Present Day: The Chicken Thief, Part III
It was a festive evening in Bixtry. Midsummer Feast day had started out with the fair, where farmers showed off their prize animals and local athletes participated in various sporting events. The warm, sunny afternoon brought about the great, savory meals, served on long cloth-covered tables in the bright sunshine, and after the feasting came the drinking. It seemed that the whole town was drunk now, all the taverns and inns and public houses filled to capacity with revelry and merriment.
The streets were filled with the noise of celebration: minstrels and musicians playing rowdy songs at top volume; jokesters and clowns telling wild, comical tales and eliciting bright laughter from their audiences; storytellers relating their oral traditions with grand, expressive voices; joyful, inebriated shouting, the wordless kind that all sounded like “HEY YA!” There was even an orcish drum circle a few blocks over, hammering out an intricate, high-tempo rhythm that quickened the listener’s pulse and emboldened his spirits.
One of the evening’s celebrants leaned against a railing surrounding the porch of one of the many public houses. He stood on the end just at the mouth of a dark, narrow alley, barely able to stand on his own unsteady feet. It had been a long, wonderful day for this fellow, and he had decided to top it all off with a bottle of decent Edannese wine. Not the best stuff, of course — he wasn’t made of money, after all — but the decent stuff. He had downed nearly the entire bottle all by himself, and it had snuck up and walloped him over the head when he wasn’t looking. His chief concern now was convincing his left foot to find its way in front of his right foot, and thus begin the long stagger home.
He had just managed to complete the necessary mental transmission to his uncooperative limbs when he heard a small commotion behind him, from the street on the opposite side of the porch. He slowly turned his head, squinting and frowning and trying to make sense of it all.
He saw a small blur of vibrant color, briefly illuminated by the light spilling out of the front windows of the public house. No one particular color stood out as the dominant one; it looked like someone had crumpled up a rainbow into a little ball and given it a pair of legs. That little rainbow ball was hurtling towards him at what seemed to be an unreasonable speed, and it gradually took the form of a fleeing hob in very colorful clothes. The hob appeared to be carrying a rather large parcel under his arm, but the parcel was wrapped up in his colorful patchwork cape.
The hob spotted the drunk man just in time to avoid bowling the poor bugger over. He skidded to a halt mere inches from the man’s legs, almost dropping his parcel. When he had regained his balance, he shot a quick glance over his shoulder and another, longer one back up at the much-taller human fellow.
The drunk man finally recognized this hob: he was an entertainer from the fair that day. He had been juggling and telling silly jokes just before the feast. The man remembered that the hob had been very entertaining, and the children especially had found his little show to be quite captivating.
The hob was looking up at him now with something like panic and wild, exuberant joy written on his handsome little face.
“Which way did I go, buddy?” the hob asked, his voice low and conspiratorial despite his labored breathing. The drunk man thought about the question for a moment and finally realized that it didn’t make all that much sense.
“Huh?” he asked, badly confused.
“I ran past just now,” the hob explained rapidly. “You saw me run past. Which way did I go?” He tucked one of his dainty-looking little hands inside his brightly-colored jacket and yanked out a little purse of red velvet. He gave it a boisterous jingle and grinned madly.
“I don’t…” the man began, but he was terribly confused now and couldn’t finish the thought.
“Gotta hurry, bub,” the hob said quickly. “You tell me which way I went, I give you this and run the opposite way. Then when those guys behind me get here, you tell ‘em just what you told me. Understand?”
“Oh,” the man said after a moment. “Someone’s chasin’ you?”
“Mercy,” the hob muttered, sparing another quick glance over his shoulder. “Aye, someone’s tromping right on my tail feathers. I’ll make this easier for you. I went east. Say it back to me, real quick, and this bag is yours.”
The drunk man frowned, but he did as the hob said.
“You went east,” he repeated.
The hob tipped a crazy wink and tossed the little bag, which the drunk man barely managed to catch.
“Perfection!” the hob said, and he sprinted off to the west.
The poor, confused drunk man had barely had the time to right himself from his stumbling grab at the coin purse when four large, angry-looking men came bounding around the corner. They held truncheons in their hands and wore scowls on their red faces. The man in front saw the drunk and pointed at him, shouting.
