To the Dead City

by Alex Bentley

  I hold my breath.

  The wasp continues on, away from me.

  Then pauses in its flight, as I am paused on this too-narrow beam.

  It pivots in the air and floats toward me.

  I can hear the hunting song over its drone now.

  Our prey, our prey

  This will be a good day!

  The wasp hovers an inch from my face at eye level. It is so close it is just a blur of black and yellow. And then it lands on my face, scuttling across my cheek, over my ear and up into my hair, its legs like supple twigs.

  I almost cry out.

  The venom of the straggis wasp, in very small doses, can be used to lessen pain. In slightly larger doses, it can deaden a limb so completely that limb can be removed. As when Clod Ashling had the bloodrot in his leg. A full dose kills so quickly it is said there is no time for the soul to leave the body.

  This will be a good day!

  This will be a good day!

  I judge that I have less than a minute before I am seen. I have a choice between an arrow between the shoulder blades, a brutal fall to the rocks below or the very real possibility of a sting from a straggis wasp. This is not a good day.

  Dripping sweat burns my eyes, my lungs ache from holding my breath and my heart is punching at my chest, trying to escape.

  But in the end, there is only one choice. If I am seen, my father dies. I have to get across the bridge and out of sight, and I have to do it now.

  Just as I stopped moving without telling myself to do so, I am moving again without instruction. I move with the ease of the pale, skinny man on his rope, despite the scratching of the wasp’s legs on my scalp.

  This will be a good day!

  I am thinking that it might, indeed, be a good day, after all. The end of the bridge is just three steps away when the wasp stings me.

  Chapter 8

  Arrows and Spears

  I do not die, instantly or otherwise.

  The wasp stings me again.

  Still, I do not die.

  I am wondering if the Glyst that allowed me to bring my father back from death has made me immune to its venom. Perhaps to all venoms. Perhaps to death itself.

  Then I remember I have experienced this stinging pain before. When the other children and I were being taught our scripts, sat on the floor in Mrs Blathnyd’s roundhouse, and that idiot boy, Keary Morr, sat behind me, had taken to pulling single hairs from my head. And I remember what Dwynan said as he passed beneath my tree, pretending to be his father.

  It will be a good experience for you, lad. It will build character, as a straggis wasp builds its conical house from animal hair and mud.

  Its building materials pillaged, the straggis wasp lifts from my head and drones off back the way it came.

  I leap the remaining distance onto the good, firm ground of the riverbank. Without pausing to enjoy the warm rush of relief that surges through me, I dart into a dense patch of red caitlins and make myself small.

  “There!” a voice cries out from across the river, competing with the high whistle of a grefa stone. “Look! There!”

  The rush of relief is replaced by a sudden frost of dread.

  But I’m sure I can’t be seen. The caitlins are tall, with leafy stems, and grow in thick clusters. I should be well hidden.

  “There!”

  I turn slowly on the spot so I am looking back toward the bridge and whoever it is that appears to have spotted me.

  “Look!” he says.

  It is Eltas, the butcher. That is not a warrior name. He is not Eltas the Butcher. He is Eltas, the butcher. His name is Eltas and he is the Jarl’s butcher, preparing his meat for storing or cooking. With him is his brother, Eftas. Eftas hasn’t the skill to be a butcher. He is a slaughter man. They are almost indistinguishable from one another, the Hilder brothers. Both bald, both wide, both with the same piggy faces.

  Eltas seems to be pointing directly at me.

  “There!” he says. “Butterflies!”

  I tip my head back by degrees until I am looking upward. A cloud of ember butterflies. I must have scattered them when I scuttled into hiding. They signal my whereabouts as surely as a campfire made with greenwood.

  “I see them,” says Eftas. He takes his bow from his back then selects and nocks an arrow.

  “It is too far, you idiot,” says Eltas.

  “It is not,” says Eftas and looses the arrow.

  It strikes the deck of the bridge a good forty yards short of where I leapt to safety.

