The Webbing Blade

THE NIGHT WATCH

LOU FELT his hands quickly growing stiff from the cold up on the fort. He felt someone tap him on the arm and he looked to see another of the skullers, Sulliman, as he’d introduced himself, holding out a pair of battered, but hardy-looking, leather gloves.

Lou shuddered as he dragged the gloves onto his hands. He felt the velvety insides of them, the soft material up against his skin, and he instantly felt warmer. He looked back at Sulliman, or Sully as he’d told him to call him.

Murch had appointed Sully, as fully-fledged skuller, to keep an eye on Lou.

Sully was a wiry man, in his late-thirties or thereabouts. He had neck-long, jet-black hair, and seemingly matching eyes. At all times he kept his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, as if one of the cursed animals might leap him from behind, even up here on the battlements.

Lou wondered if Sully was just being paranoid or whether he had a real concern about it. In any case, this being his first night, he felt himself on edge.

Lou smiled gently. “Thanks,” he said, nodding to the leather gloves now snug on his hands.

Sully winked. “The boss always seems to forget something with the new recruits. Although sometimes I wonder if he does it on purpose just to test them out, like.”

Lou gave him a nod.

Sully rested his elbows on the rim of the wooden fort and stared out into the gloomy plains before them.

The plains were set in total darkness now except for the odd torch providing a burning glow, a small patch of light. There was nothing to see out there right at the moment, but Lou well knew that perception didn’t mean anything. He had grown up his entire life keeping his ears primed to any sound out in the darkness, to the snapping of a twig, the rustle of leaves in the trees, or the cracking of a branch under foot.

His stomach heaved a little as he looked out over the plains, that hearty broth of his ma’s seemingly a long way off now, its reassuring warm, salty scent miles away from the brisk night air up here on the fort. But he knew that he had to be here, that he had to man the fort if his family were to survive the winter.

Sully hadn’t batted an eyelid as he’d reeled through his own story. It was frighteningly similar to Lou’s, really. Just like him, Sully had been a working hand and, just like Lou, he’d been turned out by the farmer, told not to come back. And, it seemed, that farmer had taken the trouble to rouse the suspicion that Sully was a trouble-maker throughout the farms about the place.

When he’d returned the next season to look for work he’d found himself turned away everywhere he asked.

After several nights out on the streets of Endmere, begging for crumbs from the late-night drinkers in The Mocker’s Pit he’d gone a knocking on Murch’s door, just like Lou had. And Murch had been glad to take him on.

And so here he was, a skuller.

It wasn’t a bad living, or so he said to Lou. Although they’d only just met, Lou noticed that he seemed to bring up the subject of pay several times over, telling him that another five years of this and he’d be off somewhere, go and buy himself some land and start up his own farm. Once he could afford the protection of his own skullers, of course.

That was the main obstacle facing most of the farmers, and why there were so few of them. Only those with the biggest operations could really make it pay. The ones who could afford the skullers’ protection.

When Sully breathed in and out, he made a slight rasping sound at the back of his throat, like he had a perpetual cold. He clasped his hands together and kept on staring out into the darkness, then he said, in a low voice, “You ever wonder what all this was like before?”