The Painted Man

Arlen stumbled back a moment, then ran forward again. Jeph and Norine were out on the porch, but stayed within the line of the outer wards. By the time Arlen reached the porch, the dog was running past him into the house, the rope still trailing from its neck.

Out in the yard, wind howled, turning the drops of rain into stinging insects. He saw Marea and his mother running back towards the house just as the demons began to rise. As always, flame demons came first, their misty forms seeping from the ground. The smallest of corelings, they crouched on all fours as they coalesced, barely eighteen inches tall at the shoulder. Their eyes, nostrils, and mouths glowed with a smoky light.

‘Run, Silvy!’ Jeph screamed. ‘Run!’

It seemed that they would make it, but then Marea stumbled and went down. Silvy turned to help her, and in that moment the first coreling solidified. Arlen moved to run to his mother, but Norine’s hand clamped hard on his arm, holding him fast.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ the woman hissed.

‘Get up!’ Silvy demanded, yanking Marea’s arm.

‘My ankle!’ Marea cried. ‘I can’t! Go on without me!’

‘Like night I will!’ Silvy growled. ‘Jeph!’ she called. ‘Help us!’

By then, corelings were forming all over the yard. Jeph stood frozen as they took note of the women and shrieked with pleasure, darting towards them.

‘Let go!’ Arlen growled, stomping hard on Norine’s foot. She howled, and Arlen yanked his arm free. He grabbed the nearest weapon he could find, a wooden milk bucket, and ran out into the yard.

‘Arlen, no!’ Jeph cried, but Arlen was done listening to him.

A flame demon, no bigger than a large cat, leapt on to Silvy’s back, and she screamed as talons raked deep lines in her flesh, leaving the back of her dress a bloody tatter. From its perch, the coreling spat fire into Marea’s face. The woman shrieked as her skin melted and her hair ignited.

Arlen was there an instant later, swinging the bucket with all his strength. It broke apart as it struck, but the demon was knocked from his mother’s back. She stumbled, but Arlen was there to support her. More flame demons closed in on them, even as wind demons began to stretch their wings, and, a dozen yards off, a rock demon began to take form.

Silvy groaned, but she got to her feet. Arlen pulled her away from Marea and her agonized wails, but the way back to the house was blocked by flame demons. The rock demon caught sight of them, too, and charged. A few wind demons, preparing to take off, got in the massive beast’s way, and its talons swept them aside as easily as a scythe cut through cornstalks. They tumbled broken through the air, and flame demons set on them, tearing them to pieces.

It was only a moment’s distraction, but Arlen took it, pulling his mother away from the house. The barn was blocked as well, but the path to the day pen was still clear, if they could keep ahead of the corelings. Silvy was screaming, out of fear or pain Arlen didn’t know, but she stumbled along, keeping pace even in her wide skirts.

As he broke into a run, so too did the flame demons half-surrounding them. The rain began to fall harder, and the wind howled. Lightning split the sky, illuminating their pursuers and the day pen, so close, yet still too far.

The dust of the yard was slick with the growing wet, but fear granted them agility, and they kept their feet under them. The rock demon’s footfalls were as loud as the thunder as it charged, growing ever closer, making the ground shake with its stride.

Arlen skidded to a stop at the pens and fumbled with the latch. The flame demons caught up in that split second, coming in range to use their deadliest weapon. They spat flame, and Arlen and his mother were struck. The blast was weakened by distance, but still he felt his clothes ignite, and smelled burning hair. A flare of pain washed over him, but he ignored it, finally getting the gate to the pen open. He had started to take his mother inside when another flame demon leapt on her, claws digging deep into her chest. With a yank, Arlen pulled her into the pen. As they crossed the wards, Silvy passed through easily, but magic flared and the coreling was thrown back. Its claws, hooked deep in her, came free in a spray of blood and flesh.

Their clothes were still burning. Wrapping Silvy in his arms, Arlen threw them both to the ground, taking the brunt of the impact himself, and then rolled them into the mud, extinguishing the flames.

