The Nine

by Terry Cloutier

  ​ I turned left into another shadowy tunnel and then left again, instinctively wrinkling my nose as the foul stench of the shit pit began to assault my nostrils. We used tapped out tunnels for the shit pits and they were all dug the same way, roughly twenty-feet long by five-feet across and usually about six-feet deep. There was nowhere for the piss and shit to go down in Father’s Arse, so over time the hole would fill up. When that happened, we’d just seal the tunnel off and dig another one.

  A candle sat burning faintly near the entrance to the pit and I approached the opening cautiously, certain that I had just heard a muffled thud. I lowered my head and passed through the low entrance. The smells coming from inside were so strong that it made my head swim and I guessed the pit had to be almost full by now and would need to be sealed off soon. A wooden railing about four-inches wide and roughly waist height ran along the edge of the hole and a fat candle flickered on the bench at each end. To shit you’d have to prop yourself up with both hands and then wiggle your ass backwards. I was always terrified of falling in. I couldn’t think of anything worse than that. All of this, though, meant nothing to me at that moment, for I realized my fears about Jedin had been justified. Baine lay face down on the rock floor near the back of the tunnel and I saw dark blood seeping from a wound on his temple. He wasn’t moving, whether dead or unconscious, I couldn’t tell. Baine’s trousers had been completely removed and the weak candlelight flickered across his thin white buttocks, while Jedin, naked from the waist down, knelt between Baine’s legs, stroking himself and mumbling. I felt rage overcome me and I gripped the wooden sword tighter in my right hand as I headed toward them.

  Jedin heard me approaching and he turned in surprise, then he smiled when he saw me. “Well, well,” he said as he slowly stood up to face me. His trousers lay on the ground near his feet and his manhood stood erect, quivering and purple. I honestly thought he looked ridiculous and, at another time, I might have found it humorous. At that moment, I did not.

  ​ “Get away from him, you bastard, or I swear by The Mother and The Father I’ll crack your head open with this!” I yelled as I showed him the practice sword I held.

  ​ Jedin glanced at the sword and laughed. “With that toy? You’ll crack my head open with that?”

  ​ “Last warning, you whore-son!” I growled at him.

  ​ Jedin laughed again. “I have a sword, too,” he said. He glanced down at Baine, who, I was relieved to see, was moving his head now and groaning softly. “And when I’m done poking your friend with it, maybe I’ll move on to you.” I was fourteen years old and big and strong for my age, but Jedin, though not as tall as I, was much wider, with massive shoulders and hugely muscled arms. I had no illusions about what would happen if he got his hands on me and we just stood there, eyes locked, at an impasse. His manhood had shrivelled by now, more a tiny dagger than a sword, and finally he looked away nonchalantly and laughed. “I guess I can wait,” he said with a sneer. “You won’t always be around to protect him.” Jedin bent down to grab his trousers and I tensed, as I knew that though his words had said one thing, his eyes had promised something else. He turned toward me and made as if to put on his trousers, then he shouted and flung them at me and rushed forward with his great arms spread to envelope me. I swept the trousers aside with my left hand even as I lifted my right arm, stabbing outward with the point of my sword. The hard wood met his soft dagger and he squealed like a hog at slaughter and then fell writhing and moaning to the floor. I looked down at him squirming at my feet and I had a sudden vision of another day and another man lying helpless on the ground. I’d had an opportunity then and I’d let it pass me by, and it had cost me dearly. I knew that if I let Jedin live today, Baine and I would forever be watching our backs and, sooner or later, the bastard would get one of us. I saw my sister in my mind and I grit my teeth. Using all of my strength, I swung downward with the sword. I hit Jedin hard, crashing the blade into his skull over and over again, not stopping or caring as the man’s wet, sticky blood splattered all over me and the tunnel walls. Finally, panting and exhausted, I dropped the sword from my numb hand and I turned and gazed at Baine, who was sitting up now and staring at me with wide eyes.

