The Webbing Blade

SEVERAL GRUNG SHORT

THE RIDE BACK to his village, Endmere, was a long and solitary one. All around Lou the other working hands buzzed with conversation, with their winter plans, with what they wished to do with their winter supplements. He could smell brandy wine thick in the air, taste the tang of it at the back of his throat every time he breathed in. He just bowed his head into his chest, scratching his forehead against the rough cloth of his tunic, and he listened to his heart beating, tried to lose himself to its steady rhythm.

He thought back to previous years. Through all the years when he’d come home on the cart, like this, he’d been so happy, delighted that his labouring was done till springtime. But the best part of it, always the best part of it, was the knowledge that tucked deep in his trouser pocket was his winter’s supplement. The money that would get his family through. Allow them to survive another year.

Now, though, everything was under threat.

As he listened to the cart wheels clunk and skip over the rutted road, kicking up pebbles and hurling them against the wood, he did and redid the calculations in his head, somehow trying to make things work. But every time he got through with one calculation he came up with the same answer. His family would be doomed around the fourteenth month of the year.

In Giddlemarch they would starve.

A solid three months before he could get any work on a farm.

The working hands left off the cart as they passed through the villages, and he forced himself to be cheery as he bid them goodbye, and agreed that they’d meet up the following year. Lou didn’t think to tell them that he would never be allowed to return to Old Man Junth’s farm.

Not as long as Herbert Junth was in charge, in any case.

He thought back to that skuller, the man there with that enormous sword of his, and that crossbow, seemingly primed to draw out and pierce a man’s heart in the beat of a crow’s wing. If he’d so much as taken a step forward, looked to threaten Herbert, the skuller would’ve taken him down. Of that he was sure.

He thought back to the man’s cold, pallid complexion. That was the same for all skullers, being that they were men of the night, they worked in the night. And the moonlight wasn’t renown for giving men a tan. For other creatures, perhaps, but as far as man was concerned, they needed the warmth and light of the sun to live. And so, Lou supposed that was what had always bothered him about them. There was simply something intrinsically unnatural about them.

The cart jerked about as it rounded the familiar bends which led to Endmere.

Lou felt his body swaying with the motion. That knot of rage was still fixed in his stomach, and although it wasn’t glowing as much as it had been back in the tent, when he’d been confronted by Herbert and that skuller, it was still there. And that was enough. Never in his life had he felt so completely powerless. Impotent. That was what he was. His family was going to starve to death this winter and he could do nothing to save them.

Only a couple of other working hands remained in the cart. They were both men from his village. Endmere was the last village on the route for this cart. The two men were best friends, and always had been. Their names were Eirk and Poels. They lived in neighbouring houses in the village and were always seen out and about together. Their wives too, Lou knew, were best friends.

They were a few years older than him, in their late-forties, perhaps approaching their last yield, and they always returned from the winter with hearty bellies full with ale fat, which they’d lose, as they had now, by the end of the summer. They would go back home to drink away their winter supplements. Their sons and daughters were already working, providing for their families. It might even have been possible for the two of them not to bother working at all.