Toymaker, The

by Quidt, Jeremy De

  ‘Any way through?’ said the man on the horse.

  The other shook his head. ‘No. It’s solid.’

  Despite herself, Katta couldn’t help but look at the man on the horse, trying to see what he would do next. For a few moments he didn’t speak. She could see him turning it all over in his mind.

  ‘We’ll try the other way,’ he said.

  The men nodded and went back towards the horses.

  Katta bit her lip. He had believed her. She could feel hope rising inside her. He was going to leave them there.

  ‘Where are you from?’ the tall man asked.

  ‘Cottage in the wood,’ she said, jerking her head. That might have been enough, but she wanted to make it sound convincing, so she said, ‘It’s just over there.’

  As soon as she pointed, she knew she had made a mistake. He must know these woods far better than she did. He’d been about to turn his horse away, but when she said that, he reined it in again and stopped.

  ‘Where?’ he said.

  She pointed again, trying not to seem as vague as she had the first time. He gave a sharp whistle and the other men stopped too.

  ‘There’s no cottage out that way,’ he said. ‘Not for a long mile.’

  ‘It’s very small,’ she said, but she knew it was too late. He’d already stopped believing her.

  He got down from his horse and went over to where Mathias lay on the ground. He pulled open the coat and saw the blood-soaked shirt. ‘Anyone know who she is?’ he said.

  The men came back. They all looked at Katta.

  ‘She’s the girl from the inn,’ said one hesitantly. ‘The one who bangs her head about.’

  They had all gathered round her now.

  ‘That’s a blade did that,’ the tall man said to her. ‘What were you doing in there?’

  This time there was menace in his voice. She knew she would have to watch each word.

  ‘Hiding,’ she said. ‘They wanted the boy.’

  ‘Who did? Tahlmann?’

  It was the name of the innkeeper.

  ‘No. Someone else. I hid him from them.’

  The man’s face gave nothing away. ‘But you came through the tunnel?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she lied. ‘We just found it here.’

  ‘Why did they want the boy?’

  ‘I don’t know. They dropped him out of a window.’

  The tall man looked at her for a moment, then laughed out loud. ‘What a lot of lies you can tell,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s true,’ she said. ‘The dwarf dropped him out of the window. He chased us, but the roof came down on him.’

  And she realized that she had done it again.

  ‘But you didn’t come through the tunnel, did you?’ said the man. ‘You found this end. That’s what you said. The tunnel was already down.’

  She opened her mouth, but no words would come. The man turned away from her.

  ‘Pick up the boy,’ he said to the others. ‘Put him on my horse.’

  He got back onto the big animal and they handed Mathias up, set him in the saddle in front of the tall man.

  ‘You walk,’ he said to Katta. ‘If you try to run, I’ll finish the boy. Do you understand?’

  She looked up at him and nodded.

  ‘Cover it up,’ he said to the others. ‘There’s no digging it out now.’

  The men put back the branches that Katta had moved, and swept leaves across the place. You wouldn’t have known it was there. Then, following the man on the big horse, they led the ponies back along the track through the wood to the road. After a few words, they parted company. The men and the ponies went one way and the tall man, with Mathias lolling in the saddle and Katta walking beside his horse, went the other – back into the wood.

  Beneath the tons of fallen earth, something began to move. At first he could only move his fingertips; he had to work them until they made a small space. Then he was able to move his whole hand. In the buried darkness, Valter began to dig his way free. There was nothing that could stop him.

  One thought filled his vicious, empty heart as he clawed his way up through the earth, and that was to find the boy and the girl who had burned him and buried him and left him for dead. Find them, and then what a game they would have.

