Husk: A Maresman Tale (18 page)

“Persistent little shogger, aren’t you?” Boss said, flicking his weedstick to the ground and treading it underfoot. “I might’ve let the other night go, but this…” He indicated the splintered planks of the back wall, swept his arm down to encompass the dark puddle spreading beneath the stygian’s corpse. “This ain’t what I’d rightly call neighborly.”

Jeb took a step toward him, but the three spearmen advanced.

“I’d give it up, if I were you, Maresman,” Boss said. “Help’s on the way, whether we need it or not.” He made a show of wiping an invisible tear from his eye. “Our friend’s spell has quite the reach. The minute horse-flesh started cooking—something I enjoyed immensely, thanks to this—” Boss held up a rose-tinted crystal. “—Sheriff Tanner would’ve gotten one heck of a wake-up call, and I don’t mind telling you, he’s gonna be mightily pissed off.”

Bones was crouching over the corpse, fingering the damage to its neck. Clovis crossed to him, holding the stygian’s head. Bones looked up, took it, then had a go at fitting it back on the body.

“Waste not, want not,” Boss said, “but all the same, you killing my supplier is going to put a hole in my purse I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive.”

The guards and the clutch of rough-looking men were growing restless. Someone uttered something about less talk and more action, and there was a chorus of agreement.

Boss smiled, beady eyes never straying from Jeb. “Oh, there’ll be action right enough, gentlemen, but it’ll be the kind that keeps folk sleeping safe in their beds; the kind of action the law metes out.”

“You might want to reconsider,” Jeb said, eyeing each man individually, letting them see he meant business. “Obstructing a Maresman’s work never ends well.”

“Ah, shut the shog up.” A short man with a ruddy complexion stepped up to him, sticking out his pigeon chest. The sleeves of his shirt had been roughly cut away to reveal ropey arms, thick with sinewy muscle. He brought a hatchet out from behind his back. “What do you think we are, shogging fishwives scared of our own shadows?” He drew back the axe and gripped it so hard his arm shook.

Jeb slashed with his saber, and the man’s eyes bulged like they were about to burst. He shook a whole lot more, and blood bubbled from his lips. The axe hit the ground with a dull thud, and then he collapsed on top of it, a leering gash across his throat.

A wave of shocked awe rolled through the spearmen, and they started to back away. The others, though, were made of sterner stuff. Angry growls and spat curses hit Jeb like hail as the thugs that had come down from the house with Boss fanned out in front of him. There were six still standing, all of them fingering weapons they’d drawn in the blink of an eye.

Jeb took a step back so he could glance over his shoulder. The spearmen behind were closing the gap, but they hesitated when they saw him looking.

A blur of movement from out of the corner of his eye had Jeb throwing out a block with his saber. Steel rang, and he came face to face with a snarling face. The man was bald as an egg, and scarred from brow to chin. Rusted rings pierced his nose and ears, and both eyes were bloodshot, like they reflected his intent. He snatched back his shortsword and stabbed, but Jeb saw it as if the man were moving through honey. With a deft twist of his wrist, he turned the blade and flicked his own up. The man stiffened, eyes riveted to the saber lodged in his throat. Jeb yanked it free in a torrent of crimson, and the thug fell to his knees trying to stem the flow with his hands.

A dagger flashed to his right. He caught the wrist wielding it even as air rushed in from the left. He swayed aside as a heavy axe arced past his head. The man swinging it was off balance, and Jeb threw out a kick that snapped his knee back. As he pulled out of the kick, he crashed his elbow into the dagger-man’s nose then cleaved through his shoulder with the saber.

The axe-man had to prop himself up with his weapon as he tried to hop from the fray, but Jeb was on him so quick, he never saw it coming. The saber took him through the belly, and the man slid off the blade as he sagged to the floor.

The others grew hesitant, as people always did when they saw how fast Jeb was. Sweet would’ve seen it, too, that first time, if he hadn’t held the advantage of surprise. Saw it the second time, though. Jeb could console himself with that.

Easing into the fight now, he felt he was gliding on the balls of his feet; felt he might even leave the ground, he was so light, so fluid.

The three standing thugs formed a ragged line with the three spearmen, all of whom were licking their lips and eyeing each other for what to do next. A quick glance behind told Jeb the other three spearmen had decided to wait, covering his retreat.

