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thatsmyswordThe last few days in Ledetchko had been eventful, to say the least. The ride there had been both shorter and longer than Henry remembered; there was something about the familiar curve of grassy hills, the small paths without concrete or stone, the quiet among the trees– he’d rarely paid this much attention to it before.
But with so much time spent among the strange, man-made places of Fandom and its future, it was a welcome sight. A way to set his mind back to rights. He could now say he enjoyed the adventure of it all, but Rattay and its nearby villages was home, a soothing balm to his soul.
That feeling had stuck with him all the way to Ledetchko, and then it had fled him the second he saw smoke pouring upwards from behind the hill. Not a fire, no, just chimneys. But he had a job to do. He wasn’t just here to admire the scenery.
It was a good thing he had his journal on him. With all the months that had passed for him since he’d found himself at the scene of the massacre at Neuhof, it was easy to forget about the details. Only after another good read-through had he dared to venture into the town itself, to ask around about Reeky - one of the bandits who had accompanied Limpy Lubosh to Neuhof.
Reeky’s real name, he quickly discovered, was Hynek. He was the tanner’s son, and he’d earned the name honestly - by smelling like the Devil himself had taken a shit on the poor man. It had not done his reputation in the village any favors.
His father, the tanner, did not think kindly of him either, though - despite being more than familiar with the smell. And the man was very suspicious about Henry asking after him at all. “Hynek shows up home once in a blue moon, so I don’t know nothing about where he gets to,” the man had snapped. “Even if I did, why would I tell every Tom, Dick and Harry?”
“Your son is about to get into deep shit,” Henry had told him bluntly. “I’m trying to find him so I can warn him. His neck’s on the block, he got mixed up with some very dangerous people.”
That had softened the man up, though it hadn’t helped much. Apparently Reeky had been there a few days earlier, but he’d left quickly. The tanner only had the vaguest sense of where he would have gone - apparently Reeky was a poacher as well as a bandit, and had a hideout somewhere in the woods.
“The innkeeper came here now and again and gave him coin,” the father finished. “It could have been for meat.”
And so Henry had jogged back down the hill, through the water, with Pebbles at his side. It had started to get late that day, the sun already sinking– the inn would have been the best place to go as it was. Lucky thing he’d kept a few groschen in that chest at the mill, or he would’ve been sleeping on the floor that evening.
Especially because he’d found himself having to bribe the bloody innkeeper for information. 65 groschen in all, nearly half of everything Henry had had on him. But it had been worth it– albeit in a roundabout way.
“I don’t know where it is exactly, but I happen to know it’s a dark place, a cave or an old mineshaft,” the innkeeper had told him. “Whenever Reeky was going poaching, he always came to me first for candles and lamp oil. He brought the game skinned and gutted, so he had to have light for that.”
It was useful information. Hopefully Sir Radzig and Sir Hanush would forgive Henry for not immediately running back to tell them there was a poacher about. Unfortunately, it would still require a bit of rummaging around, since there were three different mineshafts in the area, but going by the tanner’s description, the one in the woods was his best bet.
He’d done a bit more asking around after that: the inn was busy and full of localfolk. It wouldn’t hurt to get some certainty on where he’d have to be looking. But the best he got was a local bathmaid, who took pity on Reeky and confirmed he had a habit of running off into the woods to go poaching.
It was enough to go on for the morning. Henry had turned in for the night, missing the comfort of his despicably soft bed at Fandom, yet perversely also glad for the itchy straw of the inn bed. It was pokey and smelly and put both his feet firmly in his own place. He woke up the next morning fully aware of where he was and why; good, settling, enough to make one hardy.
It was still dark out, mind you, and most of the inn had remained asleep. Henry had figured that he was most likely to catch Reeky unawares at night - and his guess had quickly been rewarded. Reeky was in the forest, in an old cave, tucked between the trees, not far from what looked like it may have been a shaft leading somewhere else, once upon a time.
He was a thin fellow, dark-haired, with a heavy moustache that looked like it would fit someone twenty years his senior much better. He was clearly nervous, walking up and down the cave, and he was– talking?
“Jesus christ, what am I to do?” Reeky asked of the deer carcass he’d strung up. “Not that I can expect any useful advice from you.” The candles cast an almost homey light on him– it felt a little off.
