The Ale Boy's Feast (32 page)

Moments later Batey found himself fighting for consciousness. Face down in the dirt, he struggled to free his wrists from their bonds. His captor pulled off his boots and tied his ankles.

Four filthy, bare-chested mercenaries in vawn-leather trousers stalked around their victims, who were stacked like firewood. A metal rack struck a stark, ugly silhouette before the bonfire, and a man’s rib cage hung there, an array of blackened bones.

Shredders. Well, that undoes the claims that they’ve been eradicated
.

He turned his head the other way and saw weapons and oars heaped in a corner, next to several Abascar hunting spears and a few of the best Bel Amican beastman wire traps. Out of habit he began to calculate their value, but he caught himself.
Focus, Batey
. He blinked through a trickle of blood.
Ah, yes. I’ve been struck in the head
.

But unlike the three Bel Amican soldiers—Gibhart, Crowcus, and Stallobo—Batey remained awake enough to notice the other prisoner. As the mercenaries prowled about, emptying pockets, stripping away garments, and casting them onto another pile of pillage, they stopped to prod a young woman with a mop of bright red hair who was begging for mercy.

Before he could see anything else, Batey felt the heel of a boot on the top of his head, and his chin was pressed into the dirt. From the white dust spilling off that boot, he could make a guess they were near Mawrnash.

The shredders conveyed that they wanted to know how the travelers had found their cave and passed their guard. They had obviously been too busy to discover the break that led down a zigzagging path to an underground river.

Shredders were known for their swift, silent slaughter of travelers and for their appetite for human flesh. They did not take prisoners or keep slaves. What did these barbarians want?

“Torch oil,” spat one voice. “Pitch. Anything that burns.”

Deathweed
, Batey thought.
They’re desperate for fuel to protect themselves
. He fought to keep his wits, to consider how he might distract them, to keep them from finding the river and endangering Raechyl.

The pressure on his head ceased. The one with the boots leaned forward, his black braids, decorated with bits of animal bones, spilling down from a pale, scarred head. “Give us burn stuff.” He pointed to a barrel against the wall. “Barrel for give more. Hurt you not so much.”

“We’ve got nothing,” squealed Petch. “But down below. Where we came from. A river. There’s a stream of flame oil fouling it. I swear by Thesera the queen.”

That earned Petch a kick in the jaw.

“Kramming Deathweed,” said the black-braided shredder. “Six it took. By night. Six.”

Down at the end of the line, the unfamiliar woman was gasping and protesting. “We could join you,” Batey said. “Eight more to fight the Deathweed.” A boot to his jaw snapped it out of joint.
I hate that
, he thought, spitting out a tooth.

Hulking about like a pack of Cragavar monkeys, the shredders conferred.
Did no one tell them stories when they were children?
Batey wondered as the room began to spin.

Something changed. Another figure had appeared. Batey’s senses sharpened.

In the spinning room, the ale boy moved across the cave in a cloak so filthy and tattered that it seemed rather useless. He carried a dead torch, went straight to the bonfire, and stuck it into the flame’s blue center.

The mercenaries stopped talking. They watched the boy as if he were sleepwalking, glancing at one another to confirm that they all saw the same thing. Then they spread into a half circle and stalked toward him.

The boy lifted the torch in anything but a threatening manner. “I’ve an invitation,” he said, unsteady on his feet. “You’re hungry. You’re thirsty. Let these travelers go. Come down and join us. We’re catching a lot of good fish down there. And …” He paused, catching Batey’s eye. “We could help each other.”

Stupid boy
, Batey wanted to say.
You’ve volunteered to be the shredders’ first course
.

The boy backed to the wall of the cave, keeping the torch in front of him.

“Boy, get out.” Petch had been turned over onto his back, and his beard was smoking where they had singed it with torches. “Don’t lie to them,” he roared. “You’ll make everything worse.”

“I’m not lying,” said the boy. “We’re cooking a meal down there.” When a shredder sneered some incomprehensible question, he answered, “I serve Cal-raven of New Abascar. I’m taking these folks to him.”

