Issue #265 • Nov. 22, 2018

“Feral Attachments at Kulle Bland Bergen,” by T. S. McAdams

“How the Mighty,” by Dan Micklethwaite

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FERAL ATTACHMENTS AT KULLE BLAND BERGEN

by T. S. McAdams

         In the morning, Harald and Olen examine the twisted hinges and know they can’t reattach the door. Olen gives Harald a reindeer hide to curtain the open doorway. He will take no payment.

         They stand in the trampled snow of the clearing and look at the forest. The forest is safe enough during the day. The boy is still tethered inside the shieling, and his ankle is bleeding again from his efforts to pull loose. Harald left Solveig inside working a piece of cloth under the tether as a bandage. Olen’s wife died years ago, but she loved him to the end and may love him yet, which must be a comfort.

         Olen says, “I should check on my herd.”

         Harald says, “I’ll go with you.” He can take the musket. Nothing will threaten Solveig in the sunny clearing, and Olen’s daughter Piija is here, cooking or sewing in Olen’s tent.

         Olen says, “They’re all right until tomorrow.”

         Harald nods. He should go talk to the boy again, even if there’s no response. He’s about to say this, but voices from the path drive his soul into his chest, where it crowds his heart for a moment; then he remembers about the spring visit.

         Olen says, “The old man with the mustache longer than his beard?”

         “He retired,” Harald says. Supplies arrive in spring and fall, and the spring shipment brings an agent of the University to assess Harald and Solveig’s work. Olen passes their hill twice a year, coming down from the mountains in early spring and going up in midsummer, often stopping a week or more, so he knew Professor Lang, a cheerful, cynical foreigner who never pressed them for results. Lang used to tell Harald and Solveig, “By Heaven, when you say we know nothing of trolls, you will say it with authority!”

         Olen came and went before last year’s visit from Professor Persson. Persson does no fieldwork, but he has read every reputable monograph and studied preserved specimens and does not shirk the duty, he says, of noting other scholars’ failings.

         Harald and Olen wait, and soon a horse and three men emerge blinking from the forest. Only a few sunbeams penetrate the trees, fluttering and disappearing like combustible insects as branches move overhead. The horse, large, black, impressive, and poorly suited to the terrain, pulls a heavily laden sledge. Two of the men are herders, if only by family; southern reindeer herders lost their traditional range generations ago. Harald nods to one, called JoKgu, whom he recognizes from other years.

         Persson has learned practicality during a year as emissary and wears a deerskin jacket much like his attendants’, but his professorial robes are doubtless packed on the sledge. When the sun blindness passes, he says, “Good day, Professor Kittelsen.”

         Harald says, “Good morning and welcome.” Persson looks expectant, so Harald says, “Won’t you have a seat on the woodpile?”

         Persson smiles, almost good-naturedly. “I had somewhat forgotten the charms of—what do you call this place? Small Mountain?”

         “Hill Among Mountains,” Harald says. This is not merely a nickname. Harald knows the station is named Kulle Bland Bergen in University documents. Solveig emerges from the shieling, pushing past the new hide curtain, and Persson greets her too as Professor Kittelsen. Then he does sit down on the woodpile. He doesn’t acknowledge Olen or introduce his attendants.

         Persson says, “I’ll want to rest before the official interview, but give me a foretaste. Have you made your great breakthrough? Have our legendary scholars of anthropomorphic mating discerned the nature of troll pair-bonds?”

         Solveig says, “They don’t form pair-bonds.”

         “As far as we can tell,” says Harald, rebuking her imperious judgment. She pretends not to hear, and that’s a contemptuous dismissal of his effeminate reservations. They’re past the need to rehearse familiar arguments. Also, before yesterday, when Harald caught the wild boy, they no longer shared a bed.

         “Well,” says Persson, “perhaps you’ve mastered the rudiments of the troll language?”

         Olen says, “I don’t think trolls have a language. They use human speech, sometimes, to talk to humans but not to each other.”

         Harald says, “Professor Persson, allow me to introduce my friend Olen Somby.”

         Persson nods to Olen, or perhaps only glances at him. He addresses Harald. “Human speech?”

         Harald says, “We’ve only had one opportunity to observe this. We don’t know if it’s communicative or purely emotive.”

         Piija appears and speaks to Persson’s hirelings in the herders’ language, and Harald understands enough to know she is offering smoked meat and dried berries. One of the men says something Harald can’t decipher, and Piija laughs. Olen says nothing.

         Piija is old enough to marry. Harald knows Olen doesn’t want a son-in-law with no reindeer, but Olen is quickly reconciled to bearable disappointments. He understands, perhaps as well as Harald, the greater losses that lie in wait for fathers.

* * *

         Harald and Solveig named the site Kulle Bland Bergen when they topped the hill and found horizon still looming over them on every side. The ground was mostly submerged under spruce and pine needles and moss, living and decaying matter, with boulders breaching in pods and mushrooms bubbling up everywhere; some wholesome, most poison.

         Hired men made the journey with them and stayed to build a small log shieling. Harald made them wait three days and cut only trees observed in the same position each morning. It was that kind of forest. Workers obeyed him because the madness of the enterprise only confirmed his status. Would the University sponsor any other scholars, much less newly minted graduates, in long-term observation of unobservable mountain trolls?

         Harald and Solveig were academic heirs apparent, favored disciples of Asbjørnsen and von Linne, the two great authorities on Anthropomorpha. Even before graduation, their joint study of field goblins, based on existing literature and new observations, showed that Homo monstrosus vulgus practice exogamous mating; Professor Strindberg had to retire his popular lectures on goblin promiscuity.

