“Be dark soon,” Stevens said. He also cast a furtive backward glance. Long shadows spread over the rushes and the open ground before them. The bloody sun hung a finger’s breadth above the peaks and the sky was turning to rust. “These folks may be dangerous. Keep your guns ready.”
Horn snatched at Bane’s sleeve. “What’d y’all see back there?”
“Shut it, boy. Ain’t gonna leave this valley goin’ that direction. Nothin’ more to tell.”
“Yeah, shut it,” Ruark said and gave the kid a shove to get him moving.
∇
The company forded the river where it rushed shin deep, and moved to the village and passed through the open gate of the palisade after Stevens hailed the occupants. A dozen women of various ages paused in their chores and silently regarded the visitors. The women wore long, simple dresses of a distinctly Quaker style and dour bonnets and kerchiefs. They appeared well-fed and clean. Their teeth were white. Several of them immediately repaired to the central structure, a kind of longhouse. Most of the others went into the smaller houses. One of the younger girls smiled furtively at Miller. Obviously she was simple. Her dress was cut low and revealed her buxom curves, her belly swollen with child and Miller blushed and turned his head away. Chickens pecked in the weeds. A couple of goats wandered around, and a small pack of mutts approached, yipping and snaffling at the men’s legs.
A brawny matron with gray hair stepped forward to greet the company, and she too offered a friendly smile. “Hello, strangers. Welcome.” Her accent and mannerisms seemed off-kilter, indefinably foreign.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Ma’am.” Stevens doffed his hat, clutched it nervously. “Our apologies to intrude and all, but we’re on the trail of a couple old boys who belong to our group. We’re hopin’ you might’ve seen ’em.” His voice shook and he and Bane continued to cast worried glances over their shoulders. For his part, Miller had spent the past few minutes convincing himself he’d seen a coon or porcupine in the dead tree. Maybe a drowsing black bear.
To further distract and calm his galloping imagination, he studied the lay of the land. The houses were made of smoothed rocks and mortared stone and the windows were tiny and mostly without glass, protected from the elements by means of thick drapes and shutters. The dirt paths were grooved and hardened to iron with age. The hillside climbed steeply through trees and undergrowth, although its face was mostly rock. A cave mouth opened beneath an overhang. He’d thought perhaps some eccentric industrialist had possibly created a replica of a medieval town and transplanted its citizens, but the closer he inspected it, the more its atmosphere seeped into him, and he understood this was something far stranger.
The matron apparently observed the tension among the loggers. She said, “Dear gentlemen, ye have nothing to fear. Be at peace.”
“We’re not afraid, Missus,” Miller said. He used a gruff tone because the woman unnerved and unsettled him with her odd accent, her antiquated primness, the manner in which she cocked her head like a living doll. How the whites of her eyes were overcome by black. “But we are in a powerful hurry.”
“The men will soon return from the gathering and ye shall treat with them. Until then, please rest.” The matron waved them toward some benches near the statue of a figure in robes, two children of equally indeterminate sex crouched at its feet. The statue was defaced by weather and green mold. One grotesquely elongated hand stretched forth as if to part a curtain to reveal some dark mystery. The children’s necks were cruelly bent, tongues distended, spines humped and exposed as if flayed by a butcher’s knife. The larger figure’s dangling hand caressed their bowed heads. “Girls, see to fetching our guests pie and lemonade.” The two younger women disappeared into the longhouse, as did the one who’d smiled at Miller. They moved with the ponderous grace of soon-to-be mothers.
Miller wondered if all of the girls were with child and wished he’d paid more attention. It seemed important. He said to the matron, “How did you come to build this village? It’s not on any maps.”
“Isn’t it?” the woman said and for an instant her smile became sly as a predator of the wood. “Our hamlet is very old and was carried across the sea by our founders when Sir Raleigh still served the Queen’s pleasure. This is a place of worship, of communion and far, far from wicked civilizations of men. The nights are long in this valley. The days are gloomy. It is perfect.”
Stevens wrung his hat and fidgeted. “If you don’t mind, Ma’am, we need to locate our friends and be on our way before the sun goes down. Could you kindly point the way? Tracks show they come through here.”
