“What’d you say?” Yannick asked.
“Nothing!” Nosgrim said, slamming his cleaver into the table.
Yannick whirled his head around at the noise.
Seeing an opportunity, Ranthos pulled an arrow from his quiver and hid it behind his forearm, holding the head in his palm.
Ranthos would not kill anybody. He did not want to be the killer they thought he was.
“Now I don’t want you to be causing any more trouble, orphan,” Yannick said to Nosgrim, some brown spit falling onto his lip, a sign of recent fogbloom usage. He slammed his hand onto the table over his new gold piece, and Ranthos and Nosgrim flinched. Dropping it into an empty purse, he began out the room.
Ranthos saw his opportunity. Yannick wasn’t armored, and the purse was so close, it’d be easy.
If only it were.
What would Bell say?
Ranthos couldn’t.
He didn’t.
But he took a swipe at the purse, arrowhead barely poking out beyond his pointer and middle finger.
Swish, cling, cling.
Ranthos stomped his foot on the floor.
“Wha…?” Yannick asked, straining his eyes to see the room past his fogbloom.
Nosgrim shrugged.
“Shut it,” and Yannick slammed the door behind him.
Ranthos lifted his foot and picked up the gold piece from beneath it, “This is yours,” and he flipped the coin to Nosgrim.
Nosgrim was beside himself, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You didn’t have to save Bell and me.”
Nosgrim smiled, and it was something that Ranthos had never seen. And he smelled happy, also strange.
“It’s yours anyway,” Nosgrim tossed the coin back.
“Why?” Ranthos said, fumbling the catch.
“That’s a week’s worth of pay,” Nosgrim shrugged, “more or less.”
Ranthos stood there frozen for a moment. He blinked. Looked away, then back, mouth gaping, “… I don’t really need it—“
“I know. It’s symbolic. Kill the buck, and then I’m leaving with you.”
Ranthos obviously looked overly apprehensive, because Nosgrim’s face turned a tiny bit red.
“I mean—kill it and get out of my—”
“No, you can come,” Ranthos said, trying to wrench the smile off his face.
Nosgrim took a deep breath and nodded.
Ranthos nodded back.
A moment passed.
“I need one thing, though,” Nosgrim said.
“Yes?”
“Let me see your bag,” Nosgrim held his hand out to him.
Ranthos handed it over; but there was little more inside than a bundle of kea leaves and his rock collection.
Nosgrim pulled out an old green, yellowish, and red rock, one Ranthos had offered him when they were small children, “There.” Handling it for a moment, Nosgrim said, “This is mine anyway.”
The sun was setting over Tatzelton, and Ranthos and Bell had gone undiscovered. Though Ranthos was nervous that Yannick might realize that he’d blundered when he sobered up.
“He won’t sober up,” Nosgrim said confidently.
Bell was peeking out the window, watching for any suspicious passersby. She was in no explicit danger of being hunted down, but if someone had recognized her at Nosgrim’s, Ranthos could easily be found out. “I don’t see anyone,” she said, “You should be safe, Ranthos.”
“You oughta be back before morning,” Nosgrim said.
“Yes, I heard folk talking,” Bell said, “They’re all after you.”
Ranthos nodded. His heart was pounding in his chest. It was time to hunt it, finally. He hadn’t realized until now how much he had been dreading this. What if this time he didn’t have such an easy escape? “It’s time then?” He was sitting in the center of the room on his straw mat, trying to control his breathing as he sharpened his arrows, tightened the fletchings, and strung his bow.
“Few minutes more,” Nosgrim said.
“Do be careful, Ranthos,” Bell said, running to kneel beside him.
“I will.”
“You can do it,” she said, “It’s just a deer.”
If only she were right. “Yes,” he lied.
“You know what I mean, Ranthos. I know you’re scared.”
“I’m not—“
She flicked his nose. “I’d be a little more worried if you weren’t.”
“Sun’s down,” said Nosgrim, “Get a move on, I’ll keep an eye out as long as I can see you. I’ll whistle if I see trouble.”
