| |
––––––––
The woman was dead. Her head was at a queer angle; eyes open staring at me from across the room. There was blood everywhere. It drenched the floorboards, had splattered up the walls and a thin line of it arched across the ceiling. I was wet with it too. I did a quick check. Good, none of it was mine. I’d hit her hard, almost cut her in two. What to do? What to do? She was leaking more blood and I was finding it inconceivable that the human body could hold so much claret. The floor was a puddle, a deep wine red puddle. What to do? Someone in the bar below must have heard the screaming. Heard the crashing as furniture was toppled and the thud of our boots on the floorboards as we fought each other.
There came a knock on the door and my heart pounded in my chest like a thing about to explode. This is it, I’d been discovered and it will be hanging for me now. My eyes fixed on the door, half of me needing more than anything to know who was on the other side, half not wanting my shame discovered. I looked back over to the dead woman. I still couldn’t believe what I’d done but it was survival of the fittest, right? Kill or be killed. It could so easily have been me strewn across the floor with a cut through my midriff like a dark red yawn.
The door banged again. Whoever it was wasn’t going away. I’d made too much noise killing her or she had in dying and now I’d the entire village up the inn stairs raining fists on my room door. Hanging for sure. Or worse. They quartered Leggy Mardel in Never, quartered the murderer and nailed a piece of him up in each district as a warning to other miscreants.
It banged again then it was thrown open, or kicked. I tightened my grip on the sword hilt and half raised it ready to kill again when I stopped. It was Smidgen.
“What the...?” he said. He took a good look around and shook his head like he was having difficulty taking it all in. I’d been doing that too. It was a hard thing to accept and especially since it had been so unexpected. One minute I’d been playing with her on the bed and the next there was blood everywhere. There was so much of it too. “What the...?” he said for a second time. Like I said, it was a hard thing to get your head around.
“Not my fault,” I stammered. I felt wretched, weighed down by the guilt and the shame of destroying something so beautiful. I’d killed before but this was oh so different. I’d been intimate with her moments before so it seemed more personal this time, more substantial, more brutal. I’d kissed every part of that body before hacking it to bits and just thinking about it made me feel sick. I knew I shouldn’t dwell on it but it was impossible not to with her sprawled out in front of me like some blood butterfly. My life was changing and how I hated that.
“I know he don’t like me down there but I slipped into the bar. Blood, her blood dripped through the ceiling onto me. Good job there ain’t many in tonight.” Smidgen hovered in the doorway. He was talking at me but his eyes were fixed upon the woman. Gore was addictive right? No, not addictive, fascinating. It wasn’t every day you got to see the internal organs of a beautiful woman.
“We gotta do something, Smidgen.” I could feel panic rising from the pit of my stomach and there was a lump in my throat. Nerves, a thief lived by them. Though at present mine were far from steel, being all tied up and knotted inside my guts. I was shaking, never shook before. Oh that woman had got to me.
Smidgen wrestled his shoulders with the door jamb. He was such a big man he couldn’t fit in conventional buildings. The door frame cracked and split but he forced himself through into the room anyway.
Smidgen nudged the door shut, it was broken now and leaning almost free of its hinges but proffered a tiny amount of privacy, then he knelt close to the dead woman. He lifted her head up, bringing it to his mouth.
I’d met Smidgen on the road and we hit it off immediately. Kindred spirits, I think it was called. I thought he liked me but Smidgen, well, there was something not right about him. He was a great bear of a man, had a big head and the squarest jaw I’d ever seen. He had an odd talent too as he could dislocate that huge jaw of his and eat next to anything. He told me once that it hurt but in the short time we’d been travelling together I’d seen him eating some weird stuff. And none of it, in my opinion, had been necessary.
Next time I looked the woman was almost gone. Just her feet, turning blue and hard, hung from the corner of his swollen mouth like a novelty pipe. Another gulp and the only remaining evidence was the blood. Wall to wall it was too. “We should get out of here,” I said, feeling stupid the minute I finished speaking.
“That’s obvious,” said Smidgen. “Someone will miss her soon. Did she work here?”
I had to help him back up now that he had eaten, which wasn’t easy as the guy was over three times the weight of me, probably more now he had a whole woman inside of him.
I shrugged unhelpfully. I just wanted to get out of the tavern. I felt smothered, trapped. There were noises coming from downstairs now. The kind an angry mob would make, or was that paranoia creeping into my brain? A thief lived by that too, paranoia. I’d done a bad deed and so expected to be punished for it. Only no one could punish me as severely as my own guilt could. “Been giving me the eye for days,” I said, finally satisfied that we weren’t about to be lynched. “She drank at the tavern a lot so I think she was probably another guest. Mind you, thinking about it, it all seems so orchestrated. She was sent from him. How does he know where I am all the time?” That had been the fourth attempt on my life in half as many weeks. Smidgen and I moved around a lot so it was a mystery how people, the wrong people, kept finding me. My life had been so much simpler when I was just a thief.
