by David Wragg
‘Then you should probably take a break from it,’ Lemon said, then fell sideways in giggles.
Rennic spat on the earth and stood. ‘I’m going for a piss.’
Loveless was grinning, swaying in time to the tempo. ‘Now this is more like it! Whisp, old girl, take those drums off this young man so I can dance with him!’ She twirled her hands, beckoning to the two former musicians.
With a smile and a roll of her eyes, Whisper stood on lean legs and picked her way over to the drummer. He handed over the little drums without protest, anxious to join his fellow as he approached Loveless for the dance, and a moment later Whisper was seated beside the prince, slapping at the drums in supporting beat, enriching here and there with a flourish of fingers.
Loveless danced with her eyes closed. Chel watched, fascinated and ashamed, absorbed in the poise of her movements, even after three flagons of Nanaki god-piss. The two young Nanaki, lean and muscled and overpoweringly masculine, moved in close to her, attempting to match or mirror her movements. Their competition was obvious, and Chel hated them. Loveless, on the other hand, half opened her eyes, smiling at each in turn. She never once missed a step, even as Tarfel and Whisper upped the tempo.
Lemon poured more spirit into their cups, although Foss shook his head. Several brimming jugs remained. ‘Grandfather’s withered ball-sack, that girl would fuck a fencepost if you drew a cock on it.’
Chel’s voice was louder than he’d intended. ‘You think?’
Lemon paused, placing the jug back down on the table with the over-precision of the steaming drunk.
‘Am I right in thinking,’ she said, ‘that you’re after a tumble, wee bear?’
Chel said nothing. His mouth no longer worked. He could feel blood pounding against the new skin of his lip.
Lemon leaned forward, pushing her face close to his. ‘Weeell, I’m game if you are. Shall we go? Reckon most of the outer huts are empty, if a little chilly on the arse.’
He stared at her, sweat at his back, panic churning his innards. He stared at her square, freckled face, her squarish, upturned nose, her wide, round, blue-green eyes, her pursed, cheeky lips. He’d never really thought of her in terms of attraction, but when he took a moment to—
She burst out laughing. ‘Aye, right, thought not!’ She chuckled to herself, then her expression softened as she looked back to where Loveless danced, swarmed by the Nanaki men. ‘Don’t fret, wee bear, you’d not be the first to be drawn, like … like …’
‘Moths to flame,’ Foss said from across the table, his tone sombre.
‘Flies to shite, more like. Anyroad, you should count yourself lucky – you’re not really her cut of cloth.’
Chel bristled. ‘And what’s that?’
‘Aye, you know. Young, dumb, full of c—’
Foss cleared his throat.
‘Pretty,’ Lemon finished, eyes glassy. ‘Still, take heart. Two out of three ain’t bad.’
Chel frowned. ‘Are you saying I’m stupid? Or that I’m ugly?’
Lemon and Foss merely grinned at each other.
‘Sod off, the pair of you.’ He forced himself to his feet with his good hand. His legs had begun to ache more than ever in his brief rest. ‘I’m going for a piss, too.’
‘Don’t piss on the boss,’ Lemon said as he turned to stagger away.
‘Or crush any wolves,’ Foss said. Chel waved a hand at them in irritation.
‘Hey, bear, seriously,’ Lemon said, the mockery dropped from her tone, and he turned back toward them, feeling every thump of his pulse around his battered body.
‘What?’
‘She’d break you in half.’
‘Oh, shut up, Lemon.’
‘No!’
He limped away, feeling a strange mixture of embarrassment and pride. For the first time in months, maybe longer, he felt like he had friends.
***
As Chel hobbled around the dance floor’s edge, Tarfel finished the piece with a flourish, then looked up from his cowl with a breathless grin. Beside him, Whisper gave the prince’s playing an approving nod. Chel diverted, limping over to them.
‘You know, Chel,’ the prince said, wiping the sweat that beaded on his bloodied brow with the back of one hand, ‘it’s really quite a sophisticated instrument, all things considered. You know, for savages.’
His forehead was streaked copper in the firelight, his pale skin showing through muddy. With an apologetic grimace, Chel reached out and tweaked the prince’s cowl forward. ‘Best be careful, highness. Vendettas and all that.’
