by Travis Smith
At last he felt a blow from the butt of a heavy assault rifle at the base of his spine. He fell to his knees and allowed a thick arm to wrap around his neck. The man grabbed a fistful of Fallon’s hair and forced his head back until he found himself staring into the cold eyes of Antonio Staig.
2
The day, which began with a pleasantly cool breeze, had grown hot and sticky by midday in Krake. Fallon glanced up from his grueling task and pondered the towering castle on the outskirts of town. The city around the soaring towers now seemed bleak and dark, polluted by the smog of corruption, even on the brightest of days. He recalled working in his bakery and glancing around the streets at the busy and prosperous townsfolk shuffling by. The sounds of friendly greetings and determined conversations once permeated the land, from the seaside to the outlying forests. Now a heavy silence hung over the town. The once lively cobblestone streets were now desolate and soundless until a scowling guard came scuffling by wielding his strange new weapons. Even the shorebirds which used to caw down at passersby as they flew low overhead had shushed and begun maintaining great altitude when passing over Krake.
Fallon was nearly done removing the thin pelt from a scrawny deer that had been killed and dragged in from the fields earlier in the morning. The creature had likely been ill, for its skin kept tearing like wet tissue as Fallon struggled to cleanly remove it from the fascia beneath. A lifelong baker, the first time he was forced to slice into a dead animal and peel its skin from the underlying muscle, he’d made himself sick and was sorely punished for soiling the pelt. Even after all this time of skinning and tanning the hides at gunpoint, he still had not grown remarkably proficient in the art.
Once he finished removing as much of the skin as he could, he draped it over his large working stump and retrieved the sharp, flat flaying stone. With this, he set to work scraping the bits of fat and gore from the underside of the pelt to prepare it for tanning. With the early afternoon sun beaming down upon him, Fallon struggled to draw in full breaths between strokes along the pelt. He knew better than to stop working to seek water, for he would certainly be berated for wasting his overseer’s time and paga.
Fallon finished flaying the pelt and knelt beside the fallen beast with a small pile of trephining stones. Removing the brain to make a tanning paste for the pelt was his least favorite part of the whole unsavory task. He still gagged and retched throughout the process, much to the merriment of any sentries standing nearby watching him work. He’d collect the brain in a medium-sized jar and deliver the products to his overseer, who would later get them to another poor soul to begin the tanning process. The rest of the carcass would be given to yet another worker who would procure the meat from the bones to make jerky.
Fallon completed his day’s labor as the sun began setting over the western tree line. He stood on shaky, dehydrated legs and gathered his overseer’s utensils as well as the day’s shoddy product. His arms were still unaccustomed to such undertaking, and his muscles burned and ached.
“The fuck’s this?” Gremly growled when Fallon delivered the pelt to his quarters.
“My sincerest apologies, sire,” Fallon groveled. “The beast must have been ill, for this was the most I could make of the task.”
“Lot o’ good that does meh.” Gremly tossed the pelt over Fallon’s head and into the dusty street. “Couldn’t sell ’at to a blind vagrant.”
Fallon winced beneath the soaring pelt, expecting a blow. “I beg your graces, my sire,” he said, eyes downcast.
Gremly kicked the thin man in the shin with a heavy boot. “Get on then. Ye’ll do double tomorrow.”
Fallon yelped and drew his hurt leg away. “But please, sir, my daughter is ailing. I need my paga today,” he whimpered.
Gremly had nearly closed the door in the wretched man’s face. Now he yanked it back open and bowled the beggar over with his barreled chest. “Paga for a pelt I’ll never sell?” he bellowed. “Yer disease-ridden rat spawn can die o’ fever in the latrines fer all I care. Bring ’er t’ work with ye tomorrow ’n’ maybe get somethin’ out o’ ’er ’fore she croaks!”
With that, he slammed the door.
