ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  An hour into his journey the track rounded a great rock, jutting out from the hillside like a sealed-up plague house, and began a slow descent towards the first plateau on the journey to the great coastal plains. Marius stopped for a moment to enjoy the view. The rain was spectacular, a waving blanket that swept the low-lying hillside vegetation first one way then the other in a constant rhythm. For a moment he could almost believe himself underwater, adrift above a vast field of seaweed, alive with the sway of the tide above. All he needed was a cloud of some small, silver fish to dart out of the trees and the illusion would be complete. He could even see the light of a huntermouth, a strange fish he had seen once when working a con amongst the fishing vessels of the Scorby fleet, that hung a light above its saw-toothed mouth to lure fish towards it, then savaged them. Marius watched as the light bobbed towards him, shimmering in the dark rain, the sway and swerve of it entrancing and hypnotising, as if he were a whitefish and the huntermouth was closing in…

  “Shit!” Marius threw himself off the track just as the cart began to climb towards his position. His headlong dive took him into the nearby brush. He landed face first in a stickleprick bush.

  “Fuck!” He careened backwards, pulling stickers from his face and hands and flinging them away. His heel struck an exposed root and he tumbled back onto the track and across it in a mess of flailing arms and legs. His head struck the massive rock on the other side and he pitched forward, landing face first on the sandy track. He lay that way for perhaps half a minute, waiting for his eyes to catch up with the rest of him, then rolled over, expelling a spray of spit and sand into the air, and found himself staring into the barely-interested face of an underfed, aged mule. Marius scrambled out from under the animal’s gaze and stood, eyes darting to either side of the track in the search for the best escape route. When no sound was forthcoming from the mule he stopped panicking and let his gaze settle on the driver of the cart the beast was pulling.

  Marius was no great judge of age, but something that old should either be buried or a tree. Marius had once spent a torturous month impersonating the chief eunuch to the Caliphate of Taran’s second best harem, in a fruitless attempt to discover the location of the Caliphate’s second best buried treasure. In Taran they bred a special type of dog whose face, if it could be described as such, was nothing more than a mass of folds and wrinkles. The more wrinkles the dog possessed, the more highly it was prized. Marius had seen dogs that resembled mobile scrotums, pressed to the bosoms of cooing concubines as if the most precious possession on Earth, while his own scrotum sat alone, underappreciated and never once held to the bosom of anybody. But even the most scrotal of puppies would retreat to the nearest concubine’s cleavage in defeat when faced with the almost supernatural collection of wrinkles that stared at Marius now. The driver of the cart looked like a relief map of the Broken Lands after a major land battle had taken place. He crouched in his seat like a blind man’s drawing of a spider, a straw hat that looked like it might be hereditary crammed onto his head; arms and legs like knotted string poking out of a vague assemblage of clothing as if they’d been leant against them and forgotten. He stared at Marius, and Marius had the uneasy feeling that the old man had died of fright, and someone had better tell him before he forgot and drove off. He slowly raised a hand, and bent his fingers in a wave.

  “Hello,” he said, praying the old man wouldn’t spook and drive over him. He was in luck. After an extended pause, in which Marius could imagine his single word searching across the wrinkled phizog in an attempt to distinguish his ear from the rest of him, the old man leant over to a lamp that hung from a pole at the side of the cart. He tilted it so the light swung directly into Marius’ face. Marius smiled, and waved again.

  It is entirely possible that the descendants of the old cart driver still tell stories of the night he met Marius. Blinded as he was by the sudden flash of light, Marius didn’t see him leave the cart, but he did feel the breeze as he passed, moving across him at an angle towards the bushes at the track’s edge.

  “Hey, watch out for the stickle…” But it was too late. The old man cleaved the stickleprick bush without stopping, stick arms waving like a pair of spindly black machetes, cutting a path through the bushes at a pace that would have impressed a charging elephant. Marius watched him disappear into the gloom of the forest. Within moments the man was out of sight, but the sound of breaking vegetation continued for several minutes. Marius listened to the crashes of destruction fade into the distance, then turned back to the mule. They stared at each other. Marius’ gaze slipped down to the sand at his feet. No footprints spoiled the ground between the cart and the forest.

  “Well,” he said. “What do you make of that?”

  The mule snorted, although whether in agreement or disdain, Marius couldn’t tell. As there seemed no chance of consensus, he glanced back down the track, then down the path the old man had taken, then back at the mule.

  “Can’t leave you here, I guess,” he said. He climbed onto the cart and twitched the reins. “I doubt I need to rest my legs, either, but let’s not take the chance, hey?” He pulled on the reins, and slowly, with great reluctance, the mule wheeled about and began to pull the cart back down the track. Marius leaned back, and glanced at the seat beside him.

  “Hey, what do you know?” he said, “The old chap left his hat behind.” He placed it on his head, twitched the reins once more for emphasis, and let his new pet figure out the rest for itself.

