Dark Mist Rising (8 page)

‘I'm ... I'm sorry. What is your name?'

‘Ye don't recognize me?' She heaved a great sigh, theatrical in its exaggeration, and batted her eyelashes at me. Finally I had the wit to notice her clothing: a gown cut so low that it would have put the queen's ladies-in-waiting to shame. Her flabby, brown-spotted breasts were in danger of escaping from the sweat-stained satin, and her skirt was short to show silk stockings fastened just below the knees with garters trimmed with fake diamonds. Pink-white paint lay thickly on her lined face. I had roused an old bawd who had died as lusty as in her youth.

‘There was a time, lad, when ye'd have known my name, all right. I'm Sally Cleggers, sometime lady-love to – but I musn't say, should I? Your great men keep their secret lives secret, if they can!' She winked at me and looked around. ‘So I'm dead, am I?'

‘Yes, Mistress Cleggers. Can you tell me—'

‘Well, we all must die sometime. I had a long life and a merry one. Why, I remember once when I was a child—'

‘Yes,' I said hastily. The elderly Dead will prattle happily about their childhoods; in fact, usually it's all they will talk about. Their adult selves, their lost lives, the families they left behind – these mean nothing to them. But themselves as small children, that will sometimes animate them. Sometimes, anyway. Perhaps it is because little children, in their simplicity, are closer to what the Dead are now. I don't know. None of the actual children here, nor any adults less than sixty years, have ever talked to me, or even seemed to see me. ‘You were a captivating child, Mistress Cleggers.'

‘That I was!' she said, sticking out her chin at me and narrowing her eyes. ‘And don't ye doubt it, lad!'

‘But now you're dead.'

‘So it seems.' A puzzled look crossed her face, and I could see her lapsing again into the calm rigidity of the Dead. Again I shook her arm, saying desperately, ‘You were the prettiest little girl in your ...' Village? Neigh-bourhood? ‘Your area!'

She revived. ‘Well, no, I cannot say that, lad. Nell Goodman was prettier. Why, one time Nell and me—'

‘Mistress, is there a
hisaf
here?'

‘A what?'

‘A
hisaf
.'

‘Speak plain, lad. That be not a word. No “
hisaf
” on Barrington Heath, where Nell Goodman and me—'

‘But here, now! When you sit and wait, what are you waiting for? What do you feel?'

Her puzzlement was giving way to anger. ‘I be dead, lad! I wait for nothing!'

‘And do you feel anyone else here with you?'

‘
Ye
be here, and a more troublesome idiot I never did see!'

‘But is there anyone in your mind that—'

She was gone. Tranquillity had reclaimed her. If I shook her arm again, all I would hear was a tedious story of Nell Goodman sixty years ago. I had learned nothing.

Or perhaps I had. If Mistress Sally Cleggers had been experiencing the presence of Soulviners while in her serene trance, wouldn't she know that? Wouldn't she have awakened frightened, as I had been frightened two years ago when I crossed over to find that dense dank fog touching my mind? Perhaps not. I didn't know what the Dead felt. I was among the living.

Or perhaps I was not. I didn't know what the Young Chieftain's soldiers, back in the upstairs bedchamber of that snug cottage, were doing to my helpless body. It was possible I was already among the Dead, and would not know it until I returned – if I could return.

And now another terror came to me. I had brought Cecilia back from the dead. I had brought back the sailor Bat. I had brought back the entire Blue army, which had defeated Solek's men because the Blues could not be hurt or killed a second time. But a fortnight after each return all of them had melted away, leaving not even dust. They had vanished for ever, to be found neither among the living nor the Dead. Would that now happen to me?

If I was even now being tortured to death in the land of the living, and then I crossed back over, would it be as if I brought
myself
back from the dead? Would I live a fortnight on the other side, whole and invulnerable, and then melt grotesquely away, my chance at eternity forfeit?