         When Harald and Solveig mated, people said Asbjørnsen and von Linne pushed their protégés together to create a dynasty, but Harald and Solveig married for love. For love, Solveig put aside goblins and adopted Harald’s plan to investigate Homo monstrosus arcanus, even convincing her distant relation Count Blessom to fund the project.

         Why she is still here ten years later is more difficult to explain. She may find it hard to imagine leaving the place they once had a son.

* * *

         They lost Bragi—Harald lost him—in late spring, when the snow was mostly gone and meadows were livid with velvetbells, ogre-thistle, and mountain orchid. Bragi was four, and they had been six seasons at Kulle Bland Bergen. They had precise notes on footprints and night calls, a barrel of flinty scat that accumulated in certain gullies, scores of contradictory facts attested by migrating reindeer herders. They had yet to see a troll.

         Bragi had big eyes and ears, and Harald teased Solveig that she had her goblin after all, but goblins are bald and show teeth only in fear or aggression. Bragi had curly hair and laughed with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open, as though he meant to swallow the moon. He sprawled across their laps at night, waving his feet to foolish songs about geese and lemming-hawks that Solveig learned from her own mother. Harald can’t remember the words now, and he can’t ask his wife.

         That day wasn’t cold, and Harald was in shirtsleeves, but Bragi wore a little cloak and a tall herder’s cap. The cap was a present from Olen. They were close enough to see the peaked roof of the shieling but too deep in forest shade for Harald to let go Bragi’s hand. He shouldn’t have needed a bird to remind him of that. He wouldn’t try to explain the bird when he documented the encounter, going on as one does, as Solveig did, though without laughing or singing her mother’s songs.

         Harald didn’t study Aves, and he can’t account for a dipper that flitted up from the stream to bounce on a spruce branch vomiting chirps and squeaks as though pent notes would burst its crop. All Harald knows of birds is a recurring dream, just birdsong and the slow realization that everything is gone. The first time he had this dream, he turned to Solveig, but she said, “If the song was so dire, why didn’t you act more quickly?” Whatever his failures, what right could she have to ask him such a question and lie in the dark waiting for an answer?

         He was examining slashes on a tree trunk, slashes not made by a bear, when the bird erupted in warning or remonstrance, and he turned to see Bragi trotting into deeper shade. Harald called after him, the dipper loosed a final warble, and Harald could see the troll. Half a head taller than Harald and twice as wide, it was hairier than a man but not furred by Asbjørnsen’s definition of fur as contiguous strands with no intervening space, a distinction von Linne rejects. Its only clothing was a crude mantle, a soiled animal skin with a perforation for its head. It had no tail, but Harald would later confirm that many trolls do have them.

         Bragi followed it down the hill and out of sight, oblivious to Harald, who called and squawked after him, a frantic parody of the discordant bird. Tracks were scarce in drifts of spruce needles, but islands of damp earth confirmed that Bragi was on his own feet and should have been easy to catch. Harald ran over a mile without sighting Bragi again.

         The tracks stopped before a boulder spattered with gray-white lichen, as though bird droppings had taken root and sprouted into a vertical scrubland. Harald circled the boulder calling Bragi, then calling to the troll, offering a more generous ransom than he could have paid. He tried to repeat the offer in the language of the herders, but his vocabulary was limited, and he could only shout “I need the baby!”

         After he dulled and bent his knife hacking the boulder where the tracks ended, there was nothing left to do except walk back and tell Solveig. She was standing in the doorway, holding a piece of carved wood, maybe three feet long.

         “Where’s Bragi?”

         “There was a troll.”

         “Where is he?”

         “I couldn’t catch up.”

         “Where—?”

         “I don’t know where they went.”

         The carving was a person, a boy, not skillful but recognizably equipped with curly hair and large ears. She had found it in front of the door.

         Lacking other options, Harald and Solveig followed folk wisdom and tortured it. They couldn’t bear to deface it, somehow, so they only attacked the base, scoring it with Harald’s bent knife and charring it with embers from the fire. When that did nothing, they began to coddle it. They lay the carving in Bragi’s cot and put a blanket over it at night.

         When Harald felt himself unwelcome next to Solveig, he began to sleep with the carving. On good nights, instead of birdsong he dreamt the carving had turned back into Bragi, who rolled against him in his sleep, putting a hand on Harald’s face. In the morning, Solveig would look at him looking at the carving, and Harald would think about how to answer in case she said she forgave him, but she just looked. Maybe that’s why she stays; maybe she needs to see this punishment.

* * *

         Four years later, almost exactly, Solveig found a wild boy in the company of two male trolls.

         At first, she took him for a juvenile troll himself, which would have been significant. Harald and Solveig had both seen trolls since acquiring the wood baby (which did not prove that was the reason), but they had seen no evidence of families. There was no apparent courtship before two trolls, usually male and female, in response to no clear signal, half-concealed themselves among the nearest ferns or clubmosses for solemn copulation.

         No attachment seemed to result. Young were associated with particular females, presumably the mothers, but rarely interacted with males until nearly grown. As usual, it wasn’t clear whether Solveig’s three were a social group or separate individuals drawn to a place where one found a resource; in this case, a beaver dam they could pull apart to eat pups wintering inside.

         Solveig watched from about a hundred elbows off, what they called Arbitrary Safe Distance, meaning they really didn’t know but they had survived getting that close before. She didn’t recognize the boy because he was inhumanly hairy. This is common with Homo ferus; they tend to lose the hair, along with their unnatural strength, if they relearn human language and become civilized. When the trolls had eaten the beaver pups, the boy turned his face towards Solveig, and she realized he was something else. She put a hunk of bread on a rock. She denied infringing Arbitrary Safe Distance to do this.

