Bardic Inspiration

It’s Good Rangers Eve and for the fifth night in a row the crazy old woman who calls herself Cal is hunched in her spot near the fire, holding court with ghosts. The front bar is elbow-to-elbow, backs press against every stone wall, and all the tables are full, save hers. No one wants to listen to her ranting. But I’ve worked enough packed houses to know that at some point, for someone, the desire for a seat will outweigh the aversion to deranged old ladies, and things might get interesting.

The place is loud, an avalanche of voices high and low. The air is thick with booze, breath, and body odor, and steamy hot, what with the fire and all the half-drenched revelers seeking cheerful respite from the storm outside. A night of “paws, pricks, and possibilities”, my silly, lusty dove Peach used to say, but for me it’s the energy, charged as a wizard’s wandtip.

I love it.

And tonight, despite the din, whether it’s a trick of the walls, her voice, or my custodial interest, Cal’s disjointed mutterings occasionally reach my ears.

“But I’ll remind ye,” she announces, pointing at nobody, “He was the only one what failed ta climb the steps ta Koladra Fan without being rope-towed!” She laughs. It’s a rough, wet sound, like scraping the last of the pig slop from a wooden bucket. “Dandarlian was such a, what’s the word, I know it I just can’t spit it out, bout, pout…”

I snake my way through the crowd, one arm aloft supporting a fully-laden serving tray, the other carving a path through stumbling, crowding bodies by finesse (when possible) or shoving (when necessary). Near the doors, a slurring, grandly-mustachioed man with an over-compensatory sword at his hip clumsily snatches at the tunic of the mountain next to him and raises his voice; I’ll keep half an eye, but I reckon that situation’ll resolve itself. A small, lively group of would-be bards pressed against the north wall sings an up-tempo version of “The White Lily’s Dread Gaze”. I shake my head; that tune’s not a ditty, it’s a warning.

I reach my destination, slide three bowls and three mugs onto the table, and hold out a hand. A wiry man with the symbol of Piers shaved into his head plops some coins in my palm, waggles his fingers lazily across mine as he drags them back. The lanterns flicker shadows on his face as he leers up at me.

“Take a break ‘n join us, darlin’!” He pats his knee.

From her table nearby, Cal croaks, “Kind of ya, lad, but I’m fine ‘ere with ma gallant crew, grew, shrew.”

I chuckle at the man’s gap-toothed, incredulous scowl.

“I know yer not talkin’ ta me, crone!” he says.

One of his companions, a pale-skinned brute whose face is half-tattooed with nonsensical runes someone likely told him were from the Barrier Islands, laughs. His other companion just glances away. He has the hooded eyes of a man who’s seen the shape of this before.

“I was, though, just then,” Cal says. “And I am again, now. And now.”

“Shut yer crevice ‘fore I shove ma girthy icepick in it!” He slaps his lap, and his friend Laughing Tattoos erupts again.

“Crevasse.”

“Ass? What’re ya saying, ya old witch? Speak up!”

“A crevasse is a large fissure in a glacier,” she says.

“What of it?”

“Ya said crevice, like a narrow crack. I think p’rhaps that pick yer so proud of is better suited ta tiny gaps. Whips. Cracks. Skulls. Saps.”

This time I laugh out loud.

“What’d she say?” says the wiry man, sitting up in his chair.

“Leave it alone, Farrold,” says his Embarrassed Friend.

“You can shut it, too, Emlin,” Farrold, the wiry man, says.

“She’s just a crazy old lady, she’s harmless,” I say, waving a hand. “I’m too busy tonight, but thankee for the invitation. ”

I move away, tossing an appreciative smile back at Cal, but she’s occupied staring at the twitching fingers on her clawlike right hand.

I work my way through the press back to the bar. Only two ass-gropes this pass; not bad. There are some advantages to being a tall woman. Being able to breathe in a crowded room, for one. But situating my butt at a tall man’s hand-level and my breasts at a short man’s eye-level was God’s most lascivious joke. Ah well, I’m accustomed to it.

“Rainey, three orders up, get movin’ girl!” Slab’s a good boss, but a full house makes him anxious.

