by Paula Guran
A Clutch
Laird Barron
——
The man on the straw bed was done for, for sure. The young woman saw it plainly in his knotted muscles, heard it in his wet and ragged coughs. Moss lung, the wise women called the malady. Woodcutters, such as her uncle, risked it by hewing into fungi-encrusted cedars and firs. He gleamed with sweat. Three white hens clucked and fluffed themselves on their rack near his naked feet. The dog grumbled by the hearth, lost in a dream of the hunt.
“I am dying,” her uncle said. “Come near. You took me in and gave me shelter. Allowed me to call you daughter . . . You are a precious ornament to my worthless life. O my sweet fair one! Scrubber of pots, burner of suppers, nurse to wounded forest creatures, radiant of heart, and pure of virtue!” He relapsed, head lolling.
The woman ignored him until she finished stoking the fire. She gathered her skirts and came to kneel at his side. She laid her hand upon his brow. Hot as a skillet. It wouldn’t be long. Death whetted his culling knife out in the night gloom, ready to cut another soul off at the knees. She uncorked a bottle of whiskey and dribbled it over the man’s scabrous lips until he gagged.
“My parents are dead these nine years. You have stood in their place. You have cut the wood and killed the wolves. You were my father’s blood returned home at our darkest hour. O Uncle, of course you may call me daughter.”
“Uncle. Yes, uncle. That was the story.” The man tugged her sleeve. He seemed to gather his innermost reserves, for his expression smoothed and he spoke with a cold, uncharacteristic serenity. “The moon will roll like the bloody hub of a chariot through the branches of the crying sycamores. On nights such as this when the wind roars in the trees and the hearth coals glow like the eyes of the Black Dog itself, you and the whiskey are a comfort. The cottage seems so rude, the candle glow of our souls so feeble, yet from your cheerful mien I draw courage. You resemble so much your mother now, Creator rest her.
“Gazing upon the accumulated trinkets, my bitten axes, the salted venison, the burlap and the barrels, storm chests and sealed urns, and the painting of your mother in her maidenhood, I am struck by how little there is to show for the generations of labor, for the missing thumb, the broken back, the lungs infested with devil’s club spore. My drunkard’s breath rasping, slower and slower.
“You are a good girl. Alas, I must tell you something nevertheless. My deathbed confession. Before you came along, I swore I’d be crisped in the fires of hell rather than sire offspring. You are dearer to my heart than any golden treasure. I should have kept my word.”
“Sired off spring?” she said. “I don’t take your meaning.”
“I fear it will come to you.”
When I was young, the Emperor’s Highway ended a few leagues south of the Black Forest. Not like today where the road cleaves right through the middle and is lined with hostels and cheery inns thanks to the many reforms of the Empress, Creator bless and keep her from harm. No, in the olden times all you got were deer paths and howling darkness once you set foot off the porch. Men hunted in groups with flintlocks and spears and packs of hounds. Boar, bear, wolf, and worse, lurked. Even a few of the trees and some of the mossy boulders couldn’t be trusted. Vile spirits were loose in the world. Hapless travelers vanished. Burly hunters, too. The children are what bothered everyone the most.
Ours has ever been a family of foresters – hunters, trappers, fellers, every one. My great-great-great grandfather Abernathy Ruark settled right here on the southern verge of the forest just after the shouting ended over the botched succession of King Theobald. Abernathy and his kin were a band of scofflaws and partisans who fled north when the revolt went sour, but half the kingdoms were in the same pickle and a couple generations later all was forgiven, if not forgotten. Most of the wood folk returned to the cities once the Interregnum ended. The Ruarks stood fast and continued to carve a living from the banded oak and red walnut that southern lords and fat-bellied merchants hold so dear. We hunted the razorback boars and skinned the bears-that-speakthe-tongue-of-men. We will continue until the last of us has shuffled into the Hinterlands.
James Dandy was a friend in my youth. Yes, yes, the very highwayman and brigand who got himself hanged in King’s Grove two winters gone. Last of his line. He grew up hard as nails. His parents were put to the ax and his brothers taken in chains to Sad Island. The Kouadoi would have bagged him, too, if he’d not squirreled away beneath a pile of dung until they tramped down to their ships and went back over the sea to their great ruined empire of caverns in Mount Thrall. That marked him, surely it did. Not a bad sort, but not a good one either, and now he’s worm food with all the rest but yours truly.
