Husk: A Maresman Tale

by Prior, D. P.

  The stygian turned, one hand still on the barn door, the other clutching the bloodied carcass of a turkey. It opened its mouth, unleashing a stream of garbled words that could only have been a spell, but Jeb was on it in an instant, aiming a wild swing at its neck. The stygian swayed aside at the last second, and the blade bit into its shoulder. Jeb followed up with a punch to its head that pitched it to the hard earth.

  He raised his saber for the kill, but the stygian put up a hand and cried in a guttural voice, “I find it! Husk you seek!”

  Jeb gritted his teeth, kept the saber poised to strike. A hundred thoughts vied for his attention at the same time: duty, the husk, Maisie, his mother, the cries from the house…

  Through the gap in the doors, he could see half a dozen guards pounding toward him. He grabbed the stygian by the strands of oily hair tufting from its scalp and dragged it away from the doors. It groaned, and he kicked it in the jaw for good measure. Then, he hurried back to the doors and pulled them closed, cursing at the one hanging from only its top hinge.

  He cast about for something to slow the guards down. The place was rank, with hundreds of picked-clean bones littering the floor, and a pile of soiled hay the stygian must’ve slept on. There was a cart with a broken axle it would’ve taken two men at least to shift, but there was a wall of crates stacked four high just inside the entrance. Jeb got in behind it and shoved, and the top crates came crashing down in front of the doors, spilling their contents of dried leaves and powder across the ground. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough of an obstacle while he escaped through the hole in the back wall.

  “Talk!” he said, striding to the stygian and kicking it again. “Thirty seconds, and then I don’t care what you’ve got to say.”

  “Yes,” the stygian said, propping itself up on one elbow and sniffing at Jeb. “Yes, thought this, I did, other night. Half husk, like all Maresmen, but more than that. Hah! She your kin, this one you seek. Your… mother.”

  Jeb punched it in the head and got astride it, touching his saber blade to its throat.

  “How do I find it? Quickly!”

  The guards were almost at the barn. Their footfalls were like an avalanche, and he could hear their panting.

  The stygian smirked and held up its amulet. “This. Your mother has same wards inside her.” He thumped his chest.

  “What?” Jeb said. “Wards? You mean an amulet that deadens the blood trail?”

  “No. Not amulet. No body, remember. Just smoke, like clouds.”

  Jeb snatched the amulet and yanked its chain free. “How, then? How’s she do it?”

  The stygian’s eyes widened, and it looked over Jeb’s shoulder. Jeb followed its gaze, saw someone dart back from the gap in the doors. Whispered voices sounded from outside, then more footfalls, stealthier this time.

  “Shog,” Jeb cursed under his breath. They were coming round the back, cutting off his escape. How did they know?

  The stygian grinned, exposing its blood-stained teeth. “Not just tentacles, hah! Triggered sorcerer’s eye, you did, and humans see what set off my wards. Yes, Boss be pleased very much, I say.”

  Jeb pressed the blade harder against the stygian’s flesh and drew a drop of black blood.

  “You killed my horse, shogger. One more wrong word—”

  “Came to me, she did, your mother. In Qlippoth. Made me do it; made me give her power.”

  “To block the blood trail?” Jeb asked.

  The stygian nodded.

  “So she could go after the Maresmen?”

  “Hates them, she does,” the stygian said. “But more than block. Leave false trail, she can. Lure them, like turkeys.”

  “And this helps how?” Jeb said, shaking the amulet.

  “Brightens when she near. Same magic, it is, one in the amulet, other melded. She has no body, I say, so I weave great magic in her… spirit. She pleased, yes. Very pleased, but did not know.”

  “Know what?” Jeb asked. He glanced over his shoulder at the hole in the wall. There was movement from outside.

  “She gain power over blood trail but lose something in return. It law of sorcery.”

  “What?” Jeb said, shaking him. “What did she lose?”

  “Oi!” someone cried.

  Jeb threw another look at the hole in the wall. A guard stepped through, spear leveled. There were others behind him, and at the same time, someone pulled open the broken barn door.

  Jeb’s eyes flitted both ways. In the distance, more figures streamed from the house, and at their rear, snug in a fluffy white gown, came Boss himself, puffing on a weedstick.

