evening, but of the stygian there was no sign, and the blood trail remained as dead as Jeb’s run of luck.
Boss arrived by trap as the suns set, and occasionally Jeb could see his bloated silhouette pass across the lamplit windows of the ranch.
The guards were changed at regular intervals, and he judged there to be at least eight of them on patrol at any one time. Course, that didn’t account for who else might be in the house, and how many other guards occupied the outbuildings dotted about the property.
That night, Jeb pulled back farther into the woods and didn’t risk a fire. The massive disk of Raphoe provided enough silvery light to see by the early part of the night, so he took the opportunity to check and clean Brau’s flintlock. About halfway through oiling the frizzen, the sound of cracking twigs made him stiffen and stop. At the edge of the tree line, a pair of yellow eyes peered at him from the dark.
Licking his lips, Jeb pushed himself into a crouch and set about opening the powder flask and measuring a portion into the barrel. The bag of lead shot he kept in his coat pocket was still virtually full. He fished out a ball and shoved it home with the ramrod, all the while maintaining eye contact with the wolf. When he was good and ready, he cocked the pistol and took aim. Sensing something was amiss, the wolf whimpered and backed away. Jeb yelled after it, and it turned tail and scampered into the night.
He didn’t dare sleep after that, so instead, he spent the rest of the night preparing: rubbing at the wooden handle of the flintlock with the linseed he carried for the purpose; honing the edge of his saber with a whetstone, and pondering his next course of action.
Time the suns came up, Jeb was already halfway back to Portis. Sure, the bruises hadn’t fully faded, but his strength was coming back daily, and he was keen to enlist the help of the sheriff to bring in the husk. Well, bring in wasn’t the whole truth of it; he aimed to kill it.
Only problem was, something had started to niggle away at the back of his mind, like a maggot boring into an apple. Something about stygians. They weren’t exactly known for their lustfulness. Rumor had it they didn’t even mate to reproduce; they relied on some sort of dark magic. If that was true, and Jeb had no reason to believe it wasn’t, how could he explain the way the Outlanders had been taken, or the three Maresman who’d clearly been in the throes of passion when they’d been sent back to the mud?
11
T HIS TIME WHEN Jeb crossed the bridge, there was no sheriff waiting for him. The high street was already bustling with fisherfolk on their way to work, and a number of the shops he’d passed when he first arrived were open early, some selling bait and tackle, others taking in nets to repair or offering deals on new oilskins that no one seemed to want or need. Either they’d better create a need soon, or they’d go out of business. Mind you, from the looks of the storefronts, worn by the salt spray carried off the sea, they’d been there a while, so Jeb guessed they knew what they were doing.
The bitter smell of coffee was thick in the air, coming from a shop that displayed an array of pastries outside beneath an awning. Jeb dismounted, leaving Tubal tethered to a post, and bought himself a steaming fill of coffee for his tin mug, along with a sweet pastry and a meat pie for later.
“Haddock pie’s my specialty, stranger,” the crone running the place said. “Folk round here swear by it.” She spat something brown and sticky into a bucket through the gap in her teeth.
“So I’ve heard,” Jeb said. “Maybe next time.”
Truth be told, the thought of eating fish in a place that stank of nothing else made him think he’d be wearing it on the front of his shirt. Still, never hurt to be neighborly when dealing with the locals.
“Tizzy Graybank, I presume?”
She was rake thin, which struck Jeb as somewhat incongruous, and her
Boss arrived by trap as the suns set, and occasionally Jeb could see his bloated silhouette pass across the lamplit windows of the ranch.
The guards were changed at regular intervals, and he judged there to be at least eight of them on patrol at any one time. Course, that didn’t account for who else might be in the house, and how many other guards occupied the outbuildings dotted about the property.
That night, Jeb pulled back farther into the woods and didn’t risk a fire. The massive disk of Raphoe provided enough silvery light to see by the early part of the night, so he took the opportunity to check and clean Brau’s flintlock. About halfway through oiling the frizzen, the sound of cracking twigs made him stiffen and stop. At the edge of the tree line, a pair of yellow eyes peered at him from the dark.
Licking his lips, Jeb pushed himself into a crouch and set about opening the powder flask and measuring a portion into the barrel. The bag of lead shot he kept in his coat pocket was still virtually full. He fished out a ball and shoved it home with the ramrod, all the while maintaining eye contact with the wolf. When he was good and ready, he cocked the pistol and took aim. Sensing something was amiss, the wolf whimpered and backed away. Jeb yelled after it, and it turned tail and scampered into the night.
He didn’t dare sleep after that, so instead, he spent the rest of the night preparing: rubbing at the wooden handle of the flintlock with the linseed he carried for the purpose; honing the edge of his saber with a whetstone, and pondering his next course of action.
Time the suns came up, Jeb was already halfway back to Portis. Sure, the bruises hadn’t fully faded, but his strength was coming back daily, and he was keen to enlist the help of the sheriff to bring in the husk. Well, bring in wasn’t the whole truth of it; he aimed to kill it.
Only problem was, something had started to niggle away at the back of his mind, like a maggot boring into an apple. Something about stygians. They weren’t exactly known for their lustfulness. Rumor had it they didn’t even mate to reproduce; they relied on some sort of dark magic. If that was true, and Jeb had no reason to believe it wasn’t, how could he explain the way the Outlanders had been taken, or the three Maresman who’d clearly been in the throes of passion when they’d been sent back to the mud?
11
T HIS TIME WHEN Jeb crossed the bridge, there was no sheriff waiting for him. The high street was already bustling with fisherfolk on their way to work, and a number of the shops he’d passed when he first arrived were open early, some selling bait and tackle, others taking in nets to repair or offering deals on new oilskins that no one seemed to want or need. Either they’d better create a need soon, or they’d go out of business. Mind you, from the looks of the storefronts, worn by the salt spray carried off the sea, they’d been there a while, so Jeb guessed they knew what they were doing.
The bitter smell of coffee was thick in the air, coming from a shop that displayed an array of pastries outside beneath an awning. Jeb dismounted, leaving Tubal tethered to a post, and bought himself a steaming fill of coffee for his tin mug, along with a sweet pastry and a meat pie for later.
“Haddock pie’s my specialty, stranger,” the crone running the place said. “Folk round here swear by it.” She spat something brown and sticky into a bucket through the gap in her teeth.
“So I’ve heard,” Jeb said. “Maybe next time.”
Truth be told, the thought of eating fish in a place that stank of nothing else made him think he’d be wearing it on the front of his shirt. Still, never hurt to be neighborly when dealing with the locals.
“Tizzy Graybank, I presume?”
She was rake thin, which struck Jeb as somewhat incongruous, and her
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