by M. A. Ray
“Come on,” Vandis said. He rose from his stool. “It’s getting late. Let me walk you back to camp before I get any drunker.”
“I can—”
“I know you can, but tonight you’ll let me.”
“Yes, Vandis.” Dingus swallowed the dark rum. It went down like fire and it tasted thickly sweet and spiced. “It’s horrible!” he gasped.
The Masters all laughed, and Jack said, “It’s an acquired taste.”
Dingus gazed into his empty cup. Fumes still drifted from the bottom. He’d have to rinse it good. “Why’d you wanna acquire it?”
“To get drunk more efficiently.” Vandis grinned once more and put his hands in his pockets, twitching his head in the direction of their camp. “Come on.”
“Hold on a moment,” Evan said. “Dingus, you like to hunt, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Evan.”
“Tomorrow morning we’ll be after dressing hogs for the feast. We could do with an extra pair of hands—what do you say?”
“Sure, if Vandis doesn’t need me for something.”
“You’re free,” Vandis said. “I’ll be in meetings.”
Evan nodded, and told Dingus, “I’ll send Wally over for you in the morning then.”
“Yes, Evan. Good night,” he said to the other Masters; they said it back and he left with Vandis, out through the trees. “No wonder you never told me about your Master,” he ventured when the hollow lay behind them, “even if his name was the same as mine.”
“I don’t enjoy thinking about him,” Vandis admitted, “but let me tell you, I did my damnedest to deserve every lump.”
“Wasn’t Reed’s business to talk about in front of everybody.”
Dingus’s Master let out a sigh. “Well, I have to disagree. If a Master’s hurting a Squire, it is everyone’s business. It’s everyone’s business to see it doesn’t happen again.”
“So it’s everybody’s business about me, too,” he muttered.
“That’s a little different, but now? Yes.” Vandis put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. “Reed didn’t go about it the right way, but he was right to bring it to me if he suspected. I have to think so; if nobody questions my integrity, it’s dead. I’m sorry he made a fucking circus out of you, though.”
Dingus hung his head. Firelight danced between the trees from all directions, and the shadows danced on the ground in front of him. “I should’ve let him do what he wanted,” he said. “I’m sorry I caused you trouble.”
“Even if he wasn’t going to hit you, he scared you. You have the right to defend yourself. I don’t want to hear you apologize again.”
“Yes, Vandis,” he said, and Vandis squeezed the shoulder. They walked the rest of the short way to the clump of whitebark pines in a quiet that eased Dingus’s heart as much as the wild.
A Bird Under Mountain
In the morning, Dingus sat waiting for Wally, whoever that could be, on a fallen log just outside the pine copse. Vandis was still in camp, finishing his coffee and shaving. Kessa was sleeping in; she’d come back right after he had the night before in a chattering cloud of younger Squires who, clustered around her, looked to him like ants swarming a dropped berry. As if it hadn’t been enough, her talking to all the other kids, she’d wanted to natter at him too. Dingus wasn’t having it, and he’d jammed the last of his nighttime snack in his mouth and got in his bedroll.
“Well, forget it, then!” she’d snapped. He guessed he hadn’t been very nice to her lately, but at least he’d remembered her birthday in the spring, enough to give her an otter he’d whittled out of a piece of applewood. That had to count for something. He’d been so busy getting ready for Trials, and to be honest, so miserable, he didn’t have anything left for her; the days scraped him out and left him hollow and aching and the nights filled him up with fear. Last night he’d dreamed it again, the hanging, and screamed himself awake just before dawn.
While he lay shivering in a ball under his blanket, Vandis had gotten up and started his prayers, so Dingus got up too, put breakfast on, and sat next to his Master to do prayers too, or at least to pretend. He spent at least half the time thinking what to pray about, but sitting by Vandis in the morning eased him some. He’d close his eyes and take in all the scents of where they were that day, of everybody’s sleepy sweat and the gas that passed in the bedroll of a night—but this morning there were so many people around that the collective stink of them all overwhelmed the smell of the forest.
