Wiley

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I didn’t wake to find Durtle’s knife at my throat.  Surprise number one.  Number two came in the mountainous shape of Smidgen.  He was still asleep, no shock there, but surrounding him were all the cattle the villagers had brought in to protect against Summer Taker during the night.

I’d said that dumb animals liked him and here was proof positive.  The villagers looked on, amazed.  I shut my gaping mouth.

“Hey, Smidge’,” I murmured and he stirred.  I thought he must be snug, being at the epicentre of all those warm animal bodies.  There were some sheep and some pigs, a couple of goats and even some gangly-legged brown haired cows and they’d all gravitated towards him.  Weird.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he stood up and, as one, the villagers in the barn cooed and stepped back.  He was so big, was Smidgen, that he sort of filled your vision if you were stood too close to him.

“Where’s Durtle the rat?” I asked of the barn.  There was an animal that had chosen not to sleep with Smidgen last night.

“Outside,” said Ponk.

“What is it?” I enquired for Ponk looked odd.  All wide eyed and disorientated like something bad was worrying him.

“Come on,” I said fearing the worse.  “Show me.”

Slapping his lips together Smidgen followed me out.  I knew that he would want breakfast soon.  You couldn’t be his size and not need to eat a lot and regularly too.  I just hoped Durtle had the sense to keep away or else he would make a convenient snack.

He hadn’t.  He was close to the barn, him and his cronies.  Speechless they were too as was I when I finally took in the vista.  It was the second time today I’d stood with my mouth gaping open and it was still early morning.

Bent had killed Summer Taker for she lay, well, she lay everywhere.  Like a red sea her flesh drowned the village.  It sidled up the sides of huts, flooded any flattened area and formed a crusty mound in the centre of Broil.  Steam rose from the opened guts as cold air reacted to the dying warmth of Agentha’s innards and the exposed parts of her glistened in the early morning like dew on grass.

Anatomical gas escaped an opened organ and the sudden fart made us all start.  Durtle let out a scream and I would have laughed if the smell hadn’t been so bad.

“Where the hell is Bent?”

Ponk shrugged.  I could hear the rough material of his shirt rustle against his skin.

Then I spied him through the steam.  He was riding his horse and leading Smidgen’s and mine by their reins.  They must have escaped their stabling last night.  I also noticed the canvas blue of the bag strapped to the back of Smidgen’s saddle and I breathed a deep and grateful sigh of relief.  I’d forgotten about the bag.  I was too quick to dismiss responsibility, fool, fool, fool.  I shouldn’t let it out of my sight.  Better still, Smidgen shouldn’t let it out of his.  I thought he was custodian of it anyway.

“The bag, Smidgen.  How could you forget about the bag?”

“Sorry, Flendin,” he sniffed.  “I didn’t mean to leave it on the saddle.  Really I didn’t.”

I jumped up so as I could reach to slap him across the back of his head.  “We could’ve lost it.  Next time I give you something to do you bloody well do it.”

“Sorry, Flendin,” Smidgen looked down at the ground, ashamed.

“We can’t afford to lose the bag you idiot.”

“Sorry Flendin.”

I felt bad for blaming Smidgen.  The moment the cruel words escaped my lips I knew I was angry with myself and not my companion and that he really didn’t deserve this humiliation.  He’d been very frightened last night and the bag was, ultimately, my responsibility.  “Go and eat,” I said as way of apologising, clumsy as it was.  I wasn’t very good at that kind of thing, apologising.  He smiled at me and I guessed we were still friends.  Much to the villagers disgust he set about taking great chunks out of Summer Taker’s body.

“Thank you,” I said as Bent rode up.  He handed over the reins to my old nag.  “Had they gotten far?”

“No.”

I thought about the fight between Bent and Summer Taker.  Compared his size to the other.  “Are you hurt?”

“No.”  Bent leant out of his saddle.  A pale ungloved hand touched the back of Smidgen’s head.  “Glad to see you’ve still got your appetite.”

“Thank you for helping me.” Smidgen chomped on a mouthful of steaming flesh as he spoke.  It didn’t bother Bent, all the gore and the perversity.  Nothing seemed to faze him.

“I hope you like well-hung meat,” he said, pulling his hand back.  “Agentha is over a thousand years old.”

Smidgen spat furiously.

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Despite Bent helping with their resident Turned, there hadn’t been a single person sad to see us leave Broil.  Had they even been appreciative of his efforts?  Had they hell.  That was common folk for you.  Ungrateful lip wobbling, bowel loosened, lamebrains.  I should’ve stuck my sword in Durtle and two fingers up at the rest of them.  But I hadn’t and we were far enough away from that village to sway any thoughts of me backtracking to do just that.  I guess I was angry, angry at still being stuck with this old coat and feeling the cold of the morning, and a little angry for Smidgen’s sake.  They hadn’t been kind to him.

