Fable: The Balverine Order (Fable) (17 page)

THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE BLANCHED
when he saw Poxy, and snarled, “Is that your . . . your creature?”

Thomas and James, bone weary, wet, exhausted, and wanting nothing but a place to dry out, looked in confusion from the innkeeper to the dog and back again. “Yeah,” said James, who was hardly in the mood for any manner of grief from anyone, much less a bowlegged tavern-owner with a foul attitude that was only matched by his equally foul breath.

“How long have ye had it?”

Something warned James to lie immediately, and he said without hesitation, “Raised her from a pup. If you're in the market for one, you can't have her.”

The master of the house squinted at James as if he had just been speaking in a foreign tongue. “Why would I—?” Then he stopped, waved off the notion, and instead said, “Never mind. Just keep the damned thing to yourself, understand?”

“Yes,” said James, who didn't understand in the least but was too fatigued to care. Thomas was in the same state of mind, and he simply nodded.

Minutes later, they were in a small room, which was furnished with a pair of bedrolls and nothing else. Poxy growled at them, and James said, “Go ahead, girl.” The dog promptly leaped upon the bedrolls, and an assortment of round insects, some almost as large as the palms of their hands, scuttled out in all directions. Poxy immediately took great delight in bounding about and stomping on as many of the bugs as she could catch before the last of them had scurried to safety in the cracks and crevices of the room.

Without having to say a word, James picked up the bedrolls, dragging each of them between two fingers of either hand, and shoved them out into the hallway. If the window in the room had not been little more than a crack in the wall, he would have tossed them out of it.

They didn't say anything for long moments; instead, they just sat on the floor in a daze. Then Thomas said, “Something to drink?”

“Absolutely,” James said so quickly that Thomas didn't even get the last word out in its entirety.

Minutes later they had cracked open a couple of newly acquired bottles of God-only-knew what it was. The uncertain brand or type of alcohol they were about to pour down their throats was of no consequence to them. All that mattered was drinking as much as possible, as quickly as possible, as if doing so could wipe away what they had seen and experienced. Thomas had also acquired some manner of dried-out meat, which he doled out between himself, James, and Poxy, the latter of whom sniffed it suspiciously and didn't seem particularly thrilled at the offering. Then she made a noise that sounded like a grunt and ate it grudgingly.

James's head was swimming when he finally got around to speaking. “I'm sorry,” was what he said.

Thomas stared at him, squinting, trying to determine why it was exactly that there seemed to be more than one James in the room. He chalked it up to simply being the most recent of the exceedingly odd things that he had experienced since he had left home. “You're sorry? For what?”

“I got too full of myself, playing games with those pirates, beating them.” He was speaking with excessive slowness. He sounded as if he were trying to remember how to pronounce every single word before it left his lips. “If I hadn't done that . . . if I hadn't gotten them angry . . .”

“You're being ridisculous,” Thomas chided him. Then he frowned, and said again, “Ri-dis-cu-lous,” continuing to mangle the word but at least enunciating it meticulously. “They were
pirates
, John.”

“James.”

“Whoever the hell you are. The point is ...” He stopped, frowned, his eyes bleary. “
What
was the point . . . ?”

“Pirates.”

“Right. Exactly. They were pirates. You heard the captain, right before he was ripped to pieces ...”

James raised his half-empty bottle of whatever. “To Captain Rackam. He died a man of parts.”

Thomas burst out laughing, as did James. So overwhelmed with mirth was Thomas that he actually fell over, dropping the bottle, but there was no harm done since he had just emptied it. The bottle rolled away as Thomas held his stomach and continued to howl with laughter. James was laughing as well, but in a fashion that sounded more like a long, sustained hiccup.

“That's . . . that's not funny,” Thomas said as he gasped for breath. “That . . . that's really not funny, James. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am. I truly am.” But he didn't particularly sound it.

“It was a horrible thing . . . what happened to him ...”

“Not much worse than what he had planned for us.”

At that observation, Thomas finally did manage to get himself under control, his face darkening. He remained lying on the floor, but he pointed at James, and said, “Yes. Exactly. What he had planned. You said it yourself. The fact is, you forced the issue. They were humoring us, probably because it amused them to do so. But we were never going to make it to port alive. If not for you . . . and if not for your stupid dog . . . they'd probably have murdered us in our sleep. Apologize?” He blew air disdainfully. “
I'm
the one who should be begging
your
pardon.”

