The Outlander: Ch 1 "The Last Tavern"

[Badfellow]

Here for your perusal is a smattering of serial fiction I've been throwing around inside my brain bucket, the working title generically being The Outlander.
This is part of a greater work, toward which I will post installments as they are authored.
Comment, criticize and hopefully enjoy.

Sincerely and Sláinte,
Badfellow



CHAPTER 1: THE LAST TAVERN

The Outlander crossed the hardpan on the perpendicular, seven days on foot over that godlessly flat and forsaken land where no tree nor even weed had ever grown. The mule keeled over on the third day out from the small shepherds post at Tower Wells. He ate what he could of the stringy, threadbare thing. What remained of his kit went over his shoulder while trudging onward over the pan. Then on the eighth day straight, his lips blistered and his cloak covered in a patina of salted, umber dust, he came within sight of the mountains and the low rise of foothills mounding against the monotonous whistling of the plains. Low scrub and scraggly thorns tore at his boots. By the heat of late afternoon, he drained his last flask of white demon bartered from the shepherd's stills and spat the cork disgustedly to the ground. His gamble in taking a shortcut across the hardpan had been narrowly calculated, and now the thirst more than anything drove him onward like a grim muse.

Not a goddamn thing left to eat. Worse yet, not a goddamn thing left to drink.

It was gathering once more toward dusk with packs of mangy predators yipping in the brush of the high country dead ahead. The salt flies were buzzing. The vipers were hissing hungrily over the scrabble for the heat escaping his cloak. Then against the shadowed curtain of the mountains, the Outlander spotted a distant, flickering beacon of lamplight beckoning in the darkness. One light then another. Short before midnight, he kicked aside the last clump of barbed and gnarled brush, coming at last to a rickety tavern and a place where the Great Western Road became something far less substantial as it ascended toward the mountain routes of the Hylandt Crescent.

“Wandered,” said a blind man listening to the differentials in the wind. “Here come a wandered off the pan.”

“Off the road,” said another who was sighted but far more drunk.

“Nay, he's off the pan,” countered the blind man. “Big boots, too.”

Seated on the front stoop of the tavern, there were a handful of broken, old miners in filthy overalls, gathered like piles of spent ore tailings, occupied as they were with mugs of cheap ale and long-stemmed pipes that prevented their unkempt whiskers from bursting into flame. A jaundiced lamplight poured from the open windows of the tavern at their backs, and some maudlin alpine tune plucked from a set of rosin worn strings.

“What'll ye have, stranger?”

“I'll have the strongest you've got.”

The tavern keeper was a squat, stub limbed brute who spoke a guttural dialect of Hylandt tongue as thick as rancid butter. He reached for a stoneware bottle from the scant selection of stock upon his shelf, serving with sardonic relish some unknown ambuscade of amalgamate swill that poured yellowed and oily with flecks of dreg in the cup. The brute then stood back, hairy arms folded, waiting for the show to start.

“Mmmmmmm,” grunted the Outlander.

It was venomous swill to be certain, searing and acridly bitter, and pungent as in the manner of offal or saltpeter in its offense to the nostrils. But the Outlander drank of it heartily and with no complaint. He felt the power of the potents soak slowly back into the desiccated yearning of his every pore. Never had a sweeter garbage crossed the gullet of a parched soul such as he. The Outlander took from his person a small bit of golden Imperial coinage, and slid it without comment across the stained and splintered planks of the bar for another.

“Aye,” obliged the tavern keeper. He took up the shiny bit of Imperial coinage in sudden interest, rubbing the relief of the nine torches and the double-headed eagle contemplatively beneath his dirty thumb. “Ye are a long way from the provinces, stranger.”

“This dung stop is a long way from anywhere. Keep pouring.”

[The Urbane Spaceman]

Damned fine.

Keep it up young man. Rock us well.

[oettinger]

Well done. We need a prequel quickly!

"He ate what he could of the stringy, threadbare thing"
He had his wife for dinner? Wow!

[Patchez]

That would hook me into the story for sure.

[mistah willies]

Also, Injuns. Yes, please.

[Badfellow]

Thank you, my friends. I'll keep it going.
(chapter 1 continued)


Persuaded by further payments of glittering Imperial gold, the tavern keeper brought forth his better grade of Hylandt potents from the dusty recesses of the root cellar. These potents were strong and true, not to be confused with the watered down dregs he served to the riffraff and burned-out miners that were his usual patrons. An ardent perfume blossomed over the bar as the cork was lifted. The tavern keeper had since given up on refilling the cup and instead placed the stoneware crock near to the stranger's elbow where it sat within easy reach. He stood back behind the bar and pursed his gold while the stranger went hellbent to the task of drinking.

“Ain't that just rich,” said a voice from over the Outlander's shoulder. “Throwing all those bits around without a care in the world. Aye, boys. That's a lot of bits to be handled so casually. Probably damn near more than we'd see in a week of tolling the haul roads.”