I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was afraid to stay here and afraid to go back. Fear tightened around my chest until my breath came fast and shallow, and my heart pounded hard enough to hurt. I put my head in my hands and there, in the quiet Country of the Dead, I wept and sobbed like the six-year-old I had once been, who lost his mother to a death he could not understand.

9

I stayed longer in the Country of the Dead, but I could not stay for ever. There was no way to know if more or less time had passed here than in the land of the living; time is not the same in the two realms. However, if the pain on the other side was too great, I could always cross back again. My torturers could not take that escape away from me. It was mine.

Despite my fear, I had to know if I was I already dead in that tiny bedchamber in The Queendom. I took a last look at the puzzling grey fog, wispy and motionless around the circle of the Dead. Then I bit my tongue and crossed back over.

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

I was back in my body in the cottage bedchamber, again tied to the chair and with the knotted cord bound painfully around my head. A burst of agony around my eyes as I returned, and a moment to clear my blood-soaked vision.
So much blood
. And then I saw that it was not all mine. Only a small portion of it was mine.

The two savage soldiers, the singer-warrior and his lieutenant, lay on the floor. I could see the lieutenant clearly, but the singer-that-was lay mostly behind the bed, where he must have fallen. On the quilted bedcover the pattern of wildflowers was spattered with sprays of blood. The lieutenant's throat had been torn out in fleshy gobbets of meat and blood. His hands were flung helplessly above his head and one arm lay at a grotesque angle to his still body. Beside him sat Shadow, wagging his tail.

It was a moment before I could speak. When I did, my voice came out thick and high. ‘Shadow ... did you ... ?'

Of course he had. The huge dog gazed at me expectantly, eager for praise. His green eyes shone. Blood matted his grey coat. In the dim light from the single tallow candle on the dresser, the blood looked almost black, oily and viscous as tar.

I felt sickened, and relieved, and grateful. Mostly, however, I felt scared. Where were the other two savages, the ones who had brought me here? At any moment they could come pounding up the stairs,
guns
drawn, and I didn't think even Shadow would be a match for guns. Why hadn't they come up already? They must have heard some noise – a dog cannot kill two men without noise.

Someone was climbing the stairs.

‘Shadow, go!
Kill!'

The dog wagged his tail harder.

A figure filled the doorway. All I could see was his outline, and then he came carefully into the room.

Not a savage. It was a youth of about my own age, at least six and a half feet tall, his considerable bulk made even larger by a pack strapped to his shoulders. Yellow-haired and stubble-bearded, he was dressed like the son of a prosperous farmer in wool tunic and leggings, with thick leather boots. In one enormous hand he carried a pig-butchering knife. We stared at each other for a moment, he looming huge above me, before he loosened the knotted cord from my head. I gasped with relief. The boy's knife slashed through the ropes that bound me to the chair.

Finally he spoke. ‘Who are you?'

How to answer that? I gave the simplest answer. ‘Peter Forest.'

‘I heard a ... I was bringing the sheep back from high pasture and ... Your dog ain't never done
that
?' He waved at the dead soldiers.

Shadow bounded over and licked his hand. The dog's short tail wagged. I said, ‘Help me up – please.'

He hesitated, but evidently decided I was harmless. To someone of his bulk and strength, armed with a butchering knife, I most certainly was. With one hand he pulled me to my feet, but I could not stand. I collapsed upon the bed. The reek of fresh blood filled the room.

I said urgently, ‘There are two more savages—'

‘Dead in the kitchen. More of their soldiers hold the roads. Are
you
the reason they have taken Almsbury?'

‘No.' Was I? It seemed possible, but I didn't want to tell that to this stranger who looked at me with such frank, fearless curiosity. Yes, fearless. He stood absently patting Shadow's blood-spattered head with no trace of alarm about the four murdered men, the dog that had killed them or the Young Chieftain's soldiers occupying his village.

