Life and Limb (The Ebon Chronicles) Read Online Free Page A

man's domain.  I laid claim to that meat before it hit the ground.  That's my law."
    He handed me a wooden pole intersected at the end with another smaller piece of wood, wrapped in musky cotton rags.  I took it, placing it under my arm and hobbled once, nearly falling over as the iron bars in my leg tapped the wooden support.  Reacting to the wince I gave out, Jester slapped me on the back,
    "There you go, good as new.  We've got to unload this horse and get what dry goods we can in town.  You're coming with us."
    I slept most of the way there in the back of a wagon pulled by Jester and his six daughters, trying to keep my leg from moving in the jostling rickety wagon.  Finally I gave up, resting my head back on Atus' cooling body, his hooves hanging and bouncing stiffly over the wagon's side.  Flies crawled over us both, invading nostrils and tickling lips.  I dreamed not an image, not a sound, but a thought.
    A simple thought ran through my brain over and over.  I was laying my head on Atus' cold and dead body, and he somehow knew something that I didn't.  It must have been nearly half a day's worth of sleep, covering myself from the sun with my coat and hat, and dreaming that one delirious thought.
    This dead horse knows something that I don't.
    When we reached the town Jester had been talking about, I pulled my hat down from my face and leaned my head over to look up ahead of us.  It wasn't as small as the first hamlet I had crossed, made up of nearly thirty ramshackle earthen huts topped with rusted metal and grey dry grass.  At the front of the town, guarding the opening of a three foot high adobe fence, a man and a woman with rifles around their shoulders held out dirty hands and the wagon came to a stop.
    The shorter of the two, the man rounded the back and stared in at me.  He was clean shaven, bald with a straw cap woven tightly around his head.  He ripped the coat covering me down and saw the pistol in my hand.
    "This man's been shot," he called up to the other, "Looks mean."
    "He ain't gonna do well unless we get him out of the sun," Jester called out rushing back.  His hand quickly retrieved the coat and covered me up again with a chuckle, "He won't shoot you, don't worry."
    With the ringing of a bell the cart moved across the threshold of the wall and into the village.  Excited noise followed us as I leaned up to take in my surroundings.  An old woman with thick arms in a long apron hurried along the cart ignoring me, but feeling one of Atus' legs and calling up to the front,
    "How old?"
    "Half a day," Jester said, "What are you offering?"
    "I got lots of shacks.  Room and board for up to eight people per pound smoked."
    I rolled the coat around me, wrapping the collar around my shoulders and jabbing my arms weakly into each sleeve,
    "You know anything about broken legs or bullet holes?" Jester called back to the elderly woman.  She eyed me suspiciously, then looked back at the horse's leg.
    "Sure do," she said, "Three pounds smoked."
    "Meet us at the well in a minute," Jester said, straining as the ground hit a rough patch.
    The town square was arranged around a large well with barbed wire and a small group of men surrounding it.  They laughed between themselves as the youngest tried to throw a pebble down a small rut that had been traced in the dust, each nodding and clapping with what was an apparently impressive toss.  As they noticed us, they quickly started ringing another bell attached to a pole.
    "Alright, folks!" Jester said hopping up onto a small cement block, adopting the charismatic tone of a salesman, "Gather round here, no pushing.  Enough for everybody here.  Those of you who've traded with me before know my method.  Let's make a deal."
    "Where'd you get it?" an older man from the crowd called out, his skeletal face glaring suspiciously up at flies buzzing around us.
    "Shot it myself," Jester said, not missing a beat, "This morning Riderman here was taking it across the