  It took him several hours. It was long after nightfall before he pulled himself out of the ground and spat the last of the earth from his mouth. He stood amongst the trees in the wood, with the cold frosted stars above him, and let out one long, murderous cry. Then, with eyes sharper than any cat’s, he started searching in the wood for the opening of the tunnel. That took him time as well, but he did not rush. Just before dawn he found it below a grass bank, branches pulled across. He knelt down and breathed in. He could smell Mathias’s blood amongst the leaves. The smell of Katta where she had knelt beside him. There were other smells too: of men – he could make out five – and horses, lots of horses. He listened until he was quite certain they weren’t still close by. When he was satisfied that there was no sound to hear, he began to follow one scent – the scent of a girl walking beside a horse. It went step by step back along the hidden track through the wood to the road. In the darkness he smiled to himself. This was the best start for a game – when they thought themselves already safe.

  9

  The Burners

  Katta walked beside the horse. The carpet of leaves on the ground was rimed with frost. She had no coat. She folded her arms about her, trying to keep warm, but the cold went straight through. Her feet were frozen. She didn’t know where she was being taken, but she could guess only too easily how it would all end, when there was no one about to hear her scream or see what was done. That’s how it would be.

  But the horse walked on, and with each step Katta became more uncertain. She had seen enough dips and hollows – the quiet places where it could be done. Each time she steeled herself for the moment when the tall man would rein in the horse and get down. But he had ridden past them all. The morning had worn on and still they hadn’t stopped. There had to be an explanation, and she had to work out what it was.

  When she thought that she had, she stopped walking. ‘I’m not going any further,’ she said.

  But the horse carried on.

  ‘I’m not going any further!’ she shouted.

  The man reined in and looked back at her but she stood her ground.

  ‘You’re not going to kill him, are you? ’Cos you want to know what they wanted, don’t you? He might be worth something. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  He walked the horse back towards her. Still holding Mathias with one hand, with the other hand he pulled a pistol from a leather fold on the saddle, cocked it and levelled it at Katta’s head. ‘Maybe I should just shoot you,’ he said.

  She could feel herself shaking, and this time it wasn’t from the cold. But she’d worked that out too. She only hoped that she was right because it was too late now if she wasn’t.

  ‘You’re not going to do that, neither. Are you?’

  ‘Am I not?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘’Cos you’d have done it already if you was.’

  A look of mild amusement passed across his face. ‘But you weren’t being a trouble before,’ he said.

  ‘Then you’d better get it over and done with,’ she answered. ‘’Cos I can be a lot more trouble than this.’

  She stood still, waiting for him to pull the trigger. It seemed like an age. She could see the dark, unwavering circle of the barrel in front of her face, the trees and the blue sky behind it. She wondered if they were the last things that she would see.

  But he didn’t pull the trigger. He put the pistol up and slid it back into its holster on the saddle. Then, reaching down, he took hold of her arm, pulled her up and set her behind him on the horse.

  ‘Just don’t think of being too much of a trouble quite yet,’ he said. He clicked his tongue at the horse. ‘Go on, Razor,’ he said, and the horse shook its head and was away.

  The ma
n rode the horse on as though he wanted to make up for lost time. At one point they had to ford a river, but the big horse didn’t hesitate. It stepped down through the cat ice at the water’s edge and, blowing short, snorting breaths, half walked, half swam its way across the freezing water – the swirling cold bit into Katta’s legs. Then the horse was up the other bank in huge, lunging strides. Katta had to hang onto the man’s coat as they plunged back into the woods again. She almost forgot the cold. She’d seen lots of horses at the inn, even sat on a few, but never one as fine as this. She could imagine it riding down anyone foolish enough to stand in its way. It was huge, like a big wall of muscle and bone, and it just kept going.

  They had ridden for at least another hour when Katta caught the smell of wood smoke in the cold air. First thin, then getting stronger. The man slowed the horse to a walk. Ahead, in a clearing, something was burning. She could see thick, blue-white smoke drifting like mist between the trees. The man leaned forward and slapped the horse’s neck. It shook its head. Wherever it was that they were going, they had evidently arrived.