         Bread wouldn’t have worked with most feral children, who commonly refuse to eat anything but raw meat, though the bears and wolves who raise them don’t mind human food; but the troll-boy was different. He ate the bread and followed Solveig back to the shieling.

         They arrived after sunrise, snow ablaze in the clearing, and this caused the boy no obvious discomfort. He left footprints with very little arch, similar to troll tracks. He had five toes, but so do trolls, sometimes. His trollish body hair differed in both disposition and color from his cap of boyish curls. Harald thought he could be as young as eight years old, in spite of his size, with ears that lay flat to his head and didn’t seem especially large but certainly weren’t small. Many a big-eared toddler grew into a child whose ears fit just that way.

         Harald said, “You can’t know it’s Bragi.”

         Solveig said, “He isn’t Bragi.”

         Harald said, “He could be. You don’t know.”

         The boy came back for Solveig’s handouts, always at dusk or dawn, though the sun didn’t especially hurry his retreat to the forest. He didn’t enter the shieling. He didn’t respond to greetings. He ignored a pair of boots Harald left with Solveig’s food. Harald always followed him down the hill and always lost him, tracks ending abruptly as any troll’s.

         Once, chasing the wild boy, Harald saw two female trolls in a sort of muttering faceoff he and Solveig had seen twice before, interrupted once by sunrise and once by a moose, so they don’t know how it ends. They don’t even know if the behavior is sociable or antagonistic. Solveig said, “What happened next?”

         Harald said, “I was following the boy.”

         “So you walked away?”

         “Yes.”

         “You followed the wild boy to another dead end.”

         “Yes.”

         “If trolls no longer matter to you, Harald Kittelsen—”

         “What? What should we do instead?” Harald’s voice was composed, but he could feel his face grimacing as wildly as hers. They stared at each other, mute and insistent, knowing the exchange was over and they might not talk for days.

         It could be that Solveig stays at Kulle Bland Bergen because nothing matters to her except scholarship. It could be she was always that heartless and it took him this long to see it.

* * *

         The day before yesterday, melting snow dripped from the roof and Olen appeared, bringing his herd down from the mountains to calve. He always pitches his dome-shaped tent in the same spot next to the shieling, and they think of him as a neighbor. Olen has lost children, so he understands, but he has four left, so perhaps he doesn’t.

         Olen could always see trolls. He once told Harald many children go to the trolls and some come back. A wise man among his people, Olen feels obliged to say cryptic things from time to time, but he is mostly easy with Harald. He’s older than Harald’s father was the last time Harald saw him but younger than Professor Asbjørnsen. He is Harald’s only friend. Harald showed Olen the net he was fashioning to catch Bragi—of course the wild boy is Bragi—and Olen said, “Friend Harald, this is not a good plan. You don’t know the boy is your son. And it would be easier to drug him.”

         They didn’t tell Solveig. Piija baked the herbs into a loaf, and Harald left it with Solveig’s offering at the edge of the clearing. Bragi preferred Solveig’s loaf and didn’t finish Piija’s, but Olen said he ate enough. When Bragi was asleep, Harald and Olen carried him to his childhood bed, still under a windowsill cluttered with wooden tops, leather balls, stones that once appealed to a four-year-old. Olen had taken apart Harald’s net and soaked the twine in a bucket of water with tree sap and other things. They tied seven strands to Bragi’s ankle, braided them together, and tied seven knots to the bed, which is attached to the wall. Once dry, Olen said, the knots could never be untied; the tether would have to be cut. Under the hair, Bragi’s shins were scarred by life as a wild thing.

         Bragi had been hurt only once in four years with Harald and Solveig. Harald used to hold him belly down like a bird in flight and run with him to make him laugh. Inevitably, Harald tripped, scraping Bragi from hip to shoulder. Bragi cried for a long time, making Harald’s stomach ache, and when the bruises went away, Harald resolved to keep him rosy and unmarked for the rest of his life.

         This memory depleted Harald as he checked the knots. Solveig sat and watched from the other bed, attached to the opposite wall but still very close because the shieling was not wide. She didn’t interfere, only said, “You know he isn’t Bragi.”

         When the boy woke, he stood and kicked against the tether. There was a sound like cracking wood but also like the sound wooden buildings make at night without cracking. The workers did a good job years ago. Bragi sat down, expressionless, and Harald said, “That’s only until you remember. You’re our son.” He held up the wood baby. “This was you.”

         The boy was unresponsive, but that didn’t mean anything; there was no reason to think the real Bragi would recognize the carving.

* * *

         Homo ferus are never civilized without physical discipline. Parents who recapture wild children are often too fainthearted to effect the cure themselves and send the children to monks or nuns.

         Far from any monastery, Harald had only Olen, who reluctantly cut himself a switch. Piija made reindeer stew. Harald took two bowls and seated himself on Solveig’s bed. “Bragi, look,” he said. The stew already had Bragi’s attention, but talking should be part of it. Solveig stood behind Olen with folded arms, ready to make them stop. Harald said, “Watch, Son.” He spooned five precise bites, then handed a bowl and spoon to Bragi.

         Bragi used the spoon, but he spooned much faster than he could swallow, and twice he choked, regurgitated into the bowl, and scooped the mess into his mouth again. “No, Bragi!” Harald said. “Like this!” He repeated his demonstration, but Bragi wouldn’t look up. Olen didn’t hit him hard. Still, Bragi’s howl sprayed more stew than the bowl he threw against the wall. He howled through Harald’s useless reassurances, and when Harald touched his shoulder, Bragi flung him away with one hand, and Harald bruised a hip on the floor and ribs against Solveig’s bed.