  Jeb was torn between charging the guards and finishing what he’d come to do, and he didn’t have the luxury of delay.

  Three men came through the doors, another three from the back.

  “Drop the blade!” one yelled.

  “Back away,” said another, clambering over the wreckage of a crate and kicking stray bits of wood aside.

  The stygian tilted its head and sniggered, and that did it for Jeb.

  In one fluid motion, he stood and swung down with the saber. The smirk froze on the stygian’s face, and then its head rolled across the floor. Jeb stopped it with a foot, then reached down to snag it by the hair.

  “Job done,” he said, brandishing the severed head like a badge of authority. “No need for anyone else to get hurt.”

  The guards looked dumbly at each other, spear tips wavering. Jeb turned to the barn doors and threw down the stygian’s head. The three men there gawped at it, and one of them retched.

  The other door swung open, and Clovis stood there, drinking in the scene with glazed eyes. A vein stood out on his neck, and one of his cheeks twitched rhythmically.

  Bones slipped in beside him, a naked blade in his hand. Looked like a scalpel to Jeb. A huddle of hard-faced men pressed in behind them, kicking a path through the debris left by the crates. Most looked like they’d have fit in with the rabble at the Sea Bed, though what they were doing over at Boss’s place this early in the morning was anybody’s guess.

  There was a flash of white, and they parted to let Boss through. He eyed the stygian’s head almost sadly, staring at the river of black blood it was spilling. Then he took in its crumpled body and the black-smeared saber in Jeb’s hand.

  “Persistent little shogger, aren’t you?” Boss said, flicking his weedstick to the ground and treading it underfoot. “I might’ve let the other night go, but this…” He indicated the splintered planks of the back wall, swept his arm down to encompass the dark puddle spreading beneath the stygian’s corpse. “This ain’t what I’d rightly call neighborly.”

  Jeb took a step toward him, but the three spearmen advanced.

  “I’d give it up, if I were you, Maresman,” Boss said. “Help’s on the way, whether we need it or not.” He made a show of wiping an invisible tear from his eye. “Our friend’s spell has quite the reach. The minute horse-flesh started cooking—something I enjoyed immensely, thanks to this—” Boss held up a rose-tinted crystal. “—Sheriff Tanner would’ve gotten one heck of a wake-up call, and I don’t mind telling you, he’s gonna be mightily pissed off.”

  Bones was crouching over the corpse, fingering the damage to its neck. Clovis crossed to him, holding the stygian’s head. Bones looked up, took it, then had a go at fitting it back on the body.

  “Waste not, want not,” Boss said, “but all the same, you killing my supplier is going to put a hole in my purse I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive.”

  The guards and the clutch of rough-looking men were growing restless. Someone uttered something about less talk and more action, and there was a chorus of agreement.

  Boss smiled, beady eyes never straying from Jeb. “Oh, there’ll be action right enough, gentlemen, but it’ll be the kind that keeps folk sleeping safe in their beds; the kind of action the law metes out.”

  “You might want to reconsider,” Jeb said, eyeing each man individually, letting them see he meant busines
s. “Obstructing a Maresman’s work never ends well.”

  “Ah, shut the shog up.” A short man with a ruddy complexion stepped up to him, sticking out his pigeon chest. The sleeves of his shirt had been roughly cut away to reveal ropey arms, thick with sinewy muscle. He brought a hatchet out from behind his back. “What do you think we are, shogging fishwives scared of our own shadows?” He drew back the axe and gripped it so hard his arm shook.

  Jeb slashed with his saber, and the man’s eyes bulged like they were about to burst. He shook a whole lot more, and blood bubbled from his lips. The axe hit the ground with a dull thud, and then he collapsed on top of it, a leering gash across his throat.

  A wave of shocked awe rolled through the spearmen, and they started to back away. The others, though, were made of sterner stuff. Angry growls and spat curses hit Jeb like hail as the thugs that had come down from the house with Boss fanned out in front of him. There were six still standing, all of them fingering weapons they’d drawn in the blink of an eye.

  Jeb took a step back so he could glance over his shoulder. The spearmen behind were closing the gap, but they hesitated when they saw him looking.