It was a mean thing to realise, but I was getting inured to the violent prejudice Smidgen suffered.  Instead of shocking me I was getting used to it.  So commonplace was the trouble that I came to expect it now and that anticipation took a lot of the edge off.  Made it seem less deplorable.

Even I was starting to think it acceptable behaviour when it wasn’t.  It really wasn’t.

It wasn’t just the way other people treated Smidgen, it was to do with the way I acted towards him too.  I didn’t defend him as well as I could’ve and that hurt me more than the recent memory of him banging on the barn door and no one letting him in.

The only person who hadn’t let Smidgen down back in Broil was Bent.

Our mysterious travelling companion was revealing more sides to his character but still not enough for me to begin to understand him.  I always thought he lacked compassion but he’d shown a bucket full of it back at the barn.  He’d pulled Smidgen to safety whereas I’d done nothing.  He’d killed Summer Taker to stop her feeding on the villagers and I’d done nothing.  I was being taught moral principles by a demon and yeah, no wonder I was in a bad mood.  I’d very little control over anything and desperately wanted to change everything.  Myself included.

Smidgen was smiling, beaming ear to ear.

“What’s with you?”  I was in no mood for gaiety.

“Just enjoying the day out riding with friends.”

He made it sound like a jolly.  I will put a dampener on things.  “You forget how close you came to being eaten last night.  You’d have stood no chance against the Ogre.”

“Bent was there though.”

“He’s never helped me before,” I stated sourly.  I was a real grump this morning.

“Perhaps you never needed it,” said the dark cloud.

As usual he rode behind us.  Not much further back but just enough to suggest we were targets.

I would try winding him up instead.  “You surprised me last night, Bent.  I’m starting to think you do care about Smidge’ and me.”

He didn’t answer, just kept that cowled head of his fixed dead ahead.

He really was impossible to provoke so I resolved to take our task seriously and settled down for a day of silent travelling.

The road was easy enough to follow.  The Terrant had a thousand legs and the ground here was all messed up with the furrows each had left behind.  It, like us, was heading north.  All we’d to do was follow the destruction.

Smoke hung in the air way ahead of us.  “That’ll be Wiley,” I reckoned and I checked the map I’d ‘borrowed’ from Sharkey the travelling salesman.  Smidgen nodded.  Would we be welcomed at Wiley?  I doubted it.  Life sure was hard riding with Smidgen.

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“Stop that Hat, stop it,” The Golem of the South growled as Hat pulled tight across his crown.  “You want to shoot off and leave me, go ahead.  You want to get to Never then go.  I’ll get there in my own sweet time.”  Golem was walking north but not swiftly.  One earth trembling footfall followed another and the pounding of his sluggish steps was like thunder rumbling underground.  His immense weight was a curse, imparting to him an awkward and painful gait.  The period between each stiff stride was so drawn-out, so protracted that sometimes he seemed to not be moving at all and Hat was getting impatient.  It took effort to bend just one knee and more so to drop one foot in front of the other.  He was as heavy as rock.

He’d swallowed too many souls and their virtue weighed him down like a spiritual anchor.  One day he’d be so full of souls he’d not be able to move.  “I’ll get to Never, mark these words,” he blustered.

Some heads formed a gnat cloud around Hat and it gobbled a few up.  It hated the heads.  More zipped in from the south and the southwest.  They hovered in front of Hunger or flew in wide circles around him jostling for space.

“The Green Man has woken up.”

“This is welcome news,” said Hunger.

“He heard the timbre of your footfalls banging and crashing and heaving.”

“He’d slept for so long I thought him dead.”

A head barged into his nose and bounced back.  “He ain’t dead.  Heading for Audry by the looks of it.”

Hat stretched and squeezed agitatedly.

“Hat is worried,” Hunger interpreted.  “He’s concerned about The Green Man’s intentions.  What’s at Audry?”

“Nothing.”  A different head.

Hunger remembered now.  “That’s right.  The Terrant passed through there going northwards.  He ate them all.  The women, the children and the men.”

A fresh shrunken head bobbed in from the south.  “They killed Agentha the ogre,” it blurted breathlessly.

“She hasn’t been happy for many years.  We lose one soldier but gain another.  The Green Man knows his master well for he too travels north.  I will have all my children at Never.  Away, away heads,” Hunger waved his arms, dispersing all the little heads.  “Spy for me, collect information, eavesdrop and learn things.  Let me know what others are thinking, what they’re scheming and follow Flendin the Dark.  Learn all you can about him.  Study his companions and trail that bag of his.  We’ll have resolution in Never and all my children will be there.”

THUD.  Hunger placed another inexorable step forward and the ground shook violently.

