STALKER7

An ongoing story about professional dungeon delvers and the dirty, dangerous jobs they do for their wealthy patrons.

Previous Chapters

8 – BASTARD MENAGERIE

The sun had risen bright and strong but the dark waters of the Fekete Ver gave off a chill that nipped exposed skin. Mikal’s breath was actually clouding in the morning air.

Jakks saw him frowning. “It doesn’t freeze in the winter,” he said.

“What doesn’t?”

“The river. It gets cold enough up here to freeze the balls off a bull, but it never ices over,” the ranger said. “Never.”

Jakks was yanking his chain. Even the Upper Trond in Nagront froze when it got bitter enough. “That’s not possible.”

“And yet it’s true,” the ranger replied. “There’s a lot of that up here; shit that shouldn’t be but is.”

That’s not too ominous. Mikal didn’t say that out loud, partly because the rangers were their ride back and he didn’t want to rub the sergeant the wrong way and mostly because he didn’t want to see anymore words ghost away in the breeze. Instead, he shifted on the narrow bench in the back of the longboat and focused on the tree line on the steadily approaching far bank.    

Back at the fort, a fifth ranger named Myrth had joined Jakks and his squad when they were ready to shove off. A tall, muscular woman, she would see them over safe, then bring the boat back to the fort side. Myrth had scowled fiercely when she spied Mikal’s crew, and he wasn’t sure if she disapproved of them in particular, or if she was just pissed off at the world in general. Either way, Mikal had never met anyone who looked less like her name.

For the crossing, Shiver and Funk and company were sent to the stern. The longboat had oars stowed below the gunnels, but the five rangers were hauling it along a ferry line that snaked across to the opposite shore. A thick hemp rope, tarred tobacco brown and slick with wear, the line was strung across the river through iron rings that had been hammered into each of the western bridge supports on the outside stone face. Once everyone had settled in the boat, the rangers donned leather gloves and heaved together in long, practiced pulls.  that advanced the boat in swift, steady lurches.   

Davorin and Mikal’s offer to help had been quickly shut down. “You’d just trip up our stride,” Myrth had said. “Park your asses and don’t move ‘til we’re over.” Her tone suggested she wouldn’t mind if any of them fell overboard, and if they did, she wouldn’t stop to fish them out.  

As the boat was hauled near one of the central pillars, Orba pointed to the rust-scabbed iron rings. One was as large as a circus hoop with spikes on the outside rim. The other could maybe squeeze around Davorin’s thigh. “Why are they different sizes?”

One of the recruits, a weasel-faced adolescent named Fen puffed out his chest. He had been stealing glances at her and Shen since they strode onto the pier. “Them’s old slave shackles, ain’t that right, sergeant?”

Jakks sucked in a breath as he pulled the rope. “What’d I tell you about jabbering on the job, boot?”

“Sorry, sergeant.”

Jakks let the scolding sit a moment. Then, “He isn’t wrong. Fort lore records these were war-beast collars. Which is why some are large.”

“War-beasts?” Orba asked.

“Kusk, Abhor… the big ones.”

Orba absorbed this. “But those are – – dead, right? Long gone.”

“… Yes.” 

There was just enough hitch in Jakk’s answer to give it a whiff of lie.   

Great, Mikal thought.

Vera caught it too. “You don’t sound certain, Sergeant Jakks.”

The ranger heaved on the line again. “You want certain, stay home. This place is…” He groped for the word. “Precarious.”

Vera took in a breath and held it, weighing her thoughts. Then her eyes hardened. “We get skode down south,” she said softly. “They’re pretty fucking precarious.”

Mikal looked away. Vera deliberately fixed her gaze on Myrth.

“Mongrels, mostly,” Vera continued. “The Confederacy is littered with ruins and they like catacombs and crypts. Cellars. Anywhere underground.”

“Makes sense,” Myrth grunted. “Fuckers try the river all the time. Most drown. Some don’t. Patrols can’t catch them all.”

River water sloshed against the gunnel and Vera wiped her face like it had gotten wet. “What else we need to worry about?” she pressed.

Myrth snorted. “Oh, it’s a bastard menagerie over there. Skode, you know about. Blotgan too. Their warbands come down out of the mountains this time of year. Then you got ashtalon swarms. But they’re rare and roost high, so you only need to watch out if you go near cliffs, or a city. And then there’s the Dregs.”

Mikal cleared the lump in his throat. “Dregs. They are…?

“Scum. Fools,” the ranger answered. “Deserters. Fugitives fleeing the gallows. Idiots aiming to make their name in the March. Poor, desperate folk with nowhere else to go.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Stupid scabs convinced fortunes wait for the taking in the sick soil.” 

Orba, Shen, and Davorin were listening intently. Gellert was studying the river’s surface like there was something written in the dark current’s twists. Mikal considered asking about ashtalon swarms, but everyone was skittish enough without piling on another layer. Everyone except Lomer Jon.

“Well, thank the gods we got rangers to hold the line,” he sneered. “Shit, if I’d have known the fearsome Kermir March was rashy with miscreants and runaways, I’d have stayed in Nagront. Real ‘stuff of nightmares’.” 

Myrth shot him a hard look. “Posh words and a pair of flash shanks mean nothing to a pack of skode. Alley trash like you shrivel quicker than a spent prick.”

Lomer Jon snarled and started to stand up. As one, all five rangers turned and dead-eyed him. Mikal, Vera, and the others leaned back. Have at it. Toss him over like a chamber pot.

The Union man was a prat but he wasn’t stupid; he sat back down. The rangers went back to the ferry line.

The rope ended at the last pillar, a good hundred feet from shore. Jakks and his squad took up the oars and rowed the rest of the way to a second stubby pier partially hidden in a tangle of tall river grass. There, the sergeant and the other two recruits jumped out, ran to the shore and leveled their crossbows at the nearby undergrowth while Fen and Myrth threw their packs onto the pier. The procedure was done without a single order given, without a word exchanged, in fact, and had the fast, practiced movements of a military drill. The rangers were off-loaded and ready in under two minutes.     

The company of Shiver and Funk took considerably longer to clamber out of the boat. Myrth did a poor job of hiding her scorn, but opted to aim it, and her crossbow, at the trees like her comrades.

The instant their boots touched the pier’s wooden planks, she grabbed two oars and started rowing back toward the bridge supports.

And just like that – no fanfare, no clap of thunder or foreboding gust of wind, not even a curt farewell – Mikal, Vera, Davorin, Shen, Orba, Gellert, and Lomer Jon were standing on the north bank of the Fekete Ver, in the homeland of old Ur’Gench Dominion.

***

To be Continued.