CRYERS

by North, Geoff

  “I need you here. If anyone severs a toe with their shovel while digging, or if one of them practicing champions breaks a limb, they’ll be coming here to get fixed.”

  Kay seemed more prepared this day to counter her mother’s arguments than previous mornings. “I washed all the dirty towels you told me to, and prepared more than enough creams for cuts and rainburns. I even split up enough splinters to brace the broken bones for half the folks living in Rudd. Please, Ma…I don’t ever ask for much.”

  Sara shook her head. “You’re all I have left. I won’t have you wandering out into the plains with a bunch of drunken men bent on seeing other men hurt themselves. It’s barbaric.”

  “I can take care of myself. Been helping you look after the same kind of men right here when they come to get fixed.”

  “You can look after yourself because I look after you, and those men come to my house needing aid. World’s a whole lot different once you step outside…especially for a pretty girl. You’re staying here, and that’s final.” The girl made a pouty face and started to walk away. “Don’t you go walking out on me like that—if you need to feel sorry for yourself, do it in the backroom. Bring them towels out, and when you’re done there, go fetch some fresh water from the well.”

  Sara turned her attention back outside. The stream of workers had thinned out. A few, slow-moving stragglers trailed behind the others, dragging their spades and picks through the mud to slow them down even more. Sara was about to turn away—to begin preparing the materials her daughter was gathering for another busy night—when a giant gray form appeared around the corner of her neighbor’s house at the end of the street. At first she thought a roller had somehow crossed the stone bridge at the northwest end of town without being spotted. It had only happened once before in her lifetime; the passed out guards had been trampled and half-consumed as a result. She leaned out through the opening for a better look.

  That ain’t no roller.

  A smaller figure was walking beside the monstrous form. Two men. The smaller one wasn’t all that tiny, she realized. Her eyes were drawn back to the mountain on two legs. Sara had never seen a man so big, a man so packed with muscle and presence. They came closer and Sara slowly backed in from the window. The mass of tattooed flesh had seen her. He leered and showed her his maw of grey gums. This was one of Burn’s champions, she realized. Whoever was thrown into the pit to challenge him wouldn’t stand a chance. There wouldn’t be much left to patch up. The thought sickened her.

  The man next to him lifted his gaze from the track-laden ground and looked out to the horizon past town. His hands were tied behind his back, and he staggered as the giant pulled him along. Sara gasped and covered her mouth before she could cry out. The men passed without saying a word, following the workers east. A final group trailed after them—two boys, a portly man with an awkward walk, and two guards Sara knew but had little to do with. She craned her head back out and watched the other two move off into the morning light of day.

  “Kay!” She called over her shoulder. “Pack up what’ve you got ready and meet me outside.”

  Her daughter raced back into the room. “You’re gonna let me go?”

  Sara didn’t answer right away. She was already starting to fill a worn leather sack with the instruments she’d finished using less than twelve hours earlier.

  “Ma? You letting me go to the pit?”

  Small knives with bone handles bloodstained a dull brown were secured in twine and shoved inside the bag. Sara wrapped a bottle half-filled with clear alcohol into the cleanest sheet left on the crude operating table. It was the same table where Sara and her daughter sat down to eat meals during those times when men weren’t hurting or killing themselves. There had been no meals served there in the last few days, and there would be no breakfast or supper at that table this day either, Sara supposed.

  “We’re both going to the pit today. I have a feeling our services might be needed on site.”

  Chapter 37

  Most folks backed away when Lode walked by. Cobe turned and watched the woman stick her head further out the window. She leaned against the wooden frame with a horrified look on her face, oblivious to Cobe, Willem, and Trot shuffling by. All of her attention was drawn to the big man and his reluctant champion a dozen steps ahead.

  Cobe’s brother had noticed the woman as well. “She ain’t never seen a monster before?”

  “Not many seen the likes of Lode, I’m guessing,” Cobe replied.