         “No more,” Solveig said. “I know you mean it for good, but no more.” That was yesterday, and the trolls attacked last night.

         It was the most cooperation they ever saw between arcanus. Harald and Solveig, by long habit, are nearly as nocturnal as trolls, but they spent the afternoon trying to soothe Bragi, who kicked against the tether until he bled. That would leave another scar. Solveig brought him white carrots and sourdough bread, and Harald sang a circle-dance song, hoping his wife would take the hint and sing old favorites. At sunset, the boy settled without really calming. He sat on his bed and sniffed at the evening, and Harald and Solveig lay down back to back on Solveig’s bed, Harald wondering if she would turn to him in his dreams as the wood baby did.

         The trolls lined up at the edge of the clearing, closer than Arbitrary Safe Distance, looking enough like boulders and stumps that they might have gone unnoticed but for their guttural hoots. As far as Harald could see through the windows, they had encircled the shieling. When they advanced, crunching through the snow, the trolls called, “The boy! The boy!” and Bragi answered, “The forest! The cave!”

         Harald said, “Bragi, you don’t belong in the forest. You’re not a troll. You’re Bragi Kittelsen. You need schooling, proper clothes, proper food. Don’t you remember Uncle Olen’s cheese?” Bragi used to love reindeer cheese. Solveig had found the musket and was rummaging in a chest, the wrong chest; powder and balls were in the small chest under the bed.

         A troll wrenched the door from the shieling, threw it backwards into the darkness, and stepped into the kitchen, three troll-steps away. Two smoldering logs in the fireplace lit the mossy trunks of its legs. The axe that cut the logs was outside.

         The troll retreated as clanging advanced from the direction of Olen’s tent, and Olen took its place in the doorway, brandishing a handbell like a dark, noisy torch. A faint jingling from the tent told them he had left Piija with a string of pellet bells and brought the stronger ward to their rescue. With such a friend to help, how could they fail to lead Bragi back to himself? Solveig put a hand on Olen’s, in thanks, Harald thought at first, but Bragi was curled face to knees with his hands over his ears, and she may have wanted to quiet the bell.

* * *

         Persson says the boy must go back to the University with him. Harald is no more impressed than Solveig by Persson’s authority, but they should consider the idea. For Harald, sending the boy to Asbjørnsen would be like sending him to a grandparent. Wouldn’t Solveig like to see what Professor von Linne can do for their son?

         Solveig says, “This is our study.”

         Harald is not unfamiliar with the strain of resentments too large for his abdomen, chest, and skull. He sometimes exhausts himself by chopping wood or simply clenching his body in the dark until only sullenness remains, but so much arrogance with everything at stake demands a full-throated response; when he finds the words, he will wither her.

         He’s interrupted by Persson and JoKgu and the other herder pushing past the hide curtain, squeezing into the kitchen. JoKgu carries a coil of rope. Harald is still remembering words, so he only raises an eyebrow. Persson says, “I’m taking the feral boy.”

         Bragi stares at the forest through the window in the opposite wall. There’s a small pool of blood beneath his tethered foot. At the window behind Bragi, Olen says something in the herders’ language. Persson’s men look away. Piija joins her father and says something, two or three sentences, and the new herder says, “Okay, okay.” He turns awkwardly in the tight space, bumping JoKgu with his shoulder, and leaves the shieling. Persson says, “Bring him back.”

         JoKgu says, “He won’t come.”

         “You will do your job?”

         “Yes.”

         Solveig picks up the musket, which is loaded now. Feelings and ideas move through Harald’s body, and he doesn’t decide what to do, any more than water does. The channel is there, or it forms, and the river flows.

         He tells Solveig, “Let them try. Bring the gun.” She trusts him enough to follow him from the shieling, and they stand outside with Olen. The wind is cold, but it smells more like mud than snow. Moments later, Persson stumbles out the door, tangles in the deerhide, almost loses his balance. There’s a gash on his forehead, maybe from hitting a bedframe, a chest, a windowsill, even the fireplace, and he is supporting JoKgu, who has something drastically wrong with one leg.

         Persson yells, “Einár! Your colleague is injured! Will you refuse to help with this too?” Piija and the new herder come from the other side of the shieling and help JoKgu limp towards Olen’s tent.

         With one man hurt and one unwilling, Persson isn’t much of a threat, but Harald says, “My wife will shoot you if you interfere again.”

* * *

         Of course, Solveig remains at Kulle Bland Bergen out of love, and Harald understands this when she betrays him. There’s a protective jingling from Olen’s tent, but it’s the frantic bird that wakes Harald, a dipper that shouldn’t be singing after dark.

         Bragi is gone. Solveig kneels on the floor, holding the knife she used to free him. “He’s our son,” she says hopelessly, motioning towards the bloodstain on the floor, now the size and shape of a deer’s entrails.

         Outside, lumpish figures plunge into the forest. JoKgu, leaning on a stick, tries to coax Persson into a tent. Persson clearly doesn’t see the lumbering two-headed troll that drives JoKgu into the tent without him, but Persson retreats from Harald. Noticing the musket in his hand, Harald rests the butt on the ground. The snow is patchy and scuffed, and moonlight discloses few prints, none with five toes. When the snow is gone, spruce and pine needles will dry on the ground, and Harald will smell the coming summer, the passing of another spring. Maybe Piija will marry Einár and Olen will climb the mountains alone.

         Back in the shieling, he finds Solveig tucking the wood baby into Bragi’s bed. Harald and Solveig lie down together, and Solveig eventually falls asleep. Harald lies awake with one hand on the musket, hoping to protect what’s left.

