The Broken Man

by Hawkings Austin

  “Right back where we started,” he said.

  Piju had led them to the same clearing a short time before, so Keynan wasn’t surprised. The dog paced through all of Piju’s steps, but Blue didn’t cross the log and head up the hill as Piju had. Blue just didn’t think that Ella went up there. Keynan didn’t disagree with Blue’s nose. The Bolg children might have tracked everywhere, but Blue would know them by their smell as clearly as their mother would know them by their names.

  Blue buried her nose in a thicket, and a frog launched out from it. Blue chased it two passes, tucked her hind legs and bowed her back; her mouth open, she prepared to leap for a kill.

  “Kaup,” Keynan yelled the Daen word for stop, and Blue froze with her feet nearly off the ground. She slid forward a body length, but her teeth never closed on the frog.

  Keynan was aggravated. Blue didn’t chase squirrels without a command, but she was breaking training for a frog. Casually, Keynan looked around at the crowd. Three Ruad mothers had joined in, standing back at the edge of the clearing with two young boys, watching Blue do her tracking. Watching for the Daen’s dog to mess up, thought Keynan.

  He smiled; best to brazen through instead of admitting Blue had gone off track. Inside his head he was nearly yelling. The bitch has had a dozen perfect tracks, and she messes up in front of a crowd. Keynan pasted on one of Berin’s smiles, but found his cool demeanor slipping. Now? he thought. I couldn’t have learned she was crowd shy last moon?

  The small boy suddenly realized what was happening, a solid heartbeat behind Keynan’s thoughts.

  “Don’t let doggie eat him!” he yelled. “Me and Ella play with Mr. Frog all the time.”

  “Oh for the Good Father’s Gigantic…” Keynan had been so relieved that he nearly cursed in front of the Ruad children. “Uh, sake,” he altered quickly. To himself he added, “It isn’t like your high priestess is standing right behind you.” She was of course.

  “You all right, Key?” she asked.

  Keynan was turning purple embarrassed for both his words and Blue’s inability to track. Auntie kept him on as a dog trainer and his best dog chased a frog. He remembered to call, “Ni Chose,” for Blue and she started circling the pond, her nose low to the ground.

  “I’m fine, Auntie. The girl’s scent must be on the frog. I just …” He waved his arm to indicate the frustration.

  “I know,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It is a stressful day.” There was a pause while they both watched the dog taking circles around the clearing. “I’m not seeing anything, are you?”

  “I can’t see the girl leaving this clearing, Auntie.” Keynan looked around. “I have a bad feeling about that yew tree though. What if she was eating berries?”

  “That would be a weird problem to solve,” she said, “but I’ll take it over ghosts any day.”

  The rattle of the chariot could be heard when it turned onto West Gate Road, nearly a thousand paces away. It had been run hard and almost all the grease rubbed off its axle. It rattled and shrieked like it was about to catch fire. Brea excused herself and headed out to the edge of the forest toward the noise, where the road passed at the edges of the tree roots.

  Seth pulled the reins and the ponies settled from a canter down to a slow walk. Waylaid slowly lowered himself out of the back of the chariot, tucking his kilt back into his belt. He hobbled, favoring his right knee. Waylaid was covered in the marks of hundreds of tree branches, his hair whipped with the tatter of leaves and his vest spattered with sap.

  “I told you, Master Waylaid, that I would get you here before sunset.”

  “And you did, boy,” he replied. Waylaid stretched his arms over his head, his back letting out a string of creaks and pops. Seeing Brea, he straightened his kilt and made a perfunctory attempt to wipe his vest clean and fluff his beard. He pulled a branch from where it was trapped in his one braid and ran his fingers through his mass of curly hair, scattering leaves.

  Brea kept herself from rushing to him, walking sedately as befit a judge. Keynan watched from the clearing, trying to focus on both Blue’s progress and the arrival of the Fomor at the same time.

  “So, Master Waylaid, I expected you at mid-afternoon. What kept you?”

  He frowned at her and then cocked his head to the side.

  “I did not expect to see you at all. This is either an amazing coincidence, or you are here to capture an evil and particularly frightening looking Fomor sorcerer.”

