Probably. Sander knew he wasn’t thinking straight, and time would learn him if this was indeed his hereto-unidentified nemesis or just some godforsaken monster or demon looking to do him in, but for now he had to find his way out.
Tearing himself away from the bested fiend, he saw a small table fashioned of rock or coral, its surface cluttered with strange bone instruments. Before he could give the gear a proper going over, something large splashed behind him, and he wheeled around. Squinting into the quickly deepening darkness, Sander saw that rather than a bank proper he had come ashore on a tiny island of muck, black water stretching in all directions, water that winked and blinked and shone with countless stars.
Eyes, he realized as the light failed entirely, not stars—eyes.
The darkness took Sander, as it takes us all, whether we like it or not. He settled into a crouch, planting the heel of his wounded foot as best he could as they squawked and splashed at each other, at him. He may be in hell, but at least he knew where he was, and when you’re at the bottom you know there’s nothing beneath you.
“Right, then, you Belgian plaguebitches,” Sander called into the busy darkness. “Let’s fucking do this!”
V.
The day after Jan bought Jolanda, the girl kicked him in the balls and stole his horse. It was not the sort of blow that one can easily shake off; she knew her business well and connected with the tip of her foot, her toes curled slightly back, rather than the kind of amateur ball-kicking where the top of the foot hits the scrotum, spoiling the thrust of the attack. She had bided her time, not attempting her assault when his codpiece was merely unhinged for a piss but instead waiting until their second night together, when the armament was entirely down to facilitate his dropping a deuce.
She must have been watching him, which was downright foul, but at least affirmed her dedication to a task, once she had set her mind to it. He was still squatting when she ambushed him out of the blackthorn, and before he could straighten up she’d taken the fatal step forward that set her foot and grounded her for the kick. It was one of the worst assaults he had ever suffered. At least he didn’t land in his shit when his mind decided that he didn’t really need to be conscious of the sensation in his loins.
He wasn’t out long, but even after he returned to his senses, he couldn’t stand, his legs shaking uncontrollably, and he had to lie very still for quite some time, teetering on nausea’s edge. Finally he was able to squirm around and stretch his legs out, confirming that, yes, indeed, his balls were in an incredible amount of pain, and on top of that she had stolen both his purse and his sword from his belt. By the time he had gotten back into his hose—and unhooked the codpiece, which was now uncomfortably tight—he was in a black mood.
The whole point of going so far away to relieve himself was to give her ample time to steal the horse, whereupon he would catch her again, straighten her out, and they would establish the pecking order once and for all. The only real surprise was that she hadn’t tried the trick the night before, when they had slept for a few hours on the beach after leaving her father’s house. Well, that and the whole ball-kicking, which was wholly unwarranted, and showed a cruel streak in young Jolanda that Jan found distressing.
Limping out of the sloe, he saw that while she had taken his camping pack, his blankets and rucksack remained. This only relieved him until he caught the vinegary whiff of piss emanating from them. With a sigh, he rooted through the wet pack until he found a small length of iron, the bar perhaps two fingers wide and half an ell long. He knew from experience that hurling it into a running person’s back or legs had a way of flooring the runner without the risk a knife brought to things. Leaving the rest of his gear, he followed the tracks back the way they had come from the bole in the dunes, the setting sun in his eyes.
Mackerel, his horse, was exactly where Jan expected he would be—munching the patch of marram grass they had passed at the edge of the dunes. He hadn’t fed the stallion precisely to ensure that Mackerel’s stubbornness was even further exacerbated, and wasn’t surprised that an equine-ignorant child hadn’t been able to move him once he locked his head down and set to eating. What did surprise Jan was that instead of a young woman’s footprints leading off he found the young woman herself, sitting halfway up a dune, watching man and horse. His sword was unsheathed and buried in the sand beside her, which restored a good deal of the animosity Jan had lost upon seeing he wouldn’t have to spend all night chasing her after all.
“You’re hurting the blade, doing that,” he called, the metal bar in his right hand tucked back behind his forearm.
