Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (24 page)

Tarc
wondered if Daum had told his mother about the men he’d killed last night. Rather than say anything about how horrible that had made him feel though, he only said, “Okay.” No need to burden his mother with more than she already carried.

He went to the stable first. “Daussie?” he called.

No response.

At first he turned to start looking in the stalls, but then he realized his ghost would work as well in the day as it had at night. He expanded it and found one warm spot up in the hayloft, behind the
stack of hay bales. “Daussie!” he called again. When the spot didn’t move, he sighed and started up the ladder into the loft. When he got there he realized that she’d not only hidden behind the stack but had covered herself with loose hay. He nudged her with a toe, “Daussie, come on. We need your help.”

She gasped and sat up. “How did you find me?”
She looked panicked.

“I knew you were here and… where you would hide.” He saw the
fear in her eyes, “It
was
a good hiding place.” He spoke as reassuringly as he could, “Someone who didn’t know the stable wouldn’t have been able to find you under that stuff.”

“We need to
leave
this horrible town!”

Tarc
shrugged, “Maybe, but we can’t leave now. We’d have to climb over the wall and they’re probably going to be guarding it. Now, the rest of us need your help. Come on.” He held out a hand and she took it. He pulled her to her feet. “I’m going to wait tables; you’ve got to keep doing my jobs.”

She shuddered, but said nothing.

“Come on.” He started down the ladder, worried about what he’d do if she didn’t follow, but a moment later she came after him.

He dropped a bucket
into the well and cranked it back up. He tossed one full bucket of water into the back of the wagon and told Daussie to fill a bucket for Shogun. Even in the late afternoon the late spring air was cool. The well water even colder, but Tarc took off the bloody shirt and poured another bucket of water over himself. He wiped himself off with the cleaner back part of the shirt. Shogun was drinking thirstily and Daussie just stood there watching the horse.

She seemed to need to be told everything
she needed to do. Tarc thought her mind must be going over and over recent events. “Dodge,” he said.

Daussie didn’t respond.

“Dodge!”

She looked up.

“Get the mop and clean the wagon. Then put the wagon and Shogun back in the stable.”

Daussie’s eyes flashed wide and shot to the
bloody floor of the wagon.

Tarc
knew from years of experience that she was about to protest. He rode over her, “Don’t say you ‘can’t,’
someone’s
got to do it and
you
can’t go in and wait on the soldiers.” He paused to give her a moment to think, “I’m sure Mom needs wood and water too.”

Daussie grimaced, but after a second’s hesitation she nodded sharply and
limped for the kitchen to get the mop.

***

At dinner, like at breakfast, there were no townspeople eating at the tavern. The room was packed with soldiers however, all demanding food.

None of them paid.

Many repeated the jeer from the morning about only paying when the “beautiful girl” was back to wait on them. They
all
seemed to have heard of Daussie, even though only a few could actually have seen her during the scouting visits prior to the invasion.

Daum helped Eva in the kitchen and also waited tables as apparently Krait had forbidden any drinking for the next few days.

First they ran out of chicken, then they ran out of sausage, then finally the last of the pork was gone too. Krait had just seated himself when Daum came out of the kitchen to say that the tavern was out of meat, having only carrots and potatoes now.

Krait stood and stalked to Daum, “And why aren’t you serving my men meat?!”

Daum kept his eyes downcast, “They haven’t been paying. Without money we can’t buy meat.”

Tarc
reached behind his neck as if to scratch. Daum saw him do it and gave a little shake of the head. Tarc knew he’d never survive throwing a knife at Krait in a room full of the man’s soldiers, but he had decided that he couldn’t let the man kill his father either.

Rather than threaten Daum, however, Krait stalked to the bar, lifted the piece covering the opening
and went to the cash drawer. Tarc’s butt cheeks clenched together with fear that Krait would find it full of money. However, he pulled it open and pawed through some of the compartments without turning to accuse Daum of holding out on him. He turned to Daum, “Where do you get your meat?”

Daum looked reluctant
, but after a pause said, “Stevenson’s butchery.”

Krait turned to one of the men who’d just finished eating, “Arco, take the boy there,” he nodded at
Tarc, “to the butcher’s place and,” he gave an ugly grin, “
requisition
some meat to feed our troops.”

M
uscles bunched with anger at Daum’s jaw, but he stepped to Tarc’s side, saying a little louder than Tarc had expected, “Go to the kitchen and ask Eva what you should get at the butcher’s place.” He pushed Tarc along toward the kitchen, Tarc thinking he already knew what they needed from his many trips in the past. In a low voice Daum said to Tarc, “Tell Stevenson we’ll pay him back when we can.”

Wondering how they would pay
if no money was coming in, Tarc went into the kitchen as he’d been instructed. He briefly told Eva what had happened and Eva made some suggestions, but most importantly said to take whatever Stevenson had a lot of.

When they arrived at Stevenson’s, the door was shut and a “Closed” sign hung on it. Tarc shrugged and began to turn away, but Arco stepped up to it and began pounding on the door with the butt of a big knife.

Wondering if Arco couldn’t read
, Tarc said, “They’re closed.”

Arco turned to give
Tarc a malicious grin. He spoke loudly enough that Tarc understood he intended his voice be heard inside, “Well now, closed or not, if they don’t come to the door in the next minute or so, we’ll just be breakin’ it down, won’t we? I reckon we can pick ourselves out some meat without their help.”

