The Broken Man

by Hawkings Austin

  There were sacrifices in the Holy Grove every single week: birds, lambs, and once a cow. But none of them were burned up more than the fire would explain. Usually, most of the sacrifices were skinned and stewed before the morning was finished. The Daen priests didn’t have any other source of meat.

  There had been a circle, centered over the slave quarters, where the birds would not land. He had searched the slave quarters and found the new bread oven. Waylaid had told him that one secret of the spirit hunters was to “Look for what is new, what is different. Look for what is old, what is unchanging.”

  Admittedly, I guess I didn’t find the new bread oven until I was locked inside it. But I should have. There may be some ancient Fomor artifact behind these killings, if only I could find it.

  Piju walked a long circle through the trees, jogging a bit in the late sunset, while there was still enough light. He managed a few thousand paces before the sun hit the top of Ard and then dropped to walking. There was still moon enough to see, for a boy raised in the woods. He was hoping to find something odd, something clearly uncommon in what seemed to be a very common wood.

  The track of a boar was uncommon. He studied the track for a while but it simply showed a young male who was wandering far for a new territory, probably looking for some sweet acorns up among the oaks. That wasn’t evidence for a murder. No, he thought, but it was probably evidence of a cold winter to come.

  The new bread oven had sat at the center of the circle of dead birds. That had been a point for finding a restless spirit, even if he hadn’t seen it at the time.

  I would have found a way to be a hero for Roe in any case, wouldn’t I? I didn’t have to be stupid about it.

  He kept walking; the small deer had been common here, when he had first come to Ard. Now the southern wood was mostly hunted out. Someone has been reducing the roe considerably. He had seen the sign of the Bolg on the hill behind the murder, but this was the sign of a hunting team. He cataloged each beast and each bush. The lore of the Pywer wood was in him, and he could remember the rhyme for each berry―good or poison. None would cause the eyes to turn dark.

  Well, he admitted to himself, the symptoms were similar to Yew poisoning, but significantly worse. If it had only been the one girl, then her death would just be one of those strange things that you can’t explain which nonetheless happened. Those unexplainable things happened all the time. Only the Ruad philosophers thought that there was an answer for everything. But―Piju found himself agreeing with his hypothetical Ruad―a dozen children all dying in the same way must have been caused by something. Piju just didn’t know what.

  The Burning Ghost was caused by a Fomor sorcerer. Mind you, one who had been dead for over a thousand years, but still, it seemed reasonable that there should have been a grave on that hill where the children played, an old tomb that the children had opened. A children’s fort mistakenly built upon the grave of an ancient Fomor sorcerer. Now that was a good story, maybe that was the way he would tell it, but there had been nothing on that hill. It had never even had a house on it. The rocks were too uneven.

  The skull lay a few feet to the side of the trail, picked clean by animals; the skeleton wasn’t visible. Piju stopped and listened, but the early night continued around him. He stepped over and picked up the skull; the skeleton lay under leaves and scattered about the woods, spread over a few paces. There was no sign of a leather vest or a tunic, but the breeches were still intact. The baldric had a fine sheath on it. Piju drew the blade; it was a fine bronze eating knife. The linen cord wrapping of the hilt showed that it was a western style. The owner had been a young boy, less than twelve years old, a Bolg.

  The Burning Ghost hadn’t killed anyone, but frightened everyone in the slave quarters. Piju hadn’t seen it, not as Sunny had, but he had tried to talk to it. He had sent Roe to get Waylaid but had gone ahead and foolishly tried to talk to the thing. The man, he reminded himself. The man had died more than a thousand years ago, but he was still a man. Piju had wanted to play the hero, but it was stupid, really stupid, showing off for Roe.

  Hi, I’m the great spirit hunter, and I’ve come to save you.

  He had deserved what had come of that. The ghost had tricked him. He should have run, no one was watching, but he had walked right into that oven without thinking.

  That ghost hadn’t wanted him dead, though it had almost killed him. This ghost killed people. The death of a Bolg boy made this strangely personal. This was a small boy, still in his breeches with only an eating knife at his belt. Piju had been a boy like that only a handful of years ago.

