Hi fantasy story: THE ROPE

The Rope

There's a village three rivers from Colland named Grassbrew. In that village there's a noose with my name on it. I bet you it's a crooked old noose that they have used to hang half a dozen filth, no way they are wasting good rope on me.

I have been running from this very same rope for a solid moon death. An entire year in the dark and the murk, getting shit on by birds and gods alike, chased by everything and living on nothing at all.

A branch swings back a few feet down the thicket from where I stand. He is buried behind trees but I can almost smell him, ripe and always rotten was my Jak Gould. He is the last of what used to be five and has been in my wake for two days.

He is here, I know that he is here and he knows that I know. Seems the perfect time to stop playing about the trees like rabbits, we have both killed far too many people for such games.

"Shall we dance, dear Gould," I yell through the trees and I see branches part as he walks towards me, as big as a pillar with hands that could tear a man right open.

I stand with my back to a tree and I watch him approach from the corner of my eye. He stands planted in the middle of a clearing and bellows;

"Show yourself, Mory!"

I unsheath Salt and hold her firm in my right hand, a dagger in my left. The world seems to stop breathing for just a moment as I step into the clearing and we stare each other dead in the eye.

"Dear Moriet," he says, his voice slightly catching in his throat. "It hurts me more than I could ever imagine to see you again."

It weighs just as heavy on my heart to see him but I don't say a word, I cannot bear to speak, cannot trust my voice to not shake.

He steps forward and I fight the very real urge to take a step back. Gould is twice my size and taught me all the hand combat I know, but I know other things too, yet so does he.

"You won't speak to me then?" He is closer now, and he stands still as he pulls his longsword from its scabbard. "Did you not speak to your Dane before you cut him down like a log?"

"I did not kill Dane!" I spit and I am become rage at the mere mention of his dead name.

I charge hard and for a long time the sound of steel on steel rings through the trees. I met Gould when I was only a little girl and I have always known the power of him. He is to blame for a lot of the power in me because he raised me on iron and fist. This may very well be the day that I kill the only father I have ever known, or the day he kills me.

Gould lands a crippling blow to my gut with the back of his arm and I stumble backwards, falling to my knees. He kicks Salt from my hand and I still, crouched in the dirt of the clearing with my teeth clenched nearly through my cheeks.

We are both bloody and I can feel every broken rib with each breath I take. He approaches, his heavy boots crumpling the earth. I take a slow breath and count down with each step and just when he is close enough I leap. My shoulders crush into his core and with my entire body I knock him off his feet, the wind leaving his body just long enough for me to scramble up his torso and press my dagger to his neck .

Gould has never known much fear, I have never seen it in his eyes and I don't see it now with my blade at his throat. If anything he looks tired, tired and old.

"I did not kill Dane," I say, tears mingling with the blood on my cheeks.

"My sweet, little Moriet," he is smiling, tears sliding down the side of his face. "Fera used to say you had these hands that were made for music and couldn't possibly hurt, how wrong she was."

"I did not kill Dane, say you believe me!" I am crying, my voice is hoarse and barely leaves my throat. I am crying for all them, for old Fera who was always old, with her knives that could cut you to ribbons from half a field away. String, with his side smile and lanky arms that could string arrows in the blink of any eye, lanky arms that hung at his side as he hung from the noose.

Gould, with my blade at his throat, father to all of us and now hunting me down because he believes I killed his son, my Dane.

"I only knew him by the mark on his leg," says Gould, "why did you only leave me his leg?"

"I didn't kill him!" I scream, he needs to hear me. "I could never, if I tried! He is the only thing that I have ever loved, Jak Gould and you know this."

Gould looks at me now, he is thinking. I know because he is chewing the inside of his cheek. Slowly his face rests, he is still tired and angry, but more tired than anything.

"Make it swift, Mory," he says at last.

"You don't have to die," I whisper.

"There is nothing left for me. You owe me this, did I not teach you to pay your debts."

It's as though I've dipped my hand in tar, his eyes never stop staring at me until I close them. I wipe his blood on my breeches and my tears on my sleeve. One does tire of digging holes in the dirt.

I have spent a lot of the year in the woods of Haredun, but once in a while I steal into the village to drink some mead and speak outside my head. Loneliness kills just as well as any sword is what Gould never taught me, but I learned. This is one of those nights when I need a little more than tree trunks and howling wolves.

If you have walked as far as I have walked and therefore walk as I walk, the village of Haredun is merely a day from Grassbrew. I could have crossed oceans in the time that I have been running, yet I stayed. They kept me here, all of them even as I watched them fall like flies.

I am sitting in the only Inn in the village of Haredun and my mead tastes like soap water. The entire village seems to have gathered within these dodgy walls and as always, I am grateful for the shadows.

