Michael Kanuckel's Blog, page 2
December 7, 2013
Leveling up
I spend a lot of time playing role-playing games. Well, really I spend most of my time working, taking care of my kids, and trying to write, but I spend a lot of my FREE time playing role-playing games. I love them- especially the older ones on the Nintendo, like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. And one of the main things I love about them is something that a lot of other people seem to hate: level grinding.
You see, Japanese rpg's have a valuable life-lesson to teach us. In the game, as in life, you start out weak and unskilled. Over time, as you accomplish certain goals and defeat more and more enemies, you gain "experience points". And as you gain more XP's, you become more intelligent, stronger, wiser, better able to deal with situations, and gain new skills. See? Just like life. And just like real life, gaining XP's takes time. A LOT of time. And it takes determination.
Now, let's apply this model to writing. We'll call this "Novelist: the RPG".
You start out young and unaccomplished, armed with the basic skills needed to write a sentence, and the knowledge that writing is your dream. This is the goal of the game, then: to become that dream.
At first, things don't go so well. You try to write a story and it just doesn't seem right, and you trash it and start over again. But within the context of the game, each of those words you wrote add up to experience points. You are slowly but surely leveling up. After a certain point, the words seem to flow easier. The sentences become clearer. You are beginning to develop a voice. And so you learn some new skills. You are advancing!
Now comes the first real big fight of the game: letting someone read your work. Just like in the game, if you've gained enough levels and worked hard enough, you will win this battle. Someone (a teacher, a parent, a friend) will enjoy your story. And, also just like in a game, if you fail, you just go back to the last save point and keep on trying.
THAT is the real lesson here. You CANNOT fail at this game, unless you just quit. If you keep playing, you will win. You only have to build up enough levels of experience, and you can conquer ANYTHING.
Sadly, many people just give up and quit the game.
Every victory must be EARNED: that first successful story that your teacher really loved; the first short story that an editor accepted and published in his or her magazine; your first completed novel; the second one; the third; finding an agent; going independent; selling your work.
All of these are levels of the game, and each level, each test, requires more time, more work, and more experience if you're going to win.
It takes time. A game can take hours. But this, this real life test of your strength, determination, skill, and courage, takes years.
Or you can just quit.
I hope you don't.
I never will.
You see, Japanese rpg's have a valuable life-lesson to teach us. In the game, as in life, you start out weak and unskilled. Over time, as you accomplish certain goals and defeat more and more enemies, you gain "experience points". And as you gain more XP's, you become more intelligent, stronger, wiser, better able to deal with situations, and gain new skills. See? Just like life. And just like real life, gaining XP's takes time. A LOT of time. And it takes determination.
Now, let's apply this model to writing. We'll call this "Novelist: the RPG".
You start out young and unaccomplished, armed with the basic skills needed to write a sentence, and the knowledge that writing is your dream. This is the goal of the game, then: to become that dream.
At first, things don't go so well. You try to write a story and it just doesn't seem right, and you trash it and start over again. But within the context of the game, each of those words you wrote add up to experience points. You are slowly but surely leveling up. After a certain point, the words seem to flow easier. The sentences become clearer. You are beginning to develop a voice. And so you learn some new skills. You are advancing!
Now comes the first real big fight of the game: letting someone read your work. Just like in the game, if you've gained enough levels and worked hard enough, you will win this battle. Someone (a teacher, a parent, a friend) will enjoy your story. And, also just like in a game, if you fail, you just go back to the last save point and keep on trying.
THAT is the real lesson here. You CANNOT fail at this game, unless you just quit. If you keep playing, you will win. You only have to build up enough levels of experience, and you can conquer ANYTHING.
Sadly, many people just give up and quit the game.
Every victory must be EARNED: that first successful story that your teacher really loved; the first short story that an editor accepted and published in his or her magazine; your first completed novel; the second one; the third; finding an agent; going independent; selling your work.
All of these are levels of the game, and each level, each test, requires more time, more work, and more experience if you're going to win.
It takes time. A game can take hours. But this, this real life test of your strength, determination, skill, and courage, takes years.
Or you can just quit.
I hope you don't.
I never will.
November 25, 2013
True Romance.
I have been told my whole life that it is wrong to objectify women. That a woman is more than just a body, that she has a mind, and a personality, and should not be judged by her looks or looked at as a sexual "thing." Fine, that's all well and good. I personally don't see anything wrong with looking at attractive people and thinking they're attractive, but let's leave that be because it's beside the point.
My main problem is that these same women will drool all over themselves and make disgusting remarks about the men on the covers of their "romance" novels. Ever heard of a double standard, ladies?
The rise of these types of novels on the Kindle and elsewhere irks me to no end, to be perfectly frank about it. Slap something together that's about a hundred pages full of sex and gods-awful dialogue, go find some piece of meat to look vapidly out from the cover with his washboard abs and shaved groin all but completely exposed, and boom! you've got yourself a book. And the "ladies" just squeal and coo over them.
Some of us take the craft of storytelling seriously, folks. Some of us are trying to accomplish something. Some of us spend years building up our skills, honing our voices, and we want nothing more but to reach a real audience and touch them. Touch their hearts, not their junk.
My main problem is that these same women will drool all over themselves and make disgusting remarks about the men on the covers of their "romance" novels. Ever heard of a double standard, ladies?
The rise of these types of novels on the Kindle and elsewhere irks me to no end, to be perfectly frank about it. Slap something together that's about a hundred pages full of sex and gods-awful dialogue, go find some piece of meat to look vapidly out from the cover with his washboard abs and shaved groin all but completely exposed, and boom! you've got yourself a book. And the "ladies" just squeal and coo over them.
Some of us take the craft of storytelling seriously, folks. Some of us are trying to accomplish something. Some of us spend years building up our skills, honing our voices, and we want nothing more but to reach a real audience and touch them. Touch their hearts, not their junk.
November 10, 2013
Clip Show 3
A short story from Small Matters.
Faces In the Wall
Tommy’s bedroom was done in fake wood paneling, the kind that’s supposed to look like pine. When he lay in his bed and looked at the wall next to it, the whorls and knots sometimes looked like faces. He first noticed them when he was five years old.
It wasn’t a scary thing, though sometimes there were monstrous faces, demon faces, there in the fake wood paneling. It was a secret thing, his secret thing, like the stone steps that cut into the hill down the street, almost hidden in spring by the tall grass. Walking to the brick schoolhouse on top of the hill, he and his cousin Joe would go up the crooked stones. Joe said the steps were made by trolls, long ago. The faces in his bedroom wall were like that. Secret. Fun.
He watched the faces in his wall at night, and tried not to listen to his parents fight. He did like Telly and Big Bird said on Sesame Street, and used his imagination. He made up stories for the wall people, while out in the rest of the house his father came home late and drunk again, and his mother screamed that she’d had enough of his crap again, and something got broken or thrown across the living room.
Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it.
The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books.
Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked.
Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.
He trailed his hand along the soft not-wood of his bedroom wall, surveying his own small kingdom. There was a pack of goblins, kind of like snarling dogs with people faces. A kindly lion, a shaggy wizard with smiling eyes, ghosts made of smoke. Men and women and little children, some with names he knew and some he didn’t. He loved them, his wall people. He loved them, and they loved him, and they didn’t spend their time looking for some reason to be mad at him, like his daddy.
Something broke out in the kitchen or the living room, and Tommy closed his eyes. Slurred, incoherent words bellowed out of his daddy’s mouth as he stumbled into something and fell. His mommy screamed that she was serious this time, she was calling the cops, she’d had enough.
Someone new had appeared on the wall when he opened his eyes again. Her hair was a length of midnight, one eye twinkling with good humor- the other was covered with a patch made from a dark knot in the fake wood paneling. A tri-corner hat sat jauntily on her head. A naked sword was tucked into the big leather belt she wore low on her hips. Her small hands were planted on those hips, and she was laughing as if she’d just heard the funniest thing in the world. And behind her, oh could it be? Yes, there was her ship, the Will o’ the Wisp, most dreaded vessel of the Westwall Sea.
Tommy knew her name just as soon as he saw her, though she was new to the wall and he’d never seen her before. Esmeras, Queen of the Westwall. She stole the treasures of fat, greedy kings, and brought them to the people of the wall who needed it most. She could wield a fiddle as well as she could a sword, always ready for a song or a fight. And more than anything, she would love a little boy of her own, to sail with her on all kinds of adventures.
In the living room, in the real world, one of mommy’s porcelain figurines fell from the coffee table and shattered on the floor. A scream, followed by the bullish roaring of Tommy’s daddy. The real world, Tommy thought, is where the real monsters live.
Esmeras smiled at him, and behind her the tall sails of the Will o’ the Wisp flapped like fresh laundry in a summer breeze. Tommy could smell the tangy salt air of the sea, could hear fat white gulls screeching and wheeling in the sky. Adventure was waiting.
When the pirate queen’s small hand came through the wall, transformed from the color of fake pine paneling to the soft, creamy white of flesh, Tommy didn’t hesitate for a second. Smiling, he took it in his own, and sailed off to find his fortune.
Faces In the Wall
Tommy’s bedroom was done in fake wood paneling, the kind that’s supposed to look like pine. When he lay in his bed and looked at the wall next to it, the whorls and knots sometimes looked like faces. He first noticed them when he was five years old.
It wasn’t a scary thing, though sometimes there were monstrous faces, demon faces, there in the fake wood paneling. It was a secret thing, his secret thing, like the stone steps that cut into the hill down the street, almost hidden in spring by the tall grass. Walking to the brick schoolhouse on top of the hill, he and his cousin Joe would go up the crooked stones. Joe said the steps were made by trolls, long ago. The faces in his bedroom wall were like that. Secret. Fun.
He watched the faces in his wall at night, and tried not to listen to his parents fight. He did like Telly and Big Bird said on Sesame Street, and used his imagination. He made up stories for the wall people, while out in the rest of the house his father came home late and drunk again, and his mother screamed that she’d had enough of his crap again, and something got broken or thrown across the living room.
Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it.
The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books.
Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked.
Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.
He trailed his hand along the soft not-wood of his bedroom wall, surveying his own small kingdom. There was a pack of goblins, kind of like snarling dogs with people faces. A kindly lion, a shaggy wizard with smiling eyes, ghosts made of smoke. Men and women and little children, some with names he knew and some he didn’t. He loved them, his wall people. He loved them, and they loved him, and they didn’t spend their time looking for some reason to be mad at him, like his daddy.
Something broke out in the kitchen or the living room, and Tommy closed his eyes. Slurred, incoherent words bellowed out of his daddy’s mouth as he stumbled into something and fell. His mommy screamed that she was serious this time, she was calling the cops, she’d had enough.
Someone new had appeared on the wall when he opened his eyes again. Her hair was a length of midnight, one eye twinkling with good humor- the other was covered with a patch made from a dark knot in the fake wood paneling. A tri-corner hat sat jauntily on her head. A naked sword was tucked into the big leather belt she wore low on her hips. Her small hands were planted on those hips, and she was laughing as if she’d just heard the funniest thing in the world. And behind her, oh could it be? Yes, there was her ship, the Will o’ the Wisp, most dreaded vessel of the Westwall Sea.
Tommy knew her name just as soon as he saw her, though she was new to the wall and he’d never seen her before. Esmeras, Queen of the Westwall. She stole the treasures of fat, greedy kings, and brought them to the people of the wall who needed it most. She could wield a fiddle as well as she could a sword, always ready for a song or a fight. And more than anything, she would love a little boy of her own, to sail with her on all kinds of adventures.
In the living room, in the real world, one of mommy’s porcelain figurines fell from the coffee table and shattered on the floor. A scream, followed by the bullish roaring of Tommy’s daddy. The real world, Tommy thought, is where the real monsters live.
Esmeras smiled at him, and behind her the tall sails of the Will o’ the Wisp flapped like fresh laundry in a summer breeze. Tommy could smell the tangy salt air of the sea, could hear fat white gulls screeching and wheeling in the sky. Adventure was waiting.
When the pirate queen’s small hand came through the wall, transformed from the color of fake pine paneling to the soft, creamy white of flesh, Tommy didn’t hesitate for a second. Smiling, he took it in his own, and sailed off to find his fortune.
Oops!