  As the horse walked on, Katta looked about her. Stacks of felled wood were lying on the ground – split and heaped together. In several places large, turfed mounds leaked smoke. The clearing was thick with it. There were men working, their faces black, smeared with burned wood and ash. With iron spades they were patting and tending the turfed mounds, building new ones around stacked wood. There were small huts, the roofs thatched with rough bracken, smoke leaking through them. Wherever she looked there was smoke. Her eyes stung with it. But she knew what this was. It was a Burners’ camp. The people who felled the wood and smoked it through until it was nothing but sticks of charcoal. They’d stay in one place just long enough to make as much as they needed, then they’d move on, selling it by the sack load in the towns and villages as they went. They had their own language and ways. They didn’t mix with the outside world and the outside world didn’t mix with them. There was usually a lot of trouble when it did.

  Several faces turned towards them. One of the men put down his spade and walked slowly towards them across the clearing. His face and clothes were grimed with charcoal, his eyes bloodshot. But he was smiling, his teeth white against the dirt of his face. He had a gold ring in each ear.

  ‘Koenig!’

  He said the name in friendly greeting, and Katta knew that this must be what the tall man was called. Then the Burner man saw Mathias, half wrapped in Koenig’s coat, and, looking from the boy to Koenig, he reached up and with both hands carefully lifted Mathias down. Koenig slipped from the saddle and followed the man as he carried Mathias into one of the huts. Katta sat on the back of the big horse. Then she too swung her leg across and dropped to the ground. Some of the children who had been outside the huts stared at her. She stared back, then spat. She had once been in a fight with Burner children when they had passed the inn. It had been a long time ago, but she hadn’t forgiven them for what they’d done. It was why she had to wear the padded hat.

  It wasn’t even her who had started it – it was the stableboys. They were always up for a fight. But she’d stood at the edge and watched it with glee, clapping her hands and yelling. It had got so bad that men had spilled out of the inn and pulled them all apart. Then one of the Burner boys had thrown a stone. A big stone, about the size of a goose egg. She’d seen him skulking at the back of the fight, too scared to get close. She saw him bend down and, scooping something up, throw it. She didn’t see where it went – she lost the line of it above everyone else; then it hit her on the side of her head and the whole world shattered into little tiles of brightly coloured light. She found herself on her knees as though someone had put her there, but she didn’t know how. Everywhere she turned, the world was made up of bright flickering colours. No one else had seen it happen. The fight was still being broken up; no one paid any attention to her. But suddenly she didn’t feel well, and she didn’t want to watch any more. Slowly, almost unaware of where she was, she had walked back through the door of the inn, the colours flickering in front of her eyes as she went. She could hear people talking, but their voices were deep and slow, as though she were hearing them through a wall. Someone gave her a tray to carry and it had dropped through her fingers. She had watched it floating slowly down to the ground like a falling feather. Then the ground came up and met her too.

  She had a small hole in her head, where the bone was pressed in. Just as big as the stone had been. There was nothing that could be done about it. Usually it didn’t matter. But sometimes it did. Then, without any warning, dancing lines of little pin colours would start to flicker before her eyes and she would find herself on the floor and not know how she’d got there. She would have wet herself or worse, and her skirt would be dirty and stink. Sometimes if there was no one around to help her, she’d bite through her tongue. So she had to wear the hat. It helped when she banged her head on the floor. She didn’t know she was doing it: she’d just find herself on the floor and know that it had happened again. Then she’d cry because it was going to be like that for the rest of her life, just because of that Burner boy and the stone.

  So she had no love for filthy Burners and even less for their filthy children. She wondered, as she stood there, if they were the same ones, and that made her shudder. She’d have their eyes out if they were.

  She bent down and picked up a stone, then thought better of throwing it. Instead, she held up her head and started to walk towards the hut where they’d taken Mathias – the stone, sharp-cornered and heavy, in her hand. At least, now, she had something that she could use if she had to, and there was no knowing whether she might need it before long.

