The fodden crept out of the undergrowth and began to lick the blood. Blackwood nudged it aside with his boot.
'No,' he said.
'Why riot?' said the fodden, lisping, hissing, spluttering. Practice let Blackwood understand its distorted speech easily.
'It's not for eating.'
'Blood is blood. It was a bad man. It's sorry now, isn't it?'
'It's still not for eating,' said Blackwood.
The fodden swiped at the corpse with one fox-fur hand. Blackwood kicked it away. Hissing, the fodden shrank back into the trees. Blackwood knelt by the headless body and cut out his arrow, which had the barbed broadhead he favoured for hunting; its three flight-feathers were yellow for easy retrieval.
'Murmer,' said Blackwood. 'Come on.'
The fodden lingered, hunched in shadows.
'Come on!'
The fodden followed reluctantly. It was short, bandylegged and covered in red fox fur but for its bald-bone head. Its eyes were green slits; its teeth suggested it was a carnivore with a vicious bite. Breeding colonies of foddens lived only in the Penvash Peninsular; this one was old, and young male foddens would have killed it if it had not left. It was always moody and foul-tempered for weeks after waking from hibernation, and liable to do ugly and spiteful things; this far into spring it should have got past that stage, but there was no sign of its temper improving.
Blackwood followed the track of smashed vegetation and leaking blood. He went slowly, not wanting to overtake the warrior. The fodden followed at a distance.
Blackwood was burdened with a roll of waterproof canvas as an emergency weather shelter; a quiver of arrows; a composite bow of wood, sinew and horn; a small food pouch; and, strapped to his belt, a case of black leather holding his hunting trousse: a large chopper, a small chopper, a saw, an awl, a knife and a sharpening stone. Many animals had been dismembered by that useful collection.
He discovered a second headless body, badly hacked about. A shattered sword-stump lay nearby. Obviously there had been a fight: the soft ground was scuffed and gouged where the combatants had braced and slipped.
'Another,' said Murmer.
'Yes,' said Blackwood. 'Don't touch!'
'So starve me then,' said Murmer, idling past, tongue touching greedy lips.
The dead did not shock Blackwood; he was familiar enough with mutilated bodies. He had not wept for the dead since the time when he had held in his arms the last of his stillborn children. At tax time, which began on the full of the Harvest Moon, Comedo's soldiers would hunt down defaulters and slaughter them. Blackwood had seen it. He knew all about the bloat and stink of corpses, the disintegration of the human face, the collapse of the body to scum and bones.
'Heel!' said Blackwood, as Murmer lagged behind.
Blackwood expected the hunters, who had betrayed themselves to him earlier by sounding horns when a kill had been made, would be gone by the time he reached the forest edge – but they were still there. He should have guessed: he had heard sounds of fighting when they had been ambushed, and should have known they would be delayed.
Crouching in the forest, he watched. Some of the men sat on horses chatting to each other; some were still searching corpses for anything worth taking. Two were exercised in keeping the dogs from tearing at the bodies of dead men and two dead horses.
Prince Comedo, laughing, sat high on a white horse with retainers around him. He wore a plumed helmet but no armour. He carried a spear on which a head had been mounted; the ears and nose had been sliced away, the eyes gouged out. Red stains from the prince's bloody hands had stained the mane of his horse where he had stroked it.
One Collosnon soldier, still alive, had been slung over the saddle of a horse and tied there for the journey back to Castle Vaunting. He had taken a scalp wound, but it was not bad enough to threaten his life – worse luck for him.
Laughing, smiling, Comedo gave the signal to head for home. Horns blared, men cheered. They set off with a jingle of harness, a racket of dogs. When all were gone, Blackwood ventured forth. Flies already buzzed around the corpses. He looked back at the forest. The fodden was nowhere to be seen.
'Murmer? Come here! Murmer!'
No answer.
Blackwood looked at the sky. He was running out of daylight. He started to walk east. The hunt had come from the east, as a cursory glance at their tracks made plain. Every step took him nearer to home; it was disturbing to have hunters come so close to his house. He always feared that on his return he might find the door smashed open and blood on the floor and the walls…
When Blackwood was out of sight, Murmer slipped from the forest to disturb the flies. He stooped to a wound- gash, and drank, deeply.
It was almost dayfail: a tarn near the forest edge already held the colour of the night. It was that time of evening when the black slugs emerge to soothe through the cool air; the wind, which had long ago lost its morning strength, was dying. Twilight was settling in the creaking branches as Blackwood stalked into the forest with anger on his heavy-jowled face.
'Softly now,' he said. 'Soft!'
But the animal strung up by wire and iron jaws kicked and strained in panic, tearing its lacerated body still further. Blackwood, knife in hand, saw horror in its eyes. The creature looked so human that it crossed his mind that perhaps it was more than mere deer. But in any case he could not save it. The knife glinted, striking, as he did the deer a kindness. Blood dripped down from the body Comedo's yahooing huntsmen had hung high with wire and trap-jaws. Blackwood cursed the prince:
– Blood in your mouth, you rat-rapist.
This traditional felicity eased his feelings. He had cursed Comedo many times before – though never, not even in his bedrock dreams, did he consider abandoning curses for action.
The tracks – a child could have seen it – showed horses and dogs had been here. Those dogs were big brutes kept hungerfed; they would have put the deer out of its misery soon enough, if their masters had not whipped them off. The prince enjoyed watching suffering. People used to think his father was bad, but the father's faults had lain in overlarge appetites, not in calculated sadism.
Blackwood had been the father's huntsman. Later, Comedo had employed Blackwood to organise hunts for him. However, Comedo's joyful slaughter had swiftly thinned the game away to almost nothing. Blaming Blackwood for the dearth, Comedo had turned him out of the castle, ordering that no man in Estar feed or shelter such a useless mouth, on pain of death.
Blackwood, surviving for years in a house hidden away in Looming Forest, guessed he would fare just as well under Collosnon rule, but still had no compunction about killing the invaders if they came his way. From talks from the Melski of the river, Blackwood had learnt of Collosnon atrocities against poor fishing folk living near the river. The Collosnon had no taint of royalty to protect them from his anger.
Now, as evening faded to night. Blackwood gral-loched the deer, then washed his knife in the tarn. A sudden splash shattered the night calm. Blackwood peered into the darkness and spoke sharply: 'Murmer! Stop throwing rocks!'
The fodden said nothing, but Blackwood knew it was there. Another rock splashed into the water.
'Murmer!'
Spluttering laughter from the darkness. Was the fodden going mad in its old age? Perhaps.
