by Robert Earl
They circled around her, silent as ever, apart from the clip of their claws on the cobbles, and the hiss of their excited breathing.
The old woman didn’t slacken in her pace as she walked though them. Nor did she speed up. She merely glanced at the twisted form of the thing that had made the mistake of stepping in front of her, pointed an arthritic finger towards it, and muttered a single, terrible word.
It was still screaming as she walked over to its twitching body, stamping down with her hobnailed boots to feel the satisfying snap of bone.
She smiled, pleased to have been distracted from thoughts of the awful bargain she was about to make.
The smile died on her face as, to a chorus of sudden whimpers from the carrion eaters, a form emerged from the doorway of one of the houses. Even with eyes as sharp as needles in the dark, the old woman couldn’t make out more than the outline of its shape, for which she was thankful. Anyway, she didn’t need eyes to see it with. It radiated such a sense of raw, murderous power that its presence throbbed in her mind with the same dull insistence as a rotten tooth.
She curtsied, her mouth suddenly dry.
“My Lord Ushoran,” she hissed, her voice little more than a death rattle, “I bring you tribute, and I ask for a favour.”
With that, she laid down the form of the bundle she carried, returning the child that Chera had taken to the fate that had found it.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Revenge is a delicacy to be enjoyed at leisure. Retribution is a duty that will not wait.”
– Inscription found on a Strigany dagger “Good girl,” Dannie said, leaning forward to whisper into his mare’s ears. They framed the path along which she was galloping, racing along it with wild abandon. “Good girl. You can do it.”
The mare bunched her shoulders, and leapt over the fallen trunk that blocked the deer path. Her hooves sparked against shale as she landed, and then she turned to hurtle around the bend that cut through the trees ahead.
Like all the forests that clung to the barren slopes beneath the Grey Mountains, this one was sparse and ill-favoured. Only the most stubborn of evergreens could live on the poor soil, and the trees that did manage to survive were bent and misshapen.
The shadows the trees cast were thick and black, but the bars of sunlight that cut through them flickered across Dannie’s face. When the sunlight hit him, his hazel eyes glowed as yellow a tiger’s, and his mane of black hair took on a raven’s wing sheen.
“Good girl,” he whispered again, resting his hands on his mare’s neck. He had known her ever since she had been a foal, and, as always, he was riding her like a true Strigany, with neither saddle nor bridle. He could feel her pulse as it pounded beneath his fingers and thighs. He could feel her terror, too. It matched his own.
The mare took the corner fast, too fast. Her hooves skittered across a sudden slide of shale, and her legs almost went from under her. Dannie reacted instinctively, twisting to one side to help her to keep her balance, and then she was away again, ears laying back flat as she sped forward.
He didn’t like the way her breath was beginning to sound, or the way that the sweat that soaked her fur was starting to foam. She was a good old girl, but not meant for the gallop, especially not on these treacherous paths. Maybe it was time to drop her pace.
He snatched a look back over his shoulder, and any thoughts of slowing down vanished.
Despite the suicidal speed with which they had been tearing through the switchback circuits of the deer paths, the pursuing boars had drawn even closer to them. He thought that there were about half a dozen of them in pursuit, half a dozen of the ugliest animals Dannie had ever seen.
The first one was so close that he could see the murderous glint in its piggy eyes. The thick fur of its mane bristled as it powered forwards, its thick legs and low centre of gravity ideal for this rugged terrain. As Dannie watched, the animal burst through a spill of sunlight, and he could see the saliva that glistened on its tusks.
But if the boar was ugly, its rider was positively grotesque. Despite the mottled green skin that showed through its rags, and despite the simian stoop of its misshapen body, the orc looked more boar than humanoid. It had the same vicious little piggy eyes and the same yellow-fanged snarl.
Dannie’s mare whinnied a warning. He turned in time to duck beneath the branch that would have cracked his head open.
“Thanks, girl,” he whispered, and wondered what to do. He knew that there would be no outrunning the boars. His mare was almost winded, while the boars looked as though they could roll along at the same speed all day.
He reached down and touched the head of the hatchet that he wore on his belt. It gave him a feeling of comfort, although he knew that the feeling was misplaced.
His mare slowed as she rounded another corner, but this time, after she had taken it, she didn’t accelerate away. She couldn’t. Her flanks heaved in and out as she sucked in air, trying to fuel the burning muscles that could barely manage a canter.
Dannie resisted the urge to dig his heels in. It wouldn’t do any good. Then he remembered the pack he carried, still bulging with next week’s provisions, and cursed himself for a fool. He couldn’t believe he had made her carry the weight of it thus far.
“Sorry old girl,” he said and, shrugging the pack off his back, he threw it behind him. The leather split as it hit the ground, spilling dried fruit and jerky everywhere, but Dannie didn’t see it. His eyes were locked on the boar that was barely twenty feet behind them.
Then, like some miracle from a petru’s story, the animal halted, stopping so suddenly that the orc that rode it was sent flying over its head. Lumps of the boar’s mane remained in its green clawed fists, and both it and the animal squealed with pain.
