Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (42 page)

“Please sir, I only have the round from my
tips, but I’ll pay for the broken mugs from that,” she promised in
fear of losing her job and only place to live.

Fats glared at her with his beady eyes,
“Don’t feed me that crap again! I know you must be taking men up
there, a cute little vixen like you can make a fortune before your
looks go!” he exclaimed, pinching her rear with his fat
fingers.

Rachael jumped away from his hard pinch and
exclaimed, “I haven’t taken any men, I swear!”

“I don’t believe you, but I’ll let the past
slide, however, I’m expecting you to make some serious round
tonight. I’ll send you some business to get you started. Sergeant
Herms and his three corporals will be in, and they can have you for
five silvers apiece, but I’ll expect twenty-seven silver crowns at
the end of the evening, so you’ll have to find two more men to
service at five apiece on your own. I can’t be doing you favors by
finding your marks continually."

The young girl's eyes darted around
desperately, but she didn't dare speak out.

Then the fat innkeeper leered at the young
girl and added, “And you can give me a free one
afterward
for supplying you with the sergeant
and corporals,” he finished as his eyes peeled her dress from her
curvaceous young body as they followed her rounded contours.

“Now go get freshened up, the sergeant is a
friend of mine and since you claim he will be your first I want him
to have you clean. He should be here in about two bells,” Fats
promised.

With her eyes
downcast
and resignation in her
voice,
the young girl answered, “I’ll do as you say.”

She knew she had no choice. A few months
back she had watched as the bandits who killed her father tried to
rape her mother. Her mother fought them until one of the bandits
finally got angry enough and killed her, right before her young
daughter’s eyes. They had turned to have their way with Rachael
when a group of Tchulian soldiers had galloped over the rise nearby
and the bandits scrambled to get on their horses and escape. She’d
seen what fighting back had cost her mother and now the young girl
saw no reward for resistance.

The
Innkeeper
pinched her rear again as she turned to leave
and it took a great effort of will to keep her revulsion hidden
from the smelly, disgusting man.

The thought of Fats and the dirty sweaty old
sergeant, not to mention his ugly corporals, laying their hands on
her nearly made the young girl physically ill.

She staggered up the stairs to her room and
began to freshen herself up as instructed. As she used her small
wash pan and a rag to bathe, Rachael searched for a way out of her
dilemma, but her other options were worse places to work or
death.

Rachael had lost both of her parents to that
bandit raid and though the Tchulian soldiers had saved her from
being raped and possibly murdered, or even worse, sold into
slavery, they had also abandoned her in this garrison town. Upon
reaching the town they had told her to get a job and left her on
the street with nothing, but a few pieces of clothing and other
articles she had been able to carry. The bandits had taken all the
money her parents had with them for the journey. Now the young girl
was faced with selling her body or being thrown on the mercy of the
desert.

A girl with her meager belongings and no
family could not get out of this town; the desert was too far to
travel without help that she could not afford. This was a garrison
town; all working girls beyond a certain age had to service the
Tchulian soldiers.

Rachael could think of no way to escape. She
tried to look on the bright side, the officers tended to come to
this tavern and pay fairly well; at least that is what the other
girls had said. The regular soldiers were rougher and paid less. If
she went somewhere else she would still have to sell her body, but
for even less.

The poor girl was barely fifteen years old.
She wept on her bed for a little while, but when that didn’t help
she suddenly got angry at her predicament and a new plan came to
mind.
“My first time is not going to be with that foul sergeant;
at least that can be my own choice. I’ll pick a good looking boy of
my own age, that way I can close my eyes and remember him when I
have to deal with those disgusting soldiers!”

She quickly fixed her hair and put on a dab
of precious perfume that had been her mother
’
s. She snuck
down the back stairs and went looking for the young man of her
dreams.

G’Taklar woke up to the sounds of horse
hooves clopping, leather creaking, and wagon axles grinding.
Concealed behind the rocks he could just see a flatbed wagon on its
way into a small dusty town. The young man sat up and surveyed his
surroundings; the wagon was well past, so the lone man driving the
two horses didn’t see him pop up. G'Taklar took in his surroundings
for the first time in the light of day and his mind immediately
noticed the color brown. Everything around this area was a
different shade of that dreary color. The stones around him were
light beige, the hills looming around him were the chestnut color
of dull pottery, and the huddled buildings of the town below were
made of bricks created from dried mud. The muddy tan river flowed
out of the cave below him and past one end of the town. If the sky
had been brown instead of blue, G’Taklar would have been sure he
had awakened in a different world, a world of boring browns.

G’Taklar himself was an exception to the
standard color of the area. He noticed the colors of his clothing
for the first time in the sunlight: pink pantaloons with a blue
belt, green silk half jacket and yellow slippers. “These aren’t
exactly the clothes Furnian the mighty wore while saving the Lady
of Zil,” he complained to Jatar.

“
They are better than what you woke up
wearing in the cell,”
Jatar pointed out in return.

Looking down on the town below G’Taklar
could see an obvious main road dissecting its length, but there
were many other smaller ones branching off into the buildings
surrounding the center thoroughfare. The outlying buildings were
small, but a few larger two-story buildings lined the main road
down the center of town. Those were obviously the places of
business.

His eyes followed the road about a league
past the outskirts of town to where he saw a large
walled-in
complex
of some sort. It had long and low brown uniform
buildings dominating the inside. Whatever the complex was, it
looked like a dry and dusty place to G’Taklar, he decided to avoid
it at all costs.

The sun was high enough to tell G’Taklar and
Jatar that the young man had slept past sunrise. Townspeople were
moving about the streets below, and horses and wagons traveled the
roads on their owner’s business.

