Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

“Then we need to make you full-time dealer.”

I pushed my ante in. I drew, discarded, and tossed my cards in when it came to me.

One-Eye went down with ten. The biggest card he had was a three. His leathery old black face ripped in a grin lacking an adequate population of teeth. He raked the pot in.

Elmo asked the air, “Was that legitimate?” We had a gallery of half a dozen. We had the Dark Horse to ourselves today. It was the Company watering hole in Aloe. The owner, Markeb Zhorab, had mixed feelings. We were not the kind of guys he wanted hanging around but because we did, his business was out standing.

Nobody indicted One-Eye. Goblin, with his butt on the table next over, reminded Elmo, “You dealt.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

One-Eye has been known to cheat. Hard to manage in a game as simpleminded as tonk, but there you go. He is One-Eye.

“Lucky at cards, unlucky at love,” he said, which made no sense in context.

Goblin cracked, “You better hire yourself some bodyguards. Women will be tearing down doors trying to get to you.”

A wisecrack from Goblin generally fires One-Eye up. He has a hair trigger. We waited for it. One-Eye just grinned and told Otto, “Deal, loser. And make it a hand like the one Elmo just gave me.”

Goblin said something about Missus Hand being the only lucky lady in One-Eye’s life.

One-Eye went on ignoring the bait.

I began to worry.

Otto’s deal did not help.

One-Eye said, “You know how we run into weird customs wherever we go?”

Elmo glared holes through his cards. He grunted. Otto arranged and rearranged his five, meaning he had a hand so bad he did not know how to play it. One-Eye did not squeak but he kept grinning. We were on the brink of a new age, one in which he could win two hands in a row.

Everybody looked at Goblin. Goblin said, “Otto dealt.”

Somebody in the gallery suggested, “Maybe he spelled the cards.”

That all rolled past One-Eye. “The weirdest custom they got here is, when a girl loses her cherry, from then on she’s got to keep all the hair off her body.”

Otto rumbled, “That’s some grade-two bullshit if I ever heard some. We been here near three months and I ain’t seen a bald-headed woman yet.”

Everything stopped, including One-Eye stacking his winnings.

“What?” Otto asked.

There have always been questions about Otto.

The rest of us occasionally invest a coin in a tumble with a professional comfort lady. Though the subject never came up before, I knew I had yet to see one whisker below the neckline.

“Do tell,” Elmo said. “And I thought it was the luck of the draw that I wasn’t seeing what ought to be there.”

I said, “I figured it was how mine kept from getting the crabs.”

“Nope. All tied into their weird religion.”

Goblin muttered, “There’s an oxymoron.”

One-Eye’s mood faltered.

Goblin’s froglike face split in a vast grin. “I wasn’t talking about you, shrimp. You’re just a regular moron. I was talking about slapping the words weird and religion together.”

“You guys are trying to hex my luck, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” Elmo said. “Talking about pussy works every time. Tell me about these bald snatches.”

One-Eye restacked his winnings. He was turning surly despite his success. He had come up with some great stuff, on a subject guys can kill weeks exploring, and nobody seemed to care.

I shuffled, stacked, and dealt. One-Eye grew more glum as he picked up each card.

The last one got him. “God damn it, Croaker! You asshole! You son of a bitch!”

Elmo and Otto kept straight faces, because they did not know what was happening. Goblin tittered like a horny chickadee.

One-Eye spread his hand. He had a trey of clubs. He had a six of diamonds. He had the nine of hearts and the ace of spades. And that last card was a knave of swords.

I said, “How many times have you claimed you didn’t have no two cards of the same suit? For once you won’t be lying.”

Now Elmo and Otto got it. They laughed harder than me or Goblin. The gallery got a good chuckle, too.

The Lieutenant stuck his head through the front door. “Anybody seen Kingpin?” The Lieutenant did not sound happy. He sounded like an executive officer who had to work on his day off.

“He skating again?” Elmo asked.

“He is. He’s supposed to be on slops. He didn’t show. The cooks want to chop him up for soup bones.”

“I’ll talk to him, sir.” Though Kingpin is not one of his men. Kingpin hides out in Kragler’s platoon.

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Elmo does have a way of communicating with errant infantrymen. “Why are you people in here, in this gloom and stink, when you could be sucking up fresh air and sunshine?”

I said, “This is our natural habitat, sir.” But the truth was, it had not occurred to anybody to take the game outside.

We gathered our cards and beer and shambled out to the street-front tables. One-Eye dealt. Talk dwelt on the hairstyles, or lack thereof, favored by Aloen ladies.

It was a grand day, cloudless, cool, air in motion but not briskly enough to disturb the game. The gallery settled in. Some just liked to watch. Some hoped a seat would open up. They joined the increasingly crude speculation, which slipped into the domain of one-upmanship.

I interjected, “How long have we been playing with these cards?” Some were so ragged you should not need to turn them over to know what they were. But my memory kept tricking me. The face sides never matched up.

Everybody looked at me funny. “Here comes something off the wall,” One-Eye forecast. “Spit it out, Croaker, so we can get back to stuff that matters.”

“I’m wondering if this deck hasn’t been around long enough to take on a life of its own.”

One-Eye opened his mouth to mock me, then his eyes glazed over as he considered the possibility. Likewise, Goblin. The pallid, ugly little man said, “Well, screw me! Croaker, you aren’t half as dumb as you look. The cards have developed a mind of their own. That would explain so much.”

The whole crew eyeballed One-Eye, nodding like somebody was conducting. One-Eye had insisted that the cards hated him for as long as anyone could remember.

He won again.

Three wins at one sitting should have tipped me off. Hell was on the prowl. But my mouth was off on another adventure.

“You know what? It’s been eighty-seven days since somebody tried to kill me.”

Elmo said, “Don’t give up hope.”

“Really. Think about it. Here we are, out in the damned street where anybody could take a crack. But nobody is even eyeballing us. And none of us are looking over our shoulders and whining about our ulcers.”

Play stopped. Seventeen eyes glared at me. Otto said, “Croaker, you jinx it, I’ll personally hold you down while somebody whittles on your favorite toy.”

Goblin said, “He’s right. We’ve been here three months. The only trouble we’ve seen is guys getting drunk and starting fights.”

With 640 men, you know the Company has a few shitheads whose idea of a good time is to drink too much, then get in an ass-kicking contest.

One-Eye opined, “What it is is, the Lady’s still got a boner for Croaker. So she stashed him someplace safe. The rest of us just live in his shadow. Watch the sky. Some night there’ll be a carpet up there, Herself coming out to knock boots with her special guy.”

“What’s her hairstyle like, Croaker?”

Special treatment? Sure. We spent a year following Whisper from one blistering trouble spot to the next, fighting damned near every day.

Special treatment? Yeah. The kind you get for being competent. Whatever your racket, you do a good job, the bosses pile more work on.