Goblin dealt. I checked my cards. The proverbial hand so bad it could not make a foot. Damned near one of Elmo’s fabled Pismo straights, or no two cards of the same suit.
Goblin looked his over. His eyes got big. He slapped them down face upward. “Tonk! Goddammed tonk. Fifty!” He had dealt himself five royal cards, an automatic win demanding a double payoff.
“The only way he can win is deal them to himself,” One-Eye grumped.
Goblin chortled, “You ain’t winning even when you deal, Maggot Lips.”
Elmo started shuffling.
The next hand went the distance. Pickles fed us snippets of the reincarnation story between plays.
Darling wandered by, her round, freckled face blank, her eyes empty. I tried imagining her in the White Rose role. I could not. She did not fit.
Pickles dealt. Elmo tried to go down with eighteen. One-Eye burned him. He held seventeen after his draw. I raked the cards in, started shuffling.
“Come on, Croaker,” One-Eye taunted. “Let’s don’t fool around. I’m on a streak. One in a row. Deal me them aces and deuces:” Fifteen and under is an automatic win, same as forty-nine and fifty.
“Oh. Sorry. I caught myself taking this Rebel superstition seriously.”
Pickles observed, “It’s a persuasive sort of nonsense. It hangs together in a certain elegant illusion of hope.” I frowned his way. His smile was almost shy. “It’s hard to lose when you know fate is on your side. The Rebel knows. Anyway, that’s what Raven says.” Our grand old man was getting close to Raven.
“Then we’ll have to change their thinking.”
“Can’t. Whip them a hundred times and they’ll keep on coming. And because of that they’ll fulfill their own prophecy.”
Elmo grunted, “Then we have to do more than whip them. We have to humiliate them.” We meant everybody on the Lady’s side.
I flipped an eight into another of the countless discard piles which have become the milemarks of my life. “This is getting old.” I was restless. I felt an undirected urge to be doing something. Anything.
Elmo shrugged. “Playing passes the time.”
“This is the life, all right,” Goblin said. “Sit around and wait. How much of that have we done over the years?”
“I haven’t kept track,” I grumbled. “More of that than anything else.”
“Hark!” Elmo said. “I hear a little voice. It says my flock are bored. Pickles. Break out the archery butts and...” His suggestion died under an avalanche of groans.
Rigorous physical training is Elmo’s prescription for ennui. A dash through his diabolical obstacle course kills or cures.
Pickles extended his protest beyond the obligatory groan. “I’m gonna have wagons to unload, Elmo. Those guys should be back any time. You want these clowns to exercise, give them to me.”
Elmo and I exchanged glances. Goblin and One-Eye looked alert. Not back yet? They should have been in before noon. I figured they were sleeping it off. Turnip patrol always came back wasted.
“I figured they were in,” Elmo said.
Goblin flipped his hand at the discard pile. His cards danced for a moment, suspended by his trickery. He wanted us to know he was letting us off. “I better check this out.”
One-Eye’s cards slithered across the table, humping like inchworms. “Til look into it, Chubby.”
“I called it first, Toad Breath.”
“I got seniority.”
“Both of you do it,” Elmo suggested. He turned to me. “I’ll put a patrol together. You tell the Lieutenant.” He tossed his cards in, started calling names. He headed for the stables.
Hooves pounded the dust beneath a continuous, grumbling drumbeat. We rode swiftly but warily. One-Eye watched for trouble, but performing sorceries on horseback is difficult.
Still, he caught a whiff in time. Elmo fluttered hand signals. We split into two groups, ploughed into the tall roadside weeds. The Rebel popped up and found us at his throat. He never had a chance. We were travelling again in minutes.
One-Eye told me, “I hope nobody over there starts wondering why we always know what they’re going to try.”
“Let them think they’re up to their asses in spies.”
“How did a spy get the word to Deal so fast? Our luck looks too good to be true. The Captain should get Soulcatcher to pull us out while we still have some value.”
He had a point. Once our secret got out, the Rebel would neutralize our wizards with his own. Our luck would take a header.
The walls of Oar hove into view. I started getting the queasy regrets. The Lieutenant hadn’t really approved this adventure. The Captain himself would ream me royal. His cussing would scorch the hair off my chin. I would be old before the restrictions ran out. So long madonnas of the streetside!
I was supposed to know better. I was halfway an officer.
The prospect of careers cleaning the Company stables and heads did not intimidate Elmo or his corporals. Forward! they seemed to be thinking. Onward, for the glory of the band. Yech!
They were not stupid, just willing to pay the price of disobedience.
That idiot One-Eye actually started singing as we entered Oar. The song was his own wild, nonsensical composition sung in a voice utterly incapable of carrying a tune.
“Can it, One-Eye,” Elmo snarled. “You’re attracting attention.”
His order was pointless- We were too obviously who we were, and just as obviously were in vile temper. This was no turnip patrol. We were looking for trouble.
One-Eye whooped his way into a new song. “Can the racket!” Elmo thundered. “Get on your goddamned job.”
We turned a corner. A black fog formed around our horses’ fetlocks as we did. Moist black noses poked up and out and sniffed the fetid evening air. They wrinkled. Maybe they had become as countrified as I. Out came almond eyes glowing like the lamps of Hell. A susurrus of fear swept the pedestrians watching from the streetsides.
Up they sprang, a dozen, a score, five score phantoms born in that snakepit One-Eye calls a mind. They streaked ahead, weasely, toothy, sinuous black things that darted at the people of Oar. Terror outpaced them. In minutes we shared the streets with no one but ghosts.
This was my first visit to Oar. I looked it over like I had just come in on the pumpkin wagon.
“Well, look here,” Elmo said as we turned into the street where the turnip patrol usually quartered. “Here’s old Cornie.” I knew the name, though not the man. Cornie kept the stable where the patrol always stayed.
An old man rose from his seat beside a watering trough.
“Heared you was coming,” he said. “Done all what I could, Elmo, Couldn’t get them no doctor, though.”
“We brought our own,” Though Cornie was old and had to hustle to keep pace, Elmo did not slow down.
I sniffed the air. It held a taint of old smoke.
Cornie dashed ahead, around an angle in the street. Weasel things flashed around his legs like surf foaming around a boulder on the shore. We followed, and found the source of the smoke smell.
Someone had fired Cornie’s stable, then jumped our guys as they ran out. The villains. Wisps of smoke still rose. The street in front of the stable was filled with casualties. The least injured were standing guard, rerouting traffic.
Candy, who commanded the patrol, limped toward us. “Where do I start?” I asked.
He pointed. “Those are the worst. Better begin with Raven, if he’s still alive.”
My heart jumped. Raven? He seemed so invulnerable.
One-Eye scattered his pets. No Rebel would sneak up on us now. I followed Candy to where Raven lay. The man was unconscious. His face was paper-white. “He the worst?”
“The only one I thought wouldn’t make it.”
“You did all right. Did the tourniquets the way I taught you, didn’t you?” I looked Candy over. “You should be lying down yourself.” Back to Raven. He had close to thirty cuts on his face side, some of them deep. I threaded my needle.