“You!” the angry man said. “Did you see a hob run by just now? He was wearing brightly-colored clothes!”
“Oh, aye, I seen him,” the drunk man said, smiling crookedly. “He went east, he did.”
“East,” the angry man repeated, scowling seriously. “You are sure of this?”
“Oh, aye!” said the drunk man, feeling the sweet weight of the little coin purse in his hand. “Straight east he run, like all the devils in hell was nippin’ at his arse!”
“East!” the angry man hollered, streaking off in that direction and followed by his comrades. And then they were gone.
The drunk man stared down at the little red velvet purse in his hand, and gently pulled the string to open it. The top opened up like a strange, alien flower, and revealed the purse’s gleaming contents: gold coins, a dozen or more, all shining brightly in the dim evening light.
It was an odd thing; if the man had not been nearly drunk enough to pass out, he would have passed out at the sight of so many gold crowns. As it happened, he just smiled wide and stumbled home.
The hob, on the other hand, could not afford to stumble. He ran full-tilt through narrow alleys and down unlit side-streets, streaking towards the town limits. The bulky package beneath his cape was an awkward thing, and the poor, miserable creature inside it continued to struggle towards release, but the hob clamped down and kept on running.
A short while later, he saw the two horses up ahead. They were standing just outside of the circle of warm, orange light created by the little campfire. He saw the two figures seated across from each other on either side of the fire, wearing their cloaks and keeping their eyes on the road nearby. Of course, the hob wasn’t coming from the direction of the road. That would have been crazy.
He slowed his pace a bit and jogged up to the campfire. His little hob feet were as silent as shadows on the soft, grassy ground, but the outlandish colors of his clothing gave him away quite quickly. The two figures snapped erect, their hands going beneath their cloaks and ready to draw steel.
“It’s me,” the hob said quickly, scampering up to the fire.
“Oh, Wil,” said the figure on the left. This man was by far the smaller of the two, and his voice had a distinctly Edannese lilt to it. “We were beginning to worry.”
The other figure, a very large, bulky fellow, said nothing.
“We gotta go, Eorian,” Wil said. “Right now.”
“Not again,” said the very large figure, shaking his broad, hooded head.
“The festival was pretty much finished anyhow, Durok,” Wil muttered, moving towards the horses. “I think we tapped that keg dry.”
“True enough,” said Eorian, pulling back his hood. He had very long, black hair, tied away from his narrow, handsome face in the fashion of the elven people. He was broader and stockier than a true elf, and his ears were small and round like a human’s, but his face looked distinctly elven. He trotted over to his horse as he spoke, getting it ready for a hard, fast ride. “But please, Wil… tell me that is not another rooster beneath your cloak.”
The squirming bundle beneath Wil’s arms uttered a cluck of protest. That was answer enough for anyone.
“Father of hell,” Durok grumbled, drawing back his own hood and revealing his shaved and tattooed scalp. Like Eorian, he was of mixed blood; he had the fierce mien and massive, powerful build of an orc, but his nose had a small, fleshy point and his lower canines were too stubby to be considered proper orcish tusks. His skin was gray; not greenish like an orc’s and not brownish or pinkish like a human’s, but somewhere in between. He had a great, bushy beard framing his jaw, and his thick black eyebrows were drawn together over his deep-set, mud-brown eyes. “That’s the fifth damn time.”
“I really think this is the one,” Wil said urgently. He dashed over to Durok, who lifted him up and set him on the back of his big grey steed, Thunder. Durok climbed up into the saddle and spurred the big animal into action, snapping the reins.
“You said that the last four times as well,” Eorian called from behind. His roan stallion, Windracer, was quicker than the orc’s, but Eorian never pushed his mount as hard as Durok pushed Thunder.
“Well, this time, I’m really really sure,” said Wil confidently. He held onto Durok’s cloak with his left hand and secured his stolen fowl with his right. “You’ll see tomorrow. Just you wait!”
They rode for several hours, stopping to rest just before dawn. They were all too tired to count the previous day’s earnings, so they sacked out on the ground. Wil collared his kidnapped rooster before he lay down, tethering it to a nearby bush.