Henry lifted his sword and contemplated, just for a second, simply going in and taking the man prisoner. But… no. That was too much of a risk right now. He was alone.
He raised his voice, instead. “Need someone to talk to?”
“Fuck!” Reeky had exclaimed, and turned around with his own dagger raised. “Don’t kill me! I can explain!”
And– just like that– lowered his dagger, setting it down on the floor. The fear had been clear in his expression; a smell even stronger than tanner’s urine. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear. I’ve no one to tell anyway. Just please don’t kill me.”
Oh.
He thought Henry was one of the bandits.
“I’m not planning to kill you,” Henry said, lowering his own sword.
“You’re not one of Runt’s men?” Reeky asked.
Runt. He filed that way. “No.”
Confusion flitted across Reeky’s face. “Then who are you?”
Should he make himself known as Sir Radzig’s official representative in all this? No. That might scare him off, or coax him into doing something stupid. “That’s not important,” Henry said. “The important thing is we have a common foe.”
“Considering all the enemies I have, the odds of that are pretty high.” Was Reeky trembling? It was an honest miracle he’d survived this long.
“I’m talking about the gang that raided the Neuhof stud farm,” Henry explained. “I know you were there.”
“I was, but I’ve got nothing in common with those bastards,” Reeky insisted.
“I’ll take your word for it, providing you tell me what you know,” Henry said, sliding his sword back into its sheath.
“I don’t know why you should c-care, but if it keeps my neck out of a noose I’ll spill the beans,” Reeky said.
Now, at least, they were getting somewhere. Henry thought of his notes, the holes in the story, and fixed his eyes on Reeky. “The raid didn’t turn out quite as planned, did it?” he asked.
“Depends on whose plan you’re talking about,” Reeky said, shrugging. “We were up to it to grab some loot and bugger off. Only Runt’s cutthroats was there to shed blood.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, Runt’s cutthroats?”
“There were two gangs there, mine and Runt’s,” Reeky explained. “We was only there to steal, but they wanted to slaughter everyone.”
Ah, of course. It wasn’t his fault at all. All those deaths… for a moment, Henry could see them again in his mind’s eye, all those innocent people sprawled across the ground by dead horses, and the blood…
…
“But when you realised what they had in mind, you didn’t have to go along with it, did you?” he asked, wrenching his head away from it. Did it come out accusatory? Ah, he didn’t care.
“But we didn’t know nothing!” Reeky exclaimed. “Even that we were going to Neuhof! They told us to keep watch on the courtyard while they were cutting the horses’s throats!” He twitched, something like genuine disdain flicking across his eyes. “Jesus! That fucking vexed me! Their horses was the most valuable thing there!” He shook his head. “When I spoke up, though, Runt gave me such a bollocking I knew I’d better keep my mouth shut. And when they said we was gonna kill anything what moved, then we knew there was no going back.”
After that, Henry managed to pull the rest out of him. Reeky hadn’t known much about Runt or his men, that much was clear. Timmy and Pious Pavel, the remaining two members of his gang, seemed more in the know; they’d spoken about some camp Runt’s people had gone to. Somewhere in the woods.
There had only been one other member to their own gang, Limpy Lubosch, the poor sod who had died in Uzhitz shortly after the raid. Pious had been their leader, but he was missing. And Timmy– well, at least Reeky knew where Timmy had gone, which made him Henry’s next lead, he supposed. He worked for a mill - a different one than Theresa’s, north of Neuhof. He’d likely gone back there.
And that would’ve been the end of this here– this lead exhausted, Reeky and taken to Sir Radzig. But fate had something else in mind. Or rather, Runt.
Reeky and him had heard them calling from outside the cave. Three men, armed and covered in armor that, while not expensive, was certainly better than one would expect from country bumpkins.
“Oh shit, Runt’s people. We have to get out of here,” Reeky had hissed, as soon as they’d gotten outside.
“We’re not going to be able to outrun them,” Henry whispered back.
“Fuck,” Reeky cursed.
“They don’t know I’m here,” Henry pointed out. “The two of us can take them by surprise.”
“No fucking way,” Reeky shot back. “I’m gone!”
But Henry had grabbed him by the arm. Told him that there wasn’t a way in Hell either of them would make it down the mountain by themselves. And reluctantly, Reeky had agreed.
