by Robert Earl
Still, they were Strigany. They would fight.
“Right, here’s how it is,” he barked, his eyes glinting with the controlled terror of battle. “We either run and let them kill us all, and they will kill us when they catch us on the open road, or we take them here.”
“So, we hold our ground?” It was Chera who asked, and Malfi was simultaneously proud and dismayed to see how fearless his daughter looked.
“No,” Malfi said, and turned back up the cluttered street, “we hold that ground.”
The domnu pointed to the rows of neatly stacked corpses, the abandoned hay carts, the stacked barrels, and all the other obstructions that littered the street.
“We’ll take ’em at close quarters,” he said, grinning, “and they won’t know what hit them. Remember, go for the horses first.”
The horsemen quickened their pace, and, a moment later, the sound of their hooves was echoing off the walls of the hamlet. There were more than twenty of them, Malfi realised as they trotted forward. More than twenty armed, trained and mounted professional killers; no wonder they looked so confident.
They remained confident even when their formation disintegrated amongst the clutter of the street. This lapse certainly didn’t bother their captain. Incredibly, he was smiling as his horse jinked its way towards the Strigany. It wasn’t until he realised that the Strigany weren’t fleeing from this clumsy charge that his smile faltered.
Then, he saw what Malfi held cradled in his arms, and the smile left his face altogether, slipping away like a rat from a sinking ship.
Suddenly realising what a mistake it had been to fall into this battleground, the mercenary dug his heels in and began to raise his hand. Before he could complete the gesture, Malfi levelled his gun and fired.
The gout of flame threw shadows skittering across the walls, even as the spray of steel chopped into the mercenary and his horse. The range was close enough for the impact to hurl both animal and man tumbling backwards, and they crashed into the rest of their squadron.
Malfi, his head ringing, half hoped that such a well-placed shot might have knocked the heart out of his enemies, but it was not to be. If anything, it merely seemed to encourage them and, howling with rage, they urged their reluctant horses forward.
“Charge!” one of them cried, digging his heels into his mount as it leapt over a cart. Behind him, his comrades urged their nervous horses into an awkward gallop, even as one of them tripped and fell with a scream and the snap of breaking fetlocks.
Malfi roared his defiance and drew his sword. Then he charged forwards, leading his people to battle amongst the piled corpses of this blighted town. Chera wanted to run, wanted to hide. The horsemen looked huge as they bore down on her, and she felt a moment of sheer panic as she saw the steel tips of their lances. Every single one of them seemed to be pointing directly at her.
However, the sight of her father rushing forward to meet the murderous onslaught cured her of that fear. By some strange alchemy of the soul, her terror became hatred, and a moment later, her hatred became strength.
She realised that she was screaming a challenge, as she rushed forwards, her billhook held over her shoulder like a woodsman’s axe. Although the weight of the tool usually made even lifting it an effort, now she wielded it with an adrenaline-fuelled strength that made it feel as light as a fencing sword. She swung the polearm down in a lethal arc, and before she even knew what was happening, she was killing.
The first man she took was about thirty. He had a hooked nose and a blond beard that needed a trim. His eyes were blue, and he was riding a bay horse. The armour plate he wore on his chest was dimpled where rust had been scrubbed off.
Chera saw these details in a single flash that burned them into her memory, even as she twisted away from the thrust of his lance. She used the momentum of her spinning body to chop the billhook into his neck, and she pulled at his dead weight just as she would have pulled at the dead weight of a three week-old corpse.
The steel tip bit deep into the muscles of the mercenary’s neck, and he screamed as he was dragged from the saddle. Chera screamed back and instinctively tried to free her hook from his neck. When it came loose, it was through a rip of flesh and a spray of blood that splashed against her leather apron.
She stood and watched the man, who lay ruined and dying at her feet. He watched her back, eyes pleading. Then he was gone.
The rage that had driven Chera to the act ebbed, and she was left trembling with nausea over the corpse of her first kill. As the battle surged around her, she stood, staring blindly at him, and the haft of her bloodied billhook started to slip through her hands.