  He had worried that the killer might have been a Bolg. Someone had been at the top of the rocky hill the children played on, a Bolg far from home. If this thing killed Bolg as well as Ruad, it wasn’t one of his people. Whatever his race, no one raised in a Bolg village would kill a child like this.

  The Bolg have wars, even civil wars, but we don’t war on children.

  Piju didn’t know what the boy was doing so far from home, but he was out here at least a few weeks’ travel from his home. He wasn’t killed by a human weapon, or anything else that broke bones. He had fallen down and died, about a moon ago.

  Piju placed the skull back with the chest.

  “I hope someone called for you, brought your spirit home.”

  After Waylaid had freed him from the oven, he had told him that he had planned a sacrifice and that he had planned ahead and carried a pigeon on him. The dried-up corpse of the pigeon was still in his pouch, proof of the sacrifice made.

  Piju hadn’t planned ahead, but the Burning Ghost had. It had wanted his blood. Piju didn’t know what would put this new ghost to sleep, but it wouldn’t be his blood.

  The poor boy’s skeleton was also not on some ancient Fomor temple. It was lying in the woods, far from anyone. Piju moved on, careful in the moonlit darkness. He kept searching for anything that might explain the real question.

  Who would kill a child?

  Last winter he had asked Waylaid when he would become a journeyman. Waylaid had answered in his usual gruff manner.

  “What are you a journeyman of?” Waylaid had laughed at Piju’s confusion and said, “When you have an answer for me, I will have an answer for you.”

  “I am a hunter.” That was all Piju could answer, which wasn’t anything Waylaid could teach. Waylaid couldn’t make Piju a Master Hunter, because Waylaid was a Master Spirit Warrior. Piju couldn’t see spirits, couldn’t hear spirits, there was nothing Waylaid could teach him.

  What is Waylaid’s apprentice doing in the middle of this Fomor-haunted place? Piju asked himself, looking about the lonely forest. If he wanted to be a hunter, he should sell himself to the Ruad. They had need of hunters. That left an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

  “The Ruad won’t take me as a journeyman, and I won’t be a slave.”

  So, the philosopher side of his brain asked again. What are you doing in the middle of the forest in the dead of night?

  “Hunting?” he answered, but Waylaid doesn’t teach hunting.

  Maybe you should go back to Leest, to Abernehh, there is a nice boat there with your name on it.

  “The problem with arguing with yourself,” Piju said, “is that your opponent really knows how to hurt you.

  “Roe thinks I’m a sorcerer’s apprentice.” He smiled as he moved through the trees. Anything Roe was happy about was good for him.

  Did she want you to become a sorcerer? Piju had a strong feeling that being a sorcerer was a lot less romantic than it sounded. Waylaid thought it was evil to be a sorcerer, so he might not teach him. But sorcery had already involved him nearly dying in a bread oven. He couldn’t really imagine a more embarrassing death.

  “Perhaps sorcery is out.” The snide little comments his subconscious made had gotten him angry.

  “I’m hunting for whatever is killing those children,” he said, then hushed himself. That was stupid, talking out loud when I am supposed to be hunting.

&nb
sp; Sorcerer’s journeyman? Hunter? What does it matter what I am called if there is a child dying out here tonight? It slid together in his head like the stringing of a bow. I am hunting evil. Ghost, poisoner, beast, or sorcerer, I am a great hunter and I will find it.

  I do need to know some of Waylaid’s skills, but I know what I am now. I will tell him I am a hunter, and he will teach me what I need to know. He didn’t need Waylaid to teach him how to walk in the woods at night, and he didn’t need to see ghosts. He would find this monster his way.

  He smiled and moved forward through the trees. Not more confident that he knew what he was doing, but more confident that he knew why he was doing it. There was a child going to die this morning. It was a whole night away, but he’d rather his spirit walked the Earth a thousand years than he let this happen to another little boy or girl.

  The voice in his head didn’t know it was time to shut up.

