Kings of the Wyld

by Nicholas Eames

  “I … no.” The daeva looked abashed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Gabriel’s gaze darkened. He took a step toward them, and Clay’s eyes were drawn to the sword he dragged behind him. He saw rushing water through the window of Vellichor’s blade, and a writhing fish so real he thought for a moment it might come splashing out into a world in which it didn’t belong.

  Gabriel’s eyes had moved past her now, and his expression hardened.

  Ganelon nudged Clay’s shoulder and they both turned slowly around.

  There was a small host of cannibals arrayed along the forest’s edge. They stood with spears ready and bows drawn, bolas whistling and blowguns raised to puckered lips. They didn’t attack, though, and two of them broke from the others, coming tentatively nearer to the band and its crippled daeva.

  One of them was Jeremy, who slowly and loudly introduced his father, Teresa.

  “Teresa?” Even mumbling, Larkspur sounded dubious.

  “The Ferals remain nameless until after their first kill,” Moog explained hurriedly. “They must consume the entire body themselves, after which they adopt that person’s name, regardless of gender. It’s not unusual to meet women with names like William or Todd. A man with a woman’s name is quite rare, actually. Probably because women are rarely stupid enough to get killed by cannibals in the first place.”

  “ME TERESA,” Jeremy’s father announced redundantly. Clay wondered if Ferals ever spoke in tones quieter than a shout. “BONEFACE ELDER. WANT FOR PEACE.” He made a placating gesture with empty hands. His eyes lingered on Ganelon—or more aptly, on the bloodied axe in the southerner’s grip. “NO MORE KILLING, YES?”

  “That depends,” said Ganelon.

  “THAT DEPENDS,” Teresa repeated, clearly having no idea what the words meant. “YOU COME TO VILLAGE. SPEAK WITH CHIEF. HAVE TRADE.”

  Trade for what? Clay wondered as Gabriel sidled up beside him.

  “We’re not going to your village,” Gabe said. “If your chief wants to speak with us he can come here. But he’d better come soon, or we’re leaving.”

  The elder shook his head. “CHIEF NO COME. CHIEF SICK. YOU CHOOSE NOW: FOLLOW OR FIGHT. MAYBE US DIE. MAYBE YOU. THAT DEPENDS,” he added, and Clay realized he’d sort of grasped the meaning of those words after all.

  A smart cookie, Teresa.

  “Fuck ’em,” said Ganelon. “A few dozen of these bone bags against the six of us?” He spat on the barren ground. “Ain’t nothin’.”

  “Ain’t nothin’?” Matrick scoffed. “I count at least fifteen bows aimed at you, big guy. You aren’t made of stone still, you know.”

  Ganelon opened his mouth to reply, but Gabe raised a stifling hand and turned to Clay. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Clay eyed the wall of wicker shields, white faces, and bristling weapons, wondering how many of those spear tips and arrowheads might be poisoned. The blow darts certainly would be, or else what the hell was the point?

  Fighting here or in the village made little difference, since it was likely this was most of what remained of the Boneface warriors, which would explain their sudden willingness to negotiate rather than risk the few fighting men they had left. There were clan wars to think of, and with Dook dead under a tree they could use every spear come springtime.

  “We’d might as well go with them,” he said finally. “We’re screwed anyway.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The Cannibal Court

  They followed the Ferals back into the tangled forest, striking south until they came to a bluff of chalky white stone. There was a small camp here in which they spent the night. The band was offered shelter in a tall skin tent that had apparently belonged to the Feral champion, Dook. Teresa came to offer them supper, which was in fact just an assortment of severed hands, but Gabriel refused on their behalf, and for a second night running Clay was happy to gobble down whatever Moog’s hat was serving up.

  Come morning they followed the cliff face west, and as the afternoon waxed the air grew damp and sticky with heat. The trees here were enormous, with trunks that would have taken Clay a full minute to jog around. A troop of orange-furred monkeys tracked them from the canopy above, and upon some unknown signal began screaming and pelting the party with dung.

