Adjusting his fur hat, he went back inside his shack. He sat down in his captain’s chair and stretched out his feet. He looked round, studying his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. The shark-jaws lining the slatted walls, the burst of dusty, curly hairs pushing out between the boards, the lanterns and brass fittings, the casks and skinning knives and shucking stones, the harpoon heads and bundles of netting, the dhenrabi spines and Jhorlick gills, the heaps of clothing and fine cloth, and the amphorae filled with oil or wine or dyes, the clay jar on the shelf with all the gold teeth, and the half-dozen Seguleh masks …
Whuffine grunted. All in all, he decided, this was a far finer abode than any chilly, draught-filled temple with muttering priests for company, and all the slippy pattering of bare feet in the dead of night, as cots creaked under unusual weight and unlikely forces made them sway and jerk. Better, indeed, than the dusty shadows of the alcoves smeared in old wax and crowded with pointless offerings, where spiders built webs only to die of starvation and their tiny shrivelled bodies crunched down to bitter nothing between the teeth.
But somewhere in that temple, it was held, there was faith, thick as curdled cream, upon which a god could grow fat. Well, he’d yet to see that happen. The corridors echoed with pointless hopes and muddled ambitions, with sordid crimes and petty betrayals. Faith was a claw hammer to prise loose the boards beneath the commonry’s feet, an executioner’s axe to lop off the heads of unbelievers, a flaring torch to set light to the kindling crowding a thrashing fool bound to a stake. Whuffine snorted. Why, a god could get sick with this lot, no doubt about it.
If it wasn’t too much work, he would have ended this world long ago, and without much regret.
But I’ll settle for what washes up every morning. The bodies and dead dreams, the brave and the insipid, the frightened and the belligerent, the wise ones – but oh how rare they are! – and the idiots, of which there are far too many.
‘Ah, listen to me, all nostalgic again.’
Slithering with all the stealth she could muster, Witch Hurl moved among the chopped-up hunks of scorched meat outside the door to Whuffine’s shack. She gathered a few clumps up and under one arm and continued on up the trail.
This meat was fresh. This meat wouldn’t sour her stomach the way that dead man had, and she wouldn’t have to listen to any endless nattering about crossing the ocean and getting home, when all he had left was his head, or his cry of thanks when she kicked it into the waves.
She tore off mouthfuls of the human flesh, swallowing without chewing.
Remembering everything gave her good reasons, now, reasons to continue on, up into the village, where she would deliver a night of vengeful mayhem that, by dawn, would see not a single villager left alive.
And you, Feloovil Generous, you I’ll save for the last. You betrayed me when I needed you the most, and for that you will pay – by all the hoary pig-gods of the Hog Harbingers of Blearmouth – may their bones rot in their stupid little barrows – you will pay, aye, Feloovil.
Because, woman, I remember everything!
With every mouthful of bloody flesh she swallowed, she felt her strength returning.
Soon, everyone dies! She cackled, choked, and then spat out a sliver of shattered thighbone.
Behind her, the storm struck the shore, and its howl filled the air. Reaching the rise and coming in sight of Spendrugle, Witch Hurl paused. A single glaring light was visible in the distant keep tower. My tower! My keep!
Such a delicious night of slaughter awaited them all!
‘We take the beach trail,’ said Ackle, ‘but then cut off from it while still on the rise. Then it’s two hundred paces along the goat trail further down the coast. There’s a cut that leads down to a secluded strip of sand.’
‘If you say so,’ Spilgit said. He was freezing, clutching his shovel in hands swiftly growing numb. The light was almost gone, the wind turning ferocious and it buffeted them as they trudged along. Keeping his head down against the sea spray slanting in almost horizontally, Spilgit stayed a step behind Ackle.
They were halfway along the coast trail when Spilgit heard the man grunt and saw him stagger to one side.
A wild-haired old woman was suddenly before him, shrieking and lunging with hands hooked like talons.
Spilgit swung the shovel and the clang when the flat of the blade struck the woman’s forehead was like a hammer on an anvil. The impact sent her tumbling into the brush between the trail and the beach.
‘Gods below! Who was that?’
Ackle reappeared and joined Spilgit as they peered into the tangled thicket. ‘Did you kill her?’
Spilgit licked his lips, his heart pounding hard in his chest. ‘I don’t know. She attacked me!’
‘Ever seen her before?’
‘No, I swear it. I thought I knew everyone.’
‘Maybe she came up from the sea. Another one from the wreck.’
Spilgit’s sigh was shaky. ‘I suppose so.’
‘You’re a murderer now, Spilgit.’
‘No I’m not. It was an accident. It was self-defence.’
‘She had spindly hands and you had a shovel.’
‘She attacked me, you fool. You saw it.’
Ackle shrugged in the gloom. ‘She didn’t attack me. But then, I’m not a tax collector, am I?’
‘Let’s just get on with this, shall we? We’re out here, might as well bring the nightmare to an end, though I’m beginning to think that end is a long way off. Don’t look at me with those eyes, I’m an innocent man.’
Saying nothing to that, Ackle set off once more, and Spilgit quickly followed.
Lying on the bed, Hordilo watched her getting dressed. ‘It’s not going to happen,’ he said. ‘I mean, you were great and all, but I’ve had my fill of wives.’
Birds Mottle glanced briefly at him before shrugging into her quilted gambeson with the huge tear exposing one breast. ‘Thought you never married.’
‘Exactly, and I mean to stay that way.’
She faced him. ‘I was great, was I?’
‘That’s what I said, but don’t take it to heart.’
‘I won’t, and you know why? You weren’t so great. You’re so hairy I thought I was rolling with a dog.’
Hordilo scowled. ‘I know what this is.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s you thinking you need to throw a knife or two, since I told you I wasn’t interested. Making up insults ain’t no way to make yourself feel better. Maybe for a moment or two, but it never lasts. Besides, women like dogs, and I should know. So,’ he concluded, ‘it didn’t work.’
‘Well now,’ said Birds, studying him, ‘you got all the answers, don’t you?’
‘I got the answers to the questions, which is better than answers to questions nobody asks, since those kind of answers are a waste of time. So, if you still got a question, ask it and I’ll answer it, unless it ain’t a question worth asking.’
‘I don’t,’ she replied, collecting up her weapon belt. ‘There comes a point in a relationship when it all goes past words, or talking, even. And in the heads of the woman and the man, even thoughts dissolve into a grey, formless haze. Time itself turns into an illusion. Days and nights meld, forward and backward, up and down, now and then – all vanishing into a muddle of pointless existence.’ She faced him from the door. ‘We’ve reached that point, Captain.’
‘I ain’t fooled,’ he said.
‘By what?’
‘You’ll step outside the door and close it softly behind you, and lean against the wall, with tears running down your cheeks. Then you’ll take a deep breath and find, from somewhere deep inside, the resolve to go on, alone, abandoned and rejected. But really, what else is there to do? The shattered, wounded heart will mend, maybe, in a decade or two. That’s how it is for women and it’s too bad, you know? But a man’s got a thicker hide, and well, that’s just natural. Something we’re born with.’