Chapter three: Bandits and a spot of eye gouging
I dreamed again last night, such a dreadfully vivid dream. I dreamed of the Wraithmarsh. I dreamed the banshee that roam the wastes and bogs with the ill-grace and cackling madness of the worst and most pitiable derelict wore my mother's face. I dreamed of the day Oakvale ceased to be.
Once I would call such ghastly nocturnal visions nightmares, but can memory truly be nightmare? I wonder as I sip upon a fine aperitif and warm myself by the fire in my grand parlour if the horror has lost its lustre. Is it possible I have finally grown tired of my lingering guilt? Wraithmarsh has been a blot on the landscape for so long that most of Albion has forgotten what the land was once like. Does this absolve me of responsibility, perchance? Is a man still culpable when no one alive remembers his crimes? Do I even require absolution, I wonder. There is no one left alive to hold me accountable for my choices. Sparrow took my secret to her grave, such a peculiarly noble soul, and not even her offspring know my story. So I wonder, I truly do wonder, what it is that keeps me up at night, unable to draw breath much like that long ago child centuries forgotten.
Enough of this nonsense; I am well past such maudlin twaddle. I live, I thrive, and I…endure. That is enough. It is enough, blast you. I am Reaver and I regret nothing. I will exorcise my ghosts upon the pages of this book and finally rid myself of them once and for all.
Yet I am so dreadfully tired; let us dispense with preliminaries and jump right back to our narrative, shall we?
Oakvale is caught in the chapped palm of mid-winter as we turn back time with the negligent ease of indolent gods. The night is dark and empty. The fresh snow fall blanketing the fields and quilting the roofs gains a sharp, cracking patina of frost as the naked stars peer down upon a midnight sleeping town. All is quiet under a veil of seeming tranquillity. Yet the jackals are never far from the flock.
Our sickly protagonist, young Joshua, is still just about alive despite the dire proclamations of his high-strung mother. His health has improved not a jot, but he has at least failed to decline any further. This is a source of some pride for the child, who considers every breath a minor victory in his ongoing battle against encroaching fatality. He is also greatly heartened by the revelation of his true paternity and has taken it upon himself to beg, plead, and cajole his uncle for any further details regarding his dastardly father, Andy of the Bloodstone Gang.
So far his uncle has been considerably less than obliging and his mother tends to become hysterical at the mere mention of that rag-tag band of mercenaries lurking by the ragged coastland some twenty miles from Oakvale. In between coughing blood and mild asphyxiation the boy has decided that something must be done about these adults. He will have his answers one way or the other, this he swears to himself.
Still on this particular night fate has conspired, as it will do throughout the lad's eventful life, to offer up some unexpected excitement. He is woken from a fitful and disturbed slumber by the sound of shattering glass and cracking wood. Sheer fright gives him the strength to sit bolt upright in his bed, the little toy crossbow miraculously finding its way to his hand in less time than it takes to tell of it. Beyond his bedroom door he hears his mother scream. The boy is out of the bed in a shot, swaying on his two feet from vertigo as he is not used to standing.
"The church!" The boy hears father Terrence rush by his bedroom door, "There are bandits in the church." Following this exclamation there is a pattering thunder of feet and his mother's voice, shrill with rising panic chases her husband's footsteps.
"Terry, Terry yer ruddy arse, ferget the church – don't let 'em know we 'ere!"
The boy is bare foot and dressed in nowt but his nightclothes, the toy crossbow gripped tight in one hand and a fistful of shiny silver nails in the other. Distant but growing ever louder he can hear the chaotic symphony of destruction. The acrid scent of burning pervades his nostrils though he knows not how. Beyond the flimsy confines of the rectory the peaceful world of Oakvale has descended into madness.
"Joshua!"
The door to his bedroom is flung open and his mother bursts in. She is a whirling dervish of loose red hair, tired cotton nightdress and worn slippers. She swoops upon her only son as a hawk swoops down on a field mouse and suddenly he is swung up off his feet, carried like a babe in his mother's arms as she runs towards the front door of the rectory.
"Mother…what…!" Whether due to the excitement of the moment or the crushing strength of his mother's arms it is difficult to tell but the boy is struggling to find breath for speech. His mother drops him back to his own two feet on the cold flagstones of the kitchen as she wrenches open the front door to peer outside. In that moment the woman known as Ginger, or simply mother, undergoes a metamorphosis most profound, she is transformed from nervous, anxious country mouse to fearsome she-wolf standing guard over her cub. In her hand she clasps an eight inch breadknife like she knows how to use it and the sickly glow of fire limns her silhouette as sparks fall like snow in the darkness beyond her questing gaze. Father Terrence is nowhere in sight.