There was no chance to close the gate. The demons ringed the pen now, pounding at the wardnet, sending flares of magic skittering along the web of wards. But the gate didn’t really matter. Nor did the fence. So long as the wardposts were intact, they were safe from the corelings.

But they were not safe from the weather. The rain became a cold pour, whipping at them in cutting sheets. Silvy could not rise again after the fall. Blood and mud caked her, and Arlen didn’t know if she could survive her wounds and the rain together.

He stumbled over to the slop trough and kicked it over, sloshing the unfinished remnants of the pigs’ dinner to rot in the mud. Arlen could see the rock demon pounding at the wardnet, but the magic held, and the demon could not pass. Between the flashes of lightning and the spurts of demon flame, he caught sight of Marea, buried under a swarm of flame demons, each tearing off a piece and dancing away to feast.

The rock demon gave up a moment later, stomping over and grabbing Marea by the leg in a massive talon the way a cruel man might grab a cat. Flame demons scattered as the rock demon swung the woman into the air. She let out a hoarse gasp, and Arlen was horrified to discover she was still alive. He screamed, and considered trying to dart from the wardnet and get to her. But then the demon brought her crashing down to the ground with a sickening crunch.

Arlen turned away before the creature could begin to eat, his tears washed away by the pouring rain. Dragging the trough to Silvy, he tore the lining from her skirt and let it soak in the rain. He brushed the mud from her cuts as best he could, and wadded more lining into them. It was hardly clean, but cleaner than pig mud.

She was shivering, so he lay against her for warmth, and pulled the stinking trough over them as a shield from the downpour, and the sight of the leering demons.

There was one more flash of lightning as he lowered the wood. The last thing he saw was his father, still standing frozen on the porch.

If it was you out there … or your mam … Arlen remembered him saying. But for all his promises, it seemed that nothing could make Jeph Bales fight.

The night passed with interminable slowness; there was no hope of sleep. Raindrops drummed a steady beat on the trough, spattering them with the remains of the slop that clung to the inside. The mud they lay in was cold, and stank of pig droppings. Silvy shivered in her delirium, and Arlen clutched her tightly, willing what little heat he had into her. His own hands and feet were numb.

Despair crept over him, and he wept into his mother’s shoulder. But she groaned and patted his hand, and that simple, instinctive gesture pulled him free of the terror and disillusionment and pain.

He had fought a demon, and lived. He had stood in a yard full of them, and survived. Corelings might be immortal, but they could be outmanoeuvred. They could be outsped.

And as the rock demon had shown when it swept the other corelings out of the way, they could be hurt.

But what difference did it make in a world where men like Jeph wouldn’t stand up to the corelings, not even for their own families? What hope did any of them have?

He stared at the blackness around him for hours, but in his mind’s eye all he saw was his father’s face, staring at them from the safety of the wards.

The rain tapered off before dawn. Arlen used the break in the weather as a chance to lift the trough, but he immediately regretted it as the collected heat the wood had stored was lost. He pulled it down again, but stole peeks until the sky began to brighten.

Most of the corelings had faded away by the time it was light enough to see, but a few stragglers remained as the sky went from indigo to lavender. He lifted the trough again and clambered to his feet, trying vainly to brush off the slime and muck that clung to him.

His arm was stiff, and stung when he flexed it. He looked down and saw that the skin was bright red where the firespit had struck. The night in the mud did one good thing, he thought, knowing his and his mother’s burns would have been far worse had they not been packed in the cold muck all night.

As the last flame demons in the yard began to turn insubstantial, Arlen strode from the pen, heading for the barn.

‘Arlen, no!’ a cry came from the porch. Arlen looked up, and saw Jeph there, wrapped in a blanket, keeping watch from the safety of the porch wards. ‘It’s not full dawn yet! Wait!’

Arlen ignored him, walking to the barn and opening the doors. Missy looked thoroughly unhappy, still hitched to the cart, but she would make it to Town Square.

A hand grabbed his arm as he led the horse out. ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?!’ Jeph demanded. ‘You mind me, boy!’

Arlen tore his arm away, refusing to look his father in the eye. ‘Mam needs to see Coline Trigg,’ he said.

