» Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:04 am 
~ CHAPTER ONE ~
The air was filthy with smoke, sweat and stale beer, and if not for the alcohol he would have left the lowly bar hours ago. But bitter liquid had a way of calling him, a way of nailing him down. That evening was no different than the others.
Baeder Surra sat at the table with a glass of hard liquor in one hand and five cards in the other. Chance was the game and death was the betting piece, though no one, not even Baeder himself, was aware of it just yet.
“Your call, buddy,” one of the three men around Baeder said, a fat man with a skinny mustache. The other two were his pals, Baeder could tell that despite being drunk near beyond recognition. And worse yet, they were playing him for a fool.
Trying to, at least.
Baeder grabbed for a random handful of black pebbles and threw them to the middle of the table.
“How much is that?” the fat man asked, laughing and nudging his friends’ shoulders. “I ain’t countin’.”
“Don’t matter,” Baeder replied as calmly as the whiskey would let him. “Ain’t gonna beat me either way.”
The three men around him cackled with laughter, hootin’ and hollerin’ as more and more bystanders crowded the circular table. The tiny town of Roslin was host to no more than two-hundred or so people, and Baeder figured at least half of them were packed inside the tavern. Or at least that’s what it seemed like. More than likely it was double vision, an effect he often felt after having too much to drink.
And when he raised his eyes to meet the fat man’s, he realized this must have been the case, for where one fat man was large enough, he now saw two.
“Sumpin’ wrong there, fella?” the man asked, choking back a laugh. Tears were running down his face. He and his friends thought they were something, thought they were going to get their money’s worth off of that drunkhead stranger passing through town.
“Nope. Make your call,” Baeder said, struggling not to slur his speech. Gotta stop now, he thought, aiming to set his glass of whiskey down on the table but instead accidentally letting it fall to the floor where it smashed to pieces. Above the laughter from those around him he thought he heard the bartender curse at him.
Oh well, he thought. Ain’t gonna be here much longer anyway.
“I gotta know the amount ‘fore I can respond and I ain’t countin’.”
“Make your move,” Baeder mumbled, wondering where in the world his cigars were. Peruvian cigars, heavy and smelly just the way he liked them. He always had smokes after a good drink, but now that he couldn’t find them he was starting to become irritated.
“I said I-”
“Isaid make your move!” he yelled angrily. For a moment the bar was silent, but then it erupted in high-pitched laughter, the loudest coming from the fat man. Laugh at me all you want, Baeder thought. Won’t be laughing when I take your money.
“Fine. I call it,” the loud mouth said, throwing in a random handful of pebbles as well. “Show ‘em, fella.”
Baeder smiled, and he couldn’t figure out if it was because he’d svckered those who thought they were svckering him, or if the alcohol had left numbville and traveled straight to sillyville. Either way, he was a few coins richer.
“Combination with twelve’s and thirteen’s,” he said triumphantly.
The fat man jumped out of his seat and stared at Baeder’s hand that now lay on the cracked, wooden table. He gave his friends just a moment’s glance before eying Baeder with a furious glare. “You a cheater!”
“Am I?” Baeder asked. “Why’s that? ‘Cause I was supposed to have a sixteen to split up my combination? Better not let the dealer have so much to drink before messing with the cards next time.”
The dealer, a thin man almost short enough to be Baeder’s footstool, laughed nervously before darting into the crowd and out the bar through the front. But Baeder paid him no attention. The only danger was right in front of him, for the fat man’s hands were inching closer and closer to the belted revolvers at his large hips.
“Sumpin’ wrong there, fella?” Baeder mocked, unable to suppress a laugh.
Some of the others (not all, but a large number) standing around the table began to laugh, and this was the tipping point for the fat man.
“You dirty, cheatin’, gun-svckin’-”
He went to grab his revolvers, but he wasn’t even halfway there before a bullet struck him just above the left eye. That quarter of his head blew up in tiny, gory pieces, and his body flew back before ramming into the wall behind him. The crowd scattered and the dead man’s buddies were some of the first out of there. Baeder was the only one left (minus the bartender, who was now kneeling behind his counter), his own revolver smoking at the barrel. Drunk as he was, his aim had proved true once again.
