Furcas

By GJ Kelly

From the author of The Longsword Chronicles, The Shi'ell, and The Six Concentrics, comes the second book in the series A Newland Tale...

Furcas Balamson, the Giant of Medvale. Six feet seven inches of brawn bound to a rope, heading to the Causeway Fort to serve another sentence for drunken brawling. And this time, only a special arrangement with the Vigils and Magistrate of Medvale is keeping him from ten days Hardside...

Furcas Balamson, a gentle giant when sober, a deadly and violent force of nature when drunk.

Life hasn't been kind to Furcas.
It's about to get a lot worse. For everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GJ Kelly
• Release date: Aug 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463025390

GJ Kelly

GJ Kelly was born near the white cliffs of Dover, England, in 1960. He spent a significant part of his early life in various parts of the world, including the Far East, Middle East, the South Atlantic, and West Africa. Later life has seen him venture to the USA, New Zealand, Europe, and Ireland. He began writing while still at school, where he was president of the Debating Society and won the Robb Trophy for public speaking. He combined his writing with his technical skills as a professional Technical Author and later as an internal communications specialist. His first novel was "A Country Fly" and he is currently writing a new Fantasy title.He engages with readers and answers questions at:http://www.goodreads.com/GJKelly and also at https://www.patreon.com/GJ_Kelly

Book preview

Prologue

By this rain and this storm and all this ruckin’ nightmare I do me swear, me, Furcas Balamson, I’ll ne’er touch a drop again! Never again! Ain’t no demon in a bottle gonna get me again!

***

"Well… sometimes I think… Sometimes I think, what if I’m mad? What if I’m not really here having this conversation with you? What if I’m remembering this conversation with you, but really I’m dressed like a canary and sat in the shade of a loony bin? And what if there’s people looking at me and saying poor sod, trapped in a conversation he had long ago… How would I know?"

oOo

1. A Midsummer Night’s ‘Mare

Furcas stood there, stunned to the core by the violence all around him; violence in the storm, lightning flashing and crashing, thunder cracking, rain pounding, blood washing away, the young dep (was Vanner his name?) clutching at his spilled entrails and screaming for his mother. And the madman on his knees in the middle of the road, arms held out wide, screaming…

Seen ‘em in the dark the legs the many many legs, all slime and suck-sticky legs and eyes in the deep deep dark and demons in the bottles and in the cracks o’ the earth deep deep down! Seen ‘em, I done seen ‘em, and they seen me, and I seen the demons seen their eyes and seen the demons inside the eyes and seen them in the people growing!

To his left, the two women; April Triss he knew well, and the other, Jess Danswidow he knew not at all, and they were screaming too, clutching each other, trying to deny the horror all around them.

More lightning, and that grotty little shite who’d ruined a young girl’s face for spurning him was sprinting away, another dep hard on his heels, while Zammit, Vigil of Medvale, tried again to draw his bow and to loose an arrow at the fleeing murderer, Kale Brillson.

More thunder, and in the flashes of sheet lighting from further up the Medvale Road, Furcas could see the madman’s face turn towards him, eyes boring into his, and over all the noise of women and young men screaming, and the thunder, and the lightning, Varl Manderson’s mouth moved, and Furcas could hear the words in his head!

"You’ll see ‘em soon too aye you will and if you don’t be strong they’ll take you as they took me and show you more and more demons and make more and more… He knows your name Furcas Balamson! He sees you! He has a demon in a bottle set aside for you!"

Terror gripped Furcas by the innards then, and he reached up, his hands freed from the rope by that little shite, cords cut by that little No-name shite and his razor-sharp flake of obsidian... He reached up to clutch handfuls of the soaking hair plastered about his head, and he screamed too:

Not me! Not me! over and over again.

He barely noticed the two deps come sprinting back through the torrential rain, and the Vigil ordering one of them away after that bastard Kalidson, the rat-faced thief who’d killed that young fellah lying there in the mud, his throat gaping, sightless eyes turned up to the storm, unblinking in spite of the rain.

He has a demon in a bottle set aside for you!

Not me! Not me!

Furcas! someone was shouting his name. Furcas! Furcas Balamson! Help me Furcas!

Yes. Furcas Balamson. Furcas Balamson be my name…

Varl Manderson’s screams seemed to fade then, drowned by the storm. It was the young fellah, the dep, the one named Olly. Dep Olly was tugging at his soaking shirt.

Sake! Help me, Furcas!

He blinked. What d’ye want me to do? he called over the sound of the storm.

It’s Vanner! Vanner! I… don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!

Vanner?

The youth dragged him over to where the big dep was lying on the ground, desperately trying to stuff his entrails back into the gaping wound in his stomach. One of the bastards fled from the rope, probably Brillson the fisherman, had laid the poor sod open, and he was dying hard and slow; a wee little dog sat howling beside him, from time to time licking the lad’s face.

Furcas blinked, tears and rain blurring his sight, and knelt, and reached out with a massive hand to cup the young man’s cheek, and turn his head a little, to cradle it, seeing the desperation in Vanner’s eyes, desperation and the fear of death…

It’s all right, lad, Furcas managed, the other dep standing nearby, sobbing. It’s all right, Furcas got ye, lad, Furcas won’t let no demon get ye. Hush now… hush now…

Me mam… the boy whimpered, eyes wide.

She’s coming, lad, she’ll be with ye soon now. Hush now…

The wee little dog started licking the young fellah’s face again. Furcas had seen how the two of ‘em had been friends, this morning at sunrise, when he’d been bound to the rope.

Beggar… Vanner smiled, and then lay still, and died.

Vanner! Olly cried.