Well, I accidentally hit return and published the title of this blog post with no blog. Anyway. Tom Petty really did say it best- the waiting is the hardest part.
I just had a free promo event over at Amazon for my short story collection, Small Matters. Over a hundred copies went out. These types of promos are done, of course, in the hopes of getting reviews and spreading the word about your work. So far, one review is the net result of this giveaway, and I have had zero new sales. Granted, it's only been a couple of days- but somehow I have the feeling that I'll probably only see two or three reviews out of the deal. And how much do the reviews really matter? I don't know. My novel, Winter's Heart, has 12 reviews. So far this month, I've sold 8 or 9 copies.
Patience is a virtue, I know. I've only been doing this for 2 months. Slowly, slowly, things might build up.
or not.
Like the man said: the waiting is the hardest part.
I just had a free promo event over at Amazon for my short story collection, Small Matters. Over a hundred copies went out. These types of promos are done, of course, in the hopes of getting reviews and spreading the word about your work. So far, one review is the net result of this giveaway, and I have had zero new sales. Granted, it's only been a couple of days- but somehow I have the feeling that I'll probably only see two or three reviews out of the deal. And how much do the reviews really matter? I don't know. My novel, Winter's Heart, has 12 reviews. So far this month, I've sold 8 or 9 copies.
Patience is a virtue, I know. I've only been doing this for 2 months. Slowly, slowly, things might build up.
or not.
Like the man said: the waiting is the hardest part.
November 9, 2013
The reluctant Hero, the Conflicted Villian
Harold Emery Lauder.
There are a lot of places to go and examples I could sight for the theme of the conflicted hero. I could talk about Aragorn and Boromir from The Lord of the Rings. I could talk about the main character and narrator from Interview with the Vampire. But to me, no one captures the character of the conflicted character quite like Harold Lauder.
I think pretty much everyone is familiar with The Stand, so I'll be brief. Harold is a nerd and an outcast in his small town home. He's smart, socially awkward, fat, and in love with a girl way, way out of his league. People don't like him. His parents don't like him, instead doting over their pretty, popular daughter. Harold feels like it's him against the world because it is.
And then the world ends.
In a twist of fate that could only happen in a novel, the only two people left alive in Harold's little town are himself and the girl he loves. And she still rejects him, although she's more than happy to accept his help navigating the apocalypse until someone better comes along in the form of handsome, rugged, ex-jock Stu Redman. Still, Harold endures- until he finds out that Fran, the girl of his dreams, has been making fun of him the whole time in her journal.... when she isn't gushing over Redman.
Harold is bitter, and it's hard to blame him. Even in the new world, he's a reject. When his group of survivors makes it to Boulder, the new center of civilization in the post-apocalyptic world, he isn't even asked to join the committee that will govern it despite his keen intelligence and ability to improvise and think around corners.
And still he carries on.
The new people he meets in Boulder don't know about the fat, awkward boy Harold was. A hard life has taken the fat and the acne from him and left a lean, capable man that others can respect. But the seed of hate planted so long ago cannot be dug up now.
Reluctant and conflicted- that's Harold Lauder. He could build a new life for himself in Boulder. He could forget the old grudges, the old blood-debts. He could forget about Fran and find a girl of his own. But in his mind, letting go of that old hate would be invalidating himself; his whole identity is wrapped up in it. Still, he almost turns aside and accepts the man he is now. And so the Dark Man sends him a woman to keep him occupied, live out his lonely boy fantasies with, and corrupt completely. Some will say he had a chance at redemption and blew it. I say Harold Emery Lauder never had a chance at all.
His conflict, his struggle, and his fall make him the most human character in The Stand.
Rather than trying to create a hero with a dark past, or a justified villian, we should all strive to make a character like Harold.
One who is a human being.
There are a lot of places to go and examples I could sight for the theme of the conflicted hero. I could talk about Aragorn and Boromir from The Lord of the Rings. I could talk about the main character and narrator from Interview with the Vampire. But to me, no one captures the character of the conflicted character quite like Harold Lauder.
I think pretty much everyone is familiar with The Stand, so I'll be brief. Harold is a nerd and an outcast in his small town home. He's smart, socially awkward, fat, and in love with a girl way, way out of his league. People don't like him. His parents don't like him, instead doting over their pretty, popular daughter. Harold feels like it's him against the world because it is.
And then the world ends.
In a twist of fate that could only happen in a novel, the only two people left alive in Harold's little town are himself and the girl he loves. And she still rejects him, although she's more than happy to accept his help navigating the apocalypse until someone better comes along in the form of handsome, rugged, ex-jock Stu Redman. Still, Harold endures- until he finds out that Fran, the girl of his dreams, has been making fun of him the whole time in her journal.... when she isn't gushing over Redman.
Harold is bitter, and it's hard to blame him. Even in the new world, he's a reject. When his group of survivors makes it to Boulder, the new center of civilization in the post-apocalyptic world, he isn't even asked to join the committee that will govern it despite his keen intelligence and ability to improvise and think around corners.
And still he carries on.
The new people he meets in Boulder don't know about the fat, awkward boy Harold was. A hard life has taken the fat and the acne from him and left a lean, capable man that others can respect. But the seed of hate planted so long ago cannot be dug up now.
Reluctant and conflicted- that's Harold Lauder. He could build a new life for himself in Boulder. He could forget the old grudges, the old blood-debts. He could forget about Fran and find a girl of his own. But in his mind, letting go of that old hate would be invalidating himself; his whole identity is wrapped up in it. Still, he almost turns aside and accepts the man he is now. And so the Dark Man sends him a woman to keep him occupied, live out his lonely boy fantasies with, and corrupt completely. Some will say he had a chance at redemption and blew it. I say Harold Emery Lauder never had a chance at all.
His conflict, his struggle, and his fall make him the most human character in The Stand.
Rather than trying to create a hero with a dark past, or a justified villian, we should all strive to make a character like Harold.
One who is a human being.
October 20, 2013
Landscaping
It's been a little while since I had time to do this- the real world has such a way of interrupting my life. I found a real job, just before I was completely broke and on the streets; unfortunately, it's a job that doesn't even cover my monthly bills....
But enough of reality. That isn't why we're here, is it?
Today I wanted to talk about one of the most necessary items in any fantasy writer's toolbox- world-building.
Have you ever watched a fantasy or sci-fi film and found yourself completely lost from the word "Go"? You just had no idea what was going on, or what motivated the lead characters, or WHERE they were, even? That's bad world-building. Now, don't get me wrong- to me, a story is doing it's job most effectively when the reader (or audience, in case of film) is flung right into the middle of the action at the beginning. But after that opening salvo, a writer needs to draw back a little bit and set the stage. A bit of dialogue here, a little history and architecture there- in bits and pieces, through repetition of "facts" and the addition of layers of new ones, little by little a world is built. Words that seem strange to the reader at first become common- hell, sometimes whole LANGUAGES of the stuff. Places begin to take on a look and a feel in the reader's mind, as do names and faces. The reader becomes invested- he or she cares about this world, and the protagonist treading through it. This is world-building, and it's essential to the writer whose domain lies outside of the modern world we all live in.
Let me refer you to the master of this: the Master of Masters, in my humble opinion, and the one I must always bow down to in reverence; J.R.R. Tolkien.
Anyone who knows the man and his works will know immediately what I mean- when it comes to building a world (and populating it), no one can hold a candle to him. He doesn't tell his readers there are elves in Middle-Earth- he shows them in many forms, and gives the reader a knowledge of their culture and history, and gives them language, and song, and legend. And he does the same for all the races inhabiting his master-work, The Lord of the Rings. And as for "literal" world-building- well, if Middle-Earth actually existed, you could use Tolkien's book and walk from the Shire to Rivendell without ever losing your way. That is how detailed his descriptions are.
World-building. I cannot stress it enough. If you are an author of the fantastic, you must hone this skill. Don't tell me what your world is. Show me, through language and history and legend and song. Don't tell me how old it is- make me feel its age. Don't tell me what peoples dwell there- show them to me, as they live and breath.
I think of it as landscaping- because if you want to grow a garden, you must first till the soil.
But enough of reality. That isn't why we're here, is it?
Today I wanted to talk about one of the most necessary items in any fantasy writer's toolbox- world-building.
Have you ever watched a fantasy or sci-fi film and found yourself completely lost from the word "Go"? You just had no idea what was going on, or what motivated the lead characters, or WHERE they were, even? That's bad world-building. Now, don't get me wrong- to me, a story is doing it's job most effectively when the reader (or audience, in case of film) is flung right into the middle of the action at the beginning. But after that opening salvo, a writer needs to draw back a little bit and set the stage. A bit of dialogue here, a little history and architecture there- in bits and pieces, through repetition of "facts" and the addition of layers of new ones, little by little a world is built. Words that seem strange to the reader at first become common- hell, sometimes whole LANGUAGES of the stuff. Places begin to take on a look and a feel in the reader's mind, as do names and faces. The reader becomes invested- he or she cares about this world, and the protagonist treading through it. This is world-building, and it's essential to the writer whose domain lies outside of the modern world we all live in.
Let me refer you to the master of this: the Master of Masters, in my humble opinion, and the one I must always bow down to in reverence; J.R.R. Tolkien.
Anyone who knows the man and his works will know immediately what I mean- when it comes to building a world (and populating it), no one can hold a candle to him. He doesn't tell his readers there are elves in Middle-Earth- he shows them in many forms, and gives the reader a knowledge of their culture and history, and gives them language, and song, and legend. And he does the same for all the races inhabiting his master-work, The Lord of the Rings. And as for "literal" world-building- well, if Middle-Earth actually existed, you could use Tolkien's book and walk from the Shire to Rivendell without ever losing your way. That is how detailed his descriptions are.
World-building. I cannot stress it enough. If you are an author of the fantastic, you must hone this skill. Don't tell me what your world is. Show me, through language and history and legend and song. Don't tell me how old it is- make me feel its age. Don't tell me what peoples dwell there- show them to me, as they live and breath.
I think of it as landscaping- because if you want to grow a garden, you must first till the soil.
October 12, 2013
Clip Show 2
Sequels always stink, but not this time! Here's a portion of chapter two of my fantasy novel, Winter's Heart.
Two
Wuster
The town of Wuster lay down in a valley surrounded by gentle hills and farmland. From where he stood, Steven could look down past the high walls and into the town itself. Here some of the old buildings still stood, great constructs of concrete and glass. There was a library, with a wide staircase contained within pillars and a domed roof, and there were still some books left in the stacks. The Tecks of the In-Betweens congregated here and in Hatis City off to the east to study the books that remained and try to make sense of them. Some of the old roads survived as well, rising up into the air on tall concrete supports. Steven passed under one of these on the way into town and could almost imagine the shining steel Autos that had once run on these, hurtling people to their destinations in minutes or hours instead of hours or days. In an Auto, Steven could be at the market and back home again in less time than it had taken for him to get this far, but these highways stood empty now, cracked, decaying paths for the dead.
If wishes were fishes, he thought, then none would starve.
The gate stood open, flowing with a busy town’s morning traffic of traveling Merchants and workers. Men, pertminh, and even dwarves with old-fashioned cloaks draped over their broad shoulders milled about. Tension wormed its way into Steven’s stomach, and his hand lingered near the hilt of his sword. His mother had often told him stories of the dwarves when he was a child; of their great stone halls underneath the mountains, and the bravery of their warriors, and the skill of their smiths. And, while Steven believed in the tales of the Long an Long Ago, he knew that times had changed. Dwarves were not to be trusted unless you knew them by name, and even then it was a gamble.
Wuster made Steven uncomfortable. Too many people crammed into one place. The gate gave way to an open market that seemed to go on for days, boasting items the simple grocer in Deadbuck had never dreamed of. Merchants from every part of the world called out to the passerby, boasting everything from wine made of the forbidden fruits of Manjan to rugs from the mystic land of Ishtani. Here there were taverns with names like The Pierced Nipple and Flower’s Dew Inn and The Sticky Beard, and shops that sold clothing of poor quality, apparel for the Lace-Cunnie Girls, and shoddy boots that were all the vagrant workers could afford.
