by Toby Bennett
“Want some grub, Mr. Blake?” The youngest of the crew, little more than a boy, asks him as he distributes food cooked over a small and constantly monitored brazier. Unlike most boats, which would take to shore during the night, the mail boat kept going. It was not yet summer and the middle of the river was deep and free of obstacles, since the captain’s bonus relied on how fresh his news or whatever perishables he might be transporting were, the crew simply rigged up two strong lanterns the bow of the boat and trusted to their knowledge of the river.
“Want some grub?” The boy repeats the question, proffering a bowl of steaming stew and waving a chunk of dark bread. Sam blinks, for just a second he can see the road map of veins and arteries running through the boy; he can follow the heat as it flows from his heart and stomach into his limbs, not quite so hot as the stew but far more appealing to the dark voices calling him from the twilight. His lip curls involuntarily as he looks at the bowl. Then, with an act of will, he nods his head and joins the boy and the captain around the metal stand and its collection of glowing coals.
Almost as soon as he feels the heat of those coals and the warmth of the stew in his throat, he loses some of the predatory desire that had stirred in him moments before and he is able to smile his thanks.
“I thought so,” the captain says raising his own bowl in acknowledgement, “the cold on the river creeps up on a desert man.”
“The nights are cold there, too,” Sam answers, looking west, past the horizon.
“I know my father used to be prospector before we earned enough to move to the river.”
“He must have been lucky, lots of folks spend their whole lives saving for that move.”
“He was very lucky, but he was a hard man, he did whatever it took to get here, had this boat made from the best timbers and started learning how to sail. I still say he never learned to use an oar half as well as a pick. He just never got used to the water or the river’s moods but I did and I don’t think I’d ever have got used to the dark and smoke of those mines. So he done alright by me, my pa. Any rate cold here’s different than out on the sands, it’s the water, gets into your bones they say. I could see something was creeping over you as the shadows lengthened, nothing like a good hot meal to bring a man back to himself.”
“Yes, thank you, it’s been a long time since I had good company at supper time.”
“Thought as much,” the boatman agrees amiably, dipping his bread into the meaty stew, “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your hurry to get down to Olstop?”
“I wondered why you didn’t ask that earlier.”
The captain shrugs. “You had the money and often people in a hurry don’t like being asked their business. I need the money and saw no reason to put you off. I thought that now that you are on board and we’ve shared a meal would be a better time to ask, just to satisfy my curiosity. Don’t bother to answer if you can’t tell me the truth.”
“The truth is, I’m actually headed for the other side of the river.”
The captain’s eyes widen slightly at this.
“The marshes? But why? There’s nothing in there and they’ve got a bad reputation for swallowing people.”
“I know their reputation, but I’ve got to get there quick. I won’t lie to you and I can’t tell you my reasons.”
“They must be unusual for you to go there, but if you want I can put you off on the right side of the river. It’ll save you having to back track from Olstop.”
“I’d be much obliged if you would.”
“I don’t know how much time it will save you though, at the rate we’re going we might reach the edge of the marshes before sun up, but you’d be a fool to venture in there before daylight.”
Sam grunts his agreement but pointedly does not comment on the captain’s last statement.
Nodding, as if having confirmed something, the captain returns to his own meal. “Beef,” he says breaking the silence, “you don’t get much of that out west do you?”
“No, even sheep are hard to graze past Silverspring, pork’s the staple meat and that’s not too common for most but a pig’ll eat most things, so they’re easier to keep.”
“When I was a boy some people even ate the bugs,” the captain comments, referring to the Bowl’s large population of insect life.
“I ate gritter once,” Sam muses, dunking his own bread, “the man who cooked it swore it was a delicacy but I certainly haven’t developed a taste for those sandy shelled monsters.”
“I’m surprised that he would give up such a valuable beast of burden, they’re the devil to train.”
“Its antenna had been mauled in an attack by an ant-lion,” Sam explains.
The captain nods sagely, the gritter is the second biggest insect in the Bowl and weighs about the same as a small horse, it is favoured by prospectors and civilians as a means of transport on the open sands since it can carry many times its own weight and is far more reliable than a horse in the deep desert, so long as speed is not your primary consideration. The biggest problem with gritters lies in overcoming their natural instinct to throw themselves under the sand at the first sign of trouble, an instinct developed to deal with the largest and rarest insect in the Bowl, the ant-lion. A series of stinging tentacles make up the lion’s ‘mane’ and the rest is a heavily mandibled insect, the size of a carthorse, that paralyzes and then masticates its victims.
“You’ve actually seen an ant-lion?” The youth asks.
Neither gritters nor ant-lions came anywhere near the river, since both species were prone to drown in more than a few inches of water.
“Not that time but I have once or twice, they’re rare except in the hottest parts of the desert, something to do with the mating cycle.”
“Did you ever kill one? You ever seen a mutant?” The youth asks.