Furcas stood, and gazed at the horror around him in the flashes of lightning. The other Vigil, Strang o’ the south watch-house, was dead, his skull cracked open by the wedge-shaped lump of obsidian cobble lying discarded on the ground there beside the body. And over there, a short distance away, that young lad, too young, the one they’d called Marlo...

I don’t know what to do! Olly screamed again. I don’t know what to do! I’m just a dep! I’m just a ruckin’ dep!

Furcas stared at the youth, and saw fear staring back at him.

Seen ‘em in the dark the legs the many many legs, all slime and suck-sticky legs and eyes in the deep deep dark and demons in the bottles and in the cracks o’ the earth deep deep down! Seen ‘em, I done seen ‘em, and they seen me, and I seen the demons seen their eyes and seen the demons inside the eyes and seen them in the people growing!

Mad Manderson, screaming his bloody nonsense again. The other Vigil had run off down the road, after Brillson, and the other dep, the one with the odd face, Dep Nedrik, had gone too, gone after that No-name shite.

Give us yer cord! Furcas shouted, and pointed at the loop of restraining cord hanging from the young man’s belt.

Olly handed it over immediately, wide-eyed, and Furcas took it, and strode over to where the screaming lunatic knelt in the middle of the torrent rushing down the slight slope of the Medvale Road. It didn’t take long to bind the madman’s wrists again, or to heave him to his feet and pull him over to the embankment, there to bind him unresisting back onto the rope.

They were all looking at him now, all looking at Furcas Balamson. Aye, he thought, Furcas Balamson do be my name, I must always remember that.

He led the madman and the two terrified women further along the road, away from the carnage and the wee howling dog. When they were some fifteen yards away from the gore and the worst of the horror, Furcas left them there, and went back to fetch the dog. The poor little thing didn’t resist when he picked it up, and carried it gently over to the dep, and passed it into the young man’s care.

Olly took the dog, and held it close, and his face crumpled, and he began to sob uncontrollably.

There there, boy, Furcas offered, and gently squeezed the youth’s shoulder.

Oy! Oy! Get back there! a voice screamed.

It was the other dep, come back empty handed, but for the bow he carried, an arrow nocked to the string.

Easy boy, Furcas called. Ain’t nothin’ to do now but wait fer the Vigil to come back.

Nedrik blinked, astonished and gaping, staring first at the towering figure of Balamson, and at the sobbing figure of Olly clutching Beggar, the deps’ mascot and watchdog, the small terrier shivering in his arms.

Where’s Zammit! Olly! Where’s Zammit!

Gone after that murderer Brillson, Furcas replied on Olly’s behalf. Ain’t nothin’ to do now but wait. Reckon Zammit’s buggered too, seen his wounds. Reckon he’s buggered too.

Shut up! Shut up, Furcas!

There was an edge of panic in the young man’s voice, of course there was. Furcas nodded, and simply walked away, back to the two women, who fell against his chest, weeping.

And there he stood, six feet seven inches tall and a massive arm wrapped around each of them, standing in the deluge, while tied to a coil of rope the madman Varl Manderson shouted up at the raging sky.

Ain’t nothin’ to do now but wait fer the Vigil to come back, Furcas declared again, to himself as much as to anyone else close enough to hear his words.

Some time later, the thunder rolling away east down the road but lightning still illuminating a dark and angry sky, they saw Vigil Zammit walking unsteadily up the road towards them, using his bow for support. Nedrik sprinted away down the muddy track towards him, and helped as best he could. The pair of them tried not to look at the ruin of their friends as they passed the bodies, and when they were level with Furcas and the two women, Nedrik and the huge man helped Zammit to sink to the muddy ground.

Furcas stood quietly watching while the dep did his best with needle and thread from a pack, trying to stitch together the Vigil’s face and left shoulder where they’d been laid open by Kalidson’s stone blade. Aye, buggered, Furcas thought, knowing that this far from a proper healer’s aid, it was unlikely Zammit would survive the loss of blood and the infection which must surely be setting in even now.

Zammit, Furcas knew, was a good bloke.

A decent bloke. Never once had anyone back at The Setting Sun spoke a bad word for Vigil Zammit. Ten years that man had served in Medvale. Ten years a Vigil, and now here he is, on the Medvale Road, buggered. Didn’t make no sense. None of it made no sense, ‘cept what that ruckin’ lunatic was always going on about.

What was Zammit doing? Ah, calling the other young fellah over, Olly. Taking the dog from ‘im. Sending him away up the road at the run, off to King’s Cross, most likely, to fetch help. Aye there he goes, still cryin’, poor young bloke, running in the rain eight mile to the Cross, to fetch help. Mebbe they’ll send horses, get here quicker in a horse-drawn cart. Do horses go out in the rain?

Furcas!

Nedrik, shouting over the noise of the rain and the lunatic’s ceaseless gibberish.

With a squeeze for the two women, Balamson left them hugging each other for warmth and comfort, and strode over to where Zammit was sitting on the muddy embankment, and squatted down beside the wounded man.

Need you to keep an eye on Manderson! Zammit managed, through teeth clenched against the pain of his wounds.

Aye, mister Zammit, don’t you be worrying about us. Ain’t goin’ nowhere, nor’s the loony. You get that bastard Brillson?

Zammit nodded.

Good. Mean murderin’ mad bastard, that one. Good you got ‘im, mister Zammit. Good you got ‘im. Don’t you be worrying about us lot. We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Won’t be no trouble from us, now.

Again, Zammit nodded, and stroked the head of the dog curled and shivering in his lap.

