novelxo Chapter Shares and a Drider
The answer was obvious.
“One share,” answered the boy and young Joe together.
“That’s fine by me,” Marroh said. “I’m in agreement. We rob from the rich and give to the poor. Sounds like noble work for dwarves.”
“Yep!” said Joe, “And we each get three shares!”
“Steady there, laddie. You're only entitled to two,” Marroh reminded him.
“No. I don’t. I traded to get another.”
“And you traded one away to get it,” Marroh informed Joe. “You traded away being captain of the guard for captain of the cavalry. Add one share for being a member of the gang and you’ve only got two shares.”
Young Joe counted it out on his fingers, his counting finger dancing in the air after which his eyebrows jumped up in dismay.
“Why, you’re right!” he declared. “That’s only two shares! That’s not fair!”
“It was fair when you agreed to it,” said the boy.
“Well! It ain’t fair now!” young Joe argued. “I want back being captain of the guard.”
“Okay,” said the boy. “We’ll undo the trade. You’re the captain of the guard, and I’m the captain of the cavalry. You’re better at the guard, and I should be better at riding horses, anyway.”
“Done!” young Joe said. “Now I’ve got three shares!”
“No. You’ve still got two,” Marroh corrected him. “You’re a member of the gang and the captain of the guard. That’s two shares.”
Young Joe’s fingers were back in action, going through the tally again, this time with double the determination. “Dang! You’re right again! How did that happen? I just traded to get another share!”
“Maybe you traded with the wrong person,” the boy suggested. “Maybe you should trade with Marroh?”
“Will that work?” young Joe brightened, a hopeful light coming on in his eyes.
“No,” Marroh told him. “But it seems to me you were made captain of the raft. That ought to give you three shares.”
“That’s right!” remembered Joe. “I was captain of the raft!”
“I suppose so,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “That gives you three shares.”
The boy gave no real objection because, being captain of the gang, captain of the cavalry, captain of ceremonies, and being a member of the gang, he still had four shares to each of their three.
“But now that we’re on the subject of captains, what’s this business about a captain of the cavalry?” Marroh wanted to know. “I didn’t sign on to ride any horses!”
“Some members of the gang might choose to ride,” the boy said, “maybe me.”
“There are no horses to be had here even by stealing,” countered Marroh, “Which, in my opinion, means we don’t need a captain of the cavalry and so you should only have three shares.”
“Say! He’s right,” young Joe realized.
“I never said it had to be horses.”
“I know about the Second War,” said the dwarf. “Satyrs ride horses. But they’re gone now. They disappeared with the satyrs. What can you ride beside a horse?” Marroh wanted to know.
Now, this put the boy in a spot, so he lowered his voice and replied, “I have a drider.”
Now the boy was still mad at Leradien for trying to kill Ronthiel, but he also couldn’t lose his one share advantage without an argument. Besides! Any gang with a drider in it had to be feared.
“A drider?” gaped Marroh in horror. “What do you mean, you have a drider? Where is the filthy, black-hearted thing? I’ll kill it!”
“She’s not a member yet, but she’d join if I asked her.”
“What kind of captain are you?” the dwarf demanded of him. “Inviting a drider to join us? You want to get us all killed?”
“She’s friendly,” the boy insisted. “Besides! I haven’t asked her yet. I just figured if we had a drider to ride why we’d be the toughest gang around.”
“Yes. And also the dumbest! What’s to keep her from biting and draining us all blood dry? Besides! No one rides a drider!”
“I have,” said the boy.
“And you’re also a satyr and a known liar,” Marroh reminded him.
“I have too ridden her,” he repeated with insistence.
Marroh scoffed and shook his head.
“Even if that’s true, that’s still no guarantee she won’t murder the rest of us. I say there should be no captain of the cavalry!”
“I agree,” said Joe.
The boy realized he had been outvoted.
“Tell you what,” he offered, “I’ll let you meet her first and then you can decide.”
“I don’t need to meet her to decide,” young Joe said.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said yet,” Marroh told him. “There’s no need for any of us to be choosing to ride anything, especially driders. Besides! You said she’s a ’she’. You can’t have any girls in a gang.”
It was true. Everybody knew you couldn’t have a girl in a gang. The boy knew he had lost his fourth share.
“Okay! But, as captain of this here gang, I say she’s not a girl but a drider. Why! If we had a dragon, would we care if she was a girl? So I say we keep an open mind to her joining, just in case, and I get my fourth share if she does.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Marroh. “Just in case of what?”
