by Martin Davey
He had to work the sword to free it of the bone. Only when he had managed to free the blade did the blood begin to gush. He was well aware of screaming now, his throat was raw with it and he didn’t care. He heard voices shouting: Pascal and Dorian. He ignored them. This time he kept his eye on the thrashing beast, a mess of blood and broken bones, and he struck with all his might at the neck. This blow sliced more easily into flesh; and the beast, after one final, terrible scream, fell silent. Landros struck again to make sure the creature was dead. And then again. And again. His sobbing wracked his throat and the blood on his hands was hot.
Three more times he struck until he felt one hand land softly on his shoulder and another on his sword arm. Pascal. “She’s gone, Landros, she’s gone,” his friend whispered in his ear while prying his fingers free of the hilt of the sword.
Pascal had turned so white that the freckles were stark across the bridge of his nose. “She’s gone,” he said again.
“Feren…” Both men turned to the prone figure in Dorian’s arms. That death could come so suddenly was a shock to Landros. Living here at the edge of the world, he had become accustomed to the slow agonizing deaths of the pox or other illnesses; but sudden violent death was alien to him. He started to move to Dorian, then stopped. He wanted something to wipe his bloodied hands on, but that seemed a small concern with his friend lying dead in the Captain’s arms.
Even as he stood there staring at the scene, questions spun through Landros’s head like masks around a dance floor on the Day of Thanks. How were they going to get the body back to town? How were they going to tell Feren’s mother? Would Ricon Lovelin, the Town Clerk, hold any of them responsible for the death? What were they to do with the dead horse? All thoughts that passed through his mind in a moment, and Landros hated himself for them all. His friend was dead and all he could think was how difficult it would be to shift his body? He shook his head.
The berragulls had started their mournful cries once more. The shalon had settled in a tree further along the cliff. The winds still gusted from the end of the world and the waves still crashed and frothed against the rocks far below. It seemed a treachery that the world could continue in so normal a vein after the violence of only moments before.
“We should take him to his mother.” Dorian had finally stopped stroking Feren’s hair, though he still cradled his head.
Landros nodded and looked to Pascal, then to Lykos who still held his broken arm; he was white as a berragull and biting his lip hard enough to draw blood in his efforts not to cry out against the pain. Landros felt for the man; difficult to seek sympathy for a broken arm when your friend lay dead in the dirt.
“Here; we can put him on Harrah. I’ll walk.” Landros had almost forgotten Torra. Torra, whose late surge had been the cause of it all. Or had it? Landros suddenly felt too weary to think about it; all he wanted to do was get home and wash the blood from his hands and clothes. To wash away the memory of the day.
Dorian gently laid Feren’s head on the ground and they surrounded the body, five of them with the winds of the end of the world ruffling their hair. Landros felt like he was part of some murderous conspiracy standing with his friends and looking down at the body. The first dead body he had ever seen. It seemed an age they stood there like that, each lost in his own thoughts as they watched the body of their young friend.
Landros jumped as Torra clapped his hands loudly together. “Who will help me lift him?” He spoke with a brightness totally at odds with the mood on the cliff. Perhaps he was trying to lighten the mood; perhaps that was the way he dealt with loss.
Whatever the reason, Landros noticed the dangerous darkening of Dorian’s face and he stepped forward. “Here, Torra, you take his legs.”
Only once they had lifted Feren did Landros realize the difficulty they would have getting him onto Harrah’s back. Feren sagged in the middle, Landros holding him by the armpits and Torra holding his booted feet. Harrah was not a short horse by any means. Landros stepped forward, stepped back, twisted and turned; and still couldn’t see a way to get Feren onto the horse. He had never thought the slim young Watchman could weigh so much.