  What Clay assumed was harmless mischief, however, was anything but. One of the sloppy pellets landed on Jeremy’s bald head, and the cannibal wailed as the flesh beneath it sizzled and sloughed away. Other tribesmen cowered beneath wicker shields that caught fire when struck. Finally Teresa ordered a return volley of arrows and darts, which scattered the primates and brought one shrieking down with a feathered shaft in its chest.

  Moog, naturally, took special interest in its corpse. “Holy Tetrea, they’re spark monkeys!” He glanced excitedly at the others, but his enthusiasm was met by his bandmates with underwhelmed stares. “Half my colleagues at Oddsford didn’t believe they were real. This might mean the entire pyromate genus exists as well. Scorch apes! Ember chimps! My gods, the ramifications …”

  Teresa’s Ferals were moving on, eager to be away before their assailants regrouped, and Gabriel led the others after them. Clay, the last to leave the site besides Moog, pretended he didn’t see the wizard take a furtive look around before sneaking the dead monkey into his bag.

  The sky was beginning to take on a darker shade of purple when the elder informed them they were nearing their destination. Craning his neck, Clay could see a palisade wall on the summit upon which headless corpses were impaled and left to bloat in the sun. Teresa pointed out a narrow switchback trail, and as they climbed the band was treated to the sight of yet more stakes, these ones adorned with severed heads in various states of desiccation. The elder stopped beside one to shoo a crow from pecking at a gory eye socket.

  The Boneface village was like most other tribal settlements Clay had visited throughout his years of adventuring, except there were no animals in sight and considerably more body parts lying around. Arms and legs were stacked like kindling beside guttering cook fires; sheets of flayed skin had been left to dry on slatted racks. There were cages occupied by desultory-looking prisoners awaiting their turn in the pot. Most of these appeared to be Ferals from rival tribes, but Clay and the others were asked to wait near to where a massive ettin had been chained by both of its necks to a slab of jutting stone.

  Clay had encountered a few ettins in his day. He knew that despite their huge size and monstrous appearance they weren’t particularly inclined toward violence. Sure, if you pissed one off they were real bastards, but like any savage thing it helped if you approached them with kindness instead of open aggression.

  That being said, the first instinct of anyone confronted by a hulking man-giant with two heads was usually to either run from it or kill it dead.

  One of the monster’s heads caught Clay staring and smiled toothily. “Good afternoon!”

  “Urg …” Clay’s first attempt at a reply was a hoarse croak. “Hi,” he managed eventually.

  “Fine weather we’re having today, aren’t we?” the ettin asked.

  Clay looked up. Cobalt clouds of acidic rain crowded the rapidly darkening sky. “Could be worse,” he replied with a shrug.

  The creature nodded, rattling the collar at its throat. “Indeed it could be. My sentiments exactly.”

  The other head, which had been sleeping until now, roused itself groggily. When it turned toward Clay it was all he could do not to recoil in horror. It was hideously deformed: its nose a bruised smear, its mouth a gaping hole of shattered teeth. What few wisps of hair it possessed hung limply across a bulbous skull. Its eyes were the yellow-white of curdled milk, and when it spoke it confirmed Clay’s suspicion that the creature was blind.

  “Is someone there, brother?”

  “Yes, Dane,” said the first head. “We have illustrious guests! A band, by the looks of them. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name …”

  “Clay. Cooper,” he said, doing his best not to gawk at t
he ruinous face. He introduced the others, careful to call Larkspur by her newly assumed name. Gabriel mumbled a greeting, but his eyes were glued to the mountains bordering the western horizon. Ganelon nodded but said nothing, Matrick waved a curt hello, and Moog, ever the amiable one, marched over to shake the ettin’s hand.

  “Arcandius Moog,” the wizard introduced himself. “Archmagus and alchemy enthusiast.”

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Arcandius,” said the first head. “My name is Gregor, and this handsome gentleman is my brother, Dane. Say hello, Dane.”

  “Hello,” said Dane.

  Clay was still trying to reconcile the word handsome with the abomination before him, and was grateful when Moog took the reins of conversation from his hands.

  “Nice to meet you both,” the wizard said. He paused to watch two grubby children run past. One was chasing the other, wielding a severed arm like a club. “I only wish it was under better circumstances.”

