A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet Read Online Free

comprised the remainder of the furnishings. There were only three other people in the room: a trio of badly-worn old men who sat apart and, for all the broker knew, were as strange to one another as they were to him. They seemed unaffected by the fire that was filling the room with acrid fumes from a poorly-damped fireplace. For lack of any other fuel, the innkeeper was burning dung. The old men glowered at the newcomer through red, gummy, weeping eyes.
    The innkeeper followed Gerber into the room and closed the door behind him.
    “Have a seat anywhere you like an’ I’ll get some hot food for you right away.”
    “I need a drink first.”
    “Yes, sir, Mr. Gerber, sir. What’ll be your pleasure?”
    “Give me brandy. I need to get the chill out of my marrow.”
    “Right away, Mr. Gerber,” said the innkeeper as he stepped behind the bar and rummaged among the bottles that crowded the shelves. Finding a likely-looking, bulbous flask, he blew the dust from a snifter and poured into it a generous portion of dark liquid. The broker accepted it wordlessly, frowning at the greasy fingerprints on the glass.
    “It’s always hard to believe that you can find something to do with all them squalling brats,” said the innkeeper. “Can’t imagine what anyone’d want with ‘em all.”
    “Where do you think baby oil comes from?”
    The innkeeper started, frowned, then laughed. “You are the kidder, ain’t you! Ha! Ha!”
    “Sure I am,” the broker lied.
    A heavy-set blonde girl peeked through the curtain behind the bar and asked, “What about that there wagonload of squallers, dad?” Gerber thought that if this was the daughter who’d grown like a weed, it had been a highly apt metaphor.
    “They’ll hold, Gelkie. First get this gentleman here something hot to eat.”
    “Sure, dad. There’s some meat just comin’ to the boil an’ a potato an’ a cabbage.”
    “Well, what are you waiting for, then?”
    “All right! All right! It’s on its way! It ain’t the King of bloody Tamlaght,” she added from the other side of the curtain.
    The bartender refilled the broker’s snifter and leaned his elbows on the scarred counter.
    “I ‘pologize for my daughter. She’s a good girl but just a little rough ‘round the edges. She don’t get much advantage of society out here. Needs a bit of sanding, I guess you’d say.”
    Gerber, who had no intention of encouraging the man’s inane conversation, ignored him—though privately he thought the girl needed eradication more than sanding. No point in stopping with that; might as well eradicate the father, as well, since he’d obviously be lonely without her and Gerber was not the man to endure another’s suffering. Eradicate the mother, too, why not.
    “Still, she’s good enough at heart,” continued the innkeeper. “Like her poor mother, sick abed these last three weeks. Suffering something terrible from the ague-cake. Gotta keep a bucket by the bed day and night, and the sponges and rags we go through! Musrum only knows how we do it. It’s a burden, I got to admit it. A burden. Lemme tell you, if there was a market for phlegm like there was for babies, I’d be a rich man.”
    “I really don’t think you ought to start saving any.”
    “No? You don’t think so? Well, shit. And here I got nearly a barrelful already.”
    “It ain’t the ague-cake,” said one of the three old men, whose presence Gerber had entirely forgotten. “It’s a curse.”
    “Shut up,” snarled the innkeeper. “It ain’t no curse.”
    “It is too a curse.”
    “Ague-cake ain’t a curse, it’s a disease. That’s natural. Curses ain’t natural.”
    “Yes they are.”
    “The volcano’s natural and it’s a curse, for sure,” added a second old man.
    “No, it ain’t,” said the first old man. “It’s just a mountain. Mountain’s ain’t curses.”
    “They are when you don’t want one. You know anyone wants a volcano?”
    “I sure didn’t want a volcano,”