Chapter Four: Part Two

Continued from Chapter Four: Part One

“You know, price the size they’ve put on you, you’re not to be attracting just any mercenary,” Digger said. They rode their horses through the hills, along the highway where the murderers had turned up dead.

“That’s reasonable,” Silk said, puffing on a cigar.

“There are only two or three scalp hunters willing to pursue a warrant so expensive,” Digger took a thoughtful tone, waving three fingers to emphasize his point. “Low-Ball and his lads might,” Digger said. Low-Ball was one of Silk’s people, from the far southern peninsula, who’d turned his skills learned pirating into a mainland trade. Though Silk knew that Low-Ball had turned governor and spent most of his time attempting to unite the southern islands into a republic, and make “honest” trade—honest understood in a diplomatic sense. In any event, Silk had little fear of Low-Ball. “Then there’s Bogeyman,” Digger went on, mentioning one of the scary stories that had graduated from merely haunting the nightmares of children to tainting the stories that hard men told each other around campfires. For years no one believed that Bogeyman existed, and the few raving men who talked of him received the “mad” label. Digger believed Bogeyman existed—as did Silk.

“He’s been tied up with business, they say,” Silk said.

“Aye, so I hear,” Digger agreed. “He’s still a danger. He isn’t already rich and he always needs money.”

“That is true,” Silk said, scratching his cheek. Bogeyman always had some expensive venture on his platter, or so folk believed.

“And my father,” Digger said with thought in his voice. “He’d be up for the chase.”

“Yes,” Silk drew out the word, smiling. “That would be a worthy chase.”

“Aye.”

“Do you think he’d take it up?” Silk asked. Digger shook his head.

“He’s distracted with his own affairs,” Digger said.

“Pity.”

“If you actually wish to be caught it is,” Digger said as they rode past some huckleberry bushes frosted with old snow.

“You have very little faith in me,” Silk said, smiling.

“I hardly know you,” Digger said. Silk chuckled.

“You forgot someone,” Silk said.

“Did I, eh?”

“Tetch Slander and his boys,” Silk said.

“There is them—gods preserve you if they like the scent,” Digger said.

“Why? I think it’d be rather a lark evading old Slander and the Scarpy,” Silk snuffed, taking his cigar out of his mouth. “I fought beside them often enough. Fighting against them presents all new puzzles.”

“You are an odd one,” Digger shook his head, raising an eyebrow. He clearly could not believe that Silk was serious. Silk chuckled again. “Do as you like. I’d really like to clarify this Engelkind point.”

“I have declared war on the man.”

 “Right, you’ve declared war on Engelkind’s institution,” Digger was saying as they rode. Silk interrupted here.

“Just the man, not his institution,” he said, snuffling. He puffed on his cigar and looked around at the pine trees growing up the sides of the steep valley. It was the only highway out of town, Digger had said. Silk was not sure it smelled believable, but it didn’t matter much. The dead murderers had been found on this road.

“Declared war on Engelking the man—greater tang of blarney to that, but I’ll leave it aside till I know better of your character,” Digger continued.

“Most gracious,” Silk said.

“What I’m hearing as the moral to the grand story is Silk wants to see Engelkind killed, eh?”

Silk nodded. He heard something in the woods roundabout. Or, rather, heard an empty where scurrying critters ought to be audible. The silence had surrounded them for some minutes now. It had washed the valley suddenly half a mile back.

“Engelkind is a dictator and a scourge on future generations—does the young lordship’s conscience like the ‘tang’ of that?” Silk said, concentrating on listening to the woods rather than to Digger.

“Nay, I find it hard to understand. Legend tells us that Engelkind is a marked man, and that Ferryman’s own instrument is the only end he’ll meet.”

“And you have trouble believing I’m Ferryman’s instrument?”

“Aye. The story says Engelkind can only be killed by a thing unknown to this world.”

Digger was quite true, of course. Silk knew the story. He found it fascinating and he’d seen enough things try and fail to kill Engelkind the warlord to believe the legend. Ferryman occasionally marked men as his own quarry. The fact was well known. Those men only died according to Ferryman’s own design. No one had ever succeeded in directing or predicting the designs of Ferryman, the god of death and the end of things. What with Ferryman disappeared from the world, and Engelkind simply proceeding to age—he must be eighty or ninety already—it presented Silk a pretty puzzle.

