“Thanks,” he said. “Why ain’t you told me of this Blatant Barm before? If he was so bad wouldn’t he be the first one you told stories about?”
“You were too young,” she said, sitting back. “And the story too frightening.”
Ooooh … This was going to be a good one. Wayne bounced up and down. “Who got ’im? Was it a lawman?”
“It was Allomancer Jak.”
“Him?” Wayne said with a groan.
“I thought you liked him.”
Well, all the kids did. Jak was new and interesting, and had been solving all kinds of tough crimes this last year. Least according to Dug.
“But Jak always brings the bad guys in,” Wayne complained. “He never shoots a single one.”
“Not this time,” Ma said, digging into her oatmeal. “He knew Blatant Barm was the worst. Killer to the core. Even Barm’s sidekicks — Gud the Killer and Noways Joe — were ten times worse than any other bandit that ever walked the Roughs.”
“Ten times?” Wayne said.
“Yup.”
“That’s a lot! Almost double!”
His ma frowned for a moment, but then leaned forward again. “They’d robbed the payroll. Taking not just the money from the fat men in Elendel, but the wages of the common folk.”
“Bastards!” Wayne said.
“Wayne!”
“Fine! Regular old turds then!”
Again she hesitated. “Do you … know what the word ‘bastard’ means?”
“It’s a bad turd, the kind you get when you’ve really got to go, but you hold it in too long.”
“You know that because…”
“Dug told me.”
“Of course he did. Well, Jak, he wouldn’t stand for stealing from the common folk of the Roughs. Being a bandit is one thing, but everyone knows you take the money what goes toward the city.
“Unfortunately, Blatant Barm, he knew the area real well. So he rode off into the most difficult land in the Roughs — and he left one of his two sidekicks to guard each of the key spots along the way. Fortunately, Jak was the bravest of men. And the strongest.”
“If he was the bravest and strongest,” Wayne said, “why was he a lawman? He could be a bandit, and nobody could stop him!”
“What’s harder, love?” she asked. “Doing what’s right or doing what’s wrong?”
“Doing what’s right.”
“So who gets stronger?” Ma asked. “The fellow what does the easy thing, or what does the hard thing?”
Huh. He nodded. Yeah. Yeah, he could see that.
She moved the lantern closer to her face, making it shine as she spoke. “Jak’s first test was the River Human, the vast waterway marking the border with what had once been koloss lands. The waters moved at the speed of a train; it was the fastest river in the whole world — and it was full of rocks. Gud the Killer had set up there, across the river, to watch for lawmen. He had such a good eye and steady hand that he could shoot a fly off a man at three hundred paces.”
“Why’d you want to do that?” Wayne asked. “Better to shoot ’im right in the fly. That’s gotta hurt something bad.”
“Not that kind of fly, love,” Ma said.
“So what did Jak do?” Wayne asked. “Did he sneak up? Not very lawman-like to sneak. I don’t think they do that. I’ll bet he didn’t sneak.”
“Well…” Ma said.
Wayne clutched his blanket, waiting.
“Jak was a better shot,” she whispered. “When Gud the Killer sighted on him, Jak shot him first — clean across the river.”
“How’d Gud die?” Wayne whispered.
“By bullet, love.”
“Through the eye?” Wayne said.
“Suppose.”
“And so Gud lined up a shot and Jak did likewise — but Jak shot first, hitting Gud straight through the sights into the eye! Right, Ma!”
“Yup.”
“And his head exploded,” Wayne said, “like a fruit — the crunchy kind, the shell all tough but it’s gooey inside. Is that how it happened?”
“Absolutely.”
“Dang, Ma,” Wayne said. “That’s gruesome. You sure you should be tellin’ me this story?”
“Should I stop?”
“Hell no! How’d Jak get across the water?”
“He flew,” Ma said. She set her bowl aside, oatmeal finished, and gave a flourish with both hands. “Using his Allomantic powers. Jak can fly, and talk to birds, and eat rocks.”
“Wow. Eat rocks?”
“Yup. And so he flew over that river. But the next challenge was even worse. The Canyon of Death.”
“Ooooh…” Wayne said. “Bet that place was pretty.”
“Why do you say that?”
“’Cuz nobody’s going to visit a place called ‘Canyon of Death’ unless it’s pretty. But somebody visited it, ’cuz we know the name. So it must be pretty.”
“Beautiful,” Ma said. “A canyon carved through the middle of a bunch of crumbling rock spires — the broken peaks streaked with colors, like they was painted that way. But the place was as deadly as it was beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Wayne said. “Figures.”
“Jak couldn’t fly over this one, for the second of the bandits hid in the canyon. Noways Joe. He was a master of pistols, and could also fly, and turn into a dragon, and eat rocks. If Jak tried to sneak past, Joe would shoot him from behind.”
“That’s the smart way to shoot someone,” Wayne said. “On account of them not bein’ able to shoot back.”
“True,” Ma said. “So Jak didn’t let that happen. He had to go into the canyon — but it was filled with snakes.”
“Bloody hell!”
“Wayne…”
“Regular old boring hell, then! How many snakes?”
“A million snakes.”
“Bloody hell!”
“But Jak, he was smart,” Ma said. “So he’d thought to bring some snake food.”
“A million bits of snake food?”
“Nah, only one,” she said. “But he got the snakes to fight over it, so they mostly killed each other. And the one what was left was the strongest, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“So Jak talked it into biting Noways Joe.”
“And so Joe turned purple!” Wayne said. “And bled out his ears! And his bones melted, so the melty bone juice leaked out of his nose! And he collapsed into a puddle of deflated skin, all while hissing and blubbering ’cuz his teeth was melting!”
“Exactly.”
“Dang, Ma. You tell the best stories.”
“It gets better,” she said softly, leaning down on the stool, their lantern burning low. “Because the ending has a surprise.”
“What surprise?”
“Once Jak was through the canyon — what now smelled like dead snakes and melted bones — he spotted the final challenge: the Lone Mesa. A giant plateau in the center of an otherwise flat plain.”
“That’s not much of a challenge,” Wayne said. “He could fly to the top.”
“Well he tried to,” she whispered. “But the mesa was Blatant Barm.”
“WHAT?”
“That’s right,” Ma said. “Barm had joined up with the koloss — the ones that change into big monsters, not the normal ones like old Mrs. Nock. And they showed him how to turn into a monster of humongous size. So when Jak tried to land on it, the mesa done gobbled him up.”
Wayne gasped. “And then,” he said, “it mashed him beneath its teeth, crushing his bones like—”
“No,” Ma said. “It tried to swallow him. But Jak, he wasn’t only smart and a good shot. He was something else.”
“What?”
“A big damn pain in the ass.”