Copyright © 2018 T. S. McAdams

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T. S. McAdams made his first sale to Beneath Ceaseless Skies (“Grassland” in BCS #235) and vows that Scott H. Andrews hasn’t seen the last of him yet. McAdams’s work has also appeared in Madcap Review, Santa Monica Review, Pembroke, and Jersey Devil Press.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

HOW THE MIGHTY

by Dan Micklethwaite

         “Come here with you,” Boden calls, as he retrieves his son, Tallow, from amongst the crowd’s rushing legs. He lifts the boy onto his shoulders, but the weight makes him gasp, makes his lower back twinge, and Tal’s mucky brown boots smear the front of his tunic. He can hardly tell him off for that, though, can he? Not when he only sees him for the odd day here and there. It’s one of those things that he’s just got to take.

         Same for the way the boy bounces as they move on through the masses—jarring those vertebrae again and again. And the way he waves his doll down in front of Boden’s face, obscuring the view of the coliseum ahead.

         That doll’s only a few chunks of spruce held together by string, wrapped up in leather, with a bit of red woolen hair, but he carries it everywhere, like a soul-guide or a pet. It’s a likeness of the reigning four-time Champion: the man from Pankezi, Arturez Branco. He is Tal’s favorite fighter, because he’s Boden’s favorite too. But the boy’s never seen him or any of the others in action, never had chance to, not till today.

         And there’s nothing at all like your first trip to the fights.

         Walls of song rise around them, and Tallow joins in, making his own lyrics to go with the tune. Boden recalls his own earliest visit; his dad had taught him the chants and they’d sung them whilst Merrik the Dread won his fiftieth fight.

         “You alright up there?” He laughs, and the boy leans over and looks into his eyes.

         “Yeeeeahhh!” Tal shouts, with that huge, lovely grin; the one that Boden used to see from Tal’s mother, the few times he’d ever done anything right.

         “Branco! Branco! Brancoooo!” Tal screams.

         Others join in, kids and adults alike.

         Between these fans, Boden catches sight of the merchandise kiosks and spins away, hoping that Tal hasn’t seen the new range of dolls, much better than this one Boden fashioned for the boy himself. But in front of them is a stall selling replica outfits and a range of wooden swords and axes, the blades painted white and looking like bones.

         Tal bounces again and shouts as he sees them, and Boden’s back almost gives out with repetitive strain. As he jolts to a stop, the doll’s jagged feet clatter into his forehead, only just missing his blinking left eye.

         He sets the boy down.

         “Youallrightdad?” Tal garbles.

         “Aye, never better.” He looks at the ground so the boy can’t see him wince. “What is it you want now?”

         “Brancosuits! Overthere!” He windmills the doll overhead like a mace, nearly smashing another kid square in the teeth.

         “Ok, ok. Just breathe, alright. You’re getting to be as bad as your mam.” As soon as he’s said it, he knows he was wrong. Tal’s face drops, just like that, shaken back into the world where his parents aren’t talking. Aren’t loving.

         Boden moves in to hug him, but Tal only reluctantly lets him take hold.

         “I’m sorry,” Boden says, “but you’ve already got a Branco suit. I mean, what’s this?” He taps the ornate leather tunic he’d bought a year or so back, which the boy’s only just growing into.

         “Yeah,” Tal says. “But that new one’s got more gold trim. Look! And more gold tassels.” The tassels mark victories in ranking events.

         “I know, lad. But then he’ll get another one today, won’t he?”

         “Well, yeah!” Tal grins.

         “Tell you what, if we’ve got time on the way home, we’ll stop by the tailors on Crow Lane and pick up some gold thread. Then we can stitch you some. How’s that sound?”

         Tal nods and jumps and twirls the doll overhead.

         Boden takes his free hand and leads him on through the gates, feeling like yellow thread would probably be cheaper. But he can’t skimp on his son, can he? It’s another of those things that he’s just got to take.

* * *

         Boden walks Tal to one of the Pankezi date palms they set around the gambling hall whenever Branco’s fighting. Children aren’t allowed in the betting queue.

         “Wait here,” he says, “and don’t talk to any strangers.”

         “Where are you going?” Tal says. “Can’t I come with you?”

         Fighting isn’t the only part of this experience that Tal’s never seen before. Boden doesn’t quite know how to explain the process, let alone why he’s got to do it. “It’s just a bit of work I’ve got to take care of,” he says. “I’ll be right back, before you know it.”

         He leaves Tal playing with his doll in the dirt, stamping the feet on scurrying bugs.

         He’ll have to rush back, though. He comes here by himself about once a month but always forgets just how vile and disorderly the punters can be. The fighters, the best ones at any rate, might be lauded as demi-gods, but their supporters often tend towards the other side of the spectrum. And the greater their devotion, the further away they usually are.

         He’s only a casual fan, he tells himself, and almost believes it.

         At one of the stalls, the numbers man gestures at the odds that are chalked out behind him, and Boden’s disappointed it isn’t a little higher than five-to-one on. Of course, Branco’s the reigning Champion, and the sport-sheets say he’s been in great form of late. As usual. But his opponent today is a promising newcomer, been racking up a few good wins of his own. He beat Chandral ‘The Cleaver’ last time out, which had been starting to look nigh on impossible. Boden puts his wager down for Branco anyway, the safer choice, the better chance of getting money he needs. He taps the table impatiently as the numbers man scrawls out the slip.

         As soon as he turns, he feels a cold sweat. He cannot see Tal, and there’s a man by the palm tree with his back to the crowd. Closer in, pushing through, he spots the boy on the ground, still holding his doll, and also recognizes the man from the hunch of his shoulders, the shape of his skull.