“You saw them, of course,” Miller said. He decided what it was about the woman’s speech that bothered him: Her voice was hoarse, the cadences unbalanced, her intonation stilted because she wasn’t accustomed to speaking and hadn’t been for a long time.
“Aye, she seen ’em alright,” Bane said, mouth set in a grim line. “Prolly one o’ you wenches that lured em’ here.”
The matron kept smiling. Her hands trembled. “Our husbands will be home anon. Mayhap they have seen your companions.” She turned and walked into the longhouse. The door closed and then came the unmistakable clunk of a bar dropping.
Bane shook his head and spat. He broke apart his Rigby and checked the load and clacked the breech into place again.
“Well, this ain’t good,” Stevens said.
Horn said, “What we aimin’ to do?” He moved to shuck his pack and Ruark frowned and told him to leave it be.
“Gonna find Cal and Ma. That’s what. And leave your goddamned pack on. We have to make tracks in a hurry you wanna be all the way up shit crick with no paddle?” Stevens clapped his hat on. “Stick our noses in every last house. Kick in the doors if we have to. Let’s make it quick. Daylight is burnin’.”
Miller and Bane teamed to search the cottages on the south side; Stevens, Horn, and Ruark took the north. It went fast. Miller took the lead, busting through the doors and making a brief sweep of the interiors. The women inside calmly waited, speaking not a word to the trespassers—and indeed, many were pregnant. Each house was small and dim, but there weren’t many places to hide. Most were neat and well-ordered, not untoward in any obvious way. Simple furnishings, albeit archaic. Oil lamps and candles, fireplaces that doubled as ovens. A paltry selection of books on rude shelves. This last detail struck him as truly odd.
He said to Bane, “Not one Bible. You ever see this many houses without a copy or two of the good book lying around?” Bane shrugged and allowed as he hadn’t witnessed that particular phenomenon either.
Both parties finished within a few minutes and regrouped in the square. Everyone was sweating from running up the hill to check the half dozen houses perched there. Miller mentioned the lack of holy literature. Stevens said, “Yeh, mighty peculiar. Where are the kids? You seen any?”
“Gudamn!” Horn said. “Brats should be crawlin’ underfoot, chasin’ the chickens, screamin’ bloody murder. Somethin’ shore as hell ain’t right.”
“Mebbe they inside the big house,” Ruark said. “Or that tower.”
“Well, we gotta check that house,” Miller said although the idea made him unhappy. The thought of searching the tower was even worse—it curved out of joint, angles distorted, and the sight made his head queer, his stomach ill. Not the tower if there were any other way.
Horn appeared stricken. “Hold on there, fellas. Them women ain’t gonna hold Cal or Ma. No sir. We barge in there an’ git shot, some might say we had it comin’.”
“Yeh, I reckon,” Stevens said. “You can stay out here and keep watch if you’re afraid of the ladies. Them husbands gonna be walkin’ in on us any minute. Who knows how many of them old boys’ll show.”
“Plenty, you kin wager,” Bane said.
Miller kicked the door. “Solid as a stump,” he said. Ruark spat and unlimbered his axe, as did Bane a moment later. The pair stood shoulder to shoulder chopping at the door and it crashed inward after a few blows. The
men piled into the house, blinking against the smoky dimness. The sole light came from what seeped through window notches and a guttering fire in the hearth. The murk made hazy blobs of the long table, the counter and barrels stacked in threes here and there. The peak roof vaulted to a height of fifteen or so feet, supported by a massive center beam and a series of angled joists that met the wall at about chin level. Meat hooks, pots and pans, coils of rope, cured ham, and strings of sausage swayed and rustled with each gentle exhalation from the hearth.
Of the women there was no sign, but Ma was present.
