Just be sure to invite me along.
‘Among the pilgrims,’ so I did resume after an appropriate duration to stir the stew, ‘maelstroms raged in silent touch of glance and hungers were awakened and the conviction of terrible starvation sizzled with certainty, and for all the threats spoken and unspoken, ah, love will find a way. Legs yearn to yawn, thighs quiver to clamp hard. Snakes strain to bludgeon into ruin all barriers to sentinel readiness.
‘There was a woman,’ and if possible, why, even the mules and horses trod more softly to challenge not my words, ‘a sister to three bold warriors, and desired by all other men in the company. Hard and certain the warnings issued by the brothers. War in answer to despoiling, a thousand legions upon the march, a siege of a hundred years and a hundred great heroes dead on the sand. The toppling of kings and wizards upon the rack. Heads on spikes and wives raped and children sold into slavery. The aghast regard of horrified gods. No less to any and all of these the stern threats from the brothers.
‘But who could deny her beauty? And who could ignore the hooked bait in the net she daily cast so wide into her path and wake both?’
Did I risk a glance at Relish Chanter? I did not. But let us imagine now her precious expression at this moment. Eyes wide in horror? Lips slack? A rising flush? Or, and with surety I would cast my coin here, an odd brightness to her gaze, the hint of a half-smile, a touch wilder and wider the sway of her petalled hips. Perhaps even a deflagrant toss of her head. No young woman, after all, can be chained to childhood and all its perverse innocence, no matter how many belligerent brothers she has in tow. The flush apple beckons every hand, and the fruit in turn yearns to be plucked.
‘Among the poets and bards,’ said I then, ‘there was a statesman of the tender arts, elder in his years, but creativity’s flower (still so lush in his mind) proclaimed with blind lie a vigour long past. And one night, after days of effort growing ever more desperate, ever more careless, did he finally catch the maiden’s eye. Whilst the brothers slept, heads anod and snores asnore, out they crept into the night—’
‘But I—’
Poor Calap Roud, alas, got no further.
With a roar, Tiny Chanter lunged upon the hapless old man. The fist that struck the poet was driven hard as a mace, crushing visage and sending shards of bone deep into Calap’s brain. In his collapse not a finger’s breadth of his body evinced the remotest sign of life.
Oh dear.
Do the gods stand in wait for each and every one of us? So many do believe. Someone has to pay for this mess. But who among us does not also believe that he or she would boldly meet such immortal regard? Did we not drag our sack of excuses all this way? Our riotous justifications? Even death itself could not defy this baggage train chained to our ankles and various other protuberances. Truly, can anyone here honestly assert they would do other than argue their case, all their cases, that mountain heap of cases that is the toll of a life furtively lived?
‘Yes, oh Great Ones, such was my laziness that I could not be bothered to dispose of my litter in the proper receptacles, and a thousand times I pissed against a wall behind my neighbour’s house, even as I coveted and eventually seduced his wife. And yes, I was in the habit of riding my horse through town and country too quickly, exercising arrogant disregard for courtesy and caution. I cut off other riders out of spite, I threatened to trample pedestrians at every turn! I always bought the biggest horse to better intimidate others and to offset my sexual incapacities! I bullied and lied and cheated and had good reasons every time. I long ago decided that I was the centre of all existence, emperor of emperors – all this to hide my venal, pathetic self. After all, we are stupider than we like to believe: why, this is the very meaning of sentience, and if you gods are not to blame for your own miserable creations, then who is?’
Just so.
And, as poor Calap Roud’s corpse cooled there on the hard ground, all the others stared in an array of horror, shock, sudden appetite, or mulish indifference, first upon Calap and then upon me, and then back again, deft in swivel to avoid the Chanters with their gnarly fists and black expressions (and Relish, of course, who stood examining her fingernails).
Yet t’was Relish who spoke first. ‘As if.’
Extraordinary indeed, how two tiny words could shift the world about-face, the volumes of disdain and disgust, disbelief and a hundred other disses, so filling her breath by way of tone and pitch as to leave not a single witness in doubt of her veracity. Calap Roud in Relish’s arms? The absurdity of that notion was as a lightning strike to blast away idiotic conviction, and in the vacuous echo of her comment, why, all eyes now fixed in outrage upon Tiny Chanter.
Whose scowl deepened. ‘What?’
‘Now we’ll never hear what happened to the Imass!’ So cried our amiable host, as hosts must by nature be ever practical.
The mood soured then, until I humbly said, ‘Not necessarily. I know that particular tale. Perhaps not with the perfect recall with which Calap Roud iterated it, but I shall do my best to satisfy.’
‘Better choice than your own story,’ muttered Apto, ‘which is liable to see us all killed before you’re done with it.’
‘Unacceptable,’ pronounced Purse Snippet. ‘Flicker owes me his tale.’
‘Now he owes us another one!’ barked Tulgord Vise.
‘Exactly!’ chimed Brash Phluster, who, though an artist of modest talents, was not a fool.
‘I shall assume the added burden,’ said I, ‘in humble acknowledgement of my small role in poor Calap Roud’s fate—’
‘Small?’ snorted Steck Marynd.
‘Indeed,’ I replied, ‘for did I not state with sure and unambiguous clarity that my tale bears only superficial similarity to our present reality?’
As they all pondered this, Mister Must descended from the carriage, to get his butchering tools from the trunk. A man of many skills, was Mister Must, and almost as practical as Sardic Thew.
Butchering a human was, in detail, little different from butchering any other large animal. The guts must be removed, and quickly. The carcass must be skinned and boned and then bled as best as one is able under the circumstances. This generally involved hanging the quartered sections from the prong hooks at the back end of the carriage, and while this resulted in a spattered trail of blood upon the conveyance’s path, why, the symbolic significance was very nearly perfect. In any case, Mister Must worked with proficient alacrity, slicing through cartilage and tendon and gristle, and in no time at all the various pieces that had once been Calap Roud depended dripping from the carriage stern. His head was sent rolling in the direction of the shallow pit containing his hide, organs and intestines.
Does this shock? Look upon the crowd that is your company. Pox the mind with visions of dressed and quartered renditions, all animation drained away. The horror to come in the wake of such imaginings (well, one hopes horror comes) is a complicated mélange. A face of life, a host of words, an ocean of swirling thoughts to brighten active eyes. Grace and motion and a sense that before you is a creature of time (just as you no doubt are), with past, present and future. A single step could set you in his or her sandals, as easy as that. To then jolt one’s senses into a realm of butchered meat and red bone, a future torn away, and eyes made dull and empty, ah, is any journey as cruel and disquieting as that one?
To answer: yes, when complimented with the growling of one’s own stomach and savoury hints wetting the tongue.