Marcii (The Dreadhunt Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter Two

              Newmarket buzzed with life, filled to the brim with people swarming like insects.

              This was a town that had spent its entire existence centred solely around trade, and the hustle and bustle here was simply a way of life.

              Long stalls and tall stands and open tents were covered with taught canvas, mounted on high poles just in case of rain. The makeshift streets and walkways between them teemed and heaved with the gathered masses.

              The shouts and cries of stall owners and market masters all merged together into one huge din. To any who were unaccustomed to such things it filled their senses with absolute chaos.

              Bright colours flashed everywhere as townspeople flocked between the stands and were barraged with a hundred and more goods for sale.

Many items were genuine; many more were not.

The same could be said for those running the stalls.

Many of them were honest, whilst again, many more of them were not.

In fact, the same can be said as a general rule for mankind.

Marcii made her way as best she could through the heaving market in the very centre of town. The teeming crowds of people all around didn’t give her a huge berth, but they clearly stepped one way or the other to avoid her.

They didn’t offer the same courtesy to others.

That could simply have been because they didn’t want to walk into her, but then, people had been avoiding her for her entire life, so she didn’t really even notice it any more.

For as far as she could see in every direction there were stalls and stands and tents, and then yet even more beyond that.

She was not overly tall however and at sixteen years of age, she probably wasn’t going to get much taller. She sighed heavily and suspected that she would forever feel lost amidst this rough, endless sea of trade.

Marcii slipped through the bustling, hurrying crowds, scurrying around her to and fro in every direction, unconsciously parting the waves as she went.

Almost everyone she saw, whether they acknowledged her or not, she recognised.

Having lived in Newmarket her entire life, the young Marcii Dougherty knew most people by face, if not by name. It was not the biggest town in the land, but its inhabitants numbered in the thousands rather than the hundreds.

People hurried past her without looking, more often than not in a world of their own, focused on the overwhelming market and the deafening noise and the blinding colours.

Marcii saw blacksmiths, tailors, barbers, coopers, farmers, people of all trades and occupations cutting around. Each was dressed just as appropriately and indeed as predictably as you might imagine.

The Newmarket blacksmith strode across the square, taking broad strides as he went and carrying several sets of farming tools in his strong embrace. His thick leather apron was drawn about his stout frame and spotted with burn marks that had scorched the leather here and there.

He knew Marcii quite well, but he was too tall and the square too crowded for him to see her.

Next she saw the tailor: a tall, slim woman with short, cropped, chocolate coloured hair and similarly coloured, sharp eyes. Though she was some ways away across the square she spotted Marcii’s jet black hair, straight and long, through the teeming masses. Pausing her sweeping observation of the crowds for a second, she caught the gaze of Marcii’s bright, almost luminous yellow eyes, peering out from behind her black fringe.

The tailor smiled falsely for a moment, for having caught the young Dougherty’s gaze she felt almost obliged to acknowledge her. But after a moment she looked away again, and she did not look back.

Marcii paid little attention, for such things she’d become accustomed to and rarely even noticed these days.

She drifted between the stalls and tents, slicing her way through the crowds as if she were poisonous. Every time she settled at a stand she scanned the wares for sale quickly, pausing there only briefly, and moving on immediately whenever she didn’t find what she was looking for.

The alluring scent of food and drink of all varieties reached her nostrils and her stomach growled fiercely in response, but she did not stop to eat.

Her mother, Amanda Dougherty, had given her a very specific list of things she needed to buy. Marcii knew her mother would be very angry if she spent the money she’d given her on anything besides what was on that list.

Once every four or five stalls or so Marcii paused for longer than just a few moments and dipped her small hands into the deep pockets of the brown, leather over jacket that she wore. The jacket was heavy but it kept the cold at bay, for the seasons were most definitely on the turn and the days were growing noticeably shorter and harsher.

Retrieving the coins scattered about the very bottoms of her pockets and exchanging them for the goods she needed, Marcii purchased everything from vegetables and meats to cloth and kitchenware.

