The Last Reckoning

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The Fork-Tongued Charmers uttered their final words.

“As the bog fills your eyes and ears, we too blow out our lights, sharing the ultimate darkness with you for but a moment, a reminder of what awaits us all should we forsake our bond.”

They blew out their candles, and all was dark.

Two hundred and eighty-nine, two-hundred and ninety.

Rye counted. One second for every three beats of her racing heart. Her clothes clung to her body from sweat as she waited, her back pressed against the pulpy bark of the split tree. Despite her panic, she forced herself to focus. The count was critical; she couldn’t lose track.

Two hundred and ninety-nine. Three hundred. Five minutes now.

It felt like forever. And yet was it long enough for all of the Fork-Tongued Charmers to have left? She peered over her shoulder. The moonless night offered nothing but shadows and silence.

Rye kept up her count. She had seen Harmless hold his breath for six minutes under frigid water. But to wait that long would leave her with no room for error. It was now or never. With a flick of flint, she re-sparked her torch and tore out from her hiding place.

Rye ran as fast as she could, but the wet bogs seemed to grip her boots and fight her every step. It was as if she could barely lift her legs. When she did, unseen roots and creepers lurched out to trip her.

Finally she reached the place where she had last seen her father. Dropping her torch, she plunged herself into the bog, clawing and digging at the muck.

“Harmless!” she cried out, this time as loud as she could. “Harmless!”

But the bog guarded its prize jealously as it tightened round her. Soon Rye couldn’t move her legs, and her arms grew heavy. She struggled to free herself but its murky waters held fast. Too many minutes had passed. Rye looked to the darkened sky above, her voice lost.

“Harmless,” she rasped. But there were no answers. She had run out of time, for both Harmless and herself. She felt herself sinking, and could no longer move at all.

There was a loud splash behind her. Rye was pulled up violently, popping from the ooze like a cork as she was hurled backwards. She landed hard on moist but unforgiving earth, losing her breath with the impact. Through the light of her torch on the ground she saw a large grey shape plunge into the bog. It buried its head and shoulders beneath the surface, rooting and grunting like a pig in a trough.

Rye blinked her eyes in disbelief. After a moment, Leatherleaf emerged from the water, pulling himself from the bog with one clawed hand.

The other claw dragged Harmless behind him, her father’s lifeless body stained black with mire from head to foot.

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A CHILL BREEZE rattled the swamp maples and sent a storm of crimson leaves fluttering down past Rye’s shoulders like hundreds of tiny kites against a grey sky. The leaves joined their fallen companions around Rye’s boots, covering every inch of turf in the tiny graveyard. A dozen or so worn and broken headstones peeked out from the rustling red piles.

Villagers who knew of this place called it Miser’s End Cemetery. But most had long since forgotten it altogether, and didn’t call it anything at all.

Rye examined the thick bouquet of clover in her hand, the long stems tied with simple twine. She trudged through the leaves to the centre of the graveyard, where three irregularly shaped stones jutted from the overgrown weeds, their faces covered with ivy that had turned burnt orange with the season. She crouched and pulled aside the leaves from the first. The single carved name was faded but legible, and was unaccompanied by date or detail.

GRIMSHAW

It was a name she’d only recently come to know. Grimshaw the Black. Her grandfather … and former High Chieftain of the Luck Uglies. The second headstone was just as unremarkable, the ivy less dense as she tore it away.

LOTHAIRE

That was the name of Harmless’s younger brother. Lothaire the Loathsome was an uncle she’d once heard mentioned, but had never actually met. Rye swallowed hard and moved to the last of the three irregular stones. Here she didn’t need to clear any ivy. The markings on this headstone were still crisp, its face unadorned by weeds or growth.

GREY

Rye breathed deeply and looked around at Miser’s End. She had first met Harmless in this very same burial ground. They’d shared breakfast and stories sitting among these headstones. She’d played here with her friends even before that, and yet she’d never known her very own ancestors had come home to this small, unremarkable place.

There was a metallic creak behind her and she glanced quickly over her shoulder. It was just the iron gate swinging gently in the breeze as another round of crimson leaves danced past her boots. She cast her eyes to the path up Troller’s Hill, where its solitary old tree cast a skeletal shadow in the afternoon light. She thought she saw another shadow flicker on the hillside, but in an instant it was gone.

Rye turned back to the ground in front of her and resolved herself to the task at hand. She stared at the bouquet of clover one last time, pinched her eyes tight, then set it at the base of the headstone etched with her father’s name.

Rye hurried out of the cemetery and up the path to Troller’s Hill. She was just outside the northernmost fringe of Drowning, and as she climbed the gentle peak, she could see the roof of her cottage and Mud Puddle Lane not far away. She squinted, in hopes of catching a glimpse of Quinn, or the Pendergills, or even crotchety Old Lady Crabtree. But the dirt road seemed strangely deserted for midday. It would have been easy to hurry down and rap on Quinn’s door, to greet her old friend for the briefest of moments, but her instructions had been quite clear. She was to stay out of Drowning and return without delay. Abby would be waiting.