Dannie watched, as, pausing only to snarl at its erstwhile rider, the boar lowered its head to start gobbling up the strips of jerky. Those behind it, their noses as finely tuned to the aromas of such delicacies as their leader’s, soon joined the feast.
Dannie’s mare jinked through a bend, and the last he saw of his pursuers was the sight of two boars turning on each other to fight over the leather of his satchel. Their riders were too busy to try to break it up. Their harsh-tongued recriminations had already turned to violence.
Their squeals of rage, pain and greed followed him down the deer path, and Dannie realised that he was laughing, laughing so hard that it hurt. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he leant down to cling to his mare’s neck so that he wouldn’t fall.
Gradually, he got himself under control, and, realising that the pursuit was over, he soothed his mare down to a walk, and then slipped off her back to walk beside her. They soon reached the stream that they had followed up into the hills from their caravan. They stopped by a pool, where Dannie let his horse drink.
He could feel her breathing returning to normal as she relaxed, and he felt the euphoria of pure relief.
“That was a damn close-run thing,” he told her, “and damned lucky. I think that the fates have something in store for us.”
He patted his mare on the shoulder, and led the way back towards the wagons of his domnu’s caravan, the sun drying his shirt on his back. The first sign that something was wrong was the smoke, not that smoke wasn’t one of the constant aromas that clung to a Strigany encampment. The first thing that any caravan did when it stopped was to build fires for cooking and for light, and for telling stories over.
The smoke that rose from beyond the hill where Dannie’s caravan had made camp was wrong. There was too much of it, for one thing, great billowing clouds that drifted far up into the clear blue of the midmorning sky. No Strigany would have wasted fuel on such an inferno.
The smell was wrong, too. It was acrid, as if somebody was burning paint or varnish as well as wood. There was even a hint of burnt meat. It reminded Dannie of something that he didn’t want to remember.
Putting it to the back of his mind, he swung himself up onto his mare.
He’d been wal
king alongside her ever since their escape from the boar riders the day before, and her wind was back. As soon as he touched his heels to her flank, she broke into a trot, and then a canter.
“It’s nothing to worry about, old girl,” Dannie told her. “They’re probably just clearing some ground, using varnish to set the green wood on fire.”
The mare slowed as she started climbing the hill. They had passed the last copse of trees at dawn, and, ever since, there had been nothing but the close-cropped pastureland that covered the hills in a velvet carpet.
“It could be a lantern fire,” Dannie muttered, unconsciously lifting his head to see over the ridge of the hill. “Somebody could have dropped a lantern, or spilt some paraffin, or…”
The mare had stopped at the crest of the hill. Dannie gazed down on the camp site.
It was a moment that he would never forget. Years later he would still find himself waking from nightmares born of the memory, his skin pale and his blankets soaked with sweat. Sometimes the horror would even find him in the clear light of day, coming from nowhere to break the peace of the present with visions of the past. When that happened, even those whom he later learned to love would avoid him, waiting for the embers of his rage to die back down.
On the actual morning, and at the actual place, he felt neither rage nor sorrow. What he felt was numbness: bone deep and complete.
The burning remains of the wagons were laid out, just as they had been when he had left to go hunting. Although the canvas and wood of each wagon was no more than a burning ruin, he could still tell which family had owned each, just by their position.
His heels seemed to move of their own volition, and he clipped them into the mare’s flanks. She responded reluctantly her ears fluttering nervously as she descended towards the holocaust below.
As Dannie drew nearer, the pall of smoke that hung over the ruins of his caravan enveloped him, the sting of it bringing tears to his eyes. He peered through it, and for the first time he saw the charred bundles that lay amongst the burning wagons. He realised where the burnt meat smell was coming from, and what meat it was that was being burnt.
His mare hesitated at the perimeter of the encampment. It hadn’t been fortified. Why would it have been? Dannie’s people had stopped here many times in the past, and the only people they’d seen had been shepherds, weathered men glad of the chance to trade some mutton for pipe weed, and for company to smoke it with.
Dannie looked at the churned-up ground that lay between the burning wreckage of the Striganies’ wagons. Through the haze of his shock, he had guessed that the things that had done this had been the same ones who had almost caught him the day before. Now, he could see that he was wrong. The ground had been cut up by horses’ hooves, and steel-shod ones at that.
“Hold,” he told his mare, and slipped from her back. He bent down to study the hoof prints. He wanted to remember the size of them, the pattern, and the number of nails the blacksmith had used.
Then he came across the bloody smear of one of the drag marks that led to a burning wagon, and the strength bled from his legs. He collapsed onto the ground, and sat there in silence, his legs out in front of him, his head in his hands.
The sun rolled across the clear blue sky ahead. The fires roared and spluttered. Then they collapsed into piles of glowing ash, red-hot nails and soft, chalky bones. The first of the stars emerged. In the distance a fox barked.
When the chill of night fell upon him, he started to shiver. His mare, who had wandered off to graze, came back. She sniffed at him, and nibbled a lock of his hair. Then she lay down behind him so that he had her warmth and solidity at his back.
