by Hugh Cook
He gave a quick look round, sheathed his blade, then set off at a jog, holding the head by a fistful of hair. He did not look back.
Blackwood wondered about that warrior who had demanded his name before leaving without giving his own, who had cropped grey hair, cold eyes, and a brutal way with human flesh. He hoped they would not meet again.
The dead Collosnon soldier had discarded his sword, helmet and cuirass to be able to run faster, but the spider amulet at his throat told the world which master he served. Sighting that amulet, Blackwood had shot without hesitation. The arrow had caught the soldier just to the left of the breastbone; he had spun round and fallen dead.
The fodden crept out of the undergrowth and began to lick the blood. Blackwood nudged it aside with his boot.
'No,' he said.
'Why riot?' said the fodden, lisping, hissing, spluttering. Practice let Blackwood understand its distorted speech easily.
'It's not for eating.'
'Blood is blood. It was a bad man. It's sorry now, isn't it?'
'It's still not for eating,' said Blackwood.
The fodden swiped at the corpse with one fox-fur hand. Blackwood kicked it away. Hissing, the fodden shrank back into the trees. Blackwood knelt by the headless body and cut out his arrow, which had the barbed broadhead he favoured for hunting; its three flight-feathers were yellow for easy retrieval.
'Murmer,' said Blackwood. 'Come on.'
The fodden lingered, hunched in shadows.
'Come on!'
The fodden followed reluctantly. It was short, bandylegged and covered in red fox fur but for its bald-bone head. Its eyes were green slits; its teeth suggested it was a carnivore with a vicious bite. Breeding colonies of foddens lived only in the Penvash Peninsular; this one was old, and young male foddens would have killed it if it had not left. It was always moody and foul-tempered for weeks after waking from hibernation, and liable to do ugly and spiteful things; this far into spring it should have got past that stage, but there was no sign of its temper improving.
Blackwood followed the track of smashed vegetation and leaking blood. He went slowly, not wanting to overtake the warrior. The fodden followed at a distance.
Blackwood was burdened with a roll of waterproof canvas as an emergency weather shelter; a quiver of arrows; a composite bow of wood, sinew and horn; a small food pouch; and, strapped to his belt, a case of black leather holding his hunting trousse: a large chopper, a small chopper, a saw, an awl, a knife and a sharpening stone. Many animals had been dismembered by that useful collection.
He discovered a second headless body, badly hacked about. A shattered sword-stump lay nearby. Obviously there had been a fight: the soft ground was scuffed and gouged where the combatants had braced and slipped.
'Another,' said Murmer.
'Yes,' said Blackwood. 'Don't touch!'
'So starve me then,' said Murmer, idling past, tongue touching greedy lips.
The dead did not shock Blackwood; he was familiar enough with mutilated bodies. He had not wept for the dead since the time when he had held in his arms the last of his stillborn children. At tax time, which began on the full of the Harvest Moon, Comedo's soldiers would hunt down defaulters and slaughter them. Blackwood had seen it. He knew all about the bloat and stink of corpses, the disintegration of the human face, the collapse of the body to scum and bones.
'Heel!' said Blackwood, as Murmer lagged behind.
Blackwood expected the hunters, who had betrayed themselves to him earlier by sounding horns when a kill had been made, would be gone by the time he reached the forest edge – but they were still there. He should have guessed: he had heard sounds of fighting when they had been ambushed, and should have known they would be delayed.
Crouching in the forest, he watched. Some of the men sat on horses chatting to each other; some were still searching corpses for anything worth taking. Two were exercised in keeping the dogs from tearing at the bodies of dead men and two dead horses.
Prince Comedo, laughing, sat high on a white horse with retainers around him. He wore a plumed helmet but no armour. He carried a spear on which a head had been mounted; the ears and nose had been sliced away, the eyes gouged out. Red stains from the prince's bloody hands had stained the mane of his horse where he had stroked it.
One Collosnon soldier, still alive, had been slung over the saddle of a horse and tied there for the journey back to Castle Vaunting. He had taken a scalp wound, but it was not bad enough to threaten his life – worse luck for him.
