The Wicked Day (6 page)

Jute waited for the pounding of his heart to subside. The slight sounds of the inn came whispering to him. The sounds of sleep. Someone turning uneasily on their bed. The wind sighing in the eaves outside, sighing and waiting for whatever it was that would be coming that night. And then, right when he had breathed a sigh of relief, there came a sudden thump of running feet from upstairs, a thud and a shout, and then the ringing clash of steel against steel on the stairs. Jute turned and stumbled down through the darkness, feeling his way step by step.

“Watch out!” said the ghost.

“What?” said Jute, and then he tripped over something (a mop and bucket) and, with a tremendous clatter, fell flat on his face at the foot of the stairs. He jumped up. A dim light shone from the embers in the common room fireplace. A figure appeared in the kitchen door, wrapped in a dressing gown. Esne. She said something—her mouth opened and he saw her eyes filled with shadows and sleep—but he did not hear her, for he was already dodging around the tables and running for the door.

The handle whispered under his hand. He flung himself to one side as the ward in it quivered into life. There was a brief, soundless flash of light and heat and then the room was plunged back into shadow. Jute blinked and rubbed his eyes. Glaring white spots danced before his vision.

Something rolled thumping down the stairs and came to rest in a dark clump on the floor. Esne shrieked. A man leapt down the stairs with a sword in his hands. Declan. He whirled and beat back a wave of figures that dashed down the stairs after him. Iron shone in the dim light.

“Get the boy too!” shouted someone. “Esne! Get him, if ye know what’s good for ye!”

“Oh dear,” said the ghost.

Esne strode across the room, her nightgown flowing out behind her. But her face was weary and she clutched at Jute in a half-hearted manner. He ducked under her hand and darted into the kitchen. The glowing coals on the hearth revealed the face of the potboy yawning on his bed of rags by the fire. His eyes widened at the sight of Jute, and he fumbled for the poker hanging on the hearth wall. Jute hurtled past him. The poker hissed through the air behind him.

Jute cringed as he grabbed the handle on the back door, but it wasn’t warded; it was only stiff with rust. He flung it open and shot out the door. Footsteps splashed toward him across the muddy yard behind the inn. He did not wait to see who it was (or
what
it was, a voice in his mind pointed out) and darted away through the night and the rain.

For a sickening moment he was disoriented. There was only the rain and the darkness and the muddy streets twisting in and out of the jumbled houses. A dog barked close by. But then Jute heard the rumble of the waterfall somewhere further away in the night. The footsteps pounding along behind him did not slow up. They sounded as if they were gaining on him. Jute ducked down an alley and then clambered up a stonewall and out onto a roof. He peered over the edge. A man ran along the alley. As he passed by Jute’s hiding place, he slowed. It was one of the men from the inn. Not the drunk Ollic, but one of the other men from his table. The one with yellow eyes. He crept down the alley, stopping every few steps to examine the ground. Not that there could be anything to see in the rain. The alley was practically a stream sluicing between the stone walls on either side. But still, the man bent his head low over the mud and water. He had a large, strangely shaped head. Long and stretched. And there was also something peculiar about how he moved. His stance was more like that of a dog sniffing for the scent of its prey.

Jute froze.

The man was sniffing!

Sniffing and snuffling, his head lower and lower until he was so bent over that he had to steady himself with one hand in the mud. After a moment, though, the man straightened up and hurried down the alley, disappearing into the night.

“Was he trying to smell you?” said the ghost from inside Jute’s knapsack.

“I don’t know. Yes, I think so.”

“Wake me up when this is all over,” said the ghost. “My nerves can’t stand it anymore.”

“Ghost aren’t supposed to be afraid,” said Jute.

“Shows how much you know about ghosts.”

For some reason, this cheered Jute up. True, he was lying on top of a roof in a strange village in the cold rain in the middle of the night, and Declan and the hawk were nowhere to be seen. The day (rather, the night) was turning out badly. But the fact that the ghost was afraid was, oddly enough, an encouraging thought.

