Brom - The Child Thief

They were mighty berserkers now, and a particularly tall haystack behind the stable was a terrible dragon. In a ferocious attack, Peter leaped upon the haystack and tried to climb to its summit. The stack tilted, Peter yelped, and the whole heap toppled over, pinning him beneath a blanket of soggy hay.

The boys ran up and began to dig Peter out. When they uncovered his face, Peter spat out a mouthful of straw, began to cough, then laughed. He choked, spat out more straw, then laughed some more. Soon they were all laughing so hard that they rolled on their backs, helpless.

“Hey,” Peter hollered, between bouts of giggling. “Hey…get…me…out of here.”

“THERE YOU ARE!” came a woman’s sharp, angry shout.

The laughter died. Peter’s heart leaped into his throat as he suddenly remembered just where he was.

“What nonsense is this? I’ve been—” She stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth agape. “Who…? What…?” She let out a scream.

Peter twisted around to look at her and she pointed at him with one fat, trembling finger and screamed again. “GOBLIN! GOBLIN!”

An older bald man and a wiry pockmarked youth stuck their heads out from the stable. They saw Peter and came in at a run. The youth carried a pitchfork.

Peter yanked his arms out from the hay and dug frantically to free his legs.

The two boys looked from their mother to Peter. “No, Mama,” Edwin cried. “He’s not a goblin. He’s a—”

Peter jerked one leg free and kicked and twisted to free the other.

“ GET AWAY FROM IT! ” the woman screeched. “ EDWIN! OTHO! HEAR ME, GET AWAY FROM IT NOW! ” When the boys didn’t move, she ran up and snatched them back.

The pockmarked youth raced up, raised the pitchfork, and drove it right for Peter’s face.

Peter jerked his head away, but not fast enough. One of the prongs sliced down the side of his scalp. He felt a red-hot slash of pain and let out a howl. In a wide-eyed fit of panic, he kicked his remaining leg free and scrambled up. He almost made his feet when someone grabbed his arm and jerked him off the ground. The bald man slammed a huge fist into the side of Peter’s face. Peter’s head exploded with white light and pain. His legs buckled, but before he could fall the man punched him again, a hard jab in the ribs, sending the boy tumbling backward. Peter hit the ground in a heap and everything went blurry.

“ KILL IT! ” the woman shouted.

Peter tried to suck in a breath but his mouth was full of something wet and warm. He coughed violently, spraying the ground with his own blood. The side of his face had gone numb. Through tears and blood he saw a blurry figure moving toward him.

“NOW, KILL IT! QUICK!”

“I got it!” the youth cried.

Peter cleared his eyes in time to see the youth coming at him with the pitchfork. Dizzy, and slow, Peter made it to his feet.

The youth jabbed him. Peter tried to twist out of the way, but the prongs raked across his side, leaving behind three flesh-deep gashes.

The bald man made a grab. Peter ducked and ran, stumbling at first, but once he got his feet under him, ran, ran like the wind into the forest.

Once within the trees, he collapsed to his knees, clutching his side, his face clenched tight with pain. He let out a loud, hitching sob, then spat repeatedly, trying to clear his mouth of blood.

They were yelling and pointing at him from the field. Several more men and women had come around the stable. They weren’t following him, just standing and pointing excitedly into the woods. He could see their faces, could see the revulsion, the fear…the hatred .

Other men came up then. Men with thick, braided beards carrying great, long swords. Peter ran.

PETER’S LUNGS BURNED. He’d been running most of the day and still he dared not stop. He glanced back, eyes wide with terror. He could hear them, their dogs, and the hard clumps of the horses’ hooves. They were closing in.

Peter spotted Goll’s hill far ahead through a break in the trees, and the horrible realization that there was no safety there, that there was no safety anywhere, hit him. Goll couldn’t stop these huge men with their terrible swords and axes. The men would kill Goll. Peter cut down a new path, headed toward the cliffs, leading the men away from Goll’s hill, hoping the horses at least wouldn’t be able to follow him up the steep ledges.

Peter made the cliffs and stopped, listening for the men as he tried to catch his breath. He didn’t hear them. A touch of hope lifted Peter’s spirits. Maybe they’d given up. Maybe he wouldn’t die today after all. Then he saw the smoke and his chest tightened. “Goll,” he whispered.

Peter ran, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side, the throbbing in his head as he sprinted as fast as he could back to Goll’s hill. He topped the rise and froze.

Smoke billowed out from Goll’s burrow and there, dangling from the great oak, hung Goll. The rope was strapped about his chest, pinning his arms to his side, his feet twitched only inches above the ground. The huge men surrounded him, some on horses, some on foot, all with swords and axes in hand.

The moss man was charred and smoke drifted from his red, raw skin. He had no less than a dozen arrows in him, and yet still he kicked and spat. The dogs bit at him, tearing open the flesh on his legs as the men brayed with laughter.

Peter’s knees gave way and he stumbled against a fallen tree, his fingers digging into the rotting bark as he slid to the ground. He wanted to stop them, do anything to stop them, but couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than stare on in utter horror.

A huge fellow with a thick black beard and long knife walked up to Goll.

Goll stared at the blade with wide, terrified eyes.

The bearded man grabbed Goll by the hair and jerked his head back. He first cut off Goll’s left ear, then the right. As the moss man struggled, the men laughed and the dogs ran around in tight circles, howling.

The man jabbed the blade into the moss man’s stomach. Goll screamed and twitched spastically as the man sawed his gullet open. The man slid the blade into a loop of intestine and pulled it partially out of the wound, then whistled to the dogs. The dogs snatched the loop and pulled Goll’s intestines out onto the dirt in wet, rolling coils, tugging and fighting over them as the moss man wailed.

Peter watched, stone-faced, unable to move or cry, to hardly even blink. He watched. He missed nothing.

After too long, much too long, Goll stopped wailing, his head sagged forward, and he was still.

WHEN THE MENleft, Peter stood and walked down the hill. He didn’t cry, he didn’t feel the cuts in his side, the gash across his head, not even the ground beneath his feet. He did not feel. He moved slowly, methodically.

He found Goll’s bone-handled knife and cut the moss man down. To Peter’s surprise, Goll opened his eyes.

“Be brave, Peterbird,” Goll rasped. “Kill the wolf.” And that was it. The moss man’s eyes glazed over.

Peter slipped Goll’s knife into his belt, gathered up his spears, and headed north, away from the village. He had no clear thought of where he

was going, only that he was going away from the village, away from the men.

It wasn’t long before Peter heard the wolf trailing him. Peter stopped in a clearing, turned, and waited. The one-eared wolf appeared. Its lips curled up like it was laughing at the boy, like it knew it had him.

Peter didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate. He dropped the light spear and hefted the stout one to shoulder level. He slipped the bone-handled knife into his other hand, locked eyes with the wolf, and came at the beast in a dead run.