All the stall owners served her without question, but there was no dispute that they eyed her warily as she approached, as if she was most certainly not to be trusted.

This was likely not down to anything Marcii had actually done wrong.

The very town itself had grown full and rife with distrust and fear of late.

Nonetheless, Marcii was polite and courteous as ever, just as her parents had raised her and her older sister to be.

She turned away from the stall she’d just visited, stuffing a bag of carrots into one of her deep pockets as she did so. Her step was quick and she almost collided with somebody standing close behind her, only catching the figure in the corner of her eye at the last second.

Startled, her gaze fell immediately upon the only person who seemed not to give Marcii such a wide berth as everybody else.

“Oh my life!” She exclaimed, dodging to one side even as she turned so that she did not collide with the young girl.

“I’m sorry.” The girl replied. Her voice was sweet and her tone rose in apology, but her expression remained unchanged, as if only her voice registered her surprise.

“Vixen!” Marcii followed. “I didn’t see you there! Are you okay?”

“Fine, thank you.” Vixen replied, gazing up at her friend Marcii through her tawny brown eyes.

              Vixen was an orphan whom Marcii had befriended, quite some years ago now. Marcii could only guess at her age, perhaps somewhere between eight and ten. She was perpetually filthy and spoke only slightly less infrequently than she ate, making her a scrawny, unseemly child.

              Her hair was permanently matted with twigs and leaves and, in fact, Marcii had only ever assumed she was an orphan because she seemed to have no home or parents, and had never spoken of either.

              Passers-by didn’t just avoid the immediate vicinity around Marcii now, but cast looks full of disdain upon the two of them as they scuttled past. To those with wealth and power, such a friendship was meaningless.

The pair of them were considered worthless.

Nothing.

Lower than the very dirt itself upon which they walked in fact, beneath their cobblestone streets.

“Do you need anything?” Marcii asked Vixen then, fully prepared to go against all her strict instructions if the young girl needed to eat.

Marcii had always thought very fondly of Vixen and felt a strange attachment to the young girl that she simply could not describe. She thought for some reason Vixen was most special, even if nobody else did.

Her family were especially disapproving of her showing the girl such kindness, as they often made quite clear.

Vixen was harmless though.

She was just young and lonely.

Growing up without a family is hard.

Her offer hung in the air between them for some time, but Vixen did not reply.

Instead, she turned to her left slightly, gazing briefly between the flurries on people, and eventually raised her hand and pointed through the crowds.

Marcii followed her indication and somehow her gaze wound its way perfectly round and through the swarming masses to land immediately upon what Vixen could see.

She was pointing at a doddery old man who clutched tightly to his cane and stooped back against a wall on the very edge of the square.

His name was Midnight.

Confused, Marcii glanced back to Vixen, but the young girl was gone.

Just as swiftly as she had appeared, she had vanished, and she left Marcii feeling somewhat bewildered in her wake.

Sighing and furrowing her brow slightly with concern, Marcii turned her gaze back to Midnight across the square, just about visible through the teeming throngs. He had not moved on and looked deep in thought as he stood there, his deep, black eyes lost.

Marcii tilted her head slightly to one side and looked on at Midnight for a minute or two, as he flitted in and out of view between the crowds.

She had always found him to be a most curious old man.

He had simply appeared one day in Newmarket, a long time ago.

No one knew where from.

Or so the story went.

He was deaf and dumb and older than time itself. His face was heavily lined and his eyes deeply set from the long, gruelling century that had seemingly carved itself into the very leather of his skin.

He was a small, scrawny man, though he had strong, powerful hands, which Marcii always found most bizarre for some reason. His hair was grey and scruffy, he wore a beard and his eyebrows were thick like age old woolly caterpillars.

Of course, his name was not really Midnight. The townsfolk had only taken to calling him that because every night he made his way religiously outside to stare at the moon in the midnight sky.

Even when it was raining and the sky was shrouded by thick cloud, where not even the faintest glow of the moon could escape the blanket of blackness, still outside he would go, and nobody knew or understood why.