  “Keep walking,” one of the guards said. He was called Tog, and he had a pinched in face as ugly as his name. Tog was short—not much taller than Willem—but what he lacked in height was made up with in width. Most of his adult work duties had obviously been stationary—guarding the bridge on the west side of town—because the walk across town had left him winded and sweat-drenched.

  Cobe nodded at the man and continued on. Both were carrying big clubs on their shoulders, but neither had needed to use them. They weren’t like Lode’s followers; these men didn’t have to smack, kick, and curse the three along. They weren’t animals. Ard, Beff, and Devon had lived brutally, and all three had died equally brutal deaths. Cobe had seen enough death in the last week to last him a lifetime, and he would see a whole lot more in the days to come. He had learned to control his temper in that short time, and he kept his mouth shut when told to. Willem had learned the same lesson. Both boys went where they were told to go, and there was little backtalk. If they were going to survive—and Cobe still had every intention of doing so—they had to play by the rules.

  They were led across another bridge built up from an accumulation of rocks on the eastern side of Rudd. The night before, when they’d arrived in the dark, Cobe could only imagine what might have lurked in the depths of the trench that encircled the town. Now, the early morning sky penetrated into the shadows revealing a still body of black water. It reminded him of the lake sitting at the bottom of the crater that sat atop Big Hole. That cesspool reeked, and had made his eyes water. The stuff sixty feet below them now wasn’t much better. He could make out garbage floating in the sludge. Trot stumbled, and a loose rock bounced down the steep wall to splash into the oily mire. Curly pinches of dog shit and thicker logs belonging to humans bobbed up in down in the black soup. Cobe held his breath in disgust and kept walking. He had to remind himself that the citizens of Burn weren’t any better. Cobe had carried many a pail containing the excrement and splashing urine of his family to the river bordering town. Everyone used it as their personal dump. In fact, Burn was worse than Rudd. At least the people here only surrounded themselves in their own filth—Burn’s residents shared theirs with every other living thing downstream.

  Cobe almost fell over top of Willem. The boy had come to a stop about three quarters the way across. “Quit looking at the shit,” Cobe said. “It don’t make it any prettier or easier to smell.”

  “I ain’t lookin’ at the turds…What’re them ropes sticking out of the rocks?”

  Cobe noticed them for the first time; a web of heavy ropes poking out from the wall of stones less than three feet above the sewage. It ran the entire length of the bridge’s base.

  The other guard spoke up. “It’s what you call a defence mehkism.”

  “Mechanism,” Cobe said.

  “Yeah, mehkism—just what I said.” His name was Remee, and he was Tog’s direct opposite. Remee was tall, a collection of long bones gathered under a thin layer of skin. He talked more than Tog, but didn’t have much intelligent to say. “There’s four bridges leadin’ in and outta Rudd. If the guards ever feel threatened of bein’ overrun, they can give the rope a tug and bring the whole thing down.” He beamed at the boys and stuck out his chest as if he’d invented it himself. “It’s all…how do you say…inter-waggled throughout the rocks. Ten or twelve small stones pop out at the right spot, and the whole fucker goes.”

  It would also discourage anyone attempting to enter Rudd from the bottom, Cobe guessed. Those falling sto
nes could crush anyone trying to sneak in. He heard a trickling sound coming from somewhere. He pictured the rocks starting to loosen deep under his feet, smaller pebbles leaking down into the cracks. Cobe’s heart started to race.

  They’re pulling the rope! They led us out onto the bridge, and they’re going to bury us here.

  “Couldn’t you wait until we got back on solid ground?” Willem complained.

  Trot tucked himself back in and grinned sheepishly over his shoulders at the boys. His muddy feet were spotted with a last few hurried drips. “Sorry…couldn’t hold it no longer.”

  Cobe almost laughed. He’d been afraid someone had pulled a rope and sealed their fate. The only rope being pulled now was the one holding Trot’s pants up.

