that. Maluns’ east-west road had ended at the river, at the doorstep of my father’s mill. The same east-west road in Balunkrants ended not at the riverbank, but in distant Pruvykhu. That’s right: there was a bridge, and the first one I’d ever seen in my life. The road across that bridge didn’t exactly run straight to the Arzemene capital, but it led that way at least, and by connecting to other highways and travelling for at least six weeks, you’d get there in the end.

Anyhow, Damek stopped me on the edge of town and held out his hand. “Now, lead me well. Let’s give these people a proper show of the blind man and his aid. And don’t mutter a gods damned word aside from Please, we’re so hungry. You think you can handle that?”

“What do you think I am? Some kind of moron?” I asked.

Damek slapped me upside the head and said, “Also, the number one rule of begging is to always offer something in return. People can’t resist hungry little buggers like yourself, but if I’m going to get anything—blind as I am—I’d better make some sort of trade, even a weak one. So don’t be surprised if you hear me calling out to pray for people. Provincials are all so damned superstitious that we should have plenty of customers lined up by lunchtime.”

“But you’re not a priest,” I said. “The Inquisition won’t like it.”

“There’s no law against offering to pray for people, boy. Hell, if we did bump into an Inquisitor—which is highly unlikely given Koldan’s presence in the area—but if we did, I’d probably get a commendation for my piety. Only, we both know I won’t be praying to Saint Zoran’s faceless god. Which is why you will keep your mouth shut, as I can’t trust you not to go blabbering about the seven and the fact I’m a druid of the old religion.”

“Fine,” I said sulkily. I adopted a whining tone and added, “Please, we’re so hungry.”

“Tone it down a bit, you prima donna,” Damek said, “but that’s the spirit.”

I took his hand as he offered it to me, and together we strolled into town, playing the most pitiful pair ever to grace Balunkrants. For my part, there was little acting involved. I was damned hungry and not above begging for any scrap of food someone might deign to throw at us.

Damek, on the other hand, offered to pray for any malady you could think of. Where he came up with so many different ailments and problems, I don’t know, but the bastard possessed a kind of mental depository for all sorts of random crap.

Anyhow, even more curious was that Damek had hooked his walking stick up beneath his armpit and was flashing some sort of secret sign everywhere we went. Using his right hand (I was holding his left), he touched his forefinger and thumb together to make a circle and then extended his middle, ring, and little fingers out towards the ground, fanning them as far apart as his bones and muscles would let him. He seemed to be gaining few, if any, responses to the signal, but it was clearly intended to advertize something, most likely his true occupation as druid of the old religion.

It took a while before anyone responded to either my pleas for food or Damek’s offers to pray, but eventually a well-dressed woman of the town hurried over to us. She wore a full-length dress after the current fashion, and its blue dye hinted at some wealth on her part. She was not particularly beautiful. In fact, if I were being kind, I’d say she was rather plain. Very kind. But she was clearly distressed.

“Oh, you poor people,” she said, placing her hand to her rather prodigious breasts in a dramatic display of sympathy. “Have you eaten today?”

“No!” I said before the last word had even escaped her mouth. She started at the desperate quickness of my answer, and Damek’s grip on my hand tensed angrily.

“Please, come with me,” the woman offered as soon as she’d recovered.

“What the boy meant to say,” Damek said, “was—”

“That is all right,” the lady interrupted. “A hungry stomach will talk.”

She turned about, motioning for us to follow, but Damek hung back to gain us a moment’s privacy. “Don’t be so damned eager, you little fool,” he growled. “Desperation is the least likely thing to attract us custom. Have some damned self-respect.”

“Says the man who calls himself Damek of the Crap-house,” I replied.

Were it not for the very public setting, I fancy Damek would really have brained me for that one. As it was, the woman who’d offered us food was waiting, and so we followed her dutifully.

She led us into one of the larger houses of Balunkrants, right opposite the home that would serve as the Inquisitor’s residence whenever one of those bastards came through this corner of Samye Canton.