"Stupid man, the church's on fire an' there's nowt he can do f'it now," Ginger shakes her head, eyes skimming the darkness keenly. "Right glad I am that Stan's out o' town; bloody bandits."
"…Bandits?" perking up considerably the boy creeps closer to his mother, even though the smoke of the numerous small fires sprouting from the thatched roofs of the neighbourhood houses and the brilliant cold of the night hits his lungs like a physical blow. The boy huddles closer to his mother. "Mother is it the Bloodstone Gang?"
Ginger does not bother to look back, but her eyes narrow dangerously, "It better bloody not be. I'll rip Andy's balls off wit' my own hands if it is."
This is a fascinating prospect, and the boy is still so captivated by the disturbing visuals evoked by such bloodthirsty declarations that he is startled to the point of heart palpitation when his mother grasps his arm and yanks him forward into the night. "Quick we'll hide in the old Barnaby crypt 'til it's over."
Running through the snow is an experience. The boy can barely walk without wheezing yet now he runs, dragged along like the runty tail of his mother's blazing comet. The snow is shockingly cruel under his bare feet and the ice grasps at his soles, pricking away tender flesh in frigid kisses of biting chill. The night sky is lit from beneath by the grasping tendrils of flame that claw and chase their way up the church's once proud spire and for a moment all the lad can do is turn his face up to that inferno, the heat of which scorches him yards away, in wonder. Had he time to think about his situation the boy would no doubt be quite afraid but in that moment, that glorious moment of panic and heartrending strife it feels as though something in his soul has torn free of tired bondage and now strains for that blistering light of destruction in the same manner desperate souls pine for salvation.
"Joshua!" His mother's voice, sharp as an eagle's cry, jerks him from his dazed wonderment in an instance. He turns wide eyes back to his mother and there is another frozen moment wherein the sight of his mother beckoning to him, arm outstretched as she stands by the open door of an ivy shrouded mausoleum will be forever indelibly etched upon his memory. Then time resumes its mad march forward and a lanky shadow seeps from the greater dark of the cemetery to coalesce right behind his mother.
"'Ello Luv, tryin' t'hide were yer?" An unkempt man, sallow face scarred and pockmarked, reeking of bad ale and blood grabs hold of Ginger from behind, large grubby hands rasping over her skinny hips before flying upward to grope her breasts. "Yer an' me are gunna 'ave some fun." He leers into her ear and his snaggleteeth gleam sickly yellow black in the light of the burning church.
"Ge' off me," Ginger tries to twist around and plunge the breadknife into soft bandit flesh, but the man is too quick for her, he grabs her wrist and twists and the knife is suddenly angled for her own body.
"Shouldn' a dun dat girlie," the bandit is still grinning cruelly as he bears down on Ginger, who struggles in vain, "Gotta kill yer now."
"Mother!"
It is all over in the blinking of an eye, and ever after the boy will never be able to recall the correct sequence of events. It happened that blasted fast. All the same he will remember the firelight glinting on the notched edge of the knife and the look of despairing outrage on his mother's face as she is driven to her knees, the blade arcing downward. He will remember also the almost comical look of total surprise that blossomed upon the brigand's face when blood, black as pitch, burst forth from his ruptured eye socket, now sporting the addition of a rather shiny nail.
"Aghhh!" The bandit went reeling backward, dropping the knife, both hands clawing at his eyes.
"Get away from my mother, you bastard!"
P-tow, the sound of the toy crossbow unleashing another bolt is quite unlike anything else, and then there is a nail embedded through the bandit's ugly paw, the same hideous mitt that had been groping for his mother's fallen knife in the snow.
"Joshua!" Ginger dives forward, scrambling over the snow towards her child, who stands firm in the cold, his hands moving in a blur. The bandit lurches forward, snarling incoherently, only to be knocked back as another nail finds a home in his one remaining eye. The man screams like a beast at bay, and falls to his knees, blood and thicker liquids oozing around his fingers, the palms of his hands clamped to his face as if he sought to keep his splattered eyeballs in their sockets by holding them there.
For the little lad Joshua it seems as though time itself stands still. Where there was darkness and tiger stripped fire shadow before, now there is perfect clarity. He sees more clearly now, amid the snow and ash flurries than he has ever seen. He can hear the sobbing rasps of the brigand's pained breathing, his mother's voice echoing strangely in his ears and the glorious thunder of his own heartbeat, strong and proud for the very first time. P-tow, p-tow, p-tow; he fires consecutive nails from his toy so fast he breaks the mechanism on the last shot, not that it matters. The nails fly through the air, harbingers of this man's doom, to strike right through his palms even as the man seeks to shield his face. Another howl erupts from the man as his hands are skewered to his face by three inch nails and when he opens his mouth wide on that last yowl of pain the third and final nail flies right inside that gaping maw and pops out the other side.
