gloom beyond three horses shift and snort and the two mules eye them with envy (they look taller than they really are, and those brushed manes are an affront!). The Great Dry is a frost-sheathed wasteland beyond the fiery island, a scrabble of boulders and rocks and stunted shrubs. The carriage creaks with inner motion and perhaps one rheumy eye is pressed to a crack in the curtains, or an ear perched upon dainty hopes cocked in the folded crenellations of a peep-hole.
And of the air itself, dread is palpable and diluvean. A Recounting of the Twenty-third Night
“But listen! Whose tale is this?” So demanded Brash Phluster, a man who was of the height that made short men despise him on principle. His hair was natty and recalcitrant, but fulsome. He had teeth aligned in a mostly even row, full lips below a closely trimmed moustache and above a closely trimmed beard. It was a mouth inclined to pout, a face commissioned for self-pity, and of his nose nothing will be said.
Declamation ringing in the night air, Brash awaited a challenge but none came. We may list the reasons, as they could be of some significance. Firstly, twenty-three days of desperate deprivation and then horror had wearied us all. Secondly, the pullward weight of necessity was proving heavy indeed, at least for the more delicate among us. Thirdly, there was the matter of guilt, a most curious yoke that should probably be examined at length, but then, there is no need. Who, pray tell, is unfamiliar with guilt? In punctuated pointedness, fat snapped upon coals and almost everyone flinched.
“But I need a rest and besides, it’s time for the critical feasting.”
Ah, the critical feasting. I nodded and smiled though none noticed.
Brash wiped his hands on his thighs, shot Purse a glance and then shifted about to make himself more comfortable, before saying, “Ordig’s only claim to artistic genius amounted to a thousand mouldy scrolls and his patron’s cock in hand. Call yourself an artist and you can get away with anything. Of course, as everyone knows, shit’s fertile soil, but for what? That’s the question.”
The fire spat sparks. The smoke gusted and swung round, stinging new sets of eyes.
Brash Phluster’s face, all lit orange and flush and lively, floated like a thing disembodied in the hearth’s light; his charcoal cloak with its silver ringlets shrouded him below the neck, which was probably just as well. That head spouting all its words could just as easily be sitting on a stick, and it was still a wonder that it wasn’t.
“And Aurpan, well, imagine the audacity of his Accusations of a Guilty Man. What a heap of tripe. Guilty? Oh, aye. Guilty of being utterly talentless. It’s important-and I know this better than anyone-it’s important to bear in mind the innate denseness of the common people, and their penchant to forgive everything but genius. Aurpan was mercifully immune to such risks, which was why everyone loved him.”
Flea Chanter grunted. “Give that leg a turn, someone.”
Brash was closest to the spit but naturally he made no move. Sighing loudly, Mister Must Ambertroshin leaned forward and took hold of the cloth-wrapped handle. The crackling, sizzling haunch was weighty, inexpertly skewered, but he managed it after a few tries. He sat back, glanced round guiltily, but no one met his eyes.
Darkness, the flames’ uncertain light and the smoke were all gifts of mercy this night, but still the stomach lowered heavy and truculent. No one was hungry. This cooked meat would serve the morrow, the aching journey through a strangely emptied Great Dry, the twenty-fourth day in which we travelers felt abandoned by the world, the last left alive, and there was the fear that the Indifferent God was no longer indifferent. Were we the forgotten, the sole survivors of righteous judgement? It was possible, but not, I fair decided as I eyed the leg over the flames, likely.
“So much for Ordig and Aurpan,” said Tulgord Vise. “The question is, who do we eat tomorrow night?”
Critical feasting being what it is, sated and indeed bloated satisfaction is predicated upon the artist on the table, as it were. More precisely, the artist must be dead. Will be dead. Shall be naught else but dead. Limbs lie still and do not lash back. Mouth resides slack and rarely opens in affronted expostulation (or worse, vicious cut the razor’s wit, hapless corpses strewn all about). The body moves at the nudge only to fall still once more. Prods elicit nothing. Pokes evoke no twitch. Following all these tests, the subject is at last deemed safe to excoriate and rend, de-bone and gut, skin and sunder. Sudden discovery of adoration is permitted, respect acceptable and its proud announcement laudable. Recognition is at last accorded, as in ‘I recognise that this artist is dead and so finally deserving the accolade of ‘genius,’ knowing too that whatever value the artist achieved in life is now aspiring in worth tenfold and more.’ Critical feasting being what it is.
Well Knight Arpo Relent was the first to speak on the matter (what matter? Why, this one). There had been desultory discussion of horses and mules, satisfaction not forthcoming. Resources had been pooled and found too shallow. Stomachs were clenching.
“There are too many artists in the world as it is, and that statement is beyond challenge,” and to add veracity to the pronouncement’s sanctity (since the gaggle of artists had each and all shown signs of sudden alertness), Arpo Relent settled a gauntlet-sheathed hand upon the pommel of one of his swords. The moment in which argument was possible thus passed. “And since we among the Nehemothanai, whose cause is most just and whose need is both dire and pure, so as to speak in the one voice of honourable necessity, since we, then, require our brave and loyal mounts; whilst it is equally plain that the Dantoc’s carriage can proceed nowhere without the mules, we are at the last faced with the hard truth of survival.”
“You mean we need to eat somebody.” So said I at this juncture, not because I was especially dense, but speaking in the interest of pith (as one has no doubt already observed in the tale thus far). ‘Say it plain,’ has always been my motto.
To my crass brevity Arpo Relent frowned as if in disappointment. What artist asks such a thing? What artist lacks the intellectual subtlety to stroke the kitty of euphemism? When the game shall not be played, fun shall not be had. The nature of ‘fun’ in this particular example? Why, the ‘fun’ of sly self-justification for murder, of course, and what could be more fun than that?
Tiny Chanter was the first to play, with a tiny grin and a piggy regard for the poor artists who now stood miserable as sheep in a pen watching the axeman cometh. “But which one first, Relent? Fat to skinny? Obnoxious to useless? Ugly to pretty? We need a system of selection is what we need. Flea?”
“Aye,” Flea agreed.
“Midge?”
“Aye,” Midge agreed.
“Relish?”
“I like the one with the shaved head.”
“To eat first?”
“What?”
Tiny glared at me. “I warned you earlier, Flicker.”
At some juncture in discourse with a thug, one comes to the point where any uttered word shall obtain as sole justification for violence. It is not the word itself that matters. It is not even the speaking thereof. Indeed, nothing of the world outside the thick skull and murky matter it contains is at all relevant. There is no cause and no effect. No, what has occurred is the clicking of a gear wheel, a winding down to the moment of release. The duration is fixed. The process is irreversible.
Resigned, I waited for Tiny Chanter’s pique to detonate.
Instead, Relish said, “They should tell stories.”
Steck Marynd took this moment to snort, and it was an exquisite snort in that it clearly counted as the first vote on the matter.
Tiny blinked, and blinked again. One could see the tumult of confusion whisk clouds over his brutal visage, and then his grin broadened, frightening away all the clouds. “Flea?”
“Aye.”
“Midge?”
“Aye.”
“Knight Relent, you happy with that?”
“I am ‘Sir’ to you.”
“Was that a ‘yes’?”
“I think it was,” said Flea. “Midge?”
“Oh aye, that was a ‘yes’ all right.”
At this moment Tulgord Vise, Mortal Sword to the Sisters, stepped into the understandable gap between the Nehemothanai and the limpid artists (of which, at this juncture, I blithely count myself). He blew out his cheeks (his
