Chapter 23
the bare mountain
the ice house
death’s hold
old Blood-belly
ever-hunger
witherfell
heartbarrow
—Travellers’ names for the Republic of Thell (trans.)
The three of them sit around the table.
The fire is going, as it always is at this time of year, cooking the cold out of the stones, swallowing logs away into itself.
Soot scorches the breast of the chimney, where a fire was laid yesterday, and the day before, and almost all the days before that.
The chill creeps in under every door this close to the mountains.
A small crowd tonight, but a good one. All the usual faces, Tapshuck at the bar, pulling draughts of something bitter and fine.
The dog is at his feet, farting up a storm and cadging what it can.
Dampstrand’s got her feet up on the table already, boots caked with river mud.
She’s still red at the wrists from gutting the catch, but already winkling and salting all the little molluscs that have sat at the bottom of the net.
They go nice with a sharp pint, those. A lick of butter and a sniff of pepper, and you’re set.
So she’s sprinkling all over the plates, and there’s Thinshanks next to her, leaner than he used to be, ruddy at the nose where the hill winds have picked the skin off the bone.
He’s trying hard to catch his crumbs, and harder to catch her eye.
It’s been that way since Damp was widowed, and Thinshanks is nothing if not an optimist. You have to be, to tend sheep this close to the mountains.
He laughs as he talks, widemouthed and flat toothed. And if there’s a knife by his side, they all know why it’s there.
And the last of them, of course. All the best crews come in threes, and Rustneck’s been the top of this triangle for a long time now, for she’s the only one with the nerve to go delving the barrows.
That’s how she got the name, of course, from years of stooping below those low lintels and grubbing in the dirt for all the tarnished treasures of the barrow folk, and the mountain.
It’s slicked her shoulders with a thick brown line, like a half-caulked boat.
She’s peacocking it tonight, letting her shirt slip down as she fleeces Damp at another round of dice, reminding everybody who the real thrill-seeker in this town is.
Town, such as it is; a village, if that, contracting in on itself, after the wars and the south. Flinching inwards like a snail in the shell, abandoning the high roads, because Thell is marching them, the horizon lined with brass. It’s better to stay home.
So, the town’s become a village, and the village has become a huddle of little cottages, with the tavern at the heart of it, and busy every night, because no one wants to be alone, not this close to the mountains.
Thinshanks has heard rumours from the other herders, the ones that don’t stick to a little clump of shonky houses, that take their flocks roving over the thin clay soil of the Barrowlands.
The herders that sometimes let those flocks graze on the thick, green grass nearer Thell, lush as it is in those places where battles were fought, and where the dead push up the roots and shoots.
Thinshanks has been hearing rumours, and this is what he says through half a loaf of bread, the spatter of crumbs toasting in the fire as it stretches over the hearth.
‘There’s a drover told me they scooped the hill out like an egg. Sucked all the blood and spirits out of it. Sent in their witches to drain the whole thing, ’til it couldn’t support its own weight.’
Rustneck’s unconvinced, having seen her share of crumbling holes, but she’s enjoying the performance. She leans forwards and fills his cup. ‘Scooped it out?’
Shanks nods emphatically. ‘Like an egg, they said, all hollow, and the stone itself flaking away, crick crack.’ He sups meaningfully. ‘That was good masonry too. I laid some of the blocks myself. Frogbreath’s father did the slab stone but I did the littler bits, hammer and chisel, fiddly fiddly.’
Damp snorts. ‘Sounds like the usual clip-clop bollocks. Pass the nuts would you? My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’
Rust slides them over, palms a few for herself. Split and sat in the embers of the fire, they’ll make good eating when the night has wound on.
‘Something’s up though. Half the barrows I used to dip are sealed now. And professional like. Pulled the capstones down and piled on new earth.’ She shoots a look at Shanks.
‘Plus, they’re up on the hills. Which is what’s driven you down here so often, to nest in our armpits.’
Shanks laughs and calls to Tap for another round. Both barkeep and dog answer, the latter padding over to push its thick wiry skull against all these familiar hands. Damp pats its flank and pulls her hand away sticky. She sniffs it, licks it and looks at Tapshuck. ‘Dog’s bleeding Tap.’
Tap bends down to the beast, gentles its shoulders. The cuts aren’t obvious, beneath all that shag, but they’re there, a day or two old, maybe, scabbing and rusting down to black.
‘Where did you get these, lad?’ The dog doesn’t answer, more interested in the scraps of jerky that Shanks is waggling like sprats on a line.
Damp tuts, wipes off her hands and searches a little more carefully. There’s not just blood on the fur, but the stink of incense and other sour herbs.
‘Your dog’s been running where he shouldn’t, Tap. Put a stave behind the bar and leash him, I’ve told you often it.’
Tapshuck grumbles. ‘He likes his wandering.’
Damp looks up, furrows her thick brows. ‘That’s as may be, but it was me coaxed him from a pup and gave him to your lumpy arse. So you do as you’re told. This old fella’s been digging in graves marked by the Republic, sure as shit sticks.’
Rust spits into the fire, stretches, yawns. ‘Thell. The ways we talk about them, you’d think they were all wights.’ She massages her wrists, shoots a sympathetic look at the dog. ‘I’ve been in their barrows. They silt down to dust just like the rest of us.’
Damp grins. ‘Don’t talk like that, my lovely, you with that big ol’ vein pulsing in your throat there, they’ll come right down that chimney and drink you up.’