  “See,” says Eltas. “I told you.”

  “Shut up,” says Eftas, and makes his way to the start of the bridge. He takes two steps onto the deck. Then two steps off. “It’s soft as pudding,” he says and nocks another arrow.

  “What are you shooting at?” says Eltas. “It’s not as if we can see anything. Could be anything set those embers to flight. A fox or a rat. Could be anything.”

  “And what of the stone?” says Eftas. “It’s whistling, is it not?”

  Eltas looks at the stone in his palm and says, “The gedding thing hasn’t stopped whistling since yesterday!” He shoves it deep down into his side bag, muffling the sound.

  Eftas trains his arrow in my approximate direction and looses his arrow.

  It strikes the ground several yards to the right of me and a good ten yards from where the caitlins begin.

  “I’m sure I see something,” he says. “Squatting, Low down.” He nocks another arrow.

  “Well, that rules out the Clainh girl,” says Eltas. “No way she’d have made it this far. Not with the scabwolves and the snakefish. No way she’d have crossed that bridge, either. Look at it. I’ve seen sturdier carcasses in the height of summer.”

  Eftas looses another arrow. It strikes closer this time, only a couple of yards to my right, and only five yards from the caitlins.

  “She could have walked along the outer beam,” says Eftas. “Balancing, like. Remember when those players came from Claefol, and that man who was the colour of a ghost walked on a rope from the Jarl’s place to the gaddapole?”

  “I remember,” says Eltas. “But I doubt the girl would possess the guts for such a task.”

  Eftas selects another arrow.

  I begin to shuffle backwards. I can’t risk just waiting for the next arrow to land. It would probably miss, but I can’t be sure. And I’m confident they cannot see me.

  “Look!” shouts Eltas. “The caitlins are moving. If that’s you, girl, stay put. We will not hurt you.”

  “Not to begin with, anyway,” says Eftas in the tone of voice I have heard men use when they have too much mead in them.

  Eltas laughs. “Come on. Show yourself.”

  Eftas releases the arrow.

  I continue to shuffle backwards.

  The arrow lands inches from where I was just squatting. I don’t think it would have struck me.

  “Come on, girl!” shouts Eftas. “We needn’t put a hole in you. Let us see you! Last chance.” He nocks an arrow.

  Then Eltas, his voice almost as high as the whistle of a grefa stone, says, “Wasps!”

  “What?” says Eftas.

  “Wasps! Straggis wasps!”

  Eftas drops his bow, turns and runs. Likewise, Eltas.

  I watch as they disappear back into the Freewood, waving their hands around their heads and wailing.

  Once the Hilder brothers’ voices have faded completely, I head out onto the road the bridge once served. It has been made narrow by overgrowth and is pocked with craters such that you have to watch your footing or risk a wrenched or broken ankle.

  It takes a full mile of walking for my nerves to calm from the events of the bridge, and when they do I am suddenly aware of just how hungry I am. My belly is an empty cave, haunted by the growls of a long-dead bear. If I were a complete fool, I’d get a fire going, skin and cook the welpa. But I am not a complete fool. I am only half a fool, so I pick some berries from the scraggy bushes that line the road. They look a littl
e like yellowberries, except they are smaller and not so juicy. They do not taste like yellowberries, but they are pleasant enough. I do not eat many. Just enough to silence the growling in my belly-cave. The growling is replaced by my father’s chiding voice.

  Child, you must never eat a thing unless you know what that thing is. The land does not repay stupidity with kindness.

  If I was not so hungry, I might have heard my father’s voice before I ate the berries. But hunger has a way of silencing good sense.

  As I walk, I brace myself for the doubtless inevitable stomach cramps or, worse, a sudden and uncontrollable wateriness in the bowels. For two hours I steel myself, but the cramp and the wateriness do not come. The land has repaid my stupidity with, if not kindness, a neutral nod of its head.

