Fable: Blood of Heroes (11 page)

CHAPTER 9

INGA

W
hat do you mean, you’re taking my ale?” Pale Pete, owner of the Hack and Cough Pub, was not a happy man. Built as solidly as one of his larger kegs, he stood with folded arms between the Heroes and his stock. A thick cudgel hung from his hip.

“Every keg with that hideous dead cow on it,” Inga confirmed. “You haven’t had any yourself, have you?”

“I taste test every barrel that comes through these doors.” He grimaced. “Can’t say I could stomach more than a sip of that stuff. But I got a great bargain.”

“I’m sure,” Inga said. “But like Old Mother Twostraps used to say, if you pay for rough linen drawers, you can’t expect ’em to feel like silk. Sure, outlaws and smugglers are happy to cut prices. They’re just as happy to cut throats. That ale is poisoned.”

“That’s preposterous!” Pete looked at Tipple, and his eyes narrowed. “I see what this is about. Old Jeremiah Tipple claims to be a Hero, but nothing’s really changed. He can’t pay his tab, so he’s spun a story about tainted drink as an excuse to steal my stock, is that it?”

“Tipple wouldn’t do …” Inga hesitated. “Well, maybe he would, but that’s not why we’re here.”

“Besides, if I were planning to swindle you, I’d steal the good stuff.” Tipple’s face shone with sweat, and his pallor was the yellow-green of an old bruise. He had been complaining of a sour stomach all morning. It had taken two potions and a bit of Leech’s power to get him up and about this morning.

“Look at him,” Inga said. “This is what your ale did.”

“Prove it.”

“Very well.” Inga folded her arms. “Go ahead and drink a pint of that dead-cow ale. One pint and we’ll leave you in peace.”

Pete looked past Inga to the patrons seated at their tables, many of whom were watching the exchange. “I told you, that stuff tastes like—”

“I’m sure you’ve had worse,” said Inga. “One pint. I’ll pay.” She pulled a coin from her purse and slammed it onto the bar. “You can keep the change.”

Blue chuckled softly. “Risky ale makes you pale.” He tilted his head to one side. “And dead.”

“That redcap gives me the creeps,” muttered the owner.

“You’re not alone, friend,” said Tipple.

“What’s wrong?” asked Inga. “Not thirsty anymore?”

Pete’s shoulders sagged. “Take the damn kegs, blast it all. Both of them. I was thinking about closing this place anyway. Mother always said I’d no head for business. But if a fifty-percent-off sale’s good for profits, shouldn’t a hundred-percent-off sale be twice as good?”

Inga patted him on the shoulder. “Always listen to your mother.”

“Can I get a bottle to go?” Tipple asked as he grabbed the nearest keg. “Wine, not that poisoned sewage.”

Inga sighed. “Are you sure you should be drinking that? You’re already sick as a dog.”

“If the dog felt like this, he’d want a drink too.” Tipple looked back longingly as they left the tavern, seemingly unbothered by the weight of the keg balanced on his shoulder.

Inga carried the second keg. To her left, Blue played idly with an earthworm he had dug up from the side of the road earlier in the day. A length of rope secured him to Inga’s wrist. “Blue, what do you know about this poison? Why would Nimble Johanna want to kill innocent people?”

“Not innocent people. Heroes.”

Inga frowned. “She wanted to kill us?”

Blue nodded so hard the tip of his cap slapped his eye, making him yelp in surprise.

“Why?” asked Tipple.

“Because Heroes are big and stupid and smelly!” Blue sniffed Tipple, then made a show of toppling over. He bounced back to his feet. “Yog will kill them all!”

“Who’s Yog?” asked Inga.

The redcap’s eyes went round. “How do you know Yog?”

With great difficulty, Inga swallowed her first retort. Blue wasn’t trying to be difficult … probably. Depending on which rumour you believed about where redcaps came from, Blue might even have been human once. With those spikes he had driven into his skull, it was a wonder he could talk at all. “Is Yog an outlaw? Another redcap?”

This triggered a bout of laughter. “Yog is bone and stone and iron chain. Flying death and deadly rain.”

Tipple looked around. “Am I the only one who can’t make a lick of sense out of that?”

“Did Yog work for Nimble Johanna?” asked Inga.

Blue hunched his shoulders and pulled out the skeletal finger he had shown them before, the one he claimed was magic.

“Yog … is a finger?”