         It’s Corda, an old acquaintance. A former accomplice, of sorts.

         “Long time no see,” he says, and Corda spins quickly, hand shooting to his belt where Boden knows he keeps a knife.

         “Aye, fancy running into you two here,” Corda replies, bringing his hand down to his side again, empty.

         Tal has stopped playing; is watching them both.

         “Where’s your little ‘un, then?” Boden asks, ruffling his son’s hair.

         “Just gone for another slash.” Corda shrugs. “Bladder the size of his brain, more’s the pity.”

         Tallow laughs. Boden forces a smile.

         “You put your money down, then?” Corda says.

         “Aye.”

         “On the Champ?”

         “Aye. We reckon he’s the best there is, don’t we Tal?”

         Tal nods and grins.

         “I dunno, mate,” says Corda. “Think Wharrey’ll run him close. He’s a local, you know. Good to see ‘em matching it with the ruddy exotics for a change, innit? And did you see them odds—twenty-to-one!”

         Tal looks shocked.

         “Oh, not that I really think he’ll get the best of Branco, lad,” Corda says, after Boden gives him a nudge in his well-padded ribs. “Think I’m just gonna go take a leak myself, actually. Watch out for my boy now, won’t you?”

         “Don’t worry about him and his notions,” says Boden, mussing Tal’s hair again. “It’s like son, like father in that case. Brain as small as his bladder.”

* * *

         If the atmosphere outside the coliseum and in the gambling hall was riotous, then inside the arena it feels like war. There are thousands of people, all singing full-throated, beating at wood blocks, blowing up-tempo marches on battered brass horns. Continuous waves roil around in competing directions, threatening tempests wherever they meet. Kids and grandparents alike hold the banners they’ve made from bits of old bedlinen, trousers, and sacks. The green flags of Pankezi flutter in and amongst.

         Boden still can’t believe he was able to get tickets for this, Arturez Branco’s eighth semi-final. Much less that they’ve hustled their way to the front, all the way down by the thin wooden barrier.

         That’s partly why he’s so out of pocket, but he was desperate for Tal’s first trip to be special. Extra-special. Unforgettable. It’s just one of those things, and undeniably worth it as he watches his son watch the spectacle, goggle-eyed and gawping and his little heart pounding fast.

         And then faster again, as the Lord of High Revels addresses the crowd, on the Imperial balcony two tiers above. He strides nobly up to the speaking-horn and appeals for quiet, but quiet doesn’t come. If anything, it gets louder. It’s a ten thousand-seat stadium, but it seems more like a hundred thousand—the way Boden’s always imagined a battle might sound. It’s nearly impossible to hear the introductions as the contenders appear, the challenger first and the Champion after.

         Dom ‘The Drum’ Wharrey has only just turned twenty-one but is already among the heftiest competitors Boden’s yet seen, broad as an outhouse and tall along with it. From the sport-sheets, Boden knows Wharrey’s been praised for his speed and range on the counter, and for his nimble maneuvering of his two-handed axe. “Expect him to play a beat or two today,” shouts the announcer, just about audible before the volume of cheering rises again. Wharrey draws quite a reaction from a large group of townsfolk in the far left corner. They’re singing a local drinking song and waving their yellow local flags.

         But the most deafening levels, as always, are reserved for El Branco. The name echoes out around the arena, and Tal screams along, raising his doll with its red woolen hair like a beacon.

         The defending Champion is thirty-three, pretty old for a fighter, and he has developed humility through his years at the top. He waves to all sides as he enters the ring, a coy deferential smile on his face. Branco is the Fighting League’s real golden goose, and he obviously knows it—but he knows as well that he wouldn’t be without the fans on his side.

         He unwraps his broadsword, over half the height of an average man, and swings it overhead with a menacing beauty before planting the tip in the well-flattened dirt. A breeze flutters down and across the arena, sweeping his long fiery hair away from his face; exposing a new and unexpected beard. It’s like the flame’s spilling out of him; like it can’t be contained. There are three little plaits in it, by the chin, and Boden doesn’t doubt for a second that half of the townsmen will be styled likewise before the week’s through.

         He can already anticipate Tal asking for more red wool if they do stop off in Crow Lane, so as his mother can crochet one, to be hooked round his ears. With a few strands left over to stick on the doll.

         Tal holds that doll steady on top of the barrier, and Boden smiles down at him, both of them ready for the fight to begin.

* * *

         “Long time no see.”

         Corda’s found them again, more’s the pity, but at least he’s brought beer. Boden nods and takes the clay goblet proffered to him as Corda’s son, Parrus, dodges under his arm to go stand beside Tal.

         “How’s our lad doing?” Corda asks, taking a swig, drawing his top lip over yellowing teeth.

         “Our lad?”

         “Aye, young ‘un from round here. The Drum.”

         “Not too well, being honest.” Boden gestures to the ring.

         Out near the center, Branco drops into a leg-sweep, upending the challenger for the third time already. It’s one of his signature moves, and yet few ever seem prepared when it comes. His blade whistles down in a quick arc to follow, only narrowly blocked by the challenger’s axe.

         Branco steps back, shimmies, raising his arms for more noise from the crowd.

         As if that were possible.

         The green flags of his homeland color the air.

         The Drum doesn’t try to make any more of this reprieve than it is, simply using the time to get back to his feet and shake off the dust. He slaps at his cheeks, first one then the other; perhaps a sign that he’s wrestling some early fatigue. Or self-doubt.

         “Ahhh shit,” says Corda. “He’s not got the blasted legs for this, has he? I knew I should have put my money on Branco, and bugger the odds. I mean, look at the state of him out there, prancing around like he’s a girl half his age. Fuckin’ exotics. How’s he bloody do it?”