  ​ “Mother’s tit, Hadrack!” he whispered as he looked from me to the crumpled mess on the floor.

  ​ Baine told me many years later that that moment in the shit pit was when he’d known he’d be my sworn man some day. No one had ever stood up for him before and he told me what I’d done that day was a debt that he felt he owed me for the rest of his life. I knew nothing of that at the time, of course, and I was still trying to come to grips with what had happened, when heavy footsteps sounded along the tunnel. Baine and I tensed, expecting the worst, and then we relaxed as we recognized Jebido’s hook-nosed face as he stooped down and entered the latrine. He glanced around at the blood-splattered walls and his bushy eyebrows rose slightly when he saw what was left of Jedin lying on the floor. He whistled through his teeth. “Well, boys, I guess we better get this mess cleaned up before someone needs to piss and sees it,” he said. And that’s exactly what we did.

  ​ Jebido and I striped Jedin’s corpse, and while Baine used the dead man’s clothes to wipe down the walls and floor as best he could, we dragged the body over to the shit pit and pushed it in. Jedin sank and then popped back up to the surface and I remember thinking we were going to get caught because he was going to float on top just like all the other turds. But luckily Baine had other ideas. He gathered some rocks and piled them onto the dead man’s chest, until finally it sank from sight for good. Surprisingly, no one seemed to notice, or if they did, care about the smudged stains on the walls and floor of the shit pit, and the next day it was sealed up and a new one was dug. The Heads looked for him, of course, but not with much enthusiasm, as Jedin was not a popular man. Everyone in Father’s Arse just assumed he’d gotten lost in the tunnels and had died, which did happen from time to time. Most of us Turds considered it good riddance and, for quite a while after he disappeared, we’d joke that you’d better look over your shoulder first before bending down because Jedin’s ghost might be sneaking up behind you to bugger you. I’ve always thought it fitting that Jedin would be spending all of eternity buried in a tomb of shit.

  ​ The year that I turned seventeen was the year that everything changed for us Turds down in Father’s Arse. Two things happened, one right after another. The first mainly just affecting myself and my team. The second, everyone in the Hole. We were working the western tunnels and having a terrible time of it, I remember, as we’d had an unusually bad stretch of persistent rain. Many of the tunnels were knee deep in water. It was the worst we’d ever seen, but the Heads insisted we continue regardless. I didn’t learn until much later that the reason we continued was because King Jorquin had been strengthening his defences in Southern Ganderland for years by building a line of defensive garrisons and bridges along the border to defend against the Piths to the south. The building of these ambitious defences had begun right after the discovery of Father’s Arse, about a year before Jebido, Baine and I had arrived at the quarry, and that’s why we worked night and day all those years. It seemed that no matter how many stones we pulled from the earth, the builders still wanted more. The bridges and most of the garrisons were complete, but several of the key garrisons were not finished yet and war with the Piths had become a certainty.

  ​ For us Turds though, toiling in the depths of Father’s Arse, the problems of the world above hardly mattered. What did matter to the team, however, was that Listern Wes had begun to cough. At first, the rest of us pretended not to notice when he would hack and cough into his hand for several minutes before finally wiping bright red blood onto his trousers. As each day went by, Wes grew weaker and weaker, refusing to let us do anything to help, probably because he knew, like we did, that there was nothing any of us could do about it. Every Turd in the Hole knew that coming down with the wet cough was a death sentence. Then, almost three weeks afte
r that first cough, Listern Wes, now barely a hundred pounds of skin and bone, died. The Heads replaced Wes with Uhin Eby, who had a tendency to chatter on about anything or nothing for hours at a time. Eby was an inattentive worker and hugely annoying and none of us cared for him much, as we had to work even harder now to make our quota each day.