  Could Piju be a parent? It asked. Buck certainly needed a father. No Ruad would claim him with his black hair, whoever the father might be, and it wasn’t likely that any family-centered village Bolg would either. He had a sudden wash of sympathy for Samu, who was not likely to be accepted by any tribe, no matter who his father or mother was. Piju was as aware of life without a family as anyone could be. It was hard to grow up when no one would claim you and no one would claim Buck.

  Except me.

  The woods were darker in this area, thick with pine trees and a slow moving stream. The ground grew wet, but there was a bog mound up ahead, and it rose, treeless, like a shallow hill above the forest. The deer path slid through the absolute blackness of the pine trees into a few paces of swampy mud covered in waist-high reeds. He parted the reeds and continued up the hill.

  A small corner of the moon still sat upon the horizon, lighting the hill in a weird black and white approximation of the day. The bog hill was dark from its purple grass and heather, and quiet this deep in the night. Only birds and rabbits made a life in bog grass, but at the top of the hill, the rocks had been piled up into a big white mound. It was a burial cairn.

  Piju crouched at the edge of the field, his bare feet ankle deep in the water and hidden in the reeds. He looked out at the cairn.

  How long has that been there?

  Piju knew that the Daen never buried anyone on a bog. Peat bogs aren’t dirt, so the body didn’t touch the ground, and that meant that their spirits weren’t destined for the judgment of their Blessed Mother. Any other people might do it, but spirits were known to walk from places like this. You might as well bury someone on a road for all the peace they’d get. A burial on a bog mound was really no different than losing a boat at sea. You knew that if the spirits found their way to shore, they’d haunt you.

  He wondered if this was the place he was looking for. The brightness of the moon discouraged him for a while, as the bog hill had almost no cover to it. Heather and purple grass wouldn’t cover anything bigger than a rabbit. There were two scrub pines that might have made great cover, if there had been ten or twenty of them. A single ancient oak stood watch at the eastern side of the hill, nearly back into the forest. Maybe there had been a ritual ring about its base, sometime in the past. The ground there was clear of the stones and logs that littered the hill elsewhere. There wasn’t much at all that could be called cover and it wasn’t arranged in any way that made his approach to the mound secret.

  The moon finally set, and he slid along the ground like a hunting cat making his way between the scrub and grasses toward the cairn. He let his thoughts be the hunting cat’s, whose tattoo was sixth on his arm.

  “Wait for the breeze to blow, slide forward with it. Drop to the ground and breathe the peat into your nostrils. Push down your fingers into the spongy ground and slide between the heather.” There was no motion from the rocks and no strange scent that disturbed his nostrils.

  The field was still in the night, lit only by starlight, and moving only as the grasses swayed in the evening breeze. Piju reached the cairn and softly laid his hand upon the stones at its base.

  Go back! rang in his mind.

  A hand like a bony claw hooked at his neck and he twisted away, throwing himself across the heather. It had torn the side of his neck, and he was bleeding freely. He rolled to his feet and drew his bronze fighting knife…and saw nothing. Something stood before him. A terrible certainty entered his mind that a creature stood before him. He could not see it, but still it stood there.

  Slowly the movement of an unfamiliar constellation resolved to him. There were stars moving inside the shape of a man. The beautiful red stars moved within the shape, rebounding from the edges of his outline. Piju didn’t move and neither did the creature but slowly the moving stars gave him the outline of a man dressed in a great robe. His hands had but two great fingers which hung like meat hooks from his sleeves.

  Piju barely dared to breathe, but this apparition held still, between him and the pile of stones, the beautiful stars clear against the night sky. There was an eruption of light, filling the crevices of the creature. For an instant, the robe was white, and the hands were bony fingers. There was no head upon the shoulders of the robe. The light faded but left behind twin red gleams above the robe, eyes in the darkness without a head to hold them.

  Child of the Bolg, the words filled his mind, but not his ears. He imagined it speaking to him but could not hear it. It wanted him, his blood and his life, to join the beautiful stars at its heart. The burning eyes left the body of stars standing beside its grave and moved slowly toward him. Join me, Child of the Bolg.

  Piju ran.

