Abomination (27 page)

The bodies were still there, of the thugs that she and the man who had fought alongside her had killed in the melee. Indra had never fought in or seen a real battle, a military battle, like the ones her father had fought during the wars against the Norse, but from the stories he told she could imagine that this is what the
aftermath looked like. Bodies splayed across the ground, bloodied and cleaved, so still it hardly seemed possible that there had ever been life in them at all.

And though she could hardly bear to look, she saw that he was still there, too. She glanced over just long enough to see the body lying on the ground, the head a few feet away, the ground stained dark with drying blood. Like the other bodies, his head, drained of all life, barely looked real: a pale, waxy imitation of what it had once been. His eyes were open wide in a ghastly stare that would remain until flesh rotted from bone, though mercifully that stare was directed not at Indra but up at the darkening sky. She looked away.

She had seen dead men before. This one had been a stranger to her; they had met that same day and had shared a campfire for a short while, nothing more. But though she barely knew him, she felt almost overwhelmingly sad to see his body bled out and lifeless on the ground. She tried to tell herself it was merely the vexation of knowing that the many riddles about him would now never be solved. But deep down she knew it was more than just her unsatisfied curiosity. The deep, iron-heavy sorrow came from knowing that he had been a good man.

She hadn’t needed to know him long to be sure of that; somehow she had known it instinctively. In their short time together she had glimpsed a life that had conspired against a decent man, a life of wretched indigence and isolation. To see that life end undeservedly as well, simply because he had stood by her side against a gang of drunken bullies—where was the justice in that, or in any of it? Where was God?

It was a question she had once asked her father when studying history as a child.
God always delivers justice to those deserving, in one way or another
, he had told her. But glancing again, in spite of herself, at that headless body, in that pitiful, filthy sackcloth robe, it seemed to her now that it was just another one of her father’s lies. If God was real, all he ever did was look on with callous indifference.
The only justice she could ever rely on was that which she made for herself.

She heard voices. They came from behind her, where she could not see, but she recognized them.

“Two of my best friends she killed, their bodies still warm right over there! And you want to do nothing about it!” It was Fish Knife. He sounded less drunk than before, and far angrier.

“Use your head!” This voice belonged to the tall one, the one who had started it all back at the crossroads. Pick, someone had called him. “It’s better this way. I know a man—”

“Oh, you know a man, you know a man. You always know a man! You talk and you talk and that’s all you ever fucking do! Blood demands blood, that’s the law we live by!”

“Listen to me. Listen! She’s a young girl, not bad to look at. Unharmed, the man I know will pay well for her. Believe me, whatever the iron is worth, she’d be at least double! Or we can do it your way and kill her, and your friends
and
mine will have died for a lot less.”

There was a pause.

“Double?”

“At least.”

Footsteps approached. Fish Knife came into view, followed by Pick and Broken Nose. The only three of the original ten to have survived. Fish Knife looked down at her. He was carrying one of her swords, while Pick had the other.

“Look, she’s awake.” He kicked her in the thigh, just enough to hurt.

“Unharmed, I said!” Pick protested, shoving Fish Knife in the shoulder. “Do you want to earn out of this or not?”

Fish Knife seemed to care little. He looked down on Indra, bound and helpless. “Maybe there’s a way we can all be happy,” he said. “I want her dead. You want her unharmed. What if we deliver her to this man of yours somewhere in the middle?” He cracked his knuckles. “We don’t kill her, just give her a proper going-over.
Enough that she’ll remember it for a good long while. Won’t leave nothing permanent.”

“She’s banged up enough as it is,” Pick said. “You make it much worse, it’ll take her price down by half, at least.”

Fish Knife glared at Pick, the look in his eyes and the ice-cold tone of his voice both conveying the strong impression that he had reached the limits of his willingness to bargain. “Then half it’ll have to be.”

Pick put up his hands in a gesture of surrender and gave a sigh of frustrated resignation. “Have it your way. But mark my words, this is why we never improve our station in life.”

