Esther Freisner - The Chick Is In The Mail

"Yeah, yeah." I tied up Corspemaker's reins and slapped her rump, urging the mare back the way we'd come. Gerta's gray gelding Slasher and the three pack donkeys followed. "I'll sneak back and climb up that depression just before the last bend. You guard his prissiness. I think he's cowering over there in those rocks."

"I'm not cowering!" Dal's voice rang out from around the turn. "I'm praying!"

"Praying?" Lomo called down the cliff side. His voice quivered with eagerness. "Is he a priest ?"

"No!" I said crossly.

"But I have something to confess!"

"He's not a priest!" I reached for my bow.

He leaned closer to the edge and I could see his shock of dishevelled red hair decorated with pigeon feathers. "Are you sure?"

Now bandits, being depraved brutes, are often keen on priests, and they're never the least particular about what kind. They like the odd bit of prayer, when they can get it, just in case it might tip the scales in their favor someday, and they're absolutely potty about confession. Like kings and politicians, they have this peculiar notion they can do anything they want, as long as they're real sorry afterwards. "He's not a priest-he's just a stupid hymnal salesman!" I yelled back, trying to get a clear shot.

"Really?" Several more interested scruffy heads popped over the side of the cliff. "Does he know `Nearer My Isis to Thee'?"

The merchant scurried back around the cliff on hands and knees, his face red as a throttled pig. I nudged his quivering body with my foot. "Well?"

He shook his head so hard, his flabby neck skin wobbled back and forth.

"No," I said, "he doesn't, so you might as well come down and have your heads properly lopped off while the light is still good."

"Yes!" Gerta chimed in with enthusiasm. "What fun is shedding blood if we can't see it?"

"How about `Onward, Pagan Soldiers'?" a different voice asked. "My mum used to sing that one over my cradle."

I cocked an eyebrow at Dal. He looked uncertain.

"Can you hum a few bars?" Gerta asked.

"Damnation!" I said, completely out of patience. "This isn't a sodding tea party, you know! Come down and fight!"

"Don't get huffy there, ducks," Lomo called down amiably. "I'll get around to killing you in a minute."

"You wish!" Cocky bastard! Now I remembered why I'd split his head open the first time. I motioned to Gerta to guard Dal, then sheathed Esmeralda and ran back down the trail to a slope that looked climbable. I found a fingerhold in the gray granite, and then a toehold, and set to work.

"What about `The Old Rugged Rune'?" I heard Lomo ask. "That's always a real crowd-pleaser."

A few knobby roots protruded from the sheer cliff face here and there, and I used them when I could for handholds. My mail shirt strained across my chest as I climbed, so tight I couldn't get enough air.

Lomo's red-haired head appeared above me. He grinned. "What's the matter, ducks? Having a spot of trouble?"

"Just wait until I get my hands on you!" I wheezed, wishing I could stop long enough to loosen my mail. "I'll kill you so dead this time-"

"Oh, you always say that." He waggled a finger at me. "My goodness, have you put on a bit of weight? Maybe it's time you checked in at the Old Amazons' Home."

"You-are-" I said with great effort. Black dots were parading behind my eyes. "-a-dead-man!"

"You really should have sent Gerta, if you wanted some climbing done," he said reprovingly. " She's still in top trim, anyone can see that. While you, well-" He leaned over the side of the cliff. "My goodness, is that a gray hair?"

I lurched upwards, the black dots behind my eyes having gone volcano red. The next handhold in the rock crumbled beneath my weight and I made a frantic grab at a nearby root. It held for a second, then tore loose. I fell backwards, the useless thing still in my hand, Lomo's laughter ringing in my ears.

"I don't know what you want with that stupid root," Gerta was saying from the other side of the universe. "It doesn't look the least bit appetizing and it stinks."

Wasn't I dead? Anyone who hurt this much ought to be dead. I groaned and thought about opening my eyes. Not today, though. Maybe next week, or next year.

"They took everything," she said dejectedly. "Bashed me on the head with a rock the size of a castle, then stole Dal, his hymnals, and our swords. I can't even find the horses. We'll never live this down, once word gets around. That must be why they didn't bother to cut our throats. We'll be a laughingstock for ten kingdoms."

I heard singing somewhere above us, echoing against the mountain side. Bad singing. Excruciatingly bad singing.

" `On a hill faraway,' " off-key voices were screeching, " `stood an old rugged rune-' "

I wondered if maybe I could pry open my eyes just long enough to find the side of the cliff and roll over the edge to make this torture stop. Unfortunately my eyes did open and the daylight seemed to explode inside my head, reminiscent of that time Gerta and I had drunk a whole month's profits in two hours.

I clutched my skull and decided even death would not help. Pain of this magnitude would no doubt follow me all the way to the Underworld. "How-long?" I croaked. My breath was a white cloud in the rapidly cooling air. I shivered and sat up.

Gerta squinted up at the sky. "It's almost dark." She had a black eye and a knot on the side of her head the size of a roc's egg.

Hours, then. "Damnation!" I leaned forward and pressed my aching head to my knees.

The breeze shifted and the singing faded until I could no longer make out the words, at which point thinking became marginally possible. "I'm going to rip Lomo's toenails off and use them to dig out his liver!" I said hoarsely.

"That's the spirit," Gerta said weakly.

For some reason, my mail seemed even tighter than before, though that could have been because I now had a bruise on my back matching each and every ring. Every breath was an exercise in additional pain.

The wind shifted again and I heard enthusiastic strains of " `Come, come, come to the pyre in the wild wood! Oh, come to the pyre in the dell !' "

I pulled myself up against the rapidly chilling rock of the cliff. "Follow those voices!"

Gerta nodded soberly and we staggered off in what seemed the right direction. The trail twisted around the mountain like a drunken dragon, now rising, now descending. The voices that drew us on caterwauled like demented choirboys and as we drew near I made out the third verse of "Zeus Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen!"

"They are having entirely too much fun," Gerta whispered.

"Yeah." I sat back on my heels and tried to catch my breath. I ran a finger under the constricting collar of my mail. "Can mail shrink?"

"You're probably just adding muscle," she said soothingly, though I could see by her dubious expression she didn't mean it. "You've been so active lately."

"Right." It was full dark now and we could see the orange glow of a fire up on the cliffs above. The frost-ridden wind gusted down the cliffs and cut straight through me. I rubbed my hands together for warmth, then reached for Esmeralda. My chilled fingers closed on an empty scabbard. The thought of Lomo's dirty hands touching my lovely custom-made hilt with the exquisite embossed elephant's head made me see purple and puce.

"Sermon! Sermon!" the bandits were chanting. "We want a sermon!"

"But I'm not a priest!" Perchis Dal said abjectly. "I keep telling you that."

"Give us a sermon, my fine potted plant," Lomo said, "or we'll pluck out your nose hairs one at a time."

Gerta and I eased up the slope. Shadows cast in the firelight shifted on the rim as figures moved about and the stench of scorched donkey meat hung strongly in the air. "Dearly b-beloved," Dal said uncertainly, "y-you should always be good and-and-"