Furcas rose up, towering over the young deputy standing beside him, and offered the youth a nod of reassurance before indicating that it was Zammit who needed the young man’s attention, not what was left of the rope. And that was true, too. The women had no interest in running, cold, soaked through, and terrified as they were. And Varl Manderson? That lunatic was content to kneel in the mud, gently rocking back and forth, mumbling about demons.

It was cold, and though the great squalls were slowly dying away, still the rain lashed in. Furcas went back to the women, sat them down close to the free end of the rope, and then sat with them, that rope’s end close to hand should Manderson suddenly decide to run off somewhere.

The huge man shot a glance at the lunatic, whose eyes were screwed tight shut against the weather, face upturned.

He knows your name Furcas Balamson! He sees you! He has a demon in a bottle set aside for you!

Furcas shivered, though it might have been the cold and the wet. He was, after all, dressed lightly for hard summer toil in the wood-yards of the Northmarket. A thin cheesecloth shirt, knee-length short trousers of light canvas, and heavy boots. That’s what he’d been wearing when arrested; when he’d woken up in central’s cages… again.

Why had he drunk so much after work that day? They said he’d near choked Vigil Tirk to death and near bashed that young bloke Vanner’s brains out on the bar there in the Sunset. One. One pint was all he’d gone in there for. Surely a man who worked as hard as he did deserved just the one pint of cool ale after a hard day’s graft out there in the woodpiles o’ the Northmarket? Was that so wrong? That one pint had been all he could remember, but in the courtroom, Botis had said it was thirteen that’d been drunk by the time the fighting started.

Thirteen pints… Furcas could remember one. The first one. After that, everything was black. A black worse than sleep. A black like death, for nothing, not one thing, did Balamson remember of it. Just black, and then waking up slowly, head aching badly, really badly, in the cages o’ the central watch-house. They said he’d near killed Vigil Tirk, and that his head ached on account of that young bloke whacking Furcas on the head with his stick two-handed, and then Vigil Tirk had busted a four-seat table-top over him.

Seen ‘em in the dark the legs the many many legs, all slime and suck-sticky legs and eyes in the deep deep dark and demons in the bottles and in the cracks o’ the earth deep deep down!

They said he’d near choked Vigil Tirk to death and near bashed that young bloke’s brains out on the bar. Vigils had said so. Botis the landlord had said so. Magistrate had said so, and everyone knew the magistrate never lied. Furcas, though, couldn’t remember. He could never remember. He’d go in after work, for just the one. Just one pint o’ good cool ale after a hard day’s graft. And mostly, and usually, he’d wake up in his own string bag out in his shack behind the Woodstacks. Mostly. Sometimes he did wake up in the Woodstacks, and sometimes he’d wake up in the back room run by April Triss, where they’d put him out of harm’s way so the Vigil’s wouldn’t take him in again. Now here was on the rope, again. Fort-bound, again.

…demons in the bottles…

True, that.

He knows your name Furcas Balamson! He sees you! He has a demon in a bottle set aside for you!

Furcas turned his face up to the heavens, rain stinging his cheeks and eyelids. By this rain and this storm and all this ruckin’ nightmare I do me swear, me, Furcas Balamson, I’ll ne’er touch a drop again! Never again! Ain’t no demon in a bottle gonna get me again!

oOo

2. B

The merchant-waggoner, stranded up the road in the storm, the one helped by the two young deps when his cart had almost overturned before the murderous break from the rope, came down later with clean hemp cloth taken from his bales. When the rains had eased a little, he’d come down the road and given it to them, good woven cloth to help warm them all, and to cover the bodies of those who died. He brought them food, too, sharing it with them all, even those on the rope, though only Furcas had been brave enough to take some to the madman still gibbering on about demons.

Later in the night, when the rain had almost stopped, Furcas rose up from his seat on the embankment, and walked the fifty yards or so away to the man’s cart, and picked up the pole, and turned the vehicle, and using his great strength, pulled it down the broad and muddy Medvale Road, parking it opposite the small group of men and women sat on the embankment. The waggoner himself, a fellow named Jorge Lenson, had led his ox down too, and all of them had sat close together.

Vigil Zammit was asleep, wrapped up as well as could be. Dep Nedrik sat watchful nearby, but was slowly succumbing to the shock and horror of this dreadful night. Manderson was nodding off too, barely whispering his nonsense now, much to the relief of the two women, curled up in their new cloth wraps and leaning against each other, trying to sleep.

Mad bloody night, Lenson whispered, sat next to Furcas. Mad bloody night.

Bloody do be the word, Furcas replied, shivering against the cold in spite of the close-wove hemp cloth he’d wrapped about him; it was wet, after all.

Never seed the like. Never heard o’ the like neither. Them poor young lads…

Aye, Furcas agreed, trying not to think of those poor young lads and Big Strang lying on the cold wet ground ten yards away.

Ta fer bringing me and me cart down, the merchant said softly. I were fair filling me pants up there alone, wondrin’ if’n one o’ them ‘scaped cullions might come and do fer me as did fer them poor youngsters.

Reckon they’re miles away b’now, Furcas sighed. Runnin’ like rabbits through the dark, get as far away from all this as they can, I reckon.

Aye, mayhap it’s so. Got me a wee bottle o’ brandy under the seat in the cart, you fancy a nip. Might keep the cold away, aye?

Furcas blinked. Demons in the bottles… No, ta.

Sure? Only it’s like to be a while afore that young fellah gets back with aid from the King’s Cross.

No, ta. It were drink as seen me on this bloody rope and put me in the Fort.

Oh. Sorry. Dint mean nothin’ by it, mate.

Furcas Balamson do be my name. Furcas’ll do I reckon.

Aye fair do.

