Delicious Caprice: Prologue and Chap 1

This piece's Prologue and the first part of Chapter 1 was posted on WDC for “Save the Prologue” contest, 30 January 2010

Blurb
As unlikely a band of heroes as ever trod the Urth.
Tamwort is the one truly sane man, and the leader.  An ex-soldier, he loves two women; one as a brother and one as a would-be husband.  Not so long ago, he was Captain of the Palace Guard.  Now, he’s outlawed for treason.  Death awaits his capture.
Sujamu is the Splendour Sharer, the whore.  She moves freely in every circle and obtains whatever is necessary by whatever means are required.  She seeks only material wealth and Tamwort’s undivided love.
Missimka is the Crazy One.  Once, she was a powerful enchantress but now she sees visions both bewildering and terrifying.  She enchants and is enchanted.  She elicits love from Tamwort, although she’s no longer capable of loving or of being loved.
Sharrak is the Namilan, a fighting dog with intelligence beyond imagination and a huge appetite for meat and base desires.  His quest is for the legendary creature known only as Maara.
Necobana is the Wise Boy, once a sorcerer’s apprentice, now a searcher in books.
Harpwill is the Haunted Hunter, the callous killer who, as always is outcast from his people.  Now, he is a mercenary, famed for a collection of trinkets in which are trapped the living souls of all he has killed.  He follows the soldier for a share in the treasure.  At the end, his greed may overcome them all.

Prologue
Imagine, if you will, a desert.  It is almost dawn.  A scream breaks the stillness, echoing among the dunes.  Two riders spur their mounts to greater speed across the sand.
Moments pass, then they see the woman.  Surrounded by sand demons, she stands alone.  The riders hack through mould and bone and rotting rags to reach her.  They whisk her away and, within minutes, they are out of sight.
“Missimka,” says one man, once he feels it’s safe enough to dismount.  “What were you doing?”
The woman looks at and through him.  She seems hazy, as if she inhaled the strong, sweet fragrance of rotting flesh and as if, inhaling it, she’s drugged into remembrance.
“I walked in the garden of life,” she begins, “but I did not see you.”  Her voice is dreamy and trancelike.  “You were nowhere to be seen, my love, and you answered not my call because you had neither ears to hear, nor voice to speak.”
The other man takes their mounts to the river, to drink and rest.
“Your eyes were empty,” the woman continues, “Their images were void.  Oh, were you blind when I came looking and you hid from my view?”
The first man walks the woman to the water, and his expression tells the other their companion’s words make no sense.  It isn’t necessary, because both men already know her speech is made confusing by derangement.
“How do I speak to you when you will not answer?” the woman finished, and stared at the man who’d rescued her from the demons, her gaze unexpectedly lucid.

