Squirrel-Based Weaponry

“Climb the tree,” the snake had said, “the biggest tree beyond the wall, and there you will find your weapon.”

Well, this was the biggest he could find. It was one of those fat reddish trees with soft bark and needles—the sort of tree that looks majestic at a distance but showers you with little itchy bits when you get underneath it.

“You and I are not friends,” he told the tree, chucking his rope up over the lowest sturdy-looking branch and hauling himself up. He looped his leg over, rolled onto the branch, and leaned back against the trunk.

“Score one to the Dorin of Erinthor, zero to the filthy Mercian tree,” he muttered to no one in particular.

There wasn’t much of a view from the first branch, just some brown twiggy sort of bushes and a lot of crumbled-up leaves everywhere. Seskie would probably have been able to name them all. Seskie would definitely never know about this little excursion.

A fat bug tumbled from somewhere and flopped into his hair. It wiggled down the back of his neck. He rummaged around inside his collar and found the big, soft, fat thing hiding there. He chucked it away, and it landed in the leaf litter with an audible plop.

“Touché, filthy Mercian tree,” he muttered, wiping damp, dusty bug stuff off his hands onto his trouser leg.

"Erin will bow," he muttered, unhitching the rope and tossing it over a higher branch. "All Erin will bow before your majesty."

He got tree sap on himself scambling up to the next bough. He sat on a line of ants. Some of the ants got mixed in the sap and stuck on his skin and clothes, wriggling.

He wobbled and almost lost his balance. His leg was itching where the ants were biting him. His hands were sticky with sap, it was in his hair, flakes of bark were stuck all over him. His magnificent cloak had a green stain all down the back of it.

"Mercia will submit willingly to your glory," He chucked the rope over the next branch, pulled himself up the rope, hand over hand, feet on the trunk. He missed his footing and swung around into the rough bark, earning himself a long scratch down his side. There were still ants on him, all up inside his clothes and glued to his hair. He could feel bugs running up and down his back. Bits of stick and bark rained down on his face and got in his mouth, soft and crunchy in all the wrong ways.

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"All the world will hail you, regent of a new, sticky age."

The branches were much thinner now. They scratched at his hands. It was actually quite a long way down. The trunk swayed in a soft breeze.

"Rancid abomination of a tree," he said, kicking it. As though in reply, a branch snapped beneath his toe and he had to cling on to keep from falling.

"What weapon lives at the top of a tree? Fucking squirrels? Am I supposed to tie a bushel of squirrels to the end of a long pointy stick, then swing it around my head like a fucking party toy?"

The branches were really rather sparse and thin now. He could almost get his two hands around the trunk. He swung out, holding on with one arm, surveying.

“Where are my squirrels, snake?” he growled to no one in particular. "I was promised squirrels."

And what was he doing at the top of a tree, for no discernible reason, in the middle of the Mercian countryside? Had the snake been talking in riddles? Had it been trying to convey some complex metaphor about his place in the world? Was it an exercise in humiliation to make him stronger? Was this even the right fucking tree?

He had to admit though that the view was quite something. The land unfurled below him, the treetops were crowded tight together like little castles. Coloured birds zipped between them, bright as messengers, diving, tucked hidden back into the green. The land dipped down and away, down towards the road and the shining river. Behind him rose the grey ring wall of the Caer Llandrel, patterned with ages.

The wind picked up a little and stirred his magnificent cloak around his shoulders.

“All will serve,” he muttered to himself, and in that moment, surveying the land with the sun in his face and the wind in his hair, he could almost believe it.

He reached around the tree for a better grip and his fingers slipped into a crack where a branch had peeled away, a narrow space full of spider nests and centipedes, and as his fingers curled into the cavity, they touched something hard and cold.

"Keep it by you, never let it go," the snake had said. "Even if the sky falls, keep it by you. Never tell anyone what you have, and all will go well."

Whatever it was, it was jammed in pretty nicely. He took his knife and carved away some of the bark so that he could get his fingers in better.

"All will bow, all will bow," he muttered, He got his hand to the thing and wiggled it free of the wood, and there it was in his palm, a coin, a simple copper coin.

"This?" he said, but there was something about the dull brown disk, a little thrill when he ran his hands over it, and he knew that it was so.

He scrambled back down the tree, then carried the coin in his cupped palms, warm as a baby mouse, back through the gate, up to his room.

That night, he slept with it next to his skin, and it lay there quiet and warm, as though it were sleeping too.