“How much?”
“A sliver.”
“Then I make nothing.”
Spilgit shrugged. “I doubt anyone’d ever claim renting shovels was a profit-making enterprise.”
“Hallig does.”
“Listen, that damned shovel is leaning outside your front door. I could have come up here and just taken it and you’d never have known the difference.”
Gravedigger nodded. “That’s a fact.”
“But I thought to do this legitimately, as one neighbour to another.”
“More fool you.”
“I see that,” Spilgit snapped.
“Now what, then, Mister Tax Collector?”
“I’m taxing you that shovel.”
Gravedigger shrugged. “Go ahead, now it’s Hallig’s problem. Only the next time you need to bury somebody, don’t bother coming to me. I’m now unemployed.”
“I’ll loan you a shovel from the vault.”
“Right, and I suppose you want me to be grateful or something. Is it any wonder tax collectors are despised?”
Spilgit watched the man take another drink, and then he left the shack, collected up the shovel, and then, noticing another shovel beside it, he collected that one too, and headed off.
Red huddled in the wet cave with nothing but bones for company. Just below, down a slant of bedrock, the seas surged with foam and uprooted trees from some tumbled cliff-side; and with each thunderous wave Red’s refuge grew more precarious as water rolled up and over the rock.
Amidst the racket, the bones jumbled around the cat seemed to whisper, in flinty voices, and he could almost make out the words as he crouched, trembling with fury. The low susurrations filled his skull. He glared at the bones, and saw in the gloom skulls among them. The skulls of lizard cats. They rustled and shifted before his eyes, and the whispering grew more urgent.
Red could smell a whiff of power, old power, and a need gripped his soul like a clawed hand about a throat.
Ssss … sssembling!
Semble! Semble you fool!
Yowling, the cat shook with tremors, and the bones crowded close, and things suddenly blurred.
The sorcery made the sweat on the cave walls steam and spit. Stone fissured and fell, shattering. In the miasma surrounding Red, old bones pushed into the cat’s body. There was terrible pain, and then triumph.
“I am Hurl! Witch Hurl!”
She tottered to her feet, impossibly weak, and looked down at her naked form. Leathery skin stretched over bones, tendons like twine. Not enough flesh, not enough living tissue to make her whole, to make her as she once was. But, it was enough.
Hurl cackled. “I have my mind back! My beautiful, perfect mind! And … and … I remember everything!” A moment later she slumped. “I remember everything.”
She needed food. Fresh meat, hot, bloody meat. She needed to feed, and she needed it now.
Feeling frail, she ventured out from the cave, skirting the foaming tumult. It was almost dark, the storm coming in like a bruise on a god’s forehead. There were corpses wedged among the rocks. Then she saw one lift an arm. Cackling, Hurl scrambled towards the hapless figure.
But when she crouched over him, she found herself looking down upon a dead man. Who then smiled. “I was never much of a sailor,” he said. “Tiny said: take the tiller. I tried to warm him, but the Chanters listen to nobody. I’m stuck. Will you help me?”
“You’re dead!” she spat.
“I know, and that’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re all cursed with our lot. I was probably alive once, but it’s not like I can go back. No-one can. Still, if you help me get out of this crevasse, then I could walk home. It’s somewhere across the ocean, but I’ll find it, I’m sure. Eventually.”
“But I need warm flesh! Hot blood!”
“Don’t we all, darling?”
She shook her head. “You’ll have to do, for now. It isn’t much, but it’s something.”
“A philosophy we share, my sweet. Now, about this help-oh, what are you doing? You’re eating my thigh. That’s not very nice, and you an old woman at that. Well, I suppose if you eat enough of me, I’ll be able to squeeze free. So that’s something. When you’re dead, it pays to remain optimistic, or so I have found. Not too much on that one now, all right? Here, see, you can reach the other one, too. It’s much fresher, I’m sure. Horrible weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
Tiny Chanter turned to survey his surviving siblings as they gathered on the beach, the icy water thrashing up round their ankles as the storm worsened. “It’s simple now,” he said. “We kill everybody.”
The one sister among them, Relish, snorted. “That’s your plan, Tiny?”
“That’s always my plan.”
“Exactly, and see where it’s gotten us.”
Frowning, Midge said, “It’s got us on shore, Relish.”
“Like Midge says,” growled Tiny, “it’s got us here, and that makes it a good plan, just like it’s always been a good plan, since it got us wherever we ended up, and we ain’t ended up anywhere but where the plan meant us to end up, and if you think I’m going to keep on tolerating your bad moods and foul mouth, Relish, well, that ain’t in the plan.” He turned to the others. “Draw your weapons, brothers. There’s killing to do, and that killing ends with those two sorcerors who stole our treasury.”
“They didn’t steal our treasury,” said Scant. “It was a squad of city guards and that treacherous captain, Sater.”
Tiny scowled. “But she’s dead, and we had nothing to do with that, meaning we’re still hunting for justice, and punishment, and those sorcerors objected to us killing them and that’s not allowed. We got to answer for things like that.”
Puny Chanter laughed. “Sater got between a dhenrabi and his mate! That was funny!”
Sneering, Relish said, “It’s only funny to you, Puny, because you’re sick in the head.”
“That’s funny, too! Hah hah!”
“Be quiet all of you,” commanded Tiny. “Draw your damned weapons and let’s get on with it. Stint, Fren, Gil, you kill that man up at the shack. But don’t mess up that fur cap of his. I want it. The rest of us, we go to the village. We get us a warm meal if we can find it, and maybe a few tankards, and then we kill everyone. Then we go up to that keep and kill everything there, too.”
“It’s your genius what leaves me speechless,” said Relish.
“I wish,” Tiny replied. Then he pointed at two of his brothers who were both gripping the same, huge sword. “Flea, Lesser, what in Hood’s name are you doing?”
“It’s our three-handed sword, Tiny,” said Flea.
Tiny walked up to Flea and whacked him on the side of the head. “Let go of that! There, take that axe, the five-bladed one. Let’s go everyone, we’re in for a bloody night.”
They set off up the beach, falling into single file on the trail, with Stint, Fren and Gil taking up the rear.
Leaning on his walking stick, Whuffine Gaggs stood beside his shack and watched the ten strangers approach. They were a big lot, he saw, each one with weapons bared and marching in a way that seemed ominous. Probably Tarthenal blood in the line, somewhere a few generations back. The sight of them made him feel nostalgic. The one woman among them was more reasonably proportioned. In fact, he saw as they drew closer, she had more curves than a clay ball, and knew how to use them as she bounced and rolled her way up the trail.
The one in the lead offered up a bright smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and simply trudged past Whuffine, as did all the others barring the last three. They halted and readied their weapons.
Whuffine sighed. “It’s like that, is it?”
The one in the centre of the line shrugged. “Tiny says we kill everybody.”
“You got me all over nostalgic here,” Whuffine said.
The man grinned and turned to the man on his right. “Hear that, Stint? The old comber remembers better days.”
“A good way to go on your last day,” Stint replied.
Whuffine glanced back to see that the others had all vanished somewhere up the trail. He looked back at the three brothers. “Tell you what,” he said, “you go on, tell your brother you did me in like you were told to, and leave it at that.”