A noble woman in fine dress passed him. She was young, beautiful in an evil sort of way, and surrounded by an entourage of serving girls and young men. They all wore face paint in the latest style; giant rings of ultrabright purple or green around their eyes and harsh lines shot down the cheekbones, white base underneath it all. They were all laughing and falling out of their clothes, stumbling through a street filled with the poor and desperate. It seemed to amuse them. The noble lady wore shoes with long, sharp heels. As Steven watched, she took a careless step and drove one of these spikes into the back of a man who was either dead or unconscious in the road. He moved on, passing a drunk lying with one foot still in the doorway of The Hair of the Goblin, holding the door open. No one was coming to move him. A dog with blood-clotted fur growled at Steven and then went back to lapping up the man’s black vomit. Two doors down, a Merchant in a satin waistcoat was standing just inside the mouth of a narrow alley with a Lace-Cunnie on her knees before him, his hands gripping her hair as one would hold a horse’s reins.
Lord Jesus, Steven thought. Help me finish my business quickly an be on my way home. This town stinks.
He walked on, and just barely felt the weight of his leather purse lessening slightly on his shoulder. An instant later the strap was shifting, falling away from him. He gripped it with his left hand and whirled, sword out, on a thing that might once have been a man underneath all the dirt and stink. The thin creature’s face contorted in a grimace of fear and hate that made Steven’s heart flutter in his chest. The thing hissed at him and actually pulled on the purse; he was rail-thin, but strong. Cursing, Steven used his sword and cut the front of the creature’s stained shirt open, drawing thin, red cut across a scrawny chest the color of old ashes and a pitiful stack of ribs. The thing bared his black gums at him once more, and fled.
“Ye didn’t have to do that,” a voice said. Steven turned and found himself face to face with a young girl. She was obviously a Lace-Cunnie, though it hurt his heart to see one so young. She might have grown to be a beautiful woman, with her sheaf of black hair, white skin, and light blue eyes, but none in her profession grew old with any grace. In a few years, there would be nothing left but a dull, flabby shell dancing on table tops for a handful of Nepos. “Peter rides the Black Snake, as so many do here, an can’t help himself. Ye didn’t have to hurt him.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” Steven said, studying the girl. He wondered what brought a girl into such circumstances. Maybe her family had been left without a father, and she had no choice but to work for food. Or maybe she just enjoyed it. There were plenty of girls in the world who joined the Lace-Cunnie Guild because they wanted to. Plenty who gave themselves up for nothing and to anyone. “But I could have.”
The girl seemed to be studying him as well, pale blue eyes locked on his face, arms crossed over her small breasts. She was dressed only in a gown with thin straps, more a slip than a dress, slit up the side all the way to the bottom of her ass, and a pair of leather boots. Her bare shoulders were turning red in the cold and wind.
“How old are you?” Steven asked.
“Young as ye want me to be,” the girl said, standing closer to him and letting her arms drop away from her chest even though it was freezing cold.
“That’s not what I meant,” Steven said, stepping back to compensate for her getting closer. “I don’t want anything from you, dear. An I am sorry for attacking that man, but it couldn’t be helped.” She was already turning away, now that she had seen he wasn’t interested in doing business.
“Hey,” Steven said, taking a gold coin out of his purse as she turned back. He tossed it through the air and she snatched it, just opening her delicate hand and letting it come to her, not drawing any attention to it. “Buy yourself a coat, for the love of the Carpenter! It’s freezin out here.”
The girl’s eyes lit up, filled with the coin. She ran off, leaving him alone in the crowd. Steven prayed that she would use it for food and clothing, and not drink- or something worse.
Anything a person might want could be found here, in the back alleys of the market. The law had no presence here. In this twisting, labyrinthine network of bars and shops a man could easily obtain a young girl (or boy), weapons, drugs of all kinds. There were potions that made a man feel as if he could fly, powders that made his manhood throb and grow, herbs that could give him the inner peace of a Dalli or the blind rage of a Berserker. Most popular, and cheapest, was pipe weed. Curse of the poor and ignorant, it was cheaper than drink and easy to find because it could be grown anywhere. It burned with a thick, pungent smoke that irritated the eyes and dulled the wits.
Wuster was built over a series of small, gentle hills, naturally low ground. The earth was always marshy in the spring and smelled of muck and waste. Poor laborers dwelled here, while the wealthy sought out the higher ground. And even in the back-market there were different classes of Merchant.
Steven made for the high ground, sword clearly visible at his side. The poorly constructed taverns and drug shops gave way to a campus of run-down stone and brick buildings covered in dead, black ivy. Gold plaques were embedded in the mossy stone, some of them still readable. The buildings had names like Bowie Hall and Cedar Dorm. A crumbling wall and an arched gate separated the buildings from the dirty street. The words Wuster University were worked into the iron bars. In a different time, Steven would have been trying to save money to send his boys to a place like this.
That time had passed.
Now was the time of the Guilds. It was the Age of the Guards and the Hunters, the Merchants and the Tecks, the Runners and the Carpenters. It was the time of the Lace-Cunnies, the Thieves, and the Mercenaries. Magic and gods. The world of lights that banished darkness, the world of Jesus and Allah and Buddha, of the Auto and PIP-SEE, was gone, washed away like a child’s sand castle lost in the tide.
The way was steep and Steven knew he was passing through a type of border. Dream Street, the low market, was behind him. On the other side of the hill the real town of Wuster sat peacefully, separated from the markets and all the noise and filth by the earth’s own wall. Keeping watch over this border were the Guild Halls, which needed no golden plaques. They were known on sight by anyone, long wooden buildings built only for function. In Wuster they all stood in a row on one side of a cobbled street named Libbey’s Road, squat and ugly next to the grand building that was the library. The only thing that designated one Hall from the rest was a small wooden sign hanging over the door of each building. On the signs were the simple insignias of each Guild; a revolver for the Guards, sword for the Hunters, an open book for the Tecks, a strongbox for the Merchants, a hammer for the Carpenters, a sprinting figure for the Runners. A neat stone path lined with torches ran from the door of each Hall out to the street, each path complete with a pair of Guards.
In Wuster the Guards were easy to spot, in their denim pants and loose white shirts. Older members also wore a pounded silver star. And of course they carried the guns, the heavy revolvers of blue steel and oiled sandalwood. The Guards watched him pass, eyeing his weapon, some young and itching for action, hands lingering near the grips of their guns, others old veterans who nodded at him over thick, crossed arms covered in scars. Steven saluted each one he passed, using a sign that was known between their Guilds.
The shops were of a better quality now, due to their close proximity to the Guild Halls. Some even had real glass display windows. Steven started looking into some of the shops. There was a man he knew- not someone he would call his friend, but they knew each other- who owned a shop that dealt in things like his PIP-SEE can. He called them Antiquities, which to Steven seemed to be a nice way of saying useless old shit. This not-quite-a-friend was of the Brown Clans, who came from the lands across the Western Sea. Some said these people invented the barter, a game Steven was not very good at. He would have to be good today.
He found the name he was looking for and stepped into the dusty, crowded front room of a shop filled with junk from the Age of the Old Folk. Furniture stood in cluttered heaps, whole forests of tables and chairs and chests of drawers marked with price tags and placards bearing unbelievable sums (two hundred and fifty kwic for a foot stool?). But there were also strange machines of metal and Plastik, that magical material that had dominated the Third Age. Here was an odd little box with cords hanging from the back of it and a series of small buttons along the front. A piece of glass was embedded in the front of the box, black and dead like the eye of a shark. The only other thing on the table was also Plastik, black like the box. There were dozens of buttons on its flat surface, each one bearing a letter, or a number, or some other symbol Steven didn’t recognize. This seemed to go along with the box. A small card set up in front of the two items read: VIDSCREEN. There was no price, so the thing had to cost a fortune.
The Antiquities Merchant himself was almost invisible amid the heaps of stuff in his shop. Steven finally spotted him, a tidy little man in a plain white shirt and brown vest, the chain of a pocket watch (these were still manufactured, both by the pertminh and skilled human craftsmen on the continent of Uthurnia, the land that most of the folk in Vondellius traced their roots back to) hanging from his pocket. His hair was a little thinner, and maybe he’d put on a few pounds, but Steven still recognized his small face and his quick, dark eyes.
“Hello, Shams,” he said, giving the man a polite bow.
The Merchant drew back a bit, surprised to hear his name. Who was this? Who had sent him? One of the numbers men? Surely not. Surely not yet. He still had some time, praise belong to Phabos, and with luck he would come up with enough of the money by then to avoid getting anything broken. His brother had warned him, before he got on the ship in Ishtani, not to let himself be corrupted by the temptations of the Rich Land. Ah, but it was so hard, and he was just a simple man. He felt the words “I have the money!” rising to his lips, but he choked them back and looked at the man in front of him. There was something familiar about him.
“Do not tell me,” Shams said. “Do not tell me, give me half the second.” He stared at his guest for a long moment. “Steven of Deadbuck!” he said at last, filled with more relief than his guest could know. He came around the counter with his arms already outstretched to embrace Steven, who grinned as he was enveloped by the small man. Shams smelled of strange oils, some earthy cologne, but Steven returned his gesture. “Welcome. A thousand welcomes to you, my friend!”
Steven and Shams weren’t exactly friends. He saved the man’s life once, though- Shams swore to it. When he first got off the boat and set his feet on the shores of Vondellius (the Rich Land, he called it- his home of Ishtani he called the Dirt Land), he set up shop in Deadbuck for some reason. Steven could only blame it on the fact that the man obviously knew nothing about his new homeland. Deadbuck was like any other village; poor and uneasy about strangers. After a few weeks of watching the small man standing in front of his shop, hands stuffed in his pockets and an uneasy look on his face (Shams had been, in fact, very uneasy; he went into this venture with his brother-in-law and his family, and if Phabos was not kind he would have to return home and work off his debt on the family’s olive farm), Steven sat down with him over a small meal and suggested that his business might do better in Wuster. Wuster was not as rich a town as Gileon, where the nobles of Leeland “summered”, nor was it as big a city as Hatis, but there were many nobles on the hill and many prosperous Merchants. Shams took his advice, moving and joining the Merchant’s Guild to get their backing and support, and soon prospered. Some time later, he sent Steven a mahogany chest of drawers and a barely legible letter thanking him for saving his life.
“How have you been?” Steven asked.
“Thank you,” Shams said, smiling. “Wonderful, just wonderful.” He was up to his neck in debt because of his addiction to playing the Numbers, he may have gotten a Lace-Cunnie girl pregnant, and recently sold a music box to an important noble that he’d sworn dated back to the days of the Second Age that was nothing but a trinket made by a poor craftsman in the Carpenter’s Guild. “I have been never better. I am sending for the wife and son soon. They come on the ship, to the Rich Land. Very exciting.”
“That’s great,” Steven said.
“And what brings you to Wuster?” Shams asked. “It is many miles to get here from your home. Dangerous in the cold.”
“I brought you something.” He put his purse on the counter and brought out the PIP-SEE container.
“And what do we have here, my friend,” Shams said, going back to his place on the other side of the counter. The smiling face had vanished quicker than a thief’s dagger, replaced by a look of bland disinterest so good that Steven had to smile. The man was a stranger in a strange land, but he was good at what he did.
“I think you know what it is,” Steven said, pushing it closer to him on the counter.
Of course Shams knew what it was. A man would have had to been born blind to not know what it was. And the price it would fetch him! He could sell it today, this very hour, and pay off his debt to Richard Pope and all the other whoresons who were closing in on him, and still have enough left over to put a down payment on a house on the other side of the hill. He could move his wife and son into Hawethorne Ridge, where the other respectable Merchants lived, instead of packing them into the tiny apartment the Guild provided him. He could put the hill between himself and that bitch of a girl who had held him with her legs until he finished inside her (this was a common thing among the Lace-Cunnies- they targeted Merchants and tried to get pregnant by them, hoping to get a house of their own in trade for their silence about who the baby’s father was). His seed was growing in her, and his wife and son were coming soon from Ishtani, and this one thing could solve all of his problems. He knew a dozen collectors who would purchase this from him before the sun set. And if he set up an auction for it, the price would rise to heights unknown (but not undreamed of).
The only problem was, this white beggar knew what he had.