“I need to get moving,” Vandis said, coming out of the camp behind Dingus, smelling of coal-tar soap, coffee on his breath when he got close. Not a fleck of his graying stubble remained, and he’d combed his hair; but he’d rolled his tunic sleeves to his elbows like usual for summer. He held out his thick leather roll of knives for Dingus to take. “Here, you’ll need these this morning. I’m going to be busy today, but if you need help, Santo or Evan, all right?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Just making sure. See you later.”
“Bye, Vandis.”
Vandis strolled away with his thumbs tucked over his belt, whistling off-key. He likes this, Dingus thought. He likes it here, with all the people, and being Head and all. He’s having fun. He wasn’t real used to Public Vandis, but at least there was enough of Private Vandis in there that Dingus didn’t feel too lost.
He’d just got to wondering where Wally was, and who he was, when a burly shape showed through the trees, and a moment later a young guy—shorter than Dingus, but who wasn’t?—with thick shoulders and arms and softness around the middle came up to him. He sported an enameled Squire’s badge. “’Lo!” he said, grinning through a full, spectacular blond beard that Dingus instantly ached to possess, though he doubted he ever would, since his face was still baby-bald. “You Dingus, then?”
“Yeah.” Dingus stood, tucking the roll of knives under his left arm. “You’re Wally?”
“Can we make it Wallace?” Wallace stuck out his hand. “Evan always calls me Wally. I hate it, I do, but that’s Evan.”
They clasped wrists. Wallace’s forearm felt solid, and it was covered in thick blond hair. Dingus couldn’t help comparing his own thin wrist and the giant hand stuck on the end of it.
“Ready for the piggy-wigs, I hope!”
“I’m ready,” he said. Wallace had a smile that took over his whole face, and Dingus couldn’t help giving it back. He followed the other Squire over to a wide, clear spot cut into the forest near the beach, already busy as a hive, noisy with talk and laughter. Several Knights and Squires repaired the brick lining of a cooking pit, while others fed a bonfire in another. The glossy, black-and-brown brindle forms of at least a dozen Knighthounds tussled and chased among the people, with jowls flapping and big shoulders bunching and rolling.
Wallace led him down near the water to the six game hoists he’d seen when he explored through here last week. They were set a good distance one from another, on a large square of pavers. Ten people waited to get to work, and six trussed-up, struggling, hairy hogs lay to one side. “Excellent!” Evan cried. He didn’t seem at all mad that they were the last ones there, or that everyone else seemed to be dressed down and ready to go. “Excellent. Henry, will you work with me? Old times’ sake. Then Dingus can help Wally.”
“Two Squires together?” said a heavy man with mutton-chop whiskers. Dingus recognized him from Elwin’s Ford but couldn’t remember his name. He waited next to that horsetail kid—him, Dingus remembered. Arkady—who, of course, had his shirt off to show perfect pectorals and a flat belly shaping into ridges under dark blond chest hair. He met Dingus’s eyes, smirked, and flexed. I don’t like your face, Dingus thought at him.
“I’m sure it’ll be perfectly fine, Ryan,” Evan said, smiling. “They’re standing Trials this year. If between the two of them they can’t break down a carcass, Vandis and I need to have a serious look at our teaching methods!” He chuckled, and the other Knight grinned and nodded acknowledgement. “All right,
lads and lasses, let’s get to it.”
Dingus and Wallace took off their tunics while everyone else broke for the tied hogs. “Hope they leave us a sow,” Wallace said with a shudder. “I do hate cutting their bits off, if they’re boars.”
“I’ll do it,” Dingus offered, folding his tunic. He laid it neatly on the bench with everyone else’s. “It don’t—it doesn’t bother me.”
“Oh,” Wallace said, sounding as if he’d bring up phlegm, “I knew you were a good one,” and thumped his hand on Dingus’s shoulder in a friendly way, making his skin prickle.
They got a boar. Dingus cut its throat with Vandis’s second-heaviest knife, and the hog squealed and thrashed. The blood rushed over his hands, loosing the familiar smell that wafted through so many of his dreams. His mouth watered.
“All right, Dingus?”