  He had never been lost in the woods, so he knew within a handful of paces the trace of the path, the location of his friends, the clearing, the child’s house, and lastly, the one he hoped would be there. Running, he prayed most fervently. “Father, Spirit of my Father, help me find my Master.” He ran for Waylaid.

  CHAPTER 12 THE CIRCLE OF DEATH

  The Night, Midsummer’s Day, Year Twenty-Seven of King Cail’s Reign

  His blood drips, from my knife,

  Spirit slips, from this life.

  He awakes, at Death’s door,

  Hunger takes, a thousand more.

  - High Priest Bran aFomori

  “The moon is down,” Waylaid said. “I hope that Piju can get out of the woods alive.”

  Brea looked at Waylaid. “Alive?” She shook her head. It had been a long day, and she had been sleeping, sitting up, in the small room.

  Brea and Waylaid had been talking, and Waylaid had fallen asleep, leaning on the wall. But the setting of the moon had awakened him as easily as the rising of the sun wakes a farmer.

  “Hmm?” said Waylaid. He frowned at her. “Didn’t I say before? This creature walks the edges of the moon. This makes him a creature of sorcery; he functions best when neither the sun nor the moon are in the sky.”

  “Will sunlight destroy him?” she asked.

  “No, of course not, spirits walk in the day as easily as the night.” Waylaid wondered what the Blessed Folk taught their children; his childhood had contained thousands of lessons about ghosts.

  “Still,” he amended. “I believe his sorcery won’t work in full sunlight. I expect he is using the power of Transitions to steal souls. Transitions work best at sunset, at dawn, the setting of the moon. Timing is very important.” Waylaid was lost in thought for a moment.

  “Piju should be back soon,” he continued. “If he is coming at all. If we’re lucky, he has found something. Perhaps it is time to wake the others?”

  The others were already awake.

  Piju’s run wasn’t as fast as he could manage in daylight, but it was pitch black under the trees. He knew the direction of Ard, it was a finger north of due west. The stars were visible, but the trees around him were only slightly lighter than the ground. The trail was pitch black and the stream was a flash of comparative light.

  He tried to re-trace his steps, but he wasn’t sure of every turn of the deer track. It was easy
to get tangled in the undergrowth. He paused to orient himself by the stars, and realized he could see the fields through the trees. The hair on the back of his neck was rising, and he was running out of time. He ran. In three great bounds, he had left the woods and hit the fields.

  Crossing the fields in the dead of night was easy. The wheat glowed in the starlight, a clean white expanse, and he ran, lifting his feet above the furrows, guessing the hidden terrain from any dip or darkness in the grain.

  The distance between the cairn and the farm wasn’t as far as he could run in a flat out sprint, but it was late. He felt drained, near to death. The encounter with the headless ghost had left him strangely weak, and he needed to lie down for a while. He focused.

  I have to reach Waylaid, I have to reach Waylaid. The night became an endless sequence of steps. Have I crossed a thousand? His hands had twitched open and lost his count.

  In the children’s clearing, Keynan and Seth sat, feeding twigs into a small fire. Oren stood at the edge of the forest, listening.

  “Hush,” said Oren, “I hear something.” Keynan stilled his dogs and they stood, waiting, in the moonlight.

  Piju saw the lights by the house from the edge of the fields. In the dark at over a thousand paces; he had missed his aim by less than the width of the field. There was only a small campfire and a few small oil lamps, but they seemed more light than half of the heaven’s stars. He pounded across the last field and saw Seth, Oren, and Keynan waiting on the road across the field from Ella’s small house.

  Piju didn’t see Waylaid. His imagination brought the ghost hard on his heels, so he did not stop but pounded up the slope to the house.

  The others had but a second to hear the soft padding of bare feet in the field, the swish of the summer wheat, and then Piju burst through them without a pause. The image in the firelight, his hair disheveled, blood streaming down his chest, bronze fighting knife still clutched in his fist. He leaped across the fire and disappeared up the slope of vines with no more sound than he had made through the fields. The slam of the house’s door sounded mere heartbeats afterwards, and they all stood, confounded.