Bloodtide

by Melvin Burgess

  I lay for hours. By the time I pulled myself upright and tried to see through my grief, the sun was high. I was human again, but less than I’d been the day before. I laid my hand on the wolf. He was as cold as the stones. I thought, where’s my Styr? Is this really him? I had this crazy idea that I could bring the human part back to life.

  There was no question of burying him. No matter how deep his grave the halfmen monsters who still lived close to the Wall would have got him back out. No flesh went to waste in this place. Instead, I gathered sticks and bits of dried wood. There wasn’t much. All the old house timbers had been taken away ages ago, but there were old branches from trees and the weather had been dry. There were more than enough for my purpose.

  I got some comfort from the work, heaving at the branches, building the pyre. It was about half built when I saw the fox. It came out of the buddleia and silver birch trees growing in a copse nearby, and sniffed the air in my direction, before emerging into the open and stepping daintily across the weeds, towards the dead wolf.

  It was good to see it, the little vixen, a pretty little thing trotting over the rubble and through the tall weeds. It had a spring in its step and it’s always a pleasure to see a wild thing. It came right up to Styr and leaned forward to sniff lightly at his head. I tensed up. Was he just meat to it? It climbed up the body onto his face, and began to lick him.

  I let out a shout and ran towards it. I thought it was after the blood. I ran about three steps expecting it to make off, but it didn’t. It stopped and turned to stare at me – a long, cool stare. I met its eyes, like you would a man’s, and I knew then, that was no fox…

  Unlike most men, I’ve seen the gods. Odin has laid his hand on my shoulder and made me a present of a knife. But this wasn’t Odin I was watching.

  The fox turned away from me and carried on, licking and nuzzling with its pointed nose. It was stretching out its bushy tail in an odd way and making strange little movements with its jaw and feet, as if it was singing and dancing under its breath. I just stood and watched. With its nose, it began to push at the wolfskin. I saw the skin part. The fox nosed and pushed, and the man Styr was inside the skin. The fox turned to look at me again for the second time, a knowing, clever sort of look. Then it tipped back its head and it laughted at me. I felt my body tingle from head to foot, because that was a human laugh. A fox that had a voice! A mocking, knowing voice. What did it mean? I have no idea, unless it was that Styr could never die because Styr had never truly been alive. Maybe. It said nothing, but it looked at me again and I knew that it wanted me to help it. I ran forward and together we stripped the wolfskin from Styr’s body. It was hard work, he was cold and stiffening by this time. I myself pulled the skin over his head. His eyes were open, glazed and grey. But the wound in his throat had gone; only the wolfskin was torn in that part.

  By the time we were easing his foot from the paw, his body was becoming supple again.

  When the skin was off I stood back. The fox began to lick him. Its long pink tongue washed his feet, his body, his face. I was there to see all this; I saw the colour come back in his limbs as it licked away the cold of death. I watched his face as the fox licked the grey film from his eyes. I saw his mouth twitch under her tongue. I saw his eyes flicker and open.

  He sat up. ‘What’s the matter, Father?’ he asked. Because I was weeping. He never saw me weep before.

  I came to my son and I held him, carefully at first, because he’d been to a place you should never return from. Our embrace was awkward, ugly, and I realised as I did it how rarely I’d held him over the years he’d been with me, which made me sad for him. I remember thinking how he’d had no mother, no childhood, just blood all his life. That was no way for a boy to grow up.

  By the time I made sure he was warm and truly living, the vixen had gone. I never saw it again, but I think I know well enough who it was. Styr remembered nothing of the night before, only the raid, and the moment as he put the skin over his head. I asked him where he had been while he was dead, but he had no knowledge of it. It was late in the day by this time, and getting cold. The wood I’d gathered for his funeral pyre was heaped behind us, and we fired it now to keep warm. I was wounded from the fight the night before; I’d begun to shake and tremble. But Styr was unharmed. He looked at me, his face lit by the flames, with a rare smile on his face and said, ‘Do you know what the worst thing about it all is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you beat me in a straight fight.’