Jute wiped rain from his eyes and inspected his surroundings. He was on top of a stable behind a house. A muddy yard separated the two. Light glimmered in one of the windows of the house, but then vanished. Further on his right, past a rubbish pile, loomed the back of another house. From what he could see, squinting in the dark, he did not have much choice other than the alley, unless he wanted to start climbing over roofs. He scowled.

It would be much simpler if I could fly.

Hawk! Where are you?

But there was no answer. There was only the patter of the rain and the moan of the wind. Jute hitched his knapsack up more securely on his shoulders and then climbed back down the wall to the alley below. He slunk through the darkness. The moon was down. Not a single star could be seen. His senses felt raw, quivering, and desperate to hear and smell and feel danger before it found him. He sidled up the end of the alley and peered out.

Further down the street, visible only as a dark shape, walked the figure of a man. The man stopped at the first house he came to and tapped on the door. The door opened and Jute saw the blur of a face in the opening. He could not hear their conversation. They were too far away. The door shut again and the man went to the next house. Again, he knocked softly on the door. The scene was repeated. The door opened, and a face peered out and then disappeared again behind the door after their conversation.

The man moved onto the third house. This time, however, the house was uncomfortably near where Jute was hiding across the street. He could easily see the face peering out of the door, a candle clutched in one hand. The light illumined the face of an old man in a nightshirt, knuckling sleepily at his eyes. The first man quickly reached out and extinguished the candle, but not before Jute saw his face as well. It was the drunk from the inn. Ollic. And despite the wind sighing around the chimneys and through the eaves and the hiss of the rain around him, Jute could hear their conversation.

“Put that out, ya old fool,” said Ollic.

“Whatter ya doin’ here?” said the old man. “Tain’t but after midnight. Go on w’ ya afore my wife wakes. Go on.” He tried to shut the door, but Ollic stuck his foot in the way.

“Nay, listen here. There’re strangers in town an’ the man himself has sent word he wants ‘em. He wants ‘em trussed like chickens fer the spit. A man an’ a boy. An’ he wants every one o’ us out lookin’ to catch ‘em. They ducked through his lads’ hands at the inn, but us’ll get ‘em for him.”

“I’m too frail to be trampin’ around in the cold,” quavered the old man.

“Get yer boots on. You don’t want him comin’ down the mountain, crackin’ our skulls, do ya? Do yer duty.”

Grumbling, the old man closed the door and Ollic went on to the next house. Jute shrank back into the alley. His teeth chattered and he clamped his hand over his mouth to still them. What did the man mean? Trussed up like chickens for the spit? And who was the man Ollic had been talking about?

Jute shuddered. He did not want to find out. Chickens on spits were nice, but only when they were proper chickens and he was eating them. He scurried away through the alley, darting from shadow to shadow, hoping the moon would not breach the clouds and lend her unwelcome light to his steps. He could hear the slight noises of people in the streets, of doors opening and closing, and the rustle of voices. But then he was past the last house and running through the darkness. The rain slashed down around him. It was so dark that he might as well have shut his eyes and blundered along, but he could hear the river flowing on his right, some yards away, and up ahead was the gradually increasing roar of the waterfall plunging down into the pond below.

But then Jute came to the last house and found himself facing a wall. It rose up in the night. Timbers lashed together. Of course. The wall. It went all the way around the village. How could he have expected anything less? The wall was quite high. He scrabbled at it to gain some hold, but the timbers were each a slim tree trunk adzed straight and clean of any vestige of branch. To make matters worse, the wood was slick with rain. He tried wedging his fingers in between the timbers to secure a grip, but it was no use. Perhaps there was a tree near enough to the wall that he might climb it and gain the top of the wall that way. A tree or even a house situated nearby. He stared about, but there was neither.

Hawk! Where are you?