His black suit and tie were rumpled, as were his trousers and shirt. His black, leather shoes, though perhaps once upon a time smart, were now scuffed and scratched from probably many years of wear, Marcii imagined.

The old man did not see her looking at him through the crowds, but as he moved, pushing slowly away from the wall and taking small, careful steps, leaning heavily on his cane, Marcii still thought he looked as though something was bothering him.

He glanced around frequently, yearningly, as if he was looking for someone. It was as if something very pressing was weighing down upon his mind, and it would not yield.

Still, he did not see her.

A few more moments passed by and a group of four or five ladies passed between Marcii and Midnight, blocking her view of him for a few precious seconds.

And then, after a moment or two, once the line of sight between them had cleared, Marcii looked back to where she’d just seen him.

But her eyes did not find him.

He was gone.

Nowhere to be found.

Suddenly a loud bell rang out across the town, resonating obnoxiously from somewhere across the square, and the swelling crowds seemed to be instantly drawn to it like rats.

Surging forward, sweeping her up along with them, the crowd seemed to swallow Marcii whole. She was not tall enough to see over anybody, and so had no idea what was going on.

Nonetheless, no matter how hard she shoved and fought to break free, it seemed that the berth she’d been granted all morning was long forgotten.

She found herself caught up helplessly, pushed and dragged roughly along within the brimming throngs, unable to escape.

Chapter Three

              The young Dougherty heard him before she could see him, for she was still trapped within the surging crowd.

To her left stood a grotesquely fat man, sweating and greasy: breathing heavily both from the effort of walking and from the excitement of the bell still ringing. His shirt was tucked into his trousers but his belly was so massive that it looked simply as if he’d folded the bottom of his shirt beneath the giant rubber ring of fat that surrounded his existence.

And to her right, laughing merrily with unnerving delight, a juxtaposed woman so thin and fragile that she looked like she might snap in the rush jumped and hopped madly to get a better view.

It seemed Newmarket was going insane.

Marcii caught snatches of conversation from somewhere behind her.

“It’s him…” A woman whispered frantically.

“He’s here every day…” A man replied in a much deeper, gruffer voice.

Marcii craned her neck to look but she could not see whom the voices belonged to.

“Do you believe him?” The woman asked. Her voice was shaky and filled with fear. But the man she was talking to did not get time to answer.

Suddenly his voice sounded again, this time booming even louder than before, silencing the whisperings all around. His words echoed about the enormous square and carried over the throngs of onlookers, reaching their eager ears, awaiting with such impatient trepidation.

The very first opportunity she found, though it most certainly did not come soon enough, Marcii seized the chance to dart through a gap that revealed itself behind the enormously overweight man to her left. She practically dove through the narrow crevice, and not a moment too soon. It closed immediately again behind her as she dodged and ducked and escaped thankfully out the back of the hustling crowd.

Eventually, stepping back across the square and away from the teeming masses, Marcii was in a position clear enough to see what all the commotion was about.

What she saw did not surprise her, and she couldn’t help but taste disgust on her tongue.

There was one man stood above the rest, surrounded and engulfed within his own delusions of grandeur.

As there always seems to be.

He dripped in expensive clothes and jewellery of only the finest quality. His suit and shirt were made from silk that was smooth to look at, let alone touch. Several heavy looking gold rings adorned his fleshy fingers and thick loops of plated gold hung cripplingly about his shoulders, all meeting in the centre of his chest.

However, lavish as his taste might have been, Marcii could never have imagined anybody would be able to wear such expensive garments so badly.

              How wrong she had been.

              Mayor Tyran certainly managed to pull of that most undesirable feat with relative ease.

              Probably in his mid-forties Marcii guessed, his dark brown hair was greasy to the point of being slimy, and pressed flat to the top of his round head. His dark, deep set, sunken eyes that seemed perpetually troubled peered out from narrows slits between his cheeks and his overbearing eyebrows.

              Whilst his rotund pot belly protruded quite obviously beneath his shirt and pulled the material tight across the buttons at the front of his jacket, his arms and legs were scrawny and weak, making him appear bizarrely disproportionate.

