Gleeman's Tales Read online

  Cleo clenched her fists, digging her nails into her raw palms each time she heard the dull thump of a kick. Soon the beatings would stop. She seemed to be lulled into a haze by the frequency of the torturous grunts and the subsequent prick of her nails into her soft palms.

  Looking back, Cleo was not sure how much time had then passed - an hour, two hours - but she was startled when heavy footfalls introduced one of the men from the room above. Cleo watched the boards above her groan in protest under the weight of the sailor.

  “You said you’d wait up for me? What, you a glutton for punishment, little minx?” Rook’s voice sounded more nasally, as though he were holding his nose closed. He seemed to lumber through the main hall fumbling at his pants as he groped over towards Jean. She sat with an obvious look of fear on her face.

  Cleo edged out of the crawlspace and tucked the front half of her poncho behind her back creating a slight cape of woven material. With her hands and arms free, she snatched up the staff, ever aware of the added weight in its butt. She twirled the hardened and treated weapon in her hands, and then padded into the room, careful to walk slow and avoid the loose floorboards that Jean had pointed out earlier.

  Rook must have taken notice of the fear that painted the Jean’s face. “Oie? What’s the matter, little minx?” he asked, starting to turn around.

  Fearing that the drug had failed, Cleo acted on instinct, swinging the staff’s reinforced butt into the sailor’s turning head. The impact jarred Cleo’s hands and sent a shockwave rippling through her small arms. She also heard the distinctive sound of bones crunching under the hit. Cleo watched in horror as Rook stood motionless, his eyes devoid of cognition. He swayed and threatened to topple over. Both women were quick to react, catching the dead weight at his shoulders and easing him to the stressed wood floors. Blood spouted and spread through the white linen wrapping already covering his nose.

  “I see you got a good swing in, Gnochi,” Cleo whispered. The nose seemed to deflate itself from the force of Cleo’s massive swing.

  “Quickly, Cleo. Do you have the pouch?”

  Cleo had been standing over the face of the man she had decommissioned with a look of slight pity, but also anger. She returned to the present, fumbling at her belt to untie a small pouch. She retrieved from within a glass jar of a thick black tar. It sloshed slowly like honey and clung, thick as sludge, to a brush she twirled through it. She removed it from the jar, examining the tar as it stuck to the brush’s fine bristles.

  “He deserves no less and much more for what he did to you, your master, and me,” Jean said, eying the brush. “I can’t imagine that this is the first of his offenses either. If you can’t do it, I will.”

  Cleo slapped the brush over the eyes of the unconscious sailor, lathering the black sludge into the nooks and crannies, spreading an even layer over the lashes. “It’s done.” She slipped the jar and brush back into the pouch and retied it to her belt.

  She clutched the staff tight as she ascended the stairs, careful to make as little noise as possible. Her heart fluttered as she mounted the top step, and her gaze swept down the seemingly endless corridor to the room where she and Gnochi had been staying. Her light brown boots seemed to find every loose floorboard. The deafening silence amplified her every step.

  Cleo found herself at the room’s open entry. Though closed, a substantial piece of the door remained warped open from an earlier scuffle. She easily pushed it open and surveyed the room.

  The first thing she saw in the dim light centering the room’s only candle was Gnochi’s ferocious, yet silent, attack of his heavy rope bonds with what Cleo guessed to be a nail head he had pried loose from the floorboards. He was bloody; his head, bruised. The dirt-stained tunic that clung to his bruised shoulders now bore splotches of blood spanning from dried-dark-brown to fresh-flesh-red, its frayed lacing removed and used to bind his ankles together. Gnochi’s tired brown eyes found Cleo’s, and she saw them glisten for a moment before he looked down and rubbed them on his torn sleeve. He then pointed to the bed which anchored the room.

  Spread out, mouth agape, and eyes closed, Cleo’s uncle Bollo slept.

  She edged over to the side of him and readied her staff over his eyes. She had never looked this closely at her uncle, despite the long voyage they shared. She noted how full and bushy his moustache and beard were and how unlike they were to Oslow’s mammoth beard which was stringy and long. It was at this moment that she realized that she saw no resemblance to her father in his rounded features. Bollo’s eyes and face held not the same stern determination inherent to Cleo’s father.