They weren’t the first men Henry had killed. Nor, he suspected, would they be the last. But he couldn’t linger on it. The fight had been hard and fierce, Reeky had nearly died. And besides, these men had likely been at Neuhof - had cut the necks of innocent horses and slain young farmhands where they stood, with no mercy.
They deserved the death that had come to them, Henry told himself. He’d been a vessel for God’s justice. And, with that thought in mind, he’d set Reeky free. They had both suffered enough as it was.
Grace was a part of justice, too.
—
And so it was that barely two days after his return to this time and place, Pebbles dragged Henry back to Rattay, bloodstained and weary, with news for Sir Radzig and questions and answers both for himself.
At least it drizzled rain as he made his way across the path back to the mill. He could pretend it cleared some of the blood off of him. He paused by a trough along the way to clear the worst of it from his face before he faced Theresa again.
Scrubbing the dirt off his skin, the blood from his nails. His clothes would have to wait, but he hoped she’d forgive him for it.
“Look at the state you’re in!” she sighed at him as he came to the mill, and he felt an immediate pang of shame for it all.
“I was hoping we could have that walk that we talked about,” Henry offered, doing his best to plaster on a smile. Honestly, he should rest up, get a proper clean, all the works, but he found it hard to settle his tumbling mind even after the ride. Spending time with Theresa - that laugh in her voice, her constant japes - could finally settle it.
“You don’t give up, do you?” Theresa laughed. For a moment, he feared she might insist he go wash himself, but what followed was a mere, simple– “Where would you care to go?”
“What if we took a stroll around the river?”
“Why not?” Theresa said. “That sounds lovely. Shall we go?”
And in the end, it was just that simple.
Perhaps it was the Skalitz in them both. As they walked past the mill and onto the thin path along the river, Henry realized she’d never told him about her own experiences. The last he’d seen of her that horrible day, she’d been trapped inside while the Cumans tried to break down her door. He’d whistled, gotten the Cumans to chase him instead. And that had been the last of it, until she’d come to drag his useless body back out of town that–
“It was a good idea to go for a walk,” Theresa said. “Not that I don’t like the mill, but you get tired of it. So I’m glad you took me out.” Her tone was feather-light, and so were her words. She talked about Prague, about how much she’d like to see it some day.
“I haven’t been, but I have been in Kuttenberg,” Henry said, inanely, even as his mind tripped forward - backward - to larger, stranger places. “Prague must be much bigger.”
“I heard it’s pretty smelly, though.”
Henry snorted. “Yeah, so many people in one place,” he said. “So many arseholes.”
“That’s disgusting!” Theresa laughed. “I’d love to go, though. I’d like to listen to that young preacher, Jan Hus. They say he preaches in the common tongue - everyone’s talking about it.”
“I bet he’s just handsome - that’s why the women dote on him,” Henry said.
Theresa snorted. “You’re a right one! A preacher doesn’t need good looks for people to listen to him.”
Henry raised an eyebrow at her back. “And what about that fine fellow at St James?” he challenged. “I know full well why all the girls have started going to confession. And you have, too, so don’t give me any of that.”
“You scoundrel,” Theresa chastised him, laughing again. “Well, all right, I admit I find him handsome. But that doesn’t make me a bad Christian!”
“I’d never dare to suggest such a thing,” Henry said.
He might recognize this feeling later. It was the one that drenched his days back in Fandom. A sense of distraction, a layer of lightness on top of something so unfathomably dark and deep he wouldn’t know where to start with it. He could hide it there, and then back here it would all come bubbling up.
Except Theresa knew what the darkness was, and yet she was here, talking about anything but it. He was desperate for it, grabbing a hold of it; they raced together along the riverside and he put power in his step. When they settled between the heavy grass, they spoke only lightly of the real things of this life here. Of Sir Radzig, and Henry’s service to him, a topic that they spun immediately towards jesting once it strayed too close to the truth.
Theresa had a lovely laugh, and that was far more important.
“Serving Sir Radzig? Ah, it’s all luxury, banquets, game stuffed with other game,” Henry joked.
“Ha!” Theresa barked. “A chicken stuffed with… Stuffed with a frog!”
Henry’s mouth quirked up. “That’s nothing compared to a frog stuffed with a chicken.”
That laugh was almost a cackle, then. “A goat– a goat stuffed with–”
“A pig?” Henry offered, laughing with her.
See? That was all he needed. A good laugh with a pretty girl. Things were all better now.