Laughing, smiling, Comedo gave the signal to head for home. Horns blared, men cheered. They set off with a jingle of harness, a racket of dogs. When all were gone, Blackwood ventured forth. Flies already buzzed around the corpses. He looked back at the forest. The fodden was nowhere to be seen.
'Murmer? Come here! Murmer!'
No answer.
Blackwood looked at the sky. He was running out of daylight. He started to walk east. The hunt had come from the east, as a cursory glance at their tracks made plain. Every step took him nearer to home; it was disturbing to have hunters come so close to his house. He always feared that on his return he might find the door smashed open and blood on the floor and the walls…
When Blackwood was out of sight, Murmer slipped from the forest to disturb the flies. He stooped to a wound-gash, and drank, deeply.
***
It was almost dayfail: a tarn near the forest edge already held the colour of the night. It was that time of evening when the black slugs emerge to soothe through the cool air; the wind, which had long ago lost its morning strength, was dying. Twilight was settling in the creaking branches as Blackwood stalked into the forest with anger on his heavy-jowled face.
'Softly now,' he said. 'Soft!'
But the animal strung up by wire and iron jaws kicked and strained in panic, tearing its lacerated body still further. Blackwood, knife in hand, saw horror in its eyes. The creature looked so human that it crossed his mind that perhaps it was more than mere deer. But in any case he could not save it. The knife glinted, striking, as he did the deer a kindness. Blood dripped down from the body Comedo's yahooing huntsmen had hung high with wire and trap-jaws. Blackwood cursed the prince:
– Blood in your mouth, you rat-rapist.
This traditional felicity eased his feelings. He had cursed Comedo many times before – though never, not even in his bedrock dreams, did he consider abandoning curses for action.
The tracks – a child could have seen it – showed horses and dogs had been here. Those dogs were big brutes kept hungerfed; they would have put the deer out of its misery soon enough, if their masters had not whipped them off. The prince enjoyed watching suffering. People used to think his father was bad, but the father's faults had lain in overlarge appetites, not in calculated sadism.
Blackwood had been the father's huntsman. Later, Comedo had employed Blackwood to organise hunts for him. However, Comedo's joyful slaughter had swiftly thinned the game away to almost nothing. Blaming Blackwood for the dearth, Comedo had turned him out of the castle, ordering that no man in Estar feed or shelter such a useless mouth, on pain of death.
Blackwood, surviving for years in a house hidden away in Looming Forest, guessed he would fare just as well under Collosnon rule, but still had no compunction about killing the invaders if they came his way. From talks from the Melski of the river, Blackwood had learnt of Collosnon atrocities against poor fishing folk living near the river. The Collosnon had no taint of royalty to protect them from his anger.
Now, as evening faded to night. Blackwood gral-loched the deer, then washed his knife in the tarn. A sudden splash shattered the night calm. Blackwood peered into the darkness and spoke sharply: 'Murmer! Stop throwing rocks!'
The fodden said nothing, but Blackwood knew it was there. Another rock splashed into the water.
'Murmer!'
Spluttering laughter from the darkness. Was the fodden going mad in its old age? Perhaps.
***
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br /> As the moon rose, Blackwood shouldered the carcass and set off for home. It was death to touch the prince's meat, but the prince never claimed his kills. And though it may be death to break the law, it is death to be poor and keep it.
Tramping through the darkness, he indulged himself with smoky memories of the aftermath of other hunts. Horns announcing the return to the castle. Groaning banquet tables. The hall flushed with heat. Jugglers, singers, music. Tankards hammering on the table as the songs roared out. Good meat and greasy fingers.
Had it really been like that, in the old days, before Comedo came to power and the dragon came to Estar? Perhaps. Certanly things were different now. Hard times, hard times…
Blackwood came to a stream, which he followed into the forest; water would wash away footprints and any leaking blood, leaving no trail for men or dogs. His boots kept out the water, but it chilled his feet. The fodden splashed along noisily behind him. Blackwood turned and hissed angrily; Murmer sat down on the bank and sulked.
