Authors: John Hornor Jacobs
Kalends of Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
Next day, we came upon the slaughtered stretcher. Strange thing was, no carrion fowl circled above, no turkey buzzards tugged at the creature’s innards. The thing lay in a tamped down circle of dust. No shoal animals had disturbed it.
Fisk whistled. ‘All my days, Shoe, I’ve never seen the like.’
‘I have.’
‘Let me guess.’
The elf was laid, sprawled out, bound to stakes at the ankles and wrists with what looked to be hemp threaded with strands of wispy spun silver. Its eyes were blackened as if it had
angelis
fever, its mouth open in a wail arrested in the midst of finding voice.
On its visible skin, arms and legs, were burn-marks. I’d seen them before.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Winfried said, staring at the corpse. ‘That is a
vaettir
?’
I dismounted from Bess and approached the dead thing. With it laid out there, you didn’t get the scale of the creature until you were right upon it. From crown to toes, the stretcher was at least fifteen feet tall. A big male; powerful and deadly.
But trapped. Met its end in the ignominious dust.
I fear the things. Times I’ve cursed them. Have done my part in killing them. But never like this. Whatever its character – and I was beginning to see that not all
vaettir
were the same – no stretcher deserved death like this.
‘Been here two, three days maybe,’ Fisk said, looking around. He dismounted from the black and stared at the dead stretcher. The wind tossed the shoal grasses, making them writhe and whip in the morning light. Fisk made a circle around the creature.
‘Beleth made camp over here. Looks like he had a couple of fellas with him, judging by their boots.’
‘How does one trap a
vaettir
?’ Winfried asked.
‘One doesn’t,’ I said. ‘When stretchers are about, you hie your ass homeward or get out your Hellfire. Nothing else much to do.’
‘Clearly, there’s been some innovation along that front,’ Winfried said, grimacing.
‘Ia damn,’ Fisk said.
‘Last year,’ I said, ‘we took some patrician fools on an auroch hunt.
Vaettir
interrupted the party. Bunch of folks died but in the fracas, we managed to down one of the stretchers. She became Beleth’s pet, I guess you’d call it.’ I shivered with the memory.
‘And those markings?’
‘Beleth’s work, of course.’
‘What hellish thing could he be wanting from them?’ Winfried asked.
‘That’s the question,’ I said.
Kneeling by the creature, I peeled back the thin fabric covering its chest.
Vaettir
care very little for clothing and even less about modesty or protecting their incorruptible flesh from the elements but, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, they love to take trophies, mementos from kills. I think the creature’s shirt once might have been a homespun sodbuster’s blouse or part of a dress. Woven in its hair were bits of copper and turquoise. Wound about its wrist, a golden necklace of a style known a century or two ago.
There were more intricate burn marks upon its chest and limbs. Glyphs, Beleth had called them. For an instant I remembered Agrippina looking up at me with that unfathomable gaze. Baring sharpened teeth.
‘They look like the wards and burns that Sapientia showed us on the Grantham woman,’ I said. ‘And those that Beleth marked on Agrippina.’ I looked at Fisk.
Ignoring that, Winfried cocked her head and said, ‘Like great crows, they seem.’
I shook my head. ‘The
vaettir
are hard to understand, ma’am, and naturally, when you encounter them you want to liken them to something. You want to compare them to something in the natural world,’ I said. The woman looked at me. Her face was drawn and, very much like the
vaettir
, she had a rapacious look about her. ‘But they’re beyond nature as much as they’re beyond comprehension.’
When she said nothing, I continued. ‘They’re like crows, but they’re like the bear, or the mountain lion or even the shark, too. They’re fast as lightning in the anger-stoked skies. They’re like vicious tricksters. They’re like us, dreadful deadly creatures.’ I shook my head. ‘But they are more than this, too,’ I said, and told her of the stretcher that saved me at the ill-fated ambush.
Fisk spat as I spoke.
‘So,’ she said, slowly, ‘you mean to tell me that there are
vaettir
with other … other agendas than simply rapine and violence?’
‘Bah,’ Fisk said, turning away.
I ignored him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They are more than what we know. They are not just deadly, though they are that. Something else moves them.’
‘I did not understand the
vaettir
even before witnessing them and now I am even more confused,’ she said.’