“Stand your ground,” he heard Boss saying, and turned back to see him gesticulating from just inside the barn doors. “Just keep him here till the sheriff arrives.”

Boss’s eyes widened, and a foot scuffed behind Jeb. He spun and blocked Clovis’s punch with his forearm. In the same motion, he swung with the saber, but missed when something dark cannoned into his face and thudded to the ground. It was the stygian’s head, and recovering from his throw was Bones, gleaming scalpel in his free hand.

Clovis lurched toward Jeb, like he didn’t have a thing to fear from cold steel. Bones circled away to the right, his movements flowing like lengthening shadows. A cold grip took hold of Jeb’s innards, seeped its way into his limbs. These two were different somehow. Magical maybe, but at the very least seasoned killers who weren’t fazed by what they’d seen him do.

Someone rushed in from behind, but Jeb swirled around a clumsy sword thrust and buried his saber in a man’s chest.

“Told you to wait!” Boss said, and the others pulled back.

Bones gave Jeb a thin-lipped smile and held up his scalpel before his eyes. Clovis cracked his knuckles and started forward, but Boss’s cry stopped him in his tracks.

“That goes for you, too, you big lummox.”

Jeb spun a quick circle, then sprinted for the back of the barn. The three spearmen didn’t waver, like he’d expected. One jabbed at him, but he swayed around the tip and lashed out with his saber. The man jerked his head out of the way, but Jeb was through the gap. He batted aside another’s tentative thrust, but the third man nicked his thigh. Jeb cursed but powered on through. If he could just reach the hole he’d made coming in…

A crossbow swung through the opening, and Jeb skidded to a halt.

“Reckon that’s about far enough, Maresman, don’t you think?” Sheriff Tanner said round the stub of a weedstick.

At this range, there was no way he could miss. Jeb lowered his saber, and when the sheriff wagged the crossbow at him, dropped it on the ground.

The sheriff’s eyes took in the carnage in the barn, dwelling an instant on each of the bodies, but longest of all on the stygian’s headless one.

“I was under the impression it was a simple case of trespassing, what I saw on this little beauty.” He held up a crystal like the one Boss had. “But I guess we’re going to have to add felony murder to the charge.”

Jeb frowned his incomprehension.

“Oh, you don’t have that where you come from?” the sheriff asked. “Well, Maresman, it’ll be my pleasure to introduce you to a whole new world of law.”

Boss chuckled and bumbled through the broken crates as he cut a path to the sheriff’s side. “Glad to see them settler’s law books I picked up in New Jerusalem are working out for you, Roskin. You just let me know when you need some more.”

“Obliged to you, Boss. See, Maresman, things was done different in the time of the first settlers. Reckon they brought their customs with them from Earth. Hundreds of years of them. Now, I’m a simple man, unlettered, you could say, but I’m the kind of a man who’s the kind of a dog that likes to learn new tricks. Ain’t that right, Boss.”

“Oh, yes,” Boss said, and puffed on his weedstick.

“It was a husk,” Jeb said, nodding at the stygian’s decapitated body. “That’s what I came for.”

“So, let me just add this up for you,” the sheriff said, completely ignoring him. “That affray with Sweet…”

“Uh huh,” Boss said with a curt nod.

“Trespassing on Boss’s land…”

Another nod, and Boss said, “Don’t forget the other night now, Roskin, you hear me?”

“Two accounts of trespassing, then,” the sheriff said. “And let me see…” He pointed the crossbow at each of the bodies in turn. “One, two, three—”

“No,” someone said. “He ain’t dead, sheriff. Just wounded.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes and pointed at another one. “Three, four… Is that man breathing?”

A guard went to investigate, and the sheriff gave up counting.

“Oh, and don’t think I didn’t find poor old Tharn’s body down by Carey’s Hostelry, either. You Maresmen might be a law unto yourselves elsewhere, but in Portis, I am the law. Ain’t that right, Boss.”

Boss looked rankled for a second, but then said, “You’re the law, all right, Roskin.”

“Way I see it,” the sheriff said, “you gone and gotten yourself into a whole heap of mischief, Maresman. Whole heap of it. You agree with me, Boss?”

“Oh, yes, Sheriff Tanner,” Boss said. “A whole stinking heap.”

