Chapter 199: Bag Hag
"Toss the little bone-gnawers four barrels today, looks like feeding time is popular with them."
Billy was balancing on a stack of three barrels, which gave him a good look at the area where they had dumped barrels full of offal each of the last two mornings. Ghouls were hiding in every crack or crevice, hopping up and down in anticipation, gnawing on bones and each other. Word had gone out to the denizens of Hungry Town that tasty meat was falling from the sky, and they were clustering in the area where the morning miracle occurred.
"You're the boss. I just hope none of them are smart enough to make a connection between the sound of a catapult and a barrel of snacks smashing into the ground." Sal was one of the stronger workers, and had help pack one of the new catapults to the courtyard in front of the ACME building. Ben had spent a long time with Rolly and Squirmie helping Sal calibrate the aim and the tension needed to dump the barrels where they wanted them. With Rolly around, Ben didn't have to worry about perfect calculations, and Squirmie was an ideal ariel scout, letting them know exactly where each ranging shot hit.
The last two nights had seen a lot of activity at the stockyards with two dozen contract workers led by the Baron and Baroness butchering everything in sight. The magic of the stockyards was working to refill the pens, but they were clearing them each night and the respawn wasn't keeping up.
Bob and his hound had showed up each evening, eager for the hunt. While Bob had been hunting wild animals for centuries, the hunts in the Fae lands were highly stylized with packs of dogs and peasants flushing the game and driving it to the hunters. Who got to kill the biggest beast was always pre-arranged. It was all just a dance with a familiar outcome. He'd grown bored with it swiftly after only a century or two.
Here in the stockyards it was different. There was an unpredictability to the creatures. Was this type of carnivorous sheep explosive? Or did it have some other trick? Bob felt himself pushed to his limits, straining his skills and relishing the bit of danger he was in. There was also the difference between a tired creature, and one that was fresh. These critters were as eager to hunt Bob as much as Bob wanted to hunt them. Twitterberry and the hound had saved their Lord's life five times in the last three nights. The close calls just added to his enthusiasm. This didn't surprise Twitterberry. Noble Fae tended to take things to extremes. His mothers love of the trapeze and his father's collection of rare porcupines being just two examples. It seemed Bob had found his calling in hunting strange beasts. And they had to admit he was getting better.
The meat had been shipped to Sedgewick by the wagonload and dumped into the growing charnel pit. The doors were opened and a wagonload of meat was pushed inside. A few minutes later, a bloody and battered wagon was ejected out those same doors, piled high was smoked meats of all types. The pit was cycling the meats in just hours, the smokehouse roaring at all times of the day and night.
One shift of workers was always there, packing the meat into barrels. Some was labeled 'Smoked Sedge Beast', others 'Smoked Meat', and a few just said 'Smoked Mystery Meat Surprise!'
The Legion bought it all. Optio Gustuvus opened up the barrels and took a look at the mystery meat, sampled a few pieces, and declared it fine eating. "It's a damned sight better than what an army normally eats in the field and no one is going to complain. If anything, the variety of what's inside will be appreciated."
Not everything went to the hungry charnel pit. Suzette had spent some of the town's saved Building Points to create more Storehouses. Uncured hams, pork bellies, wings of all types, and choice cuts from some of the beasts were piled inside the storehouses where the resident refrigerator mage froze them solid. Once a storehouse was packed with frozen meat and Hermetically Sealed, Delbert just had to refresh his spells once a week to keep things frozen solid.
There was some worry about what was going on, in terms of both Billy's plan for emptying the stockyards and the increasingly dangerous charnel pit. Joe assured Ben and Rolly that keeping it busy like this was helping, slowing the growth and even setting it back a bit. The pit was burning mana to get the work done, and they gained a measure of control by regulating how much they fed it.
But eventually, they needed a Butcher to control it, and not someone who had barely graduated from the crash course in slaughtering that more and more of the contract workers were taking. "Any luck with finding him, Joe?" Ben was working on a couple of ways to locate Ozzy; Joe was one of those ways. The old smoke golem was cagey and didn't reveal a lot, but he also wasn't outright hostile to them.
"Maybe. Maybe not. If I'd been there when he blew up, I'd have a better idea. From what the little Outlander says, he really lost his temper. I warned him he burned too hot sometimes. I'm still curious about mixing light and dark, too. That might have something to do with it. Dark gives a lot of fuel and power, but light burns hot and can really stoke a furnace. But both? Now that's going to be interesting. Very interesting. No one shows up in the smoke with a lot of both at the start. And Ozzy has other...peculiarities that might add to things."
"But what I can tell you is that a Cyclone blew through the area a little after he blew himself up. That's a strange event in and of itself. If he floated up high enough, he might have got caught in its wake and been taken for a spin. Or, and this is of more concern, he might have been the reason the cyclone showed up. He was on the edge of learning some secrets on his own. Secrets that some folk think should stay in the Smoke. That's all I have for you now."
Ben doffed his hat and bowed. "I thank you for any help you can offer sir, in our quest to find our mutual friend. I have another idea. We have a circle of witches; I'm hoping that one of them can find a way to track him."
