Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 10)

I've reached serial 10 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants! That's a lot of boring transcribing! I didn't realize how many words I was getting on each page.

Here are some numbers:

Word's transcribed thus far: 3984 words.
Manuscript pages transcribed: 3.5
Average words per manuscript page: 1143 words.
Updated anticipated length of the entire novel: 34290 words

As usual, here is a link to the full transcription, thus far, if you want to know more about the project, the source of the manuscript, or the story of the novel's genesis. Also, all of the illustrations I've been composing are there as well: Pulp Novel Project: The Rogue and the Merchants

With a nod three of the men accompanying the graybeard came forward and began probing the Rogue's wound. After a simple poultice was prepared, they set off together in the direction from which the crowd had originally came.

As they moved, the more curious and youthful of them stole glances of the Rogue, smiled, and began whispering among themselves. This the Rogue ignored, though it irritated him. His dark past had made him come to hate being an amusement, a curiosity. Were these but patronizing smiles for a ranger who had been bested by a wildland that they flourished in? He did not know.

Later, rolling his eyes skillfully, the Rogue caught some of them behaving in a way that stirred his suspicions: some of them glanced nervously at the night sky. The Rogue was adept at reading subtle body language, and  yet, he could not understand their anxiety.

The Graybeard

Aside from an occasional mysterious grin and their propensity to look with anxiety as the night sky, the folk walked along with the Rogue, chatting in their chittering language in an honest sort of way in spite of the night's darkness that surrounded them.

The graybeard leader was followed by torch-bearers and the man who was wearing the wolf-cloak. It concerned the Rogue that wolf-cloak had a dark expression lingering on his face. He still did not know what the man had attempted to tell him.

The Rogue eventually arrived to the village of these people. Their houses were built on a flat patch of grass, shorn close by the appetite of grazing sheep. The houses were made of bent reed smeared with clay and mud and looked quite cozy. The roofs of the houses--which we made out of thick, bundles of grass--looked liked the mops of hair of some boys the Rogue had known. Each house had a small, arched portal that was covered by a piece of crudely woven cloth. And above each door, it seemed, was a small, goatish skull. Perhaps a god they worshipped?, the Rogue wondered.

The village was laid in a three-ringed circle, the center of which was a bare earthen plaza. It was about a hundred feet from the rider's edges; the black water of that river flowed softly here. Accompanied by that gang, the Rogue came into the central plaza.

In spite of it being in the middle of the night, everything here was brightly lit by torch poles and bowls of oil similar to the one that the Rogue had seen when first he countered the two guards. And like that one, these gave off the same, greasy smoke as before, which seemed to linger in the air here, making a kind of smoky "roof" that almost shielded the millions of burning stars overhead.

And the plaza was not empty: women and children were here, huddling together, talking, playing, gossiping and joking. And there was a firepit in the very center of things, ringed by stacked bricks. Sitting around the firepit there were more women--beautiful women, young and old--who seemed to be weaving baskets out of pale grass. To the Rogue--who had been traveling with sinewy and bearded merchants for weeks now--these were indeed beautiful women, a wonderful surprise to stumble upon in the night. The hair on their heads, like their men, was shaved close, and their eyes were also darkly painted, although their eyes were black. To the Rogue their bodies, in spite of being wrapped in indelicate furs, were ripe and lovely. They seemed ghostly to the Rogue, seemed to wear the night with grace.

Upon the arrival of their leader, their men, and, of course, the Rogue, some of the women were startled, squeaked, and ran for their houses, leaving their work. Others stood tall, pushed their children behind them, and gazed at the Rogue with clenched jaws and trembling eyes.

These courageous ones appeared the more beautiful to the Rogue, who, using a guile he had honed over many years, stole quick glances of their forms to his pleasure: their skin, glazed with oil, glistened beautifully in the flickering light of the firepit and the torches.