The Blinding Knife(247)

They left and hadn’t gone half an hour farther up the coast before a putrid smell rolled over the skimmer. It was death.

“There’s a village a league or two from here,” one of the Blackguards said. “Weedling, it’s called. I grew up just a few bays down.”

The skimmer cruised slowly into Weedling Bay and Kip was relieved to see that the village wasn’t burned to the ground. But there were hundreds of gray shapes crowded onto the beach so thickly that there was hardly any sand visible. Perhaps a dozen locals were walking across the backs of the shapes, carrying machetes and buckets.

“Are those beached whales?” Cruxer asked.

“Orholam have mercy,” someone said.

The wind brought a blast of putrefying flesh and blood to the skimmer and Kip almost gagged. He felt funny. Not just sick or disgusted, but trapped. He wanted to jump into the waves and swim. He wasn’t even sure where. It was a crazed, caged animal feeling.

“Commander,” one of the Blackguards said, “I don’t feel so good.”

“It’s just dead fish,” Ironfist said. “Kalif and Presser, draft us some oars.”

They drafted oars and oar locks and the Blackguards rowed the ship in. When they got within forty paces, the villagers finally noticed them. Some fled outright, while the others merely watched them with hooded eyes.

A tall older man with some kind of long-bladed spear that he had been using to cut into the thick whaleskin stood on a half-butchered whale with one hand on his hip. “Well, the sea she brings us all sorts of insanity, don’t she?” he said.

“Are you the conn here?” Commander Ironfist asked.

“Such as we have,” the man said.

“I’m Commander Ironfist of the Chromeria Blackguard.”

“Ironfist? Aye, we’ve heard that name here. Curious boat you have. I’m Conn Mossbeard.”

He didn’t, so far as Kip could tell, actually have moss in his beard, but it was dyed a pale lichen green.

“What happened here?” Ironfist asked.

“Something’s been building for a couple weeks, though it’s not near so strong today,” the conn said. “Livestock acting like there were coyotes in the yard, but none were, you know what I mean? Plowhorses and oxen shying from their harnesses. Horses spooked. Pigs attacking like all the sudden they thought they were javelinas. We had people injured by the score, by beasts they’d known their whole lives. We’re farmers and fishermen here, we knew something wasn’t right. Still don’t know what, though. They say great powers clash, small folk suffer, I don’t know.” He spat.

Ironfist didn’t interrupt, gestured for the restive Blackguards not to speak either. If the stench of the decaying whales hadn’t been so overpowering, Kip would have jumped off the boat.

What’s gotten into me?

“Whales beached yesterday. Heard of it before. Never seen it, and never heard of so many doing it at once. Handy placement if they’re going to do it, I thought at first. We could get enough meat and oil to last us years, but…” He pulled his tunic up and Kip saw that he had a bandage around his side. It was bloody. “I started giving orders, like I done a thousand times. People here know you got to work together for big jobs like this. But they attacked me instead. Men and women I’ve known my whole life. Attacked me and run off. The animals are gone, too. It’s like a madness came. ’Cept it didn’t hit us all. The steadiest men and women, we’re all still here. Coro over there, he used to be an idiot, had fits when he didn’t get exactly one biscuit at dawn, exactly two pieces of bacon at lunch. Now he’s as right as you or me. But them’s were normal, most of them are long gone. Don’t know where. Don’t know what to do but butcher what we can and hope this all blows over like a squall.”

“Did any of the people act… um, oddly before they went?” a Blackguard named Pots asked. He turned to Commander Ironfist. “Your pardon, Commander.”

“We’re good people here,” the conn said. “Decent. Devout.”

“People do strange things when they’re not in their right mind. Things that aren’t truly their fault,” Pots said.

The conn grimaced. Spat again. “Seemed like folk lost all sense of dec… of decoration, if you take my meaning. I saw… I saw.” He spat again. Avoided eye contact. “Folks were rutting like animals. Folks walking about nekked. Folks grunting and howling and barking. Barking. You heard people called barking mad? I thought it was jus’ something people say. I saw men I’ve known forty years barking at each other. Scared me half to death. Like they was made animals in all but body.”