It was afternoon by the time they woke up. They had slept through the rooster’s crowing at first light, and through the subsequent crowings throughout the day. It had been a long, exhausting week, and the Midsummer Feast in Bixtry had been an excellent cap. It had been as much fun as it had been profitable.
When Wil woke up, the very first thing he did was check on his rooster. It was scratching around in the dirt beneath the bush, acting perfectly ordinary. There was absolutely no indication that this particular rooster was special or magical in any way. Wil was a little bit dismayed but not entirely put off; it would be a cold day in the hottest part of hell before Wil Magee could be anything like completely dispirited. He had been damned close a couple of times, and one time he was within touching distance of abject, hopeless despair, but it took a lot more than an ordinary, non-magical rooster to really give him pause.
“Is it the one, Wil?” asked Eorian from his bedroll. He yawned widely and sat up, looking over at the hunkered-down hob and smiling faintly. This was further evidence of his racial admixture: true elves did not require sleep.
“Well, it certainly seemed that way last night,” said Wil, rising from his crouch. He was still wearing that conspicuous patchwork outfit, though it was a little dirty now from sleeping all night on the ground. “But I guess this isn’t him.”
“We can eat him, then,” said Durok grumpily. He climbed out of his sleeping bag and had a good, long stretch. He was wearing only his breechcloth, and almost all of his tattoos — he was covered from head to toe, in a variety of different styles — were visible now, stretching over his massive warrior’s muscles. Durok was easily the biggest person Wil had ever seen in his life, almost seven feet tall and so wide across the shoulders that Wil could lay across them with room to spare at either end. He knew this because he had tested the theory one night while the big warrior had been sleeping.
“What made you so certain that this was the one, Wil?” asked Eorian, drawing on a pair of green linen trousers. His deep green eyes glittered like emeralds, a smile within the smile he wore on his handsome, angular face.
Wil looked down at the rooster. Now that he saw it in the daylight, he couldn’t really recall why this one had caught his attention so. It was a rather ordinary rooster with golden-brown feathers and a long, dark, curling tail. It was actually a little small for the breed, just like Wil.
“Oh!” he said suddenly, the memory slapping back into his brain. He turned to his friends with a wide, proud smile on his face. “The owner said his name is Golden Boy. He’s a prize winner!”
Durok stared down at the rooster with a slightly contemptuous look on his face.
“Wil,” he growled. “Look how his comb and wattles are trimmed to almost nothing. See the sharpened spurs? The scars on his face? This is a prize-winning rooster, alright. I bet he’s won a great many cock fights.”
Wil looked down at the rooster again, his proud smile fading away quite quickly. If anyone knew how to spot a fighter, it was Durok. And now that these things were pointed out to him, Wil felt rather foolish for not having noticed them earlier.
“Hrm,” he mused quietly. “Bugger.”
Durok grunted his disapproval.
“I imagine he’s no good for eating, either,” he muttered. “He’ll be all stringy and tough, no matter how well you season him. Might as well let the damned thing go.”
“We could try to sell it,” Eorian suggested. “Keep it for a while until we get a few towns away and sell it to a gambler or the like. We might even make some real money from the deal if we let Wil do the bargaining.”
“Maybe,” said Durok. “The hob can sell kindling to a man who’s house is burning down.” He paused a moment, regarding Wil and the stolen rooster, then shook his head. “No. The bird is a liability. I don’t intend to go back to jail for another goddamn stolen chicken.”
“Durok’s right. We oughtta let the poor little fella go,” Wil said. He undid the little leash from the rooster’s neck, calming the disturbed bird as his fingers worked. The rooster flapped his wings and dashed a few steps away, and then stopped once again to scratch at the dirt, ignoring his captors in favor of bugs and seeds.
“Go free, little buddy,” Wil said, standing up and dusting off his knees. “No more fighting for you.”
“We’d best get a move on,” said Durok, bundling up his gear. “Next town is nearly twenty miles from here.”
“Aye,” said Wil, watching the rooster with a strange, sad expression on his face. He couldn’t help but feel some kind of weird kinship with the misplaced bird. He turned away slowly and began packing his gear.
Posted by sirgunky 