Before it could fall, she felt cool, bony fingers close around hers. She started, and then looked down into the still, dark eyes of her petru. It was like looking over a precipice into some dark, terrible void.
“Well done, my darling,” the old woman said, and Chera felt her nausea pass, her shaking hands becoming firm. Her victim forgotten, she could hear the cries, screams, and howls of battle, the endless clatter of steel and stone, and wood.
“Kill them,” Petru Maria told her, her wrinkled face twisted with a burning intensity, “before they can kill us.”
Then Chera saw the horseman who had appeared behind the old woman. He kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks as he aimed his bloodied spear tip at her back.
“Maria,” Chera yelled, “watch out.”
The old woman turned. She gestured as lazily as if she were shooing away a fly, and spoke a single word to the horse.
The animal screamed and reared back, as though from a branding iron. It spun around, its hooves slipping on the cobbles, and bolted down the street. Its rider dropped his lance as he tried to hang on, deaf to the curses of his comrades as he fled past them.
“Come with me, my sweetheart,” Petru Maria said, beckoning to Chera with one gnarled finger as she stalked forwards to find more victims. Around her, the street was a confusion of debris and struggling forms.
In the open, the lancers would have slaughtered their ragged opponents as easily as they had hoped, spearing them where they stood, or running them down as they fled.
Here, though, things were different. In the confines of the village, the Strigany fought with the brutal, direct expertise of born street fighters. They jinked amongst the piled corpses and scattered debris on the street, dodging the jabbing lances and arcing swords of their foes to cut their horses out from beneath them. Tendons were sliced. Bellies were opened. Soon, the screams of the horses were loud enough to drown out both the confused orders that the mercenaries were shouting at each other, and their screams for assistance as, one by one, they found themselves isolated, and surrounded by the Strigany.
Chera followed Petru Maria through the bloodied chaos of the street, and even through the horror she felt at the grisly task she had to perform, she was amazed by the petru’s enthusiasm. The old woman grinned and hummed merrily as she slipped unseen through the battle, the blades she held in her withered, liver-spotted hands in constant motion as she stabbed, sliced and severed.
Her smile didn’t fade until the mercenaries began to retreat, their courage suddenly snapping. Some of them fled on foot, leaving their crippled mounts amongst the carnage of battle. Others galloped in a confused line back up the road they had come by.
A ragged jeer went up from amongst the Strigany. Maria simply spat, shrugged and turned to Chera.
“Well, my poppet,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Your first kill. Good girl.”
“No,” Chera said, looking from the bodies of their victims to the carnage beyond. “This isn’t right. It can’t be right, to kill each other like this. Things shouldn’t be this way.”
The petru looked at her, a terrible pity in her eyes.
“But they are,” she said, her honesty as blunt as a cudgel. “They are this way.”
“Petru Maria!” a voice called, and the old woman turned to see Malfi walking towards her, holding a roll of par
chment in his hand. “I found this proclamation on the body of the captain. Look, it’s got a seal, and it says something about us, about all Strigany. Can you come and read it for me?”
So it was that, surrounded by the cold corpses of their clients and the warmer ones of their foes, Malfi’s caravan learned of the terror that lay ahead of them. As the pyres had burned to a greasy ash, Malfi’s caravan had withdrawn back down the road that had led them here. When the smell of the burning corpses no longer followed them, there they stopped, circled their wagons, and waited while the wagon masters went to Malfi’s caravan to discuss what to do next.
Chera, having no place at the council, made her way through the dusk to Maria’s wagon. Once there, she lit a lantern, and watched the sleeping child she had saved from the plague-blighted village. The girl had been cleaned, and her hair braided, and now she slept the sleep of the truly innocent. Not wanting to wake the child, Chera resisted the temptation to stroke the smooth skin of her flawless cheeks.