“Jason, why don’t you go and see if Randy wants a turn by the fire?”
Jason frowns at the prospect of having to leave warmth and company in order to take his turn at watch but he leaves without comment, taking the rest of his supper with him.
“I’m sorry,” the captain says once he has gone “but I’d just as soon not fill his head with these things. Like a lot of people who grow up near the river, he cannot understand the hardships of the desert. He only hears what he wants to, strange creatures, silver and guns.”
“And demons! Don’t forget those,” Randy Corfin says, squatting down next to the two other men.
Though prematurely balding Randy puts a lie to any claim that rivermen are soft, he is nearly six and a half feet of solid muscle.
“Got some nonsense, from one of those new preachers down in IslandCity, that the devil is trying to take over the line and that all good believers have to stop him. Of course, that meant giving up a week’s pay, but Jason was glad to do it, I guess you can just be glad he wasn’t older when the Crusades came, he would have gone with them in a heartbeat and now, with their chapters running the South territories, he still might.”
“They only took it over to end the corruption begun by the Thatchers,” the captain says looking meaningfully at their passenger. The meaning was clear, careless talk could cost them business or worse.
“There was talk on out last run up the Snake that there might be a new Crusade brewing,” Randy continues, “the last thing we need is him hearing about that.”
“If he wanted to go we couldn’t stop him, he’s been sixteen for two months now.”
“Bah!” Randy scoffs, “he’s wetter than the underside of this boat. Can’t claim he’s a man just because his balls have dropped.”
The big man stops and takes a look at Sam, then evidently decides to continue talking, despite his captain’s warnings.
“I don’t know if you’re a religious man yourself? But I remember before all this madness came to the river. Now boys are being lured off to fight whatever bogey man those soul hungry crows can conjure up.”
“Anyone who has walked the Anvil is religious, Randy,
” the captain says, softly, “you’d understand that if you’d ever been further west than a curve in the river.”
“Well perhaps we have less use for gods here on the river, certainly used to have. As for you friend,” addressing Sam, “believe what you like but to my mind you should never follow a god that needs your money or your children to do his fighting.”
So saying the big man pulls a flask from his coat and takes a long pull before offering it around. Sam takes it gratefully enough and smiles back without commenting on the river- man’s words. In fact he is unsure as to whether he feels pity or envy for this man, so free of the strictures that so many take for granted, free from Sam’s certainty that both of them are damned.
*
At last the sun is down. At last the water and the mud have cooled, leaving only the stink of another day’s baking heat. A dark shadow stirs beneath the water of a moon-lit pool; black plates, made slick by the water, move over twisted bone and muscle. Dale is hungry, now that he is awake, even the small strain of keeping air flowing into the human trapped beneath his skin during the day time had been draining. Now he yearns to feed. Does he dare take something from his master’s prize? Even the thought causes the formation of myriad tiny barbs which press into Lillian’s limp flesh bringing her back to consciousness. Dale can taste the thin trickles of blood from her newly abraded skin and it is only with the greatest reluctance that he withdraws the goads in her flesh.
“Do not fear, beloved, you are sacrosanct, but I must feed. Must!” He is almost howling in frustration. Did Pellan care nothing for his child that he would ask this pain from him? The blood of an alligator would have to do. Cold and thin, no real sustenance but it was all there was to be had.
While the monster hunts, Lillian’s mind twists and turns, seeking some solution to her predicament. Although the cold dead flesh around her insulates her to an extent, having been buried and submerged for the whole day has left her body temperature dangerously low. Pure exhaustion had allowed her to sleep for a while but now the pain of nearly twenty four hours of being unable to shift her position and the cold of the water they have just left are conspiring to overturn her already fractured reason.
Warmth comes in the form of blood dribbling down from one of Dale’s many kills, a baptism that blinds her with sticky gore. Repeated blinking fails to dislodge the drying blood and mud and she all too quickly surrenders to a renewed sense of inevitability. It is not until the new voice has been talking for a while that she makes one more heroic effort to open her eyes and finds to her surprise that they open with ease, air flows in through her open nostrils as it has been doing, unnoticed, for the last few minutes. Her hand reaches up to touch her face, seeking the miasma that must be left by the marsh, but she finds only smooth skin and her hair feels as if it has been recently washed. It’s all true she tells herself it was all a dream, a horrible dream, I’m free, it never happened. It is dark in here but the blinds must simply have fallen shut. She reaches over for the bedside candle but instead her hand closes on dry reeds and beneath that moist earth. At last her mind allows her to register the voice which had reawakened her.
“What in nine hells were you thinking bringing her here like that?” The voice demands in a harsh whisper, “I’ve only just got her cleaned up and it’s mere hours till sunrise. She barely looked at me through the whole process! Do you think Pellan wants his prize in that condition? Do you think the other Elders will bid for her if she’s broken?”