  A thought halted her attack. She wondered if this man was her mother’s brother, then realized that it would not matter, as her mother was dead. One of her hands instinctively reached for a necklace that no longer nestled itself on her chest. She returned her grip to her staff and gazed down at her uncle, then swung the staff down with as much force as she could muster. The lead-capped staff crashed into her uncle’s sleeping face. As she expected, his body slumped from a restorative sleep into an unconscious hibernation. Blood leaked out from his mangled nose and mouth.

  She brought out the jar of the black sludge and spread a generous coat over her uncle’s eyes. Cleo glanced to Gnochi to gauge his reaction, but the darkness obscured his face, though she thought she saw his eyebrows rise. She knelt and unsheathed Gnochi’s dagger to cut the remainder of the binds away from his hands and feet. He rose and rubbed his wrists to aid recirculation. Cleo offered the staff to Gnochi, which he accepted. Without a word, the pair exited the room and made for the stairs. Her own light footsteps no longer sounded alarms compared to the haggard walking and frequent pounding of Gnochi’s feet and staff.

  After exiting the stairs, Gnochi grunted and leaned against the wall favoring an unseen wound on his side. Jean was nowhere in sight.

  “The other one?” He mumbled the question. Cleo pointed to the limp shape prone on the floor. She offered her shoulder to Gnochi and led him to the front entrance. Once there, she deposited him under the awning. She flicked the poncho back around her full torso and sprinted into the rainy night towards Oslow’s shop and the waiting Perogie.

  Cleo raised the saddle up over Perogie and tightened the straps, attaching the various packs. She noted how much more Perogie was burdened with, so she carried two of their new packs instead.

  “He alright?” Oslow’s voice startled Cleo, she did not fear that he could tell because the rain drowned out all but the most direct noises.

  “They roughed him up good, but we need to get out of town. I don’t want to be around here if they wake up and it didn’t work at all,” Cleo said, handing the remainder of the tar back to Oslow.

  “That’s understandable. Well, I guess you’ll be off then.”

  “Yes,” Cleo said, beginning to lead Perogie from her makeshift stable. “I’ll take care of him, Oo, don’t worry,” Cleo affirmed as she led Perogie into the dark rainy night.

  Chapter 13

  Cleo lead away from Mirr on a road that she thought would lead her toward Pike’s Cathedral. After nearly an hour of walking through the blinding rain, her visibility became so poor, she failed to see anything beyond her arm’s length. She knew that they must stop. All around her lay thick, dark forest.

  She was not sure if she was traveling in the right direction, but she knew that she had to put distance between her, Gnochi, and the two men who had pursued them from Imuny. As if by a miracle, Gnochi slept much of that first hour despite his seated position on Perogie’s back and the rain that pelted his body. Even during the peace of his sleep, his face reflected a forlorn sorrow. The rain dripping down his cheeks looked of tears.

  After driving Perogie further, Cleo spotted a large hillock and a small cave recessed into its surface. Her weary bones protested at the thought of further travel. She led her steed into the cave and unloaded the packs from Perogie’s back. As she sat down, eager to rest her legs, she realized that she needed to start a fire. Af
ter settling from the trek, cold began to seep through her skin. She noticed that Gnochi fared little better. She didn’t know if she should be worried that despite the sodden clothing which clung to his body like leather and the fierce chattering of his frigid teeth, he remained asleep. Should he have woken, considering the harsh conditions?

  Cleo tucked strands of wet hair behind her ears and filched the hat from atop Gnochi’s head. She rushed into the maelstrom, scouring for any twigs not soaked through from the storm and stowed them under her poncho. Though the hat was heavy with rainwater, it deflected some of that which sought to chill her face.

