“Twelve,” agreed Tagg, and handed the merchant in the tall red hat a handful of coins. The warrior gently took a thin wooden slab from the man, covered in small kelp wraps with a variety of fish, meat, and cassava within. He held the plate between their group, and Vaenuth grabbed on at the same time as Arloe.
They wolfed down the wraps with hunger, and then passed back the wooden tray to the merchant. The food was chilled by water, and it provided relief from the humidity, but Vaenuth didn’t like it one bit. She ate only because she believed Tagg would honestly force her to otherwise.
“Now where?” she asked, when her mouth finished chewing. She flipped her single slash of hair to the other side of her head. Her serpent tattoo, coiling up her left arm, gleamed with sweat.
“Ship doesn’t leave till tomorrow,” Krebin said. He rested his hand on his red-hilted machete. He had a bruise on his forearm from training with Tagg, so he changed his posture to stop antagonizing it.
“Shall we find someone more comfortable than those tiny bunks tonight?” Pressip asked.
Tagg shrugged. “That would be nice,” he said, smiling. His short brown hair was messily thrown back and he frequently ran his fingers through it. He rested his hand at his waist, on that ornate, iron-bladed weapon that had strangely been gifted to them.
“Lead the way,” Vaenuth said. “Somewhere close to the water though.”
They had moored in the port of Varravar, on the mouth of the Maga river basin, a large and colourful city. The buildings were all painted here, dark red, dark blue, white… Vaenuth could not remember stopping here on that first voyage. She had purchased passage from the city of Elpan, originally, but the last voyage from Starath to Maykren had not stopped in Varravar. If they had, she had never left the ship’s cabin.
“What about this place?” asked Arloe, as they passed one inn. The building was painted with a tainted white, it appeared grey, though the stones used were white in colour.
Tagg shook his head. “It’s a front for a brothel.”
Vaenuth smiled, which the others did not expect. Even Tagg seemed hesitant that mentioning it might offend her. They kept walking. “What are the laws here?” Vaenuth asked. “Who rules Varravar?”
“The Spirit of the Ancestors,” Krebin replied. “They are interpreted by the Priests of Varravar, of course, but anyone is allowed to commune with the beyond at any bone shrine.”
Tagg spoke up. They were walking across a small stream now, on a short boardwalk. “So, do the spirits of the dead like brothels then?” he questioned. “What do they get out of it anyway?”
“Well, even the Priests must like women…” Krebin muttered.
Vaenuth laughed. Story of her life—who didn’t like women? She kept walking, and bit her tongue. Their jokes didn’t bother her too much, but she was glad they didn’t talk like this often. Through a market, they walked, and their conversation faded. It was replaced by the haggling of merchants. Cassava was everywhere—cassava cake, tapioca flour, cassava oil, chips, bread. Sometimes, corn products replaced them. Fish was a popular option too, for Varravar was a river and an ocean city.
“How about here?” asked Arloe. It was a small building he indicated with his thumb, but a second, two-storey structure appeared to be part of the same establishment. A drinking house and an inn. A small sign was hanging out front, but Vaenuth couldn’t read it until they were right in front of it. The sign read, ‘The Old Man and the Young.”
They stepped inside the front door of the tavern in search of the innkeeper. The tavern was crowded even midday. They served coffee and a few other sober beverages, but half the patrons were drinking beers or rums. Vaenuth become acutely aware of her gender—there were only three other women in the whole room, and one of them worked at the bar. She was the only one of these women who was armed, with a sparring sword on her back and a real one at her hip.
“Welcome,” sighed a man nearby. He was sitting on a bench, without a table, filling in a parchment on a wooden board. “Looking for a room? Lunch has already been served.”
“How many beds in a room?” asked Tagg.
“Two,” the man replied.
“Then, we’ll take three rooms.” Tagg pulled out his coin purse, and paid the man the requested fee without bartering. The innkeeper opened a small metal box with a key and tossed more metal inside. “What’s the best at the bar?” Tagg asked, with a wink.
The innkeeper chuckled. “It’s all good, of course!”
They started walking toward the bar, when the men at a nearby table crooned. The biggest of them, a fellow with a scar on his forehead whooped and patted his crotch, with his burly legs spread. “You can sit your rump down right here,” he called, staring at Vaenuth’s body.
Vaenuth’s fists clenched. She looked at Tagg, who gently shook his head. But the leering men laughed, and she looked back at them with her teeth grinding. “What’s that, friends?”
“Friends?” one of the three men managed, between guffaws.
The first man frowned, unimpressed with her reply. “You dance in her with your white tits out, a men’s house, not a brothel. You’re welcome to leave, but if you want to stay… sit your arse down right here or my hands will be the least of your worries, whore.”
Pressip inhaled, his face flushed. He touched his hilt, but Tagg put his hand on the hunter’s. They both looked at Vaenuth, waiting for her reply. She smiled, and they relaxed, until she took a step past them, toward the table with the three burly fishermen. “You fellows look big,” she said. “Strong.” She gave them her best smile.
Their spokesperson, with his dyed-blonde hair a mess that framed his face, grinned, and stared at her torso as she approached. Two straps crossed her chest, one was her sparring sword and the other her clothes pack. Neither prevented him from getting the view he was after, and Vaenuth didn’t change that. “We are,” he said. “Strong. Big. We’d give you a good time.” He reached out for her, as she walked closer, but she paused, just out of reach. Sweat from the watered down hair gleamed on his wide forehead.