He thought he had perhaps cracked it. The silence around him seemed familiar. As a clue, silence was wretched. It hardly told Silk anything. He paid attention to it, though.

“Well, we shall see,” Silk said.

“It’s too quiet,” Digger said.

They let the silence lower. It breathed through the trees—a scream with no breath, no throat, no voice. The icy sky pressed down on the snow covered ground. Before them, the road lay clear like a bated snare.

A noise like a hiccuping sob interrupted the silence. Stumbling from the trees, a man fell onto the road. His coat had ripped—he held a bloody hand to a too-limp shoulder, trying to steady the dislocation. With red shot eyes leaking frustrated tears, he stared at Silk. A grin cracked his face.

“He saw you,” the man said—Krist Novoselic gone far past the edge. Novoselic ran at Digger and Silk. Stumbled, though his legs appeared uninjured he had trouble walking. His breath came in grunts and snuffs. Digger’s hand fell on the handle of his bow, but he left his arrow un-nocked. Novoselic posed no threat; he loped past Silk and Digger, smelling of blood and sweat—muttering, “ha, he saw you, ha,” as he went. They let him go.

Digger looked sideways at Silk, raising an eyebrow. No words seemed required. The mad murderer spoke frighteningly for itself. Digger loosened his big knife in its sheath. Silk drew his curved two-handed sword, so that he looked prepared, although he thought he knew what had beaten Novoselic. With the mumbling, hiccuping breaths of Novoselic falling behind them, Silk and Digger rode their horses forward at a walk.

The road rounded a bend. Thick bushes blocked the view forward till they had made they turn. Twenty yards further on, a boulder stood in the middle of the road—the road parted around it. The boulder stood ten feet tall. On it, with no apparent weapon, stood a slim man, clutching a voluminous cloak like enough to a Holy Assassin’s around his shoulders. He had the hood up, though his face--youthfully shaped but shadowed around the cold eyes and sharp lips--stared out from the dark hood. His skin had the white cast of a corpse frozen in the snow on the ground. Silk recognized the pallor and nothing else about the person. That seemed strange. Silk expected to see someone else. His surprise, damnably, showed on his face for a second. The man standing on the boulder didn’t react. He stared passively at Silk. Silk gained control over his surprise after only a second. The man probably saw it.

A brief hiatus will be taken for Christmas. Continued on December 27...

Chapter Three: Part Three

Continued from Chapter Three: Part Two

“Wait…” Digger said. He turned back to Silk. Silk had already turned back on his walk to his inn. He sang an old marching song as he went. It felt good to be getting on with his life. He’d been feeling far too decadent of late. Moving forward excited him.

“Come along, Wiggend Lordling,” Digger said, using an old title for the son of the Wiga. “I believe that your tenure as an employee of the state has ended.”

*

Wexerly, the bright-eyed leader of urchins, looked from under his too-big hat and too-big coat at Silk Golinvaux and the one they called Digger McGrath, the Wiggend Lordling, as they had their conversation. He watched from behind some dustbins with the young lads who followed him, smiling as the man, whose name was Collin, put up the poster proclaiming Silk enemy of the state. Collin, when he saw the poster, did a double-take on it. He looked with fear around at Silk, who grinned as he walked away with Digger McGrath. When he finished securing the poster Collin hurried to whisper in Digger’s ear, to tell him that Silk was an outlawed criminal—as if Digger had not seen the sign. Collin spoke urgently in Digger’s ear, making it clear by his posture and frenzied pointing at Silk’s back, that it was a big-ass deal. Digger paused to listen. In his profile, Wexerly saw subdued pain. Digger had already committed to go with Silk. He had also agreed to protect Súthende from danger. Collin perceived a threat: Silk the Beast stood not ten feet away, and the state had declared him an enemy.

Digger’s shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. This was not how he had wanted to tell the good people of Súthende his life outgrew them. It made Wexerly smile. Sometimes the will of the gods manifested itself, knocking lazy asses into action for them. Wexerly liked Silk because he had embraced that—somewhat atheistically, perhaps, but with joy nonetheless.

