Chapter 2: Delivery Boy

“This,” Runt thought to himself as he stumbled up the dirt track, “is a terrible idea.”

In his hand he held a scrap of parchment. The crudely drawn map showed directions between the dog kennels and the horse stables. He knew because he watched Gunther draw an image of a dog, and a horse, plus a few more landmarks like the tannery he should find along the way. There were some squiggles underneath the pictures.

“Anyone asks what you’re about,” Gunther said with a greedy smile, “and you show ‘em this here message.”

Runt couldn’t be sure what the message said because he had never learned to read or write. To be fair, Tyron couldn’t read or write, either.

“Still,” he thought, “even if I could read, I can’t see a thing with this helmet on!”

This was Gunther’s dubious plan. Tyron kept a dented, rusting, trooper’s helmet on a shelf; the souvenir from a fight years before. He had spent a night in prison for scrapping with a guard, but he got to keep the helmet, so he figured it was a fair deal.

The helmet was far too big for Runt’s head and the grille across the face did a great job of blocking his vision. It wobbled constantly as he made his way up the track, stumbling and nearly tripping over every stone, pothole, or branch lying beside the path. But it hid his hair, which was tucked up and under the helmet, and more importantly, it hid his ugly face.

Runt’s heart skipped a beat as laughter erupt from above. He froze, then started to move again. It was one of those laughing birds, a kingfisher. From the bird’s perspective he was worth laughing at. The boy tottered up the track towards a busy intersection looking like a kid with his head stuck in a cooking pot. The helmet wobbled to-and-fro seemingly with a life of its own. A chicken, scratching in the dirt, clucked and squawked and flapped away from under Runt’s wandering feet.

The helmet made noises echo and distort. Runt’s hearing was usually excellent. It had to be. He could tell, by sound alone, when Tyron was awake, asleep, hungry, bored, or angry. He could even tell if the boss was sitting or standing by the “sound shadow” his body made. And he could tell all this from the next room. Tyron spent most his time in the office and Runt, in the kennels. As a game, he sometimes walked around the kennels with his eyes shut using only his ears as a guide. The helmet made that impossible.

Sweat broke out across his face and back. His head began to ache. “This,” he thought again, as he stumbled over another rock, “is the baddest idea in the history of bad ideas.” It was then, just as he finished the thought, that Runt walked smack-bang into the legs of a trooper standing by the intersection.

Tumbling back the helmet fell as Runt looked up in shock. Light flooded in. He could see again. Time stood still. This was Runt’s first uninterrupted view of the outside world aside from peeking out of gaps in the kennel walls or looking over the fence of the muck yard. The imposing figure of a man filled his vision.

The trooper spun around and looked down. “What in bloody hell’s name –“ he blurted and then froze. He and Runt stared for a second before the small boy’s instincts kicked in. The squiggles on the note forgotten, Runt turned and ran.

“Oi! You! Stop there!”

No chance of that. Runt dashed, quite fast for one so small, to the nearest shelter, a stand of bushes. He slipped under a gap in the shrubbery, pushed his way further in, and crouched breathlessly. The trooper stomped towards the bushes and paused. An oily snickering sound told Runt the man had drawn his sword. The bushes rustled as he pushed the branches back and forth with the blade. Then, with a grunt of defeat, he spun around and marched back to the intersection, stopping only once to line up and kick the rusty helmet off in the other direction.

With his heartbeat slowly returning to normal, Runt figured he had two choices. He could go back to the kennels and face certain punishment: once for losing the helmet, and twice for not bringing any grog. Or, he could continue on and risk being caught, locked up, and who knew what else? Runt pushed on. Later, much later, when he had time to think about that moment, he realised it was not the fear of one punishment or another that made him decide. It was the lure of the unknown. For the first time in his life, he was Outside. With Permission.

Runt was about to learn something else, almost by accident, as he ducked and darted from shadow to shadow, avoiding the guards and other townsfolk. He was great at sneaking about. Like, really great. Scarily great. Ghostly levels of greatness. But Runt didn’t believe in ghosts, so what he actually thought, as he bolted from one hiding place to the next was “I’m a mouse. A scurrying mouse. I’ve seen how they do it. Little bursts of fast. Long stretches of wait and look. And silence. Always silence.”

The truth was he lived his whole life as a mouse. He hid, he crept, he stuck to the shadows. The safest way to stay alive around a maniac like Tyron was pretending not to exist.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

He made it past the intersection, and the grumpy looking trooper, by ducking under a slow-moving cart carrying sacks of potatoes up the hill towards the castle. A toothless old woman nearly spotted him as she hung out a basketful of washing but he ducked behind a barrel, then a fence, then bolted to a nearby tree as a group of pigeons took flight. He could have sworn a young man pushing a barrow full of cabbages looked straight through him crouched, as Runt was, in the shadows of a fig tree, but he just kept rolling along, whistling tunelessly.

