Dog Boy slithered down the rope, his shoes skittering on the wet, mossed stones, each skid and scuff sounding like the ringing of a bell to him. He went down past the dark loom of the door, catching his breath at the stink of char and blood, down into the black well between wall and stair, reached the end of the makeshift, softly creaking rope and took a breath.
Then he dropped, almost shrieking aloud at the plunge into the unknown dark – he fell a foot, hit the slope of the slicked mound and skidded on his arse through the wet and the blood and fluids until he fell and rolled into where the dead had lain.
He lay in the cold seep of it, waiting and trying to hear over the thunder of his own heart and harsh breathing; no-one came. He heard distant laughter, a burst on the breeze, saw the red-flower flutter of flames and shrank away from it, crabbing towards the wall of the garth until the stones nudged his back.
It was taller than himself by an inch or two, a wall to keep out maurauding beasts on four or two legs from lifting valuable livestock and no more. Inside it, the keep’s buildings had been ransacked and part burned – until someone had wisely asked where the besiegers would stay; now the bakehouse and brewhouse glowed faintly from the fires lit within, the half-charred thatch of their roofs still a wet stink as Dog Boy climbed over the wall.
It was the quick way, cutting off a long, arse-puckering crawl round the wall and through the enemy camp – but it held dangers of its own.
The first was the dark, which struck Dog Boy almost blind and left him with only the glow of the fires to let him know what direction he moved.
Now he blessed the persistence of Hal in giving him the old sword and scabbard; Dog Boy had preferred his knife – but that would be no help in a stand-up fight, God save you, Hal had said. The awkward sword had been slung on his back for the climb down and was rendered useless, for he would have needed the arms of a babery beast to draw it from there.
Now, though, he took it off his back, drew it, took the scabbard and placed it on the very tip, holding the belt fastenings in his teeth. Now he had a wobbling curve near the length of a man in front of him and, by swinging gently from side to side, he moved it like the feeler of a giant beetle.
He fell only once, a stumble that spilled him his length and he lay, feeling the wet seep, clenching the sword in one hand and the leather scabbard ties in his teeth so that he would not lose either. He strained to hear; laughter in the near distance calmed him a little and he reached out his free hand to lever himself up – then recoiled at the sensation of rough wet hair.
It was the deerhound, the one he’d called Riach because it meant ‘brindled’. The beast’s throat had been cut and Dog Boy felt a great welling sadness – he had not brought the dogs in to the keep, for there was not much more useless a creature in a siege than a dog, which ate meat people needed and provided, in the end, poor fare of its own.
Dog Boy was certain the other, Diamant, was also dead for neither of these hounds would have countenanced strangers in the garth without contesting it.
He cursed the siegers then, promised vileness on them for it and a deal of his anger was for himself; I am ill-named, he thought as he pinch-stepped away, for it seems I bring nothin’ but doom on decent dugs.
The scabbard tapped the far garth wall gently and he flicked it away with the sword, then gathered it in and fastened it on his back; behind, the laughter rose enough for him to hear the drink in it and he smiled grimly. Be gaggling on the other side o’ yer face when I return, he thought. I will hang the doddles o’ yon dug-murderer from the kennel door.
It took him all night to reach the Auld Chiel’s Chelleis, a long, dark slog through whin and bracken in a wet drabble of night until the milk-glow horizon brought a marriage of birds and their joy of song to the dawn.
The thick, clumped bushes and trees that fringed the Chelleis grabbed his clothes and he had gone no further than a fingerlength in when he heard the rustle and then the voice.
‘Swef. Bide doucelike else ah’ll arrow ye.’
‘God be praised,’ Dog Boy gasped out at once and, after a pause, had back the reply.
‘For ever and ever.’
It was Scabbit Wull, easier in his mind that what he had in front of him was human and not Faerie – then delighted and relieved to see it was Dog Boy. All the cold, wet folk in the Chelleis were delighted, for they thought matters had been resolved and they could leave their crude, damp shelters and come home to warm fires – which they dare not light themselves – and decent food, which they were running out of.