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Ordesky was barely conscious when they dragged him out of the drain. He was aware of a person; or rather the vaguest form of a person, as it stooped low to examine him. A slap was drawn across his face and he remembered feeling angry at the stinging pain and tried harder to focus.
“Disappointing this is,” said the person and Ordesky cracked an eye open fully. Bright flickering torchlight hurt so he shut it immediately. “Wake up worm,” and he was shaken vigorously. “I’d thought they’d make a start on his legs but there isn’t a single bite mark on him.” It was obvious the person was talking about him and secretly Ordesky was thankful he hadn’t been ‘bitten’.
“It was quick with that young thief we caught.”
“That’s right, it was the quickest yet. Only had him down there half a day and when we hauled him up there was nothing left but a bit of bone and gristle.”
Ordesky had lost all sense of time in the drain. He’d been hungry before they’d lowered him and he was hungry still so that was no indication of the passage of time. It could’ve been a day or it could’ve been a week. He took comfort that he’d not been eaten yet. Despite his circumstance that was something.
A strong man heaved him upright and the rope around his waist and wrists dug in hard. Maver Kane’s ugly face loomed close. “We heard you wailing like a girl,” he spat.
After the darkness of the drain any form of illumination seemed too much and Ordesky’s eyes started to water. No doubt as soon as he was accustomed to the torchlight they would bung him back down the drain. That was the mentality of such men. They liked toying with the weak.
“I like to think that during those moments between wailing and fainting you’ve come to the conclusion that you want to tell me where Flendin’s gone. Would that be right?”
A sharp sting in his stomach and Ordesky groaned and if he hadn’t been tied rigid he would have doubled with the pain. Another slap across the face and someone pulled his hair back so that he had to look at Maver Kane.
He had mad eyes. They were big and round and, in the gloom of the basement, black looking and Ordesky noticed the whole time they held him they never blinked. Like looking at a dead man, he thought, as no life registered in Kane’s face. Blank and staid. Nothing moved. There was no involuntary muscle twitch, no furrow of the brow and no blink. It might as well have been a mask. A façade fashioned from wood.
“I’m being good to you Ordesky the Mouse. You could’ve lost fingers by now, a hand or an arm or worse. I’m letting you think about your predicament, letting you evaluate your situation. I’m giving you the option of being my friend. Think hard on it too because I’m losing patience and Millet here,” Maver Kane turned to a cleaver holding hoodlum with cleft lip and flared nostrils, “wants to see what you look like internally.”
Ordesky was a beaten man. The moment they caught him in the old factory he had been so. A man commonly labelled the Mouse had little resistance to anything threatening and if he knew the answer to Flendin’s whereabouts he would talk. He would talk so much they would have trouble shutting him up. But he didn’t know. Resigned to pain Ordesky took a deep breath and opened his mouth. “I don’t know where he is,” he heard himself state and the retaliation to his response still surprised him despite him knowing what had to happen.
“Put him back down there. Get him out of my sight.” Maver Kane stormed angrily from the room and Ordesky was pushed down the hole; the rope around his waist caught his weight snagging him in the middle and winding him. His whole body ached now and he grimaced with the totality of the pain. Could his misery be more complete? He thought not and found himself talking to the darkness. “If there are Holes here, please, come finish me off.”
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“We spent all that time talking about getting to Black Pots and when we finally arrive we leave the same afternoon.”
“One of the mysteries of life. You think you know what you want but when you get it you realise that you no longer do.”
“Tsk. Typical.”
I hadn’t known Smidgen for long but he was growing on me and despite his monstrous appearance I felt remarkably at ease with his company. He had a good sense of humour and thought well of everything and everyone and I’d noticed that when away from strangers he smiled a lot, and when he did his whole face wrinkled up like a month old prune or the crinkled phizog of a sour jowled terrier. There was that dog analogy again, and, just like with Rain Chaser, he liked eating a lot too.
Shame on me for comparing a man to my dog but I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. I looked at Smidgen and I felt warmth, the kind of compassion possible only by unconditional friendship. I liked Smidgen. Pity the rest of the world didn’t.
As we rode unharried through the afternoon I recalled the day we first met.
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Three days out of Never was the town of Misery. An aptly named hub of commerce that joined the wool trade from the northeast to the purses of the north. An almost constant stream of wool loaded wagons filtered into that town. Hard iron rimmed wheels clanked and rattled constantly and the only respite from the discord came at night when the wool auctions closed. Come the morning deals were struck, palms spat on, hands shaken and the wagons, now empty, turned volte-face and headed back out onto the open roads. No one smiled much and no one spoke a lot. Interaction was a frivolity; a distraction from business and in Misery making money was everything.
Misery was a good decision for me. I thought it so obvious a choice for a man wishing to lose himself that no one would think to look there, kind of a double bluff if you like. I couldn’t stay for long, just enough time to gather my wits as I’d left Never in such a hurry I’d not had time to plan my getaway. There was always a congestion of bodies cramming Misery’s streets. The lure of fast easy money attracted allsorts. Greed, it seemed, wasn’t discriminating when it came to type, and as I entered the town from the north I spied every sort of person. From the beggars, arms outstretched imploringly, to the feather-wearing peacocks of the aristocracy. There was great wealth to be made in Misery and the greed of the town was like a living thing. It filled men’s heads, possessed them, gave them drive and ambition and the few that succeeded perpetrated the false hope that anyone regardless of standing could make money. The dream endured, consuming one poor soul after another until most died penniless. Those lives kicked hardest scouted around for something to kick back at and on the day of my arrival that something was Smidgen.
