In the gibbet is an old woman and she terrifies him. She is a sorcerer and people like her caused the sourings. Maybe she will curse him or suck his blood to replace what she has lost.
She doesn’t look evil, not when he looks closely. She looks old and pained. With a squeak the breeze spins the windvane which lifts the brake on the slow-weight with a click that makes him jump. The old woman grunts as dirty blades are spun to reopen half-healed wounds on her arm and let out a slow trickle of blood.
“Barbaric,” he hears his master hiss.
“But the magic has to be reclaimed by the land,” he says. He heard a Landsman, looking fine in bright green armour, say as much in a village a year ago.
“Maybe, but there’s no reason it should be strung out so. Blood is blood, life is life.”
“But why do they do it this way then, Master?”
“Girton, when I buy you a bag of crispy pigskin, do you eat it all at once or do you save it and make it last?”
“Make it last.” He doesn’t understand what crispy pigskin has to do with anything. He would like some crispy pigskin though, it is his favourite.
“Does that change the taste?”
“No, but it lasts longer. I want to savour it.”
“Well, that is why those green Riders do this.” She points at the old woman across the road from them and then slides down from Xus. “Keep watch, Girton,” she says. Then he is climbing into Xus’ saddle and she is climbing the blood gibbet.
“Don’t hurt me.” The woman’s voice is little more than a croak as his master hangs by her on the metal frame. When his master puts her hand through the cage the old woman flinches.
“I won’t hurt you.” She caresses the old woman’s cheek.
“I’m not a sorcerer,” says the old woman.
“There’s no need to lie, wise mother,” says his master in the Whisper All Should Hear. He does not know why his master uses it, but the old woman’s eyes become wide.
“Free me, daughter,” she says.
“I will, but I cannot let you out. You understand wise mother?”
The old woman stares at his master and a tear tracks down her face, flowing along the banks of her many wrinkles. Then she nods her head slightly. “You are right, daughter. Where could I run to? I am old and will only endanger those I love.”
“I am sorry, wise mother.”
“Thank you for your kindness, daughter,” says the old woman, and then her eyes become wide as his master applies the Touch of Sleep. Once the woman’s eyes close his master climbs further down the blood gibbet, stopping to slash the woman’s wrists so her blood spatters into the dirt.
He has been so transfixed by the horror of what is happening that he has quite forgotten to keep watch.
“What are you doing?” A man’s voice. When he turns he freezes. A Landsman, huge on his hissing warmount and surrounded by the stink of rancid fat and rust coming off his grass-green armour.
A mount is far more dangerous than a man, Girton. Never face one if you don’t have to.
Beneath him he feels Xus, desperate to act, to rear, to bite and scratch and fight, waiting for the command he is too frozen with fear to give.
“A kindness, Blessed,” says his master, but she does not sound like herself. She sounds meek and scared.
“It’s not a kindness to interfere with a blood gibbet, woman. It is treason. What are you, a sorcerer yourself?”
“No, Blessed. Only I knew the old lady from my village and she was kind. I—”
“No excuse,” he barks as his mount saunters past Xus and the two animals bare their tusks at each other.
“Please, Blessed, please do not hurt us or me boy. My mount, you can have him.” His master sounds panicked, and it freezes him to the saddle of Xus. He has never thought his master could be scared of anything. “Please don’t hurt me. Please.”
But the Landsman keeps on coming.
“I’ll have the mount anyway.”
“Blessed, I am not unattractive.” She starts to unbutton the top of her jerkin but she does not take her eyes from the ground.
“I’ll not touch a sorcerer—” he draws a club “—but you’ll live long enough to water the land in the old woman’s place.”
When the Landsman nears her it looks like his master falls, as if she faints with terror, but the fall turns into a roll and she comes to her feet below the Landsman’s mount with her twinned stabswords in her hands. She cuts the girth of the Landsman’s saddle and disembowels his beast in one slash. The creature falls, letting out a jumble of wet and red intestines and the most hideous scream he has ever heard. The Landsman falls with the beast, but he has been trained well and jumps from his dying mount, clearing the creature, which rolls onto its back kicking its spurred feet in the air and screaming until the Landsman silences it with a slash of his longsword.
“You’ll pay for that, woman,” he growls. “I loved that animal.” He comes forward with his longsword held loosely in one hand and his stabsword in the other. His master stands drenched in blood and with a stabsword in each hand. Her hair is black ropes, sluggish in the lazy wind. Mount blood moulds her kilt to her body and drips down from its hem to define the muscles of her calves in gore. She is black and red and so still she could be a hedgescare statue standing against the hissing wheat. The Landsman towers over her, his breath comes in gasps like the snorts of an angry mount. He brings his longsword round in an arcing horizontal sweep sure to cut his master in half. The boy is so scared he cannot even scream a warning.
She moves.
She dances.
What is she doing?
He wants to scream at her, “Defend yourself! Don’t die!” but instead he is silent as she goes through the iterations. He wants to shout, “The iterations are not for fighting!” They are dances for entertaining drunks outside village drink holes and gathering a few pennies. They are not for facing huge armoured men!
She laughs as she teaches him. “Oh, Girton, won’t you impress the fine ladies!”
If he could move he would cover his face.
The Landsman is dangerous, intent on death. Fury is in his eye and he grunts with effort. His blades move smooth as water. They trail streamers of light. His master goes into the fifth iteration, the Boatgirl’s Dip, something he knows so well—She holds his hand and twirls him under her arm—she takes his part. The Landsman lifts his longsword and his master goes under the Landsman’s arm. She spins around him, deflecting a thrust from his stabsword as she twirls, and then she is standing behind him at the iteration’s end point. She is still, legs slightly apart, hands at her side, and she is holding only one blade. The Landsman, that huge creature of green and metal, slowly falls forward, as much a corpse as any felled tree. His master’s left stabsword hilt protrudes from the unarmoured place beneath the Landsman’s arm. She takes the blade out of the man.