Magic Casement (30 page)

Rap
had lost his appetite. “I don’t want to hear!” he squealed.
For an instant the old mockery gleamed in Little Chicken’s eye.

“Then
sharp stick from fire...” If Rap disliked hearing such barbarities even
when they did not concern him personally, then here was a way to get back at
him. So Little Chicken proceeded to narrate all of Sweet Nestling’s death
agonies in meticulous detail. He spoke with great admiration, sounding
sincerely regretful that he had not been allowed to try to better the
performance, and watching Rap’s nauseated reaction with bitter joy. By
the time the meal was over, Rap knew that Cheep-Cheep was already hanging in
the middle of the lodge, waiting for his long ordeal to start. He must get out
of range quickly.

“Let’s
go,” he said, wondering if he would freeze to death before Cheep-Cheep
died. “How many horses do we take?”

Little
Chicken frowned. “No horses. Run.”

“Run
all the way? No horses?”

“Horses?”
Little Chicken spat. “Horses for babies and old women. Men run!”

Before
Rap could argue, a handful of bear grease was pushed in his face. Little
Chicken spread it with care, on Rap’s lips and eyelids and even on the
insides of his nostrils. Then he adjusted Rap’s hood, pulling down and
lacing a mask that Rap had not known existed, covering his face completely
except for eye and nose holes. He did the same for himself and turned for the
door, conversation now being almost impossible.

He
was serious, obviously-they were going to run to the mountains. He began a slow
jog as soon as his moccasins touched the snow. Rap fell in behind him, not
truly believing that the feat was possible. All the way? The cold would freeze
their lungs in minutes.

They
jogged out the gateway and started across the clearing. Two men against the
wastelands? Two boys... Rap felt horribly vulnerable, much more so than when he
had set out from Krasnegar with Andor. Perhaps, it was the absence of the
horses, perhaps just that now he knew more. Only the two of them, master and
slave? He had trusted Andor completely. How could he ever trust Little Chicken,
who might well intend to imprison Rap in some convenient spot and then put his
good ideas into practice? One more companion would be a wise precaution, Rap
decided.

Fleabag,
sleeping happily in his snow hollow, jerked his head up as if he had heard a
call. He rose and shook himself. He bowed low to ease his front legs. He
pointed his nose at the sky to stretch his back legs. Then he set off into the
forest in a wolf’s long, easy lope.

Buckskins
were indeed better than furs-for running. They weighed nothing, they seemed to
let the sweat out without letting the cold air in, and feet could flex inside
the soft moccasins and so stay warm. Encased in grease and leather, Rap jogged
over the moonlit snow behind Little Chicken and gradually began to feel more
confident. Fleabag soon joined them and then took up position ahead.

After
covering a league or so, Little Chicken dropped to a walk. He snapped off the
icicles below his nose so that he could open his mask, but when Rap raised his
mitts to do the same, the goblin knocked his hands down.

Red
and puffing, he studied Rap impassively for a moment, then asked, “Blisters?
Rubbings?”

Rap
mumbled something incoherent and shook his head.

Little
Chicken nodded in grudging satisfaction. “You run good, town boy.”

Rap
grinned, but only to himself. He nodded.

“Go
much faster, then?”

Rap
nodded with less certainty, and the goblin chuckled as he closed his hood, but
when he broke from the walk into a jog again, he kept the same pace as before.

Any
resident of Krasnegar needed good legs. Rap had hoped that his week on
horseback might have left him in better shape than Little Chicken was. As the
hours crept by, he discarded that idea. The night became a blur of snow and
trees, of shadows and moonbeams, of pounding heart, of smoky breath out and icy
breath in, of chest burned by the frigid air, of Fleabag loping along, always
at a distance, of Little Chicken ever just ahead, usually jogging, rarely
taking a walk break. At times they must run with hands held high to divert
branches, at times they were slowed to a snail pace by cluttered deadfall. But
mostly they just ran. There was no conversation and Rap would not have been
capable of it anyway. He was soon unable to think or feel anything except a steady,
grinding, suicidal resolve that the town boy was going to keep up with the
goblin.