Eventually it took all five of them pushing and shoving to get Feren draped across the nervous Harrah. Landros tried to settle Harrah with a stroke of his nose, but the stallion revolted even more, his eyes wide in fear. Maybe he could smell the blood of his stablemate still on his hands. Instead Landros checked on Feren, draped so unceremoniously across Harrah’s back. For one terrifying moment, he thought he could see brains falling from the hole in Ferens’s skull. Closer inspection revealed that it was only Ferens’s dark hair, thick with blood, hanging loose. He heaved a sigh of relief. “We ready?” he called out.
They were. The little group began the long walk back to Katrinamal. And walk it was; nobody rode the five miles back to town. Somehow it must seem disrespectful to ride in the company of a fallen comrade; all of them, even Lykos with his broken arm, led their horses by the reins and walked with heads bowed as the winds sang their mournful sighing songs.
Landros would have been happy to walk the entire way without saying a word. He wanted time to come to terms with his emotions, with what had happened. It was only as Dorian’s horse startled a grannit into flight that he realized they had become separated from the other three and were walking a full three lengths behind them. The sun was already falling to the horizon, the sky a velveteen blue. Katrinamal was still three miles distant, not yet visible beyond Staxton hill. Here and there were scattered farmhouses with uniform red roofs amid the yellow butterbur fields. A strangely tranquil scene on such a violent day.
Dorian absently stroked Kerona’s ear as they walked. “I had been wanting to talk to you before we reached town.” He kept his voice low although the other three men were far too distant to hear their talk. Feren’s head bounced against the saddle of Torra’s horse with each step.
Landros couldn’t keep his eyes off the sight of Feren draped across the saddle like that. Now they were nearing Katrinamal, it seemed as though every sight brought back memories of their times together: there was the peak of Staxton hill up ahead where they had heard on a clear day you could see the towering spires of Jerusan. They had picnicked there every afternoon of one glorious summer waiting to see those legendary relics of a bygone age. Next was a large grey rock weathered into the vague shape of a huge chair. Years ago, Feren had enjoyed sitting on that rock and pretending to be a mighty King of some imaginary kingdom where knights in shining armour rescued beautiful queens from beastly dragons. Feren had always been one for the stories. Until the Town Clerk had found out and then the games and the stories had come to an end. Landros bit his lip and strode on. “Have you?”
Dorian nodded. “Be truthful, Landros. You will be called before the Clerk; and for the love of your mother, for any love you have for me, be truthful. I started the race; I promised the winner a night at the Mother’s house. I am the one to blame for Feren’s death. Do not lie in some misguided attempt to shift the blame, Landros.” Dorian’s voice was quiet, urgent. He watched the little group ahead for any sign they might be hearing the conversation.
“But…” Landros tried to interrupt, but Dorian overrode him as though he hadn’t heard a thing.
“The Clerks…Ricon Lovelin, he isn’t quite human, he is…more than we are, Landros. Maybe the Keepers change the Clerks, or maybe they are different to begin with,” Dorian shook his head as though berating himself. “But whatever the reason, he cannot be lied to, Landros. He will ask you what has happened, he will question you intently on it, and yet he will already know what has transpired, maybe he will have known of it before we even left Katrinamal this morning.”
Landros took a moment to marvel at Dorian’s eloquence. He had known the man all his life, and yet he had never known him say so much in one breath before. And then he remembered: the Dream. Keeper Jerohim. The Captaincy of the Watch.
He looked at the three men walking before him.
He looked at the dead man slung across the horse like a mouldy bag of potatoes. He looked at the lifelong friend whose livelihood he had been told to seize. Had he really been so proud when the Keeper had told him? It seemed so long ago. And now his first act would be to stand before the Town Clerk to explain the death of one of his men.
It was with a heavy heart that Landros crested the rise of Staxton Hill and headed for home.
CHAPTER 2
Katrinamal was a big town. Nothing in comparison to the glorious shining cities in the stories Feren had loved so much, but big when compared to the little villages and hamlets that were strewn along the edge of the world like aphids clinging to the fringes of a curled, withered leaf. It nestled in a shallow valley, sheltered from the violent winds that sometimes took umbrage against the civilized domain of man.