“Well! For starters, there’s a displacer beast about on the other shore,” he said. “That’s why we’re here on an island where it’s safe. But when we go back, a drider could come in mighty handy against it.”
No one could argue that so they agreed to disagree on the need for a drider and, being in such agreement, they lay out on the grass in contentment and watched the sparks of the fire travel upwards towards the stars and the boughs of the trees move overhead.
“AIN’T this great?” said Joe.
“It is,” agreed Marroh. “What would the others say if they could see us?”
“Say? Well, they’d just die to be here—isn’t that right, Joe?” the boy said, watching the stars.
“I reckon so,” Joe considered. “Anyway, I’m suited. I don’t want anything better than this. Here I am with my best friends, all by ourselves, and on our own private island. Good food, good company, it just doesn’t get any better.”
“And we can do this every night,” added the boy. “Once we get a mind to leave.”
“Well! Somebody hurry up and get a mind to!” grunted the dwarf. “I’ve brought us the weapons. What’s keeping us?”
“We haven’t planned that out yet,” the boy said. “That’s why I’m the captain. We’ve got to figure where we’re going as well as when we’re leaving and how we’re going to get there. That takes careful consideration. But you know what the best of all is when we leave?”
“What’s that?” asked young Joe.
“We don’t have to go to school. We won’t have to do anything we don’t want to as robbers,” the boy told him. “That’s the motto of our gang.”
“So what’s it like going to school?” Joe asked.
Humans didn’t have schools. It was rare for a human to be able to read. Some thought they were stupid because of it, but humans could log, farm, build, ride horses, and go to war. There really was not much of anything humans couldn’t do. Everyone agreed they were going to be around for a while because of it. None of them counted it against Joe that he hadn’t been schooled.
“I didn’t mind my first day,” Marroh recalled in remembrance, “until the next day when I found out I had to go back again.”
“Yeah,” the boy agreed. “Schools would be all right if it weren’t for all the teachers who keep spoiling all our fun. You’re not missing anything, Joe. You don’t need schooling if you’ve got a brain. It’s like the boy who got rich selling toothbrushes. He never went to school.”
“What boy is that?” asked Joe.
“I’m not sure of his name, but he made lots of riches in trade. Instead of going to school, he opened a drink stand on the side of the road and gave away free drinks to passers. They’d all say, ‘Yuck! This tastes like cow pie!’ and he’d say, ‘It is cow pie. Want to buy a toothbrush?’ He made a fortune.”
“Heard it before,” Marroh said.
“What’s a toothbrush?” asked young Joe with a squint.
“So what else does a robber have to do?” Marroh asked the boy.
“Oh! They have just a jolly good time—stay up late and steal at night and rob gold caravans by day! Then they take their money and bury it in awful places where there are ghosts and things to watch it. And, of course, we kidnap women.”
“What do we want women for?” asked Joe.
“We don’t. We ransom women back to their husbands,” the boy replied. “And while they’re with us, they cook for us.”
“What if they don’t have husbands?”
“Those you don’t ransom,” answered the boy. “The unmarried ones you keep for yourself and they are always beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” repeated the dwarf. “What do you mean by beautiful?”
“Whatever suits your fancy,” the boy said.
“So we will capture dwarf women, too?”
“Sure! We’ll capture and kidnap anyone,” the boy said. “And we’ll be able to afford to buy the finest clothes. The women will find us all irresistibly handsome.”
“I could get accustomed to that,” Marroh decided with a nod.
“We all could and we all will.”
“Say! What was that which just flew overhead?” Joe asked.
“A bat,” was the dwarf's reply.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the eyelids of the lads. The night brought such a silence that the crackle of the campfire was all that could be heard, a natural music in the black-duvet night. Flames sent crackling red sparks dancing into the breeze.
“There that bat goes again!”
“Go to sleep.”
The smoke twirled heavenward carrying their worries away. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the boy, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary. The other two had more difficulty in getting to sleep. Adventure and not being home was new to them. But the excitement of it could not last forever and they too fell asleep, each one of them content with his three shares.
It hadn’t occurred to any of them how three shares each amongst three people was the same as each having one. Instead, all three believed that they would get three times as much treasure with three shares than if they only had one share apiece. Indeed! If they hadn’t fallen asleep, more captaincies would have surely been handed out and their future wealth further increased.
Yet not a one of them understood the meaning of the bat flying overhead or they wouldn't have slept that night at all.