  ​ Nearly a week after Wes’ death, Baine, Jebido and I were sitting by the reservoir and resting after a particularly gruelling workout. Not many of the Turds watched us practice anymore, having grown bored of our battered wooden swords I suppose. By this time, I was the tallest person down in Father’s Arse, even taller than Segar. Baine and I were listening as Jebido told us an amusing tale about a watch commander and a whore with one leg, when he was interrupted by a screech coming from above us along the western rim of the Hole. The ear-splitting noise was quickly followed by shouts of alarm from the Turds on the ground as a large stone that was being lifted over the rim came hurtling back down. The men beneath the falling stone managed to dive out of the way to safety just as the block disintegrated into thousands of pieces as it hit the stone floor. In the nine years I’d been in the Hole I’d seen ropes break a handful of times, so a falling block was far from unusual. What was unusual was that the stone was quickly followed by a horse and then a man, both of them shrieking in terror before the unforgiving floor of Father’s Arse silenced them forever.

  ​ “Mother Above!” Baine gasped as the three of us leapt to our feet. Heads appeared from all directions with drawn clubs, converging on the dead horse and man just as we heard a pitiful wail echo out from above us. Somehow another man had fallen from the rim, and then another man fell, followed immediately by a third man, all of them screaming and flailing their arms wildly as though somehow that might help save them. One of the falling men landed heavily near me in a cloud of dust and he lay still in a crumpled heap. He was dressed in leather armour and his shield, which was painted yellow with the king’s black stag emblem embossed on it, clattered loudly to the ground beside him, followed closely by his spear, which landed point first. The spear bounced against the rock with a crack, narrowly missing impaling the already dead soldier before it then somersaulted end over end crazily to land at my feet. I instinctively crouched down and picked it up.

  ​ “Thank you Mother, thank you Father!” I whispered as I looked up at the deep blue sky far above me, feeling sudden hope. I turned to Jebido, but he was already racing across the floor to the other fallen soldiers who lay close together like sacks of broken bones. Jebido snatched up both the soldiers’ spears, having to toss one aside when he realized it was broken down the shaft. Our eyes met across the distance and I pointed to the ladder, which was for the first time in my memory, free of Heads. “Baine, let’s go!” I shouted as I sprinted forward. I saw a huge figure running to cut Baine and I off and I groaned as Segar beat us to the ladder.

  ​ “I can’t let you do it,” Segar growled as we ran up to him.

  ​ “But this is our chance to finally escape this place!” I protested. I levelled the spear at his chest. “Come with us or step aside.”

  ​ “I will not,” Segar stated. He crouched and whirled his club in his hand as he regarded Baine and I calmly.

  ​ I looked over my shoulder and groaned as I saw Jebido racing toward us with five or six Heads close behind him. “Either come with us or die right here!” I screamed at Segar. I’m still not sure what the big Head would have done, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Jebido reached us and, without pausing, he thrust forward with his spear, impaling Segar in the chest. The big man’s eyes rolled in surprise and he fell without a sound.

  ​ “Hurry!” Jebido panted, motioning to the ladder with his chin.

  ​ I nodded, held the spear against my chest and, using my thumb as a basket to grip it, pulled myself up the first rung with my fingers. When I finally reached the first ledge, I jumped to the next ladder and then looked down. Jebido was right behind me and Baine was right on his heels with a look of overjoyed excitement plastered across his thin face. I looked past Baine at the Heads that had gathered at the base of the ladder just as one of them began to climb. I looked away and clambered up the ladder, moving as fast as I could, then jumped to the next ladder and then the next, and the next, until finally, unbelievably, I climbed the last rung and dragged myself up and over the lip of Father’s Arse. I stood up, panting and out of breath as I looked around at the trees and deep blue of the sky and felt the wind on my face. After being a prisoner in the Hole for nine long years, I was finally free!

