Chapter 8 – The Growth of Trees #4
Why did they make those noises? Ophele sought patterns as naturally as she breathed, but she did not have enough information to make sense of these nighttime horrors.
Why did stranglers make that sound? It was a high and cackling eh heh heh heh that echoed through the night air for miles.
Were they communicating with each other?
Could the devils talk amongst themselves?
It seemed to her that it would be more sensible to go after forest animals than to face armed and armored men, but the hunters reported no shortage of game.
The devils wanted the flesh of men. And occasionally livestock, out of pure spite.
She could find no patterns in their behavior.
The deafening howls of the wolf demons came nearer and nearer, and only two days ago she had heard a pack of ghouls down the lane, like a particularly hoarse and raspy dogfight.
She had never seen these creatures, and no one would describe them to her, and it let her vivid, well-stocked imagination run wild.
Ophele tried to be brave. She tried to be logical.
She lit lamps and blew them out, unsure whether lights might not attract the devils.
As the night wore on, she moved from her bed to the table and back again, trying to reason out where the safest place in the cottage was.
From her bed, she could see all the doors and windows at once, so if a strangler crept inside, at least she would have time to scream.
But she had also seen the damage a wolf demon could do.
A creature that could rip the front box off a wagon would think nothing of a bit of wattle and daub.
It could tear off the whole corner of the cottage if it wanted to, and take her with it.
And she hadn’t any idea how strong stranglers were, either.
It was entirely possible that one night, as she tried to squeeze herself back into the corner of room, two hands might smash through the walls and wrap around her throat.
Could they hear her breathing? Could they smell fear, the way people said dogs could?
Hiding behind her book, she tried to be deaf.
“Strangler!”
The call was distant, but not that distant. She heard running feet heading up the road to the north, somewhere further along the line of cottages, and suddenly she hardly dared to breathe. Her ears strained.
“Don’t see it,” said another voice. It was hard to tell how far away. The walls of the cottage muffled sound a little, but not much.
“Well, he’s dead, you nit, it’s somewhere close by,” said a third voice. “Weren’t you watching? Search the crofts.”
Ophele clutched her knees to her chest, curling up as small as she possibly could, as if she could eventually collapse on herself and disappear altogether.
She wished she would. Oh, stars, someone was dead.
A strangler had killed someone right outside.
This second it could be outside the cottage, killing Yvain or Dol.
“Dol?” Terror turned one syllable into three. “Are you all right?”
“You’re not asleep?” Dol sounded displeased. “We’re both here, you’re safe, my lady.”
“They said someone is dead.”
“Dunno who yet, lady. Oh, but it’s not His Grace,” Dol added quickly. “He’s on the east watch tonight, at the gap between the walls.”
But he could die there. He could already be dead.
And Sir Miche might die, or Sir Justenin, or Sir Tounot, any of them could die, all those men she saw at the wall or sat with at supper.
They tried not to let her see the devils they killed, and every time someone died on the wall, they moved heaven and earth to make sure she didn’t lay eyes on the corpse, but she wasn’t stupid.
The devils were there. Men could die. A man had died. She could die.
They kept saying she was safe. The duke said it every night, that no devil would ever get so far as the cottage, but how could they know that?
It was only May and all anyone could talk about was how there were more devils than they had ever seen before.
In her mind’s eye she could picture dozens of shadowy goblin-shapes crawling over the palisades, wolf demons smashing through the barricades that lined the main road, and frothing packs of ghouls charging behind them, snarling and slavering.
One night, they might come in like the tide.
No one could say it wouldn’t happen. No one could know.
“…lady? Your Grace?” Dol repeated, and Ophele started, turning in the direction of his voice. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes?”
“Don’t be scared. You’re safe.”
“How do you know?” She wanted him to know. She wanted desperately for him to make her believe it.
“If we ever thought there was danger, our orders are to take you to the storehouse, my lady,” said Yvain, who was standing at the opposite side of the cottage, outside the door. “Stone walls. No windows. If we thought it was necessary, even for an instant, that’s where you would be right now.”
