Chapter 6 #4
“Think about it,” I said. “Out on the moor, they could see us but we could see them. In the woods, they can track us easy as pie from our footprints in the leafmould, but we can’t see them till they’re right on top of us. Also, we’re on foot, which slows us down and makes us easier to catch. Also—”
“If you don’t stop whining, I’ll smash your face in.”
It was almost like having Svangerd back. “Point taken,” I said.
We stopped for the night under a huge beech, whose canopy kept the brambles and holly at bay.
“Bear in mind,” I said, “that this is where the archduke comes to hunt wild boar. Wild boar are shy, reclusive creatures who like to hide up in nests in deep cover. If they hear you coming they’ll run away and hide, but if you come on them unexpectedly in their nests, they’ll charge you and rip you open like podding beans.
Now if I was a wild boar, this is exactly the sort of place where I’d—”
She sighed. “Please shut up,” she said. “I can’t think when you’re rattling on at me.”
“Just bringing a few salient facts to your attention,” I said. “What are you thinking about?”
It was too dark to see her face. “Nothing,” she said. “Ethical issues, questions of right and wrong. What I’m going to do if things don’t go as planned.”
“The greater of two evils, presumably. It’s not up to you, though, surely. Won’t your superiors give you orders?”
“I can’t always be sure of hearing them,” she replied. “It’s difficult sometimes. Things get in the way.”
“Such as?”
She didn’t answer. I considered needling her some more, but decided not to. It wouldn’t help matters, and I might enjoy it. Instead, I went back to trying to figure out how the goons had tracked us across the moor without us seeing them. If I was a goon –
“I keep telling you,” she said. “That woman Grimhild can smell me.”
“I don’t remember seeing her among the dead bodies.”
“Maybe the Order can as well, I don’t know. For all I know, they’re hiding in the brambles right now, waiting till I fall asleep.”
“You don’t seem too worried.”
“I’m not. I can handle them.”
“You want them to find us. So you can slaughter them.”
She yawned. “To be honest with you, right now, no. When I first got out of that book, maybe. Now, though, I just want to get the job done and move on to something else.”
I’d been conducting a series of experiments over the past few days, and I’d reached the conclusion that if I was between twenty-five and thirty yards away, she couldn’t read my mind. “I think I’ll go and have a shit,” I said.
“Fine. Watch out for wild boar.”
I gave it forty yards, just to be on the safe side.
Then I snuggled down in the brambles and tried to clear my head.
There was an alternative I hadn’t considered yet.
Some years earlier, I’d been told to make a copy of Onomacritus’ Miracles.
It wasn’t an assignment I enjoyed. It’s a lousy book, badly written and stuffed full of superstitious nonsense about angels and devils.
I know for a fact that much of it was copied out of other books, not always accurately; I’ve read several of the sources Onomacritus drew on, and the man was often careless to the point of gross negligence.
Occasionally, though, he gets it right; and one of the incidents he describes is St Agabalus driving a demon out of some king’s daughter.
The description is detailed and coherent, and I could remember it clearly enough to follow the steps myself.
Question: was this one of the bits Onomacritus copied accurately from a reliable source, or just some garbage he made up out of his head? No way of knowing.
Assume it’s accurate. In which case, I’d need some aconite (already got that; noticed it growing on the edge of the wood, grabbed a handful), some warm blood (got that by the armful), fire, a sharp knife and the Special Benediction, which they made me learn by heart when I was twelve.
The third step in the procedure would mean cutting off one of Svangerd’s fingers.
Really? Onomacritus says yes, it’s essential, only a finger will do, because you need a hole to drive the evil spirit out through.
He says that sort of thing all the time, and it’s one of the unbearably cruel ironies of history that his stupid book has survived when so many treasures of the human spirit have perished.
On the other hand, this could be one of the accurate bits. We just don’t know.
I realised that it could be done. True, she could read my thoughts, if I was within twenty-five yards or closer.
So I’d need to be thinking about something else when I sneaked up behind her and bashed her on the back of the head.