Miller almost cried out when he beheld what had been done to the Welshman, and Stevens hollered loud enough to bust an eardrum. Miller didn’t blame him. Ma sat Indian style, naked in the middle of the floor, blood thick as pudding around his legs, in his lap. His belly was sliced wide and a quivering rope of purple innards was strung several feet above him and looped through a large eyebolt suspended from a chain. The intestines traveled down again like a pulley cable and wrapped around a wooden turnstile. The turnstile had been cranked repeatedly and its gory yarn oozed and leaked. Most of the rest of Ma’s guts were slopped across his thighs, or floating in the grue. His slack jaw drooled. He gave his comrades a glassy eyed nod not much different than his usual.
“Oh, god, Ma!” Stevens said. “What’d they do to you, hoss?”
Horn stuck his head in to see what the commotion was all about and shrieked to beat the band, so Ruark swatted him with his hat and drove him outside. Right then the matron ghosted from the gloom in the corner and hacked Bane’s shoulder with a cleaver. He yelled and smacked her in the jaw with the butt of his Rigby and she sprawled.
Blood trickled from the matron’s lips. The injury did not diminish her, rather imbued her with an aura of savagery and mania that caused the men to flinch as one might from a wounded beast. Her eyes were so very large and dark and they gleamed with tears of rage and exultation. She whispered with the intimacy of a lover, “Did ye see what’s waiting for ye in the trees?”
“Where’s our other man?” Miller strode over to the matron and leveled his rifle at her. “I’ll blow a damned hole in your kneecap, Missus. See if I won’t.”
“No need for that. The handsome lad is in the tower. They gave us the fat one for sport. It amuses them to watch us practice cruelty.”
Miller walked around Ma and the coagulating lake of blood. He grasped the ring of a trapdoor and pulled. Several of the women were huddled like goats in a root cellar. They gasped and held each other.
“See him?” Stevens said.
Miller slammed the trapdoor and shook his head.
Bane cussed as Ruark pulled the cleaver free of his shoulder with a gristly crunch. Miller fashioned a tourniquet. The entire left side of Bane’s buckskin jacket was soaked through and dripping. Horn shouted. Everyone ran to the windows. Twilight lay upon the world and a disjointed chain of lamps bobbed in the purple dark, descending the switchback trail on the other side of the valley. Miller said, “Either we fort up, or we run for it.”
Stevens said, “Trapped like rats in here. Roof is made of wood. They could burn us alive.”
“Not with they women in here,” Bane said through gritted teeth.
“You want to spend the night in here with them?” Miller said.
“Yeh, never mind.”
“We could take this one as a hostage,” Stevens said halfheartedly.
“Piss on that,” Miller said. “Who knows what she’ll chop off next time.”
“Ye should flee into the hills,” the matron said. “The horrors ye will soon meet…flee, good hunters. Or make an end of each other with your guns and knives. T’will be a merciful death in comparison.”
“Shut up before I kill you,” Miller said. The matron stopped talking at once.
“What about Ma?” Stevens said.
“He’s gone,” Bane said. “Worst way a man kin go. Gutted like a pig.”
“We cain’t leave him.”
“Naw, we cain’t.” Ruark drew his flintlock pistol. He walked over and laid the barrel against the back of Ma’s head and squeezed the trigger. For Miller, in that moment the past five years of his life were erased and he side slipped through time and space into a muddy trench in France, shells and bodies exploding. He had never left, never escaped.
Stevens aimed his rifle at the matron. He lowered it. “Don’t have the sand to shoot no woman. Let’s git, boys.”
Ruark said, “Won’t make it far in these woods in the dark.”
Stevens said, “We head for the tower and fetch Cal. See what happens.”
The Matron said, “Yes! Yes! Go into the house of the Master! He’ll greet ye with a glad smile and open arms!”
“Quiet yerself, hag,” Stevens said, menacing her with his rifle butt. “C’mon, boys. Let’s find poor Cal before the villains make stew of him.” There was grudging acquiescence to this plan and the men withdrew from the longhouse and its horrors.
Miller went to the palisade gate and shouldered the Enfield, aimed at the string of lights and blasted several rounds in rapid succession. One of the approaching lamps burst, the rest were doused momentarily. A howl of pain rose from the field. Miller reloaded in a hurry. He ran for the tower where his companions were gathered near its double doors. Something fluttered to his left—a coat tail disappearing behind a pile of neatly stacked firewood. He knew they’d been had. While the villagers waving lanterns on the flats played decoy, others had crept along in a flanking action. He dropped to a knee and swung his rifle around.
