'
'Oh yes, that sprang out of the rock. I remember now. How could I forget that monstrous thing? The size of its jaws. They just opened up and took the head off that student who was with it then. What was his name?'
'It doesn't matter.'
'But I was on the road with him for a year or more and now can't remember his name.'
'Don't start getting sentimental.'
'Ivan!' O'Brien said. 'His name was Ivan!'
'Enough, priest. We've work to do.'
'With that?' Shamit said, looking at me down the narrow length of his pimply nose. I met him stare for stare, trying to bring a few contemptuous remarks to my lips, to be uttered in my best condescending tone. But for some reason my throat wouldn't shape the words in my head. All that emerged was an embarrassing stew of snarls and jabbering.
Meanwhile, Cawley inquired, 'When does the burning of the Archbishop and his sodomitic animals begin?'
'Tomorrow,' said O'Brien.
'Then we'll have to work fast if we're to make some money from this sorry excuse for a monster. O'Brien, fetch the shackles for the demon. The heavier ones, with the pins on the inside.'
'You want them for his hands and his feet?'
'Of course. And Shamit, stop flirting with it.'
'I'm not flirtin'.'
'Well, whatever you're doing, stop it and go into the back of the wagon and bring out the old hood.'
Shamit went off without further word, leaving me to try and persuade my tongue and throat to make a sound that was more articulate, more civilized, than the noises that had escaped me thus far. I thought if they heard me speak, then I could perhaps persuade them into a conversation with me, and Cawley would see I was no eater of limb or heads, but a peaceful creature. There'd be no need for the shackles and hood once he understood that. But I was still defeated. The words were in my head clearly enough, but my mouth simply refused to speak them. It was as though some instinctive response to the sight and smell of the World Above had made me mute.
'You can spit and growl at me all you like,' Cawley said, 'but you're not going to do no harm to me or to none of my little family, you hear me, demon?'
I nodded. That much I could do.
'Well, will you look at that?' Cawley said, seeming genuinely amazed. 'This creature understands me.'
'It's just a trick to give you that impression,' the priest said. 'Trust me, there's nothing in his head but the hunger to drive your soul into the Demonation.'
'What about the way he's shaking his head? What does that mean?'
'Means nothing. Maybe he's got a nest of those Black Blood Fleas in his ears, and he's trying to shake 'em out.'
The arrogance and the sheer stupidity of the priest's response made my head fill with thunderous rage. As far as O'Brien was concerned I was no more significant than the fleas he was blaming for my twitches; a filthy parasitic thing that the father would happily have ground beneath his heel if I'd been small enough. I was gripped by a profound but useless fury, given that in my present condition I had no way to make it felt.
'I–I got — I got the hood,' Shamit gasped as he hauled something over the dark dirt.
'Well, lift it up!' Cawley shrugged. 'Let me see the damn thing.'
'It's heavy.'
'You!' Cawley said, pointing to one of the three men now idling by the winch. The trio looked at one another, attempting to press one of the others to step forwards. Cawley had no patience for this idiocy. 'You, with the one eye!' he said. 'What's your name?'
'Hacker.'
'Well, Hacker, come give this degenerate half-wit some help.'
'To do what?'
'I want the hood put on the demon, double quick. Come on, stop crossing yourself like a frightened little virgin. The demon's not going to do you any harm.'
'You sure?'
'Look at it. Hacker. It's a wretched scrap of a thing.'
I growled at this new insult, but my protest went unheard.
'Just get the hood over its head,' Cawley said.
'Then what?'
'Then as much beer as you can drink and pig meat as you can eat.'
That deal put a charmless smile on Hacker's scabrous face.
'Let's get it done,' Hacker said. 'Where's the hood?'
'I'm sitting on it,' Shamit said.
'Then move! I'm hungry!'
Shamit stood up and the two men started to lift the hood out of the dirt, giving me a clear look at it. Now I understood why there had been so much gasping from Shamit as he carried it. The hood was not made of burlap or leather, as I'd imagined, but black iron, fashioned into a crude box, its sides two or more inches thick, with a square hinged door at the front.
'If you try any Demonical trick,' Cawley warned me, 'I will bring wood and burn you where you lie. Do you hear me?'
I nodded.
'It understands,' Cawley said. 'All right, do it quick! O'Brien, where are the shackles?'
'In the wagon.'
'They're not much use to me there. You!' He picked the youngest from the two remaining men. 'Your name?'
'William Nycross.'
The man was a behemoth, limbs as thick as tree trunks, his torso massive. His head, however, was tiny; round, red, and hairless, even to brows and lashes.
Cawley said, 'Go with O'Brien. Fetch the shackles. Are you quick with your hands?'
'Quick…' Nycross replied, as though the question clearly tested his wits.'…with… my hands.'
'Yes or no?'
Standing behind Cawley, out of his sight but not out of that of the baby-faced Nycross, the priest guided the simpleton by nodding his head. The child-giant copied what he saw.
'Good enough,' said Cawley.
I had by now realized that I was not going to be able to get my tongue to say something cogent, thereby wringing some compassion from Cawley. The only way to avoid becoming his prisoner was by acting like the bestial demon that he'd said I was from the start.
I unleashed a low noise, which came out louder than I'd anticipated. Cawley instinctively took several steps back from me, catching hold of one of his men he had not so far addressed. The man's face was grotesquely marked by a pox he'd survived, its most notable consequence the absence of his nose. He swung this pox-ridden man between me and him, pushing his knife point against the Pox's body to commit the man to his duty.
'You keep your distance, demon. I've got holy water, blessed by the Pope! Two and a half gallons of it! I could drown you in holy water if I chose to.'
I responded with the only sound I had been able to make my throat produce, that same withered growl. Finally Cawley seemed to realize that this sound was the only weapon in my armory, and laughed.
'I'm in mortal fear,' he said. 'Shamit? Hacker? The hood!' He had unhooked his iron bar from his belt and slapped it impatiently against his open palm as he spoke. 'Move yourselves. There's still skinning left to do on the other three and ten tails to be boiled clean to the bone!'
I didn't like the sound of that last remark at all, being the only one with not one but two tails in that company. And if they were doing this for profit, then my freakish excess of tail gave them a reason to speed up the stoking of the fire beneath their boiling pan.
Fear knotted my guts. I began to struggle wildly against the confines of the net, but my thrashing only served
