While the hunting party was away, Hugh made his preparations. The flame of Grumb’s paranoia had been lit, and now he sought other tinder...
Many of the nobles had stayed behind, disinclined to participate in the tiring and mucky exertion of hunting through the swamp for the dangerous fauna which dwelt there. Hugh moved among their number, making use of the small celebrity he had acquired through his ‘honest subservience’ to be entreated to their small gatherings and play at serving them.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Patril demands a duel before the hunt is done! Not that he has a chance against Teman, but after the kind of humiliation he’s taken it might be the only way he can save any face at all! Imagine, winning all night at cards just to find yourself down an auble by morning!” One of the ladies japed. She had developed a particular fondness for Hugh, insisting that he call her Jessi and declaring him ‘just the sweetest, most loyal thing, more than any dog!’. Fast are the fashions of the idle, trivial are their delights. A treasured toy in the dawn, cast aside by dusk.
“Teman really has shown himself the man of the moment hasn’t he? I always thought his features rather too sharp? But after his clever cornering of Patril they really do seem to suit him?” said a nervous young woman by the name of Henrietta, who seemed to end every sentence looking for approval.
“Too right Heni! I truly am so glad we came! Such excitement after all! I was worried it would be frightfully dull. I was so disappointed when Elskia left with no party at all. She’s been so different lately, actually interesting for once! It’s as if she’s finally coming into her mother’s blood,” Jessi said.
“May she res—” began Henrietta.
“Oh Heni! There’s no need! The Baroness can’t hear us all the way out here,” Jessi laughed, “But I’ll tell you who must be sore about coming! Cynthia! I heard the second auble was her dowry on advance,” she uttered the last in a conspiratorial hush, “If my betrothed gambled away my dowry before we were even married I think I’d just abandon him right there and then.”
Upon hearing this, Hugh tried very hard to not be noticed.
Hugh’s ability to go unnoticed was perhaps one of the few ways he’d always considered himself somewhat exceptional. It wasn’t a capacity for sneaking, he did not have any skill for stealth, but a way of behaving which, upon observation, rather made the observer want to look away and immediately ignore him. It was a particular slump of the shoulders, a quick shuffling step, and a dull but frustrated look that brought to mind a person in rather desperate need of a privy. He had developed it over many years of desperately wanting to go without comment. This was not, however, the method he employed.
The long process of trial and error to develop his ‘look away’ posture had, over the years, produced many other novel expressions of body language. These novel expressions were, by and large, dismissed as patently useless for himself. The posture he assumed was one of these ‘lost inventions’; one which, if it was given a name, would called something like ‘Don’t look at me’, which was accurate only insofar that the phrase was assumed to be communicated in a high pitched scream.
That is to say; Hugh tried very hard not to be noticed in a manner which, to all observers with the faintest social perception, drew attention like moths to a flame.
Henrietta politely ignored him, a gesture of grace she wished others would offer herself.
“Hughie dear, I daresay you have something interesting to share with us!” Jessi, on the other hand, smelled blood in the water.
Hugh shifted uncomfortably, “It’s not my place m’lady. The highborn should be able to trust their vassal wont speak of private moments... Not that there is anything mind!”
But this only inflamed Jessi’s interest. “Private moment you say. Well now my mind is all ablaze. Hughie, you have done something very cruel thing to set my mind wandering. I’m scarcely to blame for the kind of conclusions I might come to! It has been said that my only fault, minor though it is, is a small predilection for jumping to extreme conclusions.”
“Extreme conclusions?” murmured Henrietta.
“Exactly Heni. But it’s so difficult to keep one’s head in such circumstances without any solid footing in fact by which to ground oneself.”
“Please miss, it will come back on me if it’s spread around!” begged Hugh.
“So there is something! Well you can be assured Hugh, I am moved only by absolute concern and caring for my friends and peers. I would never repeat something told in confidence. But oh how it breaks my heart to be unable to offer a kind word or gesture of support when my friends struggle and I don’t know of it! So often once I am informed it is only a matter of time before their current challenges become of little consequence!”
Hugh let a crack begin to show in his resolve, “you help them?” Hugh asked anxiously, “It’s just, I’ve felt so guilty over my part...”
