‘What are you, Everett – if that even is your name?’ he sneered. ‘What’s a strong, healthy young man like you doing skulking out here amongst decent folk, instead of serving your King and country?’ Wealth and breeding did not confer an overabundant sense of irony, it seemed. ‘I bet you’re a deserter, aren’t you?’
The insight took Everett aback, and he looked at Gus more closely. Maybe there was something more going on behind those soft eyes than just self-regard.
‘Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?’ Gus persisted. ‘I might have a bit of a word with some people my father knows at home. War Ministry folks, don’t you know. Have them send some constables out here to find out who you really are.’
The deserter took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it to the ground, extinguishing it beneath his heel. Then he leaned closer to Gus and sniffed. ‘You smell of cloves,’ he murmured, and sniffed again. ‘And pepper. It must be whatever mouthwash or cologne you’re wearing. Under that…’ He inhaled more deeply. ‘You’ve tried to wash off the smell of sex but it’s still there.’
‘What the bloody hell are you on about?’ The other man flinched away from the deserter’s proximity, but he followed, sniffing close to the line of Gus’ jaw where it met his neck in the densely clustered trunk of veins and arteries.
‘And talcum. Or flour. And lard. Lots of lard. Why, I bet if I killed you and boiled you down I could make some halfway decent dumplings out of you.’
‘If that’s your idea of a threat—’
‘It’s not a threat. It’s more of a menu option.’ Everett winked at him.
Gus stormed off and the deserter found that he was being watched by amber eyes. Mother’s swine chewed, unimpressed.
‘And you lot can shut up too.’
* * *
He slaughtered the first of them a month later.
‘Let’s face it,’ Mother said to him. ‘You’re no farmer. You didn’t seek us out to spend the rest of your long life digging turnips and milking cows, and I wouldn’t be so foolish as to think if you ever did become one of the Farrow that you would stay with us for long afterwards. Fortunately, there is an important role that you can perform for us which doesn’t require you to do so – in fact, it makes perfect sense for you to take it up since it was Michael’s role too. You’ve replaced him in our community, you might as well replace him in our rituals too.’
It sounded ominous. ‘What was his job?’ the deserter asked warily. They were standing at her sty, watching her Welsh grunt and wallow contentedly.
‘He was our slaughterman.’
‘Of course, he was.’ He almost added and you bloody need one, after that botched mess at your orgy, except that he wasn’t supposed to have seen it. ‘But I still haven’t passed my initiation, or whatever you call it. Is that allowed?’
Mother’s smile was thin, but not entirely humourless. ‘What is allowed is what I judge best for the Farrow. It’s why I’m going to overlook your threats towards Ardwyn’s intended. This is a role for which it seems to me your skills and personality make you ideally suited, but don’t worry if you don’t feel up to it straight away. It will be twenty-six years before Moccus returns and you are needed, which gives you plenty of time to practise and for us to find a replacement if you turn out to be unsuited.’
‘Why twenty-six years?’
‘Because that is the duration of the cycle of Moccus. Do you want to spend years here learning about the lives of the stars and the planets, their correspondences with human souls, and the majestic mathematical balance of the universe? I can teach you the answer to that ‘why’ but I doubt you’d find it rewarding. You’re even less a priest than a farmer.’
‘Fair enough. But I’ll be…’ He stopped, realising that he had no idea how old he was. ‘In my forties,’ he finished.
‘You won’t feel it. Nor will you look it. You’ll continue as strong and healthy as you are for a long while yet. But nothing is immortal, not even a god. Moccus takes on the burden of birth, ageing, and death so that we don’t have to. For a while.’
She told him that the six months after Moccus’ sacrifice between the equinoxes was a time of replenishment, when that which had been given was repaid. Replenishment came in the form of one perfect swine, sanctified by consumption of the first flesh, to be sacrificed to Moccus each month just after the new moon, when the waxing crescent formed the great boar-god’s tusks. It was taken up to the clearing and slaughtered in a much smaller ceremony, which the deserter much preferred the sound of – anything instead of watching a bunch of middle-aged toffs humping each other.
When he’d killed the boy for his leg, the deserter had been starving, sick with neuralgia and barely aware of what he was doing. The first time he killed one of Mother’s swine it was with absolute clarity. He felt the life of the creature thrumming through it as it was held, like a bowstring drawn back tight and ready to let fly, or a bullet in the breech, an explosive release waiting for just the slightest pressure of his fingers. It wasn’t the sense of power that he experienced because the power wasn’t his – it belonged to the arrow, the bullet, the creature, and the blood of the god that it had eaten. It was the sense of control over that power, the ability to unleash and direct it, to destroy or reorder the world with it at his whim, the intoxication of finally, finally not being at the mercy of vast forces beyond his comprehension but for once possibly being in charge of them. For the first time he thought he understood those fat generals