Our misadventures were mainly his doing, or that of his cousins Manfred Hurt and Ike Lutz, both of whom had fled Westhold under a dark cloud. Man whores, the pair. Hurt convinced me to leave home and travel the kingdom in search of adventure. For a year I followed him around like a puppy, growing leaner and meaner with each passing week. We survived by laboring when there was labor, stealing pies from windowsills, whoring ourselves to monied folk, and so forth. I learned much of Dandy and his cousins. Much indeed.
I’d resigned myself to another dose of boot-leather soup when Dandy waved a handbill he’d snagged from the gutter. He proposed that we four should join a troop of other stout lads to answer the King’s call for a march into the worst part of the Black Forest – The Fells. Aye, The Fells, The Fells where the Jumping Jack dwells . . . The Ministry of Coin wanted to scour the ruins of them old fallen holds that lie sunk into the muck and mire. There’d been a war, always a war, and it drained the treasury. Matters were so dire, palace servants had taken to melting royal dinnerware for the gold. Shameful.
Eadweard Mingy sat the throne in those days. King Mingy’s mother died birthing him and he was raised by a witch from the Far East. The bat gave him a taste for the black arts, maybe for the Dark itself. What a wretched court his must’ve been. Damned if that warlock Jon Foot didn’t curry his favor all the years Mingy reigned. Jon Foot’s folly is why I’ll never step north of the Hunt River so long as I draw breath. Creator blast him.
After a roaring drunk, my friends and I got fresh tattoos and signed up with the Royal Army. They were pleased to snatch our service since we were accomplished woodsmen, or close enough for their uses. I hoped to see home again. Foolish boy was I.
Away we went – a full company of soldiers, laborers, potboys, and whores. One of a dozen such companies sent to spelunk for gold and precious relics and jewelry in the abandoned strongholds of the dead lords. Whispers were that the leaders of the expeditions reported not to the chancellery, but to Foot himself. He sought something other than mere gold or trinkets among the ruins.
Woe to us who discovered it for him.
We marched. North and north through the tilled and green lands around Great Port. North and north over the Tumwater and though the Wolverine Mountains a day’s ride from the sea. North and north again until we passed through Sterling and entered the Black Forest in the region known as Cottonwood Vale for the cottonwood trees that line the River Fetch.
Our troop was led by Captain Vanger – well known throughout the army as a genuine hard ass. Vanger the Incorruptible, Vanger the Whip. Captain brooked no nonsense among the ranks, squaddie or civilian. Carried a blacksnake whip at his belt – as the men all do in Carlsbad, which is where he’d been brought bloody and screaming into this evil world. Loved that whip, Vanger did. Could snap a fly off a man’s cheek at seven paces. Nobody was safe from it, either. That’s how Manfred Hurt lost a chunk of his earlobe – old Incorruptible popped it like a cherry over some trifling infraction or because he didn’t care for the look on the lad’s face. No, it didn’t teach Hurt much except to use a bit more stealth when fucking about. Only a bit.
North and north. Five days along the Left Hand Path where the canopy closes like an iron trap and sunbeams are wan. That way cannot be found anymore; it has overgrown and some sprats argue it
only exists in the addled minds of old men. Sprats with fewer teeth than before they say it to me, I aver.
Our scouts, a squad of Peloki warriors who wore topknots and red ochre war paint, had their chores cut out for them. You think our homely shack lies in the wilds, now, do you? Back then, the Left Hand was the only trail except what the animals made. Before the grand massacres that exterminated them once and for all, Malets and Hillmen skulked from the moors and hunted the forest. Not for game, mind you. Plenty of that in the highlands. The savages collected scalps from unwary southerners they caught with their breeches at half-mast.
None of us snot-noses had seen a genuine blue-belly, and despite the grim mutters among the veterans, we eagerly hoped to catch a glimpse. Some shit-eating fairy always lurks in the wings, waiting to grant an errant wish. Horses and donkeys went missing. Patrols spotted malevolent shadows flitting among the wagons and drove them away with torches and shouts. Finally, the Malets captured two lads on graveyard watch – snatched those unlucky boys smooth and quiet as weasels in the coop. Captain Vanger forbade any rescue mission into the deep undergrowth. He’d fought in the Battle of Thornwood and a dozen more on the Ynde subcontinent where tigers and their cults of worship roam the jungles. He knew the score. We marched onward and dusk came in a rich crimson blush through the foliage.
Deter Johansen and Marvin of Saltlick, those were their names. Healthy lads with good strong lungs. The boys’ screams echoed for two nights. Still echo in my mind sometimes.
Three more days northwest and we forded the River Hunt and soon came upon a marsh of pale moss. Across this bog spanned a rough path of rotted planks. Here lay the beginning of The Fells. The savages harried us no more. Even they were wise enough to stay clear of that cursed land with its toads, spiders, and poison clouds from the Fifty Years Fires.
The trails crisscrossed the Fells like veins in the back of a crone’s hand. Some called those paths The Gray Fingers, others, the Long Trail Winding. They branched every which way and as far as I know, wound on forever. Nobody can say who slapped them down in the first place. Perhaps it was the ancient kings or surveyors from the time of Argead of Enathia or his usurper son. What I do know is the horses and donkeys hated them. The soldiers hated them, too, but to step off the planks was sure death. The mud had no bottom and would suck a man straight down to hell.
More days of stumble and slog. Mosquitoes blacked the nets at night. Bloodsuckers droned so loud, you couldn’t hear the comrade snoring at you shoulder. Everybody had the shits. Lost four men and an entire string of horses to the bog water.
Autumn north of the Wolverine Mountains is dreary. Rain, muck, and leeches are what you’re in for. Our camps became restless as the priests argued with the officers on the matter of performing rites sacred to the season. The men were not particularly thrilled that the Feast of the Dead fell upon us as we journeyed across a land laid low by sorcery. We feared to off end the Powers, yet we dreaded to commence ceremonies that by necessity draw the attention of the Dark. Captain Vanger compromised by doubling wine rations and permitting the chaplain to affright us with gruesome tales of how the inhabitants of the region had all gotten themselves exterminated. The chaplain painted with broad strokes; the men were bumpkins and nitty-gritty details would have been wasted.
On the next to last evening of autumn, the army camped atop a butte that heaved from the quagmire. West lay the ruins of Castle Warrant. Warrant’s towers had crumbled and pieces of carved granite were embedded in the slope of the ridge it occupied. The vision of that night remains: a half dozen campfires in an encircling ring around the crown of our bluff, smoke rising into the grin of the skull moon; shattered battlements of the castle silhouetted against stars smashed so densely close together they formed bands of white and pink and smearing red. Gelid cold of the dark between the stars seeped across the void and stole my breath. I slept little.
At dawn, the soldiers dug earthworks. Captain Vanger hadn’t lived to earn silver in his whiskers by playing the fool. No guarantee the blue-bellies wouldn’t return in force or that the giant troglodytes of the deep swamp wouldn’t boil forth to ravish the men and slaughter the animals. We civvies were divided into small parties overseen by squads of light infantry and dispatched along vectors of approach.
Manfred Hurt and me were sent to a breach in the southern curtain wall. Dandy and Lutz got sent elsewhere with other laborers. I never saw Lutz again. He fell into a crevice. Plop.
With picks, axes, and pry bars we spent the hours until dusk chopping through thickets and rolling aside boulders to reach the outer courtyard. Mossy walls loomed overhead. Hurt asked me if I knew of the Warrants and why their castle was so damnably massive. It went against my grain to admit any sort of book learning to the oafs of my acquaintance, thus I broke wind and shrugged. Da had taught me to play it close to the chest. On the other hand, Ma had taught me to read, semi-educated lady that she’d been before her logger-love swept her away from civilization. I could’ve instructed my chum that this fortress had once held the Northwest Marches against the Noord, those fathers of Malets and Grethungs and the Peloki, indeed, a hundred other tribes that fell to barbarism when the great Empire Across the Sea receded into itself. They called her Castle Warrant, yet she’d served as the steading of many a noble family until the Belfours lost her during the Interregnum.
I could’ve also mentioned the rumors of madness and depravity that possessed the Balfour family decades before the wars. My grandmother waited on the famed historian Grote of Lygos, and she read over his shoulder when he recorded the Red Treatise of Diebold and the North. She’d muttered of bloody orgies and foul sacraments that occurred in many of the north holds of a certain era. A vile cult infiltrated the ranks of the noble families, corrupting those fair knights to the ways of evil, and ultimately destroying them from within. Traffickers with the Dark, Gram said of the cultists. Were she yet living, she would not have approved of our traipsing about the ruined estates of those who’d perished in the thrall of wormy perversions.
No way could I speak any of this to loutish Hurt. He cursed the Crown in one breath and praised it with the next. Over a supper of boiled oats and salted pork, a strapping blacksmith’s son named Henry Bane gripped my shoulder in his ham hock fist. “Don’ go back in the morn,” he says to me. I ask why not and he says he beheld a crow peck the eye from a dying mule. The crow winged through the mist toward the western tower. Henry Bane took it for an ill omen. “Somethin’ right terrible will happen tomorrow,” he warned.
Fuck me running if that clod wasn’t dead right. The horror acted on a delay. It fastened upon me, aye. I finally understood, in the fullness of time and all that. More and more every night when I lie awake and listen to branches scratch the roof.
The courtyard sod had grown brittle. A royal engineer marked a spot and we yoked a team of mules to an auger and bored until we’d punched a hole into a vault. Me and a score of other lads descended on a series of lines knotted together. Down and down into the bowels of the earth with our picks and our lamps, hearts pitter-patting in our throats. We knew what to search for – coffers of jewelry and objects of art and ancient precious coins tarnished or bright, ceremonial blades begrimed by rust and verdigris, and panoplies of ancestral armor.
A grand cavern spread beneath the foundations of Castle Warrant. Stalactites oozed primordial slime. Shelves of granite and quartz blazed in the torchlight and fell away into utter blackness. A river clashed over distant rocks. Colonies of bats shrilled as they funneled into the abyss. Echoes traveled for leagues. Our party unhooked from the belays and clung to the damp spine of bedrock, followed its curve around to a landing and came to a flight of steps carved from the very stone itself. One case spiraled downward into the heart of the earth. The second case corkscrewed upward into the ruins of the castle proper. Our party split. I ventured up with nine comrades. A lonely feeling to watch the torches of our other fellows sink and dwindle to specks floating in oil, then snuffed.
In
case you’re wondering, we never saw them again either.
Hurt and I took point. We climbed. Three hundred steps. Cracks every which way. Deep cracks stuffed with millipedes and pill bugs and wet, cancerous moss that smelled worse than the stuff in the swamp. Clung to our boots and squelched like mud as did the pale mushrooms in their beds of hollowed step and splintered masonry. Earthquakes had tumbled stones from the vaulted roof. We scrambled over them, or went around, climbing, climbing, until at last we traveled through an archway into the basement.
Mind you, Castle Warrant stood for a millennium before the Interregnum. Emperor Innocent II himself ordered it built. As one of the great keeps of the North, Warrant contained smithies and barracks and stables to house lancers of diluted Xet stock who rode warhorses imported from the west. And dungeons. Many, many cells, many chambers of interrogation and woe. The rock was a honeycomb full of bones. An ossuary of damned souls. None of the prisoners of war were released during the final days before the Fires. Men, packed into cubbyholes, were left to gnaw one another like starved rats. Their skeletons moldered, locked in the eternal struggle.
Oh, how we tiptoed past the bones. Our shadows, tall and cruelly sharp, capered and spilled across the walls, mocking us. Grown men, with daggers and swords, we huddled together and held hands like children passing through that crypt. Halls crissed and crossed and doubled upon themselves. Sergeant Bakker broke out the chalk so we wouldn’t become lost forever in the warren.
The stairwell to the main floor had collapsed, confining our search for riches to those lower levels. I filled a burlap bag with coins. Brass, bronze, copper, reliefs worn smooth and shined to a glow I could see in the near dark. I swept all kinds of bullshit into that sack on the chance it would fetch a kind word from the Captain or at least spare me from the lash. Pewter cups and pewter plates, mostly cracked, but who gave a rip? Metal tongs and shattered candlesticks. Hurt rejoiced to find a trunk he thought would be jammed with valuables. Alas, mostly dirt and moldering cloth. He saved a moth-eaten tapestry that had grayed with antiquity.