Just
before moonset they came to Porcupine Totem, and when the dogs began to bark,
Little Chicken stripped off the masks. He pushed Rap ahead as they approached
the doors. By that time Rap was too weary to wonder why, but he was accepted as
Flat Nose of the Raven Totem without question. Most of the clan were absent,
visiting Raven Totem for the entertainment, but there were a couple of young
men left in charge, and many old folk, and some children too young to travel.

The
village layout was very similar to the Ravens’, perhaps a little larger.
Rap staggered into a lodge that seemed quite identical and met insufferable
heat and glare. His knees almost buckled on the spot. Yet the household had
been asleep and was only just reviving the fire for the visitors, so perhaps
the hall was really quite cool. Little Chicken’s fingers expertly
unfastened Rap’s buckskins for him, and he stepped out of them with
relief, sank down on the hearthstones, and greedily drank of whatever it was
they gave him. His mind was as full of smoke as the ceiling. All he wanted was
sleep, sleep, sleep...

Then
Little Chicken, stripped to a loincloth as he was, pushed him down flat on the
big fireplace and produced a bucket of the inevitable grease, contributed by
the hosts. He inspected Rap’s feet carefully, then set to work at giving
his legs a vigorous massage, skillfully unknotting the tendons and easing the
aches. It was heaven.

“Soft,
town boy,” he growled contemptuously.

Rap
agreed, thinking that he could not have run another two steps. When the massage
was over, he offered to do the same for Little Chicken, although he knew he
would be very unskilled. Little Chicken’s eyes flashed in anger. “For
trash?” Probably he did not need a massage. He looked as fresh as when he
had started out, hours before. After snatching up a dish of food that was
waiting by the side of the fire, he stalked to the door. Rap’s farsight
showed him heading for the boys’ building. It was then that Rap realized
why he had been pushed forward for the introductions, and why the skin around
his eyes hurt--which he had not noticed before. It was only after he had gulped
a quick meal and thanked his hosts and rolled up in a greasy, stinking fur to
sleep that he wondered what Inos was going to say about that.

He
had hardly closed his eyes, he thought, when Little Chicken was shaking his
shoulder and starting another massage to loosen muscles knotted up in sleep.
Then he sternly ordered Rap to go out to the pits right away. Two of the women
rushed to prepare food for the guests even as Rap was being dressed again by
his handler. Little Chicken obviously took his duties seriously, whether they
be to die entertainingly or to serve a master. He would allow Rap to do nothing
that he could do for him, not even lace a boot; he would accept no help for
himself. In his own eyes he was trash, neither boy nor man, merely a possession
that should try to be useful and must pamper this fragile nongoblin. He led the
way southward without another word. Had it not been for the first glimmers of
dawn light, Rap would not have believed that his stay at Porcupine Totem had
lasted more than a few minutes.

The
following days passed in the same way. Each morning Little Chicken obtained
directions. By moonlight he brought his owner safely to another village.
Conversation was impossible in the masks, and when the journeys ended Rap was
too exhausted to try. In any case, his companion refused to stay in the adults’
building once he had given Rap his massage and seen him settled.

Rap
talked a little with his hosts, but he had nothing to tell them, and their news
was meaningless to him. His questions about Darad brought only angry silence
just by asking, he was breaking the rules for guests. He was never refused
hospitality or courtesy, but the welcome was grudging, partly because he was
not goblin-born, mostly because of Little Chicken. To own trash was a crime.
Rap had offended by not giving his defeated opponent the death he deserved and
wanted.

Gradually
Rap’s fitness improved, aided each evening by the most enormous meals he
had ever eaten, much of them fresh meat that was a great luxury to him.
Gradually Little Chicken raised the pace, but only slightly, for the villages
were set an easy day’s run apart, and greater speed would have brought no
advantage.

The
daylight was becoming noticeably longer as the sun began its slow return to the
northlands and the travelers worked their way south.

About
the sixth morning, just as it was time to fasten the masks and leave the lodge,
Little Chicken paused and regarded Rap with a glint in his eye.

“Salmon
Totem,” he said, “then Eagles, then Elk. Three days?”

“Right.”

“Or
sleep in snow, then Elk. Two days?”