  The bushes with their not-yellowberries thin out and fields of thick grasses fall away on either side of me. To my right, I think I can make out the low undulations of the Scoddy Hills, on the far side of which is Brim and then the rough waters of the Benna Sea. To my left, perhaps seven or eight miles distant, is the Forest of Leccan, beyond which the Beorstehd Mountains are vast and jagged, the Seven Peaks snagging at the grey-black blanket of rain-heavy cloud that is making its way toward me at some considerable speed.

  I was lucky with the berries, but I do not think I am going to be so lucky with the weather.

  The sky favours me for another hour, then seems to unburden itself of every drop of water in a five-minute downpour that, with nowhere for me to shelter, soaks me to the skin. I have never seen rain like it. It falls in arrows and spears, and soon the old path is a rushing brook, and I am not walking but wading,

  With the mud sucking at my feet, my legs, already tired, begin to ache. Likewise my neck and shoulders as I hunch against the cold and the wet. Misery soaks my soul as surely as the rain soaks my clothes.

  Count the good until one hand is full, I hear my mother say.

  “One,” I say. “The scabwolf did not take me.”

  I extend the thumb of my right hand.

  “Two,” I say. “Dwynan did not see me, so my father shall live.”

  I extend my first finger.

  “Three. The straggis wasp did not sting me.”

  I extend my second finger.

  “Four. The idiot Hilder brothers did not land an arrow in my hide.”

  I extend my third finger.

  “Five. The not-yellowberries did not turn my bowels to water and have me ged myself like a mewling puke-baby.”

  I extend my little finger.

  “I have a full hand of good,” I say. “And that is well and fine.”

  I hear my mother say it, too.

  I have a full hand of good. And that is well and fine.

  “And that is well and fine,” I echo.

  As if to reward my gratitude, the rain begins to ease off a touch. It is just heavy rain now and not an assault of water.

  Trees begin to appear at the roadside. Just a scattering to begin with but gathering over the next mile until there is forest on either side of me. The rain on the leaves is loud and heavy, bending the younger branches until it seems as if the woods are full of movement. Full of things.

  I draw my father’s sword.

  A few feet into the forest to my left, something snakes down the trunk of a fat, old tree. But it is just rainwater, trickling in thick glistening ropes. To my right, there is a clatter, and I see a huge nedercrow disappear up into the darkening canopy. Behind me, something splashes. I spin round so fast I almost lose the sword. But there is nothing there.

  I am jumping at nothings. Rainwater and crows and nothings.

  I should sheath the sword. A drawn sword with no enemy in view can summon trouble, it is said. I have had enough trouble for one day. More than enough.

  The moment the sword is housed in its scabbard, the air a few yards in front of me seems to ripple, as if a wind is blowing through the rain. But I feel no wind.

  And then the rain parts like a curtain.

  And the very air tears open, as when a long cut with a sharp knife opens a fish’s belly and the wound spreads to release the creature’s guts and makes you wonder how they all fit inside its body in the first place.

  But there are no fish guts pushing from this wound, this wound in the air. There is nothing. Just a darkness that seems to go on forever. It seems to have a weight and a texture, that darkness. It feels as if that darkness is not simply the lack of light, as when a candle is extinguished, but—and I not only feel this to be so, I know it to be so—the darkness is what becomes of light when it is bled-out and dead. The darkness, this very particular darkness that lies beyond the wound in in the air, is murdered light.

  And then something… something is striding toward me from out of that darkness, that carcass of light.

  It is just as my mother described it.

  Tall and thin and white, with too many joints in its limbs. Its head is long and fleshless, and where a mouth should be are tentacles as of the squid that can be netted at Brim.

  The tentacles begin to grow, stretching toward me, floating as hair floats on water.

  It is wrapped in strips of the darkness from which it came. It is bandaged in murdered light.

  Cwalee.

  Chapter 9

  The Man with Burning Hands

  I draw my sword, staggering back, away from the Cwalee’s questing tendrils. They are like bloodless worms, but thick and long. Getting longer. At the tapered end of each worm is something like a puckered mouth, opening and closing, ringed with tiny, black teeth.

