Gleeman's Tales by Matthew Travagline

Author:Matthew Travagline [Travagline, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

“I’ve got to get Typhus settled for the evening before dinner, so make it quick, Roy,” Harvey said, aggrieved at his friend’s interruption. Dorothea had pushed the menagerie harder in their travels because of their late start. The lead wagons had finally stopped as the sun dipped below the feathered treetops, the animals exhausted from the day’s tiresome march. Despite the chill of the evening, his short hair was plastered by a sheen of sweat to his forehead.

Roy fingered the smooth swirl that capped his taut leather sword hilt and relaxed. “She saw me naked,” Roy stammered, then glanced around and added, “Well, not naked entirely, but in my skivs.”

“Who?” Harvey asked, stopping his task to stare.

“Who else?” Roy asked, his voice sounding impatient. “The girl that’s with Gnochi.”

Harvey shook his head. He paced, inspecting the ground as if looking for something of interest.

“I had returned from bathing. Was toweling dry behind the curtain. Didn’t expect her to barge in without knocking,” Roy said in a rushed whisper. His cheeks reddened at the recollection of the tryst. “Do you think she told him?”

“Are you still breathing?”

“Huh?”

“He watches her with part parental love, part selfish suffocation.” Harvey unbuckled the saddle from Typhus’s back and pulled it to the ground. “No, I think he’d kill you if he thought you had done anything with Boli.”

“She is cute in a boyish sort of way. Do you think they are together?”

Harvey slapped his palm to his sweat-stricken forehead. A breeze meandered past him, evoking a shudder. “I think you’d best stop talking like that before you get us both killed,” he warned.

“Why? He’s a bard. A simple entertainer.”

“Not this one,” Harvey said. “I know the fools we’re used to in Blue Haven can afford to be incompetent and frail because there are guards on every corner in the clean districts of the city proper. But one who travels, as Gnochi says he does, will need to be self-sufficient in every aspect of his life. You’ve seen the sword he wears on his hip. Their horse carries a capped quiver that rattles with arrows. And where there are arrows, there is a bow.”

“Oh, you’re exaggerating,” Roy said. “He’s got a gut for Providence’s sake. Doubt he could run a mile on it, and I saw how whipped he was from riding all day. He probably doesn’t even know how to use that sword on his hip. I bet he’s living the life of luxury paying his way through towns by his words alone.”

“You’re foolish if you believe that,” Harvey said. “And you’d be smart to avoid the girl he’s with. She’s bad news for you, me, or anyone.”

“I can take care of myself, you know. I’m not the helpless little boy you found in the slums. I can pick my own battles, and I didn’t come to you, of all people, for dating advice, Harvey!” Roy rushed off and tore into their shared wagon.

Harvey winced as the slammed door shook the wagon’s rickety wheels. He heard the sharp metal of the rungs being pulled separating their two sections.

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