Wives were a curse, no doubt about it. So Hordilo had learned to trim down his dreams, as befitted a man made wise by years of grief and blissful ignorance horribly shattered on a fateful day when the world turned on its head and blew him a mocking kiss. It all came down to avoiding the pitfalls awaiting a decent man wanting a decent life, but that was never as easy as it should be.
He sat glowering at the table, ignoring the moans and complaints from all the scratched-up fools who’d been too slow or too drunk to escape the claws of Red the lizard cat, and studied the three newcomers lined up at the bar.
Now, a woman like that one would do me fine. She don’t mind her mostly nakedness, I see, and showing me that backside ain’t no accident, since I’m the only good-looking man in here and she eyed me coming in. Too knowing to be cold. Why, she could thaw a snared rabbit under hip-deep snow. And make it jump, at least once.
But no, he’d have to arrest her. Along with her two companions, and then see them all hanged until dead. What lord made a law that said being a stranger was against the law? The death sentence for having an unfamiliar face seemed a little harsh, as far as punishments went.
The three were speaking with Feloovil, but she was only half-listening, dabbing a damp cloth against the rake of claw-marks running down her right cheek. Finally, with an irritated gesture she indicated Hordilo and the three strangers swung round.
The bandaged one limped over. “You! You thook them up there? The keep? And they wath made guethth?”
Hordilo glared at the other two. “You elected this one your spokesman?”
The woman scowled. “Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, and Mancy the Luckless. They’re all up at the keep, are they?”
“They are, and you’re welcome to join them.”
“Thath awfully nithe of you,” the bandaged man said, nodding and smiling.
“Just take the track up to the gate and knock,” said Hordilo, waving one hand. Then he pointed at the woman. “But not you.”
“Why not me?”
“Got to question you.”
“About what?”
“I’m the one asking the questions, not you. Now, get over here and sit. You two, go on, up to the keep. There’ll be a fine meal awaiting you, I’m sure.”
“And her?” the third man asked, nodding at the woman.
“I’ll send her up anon.”
“Go on,” said the woman to her companions. “He’s the law around here.”
“I uphold the law,” Hordilo corrected her. “It’s Lord Fangatooth’s law.”
“Lord what?”
“Fangatooth. You all think that’s funny? Go and tell him so, then.”
When the two men had finished their drinks and left, the woman carried her tankard over and sat down opposite Hordilo. She studied him with level eyes and that was a look Hordilo knew all too well.
“Is that what you think?” he asked in a growl.
“Why shouldn’t I?’ she retorted, slouching and setting her tankard down on the thigh of the lone leg she stretched out-the one bare and pale and with a delicious curved line where the meat of it slung down from the chair’s edge, and the sight of that made Hordilo want to fall to his hands and knees and crawl up under that thigh, if only to feel its weight on the back of his neck. He shifted about, felt sweat everywhere under his clothing.
“I don’t like it when women think that,” he said.
One brow arched. “If you weren’t that way then no woman would think it, would she?”
“I wasn’t until some woman did me in, not that I was ever married, of course, but if I had been, why, she would’ve done me in, all because she was thinking what she was thinking.”
“You’re blaming the water for the hole it fills.”
“I’ve just seen that too many times,” Hordilo said, feeling surly. “Women thinking.”
“If that’s what you think, why talk to me? You could’ve questioned Gust Hubb, or Heck, even. But you didn’t. You picked me, on account of me being a woman. So let’s face it, you keep making the same mistakes in your life and I ain’t to blame for that, am I?”
“If we’re talking blame here,” Hordilo retorted, “then it was you that sat down thinking what you were thinking. I ain’t blind and I ain’t dumb and I don’t take kindly to being thought of that way, when we only just met.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hordilo. Captain Hordilo.”
“All right, Captain Hordilo, since you know what I’m thinking, what are we doing here?”
“Women always think I’m that easy, don’t they.”
“Is that what I was thinking?”
“I know what you were thinking, so don’t try and slip around it with all this talk of us taking a room upstairs to continue this conversation. I got laws to uphold. Responsibilities. You’re a stranger, after all.”
“You only think I’m a stranger,” she replied, “because you ain’t got to know me yet.”
“Of course you’re a stranger. I never seen you before. Nobody has, nobody around here, I mean. I don’t even know your name.”
“Birds Mottle.”
“That hardly matters,” he replied.
“Yes it does. Strangers don’t have names, not names you’d know, I mean. But I do, and you know it.”
“What were you thinking, showing me that leg of yours?”
She glanced down and frowned. “I wasn’t showing it to you. I was just letting it lie there, resting. It does that when I sit.”
“I ain’t fooled by anything so obvious,” Hordilo replied. He reached down and held his hand under her thigh. He hefted it once, then twice. “That’s a decent feel, I think.”
“You think?”
“I know. Decent weight. Solid, but soft, too.” He moved it up and down a few more times.
“Looks like something you’d be happy doing all day,” Birds Mottle noted.
Sighing, Hordilo sat back. “And you said you didn’t think I knew what you were thinking.”
“Got me.”
He rose. “All right, then.”
“Upstairs?”
“I get this all the time,” he said, “for being so handsome.”
Her eyes widened. But he’d seen that look, too, plenty of times, and whatever she was thinking, why, she could keep it to herself.
Feloovil Generous watched the two head up to Hordilo’s room. She shook her head. There was no telling the tastes of women, and of all the idiotic conversations she’d heard from Hordilo over the years, that one was close to tops. Can’t figure how he does it. How it works every damned time.
We’ll still see her hang, of course. So, I guess, everyone wins.
She patted the stinging slashes on her cheek, looked round to see if Felittle had cracked open the cellar door and slipped out, but even as her head turned she saw the door snap shut again, the latch thrown with a muted thunk. Good, that embarrassment from her own womb could rot down there, for all Feloovil cared.
In the rooms above-all the rooms barring the one now occupied by Hordilo and that slutty woman-all of her girls were weeping and trying to put together what was left of them. Someone would have to sweep up the clumps of hair and bits of skin, but that could wait on her lovelies repairing themselves with make-up and wigs and whatnot.
She’d warned her daughter about taking in that lizard cat. It might have shown up looking half-dead and with a witless look in its wandering eyes, but a wild creature was just that. It belonged out among the rocks, sliming across the cliff-faces above the waves eating birds and eggs and stuff, instead of killing and eating the village cats and some of the dogs, too.
A spasm of grief clutched her at the thought of the two dogs Red had torn open. Scurry and Tremble had been decent hounds, a little fat and slow, true-fatally so, it turned out-and now Wriggle was all alone and pining under Ackle’s table … and where had that stinking man gone to? He should have been back by now, with Spilgit in tow, which would have given her the opportunity to turn this miserable day right around.