“What you want, stiffhead?” Jolanda answered, not moving. She was clever, sure enough—she had climbed the dune and then strafed over to where it was even steeper, meaning he would exhaust himself before he reached her if he made a charge.
“With you?” said Jan.
“What else I care about?”
“You’re going to help me with something.”
“Tell me what, then,” Jolanda said, standing up. “Could’ve cleaned you while you were crying in your turds back there, so fess up what you want—could’ve killed you shell-dead and taken it all, aye? Still can, you lip me.”
“Come down here so we don’t have to shout,” said Jan, which earned him a laugh. “All right then, stay up there. What I want is a good swimmer to retrieve something for me. I know where it is, but it’s at the bottom of a lake and I can’t swim. You come with me and I’ll feed you, see that you’re taken care of, and if you dive down and bring it up for me, I’ll give you a hefty reward, as well as your freedom. Fair?”
“Freedom I got, and this purse of yours seems a hefty reward already,” said Jolanda, and Jan hoped his disgust wasn’t writ as plainly across his face as it was his heart. He had bought the little bitch instead of trying to kidnap her from the beach on the hope that she would relent to his authority that much easier, but apparently her father was correct—a collar and leash might be the sounder plan. Still, from her current vantage it couldn’t hurt to try scratching her behind her ears a little more, and Jan sighed.
“The coins aren’t real,” he said. “Counterfeit. And rest assured that my offer is limited by my patience—if you don’t do as I say, you’ll find the only metal of worth is buried in your heart. I’m prepared to let this whole incident go with only the mildest of repercussions if you come back down here and give me your oath to not try this kind of shit again, and then we can make supper.”
“Big talk for a stiffhead with a sore sack!”
“Jolanda,” said Jan evenly. “I am a man of means, and you’re a girl with nothing but what you have stolen from me. Even if you were to evade me tonight and sneak away into the dunes, where would you go? I would be back here with men and dogs in short order, and on horses we would find you, and then we would kill you. If you inconvenience me by forcing such a route, then I will do everything in my power to make your death as—”
“Aye, I get you,” said Jolanda. “Big man, big man. But if I don’t, that’s me in your service, not a slave, and when I get your thing I’m free to go, and with some coin?”
“Yes,” said Jan, very tired with the whole affair.
“That’s us sorted,” said Jolanda, yanking his sword out of the sand. He noticed she wasn’t straining to hold it aloft. “I wanna learn how to use one of these. You show me that, we’re good.”
“Why?”
“So next time I need to sort some neuking ponce, I’ll just poke his bacon ’stead of kicking his eggs.”
It was a sound point, and Jan nodded. Jolanda began sliding down the dune, but stopped halfway, cocking her head in Jan’s direction. He wondered if she would ask, and she did.
“What’s that mildest repercussion you said?” The sunset made the sword in her purple hand glow a deep red.
“You kicked me awfully hard,” said Jan with a smile. “So I’m going to break your fat nose, and then we shall be, as you say, sorted.”
“Break my n
ose?” Jolanda smiled back. “Would’ve been smart for you to leave that part out till I was down there with you, wouldn’t it?”
“I won’t lie to you, Jolanda,” said Jan, twirling the bar he had cupped in his hand and tossing it into the weeds next to Mackerel’s lowered head. “I won’t lie to you, I won’t rape you, and if you do right by me, you can expect fair treatment. That’s better terms than you’ll ever hear, and a busted hook as payment for bashing in my privates seems a light price compared to what most would charge.”
“And I just take it?”
“I’m not stupid, nor do I suppose you are. You come here and try to give me another kick, and if you land it, that’s a lesson hard earned for me, and if I make good on my promise, where your—” But Jolanda was already barreling down the dune again, dropping the sword as she came. She was favoring her right foot, and he wondered if she had broken a toe on his groin. He hoped so. Then she was in the air, leaping the last few ells to land on top of him, and Jan sidestepped her, shooting out a fist as he did.
