Mel Odom - The Black Road

Stand easy, Mat warned. His voice, even though Darrick was certain it came from within his head, also sounded distant and small. This is going to be the worst of it, Darrick, an' there ain't no way around it.

Darrick couldn't believe he wasn't dead. The fall alone against the stone mouth of the snake should have killed him, but the addition of the flames had taken away all chance of his survival.

Yet-

He lived. He knew it from the way he felt, from the ragged and tortured breath he took and the way he hurt all over.

Ye can't lie there, Mat said, and his voice was thin and distant. This here's the Black Road. The Twisted Path of Shadows. Kabraxis rules supreme here. At least, he believes he does. He'll kill ye if ye lie there. Get up-

"Get up," a harsh voice grated. "Get up, you worthless bastard."

Darrick recognized the voice as his father's. His eyes snapped open, and he saw the familiar stable area behind his father's butcher shop. He found himself lying on the sour hay that lined the hayloft.

"You didn't think I'd catch you back up here sleeping, did you?" his father demanded.

Instinctively, Darrick curled into a ball, trying to protect himself. His body hurt from the beating he'd remembered getting the day before. Or maybe it was the same day, only earlier. Sometimes after a beating Darrick had lost track of time. He suffered blackout periods as well as lost time.

"Get up, damn you." His father kicked him, driving the wind from his lungs and perhaps breaking yet another rib.

Fearfully, Darrick got to his feet before his father. Something dangled from Darrick's hand, but when he looked he could see nothing. Perhaps he had another broken arm, but this one felt different from the last.

He thought he heard Mat Hu-Ring's voice, but he knew Mat would never come around when his father was in one of his moods. Even Mat's father wouldn't come around during those times.

"Get up, I said," his father roared. He was a big man with a broad belly and shoulders as wide as an ax handle. His hands were big and tough from hard work and long hours and countless tavern fights. A curly mop of brown hair matched the curly beard he wore to mid-chest.

"I can't be here," Darrick said, dazed. "I was a sailor. There was a church."

"Stupid, worthless bastard," his father roared, grabbing him by the arm and shaking him. "Who'd make a sailor out of the likes of you?" His father laughed derisively."You've been having another one of those dreams you cling to so much when you hide out up here."

Face burning in shame, Darrick looked down at himself. He was a boy, no more than eight or nine. No threat at all to his father. Yet his father treated him like the fiercest opponent he'd ever encountered.

His father slapped him, causing his head to ring with pain.

"Don't you look away from me when I'm talking, boy," his father commanded. "Maybe I haven't taught you anything else, but you'll know to respect your betters."

Tears ran down Darrick's cheeks. He felt them hot on his cheeks, and he tasted their salt when they reached his quivering lips.

"Look at you, you sniveling coward," his father roared, and raised his hand again. "You don't have sense enough to come out of the rain."

Darrick took the blow on the back of his head, watched the world spin around him for a moment, and remembered how only last week he'd watched his father beat three caravan guards in a fight in the muddy street outside the Lame Goose Tavern. As a butcher, his father was passable, but as a fighter, there were few who could compare.

"Have you fed the livestock like I told you to, boy?" his father demanded.

Peering over the edge of the hayloft, afraid he knew what the answer was, Darrick saw that all the feed bins and water troughs were empty. "No," he said.

"That's right," his father agreed. "You haven't. I ask so little of you because I know that's all I have the right to expect from an idiot like you. But you'd think you'd have enough sense to feed and water livestock."

Darrick cringed inside. He knew there was no winning when his father was in one of his moods. If he had fed the livestock, his father would have found fault with it, would have insisted it was too much or too little. Darrick's stomach lurched as if he were on a storm-tossed sea.

But how could he know what that felt like? Other thanone of the stories he sometimes overheard outside the taverns his father frequented in the evening. His father always tried to leave Darrick at home, but his mother was seldom there in the evenings, and Darrick had been too afraid to sit at home alone.

So Darrick had secretly followed his father from tavern to tavern, having an easy time not being seen because his father had been deep in his cups. As mean as his father could be, he was also the most permanent point of Darrick's life because his mother was never around.

…not there…

Darrick breathed shallowly, certain he'd heard Mat Hu-Ring's voice. But that couldn't be, could it? Mat was dead. He'd died… died…

Died where?

Darrick couldn't remember. In fact, he didn't want to remember. Mat had died somewhere far from his family, and it was Darrick's fault.

Ye're on the Black Road, Mat said. These are demon's tricks. Don't give in…

Mat's voice faded away again.

The weight hung at the end of Darrick's arm.

"What is this, boy?" His father yanked Darrick around, displaying the rope and the knotted noose at the end of it. "Is this something you were playing with?"

Darrick didn't speak. He couldn't. Only a few days ago, using the tricks he'd learned from Mat, who had learned them from his uncle the sailor, Darrick had made the rope from scraps of rope left by farmers who brought their animals to his father's shop to be butchered.

For days Darrick had thought about hanging himself and putting an end to everything.

"You couldn't do it, could you, boy?" his father demanded. He coiled the rope up, shaking the noose out.

Darrick cried and shook. His nose clogged up, and he knew he sounded horrible. If he tried to speak, his father would only make fun of him and slap him to make him speak better, not stopping till Darrick was unconscious ornearly so. He knew he'd taste blood for days from the split lips and the torn places inside his cheeks.

Only this time, his father had something different in mind. His father threw the rope over the rafter support on the other side of the hayloft, then caught the noose when it came back down.

"I wondered how long it might be before you got the gumption to try something like this," his father said. He peered over the side of the hayloft and lowered the noose a little. "Do you want to just hang yourself, boy, or do you want to snap your neck when you fall?"

Darrick couldn't answer.

It didn't happen like that, Mat said. I found the rope. Not yer da. I took the rope away from ye that day, an' I made ye promise that ye'd never do somethin' like that.

Darrick thought he almost remembered, then the memory slipped away from him.

His father fitted the noose over his neck and grinned. His breath stank of sour wine. "I think snapping your neck is a coward's way out. I'm not going to let no bastard son of mine be afraid of dying. You're going to meet it like a man."

It's the demon! Mat yelled, but his voice tore apart as if he were shouting through a strong wind. 'Ware, Darrick! Yer life can still be forfeit in there, an' if the demon takes it on the Black Road, it's his to keep forever!

Darrick knew he should be afraid, but he wasn't. Dying would be easy. Living was the hard part, stumbling through all the fears and mistakes and pain. Death-slow or quick-would be welcome relief.