He shook himself. “Yeah, sorry.” They pulled the boar over to the only unclaimed hoist, between Arkady and his Master on the left and, on the right, two women. Dingus recognized the girl with the smooth, fat brown braids from the summer before, only now she had them pinned around her head, and she was down to her undershirt and breeches. The other woman must have been her Master; she had some gray in her dark-blond hair, wiry muscle in her arms, and looked like she didn’t sit still for a moment.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Wally,” said the older woman, as Dingus wiped his hands and the bone handle of the knife. Her voice sounded friendly in his ears.
Wallace straightened. “Happy Longday, Pearl,” he said politely, nodding to the Master.
Braids looked over her shoulder. Her smile took over her face, too. “Hi, Wallace.” She was even prettier than Dingus remembered, but maybe the relative lack of clothing messed with his head.
“Francine,” Wallace said. Dingus didn’t have to see his face to read his pleasure and interest: he squared his shoulders and put his fists on his hips. “You’re a sight for weary eyes.”
She laughed and cut around the hog’s thing—they had a boar, too—and Wallace gave a gulp Dingus could hear over the sounds of his own work: cutting flesh around the spine so he could get the head off. His mouth twitched. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to laugh at Wallace just yet.
“Who’s your busy friend?” Pearl asked, pointedly.
“Eh?”
“Dingus,” said Dingus, and gave the head a hard twist. It didn’t come off, and he put the knife in, looking for cartilage he could crack.
“Right, right—Vandis’s uncut diamond,” Pearl said.
Dingus looked up. “What?”
“You, kid. He hasn’t stopped talking about you since we all got here.” He must’ve shown his anxiety, because she lifted her hand and said, “Don’t worry. Us Masters know better than to take that sort of thing seriously. You’re his first, and it’s your first Moot, so he hasn’t had a chance to show off a Squire before now. He’s just making up for lost time.”
“Oh,” he said, swallowed, and turned his attention back to getting the head off the hog while Wallace went around to the back and prepared the hind legs for the hoist. He didn’t want to be showed off, especially after last night. He wanted to get his leaf and pretend he was invisible the rest of the time.
“Hey, I remember you now. You were at Elwin’s Ford late last summer,” Francine said suddenly.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I—” she began, but what she’d been about to say, Dingus never knew.
“Oh yeah,” said Horsetail Arkady, from the hoist to the other side.
Dingus thought, Oh hell, but he just pretended he didn’t hear and switched to the heavy brush knife for the front trotters.
“I didn’t recognize you without the bruises,” Arkady went on, and his tone said it wasn’t an improvement.
One of the hog’s trotters popped off under a particularly forceful blow. Dingus had to stretch out to get it and toss it in the hide pan. The Master with the muttonchops said, “Take it easy, Arkady. That was unkind,” but Arkady didn’t seem to take note.
“What’s he mean?” Wallace asked, pulling down the hoist and hooking it into the hind legs.
Arkady started to explain. “When—”
“My face was messed up when I was at Elwin’s Ford,” Dingus said, because he wasn’t about to let Arkady explain anything about him. “I was—when Vandis found me, I was getting—beat up.” He hacked off the other trotter and stood back for Wallace to raise the carcass, just in time to see Arkady rubbing his neck with a bloody hand, wearing his nasty smirk. Dingus wanted to hit him.
“Er,” Wallace said, “you said you’d—”
“Yeah, I got it.” Dingus stepped forward to do the job Wallace hadn’t wanted to, and then sliced the skin around the hind legs and down through the fork.
“Here, I’ll take the back, since you did that bit. I don’t mind the pooper, they’ve all got that, y’ ken?”
“Yeah,” Dingus said. Wallace was definitely okay, and the grins he kept sending over to Dingus made it hard to stay angry. He busied himself with skinning the belly. Wallace did the back.
“Elwin’s Ford, that’s Wealaia, ennit?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Should’ve figured, you being an elf and all.”
“That’s okay.” Any one of the People could tell the difference at a moment’s glance, but humans didn’t seem to be able to see what he was. Then again, dilihi was about as rare as fox teeth in a sheep’s mouth. “I’m not one.”
“Well, you look like one,” Wallace said, with a grin.
Dingus had to admit, “I guess I do a little. I’m, uh, I’m half human.”