Hunters, Shams thought. No better than vultures. A Merchant of his standing depended on the Hunters to survive, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. They were always bringing him jewelry with blood grimed into it, broken tools, all manner of unusable trash they found that they thought might be worth something. And now, of all the cruel luck, here comes someone he knows, someone he owes a life debt to, with something they both know to be quite valuable.
“Let’s not play games,” Steven said. “I’m not in the mood. I know the value of this thing, an so do you.” Steven had no idea about the thing’s actual value, and was sure he was going to get ripped off. But he thought he’d come away from this with more than enough to suit him. After a moment of silence in which Shams only stared at him, weighing and measuring him, Steven sighed and took it back. “Well,” he said, “I can see you’re not interested. Sorry to bother you. It’s a real shame though,” he went on, turning toward the door. “I heard there’s a visiting noble in town lookin for something just like this. He wouldn’t see a man like me, of course, but the Merchant who brought him this would surely make a fortune off the deal. Oh well. Good to see you, Shams.”
Steven put his hand on the door. Turned the brass knob. Started to pull the door open.
“All right,” Shams said. “All right. Come back.”
Steven let the door swing shut and came back to the counter.
He set the container back down. Shams pulled down a large glass on a brass arm, looking through it. His face swam behind the glass, two giant brown eyes and a preposterous nose that shifted and elongated whenever he moved the slightest bit. Steven didn’t know why he had to inspect it so closely.
“There is very little damage,” Shams said, mostly to himself. He was immersed in his business. The first trick any Merchant had to learn, his father had told him, was how to look as if he is an expert in things for which there is no expertise. “Very good condition. And the pull tab is intact! This is full?” He took the container and set it on a small silver scale. “Weight is... thirteen ounces.” He brought it back to the counter. “No rust, no dents, this was kept well.” He looked at Steven through the glass with huge, watery eyes. “Where did you get this, my friend? It will help the sale if I can give the potential buyer a little history.”
“A friend,” Steven said. “I believe it’s been in his family for a very long time.”
“Well, I- wait just a moment,” Shams said, turning the container over. “What is this?” The Merchant found a small metal pick under his counter and used it to chip something off the bottom of the container. Something small and stained pink fell to the counter with a click. Shams took it up between his thumb and forefinger and held it under his glass. “Part of a tooth? Something tried to bite through the container. There is a dent, and this chipped... fang is the word, I believe. Now what would try to do that, my friend?”
Steven sighed. “You know what I do for a living, Shams.”
The Merchant laughed. “I cannot sell this. Take it away from me at once.”
“What?” Steven said. Shams backed away a step. “However I got it doesn’t change what it is. It’s of the Old Folk! There’s pictures of PIP-SEE in every magazine book I’ve ever seen. You could sell that before I even got halfway back home, an for Jesus knows how much.”
Shams shook his head. “No respectable client of mine will purchase this thing. But,” he went on, seeing Steven’s face darken, “we have a history. Let me see what else you have, and then we will discuss a price for everything. But I do not like it. For no one else will I do this, so do not go telling your Hunters that Shams Alkehn buys your foul spoils.”
Steven emptied his purse on the counter, knowing he’d been defeated. There was a mostly empty vial of some liquid called SLEEP-RITE, some rings, a book with most of the front cover torn off. Shams looked it all over for a long time, paying no attention to the way Steven was crossing his arms and staring at him. He inspected things with his glass, picking them up with a gloved hand (he put the glove on after discovering the goblin tooth embedded in the PIP-SEE container, but it was only for theatrics). The only sound in the dry, dusty shop was the ticking of his pocket watch.
I am going to be able to close for the rest of the year after this, Shams thought. He was careful not to smile as he thought this. Steven Boughmount was a little smarter than he looked. But only a little bit, the praise be to Phabos. Shams was going to be debt free by the time the moon rose tonight. And he had plans for that Lace-Cunnie girl as well. In a couple of days she would no longer be a concern.
“These things are all worthless,” he said after an appropriate amount of time had passed for it to seem as if he’d been in deep deliberation about the value of the items on his counter. “Even the PIP-SEE container is now little more than garbage. But for you, because we are old friends, I will say seventy-five.”
Steven smiled. Things weren’t as bad as he’d thought. “Seventy-five gold?”
Shams looked at him, studying his face, and then burst out laughing. “You have fallen into a dream! Wipe Tullken’s sleepsand from your eyes and return to the world of men! For these things I will give you seventy-five kwic, and not one nepo more. Believe me,” he continued, pointing one brown finger at Steven as he stood there with his mouth hanging open, “this is a good deal. This is best price!”
“That’s an insult, not an offer,” Steven said quietly. “You could sell the rest of the potion left in this bottle for seventy-five kwic. An you could get one gold just for the Plastik, with its label intact the way it is.”
“You don’t tell me my business!” Shams said. “What do you know?”
“More than you thought, I guess,” Steven said.
“All right,” Shams said. “I do not like it, but I will pay one gold. Best price.”
“I don’t think so.” Steven started shoving things back into his purse. “I thought that, with our history, you might be fair with me. Guess I should have known better. I think I’ll go an find someone who speaks my language.”
Unbelievably, Shams saw the deal of his life slipping through his fingers. That could not be. His mastery of the trade was indisputable in Ishtani. His father once said of him, “Shams could have sold Kilgor the Void.” But that was in Ishtani, where in every circumstance there were strict rules to fall back on, and everyone observed them. Things were not like this in Vondellius. Here, tempers flared without the slightest provocation. Blood was shed in the streets on a daily basis, with no justification.
“Wait,” Shams said as Steven got to the door again. “Wait, for the mercy of the gods! What did you have in mind?”
“Forget it,” Steven said, pulling the door open so hard the bell above it almost cracked. “I should have let you die in Deadbuck, you damned sandeater.” He walked out, disappearing into the crowd. Shams ran after him, his face dark red. Never had he been so insulted. No, never had he dreamed that he might one day be that insulted!
“Vulture!” he said, hurling the insult out into the crowd to find the white beggar. “When you die, not even the wild dogs will eat your foul flesh! Take it all of your worthless trinkets and sell them to the Culters!” He made a fork of his forefinger and pinky on his left hand and spit through it, and stormed back into his shop.
Steven walked off, not really paying attention to where he was going, sick in his heart and shaking with anger. He couldn’t believe he said that to someone who, though he wasn’t exactly a friend, was an acquaintance he’d been on good terms with. What was he thinking? It’s the town, he thought to himself. It’s the stink of the town. But that was only an excuse. One of his father’s favorite sayings (never spoken when Steven’s mother was around) was “Excuses are like assholes- everybody’s got one.”
He’d lashed out in anger, and there was no getting around it. The Merchant tried to rip him off, and he attacked him. Seventy-five kwic was fine, really, for his purposes. Steven knew a man who would sell him an evergreen tree for ten. Buck was his name. Buck’s father had planted whole fields of sapling trees before his son was even born. He called it an investment in the future, and he was right. There weren’t many people who celebrated Christmas, but the evergreen tree was an important part of many winter celebrations. Those who worshipped Aukwine got a tree and decorated it with silver charms, to thank her for the last year and pray that the next one would bring good things. Followers of Makross burned one as a token sacrifice. Buck made so much money during the winter that he didn’t need to work the rest of the year, and Steven envied a man with nothing better to do all summer long than go fishing and stroll along the fields. Steven’s tree wouldn’t be burned, or prayed over. It would only stand in a corner of the living room, a symbol of green and life in the coldest night. It would say another year was done, and thank the Carpenter that all was well.
And there still would have been some money left over for gifts. Steven would have done for his family what his father was never able to. But he lost his temper. There was still money in his purse, but that was spoken for. It was for the stuff of life. He was depending on the sale of his goblin spoils for the holiday. Another of his father’s sayings occurred to him; a child buys what he wants, an adult buys what he needs. And what he needed was meat for his children; and eggs, and milk, and bread, and new clothes for spring to replace the ones they had outgrown since the last time it was warm and green.
What did the Merchant scream at him? Take all of your trinkets and sell them to the Culters. Was it worth the risk? Heather wouldn’t think so, but she didn’t understand how important this was to him. She couldn’t care less about Christmas, being a casual follower of Aukwine and the other gods. And there was no way to be sure if there was a risk at all. All of the In-Betweens shared a village mentality, and probably only half of what was said about the Culters was true.
One thing he knew for sure was that they called themselves the Children of Kilgor, some god Steven knew very little about. Supposedly he was a dark god, what the people called Black, worshipped by goblins and trolls. Sir Tristan’s Bestiary made no mention of the Black races having anything like organized religion, so he doubted this was true. It was said that the Children practiced magic, and made human sacrifices, and, wildest of all, mingled with the Black races and even laid down with them. All of it was ridiculous, the product of perverted imaginations and bored housewives.
But he asked himself again: was it worth the risk? He decided that it was. Odds were he had nothing to fear from these Culters, and if they were interested in buying the things he had to sell then he should pursue the opportunity.
Two
Wuster
The town of Wuster lay down in a valley surrounded by gentle hills and farmland. From where he stood, Steven could look down past the high walls and into the town itself. Here some of the old buildings still stood, great constructs of concrete and glass. There was a library, with a wide staircase contained within pillars and a domed roof, and there were still some books left in the stacks. The Tecks of the In-Betweens congregated here and in Hatis City off to the east to study the books that remained and try to make sense of them. Some of the old roads survived as well, rising up into the air on tall concrete supports. Steven passed under one of these on the way into town and could almost imagine the shining steel Autos that had once run on these, hurtling people to their destinations in minutes or hours instead of hours or days. In an Auto, Steven could be at the market and back home again in less time than it had taken for him to get this far, but these highways stood empty now, cracked, decaying paths for the dead.
If wishes were fishes, he thought, then none would starve.
The gate stood open, flowing with a busy town’s morning traffic of traveling Merchants and workers. Men, pertminh, and even dwarves with old-fashioned cloaks draped over their broad shoulders milled about. Tension wormed its way into Steven’s stomach, and his hand lingered near the hilt of his sword. His mother had often told him stories of the dwarves when he was a child; of their great stone halls underneath the mountains, and the bravery of their warriors, and the skill of their smiths. And, while Steven believed in the tales of the Long an Long Ago, he knew that times had changed. Dwarves were not to be trusted unless you knew them by name, and even then it was a gamble.
Wuster made Steven uncomfortable. Too many people crammed into one place. The gate gave way to an open market that seemed to go on for days, boasting items the simple grocer in Deadbuck had never dreamed of. Merchants from every part of the world called out to the passerby, boasting everything from wine made of the forbidden fruits of Manjan to rugs from the mystic land of Ishtani. Here there were taverns with names like The Pierced Nipple and Flower’s Dew Inn and The Sticky Beard, and shops that sold clothing of poor quality, apparel for the Lace-Cunnie Girls, and shoddy boots that were all the vagrant workers could afford.
A noble woman in fine dress passed him. She was young, beautiful in an evil sort of way, and surrounded by an entourage of serving girls and young men. They all wore face paint in the latest style; giant rings of ultrabright purple or green around their eyes and harsh lines shot down the cheekbones, white base underneath it all. They were all laughing and falling out of their clothes, stumbling through a street filled with the poor and desperate. It seemed to amuse them. The noble lady wore shoes with long, sharp heels. As Steven watched, she took a careless step and drove one of these spikes into the back of a man who was either dead or unconscious in the road. He moved on, passing a drunk lying with one foot still in the doorway of The Hair of the Goblin, holding the door open. No one was coming to move him. A dog with blood-clotted fur growled at Steven and then went back to lapping up the man’s black vomit. Two doors down, a Merchant in a satin waistcoat was standing just inside the mouth of a narrow alley with a Lace-Cunnie on her knees before him, his hands gripping her hair as one would hold a horse’s reins.
Lord Jesus, Steven thought. Help me finish my business quickly an be on my way home. This town stinks.
He walked on, and just barely felt the weight of his leather purse lessening slightly on his shoulder. An instant later the strap was shifting, falling away from him. He gripped it with his left hand and whirled, sword out, on a thing that might once have been a man underneath all the dirt and stink. The thin creature’s face contorted in a grimace of fear and hate that made Steven’s heart flutter in his chest. The thing hissed at him and actually pulled on the purse; he was rail-thin, but strong. Cursing, Steven used his sword and cut the front of the creature’s stained shirt open, drawing thin, red cut across a scrawny chest the color of old ashes and a pitiful stack of ribs. The thing bared his black gums at him once more, and fled.