Blue kicked her in the shin. “Stupid Heroes. Stupid outlaws. Stupid redcaps.”

Beneath his obvious anger and disgust, Inga heard something more. Pain and longing. “We thought you might have been a prisoner of those outlaws. You weren’t, were you? The redcap bodies we found. Did Yog tell you to betray them, and to help the outlaws deliver their poison to Brightlodge?”

“Maybe.” Blue looked away. “Not telling.”

“You helped to kill your fellow redcaps,” said Tipple.

“Maybe,” he said, more quietly than before. His eyes were glassy. He blinked and swiped a filthy hand over his face. Could a redcap actually be feeling guilt over betraying his own kind?

If so, that guilt vanished the instant he spotted their destination. Rook and Leech had dragged three more kegs to the edge of town, where they were dumping the contents into the sewers that flowed into the falls.

Blue’s eyes went round. “Fish will be drunk on ale that’s sunk!”

From the angry shouts of the crowd, the Heroes might as well have been tossing babies over a cliff.

“They say it’s the start of a prohibition!” cried one man. “We won’t stand for it, do you hear?”

“Wendleglass can have my ale when he pries it out of my cold, dead belly,” said another.

“
Real
Heroes wouldn’t march into my establishment and steal my kegs without as much as a how-do-you-do!”

Inga shoved through the crowd, set her own keg on the ground, and raised her voice. “The ale is poison!”

“But it’s
cheap
poison!”

“Not to mention it tastes like sewage,” added Tipple.

“
Cheap
poisoned sewage!”

“My brother had a pint of the stuff last night, and he was just fine when he left. Mostly fine. Not dead, at any rate.”

“And how is he this morning?” asked Leech.

“Now look here, just because a man takes mysteriously ill after a good, honest night’s drinking doesn’t mean—”

“Enough,” shouted Inga. They were like stubborn children. Tell them they couldn’t have a treat and they grew more determined than ever to gobble it down the instant you looked away. “Listen here. Anyone so much as touches these kegs, I’ll toss you in after them, got it?”

Rook smashed the butt of his crossbow into another keg, hard enough to crack the wood. Tipple lifted the keg and hurled the whole thing into the sewer. The crowd roared in response.

“Stand aside!” The crowd split to open a path for a pair of Brightlodge guardsmen. They were sweating and out of breath, and one had blood on his spear and uniform.

Inga’s gut tightened. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re to return to Wendleglass Hall immediately!” said one.

Rook folded his arms.

“That is … I meant to say, Young King Wendleglass has asked that all Heroes join him at the hall,” the guard amended. “If you don’t mind.”

The other shifted his weapon to point at Blue. “Redcaps have invaded Brightlodge.”

Poor King Wendleglass had been in a panic. Inga and the other Heroes had smiled and nodded reassuringly until they could get him out of the way and get down to the business of planning their defences, planning which was complicated by interruptions and criticism from the king’s dead father.

Even now, Old King Wendleglass wandered the streets of Brightlodge while Heroes searched for the intruders in groups of two and three. Inga could hear him shouting,
“Redcaps at our walls! Redcaps in our streets! Redcaps in our privies! Brightlodge was never invaded by redcaps when
I
was king!”

There were reports of redcaps popping up all over Brightlodge. Inga had been partnered with Jeremiah Tipple, but they hadn’t gone far when Tipple paled, clutched his stomach, and raced to the nearest privy.

Inga pounded on the door. “Will you hurry it up in there? We’re supposed to be protecting people.”

The only answer was an inarticulate shout. Tipple sounded like a cow in labour. Inga winced to imagine what was drawing such sounds from the man.

Blue crouched close to Inga, hiding behind her bulk as the townspeople alternately fled into their homes and came back out to see what was happening. He appeared to be enjoying the panic and occasional screams.

“Do you need me to fetch Leech?” Inga called to Tipple. He and Rook were working several streets over.

Something slammed against the outhouse walls from the inside, hard enough to make the entire structure jump several inches. The wooden planks creaked.

“Tipple?”

The door exploded from its hinges. Inga instinctively yanked Bulwark up. Flying shards of wood thumped off the shield. A body tumbled into the dirt. Tipple stomped out after it, one hand holding his trousers up, the other balled into a fist. Blood dripped from parallel scratches on his face. “The pipsqueak was hiding in the roof like a damn spider,” he roared. “Waited for me to sit down and settle in, then pounced on my blooming head.”