3
That evening Fallon hurried back to the secluded nook he’d secured behind the old butcher’s shop. When The Baron’s men had slinked forth from the shadows and hidden corridors of Krake, the men and women who stood behind the kingship had been forced from their homes, their jobs, and their ways of life. Those unwilling to adapt to The Baron’s rule were either killed, imprisoned, or tortured—oft times all three. They served as examples for the remaining citizens of Krake and Reprise—and, possibly, the rest of the world. Men like Fallon were driven from their homes and forced to work long days doing arduous labor for their designated overseers, who were encouraged to give their workers paga as they saw fit for compensation. This, The Baron affirmed, would decrease insurgencies and give everyone a sense of worth and drive. Thus, many of the shops that had once serviced the people of Krake had been abandoned and refashioned into dilapidated quarters for the newly homeless. Many of these overcrowded barracks were farms for disease and violence, so Fallon had taken his daughter Anda to create a more quiet nest behind the old butcher’s shop.
On his way back to the shop, he ran into his friend Corin. The man waved him over with a strong sense of hushed urgency.
“What is it?” he asked Corin, breaking his stride and stepping off of the main road into the shadows.
“Take these,” his friend whispered, handing Fallon two jars of preserved fruits.
“How did you—?” Fallon began.
“Quiet!” Corin interrupted. “They’re for young Anda. If anyone sees you with those, you will surely be executed in garish display.”
Fallon tucked the fruits into his smock and nodded in wordless thanks. The imports had grown more and more scarce since The Baron took over, and it had been quite some time since Fallon had access to any foods as fine as fruits. Those who had been put to work for The Baron’s henchmen were reduced to feeding themselves and their families nearly exclusively jerky. What few fruit and vegetable crops were still coming through the market were swiftly distributed among those individuals of higher social status in the new class system.
“I truly have no words to express my gratitude. Your risk is noted and weighs upon my mind,” he told his friend at last.
“My overseer allows me inside,” Corin said with a wink. “He is as inattentive as one would expect such brutes to be.”
Fallon fought against the tears welling in his eyes as he placed a hand on Corin’s shoulder.
“Enough!” Corin said. “Away now. Give your daughter a meal that may keep her alive.”
4
Fallon rushed the rest of the way to where Anda lay in wait for him to return from his day’s work. He found her just where he’d left her, tucked away under a heavy burlap blanket in the shadows behind the old butcher shop. Though the early evening air was mild, Anda was shivering visibly.
“My dear, I am back,” Fallon said softly.
When he got no response, he knelt beside his daughter and rolled her toward himself, pulling the blanket away from her head. The face beneath was ghastly. Her closed eyes were darkened and sunken into her skull, and the skin of her face had paled to the brink of translucency. She sported a fine sheen of sickly sweat. He shook her gently. “Anda? I’ve brought us some fruits.”
Now she offered but a soft, incoherent groan in response.
Fallon felt his stomach pitting into a knot of helpless desperation. To see his daughter in this state and to be able to offer her nothing but a jar of old fruit was maddening. Were she not semi-conscious, The Baron’s men would have her out in the fields doing hard labor with the rest of the kids, but, as the circumstance stood, the guards merely passed her by and regarded her a wretched case fit for neither labor nor confinement.
Fallon decided at last that he could remain in inaction no longer. He scooped the nigh weightless girl into h
is arms and hurried through the empty streets toward the healer’s cabin.
When he arrived at his once-friend’s abode, he rapped upon the door and called for him in a hushed whisper. “Luka!”
He could see a candle burning through a dim window and heard a soft rustling as the healer approached the cabin door.
“Luka, we need your help, I beg of you,” he pled when the door opened and the elder man peered out.
Luka glanced around the empty streets behind his new guest before settling his eyes on the man before him.
Fallon extended his arms to offer his weightless daughter to the healer, who made no motion to retrieve the girl. “It is Anda,” he whispered. “She has fallen very ill.”
“Were you followed?” Luka asked, appearing ambivalent.
“No!” Fallon said. “Please, allow us in before we’re seen.”
Luka swallowed hard and remained motionless, blocking his doorway.
“I would not have come if the circumstances weren’t dire,” Fallon reiterated.
“I will require fifty paga,” the healer said with no discernible tone. He didn’t sound to be accusing Fallon of being unable to pay, but he wouldn’t have been so hesitant if he thought his old friend had the coins.