“Ye didn’t have to do that,” a voice said. Steven turned and found himself face to face with a young girl. She was obviously a Lace-Cunnie, though it hurt his heart to see one so young. She might have grown to be a beautiful woman, with her sheaf of black hair, white skin, and light blue eyes, but none in her profession grew old with any grace. In a few years, there would be nothing left but a dull, flabby shell dancing on table tops for a handful of Nepos. “Peter rides the Black Snake, as so many do here, an can’t help himself. Ye didn’t have to hurt him.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” Steven said, studying the girl. He wondered what brought a girl into such circumstances. Maybe her family had been left without a father, and she had no choice but to work for food. Or maybe she just enjoyed it. There were plenty of girls in the world who joined the Lace-Cunnie Guild because they wanted to. Plenty who gave themselves up for nothing and to anyone. “But I could have.”
The girl seemed to be studying him as well, pale blue eyes locked on his face, arms crossed over her small breasts. She was dressed only in a gown with thin straps, more a slip than a dress, slit up the side all the way to the bottom of her ass, and a pair of leather boots. Her bare shoulders were turning red in the cold and wind.
“How old are you?” Steven asked.
“Young as ye want me to be,” the girl said, standing closer to him and letting her arms drop away from her chest even though it was freezing cold.
“That’s not what I meant,” Steven said, stepping back to compensate for her getting closer. “I don’t want anything from you, dear. An I am sorry for attacking that man, but it couldn’t be helped.” She was already turning away, now that she had seen he wasn’t interested in doing business.
“Hey,” Steven said, taking a gold coin out of his purse as she turned back. He tossed it through the air and she snatched it, just opening her delicate hand and letting it come to her, not drawing any attention to it. “Buy yourself a coat, for the love of the Carpenter! It’s freezin out here.”
The girl’s eyes lit up, filled with the coin. She ran off, leaving him alone in the crowd. Steven prayed that she would use it for food and clothing, and not drink- or something worse.
Anything a person might want could be found here, in the back alleys of the market. The law had no presence here. In this twisting, labyrinthine network of bars and shops a man could easily obtain a young girl (or boy), weapons, drugs of all kinds. There were potions that made a man feel as if he could fly, powders that made his manhood throb and grow, herbs that could give him the inner peace of a Dalli or the blind rage of a Berserker. Most popular, and cheapest, was pipe weed. Curse of the poor and ignorant, it was cheaper than drink and easy to find because it could be grown anywhere. It burned with a thick, pungent smoke that irritated the eyes and dulled the wits.
Wuster was built over a series of small, gentle hills, naturally low ground. The earth was always marshy in the spring and smelled of muck and waste. Poor laborers dwelled here, while the wealthy sought out the higher ground. And even in the back-market there were different classes of Merchant.
Steven made for the high ground, sword clearly visible at his side. The poorly constructed taverns and drug shops gave way to a campus of run-down stone and brick buildings covered in dead, black ivy. Gold plaques were embedded in the mossy stone, some of them still readable. The buildings had names like Bowie Hall and Cedar Dorm. A crumbling wall and an arched gate separated the buildings from the dirty street. The words Wuster University were worked into the iron bars. In a different time, Steven would have been trying to save money to send his boys to a place like this.
That time had passed.
Now was the time of the Guilds. It was the Age of the Guards and the Hunters, the Merchants and the Tecks, the Runners and the Carpenters. It was the time of the Lace-Cunnies, the Thieves, and the Mercenaries. Magic and gods. The world of lights that banished darkness, the world of Jesus and Allah and Buddha, of the Auto and PIP-SEE, was gone, washed away like a child’s sand castle lost in the tide.
The way was steep and Steven knew he was passing through a type of border. Dream Street, the low market, was behind him. On the other side of the hill the real town of Wuster sat peacefully, separated from the markets and all the noise and filth by the earth’s own wall. Keeping watch over this border were the Guild Halls, which needed no golden plaques. They were known on sight by anyone, long wooden buildings built only for function. In Wuster they all stood in a row on one side of a cobbled street named Libbey’s Road, squat and ugly next to the grand building that was the library. The only thing that designated one Hall from the rest was a small wooden sign hanging over the door of each building. On the signs were the simple insignias of each Guild; a revolver for the Guards, sword for the Hunters, an open book for the Tecks, a strongbox for the Merchants, a hammer for the Carpenters, a sprinting figure for the Runners. A neat stone path lined with torches ran from the door of each Hall out to the street, each path complete with a pair of Guards.
In Wuster the Guards were easy to spot, in their denim pants and loose white shirts. Older members also wore a pounded silver star. And of course they carried the guns, the heavy revolvers of blue steel and oiled sandalwood. The Guards watched him pass, eyeing his weapon, some young and itching for action, hands lingering near the grips of their guns, others old veterans who nodded at him over thick, crossed arms covered in scars. Steven saluted each one he passed, using a sign that was known between their Guilds.
The shops were of a better quality now, due to their close proximity to the Guild Halls. Some even had real glass display windows. Steven started looking into some of the shops. There was a man he knew- not someone he would call his friend, but they knew each other- who owned a shop that dealt in things like his PIP-SEE can. He called them Antiquities, which to Steven seemed to be a nice way of saying useless old shit. This not-quite-a-friend was of the Brown Clans, who came from the lands across the Western Sea. Some said these people invented the barter, a game Steven was not very good at. He would have to be good today.
He found the name he was looking for and stepped into the dusty, crowded front room of a shop filled with junk from the Age of the Old Folk. Furniture stood in cluttered heaps, whole forests of tables and chairs and chests of drawers marked with price tags and placards bearing unbelievable sums (two hundred and fifty kwic for a foot stool?). But there were also strange machines of metal and Plastik, that magical material that had dominated the Third Age. Here was an odd little box with cords hanging from the back of it and a series of small buttons along the front. A piece of glass was embedded in the front of the box, black and dead like the eye of a shark. The only other thing on the table was also Plastik, black like the box. There were dozens of buttons on its flat surface, each one bearing a letter, or a number, or some other symbol Steven didn’t recognize. This seemed to go along with the box. A small card set up in front of the two items read: VIDSCREEN. There was no price, so the thing had to cost a fortune.
The Antiquities Merchant himself was almost invisible amid the heaps of stuff in his shop. Steven finally spotted him, a tidy little man in a plain white shirt and brown vest, the chain of a pocket watch (these were still manufactured, both by the pertminh and skilled human craftsmen on the continent of Uthurnia, the land that most of the folk in Vondellius traced their roots back to) hanging from his pocket. His hair was a little thinner, and maybe he’d put on a few pounds, but Steven still recognized his small face and his quick, dark eyes.
“Hello, Shams,” he said, giving the man a polite bow.
The Merchant drew back a bit, surprised to hear his name. Who was this? Who had sent him? One of the numbers men? Surely not. Surely not yet. He still had some time, praise belong to Phabos, and with luck he would come up with enough of the money by then to avoid getting anything broken. His brother had warned him, before he got on the ship in Ishtani, not to let himself be corrupted by the temptations of the Rich Land. Ah, but it was so hard, and he was just a simple man. He felt the words “I have the money!” rising to his lips, but he choked them back and looked at the man in front of him. There was something familiar about him.
“Do not tell me,” Shams said. “Do not tell me, give me half the second.” He stared at his guest for a long moment. “Steven of Deadbuck!” he said at last, filled with more relief than his guest could know. He came around the counter with his arms already outstretched to embrace Steven, who grinned as he was enveloped by the small man. Shams smelled of strange oils, some earthy cologne, but Steven returned his gesture. “Welcome. A thousand welcomes to you, my friend!”
Steven and Shams weren’t exactly friends. He saved the man’s life once, though- Shams swore to it. When he first got off the boat and set his feet on the shores of Vondellius (the Rich Land, he called it- his home of Ishtani he called the Dirt Land), he set up shop in Deadbuck for some reason. Steven could only blame it on the fact that the man obviously knew nothing about his new homeland. Deadbuck was like any other village; poor and uneasy about strangers. After a few weeks of watching the small man standing in front of his shop, hands stuffed in his pockets and an uneasy look on his face (Shams had been, in fact, very uneasy; he went into this venture with his brother-in-law and his family, and if Phabos was not kind he would have to return home and work off his debt on the family’s olive farm), Steven sat down with him over a small meal and suggested that his business might do better in Wuster. Wuster was not as rich a town as Gileon, where the nobles of Leeland “summered”, nor was it as big a city as Hatis, but there were many nobles on the hill and many prosperous Merchants. Shams took his advice, moving and joining the Merchant’s Guild to get their backing and support, and soon prospered. Some time later, he sent Steven a mahogany chest of drawers and a barely legible letter thanking him for saving his life.
“How have you been?” Steven asked.
“Thank you,” Shams said, smiling. “Wonderful, just wonderful.” He was up to his neck in debt because of his addiction to playing the Numbers, he may have gotten a Lace-Cunnie girl pregnant, and recently sold a music box to an important noble that he’d sworn dated back to the days of the Second Age that was nothing but a trinket made by a poor craftsman in the Carpenter’s Guild. “I have been never better. I am sending for the wife and son soon. They come on the ship, to the Rich Land. Very exciting.”
“That’s great,” Steven said.
“And what brings you to Wuster?” Shams asked. “It is many miles to get here from your home. Dangerous in the cold.”
“I brought you something.” He put his purse on the counter and brought out the PIP-SEE container.
“And what do we have here, my friend,” Shams said, going back to his place on the other side of the counter. The smiling face had vanished quicker than a thief’s dagger, replaced by a look of bland disinterest so good that Steven had to smile. The man was a stranger in a strange land, but he was good at what he did.
“I think you know what it is,” Steven said, pushing it closer to him on the counter.
Of course Shams knew what it was. A man would have had to been born blind to not know what it was. And the price it would fetch him! He could sell it today, this very hour, and pay off his debt to Richard Pope and all the other whoresons who were closing in on him, and still have enough left over to put a down payment on a house on the other side of the hill. He could move his wife and son into Hawethorne Ridge, where the other respectable Merchants lived, instead of packing them into the tiny apartment the Guild provided him. He could put the hill between himself and that bitch of a girl who had held him with her legs until he finished inside her (this was a common thing among the Lace-Cunnies- they targeted Merchants and tried to get pregnant by them, hoping to get a house of their own in trade for their silence about who the baby’s father was). His seed was growing in her, and his wife and son were coming soon from Ishtani, and this one thing could solve all of his problems. He knew a dozen collectors who would purchase this from him before the sun set. And if he set up an auction for it, the price would rise to heights unknown (but not undreamed of).
The only problem was, this white beggar knew what he had.
Hunters, Shams thought. No better than vultures. A Merchant of his standing depended on the Hunters to survive, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. They were always bringing him jewelry with blood grimed into it, broken tools, all manner of unusable trash they found that they thought might be worth something. And now, of all the cruel luck, here comes someone he knows, someone he owes a life debt to, with something they both know to be quite valuable.
“Let’s not play games,” Steven said. “I’m not in the mood. I know the value of this thing, an so do you.” Steven had no idea about the thing’s actual value, and was sure he was going to get ripped off. But he thought he’d come away from this with more than enough to suit him. After a moment of silence in which Shams only stared at him, weighing and measuring him, Steven sighed and took it back. “Well,” he said, “I can see you’re not interested. Sorry to bother you. It’s a real shame though,” he went on, turning toward the door. “I heard there’s a visiting noble in town lookin for something just like this. He wouldn’t see a man like me, of course, but the Merchant who brought him this would surely make a fortune off the deal. Oh well. Good to see you, Shams.”
Steven put his hand on the door. Turned the brass knob. Started to pull the door open.
“All right,” Shams said. “All right. Come back.”
Steven let the door swing shut and came back to the counter.
He set the container back down. Shams pulled down a large glass on a brass arm, looking through it. His face swam behind the glass, two giant brown eyes and a preposterous nose that shifted and elongated whenever he moved the slightest bit. Steven didn’t know why he had to inspect it so closely.