They were a stark reminder of her own ravaged features. The strain of contagion she had caught had been a virulent one, virulent enough to have killed her mother. Only the art of Petru Maria had kept Chera alive, stemming the fevers and the buboes that had wracked her frame, and since then the two had been devoted to each other.
Although Chera had seen enough of death to be thankful for every breath of life she drew, she wondered what the future would bring. No husband, that was for sure; at seventeen she was of marriageable age, but the only glances she drew from men were of pity or curiosity.
At least, so she believed.
She sighed and looked at the peachy complexion of the sleeping child.
“You’re a lucky little thing,” she said.
“What’s so lucky about her?”
Chera jumped, and looked around guiltily. Maria emerged from the shadows by the wagon’s entrance.
“Maria! I thought you were at council?”
“I was,” the old woman said. “It didn’t last long. We are going to keep off the road until we can find out what the others are doing. These aristocrats are as demented as mad dogs at the best of times, but this Averland…” She trailed off, letting the venom in her tone do the talking.
“So it’s true, then?” Chera asked. “We are banished?”
Maria shrugged her bony shoulders.
“Perhaps. We will see. But tell me, liebling, what is so lucky about this little girl?”
Chera blushed.
“Nothing. It was a silly thing to say especially after all she has lost.”
Maria nodded, and tugged at the whiskers on her chin.
“Well, if you won’t tell me, you won’t,” she said, “but perhaps you’d brew some camomile for me. The weather’s changing tonight. It always makes my water ache.”
“Of course, Maria,” Chera said, and started bustling about with the tea things.
“She is a beautiful child,” Maria said to herself as Chera put the kettle on the brazier. “Perfectly formed. Look at her cheeks, like peaches.”
Chera said nothing as she spooned dried herbs into the kettle.
“I remember,” Maria said, sitting back and watching Chera from beneath hooded eyes, “when you were a little girl. You were exactly the same, skin as white and as smooth as fresh cream.”
Chera bit her lip as she stirred the camomile into the warming water. She swallowed. Suddenly, for no reason whatever, she could feel tears welling up inside her.
It must have been the bloodshed today, she told herself as she turned, and busied herself looking for the tea strainer. Of course I’m upset, all that violence.
Maria’s eyes glittered like a hawk’s.
“You were such a beautiful little girl, and now you’re a beautiful woman.”
Chera snorted, and a tear rolled down one of her cheeks. She felt the warmth of it zigzag across the ridges of her scars, and suddenly her vision blurred. She blinked hard, took a deep breath, and stirred the tea.
When she spoke her voice was level.
“I know that you are trying to be kind, Maria, but we both know that that isn’t true. I am scarred, ugly, hideous. And don’t say anything about true beauty being on the inside, or souls meeting, or that stupid old saying.”
“Of course I won’t,” Maria said, and watched Chera pouring the tea. “It’s a load of old rubbish anyway. Beauty isn’t on the inside. It isn’t anywhere. Only poets know the truth about beauty, although they never tell it.
“The truth about beauty,” Maria said, wrapping her arthritis-knotted fingers around the cup that Chera gave her, “is that it’s a lie.”
Chera wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and poured her own cup.
“No, it isn’t a lie,” she said, miserably. “Men look at you. They see if you’re beautiful or not.”
Maria, who had just taken a mouthful of tea, choked, coughed, and then spat it out.
“Men!” she repeated, horrified at Chera’s naivetй. “What do they know about anything? Nothing. They’re worse than children. What difference does it make what shape your nose is as long as you can smell? None. What difference does it make if you’ve got breasts like melons or saddlebags, as long as your hips are wide enough? None. Men are idiots, and beauty is a lie.”
Chera sniffed, and looked away as Maria, content to have set the record straight, slurped at her tea.
“I’m sorry, Maria,” she said. “It’s just that I want a husband, and, let’s be honest, with this face, I won’t get one. I’ll never be in love, or have babies. I’ll grow old, all alone. It isn’t the worst thing, I know it isn’t. It’s just that sometimes… Oh, let’s not talk about it.”