“Not too loud,” Ranthos said, “I’ll hear you; it’s quiet out. We just don’t want them hearing it.”
“I’ll have Bell whistle, she’ll know how loud to do it,” Nosgrim said.
“Pfft, I can’t whistle!” said Bell goofily.
“Try a quiet whistle,” Ranthos said.
Nosgrim whistled.
Bell winced, and her ears twitched, “Quiet whistle!”
“Alright, alright,” he tried again. He could hardly hear himself that time.
“That’s good,” said Ranthos.
“Is it?” Nosgrim was in disbelief.
“Even Ranthos can hear that,” Bell said with a chuckle.
Ranthos elbowed her with a scowl.
“I don’t understand,” he said, “I hope I don’t have to do this.”
“Me too,” Ranthos stood and started for the door, snapping his hood over his hair.
Bell charged after him, almost tackling him with a backwards hug. She said something so fast and so fervently that Ranthos couldn’t even make it out.
“Uhm,” he smiled, “You too, Bell.” He patted her awkwardly.
“Come back,” Nosgrim said. It was odd to hear support from Nosgrim.
“See you in the morning,” Ranthos removed Bell and gave them both an intent look as he exited through the back.
Mangy dogs gnawed on deer bones and growled at Ranthos as he passed.
Ranthos snarled back, and they grew quieter.
Tatzelton was quiet and still, but even in the calm dark, it was still repulsive. The gutters stank with waste, and the houses with sweat. Ranthos passed Miss Cinnamon’s as he left. The scents of incense were heavy and the strange lights from within were brighter than any other structure in town.
Perhaps she was giving a reading. Perhaps to the hunters looking for him. But Ranthos set aside those thoughts and hurried out under the Tatzelgate. He placed a hand on the worn, carved surface and looked up at the wooden serpents. He probably shouldn’t take long here, but he couldn’t help himself from thumbing the Tatzelarrow. If he ever needed luck, it was now, even if it was all nonsense.
After a deep breath, Ranthos checked over his shoulder and bolted into the wood. The dark boughs of the trees and the thick brush were full of chirping bats and yapping foxes. The scents and the sounds of the Tatzelwood offered Ranthos some much-needed solace from Tatzelton.
After a good hike, Ranthos became more comfortable; this was his land, this was where he belonged, not in the town. He was a natural thing, made for nature. He wasn’t an abomination; he wasn’t a half-blood; he wasn’t a hodgepodge here; he was just a creature in his home.
Ranthos followed the scents of what deer he could find, but that wasn’t much, and they were all does, so that was useless.
Ranthos trekked through the dark wood, which to an ordinary hunter would have been very difficult, to the place he and the buck had first met: an alcove by a cliff due West of Chickenrock, and near the (misnamed) Labyrinth.
As he arrived into the glen, and he knew it had been too long, there were no tracks.
Ranthos continued through the woods and followed the ravine down till it opened up into the Shortcut.
He looked around him and in the faint moonlight he made out a gruesome scene: numerous hares, foxes, minks, holehogs, and even a young buck were dismembered and tossed about, bodies rent and organs on display draping from the brush wi
thin and around the Labyrinth’s shallow width. The same wretchedness continued for as far as Ranthos could see.
They weren’t torn apart and eaten, Ranthos had seen that before; these were trophies, or decorations, disemboweled for viewing pleasure. Some bestial part of Ranthos knew that for certain and chilled the blood in his spine.
The whole labyrinth was wreathed in the creeping scent of decay, a rot that hung low to the ground and curled about Ranthos’ feet, filling his nose with a smell that made him dizzy.
Four trees, one on this side of the Labyrinth, and three on the other, rotted away unnaturally from the middle of their trunks. The decay seemed to birth from lacerations in the bark, creeping out like poison. Ranthos ran his fingers along the bark and could match up every prong of the buck’s rack, cutting through the tree.
10
The Rot in Its Wake
Ranthos’ bones felt like they turned to mud. And by his bones, was he afraid, unable to pull his eyes away from the carnage.
Focus.