"They caught one, you heard? One of them, of the Gould five," someone says and my ears prick up. Over time they have learned to listen for what needs hearing.

"Which one?" The woman asks, "was it the arrow boy?"

"The arrow boy been dead for nearly a moon death, Luice, we was at his hanging," the man exclaims in disbelief. He sounds like her husband, he has that way of saying her name like he has been saying it often for a long time.

"Ah, yes, he still had his quiver and all. Who is it then?" Luice asks and I fight the urge to look up, I fight the memory of String's arms at his side.

"I heard the girl killed them all," says another voice, the barkeep, always meddling in people's affairs. "I heard she cut them all right up with that sword of hers."

I tap Salt beneath my cloak and stare into my cup, I could have the barkeep's head on this here table before anyone here knew what was what.

"The girl never killed anyone," Luice says. "I heard they forced her to join them so the men could use her but she never wanted none of it. She never had no say."

Now it's Luice's head I want, my sword hand itches beneath the leather.

"All I know is that they caught one," the man says again, Luice's husband who sounds like he has very little hair and a thick, round belly.

"Which one?" Half a dozen voices ask at once.

"The boy," he says and I can feel the scream building at the base of my stomach. How many of their heads could I have on my table before anyone stopped me? A lot of heads, I reckon, all of them if my anger boiled as hot as it felt.

"I was there, yea, down in Grassbrew a few days past and I seen him myself," the bald husband says. "He seems a nice enough lad, I swear but to hear the stories they tell of him."

Half the inn was listening now, hanging on the bald husband's every word, none more so than me. There is merely an insistent drum beat where my heart used to stay.

"They cut off his leg, yea, so he don't run. We must go see the hanging tomorrow."

"What was he like?" Luice asked.

"Normal lad, young, far too young for all this. He just stood there against the wall with all those eyes around and just rolled his little coin."

It isn't a coin, it's a locket. The first thing I ever stole. Dear gods, dear gods that have never known me, keep him alive for me this night, I pray as I swing my leg over the first horse I find outside the inn.

Dane Gould. I could live a thousand lives and never deserve him. They tell you about the honour amongst thieves, he was the only thing honourable about us, the only thing good about me. And never mistake it, I will ride across both moons until I'm as raw as a scab. I will always come for my Dane, through thunder, through a sea of Seasoners.

When Jak Gould first found me where he found me, I was terrified. I had never known a good man in all my ten years of life and dear Gould was not a good man, atleast he was honest about that.

He took me to Grassbrew and into the Cobbler's Inn. An old woman sat sharpening knives in the candlelight, spitting and grinding, she did not so much as look up when we walked in.

"Father mine," said a voice. I turned to find a boy behind the door. My Dane was unexceptional even then, his hair and eyes brown like dirt and fearless like his father, always.

"I brought you a friend," Gould said and that's when Dane smiled for the first time. It wasn't falling, was it? Only, for me there's just him until the end.

I am riding hard through the dark. The sun has just set and if this horse does not fail me, I will be in Grassbrew before dawn. Everything speeds past, I see no trees, there are no stars and I feel no cold. I ride.

By the time I can see the village in the distance the sun is still hiding. I climb off the horse and rub its flank. It has not failed me, I think, as I kiss it lightly on the nose and send it on its way, the rest of the journey is my own.

I know exactly where they are keeping him, gods know I have spent enough time in those dungeons, counting sunrays, plotting mass murders. Grassbrew has not changed, it still smells of shit and suffering and for a moment I miss the woods of Haredun. That's where we will go after, when it's all over, Dane and I will build our home in those woods.

The roof of the dungeon house is as ancient as Grassbrew itself, the irony of knowing that this was the first thing ever built in this village. I feel it creak beneath my feet but I know where to step, I have been here before. I place my face over the crack Gould made all those years ago and I see him.

My Dane is sitting with his back to the wall, staring through me like only he can.

"Damn you, Moriet," he says and I drown.

We stay here like this for a while, with him being angry at me for coming and me wishing I could fit through the crack.

"Until the end, Dane," I say, when I am finally able. "I thought I would never see you again."

"I was hoping you wouldn't come but I knew you would, so I was hoping you wouldn't hear," the sadness in his voice tore my heart to shreds.

"So you were going to hang with that cheap old locket around your neck," I say through the tears.

"My neck has bigger worries, Mory," he says and we just stare in silence again.

"Two at the door," Dane says, "three at the gate. More than eight behind the wall, they will come running. You can get in but you can't get out."

I am smiling, there's very little light but I know he is smiling too. He hates that I came but he loves that I am here, that we might share the same yard of rope if we make it to daybreak.

"Save room for me on that straw," I say, pulling at Salt.

"Mory," he says, just as I stand, "until the end."

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