The creature was unlike any redcap Inga had ever seen. It appeared to be female and was superficially similar to Blue. Pups from the same litter, as old Lottie Dragonbreath used to say. But the skin lacked the sickly pallor of a redcap, and while she did have a hat pulled tightly over her head, it appeared to be a damp nightcap, the laces tied tight beneath the chin. The hat was the deep green colour of decaying swamp muck. A single nail through the forehead held it in place.

The creature—the greencap—jumped to her feet and pounced at Inga, who bent her knees and braced herself. The greencap bounced off Bulwark and went sprawling.

Before the greencap could recover, Tipple seized her by the back of her nightgown, hefted her into the air, and threw her headfirst into the outhouse. She smashed through the back wall, hit the ground, and didn’t get back up.

The outhouse swayed, and for a moment Inga thought it might survive the abuse that had been heaped upon it. Then, with a series of loud cracks and bangs, it collapsed into a heap of broken boards. A foul-smelling cloud of dust spread outward from the wreckage. Blue pinched his nose in disgust.

“Where do these things get their caps?” Tipple rubbed his head with one hand. “Is there some deranged hatter running around selling red hats and iron nails to new-formed redcaps?”

“Her cap was green,” Inga pointed out.

Tipple shrugged. “Maybe this one wasn’t ripe yet.”

“She smelled ripe enough to me.”

“Ha!” He snorted and wiped his nose. “That’s a good one, Ingadinga.” He reached out as if to hug her.

Inga swiftly interposed Bulwark between them. The man had just been in a privy brawl, and he had the stink to prove it. She tugged Blue around the collapsed privy to examine the fallen greencap. “How many more of you are roaming the streets of Brightlodge?”

“Not one of us.” Blue crept towards the greencap and nudged her with his toe. “She’s broken.”

“Tipple has that effect on people,” Inga agreed.

Another redcap—greencap—galloped past, riding a pig like a steed and stabbing a pitchfork at anyone who came too close. Inga hoped it wasn’t the same pig she had helped catch the day before. That poor animal had been through enough.

She turned her attention back to the greencap who had attacked Tipple. “Do you know what happened to her, Blue?”

Blue glanced down. “Big, pickle-smelling human threw her through a privy.”

Inga scanned the street and adjusted her shield. “You said she wasn’t one of you. What is she?”

Before Blue could answer, she heard Leech shouting from one street over, calling for backup.

Inga ran towards the sound, dragging Blue behind. They found Rook trying to get a clear shot at a greencap inside a barbershop. A group of four angry townspeople crowded around Rook.

“Leave her alone,” yelled a heavyset boy, swinging an iron skillet at Rook’s head. “That’s my granny!”

Rook easily dodged the blow. The boy staggered back, though nobody had struck him that Inga could see. Leech stood in the background, draining the strength from Rook’s attackers.

“We don’t have time for this nonsense.” Inga bulled her way to Rook’s side and slammed Bulwark down in front of her. The old face on the shield came to life, and a trio of spectral shields spread out in a half circle. With a flash of light, the shields shot forth, knocking the townspeople to the ground.

A middle-aged man started to get back to his feet. Inga tugged her sword free. “Stay there. Otherwise I’ll just have to knock you down again. Now what’s all of this fussing about?”

Another greencap jumped down from the roof of the barbershop. Inga waited for it to approach, then calmly clubbed it on the side of the head with the flat of her blade. Rook raised his crossbow to shoot down the other.

“Please,” said the man. “She don’t mean no harm.”

Inga looked at the unconscious greencap, a short man with a boyish face. He could have been handsome if not for the blood covering much of his clothes and the twisted snarl on his face. Her stomach knotted.

She put a hand on Rook’s crossbow. The greencap hiding in the barbershop was as old as dirt, with wrinkled skin and a hunch so severe she resembled a walking horseshoe. To the boy, she asked, “What did you mean when you said that was your granny?”

The boy sat up, clutching his chest with both hands. “She came back from the pub last night saying she had a stomachache. When we woke up this morning, we found her like this. She was trying to eat our dog.”

“Broken, broken, broken,” said Blue.

“What about the other one?” asked Inga.

“Him?” The older of the humans—the boy’s father, perhaps—waved a hand. “That looks like our neighbour, Clump. You can go ahead and kill him. He’s a complete arse.”

The granny charged, waving a wooden cane about with both hands.