“We should leave then and quickly. He could’ve sent more than one after you. Throw the bed covers over the worst of the blood; it might help to absorb it. I’ll square the bill with the landlord and meet you in the stables. And put some clothes on will you.”
And with that, Smidgen was gone. I could hear his heavy footfalls on the creaking stairs. Hear as his massive shoulders, like a cork in a bottle neck, squeak as he passed between walls. Nothing seemed to faze him. I was all panic, cold sweat and fearful looks and old Smidgen was moving like he was nipping downstairs for a spot of tea. Good man, Smidgen, I liked him. Quickly I wriggled into my clothes, grabbed my stuff, a large canvas bag, and hurried out of the cursed room.
––––––––
That ponce from the room opposite was hovering in the hallway. A dandy if ever I saw one. He had a large golden feather in his hat and was pursing his lips like he was irritated. I got the impression there was much he wanted to say to me but dare not. Something about the noise, probably. I pushed past him, as I couldn’t wait to get outside. Fresh air, that was what I needed, fresh air to cool my hot killers’ blood.
I took the back stairs, knocking over some wicker storage jars that rolled all the way down to the bottom. Curses but I was awkward tonight.
Once outside I moved from shadow to shadow. I cut through the predawn village keeping close to buildings where the darkness was deepest. I moved as quickly as I could, knowing the sooner we left Bush the better. That landlord, Birkin, would have a fit when he went up to clean the room. Angry locals? Nah, we didn't need that. We had enough to contend with as it was.
The stables were close and my heart quickened. Not long now and I would be away from here. I couldn't see Smidgen but he could move fast for a big man. But then I was discovered and there came a shout from behind and instinctively I slunk back against a wall, making myself as flat as I could.
It was Birkin and he was alone and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Mr Reaven,” he croaked. Pulling a shawl closer around his shoulders to rebuff the cold. He was almost upon me.
Reaven was a fake name I’d given him when we’d arrived in the village four days ago. I’d almost forgotten it myself. A false name was an important subterfuge for a marked man, an extra piece of camouflage to help him disappear. It didn't seem to work for me as people were still finding me. I cast an anxious look round. Where was Smidgen? Stupid question as he would be in the stables readying the horses for another flight.
“Mr Reaven,” the landlord huffed, finally catching me up. I could've made it to the horses in the time it had taken fat Birkin to reach me, but I wasn’t myself tonight. I kept thinking of that woman, or rather what I’d done to her soft white body. I knew that I would hate myself forever for cutting her up, but she had left me no alternative. She had come to kill me.
“What is it, Birkin?” I asked. Had he discovered the blood? Did I sound guilty? I felt it.
A podgy white hand reached out to me and I instantly recoiled. Old Birkin looked a little shocked but opened his hand anyways. “Your friend, the big man. Left in such a hurry he forgot his change.”
Bloody Smidgen. His fault I nearly suffered a heart attack.
“Thank you, Mr Birkin,” I said, dropping the coin in a pocket.
“I hope you won’t be returning to Bush any time soon. We don’t like the look of your big friend. He wouldn’t be welcome here again. Farewell.”
“Farewell,” I bid and waited for him to disappear before heading into the stables.
––––––––
Smidgen was there, working under the dull light of a traveller’s lamp. He was tightening the cinch on his saddle.
“Where’s Bent?” I asked and he shrugged back.
Bent was another stray I’d picked up on my travels. He was tall and thin and forever wrapped in swathes of black. I’d never seen much of him, save his hands, which were always uncovered. Might have seen his face once but the room had been dark and his hood dropped for a moment only. I remember seeing what I thought were teeth, lots of teeth.
We called him Bent because of his poise. Whether stood or sat down his body leaned forward at an irregular angle from his waist. It looked like he was always about to fall over.
Bent worried me more than Smidgen did. Smidgen could be a monster, so too could I judging by my actions this night, but we knew next to nothing about Bent. He hid in shadows, rarely spoke and had a penchant for the black arts. As far as my knowledge of the latter went I think that meant exhuming dead things, but I could be wrong.
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him for two days,” Smidgen grumbled. Didn’t take him long to get into a black mood. Perhaps the woman was repeating on him or maybe he had overheard Birkin outside complaining about him. Nobody liked Smidgen. His monstrous appearance was enough to move people to passionate hatred in a heartbeat.
I grabbed my saddle and started to fix it to my horses back when I noticed another one cradled on a bar. It probably belonged to that ponce in the room opposite mine as it was rich and flamboyant and must have cost a lot of money. The old me was too strong to deny so I swapped them over. “Come on, Bent, wherever you are. We gotta leave, now.”
True to form the old spook waded out from the shadows at the back of the stables. It was an act that surprised me to the point of scaring me and I tried to mask my fear with bravado. “Where the hell you been all this time?” He had no intention of answering so to save face I added, “Never mind that now. We’ve got to get out of here. Saddle your horse.”
We thundered out of the stables as if hell itself were on our tail. We made an unlikely band, us three disparate souls; the monster, Smidgen, the demon, Bent, and me, the thief, Flendin the Blade. My life hadn't been the same since leaving Never.