“Oh poor Hughie! You must not bear such a burden alone! Secrets are terrible things to keep to oneself, it’s no good for your health or that of others. I assure you, and Heni can confirm, I do everything in my power to help others, discreetly, once I know of their ills.”
“You do?” Henrietta asked.
“Precisely Heni!”
Jessi looked at Hugh; expectant, as she was toward all things she put the slightest effort into, of receiving his submission.
“Well, if you only mean to help... I was serving Cynthia earlier this morning, and my lady you must know that I try not to listen, and even when I do, I rarely understand the words of my betters, but just on this occasion I overheard her say ‘if Teman has my dowry perhaps I shall consider myself betrothed to him!’” Hugh said.
Jessi sucked her teeth excitedly. If this one could she’d swallow all the secrets of the world.
“Oh Hughie! That is simply dreadful! How terrible for you to have to hold it in. I simply must do something for Cynthia, I simply must. I’m of half a mind to go to her this instant...but I’ll hold myself in check for just...a moment.” Jessi shifted in her seated, barely constraining her overflowing delight.
Hugh let the tension leave his shoulders, “You were right my lady, I do feel much better unburdened of one of them.”
Jessi froze mid-wiggle and looked to Hugh with shining eyes.
“One of them?”
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After a brief conversation with the Admiral in which we related our respective goals, I eagerly accepted a position as a Bone Corps auxiliary, fleshed division.
I learned from the Admiral that the Bone Corps had been responsible, for the last thousand years or so—he was understandable fuzzy on the details, for culling any of the releases of necromantic experiments from the dark wizard’s degrading spell arrays.
“Of course when we started the whole sordid business we were all still vital! What with the pumping of fluids and sparking of electricals! But a job like this requires sacrifices and,” he paused expectantly, “Follow-through!” shouted the conversant members of the corps. “Precisely. And for a task where the time between threats can be hundreds of years, institutional memory just isn’t up to snuff! Hence, the Bone Corps!” He spoke in a brusque, sharp manner, with a weight of passionate focus that drew you in. I understood how, with such a leader, the Corps had managed to maintain its mission for over a millennia.
“Roam mentioned you’ve been having difficulties with this recent breakout?” I ventured.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Quite right! Devil of a thing to track! Typically we rely on Roam and Lone to guide us to the target, but as Roam has no doubt alluded, his typical precision is being curtailed in some manner, and Lone has been even more scarce than usual... We are forced, in turn, to rely on the less sophisticated efforts of the Numbskulls, to... diminished efficacy.”
To directly illustrate his point, directly in front of us a set of Numbskulls were engaged in an earnest game of kickball with their own heads.
“I see the problem,” I ventured, “Is there an underlying issue with using reanimated animals for the purpose? My squirts—I mean squirrels seem to be hellbent on heading to something.”
“Fallen Gods! Those squirrels are dead?!”
I looked uncertainly at him, “I know it must have been a long time since you’ve had flesh, but typically living things don’t spray this volume of vital fluid, and they have all their limbs.”
“Quite right! I thought they were simply still entangled in their final passage! Whatever did you do to them? Creatures returned by a Death Engine always fight until destroyed whenever they’re constrained.”
I shrugged, “Not my lovelies. I’ve found a firm hand and positive reinforcement has made them totally pliable.” I wondered privately if anything in Elskia’s heritage was responsible in their submission.
“Fascinating! When I saw you I strongly suspected the fates had crossed our paths. Now I know it to be so! Bone Corps, our newest auxiliary has the route! Elyondril, tools away, the elf’s skull will wait. Mr. and Mrs. Bone, please try to retain some decorum; the Numbskulls are impressionable and restless. Speaking of which, Numbskulls: assemble!”
The Numbskulls reconstituted themselves in quick order and we began to move off, me leading the way with the squirts at hand, Admiral by my side.
“Hold there Roam!” shouted the Admiral, “Stay close, we can’t be down two scouts now that we have our heading.”
“...Yessir Admiral!” Roam answered after a brief pause, and he slipped back into ranks from his initial effort to move ahead.
Terrence took the opportunity of the shuffle to attach himself firmly to my side, head turning sharply to try and track a trio of Numbskulls competing to remain continuously in his blindspot. We had scarcely moved on when a thought finally occurred to me, and I turned to the Admiral.