         Boden doesn’t know. The Champion’s only a year older than he is, but he’s pretty sure he couldn’t move like that even if somebody offered him a kingdom to try. Not with his back like it is. He swills down some more beer.

         Branco leaps high to the Drum’s left then feints right in mid-air before somersaulting at the last moment and bringing the flat of his sword into the challenger’s side. The challenger drops to his knees again but scrambles up quickly, shaking his head—probably trying to block out the crowd’s calls for Branco to take it clean off.

         But Branco isn’t ready to finish just yet. Doesn’t want to short-change these ten thousand supporters. He wants them to feel like they’ve been entertained.

         Tal watches, enraptured, and Boden watches him. The boy chants along with the bulk of the crowd, grins along with them, dancing his doll across the top of the barrier, moving it in time with his hero’s steps.

         The Drum finally looks to be showing some promise, producing quick footwork to dodge Branco’s attack, but such are the reactions of the Champion that he still makes a good thrust with only a minor adjustment. He strikes the challenger’s back, just behind the left shoulder. It doesn’t look deep, but it is still first blood.

         As it drips down to the sand, another wave starts in the crowd, the green flags all flapping, and there’s another round of chanting the Champion’s name.

         The fans like seeing blood.

         They absolutely adore it.

         These aren’t necessarily fights to the death. But it does tend to happen, more often than not.

* * *

         The doll pirouettes, kicks, swings its stick of a sword. It jumps then lands then rolls on the barrier. It stands then blocks then counter-attacks. It parries and thrusts and slashes and stabs. Pirouettes again. Slices.

         Tal moves it more frantically as the fighters draw nearer to this side of the ring. The crowd all around are screaming and reaching out with their banners and flags. Nearer. Nearer. Then they’re only a body-length from the barrier, the thudding of their boots on the sand even louder than the chanting, the clash of their weapons even shriller than the horns.

         It’s the Drum now who’s started to exert the most pressure, finding his rhythm, really making the four-time Champion dance. His heavy yet speedy axe blows are giving his supporters, maybe a couple of thousand, something to cheer, but it’s also what Branco’s fans want to see.

         As majestic to watch as he is on attack, it feels a bit repetitive if it gets too one-sided. This is an opportunity for the Champion to show his defensive abilities, and even, perhaps, to find a quick and spectacular counter-attack, a finishing blow. Something for the fans to savor, to talk of all week.

         They’re so close to the fence now that Boden can smell them, the musk of a fight: iron and salt. He strives to remember the most vivid details, for when he relives it later with Tal.

         Branco feints then shimmies away from the axe, which bites into the sand a good yard from his feet. He kicks out at the Drum and sends him rolling, then turns to gesture more noise from the crowd. Leans forward to slap a few of their hands.

         Tal’s doll does likewise.

         But this time the challenger isn’t wasting his chance. He springs up far faster than most watchers expected and swings a huge overhead, more than enough to split a man to his core.

         The Champion sidesteps the contact, warned by shouts from the stands, but the axe carries on and slams into the barrier, only missing the doll by the slightest gap. Splinters fly up at Tal. He screams and stumbles, and as Boden darts to save him there’s a twinge in his back; he spills half his beer on the man to his left.

         “What the hell are you playing at?” the man shouts, a big six-foot hulk, already raising a fist in revenge. Boden steps in front of Tal, to shield him—but before he can do anything, a sword-pommel crunches into the side of the man’s jaw, sending teeth flying, dropping him cold.

         The sword is Branco’s.

         He poses there, smiling, milking the adoration and respect of the fans.

         As if he needed any more of it.

         Boden was all ready to defend himself, bad back or not. Ready to defend Tal. His son. But now Tal seems perfectly all right again, much better than all right, staring up at Arturez Branco with that grin that he has, the one he gets from his mother. The one that’s reserved for only the most special of things. The one Boden sees nowadays only too rarely.

         For a four-time Champion, he thinks, Branco doesn’t look so impressive, close up. He’s above average build, but then you’d expect that from someone who can spend his days in the training yard. Someone who doesn’t have to clerk in a moneylender’s or travel long miles to markets with a clothier’s mule. Yeah, he’s got brilliant technique, that can’t be denied. But is he really good enough to deserve all that money, just for swinging a sword?

         He isn’t even that handsome. That beard seems to have been grown mainly to hide all his scars, and his nose is still bent from where it was broken last year. As he smiles, Boden notices it isn’t even level.

         That smile disappears, though, as Tal shouts a warning.

         “Behindyoulookout!”   

         Branco reels from the barrier, snaps his head back to evade another wide vicious swing. Jinks this way and that, wheeling his sword around, searching for balance.

         “Bloody hell! That was close!” says Corda, rematerializing now that the trouble has gone. “Lucky escape for your lad, there.”

         It’s not clear whether he means Tal, or Arturez, or both.

         It’s not even clear if it was all that lucky.

         Half of Branco’s hair has been lopped down one side, and his new beard seems redder. Seems wet. Jagged. They realize there’s a gash—and, are those teeth showing through it?

         “Bloody hell,” Corda says.

         Boden gulps back what remains of his beer.

* * *

         The contest is getting scrappier, looser, harsher. Branco attacks but without much of his usual grace or control. Which is understandable, Boden thinks, given that a flap of his cheek’s hanging off.

         The Pankezi fans are no less noisy, though somehow at the same time a lot more subdued. Their green flags still flutter, but they’re no longer held so high nor waved quite so wildly as the yellow ones that are scattered in and amongst them. Most of their shouts are for a quick kill now, and damn the entertainment—they want him to dispatch this upstart and get himself fixed. Women nearby in the crowd are appalled. Men as well. Some are holding their betting slips nervously, twisting them, cursing when they see they’ve smudged the ink with their sweat.