She elbows Shanks, cackling, but gets little back.
It’s plain Thinshanks is less convinced.
His face is flicked with shadow as he gazes into the fire.
‘They say the port folk in Mither nail gannet skulls to the chimney breast, just in case. Stops souls slipping down. Maybe we should put up some wards. I’d fence the sheepfold, if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference. ’
Damp snorts, takes a fresh drink, and looks him dead in the eye. ‘The only thing I want nailed to my breast is a strapping young man with an empty head, Shanks.’ She pats him on the shoulder, and he flinches.
‘We can’t go jumping at every shadow that rolls down from those blasted mountains.’
The door opens with a slam, and all three of them jump. A squall of rain chases in from outside, with a flash of moonlight, like the edge of a knife.
The man in the doorway has an axe, but he also has a pack, and a look about him that says he’s not in the mood for any more weather. His face bears a scrub of beard, and cheekbones that make Damp think she’s got her wish for a second.
He’s joined by another young lad who slips an arm around his waist, and she rinses the hope out of her head like swill-water.
The younger lad wipes plastered hair from his face, and says in a sweet burr of a voice, ‘Got room for two?’
Tapshuck looks at them both. The dog growls, and shows its last few teeth. The trio look too, mostly because they haven’t seen travellers since the apple moon turned.
Eventually, Damp comes to her senses, and pulls Shanks up the bench. ‘Make room.’
Rust stands, and gestures something that might be grand, might be courtly, if her shirt wasn’t still smudged with grave dust and toasted nuts. ‘Join us lads, it’s a bitter night.’
‘You drinking?’ Tap says, more of a statement than a question really. The bearded man nods, and slips him a couple of coins that brighten his lump of a face considerably.
Damp knows that coin, for the husband she buried was a Hesper boy, and something in her softens at the memory.
‘Settle lads. It’s bitter right enough. A cat-creep night, and the dead are out looking for flame. Not a good one to be abroad.’
They settle, as much as young men settle. Taking a cup of ale, and even trying some of her little winkled delights. Introducing themselves like polite lads: Quickfish and Roofkeeper.
The evening slinks by in small talk. A few new faces is nice enough, after all. Even if Tapshuck spends most of his time with the dog, and polishing the brass that’s already glimmered.
Rust lets the fire sink, and coaxes the lamps in the windows to spill a little buttered flame against the dark.
The talk gets looser, as sleep and drink settle on the group like an old coat.
And if the roof creaks a little, well, the building is old.
And if the sheep scatter on the hill, well, they are wont to do that, wild little things.
The tavern closes itself for the night. Tap bars and bolts the door, and bids the trio goodnight. Takes the dog up to bed for some heat, and plants a little two-fingered kiss on the stair charm as he passes. Just another little brass thing in a pub full of brass things, but it gives him comfort.
The creak of him settling stretches the rafters for a while, and Damp makes a foul joke.
Shanks is next to go. There’s still not enough fat on him to hold the drink, and he slides first to her shoulder, and then her lap.
She adjusts her kirtle to pillow his head, and strokes his hair.
Because he’s not so bad, when you get down to it.
And not when the night is so dark, so cold, so close to the mountain.
Weariness weights her eyes like merchants’ lead, the fire blurs and the faces around it swim. Shadows of flame dance on the chimney breast, bouncing off brass and tack. And if something moves there, then it’s just light and heat; ash becoming flame and flames falling to ash.
The new folks are tiring too, falling into each other like lobsters into the creel. And isn’t that how it should be? Shanks’s head is warm across her thighs, and all her friends are here. Dampstrand sleeps.
So there’s just Rustneck, and she’s stretched out by the fire, because the ale’s stronger than she remembers, and the cold fiercer, creeping in every crack of this little place that feels like home.
She sleeps too, but fitful, a doze pulled back and forth by the aches in her shoulders where she’s dug and turned the dark soil.
She wakes in the small hours when the fire has fallen to black, and all her friends are dreaming.
The rain pushes the thin panes of glass like breath, and the eaves tick with the feet of rats.
And she thinks she sees something. The two young men are asleep in one of the corner chairs, twined like mice in the skirting.
And the younger one is twitching, dancing.
His fingers moving in a world she does not see, his lips muttering something she cannot hear.
Rust ignores it. She has made a living ignoring things that scare her. She ignores it until the light blossoms. A spatter of rain and wind pushes against the thatch, and in the same moment, a welter of gold light washes over that young man. His palm. His lips. His eyes.
He speaks again, and she steps closer, tries to make it clear, just a single word.
The gold light washes her bones, brighter than fire.
And she can feel something on the edge of it, like digging out something buried deep.
She can almost feel the glint and turn of it. She can almost hear her own name.
She steps closer. That small parlour is washed with gold as she puts her ear to Quickfish’s lips, and makes out just one word.
‘Thell.’
The gold flares, and Rustneck dreams.
When she wakes, it’s morning, the hearth cold. Damp and Shanks are already up, rubbing some life back into aching muscles, and pouring grease into a skillet to greet some eggs.
The young men are nowhere to be seen.
The light nowhere to be seen.
Rust thinks about saying something, about sharing what she felt, for that one moment. The touch of that light, the whisper of Thell.
But she’s made a living keeping her mouth shut. Her friends don’t deserve the worry.
So she sits at the table, and runs that Hesper coin through her fingers, wondering just what else those young lads will be buying. And just how much it will cost.