  They sized each other up from an arm’s length apart. The day had left Brea not a whit less regal in her court robes, but she knew she looked harried and uncertain. She didn’t know how to solve this problem and had worried over it for half the day. Waylaid had not eaten yet today and looked much the worse for wear from his chariot ride, but his face, horrible as it was, looked calm and serene.

  Brea took a deep breath as though breathing in the serenity of the Fomor priest.

  “I am not here to capture you or even argue with you, though this looks like the work of an evil Fomor sorcerer to me.”

  Waylaid, for a moment, seemed inclined to raise one shoulder in the Bolg half-uncertainty, but he held himself. His hands moved through yes, no, and maybe. A series of motions which expressed roughly the same idea as the Bolg shrug, but the hands moved more eloquently.

  “May I see the body?”

  Brea led him around the edge of the field, to where the women were gathered, though they stood out of reach of Ugly and Grins, who watched the corpse as protectively as a cub. Both were hip high on a Daen and had the same pattern of yellow patches on a white coat, but Ugly was the larger of the two. He had lost an ear in youth and had a couple of bite scars across his nose. Ugly was always ready to fight, and looked it. Grins had some grey around his muzzle, but he bared his teeth at Waylaid, dropping his tail and uttering a low growl.

  Waylaid grabbed Grins’ muzzle and shook it, then ruffed his ears. Grins rolled over on his belly and wiggled like a pup. Ugly rose up on his back legs, getting his feet nearly into Waylaid’s ribs. Waylaid tossed him down beside Grins and rubbed both their bellies.

  The women huddled just out of reach.

  “It’s him!” they whispered fiercely amongst themselves. “The baby killer!”

  Waylaid shoved the dogs back and knelt by Ella’s body. Keynan watched him, looking for some evidence that Waylaid was responsible. His scan seemed uninterested, as though a dead baby was a rather mundane tragedy. Then he looked at her face, her eyes. The horror passed across his eyes, a look of sudden nausea. Death did not disturb him, but this sorcery was obviously something that upset him deeply.

  “Do you have a burial cloth?” he asked Brea. She shook her head no. “Ladies,” he spoke to the women in a passable Ruad, “do you have a burial cloth for her?”

  “I’ll not give it to her killer! You will use it for more sorcery!” The small woman was terrible in her denunciation. Her eyes were wide and spittle flew from her lips.

  “KILLER!” she shouted.

  “No” said Waylaid, simply, “I am not her killer, but I must protect this body or the sorcerer may raise a revenant at the setting of the sun.”

  The mother shook her head, refusing to believe Waylaid’s innocence or anything he might say. Any thought she might have had for giving him a fair judgement had fled at the sight of his terrible visage. The other women caught her arms, dragging her back.

  Waylaid shrugged.

  “I will take her to her bed,” he said and gathered her up. In the giant’s arms, she seemed little larger than a newborn. He cradled the body as gently as a living babe and carried her up the slope.

  “I’ll show you where she slept, Waylaid,” Keynan said, then turned briefly.

  “I’m sorry Auntie,” he apologized. “Blue won’t backtrack anything from that yew bush. It’s pretty clear that the attack occurred there, but…” He shook his head. “I can’t get the dog to tell me what it was that attacked her or where it came from. She’s better than thi
s.”

  Waylaid turned and stared at the yew bush, trying to will his left eye into action. It showed him nothing more than the right. He frowned; the ghost could be trapped by the rising sun, forced into the barest of shadows while the sun was overhead.

  “It is possible,” said Waylaid, “that the ghost has never left this clearing.”

  He looked into the eastern sky and saw half the moon, faint in the fading daylight, rising over the city of Ard. “At least until the rising of the moon. I was told he had the moon bane, so he was banished to his grave, or his master, when it rose.”

  “You mean the killer was here all day?” Keynan asked.

  “If your dog was acting odd, then yes. I doubt the creature leaves a scent. Perhaps your animal has a spirit eye. Your two puppies out at the edge of the field didn’t look―”

  “No,” interrupted Keynan, “It was Blue, she is an odd beast, I expect it may be that she has the spirit eye.”