That would neutralise her long enough to get a rope on her hands and feet, which would keep her still while I performed the liturgy.
One false step, of course, and I’d be dead or in the undesirable stuff up to my ears, but I’m used to that.
And then, maybe Onomacritus’ idiotic procedure might actually work, in which case Svangerd would be free.
Or it wouldn’t work, which would be exquisitely embarrassing, and maybe she’d snap my neck like a carrot as soon as she’d wrenched the rope off her wrists, or maybe she’d just give me a very nasty look and we’d carry on as before.
She believed that I was needed, essential to some part of the Divine Opposition’s idiotic plan, in which case she’d be reluctant to slaughter me out of hand just because I’d tried to get rid of her.
Actually, I realised, I didn’t care too much about that.
If I died, I died; everybody does, sooner or later.
It boiled down to, what did I have to lose if I tried? Nothing of value.
Except: Svangerd might get hurt. In Onomacritus’ story, the demon came out, I quote, “like a tooth from a jaw”.
Interesting way of putting it. I’ve never had a tooth pulled, but I’ve seen it done five or six times.
One time (back home, the blacksmith did the pulling) the tooth came out clean with a little twitch of the wrist. Another time, when brother infirmarer was handling the tongs, the tooth crumbled into three pieces, which had to be dug out of the jaw with a chisel.
I don’t know anything about it really (Flavonius’ Mirror of Dentistry was lost three hundred years ago, when the Sherden sacked Busta Sagittarum), but I imagine a tooth that didn’t want to be pulled could make a lot of trouble for everybody concerned.
So the only option, other than letting the plan play itself out, was the one I’d considered and rejected some time earlier. It was something I really didn’t want to do, even assuming it’d work and she’d fall for it. Big assumption. But if there was absolutely nothing else –
I heard a scream. A man’s voice. Bother, I thought, or words to that effect, and scrambled to my feet.
Plunging about in the pitch dark isn’t my idea of a good time, but I’m reasonably good at it.
Back home when I was a kid we made candles and rushlights once a year, from the pigs’ fat, and not too many of them.
The days are short in the Mesoge in winter, and someone’s got to see to the animals, get in the peat for the fire, fetch the water from the pond, all that.
I can see better than you can in the dark, and I know how to feel my way when I can’t.
The other thing you learn about darkness growing up in the Mesoge is how to move quietly, because, up there, the night is full of things that want to eat you.
The trick is to go slow and steady; on that hang all the law and the prophets.
Take your time, think about where you’re putting your feet, if possible memorise the geography during daylight, so logs and rocks and streams don’t take you completely by surprise – all common sense, really.
And it’s remarkable how common sense, cultivated to the highest pitch of perfection, soon becomes indistinguishable from magic.
I headed back toward the beech tree, but circling round to the right, where there was a big tangle of briars round a fallen willow.
If I had my back to that, nobody was going to sneak up behind me without me knowing about it.
It was also precisely the sort of place where the archduke’s huntsman would expect to find a wild boar nest, but I couldn’t be bothered to worry about that.
From the edge of the brambles to the trunk of the beech was open ground, because the tree’s canopy starved everything else of light.
The scream had come from right by the tree, where I’d left Svangerd.
I angled myself so that when I approached I’d have the trunk of the tree, a good three feet wide, between me and where Svangerd had been lying.
Leafmould underfoot, of course, which is ideal for not making a racket, and you don’t tend to get small, noisy twigs close to the trunk of a tree with a big canopy.
Slow down, I ordered myself, because my dad wasn’t there to do it.
Think about what you’re doing, and listen.
Silence, which told me a great deal. Svangerd snores, even with a wide-awake demon inside her.
If there was a fight going on, there’d be plenty to hear.
Silence meant that Svangerd was awake, or dead.
If she was dead, you’d expect to hear her killers moving about and/or talking to each other.
If she’d been attacked and had slaughtered her attackers, she’d be yelling for me.
Silence could only mean that Svangerd was alive and loose, and being hunted.