According to the map, the tannery was up ahead. Runt could smell it before he saw it. The combination of dog poo, rotting meat, and stale urine meant that this business, like the horse yards and dog kennels, existed right on the edge of the city’s outer region. He paused for a second in the shade of a boulder and looked up the hill. The inner region was there, up the hill: the real city. It had been explained to him before, but this was the most he’d ever seen of it.

There was not much to see of the city from the bottom of the hill. The main road, which Runt had recently crossed, snaked its way up the hill for several miles until it reached the main gates. These could just be seen as a dark gap in the otherwise bright stone wall that circled the inner region. Only the richest and most influential people lived behind those walls along with the most important buildings. The Captain’s palace, for example, could partly be seen by the spires that reached above the city wall.

Tracing the road back with his eyes, Runt saw how the buildings became less magnificent, and more practical the further down the hill he looked. At the base of the hill, on the very edge of the city, the toughest and dirtiest work was found. Loggers, tanners, millers and, of course, the animal handlers.

The layout of the city literally existed in people’s language. Someone having good luck or growing richer was said to be “heading up the hill”. If their luck turned sour or their business failed, they were “down on the outer”.

Further past the city’s outer edge, outside “the fence” (which was not much more than a row of rough stones occasionally shifted further downhill) were the farmlands, and the Wilds Beyond. An occasional cottage dotted the grassy plains or snuggled into the side of a hill. The shepherds that lived out there were made of tough stuff. It took a lot of courage to live so close to the wolves and the rest of the terrors in that dark, dark forest at the feet of the mountains.

Runt peeked around both sides of the boulder then continued on. He was right, the tannery was just ahead. And beyond that, the horse stables. Runt worked his way around the shaded side of the tannery. It was then he saw his first wolf.

Well, parts of one, anyway. Several skins were pinned across a board, slowly drying before being tanned and turned into cloaks. Their bodies looked much like dogs must look if they were treated in this way, but the wolves were possibly a bit larger, and with dark stripes running down their sides. Runt stretched his hand up to feel the fur. Really, very much like a dog’s. The main difference was Tyron’s dogs were fluffy whereas this golden-brown fur was short and sleek. Runt hurried on to avoid being seen.

Many of the horses were out during the day carting loads in every direction. The stables were practically empty. Runt found what he needed under Gunther’s mattress and, aware he had been away a long time, immediately began the journey back.

Runt made it to the kennels just before sundown. Tyron and Gunther were arguing about something or other. The usual. The boy decided to test his new skill even further and sneaked around the back, over the muck yard fence, past the stinking heaps of dung, under the loose plank into the kennels (still without ducking), and softly opened the door just fast enough to avoid the hinges creaking. He stood inside the office for a few seconds waiting to be noticed and, when he wasn’t, he coughed.

Gunther nearly jumped out of his skin. Tyron, being much slower in every way, barely reacted. The giant bear of a man turned slowly from where he sat and gazed down at Runt with glazed, bloodshot eyes.

“Grog?” he uttered and held out a hand.

“Wait, where did you come from? And where’s the helmet? And how long have you been standing there?” Gunther babbled, waving his hands furiously.

Runt passed the bottle to Tyron (who merely grunted in return) and began telling the story from start to finish. Meanwhile there was a pop, a glug-glug-glug, and a sigh of approval from Tyron. Once he got started the words tumbled out of him until he was left breathless and flushed with the excitement of retelling it.

“Waaaait a minute.” Tyron slurred. “Are you” he gestured with the bottle “telling me,” the clear liquid nearly slopped out the neck, “that you snuck from here to the stables and back,” he waved his hairy tree trunk arm in the general direction, precious drops flying out the top “in full daylight, and didn’t once get caught? Snuck past alllllll them people, and then snuck back in here, just to see how good you got?” Grog trickled down his hand and onto his wrist. He held it to his mouth and slurped the booze out the hairs while staring intently at the boy.

As Runt nodded Tyron’s face broke into a grin, then a smile, then, slowly, a chuckle rumbled up from deep down in his guts. Seconds later he threw back his head and laughed a full-bellied laugh. He laughed louder and louder till tears began to stream down his face and stick to the rough hairs over his cheeks.

“Snuck past the guard, he did! Ha! And the rest! Bugger ‘em! Bugger the lot of ‘em! Aha! That’s my boy!” Tyron laughed so hard that it became a wheeze. He had no air left. But he slapped his thigh over and over, and wheezed and rocked back and forth, and cried with mischievous joy.

Gunther, meanwhile, had not moved, nor smiled, nor spoken a word. He glared with his squinting stare and clenched his jaw and continued to stare even as he stomped over to Tyron to snatch the grog and take a swig. He drank, swallowed, spat on the floor, wiped his lips with a dirty sleeve, and dumped himself on a chair. Only then did he look away. Gunther now stared sulkily and silently at the wall while Runt, a mouse once again, quietly crept backwards out of the office and into the kennels.

There was very little noise for a few minutes. Then, a creak. Gunther stood. The outer door slammed open and the stable master, turning, only had this to say.

“He ain’t your boy, you big jackass. Don’t forget it.”

Then he left.