  Chapter 5: The Piths

  ​ I don’t know how long I stood there breathing in free air above the rim of Father’s Arse, but eventually I felt a hand pushing at me urgently and I heard Jebido demanding that I move my huge ass. I turned guiltily and helped to pull him up. Then he and I helped Baine over the lip. A lot had changed since the last time we three had stood in this spot. On the far side of the quarry the trees had been cut further back and a tall wooden palisade had been constructed in their place. I noticed that a good section of the heavy oak timber had been hacked through and that there were bodies strewn in piles all around the breach. Most of the dead men wore the yellow and black stag emblem of the king, while a few wore no surcoat at all and were big and wild looking, with long, shaggy blond hair and beards.

  ​ “Those are Piths,” Jebido told us, pointing to the blond men.

  ​ The guard station near the ladder seemed unchanged, but the ground around it was littered with twisted bodies, all of them the king’s soldiers. The trees along the hill that had separated Father’s Arse from the main encampment were all gone and the small wooden bridge crossing the river below us had been replaced by a bigger, wider one made of stone. Thirty or so soldiers of the king stood bunched together in the middle of the bridge with their backs to us, facing toward the encampment. The soldiers were armed with swords, heavy rectangular shields and many, I noted, held long spears like the ones Jebido and I carried. Thick black smoke filled the air and occasionally some of it would drift downward to dance and skip around the soldiers as the wind toyed with it. We could hear men screaming in the distance, some bellowing in fury or triumph, some crying out in mortal anguish amid the clash and thunder of metal weapons colliding. A square fortress of stone rose in the middle of the encampment where once the tents had stood and at least thirty mounted Piths were pressing a small, desperate knot of Gandermen who fought on foot back toward the closed gate. I guessed these men and the ones bunched on the bridge had been caught outside the fortress when the Piths had attacked. A tall flanking tower with a cone-shaped roof stood to each side of the gate while thick buttresses rose along the outer walls of the fortress every twenty feet or so. Yellow-clad archers appeared in the arrow slots of the flanking towers and along the ramparts, shooting down at the confused mass of men and horses. A small group of mounted Pith archers began shooting back at the archers on the walls and I grunted in surprise when I realized that they appeared to be women.

  ​ I nudged Jebido and pointed. “Is that really women down there?”

  ​ “Indeed,” Jebido said. “The Pith women fight with their men and are said to be deadly with a bow.”

  ​ I nodded just as a great cheer erupted from the Piths as the last of the Gandermen fighting outside the fortress fell. The Piths quickly turned their attention to the thick oak gate, attacking it enthusiastically with their great war axes while the women archers continued to give them cover. In all of the excitement we’d forgotten about the Head’s pursuing us from below and with a grunt, one of them appeared on the ladder behind us. Jebido whirled and whipped his spear up, cracking the butt end across the man’s temple. The Head cried out and fell backward, windmilling his arms before disappearing from view.

  ​ “Go back or you’ll share his fate!” Jebido shouted as he held onto the ladder and peered into the quarry.

  ​ “Look!” Baine said, pointing down to the bridge.

  ​ A mass of wild-looking Piths app
eared through the smoke, running toward the bridge and the king’s soldiers that waited there. I guessed there were at least twenty of them and they held a long sword, war-hammer or battle axe in their right hands, while on their left arms they carried round metal shields painted blue and white with a circular raised boss in the center. The Piths reached the head of the bridge and they slowed, calling out insults to the soldiers who stood watching them. I noticed some of the Piths near the back had their shields slung over their shoulders and instead of swords or axes in their hands, they held long, wicked-looking poles. The tips of the poles were thin and pointed like a spear. On one side, about a foot down from the tip, was a great axe head, while on the opposite side, a nasty hook jutted out.

  ​ “Halberds,” Jebido explained. “Not a weapon the Piths normally use, so I imagine they must have found them here.” He grimaced and nodded to the Gandermen waiting on the bridge. “That’s bad news for them. When the front lines meet in the shield wall, the Piths will use the halberds to strike from above. Hit a man’s helmet just right and it’ll crack like a walnut.”