  They crossed another bridge, a rickety wooden thing stretched over a narrow point of the nameless river running past both Rudd and Burn, and headed out into the plains. Cobe had prepared for a long walk; it seemed that’s about all they did when they weren’t fighting for their lives—walking, running, fleeing from some horrible menace across sand-blasted ruin and cracked earth. A ridge of giant boulders less than a mile away was their final destination. Cobe watched the line of workers ahead of them file towards the outcrop of stones like a stream of ants returning to their hill.

  Remee spoke up again. “It’s where Rudd holds the Rites every second year when it’s their turn to host. Them rocks form a natural circle. Inside’s like a big bowl where the men fight. Folks have been carving out places to sit and watch up in the rocks for decades. I got my own seat nice and high up just on the other side of that big bastard right there.” He pointed to an exceptionally jagged piece of stone jutting up another twenty feet over its closest neighbor. “Any fucker tries and takes it…well let’s just say there might be an extra fight for the folks to watch. Wouldn’t be much of a contest, though.”

  Tog laughed. “Yer pa was the one what carved out that place to sit, and no one would want to sit there after all them years his dirty, fat ass was planted there.”

  “You take that back.”

  “Fuck yerself.”

  The two men argued back and forth while herding their prisoners along. Cobe briefly considered grabbing his brother and making a run towards the north. Tog wouldn’t be able to keep up, and Remee would likely trip over his own big feet. But there was nothing in that direction that looked any more promising. Even if they did manage to distance themselves from the guards, what would they find? Another herd of rollers? A pack of foraging howlers? No, Cobe had learned the world beyond Burn’s walls held nothing for them. Running was no longer an much of an option.

  Trot staggered on beside him, looking back over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure the guards weren’t about to take their argument out on him. Cobe ignored their yelling and focused on Lawson and Lode forty feet ahead of them. The lawman’s shoulders were stooped; his back had a forward bend in it, as if the ground was constantly calling up to him to fall down and die. Why was Lode forcing him to fight? Burn didn’t stand a chance of winning the Rites with Lawson as their champion. Was the giant’s hatred of him so intense that he would sacrifice his own home town’s chances? If Lode himself volunteered, Burn would be victorious every year. Maybe it didn’t much matter who won and who lost. No prizes were handed out at the end of it all. Neither town got anything of value if they won—nothing but bragging rights. And the losers went home feeling beaten.

  Perhaps that’s what it all came down to. Lode was willing to sacrifice Burn’s reputation just to see the lawman beaten, humiliated, and dead. It would make a statement to everyone back home. If anyone fucks with Lode, everyone pays.

  Cobe heard the sounds of shovels in wet dirt and workmen cursing as they followed Lode and the lawman through a narrow cleft in the rocks. They worked their way down on a sandy trail engulfed in shadows. The pit was smaller than Cobe had imagined it to be. Perhaps that was due in part to the sheer number of men clearing out mud and rock fall. Or maybe the ring of surrounding stones looming over everything and everyone made it appear that way. It didn’t much matter. Once the lawman was thrown into fight, pit size and land layout would be of little help to the man.

  “I wanna sit up there,” Willem was pointing to the same jagged ledge of rock Remee had bragged about minutes earlier.

  “Piss on you,” the guard said. “That’s my spot.”

  Willem could see a series of crudely-shaped hollows carved out near the top. He pointed again. “Not there—I’m gonna watch the Rites from up there.” They followed the line of his dirty finger to a grey, leafless tree hanging over the highest edge. The roots of the old thing had buried deep into the stone after what must have taken centuries of struggle. The tree had lost in the end, however. Its dead trunk hung out over the pit an improbable angle. Soon—a decade, a year, perhaps by the end of the day—gravity would give one final tug and bring it crashing down.

  “You’re not sitting up there,” Cobe said. Willem tried to ask why not, but his brother cut him off. “Maybe you should be more concerned with who’s fighting, instead of worrying about a good seat.”