  A blur of movement from out of the corner of his eye had Jeb throwing out a block with his saber. Steel rang, and he came face to face with a snarling face. The man was bald as an egg, and scarred from brow to chin. Rusted rings pierced his nose and ears, and both eyes were bloodshot, like they reflected his intent. He snatched back his shortsword and stabbed, but Jeb saw it as if the man were moving through honey. With a deft twist of his wrist, he turned the blade and flicked his own up. The man stiffened, eyes riveted to the saber lodged in his throat. Jeb yanked it free in a torrent of crimson, and the thug fell to his knees trying to stem the flow with his hands.

  A dagger flashed to his right. He caught the wrist wielding it even as air rushed in from the left. He swayed aside as a heavy axe arced past his head. The man swinging it was off balance, and Jeb threw out a kick that snapped his knee back. As he pulled out of the kick, he crashed his elbow into the dagger-man’s nose then cleaved through his shoulder with the saber.

  The axe-man had to prop himself up with his weapon as he tried to hop from the fray, but Jeb was on him so quick, he never saw it coming. The saber took him through the belly, and the man slid off the blade as he sagged to the floor.

  The others grew hesitant, as people always did when they saw how fast Jeb was. Sweet would’ve seen it, too, that first time, if he hadn’t held the advantage of surprise. Saw it the second time, though. Jeb could console himself with that.

  Easing into the fight now, he felt he was gliding on the balls of his feet; felt he might even leave the ground, he was so light, so fluid.

  The three standing thugs formed a ragged line with the three spearmen, all of whom were licking their lips and eyeing each other for what to do next. A quick glance behind told Jeb the other three spearmen had decided to wait, covering his retreat.

  “Stand your ground,” he heard Boss saying, and turned back to see him gesticulating from just inside the barn doors. “Just keep him here till the sheriff arrives.”

  Boss’s eyes widened, and a foot scuffed behind Jeb. He spun and blocked Clovis’s punch with his forearm. In the same motion, he swung with the saber, but missed when something dark cannoned into his face and thudded to the ground. It was the stygian’s head, and recovering from his throw was Bones, gleaming scalpel in his free hand.

  Clovis lurched toward Jeb, like he didn’t have a thing to fear from cold steel. Bones circled away to the right, his movements flowing like lengthening shadows. A cold grip took hold of Jeb’s innards, seeped its way into his limbs. These two were different somehow. Magical maybe, but at the very least seasoned killers who weren’t fazed by what they’d seen him do.

  Someone rushed in from behind, but Jeb swirled around a clumsy sword thrust and buried his saber in a man’s chest.

  “Told you to wait!” Boss said, and the others pulled back.

  Bones gave Jeb a thin-lipped smile and held up his scalpel before his eyes. Clovis cracked his knuckles and started forward, but Boss’s cry stopped him in his tracks.

  “That goes for you, too, you big lummox.”

  Jeb spun a quick circle, then sprinted for the back of the barn. The three spearmen didn’t waver, like he’d expected. One jabbed at him, but he swayed around the tip and lashed out with his saber. The man jerked his head out of the way, but Jeb was through the gap. He batted aside another’s tentative thrust, but the third man nicked his thigh. Jeb cursed but powered on through. If he could just reach the hole he’d made coming in…

  A crossbow swung through the opening, and Jeb skidded to a halt.

  “Reckon that’s about far enough, Maresman, don’t you think?” Sheriff Tanner said round the stub of a weedstick.

  At this range, there was no way he could miss. Jeb lowered his saber, and when the sheriff wagged the crossbow at him, dropped it on the ground.

  The sheriff’s eyes took in the carnage in the barn, dwelling an instant on each of the bodies, but longest of all on the stygian’s headless one.

  “I was under the impression it was a simple case of trespassing, what I saw on this little beauty.” He held up a crystal like the one Boss had. “But I guess we’re going to have to add felony murder to the charge.”

  Jeb frowned his incomprehension.

  “Oh, you don’t have that where you come from?” the sheriff asked. “Well, Maresman, it’ll be my pleasure to introduce you to a whole new world of law.”

  Boss chuckled and bumbled through the broken crates as he cut a path to the sheriff’s side. “Glad to see them settler’s law books I picked up in New Jerusalem are working out for you, Roskin. You just let me know when you need some more.”