“Aye!” I say, and pick up two loaded trays.

“Ferrets!” Cal screams.

A flicker of relative quiet passes through the inn, like a team of horses slowing at a crossing before quickly pounding on.

“–that old lady–”

“ –is she dangerous?”

“ –someone should put her out–”

My next table seats two men, or rather a man and a boy. Father and son, I decide. Not locals, say their look and garb. The boy’s hunting outfit is still stiff and clean.

“Thankee, lass,” the father says, handing me coins.

“Aye,” I say, “In town for the hunt?”

Business has grown from a whisper to a roar the last few days as hunters, warriors, and would-be adventurers from around the region gather to take part in Flintrock’s local celebration of the Good Rangers festival. Every year, our town grows three sizes for a tenday. If tonight’s throng is any indication, we’ll be sending more than a hundred “rangers” into the nearby basalt foothills for the annual goblin purge. Although the sickly creatures haven’t overly troubled us in years, the event continues to grow; I think it’s more about the sport now. Peach once told me that the custom in Starsfalling, where her cousin lives, is to use the festival’s willing bodies to repair and rebuild the outcabins along their defensive frontier. I guess every place is different.

“Yar, it’s Melon’s first Good.” He slaps his son’s shoulder, and the boy, who is tentatively sipping the foam from his mug, blows suds across the table. I produce a rag from my waist and wipe it up.

“Indeed?” I say, presenting my winningest smile. “Grats ‘n good luck ta ya, Melon!”

Melon flushes red and his eyes fall to the table. He nods once, refusing to look up. His dad whacks him on the back of the head and ruffles his hair.

I guess there are different kinds of power in this world.

“No, Gabe, ya fool, they’ll flank us!” Cal screams into the fire.

“Local dimwit?” The father chucks a thumb over his shoulder.

I feel a flare of anger, and my smile falls. “Cal’s not of Flintrock, just a visitor. Like you.” I can see from here Cal is hunched forward, hands grasping the edge of the table as if it’s the only thing holding her on the ground.

“Good Rangers does draw the crazies and indigents, I reckon. Guess she’ll–”

The father continues, but I’m already moving away.

Why is she here, now? Some of her ramblings sound like adventures from a rich, violent life. Perhaps she’s participated in the hunt in years past, and her disintegrating mind brought her here to relive it.

After delivering to my next table I look up to see a man standing over Cal, too close.

As I suspected, it’s getting interesting.

I push past a group of men competing to see who could force their companions to spill the most ale, two women having a slapping contest before a transfixed male audience, and some old friends colliding in violent, back-pounding hugs.

“–on yer ass, woman!” the looming man spits.

“What goes on here?” I say.

His head swivels, tilted, lubricated, across my chest and up to my face, eventually finding a focal point above my left eyebrow. He blinks his long, dark lashes slowly, twice.

Why are the pretty ones always such assholes?

“Mortfoy!” Cal yells. “The gems are the poison!”

“Shut UP,” the man says, pointing with a sloshing mug of ale.

I tuck the serving trays under one arm and hold my hands in a placating gesture. “Peace, champion, what’s yer dispute with this fragile grandmother?”

“Ma grandson,” Cal says, soft as rose petals.

“Oh!” I say, “Is Cal yer nan?” A kindle of hope that she might have family, doused by the icy water that it would take this ugly shape.

His plump lip curls. “Don’t know this hag. Ma crew wants ta sit ‘n she’s taking up space.”

“How many are ya?”

“Me an two others.”

“Sit, then,” I say, indicating one of the two open chairs at Cal’s table. “I’ll bring another chair.”

He stares at me, his brain wading through murky ale. I bend to pull out a chair, and wipe the table.

“Sit!” I say. “Cal won’t mind. Do ya, Cal?”

