Western Watch (3rd Draft)

Chapter 21

"Well, get yer ass up on the roof if you're so damned set on usin' it to collect arrows." Droellen resumes shoving a ramrod down the matchlock barrel, grunting as he pushes the wadding home, muscles rippling across his bare shoulders.

"None of those horse-fuckers in sight," calls Kasspar, standing on an old wooden ladder while peering out a trap door in the roof. He looks back down, shoulder-length grimy blonde hair falls about his young face. "Crossbow, Prett."

"No clanners, no crossbow," says a tall, thin man counting quarrels out on a table. He squints up at Kasspar with one eye. A black patch hides the ruins of the other. "You'd only bloody waste our quarrels loosing at fucking squirrels."

"Prett, shut up. Just give the kid a crossbow." Droellen stands the now-loaded matchlock up against the wall and peers out the window.

"Let me up to see," says a bald, buck-toothed man picking crumbs out of a whispy grey beard. "Anything to get out of this fucking heat. I'm dyin' in here."

"If yer dyin' it's sure not 'cause yer starvin', Bhenny" says Droellen. He sights a cocked crossbow down the road leading south out of Little Westhold. Nothing to aim at except dust, grass stubble, and a withered tree-stump about thirty yards away. "Get your fuckin' paws out of the bread."

"It's a bakery. I'm hungry."

"It's a bakery, not a cargo pallet down the Baltoni dockside. Don't bloody lift anything," says Droellen. He puts down the crossbow, gets to his feet and glares at Bhenny. "I don't care if this place is the fucking Red Hag's personal treasure box. Gave our word we'd touch nothing. Leave everything be and start layin' out the powder charges like I told ya."

"Hey Droellen," Kasspar calls down from the ladder. "There's a few cottages between us and the river and more towards the skins' camp, but nothing south except some trees and the road. We're gonna be a rock in a river when those savages ride through."

"Arsehole Totlenn," says Bhenny. "What'd we ever do to him?" He picks his way around heaped flour sacks and grabs a small cask of gunpowder.

"Us? Nothing," says Prett. They have exactly ninety-two quarrels. After counting twice, he's sure. He picks up his sword and runs a calloused thumb down the edge. "You? You probably nicked his dinner sometime."

"Piss off."

"Ah, spoken like a true man of letters." A short, barrel-chested man holding a double brace of water-skins comes through the bakery's back door and closes it behind him. He lays the water-skins on the floor by the wall. "That's all we got, for now anyway, so don't swill it all down like it's wine."

"'Bout time, Narrius," says Droellen. "What about that big wagon out back? Anything in it we can use?"

"Couple of pieces of siding, a few sacks of flour, that's it."

"Oh good, more flour," says Prett, shoving a couple of small bags aside, "you know, in case we run short."

Narrius wipes his brow, grabs a chair, and sits down. "Everyone's all snug in their houses, far as I can see. I hope the clan shows up before we all, err," he glances at the huge stone oven making up one of the walls, "bake to death, so to speak."

"You're too damned stupid to know what to hope for," says Bhenny. "Gonna hope for something make it good food, better wine, and the best women." His gaze slides over to a small canvas sack lying by Droellen's pair of matchlocks. Merreth's whip is tucked inside. "Think your woman's coming back?"