Lenson fell quiet, fighting against the obvious question which the huge man had attempted to forestall by mentioning that drink had bound him to the rope and the Fort. Gusts of wind rustled leaves in the shrubs and in the young trees on the far side of the road, and seemed to be whispering as if in conversation with the madman whose head kept jerking upright further along the embankment.

Loony, then, is he? Lenson finally broke the silence. One talking to hisself yonder?

Aye. Loony as kilt a Steepside girl after taking his pleasure from her.

Sake.

Aye.

But Furcas shivered, and this time it wasn’t the cold or the gusts of wind. It was knowing he’d heard Manderson’s voice in his head earlier, and seen glimpses in his head of demon eyes staring out from inside glass bottles. Loony? Aye. True, that. But the loony had cried aloud of seeing blood and entrails and two mouths laughing earlier in the day, and Furcas had heard those words there at the front of the rope. And here they were now, and there’d been blood, and entrails, and that poor young bloke Marlo had two mouths now, one above his chin, and one below…

People had always thought Furcas was a bit of an idiot, good for nothing save for lifting and shifting heavy loads. But it wasn’t true. The fact was…

You gone all quiet, Furcas, you thinking to sleep?

"Nah, just thinkin’. Don’t reckon I could sleep this night. Asides, reckon I ought to keep me eyes open, in case any o’ them other cullions do come back."

Aye that’s what I thought to meself too, Lenson sighed, and Furcas heard the relief in it. They might come back, on account o’ not wanting to leave witnesses.

Furcas shuddered, but it was just the cold. Those cullions wouldn’t stand a chance, not now, not against the Giant of Medvale.

You ain’t asked me what I done as got me Fort-bound.

The cloth-merchant shrugged. Don’t reckon as it’s any o’ my business…

Drunk. Got drunk, got to fightin’. Fought with a Vigil, and with that poor young bloke yonder under the sheet. Drunk again, Fort again. Ain’t gonna drink no more, though. Ain’t gonna drink no more.

Sorry about mentioning me bottle in the cart.

Aye, you said. No need fer you to keep sayin’ so, Jorge. No need.

Fair do.

Ta fer the food and the cloth.

Welcome. Bale was split anyway, took a tumble off the cart when it near tipped over. Wouldn’t get much for it in Medvale market, not soiled and spoiled. Glad it found a good use. You been to the Fort afore then, aye, Furcas?

Aye.

There was a brief silence before Lenson asked the inevitable follow-up question. The same question everyone always asked:

What’s it like then?

Furcas pondered the question. Usually he answered that oft-repeated question with a single word, shite, but not tonight. Tonight had been a night like no other in Balamson’s thirty years of nights.

Warm. Dry. Rather be there than here.

Oh. I heard from a bloke at Sedgeside that it were shite. It was all he’d say about it.

Bloke’s right. Still rather be there than here, though.

People do volunteer to serve there. In the Land’s Guard.

Aye they do, them as got no other work and can’t find nothin’ better to do. Food’s not bad, get fresh fish out the sea, good rye bread, sometimes meat. Fort’s got its own farms outside. Some folk work them farms, or the bakeries, or kitchens. Most o’ the inside work’s done by cullions like me. Cullions don’t get let outside to work in the fields and farms. Only ones as get let outside the Fort are them as go Hardside. And them as go out Hardside want nothin’ more than to get back in.

You been there? Hardside?

Nope. Don’t want to, neither. Seed it often. Called Hardside fer a reason.

These two women, they a bad lot, then?

Not really. Not like them others as ran off. They’d a-run too, if they’d been a bad lot like them others.

Lenson seemed suddenly to relax, and now that Varl Manderson was finally asleep and silent too, adjusted his waterproof cap and hat, and slowly but surely nodded off.

For his part, Furcas sat there wrapped in good hemp cloth, cloth tightly woven on a loom somewhere in the western lobe, and felt suddenly and ineffably sad, though for why, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the senseless killing, the pointless loss of life, and the misery in the aftermath of murder and the terrifying storm which had raged all about them. Where could they run, those who’d fled the rope? How could they hope for anything more than a few days or a few weeks of freedom before another magistrate would see them sent up the road to the Fort once more?

There was no escaping the Fort, just as there was no escaping Newland. For the sake of a few days or weeks of freedom, or perhaps for a meaningless existence trying to scratch out a life on some miserable rim-side slope somewhere, men had killed Vigils and Deps. And yes, Zammit was dead, and the man likely knew it himself. By the time medical aid could arrive from King’s Cross, infection would’ve set in, and that, combined with the loss of blood, would surely see the well-known and much-respected Vigil dead within the week.

Furcas sighed. He’d seen people go quickly after suffering far less grievous wounds than the Vigil. Blood poisoning, they called it. He’d seen tree fellers pierced by splinters large and small go downhill fast in the great woodland near Kingsmill, too far from sawbones and their ointments, pills, and potions. Big blokes, though none quite as big as himself, big blokes who’d pull out those large splinters with a manly grin and tie a manky hanky about the wound to staunch the blood and then carry on wielding the axe as if it were but a scratch they’d received.

Sitting in the dark at the edge of the Medvale Road, Furcas shook his head sadly. Zammit was doomed, and the Vigil knew it. Furcas had seen it in the man’s eyes, and the way he’d held that wee little dog, tenderly, stroking it, clinging to the warmth of life in the small animal, as if holding the dog were holding life itself, and keeping death at bay.

Zammit was a decent bloke. Aye, Furcas thought again, a decent bloke. Never once had anyone back at The Setting Sun spoke a bad word for Vigil Zammit. Ten years that man had served in Medvale. Ten years a Vigil, and now here he is, on the Medvale Road, buggered.