  As she surveyed the forest around her little cave looking for fuel for a fire, she thought she saw the faint outline of a house a distance further into the forest, but she forgot about it when she heard Gnochi succumb to a fit of coughing from in the cave. She renewed her efforts to get a fire lit as quick as possible, managing to find a few dozen small dry branches and several handfuls of grass. Back in the cave, she set the branches in a pyramid, then took the flint from one of Gnochi’s packs and struck it rapidly with his hunting knife. The repeated sound of her striking the flint, peppered with her sharp curses born of her failure to light a spark, roused Gnochi from his dreamless sleep.

  Cleo spied him shifting to sit upright, his mouth and eyes betraying the pain which looked to wrack his entire body. “Let me help,” he said, his voice sounding like the only thing in the maelstrom not drenched. He ran his tongue over chapped lips as he pulled one of the branches from her setup. “See how this branch has these white rings on them? If you go to burn it, you will smoke out the entire cave with poisonous gas.” Gnochi took the flint and, within a minute of whacking at it with his knife, had a small blaze growing on the cave floor.

  Cleo spied four other branches adorned with the white rings and tossed them to the rain. “I have so much to learn,” she said, her eyes falling to the flames. “Not only about being a bard.”

  “That’s why I’m here then,” Gnochi said, turning to Cleo. “I’ll be your teacher.” Neither could meet the other’s eyes during the moment of silence. “I’m sorry for exploding at you back at—”

  She leapt and threw her arms around him, burying her face into the crook of his neck and shoulder. She felt him recoil at the initial pain, then relax and encircle her back with his hands. Warm tears leaked from her eyes and she mumbled into his shirt. Gnochi pushed back on her so the two sat before each other.

  “I can’t even imagine what you are going through: taking me on as an apprentice, a companion, a friend. What you went through for me. Jean told me that I was their real target. I don’t know what you said to them to deserve this,” she said, eyeing his bruises, “but I know you protected me. Even after those things I said. You don’t have to continue. I can be gone in the morning.” Cleo cut her exasperated tirade short when she saw tears fall from his muddied eyes to the rough floor.

  “That’s quite enough,” he said, wiping at his cheeks. “We need to change out of these clothes, lest we catch some illness.” He turned around and pulled off the slick shirt revealing a trove of bruises spanning every color abnormal for human skin. “I didn’t have to take you on,” his voice said, though he made no move to look at her. “I didn’t have to bail you out, or fight for you, or clothe you and feed you. No, I didn’t have to do any of those things.” He paused, turning back around. “I wanted to. And I would hope that someone would do the same for my niece.”

  Cleo looked up to his eyes. They offered a reassurance that stayed further tears. She watched him drag his gaze to the packs and otherwise wet earth. He hobbled over to them, rooting through for clothing. He sunk into a loose shirt and a warm, wool-lined jerkin; both tucked neat in a clean pair of trousers. Gnochi’s old clothes sat in a pile seeping bloody water onto the ground.

  “I guess I had better get this armor off then. Could you help me? My arms aren’t quite used to reaching back to the torso strap.” Cleo hung the poncho up to dry revealing her soaked leather armor which shined in the flickering fire light. She saw him inspecting the emblazoned crest adorning the armor’s shoulder strap. “That was all Oslow’s idea.” She pulled the vambraces from her arms and stepped out of the boots, greaves, and leg armor. Her pale limbs were raw from where the armor sat tight as a second skin. She turned her back to Gnochi, allowing his hands to undo the clasp securing her torso armor in the back.

  “Just let me know when you’re decent,” he said, moving to the mouth of the den and staring out into the storm. From their supply of new clothing tailored by Oslow, Cleo shrugged into a light red shirt untied slightly down the front and a pair of fitted trousers.

  “You remind me so much of a child abandoned.” Gnochi said, watching the storm. “You were alone when we met. Working a job that, frankly, you would’ve been without, after a week. And you’re stubborn as a mule.”

  Cleo pursed her lips at that comment, her eyes boring into the back of Gnochi’s head. The light, dancing from the flames, flickered and played with the shadows residing in his dark hair.

  “And I suppose I did need the company. I can only talk to my horse so much before even I start to think that I’m crazy.” He paused. “But I must apologize for the danger I’ve put you in.”

  “I think I’ve caused you way more trouble than you’ve caused me.”