Jute flung all of his desperation into the call. Shouting inside of his mind. The hawk did not respond. However, something else did. Something growled in the darkness nearby. And then the rain let up. The wind tore a rent in the clouds and the moon shone through. A shadow rounded the corner of the nearest house. Moonlight gleamed on teeth and staring eyes and the strangely shaped head. The man from the alley. Only he was not a man. His head was too long. It was changing as Jute stared. The jaws pushed out, narrowing and lengthening. The thing dropped to all fours and loped forward. Jute could not move. He was frozen at the sight.

“Jute!” screamed the ghost.

Jute turned and ran, slipping in the mud and clawing his way back to his feet. His heart hammered in his throat. Behind him the creature rushed. Mud flew from its paws and he could hear the whistle of its breath.

Why can’t I fly?

And the wind blew past him, lightening his feet so that he teetered up through the air, catching at it, gulping it down, as if swallowing it would make him lighter. He ran up through the air like he was running up stairs, sobbing with relief. Something slammed into the wall below him. Jaws snapped at his feet. The creature fell away, snarling. Jute’s stomach lurched and his legs windmilled through the air. He began to sink, but his hands flailed out and caught hold of the top of the wall. He pulled himself up and tumbled down over the other side of the wall. Crashed down into the mud so hard that he couldn’t breathe. The wall shuddered behind him under the impact of a heavy blow. A body, hurling itself against it. Once, twice, and he heard the creature growling on the other side of the timbers. Then, there was only silence.

“Quickly, quickly,” said the ghost, its voice trembling. “It’ll find us. It knows this place. It’ll know where to get past the wall.”

“What was that?” gasped Jute. He staggered to his feet and ran.

“You don’t want to know,” said the ghost. “I don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t know! I’ve read of such creatures, or maybe I wrote about ‘em? I can’t remember. The shifters.
Awendans
, in the old tongue. Men who have given themselves over to their evil natures time and time again so that, one day, they’re able to take on their honest form.”

“A wolf? That thing was a wolf! What man would have a wolf inside of them?”

Jute ran through the dark. The waterfall was a thunderous roar now. He could hear it cascading down into the pool. The air seemed full of water. Not just the rain, but a thick, flying mist that was surely the fault of the waterfall. He was drenched through and through. There was nothing to be seen behind him. Only rain and darkness and the horrible sense that there were things out there, just on the edge of sight, waiting to pounce once his back was turned.

“Men who murder,” said the ghost, its voice shaking. “Men who kill the innocent until they do it for the sheer joy of death. But a shifter who becomes a wolf isn’t a true wolf. No, they’re something evil and cruel. Real wolves will kill, but only for hunger.”

Jute saw a glimmering in the darkness, a ghostly column of light cascading down and down but never going anywhere. The waterfall. It was higher than the tallest tower of the regent’s castle in Hearne. Far above, on either side, was the immense blackness of the cliffs. The dark shape of a building huddled near the bottom of the falls. A water mill. It perched on the side of the river, half leaning out over the water so that it seemed as if the building would topple over at any moment. He heard the dripping and splashing of water and a creaking sound.

“What’s that noise?” said the ghost from inside the knapsack. “It gives me the shivers. Maybe it’s the ghost of a murderer. They always groan like that.”

“Stop it. All this talk of murderers and wolves and ghosts is going to make me scream.”

“I’m a ghost,” said the ghost, but it subsided into silence.

Jute tiptoed closer to the water mill. He saw, then, that the strange creaking noise came from the waterwheel. It turned on the side of the building, water dripping from its scoops. Moonlight glimmered on water and wet wood. The windows in the water mill were dark. Jute crept across the muddy ground until he came to the wall of the mill. The overhang of the roof sheltered him from the rain. He crouched there, feeling miserable. Adventure was all well and good, but not when you were wet and cold and running away from all sorts of horrible creatures that wanted to kill you.

The one good thing about the rain was that it was certain to hide the scent of his trail. At least, that’s what he had always thought. Animals had trouble following scents over water. And there was plenty of water on the ground. Jute scowled and regarded his muddy condition with disfavor. Where was Declan? And where was the hawk, for that matter? He edged along the side of the mill until he came to a window. He couldn’t see anything through the glass, for it was just as dark within as it was without.