Joe scratched his chin. "Might work. Might not. Some of those witches are pretty new. Titania or Jenny would know the spell, if any of them. Be careful with those two, either one might ask a steep price for the help." Joe took an empty whiskey bottle, and exhaled into it, filling it with dark smoke. He corked it and handed it to Ben. The smoke inside continued to swirl around. "Take that. Might help."
Ben stared at the bottle, watching the smoke move around. "Magic smoke?"
Joe turned away without answering, then stopped. He knew the courier would just keep digging for answers, and he had a charnel pit to keep under control. "Yeah, 'magic smoke'. It's part of the Butcher. I saved one of his smoke rings, just to compare how much better he got, week to week. That might help a witch get an idea of where he was. Don't break it, you aren't getting another. And don't give it to anyone you don't trust."
Ben nodded, and bowed again, then went off to talk to Suzette. As he was walking near the edge of town, he saw a coach drawn by two black horses riding hard up the road. The driver was wearing a long black coat and a top hat, both of which had seen better days. The coach also was battered and needed a fresh coat of paint. The horses, by contrast, were in good shape and well cared for. The driver brought the coach to the edge of town, but didn't enter. Seeing Ben, he took a logbook from his pocket, put on some spectacles, and quickly checked something. "You! In the hat! Is this little shithole The Village of Sedgewick?"
Ben took two apples from his pockets, and fed them to the horses, noting that they had sharp teeth and fangs that no herbivore should really have in their mouth. They liked the apples though. "Yes, this is Sedgewick. What can I do for you?"
"Have a delivery. All yours and glad to be done with it." So saying, he took a large leather bag from off the top of the coach and dumped it to the roadway. The bag moved a bit and said "Ow, dammit, I'm not a sack of potatoes."
The carriage turned back onto the road and the driver yelled back. "No, you ain't. Taters would have been a lot less trouble than you! Good riddance!" Ben hurried to let out whoever was trapped in the bag.
After he undid the ties on the bag, a long-nailed hand slapped him. "I can handle it, keep your paws off my bag." A girl crawled from the bag. If pressed, Ben would have said she was 16 to 20 years old if she was human, which she probably wasn't. She was wearing legion issue combat boots, raggedy jeans torn off above the knee, a leather vest that was two sizes too small to contain an ample chest, and a spiked collar around her neck. Her right arm was armored in plate mail lames from the shoulder down to a gauntlet. A spiked mohawk in colors of green and yellow, dozens of piercings, and several interesting tattoos completed the look. Ben assumed they had some good nightclubs where she had last lived.
The girl took a look at Ben, laughed and said, "I take it back, handsome. Feel free to handle my baggage anytime you want. I'll be in town for a while. Know where Jenny is living? Or did you kick her down the road yet?"
Ben was so curious he could burst, but he had things to do. "Miss Jenny lives down by the little river, you can just see her chimney from here."
"Thanks bud. See you around. Remember my offer." She picked up the large bag, slung it over her shoulder and headed to Jenny's house.
Arriving a moment later, she kicked the door off the hinges and entered the house. "What a dump. Your door broke just as I turned the knob." Granny Gorpunkle was just pulling out a large tray of cookies from the oven when the door fell into the living room. She hissed and spat. "No one invited you here, Vivian, get thee hence from my house."
Vivian tossed her bag in a corner, scooped a dozen cookies off the plate, and sank into a chair. "Not your house, Gorpy, it's Jenny's. And Jenny told me I could always visit anytime I felt like running away from home. That's enough invite to kick in the door and toss my bag. And now that my bags here, you can't kick me out. She shoved the cookies into her mouth, showing off very sharp teeth that ran in the family.
Jenny walked into the room. "That's true, Viv, but if your mother is in that bag, I'm killing you both."
Vivian laughed. "Too late. The bitch is dead. You have no idea how hard that was. I must have written a hundred letters telling every paladin's guild and the inquisition where we were, and where we were heading. Every time a squad caught up to us, Mom either ate them or she heard them coming and we skipped town on a stage the night before. Her survival instincts were a pain in my ass."
Jenny and Granny relaxed, and both smiled. "Dead? Well, that's good news. How did you finally kill her?"
Vivian noticed a bottle of alcohol on a shelf and helped herself. "One night, I killed a dwarf who owned the bar we drank at. The asshole gave Mom drinks for free and kept making offers to buy me. Mom was holding out for a better price and I decided it was time to get rid of both of them. I strangled the dwarf, and stole 73 bottles of whiskey. They all went in the bag and Mom got so drunk she fell asleep. I hauled her and the bag across town to the Cathedral. I cut a hole in the roof of the Cathedral and dumped her through it during one of the big festivals. Mom fell into the middle of The Order of Saint Fustus the Pious. Even friggin Paladins couldn't mess up that opportunity. Seventeen Holy Warriors of Fustus became martyrs and mom got chopped into little pieces. They boiled the remains in Holy Water, burnt what was left to ashes and buried the ashes in 7 different graveyards. I skipped town after that and decided to come for a visit."
Jenny put down three large glasses, and poured an inch of alcohol from an old dusty bottle into each. "Good girl. That gives us three again. Connected by blood and death. Agreed?" The other two nodded and the three hags drank their toast.
Jenny was going to have fun. First a Circle of White Witches and now their family could form a Hag Hollow. Just let the inquisition try to dig them out of this strange little town.
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