But that was difficult. He couldn’t hear past his own heart beating, or see past the gore, or smell anything worth a damn besides the rot.
“I’m not afraid,” Ranthos said aloud, as if saying it would make it true.
Fear is an inhibitor, an animalistic reaction to external threats, created for the purpose of self-preservation.
He will not be inhibited so, and he was no animal.
He was thrilled, excited, on edge. Not afraid…
Or that’s what he told himself.
Look for tracks, right, go ahead.
Ranthos slid down into the Labyrinth, closer to the massacre. Scouring the dirt for fresh prints—Ranthos gagged on the rot and heaved heavy breath in and out of his lungs as he tried to straighten his mind and orient himself to his task.
Everything was out on display. It wasn’t like at the butchery. There, Nosgrim put the beasts to use, sectioned them apart neatly and produced something better than a corpse. These were corpses, for corpses’ sake.
The flies were thankful.
Ranthos rolled half a buck over to search beneath it, but in doing so, with a wet tear, reduced it to a quarter of a buck. The flies swarmed the newly revealed flesh, and Ranthos was washed in a disgusting scent that burst out from the opening.
Ranthos wanted to look away, he wanted to close his eyes and let his tears fall.
Keep your eyes open. Tough it out.
Ranthos kicked away what solid pieces of deer he could, and continued his search, listening all the while to every flesh eating insect in buzzing clarity. He could tell them apart; it wasn’t a cacophonous swarm, but thousands of individuals, each choosing to partake in this perversion.
Ranthos smashed his eyes shut and hummed to block out the noise, but the neon bits of light in the blackness swarmed like flies and his hum only added to the buzzing.
He could bear it no longer and fled out the Labyrinth.
As he ran, Ranthos scoured the air for some other scent, some sign of something else in the wood. A sign of something that he had known, something familiar.
Anything but the rot.
He breathed in again, and finally smelled the surrounding trees, and, strangely, the scent of leopard scat.
A leopard? Ranthos had only seen a leopard once before. They were rare, so close to town, but not unheard of. What was one doing here? Perhaps here for a free meal.
It hardly mattered; it was something besides the rot.
Ranthos' back slid his back down the trunk of the tree and he landed with a thud onto the damp forest floor. Cupping his head in his hands, he could only groan, completely alone yet feeling shameful. Nobody heard his drumming heart, or felt the cold droplets of sweat brewing on his forehead, but he felt weak. Just like a hodge should be.
He wasn’t thrilled, excited, or on edge, he was afraid.
If he couldn’t even look at what the buck touched, how could he ever look at the buck itself? Or kill it? He was letting Bell down.
He’d been so used to people telling him what he couldn’t do that he stopped caring about what he should do. After a tremendous step towards something like tolerance, Nosgrim protected him, and Ranthos was wasting that gift; the longer they stayed in Tatzelton, the more dangerous life became, especially for Bell; it could even get worse. If he was this afraid now, he would never reach never the mountaintops.
His weakness was evil, weakness was a choice, and he chose to be weak, to be evil.
Shee’mortem, that corruption Miss Cinnamon foresaw was crawling over the horizon towards Ranthos.
Then get up. Ranthos pulled his face out from his hands and lumbered onto shaking legs.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
In.
Out.
The walk back to the Labyrinth was like a forced march through waist-high snow, but, by his bones, Ranthos marched.
Step right.
Step left.
Right.
Left.
Nose mired, Ranthos returned. The scene was no less horrible, and Ranthos no less afraid. After half an hour’s search down the length of the shallow Labyrinth, Ranthos found a trail left within the past day. Massive cloven hooves strutted through the dirt here, stamped into the dirt with a grotesquely contorted gait.
Step left.
Step left.
Step right.
Left.
Left.
Right.
Following it further, Ranthos came upon the most hellish of the Buck’s trophies. One with life left in its bones: the leopard, with a glistening coat of antler-shredded marble white fur, bleeding punctures to complement its black spots. One leg was too badly damaged to support its body, but it tried to stand as Ranthos approached.
It was pitiful.