Cowards, he thought of the dead man’s two “friends,” getting up from his seat and staggering towards the back door, thinking it would be best to get out of town before anything else could happen.
“Whatcha think yer doin’?” a man yelled from his right. The bartender, another short man and with a full-blown beard that dropped just above his bellybutton.
“Leaving,” Baeder responded without looking back.
“Well hows am I gonna pay fer that hole in the wall, hmm?”
Baeder, confused, turned around and stared at the old bartender, who pointed to the back wall where a bullet hole could be seen above where the dead man lay.
“Oh,” Baeder said. Then, realizing he’d left his winnings on the table, shrugged his shoulders. “Take the money on the table, I guess. Should cover the hole and the mess. Sorry about that.”
The bartender grumbled something in response, but Baeder was already halfway out the backdoor and couldn’t make out a word.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
An hour later he sat under the setting sun beside a small pond with lily pads and frogs, in the middle of a forest far enough away from Roslin to stop and clean his guns. He wondered curiously why the frogs didn’t hop or swim away in fear, but when he pulled out his seven-shooters they scattered like flies, reminding him of a recent scene and causing him to laugh. But that didn’t last long, for the laugh was cut short at the sound of a voice to his right.
“You’ve proven difficult to find,” it said, deep and drawn out, as if rehearsed thousands of times.
The former bounty hunter turned around to find a tall, skinny man that strongly resembled a scarecrow. His blond hair was long and stringy yet seemingly fine as silk, the kind of hair that took hours each morning to perfect. His beady green eyes stared into Baeder’s with a sense of wonderment; Baeder himself could sense that without even trying. This man had been following him for a very long time.
Being so tall and with such curly hair that touched his shoulders, yet with no facial hair to speak of, he looked rather silly to Baeder.
“That’s probably because I never wanted to be found,” Baeder said. He thought for a moment about pointing his guns and ending any potential end for himself, but then he had two immediate afterthoughts: One, if this man really wanted him dead he would have already done so. Two, he’d tracked him down when Baeder thought that impossible. He was curious to see what this stranger had to say.
“Yes, well,” the stranger said, moving his head side to side and looking off to the right as if choosing his words carefully, “Let me just say that someone wanted to change all of that.”
“Oh?” Baeder asked. “May I ask why? Also, may I ask how you found me in the first place?”
Baeder was happy to find he had, for the most part, already recovered from the heavy dose of alcohol. It was a side effect to his constant drinking, perhaps the only positive one: at least his body had become so used to liquor that it healed faster than most. Because though he was still drunk he was at least thankful to have a clear conversation. He would want to remember this one.
“All in due time, Baeder,” was all the stranger would say. “For now you will follow us.”
“Us?”
“Of course,” came a voice to his left, another tall man, though this one with tanned skin and long, black hair that fell just past his hip. Dark blue tattoos marked his face in several locations, the largest a spiffy, jagged-like design that circled his right eye. “One man wouldn’t have been enough to find Baeder Surra.”
A Nesai? Baeder thought to himself. Whoever is looking for me sent a Nesaic wizard? Why?
“Who are you two?” Baeder asked, to neither in particular.
“Again,” the scarecrow man said, “all in due time.”
The Nesai man started to make his way towards Baeder, and he could feel vibration throughout his entire body. Nothing extraordinary, but just enough to let him know something wasn’t right.
Magic…
“Come with us, Baeder,” the Nesai man said. “Come with us and you’ll have your answers.”
As much as he wanted to stand up and run away, he could not. He simply… couldn’t.
“Here,” the wizard said, “Take my hand, I’ll help you up.”
Without even realizing he was doing so, Baeder extended his hand and let the wizard grab it. When he did, the vibration in Baeder’s body grew stronger by the second until finally he fell back, eyes looking up at the sky.
The last thing he saw was the wizard’s smiling face and the rolling clouds above.
