Clayton Emery: Whispering woods

Gull pondered what he might do, but the enormity was overwhelming. He had to find Greensleeves and Sparrow Hawk. He had to bury his dead, and tend the not-dead, the comatose ones. He had to… but he ceased to think, and sank into a dull, wet, pain-fogged funk.

Dawn's watery sun raised steam like fog. A squabbling first roused Gull. Vultures had come to eat the dead. Their cousins, ravens and crows, awaited their turn or fought over lesser spoils.

That woke him, and the resounding CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP KABUMP squeakcrunchgrind CLUMP CLUMP… of the clockwork beast. The poor creature, or construct, still circled the valley. It had limped on three legs all the night long, like a mill out of kilter that would not seize up.

Another sound came to him: the scuttling of rats. Gull lobbed a stone at a small hunched silhouette, grunted when he knocked it off a heap of rubble. But the sounds continued. All night rats had circled the fire and dug in rubbish. The earthquake must have brought them out, he thought, collapsed their dens. Though he'd never have believed this many rats in their village. Nor were these healthy, grain-fed rats, but skinny scabby things.

Enough moping, Gull thought. His father, who lay dead not a dozen feet off, had always said, "A busy man has no time to brood." Gull could honor his memory by following his advice. He rose and crouched-aching in every joint, bruised and muscle-sore-cast about what was left of the village in the eerie dawn light, then slowly poked up the fire, rousing others out of their stupor.

Awed, speaking quietly, as if the disaster might return any moment, the survivors pooled their knowledge and divvied up tasks. Snowblossom and Hedgehog and others would try to dig up the root cellars. Seal and his sons and daughters would hunt stray goats and cattle. Old Wolftooth got help to drag bodies into a pile for burning: there were too many to bury. Gull offered to butcher a horse he saw yonder, but he'd need someone…

As if reading his mind, Cowslip offered, "I'll watch for Greensleeves and Sparrow Hawk, and tend the fallen ones."

Just before last light, they'd lugged the stricken together, close to the fire to fend off the rats, but there was little hope they'd live long. That mysterious life-drain had felled in equal numbers: killed a third of the survivors outright, stolen the soul but not the life from a third, and left the rest palsied and weak.

Gull smiled weakly at Cowslip. She'd spent the night close by his side, and they'd tried to keep each other warm.

With simple tasks to perform, people got moving, but they shuffled like walking dead, hollow-eyed and clumsy. The destruction of their homeland had destroyed them inside, too. They'd be a long time healing.

Hefting his axe, heavy as an anvil, leaving his bow and arrows behind, and sighing, Gull tottered across the misty morning rubble.

The woodcutter had to skirt uprooted thorns, smashed houses, cracks in the earth, the wreckage of a goblin bladder-flyer, rat-gnawed corpses of blue barbarians and red soldiers, dead dogs, and White Ridgers too.

He passed a firepit littered with long charred bones. The pit was marked by tiny footprints. Nudging his tired brain, Gull reconstructed the scene. Yesterday the goblins had hauled away something he'd thought was a body. Now he knew differently. They'd dragged off the giant's sundered arm. And roasted it.

He kept his eye on his goal.

Across a former meadow, toward the Whispering Woods, lay a dead brown horse. Bleary-eyed, Gull steered around the dead giant.

Yet the woodcutter jumped in shock when he beheld the giant moving.

Or rather, something on the giant moving.

Between the two heads lay a long, pulsing… plucked chicken?

Chicken skin-colored, certainly, and naked, but tall as Gull. It was half-buried between the two heads. The woodcutter could see skinny buttocks stitched with blue veins under transparent skin. What…?

The horror compounded itself. The giant groaned, raised a cold white arm thick as a tree trunk, pawed weakly at his neck.

Gull froze. The gesture was so pathetic, and so human, like a baby trying to brush off a gorging mosquito. The woodcutter's heart went out to the giant. Though as a mercenary he deserved no sympathy…

The giant moaned, shifted a huge dirty bare foot, kicked so that Gull jumped back. Despite his stupor, the giant suffered. His arm stump showed white bone and red meat rotten with dirt and pus. When it banged the ground, the giant moaned anew.

The plucked chicken picked up its head, and Gull gasped.

A long head, no hair, tall pointed ears, a lacework of blue veins, a mouth full of fangs. And red blood on thin lips.

Vampire, thought Gull.

The fiend reached out almost gently with a clawed hand, pressed a filthy fingernail against the giant's eye, jabbed. The giant recoiled, and the vampire yanked up his earlobe, sank his teeth in the flesh below. Gull, who had slaughtered animals, knew a rich vein pulsed under the ear.

But he wasn't thinking of that as he attacked.

Howling, the woodcutter snagged the hem of the giant's patched sailcloth smock, hoisted himself up, clambered across the heaving round belly. Gull acted on pure instinct. Something dead leeched off something alive. Compared to this ghoul, Gull and the giant were brothers.

The vampire whirled at the battle cry. Gull saw webbing between the fingers and under its arms, like a flying squirrel. The skin was so translucent, spider-webbed with blue veins, that wan sunlight shone through. Through belly skin, Gull saw a patch of red-fresh blood in its stomach. Gull fought to keep his own stomach, and his balance, as he hefted the axe above his shoulder.

With one blow, he'd slice the vampire from helm to crotch, and kick the pieces to the crushed meadow for the crows.

But the vampire gave a tiny leap, barely pushing off with its long toes, and was gone.

Surprised, Gull swung halfway, then fully around, searching. Where had it gone?

A weight like a dead deer's crashed on his back.

Gull fumbled his axe and watched it slide away down hilly flesh. The woodcutter slammed face first onto filthy cloth that smelled of sweat and salt.

There was another smell too. A fetid slaughterhouse odor.

A hand cold as death mashed his head, lit fires in the many rock bruises and scratches, ripped his long hair aside to expose his neck.

Better to stare death in the face than take it in the back, he remembered his-dead-father saying.

With a mighty kick, Gull tried to roll over. His bad knee rang with pain. He heard the giant grunt from two mouths.

The vampire grappled him tight, though, and sank claws into his face. Fingers gouged flesh from his forehead. One hooked and grazed his eyeball. Gull couldn't decide if he were angry or frightened. A giant leech slurping his blood terrified him. But this attack-after how many in two days?-set his blood boiling.

He snapped his head and bit at the hand, kicked at nothing, swung a clenched fist. Strong the vampire was, strong as a mule, but its thin arm let go when the brawny woodcutter slammed its elbow. The vampire snarled and lunged for his throat with long white teeth stained red.

Arms tangled, the woodcutter kicked again, banged the vampire's legs with his own -and knocked the two of them headlong off the giant's heaving body.

Sky, dead skin, salt-streaked cloth, mud-all flashed by, then Gull slammed on his aching shoulder in trampled meadow grass.

But the human leech still clung.

Gull felt a searing pain on his biceps. The vampire bit him to the bone. The man yelped, hammered the hairless head with his elbow. The skull felt like rock, and he only drove the wicked teeth deeper into his own flesh. Gull kicked, but one leg was hung up. The hill of a giant loomed on the other side like a cliff. Gull's head was half-buried in weeds.