“How do you figure that?”

“How do I—?” He was astounded that James even had to ask. He propped himself up on one elbow. He tried to look James in the eyes, but James had appeared to develop the inconsiderate attribute of wavering from one side to the other, not to mention unaccountably dividing every so often for no discernible reason. Thomas closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at him. “How far back do you want me to go? To my own stupidity and overconfidence in choosing pirates to be our means of crossing the sea? I went with the first boat—”

“Ship.”

“—whatever. The first ship that was willing to take us, without even giving thought to checking with anyone else.”

“You said you checked around.”

“Barely. Casual inquiry, at best. Hell, probably they were all pirates at that wharf. I should have figured that could be a possibility. Stupid!” he snapped at himself and, for good measure, struck himself in the side of the head with the base of his palm. This proved to be an astoundingly bad idea as Thomas's eyes crossed, and he fell off his own elbow, to be left lying prostrate once more. Deciding that he would be well-advised to simply stay where he was, he continued while reclining. “Then how about the fact that this whole crazy trip was my idea in the first place? If I hadn't talked you into this—”

“Talked
me
into this?” James continued to lean against the wall; since it graciously provided support, tumbling over wasn't an issue. “I talked you into bringing me along, remember?”

“Yes, I remember, but if I hadn't suggested it—”

“If, if, if,” James said, and then added a snort for good measure, “How much do you want to play that game? Endless second-guessing of everything in your life. That's the problem with smart, well-read people like you, Thomas. You're always thinking, thinking, thinking about the road you already walked and trying to wonder whether it would have been better if you'd taken the right fork instead of the left fork or the left fork instead of the right fork. Well . . . fork that. You can ‘if' this all the way back to when we first met as children, and it'll still all come down to the same thing.”

“Yeah? What thing is that?”

James leaned forward and started to topple. Poxy quickly stepped in, and James leaned on her so that he didn't fall completely. Thomas couldn't help but notice that the dog hadn't bothered to provide support for him. “The thing is: I would not have missed this for the world.”

“Really.” Thomas wasn't convinced. “We've almost been eaten several times, we almost drowned, we almost—”

“‘A lmost' means nothing.”

“It means we could have died and were damned lucky not to have. I mean, be honest with me, James. You can't be having a good time.”

“It's an adventure. Of course we're not having a good time,” said James matter-of-factly. “When you're on an adventure, the good times are had from a distance. You remember everything you went through and laugh about it and marvel at the fact that you're still alive.”

“That's assuming we're still alive to marvel at it.”

“Of course we're still going to be alive,” James said firmly. “You said it yourself. The number of ‘almosts' that have lain between us and death have been piling up, and yet here we are. By any reasonable measure, we
should
be dead. But we're not. Do you know why?”

Thomas shook his head.

“Me neither,” James said with a twisted grin. “But I'll tell you this: We two, we're not meant to wind up in the belly of some beast or at the bottom of the sea or lying out to be carrion bait. Because if that was our destiny, then we'd have met it already. The fact that we're here proves that we're going to succeed in our goal.”

“What's scary is that that actually makes some measure of sense,” Thomas admitted. “Because I'm pretty sure that it actually makes no sense at all, which just goes to show how much I've had to drink.”

“The fact that you're lying on the floor pretty much makes that clear.”

“So . . . what are you saying? That we don't have to worry about fatal mishaps because there's no way we can fail?”

“Oh, there are plenty of ways that we can fail. We still have to be careful, watch our backs, and everything else that men who are not destined for success have to do. Triumph isn't a given; you have to work for it. But I'm just sure that we're going to reach our goal and find the balverines.”

“At which point . . . ?”

“They'll likely rip us apart.”

Thomas laughed loudly once more, a reaction that some part of him couldn't begin to fathom considering there was nothing remotely funny about the comment. It drove home to him the truth of the lunacy upon which he had embarked: that even if somehow he did manage to accomplish his goal, he might well be bringing them directly to their deaths. He had no real idea what success in this mission would ultimately look like. The head of the balverine who had slain his brother mounted on a pike? It was beyond unlikely. It was preposterous.

There was only one true, realistic outcome.

“We're both going to die,” Thomas said. “We're barreling at full speed toward a confrontation that we cannot possibly survive. That is what success is going to look like: our corpses.”