Deep in the forest, Blackwood left the stream and followed a minimal trail to the clearing where stood his house, outhouse and woodshed. The buildings were hidden in darkness, but there was the smell of wood-smoke in the air, the smell of a hearth-fire. Blackwood hung the deer carcass where no ground-life could gnaw it, then went inside.
Mystrel, his wife, greeted him quietly: touch of hand against hand, touch of forehead against forehead. She smiled; he could see her smile by firelight and rushlights. She said nothing, but brought him some soup; they were in no hurry to exchange words. After years of living in isolation together, a touch could do all their greeting.
She was now thirty-five. Time had been hard on her face, but her body was still strong enough for its purpose. Two months gone, and seven months to go.
– I will have a son. And my son will have a better life than this.
A child. The renewed promise of a future. They had not expected it. Why not? Simply because they were too accustomed to disappointment. But it was happening. With fresh meat outside, a warm fire inside and a future to plan, Blackwood was happy.
Murmer killed a lamb that night.
– Ha! Have you, have at you, womb-warm. Shlust shroost! Kick then, saast, kick. Bog-cold soon, womb-kick. Warm, ha, yes, mother me, warm one, saas-sister. Where's your high-stride hook-crook watching one then, womb-warm? No help now, ha? Dreams now, womb-kick. Dreams. Saaa!
The lamb was dead.
Murmer ate.
He was thumb and fist, but anyone who saw him feeding there by moonlight, glancing round suspiciously from time to time, would probably have classed him as paw and claw, savagery akin to wark and wylie.
After feeding, Murmer was on his way.
His destination was Castle Vaunting.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Name: Blackwood (husband of Mystrel). Occupation: woodsman.
Status: once a hired lackey of the ruling class, but now a victim of the Class Enemy of the Common People.
Description: a dark-haired heavy-jowled man of middle years, looking, incidentally, remarkably like Shen Shen Drax, the leech-gatherer of Delve.
***
The executioner – such was his title, though he was a gaoler as well – was masked with grey mud. Clay was his face, but his voice was gravel. Shadows lurched as his head swung to face Blackwood. His eyes were black pits.
'Who are,' said the executioner, 'Who are you?'
His breath stank, like dead meat softening underground. Torchlight showed clumsy thumbmarks in his clay mask, from which bits of straw protruded.
'My question was not, was not to exercise my throat. Who are you?'
The executioner's assistants, who were holding Blackwood's arms, shook him. They wore featureless strawman masks.
'Blackwood's my name.'
'Blackwood,' said the executioner. Thoughtfully, he rubbed at bits of straw bristling from his mask, as another man might have rubbed his beard. 'Blackwood. The name has a past, even if it doesn't have a future.'
'I was head of the hunt. Years ago.'
'A hunter. From the sun? How is the sun? These shadows have held me thirty years, you know.'
The executioner lurched toward Blackwood, who pulled back from the stench. The assistants wrenched his arms to agony. The clay face brushed his. Bristles scraped across his skin.
'So. So. How is the sun? Is it thaw yet?" 'It's spring.'
'Ah, the green. What have these bones been doing this green that the dark should claim them? Well?'
Blackwood was silent. Then his arms were twisted. He cried out.
'Don't,' said the executioner, weaving his clay face from side to side, 'Don't try silence. Or excuses. We're all born guilty, all guilty, so don't cry innocent. We've just one newborn today: yourself. Save yourself today and tomorrow may save you yet again. Now answer. What did you do?'
T took meat the prince had killed.'
'Meat. We have a place for meat. Bring him!'
The strawmen forced Blackwood to a room of jaws, hooks, breakers, crunchers, claws. Here was the Warm Mother, the Sharp Sister, the Iron Maiden. And three abandoned bodies.
'Let him look,' said the executioner.
Blackwood was released. He was free, for the first time since his house was raided. Now was his chance to grab a branding iron and run amok, slashing and stabbing until they cut him down. But Mystrel was their prisoner, unless she was dead. He could not die yet! He was not yet free for death.