  Willem saw Lawson resting on a wooden barrel lying on its side at the edge of the pit. He was having trouble catching his breath, and there was hardly any color to his face. Lode hovered over him, badgering the lawman with what looked like threats if he put up a poor showing during the Rites. Willem hung his head guiltily. “Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

  A fight broke out seconds later. Men spread out to give the two combatants room. Shovels were dropped and hands started clapping. The workforce had become a cheering, jeering audience, calling out encouragingly and cursing profanities at the same time. Cobe and Willem pushed through the crowd and watched as two old men squared off against each other in a miniaturized ring of mud less than twenty feet across.

  “Gawdamn!” Willem shouted. “Them farts are like twice as old as the lawman. Someone’s gotta stop them.”

  Both men were crouched over and circling. Their skinny arms were held out in front of them, swaying and feeble like the branches of the tree hanging above. Ancient fists, swollen and knobby, quivered with anticipation. One of the old men’s faces had already been struck. His crooked nose was bent off at an angle and blood continued to drip from both nostrils.

  “They ain’t stopping now,” Tog said. The guard had pushed past the workers and was standing next to Willem, his gut poking into the boy’s shoulder stump. “They still haven’t figured which one is going to compete in the senior event.”

  “Senior event?” Cobe asked.

  “You two ain’t never been to the Rites before, have you?”

  “Our Ma and Pa wouldn’t let us go watch,” Willem answered. “Said it was too violent.” One of the old men staggered forward and tried to bloody the other’s nose some more. His punch fell short and struck a boney shoulder. Both howled out in pain.

  “Your parents got that much right,” Tog replied. “It’s an awful sight to behold sometimes.” Bloody-nose swung back a moment later and lost his balance. He fell into the other man and both collapsed into the mud. “Fuckin’ humiliating, too.”

  Cobe had to step back as the old pair rolled towards them. “You mean to say they volunteered to fight? Why would men that old volunteer to do such a thing?”

  “Some men volunteer all their lives to be picked—most never get chosen. These two bastards have been tryin’ since before I was born.”

  Cobe had always been led to believe that only the weakest, the most expendable, and the most hated competed in the Rites. He never realized there was a lineup of volunteers from both towns wanting to fight and die. But when you lived in a town—or towns—where every second citizen was either a drunk or a drain on society, the number of actual fighters competing yearly in the Rites was far less than the actual number that could.

  The man with the bloody nose was on top of his attacker. He pounded at the other’s forehead with the sides of his fists. The sound it made reminded Cobe of a tim
e his mother had hammered away at a raw chunk of wild dog meat on the table where they prepared meals and ate. She’d used a wooden mallet to tenderize it enough for her family to chew through. Cobe’s pa had hunted the animal down on the plains—said the animal was a wolf, and that it deserved to be killed and eaten before it could harm someone else—as if that made it any better. It still tasted like shit, and neither he nor his brother had swallowed more than a few bites.

  The old man underneath had fallen unconscious, or he was dead. It was difficult to tell whether he was still breathing or not, all covered in mud with his competitor straddled on top of him. Bloody-nose was heaving for air of his own. He was exhausted and shaking. The crowd shouted louder for him to finish it. Shovels were picked back up, and the spades beat against the earth in rhythm to their chants.

  Kill him… Kill him… Kill him… Kill him.

  He found a sharp rock sticking up out of the dirt the workmen had missed. He clawed around it with twisted fingers and pulled it free. He took it in both hands and aimed for the center of the other man’s forehead. He missed by a few inches and it sank into his eyeball with a dull popping sound that made both Cobe and Willem gag. Trot vomited on Remee’s boots.

  Tog roared with laughter and clapped Willem’s back. “Welcome to the Rites, boys! It’s a good thing your parents aren’t here. I have the feeling they still wouldn’t approve.”