“Cal-raven?” gasped the woman with the fiery red hair. “I … I know him! I’m his friend! Please, take us with you!”

The boy stepped slowly along the wall. The shredders matched his steps like a pack of drooling dogs readying to pounce. He reached the corner and leaned back against the pitch barrel. The shredders closed in, laughing, unsheathing small razors for which they were famous.

The boy climbed into the barrel, aimed the torch downward, and plunged it into the oil. The shredders’ laughter turned to screams, and they dove at him.

The barrel exploded outward. A wave of heat blasted across the floor, singeing Batey’s mustache and scorching his face.

One shredder flew backward, impaled by a wooden lance from the shattering barrel. Another turned in circles, his chest on fire. One clasped a hand to his face and ran to the rope ladder. The fourth man fell with something attached to him—a boylike figure made of fire.

Batey fell asleep.

When Batey woke, the cave was almost empty.

He lay on his side, his jaw hanging slack. Next to him Petch lay chest down and crying softly. The ale boy stood over them, naked, black with soot and ash. Smoke spiraled out from him in thin lines.

“Think you’re a hero?” Petch sobbed. “Well, forget it. You were lucky. I found the way out.”

“That runaway shredder sealed the cave,” the boy answered. “He’ll bring back others, I suspect.”

The stories were true
, thought Batey.
The boy’s a firewalker
.

“Listen,” said the boy, “do you want to come down to our feast? Or will you stay and wait for the shredders to come back?”

“We’ll come,” said the redhead.

“Unbind me, you insect,” Petch spat. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t invite a slaver to join us.”

“Mousey may be a slaver,” said the ale boy. “But if she’s telling the truth and she helped King Cal-raven, it’s his decision what should happen to her.”

The redhead—the boy had called her “Mousey”—was rummaging through the piles of pillage. She turned, lifting up a large white tunic. “Here you go, fire-boy. This should fit you just fine.”

“Helk,” rasped Batey. It was difficult to speak properly with an unhinged jaw.

Mousey knelt beside him. “Nasty bruises. Here.” She clamped her hard little hand under his jaw. He screamed as the bones went
clok!
and then he flexed his jaw and thanked her. Finding that his bindings had been burned through, he rose up and looked around for his boots.

“I’ve still got my vawn’s saddlebag,” said Mousey. “Shredders didn’t search it yet. I’ve got bird strips. Cheese traded from a merchant and these.” She brandished two bottles of goldenwine.

“You’re in,” said Batey.

As they began to leave, Petch wept.

Batey smiled at the boy. “I think he’s made his choice.”

The boy paused. Then he returned to the spluttering captive. “If I set you free, you must promise to forget about that ladder. If our company learns about it, they’ll give up the journey and try to get out. Shredders and worse might be waiting out there. And we’ve come so far. We’re so close to something better.”

Raising his voice in what sounded like a final assault against an invincible fortress, Petch roared, “You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“No,” the boy replied quietly. “I don’t. But I do know that this is the way.”

Batey shouldered the bundle of the shredders’ pillage—all that he could carry—and said, “Make him promise that he’ll keep quiet for the rest of the journey.”

Petch’s head slumped against the ground. “I promise,” he wheezed in defeat.

The return of the missing Bel Amicans to the camp transformed the survivors’ meal into a celebratory feast.

Raechyl and Batey were inseparable, and while Petch staggered down to the water to sulk and wash his wounds, the ale boy was welcomed like a hero. Everyone wanted to embrace him, but no one did. His skin tingled and stung, as it always did after the strange magic of firebearing protected him. They unfolded one of the broad ivy leaves they had used for sails, and he lay down upon it. Smoke wisped from his edges, and he looked like a sacrifice set upon an altar.

He watched Batey pick through the shredders’ plunder. “This rope they used to bind us,” said the Bel Amican, “it’s the leather they use for reins on vawns and horses. Good, strong cord. Could come in handy.”