Returning home at such a time as this, with the sun pregnant and heavy on the horizon and the trees stark and twisted against the bruised blue of the sky, one could almost think the fluttering lights of Katrinamal to look homely.
Landros was in no mood to think this a welcome homecoming. His thighs ached as he led Kerona down the perilously steep slope of Staxton Hill. Katrinamal looked like a warren of dark streets, shadowy cul-de-sacs and black windows. Over the town loomed the spires of the temples of the Keepers. Each one a refuge where people could take a moment and offer their appreciation to the Keeper of their choice. All the spires were exactly the same height, and no other building in the town was allowed to match their lofty eminence. The spires were already bathed in darkness, the buildings at their feet flickered with the light of the torches scattered about the streets.
Every time Landros returned to Katrinamal, his eyes would betray him and slide across the flat roof of the Fiddler’s Tree, past Mother Jendra’s open windows and seductively fluttering drapes, past the shivering flags on the Town Clerk’s battlements, past the raucous tumult of the gambler’s den. Past all this and more to his home. No, not his home. Not anymore. His mother’s home. Left all alone in a house on the edge of town, where the stone floor was so cold in winter it hurt your feet. Where the fights of the gamblers and the pimps and the drunks kept you awake at night in summer.
Often Landros had come home to find his mother sitting in her chair, rocking to and fro and talking to herself. When she realized he was watching she would smile and continue with her sewing or whatever other hobby had caught her attention that week. Then the time had come when the talking had continued even when she knew Landros was watching. Until he would be woken every night by his mother screaming and swearing and he would rush out of bed to find her thrashing about, blood streaming from her mouth and her bloodied tongue. Not long after, he had found a place on the other side of town and moved Pascal in to share the rent. Every time he went near his family home, he fancied he could hear his mother shouting and swearing and arguing with herself.
No, not good to look over there.
Pascal was waiting for him further down the hill, his horse idly grazing, the reins loose in his hand. Landros ran a hand through his hair and hurried his step. Despite the cover of the surrounding hills, his hair blew in his eyes and the smoke from the chimneys of Katrinamal was swept away as soon as it was spewed into the sky, grey against the dark blue of the approaching night.
“Don’t envy old Dorian, do you?” Pascal continued down the hill as soon as Landros reached him. “Imagine having to tell Feren’s mother what happened.” Pascal puffed out pasty cheeks and shook his head in wonder. “It’s a sorry business when a young lad can’t even have a race and live to tell the tale, I say.”
Landros resisted the urge to groan aloud. So many things, so many life-changing events in one day. He kept forgetting his recent change of circumstance; or rather, he kept forgetting the responsibilities that came with the position. He looked back at Dorian walking alongside Torra and Lykos, the body of Feren still slung across Harrah’s back. They looked like nothing more than a group of grim hunters bringing their prize back to be spitted over the fire.
Dorian looked as though he had aged ten years. His heavy face sagged at the cheeks, his nose looked fleshier. His eyes were rimmed with red circles; not as though he had been crying, more like he had been rubbing at them. Dorian had known Feren’s mother for longer than Landros could remember; it should be he who told her the news. But was that a coward’s way of thinking?
Kerona tried to stop to graze and Landros pulled her on impatiently. “Maybe she would be better getting the news from somebody else? You or me, maybe?”
Pascal looked at him as though he’d just suggested he could wrap his own tongue around his head. “Have you actually met Feren’s mother? Have you seen how she treats him? Treated him.” Some of the fire went out of Pascal’s voice with the correction. “She isn’t going to take it well whoever tells her; and there’s little more terrifying in this world than a hysterical woman. Take it from me, Landros, stay well away from it. Dorian is the man for the job; that’s why Keeper Liotuk chose him for it. And that’s why he lives in that nice house of his and I’m woken every morning by your stinking feet in my face and the sound of that old tart next door going at it.”
Now would have been the perfect opportunity to tell his closest friend of his sudden promotion. But Landros couldn’t face that just now. Instead he climbed into the saddle without another word and rode back to Dorian. Kerona stepped and pranced after the slow walk, eager for some real exercise.