  While they were talking, Keynan led Waylaid across the bean fields and up the slope to Ella’s house. It had but two rooms on the lower floor and no loft or upper floor in the thatch. Everyone in the family had slept in the second room on a single great mattress of woven wool stuffed with straw. The mattress was raised off the ground on an arrangement of wooden posts, slats, and a lot of rope with a great stone headboard built directly into the wall.

  Waylaid expected that the child had likely slept by the fire pit in the main room as often as the bed, but the bed was the appropriate place to lay her out in peace. There was no door to the room but a cloth hanging. He dropped it into place, and the room darkened. The window was shuttered, so the only light came through the gaps between the shutters. The room became very quiet. It was also hot, so he pulled off his vest and tucked it into the back of his belt. The vest was a stiff, black sheepskin, so it poked up in the back like a tail.

  Waylaid understood that the woman had grieving to do, but she could not do it tonight, while the body was fresh. That was not kind to the woman, but she hated him already. Her hate wouldn’t be the worse tomorrow for it. If something horrible happened tonight, the woman should not be with her daughter’s body.

  Waylaid remembered something from long ago.

  Many years ago, I was with a mother when her son walked again, dead though he was. He shook his head. Perhaps I will tell Piju that tale, as he likes a little blood and gruesome death.

  Maybe he was truly being kind to the woman in treating her this way. Surely if he left matters alone, she might face a horrible death, but he really didn’t care. The day’s travel had been hard on him, and he couldn’t raise a basic concern for a Ruad woman’s health. Waylaid wasn’t old, but he was not a young man either; excitement and adventure were hard on the knees.

  Laying the child on the bed, Waylaid pulled up a stool and sat down, resting his worn out hips. At several points during the afternoon he had been tempted to throw Seth out of the chariot and take over driving himself. Seth was alive because Waylaid had been afraid to let go of the spear brace long enough to grab the driver’s neck.

  He carefully examined the girl, seeing what had made her unique. She wore a dress of simple linen fabric, dyed a pale yellow. The sleeves and hem were trimmed with a white ribbon, embroidered with small yellow flowers. Her hair had been a muddy yellow, perhaps a bit dark for beauty among the Ruad, who praise their women for pale and red hair. When he could get his left eye to close, he could see that she was pretty and passably blonde; in his second sight she was a horror.

  “Dead.” Clearly, sadly, her spirit was gone. To his left eye, she was an empty sack, her spirit was absent entirely. More horrible were the burns where her eyes should be, where everything she had been and the ghost itself had passed. In his second sight, they looked like the wounds caused by a flaming brand driven into her eye sockets.

  Waylaid checked her cheeks, hair, and mouth. He hummed softly to himself, a lullaby he thought he had long forgotten. He found no other burn marks, anywhere. The ghost had focused completely on the eyes.

  He pulled the white powder―mostly salt―pouch from his belt and, rising again with some difficulty, he poured as perfect a circle around the bed as he could, hobbled by his stiff knee, the small room, the wall being a bit too close to the bed on the far side, and the headboard standing right up against the wall.

  Not a circle, but…it should do.

  He stood outside the salt line and tried to look in. Pleasantly, the child looked completely normal. Soul stealing turned his stomach. From the moment he had arrived, he hadn’t been able to look at her burned-out eyes without envisioning it. It was the most horrible thing that anyone could do. The most horrible thing that I have ever done.

  Waylaid knew that there were spirits here, and after the sun set, one of them might find such an emptiness as that little body irresistible.

  Such a thing could only cause evil, even if the spirit was good and honest. That is the curse of necromancy.

  A Fomor family would have buried their dead under the house to guarantee that the spirits stayed with the family. Those captive spirits would keep a house safe from the vengeful gods which strove to destroy the Fomor. But the ring of salt would do for the night, by keeping her invisible to god and spirit alike.

  He felt, for a moment, that he should do more. That there was a faint bit of spirit which clung to her, that faint bit that might want a bit more.

  The peace was broken by a horrible wail. The mother was calling for her child.