So instead Rye stopped on top of Troller’s Hill, where Mr Nettle waited, leaning against the base of the tree.

“Did you do what you needed to?” he asked solemnly.

Rye nodded.

“Good,” he said with relief. “Let’s be going then.”

Mr Nettle’s uneasy eyes were on Mud Puddle Lane, and the shadows of Village Drowning’s rooftops looming beyond it. He chewed his beard.

“All of those buildings,” he said with a mixture of awe and apprehension. “What are they?”

“Home,” Rye said with a tight smile. “Maybe I’ll get back there one of these days.”

Rye and Mr Nettle arrived at a small sod house built right in the side of a hillock, on terrain that was neither bog nor forest. Thick marsh grass grew from its turf roof, camouflaging the dwelling into its surroundings. It sat near the southernmost end of the Wend, and was the place Abby had led a shocked and desperate Rye to after finding her huddled in the bogs, still clutching Harmless’s body in her arms. The dilapidated hovel was an abandoned bog hopper’s shack – an artefact from a time when labourers would harvest the bogs for red marshberries and ship them by the cartful to Drowning. That was before the swamps crawled with Bog Noblins again.

Mr Nettle tended to their mare, and Rye opened the shack’s rounded door and stepped inside.

Her mother stooped over a cook fire, which warmed the earthen walls like a rabbit’s warren in winter. She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of the door, and offered Rye a smile. Lottie was too preoccupied to acknowledge her with more than a grunt. She was playing with a fuzzy caterpillar that she’d corralled within a tiny fence made from Rye’s hair clips.

Rye turned to the figure in the corner. He rested in a chair with a blanket over his legs, a steaming cup of pungent liquid sitting untouched by his side. The circles under his grey eyes were dark bruises, but the eyes themselves were keen and twinkled at the sight of her.

“Don’t just stand there. Come and give your dearly departed a hug,” Harmless said.

Rye hurried forward and threw her arms round him. He let out a little groan, but wrapped an enthusiastic arm round her in return.

Rye pulled away. “I’m sorry, too hard?”

Harmless waved away the notion. “Never,” he said.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked. “You sound stronger,” she added hopefully.

“Much better now that you’re back,” he said warmly.

Harmless carefully lifted his left arm and slowly clenched and unclenched his fist. From the short sleeve of his loose-fitting shirt, Rye could see that the muscles of this arm were noticeably smaller than his right one. It was still covered in a green mosaic of tattoos from shoulder to wrist, but where skin was visible it had taken on a greyish pallor. And his forearm was etched with an angry pink scar, raised and jagged, as if the victim of a sawblade. Rye knew that, in fact, it was the remnants of the near-fatal Bog Noblin bite he’d received last spring. The night he’d disappeared into Beyond the Shale, the Dreadwater clan close behind him.

“This old companion has seen better days,” Harmless said, running a finger over the damaged limb. “There’s still a tooth in there somewhere. Alas, extracting it is beyond my crude medical skills. I’ll get to Trowbridge to visit Blae the Bleeder soon enough. It’s been far too long and I’m afraid his business must be suffering from the extended absence of his best customer.”

Harmless gave Rye a wink.

“Your mother has helped me get most of the bog rot out of my lungs,” he added with a nod to the steaming cup on the table. “Although if I have to drink another cup of her foul herbs, I think I may jump right back into the muck.”

He shot Abby a playful look. She narrowed an eye in reply.

“If you don’t stop complaining and take your medicine, I’ll throw you back in myself,” she said.

“Riley,” Harmless said, becoming more serious, “how was your visit to Miser’s End?”

“I stayed there for a long while, just like you said. And left the clovers where you told me.”

Harmless nodded, satisfied.

“I don’t think anyone saw me, though,” Rye added, recalling the unusually quiet afternoon. “Troller’s Hill – and all of Mud Puddle Lane – seemed … deserted.”

“He will have seen you,” Harmless said, and Rye knew he meant Slinister. “With his own eyes or someone else’s. And that’s all that matters. Did you play it up?”

“I looked very sad. I almost shed a tear.”

“Excellent. If nothing else, you’ll have a future in the theatre.”

“I said ‘almost’,” Rye clarified.

“Close enough,” Harmless said. He picked up the cup with his good hand and sipped it. He grimaced and coughed. Leaning over to a wooden bucket, he expelled something black and thick from his throat, then wiped his mouth on his shoulder.

“What now?” Rye asked.

“Now we stay here,” Harmless said, “and rest. And catch up on better times.” He rubbed his chin and his weary eyes turned wolfish. “Then, in another day or two, when Slinister will have assumed the O’Chanters have left for good, you will return to Drowning.” Harmless’s jaw tightened. “And summon a Call.”

“A Call?” Rye asked.

Harmless nodded. “And not just any Call. It will be a Call of all Luck Uglies, near and far. And with it, we shall bring a Reckoning to Slinister and the Fork-Tongued Charmers.”

