‘I can’t get it off you,’ Gas-a-ho said. The boy was fighting panic.
‘Where’s Ta-se-ho?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘I thought he was with you,’ said the boy. ‘When dark was coming, I gave up that you two were coming back. I stashed my roots and followed your tracks. This thing was still twitching when I came.’
Nita Qwan could feel the marks of the tentacles on his face and arms. ‘Trying to eat me,’ he said aloud. ‘Even while it was dying.’ His memory of the last moments of the fight was skewed, and he tried as best he could to piece it together. ‘Ta-se-ho was here – he got tossed by the beast.’
The boy had a fire. He could see it, and the promise of its warmth trickled through his injured spirit. He dug into the ground with his elbows – there was a shallow puddle under the small of his back – and he pushed, wriggling his feet.
The dead monster was soft and hard, and the armour plates of its head were resting just below his groin. He couldn’t feel his legs, but he seemed to be able to make them move.
He fought down panic. ‘Get my spear, Gas-a-ho. Is it here?’ he asked.
‘I have it!’ the boy said proudly. He went out of Nita Qwan’s field of vision and then came back.
Wolves howled. They were right across the pond devouring the buck he’d shot.
The boy came back. ‘I’ve cast a working on my arms to make them stronger,’ he said. And then, ‘I hope.’
‘Put the spear under the head. Put a log under the spear, and use it as a lever – no, under the head – good. Careful – don’t break the spear . . . there, it moved!’
In a moment, he dragged his right leg free. He had to use his hands, but his legs were bare, and that made them slippery and, although he lost his moccasin, he got the leg out.
The wolves howled. They sounded closer.
‘Hurry,’ he said. There was no pain in his right leg, but neither was there any feeling in it. He wriggled, getting his back out of the pool of water, and set his hands. The boy dug the spearhead into the earth, and pulled.
The wolves bayed, shockingly close, and provided them both with an additional incentive. He got his left foot to move – an inch, another, and then a third. They were sticky, slimy inches, but once it started to move, he wouldn’t stop – not to wait for the wave of pain, the crippling sick ache of a broken bone or ripped muscle. Instead, he felt nothing but a vague slipping, as if the limb was not his but the dead beast’s.
And then he was free.
He crawled fifty feet to the fire, and lay full length in its warmth, heedless of the slavering wolves.
Before the warmth could lull him, the return of life to his lower limbs struck like ice and fire and the pangs of love and being eaten alive all together. He grunted, rolled, thrashed, and grunted again.
The boy looked terrified, and Nita Qwan tried to force a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered, sounding foolish. ‘No – really – very lucky – ah!’ he said.
But shortly after, when he had some control of his feet, he listened to the wolves and turned to the boy. Gas-a-ho had gathered all their kit and made a small shelter, built a fire – even butchered part of the deer he’d shot, and cooked a haunch of the meat. Nita Qwan got his short sword from his pack and hobbled to the fire.
Gas-a-ho was by him like a swift arrow. ‘I made torches,’ he said proudly. ‘I was going to try and get you out if the wolves came – or at least fight them off.’
‘I think the whole pack fed on deer meat, and now they will sleep,’ Nita Qwan said. ‘But we must find Ta-se-ho if we can. He may be dead. But if he is not, a night this cool could kill him.’ He took a torch and went back to the corpse of the monster, which in flickering torchlight looked almost as terrifying as it had alive.
There was something to the glistening pile of its tentacles that made his stomach turn.
He forced himself to breathe, in and out, and walked past the massive rack of antlers that had miraculously not fallen on his face and killed him.
As usual, everything was bigger at night. He couldn’t find the tree that Ta-se-ho had been in – he had no moccasins and his feet were being crucified by the sharp gravel and sticks.
He stepped on the older hunter in the dark – a soft resistance, a yielding-
Something grabbed his leg and threw him to the ground – he rolled on his shoulder and turned, torch lost. He must have shouted out as he fell.
Ta-se-ho sat up. ‘You almost killed me,’ he said, and managed a weak laugh.
They took turns keeping the hunter warm. He had a badly broken collarbone, and he couldn’t use his left arm at all. He was also in shock, and despite his attempts to fend off their help, he needed every hot cup of tea, and every blanket they had. As the feeling returned to Nita Qwan’s feet, he became more mobile, and he and the boy scrounged for firewood in the damp dark.
But in the morning, the sun rose. Nita Qwan had feared rain, but it was a beautiful day. Until the effort of downing a standing dead tree in the dawn light showed that he had cracked ribs.
He returned to camp to find Ta-se-ho coaching the boy on extracting all the best parts of the deadly hastenoch. By daylight the monster was smaller and less terrifying than Nita Qwan could have imagined, and as the boy meticulously removed its head plates and its tendons for sinew, it became first pitiful and then merely meat.
Ta-se-ho took tobacco from his pouch, cast it over the dead thing and sang a song for its spirit. When he was done, he sipped tea. ‘You up to making a boat?’ he asked, and coughed.
Nita Qwan thought of protesting about his ribs, or his inexperience. But the other two seemed untroubled by the debacle. So he tried to shrug it off, too. ‘Sure,’ he said.
‘We will have many strong things from papa here,’ said Ta-se-ho. ‘They eat us. We use them.’ He laughed. ‘Is it different, down south?’
Nita Qwan piled up his cut firewood and then sat by the wounded man, who was laboriously lighting a pipe. Nita Qwan knelt and lit his char cloth and passed a lit taper of paper birch to the other man, who sat back in what appeared to be complete contentment.
‘I was never really in the south,’ he said. ‘I’m from beyond the sea.’
‘Etrusca?’ asked the old hunter. He took a deep draught of smoke and handed the pipe to Nita Qwan.
‘No, Ifriqu’ya.’ He took smoke himself.
‘Is everyone there as dark as you?’ the other man asked. ‘I have always wanted to ask how you came to be so dark, but it seemed rude.’
Nita Qwan remembered Peter’s youth, and smiled. ‘Everyone is,’ he said.
‘Very handsome. Good in the woods, too.’ Ta-se-ho nodded, as if this defined what was good. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Perhaps you drew the creature to yourself.’ Nita Qwan passed the pipe back.
‘Hah! I was a fool. I thought I had it – a trap, a trick, and my bow.’ He shook his head. ‘It should be a saying: never try to fight a monster by yourself.’ He grunted, took smoke, and handed the pipe back. ‘Of course there is another saying: there’s no fool like an old fool.’
Greatly daring, the boy reached out for the pipe. Nita Qwan handed it to him. ‘Truthfully, we both owe our lives to this boy,’ he said.
The older man smiled at the boy and ruffled his hair. ‘Ah – it will only make him insufferable,’ he said. He pointed with the pipe’s reed stem at the white birch standing at the water’s edge. ‘Were those what brought you here?’ he asked.
‘Yes – the nearest one. I thought it might make a good boat.’ Nita Qwan shrugged.
Ta-se-ho nodded. ‘I may make a hunter of you yet. Listen – this is what we should do. Today, you two cut firewood. Lots of it. Yes? Then, tomorrow, we cut the tree and take the bark. Next day I’ll be better – we move camp to the sea. Then we build the boat.’
‘How many days before we are on our way?’ Peter asked.
The hunter gave him an impatient look. ‘However many it takes,’ he said.
Liviapolis – Ser Thomas Lachlan
The defeat of the Etruscans was a three-day wonder. Within the company, they knew that the victory was not as good as it seemed, and Bad Tom was rapidly coming to regret accepting the task of hunting spies.