  Styr carried on building up the fire, with the idea of burning the two wolfskins. I sat and watched him as if he’d disappear at any second; I was more scared of him than ever after that. He worked like a machine until the blaze was roaring, and then we chucked on the skins and stood back to watch them go up. I was thinking, at least I’d rid the world of those horrible things. But you know what? The skin of the dead wolf, Styr’s skin, that one burned well enough. But mine was untouched; the fire couldn’t damage it any more than the bullets and shells of the night before. It just lay there on the fiery embers, quite a sight, glowing red with heat but without a single hair singeing.

  We argued a while about what to do with it. Styr thought we’d better take it with us, but I wouldn’t trust him with that thing. In the end, we buried it. We dug down about eight feet in the thick clay and dumped the skin at the bottom of the hole, and then filled it in afterwards with stones and sticks and twisted bits of metal to make it difficult to dig up. Finally, we scattered masonry on top to conceal the place. Looking back I suppose we should have taken it with us to make sure it was disposed of properly. Someone would know how to destroy it. But I was sick with it and wouldn’t have it near me.

  That’s the story of what happened that day. It left us both changed. I had less heart for the fight. Styr, I would say, went the other way, as if the taste of so much blood had made him greedier for it.

  And the fox? Even Cherry couldn’t tell me who that was. Perhaps Odin sent it. But I believe it was Loki, who in a funny kind of way is related to my son.

  As for the Wallace brothers, you can imagine I was pretty surprised when I heard they were back in operation a few months after we’d killed them. Or at least one of them was. James had disappeared, but Percy was still active, apparently. Cherry told us he’d accepted an offer from Conor to organise some disposal in East Ham when there was finally an uprising some months later on. I couldn’t believe it at first. I’d seen them both bleeding on the end of Styr’s dagger. But Cherry told me the only way to kill that sort was while they were wolves. Sticking any number of daggers in them had obviously done no good; so we’d missed our chance after all.

  After I heard about it I went back to no-one’s land, alone, to check it out. I found a great mound of stones and earth, and a huge pit dug in the ground where we’d buried the remaining skin. I searched the area but found nothing more, only the remains of a human body, just bones now, scattered widely over the site.

  My guess is that the brothers came looking for their skins, maybe their souls sniffed them out. When they found only one there was a fight, and if the rumours are true it was Percy who won. He took the skin and left the body of his brother to the halfmen, who came and ate his flesh and gnawed his bones, which we found scattered about months later.

  24

  One again, it is the night of no moon. A year has passed since Siggy and Styr fought to the death, and since then Siggy has helped the resistance many times with money or with assassination, but still he refuses to join them. The arguments between the halfmen leaders and the rabble of human fighters goes on. Proud humans, unwilling to take their orders from a dog, even though they have no decent leaders of their own. And the only man who could do the job prefers to play Robin Hood rather than take up the mantle his family left him.

  It drives everyone crazy – Signy, Dag, Styr, the whole resistance movement. This is what he was born for. Signy continues her flow of information in dribs and drabs, promises more, far more, when Si
ggy joins. But Siggy will not and nations suffer for his stubbornness. Styr begs, Melanie pleads, Dag sends emissary after emissary, offers to come in person. But Siggy is unmoved. All he wants is to be let alone to live his life. As if his life is his own! As if he is not right at the heart of this story.

  Melanie pig, grumping and groinking her way past market stalls and in and out of side streets. It’s dusk. No longer possible to oink and grunt your way around out here in daylight. Muswell Hill has more than its share of halfmen, but with pogroms running at about one a week, no one’s safe. Melanie knows how to snuffle around out of sight. She’s had plenty of practice in no-one’s land. These days she has to keep her do-gooding for the hours of darkness.

  Do-gooding! Fat, porking old do-gooder she is and always was, as Siggy found to his advantage. Now she wants to spread her good deeds to the whole of London and beyond.

  Get-rid-of-Conor. That’s what it all boils down to. Get rid of Conor and down comes the Wall. Get rid of Conor and there’s an end to pogroms. Get rid of Conor and there’s a chance for people to live a decent life. One bad man more or less doesn’t alter the great sum of human happiness or misery too far, unless he happens to be Conor. What tyranny was ever more total than that suffered by Londoners under him? Sometimes it seems to her that the only thing that keeps the tyrant in power is the illusion of humans that it’s only the halfmen he wants to crush.