Chapter One
The stagecoach arrived at false dawn and all the passengers disembarked.  Waiting in sleep, on different levels of the inn, were three new passengers; a woman and two men.  They’d arrived on separate coaches on different days and occupied different rooms but they were all three bound for the same destination.
Sujamu the whore slipped her silver plated hairbrush and her ready-mixed rouge into her handbag and directed the servants to carry her trunk, which she’d sealed against tampering, down to the porch.  She’d prepared for departure the previous evening but had retired to bed at midnight.  She judiciously applied a little of her most expensive perfume to cover the aroma of sleep.  Her silk underwear and velvet travelling dress betrayed the fact that she’d slept fully clothed but she’d chosen materials which recovered well.  The inn-keeper’s talk of legions of weary soldiers at her journey’s end, well-paid and bereft of female company, was designed to stimulate conversation but Sujamu was more immediately aware of the need to scratch out the biters which had crawled inside her bodice during the few hours she’d been asleep.  She dismissed the inn-keeper in order to attend to them.
Tamwort the one truly sane man and ex-captain of the palace guard, kept his weapons and valuables together in the single small bundle he’d used as a pillow on the hard wooden fireside bench during the night.  He had no other luggage and had been cautiously sparing of information when the nosy inn-keeper had opened the door to him as darkness fell.  He trusted nobody and was pleased at the news that he had only two travelling companions.  Fewer people meant less entertainment but it also meant less chance of attack, and would ensure a more restful journey than the one which had brought him thus far.  His day clothes were creased like the woman’s, but his choice of night-apparel had been restricted by his lack of other garments and the fact that he’d slept in the public lounge, alongside vagabonds, poor pilgrims and thieves.  He pulled his cloak tightly around him to hide the insignia of his now-redundant rank and allowed his host to assume he was travelling to join the regiment stationed at the coach’s destination.  He didn’t complain about his poor quality supper or the splinters in his skin where his clothing had come adrift.
Harpwill the killer packed his overnight clothing and tools into his baggage, while the inn-keeper gossiped about hidden gems with supernatural guardians.  He kept his weapons close because his habit was to expect surprise attacks at every turn in the road.  His treasured kill-trophies were well-concealed in his bedroll and saddle bags, as were some of the creeping creatures which his host’s previous guests had failed to take with them but he recognised the flicker of greed in the jovial man’s countenance as he noted the scent of good brandy from the flask inside the bag.  Travelling light was a necessary requirement for adventurers but Harpwill was decadent enough to carry a few luxuries as a means of self-reward.  Killer’s lives were short so future luxury didn’t interest him as much as the chance of immediate riches.  He asked for more details of the legendary gems.
The downstairs rooms were a bustle of activity as servants scurried around like mice, preparing food and rooms for the new arrivals.  Tamwort snatched a chicken leg from a plate as it passed and pressed a bronze coin into the servant’s hand.  Some rich patron would be shorter of food than he’d intended but the diet would improve his physique.  The ex-soldier weaved through the onrush of servants and between thieves and sleeping victims to the porch where his fellow travellers were assembling.
Sujamu sniffed lavender from the pomander she held in front of her face as she waited by the doorway of the public lounge.  Stealthy men and girls moved silently among the unwashed guests slumped in chairs and lying on benches around the fires, undisturbed by the rapid passage of the servants moving in and out of the kitchen or by the fingers of the thieves.  Her journey-fare arrived and she packed it quickly and efficiently into her straw-lined picnic basket before tipping the girl-servant who was already clutching a small bronze coin.  She hurried to the porch, glad to be leaving the stench of the halfway house.
End of entry for “Save the Prologue” contest. From here on, it is unseen writing.
The inn-keeper’s words fresh in his mind, Harpwill carried his baggage downstairs, through the reception area and past the public lounge to arrive in the porch just in time to answer the coachman’s call.
The coachmen lifted the woman’s trunk onto the roof of the coach, followed by the killer’s baggage and nothing at all from the soldier.  The driver insisted the poor man paid up front, as had the inn-keeper, assuming his credit to be of no value.  The open door revealed an interior sparse of luxury but well-sprung for the uneven, potholed road.
When they were seated within, the guard poked sharply at a bundle of rags under Tamwort’s rearward facing seat.  “Fortunes, Missimka.  It’s time to earn your keep.”
A pale and dishevelled urchin uncurled itself and stared unnervingly into the killer’s face. “Whosoever would be master of Fortune”, she said at last, as if predicting his future, “let him first overcome his weakness.”  Harpwill shifted uncomfortably and shrank uncharacteristically towards the corner, away from the little witch and her supernatural forecast.
The whore recognised the truth of the greed in the killer sitting beside her so she leaned closer, eager to hear the fortune-teller’s estimate of what Fate might intend for her.  “You, Lady, have been blessed and cursed by the twin flames of poverty and beauty”, said the girl, and Sujamu smiled contentedly, satisfied with the truth of the reading but her fortune wasn’t finished.  “Seek your enemy among your companions.”  The woman shivered and inched away from the killer.  She placed her hand-luggage on the seat between them.
When the entertainer turned around to face the soldier, both coachmen smiled in anticipation of the poor fate they were certain she would prophecy for him but she surprised them and everyone in the coach.
“And so the king at last was dead.
His cold dark blood flowed from his side.
His battered slayer, spattered red,
Tore at his cloak, his wounds to bind.”
Unconsciously, the others looked for blood on the soldier’s cloak and noted bruises and other injuries they’d earlier been too preoccupied to see.
Tamwort pulled his bundle closer and said, “I didn’t ask for a prediction.”
The girl looked towards the floor and began to sing:
“Stare into the distance and look at the trees.
Their movement is owing in part to the breeze.
Below them in winter is snow all around
and underneath that is the hard, stony ground.

“Go take up your shovel and there dig a hole.
You’ll find there a treasure more precious than gold.
Be careful to hide it, don’t let the men see.
They’ll lay claim to the treasure and wrest it from thee.

“Remember this story which freely I tell,
this quest in which strong men have unwitting fell.
The treasure is guarded by forces unknown
but you are its captor, as I have been shown.”

At the end of her song, she let her eyes wander from one face to another until they reached, and rested upon, the fair countenance of the woman.  Tamwort and Harpwill’s eyes followed them but the woman shrugged and said, “I don’t have a spade.”  She smiled ingratiatingly, determining to buy one as soon as they arrived.
“Take no notice of her,” the driver advised them, in a kindly tone.  “She used to be a seer but she lost her wits.  She’ll entertain you for a few miles but she won’t tell you anything you can believe.”  As he climbed up to the driving seat, he called down: “She’s moonstruck but harmless.  Don’t hurt her, unless you want to answer to me.”
As the coach started to move away, the girl stated calmly: “Thereupon, having delivered their message, the phantoms vanished and Missimka stood alone.”
End of Chapter One
This is Draft One and I've received some good suggestions for changes.  I'm still working on the plot and characters but I intend to edit the already written parts in October and expand the whole thing into a novel  in November 2011.  Thank you for reading this item.  Cathie Hall