“Ambush!” Bane hollered as a dozen or more men in coats and top hats sprang from behind sheds, cottages, hay bales, seemingly everywhere. Pitchforks, hatchets, and knives, edges gleaming and glinting; a couple carried blunderbusses, bulkier and older than even Ruark’s. Those guns cracked and spat fire. Puffs of sulfurous white smoke boiled and seethed.
Ten feet away Bane let loose both barrels of the Rigby with a clap of thunder that sounded as if Archangel Michael himself had descended from Heaven to smite the good Lord’s enemies. The muzzle flash lit up the tower courtyard like a rocket explosion. A villager was cut in half and a section of the cottage wall behind him caved in, stomped by an elephant. The other loggers loosed a fusillade in a murderous fireworks display.
Night vision spoiled by the alternating glare and shadow, Miller struggled to find targets. He didn’t have the opportunity to draw a bead, but simply emptied the Enfield as fast as he could work the bolt. Most of his bullets clattered off stone or ripped furrows into the earth. However, he shot one bearded brute between the eyes as the man charged with an upraised hatchet, and drilled another in the back as the fellow stood motionless as if uncertain how to join the fray.
The cottage that Bane had perforated with his gun caught fire. Flames leaped into the sky. Glass tinkled as it fractured. The fire spread to another house, then another, and in less than thirty seconds, the combatants were struggling by the red blaze of a circle in hell. Ruark swung his axe and lopped a villager’s head. The head floated past Miller and into the blaze. Bane screamed and laughed, his beard splattered with blood. He pressed a man’s face against a flaming timber and held it there until flesh popped and sizzled. Horn dropped his rifle and turned to run. An older gent in a stovepipe hat knocked him down and skewered him with a pitchfork. The pitchfork went in with a meaty thunk and a clink as the tines bit through into the dirt. Horn grabbed the handle and wrestled for dear life and the man grunted, planted his boot against Horn’s groin, and pried loose the pitchfork and raised it to stick him again. Then Ruark’s axe whapped the back of the villager’s skull and turned it to jelly and the man collapsed facedown, legs twitching. Stevens’ rifle boomed once, twice, and he cursed and drew a knife and sidled in tight with his companions. Miller was empty. He picked up a severed hand and forearm and threw it in a man’s face then shoulder-blocked him to the ground and methodically clubbed him to death with his rifle butt. Sweat and grease and flying drops of blood soaked him. Mi
ller’s arms were weak and he could scarcely raise them at the end. A blast of heat from the burning houses seared his cheeks and ignited the tips of his hair. The smell of roasting flesh was strong.
The remaining villagers routed, fleeing through the flames and the rolling black smoke. Bane, still braying mad laughter, chucked a tomahawk. It sank into a man’s backside. The man yelped and stumbled. Bane whooped and said, “Run, ya fuckin’ dogs!” And he barked.
“There’s reinforcements yonder!” Stevens and Ruark grasped Horn under the arms and dragged him to his feet. The lad gasped and fainted.
Rifles thundered near the front gate. A musket ball kicked dirt near Miller’s foot.“ “Follow me, boys!” He led the charge up the hill and into the cave along a twisting path illuminated by the hellish conflagration. Storming the tower was out of the question—he suspected it would burn to the ground soon enough. Regardless, anyone trapped inside would be smoked out or broiled alive.
The cave mouth opened into a low-ceilinged area with a sandy floor and natural outcroppings that served as adequate cover. The men quickly repurposed empty barrels and busted timbers to fashion a makeshift barricade at the entrance. After they’d finished effecting hasty fortifications, Stevens passed around the remnants of his bottle. He said, “We’re in it deep. Killed us a few, but I count twenty, maybe more. Prolly mad as hornets over what we done.”
“Learn us somethin’ we don’t know, boy,” Bane said. Between blood loss and one too many belts of rotgut to kill the pain, he slurred, listing precariously until Ruark helped him sit against the wall.
Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron Page 67