  She stopped in the doorway. For a moment she couldn’t see a thing. Then her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. It was dark and narrow inside the hut. Mathias had been laid on a rough, rug-covered bed – there was only one. There were pans and things she couldn’t make out hanging from the roof above her. There was a woman too, her face weather-tanned and lined. Koenig and the man had already begun to unbutton Mathias’s coat and pull his shirt over his head. He let out a moan and a hiss of breath as they sat him up to do it. The woman hushed him, then turned and said something to Katta in Burner. Katta shook her head, but then understood what the woman must have meant, and stepped to one side so that the light could come in.

  With her fingertips, the woman carefully felt around the edges of the two knife wounds, trying to gauge how deep they were.

  ‘And his chest,’ Katta said. ‘He’s hurt his chest bad too.’

  She felt suddenly uneasy, as though they might think that she had been responsible. ‘They dropped him out of a window,’ she said. ‘He was holding his chest when I found him.’

  She caught Koenig’s eye, and remembered that he’d already called her a liar once. ‘They did!’ she said.

  But Koenig looked away. She didn’t know why she should be bothered about his opinion anyway. He was nothing but a thief.

  The woman washed the blood away, then, making a pad from leaves, she spooned thick paste onto it from a clay pot and pressed it over the wounds. She took the shawl from her own shoulders and used it to bind the pad in place, tightly wrapping the thick cloth round and round Mathias’s chest. Then she made him drink something that smelled sweet and earthy, and his head lolled almost at once and he closed his eyes.

  She said something to Katta and pointed at the bed. By signs Katta understood that she had to stay beside Mathias, so she sat down and watched. The woman reached up and pulled down two dead rabbits that were hanging from a hook in the rafters above her head. Then she set herself on a stool in the doorway and, pulling a sharp knife from her belt, began to skin them. Koenig and the man had already gone outside. Through the doorway Katta could see them standing and talking. Koenig was doing most of the talking; the other man listened. Once or twice he nodded, then looked back at the hut, and Katta knew that they were talking about her. She leaned back into the dark so that she could still watch
them and not be seen herself. Then she had the thought that the woman had set herself in the doorway as much to stop her from going out as to skin the rabbits. She looked down at Mathias: he was deep in a drugged sleep. But they hadn’t hurt him. For the moment he was safe. But she wasn’t so sure about herself. She slipped the stone into the pocket of her apron and held onto it tightly.

  Koenig finished talking to the man, who went back across the clearing. Koenig came towards the hut. He said something to the woman in the doorway that Katta couldn’t understand, then leaned in and beckoned to Katta.

  ‘Why can’t they talk proper words like everyone else?’ she said as she got up.

  ‘I’d be careful what you say if I were you,’ said Koenig. ‘Some of them can.’

  Katta looked quickly at the woman to see if she had understood what had been said. It’s one thing to be rude about someone; it’s quite another thing for them to understand it, especially when they’re holding a knife. But the woman carried on skinning the rabbits and Katta guessed that she hadn’t understood anything. It made her bold again.

  ‘Then they should learn proper talk,’ she said.

  She followed Koenig to where a small fire burned in the clearing. He held out his hands to warm them. Now she had the chance to look at him properly, she saw that he was younger than she had thought. It must have been the way the men in the wood obeyed him that had made him seem older. The big horse hadn’t been tethered. It was standing quietly nearby with its reins looped about its neck. Someone had piled some hay on the ground for it to eat.

  ‘Your horse will walk off,’ she said.

  Koenig glanced over his shoulder. ‘What, Razor?’ he said.

  The horse lifted its head and pricked up its ears at its name. Then, seeing it wasn’t needed, it bent down again to the hay.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Koenig.

  The fire was warm. Katta could feel the heat of it on her face. Her skirt was still soaked from the river. It began to steam as it dried. She realized how cold and hungry she was.