Fallon heaved a crestfallen sigh. “Please,” he said. He could think of nothing else to add.
“If you cannot afford the services, I cannot see the two of you in,” Luka said, shaking his head with only a hint of somberness.
“She is dying,” Fallon told him, his voice cracking into a choked rasp as he fought against the tears that accompanied speaking the words aloud.
“I am sorry,” Luka said, stepping back from the door. “I cannot support my own family without coins anymore. It is the way of the world now.” He made to close the door in Fallon’s face.
“Please!” Fallon yelled, planting a foot in the doorway. “She’s dying!”
“Every moment you stand here in the open, you’re putting the both of you at greater risk,” Luka told him, pushing his old friend’s foot out of the way of the door. “Come back with the paga. Only then may I help her.”
5
That night was the longest and most despondent of Fallon’s life. Even more than after the night his wife had passed, he tossed and turned and wrung his hands with worry and helplessness. He watched over Anda’s uneasy rest until the sky began to lighten with the rising sun.
He peered around the corner of the shop and glanced up and down the quiet streets. Before long, the guards would begin making their morning rounds and striking stragglers with the butts of their rifles. Fallon weighed the pros and cons of simply taking Anda in his arms and fleeing into the surrounding woodlands. After only brief deliberation, he convinced himself that they’d be even worse off than they now were, so he leaned in and kissed his daughter’s head. He cringed at the heat emanating from her sick skin and fought against a desperate and unrealistic urge to stay with her for the day.
Fallon arrived at Gremly’s farmhouse long before the sun had climbed atop the distant trees. A pair of filthy young men was hauling in a fourth deer from the early morning’s hunt. A prosperous night for the hunters made for a miserable day’s work for Fallon. He lined up his tools and set to work at a blistering pace.
During the mid-morning an approaching voice broke him from his furious toil.
“Lo, now!” the voice exclaimed. “Winter ain’t comin’ tomorrow.”
Fallon was frantically grinding the flaying stone to and fro atop the hide he’d managed to remove. He stopped his work, beads of sweat streaming down his face and stinging his eyes, and turned to see one of the guards ambling over to heckle. His chest heaved, and he arched his achy back and savored the crackles that ran down his spine as he waited for the man to address him again.
“Ya clip yer tongue wiv ’at skinnin’ knife, slave?”
Fallon shook his head.
“Yer fit t’ die o’ heat stroke in this sun,” the man said, a malicious grin on his scabby, scraggly face. He drew a canteen on a strap from behind his back. “Fancy a swig?”
Fallon watched the guard’s eyes for signs of impending abuse. He could detect nothing aside from the man’s baseline maliciousness, and the thought of cool water at this moment was overwhelmingly tempting.
“Thank you, sire,” he croaked, extending a hand.
No sooner had Fallon stepped forward than the guard turned the canteen upside down and poured its contents into the dry dirt below. “Lap it up,” he said without tone.
Fallon swallowed hard and stepped back. He looked away from the guard and set himself back to flaying the gristle from the hide.
The guard’s heavy hand fell upon the back of Fallon’s neck. “I said lap it up!” the man growled into his ear, pushing him toward the ground.
“Sir, please,” Fallon managed. “You’re hurting me.”
“Good!” he cackled, kicking the back of Fallon’s leg and forcing him to his knees. “Mayhap I’ll learn ye some manners fer addressing yer chiefs!”
Fallon was flat on his stomach with his face in the mud before he could respond. The guard let go of his neck for a moment, and Fallon struggled to pull himself up to his hands and knees, but the man’s heavy boot fell upon his upper back and forced him back face down in the dirt.
“Lap it!” the guard screamed. Fallon also heard the metallic clicking of the man’s rifle being drawn.
He drew in a small mouthful of the slop and sputtered and choked before he swallowed any of it, much to the guard’s delight.