         Boden knows how they’re feeling.

         Corda beside him is still sipping his beer, looking a little more comfortable, a little more smug. Parrus doesn’t look well, though. And Tallow looks worse.

         The boy’s turned paper-white, ghost-white, and Boden can tell right away what he’s thinking. That if he hadn’t have screamed when the axe came down, that if Boden hadn’t grabbed him and spilt the beer, then Branco wouldn’t have been caught off-guard. He’s thinking how his hero was only trying to help them, and now his hero’s the one who’s been badly hurt.

         Boden reaches for the shoulder of his son’s replica tunic, but Tal shrugs him away, and the few little tassels slip through his grasp.

         The Drum pushes back again, blocking the Champion’s sharp jabs, hammering down blow after blow of his own. One is deflected, but only as far as Branco’s left forearm, gouging the muscle, leaving him no choice but to fight on one-handed. He drips a bloody trail as he stumbles back to regroup.

         Tal holds the doll like a flickering candle, steadies it, keeping the faith. “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” he says, audible to Boden even under the deafening roar. “Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon.”

         Boden feels wretched. He knows that what his son wants, what’ll make him happy, is all that should matter. But he’s thinking of the slip in his pocket too, and the gold he can win. The gold that he’s got to win, for a whole lot of reasons. He’s sick at himself. He knows he should be making the most of this time with Tal, this chance, but he’s all too aware of what else is at stake.

         He can’t take his eyes off his son, but he can’t take his eyes off the action either.

         “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” Tal breathes, as Branco makes a leap and launches another attack.

         “Come on!” Boden shouts, as Branco’s sword evades the block and strikes the Drum’s chest.

         The challenger topples backwards, a deep groove in his torso, blood welling out of it, spraying the Champion’s sandals as he moves in for the kill.

         But he moves in too slowly.

         The challenger’s already back on his knees.

         The crowd bay for a beheading, but through a neck that thick it’d usually be a two-handed maneuver, and Branco is struggling to lift even one. That last jump seems to have sapped whatever strength he had left; the mid-air feint, the unpredictable thrust. His knees almost buckle.

         “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” Tal whispers, as he holds the doll upright, willing the same for the man.

         Boden’s own legs feel weak. He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, both to steady himself and to reassure Tal. The boy’s knuckles are white as well. Boden wants the chance to lift him up in celebration, the way his own father did the first time they came here; to sing the chants together in victory. That’s why he’d brought the boy, isn’t it, to share that experience. If he’d just wanted the money, he could have shown up alone.

         “Come on, Branco,” he pleads. “Come on...”

         The Pankezi fans take up a chorus of the Champion’s name.

         They beat on their wood blocks and blow on their horns.

         They shake their green flags, and they cry for a win.

         Branco looks up at them, through them, beyond them, as the challenger’s battle-axe smashes into his gut.

* * *

         For a moment, Boden can only stare dumbly as his son vaults the barrier and sprints out across the sand, through the footprints and blood-spatter, the doll limp in his hand as he homes in on the corpse.

         Dom ‘The Drum’ Wharrey is clear of the scene, saluting his fans in the far left corner. One of them hands him a banner, another a yellow flag with the local sigil; he ties them both round his chest to try staunch his own wound.

         Oblivious to his triumph, two guards bustle past him and race towards Tal, raising their pikes.

         Boden kicks into action. He jumps at the barrier but crashes through where the axe hit and slams face-down in the sand. He gets up, not pausing to brush himself off, even more dust and dirt on his clothes. His nose feels broken, but there’s no time to check. He doesn’t even stop when he feels his back seize.

         He just about gets there at the same time as the soldiers, but they’ve already realized his son hasn’t come out to steal. He’s actually put something down, like a burial gift. It’s his doll, laid beside Branco, carefully beyond the puddle of gore soaking into the sand.

         Tal is just staring. Just trying get the picture right in his mind, so that he never forgets.

         And he won’t, Boden thinks. Because there’s nothing at all like your first trip to the fights.

         “Come here with you,” he says, and lifts Tal into his arms. There’s a look on the boy’s face that Boden’s never seen before, not once, and hopes he never sees again, even as he knows that he will. Then Tal throws his arms around Boden’s neck and presses that face into the filthy tunic and weeps.

         The guards look around awkwardly and then down at the body, which they suppose they should move before others approach.

         Boden turns and sets off for the gap in the fence; sees Corda grinning at the betting slip that flaps in one hand, reaching out with the other to muss his crying son’s hair.

         Boden might have torn his own slip up by now, if his arms weren’t full with carrying Tal. As it is, his other worries will have to wait. The pressure on his lower back gets worse with every step, and his nose hurts like hell, but he can hardly blame the boy for that now, can he? It’s one of those things that he’s just got to take.

Copyright © 2018 Dan Micklethwaite

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Dan Micklethwaite writes short stories and novels in a shed in the north of England. His most recent short fiction is forthcoming in NewMyths.com and Third Flatiron's Terra! Tara! Terror! anthology. His debut novel, The Less than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote, was published by the award-winning UK publisher Bluemoose Books in 2016. Follow him on twitter @Dan_M_writer for further updates and info.

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COVER ART

“Monument of the Warrior King,” by Veli Nyström

Veli Nyström is an illustrator and concept artist mostly in the games industry. He currently works as a freelancer and resides in Tampere, Finland. View more of his art online at www.artstation.com/vablo and velinystrom.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2018 Firkin Press

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