Maria sipped her tea. She had been wondering how long it would take for them to have this conversation, and was glad it had finally come. If Chera had been another type of girl, it would have come years sooner, but then, if Chera had been another type of girl, Maria wouldn’t be so keen to help.
“If you want a husband,” Maria said at length, “all you have to do is to ask, my darling. It’s simple enough. No more difficult than charming an animal. Easier, usually.”
Chera shook her head emphatically.
“No. No, not that way. What’s the point? I want a man to want me for who I am, not because he’s been forced.”
“By Ushoran, girl, I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life. Don’t blush, you know it’s true. Men don’t want any girl for who she is. They want her because of who they want her to be.”
Chera looked into the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup. There was no solace to be found in them. Even so, her jaw hardened.
“I won’t ensnare a man with your arts, Maria. I wouldn’t want one that was taken that way, and maybe I will find somebody without them, one day.”
Maria grunted.
“You’ve changed your tune, my girl. If you won’t let me make things easy, that’s fine. I suppose you wouldn’t refuse some cosmetic help. The gods know, there’s not a woman alive who would.”
Chera looked at the petru suspiciously.
“Can you fix my skin?” she asked. “I mean, properly? Permanently? I didn’t think you could do that sort of thing. Last time I asked you said you couldn’t.”
Maria said nothing, but just looked at the sleeping child, the peasant child whom she had known for less than an hour. Then she looked at Chera, who had been so much more than a daughter to her. Then she came to a decision. It wasn’t difficult, not as difficult as it should have been.
“Of course I can fix your skin,” she said. “It’s just a tricky potion to make, that’s all, but it can be done, Ushoran willing.”
From what I know of that black-hearted devil, Maria thought grimly as she looked again at the sleeping child, he’d be willing enough. As always, it would only be a matter of choosing the right currency.
She sighed, and cracked all ten of her knuckles. Then she leaned back against the wooden walls of her home and lowered her eyelids. Although Mannslieb was already
riding high, it was still too early. Such a dark deed needed an even darker night, if only so that she could hide from her reflection in the puddles in the road on the way back.
Love, the petru thought, as Chera kissed her goodnight and left the wagon. Only the gods could have inflicted such a perfect curse on the world of mortals.
***
Although the smoke from the bodies that the Strigany had burnt had long since cleared, the smell of the burning still clung to the blood-greased streets and hollowed-out dwellings of the village. It clung to the shadows that stalked among the ruins, too. Hungry shadows, whose appetites had outgrown their cowardice, as Morrslieb set between the jagged spires of the forest to the south.
Although their cowardice might have been eclipsed, it still throbbed in their movements. They skittered about among the remains of the dead, with the cringing gait of beaten dogs, their teeth glistening in the night, as brightly as the stars that glittered overhead. Their cowardice showed in their stealth, too, and in their silence. Apart from the snuffling of their noses and the occasional slobbering as they found another morsel amongst the ash, they moved as soundlessly as nightmares.
They heard the woman approaching when she was still almost half a mile away. They froze, eyes wide and ears twitching as she approached. Then the wind turned, and their noses wrinkled at the familiar smell.
Their disappointment was short-lived. By the time the small, bundled figure of the old woman had stepped out of the night, which was as dark as the pits of their eyes, the creatures were busy about the remains of the dead. They knew her of old, this one, and not even the most desperate of them dared to do so much as to look into the horrible, flaying brightness of her eyes.
Then the swaddled bundle, which she was carrying with such surprising ease, stirred, and muttered something in its drugged sleep. It was a soft sound, barely audible above the wind that whined through the straw roofs of the dead houses. No matter how soft it was, though, it had the same electrifying effect as a spot of blood dropped into a pool of sharks. Cowards though they were, the things that had gathered looked up from the cold comforts of their feast. Some hesitated, but most started to close in, the hooks of their ancient appetites drawing them towards the bundle that the old woman carried, as irresistibly as moths to a flame.