‘She’s alive?’ Jeph asked incredulously, his head snapping over to where the woman lay in the mud.

‘No thanks to you,’ Arlen said. ‘I’m taking her to Town Square.’

‘We’re taking her,’ Jeph corrected, rushing over to lift his wife and carry her to the cart. Leaving Norine to tend the animals and seek out poor Marea’s remains, they headed off down the road to town.

Silvy was bathed in sweat, and while her burns seemed no worse than Arlen’s, the deep lines the flame demons’ talons had dug still oozed blood, the flesh an ugly swollen red.

‘Arlen, I …’ Jeph began as they rode, reaching a shaking hand towards his son. Arlen drew back, looking away, and Jeph recoiled as if burned.

Arlen knew his father was ashamed. It was just as Ragen had said. Maybe Jeph even hated himself, as Cholie had. Still, Arlen could find no sympathy. His mother had paid the price for Jeph’s cowardice.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

Coline Trigg’s two-storey house, in Town Square, was one of the largest in the Brook, and filled with beds. In addition to her family upstairs, Coline always had at least one person occupying her sickbeds on the ground floor.

Coline was a short woman with a large nose and no chin. Not yet thirty, six children had made her thick around the middle. Her clothes always smelled of burnt weeds, and her cures usually involved some type of foul-tasting tea. The people of Tibbet’s Brook made fun of that tea, but every one of them drank it gratefully when they took a chill.

The Herb Gatherer took one look at Silvy and had Arlen and his father bring her inside. She asked no questions, which was just as well, as neither Arlen nor Jeph knew what they would say if she did. As she cut at each wound, squeezing out sickly brown pus, the air filled with a rotten stench. She cleaned the drained wounds with water and ground herbs, then sewed them shut. Jeph turned green, and brought his hand to his mouth suddenly.

‘Out of here with that!’ Coline barked, sending Jeph from the room with a pointed finger. As Jeph scurried out of the house, she looked to Arlen.

‘You, too?’ she demanded. Arlen shook his head. Coline stared at him a moment, then nodded in approval. ‘You’re braver than your father,’ she said. ‘Fetch the mortar and pestle. I’m going to teach you to make a balm for burns.’

Never taking her eyes from her work, Coline talked Arlen through the countless jars and pouches in her pharmacy, directing him to each ingredient and explaining how to mix them. She kept to her grisly work as Arlen applied the balm to his mother’s burns.

Finally, when Silvy’s wounds were all tended, she turned to inspect Arlen. He protested at first, but the balm did its work, and only as the coolness spread along his arms did he realize how much his burns had stung.

‘Will she be all right?’ Arlen asked, looking at his mother. She seemed to be breathing normally, but the flesh around her wounds was an ugly colour, and that stench of rot was still thick in the air.

‘I don’t know,’ Coline said. She wasn’t one to honey her words. ‘I’ve never seen anyone with wounds so severe. Usually, if the corelings get that close …’

‘They kill you,’ Jeph said from the doorway. ‘They would have killed Silvy, too, if not for Arlen.’ He stepped into the rooms, keeping his eyes down. ‘My son taught me something last night, Coline,’ Jeph said. ‘He taught me fear is our enemy, more than the corelings ever were.’ Jeph put his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked into his son’s eyes. ‘I won’t fail you again,’ he promised.

Arlen nodded and looked away. He wanted to believe it was so, but his thoughts kept returning to the sight of his father on the porch, frozen with terror.

Jeph went over to Silvy, gripping her clammy hand in his own. She was still sweating, and thrashed in her drugged sleep now and then.

‘Will she die?’ Jeph asked.

The Herb Gatherer blew out a long breath. ‘I’m a fair hand at setting bones,’ she said, ‘and delivering children. I can chase a fever away and ward a chill. I can even cleanse a demon wound, if it’s still fresh.’ She shook her head. ‘But this is demon fever. I’ve given her herbs to dull the pain and help her sleep, but you’ll need a better Gatherer than I to brew a cure.’

‘Who else is there?’ Jeph asked. ‘You’re all the Brook has.’

