The following story, “Mudboy,” started out as a part of my Demon Cycle series from Del Rey Books. When I add a new POV character to the series, I try to take the reader back into their childhood, reintroducing the demon world through their eyes and showing the pivotal events in their life that led them to become the person they are in the central story line.
Briar was a great addition to the series, and I had originally intended for the following story to be the introduction to my third book, The Daylight War. It would have been the first part of a three-act play on Briar’s young life, spanning the ten years or so before he encountered Leesha and Rojer on the road to the Hollow.
But I quickly saw how the character might grow unchecked. I kept having more and more ideas for Briar’s own tale, and they were largely separate from the main story line of the series, to the point where it might become a distraction.
So I cut the section I had written, meaning to save it for a Demon Cycle novella like the others I have done for Subterranean Press. When Shawn asked me to contribute a story to Unfettered, I knew it would be a perfect fit.
I will eventually write more of Briar’s adventures, but in the meantime, please enjoy this little tale. I am thrilled to finally be able to share it, and in such prestigious company!
— Peter V. Brett
MUDBOY
Peter V. Brett
Summer 323 AR
Briar started awake at the clanging.
His mother was banging the porridge pot with her metal ladle, the sound echoing through the house. “Out of bed, lazeabouts!” she cried. “Breakfast is hot, and any who ent finished by sunup get an empty belly till luncheon!”
A pillow struck Briar’s head. “Open the slats, Briarpatch,” Hardey mumbled.
“Why do I always have to do it?” Briar asked.
Another pillow hit Briar on the opposite side of his head. “Cause if there’s a demon there, Hardey and I can run while it eats you!” Hale snapped. “Get goin’!”
The twins always bullied him together…not that it mattered. They had twelve summers, and each of them towered over him like a wood demon.
Briar stumbled out of the bed, rubbing his eyes as he felt his way to the window and turned up the slats. The sky was a reddish purple, giving just enough light for Briar to make out the lurking shapes of demons in the yard. His mother called them cories, but Father called them alagai.
While the twins were still stretching in bed waiting for their dawn vision, Briar hurried out of the room to try and be first to the privy curtain. He almost made it, but as usual, his sisters shouldered him out of the way at the last second.
“Girls first, Briarpatch!” Sky said. With thirteen summers, she was more menacing than the twins, but even Sunny, ten, could muscle poor Briar about easily.
He decided he could hold his water until after breakfast, and made it first to the table. It was Sixthday. The day Relan had bacon, and each of the children was allowed a slice. Briar inhaled the smell as he listened to the bacon crackle on the skillet. His mother was folding eggs, singing to herself. Dawn was a round woman, with big meaty arms that could wrestle five children at once, or crush them all in an embrace. Her hair was bound in a green kerchief.
Dawn looked up at Briar and smiled. “Bit of a chill lingering in the common, Briar. Be a good boy and lay a fire to chase it off, please.”
Briar nodded, heading into the common room of their small cottage and kneeling at the hearth. He reached up the chimney, hand searching for the notched metal bar of the flue. He set it in the open position, and began laying the fire. From the kitchen, he heard his mother singing.
When laying morning fire, what do you do?
Open the flue, open the flue!
Leaves and grass and kindle sticks strew,
Then pile the logs, two by two.
Bellow the coals till the heat comes through,
And watch the fire, burning true.
Briar soon had the fire going, but his brothers and sisters made it to the table by the time he returned, and they gave him no room to sit as they scooped eggs and fried tomatoes with onions onto their plates. A basket of biscuits sat steaming on the table as Dawn cut the rasher of bacon. The smells made Briar’s stomach howl. He tried to reach in to snatch a biscuit, only to have Sunny slap his hand away.
“Wait your turn, Briarpatch!”
“You have to be bold,” said a voice behind him, and Briar turned to see his father. “When I was in Sharaj, the boy who was too timid went hungry.”
His father, Relan asu Relan am’Damaj am’Kaji, had been a Sharum warrior once, but had snuck from the Desert Spear in the back of a Messenger’s cart. Now he worked as a refuse collector, but his spear and shield still hung on the wall. His children all took after him, dark-skinned and whip thin.