Back in the Westerhold, Furcas had been taken to an empty room well away from the cages, and Zammit had come in, and brought with him a couple of decent chicken sandwiches. Food in the Westerhold was shite, bread and water, and Zammit had brought decent chicken sandwiches.

I’ve spoken to the Chief and to the madge, Furcas, Zammit had said.

A tear slid down the huge man’s face while he remembered the promises that’d been made in that room; promises to revoke the ten days Hardside from Balamson’s sentence, should Furcas himself promise to be no trouble on the rope, and to help pull them along at the end of it who’d otherwise drag their feet…

Aye, Zammit was a decent bloke, and treated fair and decent with Furcas, and brought those decent chicken sandwiches. Most people thought Furcas was a bit of an idiot, good for nothing save for lifting and shifting heavy loads. But it wasn’t true. Zammit had seemed to see the truth. The fact was, Furcas was far from stupid, and in his youth had wanted nothing more than to be a builder of boats…

That dream had been born when he was a boy living on a homestead at the foot of the rim below Steepside. His father had returned from selling surplus grain and chickens up in the town, and brought back with him a picture-book for the boy Furcas to learn how to read. So many hours spent sat on his mother’s knee, learning to read from that picture book. One picture always held his attention though. B, for Boat, Bat, and Ball, and ‘Balamson’ his father had always chuckled, warming his feet by the fire in the middle of the roundhouse.

Later, his father had spent a few long winter’s nights carving Furcas a toy boat from a misshapen lump of pinewood from the trees at the foot of the rim, and thereafter had boats and the sea filled the youngster’s mind and imagination. That imagination was further fuelled by visits to Steepside when he was older, more books to borrow and read about boats, and learning that in the past, rafts had been made by the town and launched down the ocean-side slope of the rim into the sea.

It had been some strange experiment, so a book had said, to test sea-currents, invisible flows in the water which might propel logs around the eastern lobe and down south, faster than transporting them by wagon. Rafts. Furcas, even when barely ten years old, had known that rafts would be useless, and what would be needed was proper boats, boats which could be sailed, even against those invisible currents.

And when he’d first learned about those great Vennlandian ships! Giant boats! How his imagination had exploded when he’d learned about them!

But the dream of building boats and ships had long since been shattered. Furcas had grown, and had kept growing, his frame filling out just as his stature increased at an alarming rate. By the time he was sixteen, he was six feet seven inches tall, and built, they said, like a Kingshaven stone-house. And thus had his troubles begun.

Girls wanted him, women wanted him, young men wanted to best him at everything, and grew jealous of all the female attention he received. Fighting became commonplace, and try as he might to avoid it, Furcas had found himself obliged to fight back and to defend himself.

He’d tried to avoid trouble by remaining on the homestead, working in the fields with his father and younger brothers and sister, but he needed the books in the town, books on working with wood, books which might have any mention of boats and ships in them, and every time he ventured up the rim into Steepside either to return or to borrow new books, the story was the same, and always ended with blood and bruises.

Finally, come naming day, Furcas had left home, bent upon heading to Highcove, the clifftop fishing village at the junction of the eastern and southern lobes, there to find work and to walk down the steep cliff paths to the cove and its small fleet of fishing-boats pulled up on the beach at the bottom. But women wanted him there, too, and men wanted to fight him because of the women, and because of his immense size and stature.

Still, he found good work there, repairing boats, oh those beloved boats, caulking and pegging planks, stepping masts, mending rudders, strakes and gunwales… and then Furcas had found himself obliged to marry a girl who was with child, and who swore that it was his…

The girl had died giving birth to a stillborn son, and his friends took Furcas to a tavern to drown his sorrows. He couldn’t remember doing any of the things they said he’d done while he’d been in drink. He simply couldn’t remember it. The mayor of Highcove had sat in judgement, and out of sympathy for Furcas’ loss, and acknowledging the fine work he done and his previous good character, had refrained from sending the young man’s case to the madge o’ Medvale.

But there was to be no such ‘second chance’ for Furcas Balamson. The second time it happened, and Furcas had no memory of those events either, the mayor referred the case to Medvale’s court. Thirty days Fort, for damaging while drunk property to the value of one hundred daler, and for injuring eight people Furcas called friends. He was not to return to Highcove, the mayor had said, and the madge o’ Medvale had so ordered.

Twenty years old, and thirty days in the Fort.

He couldn’t go home, he couldn’t go to Steepside where he was well-known, and Highcove and its boats wanted nothing to do with Furcas Balamson. The loss of his wife and child had taken its toll, too. Furcas had a heart, after all, and though neither had been planned nor particularly wanted when the marriage was rather forced upon him, he grieved, and mourned the loss of son and wife both.

He went to Kingsmill, the ‘wood-town’, where great felled trees went through the mills and came out boards, planks, slabs, blocks and billets, where great masts were turned and sent south to the ports to replace any lost at sea by those wondrous Vennlandian ships. If only he could follow those masts south to the ports, where he might get work on the boats, and maybe even those ships!

But they told him in Kingsmill that finding work in the ports would be next to impossible. Some new thing, guilds they said, had taken hold of the docks down there in Southport and Eastport, and they wouldn’t take on anyone that hadn’t been born down there. They even said that one day, those bloody Vennlandian guilds would spread through all the lobes…

So Furcas became a tree feller, working with a gang of burly men in Kingswood Forest, hacking down mighty trees, and in every tree the huge man could see a great boat waiting to come out, like a child in a womb waiting to be born. But that hard-working gang of fellahs played hard too, and took him to a tavern at month’s end, and he couldn’t remember what happened after that, except it was up the road to the Fort for forty days thereafter…

And so he’d ended up in Medvale when his sentence was served, and there he found ready work in the wood yards of Northmarket. Still he would see in his mind’s eye, in all the wood around him in the yards and the Woodstacks, beams and boards and strakes and keels, and see himself Captain aboard a great ship of his own making, sailing his own vessel to Vennlandia.