‘The woman who taught me,’ Coline said, ‘Old Mey Friman. She lives on the outskirts of Sunny Pasture, two days from here. If anyone can cure it, she can, but you’d best hurry. The fever will spread quickly and if you take too long, even old Mey won’t be able to help you.’

‘How do we find her?’ Jeph demanded.

‘You can’t really get lost,’ Coline said. ‘There’s only the one road. Just don’t turn at the fork where it goes through the woods, unless you want to spend weeks on the road to Miln. That Messenger left for the Pasture a few hours ago, but he had some stops in the Brook first. If you hurry, you might catch him. Messengers carry their own wards with them. If you find him, you’ll be able to keep moving right until dusk instead of stopping for succour. The Messenger could cut your trip in twain.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Jeph said, ‘whatever it takes.’ His voice took on a determined edge, and Arlen began to hope.

A strange sense of longing pulled at Arlen as he watched Tibbet’s Brook recede into the distance from the back of the cart. For the first time, he was going to be more than a day’s journey from home. He was going to see another town! A week ago, an adventure like that was his greatest dream. But now all he dreamed was that things could go back to the way they were.

Back when the farm was safe.

Back when his mother was well.

Back when he didn’t know his father was a coward.

Coline had promised to send one of her boys up to the farm to let Norine know they would likely be gone a week or more, and to help tend the animals and check the wards while they were away. The neighbours would throw in, but Norine’s loss was too raw for her to face the nights alone.

The Herb Gatherer had also given them a crude map, carefully rolled and slipped into a protective hide tube. Paper was a rarity in the Brook, and not given away lightly. Arlen was fascinated by the map, and studied it for hours, even though he couldn’t read the few words labelling the places. Neither Arlen nor his father had letters.

The map marked the way to Sunny Pasture, and what lay along the road, but the distances were vague. There were farms marked along the way where they could beg succour, but there was no way to tell how far apart they were.

His mother slept fitfully, sodden with sweat. Sometimes she spoke or cried out, but her words made little sense. Arlen dabbed her with a wet cloth and made her drink the sharp tea as the Herb Gatherer had instructed him, but it seemed to do little good.

Late in the afternoon, they approached the house of Harl Tanner, a farmer who lived on the outskirts of the Brook. Harl’s farm was only a couple of hours past the Cluster by the Woods, but by the time Arlen and his father had gotten underway, it was mid-afternoon.

Arlen remembered seeing Harl and his three daughters at the summer solstice festival each year, though they had been absent since the corelings had taken Harl’s wife, two summers past. Harl had become a recluse, and his daughters with him. Even the tragedy in the Cluster had not brought them out.

Three-quarters of the Tanner fields were blackened and scorched; only those closest to the house were warded and sown. A gaunt milking cow chewed cud in the muddy yard, and ribs showed clearly on the goat tied up by the chicken coop.

The Tanners’ home was a single storey of piled stones, held together with packed mud and clay. The larger stones were painted with faded wards. Arlen thought them clumsy, but they had lasted thus far, it seemed. The roof was uneven, with short, squat wardposts poking up through the rotting thatch. One side of the house connected to the small barn, its windows boarded and its door half off the hinges. Across the yard was the big barn, looking even worse. The wards might hold, but it looked ready to collapse on its own.

‘I’ve never seen Harl’s place before,’ Jeph said.

‘Me neither,’ Arlen lied. Few people apart from Messengers had reason to head up the road past the Cluster by the Woods, and those who lived up that way were sources of great speculation in Town Square. Arlen had sneaked off to see Crazy Man Tanner’s farm more than once. It was the farthest he had ever been from home. Getting back before dusk had meant hours of running as fast as he could.

One time, a few months before, he almost didn’t make it. He had been trying to catch a glimpse of Harl’s eldest daughter, Ilain. The other boys said she had the biggest bubbies in the Brook, and he wanted to see for himself. He waited one day, and saw her come running out of the house, crying. She was beautiful in her sadness, and Arlen had wanted to go comfort her, even though she was eight summers older than him. He hadn’t been so bold, but he’d watched her longer than was wise, and almost paid a heavy price for it when the sun began to set.