  My foot sinks into a mud-filled hole. I try to pull it free while maintaining my retreat, and I fall backwards, splashing down into the rainwater. My ankle ignites with pain and my elbow strikes something hard. The sword is jolted from my hand. I quest for it, but I cannot take my eyes from the thing that is now striding toward me, the Cwalee, and my fingers find only water and mud and stones.

  It looms over me now, its tentacles dangling.

  Its long skull is not fleshless; rather, its flesh is as thin as that of a single onion layer and as transparent. There are inscriptions, either on the flesh or the bone beneath, in a pale blue ink. They are like no script I have ever been shown by Mrs Blathnyd. It turns its head a little to the side, inspecting me with one eye. It is the yellow of an untreated wound, that eye, and the pupil is not round like ours. It is a red triangle. It is the eye from the Jarl’s bowl of grefa stones.

  The tentacles descend toward me.

  My hand finds the sword. I grip it and swing. The Cwalee leaps back.

  “What the gedding hell do you think you’re doing, idiot child?” it snaps.

  It has the voice of a woman. A very irate woman.

  It shakes its head, tentacles swinging in time.

  “You’ve been at the gesithberries, haven’t you? Idiot. I thought your father would have taught you better than that.”

  I swing the sword again.

  “Put that thing down. You’ll more likely injure yourself than me.”

  And, suddenly, there is no Cwalee, and no wound filled with murdered light hanging in the air. There is a woman—a very irate woman—standing in the road with her arms folded. She has the look of my father. Something in the eyes and the set of the mouth.

  “Aunty Elsam?”

  I drop the sword.

  “Yes, Alys. What the ged are you doing out here? And eating gesithberries like a simpleton.”

  Now that the sword is down, she walks toward me, kneels at my side.

  “You’ve got your foot stuck in a hole, child,” she says. “How d’you manage that? Honestly, I’ve met brighter scabwolves.”

  She eases the foot out of the hole in the road. My ankle shrieks with pain and I cry out.

  “Oh, stop it,” says Aunty Elsam. “It’s just a bit of pain, little fussbaby. If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have put your foot in a hole in the first place. You should watch what you’re doing and where you’re going, that’s what you
should do. And eating gesithberries? And—”

  She reaches across me and picks up the sword. She balances it in her hand. There is an ease with which she does this that tells me she is more than capable of putting it to good use.

  “Why do you have Aryc’s sword?” she says. “Is your father… has he passed?”

  “No,” I say, then look away. “But Mammy has.”

  “Oh,” she says, and her voice is soft. “I liked her. I liked her a lot. Too good for that idiot little brother of mine.” She slides a hand round my waist and lifts me. “Let’s get you inside and warm and dry.”

  Her roundhouse is as my father had said it would be: set back from the road, in a carved-out clearing in the woods, concealed by a thick growth of thornbushes at the roadside. It is a house that does not wish to be found, and I suspect I would have walked right past it.

  It is neat and simple inside. The circular hearthstone in the middle of the house has a strong fire going, and there is a pot suspended over it in which something delicious-smelling simmers. There is a chair next to the hearth and, off to one side, a bed covered in heavy furs and woollen blankets. On the opposite side to the bed is a collection of earthenware pots and a small table with two chairs. Herbs and drying meats hang from the ceiling there. On the far side from where we entered the roundhouse is what I can only describe as an armoury. Swords, shields, bows, arrows, helmets and mismatched pieces of armour are arranged in an ordered fashion against the wall.

  “Sit,” says Aunty Elsam, pointing to the chair.

  She goes to a wicker hamper at the foot of her bed and pulls out a tunic, trousers, a cloak, all in the darkest green.

  “Here,” she says, handing them to me. “Get out of those wet things and into these. The stew is almost done.”

  While I change, she attends to the pot. By the time I am dressed, she has two bowls of stew ready and hands me one, then a wooden spoon.

  She sits on the edge of the hearth.