The Talisman

grabbed her by the back of the skirt and pulled her rudely back down.
    Jack blushed again: he saw the girl’s large white breast, its nipple in the dirty baby’s working mouth. Oooooo, this pretty young man’s SHY!
    ‘God!’ Farren muttered, walking faster than ever. ‘They were all drunk! Drunk on spilled Kingsland! Whores and driver both! He’s apt to wreck them on the road or drive them right off the seacliffs – no great loss. Diseased sluts!’
    ‘At least,’ Jack panted, ‘the road must be fairly clear, if all this traffic can get through. Mustn’t it?
    They were in All-Hands’ Village now. The wide Western Road had been oiled here to lay the dust. Wagons came and went, groups of people crossed the street, and everyone seemed to be talking too loudly. Jack saw two men arguing outside what might have been a restaurant. Abruptly, one of them threw a punch. A moment later, both men were rolling on the ground. Those whores aren’t the only ones drunk on Kingsland , Jack thought. I think everyone in this town’s had a share .
    ‘All of the big wagons that passed us came from here,’ Captain Farren said. ‘Some of the smaller ones may be getting through, but Morgan’s diligence isn’t small, boy.’
    ‘Morgan—’
    ‘Never mind Morgan now.’
    The smell of the ale grew steadily sharper as they passed through the center of the village and out the other side. Jack’s legs ached as he struggled to keep up with the Captain. He guessed they had now come perhaps three miles. How far is that in my world? he thought, and that thought made him think of Speedy’s magic juice. He groped frantically in his jerkin, convinced it was no longer there – but it was, held securely within whatever Territories undergarment had replaced his Jockey shorts.
    Once they were on the western side of the village, the wagon-traffic decreased, but the pedestrian traffic headed east increased dramatically. Most of the pedestrians were weaving, staggering, laughing. They all reeked of ale. In some cases, their clothes were dripping, as if they had lain full-length in it and drunk of it like dogs. Jack supposed they had. He saw a laughing man leading a laughing boy of perhaps eight by the hand. The man bore a nightmarish resemblance to the hateful desk clerk at the Alhambra, and Jack understood with perfect clarity that this man was that man’s Twinner. Both he and the boy he led by the hand were drunk, and as Jack turned to look after them, the little boy began to vomit. His father – or so Jack supposed him to be – jerked him hard by the arm as the boy attempted to flounder his way into the brushy ditch, where he could be sick in relative privacy. The kid reeled back to his father like a cur-dog on a short leash, spraying puke on an elderly man who had collapsed by the side of the road and was snoring there.
    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