Dark spikes of some black hardwood had been hammered through his wrists and ankles. His belly gaped, a gash with something dark as blackberries inside. He stank, but not so badly, for the weather had remained cool and he had, Michael estimated, been dead less than a week. His face was still human, though the crows had made off with his eyes. Slashes and bums at his elbows, knees and groin spoke of torture.
'They didn't eat this one,' Michael murmured.
The embers of a fire lay on the ground. They had worked on him a long time, judging by the depth of ash.
Blackthorn sprays had been twisted into a ring and pushed down on to his head until they tore the flesh.
Michael's spine prickled. He moved closer. What he had taken to be the tongue was in fact a piece of wood jutting from the mouth. He tugged gingerly at it. A cross.
'He was one of the Brothers,' Cat said tonelessly. 'That is why they did not feast on him. They were afraid, so they killed him the same way his god was killed, to destroy his magic.'
'Magic!' Michael snorted. A deep rage smouldered into life within him. 'Was this your bloody forest people? Mirkady and his like?'
She shook her head. 'This is not a good place, Michael. We should go. The tribe will need warning.'
'Warning of what?'
'Grymyrch. Goblins. They may be watching us now.'
He whipped the Ulfberht out of its scabbard, the iron a black bar in the dim light.
'Let them, the bastards.'
'Don't be stupid. If they wanted you they would take you in the night, or when you were alone. They are not strong in themselves, but are deadly in numbers. And they would swamp you. We must go.'
'Just a moment.'
He hauled out the spikes and let the corpse fall to the ground.
It was hard bending the arms down to its sides, and when he felt the skin slide under his hand he had to pause and reswallow burning bile. He covered the body with leaves and branches, then lashed up a cross of sorts with ivy and burnt sticks, jamming it into the ground. Strange how it outraged him that a priest should die this way, when he had thought little on seeing that other one die in the village with an arrow in his throat. Perhaps it was the isolation of it, the knowledge that he had almost certainly died alone—for the bones that carpeted the ground nearby were much older. Perhaps it was the barbaric nature of his death.
Still a farm boy, he thought with a bitter smile. Still capable of being shocked. The violence in the air was as palpable as the smell of putrefaction. It sickened him, and fed the anger. Who had the corpse been? A hermit seeking enlightenment, or a missionary out hunting souls?
They left the thicket and breathed in the clear, cold air of the valley with relief. The day was wearing round and they hurried on their way back down to the camp, Cat pausing once to listen, head cocked. But it was only a breeze wheezing through the trees. And the pattering on the leaves was not feet, only the first heavy drops of rain, the beginning of a shower that was to fall steadily until dark.
The rain gathered in puddles and streamed from the canopy overhead. The women set about erecting their hide shelters, suspending them from the nearby boughs and placidly tending the fires against their men's return. Those warriors who remained stood guard, leaning on their spears with the rain dripping from their noses and streaking their face paint. A child cried until it was given its mother's thin breast. Michael and Cat sat in silence before their fire while the world beyond became blue with evening and the heavy cloud gathered, lowering over the valley. They had told old Irae, who was in camp, that there might be grymyrch nearby and he was walking the rough perimeter, doing the rounds.
The wood was ominous this evening, the shadows full of malice. Michael felt that the tribe was stepping where no men were supposed to go. He hoped the hunters were safe.
Grymyrch. They were of the Wyrim, Cat told him, and yet were not. They belonged to some branch of the Forest-Folk who had long ago broken away from their cousins and followed a different path, a darker way. Mirkady's people were capable of savagery, but were just as ready to tolerate, even to welcome, an outsider, a human, depending on how he tickled their fancy or challenged their wits. They were a capricious, finicky people, as unpredictable as the weather; whereas the grymyrch were black and wholly evil, scarcely above animals. The Wyrim and the grymyrch had become enemies, and loathed each other, the hatred fuelled by what they recognized of themselves in the other race.
For the Fox-People goblins were a story, a legend to go with the store of other legends they held in their heads. The Forest-Folk they knew of; they were a part of the Wildwood that was familiar. But these new, unseen monsters which Michael had told them of and Cat had afterwards described had Irae looking grey and worried. On the whole, he told Michael, he preferred the dangers of the Knights to the perils of this new land, this unknown region of the wood. The tribes had not been this far south since the Great Journey, when they had trekked steadily, a great multitude of them, from the far mountains in the south north to where the woods were friendlier. That was before the villagers split off to found their settlements, before the Knights or the Brothers, before the Four Roads had been laid down.