“I was hungry, what was I supposed to do? I got the girl here in good time, didn’t I?”
“Only she may be completely mad and physically damaged! I even believe that she might have been suffering from exposure.”
“It’s not so easy caring for them, they’re weak. I did the best I could.”
“Would you like to tell Pellan that when he asks why she’s so fucked up? No? You surprise me.”
“I just got hungry, that’s all.”
“I could tell that! She’d been punctured.”
“I didn’t take anything .. hardly a drop.” Dale whines. “He won’t even notice, unless you tell him.”
“What should I say if he asks and he might well, the state she’s in!”
“What do I know about looking after the living? I’m a hunter not a nursemaid!”
“Something else I’m sure would help your case! You should really go and see him, Dale, explain a few things. I’m sure he’ll see your point of view.”
“No, please, Kurt, there must be something you can do.”
“We’ll do what I’ve already suggested, you make yourself scarce and we’ll keep her in there for a day. She’s not going anywhere. I doubt she even has any idea where she is, we can present her early tomorrow evening.”
“Thank you, Kurt, I’ll owe you one.”
“Just don’t think I’m taking the rap if she’s permanently damaged! And don’t play the innocent with me, I know you loved every minute. I’ll bet you went out of your way to torture her and not just because you were hungry.”
The voices begin to fade, as the speakers move away from the door, which Lillian now realizes, seals her in the almost total darkness of the earthen chamber. Despite the pain of cuts and aching muscles, she raises herself to her knees and tries to crawl closer to hear what is being said. A few feet from the door she understands what Kurt meant about her not going anywhere, as a chain unnoticed due to the darkness and the general numbness of her body, suddenly becomes taut. She is about to follow it back, to see how firm its point of attachment is, when the sound of footsteps becomes louder. The door opens abruptly letting in ruddy torchlight that seems dazzling by comparison to the darkness of her cell.
“Oh, you’re far tougher than I gave you credit for, I honestly thought you’d got lost in there, when I was washing you,” the voice, which Lillian had identified as belonging to Kurt, says amiably.
At that point Lillian becomes uncomfortably aware that her only item of clothing is a rough grey robe, which she had obviously been bundled into, after this unremembered cleansing process.
“Don’t worry, girl, I’m above such things,” Kurt assures her, reading her discomfort and favouring her with a smile that reveals a set of disturbingly sharp teeth. “Al, of course, is a different matter,” he laughs, turning his body to reveal the withered head sprouting next to his own.
Al’s face is that of a man, old beyond any human measure; wrinkled, almost shrunken. If she had to guess Lillian would have said that the head was dead, some grim puppet’s head that Kurt kept on his shoulder as an affectation but Al’s eyes still swim back and forth in their spongy, concave sockets adding animation and the impression of terrible life to his shriveled visage.
“Old Al’s my old head,” Kurt laughs, “not spoken in years. I thought he’d got too old to do much more than groan, but you should have seen him dribble when we got you out of those wet clothes.”
Lillian shivers inwardly at the thought of those poached egg eyes leering at her but she knows she cannot afford to show her disgust.
“Where am I and why have I been brought here?” She demands.
“And what would it matter if you knew where you were?” Kurt exchanges a knowing glance with his mummified second head.
“Wouldn’t do you no good if you did.” Al mumbles, in a voice little louder than a whisper.
“Well done, Al,” Kurt thrills, “I didn’t know you still had it in you, we haven’t spoken in so long that I really thought senility had gotten the best of you! You really have brought out the best in him, miss, he hasn’t spared me a word in ages.”
“You could thank me by telling me where I am.” Lillian struggles to keep control of her natural impulse to express her misery and frustration with a tirade of insults.
“Thank you? Thank you!” Kurt’s jovial expression suddenly slips. “You think I want him yabbering on in my left ear again?”
“But I thought…”
“The hell you did! What do you think it�
��s been like, watching my old head getting older and older, seeing the condemnation in his eyes. Why should I thank you for bringing him back?”
“I, I don’t know.” Lillian stammers, thrown off balance by Kurt’s mercurial mood swing.
“It’s not your fault I suppose, the old bastard would’ve piped up some time. If you really want to know where you are, you’re far underground, we call this place Eden, bit of a joke on the master’s part, I think and you’re not going anywhere because Eden is a warren to things far worse than Dale.”
“Dale’s the one that brought me here?” Lillian shudders at the memory.
“Indeed he is and if I told him you were talking now, he’d be back to drag you before the master, but I won’t, do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because Dale is stupid! All I have to do is keep you here till tomorrow evening, let some of your scars heal up an he’ll think he owes me big time. Round here favours are the only currency worth having.”
“Who is the master then? Why does he want me?”
“Favours always more favours,” Al mumbles, looking at her with both wild and runny eyes, “when you live forever, a favour can be a long term investment.”