  The first head, Gregor, shrugged the shoulder that belonged to him. “The circumstances could hardly be better,” he declared. “My brother and I have been honoured guests of the Boneface tribe for several months now. They’ve gifted us these beautiful golden torcs you see around our necks. They feast us nightly on roast pheasant and warm wine, and in return we’ve helped them build a proud and glorious wall around their lovely village.”

  Proud and glorious wall? Clay scowled at the crude palisade encompassing the so-called lovely cannibal village. The Ferals had skewered bodies on the pointed tips and used blood to paint vulgar murals on its surface.

  Moog was confused as well. “Torcs? Those are—”

  “Beautiful, are they not?” Gregor shot the wizard a conspiratorial wink. “I only wish Dane could see how they shine. Alas, my poor brother was born blind, and so it is left to me to describe in detail the splendour of our surroundings.”

  Dane smiled his awful smile, lifting one hand to the iron slave collar at his throat. “It feels beautiful,” he said.

  “It is!” his brother agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was crafted by the druins themselves.”

  Clay wouldn’t have been surprised if it was stolen from the neck of a dead ox. He didn’t say so, though. And neither did Moog.

  “You might be right,” said the wizard. He wore a crooked smile, and Clay caught the glint of moisture in the old man’s eyes. “Indeed, I think you are. Druin forged, no doubt.”

  Dane’s smile widened even further, and Gregor offered Moog a gracious nod.

  They waited, and while they did a trio of Ferals went by, each dragging a net crammed with the bodies of those Ganelon and the others (but mostly Ganelon) had slain in the forest earlier. For a brief moment Clay assumed the fallen hunters were to be given a proper burial, but then he remembered where he was. A few nearby villagers looked on hungrily, apparently fine with the idea of eating tomorrow those whom they had called friends today. He practically saw them salivate when the corpse of Dook was hauled into the village.

  Gregor described the morbid procession to his brother as it went by. “The brave hunters have returned!” he said. “And oh, what bounty! Dane, I wish you could see. There are spotted deer, and a great white stag whose antlers are so big they scrape furrows in the earth beneath him. They have five—no, six—braces of grouse, and a few fat turkeys. Oh, and here come the pheasants! I hope you’re not sick of pheasant, Dane!”

  “Never!” cried Dane.

  Gregor went on long after the hunters were gone, recounting a pageant so detailed and exotic that Clay almost closed his eyes himself so that he could listen without being betrayed by his sight. Instead, he watched Dane’s broken face light up with wonder, and felt a warmth in his heart, the kind that crept up on you during the first stirring notes of a song and then nestled in your lap like a purring cat.

  That Gregor put such effort into describing for his brother a world that was so much more appealing than the one in which they actually lived … It was a gift, Clay decided. A profound and extraordinary blessing bestowed upon one whom the world had effectively cursed.

  It was damned noble was what it was.

  A short time later Teresa emerged from the chieftain’s tent and scuffed his way over. “CHIEF SEE YOU NOW,” he declared, holding up three fingers. “ONLY TWO INSIDE.”

  Gabriel cocked his head. “Two? Or three?”

  “TWO,” said Teresa, brandishing the same three fingers.

  “I don’t …” Gabe shook his head. “Never mind. Clay, Moog, with me.”

  The elder raised no objections at all when the three of them followed him across the track.

  The chieftain’s tent was shaped like a cone, the skin of gods-knew-what stretched over a frame of tall wooden poles. There was a steady stream of smoke issuing from a hole at its peak, and when they stepped inside the dim interior it was thick with a haze that smelled oddly familiar.

  Glancing down, Clay found himself standing on a fleshy mat with the word Welcome etched out in the common tongue. “I …” he began, before a cry from Moog cut him short.

  “Kit!”

  The ghoul, whom Clay had forgot about entirely until this moment, was standing just inside the door, flanked by a pair of Feral guardsmen. He was still dressed in that bedsheet robe, and had accessorised with a red silk scarf to conceal the grisly wound in his throat.

  “Gentleman, hello. I apologise for leaving the ship unattended, but our hosts were rather insistent I accompany them here.”

  “The ship is gone,” Gabe told him. “Burned.”