By some wicked mercy probably wrought by some demonic tampering, Ranthos' nose could smell one thing: his own fear and the fear inside the leopard.
It stumbled forward, body rent, and bowels dangling, growling pathetically through a lolling mouth.
Ranthos looked it in the eye, green hodge-eye to green cat-eye, and raised his bow with an arrow knocked to put the poor thing out of its misery. The beast’s lungs, among other things, were obviously less-than functional, judging by its wheezing and sputtering breath.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe in.
Out.
In.
In.
And he fired, lodging the arrow into the leopard’s breast, and releasing its breath to the void with a weary wheeze. Ranthos even had to remind himself to breathe after the thing’s corpse smacked against the dirt. As Ranthos removed the arrow, he held the skull of the cat. He felt the many pieces it’d been smashed into by the buck’s hoof stamps. That the leopard had been conscious was absurd, impossible. Ranthos knew it was the buck’s purpose to keep the cat awake, by evil magic to free it from death if only slightly, or by some anatomical knowledge and precise attacks to kill it just enough so it’d die slow.
Trying to keep out of his mind the sound of that final breath and crash into the dirt, the image of the leopard’s green eyes, and the buck’s ruthlessness, Ranthos continued down the blood-soaked Labyrinth, forbidding his smell and multiplying his fright, until the ravine suddenly ended on a cliff and opened down into the hugely massive and terribly named Shortcut, where huge red rock formations reached for the sky above the maze, covered in scrubby vegetation. A drastic departure from the Tatzelwood.
Ranthos, toes hanging over the edge of the cliff, spotted an off-beat trail of cloven hoofprints stretching to the horizon through the cavernous sandstone pathways.
But the sun was rising, and he had to be back in town before it was fully lit. As nervous as he was, Ranthos thought it'd be easy to pull himself away from the hunt and return home, but having resolved his spirit to finally fight the fear, the most difficult thing was to abandon it, however necessary it might've been.
Remy’s catten purrs filled Nosgr
im’s bedroom as Ranthos, having returned from the hunt, spoke with Bell.
“The tracks went where?” Bell asked, sitting on the bed, still just so very worried for Ranthos.
Leaning against the wall, Ranthos said, “The Shortcut.”
Nosgrim chimed in, “You can’t go—“
Ranthos cut him off, “I have to.”
He was done failing, and after wrenching himself to his feet and finding a fresh trail from the carnage to the Shortcut, Ranthos was too stubborn to give up now.
“Most folk don’t make it out of the Shortcut,” Nosgrim said.
“I’ll make it out,” Ranthos said.
“Oh just like you’ll kill an immortal buck?”
“Shut it, you fat—“
“Ranthos!” Bell interrupted, “He’s just worried about you.”
“No I’m not,” Nosgrim huffed.
“Nosgrim!” Bell chided him. “I think,” she said, “We could all benefit from a little more kindness and respect between the two of you.”
Nosgrim and Ranthos grumbled.
“No, I mean it,” Bell continued, “It is important to us that you two are friends.”
Nosgrim’s face was expressionless. “I’ve got to set up shop for the morning,” he said, and walked out the room and to begin carving some carcass.
Ranthos wasn’t going to protest, and Bell hadn’t the will to do so either, after her peacemaking efforts were stonewalled.
She held her face in her hands with a weary sigh. Ranthos could smell her disappointment. She was obviously working very hard to facilitate a fruitful relationship with Nosgrim.
“Bellelar,” Ranthos said, kneeling before her, “I am sorry. I know that Miss Cinnamon said—”
“It’s not Miss Cinnamon anymore, Ranthos!" she said with a trembling lip, “If he doesn’t help us, we don’t have any hope of avoiding whatever doom she predicted.”
Ranthos’ brow creased.
“And I think that it is plain and clear what that doom is now,” she said with a dry laugh.
“No,” Ranthos said, “It’s not the watchmen.”
Bell looked puzzled.
“Miss Cinnamon said that if I didn’t befriend Nosgrim, I would be corrupted. That’s different, isn’t it?”
Enter the Lamb's Head (The Adventures of Ranthos Book 1) Page 11