  “Obliged to you, Boss. See, Maresman, things was done different in the time of the first settlers. Reckon they brought their customs with them from Earth. Hundreds of years of them. Now, I’m a simple man, unlettered, you could say, but I’m the kind of a man who’s the kind of a dog that likes to learn new tricks. Ain’t that right, Boss.”

  “Oh, yes,” Boss said, and puffed on his weedstick.

  “It was a husk,” Jeb said, nodding at the stygian’s decapitated body. “That’s what I came for.”

  “So, let me just add this up for you,” the sheriff said, completely ignoring him. “That affray with Sweet…”

  “Uh huh,” Boss said with a curt nod.

  “Trespassing on Boss’s land…”

  Another nod, and Boss said, “Don’t forget the other night now, Roskin, you hear me?”

  “Two accounts of trespassing, then,” the sheriff said. “And let me see…” He pointed the crossbow at each of the bodies in turn. “One, two, three—”

  “No,” someone said. “He ain’t dead, sheriff. Just wounded.”

  The sheriff rolled his eyes and pointed at another one. “Three, four… Is that man breathing?”

  A guard went to investigate, and the sheriff gave up counting.

  “Oh, and don’t think I didn’t find poor old Tharn’s body down by Carey’s Hostelry, either. You Maresmen might be a law unto yourselves elsewhere, but in Portis, I am the law. Ain’t that right, Boss.”

  Boss looked rankled for a second, but then said, “You’re the law, all right, Roskin.”

  “Way I see it,” the sheriff said, “you gone and gotten yourself into a whole heap of mischief, Maresman. Whole heap of it. You agree with me, Boss?”

  “Oh, yes, Sheriff Tanner,” Boss said. “A whole stinking heap.”

  21

  THE SHERIFF’S JAIL wasn’t the crowded affair Jeb expected. Fact was, it was empty, like it’d been cleaned out and made up for a very special guest. It was cut off from the office by a solid stone wall. The only way in or out was through an iron door with a face-high viewing grate. Light came in spears through the barred window set into the rear wall, and for a time, Jeb sat on the floor watching the dust motes playing in it. Save
for a bed of straw and a row of dirty buckets, there wasn’t a whole lot more to keep his interest.

  Course, it wasn’t his first time in jail, but usually, once they’d confirmed he was a Maresman, he was released with no questions asked. Something told him things would be different this time. Sheriff Tanner and Portis’s mayor-in-the-making were thick as thieves, and they’d both known the truth of things from the start. Whatever Boss was into—and you could bet it was more than just shipping somnificus to New Jerusalem—Tanner was on his payroll.

  It was looking bleak, any way you reckoned it. Boss had been dealt a severe blow, what with Jeb taking out his supplier, and the deaths were sure to cost him dearly. Then there was Tharn, of course. It seemed a sure thing Boss had paid him, too, but what would be the point of proving it, even if Jeb could? No doubt the coin purse had found its way back to Boss’s coffers by now, maybe even along with Jeb’s flintlock and anything else that had the look of value about it.

  Jeb closed his eyes and sighed. Only chance he had of getting free before whatever Boss or the sheriff had planned for him was if the Maresmen grew impatient with his lack of progress and sent someone to investigate. But even that could end badly, if they didn’t buy his excuse for the delay.

  Must have been half, maybe even a full hour passed when the grate slid open. It shut a moment later, and the heavy bolts outside the door were snapped back.

  Sheriff Tanner came in with a swagger, broadsword in hand. He took an especially long drag on a weedstick and blew a cloud of smoke across the beams of dusty sunlight.

  “Don’t get up on my account,” he said, even though Jeb made no move to. “Just listen, so you know what’s going on.” He touched the blade of his sword to the floor and leaned on it with both hands, chewing the end of his weedstick while he spoke. “Crimes you committed are about as serious as they get. Now, don’t say I didn’t warn you when you arrived, and I don’t want to hear nothing about what you Maresmen get away with elsewhere. Portis is a simple town, and we are simple folk, but let’s just get one thing straight: There’s a rule of law here second to none. Play things my way, and we’ll get along fine. But cross me, and I’ll come down on you like a herd of mustangs.”