The guard finally withdrew his foot from Fallon’s back and walked away chuckling to himself. Fallon clambered back upright onto his knees and watched the man leave. In his mind, he envisioned himself rushing the lone guard from behind and snatching his weapon right out of his oafish, unwitting hands. He saw himself standing on the guard’s throat with the muzzle of the rifle in his mouth screaming, “Say you’re sorry!” over and over until spittle sprayed from his crazed lips.
But he merely sat until the guard was around a bend and out of sight, then he dusted himself off and got back to work. Where would Anda be if he allowed himself to do something so rash and foolish?
6
By the time the blanket of night had settled upon Reprise, Fallon had managed to skin one of the four deer as well as the majority of a second. He knew Gremly would accept a promise that the second pelt was nearly skinned about as readily as he would accept a hug from a leper, but the sun was wholly beyond the horizon, and Fallon could scarcely see his own hands before him.
He walked upon stiff, shaky legs toward Gremly’s cottage carrying the one un-tanned pelt, the jar of brains for tanning, and the trephining and skinning tools. The un-skinned deer were left behind at his workspace.
“Be I blind?” Gremly growled, glancing around sardonically. “Ye must be a warlock t’ bring three beasts back from dead ’n’ set ’em free.”
“My liege, I beg your graces. I drudged from dawn to dusk. The second pelt is nearly removed,” Fallon said.
“Yer own pelt’ll be nearly removed,” Gremly snarled, stepping forward and snatching the skin away from Fallon. “When I give ye work, ye don’t show up wiv half a handful o’ shoddy shit!”
Fallon flinched backward and dropped the jar with the deer’s brain onto the dry, packed dirt outside his overseer’s cottage. The glass shattered and spilled its sloppy contents into the earth, rendering them next to useless. Gremly stepped forward again and stamped his boot down on the pile of mush, finishing the job. He swung his meaty arm and landed an uncoordinated blow upon his thrall’s head, knocking Fallon to the ground. He blinked hard against a sea of stars suddenly exploding before his eyes and wiped away a tendril of blood that was streaming from his nostril.
“Don’ come to me in the morrow without all my product,” the overseer spat. He turned and made for his doorway.
“Please, sire,” Fallon begged, struggling to stand back upright and wavering on his legs. “My daugh
ter …”
“Piss on your daughter!” Gremly bellowed, turning back to face his bondsman.
“I need my paga,” Fallon continued. “The healer cannot see her without my paga.”
“I’ll see ’er myself if I don’t get my pelts, you useless prawn,” Gremly spat through gritted teeth. He wrapped his heavy hand around Fallon’s throat and lifted his feet off the ground. “Get out o’ my sight ’fore I kill ye both ’n’ spare ye the grief.” He tossed Fallon backwards like a doll.
“You are killing her,” Fallon sobbed. “I will get you your pelts, sire. Please, just give me my honest pay.”
“Finish the three pelts ye left today. Then we’ll be even. Then we c’n carry on yer pay.”
“That will take days!” Fallon shouted from his hands and knees at his overseers back.
Gremly stopped at the doorway and turned once more. “Then bring me ’er corpse! Ye’ll get yer pay when yer daughter’s in the ground.”
Perhaps it was surprise at an unexpected assault, or perhaps it was the surge of rabid adrenaline within the frail former baker—either way, Gremly was knocked flat onto his back by a man half his size. Fallon let forth a primitive bellow that crescendoed as he bolted to his feet and tackled his stout overseer.
His advantage did not last long, as Gremly swung a heavy arm and flung Fallon across the room. He bounced across the ground and rolled into the kitchen table. Blinded by his rage, he scrambled to his hands and knees and tried to crawl underneath the table as Gremly bumbled to his feet and approached. With an effortless sweep of his arms, Gremly flipped the heavy oak table onto its side. The edge of the table came down atop Fallon’s hand, and he felt several bones within snap and crunch. He uttered a yelp that turned into another shriek of rage as he snatched his hand from beneath the table and kicked out at Gremly’s feet. He managed to kick one of the large overseer’s feet out from underneath him, and he came toppling down on top of Fallon like a punisher beast tumbling from a mountain’s cliff. His weight snapped one of the legs off the table with a thunderous crack and crushed the air out of Fallon’s lungs.