‘Then waste no more time pondering it,’ Fisk said. He ranged about, stooped, looking at the ground, marking our quarry’s movements. ‘They’re headed for Port Caldo, Shoe. You were right.’
‘My three favourite words,’ I said.
‘Stow it, pard.’ Abruptly, Fisk stood up, alarmed. ‘The horses!’
A riffling sound came, like wind-whipping clothing, and a great shadow passed overhead, wheeling. A
vaettir
.
In a flash Fisk was at his black, tugging out his carbine and I had out my pistols.
‘Get down, Winfried!’ I said, only a moment before a stretcher arced overhead, flipping, wickedly clawed hands extended.
In response to my cry, Winfried immediately ducked and slid from Buquo’s back but not before the
vaettir’s
hands snatched her hat away. She cried out. Blood flowed freely from a deep cut on her forehead.
Another shadow whipped overhead, hissing, and both Fisk and I fired, leaving a cocoon of sulphuric Hellfire smoke around us. More shadows arced overhead – no telling how many stretchers were there – but Fisk and I had been in this position before. We remained low to the ground and shot anything that came close enough to sight.
Vaettir
, when they can’t get human or
dvergar
, are fine with killing horses, though.
Fisk’s black screamed and pitched, falling over into the dust of the shoal plains, blood pumping from its neck. Winfried, wild-eyed, snatched at Buquo’s reins, tugging his head down. Bess, without any prompting from me, grunted heavily and then knelt.
Cursing, Fisk readied his carbine. When the next shadow passed overhead, he busted loose two rounds, whipping the lever action around like lightning, tracking the
vaettir
in its course.
It was the stretcher’s turn to scream and whine. Off, beyond the circle of the grass in which Beleth’s stretcher was tied, the
vaettir
hit the earth, hard. Fisk ran forward, levering another Hellfire round into the breach of his carbine and sighting. He was on top of the stretcher and fired, once, twice. Beyond, I could see another of the devilish things racing for him.
‘Down, Fisk!’ I cried, and my partner dropped.
Guns out, I fired directly into the toothy, grinning face of the
vaettir
as it came forward, directly toward me. The sinking despair caused by Hellfire was matched by the knowledge that the stretcher, even though I’d placed some shots in it, was still oncoming.
Time slowed, then, in the molasses of panic. I could see the great muscled thing pounding toward me, gigantic and growing taller with every step forward. Its teeth sharp as razors and an unfathomable grin on its face, hands out like the talons of some fearsome raptor come to bear me away.
I kept the pistols between us, rising and firing and for an instant the expression on its face changed, to one of outrage, to one of alarm. My shots were finding their mark.
And then, like I’d been hit by the
Valdrossos
herself, the great monster barrelled into me, its thigh catching me in the ribs and sending me flying, senseless, pistols tumbling away and all the air in the world knocked clean from my chest.
I knew not much more but dimly heard the sound of more gunshots and felt the despair of Hellfire as
daemon
upon
daemon
were loosed.
Then I closed my eyes.
‘All right, pard,’ Fisk said, slapping my face lightly. ‘Where’dya keep it?’
‘Keep what?’ I said, chest aching.
‘The grog, Shoe. Cacique.’
‘Waterbag on Bess,’ I said.
Fisk disappeared but returned shortly, placing the bag to my mouth and letting me drink the burning, spicy liquor.
‘Keeping the cacique in a waterbag? Think I’m gonna steal your hooch, Shoe?’
Shaking my head hurt. ‘I’m old,’ I said. ‘And know all the wiles of man.’
Where did that come from?
I thought.
Fisk smiled. ‘Can you sit?’
‘Yes. I think so. Winfried?’
‘Right here, Mr Ilys. You took a terrible blow,’ Winfried said. Her wild-eyed look had disappeared. She seemed calmer now, cantered.
‘Bah. I’m fine.’ When I moved, something in my side was a tad crunchy and there was pain, a whole world of it in my chest. I tamped the pain away. Ignored it. With great effort, I sat up and, after some effort (and support from Fisk) rose to my feet. I took another long pull on the cacique and then surveyed the damage around me.
‘Godsbe,’ said I, looking around. ‘We’ve got two more dead stretchers here.’
‘And a dead horse,’ Fisk said. His face was unreadable. He turned to me. ‘That’s why I don’t name them, pard.’
His black lay in the dirt, neck slashed and bled out, making a muddy swath around its head.
