| |
SIXTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENTS IN DARK OF WINTER...
“I passed what was left of my stomach lining months ago. I’m in pain every moment of every day. There is a fire in my guts that rises up, into my throat, feels like its going to burn my face off. So I take a sip and swallow and for a blessed second I stop hurting. I told you to bring me a bottle back and you bring me... food!” Serpent was still on the floor, pressed into the corner of the room, taking up as little of the world as he could. He was not worthy of any more. He was not worthy of what little he did have; a shack in the slums of the city. Nothing more than a mud walled room. All paid for by his son, Meric, and his dubious relationships with the ne’er do wells of Vague.
Meric had left him that morning in the exact same position. Drunk, sorry for himself, bitter and angry. All he had ever known him to be. Some role model.
“Food is swallowing ain’t it.” Meric tossed the grilled streak of meat towards the shadow in the corner. “From one of the better market sellers. I spoil you.”
“I don’t want food.” The meat was launched back and Meric inclined his head just enough to avoid it. It landed somewhere in the darkness of the shack. The rats would eat well tonight.
“The drink doesn’t just stop the pain, accumulatively, over time it stops me remembering I’m hurting. I forget who I am, I forget you’re my son.”
After all these years the old man still had the ability to hurt Meric, but the young man would not let it show. Bravado puffed his shoulders up. “I’ll be gone soon enough. Then you can drink yourself to oblivion.”
“You’re going nowhere. I brought you here and, like me, here is where you’ll die.”
Meric slumped down the wall to sit with his legs outstretched. Suddenly there was shouting from outside and instinctively he pressed his feet to the base of the door. Someone was giving chase, perhaps a robbery or a murder gone wrong. “I hate you,” he found himself saying. Not just because his dad was an angry, miserable soul but more from the knowledge that he was probably right. He had a negative take on life, depressingly accurate too. It was easier for life to reduce a man to addiction and bad dreams than to promote him to be an asset to his community.
“I hate this place. Remember Sumner?” A throaty croak from Serpent’s dark corner.
A long silence and then, “Of course I do.” The noises outside faded and Meric relaxed his feet from the door.
Serpent took a generous quaff from his last bottle. “I miss the solitude. I miss the quiet. Even the howl of the wind became a comforting thing. Here nothing stands still, nothing sleeps. Torches burn through the day and the nights. People shout, cattle grunts, industry fires up ovens, hammers molten metal, people cry for help, scream as they die. Accidents happen, people put buildings up, pull them down. You can’t escape, even in your head, always something brings you back to reality, to the city. A torch sparkles into life, a rapping on a door. Always something breaks your concentration, insists you confront your miserable existence. I miss Sumner but I know I can never go home.”
More shouting outside. Meric did not bother covering the door this time. What was the point? Trouble would find him sooner or later. “You’re a bad man, dad. You deserve everything that happens to you.”
Serpent snorted, brought some of his drink back up out of his nose at the same time. “I’m bad? I never kicked a father and his son out into the wilds of the world.”
“They never kicked me out.”
“Called you Deadeye didn’t they.”
“Called you Serpent because you are always on your front, inebriated. But who took my eye? Who gave me such a violent beating that I lost an eye?”
“You have your mothers eyes. I hated your mother.”
“You hate everything. You hate everything and kill everything with it. She walked into Murdriel to die, to get away from you and you beat me because of it.”
“I took you with me.”
“Only to stop me having a life.”
“You ungrateful bastard,” Serpent made to stand but hours of drinking and inactivity buckled his knees and he slumped back down.
“Fool,” Meric admonished.
A barrage of hits rained on the door of the hovel and Meric was up and ready in a heartbeat. He stroked the chain slung across his shoulders and back of his neck. The white light emanating from his good eye highlighted the links in the chain. Either end of the chain ended in vicious blades: It was a kittel.
“Finally got yourself a snake then.” His father referred to the kittel by its slang term. “How many you kill to earn that?”
“None,” replied Meric. “Unlike you I have worked for this. Trained for years.” He prised the door open just enough to peer outside. Whoever had beaten upon the door had gone now. There were people running about, something had stirred the paupers up.
“Played soldiers with those crooks you work for. You’re nothing but a hired thug.”
“And what are you? You’ve sat and drank for years. You may as well be dead.”
“I am dead. You too. The moment you left the village. You’re nothing. A thug is all.”
Meric kicked the door shut and span on the spot to face his dad’s corner. “No I’m a skilled fighter, a weapons master. I’ve trained hard and earnt the kittel, the right to wield one. I’ve already achieved more than you have in fifty years and I am half your age. You know what the difference between us is?”
“Bugger off thug, and leave me be.”
“I don’t quit and hide in bottles. I don’t kill wives and beat children up.”