The blow caught her in the stomach and her pounce degenerated into a plummet, the girl landing on her face and gasping for air in the sand. Although it brought a queasy pinch to his crotch and a wince to his face, Jan gave her a sharp kick in the exposed armpit, rolling her over. Before she could move, he dropped down onto her chest, knees-first. Her eyes bulged, and from where he half-sat atop her, Jan considered the angle. Then he cocked her chin with one hand, nodded, and punched her flat across the face, snapping her nose—if he had hit her dead-on, he might have driven it into her brain, and that wouldn’t do at all, not after what he had gone through on her behalf.
The cracking of cartilage brought some movement back to the girl, and she spit blood on him as he darted out his hand again and snatched her broken nose. It took several sharp twists to get it set, and she didn’t make things easier, writhing underneath him like a landed shark. Finally her nose was straight as it was liable to be and both his hands were covered in sticky blood the color of the sea at his back, and he released her. She didn’t crawl so much as slither partway up the dune she had attacked him from, her noises not quite the sobbing he expected. No, he realized as he fished his sword out of the sand and retrieved his throwing bar from the weeds, she was cackling, clutching her face in her hands and honking with laughter, threads of viscous blood dangling from between her fingers.
“I’ll set to cooking supper,” Jan told her as he took Mackerel’s reins. “When you’re ready, I’ll take a look at your hand, see that cut from yesterday doesn’t need tending.”
Leading his horse back to the bole in the dunes, her deranged laughter at his back, Jan reflected that things could have gone far worse.
VI.
The light was blinding on both sides of the water, and then Sander realized he wasn’t bobbing in water anymore at all; it was his eyelids flickering, the sun driving nails of burning fire into his brain. Someone was pushing on his stomach, and he punched the Belgian, which sent the fucker rolling down the bank. He tried to sit up and vomited again, remembering with a start that this had happened several times already, and recently, save for the punching of the… fisherman?
The man was kneeling on the bank, clutching the ear Sander had struck. A small boat was dragged up on the grassy break in the reeds beside him. There was a net in the boat, and a length of willow with a line wound around it, and two oars—not a Belgian, then, but, yeah, a fisherman.
Belgian? What? Where? The details were already sinking back down in the murk of his headache-echoing skull, and wiping his mouth and peering around, Sander saw only the narrow river slicing through teeth-achingly green pastureland. No Sneek, or Under-Sneek or wherever, and, most thankfully, no slimy monsters. They had come out of the dark for him, and he had fought them all, the bone knife sticking in the first and leaving him empty-handed, hard knuckles hitting harder skin, the chirping Belgians mobbing him, driving him down into the muck, burying him alive, until—
“You’re welcome, then,” said the fisherman, scowling at Sander.
“Yeah,” said Sander. “Where’s Sneek?”
“Sneek?”
“Yeah, fucking Sneek,” said Sander, mildly less annoyed to realize the man was speaking proper Dutch instead of Stiffhead. “This river comes from there, yeah?”
“Dunno,” said the fisherman. “Maybe? Sure.”
“Heh.” Sander chuckled. “All right, then. Fucking stiffheads.”
“Frisians put you in there? I seen you floating in the rushes an—”
“Who the fuck else?” said Sander. “Think I jumped in?”
“I don’t—”
“Think they tried to hang me?” said Sander, his tone suddenly severe. The fisherman glanced at his boat, perhaps regretting his good deed. “Think they tried to do me in on account of my not fitting into their little fucking schemes, that what you think?”
“I don’t know,” said the fisherman, slowly standing up. “I—”
“No, you fucking don’t,” said Sander. “So don’t look at me like that, you value your billy-goat eyes, you—where the fuck are you going?!”
The fisherman didn’t answer, darting to his boat and shoving off into the water. He hopped in without a backward glance, and Sander scrambled up, wondering just what the fuck this so-called fisherman knew, if maybe he had been the one to tow Sander all the way out here in the sunshine, and if he really thought he could get away with the river so languid. But then Sander put his weight on his injured foot and toppled back over.
He lay cursing in the grass, grabbing his ankle and pulling his leg up to inspect the stinging sole. The cut wasn’t deep, but it hurt like God’s disfavor, the wound starting between his big toe and its neighbor and stretching a finger’s length down. That gave him pause, and by the time he’d remembered the fisherman, the plaguebitch had already nicked off down the river. A perfect time to assess the situation.
Tunic and breeches? Gone. Boots? Gone. Glory’s End? Gone gone gone, gone as the devil’s graces. At least it was warm, the sun feeling right nice on his pruned skin—that was something. That, and the only real bits of him that hurt, aside from his pounding head, was his foot and the odd eel bite, so again, groots in his favor. And assuming the fisherman wasn’t lying, Sneek was a long way off, meaning the river had taken him far from lynch mobs and Belgians. Again, something. He was famished and needed clothes, but these were minor dilemmas in the overall scheme, and would be righted whenever he found whatever house or village the fisherman had run back to. So yeah, not so bad a state of things, as it went.
Being careful to step using only the heel of his right foot, Sander began hobbling downstream along the reed-skirted river. It was the direction the fisherman had gone, and if the current had delivered Sander from Sneek, then this was doubly the right direction to travel. As he walked he reflected on the state of the day and reckoned he must be far south indeed, given the warmth and greenness of the fields, which were all gray and dead in Friesland. It was one of life’s sweet wonders, to stroll naked on such an unseasonably warm day, the breeze drying your hair, the sun roasting your bottom, wildflowers tickling your toes even as their fragrance reached your nose… Then Sander paused, the water gurgling, the birds singing, and stared incredulously at the grassy meadowland that stretched to a border of darker green and brown, where a forest ran parallel to the river. Not good.
Sander resumed walking, limping along even quicker than before, as if he could somehow put distance between himself and the unsettling realization he had come to. Losing a few days for Sander was like losing an hour to daydreaming for anyone else, hardly the sort of thing to read too much into, but this was something else entirely, and boded exceptionally poorly. The farther he walked and the harder he tried to not think about the crocuses and cranesbills he stomped underfoot the more sense it made, in a very tragic sort of way. He came to a willow leaning over the bank, its leaves full and long, and gave a little groan to see young sparrows wheeling though the br
anches. It was autumn, late autumn, saints knew, it was probably winter, and they had tried to hang him, and now, immediately after all that, here was some, some tree, flaunting its leaves, encouraging these stupid birds to wheel around and chirp as if that were acceptable, as if it were spring, late spring, as if snow wasn’t imminent, as if…
Sander sat down in the shade, the spongy loam itching his ass as he dangled his feet in the water. It was shockingly cold, which meant he wasn’t dreaming. If that other place, the dark with all the Belgians, if that was hell, and he had bested the demons and escaped, was this heaven? That made some kind of sense. But who was the fucking fisherman, a saint? The Lord God himself? No, that didn’t wash… But neither had the Belgians, and they had been real enough.
Hadn’t they?
Rubbing his temples, Sander lay back in the scratchy grass, the river hurting his calves with its chillness. What if, he speculated, what if he hadn’t actually died and gone to hell, what if he’d simply jumped into a canal and floated away, dreaming about Belgians? Good…
But what about his foot? Could have cut it on a rock, a root, anything. Good.
But why the fuck was it early summer—no, late spring, he corrected himself, as if that made a lick of difference, late spring… But still, he couldn’t very well have floated downstream, asleep, for half a bloody year. Could he?
Well, no. But he had lost days before. Usually where drink was concerned, but sometimes they just went away on their own and he would awake to find himself in strange places. Often bad places. Once he had come to floating in a well—that had taken some explaining when a farmer finally fished him out, wells in the Low Countries being exceptionally shallow but nevertheless easier to enter than exit. Could he really be sure it had been autumn when he was hanged in Sneek?
Yes.
Well, probably. But what had happened in Sneek?
The Folly of the World Page 5