Around twenty down-on-lucks, loudmouthed and bristling with excitement, formed a group down a side street. They were hitting something with sticks, poles and anything else that came to hand and I moved in closer for a better look for the thing they were hitting seemed inordinately large and inhuman.
A man lay dead in the street, unattended and uncared for. I assumed that he must have something to do with the thing being beaten. Perhaps it was its master, or maybe a victim of a random attack.
“What gives?” I asked, using my curiosity as a feint. Pointless, the mob consisted of peasants and my thieving fingers found nothing to pilfer.
“Grab a stick and join in.”
“Why, what has it done?”
“Done? It hasn’t done anything.” I was jostled out of the way as the peasant thrashed the beast with four well placed hits. The victim bent double and cowering started to shake uncontrollably. “The old man in the street just keeled over,” the peasant said, turning back to me. “Dead just like that. I think this was his pet or something. Wettle thinks the old fella was a necromancer and this thing is his beast, his familiar.”
“Has it hurt anyone?” I asked.
“Nah, not yet and we ain’t giving it the chance too either.”
The monster was looking at me. How unnerving was that? Through all the hitting and the blood, the knot of tight bodies and the striking arms, its large wet eyes stared unblinkingly at me. This is not fair, the monster has done nothing wrong and yet it will be beaten to death and I wondered how could something so timid be so bad that it had to be killed in the street like a rabid dog?
I considered my own predicament and, morals aside; I thought the thing would make an excellent foil. I was a hunted man and here was a perfect diversion to travel with, a shield if you like. Maybe the thing will even be able to fight if I teach it to act with some assertiveness.
“Get up,” I croaked, barely audible above the wicked whooshing sounds their sticks made as they fell relentlessly, one after another, upon its shoulders, face and head. The thing heard me though for it began to stand.
The peasants fell back, sticks hovering mid-air, unsure as to how to react now that their sport was moving. The monsters round shoulders slowly unfurled, its head rose from its chest and as it made to stand it got bigger and higher. Six feet, seven, eight feet tall?
The sudden movement excited the peasants and they struck it harder and faster. They had to kill it before it became too intimidating and they gasped and puffed and spat with the physical exertion. Their faces turned red too.
“Leave it alone,” I pulled a man away by his raised arm and he cursed. I twisted it back so hard he squealed and he dropped his stick immediately and it clattered harmlessly on the ground.
I wrapped an arm around his throat and put my sword to his groin. “This man loses the ability to breed if you don’t back off. All of you.”
The thrashing stopped. Raised sticks stayed mid-air and faces, agog, assessed me for sincerity. They could tell I meant it. I tried my hardest to look menacing and genuine all at the same time and my sword looked mighty precarious pressed flat as it was against their friend’s groin.
“Come on,” I said to the monster and tentatively it came towards me. “Don’t worry about them,” I assured and its movements became bolder.
It wasn’t aggressive as it came towards me for it didn’t pile through the stick wielding antagonists vengefully, merely shovelled them gracefully to one side with a hand the size of my head.
“You can’t do that,” a peasant complained.
“This says I can,” I said, turning my sword, Moribund, so that the sun bounced off of its silver-bark coloured blade. Angry and defeated they threw down their sticks and poles and in reluctant exchange I pushed the man away with a grunt. I twirled my sword like a showman and slipped it into my back scabbard.
I went to the middle of the road to examine the dead man and the monster followed cautiously behind. “Was he your master?” I asked and it looked about as sad as anything I’d seen before. Blood from innumerable wounds slicked the ground it stood upon but it didn’t seem in pain, just sad, so very very sad. I thought that maybe it was weeping for its eyes seemed red and glazed but I never heard a whimper from it.
Robbed of their entertainment the peasants shouted abuse at me from across the road.
“Hoordruth man. You come to Misery again and you’ll know trouble,” one of them bellowed and the thing I’d saved from certain death started after him. Drawn to his full height the monster’s size was enough to deter them and they all started to dissipate rapidly until in next to no time we were left completely alone.
“So much for conviction,” I said not expecting the thing to understand. “You could’ve killed them,” I said turning to face it. “When they were beating you, you could’ve killed them all.” When cornered most animals would kill so why, when faced with death, had it chosen not to attack?
It never replied, just drew a hand under its nose and continued to stare at the old man.
“Was he your friend?” I asked. Some friend, I thought, for there were tracers on the monsters jerkin indicating it had been used for some kind of hard labour.
It opened its mouth and spoke. It was a delicate voice, in complete contrast to how I imagined it would sound, and it was broken with emotion too. “I’m sad for me.” It touched a tear away. “Now that he’s gone, I’m sad for me. People either want to hurt or to kill. Which do you want to do?”
The monsters ugliness was hypnotic and I found I couldn’t take my eyes from off of it.
It was a thing of giant proportions but I never felt threatened by it, not once.
“Neither,” I replied. “But you’re bleeding a lot. We should get you cleaned up. We should find some water and wash your wounds. Are you adverse to water?”
Once again it never replied, but it opened that big toad-like mouth of its and swallowed the dead man down whole.
I masked my horror with humour by saying “Could you manage a smidgen more?” for the old mans stick still lay on the ground.
“Better fate than what they’d do to him,” it said walking away only this time I followed it.