  Kit frowned, but before he could respond the wizard stepped up and embraced him. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I am dead,” muttered the ghoul as Teresa offered them each a bowl. The contents looked deceptively like wine. Clay looked warily at his while Kit took a tentative sip.

  “It’s blood,” he warned them.

  “Human?” Moog asked.

  Clay fixed him with an incredulous glare. “Does it matter?”

  The wizard frowned into his bowl without answering.

  “COME!” shouted Teresa, beckoning them farther inside the tent. There was a fire pit in the centre; several skulls stuffed with what smelled like Taino’s curative weed were nestled among the smouldering coals. Smoke poured from their empty sockets, clouding the tent. Across the pit, Clay saw the Boneface chieftain lying on a bed of black furs. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but a huge naked woman had definitely not been it.

  Clay shuddered to imagine how much flesh a person had to consume to grow so large. Her entire body was painted white, so that her massive limbs looked like pale sausages drawn to bursting at her wrists and ankles. Her breasts were sagging pillows on her chest, and her flabby chin rested on a shelf of other, flabbier chins. She wore a headdress that looked like a scaffolding of tiny bones; her black hair coiled through it like vines on a garden trellis. One of her beefy arms cradled a painted red skull, lacquered to a gleam, while the other rested in the lap of a servant, who was kneading the palm of the chieftain’s hand.

  “Gods of Grandual,” Moog gasped. “Her fingers.”

  Looking closer, Clay saw that her fingers were black and shriveled, like wood reduced to char after a fire. His mind recoiled in horror, and it was an effort not to give voice to the word that echoed like a curse in his head.

  Rot.

  She wasn’t sick, then, as the others had claimed. She was dead. It was only a matter of time. Moog, Clay saw, was transfixed by the infected fingers, like a man matching the gaze of an ancient nemesis.

  The elder knelt and murmured quiet words in the chieftain’s ear. She said nothing in reply, but handed him the lacquered skull. Teresa scuttled closer to the fire. He pried open the crown and packed it with sticky brown clumps of mudweed before placing the skull among the others on the bed of glowing coals. When it started to smoke he snatched it up and returned to the chieftain. She palmed it with a pudgy hand and held the skull’s face to hers, inhaling the vapour tr
ickling from its grinning mouth.

  Afterward she sagged into her furs, exhaling smoke in a long, languid stream before saying something too quiet to hear.

  Teresa addressed the three of them from his knees. “CHIEF GLAD YOU COME. HAS WANT TO TRADE.”

  “Trade what?” asked Gabriel.

  “THIS ONE,” said the elder, pointing at Kit. “IS DEAD MAN. BAD FLESH. NO CAN EAT.”

  The ghoul self-consciously fingered the red silk scarf at his throat. “That’s true. I would taste dreadful.”

  “WANT TRADE FOR ANOTHER,” Teresa announced. “ONE FOR ONE.”

  Gabe scowled. “You want to trade us Kit in exchange for … someone else?”

  Teresa nodded. “TRADE FOR WING WOMAN, YES.”

  “They want Sabbatha,” Clay said.

  “Larkspur,” Gabe corrected. “Fine by me.” Teresa beamed and began relating the good news to the chieftain.

  Moog tore his gaze from the chieftain’s afflicted fingers. “What? We can’t just give them Sabbatha!”

  “Who is Sabbatha?” Kit inquired.

  “Why not?” Gabriel turned on the wizard. “She’s not one of us. She tried to kill us, remember?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But she’s changed? Well what if she changes back?”

  “I feel like I’m missing something,” muttered Kit.

  “She might not change back.” Moog sounded as though he were trying to convince himself as much as Gabriel. “Taino said she might stay this way forever.”

  “Or she could snap back tomorrow,” Gabe countered. “Anyway, I don’t see what choice we have, Moog. It’s her or the zombie.”

  “Revenant,” Kit pointed out, though neither Gabe nor the wizard paid heed.

  “So what?” Moog spluttered. “We just hand her over? They’ll eat her, Gabriel.”

  “NO EAT!” Teresa interjected. “NO EAT WING WOMAN.” Some of the fight went out of Moog then, and Gabe actually looked relieved, until the elder smiled excitedly. “USE FOR MAKE BABIES.”