Tarfel blinked, then nodded. He’d evidently enjoyed some of the Nanaki spirit too. ‘Right you are, Chel, right you are.’
‘You play very well, highness.’
Tarfel bit at his lip. ‘It was one of my mother’s great passions. She used to play all the time in her tower, or so I’m told. She died birthing me – did you know that, Chel? I suppose most people do. Not many musicians in the family though, on Father’s side at least. Mendel played a bit here and there, but since Corvel … Well, I’ve not seen him pick up an instrument. We used to be so close, you know, the two of us, Mendel and me. Corvel was always off learning, training in matters of state. No time to play with little brothers, quite understandable of course. But Mendel, he had time, we did everything together …’
Tarfel tailed off, his eyes suddenly tearful. Chel stood awkwardly before him, his need to urinate increasingly urgent, unable to interrupt the emotional prince, watching with a mixture of genuine sympathy and extreme discomfort. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we, Chel? You’re my sworn man, I shouldn’t be addressing you by your family name all the time. You may not have a title, but you need a better address.’
‘Er, Vedren, highness?’
‘Vedren? Vedren … Vedren it is. Thank you, Vedren.’
‘Thank you, highness.’
A hand on Chel’s good shoulder shoved him sideways, and Loveless’s face jutted past him. ‘Hoy, golden boy! Less yap, more slap, yes?’ She was sheened in sweat, the blue crest of hair plastered to one side of her head, and her eyes had the faraway look of a poppy-fiend. Chel shivered at her proximity.
Alarmed, Tarfel nodded, then set his hands back on the gut strings and began to play. ‘Faster!’ Loveless cried, and as Whisper joined his accelerating melody with a syncopated beat, Loveless gave a roar of approval and slapped Chel across the buttocks, then slid back to her waiting dance partners, eager to resume their barely disguised mating ritual.
Dazed, Chel watched her go. His eye caught Foss and Lemon sitting at their table beyond the improvised dance floor, grins wider than ever. Foss raised his cup and winked.
***
Chel was reaching for the hide when it swung aside and Rennic ducked back into the hall. He noticed Chel and his outstretched hand and grunted, letting the hide fall closed behind him. Chel stood, uncertain, throat dry and conscious of his overfull bladder.
‘Lemon,’ Rennic said, then paused. His voice was rough as shale. ‘Lemon says you kept them alive out there.’
Chel said nothing.
Rennic sniffed. ‘Keep it up. Better you don’t make a fool of me.’ He moved to push past.
‘Wait,’ Chel said, almost putting his hand on the bigger man before reconsidering. Rennic’s stare was colder than the lake ice. ‘Why did you bring me, when you took the prince? Why am I here?’
Rennic was silent for a moment, rocking on his heels. It occurred to Chel that there was a good chance he was utterly drunk. At length he put his hand on Chel’s good shoulder and leaned in. He smelled of sweat, leather and raw booze.
‘What you’re looking for,’ he rasped, ‘is out there.’ He pointed through the hide. Chel followed his gesture, frowning with concentration. ‘Follow the tracks to the line of trees, you’ll know it by the smell.’ He barked a laugh and clapped Chel on the wrong shoulder. ‘Go write your name in the snow, boy.’
Then he was past, thumping across the earthen floor toward the others. Chel win
ced and rubbed his throbbing shoulder, then shoved his way through the hide.
The darkness beyond was familiar if momentarily drowning. Chel stood, breathing hard in the sudden cold, waiting to see the vapour form before his eyes. One hand on the coarse timber wall, he made his unsteady way toward the glimmering patch of moonlight at the end of the passage. As he neared it, voices reached him, so close he nearly gasped.
It took him a moment to parse what he heard, unsure of the language or speakers. A man’s voice, low, indistinct, its tone merry if insistent. A woman’s tinkling laugh, then a word spoken slowly, its enunciation heavy, unfamiliar, foreign.
‘Smoi-daa?’
The man’s voice again, the word repeated in low tones.
‘Spoi-daa?’
Spider. Chel gritted his teeth. ‘Shit.’ He began to back away, back down the passageway. There was another door on the other side. The voices followed him as he went, each of his halting steps as delicate and muffled as he could make it.
‘Fur-loi? Somo Fur-loi?’