Wallace paused in his skinning to look at him. Dingus dropped his eyes and put them tight on his work, and then the other boy rasped something thick and guttural.
“Huh?”
“Sorry.” Wallace blushed a red so dark it showed through his beard. “It means ‘a bird under mountain.’ Like me. I’m a MacNair, but I’ll never be a whole MacNair.”
“That’s a Bearded name.”
“Aye, that it is. Mam found me on the mountain, didn’t she? They love me, but it’s hard, so ’tis, always grow too fast, get too tall, and never enough hair to suit! You don’t fit.”
“Or grow too fast, get too tall, grow a little too much hair,” Dingus said, thinking about what Aust had said after pantsing him that one time.
“See? A bird under mountain.”
“We’d say ” Dingus put the saying in hituleti, and then translated for Wallace.
“Same old thing in a different tongue,” Wallace said, nodding sagely, and went back to work. “Was I ever glad when Evan said he wanted to take me! Had a time of it convincing Pap, but it’s better this way.”
“I had to leave,” Dingus blurted. “Otherwise—” But he broke off, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe he’d started to talk about that, and he didn’t know what he wanted to say, either.
“Otherwise, what?”
He swallowed, then raised his chin to show his throat, where he still carried a grayish-pink trace of ligature scar. He gestured along it with his pinky. “See this?” When Wallace nodded, he lowered his voice. “It’s from the rope.”
Wallace’s eyes went saucer-huge. “That’s a shit send-off!” It startled Dingus into laughter, and Wallace grinned cheekily. “My mam’s idea was a box of cookies. A small box. I thought nothing could be worse than not enough of Mam’s cookies.”
“Well—”
“Are you two hens planning to cluck all day?” Pearl asked. “Bright Lady’s rolling along, boys, and you started out behind.”
“We’re getting there,” Wallace protested, while Dingus flushed. He’d never been told he was talking too much, not once before now.
“Get there faster.”
“I could probably pull it.” Dingus laid Vandis’s knife next to the leather roll and went around the back. “I think we got it down far enough. Can you winch it up for me?”
“If you think you can do i
t. I can’t.”
“Probably.” He’d done it on deer plenty of times. Wasn’t easy, but it was a lot quicker. When Wallace had the carcass high enough, he grabbed two fistfuls of the hide and put all his weight into it, peeling it slowly down until it came free.
“Well done!” Wallace exclaimed. Dingus dropped the floppy hide into the tub with the hooves. When he looked up, he saw Arkady scowling at him, but he found he didn’t much care.
After they finished up with the hog, Wallace clasped wrists with Dingus and went off with Evan and Henry. Dingus walked back to the campsite with a couple of the kidneys, settled himself on the same fallen tree, and, since he was alone, people-watched while he cooked and ate. He saw a lot of kids, from about Kessa’s age on up, with their Masters. The same way he’d seen down at the hoists, they talked and laughed, kids and adults together—easy, natural, like he could talk with Vandis. Felt good to realize he finally had something normal.
It seemed as if the whole world walked through that forest: mostly humans, from every corner of Rothganar, and some who weren’t from Rothganar at all. There were men from Rodansk, as tall as he was or taller, wearing long beards with charms and fetishes braided in; men and women from the Monmouths and Kirun whose skin was every shade of brown, from tea with cream to almost black; he even saw a few whose skin and eyes reminded him of almonds. There were some who weren’t human: tiny Trallins from Oasis with white or buttery fur and gigantic, pointed ears set on the tops of their heads; and Ish, with crested heads and short, bowing legs, spidery fingers and long, decorated tails. For a long time, he sat watching. Everyone amazed him, all except for the lone tulon with the sheet of silver-blond hair, and the sight of him made Dingus’s stomach clutch.
The tulon stopped, arms akimbo, and swept bright eyes around. Dingus shut his eyes and sat still as he would have in a blind, praying he wouldn’t come over. Don’t see me, he thought. Don’t be looking for me.
He heard soft footfalls, muffled by needles, and forced himself to open his eyes. Vandis wouldn’t want to see him act like a scared little kid. Gripping the bark of the tree until his knuckles whitened, he met the big, sparkling eyes.