“There is very little damage,” Shams said, mostly to himself. He was immersed in his business. The first trick any Merchant had to learn, his father had told him, was how to look as if he is an expert in things for which there is no expertise. “Very good condition. And the pull tab is intact! This is full?” He took the container and set it on a small silver scale. “Weight is... thirteen ounces.” He brought it back to the counter. “No rust, no dents, this was kept well.” He looked at Steven through the glass with huge, watery eyes. “Where did you get this, my friend? It will help the sale if I can give the potential buyer a little history.”
“A friend,” Steven said. “I believe it’s been in his family for a very long time.”
“Well, I- wait just a moment,” Shams said, turning the container over. “What is this?” The Merchant found a small metal pick under his counter and used it to chip something off the bottom of the container. Something small and stained pink fell to the counter with a click. Shams took it up between his thumb and forefinger and held it under his glass. “Part of a tooth? Something tried to bite through the container. There is a dent, and this chipped... fang is the word, I believe. Now what would try to do that, my friend?”
Steven sighed. “You know what I do for a living, Shams.”
The Merchant laughed. “I cannot sell this. Take it away from me at once.”
“What?” Steven said. Shams backed away a step. “However I got it doesn’t change what it is. It’s of the Old Folk! There’s pictures of PIP-SEE in every magazine book I’ve ever seen. You could sell that before I even got halfway back home, an for Jesus knows how much.”
Shams shook his head. “No respectable client of mine will purchase this thing. But,” he went on, seeing Steven’s face darken, “we have a history. Let me see what else you have, and then we will discuss a price for everything. But I do not like it. For no one else will I do this, so do not go telling your Hunters that Shams Alkehn buys your foul spoils.”
Steven emptied his purse on the counter, knowing he’d been defeated. There was a mostly empty vial of some liquid called SLEEP-RITE, some rings, a book with most of the front cover torn off. Shams looked it all over for a long time, paying no attention to the way Steven was crossing his arms and staring at him. He inspected things with his glass, picking them up with a gloved hand (he put the glove on after discovering the goblin tooth embedded in the PIP-SEE container, but it was only for theatrics). The only sound in the dry, dusty shop was the ticking of his pocket watch.
I am going to be able to close for the rest of the year after this, Shams thought. He was careful not to smile as he thought this. Steven Boughmount was a little smarter than he looked. But only a little bit, the praise be to Phabos. Shams was going to be debt free by the time the moon rose tonight. And he had plans for that Lace-Cunnie girl as well. In a couple of days she would no longer be a concern.
“These things are all worthless,” he said after an appropriate amount of time had passed for it to seem as if he’d been in deep deliberation about the value of the items on his counter. “Even the PIP-SEE container is now little more than garbage. But for you, because we are old friends, I will say seventy-five.”
Steven smiled. Things weren’t as bad as he’d thought. “Seventy-five gold?”
Shams looked at him, studying his face, and then burst out laughing. “You have fallen into a dream! Wipe Tullken’s sleepsand from your eyes and return to the world of men! For these things I will give you seventy-five kwic, and not one nepo more. Believe me,” he continued, pointing one brown finger at Steven as he stood there with his mouth hanging open, “this is a good deal. This is best price!”
“That’s an insult, not an offer,” Steven said quietly. “You could sell the rest of the potion left in this bottle for seventy-five kwic. An you could get one gold just for the Plastik, with its label intact the way it is.”
“You don’t tell me my business!” Shams said. “What do you know?”
“More than you thought, I guess,” Steven said.
“All right,” Shams said. “I do not like it, but I will pay one gold. Best price.”
“I don’t think so.” Steven started shoving things back into his purse. “I thought that, with our history, you might be fair with me. Guess I should have known better. I think I’ll go an find someone who speaks my language.”
Unbelievably, Shams saw the deal of his life slipping through his fingers. That could not be. His mastery of the trade was indisputable in Ishtani. His father once said of him, “Shams could have sold Kilgor the Void.” But that was in Ishtani, where in every circumstance there were strict rules to fall back on, and everyone observed them. Things were not like this in Vondellius. Here, tempers flared without the slightest provocation. Blood was shed in the streets on a daily basis, with no justification.
“Wait,” Shams said as Steven got to the door again. “Wait, for the mercy of the gods! What did you have in mind?”
“Forget it,” Steven said, pulling the door open so hard the bell above it almost cracked. “I should have let you die in Deadbuck, you damned sandeater.” He walked out, disappearing into the crowd. Shams ran after him, his face dark red. Never had he been so insulted. No, never had he dreamed that he might one day be that insulted!
“Vulture!” he said, hurling the insult out into the crowd to find the white beggar. “When you die, not even the wild dogs will eat your foul flesh! Take it all of your worthless trinkets and sell them to the Culters!” He made a fork of his forefinger and pinky on his left hand and spit through it, and stormed back into his shop.
Steven walked off, not really paying attention to where he was going, sick in his heart and shaking with anger. He couldn’t believe he said that to someone who, though he wasn’t exactly a friend, was an acquaintance he’d been on good terms with. What was he thinking? It’s the town, he thought to himself. It’s the stink of the town. But that was only an excuse. One of his father’s favorite sayings (never spoken when Steven’s mother was around) was “Excuses are like assholes- everybody’s got one.”
He’d lashed out in anger, and there was no getting around it. The Merchant tried to rip him off, and he attacked him. Seventy-five kwic was fine, really, for his purposes. Steven knew a man who would sell him an evergreen tree for ten. Buck was his name. Buck’s father had planted whole fields of sapling trees before his son was even born. He called it an investment in the future, and he was right. There weren’t many people who celebrated Christmas, but the evergreen tree was an important part of many winter celebrations. Those who worshipped Aukwine got a tree and decorated it with silver charms, to thank her for the last year and pray that the next one would bring good things. Followers of Makross burned one as a token sacrifice. Buck made so much money during the winter that he didn’t need to work the rest of the year, and Steven envied a man with nothing better to do all summer long than go fishing and stroll along the fields. Steven’s tree wouldn’t be burned, or prayed over. It would only stand in a corner of the living room, a symbol of green and life in the coldest night. It would say another year was done, and thank the Carpenter that all was well.
And there still would have been some money left over for gifts. Steven would have done for his family what his father was never able to. But he lost his temper. There was still money in his purse, but that was spoken for. It was for the stuff of life. He was depending on the sale of his goblin spoils for the holiday. Another of his father’s sayings occurred to him; a child buys what he wants, an adult buys what he needs. And what he needed was meat for his children; and eggs, and milk, and bread, and new clothes for spring to replace the ones they had outgrown since the last time it was warm and green.
What did the Merchant scream at him? Take all of your trinkets and sell them to the Culters. Was it worth the risk? Heather wouldn’t think so, but she didn’t understand how important this was to him. She couldn’t care less about Christmas, being a casual follower of Aukwine and the other gods. And there was no way to be sure if there was a risk at all. All of the In-Betweens shared a village mentality, and probably only half of what was said about the Culters was true.
One thing he knew for sure was that they called themselves the Children of Kilgor, some god Steven knew very little about. Supposedly he was a dark god, what the people called Black, worshipped by goblins and trolls. Sir Tristan’s Bestiary made no mention of the Black races having anything like organized religion, so he doubted this was true. It was said that the Children practiced magic, and made human sacrifices, and, wildest of all, mingled with the Black races and even laid down with them. All of it was ridiculous, the product of perverted imaginations and bored housewives.
But he asked himself again: was it worth the risk? He decided that it was. Odds were he had nothing to fear from these Culters, and if they were interested in buying the things he had to sell then he should pursue the opportunity.
October 8, 2013
Writing Genuis
This is an old debate, I know, but it still fascinates me. Is it possible for a writer to a create a character that is smarter than himself?
One great example is Sherlock Holmes, but when I dwell on this question I always think of Alan Moore and two of his creations, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. For those of you who don't know Watchmen, I first must insist that you read it immediately- it is one of the greatest novels (novel, yes, not graphic novel) of the last thirty years. But in the meantime, I'll give you a little background. Dr. Manhattan was a physicist, until a terrible accident left him completely disintegrated. He managed to reassemble his body and return to our plane of existence, now with the power to manipulate all matter and also exist in all time simultaneously. Ozymandias is a mere human vigilante, but he was dubbed "the smartest man on the planet". And he is a genius, with a cold logic and drive that leads him to sacrifice millions of lives so that billions can live in peace.
How is possible for someone who isn't himself a genius (although, for all I know Alan Moore could BE an actual genius, rendering my argument null and void) create characters like this?
Well, in my opinion, it works sort of like stage magic. The magician isn't a sorcerer, just a master manipulator- and so is a writer. By creating the right scenarios, by scripting just the right dialogue, by throwing in enough scientific jargon, one could create a character that seems to be all-knowing and all-seeing. Just like the stage magician and his apparent ability to teleport from one place on stage to another, the writer can manipulate events to make such a character seem like the real thing.
Of course, that's just a theory. Who knows- maybe through the magic of the written word it IS possible to create a character that transcends the limitations of his creator.....
One great example is Sherlock Holmes, but when I dwell on this question I always think of Alan Moore and two of his creations, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. For those of you who don't know Watchmen, I first must insist that you read it immediately- it is one of the greatest novels (novel, yes, not graphic novel) of the last thirty years. But in the meantime, I'll give you a little background. Dr. Manhattan was a physicist, until a terrible accident left him completely disintegrated. He managed to reassemble his body and return to our plane of existence, now with the power to manipulate all matter and also exist in all time simultaneously. Ozymandias is a mere human vigilante, but he was dubbed "the smartest man on the planet". And he is a genius, with a cold logic and drive that leads him to sacrifice millions of lives so that billions can live in peace.
How is possible for someone who isn't himself a genius (although, for all I know Alan Moore could BE an actual genius, rendering my argument null and void) create characters like this?
Well, in my opinion, it works sort of like stage magic. The magician isn't a sorcerer, just a master manipulator- and so is a writer. By creating the right scenarios, by scripting just the right dialogue, by throwing in enough scientific jargon, one could create a character that seems to be all-knowing and all-seeing. Just like the stage magician and his apparent ability to teleport from one place on stage to another, the writer can manipulate events to make such a character seem like the real thing.
Of course, that's just a theory. Who knows- maybe through the magic of the written word it IS possible to create a character that transcends the limitations of his creator.....
October 4, 2013
Clip Show
I really wanted to say something here today, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. Haven't been feeling all that well. So, I decided to use this space and time to put out a little excerpt from my novel, Winter's Heart. This is the opening scene of the first chapter:
It was said that the Old Folk controlled the power of fire, among other things, but that was in the Long an Long Ago. Before that, the fathers of the Old Folk caught a spark with flint and steel and their own desire to live. It was also said that the world was a great wheel, and everything came round to what it once had been, and so Steven Boughmount knelt in the snow with rocks in his hands, trying to catch a flame. He was having little luck. Just over the low hills, beyond this scrub of forest, the village was warm and sleeping behind its wall.
That’s where I should be, Steven thought as he scraped the edge of one rock against the other. Not in bed, not yet, but stretched out in my chair with my feet up, a pipe smoking just right in my hand and Heather curled up beside me. The boys are all asleep, but maybe we’ll stay up for a while. Maybe we’ll move to the bedroom, maybe not. That’s where I should be, not up to my ass in snow trying to light a fire.
“C’mon, bastard,” he said, and drug the sharp edge of the rock in his right hand against the flat of the one in his left. A white spark flew, then died before it could reach the stripped branches and dried moss he had laid out on the frozen ground.
Snow crunched somewhere off to the left of him. Steven heard soft, bare footsteps. They were coming, all right. And they were in a hurry, running toward a village protected by two drunks on either side of a leaning gate. That was why Steven sat in the snow. When the Guards slept, the Hunters went to work. And what sounded like a whole clan of goblins was passing him by because he couldn’t get a damn fire lit.
Steven drew his sword. It was called Fangodoom, given to him by his mother just before she died. Fangodoom was a dwarf blade, of steel mined and forged deep within the Lyme Mountains centuries ago. Goblins near, the blade all but gleamed though there wasn’t any moon. Again he wondered if this would be the last time, and again he knew that if it was, it was. His hand turned into a fist on the hilt of his weapon, and he prayed.
“Lord, make me Your hammer.”
