“Wait,” said the friar, “I mean to say. I’ve seen how you look at animals. I don’t pretend to understand your fascination, or what you learn from them. But you and your sister are the only children in this Church that haven’t needed strict discipline.”
“We certainly received it,” said Ranthos, thinking himself bolder than he should.
“Not from me,” said Father Gerald. He was right, Ranthos supposed, compared to the nuns anyway. “You and your sister could grasp certain upright behaviors without our instruction. And you seem to have done it by watching animals. Strange,” he chuckled.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Me neither,” sighed Father Gerald, “Only… I don’t know. But if you can’t find the worms, then you should see how the mole finds them.”
How did Father Gerald know about the worms? Was he spying on him and Bell? He must’ve been, as Bell was certainly too terrified of the man to engage in conversation past, ‘Excuse me,’ or ‘Amen.’
Ranthos nodded, not understanding what he meant. But thought it could be good advice… maybe.
Father Gerald nodded, before glancing at the nuns inside the chapel, “Gone by Sunday.”
“Gone by Sunday,” said Ranthos, squeezing past him.
“Ranthos, I have made you something!” sang Bell as he entered the bedroom again.
“And what’s that?” asked Ranthos, pulling a smile over his face, not wanting to drop any of his anger toward the friar onto his lovely little sister.
“A parting gift,” said Bell, “A last meal.”
“I think that’s an execution term,” said Ranthos.
“Are you not being executed?” asked Bell with a smile.
Ranthos chuckled. “Right. Let’s see it.”
Bell unveiled from behind her back two wooden platters of roasted venison, salted and seasoned with herbs from the Church garden, and chopped potatoes with montepeppers.
It was wonderful, and Ranthos’ worries died away instantly as he and Bell sat together, whispering to each other in voices so quiet that only an alfar would have been able to hear them.
Ranthos found a mole on Sunday morning—he skipped mass and didn’t feel sorry in the slightest. The mole was underground, but Ranthos could smell it through a burrow he slipped into on accident.
Ranthos held his ear to the forest floor and heard the little creature grunting and crawling through his tunnels. It groaned out a strange hum that vibrated the soil just a little bit. It sounded ugly and sounded like he had a funny voice.
Ranthos’ nose prickled with an unfamiliar scent.
A worm?
And another.
And another.
“Scut!” said Ranthos, brought to cursing by a rush of joy.
A small-eyed fat mole wiggled out of the ground and over to the worms he had expelled from the ground, and began to schlorp them up, led by his tentacled pink nose.
Ranthos stayed perfectly still, not wanting to disturb the poor creature who looked like a round old man with huge hands and a long nose. The mole squirmed across the ground with his flat body to the next worm, who tried desperately to inch away from the predator, but the mole mercilessly sucked him up like a wheat noodle.
Ranthos smiled, and the mole turned his head up to him, likely smelling the change in Ranthos’ mood. They eyed each other for a moment. It was lucky that Ranthos found a mole in time. He was so glad that this weird little creature was still sitting here, not running away.
Ranthos smiled down at him.
The mole wagged his stubby tail.
Ranthos wagged his bum.
The mole snorted, and turned around, and dove back into his hole, his behind almost getting stuck on the way back in.
Ranthos then got to work. His worm business had to get off the ground soon, or he’d end up starving to death on the streets. He was not interested in that, thanks.
Ranthos gathered up what instruments he could around him, trying to conjure the same sound as the mole. That grunt that scared the worms to the surface.
After a series of tests, Ranthos learned that he could not make the sound a mole could with his own mouth. He could do snarls, growls, and was working on a roar, but he couldn’t do the worm grunt. Also, wood on wood didn’t make the right sound, not really, but an old saw he found under some moss almost did the trick.
Though, if the saw was thicker, it might work. Ranthos took it to Mads Smith, the blacksmith.
“I don’t do charity for hodge cubs. I pay my tithe to the friar like everyone else.”
He was convinced eventually to do charity work for hodge cubs after being given one of Bell’s blueberry pastries. Ranthos used to steal the ones that the nuns would make, but since then, Bell had mastered the recipe.
