an apprentice to help him in his endeavours. Marius rose from his perch and took a few slow steps towards the nearby peak. If there was a spot on this Earth more accursed in his life, it certainly wasn’t closer than this one. And even if this miserable stain of a village was the only place on Earth he could find what he needed, well, he was still going to look everywhere else first. He wouldn’t step foot in that village for a king’s fortune, for all the concubines in Tal, hell, if it meant the restoration of his life itself.
Within half an hour he began his descent towards the huts a hundred or so metres below.
He was skirting the village by sunrise, treading carefully through the rocks and runnels that marked the edge of the village lands and the beginning of the drop-off towards the valley floor. The villagers would not rise for another half hour or so, until the upper rim of the sun was showing across the horizon. To Marius’ enhanced eyesight it was already day. All was silent. Only the normal pre-dawn sounds of animals at rest disturbed the peace. As he neared the sty, however, the grunting of the pigs was underpinned by something more rhythmic – the scraping of metal across the ground, and the tuneless humming of a voice he recognised. He stepped out from behind the pen’s wall. Someone had been busy since he was last here – at the far side of the enclosure, a rough plot had been laid out and fenced in with gnarled wooden posts and rusting wire. A dozen scrawny chickens rooted around in the dust, skittering out of the way of the hunched figure that moved from end to end, turning over the floor of the run with a rake. As it passed, the chickens returned to peck without hope at the turned-over ground. Marius watched the lone workman for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he stepped out of the shadow of the sty and leaned gingerly against the fence.
“Grubbing in the dirt,” he said. “It suits you.”
The figure made no response. Marius watched in silence as he finished his slow, methodical coverage of the run, then made his way back through a small gate. He leant the rake against a wall and picked up a hoe, bending his attention to the piles of mud and dung churned up by the pigs.
“Ah,” Marius said in amusement. “I was mistaken. Now, now you’ve found your level.”
Again he was ignored. He sighed.
“Come on, Gerd. You know it’s me. At least say something.”
Gerd flicked a glance at him, then bent his head back over his task. Marius stepped forward to peer over his shoulder, stepping carefully between the mounds of pig droppings that Gerd was collecting.
“Nope,” he said. “It must be fascinating for you, I’m sure, but I can’t see it.”
“It’s honest work,” Gerd replied. “Good work.”
“It speaks!” Marius clapped a hand on his shoulder. Gerd neither acknowledged it nor shrugged it off. It lay there, like a dead fish, until Marius coughed and removed it. “So why are you here, then? I thought you’d be tracking me to the ends of the Earth like a little dead bloodhound.”
“Grandma needs me.” Gerd swung the hoe towards another pile of shit, spraying wet refuse against Marius’ legs. “Sty needs maintaining, chores need doing. She’s getting old.”
“And she’s blind as a judge and crazy as a banana skin. It’s a tragic tale.” He leaned in, so that his mouth was less than a foot from Gerd’s ear. “I recommend a pillow, placed over the face.” He straightened. “Where are all your dead chums, then?”
“We had a difference of opinion.”
“Oh, really?”
“They wanted to hunt you down, no matter where on the globe you ran to, and tear you limb from limb and scatter you to the four corners of the wind, so that every moment of your afterlife was spent in torturous agony, never to be reconstituted and find peace.”
“I see. And you?”
Gerd swung the hoe upwards and brandished it like a pike.
“I wanted to do it myself.”
“Oh, you have to be kidding.”
Gerd wasn’t kidding. Without so much as a change in expression, he swung at Marius’ head.
Marius ducked, and skipped backwards, out of reach. The hoe is not a graceful weapon, and Gerd was a less than graceful wielder. Compared to him, Marius was a dancer, a prize fighter, a light-footed professional fencer. Then, just as quickly, compared to Gerd he was a man lying on his back in a slippery pile of pig shit. He rolled over and drew his hands underneath his chest, ready to push himself up. A cold weight pressed against the back of his neck, and pushed him down until he lay with his face deep in the warm, stinking manure. He squirmed until he could tilt part of his face out of the mess – an eye, and the corner of his mouth – and squinted upwards. Gerd stood above him, his weight pressing the hoe down onto Marius. Marius spat his lips free of dung.
“What are you going to do?” he managed to ask. “Kill me?”
Gerd reached for something just out of his field of vision. A moment later, a broad, heavy-bladed axe struck the dirt an inch from his free eye and sank an inch into the hard ground.
“Chop you up,” Gerd said. “into different pieces. Feed your limbs to the pigs, throw your torso down the cliff face. Give your head to the dead.”
The pigs squealed in excitement, as if the sound of the axe heralded a new meal. They butted against the wooden fence, giving Marius a new memory of fear to block in later days. He was fleetingly glad that his bowels had nothing to add to the already-covered ground.
“And what will that do?” Marius eyed the nicked and stained axe head. He had no doubt it would be capable of the task. “They won’t get their king that way.”
“It’ll make me feel better.” Gerd pulled the axe up, out of Marius’ view. He braced, waiting for the first heavy impact. Instead, the pressure against his neck lessened. He rolled over, conscious of the wet, sticky, mess across his face and hair. Gerd had replaced the axe on its mount, just inside the sty door. Now he did the same with the hoe.
“Get up,” he said without looking at Marius. “Wash yourself off. You stink.”
Marius sat up. “So?”
“You’re not meeting my grandmother smelling like pig shit.” He stepped over to a barrel in the lee of the shed, plunged his hands into the top, and splashed water on his face and upper body. “Hurry up.”
Marius stood. He edged over to the barrel and washed himself down, keeping one wary eye on Gerd.
“What makes you think I want to meet your grandmother again?” he asked. The last time he was in the village, he had met the old woman to explain why Gerd was leaving, and how he would look after the boy and see him safe. All the while he had been forced to swallow down the lumpiest, indigestible cabbage soups he had ever eaten. There were parts of it that still hadn’t digested properly. Two more minutes with the axe and the pigs would have been pulling bits out of his intestines like truffles.
“Because,” Gerd replied, turning his back on Marius and walking towards the village centre. “You obviously need me, or you wouldn’t be here. And if you don’t, I won’t help you. And I’ll take you apart with the axe.”
“Compelling argument.” Marius followed behind Gerd. Men were just beginning to exit the huts, yawning as the rays of the sun stretched the shadows across the open square. As they saw Gerd and Marius they nodded slightly, before averting their gazes and hurrying past, to their jobs. Marius watched them, and saw the cautious nods that Gerd gave back.
“They don’t seem too bothered by your current state.”
“I’m a hard worker,” Gerd replied. “I’m honest. I keep to myself. I built the chicken run, and repaired the sty. I’ve almost cleared another six acres of field in the lower valley.” He shrugged. “Dead isn’t the same as it is down on the plains. They may be a little spooked by it, but as long as I’m not lazy and I don’t touch their daughters, they leave me alone.” He paused at the entrance of a low-framed, ramshackle hut on the outskirts of the village. “Be nice.” He stepped inside. “Grandma? There’s someone to see you.”
Marius sighed, and put one hand on the door frame.
“I’m going to regret this,” he said to the wood, and followed Gerd into the hut.
TWENTY-ONE
“More soup?” The old woman stood above Marius, a ladle held in front of her like a white walking stick. Hot lumps of something that may have started out as vegetable matter dripped from it onto the back of Marius’ hand. He watched it slide off onto the table, wishing he had a cloth to wipe it away. There was no chance in hell he was