He heard the goblins stop short at the sound of his voice. He could hear their ragged breathing. They must have been running for a long time. He couldn’t help but wonder where they came from and why they were here outside Deadbuck, back end of the In-Betweens. What brought them here didn’t matter. They had come, and nothing stood between them and a sleeping village of good people but a stiff, frozen man with an antique blade, a man who couldn’t even light a fire. The beasts spoke words he couldn’t understand; arguing, it would seem. Then they broke cover and charged.
Fifteen of them, at least, but it was hard to count as they came, some on two legs and some running on all fours like wild dogs. A breed this small could be mistaken for a pack of dogs from a distance, and that had led to the extinction of more than one prairie village over the years. Their ragged, dirty coats were braided. Some had shaved part of the fur from their heads and had sideburns and mohawks. Their green eyes shimmered in the moonless night, each set locked on the human.
“That’s right,” Steven said through his teeth, switching Fangodoom from hand to hand as they closed on him. “Come on, then.” The goblins closed the distance and the leader struck at him with a stone blade. Steven broke left and rolled away from them as the night filled with thunder. From the tree above him, flares of fiery light perforated the darkness. Each flash illuminated a goblin falling dead to the forest floor, some part of his body disintegrating into a cloud of bloody mist and hairy gristle. They tried to break and flee, too late. It was over in seconds, as combat always was. The last gunshot echoed off into the hills and Steven walked the pack, finishing off any that were still alive with his blade.
“Gods curse a tree stand,” a voice said. Steven turned to watch a dark figure suspend himself from the branch of a bare old oak tree and drop into the snow. “My ass is killin me!” The man sprawled out in the snow and made an angel, then stood and dusted himself off.
“Good shooting, Glen,” Steven said.
“Aye, it was at that,” Glen Tillson said, crossing his arms and appraising their work. “An it’s a good thing, isn’t it, or where would you be? Fifteen goblins. Berds, from the look of ‘em. Aukwine’s silver nipples! What would you do without me?”
Steven was about to answer, but then he saw Glen’s eyes widen in the darkness. He fumbled with his rifle, but the barrel was caught up in the leather shoulder strap. Steven turned, sword raised by instinct, and met the long, curved blade of a goblin. The sound of their weapons locking resounded in the night. Before the monster could recover and deliver another blow, Steven thrust Fangodoom into his throat and he went gurgling into the Void where his kind slept with their foul gods.
“Sixteen,” Steven said, and squeezed his friend’s shoulder before he knelt in the snow to clean his blade.
“You an that damn butter knife of yours are gonna be the death of us both,” Glen said. “Now. Let’s see what kind of pay we got for our trouble.”
They gathered the bodies together and laid them out in a row on the snow. Each one would have to be inspected; whatever they carried would become the Hunters’ pay. If they didn’t have anything the Guild would give Steven and Glen a small sum for their services, but that amounted to nothing.
“It’s a shame they don’t make good meat,” Steven said, rolling away the body of a goblin who had left the world the same way he came in, naked and slick with blood. “If they did I’d have half as much to worry about.”
“Aye,” Glen said. “Old Clanhead once told me that if the meat was dried an cured into a jerky it was bearable, but you know how he is.”
Steven nodded. Old Clanhead was actually Robert Mills, a gentleman who claimed to be ninety and considered himself something of a village elder. He presided over Deadbuck from a stool in the Green Wheel, and by the best calculations of the men in town only about two out of every hundred things he said was worth listening to. Goblin jerky, they’d found out, was not one of the two.
“Berds,” Glen said, looking down on them. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“What?” Steven asked.
“Sir Tristan’s says Berds aren’t really far travelers, an they make their homes in the mountains,” Glen said. “I mean, we see plenty of Bungers an Nobbs round here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Berd but the stuffed one in the Hall.”
Steven nodded. He knew Sir Tristan’s Bestiary as well as any other Hunter, and Glen was right. Berds were not known for extensive migrations, like some of the other goblin breeds. They were territorial, and very clan-driven. Home was home, and that was where they stayed, and the Carpenter help anyone who fell on them in their own backyard.
“Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Glen said, dragging a body over to himself. This one was dressed, in a pair of shredded pants and a leather vest. Glen inspected the belt the goblin had carried his weapon in, discarded it, and on rolling him over discovered he also had a leather purse. “All right, here we go,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Come on, Phabos, daddy needs a new pair of... well, everything.”
Steven shook his head. It was because of scenes like this that the Guards and others referred to the Hunters as “Turr’s Vultures”, and looked down on them. Even though there was no one around to see it, he wished Glen would be a little more serious about his work.
Glen pulled the purse string, and at first he looked disappointed. Steven imagined the purse must hold nothing more than the usual gob-stuffs- jewelry wrought from bone, crow feathers, other worthless charms. But then he took hold of something, and the breath caught in his throat. He pulled it out.
“By all the gods,” Glen said, turning the object over in his hands.
Steven started to ask what it was, but then he saw and the words evaporated from his mouth. It was a small item, a kind of cylinder made of metal, colored red and blue. In white letters, the great letters of the Old Folk which men could still read if not understand, it said PIP-SEE.
From time to time Hunters like Steven and Glen came across artifacts like this one, things that came from the last Age and survived in the forgotten places of the world. Some were worthless, like the strange Plastik boxes that the Tecks said had once come alive and told stories, and some were priceless. This PIP-SEE cylinder, which was thought to contain a powerful elixir concocted by the Old Folk, fell into the latter category. Glen tossed it to Steven, who snatched it out of the air. It had a little weight to it.
“You keep that,” Glen said, and then held up his hands when Steven started to protest. “I never have any luck tryin to unload shit like that. You take it. I’m better off with cold, hard coin.”
Steven didn’t argue. He put the cylinder in his own bag. How did I get so lucky, he thought, to wind up with a friend like him? They both knew how much something like this was worth, and Glen just let him have it. Of course their Guildmaster knew how much something like this was worth as well, and he would most likely take it. That was his right. As the head of the Hunter’s Guild in Deadbuck, he oversaw everything; paying out money to the widows of men killed on a hunt, housing new members of the Guild until they could afford a place of their own, dolling out pensions to the old men (there were a few)who managed the great feat of retiring from the Guild.
“Steven,” Glen said, pulling him away from his thoughts. “Look here.” He pulled another purse out of the goblin’s bag, and something inside chinked in his hand as he hefted it. Not daring to speak, they looked at each other with naked hope in their eyes. Glen pulled the strings and the purse fell open, spilling gold coins out onto the snow. “By Phabos!” he said, scattering the coins out so he could count them. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty... thirty-one gold! Steven! Thirty-one gold!”
“I see it, Glen.”
Glen rushed over to another one of the bodies, one that was dressed, and pulled a purse from that corpse as well. Not bothering to open it, he tossed it over by the small pile of gold coins. It landed with a musical thud, crunching into the hard crust of the snow. Soon there was a whole stack of leather purses laying there. Each of the Berds that was dressed was carrying one; nine in all. The two men stared down at them, not daring to imagine that each of them held what the first one had. But when they pulled them open each one let out its own small flood of coins.
“Phabos,” Glen said again. “Do we even dare count it up, Steven?”
“There’s no point,” Steven said. “Let’s just gather it up an let Mister Ashley worry about the counting. In the end we might end up with the first thirty-one that you found.”
Mister Ashley was their Guildmaster. He would tally up their bounty and take the Guild Dues from it, and then pay them. Fair was fair and right was right, after all. Steven and Glen had both lived off the Guild for a time, when they were young and starting out. Some other Hunter had given of his earnings that they might eat back then. Now it was their turn.
But Steven looked at his friend’s face and saw that he had something else in mind.
“We can’t just give it up,” Glen said.
“What?”
Glen looked over at him, and there was a glint in his eye that Steven knew all too well. When they were children, that look usually resulted in one of them breaking a limb or taking a beating from his da when he got home. A sense of dread (and excitement, yes- there’s no fool like an old fool) settled over Steven. “We can’t just give it up,” Glen said again. “This is the biggest bounty we’ve ever seen. Maybe even the biggest in any village in all of the In-Betweens. Do ya get? An you wanna just take all this in to Ashley an let him have it? Shit on that, Steven. This is too big.”
“The Carpenter says it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Steven said. “I don’t know what a camel was, but I get His words nonetheless.”
“Shit on your Jesus man, too,” Glen said. “Phabos says take what you can in this life, for it comes a high price to be seated at my table. We’re takin this. Ashley can have his Dues outta one of these purses. The rest is for us.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?” Steven said. He couldn’t even begin to believe what his old friend was suggesting. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but Steven rushed on. “You want to try an pull somethin over on Mister Ashley. That’s what you’re sayin, right? You an me are gonna fool the Master of the Hunter’s Guild. Wake up, Glen. Better men than us have tried.”
“He’s an old shit an he don’t see everything,” Glen said, but there was little conviction in his voice now.
“I know how you feel,” Steven said. “I saw all that gold, and it crossed my mind too. But remember Palmer, Glen. Fat Palmer got himself wheeled out of Deadbuck with two shattered legs, an counted himself lucky at that. Do you wanna end up that way? I know I don’t.”
“It was you I was thinkin about,” Glen said. Steven cocked his head, looking at Glen in the dark. “You’ve got a family, after all. An Year End is comin soon.”
A flash, a memory like a falling star, shot through Steven’s mind. Him standing in the dark aisle between the pews in the church his father had built, a church dedicated to a god no one believed in. Kurt Boughmount died without giving his family the thing Steven now wanted for his; Christmas. It was a celebration of the birth of Jesus, coinciding with the relatively newer feasting day of Year End. As Kurt told it to his son, there was a great feast of turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings, and an evergreen tree trimmed in silver and gold, and gifts wrapped in satin paper. All of that was a lot more than a simple carpenter could afford, even after the best year he ever had. Steven remembered standing there in the empty church, his father just buried in the wet spring earth. He remembered making a promise to give his family the Christmas his father always dreamed of.
As it turned out, Christmas was also a lot more than a Hunter could afford, even during an exceptional year. But now it’s possible, Steven thought, looking down at all that gold. If we split that right down the middle my share would be more than I brought home in the last two years together.
“No one else knew they were comin, Steven,” Glen said. “I wouldn’t have known about it either if I hadn’t been upland to visit Gilbert yesterday.”
Steven gave his friend a withering look. Gilbert wasn’t a member of any Guild. He claimed to make his living brewing ale and stilling whiskey, but villages were small places and everyone knew he made his money selling pipe weed.
“All right,” Glen said. “I was up there drinkin his ‘shine with him, okay? I saw the goblins camped out in the grasslands. Hard to miss ‘em in all that snow. So I came an got you, an here we are. Standin on top of a gold mine!”
Steven looked at the purses of gold coins.
“Ashley doesn’t know shit about this,” Glen said. “I’ll go in to the Guild in the morning an report the hunt, bring him out to inspect the bodies. Everything proper. He’ll ask about the bounty an I’ll give him a purse. He’ll probably take more than half of it, an think himself very well off from the deal. We keep the rest. We don’t say anything. An that will be that. All I ask is that you let me have a drumstick at Christmas dinner. Deal?”
A long moment of silence passed. What Glen suggested was dangerous. Dangerous and stupid. But there was a whole heap of good money laying in the snow at his feet, and when he thought of the things he could with it-
“Deal,” Steven said.
Glen clapped him on the shoulder.
They gathered up their spoils.
It was said that the Old Folk controlled the power of fire, among other things, but that was in the Long an Long Ago. Before that, the fathers of the Old Folk caught a spark with flint and steel and their own desire to live. It was also said that the world was a great wheel, and everything came round to what it once had been, and so Steven Boughmount knelt in the snow with rocks in his hands, trying to catch a flame. He was having little luck. Just over the low hills, beyond this scrub of forest, the village was warm and sleeping behind its wall.
That’s where I should be, Steven thought as he scraped the edge of one rock against the other. Not in bed, not yet, but stretched out in my chair with my feet up, a pipe smoking just right in my hand and Heather curled up beside me. The boys are all asleep, but maybe we’ll stay up for a while. Maybe we’ll move to the bedroom, maybe not. That’s where I should be, not up to my ass in snow trying to light a fire.
“C’mon, bastard,” he said, and drug the sharp edge of the rock in his right hand against the flat of the one in his left. A white spark flew, then died before it could reach the stripped branches and dried moss he had laid out on the frozen ground.