“Get out thug. I never want to see you again. Get out before I rip that other eye of yours out and feed it to the birds.” Serpent launched his bottle in the direction of the glinting chain. It hit the wall, falling to the floor without shattering.
Long moments passed and for once the city of Vague seemed quiet, as if the drama inside the hovel had stunned it, drawn its attention. Then as the silence persisted Meric became aware of the soft drizzly sound of a light night rain falling. Hear the water gurgle as it refreshed the gutters running parallel to the roads that intersected the myriad streets outside. Then the melodious tinkling of the rain was interrupted by the dissonant snoring from Serpent, the old drunk had fallen into an uncomfortable sleep.
Meric stroked the chain of his kittel as perhaps a snake charmer would a favourite pet and he sighed deeply. He had to make something of his life. The feint orange glow from the firebrands lining the streets bled through the cracks and warped gaps in the door, lending the room just enough light to see by. He could just make out Serpent’s slumped figure, rising and falling as he breathed uneasily.
Meric was already better than his father. He had trained hard through legitimate channels and it had taken years but he was a weapons master now. If anything it proved that he could apply himself, that he was capable of working hard in order to attain what he wanted. Again better than his dad. But he had to do something with it. If he did not then he feared Serpent’s prophecy would be fulfilling. He would continue to work for the local organised crime syndicates, would die in the city, blade hanging from his back.
Serpent had mentioned earlier that he missed Sumner, so too did Meric. He had been a boy when he had been forced from the village but he had fond memories of it. The parts where his dad was not standing above him, beating him unconscious. He could go back there, people would be pleased to see him again; an old fragment of the village returning would be a celebration. He had a skill too, had his kittel, and armed with that he would become warrior-one and then in time maybe chieftain.
He would not die a penniless drunk in the slums of a city that begrudged him, he would make something of himself. He would return to Sumner a hero and lead it through its golden years. His mind was made up. Finally he had direction and purpose.
Meric took two giant steps forward and hoisted his dad up by his collar. He rammed Serpent’s head into the dried mud wall, smashed it again then again until his nose broke and blood sprayed out. He picked Serpent up by the neck and skinny ankles, ramming him bodily into the wall. “You miserable bastard. I hate you!” Meric struck him against the wall until the whole façade cracked and splintered. With a fevered hand he grasped at Serpent’s hair, forcing his face and broken nose forward until it cracked some more. Then lost to his temper he head-butted his dad, hoisted him up above his head and threw him bodily through the wall.
Meric stooped through the destroyed wall after him. Serpent lay in a gutter in the street. “Apt,” Meric uttered. Then he became aware that they were not alone. Two men and a large black horse observed him indifferently.
“Careful Bloody Mirror, he has a kittel and I’m assuming he knows how to use it. I will also assume he is Panni’s new hand.” Boetan Bose cast a cautionary glance towards Serpent. “Owes money, yes?”
Meric inclined his head in a nod. But it was not money Serpent owed, it was much more than that, he owed him love and a childhood. Meric remained silent, agitated, coiled.
“Don’t think he’s breathing,” Bloody Mirror opined. He was a hulking figure, especially garbed in his coat of mirrors. He was Boetan’s bodyguard and infamous for his coat. So confident of his own ability that he would not hide but come straight at his enemies.
Meric shrugged. “Should’ve paid shouldn’t he?”
“Ooh I like you but now it’s time you pay,” sneered Boetan.
Meric shrugged again. His temper had not dissipated yet and his arms twitched with the anticipation of conflict. He had to be quick though. Bloody Mirror had a fearsome reputation, liked squeezing people against his coat until parts of them popped. “Pay for what?” asked Meric.
Boetan said, “The wall, of course.”
“Not your wall.”
“Not the point.” Sensing the determination in Meric’s deportment Boetan changed tack, tried to find reason. “I know you work for my enemy, Brie Panni, so this encounter is awkward. See I gotta take something from you, either money or your life otherwise I look weak. Me and ‘Mirror been going around taxing people and you gotta pay just like the rest. You understand that?”
“Yes,” replied Meric reaching up to touch his kittel.
“Bloody Mirror he’s touching that flashy weapon of his,” Boetan declared unaware just how quickly that weapon could move in trained hands.
But Bloody Mirror was way too slow and his head toppled free from his body.
Meric paddled the kittel so both blades whipped in front of Boetan’s stunned expression.
“Who are you? Work for me, I’ll make you rich. I need a new bodyguard now. Someone’s got to wear the coat.”
“My name is Deadeye,” both blades sunk into Boetan’s chest. “And I’m a son of Sumner.”
Deadeye took the coat of mirrors, though too big he liked the significance of it and put it on. Mounting the black mare he geed it on. “I’m going home,” he said over his shoulder to his dead dad. “And all will see me coming for I am glorious.”