Chel heard it then, Spider’s throaty chuckle, his voice clear in the bitter night. ‘Yes, darlin’. You can be my Fly.’
Chel limped faster.
FIFTEEN
The cold slapped and stung his skin, despite his cloak of Nanaki spirit. The night was overcast, the moon a pale, watery smear lost behind billows of fat silver cloud, but the ubiquitous snow reflected enough meagre light for Chel to stagger to the trees and relieve himself. Lazy flakes drifted around him as he considered trying to write his name, then thought better of it.
Refreshed but shivering, he turned back toward the huts, making for the outer door. As he approached the wafting hide, he heard their voices within: Spider’s flint-edged rumble, the Nanaki girl’s thick laughter. They were in the outer chamber, blocking his way back inside. He hovered a moment, teeth on the edge of chattering as the warmth flooded from his body into the bitter night air, then scowled. Sod it, there were other entrances.
He trudged around the outer hut ring, hands shoved beneath his arms, the snow crust crunching beneath his feet as the lead-coloured lake filled his view. It seemed utterly flat in the feeble moonlight, immobile, lifeless, thick growths of ice encroaching from the shoreline like grasping fingers. Drifts of blown snow had dusted the ice like dandruff.
A figure strode into view in a sudden blaze of mellow light from the interior, darkened as soon as the hide flapped shut behind it. Blinking in the returned gloom, Chel watched the figure march from the hut down to a creaking jetty, travelling a well-worn path in the snow. The figure wore thick furs and moved easily over the slippery boards: one of their hosts.
Something made Chel pause. He couldn’t explain why – he had every reason to be where he was, after all – but he felt the urge to hide, to stay unseen. The Nanaki paced to the end of the jetty, knelt, and began pulling up a rope that dangled down into the frigid water below. A moment’s inspection of whatever was at its end, then it fell back with a splash, and the Nanaki pulled up another. Chel pressed himself gingerly against the outer wall, keeping to the moon-shadow. Fishing lines? Traps of some sort?
The figure pulled up several more ropes, letting a few drop back into the water, keeping the rest and untying whatever lay at their ends. Then the figure was up, the items bundled in its arms, making confident progress back down the jetty toward the waiting huts. Chel ducked back around the wall, breathing into his hand to try to mask the vapour. Another flash of mellow brilliance, and he was alone in the moonlight.
He was shivering, his teeth rattling in his jaw, fingers numb, and he knew it wasn’t all from cold. Lemon’s words echoed around his head, and he couldn’t fight the curiosity, the need to know. His steps on the slick and groaning jetty were slow, cautious, his eyes on the knotted ropes at its end, body tensed against another sudden wash of light from behind. His breath felt raw in his throat.
The ropes were dark, soaked and half-frozen, stiff and sharp against his palms. The first he tried didn’t move, its end locked into the ice chunks lurking below the jetty. Heavy pulls on the next revealed a dark lump of ice, heaved into the moonlight, a solid frozen block. He let it slide back into the water.
The third rope came more easily, less wet-frozen than the others. He pulled a knotted bundle out from the frigid depths, heavier still as it left the icy water, his shoulder screaming from the effort. With gasps of exertion and pain, he hauled the bundle up onto the jetty, levering it onto the wooden boards as he flopped down beside. He felt completely numb.
He picked at the knotted rope with his good hand, teasing at the contents beneath. Something hide-wrapped lay beneath the rope, tightly parcelled. He tweaked back the hide to reveal pale stacks, half-pickled by the ice-water, dark blotches like cut ends. He worked at the sodden rope, wishing he had a knife or lever. A length slipped at last and the hide fell away, and he saw the jagged edges, the protruding bone. It was meat. Preserving meat.
Chel paused, breathing hoarse, willing his failing fingers back to life. He could kick the bundle off the jetty and be back by the fire in the space of another twenty breaths. All he had to do was stand. He could feel the cold oozing into him from the jetty floor, creeping up through his legs, gnawing at him. All he had to do was stand.
He yanked at the rope again, and the loop came free. He stared at what lay beneath, throat closed, breath frozen, then rolled onto his hands and knees and began to vomit into the black water below.
Beside him on the jetty, pale and shrivelled in the wavering moonlight, stretched the clawing fingers of a human hand.