  “It’s not a pissing contest,” he said, turning around smiling. He must have seen some confusion on her face, for he then said, “We are not competing for who has caused the most trouble for the other.”

  “Either way, there was the sailor at Imuny and back at the inn. And then at the stream. The comments people make to you. And my uncle.”

  “So, he wasn’t lying then?” Gnochi asked.

  “You’re just trying to get from one city to the next, but because of me, you have to stop at every shanty along the way,” she said, lowering her eyes.

  “You’ve done way more than that,” he said, his words stabbing her as though they were knives. “You’ve taken my mind off of my grim reality and of the position I’m in.” He paused, letting out a ragged breath. The gaping wounds torn from his first words scabbed over. For a moment, the continued drumming of the storm outside and quiet snaps of the flame made the only noises heard. Gnochi sprinkled some of the grass into the fire to feed the flame.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I want to,” he said, sitting down before the fire and offering the ground beside him to Cleo, who squatted. “Some bad people have kidnapped my family: my sister Zelda, and her daughter, Pippa. They are being held prisoners until I perform a job. But I’m afraid these bad people will kill them when I am done, regardless. They have first-age power beyond the limits that the Luddites have set as acceptable, and they flaunt it with no heed paid.”

  “So, why go through with it if you think they’ll kill your family regardless? Why not go after them?”

  “Unfortunately, following the job is the only hope I have to hold onto,” he said, pulling grass apart and tossing it into the flames. “I don’t know how long they held me prisoner. I don’t know when I was captured or how long I was tortured, but they messed with my mind.” Gnochi paused for a moment. “One day, I seemed to wake up from a daze. With me was Perogie and my packs, somewhere south of Imuny. So, I have no idea where they are based, and I have no means of getting that information. These are not the kinds of people you ask about in a tavern. If they receive even the slightest inkling that I’m sniffing after them, then I can just assume that my family is dead.” The finality in his voice asserted that he was done talking on the subject. He had set his chin to rest on his knees and resigned to staring into the flames.

  For a while, neither spoke. After some time, Cleo sat up and asked, “Are you going to sleep?”

  “There’s no rest for me tonight,” Gnochi admitted.

  “Well, I won’t be sleepy for a while, so why don’t you break out a story to pass the time.”

  From the other side of the cave, where
Perogie stood, the mare snorted and swished her tail as if saying, Yes, and something I haven’t heard a million times already.

  Cleo searched through the pack for a moment, then returned, bearing Gnochi’s leather emblazoned journal, the quill pen, and the ink she borrowed from Oslow. “Actually Gnochi,” she said, seeing the shock in his eyes as he realized what she was going to ask. Neither grimace nor frown painted his face as a result.

  Gnochi nodded after a moment, and then said, “Okay, A light tale for a somber night.”

  ◆◆◆

  Tears of the Sun

  When young Katherine stormed into the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks, her brother Louis dragged one eye from his graphic novel in annoyance. The child panted, silent tears flinging off with her every strained breath. With one hand, she gripped a trio of flowers by their crinkled stems. Her other hand clenched itself in a fist with her index finger stiffly pointing out.

  Hearing the commotion, their grandfather entered from the living room, his newspaper folded under his arm. Katherine ran to him, thrusting her finger before his wrinkled face. She mumbled between her cries about a bee.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” he said, placating his granddaughter. “Lou, can you get the bandages?”

  The teen released an audible sigh, turned his book over so it tented over the table, and lumbered to the bathroom.

  “It’s just one little sting.” Katherine’s grandfather scraped the stinger out with his fingernail. “See? It’s out. No more tears, little one. Let’s wash that so you don’t attract them to you when you go out again.”

  “I can’t go outside again knowing they’re out there. I’ll never look at flowers the same.” Katherine pulled her arm back and inspected the red welt on her finger. She lowered it to her side; with her free arm, she wiped at her nose. “Why do you have those stupid bees anyway?”

  After washing her hands in the kitchen sink, Katherine’s grandfather set her on the ground and the pair walked over to a window overlooking the hives in the backyard.