As the moon rose, Blackwood shouldered the carcass and set off for home. It was death to touch the prince's meat, but the prince never claimed his kills. And though it may be death to break the law, it is death to be poor and keep it.
Tramping through the darkness, he indulged himself with smoky memories of the aftermath of other hunts. Horns announcing the return to the castle. Groaning banquet tables. The hall flushed with heat. Jugglers, singers, music. Tankards hammering on the table as the songs roared out. Good meat and greasy fingers.
Had it really been like that, in the old days, before Comedo came to power and the dragon came to Estar? Perhaps. Certanly things were different now. Hard times, hard times…
Blackwood came to a stream, which he followed into the forest; water would wash away footprints and any leaking blood, leaving no trail for men or dogs. His boots kept out the water, but it chilled his feet. The fodden splashed along noisily behind him. Blackwood turned and hissed angrily; Murmer sat down on the bank and sulked.
Deep in the forest, Blackwood left the stream and followed a minimal trail to the clearing where stood his house, outhouse and woodshed. The buildings were hidden in darkness, but there was the smell of wood-smoke in the air, the smell of a hearth-fire. Blackwood hung the deer carcass where no ground-life could gnaw it, then went inside.
Mystrel, his wife, greeted him quietly: touch of hand against hand, touch of forehead against forehead. She smiled; he could see her smile by firelight and rushlights. She said nothing, but brought him some soup; they were in no hurry to exchange words. After years of living in isolation together, a touch could do all their greeting.
She was now thirty-five. Time had been hard on her face, but her body was still strong enough for its purpose. Two months gone, and seven months to go.
– I will have a son. And my son will have a better life than this.
A child. The renewed promise of a future. They had not expected it. Why not? Simply because they were too accustomed to disappointment. But it was happening. With fresh meat outside, a warm fire inside and a future to plan, Blackwood was happy.
Murmer killed a lamb that night.
– Ha! Have you, have at you, womb-warm. Shlust shroost! Kick then, saast, kick. Bog-cold soon, womb-kick. Warm, ha, yes, mother me, warm one, saas-sister. Where's your high-stride hook-crook watching one then, womb-warm? No help now, ha? Dreams now, womb-kick. Dreams. Saaa!
The lamb was dead.
Murmer ate.
He was thumb and fist, but anyone who saw him feeding there by moonlight, glancing round suspiciously from time to time, would probably have classed him as paw and claw, savagery akin to wark and wylie.
After feeding, Murmer was on his way.
His destination was Castle Vaunting.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Name: Blackwood (husband of Mystrel). Occupation: woodsman.
Status: once a hired lackey of the ruling class, but now a victim of the Class Enemy of the Common People.
Description: a dark-haired heavy-jowled man of middle years, looking, incidentally, remarkably like Shen Shen Drax, the leech-gatherer of Delve.
The executioner – such was his title, though he was a gaoler as well – was masked with grey mud. Clay was his face, but his voice was gravel. Shadows lurched as his head swung to face Blackwood. His eyes were black pits.
'Who are,' said the executioner, 'Who are you?'
His breath stank, like dead meat softening underground. Torchlight showed clumsy thumbmarks in his clay mask, from which bits of straw protruded.
'My question was not, was not to exercise my throat. Who are you?'
The executioner's assistants, who were holding Blackwood's arms, shook him. They wore featureless strawman masks.
'Blackwood's my name.'
'Blackwood,' said the executioner. Thoughtfully, he rubbed at bits of straw bristling from his mask, as another man might have rubbed his beard. 'Blackwood. The name has a past, even if it doesn't have a future.'
'I was head of the hunt. Years ago.'
'A hunter. From the sun? How is the sun? These shadows have held me thirty years, you know.'
The executioner lurched toward Blackwood, who pulled back from the stench. The assistants wrenched his arms to agony. The clay face brushed his. Bristles scraped across his skin.
'So. So. How is the sun? Is it thaw yet?' 'It's spring.'
'Ah, the green. What have these bones been doing this green that the dark should claim them? Well?'
Blackwood was silent. Then his arms were twisted. He cried out.
'Don't,' said the executioner, weaving his clay face from side to side, 'Don't try silence. Or excuses. We're all born guilty, all guilty, so don't cry innocent. We've just one newborn today: yourself. Save yourself today and tomorrow may save you yet again. Now answer. What did you do?'
T took meat the prince had killed.'
'Meat. We have a place for meat. Bring him!'
The strawmen forced Blackwood to a room of jaws, hooks, breakers, crunchers, claws. Here was the Warm Mother, the Sharp Sister, the Iron Maiden. And three abandoned bodies.
'Let him look,' said the executioner.
Blackwood was released. He was free, for the first time since his house was raided. Now was his chance to grab a branding iron and run amok, slashing and stabbing until they cut him down. But Mystrel was their prisoner, unless she was dead. He could not die yet! He was not yet free for death.
'Collosnon corpses. They deserved. We'll feed them soon. We'll show. Bring him!'
The strawmen hustled Blackwood through winding dungeon darkness, following the clay man, who sometimes paused to kick the bars of a cell till something inside woke and whimpered.
'Not time.' said the executioner. 'The work, not time enough. So kick the door. In the end, in the end, we do the work. The first year we let them walk. The prince might want them. If there's no call that year, he's forgotten. They're ours. The second year, the second we break them to a crawl. Then the third. Down to their bellies in the dirt. The fourth year is the last. Will the prince remember you? Do you want him to?' Blackwood said nothing.
Their footsteps roused snarls from certain cells; others held only stinking silence. This was the underside of Castle Vaunting: stale air, dripping water, rot, fear, decay.
'We feed,' said the executioner, halting where the tunnel opened to an engulfing drop. 'Here! Feed bodies. Listen.'
Listening, they heard nothing.
'It's not moving,' said one of the assistants.
'Silence! Silence! Tongues can be taught silence if they don't teach themselves. Thirty years I haven't seen the sun, but I still have eyes, ah yes. Tongues and eyes -lost if they're not deserved… but you're right. It's not moving.'
The executioner took a torch from a wall bracket and tossed it to the pit. They glimpsed a mountainous gelatinous mass disfigured by warts, craters, ridges. The torch splashed into water and went out. Darkness shifted: sucking, squelching.
'Lopsloss,' said the executioner. 'Lopsloss. It's moving. It's moving now. Now you've seen it. Now into a cell.
