The Webbing Blade

A FALLEN SOLDIER

LOU FELT his heart bounce in his chest, his hands go clammy once more. He unsheathed his sword, the steady weight of it already feeling more intimate, more familiar, to his touch. He had killed two bears on his own. Another six with Rut and Sully. He had shed his fear, that uncontrollable trembling which seemed to lock up his muscles and make him clumsy.

Now he was ready to be a warrior.

And he would never more be afraid.

He breathed in that musky scent, carrying on the breeze, tasted that sour tang at the back of his tongue, and he kept his eyes sharp, his attention fixed on Sully and Rut as they ploughed forwards in the direction of the growling.

They passed through a few trees, and then they saw the bear’s flanks, the bear half-hidden behind a mud bank. That was when Lou realised he could hear another sound too. Not just the growling of the bear, the ripping of flesh in its jaws, but he could also here the near-muted moans of a man.

As he stepped forward, carefully picking his way along the foliage-strewn forest floor, keeping up with Sully and Rut as they went on their way just as carefully, he gripped his sword tight and prepared to bring it down on their enemy.

Soon the bear came into view before them. He was focussed down on what he was eating, the person he had pressed up against the side of the muddy bank.

Lou didn’t wait for either Rut or Sully, he simply rushed forward and, with a flick of the blade that was already becoming increasingly familiar to him, he thrust the blade down into the back of the bear, listening to the snick and crunch as he plunged it through the bear’s hide.

This time he was quick and he retrieved the blade swiftly, brought it back, ready for the bear to spin round and go at him with its jaws.

But this time there’d be no resistance.

The bear let out an elongated, rumbling moan then rolled over on its side. As it lay there, downed, it twitched several times over, and Lou saw the blood pulsing out from the wound he’d inflicted. Saw the bear breathing its last, the curse leaving its bloodstream.

Next his attention moved to the man they’d saved—the man Lou had feared it would be.

Lying there, on his back, his stomach ripped open, the rags of his tunic soaked with black blood, was Murch.

Lou felt his heart lodge in his throat and, almost subconsciously, he returned his sword to its sheath, then stepped forward to see to his dying boss.

* * *

It was Sully who broke them out of their daze, their staring down at their boss, Murch, lying there, bleeding out his guts. He ordered Rut and Lou to go off and fetch fresh water. Lou jumped to his orders, as did Rut. It seemed that, with all the drama they’d had that night, they were quickly approaching the limits for their trauma.

They needed someone to order them about, to tell them just what they had to do.

Lou got to thinking that soon he might need someone to remind him to breathe.

Lou and Rut found a fresh-water stream, a burbling creek, just a few paces away. They both filled up their canisters with the water, then returned to where Sully stood with Murch. Even without needing to draw close, not even needing to look Sully in the face, let alone look down, Lou knew what had happened. That Murch was dead. It was the smell, that faintly musky, bloody, earthy stench.

He was learning to know it well.

The three skullers stood over their downed boss for several minutes, Lou fancied all of them staring at his parted lips, at his lolled open eyes. That scar occupying most of his face. Lou thought about how he’d grown up with the man keeping him safe all his life, and thought about how little he’d really known about him, and then he thought about how Murch had taken him in, made him one of his own, when he’d been truly desperate.

Sully spoke in his low drawl, eyes still firmly fixed to Murch’s corpse. “We’d be better off burying him somewhere close by, keeping this secret from the rest. It’ll only make everyone panic.” Slowly he turned his head to look at Rut and Lou. “Better to keep it between us, yeah?”

Lou turned this over in his mind. He thought about all that Murch had done, how, if this had somehow been a just world, then Murch truly would’ve been celebrated, that they would’ve all come together to celebrate just all he’d done to keep them safe.

But the way it was, he knew that the world just wasn’t just.

Hadn’t he, just like the rest of his fellow villagers, ignored most of the efforts of the skullers, at best slipped them glances in the early mornings or late evenings, at most a subtle, glum-faced nod.

They were an accepted necessity.

A sign of the cursed times they were living through.

But that shouldn’t have meant dying in obscurity.

Skullers were on the light side of the world. Protectors. Comfort-givers. And, Lou considered, that he was truly proud that he himself was one.

. . . Or that one day he might be accepted as one.

* * *

They did just what Sully suggested. The three of them digging out a shallow grave with nothing but the blades of their swords and a few rocks. It took them till the morning light licked the horizon, but they got it done. The grave was a shallow one, no more than coming up to the height of Lou’s knees.

But it would have to do in times like these.

They marked it with three large stones, arranged in a triangle, according to the customs of the region.

Lou promised to himself, staring down at that stirred-up earth, that one day he would return, come back here and give Murch a proper burial. He was determined that he would be remembered in the way he, and his work, deserved.

The procession back to the campsite was a sombre one. None of them said anything about what they’d just had to do. And as they returned, Lou saw the survivors still all standing about in the early morning light, obviously waiting for them to return. They were waiting for their protectors, as they well might.

Lou looked for Syre, automatically, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. He guessed she’d returned back to her own tent, with that book of hers.

The one which’d been called: A Practical Understanding of Dark Magic.

Just thinking about it sent a chill up his spine.