“All right,” she whispered. She shouldn’t be talking to them anyway.
They needed to watch and listen. There was a strangler outside, and while she was distracting them, maybe it would creep up and kill one of them.
Would she even know? Did people make noise when they strangled to death?
Ophele strained her ears, her heart lodged in her throat.
At that moment something howled so loud, it seemed it would shake the roof off the cottage, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep back a scream, tears of terror streaking down her cheeks.
She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home.
She didn’t want to be here anymore, even Aldeburke was better than this.
Would she even be able to run if she had to?
Oh, she could imagine fleeing to the storehouse, with the snarling shadow of a wolf demon barreling after her to rip her apart.
Sir Bram said they could rip off a man’s leg with one bite.
“Try to go to sleep, my lady,” said Dol, once the howl had faded into ringing silence. “I swear under the light of the stars, no harm will come to you.”
Ophele wished she could go to sleep and never wake up again.
Burying her head under her covers, she called herself a coward and a mouse and still couldn’t argue herself out of her fear.
Knuckles pressed to her mouth, she silently sobbed, and some hours later, her tears accomplished what logic, reassurance, and sacred oaths had failed to do.
A little bit before dawn, Ophele sobbed herself to sleep.
It felt like minutes passed before a hand gripped her and sat her up.
Black eyebrows. Black eyes. A firm mouth, set in a disapproving line.
“Wake up,” rumbled the duke’s voice, and Ophele rubbed her face with trembling hands. The Bhumi night hags were very much clinging to her shoulders, even after he shook her. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered, at the dawning of another day.
* * *
“Twenty-foot sections and six-foot gaps,” said Remin, who was confronting a much less impressive wall on the north side of town.
The palisade had already advanced eastward beyond the wheat fields to the edge of the old forest, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the din of shouting and sawing and falling trees. “We’ll fill in the gaps later.”
“It’ll be a fortnight before there’s enough wall to be worth defending,” rumbled Jinmin, stumping along beside him. Having taken command of the night watch, the big man was deeply concerned about the progress of the palisade. “It’s still a long way to the east wall, m’lord.”
“It’ll be a fortnight before we’re trying to stop them here,” Remin replied, pausing by one six-foot stretch of wall, the raw timbers lashed together with wet rope. It would dry and shrink tight quickly in this heat. “Save the pines for pitch. We’re going to need a lot of torches.”
Ahead of them were hundreds of men busy at every stage of construction for these defenses, from clearing the land to deny the devils cover to dragging the trees in for processing.
Sawyers, busily hewing them into planks.
Rope-makers, pressed into service to soak long strips of bark and grasses in water and then weave them together.
Pitch-makers, hauling away the pine branches as fast as they were trimmed, to be burned for their resin.
Tounot was overseeing the construction of the palisade itself, the finished timbers thudding into the earth, braced with heavy stones to keep the devils from simply digging under it.
And other trees were reserved for barriers like the one lying at Remin’s feet: six feet wide, eight to ten feet tall, lashed together with two cross-braces on the back to make them strong.
“Break walls,” said Jinmin, eying them with foreboding.
“They’ll fill in the gaps in the palisade, when we’re ready,” said Remin, and confirmed Jinmin’s worst suspicions by bending to lift the nearest barrier, jerking his chin at the other man. “Get the other side.”
Normally such work was reserved for draft horses, but Remin and Jinmin made a reasonable substitute.
It was a long walk to the cluster of cottages by the north gate, wattle-and-daub structures already obscured behind three lines of break walls.
Every section was braced with two sturdy logs behind it and banked with earth at the base, designed to withstand even the deadly charge of a wolf demon, so that a single man with a sword could pin them between sections of wall.
Behind the last line of walls were stands for archers, with baskets sitting ready for their arrows and sturdy braziers to give them light for shooting.
The land had been cleared for twenty yards from the last line of break walls.