Landros looked down at his old friend, but he was remembering Dorian as a younger man; remembering him sitting in Feren’s kitchen on a sun-drenched morning, his eyes bright as he talked to Feren’s mother; remembering walking past the yard and seeing Dorian writhing on the floor in mock pain, Feren laughing as he stood over the Captain with his wooden training sword in his hand. It was the struggle that had aged Dorian so much on the journey back. How Dorian must have wanted to race back to town to break the news to Feren’s mother. But he wasn’t the Captain anymore and the will of the Keepers was not to be interfered with; even more so when it was the will of Keeper Jerohim.
“I’m going to go on ahead, Dorian. Prepare her for your arrival. We can’t have her finding out by seeing us bringing him into town.”
Dorian looked at him for a long moment. “I should be the one to tell her, lad.”
Landros shook his head. “You keep an eye on Lykos. I need to show I’m taking my responsibilities to heart.” He turned Kerona; her breath billowed in the air.
“What? Who is he to decide what to do? What responsibilities?” There was a definite resentful jealousy in Torra’s voice. He looked as clean and fresh as when they had set out that morning.
Landros ignored him and let Kerona have her head. Dorian shouted something; but Kerona was speeding so quickly down the perilous slope that he only caught the word “…later…” Perhaps the Captain would be coming to see him once things were in order.
Kerona was running faster than he would have liked; crooked trees bounced past and the ground jerked before him dangerously, Kerona’s breath loud and steaming in the cool air. Landros’s legs ached from clinging on for dear life.
No time to think. No time to fret, to worry. Maybe even Kerona needed the release.
All too soon they were racing past the outlying farms and cottages of Trotter’s Fall. This was the poorer end of Katrinamal; the farm buildings run-down and dilapidated, the fields bare and the animals thin and resentful as they watched Kerona streak past. The richer soil lay to the west, away from the cliffs. It was as though Katrinamal needed this paltry barrier between it and the mysteries beyond, as though the rich and the cultured needed shelter behind the poverty of Trotter’s Fall to feel safe away from the primal presence of the Sea.
There was no wall, no barrier, not even any sign to signify where Trotter’s Fall ended and where the town proper came to be, but it was generally understood that Katrinamal itself began with the Garstower House. Began in both senses of the word, because everybody knew this enormou
s stone house was the first building ever built in Katrinamal. It was even said that it outdated the town by centuries; that it was built even before the Keepers came to save the world from itself.
Landros raced past the huge house without a second glance.
He soon had to slow down; more than one angry shout following him as people jumped out of his way on Regent Street. Already more than a few drunks staggered across the street, weary shopkeepers were locking their doors for the night, couples hurried home laden with their shopping, Guardians of the Five walked through the hubbub, serene in their smocks. More than once, Landros heard his name called out by some familiar voice. He ignored them all while easing Kerona back; her flanks still quivering with the exertion.
He well knew the way to Feren’s house: west along Regan’s Street, turn left at the temple of Keeper Martuk, all the way past the multi-hued tents of Market Square and then there it was; fourth house from the end of a little huddle of cottages squatted slantways in the shadow of Keeper Jerohim’s red-spired temple.
Now Kerona was walking, now Landros didn’t fear for his very life, now he had time to think, he wondered what he was doing. It had seemed such a logical decision at the time—to grasp at the first test of his Captaincy while also sparing his old friend the pain of telling a loved one of her son’s death. To show that he could make a decision, however rash.
He tried to think of how he would tell her of her son’s death, yet the picture of Feren’s dully staring eyes, of the jagged split in his skull, of the white bone beneath the red blood, kept sneaking into his thoughts. He found it difficult to swallow past the tightening in his throat. Perhaps the shock was wearing off and the true finality of Feren’s death was finally sinking in. A lot of good he would be if he turned up to Feren’s house sobbing and bawling like a new born babe. He wanted to laugh at the thought. It came out more like a wracking sob.