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It was dark by the time we rode into Wiley.  There was a fallen tree obstructing the thoroughfare and I bid Smidgen take care when he made to investigate.

“It could be a trap,” I ventured but nothing happened when he grabbed it.

It was like a toy in his giant hands and he pushed it aside effortlessly.

Moon cast faces appeared, first one side of the road and then the other.  It was apparent that Wiley, like Broil, was guarded.  It too had been raped by The Terrant and the villager’s defences were up.

One villager wound a slingshot in the air.  I knew for I could hear it whining as it span round and round.

“We’re tired,” I declared.  “We want food and somewhere to sleep. He,” I said jabbing a finger at Bent, “killed Summer Taker so that’s one less Turned for you lot to worry about.”

The whining stopped.  Despite the unified display of might there was little fight left in the people and they watched as we rode sedately past.  I could see their eyes glistening in the moonlight.

I don’t know if it were intuition, like I’d an unerring sense of direction, or we were being guided, but in no time we found ourselves in the centre of the village.

Pale white faces leered out of the night.  They wrenched Smidgen off his horse and stuck forks into his legs and back and shoulders.  They threw a sack over his head and the giant never retaliated though screamed when a spike was plunged into his neck.

Someone drew a sword, a rusty antique dulled half a century ago, and slashed it across Smidgen’s chest.  It caught on the metal rings on Smidgen’s vest and sparked.

They’re going to kill him.

I had to do something.

Hands fell on my thighs, grasped at my trews, and tried to pull me off of my horse.  I lashed out with my feet, elbow and hands.  Cuffing anyone who got too close.  I whacked someone full in the face with the bottom of my boot and heard the snap of a breaking nose.  “Bent,” I managed to gasp, thumping someone else on the head with a hastily formed fist.  “Bent, get him back on the horse.”

Strong hands yanked at me and I nearly fell off.  I leered out of the saddle but fought against gravity and those intent upon pulling me down.  “Get him back on the horse.”

Bent never killed anyone.  He waded in oblivious to their superior numbers and set about throwing them off of Smidgen one at a time.

Those picked off came straight at me.  The man with the rusty sword charged and I pulled my sword out and hit him.  His severed head hit the ground before his body did and all of a sudden the fighting stopped.

“Get him on his horse,” I reiterated, quietly now I could easily be heard.  I held my sword threateningly, keeping the locals wary.  I regretted killing but I’d do it again.

“You fools fight when there is no occasion to,” I said.

Smidgen was back on his horse and I followed him out of Wiley.  Bent came last.

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We rode for another hour or so.  We passed like dark clouds across the face of the night sky, silent and ominous.  I was sulking, as was Smidgen.  Bent was quiet because it was in his nature to be.  Wiley had surprised and disappointed me.  The idiots.  Why had they attacked us?

We found an abandoned shepherd’s croft and put Smidgen in there to rest.  After his ordeal he was breathless and anxious and he was bleeding from numerous wounds that needed cleaning.  He had a pole sticking out of his thigh, which I pulled out, and I plugged the wound with a scraggy piece from my coat.  There was a stream to the east of the croft.  “I’ll get some water,” I said to Bent.  “You keep watch.  If anyone from Wiley’s followed us then kill them.”

He nodded and disappeared into the blackness of the surrounding trees.

It was a cold night, a frost filled night and my breath turned to ice as I breathed.

I felt truly miserable.  I whistled to lift my spirits but became all too conscious of the night and stopped immediately.  Summer Taker had preyed on the carnage left by The Terrant and there could be other opportunistic Turned abroad.  I decided it would be wise to keep quiet and suspect every shadow I saw.

I filled a pail I’d found in the croft and tried to walk back before the holes in the bottom drained the water away completely.  I paused by the door and looked around.  I couldn’t see Bent out amongst the rustling trees but I knew he was there and it was of great comfort to me.

The door creaked as I opened it and I was expecting to hear the thunder of Smidgen snoring so was surprised to find him still awake.

I asked the obvious, “Can’t sleep?”

He shook his head and in the moonlight I could make out two points of light that were his ears.  “No,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sad.”

“About what?”

“People hurting me.”

“You’ll be alright.”  I tried to make light of his injuries but it wasn’t the physical pain that hurt him the most.

He winched when I applied a wet rag to his leg.  “I don’t hate others,” he said and all the time I cleaned his wounds I listened.  “I don’t want to hurt people or see them get hurt. I like people so why can’t they just like me back?  I can help others.  Why won’t they just let me help them?”

“I know,” I said and I meant it.  I understood.  Finally I understood.

“I’m not a bad man, Flendin the Blade.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

In fact, Smidgen, you are the kindest, gentlest most generous creature I have ever known to walk the green earth.