Bell was thrilled to hear someone liked her pastry. The nuns never gave her much credit. They always smelled jealous.
The saw worked better after Mads Smith bent it over itself a few times. He ground the broad side of the saw against a rock, but the sound didn’t go into the ground like he wanted it too. It sounded like the mole was above ground.
Ranthos tried a piece of wood—it didn’t work either.
He stomped the wood into the ground, and it did the trick. Ranthos ran the thick, malformed saw over the top of the thick stake, and the resulting sound was a moleish grunt that rang through the dirt and vibrated Ranthos’ knees.
Ranthos found the most worms in the muddy ground, or by the corpse of a porcupine.
Eventually, the mole returned, smelling like he thought Ranthos was an attractive lady mole.
“Go away! I’m a boy!”
Ranthos found he could sell ten worms to a fisherman for a halfpenny. He could sell three of the rare black ones to the apothecary for the same. And on days when no one was buying, he could always find a farmer willing to take them off his hands for a farthing, half of what they were worth otherwise.
A threepence, which was six bags of worms at a halfpenny each, would buy Ranthos and Bell a supper of bread and cheese, so it didn't appear they would starve anytime soon, but where would he live? He’d have to work a lot harder between now and Winter, or somehow demand a higher price if he wasn't to freeze to death.
It turned out that folk didn’t like hodges demanding a higher price, which was no surprise. What was a shock was that his steadiest customer turned out to be Nosgrim, who could nearly always be counted on to take ten-bag off his hands a few times a week.
“Kicked out?” Nosgrim asked absentmindedly as he tucked away his worms into his pocket.
Ranthos nodded.
“It’s tough,” said Nosgrim before heading to the pond.
Ranthos realized that he was lucky that he started on Sunday. Lots of folk went fishing after mass. Father Gerald didn’t so much like that Ranthos skipped mass, but he did like to go fishing, apparently. He even paid Ranthos a whole penny instead of half.
“I packed all your things,” said Father Gerald, “They’re on the porch. Not much reason to come by the Church for you anymore, I suppose.”
That stung. But Ranthos had no desire to return.
Once all the fishermen had passed through, Ranthos found Bell on the porch, with two burlap sacks of all their belongings. “If you’re going, I’m going too,” she said, her bright green eyes red with tears. “I can’t stay here without you, Ranthos.”
“You can’t—”
“I told Sister Edmona that if she wanted you gone, she had to kick me out too. She did.”
Ranthos hugged her tight, furious that she would do something so stupid, terrified of the future, but wordlessly happy to be facing it with her at his side.
2
Cold Winters
“There it is worm-boy,” said Yeeper Gugenveims, dropping the newly raised price of two halfpennies into Ranthos’ hand in exchange for a neatly bagged package of ten worms, courtesy of sweet Bellelar, inked with a small heart and a flower.
“Good fishing,” said Ranthos, not likin
g the new name he’d acquired, but not protesting it. He didn’t want to get run off by the watchmen again. They had just gotten some new recruits, one named Yannick, and another named Wilbur. They were a few Winters older than Ranthos, maybe even Nosgrim. But they had two parents each, so they grew up thinking themselves stronger than the orphans.
And now that they were watchmen, they were stronger than the orphans.
They made Ranthos move his worm stand as often as they could find an excuse and often stole a bag just to stomp and laugh.
They bullied the four brothers into joining the watch as well. Kunz wasn’t out of the orphanage yet, but he had already pledged his service to the watch and the service of House Durm—the snobs who governed the small town.
The strangest part was that Yannick, one of those new watchmen who had earned himself a proud reputation for keeping order among the lower ranks of Tatzelton (beggars, orphans, hodges), found himself sweet on the orphan Sigrid. She was undoubtedly the prettiest girl of her age, but Bell said that she heard that Yannick renounced all association with her once rumors of her pregnancy surfaced. He was a holy man; he assured the fawning nuns, and he wouldn’t dare sully his own reputation, or that of the Tatzelwatch, by continuing to court a woman of sin. It didn’t matter that the most recent admission into the orphanage had his same scent.
