Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

But the black mountain grew larger as the hours went by; and after the following day, when they came to the divide and took the northern track, it loomed directly ahead of them.

“Smith.”

He opened his eyes Wearily. It seemed to him he had only just closed them; but the east was getting light. He turned and looked at Mrs. Smith, who was crouching beside him.

“We’d a visitor in the night, Smith, or so it seems. Still with us. I’d appreciate your assistance in removing it.”

“What?” He sat up and stared, scratching his stubble.

She pointed with her smoking tube. He followed with his eyes and saw a mass of something on the ground in the center of camp, dimly lit by the breakfast cookfire.

“What the hell—?” Smith crawled out and stood with effort, peering at the thing. It didn’t invite close inspection, somehow, but he lurched nearer and had a good look. Then he threw up.

If you took a gray-striped cat, and gave it the general size and limb configuration of a man, and then flayed it alive and scattered its flayed fur in long strips all over the corpse—you’d have something approximating what Smith saw in the pale light of dawn. You’d need to find a cat with green ichor in its veins, too, and remarkably big claws and teeth.

It was a demon, one of the original inhabitants of the world. Or so they themselves said, claiming to have been born of the primeval confusion at the beginning of time; for all Smith had ever been able to learn, it might be the truth. Certainly they had wild powers, and were thought to be able to take whatever solid forms they chose. This had both advantages and disadvantages. They might experience mortal pleasures, might even beget children. They might also die.

Smith reeled back, wiping his mouth. The thing’s eyes were like beryls, still fixed in a glare of rage, but it was definitely dead.

“Oh, this is bad,” he groaned.

“Could be worse,” said Mrs. Smith, putting on the teakettle. “Could be you lying there with your liver torn out.”

“Is its liver torn out?” Smith averted his eyes.

“Liver and heart, from the look of it. Doesn’t seem to have got any of us, though. I didn’t hear a thing, did you?” said Mrs. Smith quietly. Smith shook his head.

“But what is it? Is that a demon?”

“Well, there aren’t any tribes of cat-headed men listed in the regional guidebooks,” Mrs. Smith replied. “The principal thing with which we ought to concern ourselves just now is getting the bloody body out of sight before the guests see it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right,” said Smith, and limped away to the carts to get rope.

He made a halter, and together they dragged the body away from the camp, out onto the plain. There wasn’t much there to hide it. They returned, and Smith found a shovel, and was going back to dig a grave when he saw the body convulse where it lay. He halted, ready to run for his life, game leg notwithstanding. The body flared green, bursting into unclean flame. It became too bright to bear looking at, throwing out a shower of green sparks, then something brilliant rose screaming from the fire and shot upward, streaking west as though it were a comet seeking to hide itself in the last rags and shadows of the night.

The flames died away and left nothing but black ashes blowing across the plain in the dawn wind.

“That was definitely a demon,” Mrs. Smith informed him when he returned, leaning on his shovel. “Going off like a Duke’s Day squib that way. They do that, you see.” She handed him a tin cup of tea.

“But what was it doing here?” Smith accepted the cup and warmed his hands.

“I’m damned if I know. One doesn’t usually see them this far out on the plain,” said Mrs. Smith, spooning flatcake batter onto a griddle. “One can assume it came here to rend and ravage some or all of our company. One can only wonder at why it didn’t succeed.”

“Or who killed it,” Smith added dazedly. “Or how.”

“Indeed.”

“Well well well, what a lovely almost-morning,” said Lord Ermenwyr, emerging from his pavilion and pacing rapidly toward them. He looked slightly paler than usual and was puffing out enough smoke to obscure his features. “Really ought to rise at this hour more often. What’s for breakfast?”

“Rice-and-almond-flour flatcakes with rose-apricot syrup,” Mrs. Smith informed him.

“Really,” he said, staring around at the circle of tents. “How delightful. I, er, don’t suppose you’re serving any meat as well?”

“I could fry up sausages, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith.

“Sausages?… Yes, I’d like that. Lots of them? Blood rare?”

“Sausages only come one way, my lord.”

“Oh. They do? But what about blood sausage?”

“Even blood sausages come well-done,” Mrs. Smith explained. “Not much juice in a sausage.”

“Oh.” For a moment Lord Ermenwyr looked for all the world as though he were going to cry. “Well—have you got any blood sausage anyway?”

“I’ve got some imported duck blood sausage,” said Mrs. Smith.

“Duck blood?” Lord Ermenwyr seemed horrified. “All right, then—I’ll have all the duck blood sausage you’ve got. And one of those flatcakes with lots and lots of syrup, please. And tea.”

Mrs. Smith gave him a sidelong look, but murmured, “Right away, my lord.”

“You didn’t notice anything unusual in the night, did you, my lord?” asked Smith, who had been watching him as he sipped his tea. Lord Ermenwyr turned sharply.

“Who? Me? What? No! Slept like a baby,” he cried. “Why? Did something unusual happen?”

“There was a bit of unpleasantness,” said Smith. “Something came lurking around.”

“Horrors, what an idea! I suppose there’s no way of increasing our speed so we’ll be off this plain any quicker?”

“Not with one of our keymen down, I’m afraid,” Smith replied.

“We’ll just have to be on our guard, then, won’t we?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“You know, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith as she laid out sausages on the griddle, “you needn’t stand and wait for your breakfast. You can send out your nurse to fetch it for you when it’s ready.”

“Oh, I feel like getting my own breakfast this morning, thank you.” Lord Ermenwyr flinched and bared his teeth as the Smiths’ baby began the morning lamentation.

“I see,” said Mrs. Smith. Smith looked at her.

He watched as, one by one, the keymen and the guests emerged from their tents alive and whole. Parradan Smith sniffed the air suspiciously, then shrugged and went off to wash himself. Burnbright crawled out of her bedroll, yawned, and came over to the kitchen pavilion, where she attempted to drink rose-apricot syrup from the bottle until Mrs. Smith hit her across the knuckles with a wooden spoon. The Smith children straggled forth and went straight to the mess of green slime and strips of fur where the demon’s body had been and proceeded to poke their little fingers in it.

Ronrishim Flowering Reed stepped from his tent, saw the mess, and looked disgusted. He picked his way across the circle to the kitchen pavilion.

“Is it possible to get a cup of clean water?” he inquired. “And have you any rose extract?”

“Burnbright, fetch the nice man his water,” said Mrs. Smith. “Haven’t any rose extract, sir, but we do have rose-apricot syrup.” Burnbright held it up helpfully.

Flowering Reed’s lip curled.

“No, thank you,” he said. “Plain rose extract was all I required. We are a people of simple tastes. We do not find it necessary to cloy our appetites with adulterated and excessive sensation.”

“But it’s so much fun,” Lord Ermenwyr told him. Flowering Reed looked at him with loathing, took his cup of water, and stalked away in silence.