A Different Kingdom(21)

The Fox-People had fallen into silence. They were not cooking anything, though there was a crude spit across the fire, and a good store of wood at its side drying out dose to the flames. They looked utterly weary and downcast. One in particular fingered his flint dagger as though he meant to cut his own throat with it.

Movement on the edge of the firelight drew Michael's attention. Something struggled there on the soaking ground, and he heard again the moan of pain that he had heard earlier. There was a man pinned to the earth like an insect, his hands jerking uselessly at his bonds. He was a fox man, but he had been staked out, and his headdress lay beside his cheek .There was the dark shine of thick clotted liquid on his naked chest, and Michael saw more of it bubble and pop out of the hole there as he writhed. Michael's stomach did a long, lazy roll and he reswallowed a gulp of vomit, feeling it sear his throat.

A wolf howled, long and forlorn, off in the distance. The Fox-People twitched at that, glancing up through the trees to the heavy sky. It was wholly dark now, and there would be no moon visible through the cloud, though it was almost full.

At last they seemed to come to some sort of unspoken consensus. They got up from the fire, hefting their weapons, and made their way over to where their comrade struggled on the ground. One of them carried a spitting branch from the fire that threw a kaleidoscope of shadows along the boles of the trees. Then they stood looking down, as if waiting.

The bound man growled deep in his throat, making Michael jump. He crept closer.

He could see little. The lying man was threshing and tugging at his ties, and the growling sounds were becoming louder. One of the fox men backed away a step as though in horror. Michael stared in disbelief.

The man on the ground was changing, darkening, lengthening. He was growing a black fur as quickly as steam mists a window, and his body was bending, arms flexing at non-existent joints, his growl becoming a gargled bellow of animal rage. Michael saw his face change, the snout push out and the ears lengthen. There was the glint of teeth, impossibly long. The head snapped from side to side and two yellow lights lit up in the eyes.

'Jesus!' Michael whispered.

He was no longer a man, but some huge, misshapen animal, barrel chested, long limbed and black with hail" One hand, a paw now, came free

And a spear was thrust with incredible force into its chest, pinning it to the ground. The mananimal screamed, and from the surrounding woods Michael heard more than one wolf howl in answer, a desperate, despairing note in the sound.

But the thing's struggles were weakening. Other spears were being jabbed into its still living body. It was impaled half a dozen times. The huge head stopped its snapping. The eyes dulled.

Immediately the fox men knelt and began working on it with their knives. Michael thought he heard one of them weeping, but the rain was too loud in the wood to be sure. He was soaked to the bone, but hardly realized it. His whole attention was on the bestial scenes at the border of the sinking firelight.

They stood up, one holding a slippery, steaming mess in both hands. Then they repaired to the fire, leaving the gutted wreck on the ground behind them. A two-fisted gobbet of meat was slipped on to the spit and the blood streamed from it to sizzle in the fire. The men licked their fingers and squatted on their haunches once more. Two of them covered their faces with their hands. All began keening softly, a low wail of grief. They watched the thing's heart char over the flames, turning it with the prick of a blood-sticky knife. They were covered in blood, soaked with it, and their face paint had bleared in streaks down their filthy faces.

When the meat had hardly been seared they cut off chunks of it and ate, holding the gobbets up to the tree-covered sky before swallowing them with great solemnity. They ate the entire heart, shaking out globs of coagulated blood sometimes, jerking off bites with twists of their head. And when they had finished one of them produced a bulging skin bag from his furs and drank from it, passing it round. Even from where he sat Michael could smell the spirit stink in the air, potent and flammable. They each took a long swallow, wiping their sticky faces, and then two of them went over to the corpse again and began carving it up, skinning and gralloching it as though it were a butchered calf. There was the grate of stone on bone, a sharp crack, and the hideous head rolled free on the ground, the teeth catching the flames for a second.

'Michael! Michael!' A familiar voice carrying over the rain and the sizzle of the fire. Michael started. His grandfather's voice, coming from the fields beyond the wood. The Fox-People gave no sign that they had heard it. It was not part of their realm, Michael realized. He backed away slowly, conscious of the numbing chill that the rain had beaten into him. He was clumsy, tired, but the rain covered his blunderings. The flame light receded and then disappeared as though a switch had been thrown, and he could see the slightly lighter patch where the wood ended and the fields began, the figure there with a lantern burning, bright as the fire he had left. Pat, his grandfather, tall as a hill in the pouring night, calling for him. He plashed back across the river, left the dank woods and laboured out towards the meadow, weary as a whipped hound, his mind in a whirl.