Pick turned and walked away, grumbling, and Fish Knife crouched down before Indra, looked her square in the eye. “You killed two of my friends, including one of my best,” he said. “Now, I’m going to sit over there, make a fire and have my supper. And then I’m going to come back here and show you how unhappy I am. You’re not going to enjoy it.” He leaned in close, close enough for Indra to see the brown and black of his rotten teeth and smell the ale on his breath. She grimaced, but did not look away. “Something for you to think about while I’m eating.”

In that moment, Indra wanted nothing more than to tell him that in the confusion of the melee, he had been mistaken: she had in fact killed three of his drunken idiot friends, not two.

She thought better of it. She stared back at him with a numb, expressionless look, unwilling to give the man the satisfaction of seeing the fear beginning to settle in her gut.

Fish Knife stood, dusted himself off, and turned to take in the clearing. Pick and Broken Nose stood nearby, sharing a skin of ale brought with them to keep their courage up.

“I’ll get a fire started,” Fish Knife said. He snatched the ale skin from Broken Nose’s hands and took a long draw from it. “We can eat and rest here tonight, go back in the morning.”

“We might need more help to carry that chain back,” said Pick. “Three of us tried before. It’s heavier than it looks. And my arm’s broken.”

“The girl will help, if she knows what’s good for her,” said Fish Knife as he began building a fire. “And if we need more, you’ll walk to town and fetch some help back here. God’s mercy, do I have to think of everything?” He glanced at the bodies strewn about. “Here, make yourselves useful—get rid of these lot.”

Pick blinked. “What?”

“I don’t want ’em around me when I’m eating. Puts me right off my food.”

“What are we supposed to do with them? We can’t bury them out here!”

“Who said anything about bury? I just don’t want to have to look at ’em. Drag ’em into the woods there.”

Pick and Broken Nose exchanged a look. Pick gestured to the makeshift sling cradling his broken arm and shrugged. With a sigh, Broken Nose trudged over to the nearest body, grabbed it by the ankle, and began dragging it toward the trees, the dead man’s arms trailing in the dirt behind him. By the time the campfire was good and blazing, all seven of their dead had been removed from the clearing and deposited in the darkness beyond the tree line. Only Wulfric’s body remained.

Broken Nose grabbed the headless corpse by a wrist and, with some effort, pulled him toward the trees. He was heavier than he looked. Pick warmed his hands by the fire and watched as Broken Nose disappeared into the darkness of the forest with the body and returned without it moments later, wiping his hands. He walked over to the fire and planted himself on his backside beside the others. Fish Knife produced a hunk of bread, halfway stale, and tore off a piece for Broken Nose, which the big man set about hungrily. Pick held out a hand for his share, but Fish Knife glanced over to where Wulfric’s head was still staring blankly up at the evening sky,
surrounded by a pool of half-dried blood. Pick grimaced, but Fish Knife just tore off a piece of bread for himself, and wolfed it down.

“You always were a lazy fucker, Pick,” he said. “You want your share, do your share. Don’t tell me you can’t manage that, even with one arm.”

Pick let out an exaggerated sigh and got to his feet. As he made his way over to where the head lay on the ground, he cursed himself for bringing Ron into this. This had been his idea, his plan—Ron and his crew of drunks were just hired help. And now here he was, taking orders. It had been this way for years, whenever they banded together. Ron always knowing better, taking charge, belittling him. Well, he vowed, no longer. Once the chain and the girl had been sold off and their pockets filled, he’d slit Ron’s throat with his own stupid fish knife and take his share for himself. Pick knew well the credo of honor among thieves; he had just never subscribed to it himself. As Ron, the bully, the usurper, would soon learn to his profound disadvantage.

He arrived at the head and hesitated. He did not have the stomach for things like this. The worst thing he had seen before today was a leg crushed from the knee down by the wheel of a wagon in an accident. He knew, of course, that the man was dead and that his eyes, while open, were just staring lifelessly up at the sky, but as he looked down, it seemed as though the head was gazing directly back at him.