Digger finished explaining to Collin that he would no longer be sheriff. Collin, with horror on his face, shoved Digger. The shove hardly did anything—Digger swayed. After it, Collin ran away, shouting, “Police! Police!” which, according to the urban legend—never tested—would rouse Engelkind’s Secret Police.

“Old Collin’s gone and done it now,” Ned said.

“Garn,” Stodge said with a little awe. “He’s got bigger balls than you’d guess looking at him.”

Wexerly ducked behind the dustbins. Crouching, he pivoted to look at his gang. Due to recent mortalities, and some of them going off to better lives, and several being at home with their families, Wexerly’s staunch companions amounted to only two today: round Ned and tall Stodge. All covered in grime, they squatted with him among the garbage in the alley, his loyal followers—the most recent in a long line of gangs he had led. They looked up to him, the urchins, because he was a bit wittier, a bit scheminger, and a bit older—in fact, more than a hundred years older, but he looked like a boy. It was partly his gravitas that allowed him to lead; the searching lads saw in Wexerly a seriousness that they lacked. At the same time, he always smiled and joked, and they liked that. If ever asked, the boys never quite knew why they followed Wexerly. They would invariably give the reason, “He took our last leader in a fight.”

“We’ll have to keep our heads low,” Wexerly said with a smile. “Things are about to be exciting.”

“Why?” Ned asked. “What’s happening?”

“You know who Engelkind is?” Wexerly asked.

“Not really,” Stodge said, scratching his greasy head under his hat.

“He’s the king,” Ned said.

“Close enough. You scared of him?”

“Of course—he’s the fucking king, isn’t he?”

“Sort of,” Wexerly said, smiling.

“And he made the Secret Police,” Ned said, he said it quickly. No one wanted to be caught talking about the Secret Police.

“You ever met anyone who’s in the Secret Police?” Wexerly asked. Ned and Stodge looked at Wexerly like he was stupid.

“It’s secret, isn’t it?” Ned said.

“That’s why,” Stodge said.

“Oh—right,” Wexerly said. He smiled. “Come on, lads—there’ll be a riot.”

Already, men from the town had begun rushing toward the shouts of “Police—police” raised by Collin. They called out to others to join the chase. Soon a crowd ran after Silk and Digger, brandishing cudgels and staves, some with crossbows. They shouted that the Secret Police would soon show themselves. It was the duty of men to give the Secret Police a hand until they could gather.

Wexerly led his lads through the alleys, avoiding the massing mob. The truth of it was—and Wexerly knew—no Secret Police existed. Some semi-intelligent citizens were frequently tapped by lieutenants of Engelkind. The lieutenants told men in secret that they had been recruited to the junior level of the Secret Police—if they performed well, they would be promoted to the inner circle. But no inner circle existed . As a result, those few instigators who thought that they would any day be included in the secrets of the Secret Police did everything they could to please the “real” inner circle agents, no doubt watching from every dark alley. They knew full well that if they misbehaved then they were likely to meet an accident; that part at least had a good deal of truth in it. The system worked well to police itself, and it reacted quickly to perceived threats like Silk, enemy of state. Wexerly found the whole equation funny—though he sometimes reflected that it was, in fact, tragic. The frightening part to Wexerly came in the form of the few men he’d seen who he could explain as nothing but actual Secret Policemen. No one had ever believed him about that, though.

He ran through an alley and paused at the end. The wind rushed past—the cobbles felt cold on his bare feet. Ned and Stodge asked what had happened. They heard a second later what Wexerly had: the crowd incited by Secret Police hopefuls rushed past, shouting and waving clubs. In an alley across from Wexerly he saw a bit of red and gold, and Wexerly ducked behind Stodge. Silk emerged from the far alley with Digger. They ran the opposite way of the crowd.

“What’s up?” Stodge asked Wexerly.

“Silk over there knows me,” Wexerly said.

“You don’t want him knowing you’re around?” Ned said, looking wise and serious. Wexerly nodded.

“We need to get to Hole in the Wall, though,” Wexerly said, mentioning the café and reading room where he and the gang occasionally went to get warm. Hole in the Wall was run by friends of Wexerly’s, some friends who would be interested to know what caused the ruckus.

“Aye,” Stodge said.

“We’ll get you there,” Ned nodded, pulling the brim of his cap down.

"Thanks, lads," Wexerly said.

Continued on December 17...