  For the first time since his travails had begun, Marius relaxed. The mule plodded onwards like a surly automaton, one step after another without a single change of pace or demeanour, the rise and fall of its haunches hypnotic in the gently swaying light of the lantern. Marius quickly fell into the rhythm of the journey, letting his body swing along with the back-and-forth motion of the cart. Now he understood the old man’s posture – faced with the endless tiny adjustments necessary to maintain balance, his body quickly admitted defeat and slumped into the shape of least resistance. Without the presence of another person to remind him, Marius quickly forgot about the stickers poking into his face. It was only when he reached up to adjust his hat, to stop the incessant rain falling into his eyes, that he brushed against them and remembered to pull them out. He stared at the first of them, and frowned. He had felt nothing as he pulled it out, not even the slight tug as it loosed its hold upon his skin. Yet he remembered the pain of falling into the bush, and how much his head had rung in the moments after he struck the rock. Gerd had been adamant that the dead were beyond such mortal sensations, but Marius was not so removed from humanity that he could dismiss the things he had so recently felt. Something was not right. Some vital information was missing, some essential truth had been mislaid, or neglected. Marius had seen his reflection. It was not that of a living man. And yet he did not feel dead, which begged the question: was he alone in this, or was this deadening of skin and soul simply something that the dead were persuaded into believing, because nobody had the strength of purpose or character to deny the common belief? Or was it Gerd who did not feel things simply because he was Gerd? And if so… Marius stared at the prickle as if he might find the truth written upon it, like the foreign conjurers in the markets who claimed to write your name on a grain of rice. As if you’d even be able to read it if they did, Marius snorted, and flicked the prickle out of the cart. No, something was not right. Perhaps a few more hours of pondering while the mule strode gently onwards would reveal the missing link. What the heck, it was as good a plan as any.

  The mule, unaware of how good the plan was, chose that moment to stop. Marius blinked, then did so again when he saw the shaft of an arrow sticking out of the beast’s neck. He stared stupidly at it for a moment, long enough for something to whizz out of the nearby brushes and thud into his chest. Marius rocked back in his seat, staring down at a matching shaft that now protruded from his torso.

  “Oh, for Gods’ sakes,” He pulled the arrow out and flung it over the edge of
the cart, jumped down and knelt by the mule, placing a hand on its neck to feel for a pulse. There was nothing. The animal was definitely dead. Another arrow sped out of the dark and slammed into his back, just below the juncture of neck and shoulders. Before he was quite aware of doing so, Marius rose from his crouch, crossing the dozen feet between the cart and the bushes in no more than two heartbeats. He burst through the branches and into the tiny clearing beyond, grabbing the hidden archer by the throat and slamming him up against the bole of a tree before the man had time to notch another arrow.

  “What the fuck,” Marius snarled as the terrified archer struggled for breath, “did that mule ever do to you?”

  From behind him, a second assailant rushed at Marius, a long dagger raised above his shoulder. Without loosening his grip upon the archer, Marius turned. The new attacker lunged. Marius took a small step to the side, drew his arm away from his body, and grabbed the attacker just above the elbow as his strike slid past Marius’ ribs. He squeezed, and the second man screamed. As he pulled at his trapped arm Marius twisted his wrist, and a loud crack echoed across the clearing. The attacker stiffened in pain, and in that moment Marius lunged forward and butted him with all the strength in his dead neck muscles. There was another sharp crack and the swordsman slowly crumpled until only Marius’ grip on his arm held him up. He let go, and the dead assailant slid to the ground, sightless eyes turned up into his head. Marius turned back to the archer, still pinned to the tree by his unflinching grip.

  “Why?” he growled, shaking his whimpering prisoner, and then, when he received no response, shouting. “Why?”

  The archer said nothing, indeed, seemed capable of no reply. His gaze was fixed upon the dead stare of his companion and only a terrified sob escaped his lips at regular intervals, like a clockwork baby winding down. Marius curled his lip in disgust, and leaned forward so that his mouth brushed against his victim’s ear. The archer flinched, his gaze sliding round as far as it could towards Marius.

  “Run,” Marius whispered. “Don’t stop. Ever. Not for cities, not for oceans, not for the edge of the world.” Gently, he loosened his grip upon his captive’s neck. “Go on,” he said, his voice soft in the terrified man’s ear. “Run.”

  The terrified archer prised himself away from the tree. With one last look at his fallen colleague he stumbled towards the edge of the clearing. By the time he entered the brush he was running. Marius listened to his passage for perhaps half a minute, then sighed and looked around at his surroundings for the first time.

  It was a meagre campsite, to say the least. The two bandits had obviously been laying in wait for unwary travellers, hoping to strike lucky, or at least snaffle some decent food. A tripod of crooked branches stood over a tiny circle of rocks, and the few charred sticks within were ample evidence that the fools hadn’t even possessed enough smarts to start a decent fire. A single battered plate perched on top of the branches. Marius wrinkled his nose at the contents. Whatever it was in life, the meagre meal inside had far too much gristle to have been in good health. He dropped the plate into the dirt, and scouted around.