  “Ella!” she screamed.

  It echoed off the forest below. Waylaid shrugged; there was no reasoning with a grieving mother. He only hoped that Piju would return before the mob came to kill him. He certainly wasn’t running away, and he doubted he would climb into that chariot again. Maybe he would tomorrow, when his hip stopped twinging.

  “ELLA!” It was so loud it seemed to shake the walls. He saw its spiritual effect on the house, not its simple physical nature. Aspects of little Ella, who had lived here, were slowly being shaken from the very walls of the house. The dust of the house drifted toward her mother’s calls.

  Waylaid settled on a stool in the corner. He may as well try to rest; it was going to be a long wait.

  INTERLUDE 3 THE BURNING GHOST

  The dark after Spring Moon, Year Twenty-Seven of King Cail’s Reign

  In my dream, on the dock I sit.

  The night is dark, the boards are wet.

  Water horse near, he seeks my life.

  To save myself, I hold my knife.

  Unseen by me, he gathers to leap

  And then I know, I’m not asleep.

  - Piju alet Kelpwa

  Piju hadn’t been in Waylaid’s good graces that morning. It was spring, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone would rather be inside the house than outside the walls. Waylaid had been comfortable in the attic and had preferred not to be disturbed.

  Piju agreed that silence was necessary for hunting, but reading was storytelling and should be done loudly with everyone sitting around listening. What was the point of reading if you were huddled silent in the corner? The Bolg didn’t read—the true speech couldn’t be written—but the Fomor had symbols for sounds they apparently didn’t want anyone to hear.

  Piju gathered his bird darts, tucking them into his bag, and attempted to go running. He set out at a good pace from the Library, but by the time he got to the bottom of the hill, he saw that the gates were closed. He slowed from his run, but the guards turned and formed a line against him. Did they think he was attacking?

  “We have a wild ‘un,” said the group leader.

  Piju spread his arms wide.

  “I am Piju, apprentice to Master Waylaid, I serve in the household of Mistress Brea, I am no enemy,” he said.

  The guards whispered quickly among themselves, then four branched to the left and four to the right. While most of the men wore thick red wool coats, the group leader could be identified by his white tunic with red trim. He wore a red leather vest
over it and looked quite impressive. The leader walked straight up to Piju, shield in his left hand, leveling a long spear with his right

  “Just come along with us, Bolg, and we won’t have to hurt you.”

  Piju ran. He spun in place and took ten paces straight up the hill, then broke left, hard enough to touch his left hand to the dirt. The spear thumped where he had been.

  He raced between the buildings, cutting left and right to stop the line of sight of the man running after him. He raced up the hill, and back into Mistress Brea’s Library. Despite his broken route, he reached her house before the guards. Her priests let him in and noted his distress.

  “Attacked?” they asked.

  Piju frowned.

  “They closed the gate, why’d they do that?” he asked.

  “No idea, little man,” Seth answered. “I know they do it. The guards get a bit testy, if you go for the gate. I’d warn you not to try it.”

  Piju gave his half shrug.

  “I’ll remember not to take a direct approach in the future,” he answered the Daen.

  The guardsman hammered on the door.

  “You have an escaped Bolg slave,” he shouted. “We mean to take him before he can kill again.”

  “You killed someone?” Seth asked.

  Piju looked confused.

  “No, not ever.”

  “Good.” Seth looked relieved. “If ole Halfhand thought you had gotten a kill in today ahead of him, well, he would have…” Seth looked around for Mistress Brea, “shit a Piju shaped brick, I assure you. Nobody gets first kill but the Mistress or Berin.”

  Piju nodded, and Seth went to the door with the rest of the house guard on duty. Piju had no idea what he was talking about but stood aside and wondered what could happen next.

  I killed someone? He tried to imagine how that might have occurred. Since he had never been taken as a slave, it made little sense to call him an escaped slave. Maybe they think I’m someone else?

  Berin answered the door, followed by six of Brea’s men. They spread out in front of the guards. At the gate, they might have been outnumbered as there were nearly a dozen men there, but only five soldiers had followed their Group Leader to the Judge’s Library.