The voice in question issued from a grubby, lump-ridden man with a great tussock of ale soaked beard spilling down his chest. He was speaking with slurred abandon to the two companions seated with him at a corner table. The Outlander had already made careful note of the nefarious looking trio upon entering the tavern. They were clad in the telltale pelts and greasy hides of the highwaymen who were known to work in affiliated bands throughout the fringes of the mountain country. An assortment of bludgeons and hatchets dangled from their belts. No doubt there were other weapons concealed about their malodorous person.

“Foreign swine are all alike,” continued the man. “Thinking they own us with their wealth. Traipsing around like their shit don't stink, like they fell a king from their mother's womb. But I tell ye, boys. They're nothing but swine.”

“Swine!” echoed his companion. “Oink! Oink!”

“Naw, lad. Ye would sooner have success in conversing with the wall. I tell ye, boys. It's true of swine or any other beast. The only thing they understand is a good beating, or barring that, a swift stick in the ribs.”

The Outlander had since foregone the cup and was now drinking directly from the crock. He unfastened the clasp of his leather cloak with an imperceivable swipe of the hand as he reached to guzzle from the neck. The power of the potents was coursing through him. Lighting shot down to the ends of his fingertips while storm clouds gathered ominously upon his brow, stronger still with every sip he took. Outside the tavern, a sudden gust of wind came rushing down the mountainside and moaned through the chinks in the timbers like a chorus of the damned. There was no mistaking the harbinger. Death was coming.

“I'll have ye cause no trouble here,” said the tavern keeper. But he was already retreating for sturdier cover further behind the bar.

The Outlander heard their weight pressing the floorboards as they rose from their chairs, then the subtle singing of blades being loosened from leather bound sheaths. He smelled their acerbic filth, the soured ale, the burning oil of the lamps, the fire of the uncut potents fuming from his own breath. Time slowed down. He felt the three mangy scavengers closing in from behind. Then in a whirling blur, he was pivoted about on his boot heel with the folds of the cloak flown open, and in each fist he held a pair of gargantuan hand cannons crafted in wood and fine Imperial steel, their cavernous bores raised and ready to lay waste.

“Assassin!”

A tremendous shock wave rattled the tavern timbers as the first hand cannon fired, and the oaf that had been charging him with a battle hatchet was thrown back ten paces by the ungodly force of impact. He crashed into the wall with a smoking, fist-sized hole punched through his chest. The other hand cannon bucked and roared horribly, and the second man's head was blown cleanly from his shoulders like a smashed pot of rotten jam. Bits of skull and brain were everywhere. The headless corpse briefly wavered on its feet before thudding to the floor in a heap.

The lumpy man stood for a moment, dazed perhaps, covered in the gore and smatterings of his freshly dispatched companions. He then came back to what little of his wits remained and seemed to remember the grisly, curved-blade hatchet he held in his hand.

“Murdering whore! Ye barrels be empty! Do ye know who I am? I'm the brother of the Mad Dog! I'm chieftain of the Ridge Reapers! I'll have ye skull for my tankard!”

Far from ever being unarmed, the Outlander deftly flipped the spent hand cannons over so as to grab them by the massive steel of their barrels. Upon the opposite ends, the traditional butt plates of ornate metal had been replaced with squat, pyramid shaped skull-crushers that gleamed deleteriously by the lamplight.

“Foreign cunt!”

It was all over very quickly with the mangy bastard's skull cleaved neatly open in two places. After reloading both chambers of the hand cannons, he turned calmly back to the bar and resumed his respite with the stoneware crock. If the tavern had been quiet before, it was now dead silent but for the crackling of the fireplace and the winds coming down the mountainside to carry away the ghosts to hell.

The tavern keeper emerged from behind the bar turtle-headed to survey the slaughter wrought within his establishment. “Holy mother of the mountain! Ye killed them boys right dead! Oh, mercy! Look at the mess ye made of my place!”

“This place was already a mess.”

“Oh, mercy! Ye need to leave!”

“You think I'd want to linger for the cozy company and quaint atmosphere?”

The Outlander tossed a handful of gold bits onto the bar, what certainly must have been a fortune to a modest proprietor on the lowly frontiers of the Crescent lands . He secured from the poor, rattled fellow some meats, a bundle of furs and two more crocks of high grade potents to bolster his provisions. It was pure glory just be be drunk once more. The hardpan was already faded from memory. Ahead were the mountains, the big ranges of the west and the first granite monsters jutting into the unknown. He drank a steady pace from the crock, confident and strong now in the embrace of the potents, ascending the trail into blackness and facing jolly grim toward the treachery of the night.

(end chapter 1)

[oettinger]

Part 2 sounds like a gory version of the drinking/shooting movie Last Man Standing.
Well done!

[Patchez]

The Gunslinger meets Drunken Master in a post apocalyptic near future?

[Badfellow]

The Gunslinger meets Drunken Master...

Interesting.

All I can say is that things get darker and there will be a fuckload more drinking involved. My only concern is that it won't be violent enough. I'll have the second chapter up shortly. Thanks again for your readership. And again, I encourage your commentary.

[The Urbane Spaceman]

Your descriptions of horrific violence read like poetry. And the smells: most writers forget to include such an important sensory contribution to the tale. We are intelligent animals, for certain, but we were animals all along.

[mistah willies]

Hmmm.

Smellmories

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tm

Now I owe Frankenietchze a shot of black ink.