  ‘Your turn next,’ mutters the fat old thing, as she spies a hoarding above a bakery shop in Closewell Street: ‘Full blood humans only.’

  Your turn next. Certainly. Already, in fact. The baker has to give up half his earnings to the war effort, and keeps his youngest son, who has a face like a pig anyway, in during the hours of daylight. The lad had already been beaten half to death on his last day at school, where he grunted in an unfortunate manner during lunch hour. But the baker blamed the halfmen, not Conor. You could kick the halfmen. You could keep them out of your shop. What could anyone do about Conor, except obey?

  Melanie’s feeling cross now, and somewhat out of breath. Out of breath because these days she really is fat. Courtesy of her Siggy. Do-gooding doesn’t mean to say you don’t have to eat well. Always on the lookout for extras, just as she always was, only these days the extras aren’t just scraps and crusts, a couple of chops, a rusty oil drum to make a spare bedroom out of. Extras these days are juicy joints of roasted meats, basketfuls of cake, fish, fresh veg, butter. Interesting stuff, food. Fascinating, in fact. But even more interesting to Melanie are other extras. Hatfuls of jewellery, bullion, gold, silver. Dag Aggerman has no better worker on his behalf within the whole of London. On her back now a rucksack full of glittering necklaces, bracelets and rings, to be handed over under a badly-lit awning behind a pie shop in Cresswell Street.

  One of Siggy’s hauls.

  ‘What does it cost to keep you in groceries, Melanie?’ he asked, when he dumped the jewels on the sofa a few days past.

  ‘It’s not me as needs grub, you knows that,’ she grunted, fawning over the pretty things. She put one around her neck and cavorted about, while Siggy grinned.

  ‘Keep one – evening wear. You look gorgeous,’ he told her and kissed her ear till she squealed. Well, what use does a pig have for jewels? Truth to tell, Melanie would have liked to keep one, but Dag needed the money more. Food for soldiers, food for guns. Conor’s success was slowed, but not stalled, let alone reversed, for all Signy’s information. Only let Siggy join the fight and the information would be endless. Last of the Volsons! Signy would not defeat Conor for the sake of the people. Her father’s dreams meant nothing to her now. Unless it was a Volson doing the glad work, the glad work meant nothing to her. For its own sake, justice was meaningless.

  It made Melanie furious. Her Sigs, didn’t he love her? Didn’t she love him? Yes, yes, her ugly old face was all he had in this world, and she knew his heart was in the right place. Face to face, Siggy would do anything for you. He’d go out and raid fat old pigs of their dripping, play the outlaw, give fortunes away every day. But, like Signy, not for justice, not for the sake of the common folk. He did it because he liked to please his Melanie. And perhaps, because he needed the exercise.

  But certainly not for the sake of the alliance.

  ‘No, nothin to do with you, eh, Sigs?’

  Humans! Always arguing, always knowing best. And the last of the Volsons, the one man who had the name, the skills and the reputation to lead them spends his time making raids on individual old men with too much money, as if a splash of outlaw do-goodery was any answer to the genocide he saw out of his window every morning.

  ‘It pleases some folk,’ he said to her. Sure. Robin Hood. Volson, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Volson steals, and the old sow hands the money over to Dag Aggerman. Wonderful, how these aristocrats can sympathise with the common folk! But Melanie didn’t want some folks pleased. She wanted an end to the tyranny, she wanted justice, she wanted hope. And her beloved Siggy wouldn’t help.

  ‘Can’t help…’

  ‘Won’t help,’ she finished for him, and off he goes to sulk on his beloved sofa.

  Oh, don’t underestimate Melanie. She has a big heart, but there’s a brain in there as well. It’s politics these days for our Mels. She passes information to and fro, picks Cherry’s brains, tries to send messages to Signy, although they are never answered.

  (‘Won’t do business with a pig,’ purrs the cat-girl.)