“I heard that poor Nosgrim had to go to the watch for a loan,” said Bell one night in their back-alley hovel, eating stale bread. “The butcher he was working for said he was dead weight and had to start paying rent. For his mattress.”
“Serves the scut right,” said Ranthos, “Nosgrim is nothing but trouble.”
The next Winter was hard, harder than it had ever been. No one went fishing, and the watch didn’t let them light a fire in the back alleys. They had to rely on begging—so did Nosgrim apparently, who manned the corner across from them, unable to afford the butcher’s mattress and unable to pay back the watch with farthings, instead paying with bruises and cuts that could only be nursed by the frost.
Once Spring came, Ranthos rushed to the wood to collect worms, but found that last Winter hit the town so hard that less and less people could afford a lazy Sunday afternoon fishing trip.
Nosgrim still did, strangely. He only smelled happy when he was on his way out to the pond with a rod in his hand. Bell saw that he had learned enough from the butcher to clean his own fish. He survived well enough that way.
He even tried to start his own fish-gutting service, but any fisherman worth his salt could clean a fish, and any boys who couldn’t had fathers who could. Nosgrim’s business didn’t last long.
Of all the orphans not working at the Church, only Ranthos, Bell, and Nosgrim hadn’t turned to the Tatzelwatch, the brothel, or thievery. Ranthos and Bell simply didn’t have the option to apply themselves at the first two, and Ranthos had neither the skill nor the courage for the third. Nosgrim wasn’t admitted into the watch because he owed them too much, and couldn’t thieve because he was too chubby. Father Gerald didn’t even allow him to try his hand at becoming a clergyman like the other altar boys did, saying he was too malicious a child when he was at the orphanage and required some maturing before he could be allowed to shepherd the flock.
“Ranthos,” said Father Gerald, catching his arm as he hurried an armful of worm bags through the square. The friar held out that black-and-white kitten that Ranthos had met many times before. It wasn’t so much a kitten anymore, though, but not quite big enough to be a cat. He was really more of a catten.
Ranthos furrowed his brows as the catten meowed at him.
“Sister Edmona says I need to get rid of all my cats before I can take on a new litter—from her deathbed if you can believe that woman!”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Ranthos. He hadn’t spoken to Father Gerald since last Autumn, when he bought two bags of worms.
“Give it to you,” said Father Gerald. “His name is Remy, after the patron saint of orphans.”
Ranthos said nothing, but reached out his arms to accept the catten. He always liked Remy, though he didn’t know his name, but hardly wanted to speak with the friar.
Father Gerald sighed and gave it to him.
Remy smelled instantly more comfortable in Ranthos’ arms than he did in the friars, nestling into them comfortably. He seemed to remember Ranthos faintly, for what that was worth. Ranthos just assumed that he smelled more like a cat than a person.
Father Gerald hurried off, never staying long.
Ranthos introduced Remy to Bell, who immediately rechristened him as “Cattenpoof.”
Ranthos didn’t feel right erasing his existing name, so they argued for a bit, and then agreed that Cattenpoof would be his family name.
“I pronounce you Remy Cattenpoof,” said Ranthos, “Rise.”
“Meow,” said Remy.
“I love him,” said Bell.
“I as well,” said Ranthos seriously. Their family had just grown by one. It was a pleasant feeling.
They fed Remy mice and lizards, though they didn’t need to. He was a capable hunter, he just didn’t enjoy sleeping alone, so Ranthos and Bell quickly became his home. They could never reject another warm body underneath their blanket.
Once Winter came again, Bell and Ranthos had stored away a purse of coins to supplement their beginning. It went better than the last did, and they enjoyed having a cute catten curled up beside their coin bowl; it made the women give just a little more. “How cute! The hodges have a friend! Look, honey!”
“Try beer instead of water,” said the woman’s husband, “Keeps you warm.”
They did. It was a wild night that they didn’t remember. They had headaches the next morning and didn’t drink beer anymore; it didn’t taste good.