‘She was a good mount, Fisk,’ I said, bowing my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as those who killed her,’ he said, looking at the dead
vaettir
with an awful expression. ‘Now go ahead and tell me the stretchers are more than just killers,’ he said, and spat.
‘How did they—’
‘Came in close after you dropped that big bastard and I managed to hit the other two a few times – enough to scatter them.’
‘Buquo can carry one stretcher, I imagine, along with you and Winfried.’
Winfried sounded alarmed. ‘We’re bringing them with us? The
vaettir
corpses?’
‘Oh, yes. Get them stuffed and shipped off to Rume, we could make a pretty penny,’ I said, thinking back on Livia’s letter to Fisk. ‘But that one,’ I said, indicating the stretcher that Beleth had bound and marked up with glyphs, ‘We need to show to our friend Samantha Decius. An engineer. If there’s anyone that can tell us what Beleth is doing – or trying to do – it’s her.’
Fisk nodded. ‘You can ride, pard?’
I toddled over to where Bess stood. She busked me with her head and then nipped at my coat.
‘I imagine so,’ I said, testing the damage done to my ribs. They were barking with pain, sending out burning rings around my chest. Every breath was an agony. But I’m
dvergar
and we can push it all aside. ‘I can make it to Porto Caldo.’
‘Lighten the mule’s load, and we’ll sling this other stretcher on the back and make a beeline for the Big Rill. At the shore, we can cut saplings for a travois,’ Fisk said. ‘You need help up, Shoe?’
I dumped some pots and pans, an extra bedroll, one of the large sacks of oats. Bess, her head turned toward me, watched implacably as I removed all the unnecessary and replaceable stores. With all three of us pitching in, we got the stretcher on the rump of Bess, who groaned and gave me a sullen stare. The
vaettir
’s arms and legs hung down and dragged on the ground. Using rope, we bound up the corpse’s ungainly limbs as best we could, so that Bess could move, but it was a precarious load.
We moved slowly for the rest of the day, and every step Bess took was a misery. I could feel my breath catching with each hoof-fall. She was a steady, indomitable beast, but had a jarring gait. By the time we stopped for the night I was in a cold sweat and half insensible from cacique.
Winfried and Fisk took watches that night, and for the first time in nearly a hundred years, I went to bed early and rose late. Whatever numen or old gods that guard the wanderers of the plains were with us, though, and the new day dawned dry and bright. Nevertheless, I’d developed a ragged cough that hurt like a bitch every time it erupted from my outraged throat.
‘Shoe, you’ve got some broken ribs. Might be a pierced lung. Will you be able to make the ride? We push hard today, we’ll make Porto Caldo by midday tomorrow.’
I pulled heavily from the cacique. Nodded. ‘I’ll make it,’ I said, a tad too forcefully. Even speaking had its difficulties. ‘You might have to tie me down, though.’
Fisk raised his eyebrows. ‘That bad?’
‘Bad enough.’
‘All right, then, let’s get started.’ He took some hemp and tied me to the rings of my saddle. Bess, who must’ve known something was amiss, did not bite or stomp on his boots or any other such mischievousness.
After giving me a serious look, Fisk took the lead rein, and mounted behind Winfried on the massive draught horse.
‘Hie,’ he said, nudging the big creature with his spurs. ‘Hie, Buquo.’
We rode.
We reached the gurgling waters of the Big Rill by dark and Fisk left Winfried to tend a fire on the shore as he cut four taller gambel saplings with a hatchet to make travois. The Big Rill was high and rushing and still frigid. Under Fisk’s watchful eye, I stripped naked and waded out as far as I could while keeping my feet. The cold helped kill the pain, an old outrider’s remedy.
‘You look like a wee little bear whose hair has been rubbed thin on his arse.’ He thought a moment. ‘And belly,’ Fisk said. Winfried, who had been only slightly alarmed by my undressing – my pain was great enough that I didn’t care whether she inspected me from crown to crotch – did her best to hide her smile.
Dvergar
are hairy, that’s for sure, but when I can I keep my head and beard well-groomed. The rest of me? Way I figure it, it’s just extra-insulation for those cold winter nights.
‘No need to kick a man while he’s in pain, pard,’ I said, neck deep in the icy run-off from the White. I couldn’t feel my feet. Nor my chest.