Ten years on, the dream dead, and the building of boats nothing more now than idle imagination, thanks to bloody Vennlandian guilds, which had spread throughout the three lobes…

Ten years of lifting and shifting heavy loads had seen Furcas Balamson become little more than an ox without a yoke, and after finding himself sent up the road for sixty days after another drink-induced blackout, he’d simply given up. What was the point of clinging to impossible dreams?

Treat me like an ox, and I’ll be an ox, he’d thought, B is for back-breaking bloody work, and bugger-all, and beer, and blood and bruises, and boats go to bloody blazes.

No. Furcas Balamson wasn’t an idiot. He’d simply given up trying to make his dream a reality, and become instead what the world had always seemed to want him to be.

oOo

3. The Last Miles

Runners came hurrying down the Medvale Road before dawn, a healer with them, fat and wheezing, and two Vigils and two deps out of King’s Cross, with the tearful young dep Olly leading the way. Zammit had been tended by the doctor, though Furcas knew it was too late. Too much blood lost, and the man barely had strength enough to stroke the poor wee dog in his lap. Oxcarts had come later. They hadn’t sent horses. Maybe horses didn’t go out in the rain or on wet roads, or maybe, Furcas thought, watching from the embankment with the two wet and shivering women, maybe horses were too valuable to be worth sending out for dead Vigils and deps and murderers as fled from the rope.

The bodies, wrapped in their shrouds of good hemp cloth, were loaded into the carts. Furcas offered to help, but the newly-arrived Vigils simply bound him and the two women back onto the rope, and made threats with their sticks. Dep Nedrik tried to intervene, and spoke up for Furcas, but was ignored; the newcomers simply didn’t trust the huge man who towered over them all.

Zammit was barely conscious and had been gently placed in a cart, and then those carts had trundled back down the road to King’s Cross, taking the healer with them. Jorge Lenson was simply left to his own devices when the new Vigils ordered the rope to its feet and commanded they begin the walk again. Furcas gave Lenson a nod of farewell, and received a slight wave and a mouthed ‘good luck mate’ in return.

And that was that. July 1st, and they were trudging along the road once more, but this time, without Furcas feeling the strain of dragging a train of eight reluctant prisoners along behind him. Instead, there were only three pairs of feet back there; two women and the loony Varl Manderson, the madman now encumbered by coils of slack rope wound over his shoulder and across his chest. Rope that was soaking wet, and thus heavier than it had been when they’d started out from the Westerhold.

The madge o’ Medvale would keep his word though, just as Furcas had kept his. But Zammit was gone up the road in a cart and they wouldn’t see him again, so the huge man decided there was no need to widen his stride and drag poor April Triss and Jess Danswidow twenty-eight miles to the Fort.

Ten yards ahead of him, Deps Nedrik and Olly were themselves setting an almost funereal pace, which suited Furcas and the others just fine, though the King’s Cross Vigils and their deps grumbled a bit. Well, the newcomers had been dragged off a night-duty for this rope-walk, and had no reason to be cheerful. No-one did, not even the poor wee dog on its white and black leash, trotting along beside Olly, the animal’s legs brown and caked with mud.

At King’s Cross they were given food, and hot breakfast wine, and a short rest. But that was all. No dry clothes, no warm wraps, nothing but what they’d had when they’d left the Westerhold, and of course the hemp cloth gifted by Jorge Lenson. But they were too tired to protest, and even Varl Manderson couldn’t summon the energy to rave about demons. The sun was warm, and the great storm of 837 had passed, leaving signs of its destruction clear to be seen even in the rich wood-built surrounds of the crossroads village.

There was some argument about who would escort the rope the last twenty miles north to the Fort, the night-duty officers pointing out that they were now off-duty, and the Chief Vigil declaring that this made them the best and most obvious candidates. The prisoners just stood there, watching the grumbling dispute from the far side of the road.

Bugger this, Furcas quietly announced. You ready to go, Trissy? Jessy?

Aye, April Triss declared with a huff. Let’s get to the bloody Fort, Furcas, least we’ll get dry work clothes there.

Furcas simply started trudging north along the side of the road, the rest following without a word, even Manderson. They’d gone nearly thirty yards before anyone noticed.

Oy! a voice called, Wait up, you bloody cullions!

Bollocks, Furcas called back over his shoulder. We-all know where we’re goin’. Don’t need none o’ you to show us the way.

And they’d simply kept trudging, watched by stunned officers and their deps.

Sooner we get there, sooner we get out, April Triss added, to a grunt of approval from Jess Danswidow.

Their sentences, of course, didn’t officially start until they were inside the Causeway Fort. Furcas, ninety days, ten of which were originally to be suffered Hardside, but the madge had rescinded that order in return for his promise of cooperation on the rope. April Triss, known locally as ‘Trissy the Sunset Missy’ had been sentenced to thirty days for an act of public indecency in an alley in Medvale town. And Jess Danswidow, a baker, thirty days for adulterating flour with limestone dust to improve her profits.

Varl Manderson had been sentenced to life, but the madman didn’t seem to give any indication that he knew it. Manderson was something of an enigma. Mad, certainly, gibbering on and on about demons and little else besides. No-one had had much success in holding a conversation with him after sentence had been passed.

