‘You mean we need to eat somebody.’ So said I at this juncture, not because I was especially dense, but speaking in the interest of pith (as one has no doubt already observed in the tale thus far). ‘Say it plain’ has always been my motto.
To my crass brevity Arpo Relent frowned as if in disappointment. What artist asks such a thing? What artist lacks the intellectual subtlety to stroke the kitty of euphemism? When the game shall not be played, fun shall not be had. The nature of ‘fun’ in this particular example? Why, the ‘fun’ of sly self-justification for murder, of course, and what could be more fun than that?
Tiny Chanter was the first to play, with a tiny grin and a piggy regard for the poor artists who now stood miserable as sheep in a pen watching the axeman cometh. ‘But which one first, Relent? Fat to skinny? Obnoxious to useless? Ugly to pretty? We need a system of selection is what we need. Flea?’
‘Aye,’ Flea agreed.
‘Midge?’
‘Aye,’ Midge agreed.
‘Relish?’
‘I like the one with the shaved head.’
‘To eat first?’
‘What?’
Tiny glared at me. ‘I warned you earlier, Flicker.’
At some juncture in discourse with a thug, one comes to the point where any uttered word shall obtain as sole justification for violence. It is not the word itself that matters. It is not even the speaking thereof. Indeed, nothing of the world outside the thick skull and murky matter it contains is at all relevant. There is no cause and no effect. No, what has occurred is the clicking of a gear wheel, a winding down to the moment of release. The duration is fixed. The process is irreversible.
Resigned, I waited for Tiny Chanter’s pique to detonate.
Instead, Relish said, ‘They should tell stories.’
Steck Marynd took this moment to snort, and it was an exquisite snort in that it clearly counted as the first vote on the matter.
Tiny blinked, and blinked again. One could see the tumult of confusion whisk clouds over his brutal visage, and then his grin broadened, frightening away all the clouds. ‘Flea?’
‘Aye.’
‘Midge?’
‘Aye.’
‘Knight Relent, you happy with that?’
‘I am “Sir” to you.’
‘Was that a “yes”?’
‘I think it was,’ said Flea. ‘Midge?’
‘Oh aye, that was a “yes” all right.’
At this moment Tulgord Vise, Mortal Sword to the Sisters, stepped into the understandable gap between the Nehemothanai and the limpid artists (of which, at this juncture, I blithely count myself). He blew out his cheeks (his upper ones) and stretched a measured regard upon all those gathered, including the host whose name momentarily escapes me, Mister Must, Purse Snippet and the Entourage (poor Apto was yet to arrive). One presumes this was meant to establish Tulgord’s preeminence as the final arbiter in the matter (yes, this matter), but of course he too possessed but a single vote, and so the issue was perhaps, for him, one of moral compass. Clearly, he saw in this moment the necessity of justification, and upon ethical concerns who else but Tulgord Vise to dispense adjudication?
Well, how about the victims?
But the retort is equally quick, to be found in the puerile weaponry all within easy reach of those with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Since when do ethics triumph power? So uneven was this debate no one bothered to troop it out for trampling. Accordingly, Tulgord’s posturing was met with all the indifference it deserved, a detail entirely lost on him.
The nightly procession was thus determined, as we artists would have to sing not to be supper. Ironically, alas, the very first victim had no tale to attempt at all, for his crime at this moment was to object, with all the terror of a lifetime being picked last in every children’s game he ever played, and some memories, as we all know, stay sharp across a lifetime. ‘Just eat the damned horses!’
But Arpo Relent shook his head. ‘There is no question of any more votes,’ he said. ‘As anyone of proper worth would agree, a knight’s horse is of far greater value than any poet, bard or sculptor. It’s settled. The horses don’t get eaten.’ And he glowered as was his wont following everything he said.
‘But that’s just—’
It is safe to say that the word this nameless artist intended was ‘stupid’ or ‘insane’ or some other equally delectable and wholly reasonable descriptive. And as added proof when his severed head rolled almost to my feet following the savage slash of Tulgord Vise’s blessed sword, the mouth struggled to form its thoughtful completion. Ah, thus did the memory stay sharp.
The first poet, having been killed so succinctly, was butchered and eaten on the eleventh night upon the Great Dry. The sixteenth night saw another follow, as did the twentieth night. Upon the twenty-second night the vote was taken following Arpo’s raising of the notion of midday meals to keep up one’s strength and morale, and so a second artist was sacrificed that night. At that time the ritual of critical feasting began, instigated by a shaky Brash Phluster.
Two more hapless poets, both bards of middling talents, gave the performance of their lives on that night.
At this point, listeners among you, perhaps even you, might raise an objecting hand (not the first one, you say? I wasn’t paying attention). Thirty-nine days upon the Great Dry? Surely by now, with only a few days away from the ferry landing below the plateau, the need for eating people was past? And of course you would be right, but you see, a certain level of comfort had been achieved. In for a pinch, in for a pound, as some sated bastard once said. More relevantly, thirty-nine days was the optimum crossing, and we were far from optimum, at least to begin with. Does this suffice? No, of course it doesn’t, but whose tale is this?
Ordig now resided in bellies with a weighty profundity he never achieved in life, while Aurpan’s last narrative was technically disconnected and stylistically disjointed, being both raw and overdone. The critical feasting was complete and the artists numbered four, Purse Snippet being given unanimous dispensation, and by the host’s judgement sixteen nights remained upon the Great Dry.
While talent with numbers could rarely be counted among the artist’s gifts, it was nonetheless clear to all of us sad singers that our time upon this world was fast drawing to a close. Yet with the arrival of dusk this made no less desperate our contests.
Brash Phluster licked his lips and eyed Apto Canavalian for a long moment, before drawing a deep breath.
‘I was saving this original dramatic oratory for the last night in Farrog, but then, could I have a more challenging audience than this one here?’ And he laughed, rather badly.
Apto rubbed at his face as if needing to convince himself that this was not a fevered nightmare (as might haunt all professional critics), and I do imagine that, given the option, he would have fled into the wastes at the first opportunity, not that such an opportunity was forthcoming given Steck Marynd and his perpetually cocked crossbow which even now rested lightly on his lap (he’d done with his pacing by this time).
In turn, Brash withdrew his own weapon, a three-string lyre, which he set to tuning, head bent over the instrument and face twisted in concentration. He plucked experimentally, then with flourish, and then experimentally again. Sweat glistened in the furrows of his brow, each bead reflecting the hearth’s flames. When those seated began growing restless he nudged one wooden peg one last time, and then settled back.
‘This is drawn from the Eschologos sequence of Nemil’s Redbloom Poets of the Third Century.’ He licked his lips again. ‘Not to say I stole anything. Inspired, is what I mean, by those famous poets.’