Read The Redemption of Althalus for Free Online Page B

at lunchtime?” Althalus murmured to his guide.
    The tattooed clansman laughed. “Not really,” he replied. “With Gosti, it’s a little hard to tell exactly which meal he’s eating, since they all sort of run together. Gosti eats all the time, Althalus. I’ve never actually seen him do it, but there are some here who swear that he even eats while he’s asleep. Come along. I’ll introduce you to him—and to his cousin Galbak, too.”
    They approached the table. “Ho, Gosti!” the tattooed man said loudly to get the fat man’s attention. “This is Althalus. Have him tell you the story of how he came by this fine wolf-eared tunic of his.”
    “All right,” Gosti replied in a deep, rumbling voice, taking a gulp of mead from his drinking horn. He squinted at Althalus with his little pig-like eyes. “You don’t mind if I keep eating while you tell me the story, do you?”
    “Not at all, Gosti,” Althalus said. “You
do
appear to have a little gaunt spot under your left thumbnail, and I certainly wouldn’t want you to start wasting away right in front of my eyes.”
    Gosti blinked, and then he roared with laughter, spewing greasy pork all over the table. Galbak, however, didn’t so much as crack a smile.
    Althalus expanded the story of his dice game with the wolf into epic proportions, and by nightfall he was firmly ensconced in the chair beside the enormous fat man. After he’d told various versions of the story several times for the entertainment of all the fur-clad clansmen who drifted into the hall, he invented other stories to fill the hall of Gosti Big Belly with nearly continuous mirth. No matter how hard he tried, however, Althalus could never get so much as a smile out of the towering Galbak.
    He wintered there, and he was more than welcome to sit at Gosti’s table, eating Big Belly’s food and drinking his mead, as long as he could come up with new stories and jokes to keep Gosti’s belly bouncing up and down with laughter. Gosti’s own occasional contributions obviously bored his clansmen, since they were largely limited to boasts about how much gold he had stored away in his strong room. The clansmen had evidently heard those stories often enough to know them all by heart. Althalus found them moderately fascinating, however.
    The winter plodded on until it was finally spring, and by then Althalus knew every corner of Big Belly’s hall intimately.
    The strong room wasn’t too hard to locate, since it was usually guarded. It was at the far end of the corridor where the dining hall was located, and three steps led up to the heavy door. A massive bronze lock strongly suggested that things of value were kept inside.
    Althalus noticed that the nighttime guards didn’t take their jobs very seriously, and by midnight they were customarily fast asleep—a condition not uncommon among men who take large jugs of strong mead to work with them.
    All that was left to do now was to wait for the snow to melt—and to stay on the good side of Gosti and his sour-faced giant cousin. If all went well, Althalus would be in a hurry when he left. Galbak had very long legs, so Althalus didn’t want deep snow in the passes to slow him down enough for Galbak to catch up with him.
    Althalus took to frequently stepping out into the courtyard to check the progress of the spring thaw, and when the last snowdrift disappeared from a nearby pass, he decided that the time had come for him to take his leave.
    As it turned out, the strong room of Gosti Big Belly wasn’t nearly as strong as Gosti thought it was, and late one night when the fire in the pit in the center of the hall had burned down to embers and Gosti and his clansmen were filling the corners with drunken snores, Althalus went to that strong room, stepped over the snoring guards, undid the simple latch, and slipped inside to transfer some ownership. There was a crude table and a sturdy bench in the center of the room and a pile of heavy-looking skin bags in