At first, while in the cages when detained by Vigils in Steepside where the murder had been committed, Manderson had been rational. He’d insisted that the girl had consented, and had taken him by the hand and led him to a shepherd’s shack. He said it had been her who’d corrupted him, not the other way around, and that later, while she was lying naked beside him and laughing at him for no reason, he’d seen a demon looking out through her eyes, and that’s why he’d killed her… he was trying to kill the demon within her, not the girl, only the demon in her eyes which was making her mad.

Or so had his confession been diligently set down in the watch-house reports which had accompanied the prisoner to Medvale, but by the time Manderson got to the madge’s courtroom and his trial, he’d become the gibbering idiot he presented to the world now. Many, including Magistrate Aldredson, had declared the madness an act to garner leniency; lunatics spent their time inside the Fort until doctors and officials deemed them safe to be released.

Cold-blooded murderers and rapists were instead sent straight through the long tunnel underneath the Fort and out to Hardside, where they worked at maintaining the northern defences; ditches dug deep and broad and lined with razor-sharp flakes of obsidian, and long runs of mound-like walls of the same stuff. Should the Wildenice come, and the causeway to the Wildenvilt be exposed, then would come the barbaric horde of Wilden people, and those ditches and walls were the first line of defence against them. Prisoners sent Hardside lived in tiny alcoves cut into the Fort’s sheer north-facing wall, and since they’d be the first men to fall should the Wilden horde come, they worked assiduously those ditches and lines of sharp glassrock to maintain.

Varl Manderson’s sentence had been specific: life, Hardside, if the Fort’s doctors found him to be sane. Life, inside the Fort, if found to be otherwise.

Furcas Balamson had his doubts now about Varl Manderson. Oh yes, the man was mad, no doubt about that. But there was truth to be found in that madness, a demon’s truth, a prophetic truth. Trudging now up the last miles north, Furcas remembered how the madman’s song had changed, when four men at the rear had tripped and fallen shortly after leaving the Westerhold and had brought the rope to a halt:

Blood oh blood I see blood and organs and demon stares in dead eyes laughing and two mouths laughing dead eyes with two mouths laughing and swimming in blood and entrails demons all about us I see them I see the demons…

It had come to pass. In the raging storm, the words spoken by Varl Manderson had come to pass, and in the aftermath of bloody murder which saw throats slashed, heads and faces split open, and a young dep disembowelled, the madman had looked at Furcas Balamson, and with the storm crashing all around them on the Medvale Road, Furcas had heard those words inside his head… He knows your name Furcas Balamson! He sees you! He has a demon in a bottle set aside for you!

Demons, Furcas knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt, were real. Hence his heartfelt oath to himself: never again to touch another drop, never again to let ale or strong wine or spirits pass his lips.

On this, the last stretch of their journey along the King’s Road which ran from Causeway Fort in the north clear to the city of Kingshaven in the south, their pace quickened; a tad over two miles an hour, maybe close to three, and the women keeping up with it. And why not? April Triss certainly wasn’t daft, and nor was Jess Danswidow, who’d doubtless been adulterating her flour and profiting from the deed even when her husband Dan had been alive and working alongside her in the small Medvale bakery. No, the women weren’t daft; they were cold, their clothes damp and clammy, and they knew warmth, a proper meal, and sleep were waiting at the end of this trek.

The sooner they got there, the sooner they could put behind them the horrors of the night, and the sooner they could pretend everything was ‘normal’ again. But not Furcas. He knew, instinctively, things would never be normal for him again. Not since he’d heard that voice in his head. Not since the warning that Varl Manderson had somehow contrived to pass to him.

Had he imagined it?

No, the shiver which travelled the length of his spine testified to the fact of it every time he recalled the words he’d heard inside his head. Yes, he’d seen the madman’s lips moving in the rain, and yes, in the forest working with the felling gang they’d sometimes called to each other over the noise of axes and saws, and grown accustomed to reading words on each others’ lips from a distance. But no, not this time. This time, the voice inside Balamson’s head had not been his own.

Both Balamson and Manderson were of an age, and both had been raised close to Steepside. Furcas was fairly certain he’d seen Varl Manderson a few times, in Steepside town, during his trips to hunt up books on boats. But they’d never spoken to each other, nor even acknowledged each other. No, it was a coincidence, that’s all it was, their both being born and raised near Steepside, north rim, east lobe.

Besides, Furcas had been born to a homesteading family, and so his mandatory education had taken place at home, as had his mandatory shooting practice. From time to time an inspector and a Vigil would travel around the homesteads and smallholdings, checking all was well and testing the children to ensure their parents were maintaining the standards demanded by law, and Furcas had always impressed both with bow and book-learning. There was no reason, then, that the two men now on the rope should’ve met at all, save by happenchance.

Now they were both on the same rope, and demons doubtless responsible for it. Demons in bottles. Aye, Furcas thought to himself with a sigh, true, that. Behind him, Manderson was strangely silent, plodding along under the weight of the coils of rope; perhaps the Vigils new to this duty felt it a useful way of keeping the madman from trying to run off or otherwise causing mayhem, but Furcas felt it unfair. He’d even said so before they’d set off from the killing-ground back there on the Medvale Road, but he’d been told to shut his face and walk on, so he’d done both.

Sake. Wish I hadn’t worn these bloody boots! April Triss declared with a grimace in her voice.

Weren’t yer boots yer customer was interested in, Trissy m’love, Jess declared. But wearin’ ‘em prolly drew his eye in the first place.

Aye, that’s true, the madam of the back room at The Setting Sun agreed ruefully. Shame of it is, I got bloody good legs. What say you, Furcas?

Aye, bloody good legs, he confirmed over his shoulder, and he knew it to be true.

"Then I go and wear these thigh-length leather winklepickers and then the customers start to drooling."