Any
perceptible hint of a challenge from Little Chicken was unbearable. “Let’s
do that, then.”

The
goblin’s angular eyes widened. “And run faster?”

“Fast
as you like!”

“Town
boy! “ Little Chicken laughed, and contemptuously pushed a handful of
grease in Rap’s face.

A
few hours later, grimly aware of the tearing pain of the faster pace, Rap
thought to wonder why his companion had not brought food if there was to be no
lodge at the end of the day’s trek. The answer, obviously, was that a
goblin could live off the land. They stopped when Little Chicken judged the
light too poor for running-he did not know that Rap could see in the dark. He
lighted a fire and then made two others. Three small fires were better than one
big one, he said, and then he screamed in fury when Rap tried to help by
gathering firewood. Needing a bucket to melt snow, the goblin used his
backpack, dropping hot rocks in it. While the resulting water was necessary and
welcome to Rap, it was the strangest-tasting brew he had ever swallowed.

“I
find food!” Little Chicken announced. He pointed scornfully at Fleabag,
whom he had completely ignored until that moment. “You keep that here?”

Rap
agreed, and did so. He was glad of the company, sitting in the darkly haunted
forest, watching the shadows of the densely enclosing conifers dance around his
triangle of firelit snow, and trying not to wonder what he would do if Little
Chicken failed to return. Fleabag just pawed out a hollow and went to sleep.

But
Little Chicken did return, in an astonishingly short time. He came bearing two
white rabbits, which he had caught beyond farsight range, so that Rap did not
know how he had done it. He could hardly have been quicker had he run to a
market for them. He was an expert skinner and a skilled cook, too, damn him!
The campsite was in a hollow, half filled by a deep snowdrift, and Rap soon
discovered that this was not by chance. As soon as he had eaten, Little Chicken
set to work digging out a snow cave there, scooping like a dog, and again
indignantly refusing assistance. When it was dug deep enough, he began
gathering spruce branches, breaking them off trees made brittle by the fearsome
cold. Again Rap tried to help and this time Little Chicken did not shout at
him. Instead he demonstrated his vastly greater strength by snapping with
apparent ease any bough that Rap had failed to break. Rap gave up in
humiliation and returned shivering to the fires.

Finally
the cave was lined to Little Chicken’s satisfaction. He backed out and
nodded to Rap.

“You
first,” he said. “I follow, close door.”

“What
about Fleabag? He would keep us warm.”

Little
Chicken’s expression should have been invisible in the dark, but Rap knew
that he was regarding Fleabag with hostility.

“Won’t
come.”

Rap
hesitated and then said, “He will for me.”

After
a moment’s pause, the goblin said, “Show!” very quietly.

Rap
crawled into the cave and summoned the dog without a word. Fleabag awoke,
trotted over, and peered into the hole to see what his friend wanted. Then he
obediently crept in and lay down alongside Rap, panting foul carrion breath in
his face, swishing boughs with his tail.

The
cave was a narrow tunnel and it seemed impossible that a third body could find
room, but Little Chicken entered by lying on his back and wriggling, using his
feet to push snow against the entrance until it was closed to his satisfaction.
That was strenuous work and he ended crushed against Rap, puffing as hard as
Fleabag. Rap would certainly be warm enough during the night between those two,
sheltered from the wind and insulated by snow. There was no light and Little
Chicken’s face was too close to be seen properly if there were, but Rap
knew the thoughtful expression it bore in the darkness. He waited for the
question.

“How
you do that?” said a whisper close to his ear.

“I
don’t know, Little Chicken. I talk in my head. It works on horses, too,
but most of all on Fleabag.”

The
goblin stared blankly at nothing for a while and then asked,

“You
knock me down in testing?”

Here
it came! “Yes. It was not the Gods. It was me.”

Rap
was not sure why he had provoked this revelation. He did not think he was
boasting. Probably he was clearing his conscience. He sensed the big mouth
opening as Little Chicken bared his fangs and for a moment Rap half expected to
feel them sink in his throat.

It
was a smile. Unaware that he was being observed, Little Chicken was grinning
into the darkness. “Good! Town boy won.” After a while he chuckled.
“Good foe! Did not know. Know now.”