[[ taken from Kingdom Come Deliverance (2018). CW for discussion of animal death. nfb, nfi! ]]
But with so much time spent among the strange, man-made places of Fandom and its future, it was a welcome sight. A way to set his mind back to rights. He could now say he enjoyed the adventure of it all, but Rattay and its nearby villages was home, a soothing balm to his soul.
That feeling had stuck with him all the way to Ledetchko, and then it had fled him the second he saw smoke pouring upwards from behind the hill. Not a fire, no, just chimneys. But he had a job to do. He wasn’t just here to admire the scenery.
It was a good thing he had his journal on him. With all the months that had passed for him since he’d found himself at the scene of the massacre at Neuhof, it was easy to forget about the details. Only after another good read-through had he dared to venture into the town itself, to ask around about Reeky - one of the bandits who had accompanied Limpy Lubosh to Neuhof.
Reeky’s real name, he quickly discovered, was Hynek. He was the tanner’s son, and he’d earned the name honestly - by smelling like the Devil himself had taken a shit on the poor man. It had not done his reputation in the village any favors.
His father, the tanner, did not think kindly of him either, though - despite being more than familiar with the smell. And the man was very suspicious about Henry asking after him at all. “Hynek shows up home once in a blue moon, so I don’t know nothing about where he gets to,” the man had snapped. “Even if I did, why would I tell every Tom, Dick and Harry?”
“Your son is about to get into deep shit,” Henry had told him bluntly. “I’m trying to find him so I can warn him. His neck’s on the block, he got mixed up with some very dangerous people.”
That had softened the man up, though it hadn’t helped much. Apparently Reeky had been there a few days earlier, but he’d left quickly. The tanner only had the vaguest sense of where he would have gone - apparently Reeky was a poacher as well as a bandit, and had a hideout somewhere in the woods.
“The innkeeper came here now and again and gave him coin,” the father finished. “It could have been for meat.”
And so Henry had jogged back down the hill, through the water, with Pebbles at his side. It had started to get late that day, the sun already sinking– the inn would have been the best place to go as it was. Lucky thing he’d kept a few groschen in that chest at the mill, or he would’ve been sleeping on the floor that evening.
Especially because he’d found himself having to bribe the bloody innkeeper for information. 65 groschen in all, nearly half of everything Henry had had on him. But it had been worth it– albeit in a roundabout way.
“I don’t know where it is exactly, but I happen to know it’s a dark place, a cave or an old mineshaft,” the innkeeper had told him. “Whenever Reeky was going poaching, he always came to me first for candles and lamp oil. He brought the game skinned and gutted, so he had to have light for that.”
It was useful information. Hopefully Sir Radzig and Sir Hanush would forgive Henry for not immediately running back to tell them there was a poacher about. Unfortunately, it would still require a bit of rummaging around, since there were three different mineshafts in the area, but going by the tanner’s description, the one in the woods was his best bet.
He’d done a bit more asking around after that: the inn was busy and full of localfolk. It wouldn’t hurt to get some certainty on where he’d have to be looking. But the best he got was a local bathmaid, who took pity on Reeky and confirmed he had a habit of running off into the woods to go poaching.
It was enough to go on for the morning. Henry had turned in for the night, missing the comfort of his despicably soft bed at Fandom, yet perversely also glad for the itchy straw of the inn bed. It was pokey and smelly and put both his feet firmly in his own place. He woke up the next morning fully aware of where he was and why; good, settling, enough to make one hardy.
It was still dark out, mind you, and most of the inn had remained asleep. Henry had figured that he was most likely to catch Reeky unawares at night - and his guess had quickly been rewarded. Reeky was in the forest, in an old cave, tucked between the trees, not far from what looked like it may have been a shaft leading somewhere else, once upon a time.
He was a thin fellow, dark-haired, with a heavy moustache that looked like it would fit someone twenty years his senior much better. He was clearly nervous, walking up and down the cave, and he was– talking?
“Jesus christ, what am I to do?” Reeky asked of the deer carcass he’d strung up. “Not that I can expect any useful advice from you.” The candles cast an almost homey light on him– it felt a little off.
Henry lifted his sword and contemplated, just for a second, simply going in and taking the man prisoner. But… no. That was too much of a risk right now. He was alone.
He raised his voice, instead. “Need someone to talk to?”