Them winklepickers o’ yorn made fer good ballkickers too, Trissy m’love, as that nasty little toe-rag roped in front o’ you soon found out before he buggered off.

May the filthy little cullion die a bloody virgin, Trissy spat.

Prolly will too an’ all, Jess sniffed, Them Vigils get a hold of ‘im, prolly will too.

Oy, quiet on the rope! a Vigil called from rearguard.

Or else wot? Jess cackled, You gonna send us up the bleedin’ road to the Fort or summink if’n we don’t shuddup?

There’s always adding days to a cullion’s sentence, as plays up on the rope!

It’s Vigil Owin, isn’t it? Trissy called over her shoulder. Thought I recognised the voice from the last time you paid us-all a visit at the Sunset on yer spring holidays!

The Vigil promptly fell silent, and at the head of the rope, Furcas smiled a sad smile. Well, April Triss was a brown-eyed beauty, and no mistake, and very popular. She and her three girls all were. Come up to Medvale from the city in the south, it was said, Kingshaven, where she’d been ill-used by some nobleman or king’s courtier, and been run out of the place to spare the high-born turd a scandal. They’d given her money and sent her on her way with a threat that’d make a strong man think twice about returning. Two hundred daler she’d once said, two hundred to keep her mouth shut about who it was that wronged her.

Giving her the two hundred had made her a whore, Trissy said, and broke her heart into the bargain. Make me a whore, and I’ll be a whore, she’d once told Furcas, she in her cups out at his shack where he’d spent a week’s wages for her company. He’d been sober, all his money spent, and had wept silent tears for her when she’d fallen asleep in his arms. Make me an ox, and I’ll be an ox, he’d whispered.

She never had named that high-born lickspittle who’d wronged her, and likely never would. But she’d made a solemn promise to herself, or so she’d confided to Furcas that same night, a promise that if she ever saw the bastard again, she’d say not one word, but walk up to him, and kick him so hard in the spuds he’d sing with the boys’ choir for the rest of his natural.

No-one knew who her parents were, or whether ‘Triss’ had been her father’s name or her mother’s. No-one in Medvale had really cared one way or the other, and she’d always been known to them all as ‘Trissy’. Except to Furcas Balamson, who, in their private moments, had always called her missy April, and she had allowed it. She had no male friends, not really, except, almost, for Furcas, who she’d once declared was the closest thing to it that she’d allow. The rest of the men in the world were just customers to the Sunset Missy.

As for Furcas, he knew he’d marry April Triss in the blink of an eye, were she the marrying kind, which of course she wasn’t. But then, there were likely many men in the east lobe much wealthier and a far better catch than he, who doubtless felt the same way. And ever since his reputation for being a maniacal terror when in his cups had spread throughout the town and its outlying homesteads, well, few were the respectable womenfolk who wanted anything to do with Balamson, the Giant of Medvale. Very few.

It took a long time to trudge twenty miles bound to a heavy rope, of course, but a few hours before sunset they saw the immense blank south wall of the Causeway Fort in the distance staring back at them. Closer still, and they saw the vast wooden doors through which they’d pass before their sentences commenced, and the days to their liberty began slowly counting down.

Enjoy the last of the free fresh air, cullions, Vigil Owin called from the rear, While you can.

Mister Owin? Furcas called back over his shoulder.

What, cullion?

You do know I’ll be coming back down the road soon enough, and passing right through your ward? You do know that, don’t you?

Aye, and me too, Trissy announced. Mayhap I’ll pay me a visit to your lady wife, while Furcas helps himself to a gallon o’ strong ale in one o’ yer taverns, Owin m’love.

The truculent Vigil immediately fell silent, rueing his childish baiting of the prisoners, and they walked the last yards in silence save for the groaning of the great gates swinging open before them.

oOo

4. Red Hemp

Those gates shut behind them with a deep and sinister boom which rolled like thunder from the harsh rock walls around them, and the four prisoners stood waiting in the gloom of the large atrium while Vigils signed papers and spoke of what had happened on the Medvale Road. The two women sidled closer to Furcas, and suddenly Manderson seemed to burst into life behind them, falling to his knees, stretching out his hands to the sides, and shouting, his voice echoing ominously from the glassrock walls…

Oh! Oh! Demons! Demons! Demons all around there be demons in all the eyes around and they are coming the ice is coming and the demons watch for their coming watch and wait and watch and wait the demons in all their eyes growing more and more…!

Shaddup, bloody crackbrain! and a burly Fort gaoler strode forward and expertly rapped Manderson on the base of the skull with a small but heavy leather sap.

The madman instantly flopped forward, unconscious, face-first into the hard rock floor.

Weren’t no need fer that! Balamson declared, feeling anger beginning to stir in the pit of his stomach. He weren’t doing nothin’ as might threaten a big brave bastard like you!

"Oh and what’s this then? Furcas bloody Balamson back again? You keep your gob shut too, Balamson, unless you want some o’ the same."

You wanna try givin’ it to me then, Ruckson? Reckon you can best me, with me ‘ands tied to this rope?

He’s right, Dep Nedrik declared, stepping forward and away from the gaggle of Vigils signing the prisoners over. Weren’t any need to lay the loony out like that.

On yer bloody way, laddie, the gaoler sniffed. This be Fort business, and none o’ yorn.

"Prisoners are my bloody responsibility until the receipt’s been signed! I could ruckin’ arrest you right here for assault!"

There was a shrill edge to the dep’s voice, the young man tired, bereaved, and facing a twenty mile hike through the dark, back south along the road to King’s Cross. Beggar the dog felt the sudden tension in the air and started barking, and Olly stepped forward to stand with his