  Two thin, ripped blankets had been rolled up and placed against the base of a tree, and apart from the bow and knife at his feet, it seemed the only things his assailants owned were the threadbare clothes they wore. It was no wonder they were so eager to purloin the cart, Marius thought. Compared to their pathetic belongings it must have promised untold riches. Reminded of the attack, he reached up and pulled the arrow from his back, looked closely at it, then flung it from him in disgust. Even the arrows were old, the tip showing signs of re-carving and repeated hardenings in the fire. The arrow struck the corpse of the swordsman. Marius looked down at him for a few moments, then trudged back to the cart to rummage around in the back. Eventually, he withdrew a short-handled shovel and made his way back to the clearing. Picking a soft spot on the downhill side of a short incline, he dug a hole a few feet deep, then carried the dead man over and dropped him into it. He stood, staring down at the unmoving corpse.

  “Come on,” he said eventually, then again, as the corpse in the hole made no attempt to rise, “Come on!”

  Soon he was screaming it, tears streaming down his cheeks, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs as he crouched over and expelled his fear into the roughly dug hole.

  “Come on, come on, come on you bastard. Get up. Get up. Please.” He sank to his knees, shoulders slumped, arms hanging loosely at his sides. “Please,” he whimpered, “Not just me.” The bandit stayed where he was, neck bent at an unnatural angle, eyes staring through the dirt wall into infinity.

  Then Marius heard something – a scratching; the tiniest of movements from the bottom of the hole. He leaned forward, gripped the edge of the grave, eyes searching for animation in the swordsman’s corpse. The sound grew louder. Marius frowned. It sounded like digging. Dirt moved under the dead man, then a hole opened, tiny at first but growing larger and larger until it filled the bottom of the grave and the dead man was no longer held by the earth but supported by a dozen hands reaching up from below. As Marius watched he was slowly borne downwards into the dark, then passed beyond the edge of the grave to arms waiting just out of sight. Six faces peered up at Marius, their dead visages fixed in anger.

  “The king,” six voices sounded in the dark, whilst dead eyes met his, “Where is our king?”

  Marius fell back as the dead reached up and began to pull the walls of the grave in after them. He scrabbled backwards, beyond the line of trees at the clearing’s edge, the dead voices following him, “Where is our king? Where is our king?” until they were cut off and all that he could see from his hiding place was an unbroken plane of sand where the hole had been. He stood, eyes fixed on the empty spot, took one step backwards, and another, then turned, and with no more thought in his head than a dead man, ran from the clearing as if the wolves of Hell were chasing.

  EIGHT

  There are some objects in the universe so large, so immense, that they bend the laws of physics to suit themselves. Smaller things, even if they are themselves of such a size as to stagger the imagination, are caught within their gravitational pull, never to be released, and what does manage to escape is either too small to be noticed, or so broken and destroyed as to be useless. Philosophers in the King’s palace had recently announced that the planets orbited the sun in this way, and that light, a substance so large and all-encompassing that it covered the Earth like a blanket, was actually held in thrall to the spinning of our own planetary surface. No matter how large, or powerful, there is always something bigger that will suck you in, enslave you to its movement and make you a mere satellite.

  Borgho City was such a place.

  It is said that wherever a king resides lies the governance of a country, but wherever the largest river meets the sea lies the true power. Borgho City squatted over the largest delta at the mouth of the largest river in the largest country on the continent, and whatever power was held within her massive stone walls was as twisted and incomprehensible as the street system that had grown up over the decades of occupation. Its walls, it was said, had exhausted quarries as far away as the Penate Mountains. In fact, most of the walls were made of rammed earth, deposited in vast hills when the first harbour had been dredged from the silt and sand of the delta mouth, but Borgho City had grown so big that truth and memory were only two of its satellites. A mile from the city walls, the road Marius was on crested a rise, before plummeting down towards the nearest gate. Marius paused as he reached the top, found a nearby lump in the surrounding ground, and sat down to watch the traffic as it approached the entrance.

  Foolish men, such as those who never have to leave a city, will tell you that the walls surrounding it, and the guards who man them, exist to defend the city from its enemies – to provide a barrier between the riches within and the covetous, barbarian masses without. Wise men know that this is nonsense. Walls exist to contain gates, and soldiers exist that they may stand next to those gate
s and demand tribute from anyone wishing to enter. Outsiders desire entrance, guards exact a levee, and then spend it on booze, women and gambling. If they’re good, Gods-fearing men. If not, well, there are a million ways to part a guard and his money, and not all of them have to be approved by a majority of the churches to be fun. Thus the economy is kept vibrant, money moves in the right directions, taxes are manageable, and the whole system runs along as smoothly as a slaughterhouse production line. The truly wise, amongst whom you can count guards, guards’ mistresses and those who didn’t learn their lesson the first time they tried to get into a city, know the truth: there are a million ways to part a guard and his money, so to a guard, money is a useless and transitory thing. If you really want to get into a city unscathed, that is, with your belongings intact and all those special little items you’ve secreted about yourself in the hope the authorities won’t go searching for them, you need to know what your gatekeepers really want. There are as many desires as there are guards to a gate, and the only way to know which one is the most appropriate is to find a good vantage point, pull up a piece of ground, and watch a while.