Free Split Heirs by Esther Friesner, Lawrence Watt-Evans Page A

up the normally quiescent contents of the cesspool. Odo winced.
    Lowering a rope for the boy wouldn’t work; he had tried that several times when one or the other of the boys tumbled down the well. A two-year-old boy did not hold on to a rope well enough to be hauled up, and certainly couldn’t climb by himself.
    Odo would have to climb down himself and carry Wulfrith out.
    It wasn’t the smell, so much, he told himself, then stopped.
    Well, yes, it was the smell. He wasn’t a sissy like those Old Hydrangean noblemen, he didn’t have any objection to honest lice or a little healthy dirt, but he took a bath every year whether he needed it or not, and he just wasn’t used to dealing with what you might call a really serious stench. If the milk went a little sour, or the eggs were bad, that wasn’t much of anything; if a sheep puked on his boot he didn’t hurry to wipe it off, and he had changed the boys’ nappies without complaint — but those were just little stinks.
    The reek in the cesspool was an entirely different matter.
    It was, after all, where he dumped the sour milk and the rotten eggs and the sheep puke and the contents of all those diapers —all of it.
    The smell down there was a whole new class of stink. He really didn’t want to climb down there.
    He could hear Wulfrith splashing about happily.
    He whacked Dunwin, on general principles, and went to fetch a rope — but after a moment’s thought and another glance at Dunwin, he decided to make it two ropes.
    The amazing thing, Odo thought sourly an hour later, was that Wulfrith had only managed to fall back twice on the way up. That, and that Dunwin hadn’t untied himself yet by the time Odo and Wulfrith were safely back on solid and relatively clean ground.
    He scrubbed vigorously at Wulfrith’s ears.
    â€œHurts, Daddy Odo!” Wulfrith complained.
    â€œWell, it’s your own bloody doin’,” Odo growled. “I’ll be moving my own bath up more’n a month, too, thanks to you.”
    â€œI didn’t do nuthin’!” Wulfrith protested.
    Dunwin giggled, and Odo kicked at him — sideways, so it wouldn’t have hurt much even if it had connected.
    When all three of them had been thoroughly bathed — Dunwin was included in the interests of fairness — Odo discovered that the hut had acquired a sort of echo of the mind-boggling, hair-curling, nose-ravaging stink that had accompanied Wulfrith and himself up from the cesspool. The clothes the two had worn, which had already showed evidence of having survived several generations of constant use, were clearly beyond any hope of redemption.
    Odo had never learned to sew. Since he had had two sets of perfectly good clothes handed down from his father, he had never seen any reason to. Now he was down to one set of clothes, the ones he had put on after his bath.
    It was time, Odo decided, to make a trip into town and buy new clothes — and incidentally spend a night somewhere else while the hut aired out. It was a market day, and he could order a shirt or two.
    And, just maybe…
    Well, he was really not as young as he once was, and maybe he was a little old to be looking after two active young boys, all by himself.
    He looked around his little home, at the pile of smashed crockery by the door of the hut, the lines of drying diapers, the shattered hayrack, the broken fences, the scattered hay and wool that was strewn everywhere. There was no sign of the cat or the sheep.
    Maybe, Odo thought, keeping both of the boys was just the slightest little bit overambitious.
    Wulfrith let out a shriek, and something fell with a crash. Dunwin giggled.
    Odo nodded. Overambitious, definitely.
    Wulfrith and Dunwin thought that the trek down the mountain to Stinkberry was a great adventure — until they had gone about two hundred yards, whereupon they took turns announcing, “I’m tired,” and “When will