The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 96:

Old Trash

In a matter of hours, Balwin Okat won over the hearts of half the vagrants.

He was eager and willing to help with any work, baring his dazzling smile the whole time – he was a socialite at heart and remembered everyone’s names and the smallest details of their interest, flitting from tent to tent chatting. He never rested, digging like a tireless dog under their barriers.

Yet, most still held him at arm’s length. He killed magpies. This was a taboo too deeply ingrained in them – they would accept his attention and help, but they wouldn’t trust him.

When Moth realized this, she was at ease. This was one reason the Haracoe Shamans could find footholds in the towns but not in the farms and woodlands.

Win seemed aware of this as well but remained determined in his attempts at wooing the vagrants.

Moth began to find him pitiful.

So did Korho.

As he brought the horses to the tent, where Moth waited for another day of burying, he said, “Feldar’s coming along today. I’m not worried about Winnie being unsupervised anymore – shame on me for thinking he was any threat.”

Rodin, Feldar, and Lt. Grotte gathered to the spot and mounted their horses.

Feldar rode up next to Rodin’s horse – a graying mare name Welly – and said, “She doesn’t seem bothered by her time in the pathways.”

“She’s never botherer by much, is Welly.” Rodin patted her neck. “I don’t think she’s aware of what’s inside her skull, half the time.”

“A trait her rider shares,” Korho chuckled, about to mount his horse when he stopped, turning around.

A group of seven vagrants approached them, looking determined.

“Something the matter?” Korho shouted, jutting his good ear towards them.

They glanced at Moth then hastily dropped their gaze, but didn’t back away.

One spoked up, a prematurely aged man with fair, sun-damaged skin. “We want to come and see the burial. We won’t get in the way.”

“Of course!” exclaimed Moth, honored. She reached out her hand, saying, “Please, come along with us. This is historical, you must be able to say to the future generation that you witnessed it happening.”

Daunted by her enthusiasm, the man crept forward and touched the edge of her hand then darted away.

“We’ll ride slow,” said Korho, and when a few of the vagrants tried to protest, Korho barked, “And you all – do not wander off or lag behind! Not out here – these woodcutters have an appetite for the helpless.”

Some of the younger vagrants looked offended at being labeled as helpless, but the older one nodded grimly.

Their procession set off down the road with Korho and Rodin leading.

Moth rode alongside Lt. Grotte, who was as withdrawn as usual, and sighed at the prospect of a long ride with no conversation – ahead, Korho and Rodin chatted incessantly, and behind, Feldar talked with the vagrants.

Clearing her throat, Moth said to Lt. Grotte, who barely turned her head, “Thank you for sitting in the tent with me yesterday.”

“It’s what I’ve been told to do – keep an eye on all of this.” And she grumbled to herself, “and aren’t I good at following orders?”

Moth hesitated, but continued, “and I saw the sentries were up here a bit ago talking with you – I hope you were able to give them a good report.”

“‘Good report’?” Lt. Grotte demanded, angry already. “Sure, the report I gave will go up to Captain Rill – he’s the only one that cares about what’s happening with you all. But those idiots that came up didn’t care about a report, they were just here to tell me how it works – how Maxa’s territory works.”

“How it works?” Moth asked, then remembered what Korho had told her. “I…I just thought it was the guards who were bought off.”

Lt. Grotte shrugged, looking straight ahead. “Sentries too. There’s been plenty of fogspots up here in this reach of Pineland – but no burns.”

Moth’s ears rang. Her throat prickled, anger and sadness brewing in her neck. “Are you – do you-” she struggled for the words. “Are you saying my farm wouldn’t be constantly burned if we were rich enough to buy off the sentries?”

Lt. Grotte’s face was set as stone, but her hand trembled for a cigarette. “Got to buy off Commander Waden, but yes. Don’t expect much help from me, Mere.”

Moth could think of nothing to say but a clumsy, sorrowful, “Sabine…”

“Don’t,” Lt. Grotte barked, leaning towards her. “Don’t you moralize at me, with your cushy life and home and brothers. I will not go back to prison – I will lie, kill, and steal to stay out. Do you understand? If I don’t do what I’m ordered…”

And the idea drained all life from her face. Anger and color seeped out. She sat on her horse, smoking, and then slowed to ride next to Feldar.”

“I’m going back to the camp. You were right.”

Feldar gripped her shoulder and nodded.

Lt. Grotte turned and rode back to the camp.

Moth rode morosely along. I’d already been told the guards were paid off – I shouldn’t be surprised by Sabine. Feldar probably already knows her hands are tied.

As her frustration over the sentries faded away to sorrow for Lt. Grotte, she was shaken from her thoughts when they turned a bend into a clearing and came upon Maxa’s crew of woodcutters.

