The Wicked Day

by Christopher Bunn

  Well, then why don’t you just carry me? he said to the wind, but the wind just chuckled in his ear and blew past in a flurry of snow.

  Much later in the day, their way began to descend. Jute wasn’t sure when, but he was only aware of a new and more agonizing pain in his legs (going down a hill is always worse than going up a hill), and the sunlight vanished behind the crags to the west. It grew colder. Ice covered the snow, undiscernible in the shadows. Jute slipped and fell. He could not feel his hands.

  “I don’t know how much longer the boy will be able to go on,” said the hawk.

  “Best to keep moving,” said Declan without turning around. “Two more hours and then we’ll stop. Down under the lee of the mountain. Below the tree line.”

  “I can’t feel my toes,” said Jute, his teeth chattering.

  “Can’t stop now. Nothing to build a fire with here. We’d freeze and die.”

  “Precisely,” said the ghost, cheering up at these words. “You’ll freeze and die. Death by freezing is fascinating. Your blood turns to ice. Your skin turns blue. Your hair gets as brittle as old women’s finger bones and then just snaps off, strand by strand, until you’re bald. Your eyes freeze into pebbles rattling around in your skull until they pop out and go bouncing across the ground. Your stomach fills up with wind and you’ll find yourself thinking thoughts of ale, hard cheese, and witches with long noses.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said the hawk.

  “Yes, but true. Many people who’ve frozen to death have reported similar experiences. The truth is often strange, my fine-feathered friend, but it’s still the truth.”

  “I don’t even know why I bother,” said the hawk.

  Jute didn’t hear the rest of their conversation, for his mind was filled with thoughts of ale and cheese. This alarmed him. Perhaps it meant he was freezing to death? But then he realized he had only started thinking about ale and cheese after the ghost had mentioned them. After all, he wasn’t thinking about witches with long noses, and for several minutes he had to concentrate hard to avoid thinking about witches. He could do with some ale and cheese. Mulled ale, steaming hot. And bread fresh from the oven to go with the cheese.

  They continued for what seemed much longer than two hours. It was an endless, dull stumbling through darkness and cold that grew darker and colder with every step Jute took. Thoughts of ale and cheese congealed into ice and fell away, too heavy to carry even as hope.

  Pine trees rose up from the icy slope, singly at first like sentinels of an army; past them were the thicker groves of the battalions standing at attention for the return of the sun. Above their snow-bowed heads, the moon skated across the frozen expanse of the sky.

  “We’ll stop here for the night,” said Declan.

  Somehow, in the gloom and the deeper swaths of shadows cast by the trees, he had noticed a ravine a short distance away from their path. They hiked across and found it sheltered from the wind. An overhang of rock had preserved a clearing dry and free of snow. Declan disappeared for several minutes and then returned with an armful of branches.

  “That won’t burn,” said the ghost. “It’s frozen.”

  “It’ll burn,” said Declan.

  He arranged the branches in a pile at the base of the overhang.

  “It won’t burn.” The ghost drifted closer. “Ice, you know. Frozen right into the wood.”

  Declan knelt down. He muttered something over the wood and a flame sprang into life. The hawk, who had been drowsing on Jute’s shoulder, raised his head.

  “Careful,” said the bird, his voice soft. “Careful, man. There’s no telling who might be listening in this night.”

  “Amazing,” said the ghost, its eyes popping. “A genuine word of power. From a backwoodsman, no less. Upon my soul, what did you say? Was it the name of fire? Or wood? I suppose you could’ve remade the nature of wood by naming it. Was it that? No, it couldn’t be. Otherwise there’d be no more wood to burn. It would’ve all been transformed. It must’ve been a name of fire.”

  Declan did not answer. The flames spread among the branches until a little fire danced merrily on the ground. Jute crouched down and held out his hands. The hawk hopped off his shoulder and unfurled his wings, shaking snowflakes from the black feathers.