Ranthos kept collecting rocks whenever he could, and the endless pile of them beside their hovel grew larger and larger by the week. Whenever Ranthos went out to the woods, he saw hunters—even in the dead of Winter—stalking the shadows with their heavy cloaks and longbows. They would haul into town huge tatzeldeer, a dozen hares at a time, Ranthos even saw one man bring back a hyena.
Those were creepy animals with wide mouths and crooked eyes.
Ranthos had killed animals before to feed Remy… He wondered how hard it would be to kill animals to feed Bell. First, he’d need a bow, and some arrows.
By Spring, Ranthos had enough to buy a bow from Wilbur’s father, Willem Urmag… But Bell got sick.
She coughed, rolling over in her blankets. She said she felt terribly cold, but was covered in sweat. She could hardly talk, and so Ranthos didn’t ask her many things.
Ranthos hammered his fist on the Church doors.
Father Gerald answered, eyes baggy and tired, surprised to see Ranthos standing in front of him, soaking wet in the cold rain outside.
“Bell is sick.”
“I can’t help you,” said Father Gerald.
“She’s sick, Father!” pleaded Ranthos, “She’ll die if—”
“I can’t help you. I will pray for her, I swear by my bones, but I can’t help you,” said Father Gerald sternly, “The sickness is running through the children at the orphanage as well. We don’t have any medicine to spare. You can try Miss Cinnamon, the magician that just moved in.”
“Magician?” asked Ranthos incredulously; he didn’t believe in magic. “I can pay,” he said, holding out his bow money.
“I can’t give it to you,” said Father Gerald, closing the door.
Father Gerald wouldn’t give him the medicine, but Oskar, one of the older orphans who now swept the halls, stole it for him, though for a higher price than Ranthos could pay.
They almost starved that Summer, but Bell recovered.
Ranthos felt dirty, taking the medicine from the younger orphans like he did. He didn’t know how to live with himself. He lay in the back corner of the hovel sobbing as he thought of what he could have done to some small child.
Then he thought of Bell, wasting away
under the disease. Losing her. He would be helplessly alone, he would probably stop fighting to make money if he lost her. He would probably just let himself starve.
But it wasn’t worth stealing. It wasn’t worth the possibility of hurting someone else. It was selfish what he did, even though he did it for Bell.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bell in a sweet, soft voice.
Ranthos took a shaky breath and tried to regain composure, but failed.
He told her what he had done eventually, and she told him that she loved him. It was the first time she had said it aloud, and it made Ranthos feel full, and happy, and completely unworthy.
“If someone in the orphanage had died,” said Bell, “I would have heard about it. Everyone is fine. I’m alive, you’re alive, and we can keep going.”
Ranthos nodded, and rushed out to the woods to grunt more worms.
He tried a few more times to buy a bow, but was robbed once by Rudiger, a newly appointed watchman; was forced to put all the bow money aside to survive the next Winter; and then finally was pressed into a generous donation to support the brave warriors of the Fifth Crusade.
They were fighting the alfar barbarians in the North.
Autumn came, and by Winter Ranthos had enough worm money to buy a bow, a string, and a single arrow. Willem Urmag begrudgingly sold them to him, muttering something about the nobility of Tatzelton’s ancient hunting tradition and how he was sullying the trade.
Regardless, Ranthos was elated. Though he couldn’t start hunting until he learned how to string the bow, a task which turned out to be incredibly difficult. Bell spent a day spying on hunters and taught Ranthos the proper technique of bending the bow out with his leg to string it.
Eventually, Ranthos mastered stringing and unstringing the bow, and he took his arrow out with him worm grunting, and practiced firing it off at trees and at rocks.
Don’t shoot at rocks, Ranthos learned, and was forced to buy a new arrow.
Ranthos found that shooting the bow came to him like throwing a rock, just with a great deal more back strength required. In the coming months, Ranthos built up the muscles required to draw the bow all the way back to his lip comfortably, and had watched enough hunters shooting that he learned the proper form and technique.
Enter the Lamb's Head (The Adventures of Ranthos Book 1) Page 3