“I’m going into town, I’m hungry,” G’Taklar
said to Jatar.

“
There are worse things in life than
being hungry, are you sure you want to take the risk?”
Jatar
replied just to make the inexperienced young man think about what
he was about to do.

“Yes, I don’t know where I am and I’m
starving,” he replied.

“
All right, but be careful. Try to blend
in, don’t become a spectacle,”
Jatar cautioned.

“Hey, this is what I’m good at, cities. I
may not be experienced when dealing with underground caverns and
creepy
two-headed
monsters, but I
know cities,” G’Taklar answered with
self-assurance
.

“
You’re used to the
court
, not cities. Remember, this is
a small town and that means a big difference from Tarnelin and its
nobility court,”
Jatar cautioned again.

G’Taklar gave a flip of his hand to show the
insignificance of the difference and said, “People are people, I’ll
be fine.”

“
Just remember that you’re a wanted man
and soldiers from that keep above will be looking for you. Try and
keep a low profile, just for my sanity, all right?”
Jatar
coaxed his unseasoned host.

“Of course, Jatar, if you ask me to I will.
What would be the best way to enter the
town
and get some food and directions?”

“
I would suggest you enter a side street
just off the main road and then after you get into town you work
your way toward the center. You don’t want to catch too many eyes
by entering down the main thoroughfare, and you don’t want to enter
the complete outskirts where you would stick out from the residents
like a
visel
in
the
klutcha
coop. Once on the main street, look for a tavern, you can
probably get information and possibly some work there, cleaning up
or something,”
Jatar answered.

“Cleaning up in a common tavern? I have
never done any such work!” G’Taklar exclaimed indignantly.

“
Oh good, then this will be a new
experience to expand your
horizons
unless of course you don’t want to eat?”
Jatar replied sarcastically.

“
Of course
I want to eat, that’s why I’m going down there!” G’Taklar said with
exasperation.

“
They’re not going to feed you because of
your good looks, you know. You’ll have to pay them, or steal
it,”
Jatar replied.

“
Of course
I’ll pay them, I’m not a thief. I’ll give them my word that I will
send them twice their price, the word of a nobleman,” the callow
young noble answered.

“
Listen G’Taklar, I have some experience
in this type of thing from my youth; they won’t take your word in
place of
round
.
They won’t even believe you’re a nobleman, much less care. From the
look of that keep on the
hill,
this is probably a rough garrison town. Nobles
will be far away and unknown to these people, they will only be
used to soldiers and they won’t trust soldiers when it comes to
paybacks
. If you
act humble instead of haughty you might get a job washing dishes
for a meal, but you’ll have to swallow your pride or they’ll just
boot you out the door,”
Jatar advised his young friend.

“I’ll try, but I guess I don’t understand
this type of people. I am not a criminal, so why wouldn’t they
trust me?”

“
Because they’re used to criminals, so
they treat everyone as if they are trying to rob them. In places
like
this,
they
treat you as guilty of a crime until you prove yourself innocent,
they have to because most of their clients probably are
guilty,”
Jatar replied.

“Then this is a bad place, and I don’t want
to be here,” G’Taklar replied illogically.

“
If you want I can take control and get
you through this, as I mentioned a moment ago I have some
experience with this type of town from my adventuresome
youth.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ve already
explained why I can’t ever let you control my body, I’m sorry,”
G’Taklar replied apologetically.

“
Don’t apologize, I understand. Let’s get
on with this and see what the town is really like,”
Jatar
suggested.

G’Taklar worked his way down the hillside
carefully. After a short walk he reached the first buildings and as
Jatar had suggested, he entered the town a few streets away from
the main road.

Three men were working on a broken wagon
axle and one of them looked up and saw G’Taklar passing by. The
worker looked at him casually, and then something made the man look
again, intently. He nudged one of his fellows who lay on his back
under the wagon and the startled man smacked his head on the bottom
of the wagon. He was about to admonish his companion when he saw
G’Taklar, which immediately caused him to stop shouting and stare
at the passing apparition. His friend hit him lightly on the
shoulder and they both laughed.

“
What are they laughing at?”
G’Taklar
asked Jatar in thought.

“
It’s probably these silk clothes you are
wearing, they’re appropriate for a
Karnian
Sheik, but from the looks those two
men gave you, I’m sure the clothes are out of place in this region.
Perhaps we should think of a new plan; remember what I told you
about attracting too much attention. I think we should get out of
here before trouble finds us,”
Jatar recommended.

By this
time,
G’Taklar had reached the main road where it
intersected with the street on which he traveled.
“But I need
food and water and these are the only clothes I have.”

“
I think you should stop and go back,
people are
staring
. We can always come in at night when the
darkness will hide the bright color of your clothes. Oh no, too
late,”
Jatar said resignedly and thought to himself that this
had probably been inevitable with the inexperienced G’Taklar at the
helm.

Three Tchulian soldiers, a
corporal,
and two
privates
had come out of a building right in front of
G’Taklar. One of the men spotted him immediately, nudged his
compatriots and then all three of them started over with big grins
pasted on their rough faces. The corporal was a huge man, towering
three hand spans over G’Taklar, his face had not been shaven for at
least a week and his uniform was a wrinkled, filthy mess.

His two companions weren’t much better. The
one on the right was fairly young, G’Taklar estimated eighteen, and
he had large square teeth that stuck out like a horse. He was about
the same height as G’Taklar. The one on the other side was about
thirty and definitely fat. His uniform, buttons were stretched to
their capacity holding in his bulging gut. He had a long, bushy
black beard that was so matted G’Taklar expected to see nesting
rats moving around.