  “There’re six names for fire,” said the ghost, “that is, if you take Olar Olan’s treatise on the naming of essences seriously. I can’t remember if I did. But that’s not important. What’s important is that you, an obviously uneducated country bumpkin, possess one of the names of fire. What has the world come to? You wouldn’t care to share it with us, would you?”

  “I’ll get some more wood,” said Declan, scowling at the ghost. “Jute, keep an eye on the fire.”

  He disappeared again into the darkness.

  “For your information, there’re more than six names for fire,” said the hawk. “There are nine. I doubt the wisdom of knowing any of them. They'd be dangerous for even a man such as Declan, who seems admirably lacking in the vices that typically succumb to fire’s allure.”

  “Nine,” said the ghost, eyes wide. “Nine names!”

  “He’s not a country bumpkin,” said Jute. “He’s the Knife. He was the Knife. The executioner of the Guild.” He shivered, despite the warmth of the fire. “He’s killed more people than anyone knows. Bodies in alleys and backrooms and on the waterfront, with him as cold as a fisherman gutting fish.”

  “Hmmph,” said the ghost. “That’s not any sort of recommendation.”

  Declan returned with another armful of wood, as well as three dead rabbits draped on top of the branches.

  “A hot meal’ll do us good,” he said.

  “Would it ever,” said Jute. His stomach rumbled in anticipation as Declan spitted the rabbits. “How did you manage?”

  “Old trapping secret,” said Declan. A smile flickered over his face and then was gone. “I’ll show you some day. I was lucky enough to stumble on a burrow. Rabbits aren’t the smartest sorts. Not like wild boar. Boar tastes better than rabbit, too, but rabbit’ll do for now. Quick to catch and quick to cook.”

  The rabbits sizzled over the flames, dripping fat and exuding a marvelous odor. Declan shoved more branches into the coals. Around them, the night settled in, and the moonlight gleamed on the snow. The hawk scratched together a pile of dried needles and then sat down on his bed with a sigh of satisfaction. The ghost, after a last attempt to persuade Declan to share his knowledge of fire, vanished in a sulk.

  “That’s a dangerous word you carry,” said the hawk after a while.

  “I use the thing sparingly, if ever,” said Declan. “Farrows never did place much faith in magic. It’s a chancy business and better to be left to those who don’t mind risking their lives and limbs. But when you’re caught in the winter, far from shelter and the only wood to be had frozen with ice, that one word can be the divide between life and death. It’s the only word of power I know, master hawk, and it’s the only one I care to know, so you can settle your feathers. My father taught it to me, and his taught it to him before. I’ve no love of wizards and their endless grasping after words. Here, the rabbits should be done.”

  Jute burned his fingers on the meat and then burned his tongue as well, but it tasted delicious. In addition, there was bread in their knapsacks, stale and hard, but it toasted well enough on the hot stones at the fire’s edge. The hawk pecked at a morsel of roast rabbit.

  “Not bad at all,” said the hawk. “But raw is better.”

  A branch collapsed down into the coals. Sparks drifted up. Jute leaned back against his knapsack and closed his eyes. Impossibly and oddly enough, he felt happy. It didn’t matter that he was out in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain range in the snow, far from any place that was familiar. What mattered was that his stomach was full and he was warm. He did not need to think beyond that. He could hear Declan and the hawk talking quietly. Snowflakes swirled past, further down in the ravine, but here he was safe. At least for a time, for
one night. Jute closed his eyes and fell asleep. Thankfully, he did not dream.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FARMERS AND TRADERS

  The morning dawned in silence, revealing a world of snow and a sky so drained of blue that it seemed simply a continuation of the snow’s white up into the horizon. The fire had burned down into ash.

  “I’ve heard there’s an old trader road somewhere below the eastern edge of the mountains,” said Declan. He frowned and shook his head as if trying to clear it of cobwebs. “I’ve never been to the duchy of Mizra before. Farrows never came here.”

  “And neither to Vo as well,” said the ghost, but only Jute heard him.