When morning came, Dannie got to his feet, and, burned-out pyre by burned-out pyre, said blessings over the ashes of his people, the aunties and uncles, and cousins and friends who had raised him since his own parents had died; the domnu who had given him permission to leave the caravan when he had, and the petru who had taken him as an apprentice and begun to teach him his trade.
Only then did he start to think about revenge. Dannie caught up with the raiders two days later. It had been an easy enough pursuit. They had made no effort to hide their tracks, and the weight of their loot and the plodding pace of the stolen carthorses had slowed them down.
It was the deep crescent hoof prints of his people’s horses that Dannie had followed. Them and them alone. That was why he had never lost his quarry, even at the ford where they had crossed through the confusion of other tracks, or on muddied crossroads he had come across this morning.
His pursuit over, he lay flat on top of a ridge, the sun warm on his neck and the grass soft beneath him. The keep to which the raiders had returned lay perhaps half a mile away. It was a squat block with a slanting tile roof, one of the many fortified manor houses that were scattered across the grasslands that lay between Altdorf and the Grey Mountains.
There wasn’t much to the fortress, just two storeys topped with a red tile roof, and a wooden stockade for the horses. Inside there would be a garrison of perhaps two dozen men, and the tax collector or administrator of some local prince.
For all he knew, Dannie’s caravan might even have stopped at this very place, to trade in trinkets or spirits, or music.
He was wondering about that when, with a shock that hit him like a punch in the stomach, he realised that those days were gone. Valli would make no more trinkets. The petru would make no more spirits. The harps and flutes of the Skudu brothers had burnt with their bones.
All of them were gone. The caravan was gone. All that remained was him, some windblown ashes and the carthorses that he could see within the stockade.
The sun lost its warmth on Dannie’s neck, and the ground beneath him felt as hard as a slab of stone. He wiped a hand across his eyes, blinked, and tried to concentrate on the tower. At that moment, a cold eastern wind lifted the banner on the battlements, and he saw the device upon it: nine golden balls on a black field.
Deciding that he had seen enough, he slithered back down to where his mare was patiently grazing. He slipped onto her back and dug his heels in.
He knew what he had to do. Although the thought of it was terrifying, it was as nothing compared to the emptiness, the unbearable, amputated emptiness that the raiders had left him.
Well, he thought as he cantered east, they will pay. They will pay in such full measure that I could almost feel sorry for them… almost.
He dug his heels in even harder, and his hair flattened as the mare broke into a gallop.
CHAPTER SIX
“As hard as steel
Though never seen breaking?
Made to last
Though never through making?”
– Strigany riddle Domnu Brock’s caravan opened for business. Every single member of the caravan knew his or her job. They also knew that the first day of business had to be carefully managed.
There were the clusters of children who had spent the previous day collecting flowers, and who went to distribute both blooms and invitations to the good wives of the town. There were the two men who had been dispatched to give the mayor a demijohn of brandy, and to find out if he might have any other, more entangling desires.
Back in the encampment, other Strigany, who had spent the previous day testing the wind, used the embers of the watch fire to build the roasting pit. It was positioned perfectly to catch the breeze, and by lunchtime the rare smell of spiced roast goat would fill the streets of the town to set mouths watering.
As well as these old tricks there were a dozen other enticements. Some of the girls heated the blood of Lerenstein’s watchmen with flashes of warm thighs and even warmer glances. Meanwhile, the musicians had started to strum out the first of the tunes on their lutes, and Ursus, the caravan’s dancing bear, yawned and stretched, preparing to earn the scraps of honeyed biscuits his handler trained him with.
Despite these efforts, it was almost noon before the first party of townsfolk summoned up the courage to leave their walls an
d venture into the strange new world of the Strigany camp.
There were maybe twenty of these brave souls, and when they came, they came huddled together as if in fear of some sudden ambush. Domnu Brock watched them from the shadowed stoop of his caravan, a wry smile creasing his scarred face. It was always the same: first a scouting party of the boldest or most curious, then the pause as they returned with their stories, and then the avalanche of the rest of the town.
It pleased him that business required these first few visitors to be rewarded. Brock was a man who valued courage, and it was fitting that these peasants’ relative bravery was met with generosity.
He watched approvingly as a couple of the caravan’s youths greeted the Lerensteiners. At first, the townsfolk remained stony-faced, but soon a few of them were smiling at the Striganies’ practiced patter. Then, slowly as melting ice, the group began to break up, as the individual members caught sight of baled cloth, or the shine of jewellery, or the black silk of the fortune teller’s tent.
Some of them gathered around Mihai, too. He was standing in the boxing ring, stripped to the waist, with his arms outstretched. Usually, he would have been clowning around in the ring with either the twins or with Ursus, providing some entertainment until the locals’ machismo got the better of their common sense.
Judging by the Lerensteiners’ response to the sight of his punishment, Brock decided as he sidled closer, Mihai and the twins had been wasting his effort. The sight of Mihai’s discomfort seemed to be entertainment enough for the good people of Lerenstein.
“Why are you standing like that?” one asked. He had the pink face and beer barrel belly of a successful brewer, and Brock knew that he would be worried about the competition. He marked the man for special treatment later-one of the girls, perhaps, or a prize.