Free Lore of the Underlings: Episode 7 ~ Ho-man Holds Court by John Klobucher Page A

John
Cap’s unwrapped attention. He bent an ear to listen in. He squinted
to spot the source of them.
    “How many billit is that, my friend?”
    “I stopped counting after seven…”
    “If only they ranked us Guard by bones.”
    “Oodor-ull, you’d be number one!”
    The fool’s gold flicker of rich, oily
lamplight painted a gallery of faces, portraits of Keep’s people
young and old who were oddly spaced out in uneven rows. Some the
stranger seemed to know from an earlier thrilling episode. Others
were still a mystery to him, only a blur in the warm gilded
glow.
    In either case, the noises they made grew
louder and louder, filling his ears. Grunting, gulping, gnashing,
guzzling — not to mention a belch or two. And, just maybe masked by
those feeding sounds, a hint of sadder undertones...
    Then men began singing and clanged their big
mugglets in one great crescendo that nearly hurt.
    On top of it all, John Cap’s stomach growled
from the smells of the guardsmen’s hearty feast. The young man had
not eaten in days, but for that bite at Eela’s fruit. He was smart
enough not to expect food now. No one threw him even a crumb. In
fact, they just ignored him.
    And yet drops of sweat had started to bead up
on the stranger’s suntanned forehead, ready to drip from his rugged
brow. “Who the devil turned up the heat?” he wondered, whistling
long and low. As he did, the liquid rolled down his cheek till the
salty wet met his handsome lip. He seemed to savor the taste of it.
Something familiar… human…
    That’s when he noticed a score of torches
around the perimeter of the room. They flamed and flared as if in
anger — warning, foreshadowing what was to come. They hissed like
an upset nest of vipers, telling all in serpent’s tongue.
    The fire had John Cap hypnotized. He froze
and stared at it licking the air, fanned by an ire that burned
somewhere near yet deep deep down in the heart of darkness.
    “Name and address…” asked a voice. It was
plain as day and very close.
    A gangly man with pockmarked skin stood over
the still-kneeling stranger. He held a leafy ledger in hand and a
sharp quilled stylus poised to write.
    The query took John Cap by surprise. “Huh?”
he started. “Sorry… What?”
    The quizzical fellow repeated himself and
offered up a patient smile, apparently sensing his subject’s
confusion.
    “For the record,” he explained. “Just the
standard questionnaire.”
    The young man replied with a half-hearted nod
as if unsure he understood. “Okay. In that case, I’m John Cap and I
come from…” He hesitated. “Elsewhere.”
    “ Tom Cat — I like the sound of that.
But I don’t have a clue how to spell it.” The man scratched his
head and scrawled something down. “Well… close enough I guess,” he
laughed. “And this land of Elvesware, is it far?”
    John Cap shrugged his big, broad shoulders.
“Hard to say, mister. Yes and no. I just know for sure you can’t
get there from here.”
    The thin man wrote some more in his notebook,
etching fine lines on its colorful leaves. Each rune he made bled a
blood-like sap that left a trail of red behind.
    “Hmmm.” He stopped. “There’s no line for
land. You’re the first foreigner that we’ve had.
    “Wish I’d brought the long form…”
    He muttered a moment, tapping his head with
the non-business end of his pointy pen. He seemed to be debating
something. John Cap used the pause to study him, a fellow of
roughly thirty years with eyes of gold though a pasty complexion.
His hair was a tale of two citizens too. In front it sprung from
his scalp like scrubgrass, all short spikey tufts nearly grazed to
the ground. The back he wore long as a chevox tail; it fell across
his narrow shoulders down to the blades in silky brown.
    Yet he had but a wisp of what you’d call a
beard — an odd blond goatee almost too light to notice.
    At last the questioner took a glance at the
shadowed fore door of the tent. He suddenly looked a