‘If you ain't the reason they came here, then why were they torturing you?' He stared at my head, where the bloody wounds left by the knotted cord still burned like fire.

‘I don't know,' I lied. ‘How many more savages are in ... in Almsbury?'

‘Dunno. I been several days at high pasture with my father's sheep. I came down at twilight to visit Betsy Turner. She's Almsbury's whore, you know. She told me, all a-fright, that some of the Young Chieftain's army was here, searching cottages and barns for something. Or, I suppose, someone.' He eyed me speculatively. ‘Do those wounds hurt?'

‘Of course they hurt!'

‘Did the soldiers cut off your hand, too?'

‘No. I lost it long ago.'

He nodded, studying the stump of my wrist.

Again I tried to stand. This time my legs held me, if I kept one hand on the bedstead. My head throbbed and burned but that pain could be borne. I had to get away now. More savages could appear at any moment. Trying to make my voice as authoritative as possible, I said, ‘Listen to me, boy. I will give you a silver if you will say nothing to anyone about seeing me here. If you leave now, go back to your sheep or to the ... the whore, or to your father's house, the savages will never know you've been here. You won't be harmed. And you will be a silver richer.' I hoped he was young enough, sheltered enough, that a silver would seem like a fortune, rather than what it had seemed to me: a week's rent on the inn at Applebridge.

He said instantly, ‘Take me with you instead.'

I stared at him. ‘Take you
with
me? But you ... I ...'

‘Yes!' Enthusiasm flooded him, along with that naive fearlessness, and I realized he must be younger than I had first supposed from his height and bulk. ‘You don't know the countryside and I do. You're weak from torture. You have only one hand.'

If he had left out any of my disadvantages, I didn't know what it was.

‘Besides,' he added, ‘if the savages are looking for one man, two may mislead them. We could pretend to be cousins. Or brothers. We could make up names that fit together.'

‘This is not a game!'

‘I know. But I would nonetheless go with you. You and the dog.' His fingers nuzzled Shadow's ears. The dog licked his hand.

‘Your father would send men after you.'

‘No. I am not due back from the sheep pasture for another day. I came down for Betsy.'

‘But if your father—'

‘Leave off about my father,' he said in a different tone, harsh and bitter. ‘The stinking old pinchpenny ain't going to look for me. He hates me and I hate him, He'd be glad if he thought I disappeared or – better yet – died.'

I said nothing, remembering my own step-uncle, Hartah.

‘I can be of use to you. I know the countryside as well as I know Betsy Turner's bottom. Also, I'm the best tracker in three counties. But we must start right away, you know. The townspeople are all shut in their cottages, scared as mice, but they ain't going to stay inside for ever.'

He was right. I made a sudden decision. After all, I could always leave him once we were in the Unclaimed Lands, creeping away while he slept, as I had crept away from Maggie. ‘All right. I am glad for your help.'

‘Then let us go!' he said, too happily.

We went downstairs, me holding on to the wall every step in the narrow stairwell. The kitchen door still stood open to the soft summer night. Shadow had had no trouble entering. The other two savages sprawled on the floor, one with his feet still draped over the wooden bench beside the table. Blood and ale mingled on the flagstones. In one corner stood the four long
guns
that Shadow had given the savages no time to use. The boy snatched up one.

‘You can't take that,' I said. ‘It makes too much noise. And do you even know how to use it?'

‘I can learn.' He bent over the dead soldiers.

‘Come, we have no time!'

‘Just one moment.' Swiftly he went through both men's pockets, put several items I did not see into his own and grabbed a half-drunk tankard of ale off the table.

He drained it and grinned at me, for all the world like a boy who has just won some cheap prize at a summer faire. In the greater light of the torches stuck in wall sconces, I saw that he was indeed younger than his body suggested and that he was extraordinarily handsome. He seemed to feel no fear whatsoever at striding out the door into an occupied village with a man he did not know, a weapon he could not use and a dog that killed.