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RYE SAT ON the grass outside the old bog hopper’s shack as the sun began to dip low in the sky. She heard the door creak over her shoulder, and Harmless hobbled outside to join her. He let out a low whistle as he carefully eased himself down on to the ground beside her.

“I may need to find a walking stick like yours until I get my legs back under me,” he said with a tight-lipped grin, eyeing the cudgel across her back.

Rye returned a smile and gazed at the clouds overhead, tinted purple in the late afternoon light.

“I wasn’t acting, you know,” she said.

“Come again?” Harmless asked.

“At Miser’s End,” she said, turning to him. “I wasn’t acting. I was sad. Seeing that headstone there – just waiting for you.” Rye clenched her jaw in silence for a moment. “When Leatherleaf pulled you from the bogs, I was sure it was too late.”

Harmless nodded grimly. “After all these years of close shaves and near misses, I thought it was finally my turn to hop the fence.”

“But you lasted for so long under there. You never gave up.”

“Yes, well, that’s not entirely true,” Harmless said with a sigh. “In fact, in the darkness, with the pressure of the bogs closing around me, you might say that I accepted my situation. I wasn’t waiting for some miraculous rescue – the unlikely arrival of you and your red-bearded friend was entirely unexpected. The reason I held on was so I might savour my fondest memories for as long as possible.” His grey eyes met her own, and he placed his palm on her cheek. “I clung to my visions of your mother … your sister … and of you. For even in the most hopeless depths, your faces make me smile. And whenever my time is finally up, I plan to go with a smile on my face.” He flashed her a smirk. “Not that I’m planning on going anywhere soon.”

But Rye didn’t find his words to be particularly reassuring. “What was it like – being buried under there?” she asked. She pinched her eyes tight and shook her head. “Sometimes I shut my eyes and try to imagine how awful it must have been.”

“Don’t,” Harmless said firmly, but kindly. “It’s not something you’ll ever have to discover.”

Rye reopened her eyes. “Slinister called it the Descent,” she said, remembering his ominous words. “Is that the punishment for violating the Luck Uglies’ code?”

Harmless nodded. “It’s a cruel fate, but an effective deterrent.”

“Have you ever sent someone to the Descent?” Rye asked hesitantly, then wished she hadn’t.

Harmless just cocked his head towards her sadly, then narrowed his eyes and stared out at the bogs in the distance. Rye supposed that was answer enough.

“Have you seen Leatherleaf in recent days?” Harmless asked, studying the shadows falling across the mire. “Of everyone who has ever done me a favour, he is the most unexpected of all.”

Rye shook her head. “I think Shady chased him off. Maybe for good this time. I haven’t seen either of them since Leatherleaf burrowed in after you.”

Rye reached into her pocket and retrieved Harmless’s broken necklace.

“He gave me this,” she said, and handed Harmless the loose runestones and torn leather band. “I didn’t know how he came by it, but I feared the worst. It seems our own chokers no longer glow either,” she added, fingering the band round her neck.

Harmless examined the stones in his hand. For the first time, Rye noticed how closely the circular pattern tattooed on his palm matched the runes on the stones.

“This was torn from my throat when I lost my struggle with several Fork-Tongued Charmers,” Harmless said. “Leatherleaf must have found it. I sensed that a Bog Noblin was following me in recent weeks. I had assumed it was another one of the Dreadwater, but was puzzled that it didn’t attack.”

Harmless furrowed his brow. “The destruction of my choker explains why yours no longer glows. But that matters little now.” Rye was stunned to see him cock his arm and cast the handful of loose stones out into the brush. “Whatever power the runestones once had to protect has faded anyway.”

Rye shook her head quizzically. Harmless spoke slowly while his eyes stared ahead, as if observing a scene far in the distance.

“Many years ago, when the Luck Uglies drove the Bog Noblins from the Shale, I led that charge. I was merciless. I unleashed the Gloaming Beasts on them – Shady and others – and when they fled and hid, disappearing in the bogs, I kept hunting. I surprised them while they were helpless and hibernating for winter. I dug them from their burrows while they slept, dragging them out one by one.”

Harmless paused. He opened one fist, then the other weakened one.

“They had a name for me. The Painsmith – the greatest monster their kind had ever known.” Harmless stared down at the faded pattern of runes etched into his palms. “The ink that stains these hands was spilled from the Bog Noblins themselves.”

Harmless’s matter-of-fact tone could not hide a hint of remorse.

“I have many regrets,” he added finally. “But I’ve long since learned that regret is an emotion with few uses.”

Rye blinked with a sudden realisation. She’d often puzzled over how the extinct Bog Noblins could have returned, but sometimes the right answer was also the simplest one.

“You didn’t honour your bargain with the House of Longchance,” she whispered aloud. “You never finished the job. That’s why the Bog Noblins have come back.”

Harmless looked up from his hands.

“At the very end, when their numbers had been decimated and I could have made the Bog Noblins no more than fossils in a history book, I hesitated.”