“Well, then,” Vaenuth said, pursing her lips. She had once been very good at this, she remembered. And with it came a sickness and a fury that burned like an ember at the back of her neck. But in this moment, she ignored the fiery coal. She was soft, everywhere, she decided, soft and warm. “We’ve got inn rooms, why don’t we have some fun?”
The man to the right opened his jaw in shock. He glanced at his friends; they were all smiling now. The big fellow with the blonde hair and broad jaw, shrugged. “Lead the way, then. I’ll bite,” he winked.
Vaenuth turned back to her friends. Pressip and Krebin were staring, in shock, while Tagg kept his cool and led the way to the door. He knew what she was doing. Arloe fell in behind the rest of them, carefully turning his back on the three men. They followed in their own turn, eager for any piece of the exotic white woman they could get.
It wasn’t until their parade reached the alleyway connecting the drinking house with the inn that Vaenuth grabbed the sparring sword from her back and spun around. With a savage hack, she rammed the wooden blade off the big man’s face—at least two teeth hit the wall at the same time he did. His friends cursed, loudly. One grabbed Arloe and slammed him back against the wall, but Tagg sprang into action as quickly as Vaenuth had. He bashed the fisherman off the back with his own wooden sword, again and again, until Arloe was dropped heavily to the corner of the ground and the wall, and Tagg had his hands full of angry fisherman.
“You little slut—” the first man growled, his mouth to his face—he was interrupted by a fist, this time Pressip’s.
The third of the attackers kicked Krebin’s leg, hard, and the other collapsed to the ground to avoid breaking something. Vaenuth lashed out with her sword, and the big fellow caught the wooden length of it. His left hand hit her, fast, and everything spun for a moment.
The plaster on the wall scraped skin off her arm, but her face was pulsing with each beat of her heart. She stumbled back, her sparring sword lost to her, but found the original insulter charging at her. A fist hit her gut, hard, and she fell to her knees, scraping them on the rocky ground. The man had blood all over his mouth from her first attack—through it, she could see his enraged sneer.
“Vaenuth,” cried out Tagg, leaving one of the men in the dirt near Arloe, to rush to Vaenuth. The attacker who had sent Vaenuth into the wall spun from watching her and the bloodied man fight, to slam his hand into Tagg’s shoulder. The mercenary gasped and lost his footing from the blow, but he didn’t fall. His attacker had a grip on him, a bloody grip. A knife stuck out of Tagg’s shoulder.
Then the attacker hit Vaenuth again, a blow to the cheek that sent her reeling across the ground. The errant blades of grass that stuck through the rock tiles tore out with clumps of soil, and Vaenuth tasted blood.
She couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t see anything but the big man’s gut, as he dropped deftly to his knees. “You knocked out my teeth, little shit,” he said. He grabbed her by the back of her neck and she felt his hands at her backside, yanking at the belt of her trousers. She fumbled for her knife—she would not let him do this.
Another punch landed, in her side. Her knife fell from her shocked fingers. It clattered to the ground. “Should have just sat on my lap,” the big man growled.
A violent thump resounded through the man, and then through Vaenuth’s frame, from where he was pressed against her. The grip on her thighs went away, and the man stumbled away, clutching his head. He fell to one knee, then turned to see what had struck him. Wielding her sparring sword, Pressip landed another blow across the man’s face, and he capsized, legs sprawling as he slumped to the ground.
Vaenuth sat on the ground, her knife clutched in her shaking hands. “Curse them all,” she gritted through clenched teeth. She dragged herself up to her feet, and stumbled toward the passed out fisherman. She stepped toward him with her dagger brandished, but Pressip caught her forearm.
“Let it be,” he said, quietly. “Tagg needs help.”
She glared at him. Her lips curl in a snarl. She’d kill all the men, cut their parts off and burn the whole sex, every last abuser. Every last wretch. But Pressip held her arm calmly, with no ill intent. She blinked at him. He was her best hunter, and one of her trusted friends. He pursed his lips, and nodded to her, then looked back up the angular alleyway.
Arloe and Krebin hoisted Tagg to his feet. The other two assailants lay unconscious in front of them. Tagg’s shirt was ringed in blood, his hands were pressed against his shoulder and his teeth were clenched. “You know how to pick your fights,” he gasped, as they marched him past Vaenuth.
They went up to their inn rooms of course, while Pressip ran to buy some supplies to treat the wound. “Through the muscle,” said Arloe, as he examined the hole in Tagg’s shoulder. Vaenuth opened the door to one of their inn rooms. The place smelled like tobacco smoke and human odor, but the beds appeared to be clean.
Tagg was barely conscious when they set him down, but he cried out when they started poking around at his shoulder. His muscular torso was soon bared, and Krebin washed the excess blood away so they could see what they were dealing with. When Pressip returned, they poured beer on the wound, while giving the mercenary a wooden rod to bite instead of cry out. When it was clean, Pressip layered on a turmeric paste and wrapped the wound with strips of beige cloth. They wrapped a few other strands around his whole torso to bind the bandage in place.
And then, Tagg went to sleep. The others said he would pull through it.
Vaenuth rested her head in her hands. The world was echoing. When Pressip knelt to wipe her bloody nose with a cloth, she just stared at him blankly. She missed the Expanse—all that sand and horizon. No more than ten humans in fifty miles. She closed her eyes and wished she was anywhere but here.