For the first time, as she looks up through webs of tangled, gray hair, I really take her in. A lumpy, shattered form shrouded under a threadbare brown cloak, streaked with mud. The flickering fire on her sunken face telling tales both tragic and comedic. Arthritic fists rhythmically clenching, releasing, in time with her puckered lips. But her eyes, they are what capture my imagination. Toasty brown, like Slab’s crispy morning taters, and large. Vacant, faded as old linen, but then, suddenly, focused and resolute. This woman is a contradiction. Her devastated body and mind cry out of endings, but those eyes…

“Sit!” she says in the voice of a child. “Ma mam’ll bring us food, ‘n I’ll tell ya ‘bout ma favorite climbin’ tree!”

I steer the man’s pliable spine into the chair, and turn to find another. As I depart, from over my shoulder I hear:

Her, excited: “Now what was tricky ‘bout the Cuthbert Lodge caper was the locks.”

Him, petulant: “Quiet.”

Her, furtive: “Dellabonna swear’d she could pick ’em, but I damn well knew they was spellbound–”

Him, resigned: “Stop talking.”

I retrieve an abandoned chair from behind the drunken singers near the wall; arms round each other’s shoulders, they’ve moved from “The White Lily’s Dread Gaze” to “Hilly Hilly Rah”, and some of their neighbors are joining in. One of them spins me as I pass; it’s awkward while holding a chair, but it earns me a cheer that warms my spirit.

“Dog stays outside!” Slab yells from behind the bar.

“But it’s stormin’!”

Slab slaps his palm on the bar, rattling dozens of mugs. “Out!”

When I return to Cal’s table, her new companion is standing again, leaning, shouting over the crowd, “Barstow! Oi! Gotta hear this!”

I set down the chair, and just before I slide it in, someone emerges from the crowd and silkily plops into it.

“Thankee, darlin’,” he says. It’s the mustachioed man I’d noticed earlier, who’d been tempting fate with a man twice his size. And indeed fate appears to have taken the bait: his left eye is half-swollen shut, his cheek is split, and his blonde mustache is soaked with blood. But he’s smiling.

“Barstow, listen ta the story this bag of bones is tellin’!” the first man says. “Go on, gran, tell it!”

“Sell it, pellet, the grains’re out back, you’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll–”

“Hey-ye! Hey-ye!” The man half-stands and claps twice in front of Cal’s face, and I flinch. “Come back, granny, tell about the miner’s son.”

“Yar!” she spits, her eyes squinting. “No taller than a goose, ‘e was, ‘n skinny as a noose, caboose, caboose–”

“Hey-ye!” Clapping again, laughing.

“Stop!” I yell, slapping his hands away from her face. He elbows me in the belly, shoving me back a step.

“Peace, Renton!” Barstow says, pulling his friend’s arm back and looking up at me lecherously. “An angry barmaid pours stingy measures, a happy one yields heavenly pleasures.” He smooths his bloody mustache, and his fingers come away crimson. He casually wipes them on the front of my apron.

Cal continues. “Well, that miner yar’nt give me what I wanted, so I dangled ‘is wee boy over the well by his tiiiiiiny ankle.”

Renton nods at Barstow. “See?”

Barstow’s bushy blonde eyebrows arch, and he leans in.

“That changed ‘is tune!” Cal says. “Loon! Noon! Boon!”

Barstow pounds a fist the table.

“Then ‘e give it allllll up! ‘Don’t hurt ma boy! Don’t hurt ma wee boy!’” Cal cackles. “So, I took it all, ‘n I dropped the lad anyhows.”

I gasp, and Cal’s eyes flick up at mine. Barstow looks over his shoulder and scans the rowdy inn. Our corner is a silent, still pool, just upriver from the rapids.

“Well, ‘e pinched me!” Cal says.

“Haw!” Renton laughs. “She has it about right, yar?”

“Shut it,” Barstow spits.

“That weren’t you, hag! That were ma man Barstow ‘ere!”

Barstow slaps his friend. “Shut! It!”

“Barstow,” Cal says.

Barstow just glares at his friend.

“Barstow!” she says again.

And this time he meets her eyes. “What of it, woman?”

And before us all, she transforms.

Standing, her chair disappearing behind, she throws back her cloak. Underneath, she’s lean and tall, dressed in light studded leather. She whips her head, and the long gray hair flows down her back, as if on command. Her face, which previously seemed emaciated, now glows with vitality, and her brown eyes crackle. She is still agéd, that much has not changed, but something else fundamental has. I think of the swollen barrel of primed ale I’d almost tapped, despite Slab’s warning, just after its bumpy delivery.

