Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

Forests and bogs were favorite haunts of spirits. Though aingerou preferred cities and other man-built habitations, and revenants preferred the places they’d lived or died, tales spoke of older beings who yet walked in the wild—the guardian Danae, whose dancing wove the patterns of the world and who could merge their bodies with ponds or groves, and the demon gatzi, who were but Danae corrupted to Magrog’s service. Both were said to whisk folk away from mortal life. I’d never run across any such creatures, so they didn’t worry me all that much, but it never hurt to keep one’s eyes open.

Holding the thread of path and direction in my head, I hurried down the road, humming the harper’s song that still shimmered in my head. The cheerful melody swelled my heart and kept the night’s terrors at bay.

The hour was not even Compline when the first glimpse of torchlit roofs and walls, and the first sounds of pipe, tabor, and raucous laughter set up a rampant thirst in me. I stripped off my monk’s gown, stuffed it into my rucksack, and trotted the last few hundred quercae up the road and across the ditchwork to the cross-timbered gate. A good-sized town like Elanus should have a fine selection of taverns, sop-houses, pickable pockets, friendly barmaids, and gullible gamblers, not to mention an herbalist or apothecary with nivat seeds to sell. Not to mention a tankard of potent mead to warm away the damp and make a man forget politics, holy men, and conspiracies for an hour or two.

A closer look dampened my optimism. Though the earthwork surrounding the hillside town appeared substantial, the wooden palisade atop it was rotting and the town watch lax and slovenly. My claim that I’d come in search of a secure bed on a journey to visit my brother in Palinur easily satisfied the two half-soused guardsmen who carried but one serious weapon between them—an iron-bladed bill hook that would see its best use as a club. They seemed more interested in my assertion that my brother had a job awaiting me in a Palinur tannery than in the motley bloodstains on my jaque or how I had managed to travel any distance in these perilous times, carrying no weapon but a walking stick.

“Bog iron’s failing,” said one of the reeking pair as he cracked some aged walnuts with his bill. His blotched skin was peeling. “Half the smelts are cold. Roads too risky to bring in ore, and them as might haul it are fighting or dead. Elanus won’t last a year more.”

The second guard sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Some Harrowers were through here yestereve, preaching. Lot of folk figure the orange-heads have it right. Won’t take but another smelt closing down for them to have us all burning for the Gehoum.”

“So they’ve gone now…the Harrowers?” I asked, glancing around uneasily, happy I’d taken off the monk’s habit. I didn’t need any ragtag from Black Night taking out their frights and vengeance on a monk. Harrowers didn’t honor the Writ of Balance. “You’re sure they weren’t soldiers—Moriangi?”

“Nawp. Only orange-heads, but soldierly, especially the woman leading ’em. They’re burning farms and outliers these last few days, them they say is offending their holy Gehoum. They burnt Mott’s granary, saying his plow was a curse. The watch snagged one of her hags for the pillory. Rest got away.”

“Mayhap I’ll be on my way sooner as later, then,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to cause them offense. But I’m for a tankard first.” I’d need to be careful leaving. The Harrowers would likely hang about the town to get their woman back. Perhaps theirs was the foreboding presence I’d felt on the road.

The town pillory sat just inside the gates. A frowsy woman, face streaked with ash and blood, yelled at me hoarsely as I hurried past. “The day of terror comes! The Gehoum will have their vengeance!” Her hair was strung up in a greasy wad atop her head and tied with an orange rag. She didn’t sound so much crazed as excited.

I sloughed off the worry, waded through a knee-deep gaggle of muddy geese that blocked the town’s main street, and happily inhaled the scent of civilization—dung, smoke, and burning fat. Just ahead of me, a ragged donkey boy leveled one whip and manifold curses, trying to get a charcoal-laden dray up the steepening lane.

The people of Elanus seemed a grim and unhealthy lot altogether, just like their town. At the edge of the road bony children dabbled sticks in the puddles, and cripples shook empty cups, bawling for a citré. Everywhere were hollow cheeks and peeling, unhealthy skin, and sunken eyes that would not meet mine. Orange head rags stuck out like bits of bright paint on a wall of gray.

As I strolled past an alley, trying to decide whether to locate a source for the nivat or the means to pay for it first, a burly man with a slack lip and a sinner’s nose pawed at my sleeve. “A bed companion this night, traveler? Or an hour’s pleasure?”

In the shadowed alley, a squint-eyed young woman opened her threadbare cloak to reveal a tight-laced bodice of ruffled lace. A slim, pretty boy with skin the color of milked tea leaned against the sooty brick, smirking as he shivered in naught but a stained silk tunic and a silver ankle bracelet.

“These two come all the way from Estigure. Blessed is the man who lies with divine Karus’s kin. Lay away blessings lest the world’s end catch you lornly.”

I sighed and let my eyes drink in the sights. “Regrettably I’ve other holy business must come first.”

The man waggled a finger and the girl spun in place, billowing her cloak and a filmy skirt, slit from hither to yon, offering glimpses of long, slim legs. The tasseled string that fastened her lacy bodice swayed most enticingly. My hands twitched as I imagined the smoothness of those long legs and the delights that lay underneath the shabby lace. Serena Fortuna had cursed me with overlong abstinence already, and now proffered the lonely prospect of winter at an abbey. No prayer I’d ever heard could sheathe a man’s ache.

With apologies to the goddess Arrosa for refusing her sweet gift, I worked to cool the growing heat in my loins. Think of battlefields, Valen. Winter. A starving belly. Monks. Nivat seeds. Family. “Perhaps later.”

His pitted, leaking nose twitched, and he licked his sagging lip, revealing stained teeth. “Five citrae will hold the girl for you until midnight. Ten for the boy. I’ve others as well. Locals. Cheaper, but blessed, all the—”

“I’ll come back if Serena Fortuna is kind.”

Even if I’d had the price, I wasn’t fool enough to give it on a promise. But I bowed to the girl, which brought a lovely flush to her pale cheeks and set her licking lips much finer than the procurer’s, and I winked at the youth, which replaced his smirk with a soft and subtle eagerness. Perhaps four years older than Jullian, he stretched an arm behind his head and thrust out one slim hip just enough to make a graceful curve.

I cleared my throat and dragged my eyes away. “Tell me, goodman, where in this sober town might I find good mead and honest dice?”

“Cross-hill toward the smelts, you’ll find the Blade. Tell Holur that Tigg sent you for a game and a taste from his cask. He’ll see to you.” He shrugged and turned his attention back to other passersby.

My stomach rumbled as I meandered down the lane that leveled off westward, “cross-hill,” rather than taking the steeper way that climbed the rounded mound of Elanus. A few tight-shuttered houses lurked among others collapsed into weedy ruins. The sweet pale smokes of peat fires laced with pork fat hung over the lane like mist over the bogs. At the far end of the lane, darker billows rose from the charcoal fires of the “smelts,” where the folk of Elanus teased workable iron from treasured pellets dug from the peatlands.