Arco had just told his men to look for something to batter the door with when Stevenson cracked it open. “We’re closed,” he said
nervously.

Arco jerked the door out of the butcher’s hand and drawing his sword stalked in to the shop as Stevenson backed away, hands up and eyes wide. “I don’t think you mean that it’s closed to
me
, do you?” he said in a dangerous tone.

“
No, no sir!” Stevenson said, obviously panicked.

“Now, boy,” Arco said, turning to
Tarc, “What did the cook say you needed back at the tavern?”

Despite several attempts, Tarc was never able to get close enough to Stevenson to pass Daum’s message that the tavern would pay him later. As they left Arco had slapped the butcher on the shoulder and told him to consider the meat a part of “Sheriff Krait’s new taxes.”

Stevenson glared furiously at
Tarc when Arco and his men weren’t looking. Until then he’d assumed that the townspeople would recognize that Krait and his men held the Hyllises in their thrall.

Now he worried,
what if the townspeople think of us as collaborators?
Not just for driving the wagon to the cemetery, but for feeding the soldiers?
Could the Hyllises, somehow, wind up on the wrong side of both groups?

Back at the tavern, Tarc and Daussie unloaded the wagon into the kitchen while Daum and Eva started cooking meats to go with the potatoes and carrots they’d cooked up while Tarc was gone. Daum frowned and closed his eyes in disappointment when Tarc told him that he’d been unable to give Stevenson their promise of repayment.

Then
Tarc was out in the big room taking orders and delivering food. Krait had ensconced himself at the biggest table and seemed to be having some kind of council of his men. With dismay he heard them talking about how much money they’d taken when they’d taken down the town’s three banks, Harrison’s among them. Tarc thought of the big jar of coins he’d taken to Harrison’s only a few days ago and wondered how much money his parents might have had on deposit there even before the strangers started to come to town.

Thinking of that made him think of the money in jars in the cellar and that led him to wonder how Captain Pike was doing.
Behind him he heard Krait ask, “We got all the deputies?”

Someone grunted affirmatively.

“Did we find Pike and his trainers?”

“We got two of the trainers, both killed.
Don’t know what happened to the third one. The team sent to the armory arrested Pike and sent him off to be locked up with the sheriff for the big display today, but he never got there. The three men that took him were some of the ones that got shot in the eye.”

Tarc
had paused in the middle of marking an order and had to scramble to remember and write the rest.

Krait said, “Shot in the eye!?

“I thought you’d heard. We had fifteen casualties last night which isn’t great, but isn’t as bad as it might have been.”

Tarc
glanced that way and saw the man lean closer to Krait.

The man
quietly said, as if describing something particularly horrible, “But, Captain… eleven of them were shot in the left eye.”

“Call me ‘
Sheriff’ goddammit! It’s what these toads are used to.” He paused, then asked in a puzzled though angry tone, “What do you mean ‘shot?’”

“Uh
, well some of them had arrows in their heads, either entering or exiting the left eye. Others just had wounds in the eye, maybe an arrow that had been pulled out, maybe a knife.” He paused, “What kind of monster would stab men in the eye like that?”

Tarc
wondered if the man had
any
idea what his Captain/Sheriff had ordered done in the square that day.

Krait said, “I don’t give a shit what
kind
of person would do it;
how
did they do it?”

“I don’t know
how
, but someone killed
two more
of our guys the same way this afternoon! The men are pretty spooked about it.”

One of the men
Tarc had been taking orders from suddenly barked, “That’s
it
boy, what are you waiting for?”

Tarc
jerked his attention back to his order chit and headed for the kitchen again, distress welling up. He hadn’t counted until the man summarized it for him. He’d killed thirteen men?!

When things slowed a little, Eva stopped Tarc, “Pretend like I’ve sent you to the cellar for something. Check up on Captain Pike. Bring up a jar of shine or something when you come back up.”

“Should I take him some food?”

“No! Not with a hole in his gut. He could drink some water; a little at a time so it’s absorbed before it gets to that part of his small intestine. I can’t think of an excuse for you to be taking water down there though.”

Tarc
reached up and pulled down one of the little crates that Eva kept her medical supplies in. He pulled out a bunch of the cloth wrapped bundles that held things which had been sterilized. “I’ll put in a couple of jars of water there. If they ask me what this stuff is, I’ll tell them it’s all ‘healer’ stuff.”

Eva shook her head. “I don’t want them knowing I’m a healer. Next thing you know, I’ll be providing
that
service to those horrible men as well.” She took out more of the wrapped bundles and put in some of her precious little jars of spices and several small pots and pans. “Tell them it’s cooking supplies.”

Tarc
filled a couple of big jars with water out of the tank and put them in. “Wish me luck.”

In the event, none of the remaining soldiers even acted as if they noticed as
Tarc went through the room and down the cellar stairs. He’d heard that servers sometimes became invisible to customers but hadn’t experienced it before.

When Tarc moved the panel and looked into the hidden compartment he saw that someone had brought some old blankets down. Pike had folded two underneath himself for padding. He huddled under the other one.

The man
looked sick.

Tarc
pulled out the jars of water and stepped into the compartment. He sent his ghost upstairs to confirm that none of the men had gotten up to follow him down into the cellar. Then he poured some water into one of the small pots and moved to Pike’s side.

“Captain, would you like a few sips of water?”
Tarc sent his ghost into Pike’s abdomen.