“Did...did you think I was just carrying a pair of mutilated squirrels on my belt?”
The Admiral gave me a distinctly grave expression, which for a skull is very grave indeed. “Fashions may change, but it is always impolite to comment unfavourably on a lady’s pastimes.”
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If Hugh could be imagined as a moist drumstick, overflowing with secrets, by the end of Jessi’s interrogation he was naught but a dry bone, cracked for even its marrow. She had wheedled, teased, drawn, and eased every secret out of him. Every overheard conversation, every rumour, every pregnant pause.
Henrietta had grown increasingly withdrawn over the course of this extraction, beginning to wince at the repeat utterance from Jessi: ‘Anything else you can recall Hughie, anything at all?’. She rightly fears the repercussions of overindulgence in such a gourmand.
But any reluctance on her part was overshadowed entirely by Jessi’s enthusiasm. She began by looking at Hugh with a kind of adoring surprise, as if a favoured pet suddenly manifested an improbable but delightful new trick, but as the gossip piled up her manner transformed steadily into what could only be described as frenzied.
Hugh managed to leave her only after repeated statements that he could simply remember no more details at all, and even then she only allowed it after she extracted a promise to come right to her if anything else appeared in his memory.
The purpose of the Bastard is to bend the crowd to his will, to engender compliance in the whole as he does in the individual. But he forgets: a crowd is a beast more than the sum of its parts. And how can you bend a beast that wars with itself? Worse yet, how to pacify the beast with an empty belly.
Hugh found Grumb looming over his assistants as they worked chopping vegetables. Ever does the petty master suspect his underlings, ever does the tried servant buck at such treatment. Hugh joined the line wordlessly and got to work.
“Finally decided to join us, eh kitchen-scrap? Done lickin’ the petticoats of yer betters?” One of the assistants hassled Hugh. A loud bark, praised in the past, but unforgivably ignorant of the present.
Grumb moved like lightning and cuffed the assistant to the ground. “That’s enough out of ya! Young Hugh has been invited to higher tables for his good character! Somethin’ you whelps haven’ a faintest idea of!”
The cook moved away, and the fallen assistant slowly stood to return to his task. They worked in silence for a while longer. Chop-Chop-Chop, the sound of knives the only register of the work.
Hugh carried out the work methodically, reaching forward into the potato bag before him, grabbing a spud, placing it on the cutting board, and dicing in time with the others. He repeated the process again and again, losing himself in the rhythm of the familiar work.
Chop. Chop. Cho—Hugh paused mid-cut. The break in the flow of labour was immediately obvious, a single knives sound suddenly absent. After a moment he continued the cut, made another, and then slowed, hesitantly finishing the slice in a drawn out tschlop.
“What’s that you’re doing kitchen boy?” Grumb called out, “forgotten how to chop taters?”
Hugh was silent, which wasn’t unusual, but he also didn’t immediately renew his work, which was.
Grumb finally roused himself to approach, unwilling to let such shirking go unaddressed.
“Well kitchen boy? Have ya gots anything to say?”
Hugh continued to stare at the board, but it was becoming obvious to all he wasn’t trying to avoid Grumb’s eye, so much as his attention was fixed elsewhere. The moment stretched until Hugh snapped his fixated attention from the knife embedded potato.
“Sorry sir, it was just...something felt odd in the potato cut sir. I musta just imagined it.”
Grumb’s eyes bulged. “Odd how boy? Is it off?”
Hugh shifted, uncomfortable under scrutiny, “No, I...I just... I figures I cuts tens of thousands of taters, maybe hundreds of thousands. Some nights I dream about cutting ‘em” The rest of the crew nodded at that, an experience they’d had many a time. “Something about this one felt different is all. But it just be me imagining things I bet,” he finished lamely. “I mean, it’s not as if anythings been done to ‘em.”
Grumb hustled Hugh out of the way and picked up the offending spud himself. The cook squeezed the spud; held the spud right up to his eye; smelled the spud first in quick sniffs and then great snorting inhales; everything short of tasting it.