The man falls face first into the snow, twitching and writhing, while he gargles in his own blood.
"Sweet Avo's knickers," Ginger gapes at her son as the boy pokes at his broken toy and pouts. Neither mother nor child pay any mind to the blood staining the snow black at their feet. The roar of breaking timber and flame shudders through the air as the roof of the church collapses in on itself and sparks light the sky many feet into the air. Ginger grabs up her knife and kicks the bandit's body over.
"Yer got what was comin' t'yer." Kneeling she went about the grizzly task of pulling loose the nails from the corpse, wiping bits of viscera off the points onto her nightdress. "Here, come take yer nails. We might need 'em."
"Mother where are we going?" Dragged along at his mother's heels once more, the little lad of our tale looks back confusedly at the crypt. "I thought…"
"Don't be daft," his mother snaps quickly still scanning the darkness with eye straining intensity, "That tomb won't be much good as a hidin' place wit' a body lyin' in front of it. The snow's all bloody too, can't hide that." Ginger squeezed her son's hand, "We'll try to get clear o' the village through the back woods."
The rush of the kill ebbing away rapidly the boy stumbles along after his mother, breath laboured, lungs on fire, vision erupting into irritating blue and yellow speckles from oxygen depletion and exhaustion. When he slips on a patch of frost and near falls face first into a rotted woodpile at the back of the cemetery it becomes painfully apparent that escape is an unattainable dream.
"Josh, sweetheart, yer have to get up." Ginger is cold, shaking, frightened. She can barely feel her own fingers and toes and her heart twists into a knot lodged in her throat when her child begins to retch blood, his whooping coughs loud as thunderclaps in the silence of the cemetery. She drops to her knees in the snow and gathers her boy to her, wiping the blood and sputum from bloodless blue lips. "You mustn't fall asleep, sweetheart, not out 'ere."
"…Chest…hurt…mam…" the boy chokes back more bloody coughs and Ginger begins to rock them both, rubbing his back firmly. She closes her eyes and does not pray for she knows the gods don't care for simple folk like them. Through the graveyard she can see the red winking eyes of torchlight and the loud tramping of bandit boots on snow coming towards them. Her hand clenches on her knife. Better than most Ginger knows exactly what happens in a bandit raid. She's already borne one bandit bastard and she'll not let another bandit touch her; she'll die first. Looking down on her son, never strong and never like to survive she wonders if it would be mercy to slit his throat now and save him from the bandits. The thought is fleeting; she would no more kill her child here than smother him with a pillow in his bed.
"Oh Joshua, I wanted better fer yer then this." Her child does not answer her; he is already deep glazed within the darkness of hypothermic dreams. The bandits are closing in, capering like phantoms amid the gravestones, haloed in hellfire red flame courtesy of their torches.
"Oi, Rodder's where are yer?" One voice caterwauls from the left.
"Rod – Neeeeyyyyyyy!" Another bellows very close by and just down wind.
"What the bleedin'…!" A final voice down by the Barnaby mausoleum cuts through the night. "Oi, boys come and look at this. Rodder's is mincemeat."
Ginger sucks in a quick breath. One of the bandit's is so close she can hear his loud breathing and the crackle-hiss of snow melting as it hits the flames of his torch. As the bandit turns to amble back towards the Barnaby tomb Ginger makes a decision, hardly a wise one but then again mothers with children to protect are rarely wise. After all when one considers the crushing poverty, disease and danger of this world in which many women chose to rear their young one must assume that logic and maternal instinct are distinctly mutually exclusive.
In fact it is really remarkable all things considered that the population of Albion has not dwindled to nothing centuries ago. Certainly for the vast majority of people there is precious little profit to be had in their short, miserable little lives. Ah well one poor sod's misfortune is simply an opportunity to exploit, as I always say.
But enough of this idle musing, back in the moment of Ginger makes her move. Abandoning her boy, she throws herself, knife at the ready, at the back of the departing bandit, emitting as she does so a rather impressive bloodthirsty roar.
"Die you bastard!"
The bandit whirls on his heels just in time to have an eight inch breadknife rammed into his left eye, and deeper still into his brain; as the old idiom goes, like mother like son. There is nothing better to unite a family than blinding one's foes in a most painful manner.