The Pleasure of Memory Read Online Free

insane? You know what them is? Them’s the Forbidable Forest! There ain’t enough wine in Parhron to get me to go in those—”
    Beam seized his arm and dragged him closer. “Damn me, Gerd,” he whispered into his face, “If you don’t shut up and listen to me, I’ll slap those last three teeth right out of your mouth!”
    “Four!”
    “What?”
    “Four teeth, not three. I got one more right here.” Gerd threw open his mouth and jabbed a dirty finger at the rotted half of a rear molar.
    “Oh for the love of...” Beam hauled the old man into a paced walk. “I’m not going to argue with you.”
    “Well, it ain’t right,” Gerd said as he stumbled along in tow, “It’s insulting not to count all a man’s teeth. You said three, but I got four!”
    “Four then! I’ll slap all four teeth out of your mouth if you don’t run for those woods on my command. Do you understand me?”
    “All right, already,” Gerd said like an adolescent appeasing a parent, “Being followed, he says. Lordy gods, you meet all kinds out here. Lousy brain fever my ass, you’re just nuts.”
    Beam counted out the time it’d take to remove the weapons belt, free his crossbow, span, and load it. Even without cover, he knew he could get a couple bolts off before the savages could apprehend him. If he couldn’t avoid going down, by gods, he’d take as many of the savages with him as he could manage.
    Just another few paces and they’d make their break. He plotted the course in his mind: Down the swale, through the brambles, a quick jaunt to a line of shrubs dressing the feet of the forest. Once there, he’d slide behind that particularly large redwood leaning out toward the road and make his stand. He prayed the old bum would keep up.
    The vibration announced the attack an instant too late. The arrow slammed his pack from behind. Beam spun away and landed hard on his hands and knees, biting his lip in the process. The weight of the pack nearly pulled his arm out of socket.
    “Holy Calina!” Gerd screamed behind him.
    “Gerd!” Beam yelled up from the dirt, “Get down here before you get hit!”
    “Look at that!” Gerd shrieked, pointing at the fallen pack, “For the love of gods, looky there! That there’s a Vaemysh arrow, ain’t it?”
    “Gerd! Get down here!”
    Gerd was dancing in the two-track and waving both hands at the feathered shaft as if casting a spell to chase it away. “That’s impossible, ain’t it?” he hollered, “Can’t be no savages this far north! It’s in violation of the treaty, ain’t it? The Allies ain’t gonna like that! They ain’t gonna like that at all!”
    Beam crawled forward and grabbed for the man’s ragged robes, but Gerd pulled back too quickly for him to get purchase. Dancing around in the road, shrieking with his arms out and his fingers wiggling their spell at the grasslands, he looked to be in the grip of his own brain fever.
    “That ain’t possible!” the old man bellowed, “It ain’t possible! Can’t be no savages in the Nolands! What the hell are you doing? You trying to fool me or what?”
    Beam again scrambled for the old man, but the weight of the pack sabotaged the climb back to his feet. He was barely standing when the next volley arrived.
    The second arrow whistled in from the southeast, passing perilously close to his shoulder before sailing off toward the forest. The third slugged into the other side of the pack from the north. The impact threw him into a spin. He landed hard on his shoulder. The square pack thudded to the ground a few feet beyond him with a broken strap and two arrows sticking out of it at a perfect right angle.
    He grabbed the broken strap and dragged the clumsy pack behind him as he crawled along the dirt rut toward Gerd. The old man was fully in the fits of hysteria now, spinning around with his hands circling the air as he preached the impossibility of savages in the Nolands. Beam was within a foot of grabbing the old man’s leg when