Captain Farren's face grew blacker and blacker. 'God pound them all,' he said.
Even those furthest into their cups gave the scarred Captain a wide and prudent berth. While in the guard-post outside the pavillion, he had belted a short, businesslike leather scabbard around his waist. Jack assumed (not unreasonably) that it contained a short, businesslike sword. When any of the sots came too close, the Captain touched the sword and the sot detoured quickly away.
Ten minutes later - as Jack was becoming sure he could no longer keep up - they arrived at the site of the accident. The driver had been coming out of the turn on the inside when the wagon had tilted and gone over. As a result, the kegs had sprayed all the way across the road. Many of them were smashed, and the road was a quagmire for twenty feet. One horse lay dead beneath the wagon, only its hindquarters visible. Another lay in the ditch, a shattered chunk of barrel-stave protruding from its ear. Jack didn't think that could have happened by accident. He supposed the horse had been badly hurt and someone had put it out of its misery by the closest means at hand. The other horses were nowhere to be seen.
Between the horse under the wagon and the one in the ditch lay the carter's son, spreadeagled on the road. Half of his face stared up at the bright blue Territories sky with an expression of stupid amazement. Where the other half had been was now only red pulp and splinters of white bone like flecks of plaster.
Jack saw that his pockets had been turned out.
Wandering around the scene of the accident were perhaps a dozen people. They walked slowly, often bending over to scoop ale two-handed from a hoofprint or to dip a handkerchief or a torn-off piece of singlet into another puddle. Most of them were staggering. Voices were raised in laughter and in quarrelsome shouts. After a good deal of pestering, Jack's mother had allowed him to go with Richard to see a midnight double feature of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead at one of Westwood's dozen or so movie theaters. The shuffling, drunken people here reminded him of the zombies in those two films.
Captain Farren drew his sword. It was as short and businesslike as Jack had imagined, the very antithesis of a sword in a romance. It was little more than a long butcher's knife, pitted and nicked and scarred, the handle wrapped in old leather that had been sweated dark. The blade itself was dark . . . except for the cutting edge. That looked bright and keen and very sharp.
'Make away, then!' Farren bawled. 'Make away from the Queen's ale, God-pounders! Make away and keep your guts where they belong!'
Growls of displeasure met this, but they moved away from Captain Farren - all except one hulk of a man with tufts of hair growing at wildly random points from his otherwise bald skull. Jack guessed his weight at close to three hundred pounds, his height at just shy of seven feet.
'D'you like the idea of taking on all of us, sojer?' this hulk asked, and waved one grimy hand at the knot of villagers who had stepped away from the swamp of ale and the litter of barrels at Farren's order.
'Sure,' Captain Farren said, and grinned at the big man. 'I like it fine, just as long as you're first, you great drunken clot of shit.' Farren's grin widened, and the big man faltered away from its dangerous power. 'Come for me, if you like. Carving you will be the first good thing that's happened to me all day.'
Muttering, the drunken giant slouched away.
'Now, all of you!' Farren shouted. 'Make away! There's a dozen of my men just setting out from the Queen's pavillion! They'll not be happy with this duty and I don't blame them and I can't be responsible for them! I think you've just got time to get back to the village and hide in your cellars before they arrive there! It would be prudent to do so! Make away!'
They were already streaming back toward the village of All-Hands', the big man who had challenged the Captain in their van. Farren grunted and then turned back to the scene of the accident. He removed his jacket and covered the face of the carter's son with it.
'I wonder which of them robbed the lad's pockets as he lay dead or dying in the roadstead,' Farren said meditatively. 'If I knew, I'd have them hung on a cross by nightfall.'
Jack made no answer.
The Captain stood looking down at the dead boy for a long time, one hand rubbing at the smooth, ridged flesh of the scar on his face. When he looked up at Jack, it was as if he had just come to.
'You've got to leave now, boy. Right away. Before Osmond decides he'd like to investigate my idiot son further.'
'How bad is it going to be with you?' Jack asked.
The Captain smiled a little. 'If you're gone, I'll have no trouble. I can say that I sent you back to your mother, or that I was overcome with rage and hit you with a chunk of wood and killed you. Osmond would believe either. He's distracted. They all are. They're waiting for her to die. It will be soon. Unless . . . '