              His whole demeanour looked most troubled, as if he had the weight of the world bearing down upon him. But the longing expression on his face added menace as he seemed almost to accept that willingly, as if he welcomed it: like he was hungry for it.

Tyran had only recently been elected into power. Or, perhaps more accurately, he had bought his way in.

Nonetheless, in only that very short space of time, the impact he’d had was profound. The people of Newmarket flocked from every corner of the town to hear him speak.

“My people!” His voice boomed across the square again, captivating his audience, and Marcii shuddered slightly at the sound.

She found him utterly repulsive.

She just couldn’t understand why people were drawn to him so.

He came from the south, supposedly.

The rumours were that he’d made his fortune in slavery, buying and selling the poor and homeless and making vast profits in the process.

It mattered not though. Whether people believed the talk or not, once he’d paid them off, the rumours always stopped, or at the very least they ceased to matter.

“I’m sure by now how many of you have heard of last night’s tragedy!” Tyran began, opening his arms expansively.

Marcii frowned for a moment.

She had not, in fact, and for once was actually strangely drawn to Tyran’s words, as they lured her in.

“In the depths of the night, under cover of darkness, two of our own were taken from us!” He continued dramatically. “Thomas and Marianne Hatchet were murdered in the night! All of their cattle, and even their dog, were also found slaughtered!”

Gasps and cries of terror rang out from Mayor Tyran’s onlookers, for whilst some of them had heard, clearly it was too early for the news to have reached everybody.

Shock and fear rippled through the crowd like a disease, spreading from person to person in less than an instant.

Just the way Tyran liked it.

“And if we do not find those responsible for this horror…” He pressed on, seizing his advantage. “If we do not find them and stop them…” He breathed loudly. “Then this will be just the beginning!”

“Who was it!?” A stray, distressed voice called from the crowd. “Are we safe!?”

Cries of demanding agreement followed, spawning something of a shouting match for a few moments, instigated by fear.

Tyran smiled slyly, allowing the dread to fester a moment or two longer before intervening.

Eventually he raised his hands and quelled the noise. His subjects obeyed and quieted their pleas.

“I have brought these trusty men you see before you into my service…” He offered assuredly, indicating with open hands towards a dozen or so burly and menacing individuals. They stepped obediently forward and displayed themselves silently to the crowd, ominous and looming.

Each seemed bigger and heftier and more of a mountain than the last. Just as Tyran dripped in finery, his men were coated in armour that looked too heavy for Marcii to even stand up in. Their weapons were varied and numerous, but always deadly. The scars that they bore across their arms and legs and faces ran deep and long forgotten, as if they were nothing more than proof of their prowess.

They were, to all extents and purposes, mercenaries.

And Marcii knew it.

Fierce and brutal, they were loyal only to the coin placed in their hands.

And such, as is the way of the world, that made them loyal to Tyran.

“My police are sworn to protect you…” He went on, as his crowd took in the foreboding sight of the men stood before them. “Whatever it is that seems to think it can plague us, it shall have to think again!”

And with those words, though there were only a handful of voices to begin with, the cheering began, and soon enough the rest of Newmarket followed suit, for Tyran was not only to be their Mayor, but indeed also their saviour.

As his people whooped and applauded he basked in their false affection and smiled with dark intent out across the sea of faces before him.

For a moment his gaze seemed to settle and fix quite intentionally upon Marcii in the distance. His eyes bore into her fiercely from where he stood, raised up above everybody else, and his police stood about him protectively, menacingly, stifling even the tiniest hint of a threat to his presence.

Unable to hold his gaze a moment longer, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, Marcii broke his hold and retreated.

She couldn’t stand to listen to another second, for although he had drawn her in, and it seemed he had indeed hooked the rest of the town, she was not swayed so easily by his enticing words.

Only a few gazes followed her as she dipped out of the square, away from the cheering and the applause.

One of them, even still, was Mayor Tyran’s.

But the other two, unseemly though they might have been, belonged to none other than Midnight, the doddery old man, and to Vixen, the young orphan with twigs in her hair, rips in her clothes, and dirt across her expressionless face.