Kar-balter rafted out to the incoming river, filled the boy’s water flask, then brought it back and anointed him, trying to cool his smoldering skin. Nella Bye clothed him in the white tunic and blue trousers that Mousey had found. They presented him with ripe, white fruit from boughs of the silver-leaf trees.

“Do you think it’s time?” Kar-balter asked him quietly. “Time to open the bottle? We don’t have to share it. It’s Abascar ale, after all.”

“We share it with our companions,” said the boy. “There are no Bel Amicans, no people of Abascar, no Gatherers or slavers here. That’s what Cal-raven would say.”

Listening at a distance, Irimus Rain smiled.

A few moments later they gathered in a circle. The sail leaves made purple tablecloths, and each person looked down at a bite of seared fish, slices of silver-leaf apples, strips of fried egg, one ripe riverbulb, and then—from Mousey’s saddlebags—a
dash of nuts and seeds and crumbs of Bel Amican cheese. The uneasy glances at the red-haired woman dissolved at the sight of such treasure.

The fire burned low, and the thick forest of stalactites above illuminated everything in shifting rays of color.

The boy sat, his legs folded beneath him, shakily holding the bottle of ale. All eyes were on him. He pressed his palm to the top of the bottle, then lifted his hand with a flourish, and—
pok!
—the cork appeared between his thumb and forefinger as easily as if he’d snapped the cap from an acorn. There were murmurs around the circle. How had he opened it without a corkscrew or a knife? Suddenly the tricks of an ale boy’s trade seemed a matter of mystery.

He walked around the circle, beginning with their most unlikely guest. Kneeling, he poured a splash of fizzy ale into Mousey’s half-shell cup. He continued to Petch, who began to explain why Bel Amican ale-craft was superior to Abascar’s until Batey’s scowl shut him up. The boy served Batey and Raechyl, Alysa and Wilkyn, then Crowcus, Gibhart, and Stallobo. He poured for Mandacath, Brink, Nukirk, Joustra, and the other Bel Amicans. The Abascars waited, smiling at one another as if this reminded them of something.

“Our company,” said Mulla Gee, “is larger than you think.”

Somehow there was just enough ale for the boy to serve all his companions.

“You should make a speech,” said Nella Bye.

The boy looked down at his strange new costume and at his purple, fidgeting feet. Then he raised the bottle. “This ale was brewed by Obsidia Dram. Nobody knew her story. Nobody even remembers which king appointed her to work in the breweries. But everyone loved what she gave them. Every day and night she worked to fill bottles with surprises. She’d say, ‘We want them to feel new things are possible. We want to wash away their fears and disappointments.’ She wanted us to savor this. She wanted to turn strangers into family. Let’s drink in honor of Obsidia Dram.”

And together, they did just that.

The ale was sharp and clear, like a note from a struck copper bell. Then it
fizzed, and fireflies filled the drinkers’ heads, notes of honey and orange on their tongues. Nella Bye giggled, giddy, as she placed her shell back down.

They ate. And they savored the meal as if they had forgotten about the threat of the shredders. But Petch kept glancing toward the break in the wall, anxious as he cleaned his leaf-plate.

As they passed around the water flask, Batey filled his shell and stood. “I propose we drink to this—the strangest treasure I’ve ever seen—a remarkable boy we call Rescue. We knew he was peculiar. But we had no idea.”

They drank. And the ale boy discovered that the water was as extraordinary as the Abascar ale. As it cleansed his tongue and throat, it also washed away a glaze of sadness and helped him taste the sweet, brisk air.

Some Bel Amicans who had been drinking the river water long before they reached this cave only shrugged, saying they tasted nothing special about the water from the source. But as they spoke, the boy could see dark green stains on their tongues from the sludge they had swallowed before.

“This,” said Nella Bye, “is what water was meant to be.” Then she smiled. “I can see you,” she whispered. “It’s all coming back.”

“What will you do in New Abascar, Nella Bye?”

“I’ll tend to the children and the old,” she said. And then she fell silent rather than darken this gathering with memories of the daughter she had lost in Abascar’s collapse. “What about you? What will you do when there’s no one left to rescue?”