“Fuck!” Reeky had exclaimed, and turned around with his own dagger raised. “Don’t kill me! I can explain!”
And– just like that– lowered his dagger, setting it down on the floor. The fear had been clear in his expression; a smell even stronger than tanner’s urine. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear. I’ve no one to tell anyway. Just please don’t kill me.”
Oh.
He thought Henry was one of the bandits.
“I’m not planning to kill you,” Henry said, lowering his own sword.
“You’re not one of Runt’s men?” Reeky asked.
Runt. He filed that way. “No.”
Confusion flitted across Reeky’s face. “Then who are you?”
Should he make himself known as Sir Radzig’s official representative in all this? No. That might scare him off, or coax him into doing something stupid. “That’s not important,” Henry said. “The important thing is we have a common foe.”
“Considering all the enemies I have, the odds of that are pretty high.” Was Reeky trembling? It was an honest miracle he’d survived this long.
“I’m talking about the gang that raided the Neuhof stud farm,” Henry explained. “I know you were there.”
“I was, but I’ve got nothing in common with those bastards,” Reeky insisted.
“I’ll take your word for it, providing you tell me what you know,” Henry said, sliding his sword back into its sheath.
“I don’t know why you should c-care, but if it keeps my neck out of a noose I’ll spill the beans,” Reeky said.
Now, at least, they were getting somewhere. Henry thought of his notes, the holes in the story, and fixed his eyes on Reeky. “The raid didn’t turn out quite as planned, did it?” he asked.
“Depends on whose plan you’re talking about,” Reeky said, shrugging. “We were up to it to grab some loot and bugger off. Only Runt’s cutthroats was there to shed blood.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, Runt’s cutthroats?”
“There were two gangs there, mine and Runt’s,” Reeky explained. “We was only there to steal, but they wanted to slaughter everyone.”
Ah, of course. It wasn’t his fault at all. All those deaths… for a moment, Henry could see them again in his mind’s eye, all those innocent people sprawled across the ground by dead horses, and the blood…
…
“But when you realised what they had in mind, you didn’t have to go along with it, did you?” he asked, wrenching his head away from it. Did it come out accusatory? Ah, he didn’t care.
“But we didn’t know nothing!” Reeky exclaimed. “Even that we were going to Neuhof! They told us to keep watch on the courtyard while they were cutting the horses’s throats!” He twitched, something like genuine disdain flicking across his eyes. “Jesus! That fucking vexed me! Their horses was the most valuable thing there!” He shook his head. “When I spoke up, though, Runt gave me such a bollocking I knew I’d better keep my mouth shut. And when they said we was gonna kill anything what moved, then we knew there was no going back.”
After that, Henry managed to pull the rest out of him. Reeky hadn’t known much about Runt or his men, that much was clear. Timmy and Pious Pavel, the remaining two members of his gang, seemed more in the know; they’d spoken about some camp Runt’s people had gone to. Somewhere in the woods.
There had only been one other member to their own gang, Limpy Lubosch, the poor sod who had died in Uzhitz shortly after the raid. Pious had been their leader, but he was missing. And Timmy– well, at least Reeky knew where Timmy had gone, which made him Henry’s next lead, he supposed. He worked for a mill - a different one than Theresa’s, north of Neuhof. He’d likely gone back there.
And that would’ve been the end of this here– this lead exhausted, Reeky and taken to Sir Radzig. But fate had something else in mind. Or rather, Runt.
Reeky and him had heard them calling from outside the cave. Three men, armed and covered in armor that, while not expensive, was certainly better than one would expect from country bumpkins.
“Oh shit, Runt’s people. We have to get out of here,” Reeky had hissed, as soon as they’d gotten outside.
“We’re not going to be able to outrun them,” Henry whispered back.
“Fuck,” Reeky cursed.
“They don’t know I’m here,” Henry pointed out. “The two of us can take them by surprise.”
“No fucking way,” Reeky shot back. “I’m gone!”
But Henry had grabbed him by the arm. Told him that there wasn’t a way in Hell either of them would make it down the mountain by themselves. And reluctantly, Reeky had agreed.
They weren’t the first men Henry had killed. Nor, he suspected, would they be the last. But he couldn’t linger on it. The fight had been hard and fierce, Reeky had nearly died. And besides, these men had likely been at Neuhof - had cut the necks of innocent horses and slain young farmhands where they stood, with no mercy.