A mangy dog began barking as they approached the farm, and a young girl came out onto the porch, watching them with sad eyes.

‘We might have to succour here,’ Jeph said.

‘It’s still hours till dark,’ Arlen said, shaking his head. ‘If we don’t catch Ragen by then, the map says there’s another farm up by where the road forks to the Free Cities.’

Jeph peered over Arlen’s shoulder at the map. ‘That’s a long way,’ he said.

‘Mam can’t wait,’ Arlen said. ‘We won’t make it all the way today, but every hour is an hour closer to her cure.’

Jeph looked back at Silvy, bathed in sweat, then up at the sun, and nodded. They waved at the girl on the porch, but did not stop.

They covered a great distance in the next few hours, but found no sign of the Messenger or another farm. Jeph looked up at the orange sky.

‘It will be full dark in less than two hours,’ he said. ‘We have to turn back. If we hurry, we can make it back to Harl’s in time.’

‘The farm could be right around that next bend,’ Arlen argued. ‘We’ll find it.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Jeph said, spitting over the side of the cart. ‘The map ent clear. We turn back while we still can, and no arguing.’

Arlen’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘We’ll lose half a day that way, not to mention the night. Mam might die in that time!’ he cried.

Jeph looked back at his wife, sweating in her bundled blankets, breathing in short fits. Sadly, he looked around at the lengthening shadows, and suppressed a shiver. ‘If we’re caught out after dark,’ he replied quietly, ‘we’ll all die.’

Arlen was shaking his head before his father finished, refusing to accept it. ‘We could …’ he floundered. ‘We could draw wards in the soil,’ he said at last. ‘All around the cart.’

‘And if a breeze comes along and mars them?’ his father asked. ‘What then?’

‘The farm could be just over the next hill!’ Arlen insisted.

‘Or it could be twenty more miles down the road,’ his father shot back, ‘or burned down a year ago. Who knows what’s happened since that map was drawn?’

‘Are you saying Mam ent worth the risk?’ Arlen accused.

‘Don’t you tell me what she’s worth!’ his father screamed, nearly bowling the boy over. ‘I’ve loved her all my life! I know better than you! But I’m not going to risk all three of us! She can last the night. She has to!’

With that, he pulled hard on the reins, stopping the cart and turning it about. He cracked the leather hard into Missy’s flanks, and sent her leaping back down the road. The animal, frightened by the coming dark, responded with a frantic pace.

Arlen turned back towards Silvy, swallowing bitter anger. He watched his mother bounce around as the wheels ran over stones and dips, not reacting at all to the bumpy ride. Whatever his father thought, Arlen knew her chances had just been cut in half.

The sun was nearly set when they reached the lonely farmhouse. Jeph and Missy seemed to share a panicked terror, and they screamed their haste as one. Arlen had leapt into the back of the cart to try and keep his mother from being thrown about by the wildly jolting ride. He held her tight, taking many of the bruises and bashes for her.

But not all: he could feel Coline’s careful stitches giving, the wounds oozing open again. If the demon fever didn’t claim her, there was a good chance the ride would.

Jeph ran the cart right up to the porch, shouting, ‘Harl! We seek succour!’

The door opened almost immediately, even before they could get out of the cart. A man in worn overalls came out, a long pitchfork in hand. Harl was thin and tough, like dried meat. He was followed by Ilain, the sturdy young woman holding a stout metal-headed shovel. The last time Arlen saw her, she had been crying and terrified, but there was no terror in her eyes now. She ignored the crawling shadows as she approached the cart.

Harl nodded as Jeph lifted Silvy out of the cart. ‘Get her inside,’ he ordered, and Jeph hurried to comply, letting a deep breath out as he crossed the wards.

‘Open the big barn door!’ he told Ilain. ‘That cart won’t fit in the little ’un.’ Ilain gathered her skirts and ran. He turned to Arlen. ‘Drive the cart to the barn, boy! Quick!’

Arlen did as he was told. ‘No time to unhitch her,’ the farmer said. ‘She’ll have to do.’ It was the second night in a row. Arlen wondered if Missy would ever get unhitched.