Just get it over with
. He reached down and grabbed a tuft of hair and lifted it from the ground, surprised by how heavy it was. He made his way to the trees where Broken Nose had dumped the rest of the bodies. There he stopped. He peered into the dense, impenetrable black of the forest beyond and found himself unable to take another step. He did not want to venture into that darkness, where dead men waited. And so he swung back his arm and flung the head into the trees and watched it disappear into the dark. He heard the rustle of branches and the soft thud of the head landing
on the ground, then turned back and sat by the fire. Fish Knife tossed him what remained of the bread with an amused sneer.

“What did you think?” he asked with a nod toward the forest. “The dead were going to rise up and get you?”

Pick looked away, embarrassed. “It’s done, isn’t it? Leave me be.” He tore off a piece of the bread and began to eat. Fish Knife chuckled and looked across the fire at Broken Nose. “Worried about ghosts and ghouls, this one,” he said. Broken Nose said nothing, as was his custom. Fish Knife gave a snort and supped the last of the ale from the skin. He glanced over to where the girl was bound and saw that her head had lolled forward, her long brown hair covering her face. Asleep. But not for long. He would wait for his food to settle, then go over there and pay her the visit she’d been promised. He lay back on the ground and gazed up at the blanket of stars becoming visible as the sky turned to night.

Over by the tree, Indra worked. Her head was down, eyes closed—but she was far from asleep. The illusion of it might lure her captors into paying her less attention, but more than that, she could not bear to look at them, and keeping her eyes closed helped her concentrate on the task at hand. She had found just enough leeway in the bindings at her wrists to bend her hands around and begin to pick away at the knot with her fingernails. She had made little progress so far, but if she just kept trying . . .

She had to try. She would not be a prize, a trophy, to these men. She would die fighting before it came to that. But so much better that
they
should die. Once her hands were free, she could take them by surprise when they approached, grab a weapon, and then anything was possible. If she could only get this damn knot to give just a little . . .

The sky was black now, and the forest around them was still. Fish Knife was still on his back, gazing lazily up at the moon. Broken Nose, snoring quietly, appeared to have fallen asleep where he sat. Only Pick remained fully alert. His attention was fixed on the tree line, where the clearing ended and the darkness of the forest began.

Something was not right. He found himself again and again peering toward the trees where the dead men had been disposed of, sensing sounds and shadows that he only half believed were real. And yet—

Suddenly he stood bolt upright. No trick of the mind could account for that: something had moved, in the darkness beyond the trees, something large disturbing the dense carpet of bracken and undergrowth that made the forest floor. He stood there, frozen, for what seemed an eternity, watching, listening for any other sign of movement in the trees.

Fish Knife turned his head and belched. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Did you hear that?” Pick replied without looking away from the trees.

Fish Knife listened for a moment. “Don’t hear anything.”

It was then that Pick realized the source of the strange, unsettling sensation that had been plaguing him. As he listened now to everything around him, he heard precisely nothing. He had spent
the night in the woods enough times to know that there was always something to hear. A forest was alive with countless creatures, many that came out only at night, which created an ever-present tapestry of sound even in the small hours. It was those sounds, the sense of being surrounded by a thousand living things great and small, that offered comfort on nights like these, deep in the woods. No matter how dark the forest might be, you were never in it alone.

Now there was nothing. Not the cooing of nighttime birds nor the scampering of woodland critters nor even the chirp of insects. There was only silence—a perfect, unbroken stillness that enshrouded everything. They were alone. Pick could not imagine how a place usually so teeming with life could suddenly be so entirely devoid of it, only that it would take something truly abnormal, truly terrifying, to cause every living thing to flee.

Now it was Fish Knife’s turn to rise to his feet. Broken Nose, roused from his slumber, turned groggily toward the trees at which the two other men were looking warily.

“All right, I heard it that time,” said Fish Knife. “I think I saw something as well.”

Pick nodded. They had both seen it. A black, formless shape, at least as big as a man, had shifted in the darkness ahead. In the trees, where the moonlight did not penetrate, it was already black as pitch, and Pick found himself wondering how it was that anything could appear even darker.