Imminence.

How does this woman, who seemed scarcely able to reach the table, who clung to it for support, now tower over it?

“Barstow Liddel,” she proclaims, “You are accused of child murder and theft. I’ll take you for trial–”

“Like hell, slut!” Renton stands, but before his feet are flat, Cal’s arm swipes up from her hip. Her leathern sap catches him under the chin with a toothy crack and he falls, unconscious, from this tale.

Barstow’s eyes bulge as he slides back his chair.

“I’ll take you for trial, or I’ll take them your head.”

Barstow screams a war cry and launches to his feet, pulling at his long sword with one hand and thrusting me away with the other. Cal takes a step back to clear space, earning shrieks of protest from the tables she barges into. She snatches the coiled bullwhip from her other hip, pulls back and cracks it in the breathless air in front of Barstow’s face.

The inn’s attention has turned to our corner. The laughter, the clinking, the eating, all have ceased. Even the bards have stopped singing, which, if you’ve met a bard, you know is no small thing.

“–what’d she say–”

“ –is that–”

“–can take her apart–”

“Trial?” Cal says.

Barstow scoffs, curling his lip. He raises his sword.

“ Or head?” Cal says.

“–did she say trial or head–”

–can’t be–”

Several people flee out the door just as thunder rolls across the valley. A dog yelps and whimpers.

“Shut it, wom–” Barstow’s protestation is cut short when Cal upends the table into him. At that moment, I swing a serving platter into the back of his knees, and he crumbles to the floor, table atop him.

The inn fills with gasps, cheers, and laughter.

Cal winks at me.

“Trial?”

She jumps, planting both feet on the underside of the table, straddling the central leg. A violent whoosh of air and a groan escape from under it. Cal hops off and flips the table aside.

“Or head?”

Barstow grits his teeth. Still grasping the sword, he leverages himself up on his elbows. Across the inn, I hear two voices—I think it’s the slapping contest women—start chanting: “Trial. Or. Head. Trial. Or. Head.”

“–is it really her–”

“–what’s happening–

“–she said trial or head–”

The chant rises now, spreading through the crowd.

“Neither, demon whore!” Barstow yells, and swipes his sword at Cal’s feet, but in a single leap she avoids the blade and kicks it from his hand. Then she unleashes the whip again. It wraps around his neck and she yanks it tight.

Barstow scrabbles at the braided leather with grimy fingers, but fails to find purchase. When he starts to kick and swing his arms, Cal tilts her head in warning and jerks back until he’s still.

His face bulging and patchy red, Barstow bares his teeth and wheezes, through spittle, “Head!”

The crowd roars.

Cal looks at me, also standing over Barstow, armed with a serving tray. I think my face exposes my alarm.

“Wrong choice,” she says “Instead, I think I’ll dangle you by the ankle from the rear of my horse, like you did to that poor child, all the way back to Danner’s Crossing.”

She pulls him to his feet.

“For trial!” she yells.

“For trial!” answers the crowd.

As she binds the defeated man’s wrists, she mutters, “Had to make him sweat.” She holds out a hand, smiling, and I take it. “Calla Lily Carver. Thanks for looking over me the last few nights, Rainey. You were truly kind to this ‘mad old woman’.” She cackles theatrically.

“Calla…” I say, thinking of the bar song I heard this very night. Most nights. “You’re the White Lily?”

Stunned, I accompany her through the horde, some frightened and shrinking back, others boldly clapping her on the shoulder.

“Oh!” She holds out a purse of coins. “To pay for my food and drink. I know you were covering me.”

I take it.

At the door, she pauses. “I watched you, you know. You have good instincts for keeping the peace. We all have different skills, Sapling, different tools. Some given at birth, some earned by hard work and necessity.” She leans in and, touching her forehead to mine, whispers, “They underestimate us.”

She grins, winks, and then, using her prisoner’s bruised face to push open the front door, she strides out into the raging storm.