***
Whisper drew back the hide curtain as he was reaching for it, his good hand trembling, skin pale from more than just cold. She gave him a genial nod, then her eyes narrowed as she took in his wild expression, brow sweat and caked trickles of vomit at his chin.
Her hand moved fast in the gloom, but her expression was easy to read. What’s wrong? She mimed drinking, then heaving, and raised an eyebrow. Over her shoulder, Tarfel was winding down his latest rendition, unaccompanied, while Loveless swung arms with one of the Nanaki bulls.
Chel shook his head. His voice was cracked, his throat still dry and resentful from retching. ‘Bodies,’ he managed.
Whisper’s eyes narrowed further, one hand moving to the hilt of the long knife at her belt. Her bow and quiver lay by the table in the hall, along with most of their weaponry. She gestured with the other hand. Where?
‘In the lake.’ He swallowed hard, fighting down revulsion. ‘Cut as meat.’
Her expression didn’t change, but the knuckles on the knife hilt gleamed pale in the murk.
‘Have to warn the others.’ Already his mind was racing away, past the terror of eating their own and onto becoming prey himself. Was this why there were no children or old people among the Nanaki band? They’d all been slaughtered already? Is that why they’d taken them in?
Whisper nodded, casting a quick look over her shoulder. The Nanaki matriarch remained at the back of the hall, wavering in the haze of smoke and steam and sweat, the creases of her eyes impossible to read. Her bone spear remained in her hand.
Whisper motioned downward. Wait here. She turned back to the room as Tarfel struck up the first chords of his next number. The notes were immediately familiar to Chel.
‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered. His eyes flicked to Rennic, whose broad back obscured the rest of his view of the crew’s low table. ‘Not that song! Stop him!’
Whisper turned back in confusion, and Tarfel began to sing.
‘O they told of her beauty,
The maiden of stars,
But cometh the—’
A clay jug smashed against his head.
Yelping and reeling, the prince flailed at his head, showering the earthen floor with shards of pottery and splatters of fiery spirit. Rennic was on his feet, swaying slightly, one hand still extended and the slow-dawning realization of a mistake crossing his face. Tarfel rubbed at his eyes and face, wailing and flinching,
the cowl pulled from his head and the crust of old blood run from his face in slick rivulets. His milk-white skin shone in the firelight.
The Nanaki moved fastest. Before Lemon or Foss could rise from the table, the matriarch had barked a command and weapons of bone and steel were inches from their throats. The two men dancing with Loveless pulled their daggers without hesitation, one of them gripping her around the waist while the other danced around her kicks to press his knife to her cheek. Rennic was surrounded by three Nanaki, their spears extended, while two more registered Whisper’s presence by the doorway and hurtled toward her. Only Tarfel was left unattended, but he seemed more concerned with brushing clay from his hair and mewling. He looked on the verge of tears.
Rennic stared around the chamber. ‘Uh … black flag?’
Whisper fixed Chel with a stare and made a scuttling gesture with one hand against her body, before shoving him back into the darkness and turning to face her oncoming assailants. The hide curtain swung shut, muffling the shouting beyond.
Spider.
Find Spider.
His mouth still sour with bile, heart thumping against his ribs and glossy sweat cooling on his brow, Chel stood frozen in the darkness. Shouts carried through the curtain, the clatter of metal. At any moment, the hanging would be ripped aside, and a bone-tipped spear would drive into his torso. His meat. Ready to be bled, dressed and carved.
Find Spider.
Of course it had to be Spider. Bloody, bloody Spider.
He snorted, swallowed, then turned and bolted for the snow beyond.
***
The tracks to the hut were easy to follow.
‘Spider?’
The hanging moved aside. Spider filled the doorway, close and gnarled and suddenly much bigger than Chel remembered. He was stripped to the waist, the scattered moonlight gleaming from his shaven dome and knots of muscle. He said nothing, staring at Chel with cold, black eyes.
‘Listen, I know we’re not … that is, we’ve …’ Chel swallowed, tried again. ‘There’s trouble,’ he blurted, trying to keep his voice low, mindful of Spider’s likely company in the chilled, darkened hut. ‘They found out about the prince. They’ve pulled weapons, surrounded the others. Whisper sent me to get you – you’re the only one who can talk to them!’