“Fallen gods, I can tell, it is different. Tampered spuds. They mean to ruin me,” Grumb muttered under his breath, pitched so low only Hugh could hear, then louder, “All veg comes through me got it? Afore ya start on it, it comes through me. Toss everything we done so far. Clean yer knives—no! New knives for the work.”
Grumb continued to spout a list of orders, a refrain that not only set them back hours of work, but promised to slow the rest.
Hugh, obedient as always, threw the perfectly normal potato among the scraps with the others.
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Travelling with the Numbskulls was what I imagined travelling with a large set of under-supervised kindergartners would be like. If they also happened to be world-class gymnasts, non-verbal, and capable of truly remarkable feats of group coordination.
After a few half-baked attempts to get a rise out of me which I failed to acknowledge, they shifted their full attention to Terrence, whom I realized must have been a somewhat sheltered child. In the couple of miles we travelled they made a game of startling him at whatever turn they could manage. It began simply enough with basic jump scares: leaping out from behind trees or bushes, but their vicious creativity was not content with that.
They began to venture ahead and prepare set pieces designed to psychologically unravel the poor elf. There was the rain of teeth; followed by the skeleton mirror hall; and the bone portrait, but none of them compared to their masterpiece.
We stopped in a clearing to get a chance to orient reorient with the squirts, which were hesitant to give a clear signal in the proximity of the Bone Corps. Once we were given adequate space I set the squirts down and Terrence sat on a nearby log and put his head in his hands.
I heard some muffled repetition of ‘I can’t do it, I just can’t do it’, but I was more concerned by the squirts remaining reluctance.
“Are mummy’s special guys feeling shy?” I baby-talked to them. Not my first choice, but they seemed to respond to the tone better than any other. They continued to shiver without direction and I had a realization. “Numbskulls! Outta here! Go on!” I shouted.
The log beneath Terrence dissolved into skeletons. He fell to the ground as they scattered like cockroaches holding the bits of bark and foliage they’d use to create the convincing facsimile.
Then I had a hyperventilating elf to deal with.
“Skeletons. Gasp. Everywhere. Gasp. Everything. Gasp. Skeletons.”
I slapped him across the face, at which point he settled, “There, calmer? All the skeletons have gone see? The squirts are squirting.”
Terrence looked at me with a growing panic, “But Elskia, there’s a skeleton inside of me!”
I nodded sagely, as one does when confronted with lunacy.
“Terrence, I’ll brook no nonsense from an elf that licked leaves for two days rather than admit he was thirsty. You are a silly elf, and I know better. Now repeat it.”
“I am a silly elf and you know better.” If anything he seemed relieved by my taking charge.
“Good. Now I’ll see about getting the Numbskulls to lay off you a little, but there’s a few things which are odd about this group, beyond the obvious, and I’m going to need to play things close to the chest you understand? Try to bear with them a bit longer and tap into the famous elvish stoicism Elyondril has been going on about.”
Terrence’s nervous clenching of his pants fabric slowed. “You mean we’re not going to ritually remove our flesh and become one with the undead?”
I gave him a flat look.
“Silly elf.”
He relaxed. “I thought you were ready to join them, with the squirts you seemed to fit right in!”
“I adapt to the circumstances I find myself in, and I enjoy affronting the natural order, doesn’t make me ready to begin such an extreme weight loss regime. Anyone can tell they’re a few knuckle-bones short of a hand, but I’m sympathetic, a thousand years of service will do that. Right now our goals are aligned, even if there are some things I don’t understand about them.”
Terrence nodded cautiously, and I noticed his ears start to droop just a little, finally at rest from the alert point he’d kept them at for hours. “What should I do?”
“Keep your cool, the Numbskulls like your reactions, don’t feed it to them. Try and tolerate your relation, seems to me if you can ingratiate yourself a little he’ll provide a buffer from the Numbskulls. You’re used to dealing with racist elf relatives aren’t you? Ask him to explain why the human skull makes them lazy, he won’t let a Numbskull near you while you’re being regaled.”
Terrence looked thoughtful and I motioned for the Corps to rejoin us. I liked the mad circus they brought with them, but I knew not to let the preference colour my reason. They had been putting down necromantic escapes for a thousand years, if they were clowns, they were remarkably capable ones. So why were they having so much trouble this time?