  She knows everyone, who to trust, who not to trust. Gold and information: what more could the halfman leader ask for? The answer, Siggy. The alliance needs him, and she cannot deliver and that’s why she huffs and growls and stamps her trotters on the cobbles as she makes her way to her rendezvous.

  Under the awning, wet with drizzle, with the smells of cheap pies made of potato peelings, swedes and turnip tops filling the air around them, the jewellery is handed over. The bag, waterproofed with wax, which Melanie always uses for this purpose is turned upside down to make sure that no little link of gold or silver, no tiny gem that might be turned into a bullet is wasted. The recipient, an old man who clips his whiskers and has to shave right up to his eyes, giving his face a curiously bald look, packs the goods on his own back.

  ‘And how’s Sigmund?’ he asks her in a gruff voice.

  ‘Ah, groink! Same as ever. Stoopid.’

  ‘Stoopid monkeys,’ agrees the old man, who has a long journey in the tunnels to the other side of the Wall ahead of him tonight.

  ‘But e’s coming,’ insists Melanie. ‘E makes all this, don e?’

  ‘For you, Melanie, he does it just for you,’ says the old man, and pulls his own bag onto his shoulders.

  ‘E as an eart.’

  The old man nods. The two part, he to a drain that has a secret connection to the old Northern Line, she back through the little byways to the flat she shares with Siggy in Muswell Hill. Crosser than ever. What was wrong with Sigs? Why wouldn’t he fight? Already, he was out again for his Melanie, out again that very night, off to Hyde Park, making more for the good fight. He’d come over soon. Surely’no one could watch this evil for much longer. You just had to do whatever you could.

  Old Melanie was scared for her liddle uman. Folk didn’t understand how much he’d been through. It took time.

  Back through the streets. Up Wayward Road, scurry across Caversham and into the mire, mud and cobbles of Harlow Square, full of burrows and submerged basements, relics of houses long since knocked down for wood and stone. Many good folk lived underground these days, and hardly dared come out.

  Coming up Battle Grove… oh, dear, Melanie, look, now! A figure appears out of an alleyway a little ahead. Melanie pauses… pauses… back to see where she may run. No drains near here to hide in. She sniffs with her whiffly nose and smells leather shoes, boiled fish for dinner, a damp woollen hat and hair. Didn’t like it. It was a human. Never trust a uman. Flashing through her mind, rhymes she used to scare her little piggwiggikins with:

  ‘Th
e Lamb, the man, the pig an the goat,

  Went fer a ride in a liddle red boat.

  The lamb, the pig and the goat got ate,

  The man was the ony one left afloat.’

  ‘Melanie, it’s me.’

  She recognises the voice, and relaxes, but just a little. Who ever felt relaxed in such company, even though she knows the man and where his loyalties lie? Her decision not to run for it is an intellectual one. Every bone in her body cries out for escape.

  ‘Oh. What you doin ere?’

  ‘We need to talk, Melanie.’ The man steps forward, close enough to touch her. Close enough to hold her. Beware, Melanie Pig! ‘About Siggy.’

  ‘What about Siggy?’ Nervous, her little eyes shoot from side to side. She steps back. Too close, too close! Is he alone? ‘Why here?’

  ‘There’s a way to make him join Dag, I know it.’

  Now, that’s interesting. No one knows Siggy better than these two. If he has a plan, it’s worth hearing.

  A step closer, he takes another step closer. ‘Conor hasn’t done enough to make him see what he has to do.’

  ‘Not enuff ? What more could e do?’

  The answer comes faster than piggy eyes can see, shot out on an arm of steel, fingers of iron seize her by the throat and crush her voicebox. No cries for help, no grunts; her words end here.

  ‘He loves too many people,’ hisses the man. He flings her down on the ground where she writhes, clutching at her ruined throat, struggling for the strangled air. He hauls her back up and throws her over his shoulder. ‘This will show him, see, Melanie? Conor will never be content until everything worthwhile is destroyed.’

  If there was any irony in the phrase, ‘everything worthwhile’, Melanie didn’t appreciate the compliment. Gagging and straining for those precious last breaths, struggling in vain against his cyber-grip, she jolts up and down, up and down on his broad high back. Another wee rhyme spins through her brain: