Chapter 9

Brad and Hodak pushed into the Charnel Pit, Coldfield’s popular tavern.

The bar-room was noisy, grimy and crowded. Incense streamers slid and coiled along the soil-fused floor, their dissipating pungency unable to disguise the acrid stench of sweaty bodies and unwashed garments.

The long bar was hidden by leaners. Narrow aisles snaked among benches and clustered tables around which boisterous, elbowing humanity teemed.

A coarsely seamed face along the bar turned, observed Brad and Hodak as they glanced around from inside the doorway. Whispers went down the line, jumped to the tables and around the room.

The tumult ground down as necks craned. A hum rose and fell as Brad and Hodak were inspected, commented upon, and judged. It didn’t take long for the noise to return to its former level: the amenities of bar-rooms everywhere.

From where he stood, Hodak failed to see a table with a couple of empty chairs. They waited. Shortly, nudging Brad’s arm, he nodded toward a table newly vacated against a wall.

They shoved and twisted through the narrow spaces to the table in time for Hodak to slam his hand, palm down, flat on the tabletop, glaring off a trio of competitors.

They sat, and Hodak pressed the glow-disk in the center of the table to summon the robo-dispenser. Meanwhile, they surveyed the throng.

Some types were recognizable; others would need to be guessed at. Mostly, they were familiar: spacefarers and space tug cowboys in tight-fitting foundation suits, construction stiffs in fitted helmets and spacer harnesses, clerks and tradesmen in business tunics, and street people in coarsely woven, grimy open-necked shirts and shorts. Slingshot technicians’ jumpsuits were marked by distinctive shoulder patches.

Scattered in knots, or leaning against walls and supports, men and women, bare to the waist and sporting sheer breechcloths or none at all, flaunted their wares.

Brad recognized spoilsmen plying their trades. They were the dandies attired in colorful, skin-tight sports suits: thieves, pickpockets, high-tech gear rustlers, black marketeers, professional gamblers, and experts in all the scams that are or ever were.

Hand and shoulder weapons were everywhere: lashed to thighs or slung across backs, flat on tables or stacked along the bar. Churning and jostling, the swarm shifted constantly: singly, in couples and groups; from fledglings newly on the wing to old timers diminished by adversity. Most were in their prime: hard of face and body, wary, unbridled and self-seeking. They mixed freely.

At a table further along the wall near to where Brad and Hodak sat, Drummer gently swirled the contents of his drinking goblet. He was gaunt, well past middle years, with a high-boned countenance. His head was capped by snow-white hair trimmed straight across at his shoulders. Dressed simply, Drummer wore a dark cloak over a white, open-necked blouse tucked into loose breeches that ended a bit below his knees. He did not bear a weapon.

Drummer stared about and searched for strangers that might serve his purpose. When he heard that the Raven was at planet-fall, he had called for and reread all available newscasts and reports to refresh his recollections of their crimes, personal backgrounds, and escape.