  They hiked down through the hills, through the thinning trees and the melting snow. It was slightly warmer down here in the foothills. However, despite the sunlight and the decrease in altitude, there was no mistaking the fact that winter had arrived in Tormay. At least the snow was not so deep, giving way to stretches of mud in places. They reached the road at midday, when the sun was high in the sky. When they crested the last of a series of lower and lower hills, they finally saw the road. It was a muddy track carved by years of hooves and boots and cart wheels that had passed that way.

  “This mud is just as bad,” said the ghost.

  “I don’t know why you get to complain,” said Jute. “It’s not as if you have any feet.”

  “Just because you can’t see something,” said the ghost, “doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For example, I can’t see your brain, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Although there’s different evidence about that which makes me suspect otherwise. Poor example for my argument, I suppose.”

  “What?” said Jute.

  “Never mind,” interrupted the hawk. “What’s important right now is the girl and you, too, of course, Jute. For the time being it’d be wiser if we dispense with any flying practice. It’s strange, but I find that my memories about this duchy are hazy. There’s no telling who or what might be living here. Anyway, we’ll swoop in, find the girl—”

  “My sister,” said Declan.

  “—and swoop out. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Swooping in and swooping out,” said Jute. “Sounds like a lot of flying to me. Particularly when you’ve just told me I shan’t be doing any flying at all, and right when I was starting to get the hang of it.”

  “The only thing you were getting a hang of,” said the ghost, “was falling flat on your face.”

  “As for you, ghost,” said the hawk, “you’d do well to stay out of sight, with your mouth shut, whenever we’re in company. Ghosts make people nervous and they start asking questions.”

  “And what about you? If we’re trying to avoid attention, I doubt a large, talking hawk will do much for the cause.”

  It was a country of broken hills and sudden, deep valleys through which the track plunged down into gloomy shadows and stands of trees huddling beside the road as if waiting for some long-anticipated guest. There were few houses in evidence and hours passed by without sighting any sign of life. Happily, though, they came to a farm as twilight fell. The farmer allowed them the shelter of the barn for the night on the agreement that they do a little work for him. This meant Declan splitting a pile of logs into kindling and Jute mucking out the pig sty.

  “Here,” said the farmer, dumping a bucket of corncobs into the pig trough, “Bend with your knees when you get your shovel in. Whoops, don’t mind the old sow, son. Ah, well. Mud don’t bother nobody.”

  The farmer laughed and stumped away. Jute clambered back to his feet and glared at the sow who, in her eagerness to get to the corncobs, had knocked Jute off his feet in her rush to the trough.

  “Fat slob!” said Jute to the sow.

  The sow twitched one ear at him but reserved her attention for the corncobs. The mud was much more than mud, which became apparent to Jute’s nose. It was one thing to be standing in the stuff. To have it smeared all over your clothing was a different matter.

  “Thank goodness I don’t have a sense of smell anymore,” said the ghost.

  “Wash up, lad,” called the farmer. “Dinnertime.”

  The farmer’s wife was as small as he was big, a cheerful bird of a woman who flitted around the kitchen table, banging down pots and plates and platters piled high with more food than Jute had ever seen at one time in his life. The farmer had three daughters and one baby boy of indeterminate months who sat strapped in a high chair, observing the scene with a solemn and indulgent eye.

  “Eat up,” said the farmer. “Them that’s shy don’t get any.”

  The girls giggled and whispered to each other behind their hands. Jute ignored them, though his ears turned red. There was a pot of stew; a platter piled with potatoes, golden and fried, that rolled off onto the table and scattered themselves obligingly by every plate; carrots and leeks; pickled cucumbers spicy enough to send Jute into sneezing fits (which made the girls giggle even more); a bowl of butter that shone in the candlelight; and loaves of fresh bread. Declan put his head down and plowed through, hardly pausing to breathe.

  “Quite a trencherman, ain’t you,” said the farmer.

  The farmer’s wife bustled up to the table with a platter.

  “Fresh trout,” she said. “Jesi and Juna caught them down in the oak pool this afternoon, they did.”

