Page 46 of The Devils
Cart in a Bog
‘I somehow knew …’ muttered Brother Diaz, ‘when I saw the forbidding plague fence … that I’d soon enough end up on the wrong side of it.’ He was picking his footsteps with irritating care, since half the road had been washed away by old storms and the rest turned to treacherous glue by the current one. ‘Knowing my luck I’ll survive werewolves, crab-people, and sorcerers in order to slip into a ditch and break my neck.’
‘We can hope,’ murmured Vigga. She’d almost been warming to Brother Diaz at times – mostly while fucking him – but since they’d found Alex and Sunny, he’d backslid into the prickly whiner she’d first taken him for, with an added streak of stubborn bitterness. Bitter stubbornness? Both, maybe. As if he hadn’t quite realised he’d been lying with a werewolf till there were other people to notice it.
Her patience had never been the strongest rope on the boat but since they struck off the road and into the forbidden Barony of Whatever, she could feel it fraying further with every step. When night came the moon would be almost full and she could feel it swinging around beyond the clouds, behind the horizon. Hot and cold and numb and tickly all at once. Her collar wasn’t tight, but it felt too tight, so she was forever wriggling at it, desperate to pop the stitches and rip herself free of her clothes to charge snarling through the tangly undergrowth, wet fur glistening in the moonlight and her wet nose full of the sticky spoor of prey, slinking and slobbering in the endless hunt for the good meat.
But she’d promised herself she’d keep the wolf muzzled. She winced as she rubbed at her breastbone, blew out a breath in a puff of mist. Clean, clean, nothing to worry about.
‘I swear I’m being punished.’ Brother Diaz shook his head at the streaming heavens, then glanced at Vigga out of the corner of his eye as if she was part of the punishment.
‘Who made you the hero of the story?’ asked Alex, peering down at her own squelching boots. One had split open at the end to make a sad, flopping mouth through which her broken toenails showed. ‘Maybe I’m being punished.’
‘Or me,’ said Vigga, glowering sideways at Brother Diaz. ‘I’m a stinking pagan, after all, and a murderous savage, and an unrepentant fornicator!’
There was an awkward silence. ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to fornicate with someone who was busy repenting, would you?’ asked Alex. ‘It’d kill the mood!’
Nobody laughed.
‘Maybe it’s a blessing.’ Sunny peered out from under the dripping peak of her hood. ‘The rain hides us. Masks our scent.’
‘You think they’re still following?’ asked Alex.
‘If they’ve got a werewolf …’ Vigga stopped to glare back the way they’d come. ‘It’ll take more’n a few drips to shake ’em off …’
She could feel him out there, somewhere. Almost smell him. Squatting in the brush, bent over her muddy footprints, snuffling and sniffling at her scent. Following her track. Hunting her , the hairy fuck?
‘We should turn the tables,’ she said, and her voice had the wolf’s growl. ‘Hunt them .’
‘The four of us?’ Brother Diaz snorted. ‘We’ll be lucky if we can track down a dry spot to sleep. I may not be an expert in military strategy—’
‘They don’t teach that at a monastery?’ snarled Vigga, having to wipe a little slobber from the corner of her mouth.
Brother Diaz took a step towards her, holding her eye for once, and she thought she saw a hint of scorn there. ‘But Her Holiness put me in charge, and even I know that when the odds are against you, you had better run—’
‘Not when the odds are long against you and there’s no help coming.’ Vigga stepped towards him now, baring her teeth. ‘Then you fall on your enemy when they least expect it, on the ground you choose, at the moment you choose. Kill their strongest, and break the spirit of the rest, and teach ’em a bloody lesson!’
‘That sounds …’ His eyelids fluttered slightly, as though he’d caught a waft of her scent, then he set his jaw, and spat the word in her face. ‘ Absurd. We can’t risk Princess Alexia’s life!’
‘Then you take her on while I go back—’
‘No! I’ve lost half my congregation already and I will get the rest of us to Troy! No one’s fighting!’
Vigga’s turn to snort her scorn. ‘If you win, what a victory! And if you lose, you die gloriously, and, I don’t know …’ When the gothi talked about it she’d followed till the dying gloriously then lost the thread, ‘the Valkyries set a place for you in Valhalla … or something.’
Brother Diaz lifted his chin to glare at Vigga down his nose. Since she was taller, he had to lift his chin quite a long way. ‘I don’t believe in Valkyries .’
She glared back at him, nostrils flared. ‘I don’t believe in monks , yet here you are.’
They stayed there, while the rain pattered down, both clammy with wet, both breathing fast, and to have kissed him would’ve been no effort at all. It was almost an effort not to do it, the fury and the tickle and the moon all mingled. To suck at his tongue, and drag him down in the mud, and she started to make a long, low growl—
‘Enough!’ snapped Alex, poking Brother Diaz in the chest with a pointed finger and making him stumble back and nearly slip in the mud. ‘You, stop riling the werewolf!’
‘Ha!’ said Vigga. ‘You tell him – ow!’ As Alex poked her in the chest.
‘And you , we’re going to Troy, not Valhalla! We’re far outnumbered, Sunny’s still hurt, and you’re the only real fighter among us!’
‘You properly poked my tit,’ grumbled Vigga, rubbing at the bruise.
‘Behave yourself or I’ll poke the other one!’ Alex glared at her, then at Brother Diaz. ‘What the hell happened between the two of you anyway?’
There was an awkward silence.
Vigga licked her lips. ‘Well …’
Brother Diaz swallowed. ‘Er—’
‘What’s that?’ asked Sunny, pointing up the road.
The rain had slacked off. Enough that through the grey haze to the south, Vigga could see a ridge above the trees and, at its end, a jagged outline that had to be man-made.
‘Looks like a bell tower,’ said Brother Diaz, squinting into the rain.
Vigga pushed her hair back, sending a trickle of cold water down her spine, and set off towards the ruin. ‘Might still have a roof,’ she said.