The area, from one end of the clearing to the other, looked clawed to pieces by the crew. It was full of fresh stumps oozing sap and covered in a dense coat of sawdust. Deep wagon wheel grooves split the earth and pooled with melted snow, forming enormous trenches of mud that the workers had used to poorly bury their feces and dump their urine.

Some trees were half cut through – the workers realizing too late they’d been marked wrong. They leaned precariously, supported only by surrounding branches.

The workers screamed at each other, some chatted and laughed, some fought over a card game – wagons groaned under their lumber and horses screamed in pain from impatient riders.

And in the center of the clearing sat the wagon. The giant wagon. Its wheels were the size of houses, laden with ancient pines. It seemed too big and heavy for the earth. Embossed in mighty letters on each of its metal wheels was the word:

Rumaknot

Its wheels had carved those deep, dung-filled ditches, which swarmed with flies.

Overwhelmed by the sounds, smells, and feeling of the place, Moth unconsciously rode up behind Korho, who glanced around to make sure the vagrants were close.

“Let’s try and be polite,” Korho said, scowling. He nodded to Rodin, who was already riding forward to greet Gauzlin.

Gauzlin was sitting in a roughly set-up tent with a small fire, a plate of food and a pot of coffee balanced on a crate at his elbow. Around him were three women wearing white aprons.

Moth looked around, noticing other women wearing aprons as well, going back and forth between a covered wagon and the rest of the camp – the wagon was full of possers, washing paddles, and containers marked ‘soda ash’. The women collected dirty laundry from the crew, who’d brought it with them in sacks. Several of them were looking angrily at the women who lounged with Gauzlin in his tent.

The three who sat with Gauzlin were young and pretty, though with jaded, hard expression and cold eyes. Happy to be off their feet, they picked at Gauzlin’s food with quick hands as they smiled at him. When they saw Moth in her ornate clothes and jewelry, a series of desperate and jealous expressions crossed their work-weary faces – but they settled on ignoring her entirely.

Flushed and over-excited, Gauzlin gestured Korho over magnanimously. “Ah, farmers, what a fine day to see you. It’s washing day, you know. Things can get a bit dirty around here, eh?” and he gave a significant look at the women who covered their faces and dissolved into laughter. One slapped his arm, and he gave an exaggerated wince.

Rodin, baffled, looked around and said, “It’s always dirty here. Well, we jumped over to say hello, we promise not to burn anymore trees – but what should we do it we see polluted ones?”

Gauzlin, half listening as he leaned over the side of his chair while pouring coffee for the women, said, “Just report it to me, we’ll deal with it.”

“Alright, we’re going to go bury, then.”

Gauzlin raised his eyebrows, pressed a finger to his lips and said, “Well, enjoy.” The women snorted into their coffee.

They set off down the road, away from the work crew.

Some of the washwoman from the wagon leaned out of it and called to the vagrants, saying, “You’re new around here! Where are you from, the fields?”

A few paused to answer, but Feldar – riding behind them – urged them to keep moving. The women booed at him, saying, “What, is no fun allowed at your camp? Or do you want all the fun for yourself – you are a bull of a man, aren’t you? Can’t stand to share?”

But they were ignored, and their burial party finally got out of earshot.

Korho looked like a boiling cauldron the entire time he was in the clearing, and he finally let out a long series of curses. “I don’t know what the hell Gauzlin’s eye wiggling is supposed to mean, but it I find another kid like Fritz in it…”

“Guzzling does seem to hate you, Korho,” Rodin said, fascinated. “He didn’t like it when you pulled his reins yesterday.”

“He’s the scrawniest bully I’ve ever met. I’m convinced a good wallop would cure him.”

“He gets plenty from Maxa. All it seems to have cured him of was a symmetrical head.”

Korho twisted his mouth and stared at him. Then sighed and nodded. “Rodin, you are a very beautiful man.”

Rodin blew him a kiss.

It was a quarter of a mile ride, but the trails became rougher and narrower as they took branching side paths, finally no wider than a horse, forcing them to ride single-file with Korho at the head.

As they got closer, a smell laced the air – foul and sour.

Korho held up a hand to stop them, and stubbornly, determinedly rode forward to the burial pit, looking in.

“I hope they drown forever in suvala,” said Korho, and gestured for them to look.

Moth dismounted and cautiously approached, the smell now strangling.

Maxa’s woodcutting crew had used the pit for garbage.

It was full of broken bear bottles, damaged buckets and tools, food that’d gone bad, bones from meals, ripped and soiled clothes, ashes, and at the bottom – the corpse of a wretchedly gaunt and beaten mule. The mule had only been dead for a few days, and its smell was at its worst.

Yet – there was no helra, there was no person. This alone brought Moth great relief to see it was only putrid trash. She rolled up her sleeves and rummaged in her bag for work gloves, saying. “Well, no helra this time, Korho! We won’t have to ride for spring water. Should we start cleaning?”