  “Did you now,” said the farmer. “Fancy being so clever.”

  “And Juna hooked the old carp too,” said one of the girls. “Pulled her right in. Shoulda heard her holler.” All the girls giggled.

  “Eat, eat,” said the farmer’s wife.

  “Somethin’ sweet?” said the farmer.

  “Of course!” His wife looked offended.

  After the girls cleared the table and whisked the baby off, the wife brought out an enormous blackberry pie.

  “Now then,” said the farmer, cutting himself a wedge. “Off to Ancalon, are you?”

  “Aye,” said Declan. “The boy and I, we got some cousins there. Family business.”

  “Quite a trip to come across the mountains this time of year. Not many folks attempt that, even for family, I reckon. It only gets worse as the days pass. Soon enough, winter’ll close the gap toward Hearne. No getting in or out of the duchy until the thaw.”

  “Every winter?” said Declan.

  “Without fail. Gets mighty cold this side of the Morns. Mind you, Ancalon’s always cold.”

  “What do you mean by that? Surely you have summer here.”

  The farmer shrugged his shoulders and paused on a mouthful of pie. “I ain’t one for talking poorly of folks, especially my own duchy, but Ancalon ain’t the friendliest of towns. People there’re a bit stiff, snobbish. None too fond of strangers. Gotten worse over the years. I suppose that’s why most country folk never go to Ancalon. Send in our goods with one of the traders for barter. Salt, iron, a bolt or two of cloth for the missus. Fact is, old Birt should be stopping by in the morning on his way south. Pick up a load of beef an’ corn.”

  “Must be trustworthy traders you have here. I wouldn’t want another man handling my gold.”

  The farmer grinned. “A slippery trader gets known soon enough in these parts. The truth’ll out. Have some more pie. You too, laddie.”

  It was still dark that next morning when old Birt came rolling up to the farm, his wagon creaking across the field.

  “Wake up. Wake up,” called the farmer, stumping into the barn. A lantern swung from one hand. “Can’t sleep away the day. Yawn wide enough, laddie, and the mice’ll be using your mouth to piddle in. Lend a hand here, now.”

  Jute shut his mouth with a snap and brushed the straw from his hair. Icicles hung from the eaves, and the air smelled of woodsmoke. Declan was wrestling barrels and sacks up onto the trader’s wagon. Four mules stood in their traces, glaring around at everything in general and nothing in particular. A silent rush of wings fluttered over the peak of the barn and disappeared into the morning gloom. The hawk. No one noticed except for Jute. Bes
ides the barrels of salted beef, there were sacks of corn stitched up in burlap, as well as stone jars of honeycomb packed in crates stuffed full of wool to cushion the journey.

  “Be sure an’ get a dear price for that honey, Birt, you hear me?” said the farmer’s wife. “Raised them bees myself. Clover and honeysuckle. Sweeter’n anything them cityfolk’ve tasted. A good price, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, I hear you. I heard you now, didn’t I?”

  The old trader was a withered stick of a man, bundled up in a coat large enough to double as his tent. Despite his age, he bustled about with greater energy than both Declan and Jute, heaving sacks and barrels up into his wagon and periodically hopping up to rearrange the goods stowed there.

  Birt agreed to give them a ride south in exchange for their company. “The company of your sword,” he said, cackling a bit. “Times ain’t what they used to be these days.”

  “And the boy?” said Declan.

  “Don’t look like he weighs much. Mules won’t mind. ‘Sides, he can scarper after wood for the fire an’ make himself useful, no doubt, or we can beat him.”

  “Why, no one’s—” said Jute, outraged.

  Hush.

  The hawk’s voice floated through his mind.

  The old man is fond of talking. Perhaps we can learn something from him of Ancalon and what goes on there. Traders hear much. Do not allow him to remember you more than he should.

  The farmer’s wife hurried back out with a bulging sack for them.

  “A bite for the road,” she said. “Eat the pie first, else it go bad. Watch that Birt, though. He’s a greedy lout.”