The knife they gave him was an ancient thing, its sickle-shaped blade black and pitted with centuries of bloodletting, but the edge was as keen and bright as a slice of moonlight. It bit into the pig’s throat with almost no resistance – he only knew how deeply he’d cut when he felt the blade scrape against vertebra. The blood pumped onto the bare, black earth at the foot of the obelisk where Mother had buried Moccus’ head – pints of it swallowed up instantly as if the very earth thirsted for it.
‘Moccus, be replenished,’ the congregation around him intoned. ‘Moccus, be renewed. Moccus, be reborn.’
Afterwards, he butchered the carcass – with the help of some of the older and more experienced men – and there was a hog roast on the village green, with music and dancing by firelight. A clay jar of cider kept over from last year’s harvest was opened and he was given the first pint as a gesture of respect. All throughout the evening people kept coming up to him and congratulating him on a job well done, the first time in his damaged memory that he could recall anyone ever doing so. It made him profoundly uncomfortable at first, but he found that if he just smiled and nodded and said thank you, that was all they seemed to need and they went away happy again. Nobody seemed to mind that he wasn’t yet wearing a tusk bracelet. Nikolai was growing well but his tusks were barely a quarter circle so far. He had never imagined that it could be so easy to make other people happy, or even that it was a thing he would value. He danced with Ardwyn, enjoying the way her eyes flashed and her hair smelled and her body moved beneath his hands in a way that wasn’t sex.
That first time he was, admittedly, clumsy, but by the time September came and the harvest was being gathered in he had refined his technique month by month such that the beasts barely knew what was happening before it was over. Mother had been right, this suited him. In the meantime, he surprised himself by settling into village life quite comfortably. He made repairs to his cottage, fixing the roof and front door as best he could, and enjoyed sitting out on the lingering summer evenings, watching sparrows bickering in the honeysuckle, smoking or getting drunk with Gar. Beyond taking care of his own hearth and the monthly sacrifice, he didn’t have to do any more work to earn his place in Swinley; the Farrow fed him, and there was plenty to go around.
8
THE SIXTH SACRIFICE
FOR THE FINAL REPLENISHMENT SACRIFICE THEY HAD adorned the obelisk with harvest bounty: barrels of apples and pears, crates tumbling full of marrows, onions, and a dozen other fruits and vegetables in abundance that he couldn’t name. Sheaves of corn were stacked in pillars on either side of the stone. It was an obscene amount of food given that men fighting in the trenches were suffering from scurvy and malnutrition, but most of it would go on to be sold at local markets or to the War Ministry eventually. The little knowledge he could glean from newspapers and gossip in the surrounding villages suggested that, as impossible as it seemed, the same offensive that he had seen the start of was still grinding its way through young lives. As the solstice approached there was a buzz of excitement in the village – not on the same scale as the sacrifice-orgy, but in that September of 1916 the waxing crescent moon came almost a week after the solstice itself, a delay which caused Mother some anxiety.
‘Don’t linger,’ she said. ‘Once you’ve bled the vessel, step to the outer circle as quickly as you can. When Moccus returns he’ll be confused and disoriented at first, and has been known to lash out at whoever is nearest. That’s why we form a circle to welcome him back into the world. It’s for our own safety.’
The deserter did as he was told. Mother blew the carnyx to summon the god to life, and Everett’s knife whispered its song, and this time the earth gave it back. He felt tremors in the soil through his feet as he stepped back to rejoin Ardwyn in the circle. The tremors became shudders and throbbing pulses, as if a great heart were beating just below the surface, or else something was pounding its way out. The black, blood-soaked earth at the foot of Moccus’ column heaved and subsided repeatedly, a little higher each time until cascades of soil were pouring down the sides of a long mound that was slowly, painfully pushing itself out of the ground.
Then a hand broke free, clutching at the air. It was followed by a second, thick fingers pulling apart and widening a well within which something huge stirred. The torchlight gleamed on tusks and straining muscles. Moccus screamed in the high, full-throated bellow of a boar as he raised his head clear and glared with burning amber eyes around at the assembled worshippers. Then he planted his hands either side of the hole and hauled himself into the world.
This wasn’t the ancient and crippled thing that the deserter had seen being so ineptly butchered in the spring. Moccus rose before them in the full swell of strength and vitality. His broad chest and limbs were thick with muscle, the pelt that covered his head and continued down his back in a crest of hackles was black and lustrous, and his cock swung between his thighs like a club. His smell filled the clearing, thick and rank. He roared again, but it wasn’t entirely an animal’s