“My name is Masha,” she said as soon as we were indoors. “My husband is the Ban of this dump, so he won’t mind me feeding those in need.” As she spoke, I noticed that Masha flashed the same hand signal Damek had been using in the street earlier.

“We would be honored to pray for you and your household,” the blind man offered.

Masha motioned us into some sort of dining room and then disappeared briefly to find a servant to make us some food.

“Damek,” I said. “That woman showed the same sign with her fingers that you have been making all morning.”

“What are you talking about? What sign?”

“You really think I’m a moron?” I asked. “I may be stupid, but I’m not as gods damned blind as you are. That thing you do with you right hand, the circle and three extended fingers. That sign. She made it.”

“Ah,” he said. “The lady must’ve missed that I was blind, but it’s lucky you spotted that.”

“What is it?”

Masha returned just then, and Damek made a great show of praying for her husband and herself, their prosperity, their future, and so on and so forth.

We ate breakfast, which, while nothing more than a few slices of bread with some sort of fruit spread, was the most delicious thing I’d had in a long time. I devoured my portion hungrily, and so I missed any and all exchanges being made between our hostess and Damek.

When the meal was finally done, the two of them rose and moved towards another room. As I began to follow, Damek said, “No, Rio. You must wait here a moment. The lady has need of certain…druid’s touches. Healing, yes. I will send for you if I need your aid.”

So I waited in the dining room as the dishes were cleared away by another servant. It was not long before Damek reappeared.

“I need you to fetch something for me,” he said. “Go into the kitchen and borrow a pot. Then go to the river and fill it with fresh flowing water for a tea. It must be fresh and running water, nothing that has been standing.”

“But Masha has servants who can do it,” I said lazily.

“I don’t trust any of them,” Damek replied. “And, besides, the lady has errands for them too.”

I looked suspiciously at him, eyebrow raised, wondering at his game. Eventually, as he stood resolutely waiting for some answer, I agreed and left to get his damned water.

It took me some time, and I must have cut quite the comical figure walking through Balunkrants with a pot of water sloshing about, especially as there was a well not a stone’s throw from Masha’s front door. Why the hell Damek needed river water, I couldn’t tell. In all my years with my mother, I’d never once heard her call expressly for river water, and she had spent a good number of years trying to think of all sorts of odd errands to send me on so she could service her male clients.

When I returned to Masha’s home with the water, the lady was seated in the dining room opposite Damek and looking considerably happier than she had before. She was also wearing entirely different clothing, a plainer dress that seemed simply to have been cast on with little thought for how it settled about her body.

“Get that water boiling,” Damek said to me. “I need it good and hot for a poultice.”

“I thought you said it was a tea,” I replied.

“Don’t talk back, you cheeky bastard,” Damek snapped, “and certainly not in front of this poor woman.”

I did as told and set the water to boiling. As I waited for it, I crept back towards the dining room door to eavesdrop, as something simply didn’t seem right to me anymore.

“Do you need us to stay?” Damek was asking. “You might need our care for a few days yet until you are…uh…better.”

“No!” Masha said quickly. “No, Damek. That is very kind, and I appreciate your prayers and…healing touch. But my husband is due to return from a trip to Gandras this afternoon or tomorrow. Poor man has been gone two weeks on business. He can care for me, I think.”

I heard the creak of his chair as Damek rose quickly. I ducked back into the kitchen as I recognized all the signs that a quick exit was in the offing, and I didn’t want to be caught listening in.

“Rio!” the blind man called. “Come, lad. We must be off. I will leave the ingredients for this lady’s balm with the servants. We must go at once. It would be best if we put some daylight between ourselves and Balunkrants before the evening, I think.”

We beat a hasty retreat from Masha’s home just as I was finally catching on to what had happened there that morning. The fact that Damek left absolutely nothing behind with any of the servants had been the final clue.

As I led him away towards the southern road, I said, with a wicked grin that I’m sure came through in my voice, “You know that she was gods damned ugly, Damek?”

“Shut up and walk,” he snapped.

(Next Chapter)