They deserved the death that had come to them, Henry told himself. He’d been a vessel for God’s justice. And, with that thought in mind, he’d set Reeky free. They had both suffered enough as it was.
Grace was a part of justice, too.
—
And so it was that barely two days after his return to this time and place, Pebbles dragged Henry back to Rattay, bloodstained and weary, with news for Sir Radzig and questions and answers both for himself.
At least it drizzled rain as he made his way across the path back to the mill. He could pretend it cleared some of the blood off of him. He paused by a trough along the way to clear the worst of it from his face before he faced Theresa again.
Scrubbing the dirt off his skin, the blood from his nails. His clothes would have to wait, but he hoped she’d forgive him for it.
“Look at the state you’re in!” she sighed at him as he came to the mill, and he felt an immediate pang of shame for it all.
“I was hoping we could have that walk that we talked about,” Henry offered, doing his best to plaster on a smile. Honestly, he should rest up, get a proper clean, all the works, but he found it hard to settle his tumbling mind even after the ride. Spending time with Theresa - that laugh in her voice, her constant japes - could finally settle it.
“You don’t give up, do you?” Theresa laughed. For a moment, he feared she might insist he go wash himself, but what followed was a mere, simple– “Where would you care to go?”
“What if we took a stroll around the river?”
“Why not?” Theresa said. “That sounds lovely. Shall we go?”
And in the end, it was just that simple.
Perhaps it was the Skalitz in them both. As they walked past the mill and onto the thin path along the river, Henry realized she’d never told him about her own experiences. The last he’d seen of her that horrible day, she’d been trapped inside while the Cumans tried to break down her door. He’d whistled, gotten the Cumans to chase him instead. And that had been the last of it, until she’d come to drag his useless body back out of town that–
“It was a good idea to go for a walk,” Theresa said. “Not that I don’t like the mill, but you get tired of it. So I’m glad you took me out.” Her tone was feather-light, and so were her words. She talked about Prague, about how much she’d like to see it some day.
“I haven’t been, but I have been in Kuttenberg,” Henry said, inanely, even as his mind tripped forward - backward - to larger, stranger places. “Prague must be much bigger.”
“I heard it’s pretty smelly, though.”
Henry snorted. “Yeah, so many people in one place,” he said. “So many arseholes.”
“That’s disgusting!” Theresa laughed. “I’d love to go, though. I’d like to listen to that young preacher, Jan Hus. They say he preaches in the common tongue - everyone’s talking about it.”
“I bet he’s just handsome - that’s why the women dote on him,” Henry said.
Theresa snorted. “You’re a right one! A preacher doesn’t need good looks for people to listen to him.”
Henry raised an eyebrow at her back. “And what about that fine fellow at St James?” he challenged. “I know full well why all the girls have started going to confession. And you have, too, so don’t give me any of that.”
“You scoundrel,” Theresa chastised him, laughing again. “Well, all right, I admit I find him handsome. But that doesn’t make me a bad Christian!”
“I’d never dare to suggest such a thing,” Henry said.
He might recognize this feeling later. It was the one that drenched his days back in Fandom. A sense of distraction, a layer of lightness on top of something so unfathomably dark and deep he wouldn’t know where to start with it. He could hide it there, and then back here it would all come bubbling up.
Except Theresa knew what the darkness was, and yet she was here, talking about anything but it. He was desperate for it, grabbing a hold of it; they raced together along the riverside and he put power in his step. When they settled between the heavy grass, they spoke only lightly of the real things of this life here. Of Sir Radzig, and Henry’s service to him, a topic that they spun immediately towards jesting once it strayed too close to the truth.
Theresa had a lovely laugh, and that was far more important.
“Serving Sir Radzig? Ah, it’s all luxury, banquets, game stuffed with other game,” Henry joked.
“Ha!” Theresa barked. “A chicken stuffed with… Stuffed with a frog!”
Henry’s mouth quirked up. “That’s nothing compared to a frog stuffed with a chicken.”
That laugh was almost a cackle, then. “A goat– a goat stuffed with–”
“A pig?” Henry offered, laughing with her.
See? That was all he needed. A good laugh with a pretty girl. Things were all better now.
[[ taken from Kingdom Come Deliverance (2018). CW for discussion of animal death. nfb, nfi! ]]