Everyone wore angry, insulted expressions – they stood immobile for a minute, staring into the garbage pile that writhed with flies and maggots, but slowly, slowly, rolled up their sleeves.

Korho made a fire – large and hot – and said, “We’re not burning their precious polluted tress, just their generous gift of trash.” He then said with a sigh to the vagrants, “I’m sorry, this will take some time before you can see the burial.”

Looking at each other, the vagrants stepped forward and quietly began pilling trash from the pit, bringing it to the fire.

Feldar moved to stop them, saying, “You do not need to help us. You came to witness a burial – you don’t need to join in our disrespect.”

One of the vagrants looked at Feldar, but turned and said to Moth in answer, “What’s a little more disrespect? Recommend us to Lord Correb, perhaps he can do us some good in turn.”

Moth lifted her chin, meeting his eyes, and nodded. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter, milady. Just another vagrant.”

“It matters to me.”

Scratching his lip, he said, “Nim. That’s the beginning and end of it: just Nim.”

*

It was two hours of work cleaning out the burial hole, but the mule was the biggest problem – bloated and writhing with maggots, there was no easy way to pull it out. Ropes around the legs would rip the softened flesh off.

Feldar stripped down to his pants, covered his face and mouth with a shawl, and jumped into the pit with a handsaw. He began hacking the mule into pieces, puncturing pockets of fluids and getting sprayed with pus and fetid water.

Rodin stood at the top and pulled up the pieces of the mule and threw it onto the enormous fire Korho made. The fire was hot as the sun, and it swallowed up the meat and bone, belching up rancid smoke.

Eventually the last little scrap of trash was disposed of – either burned or buried. The bottom layer of the pit was soaked into a foul sludge - Feldar took a shovel and scraped it into a bucket, calling up to Moth, “Is it clean enough? Is it too foul for a burial?”

Moth didn’t know. But because there wasn’t kirose or helra, she answered. “This is good. I don’t think, no matter how horrid an area might be, we should move the burial spot. This is the exact spot he said to bury.”

Feldar handed the bucket of sludge up to Rodin, who tossed it onto the suffering fire. Climbing out of the pit, Feldar held his arms out and Korho poured water over his hands, saying, “Feldar, when we bury, can you stand downwind? As a gift to me. Rodin, get the sunstones.”

“Aye.” Rodin pulled out his bag and plunked ten sunstones into Moth’s palms.

Moth cleared her throat, aware of Nim and the vagrant’s eyes focused intensely on her. She began, “I plant here today ten sunstones. Lord Correb has chosen this spot to be part of the great underground wall that protects against the fog, to protect the pinelands…” she faltered, suddenly thinking about the spot that

was being protected – but she continued, “and the woodcutters that live here. Anyone who calls this forest home.”

She dropped the stones into the pit that still reeked of rot. “Correb tills,” she said.

The vagrants echoed, “Correb tills.”

Korho grabbed a shovel and began burying the sunsones. Nim moved forward, saying, “I’ll help.”

“That’s more hands than shovels,” said Korho. “We’ve only brought four.”

Nim bent down and started to dig with his hands to help, and Korho said hastily, “No, no. Feldar, give the man your shovel. You take Lady Correb home – you’ve worked hard enough cutting up that mule, Rodin and I will finish up. This whole day has been longer than we thought, you both need to get home and wash.”

Feldar glanced at Moth – noticing her tired expression – and agreed. Together, they mounted their horses and rode away from the burial, leaving Rodin, Korho, and Nim to bury.

They were so tired they dozed in their saddles, enjoying the stillness of the forest, the bristling sound of the wind and the distant drumming of woodpeckers.

Moth thought longingly of a hot bath, able to smell the rot on her clothes and gloves. Then her mind drifted to what the Copekivis made for dinner, and found herself reluctantly hoping Win had got another boar.

Feldar grabbed her reins and pulled her to a stop. Jerked from her daydream, she saw his alert expression – they both listened.

Further up the road was shouting – not angry, but a noise like cheering.

Moth relaxed when she heard it wasn’t screaming, but Feldar’s yes darkened and his hand went up to his tense neck.

He hurried his horse forward, and Moth followed anxiously behind him.

The road led up. They were still a quarter mile from the clearing, but a group of six woodcutters were standing in the road, under an enormous pine. A few had bottles and were drinking, two of them had halfheartedly taken their ax to the base of the tree and taken a chunk out of it.

The rest were throwing rocks up into the tree, jeering and laughing.

“Fritz?” Moth began, realizing who one of the woodcutters were. She watched him pull back his arm and hurl a rock up into the tree.

Someone was in the tree – he’d climbed high enough to just be out of range of the rocks, and sat on a limb hugging the trunk, waiting for them to get bored and leave. His shirt and pants were ripped, and his shoulder was bleeding where a rock had struck him.

Ticky.