Mordraud, Book One (10 page)

The child came out of it battered and torn. He was bed-ridden for days, hovering between life
and death, locked in his room and watched over day and night by his brother. They’d heard Varno go on yelling, smashing things and railing at them, flailing at the door ferociously. Mordraud had never been so frightened in all his life. And in his terror-oppressed mind, his blame acquired flesh, blood and a name.

Dunwich.

The brother who’d never saved them, who’d deserted them to lead a privileged life in the city that had slain his father. Cambria. That accursed Cambria. Because Varno had never actually come home from that battle. The armless man was a stranger.

Merely
The Stranger.

His fear became envy. His envy became hatred.

A hatred so intense that it drove Mordraud beyond the hazy verge of despair.

***

“
WHERE ARE YOU, YOU FOUL LITTLE CREATURE? YOU DISGUSTING FREAK?”

Mordraud had been
smarter than usual. When his father returned from a whole day spent in the village, there would be clues and details that only he could pick up on. The trees’ foliage seemed to fall silent, the birds’ song changed and the few animals they still had in the courtyard would always scrape around in the dirt the same way. That way. That most feared sign.

Mordraud very quickly peered in through the bedroom window and saw Gwern
was asleep on his bed. He still hadn’t recovered. He’d wake up from time to time asking for something to drink, then would slip straight back into his sickly oblivion. Mordraud unfailingly took the precaution of securing the bedroom door with a padlock he’d stolen down in the village, from inside a woodcutter’s shed.

His mother was the second stop in his ritual. Eglade was unconscious in bed, ever thinner and neglected. Her room was locked too, but he didn
’t have the key to that one. A setback he’d managed to solve swiftly. The window was quite easy to open with a bent knitting needle, which he ran beneath a lose plank he’d unnailed with a hammer.

He had little time. The
first cries could be heard at the end of the path.

The footsteps on the gravel grew clearer, the typical
laboured rhythm of a man blind drunk. Mordraud darted into the woodshed, creeping behind a stack of old worm-eaten logs he had carefully arranged to create an inaccessible haven.

“
You’re not worth the half of me without that arm of yours,” he hissed between his teeth, repeating the words as a sort of chant. “You can’t reach me without that arm of yours.”

He pictured the
stump. He found it nauseating. The Stranger would amuse himself by showing it to him, rubbing it on his cheeks until it drove him to throw up. Mordraud blocked the thought. He suffocated it while uttering his new special refrain.

“
You’re not worth half of me...”

“
LOCKED THE DOOR AGAIN, EH? WHERE ARE YOU, YOU REPULSIVE LITTLE LOUSE?!”

Mordraud
felt the mayhem mount around him. The wood creaking, the lock juddering under The Stranger’s blows.

“
THIS IS MY HOUSE. YOU WON’T LOCK MY DOORS!”

‘
He’ll try round the back now, near the well. Then in the empty chicken coop. The old dog kennel next. And he’ll fall asleep in the living room,’ he thought mechanically, well-used to the series of grotesque steps in a ritual he’d learnt to perfection.

Mordraud r
emembered what had happened in each of those places. They’d been excellent hide-outs, but they hadn’t lasted long. The woodshed was the best of all: always to hand, ready and inviting was his father’s old blunt sword, plus a hard smooth club he himself had decorated with carvings during the weary long hours of escape in the woods.

“
If he finds me, I’ll be able to defend myself this time. You’re not worth half of me... without that arm of yours...”

He
’d trained to the point of disfiguring his arms, whenever he could, every day for months. His muscles were not yet ready to handle a blade, but the years hadn’t been spent in vain. Mordraud had hammered all the tree trunks in the forest, he’d snapped branches, lifted stones and dug trenches. His strength was not easy to perceive, concealed inside the puny body of a twelve-year-old. But his sinews were like cast-iron.

Tremendously
heavy and terribly fragile.

“
YOU’RE IN HERE, AREN’T YOU?!”

The Stranger
had changed routine. No armchair, no kennel. The woodshed door flew off its hinges like a playing card, and Mordraud felt his heart plummet. An unbearable tremor prevented him from squeezing his left hand around the hilt. “You can’t reach me without that arm of yours,” he repeated to himself, eyes nearly closed. “You’re not worth half of me without that arm of yours.”

H
is hand shook uncontrollably in the meantime. He couldn’t feel his fingers. The tendons in his wrist were crossed by a shudder that made his teeth rattle in his mouth. His whole left arm was entirely out of control.

“
Hiding like a
rat
, isn’t that right?! Beneath the wood like a
rat,
crawling in the earth like a
worm
! OUT WITH YOU!”

A lump of wood
fell near him. The enemy had reached the walls, and was using all his might to seize the castle. Another log and an avalanche of dry branches. A pine-cone landed on the boy’s head. Mordraud was curled up at the foot of a precarious pile of wood.

“
Screw you, you damn swines!”

The
enemy subsided in his attack. Unexpectedly, he beat a retreat. The Stranger’s footsteps dragged on the gravel outside the shack, and Mordraud could start breathing again.

‘
I won... You didn’t get me, you bastard...’

His hand was still clutching the sword
hilt. His fingers wouldn’t release it. The juddering had spread to his whole body. Mordraud felt panic whip through his bowels. The fear he’d smothered to escape his foe had returned to claim its rightful sacrifice.

Suddenly, he no longer knew where he was. He couldn
’t make out the walls, the dirty ground, the distance between him and the stack of logs. Space had become abstract. The shapes on the edge of his vision bent inwards as when looking through the bottom of a glass bottle.

