morning. Had enough of my excuses. Will you help me, mister? I've no one else to turn to….'
Without another thought, I snatched her wrist and sprinted for the shack.
There was a hefty collision when I barged through the door, breaking it into flimsy bits and pieces. Covered in splinters, I grimaced and crawled to wake Kat, but the samurai was alert already. He pressed his weight down onto my back and held a blade across my throat.
'Don't kill me!' I yelled.
Kat bent for a better look of my face, then grumbled, somewhat disappointed. Relinquishing the sword from my throat and his grip on my hair, I recovered against the bed. Wearing a sour grimace, Kat looked over the breathless and beautiful L, loitering at the door-less doorway. 'What is this?' he said.
'She needs our help, Kat. We're in danger!'
The samurai complained under his breath as L carefully passed him to sit on the bed.
'Your harlot stays here,' he spat, clearing nasal mucus. 'The burden will jeopardize our mission.'
'Then the burden is mine,' I said. 'Grutas will murder her if she stays.'
'No purpose…' the girl droned.
'Where is the giant?' asked Kat, preparing his fists for a fight.
'The white house,' I answered. 'Saw him there myself just now. I figure the wizard uses these women like some kind of assembly line. They are not human beings, but machinery categorized in his fucking alphabet. It's Scarfell who protects this village, Scarfell!'
'It's true,' L said. 'We are prisoners, brought here by the wizard for our purpose. All women must produce for him.'
'You see, samurai?' I said, moving to comfort her on the bed. 'I don't know why we're even allowed to stay here, but we're dead if we hang around much longer!'
'Calm her,' he said, squinting through the shed cracks. Holding L's frail form, I doubted she or I would be strong enough for a trek up the mountainside.
'Something stirs outside,' whispered Kat. 'We move now!'
'And the women?' asked L, sniffling. 'We collect them, too?'
Kat shook an ill-tempered head, his answer an unsympathetic and unquestionable no.
'We can't leave them to be raped!' I argued, facing him. 'That's the reality!'
'Shut up!' he moaned, callously moving for the door.
I took him by the arm, and Kat's response was ferocious. He turned, and picking me up by the legs, he threw my body back to the wall.
'I told you to shut up!' he growled as he tightened a hold around my jugular. 'When I tell you to do something, you will do it!'
Petrified, L could not stop Kat or do anything for me, and with a face draining of color, eyes bloodshot, and bulging, crushing windpipe blocking air, I reached for the dagger by my waist; I was left absolutely no choice!
'Do not touch that blade!' Kat said, watching my hand squirm toward the hilt. 'I am giving you an order, Fox. What should you do?'
My fingertips grazed the dagger. I could remain conscious just long enough to pull it and kill Kat.
'What should you do?' he asked again, breath hot against my cheek.
Darkness descending, I raised a conceding hand and Kat released me. I dropped like a bag of shit whilst he glowered at Madam L's critical expression near the door.
'Take this.' he said, throwing a long length of rope at me. 'Keep it over your shoulder. Do not lose it.'
'Where,' I spluttered, recovering, 'did you get it?'
'On your feet!' he demanded. 'We leave through the south side. Keep low, move fast. Do not stop!'
Before I could breathe, Kat raced out of the shack and into the fog.
***
We joined the samurai in the nippy night, our breath clear in the cold. Slouching at one hovel, it was not the women, bogs, or Grutas we were avoiding, but Scarfell. Kat would never admit it, but he feared wizards. They commanded a power that made his with the blade redundant.
Low and fast like Kat expected, sparse candlelight glossed like fireflies from various locations, and I heard the rumor-mongering conversation of women near them. The daunting mountain loomed ahead with its precipitous edges glittering silver and rising like a mystical finger to the sky.
'There!' said Kat, pointing to a vague spot ahead. 'Come!'
Fixing the rope over my shoulder, I turned to inform Madam L, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
'Kat! She's gone! We have to go back!'
'Move!' he cried, snatching the scruff of my shirt and dragging me ragged.
I carried on, struggling with the rope, and constantly looking back with the hope of seeing L bringing up the rear.
Progressing past the remaining hovels, we reached an area of flattened grass and continued south toward a tall barn remote from the village. Presumably storing supplies, hay or cattle, it was a practically straightforward construction seen on any farm. Kat pressed his back to its main wall and I wedged in, stiff from the cold beside him.
'Where is she?' I wheezed. 'Christ, she was right there! You see her?'
Calmly, Kat watched the oppressed village in the gloomy gas and gave no comment regarding the girl's fate. Suddenly, a rustling coming from inside the barn disturbed us.
'Could be L?' I whispered in Kat's ear, the sound like scuffing feet on floorboards.
SCUFF — SCUFF
'Could be the wizard,' he replied.
“My call!” I said, and without pause, I hurried to open those large doors. “Madam…” I covered my mouth to hold a scream. It was not the smell of feces that disgusted me, but the wooden pen encasing the barn. Inside, under the warmth of a lantern were over thirty pig-like creatures — bogs. Some of these oily infants slept, some clashed heads with others, while the rest dug their snouts into stacks of yellow hay. Kat failed to conceal his own repulsion when he joined me at the doors.
'An army,' he said, palming his stubble.
A trough lined one side of the pen, filled with a blend of bones, hair, and rotting pieces. 'They have to be destroyed,' I said, emotionless. 'All of these things. They can't live, Kat, and we can't leave till it's done.'
Kat took hold of my elbow. 'You want to protect the women? Destroy these creatures, and the wizard will show them no mercy.'
I remembered the lashes on L's back, and the price she was going to pay, but Kat was wrong.
'He needs the women,' I said. 'They're his bog makers, after all. No, Scarfell will come for us, Kat, and if we can make it to this King Bludgeon, maybe he'll give us an idea how to kill him, and how to set this village free.'
Eager to leave, Kat moved outside the barn and demanded that I follow. I thought seriously about running then, to follow him and be done with it, but after one more look over these gooey abominations, I could not tear myself away.
Snatching the hanging lantern from the barn wall, and swallowing all that was left of hesitation, I flung the lighter into the pen of half-breeds, and shielded my face from an explosion of glass and flames over belly and backs.
'No!' shrieked Madam B, appearing breathless at the barn doors, and she quickly was joined by her alphabet of women stock, each with unborn swine growing in their stomachs and rippling torches in their hands.
Kat returned to me inside the barn, his sword protecting us from the grieving mob as the flames set high hay stacks alight behind us.
'Get away!' moaned Madam B, at the top of her voice. 'Get away from our children! Away!'
Penned monstrosities wailed their alien sounds. It seemed their slippery skins were extremely flammable, and it did not take long for the blaze to spread. One set fire to another, then another; it was a procession of moving lights around the pen, sun yellows and whites, with that intolerable screeching underneath.
Black smoke began to build in this confined space, and the stench of cooking flesh became sickeningly apparent.
'How could you?' exclaimed one hysterical woman on her knees. 'Not our children! Someone get water! Help!'