21

T
HE SHERIFF’S JAIL
wasn’t the crowded affair Jeb expected. Fact was, it was empty, like it’d been cleaned out and made up for a very special guest. It was cut off from the office by a solid stone wall. The only way in or out was through an iron door with a face-high viewing grate. Light came in spears through the barred window set into the rear wall, and for a time, Jeb sat on the floor watching the dust motes playing in it. Save for a bed of straw and a row of dirty buckets, there wasn’t a whole lot more to keep his interest.

Course, it wasn’t his first time in jail, but usually, once they’d confirmed he was a Maresman, he was released with no questions asked. Something told him things would be different this time. Sheriff Tanner and Portis’s mayor-in-the-making were thick as thieves, and they’d both known the truth of things from the start. Whatever Boss was into—and you could bet it was more than just shipping somnificus to New Jerusalem—Tanner was on his payroll.

It was looking bleak, any way you reckoned it. Boss had been dealt a severe blow, what with Jeb taking out his supplier, and the deaths were sure to cost him dearly. Then there was Tharn, of course. It seemed a sure thing Boss had paid him, too, but what would be the point of proving it, even if Jeb could? No doubt the coin purse had found its way back to Boss’s coffers by now, maybe even along with Jeb’s flintlock and anything else that had the look of value about it.

Jeb closed his eyes and sighed. Only chance he had of getting free before whatever Boss or the sheriff had planned for him was if the Maresmen grew impatient with his lack of progress and sent someone to investigate. But even that could end badly, if they didn’t buy his excuse for the delay.

Must have been half, maybe even a full hour passed when the grate slid open. It shut a moment later, and the heavy bolts outside the door were snapped back.

Sheriff Tanner came in with a swagger, broadsword in hand. He took an especially long drag on a weedstick and blew a cloud of smoke across the beams of dusty sunlight.

“Don’t get up on my account,” he said, even though Jeb made no move to. “Just listen, so you know what’s going on.” He touched the blade of his sword to the floor and leaned on it with both hands, chewing the end of his weedstick while he spoke. “Crimes you committed are about as serious as they get. Now, don’t say I didn’t warn you when you arrived, and I don’t want to hear nothing about what you Maresmen get away with elsewhere. Portis is a simple town, and we are simple folk, but let’s just get one thing straight: There’s a rule of law here second to none. Play things my way, and we’ll get along fine. But cross me, and I’ll come down on you like a herd of mustangs.”

“This rule of law,” Jeb said, without giving the sheriff the respect of eye contact, “that include drug smuggling?”

“Whatever you think you saw on Boss’s land,” the sheriff said, “has nothing to do with you fighting on the street, murdering a lame old man, and then butchering a bunch more while trespassing.”

“It was a husk, Tanner, you know that. I went after the husk. Maybe you should be more concerned about Boss hiding one on his property. How well do you think that would go down with the Maresmen, let alone the senate of New Jerusalem?” He wanted to say more—lame old man!—about Tharn being paid to kill him by Boss, but what would be the point? It wasn’t like the sheriff didn’t already know.

Tanner shifted his weight, then hefted the broadsword to his shoulder. He chewed the weedstick so hard it broke and dropped smoking to the floor. He cocked an eyebrow as he ground it underfoot. “Oops. Don’t wanna be setting that straw on fire now, do we?”

Jeb stood, and the sheriff leveled his sword at him.

“Don’t you go worrying yourself about the senate none,” Tanner said. “Boss and them ol’ coots have an understanding. And as for the Maresmen, what would you say if I told you they was already on their way?”

“What? How?” Jeb knew he’d taken too long, but it wasn’t so long that they’d come looking, was it?

“Seems you upset someone. Someone who has connections with your boss.”

Jeb frowned and shook his head. What was he talking about? Who? And then the coin dropped.

“Slythe.” He’d seen the ex-senator seeing off a dispatch rider. Must’ve grated more than he let on, what Jeb had said to him that night at the Sea Bed.

“Not for me to confirm or deny,” the sheriff said, “but the way I see it, all I gotta do is hold you here till they arrive and take care of their own mess. Course, they don’t get here anytime soon, local law will step in for them. Ever heard of trial by jury?”

Jeb shrugged.

“We appoint twelve locals, give them the case against you, and then you get a chance to answer it. After that, they make up their minds if you’re guilty or not.”

“Who’s we?” Jeb said, already guessing the answer.

“Boss and myself, of course. Now, crimes like yours, involving the taking of life, only have one sentence, far as I’m concerned. Want to know what that is?”