'Collosnon corpses. They deserved. We'll feed them soon. We'll show. Bring him!'
The strawmen hustled Blackwood through winding dungeon darkness, following the clay man, who sometimes paused to kick the bars of a cell till something inside woke and whimpered.
'Not time.' said the executioner. "The work, not time enough. So kick the door. In the end, in the end, we do the work. The first year we let them walk. The prince might want them. If there's no call that year, he's forgotten. They're ours. The second year, the second we break them to a crawl. Then the third. Down to their bellies in the dirt. The fourth year is the last. Will the prince remember you? Do you want him to?' Blackwood said nothing.
Their footsteps roused snarls from certain cells; others held only stinking silence. This was the underside of Castle Vaunting: stale air, dripping water, rot, fear, decay.
'We feed,' said the executioner, halting where the tunnel opened to an engulfing drop. 'Here! Feed bodies. Listen.'
Listening, they heard nothing.
'It's not moving,' said one of the assistants.
'Silence! Silence! Tongues can be taught silence if they don't teach themselves. Thirty years I haven't seen the sun, but I still have eyes, ah yes. Tongues and eyes -lost if they're not deserved… but you're right. It's not moving.'
The executioner took a torch from a wall bracket and tossed it to the pit. They glimpsed a mountainous gelatinous mass disfigured by warts, craters, ridges. The torch splashed into water and went out. Darkness shifted: sucking, squelching.
'Lopsloss,' said the executioner. 'Lopsloss. It's moving. It's moving now. Now you've seen it. Now into a cell. Wait, wait for us. We'll for you, come for you, soon, not yet, but soon. Wait for us.'
***
Down on your bones. Down on your knees.
Down on your bones in the dark.
They can break anything they care to. Ribs, collarbone, elbow. They can pick and choose. Knee, ankle, crutch.
Crouched in the darkness, he waited for them to come and choose. Sometimes something coughed, or a chain clinked. Far down a cellblock corridor, a torch guttered low, then out.
Finally, he realised they had no special plan for him. Showing him the torture chamber had been a working routine. It meant nothing. Showing him the lopsloss had been another working routine. That meant nothing, too.
They would remember him in a year.
***
'Blackwood. Black… wood.' It was Mystrel.
Blackwood sat up on the straw where he had been lying for half
of eternity. He listened. 'Black… wood.'
The voice was distorted by echoes. Faint as the beat of the wings of a bat deep underground. 'Black… wood.'
He tried to shout – but fear was strangling him. 'Black… wood.'
He bowed his head and breathed the damp, fetid air, till fear was overcome and he was able to shout: 'Mystrel!'
He had not seen her since a soldier from the raiding party had knocked him to the ground. He had feared her burnt in the blaze when the soldiers had fired the house.
'Blackwood!'
'Are you all right?'
Right ight ight… echechecho through hollow stone, through dank places black as the wing of the bat, the scaffold's drop-hole.
'Yes!'
Suddenly there was a hoot as if from an owl, then a bark as if from a dog, and soon the whole line of cells was clamouring as prisoners jeered, mocked, barked, howled and hammered against the bars. The sound only died away when one of the executioner's assistants arrived, bearing a new torch.
The torch prowled up and down.
Tread of iron-shod boots on stone.
Boots which halted. In front of Blackwood's cell.
Saying nothing.
'Mister,' said Blackwood. 'The woman… the woman is my wife. Can you… can you… can you bring me my wife?'
The strawman mask studied him in silence. Then it nodded.
Blackwood waited… and waited. Then the straw-man came back, unlocked the door and threw inside the battered bloody body of Murmer the fodden. Then locked the door and went away again.
Someone was asleep; Blackwood could hear muttering, and teeth grating together. He sat in shadow, becoming shadow. Murmer huddled silently in one corner of the cell. Blackwood knew the fodden was watching him. What did it expect? To be pulped to death? He was tempted, truly – but knew the fodden was old, its mind addled by age and hibernation. It couldn't help itself. So help it into the darkness, then. Kill it! Yes? No…