Snow crunched somewhere off to the left of him. Steven heard soft, bare footsteps. They were coming, all right. And they were in a hurry, running toward a village protected by two drunks on either side of a leaning gate. That was why Steven sat in the snow. When the Guards slept, the Hunters went to work. And what sounded like a whole clan of goblins was passing him by because he couldn’t get a damn fire lit.
Steven drew his sword. It was called Fangodoom, given to him by his mother just before she died. Fangodoom was a dwarf blade, of steel mined and forged deep within the Lyme Mountains centuries ago. Goblins near, the blade all but gleamed though there wasn’t any moon. Again he wondered if this would be the last time, and again he knew that if it was, it was. His hand turned into a fist on the hilt of his weapon, and he prayed.
“Lord, make me Your hammer.”
He heard the goblins stop short at the sound of his voice. He could hear their ragged breathing. They must have been running for a long time. He couldn’t help but wonder where they came from and why they were here outside Deadbuck, back end of the In-Betweens. What brought them here didn’t matter. They had come, and nothing stood between them and a sleeping village of good people but a stiff, frozen man with an antique blade, a man who couldn’t even light a fire. The beasts spoke words he couldn’t understand; arguing, it would seem. Then they broke cover and charged.
Fifteen of them, at least, but it was hard to count as they came, some on two legs and some running on all fours like wild dogs. A breed this small could be mistaken for a pack of dogs from a distance, and that had led to the extinction of more than one prairie village over the years. Their ragged, dirty coats were braided. Some had shaved part of the fur from their heads and had sideburns and mohawks. Their green eyes shimmered in the moonless night, each set locked on the human.
“That’s right,” Steven said through his teeth, switching Fangodoom from hand to hand as they closed on him. “Come on, then.” The goblins closed the distance and the leader struck at him with a stone blade. Steven broke left and rolled away from them as the night filled with thunder. From the tree above him, flares of fiery light perforated the darkness. Each flash illuminated a goblin falling dead to the forest floor, some part of his body disintegrating into a cloud of bloody mist and hairy gristle. They tried to break and flee, too late. It was over in seconds, as combat always was. The last gunshot echoed off into the hills and Steven walked the pack, finishing off any that were still alive with his blade.
“Gods curse a tree stand,” a voice said. Steven turned to watch a dark figure suspend himself from the branch of a bare old oak tree and drop into the snow. “My ass is killin me!” The man sprawled out in the snow and made an angel, then stood and dusted himself off.
“Good shooting, Glen,” Steven said.
“Aye, it was at that,” Glen Tillson said, crossing his arms and appraising their work. “An it’s a good thing, isn’t it, or where would you be? Fifteen goblins. Berds, from the look of ‘em. Aukwine’s silver nipples! What would you do without me?”
Steven was about to answer, but then he saw Glen’s eyes widen in the darkness. He fumbled with his rifle, but the barrel was caught up in the leather shoulder strap. Steven turned, sword raised by instinct, and met the long, curved blade of a goblin. The sound of their weapons locking resounded in the night. Before the monster could recover and deliver another blow, Steven thrust Fangodoom into his throat and he went gurgling into the Void where his kind slept with their foul gods.
“Sixteen,” Steven said, and squeezed his friend’s shoulder before he knelt in the snow to clean his blade.
“You an that damn butter knife of yours are gonna be the death of us both,” Glen said. “Now. Let’s see what kind of pay we got for our trouble.”
They gathered the bodies together and laid them out in a row on the snow. Each one would have to be inspected; whatever they carried would become the Hunters’ pay. If they didn’t have anything the Guild would give Steven and Glen a small sum for their services, but that amounted to nothing.
“It’s a shame they don’t make good meat,” Steven said, rolling away the body of a goblin who had left the world the same way he came in, naked and slick with blood. “If they did I’d have half as much to worry about.”
“Aye,” Glen said. “Old Clanhead once told me that if the meat was dried an cured into a jerky it was bearable, but you know how he is.”
Steven nodded. Old Clanhead was actually Robert Mills, a gentleman who claimed to be ninety and considered himself something of a village elder. He presided over Deadbuck from a stool in the Green Wheel, and by the best calculations of the men in town only about two out of every hundred things he said was worth listening to. Goblin jerky, they’d found out, was not one of the two.
“Berds,” Glen said, looking down on them. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“What?” Steven asked.
“Sir Tristan’s says Berds aren’t really far travelers, an they make their homes in the mountains,” Glen said. “I mean, we see plenty of Bungers an Nobbs round here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Berd but the stuffed one in the Hall.”
Steven nodded. He knew Sir Tristan’s Bestiary as well as any other Hunter, and Glen was right. Berds were not known for extensive migrations, like some of the other goblin breeds. They were territorial, and very clan-driven. Home was home, and that was where they stayed, and the Carpenter help anyone who fell on them in their own backyard.
“Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Glen said, dragging a body over to himself. This one was dressed, in a pair of shredded pants and a leather vest. Glen inspected the belt the goblin had carried his weapon in, discarded it, and on rolling him over discovered he also had a leather purse. “All right, here we go,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Come on, Phabos, daddy needs a new pair of... well, everything.”
Steven shook his head. It was because of scenes like this that the Guards and others referred to the Hunters as “Turr’s Vultures”, and looked down on them. Even though there was no one around to see it, he wished Glen would be a little more serious about his work.
Glen pulled the purse string, and at first he looked disappointed. Steven imagined the purse must hold nothing more than the usual gob-stuffs- jewelry wrought from bone, crow feathers, other worthless charms. But then he took hold of something, and the breath caught in his throat. He pulled it out.
“By all the gods,” Glen said, turning the object over in his hands.
Steven started to ask what it was, but then he saw and the words evaporated from his mouth. It was a small item, a kind of cylinder made of metal, colored red and blue. In white letters, the great letters of the Old Folk which men could still read if not understand, it said PIP-SEE.
From time to time Hunters like Steven and Glen came across artifacts like this one, things that came from the last Age and survived in the forgotten places of the world. Some were worthless, like the strange Plastik boxes that the Tecks said had once come alive and told stories, and some were priceless. This PIP-SEE cylinder, which was thought to contain a powerful elixir concocted by the Old Folk, fell into the latter category. Glen tossed it to Steven, who snatched it out of the air. It had a little weight to it.
“You keep that,” Glen said, and then held up his hands when Steven started to protest. “I never have any luck tryin to unload shit like that. You take it. I’m better off with cold, hard coin.”
Steven didn’t argue. He put the cylinder in his own bag. How did I get so lucky, he thought, to wind up with a friend like him? They both knew how much something like this was worth, and Glen just let him have it. Of course their Guildmaster knew how much something like this was worth as well, and he would most likely take it. That was his right. As the head of the Hunter’s Guild in Deadbuck, he oversaw everything; paying out money to the widows of men killed on a hunt, housing new members of the Guild until they could afford a place of their own, dolling out pensions to the old men (there were a few)who managed the great feat of retiring from the Guild.
“Steven,” Glen said, pulling him away from his thoughts. “Look here.” He pulled another purse out of the goblin’s bag, and something inside chinked in his hand as he hefted it. Not daring to speak, they looked at each other with naked hope in their eyes. Glen pulled the strings and the purse fell open, spilling gold coins out onto the snow. “By Phabos!” he said, scattering the coins out so he could count them. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty... thirty-one gold! Steven! Thirty-one gold!”
“I see it, Glen.”
Glen rushed over to another one of the bodies, one that was dressed, and pulled a purse from that corpse as well. Not bothering to open it, he tossed it over by the small pile of gold coins. It landed with a musical thud, crunching into the hard crust of the snow. Soon there was a whole stack of leather purses laying there. Each of the Berds that was dressed was carrying one; nine in all. The two men stared down at them, not daring to imagine that each of them held what the first one had. But when they pulled them open each one let out its own small flood of coins.
“Phabos,” Glen said again. “Do we even dare count it up, Steven?”
“There’s no point,” Steven said. “Let’s just gather it up an let Mister Ashley worry about the counting. In the end we might end up with the first thirty-one that you found.”
Mister Ashley was their Guildmaster. He would tally up their bounty and take the Guild Dues from it, and then pay them. Fair was fair and right was right, after all. Steven and Glen had both lived off the Guild for a time, when they were young and starting out. Some other Hunter had given of his earnings that they might eat back then. Now it was their turn.
But Steven looked at his friend’s face and saw that he had something else in mind.
“We can’t just give it up,” Glen said.
“What?”
Glen looked over at him, and there was a glint in his eye that Steven knew all too well. When they were children, that look usually resulted in one of them breaking a limb or taking a beating from his da when he got home. A sense of dread (and excitement, yes- there’s no fool like an old fool) settled over Steven. “We can’t just give it up,” Glen said again. “This is the biggest bounty we’ve ever seen. Maybe even the biggest in any village in all of the In-Betweens. Do ya get? An you wanna just take all this in to Ashley an let him have it? Shit on that, Steven. This is too big.”
“The Carpenter says it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Steven said. “I don’t know what a camel was, but I get His words nonetheless.”
“Shit on your Jesus man, too,” Glen said. “Phabos says take what you can in this life, for it comes a high price to be seated at my table. We’re takin this. Ashley can have his Dues outta one of these purses. The rest is for us.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?” Steven said. He couldn’t even begin to believe what his old friend was suggesting. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but Steven rushed on. “You want to try an pull somethin over on Mister Ashley. That’s what you’re sayin, right? You an me are gonna fool the Master of the Hunter’s Guild. Wake up, Glen. Better men than us have tried.”
“He’s an old shit an he don’t see everything,” Glen said, but there was little conviction in his voice now.
“I know how you feel,” Steven said. “I saw all that gold, and it crossed my mind too. But remember Palmer, Glen. Fat Palmer got himself wheeled out of Deadbuck with two shattered legs, an counted himself lucky at that. Do you wanna end up that way? I know I don’t.”
“It was you I was thinkin about,” Glen said. Steven cocked his head, looking at Glen in the dark. “You’ve got a family, after all. An Year End is comin soon.”
A flash, a memory like a falling star, shot through Steven’s mind. Him standing in the dark aisle between the pews in the church his father had built, a church dedicated to a god no one believed in. Kurt Boughmount died without giving his family the thing Steven now wanted for his; Christmas. It was a celebration of the birth of Jesus, coinciding with the relatively newer feasting day of Year End. As Kurt told it to his son, there was a great feast of turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings, and an evergreen tree trimmed in silver and gold, and gifts wrapped in satin paper. All of that was a lot more than a simple carpenter could afford, even after the best year he ever had. Steven remembered standing there in the empty church, his father just buried in the wet spring earth. He remembered making a promise to give his family the Christmas his father always dreamed of.
As it turned out, Christmas was also a lot more than a Hunter could afford, even during an exceptional year. But now it’s possible, Steven thought, looking down at all that gold. If we split that right down the middle my share would be more than I brought home in the last two years together.
“No one else knew they were comin, Steven,” Glen said. “I wouldn’t have known about it either if I hadn’t been upland to visit Gilbert yesterday.”
Steven gave his friend a withering look. Gilbert wasn’t a member of any Guild. He claimed to make his living brewing ale and stilling whiskey, but villages were small places and everyone knew he made his money selling pipe weed.
“All right,” Glen said. “I was up there drinkin his ‘shine with him, okay? I saw the goblins camped out in the grasslands. Hard to miss ‘em in all that snow. So I came an got you, an here we are. Standin on top of a gold mine!”
Steven looked at the purses of gold coins.
“Ashley doesn’t know shit about this,” Glen said. “I’ll go in to the Guild in the morning an report the hunt, bring him out to inspect the bodies. Everything proper. He’ll ask about the bounty an I’ll give him a purse. He’ll probably take more than half of it, an think himself very well off from the deal. We keep the rest. We don’t say anything. An that will be that. All I ask is that you let me have a drumstick at Christmas dinner. Deal?”
A long moment of silence passed. What Glen suggested was dangerous. Dangerous and stupid. But there was a whole heap of good money laying in the snow at his feet, and when he thought of the things he could with it-
“Deal,” Steven said.
Glen clapped him on the shoulder.
They gathered up their spoils.