“
Mum?”

N
obody replied to his distraught whisper. He wasn’t even sure he had a mother. That might not be his house. He couldn’t recognise it. He was alone in a foreign land, surrounded by fleeting presences and indiscernible forms. Inexplicable aromas tortured his nostrils. The light had veered to a crimson red tainted with yellow.

“
Mum?!”

Mordraud
managed to slither out from under the heap of wood, and followed the faint shadow of sundown to make it beyond the threshold of the half-closed door to slip into the courtyard. Not a sound – a sign that the enemy had now returned to his camp. But where was he, he asked himself in bewilderment. His head was spinning. However hard he might try, he couldn’t focus ahead without feeling a violent retching rack his stomach. Like when he was subjected to The Stranger’s deformed stump. Before panic could get the edge on him, Mordraud ran flat out into the forest, stumbling on every root and bumping into every branch.

N
ight fell in a hurry, marked by a pale crescent moon. He ran until he felt his legs give way, paying no heed to his exertion. He knew that if he stopped, his disorientation would return with even greater force. But while he moved he had no time to think. The hours marched by, and when exhaustion finally crushed him to the forest floor, the tremor had dissipated. Mordraud fell asleep huddled up on a pile of dry leaves.

Dawn embraced him pitilessly.

Without realising, Mordraud had nearly reached the village: he was a few feet from the last row of trees in the wood. But it wasn’t the light that woke him.

It was a sharp kick
in the back, accompanied by muffled sniggers.

“
Look here, it’s the witch’s child!”

“
We wanted to go hunting hares... But we’ve had better luck!”

A
nother two kicks. A punch in the stomach. Nothing, compared to The Stranger’s. It was the boys from the village. The same he’d charged, head down. Including the one whose teeth he’d knocked out. The leg taking revenge on his kidneys belonged to that boy.

“
I’m gonna make you pay for
these
!” chomped the stockiest lad, pointing to his gappy mouth. “Come on, hold him down for me!”

A tangle of
arms pinned him to the damp earth. A long butcher’s knife appeared in the toothless boy’s hands.

“
What shall it be? An eye?”

The knife tip
hovered a few inches from Mordraud’s face. “An ear?”

Mordraud
felt the shaking return, so overpowering he nearly bit off his own tongue in his mouth. The judder rippled through his tendons and crumpled them. His fingers became numb stones.

The lad
s’ faces were all the same. The trees above his head merged into a single green mass. Colour, he thought deliriously. Colour everywhere.

The red and yellow of the sky. The black earth. The un
attainable green of salvation.

“
I’ve decided!” the boy with the knife yelled triumphantly.

“
HIS TEETH!”

Mordraud
arched his back and yanked a leg from their grip. A blow to the chest propelled the toothless boy to the ground, along with the large rusty knife. Mordraud’s reaction took everyone by surprise. He elbowed himself free and got back on his feet.

“
You damn
rat
!”

Their voices were all the same. Their
eyes too. The Stranger had multiplied and had come back to finish off his assault of the night before. They couldn’t know, but Mordraud was good at enduring a beating. Miserably good. Day in day out he had to deal with an old mercenary whose hands were as hard as iron.

Their punches were like caresses by comparison.

Mordraud grabbed a broken branch and battered the first head within range without hesitation. The trembling mellowed in intensity. The boys stepped back, then all charged together.

The shaking in his
arm ceased entirely when he saw the first of them drop with a pulpy face.

Mordraud
leapt backwards to avoid the blades of the knives and billhooks that had flashed from their belts. He felt calm and at ease, as never before. His stick flew, striking at random. When his left arm came to a standstill, five older and much bigger boys lay on the ground groaning. Some were not moving. Their eyes were swollen and blood ran from long gashes on their cheeks.

Mordraud
looked at his left hand. He’d just discovered a way to stop that blasted shake.

To smother fear
.

To find peace
.

***

That evening, Mordraud didn’t follow the usual steps in the ritual. He just looked in through Gwern’s window to check everything was in order, and went in the house. The padlock he’d stolen was smashed. The Stranger must have found a hammer. Luckily, he’d been knocked out by the drink before he’d got as far as going in, Mordraud saw with relief.

But he
’d soon be back. Mordraud knew he would. He placed a pan of soup over the fire, and went out to the woodshed to get a crowbar. He returned to the house and stood before his mother’s door. He forced the lock by wrenching the loop from the frame, and went in, closing the door behind him.

Nobody
would prevent him from carrying on in his habits. His mother would eat her soup. Just as she had in their previous life, before The Stranger had found them.

He sat
beside Eglade, lifted her head and slowly began spoon-feeding her. She was fearfully thin. Her hair had turned grey. Her once smooth flawless skin was like soggy paper. It disintegrated between his fingers.

“
There’s something I have to do tonight, mum...” whispered Mordraud. Eglade was staring at him, but her eyes saw nothing. She didn’t recognise him. She’d forgotten even him.

“
Something I should have done a long time ago.”

“
Ealon
...
Sial’nar
... “

“
What was that, mum?” he asked her, moving closer to pick up her murmur.

“
Endless... Night... Endless... Night...”

Mordraud
heard Varno enter the house with uncertain footfalls. He bashed into the walls, hammering them with his one hand. He was drunk, as usual. When he saw the door had been tampered with, and that Mordraud was carefully feeding his mother, he began shrieking. He plummeted into the room and seized the boy by the neck.

“
I told you, you
rat
! You’re to obey me!”