Who else could be trusted for such a project? We were the hardiest: our palms calloused and fingertips likewise. We could manipulate the spade as easily as the trench or tamp, could sling a ditch as fast as skewer the cuypo, that plump swamp rodent whose numbers we’d already depleted.
They were about the only beasts here that did not scuttle.
This was ferocious country. We kept our wits tight and armaments close. Around any bend you might find a pack of yocslayp or, if you were particularly unlucky, whatever species of behemoth molted so inconveniently onto our emergent roadway.
Our new road would cut across Grubb’s Expanse to connect the outpost Bortrediel—pronounced like an unlikely trampling: boar tread eel—with mighty Spradalingustort. I’d visited the great city few years back. My experience was so drenched in revelry that I only held bare remembrances: the daytime moon floating above a carnival tent, cannons booming blooms of psychotropic dinszel-seed oil, my sunburnt hand clutching a girl’s green dress.
Overman Crad had explained how another road crew was starting down south, and we’d meet them in the middle. After which I’d let my feet take me to the city where, with leisure born of the reputation I’d garner from working the Grubb’s Expanse Roadway Project, I would venture to my next stage of life.
This was all months off. We were hardly into the work; Bortrediel was only a half mile behind. I could still see the scarecrow shapes of folks hanging their wash in advance of the day’s heat.
Bortrediel nestled in odd landscape, a patchwork of forest, desert, plain, and swamp. An old hand once communicated his theory of Bortrediel’s strangeness being the product of ancient water tables. I couldn’t disagree with the man. I’m no geographist or floraunifer. My friend Dipsweet speculated the peculiarity was the crowning art of a Practitioner commissioned by some governance to remake this land into a vision of the world in miniature.
“Seems plenty big to me,” I said. I was sweating and hungry. “We call it the Grubb’s Expanse, Dipsweet, not—”
“Grubb’s Limitation? Grubb’s Enclosure? Work with me, Ratford, feel my trajectory. Grubb’s Expanse is all the world scrunched together. Adjacent-like. Rubbing against.”
Dipsweet dropped his pick on rocks too large for my shovel. We worked in tandems, and it was the custom of our troupe to line up sidewise so we could compete for distance in the morning, leaving afternoons for cleanup and crowing. We were Troupe Three, an honorable position earned by our stalwart labor. But every one of us wanted to play point. I could see beyond Troupes Two and One to where the wild southern land would roll its way, eventually, to Spradalingustort’s earthen walls. I imagined the view without obstruction.
“The map is not the land, Ratford. You’d do well to remember that.” This from Gorbin. He and Darnimum Eaglesrot trailed several yards behind me and Dipsweet. Gorbin was traditionally humorless. I couldn’t figure out the intention of his commentary.
“Explain that to me,” said Dipsweet. “Whatever you mean by that, I want you to explain it to me.” He yanked his pick free and began picking right near Gorbin. They began snarling at one another. Darnimum Eaglesrot started picking with me.
After lunch, we went back over the distance. Dipsweet and Gorbin, powered by argument, had surpassed mine and Darnimum Eaglesrot’s impromptu tandem.
I paused to pick a string of cuypo tendon from my teeth. Bortrediel was far enough away, now, that if I didn’t know it an outpost, I might think it just unlikely rock formations. Darnimum Eaglesrot clapped me on the shoulder.
“How’d you ever make it without me?” asked Dipsweet. He wasn’t all that tall, but he had an albatross’s wingspan with which he enfolded me. He pointed to the moon hanging in the daytime sky, its rings barely visible against the feathery blue.
“See this moon as a sign, Ratford, for I know how you love that celestial body in daytime, submerged in its invisible ichor, sliding amongst the stars as a drifting riverstone pushes aside sparkling riverbed detritus. Though Grubb’s Expanse may be rugged, it cannot be as riven as the visage of the moon, can it? And if it is, then all the better for us! Impossible tasks light the forge of genius! No? No? Yes! Yes!” Dipsweet hopped onto the lip of his pick, perhaps to get a few extra inches closer to the celestial. He was named, after all, for Sweet Superior, that most glorious and surly Deity, the prefix “Dip” rendering his name a tribute rather than a blasphemy.
“Hey Dipsweet, why don’t you try working a little?” said Overman Crad.
Dipsweet hauled back on his pick. “And yet, do I not work this instant?”
Dusk.
Gorbin’s flint brought fire. With the fire we cooked a supper of beans and cuypo. Yukwit and his tandem, Narf, played viuls with strings already softening flat in the swamp dampness. Being a lover of music, I fell asleep by the fireside and woke up alone among the glowing ashes. The night was so temperate it hardly seemed worth it to crawl into my tent.
This is the reason I was first to bear witness.
Our troupe’s tents were arranged off the main drag in the shape of a gracip-shoe. I couldn’t help feeling as if there were only ten of us in the whole world. Fog wafted. With the moon shining down you’d think we were contained inside a burning twist of celestial procreant.
I snuggled closer to the embers.
And from behind me came an awful din. A piercing shriek, a keening of such dominance that my other senses dimmed in response. Its locus was Gorbin and Darnimum Eaglesrot’s tent.
At the tent’s entrance Darnimum Eaglesrot hung suspended in the air. Facing him was a blurred, multichromatic thing on stilts. The thing carried him dangling to the tree line and I could see the glistening antler tines penetrating his chest.
This uncertain thing bellowed into Darnimum Eaglesrot’s face. He screamed right back. He’d bitten off his tongue.
And as quickly as it had begun, the two figures disappeared into the woods.
I stood lonely in the dark camp. My chest hurt. I could hear myself whimpering. Suddenly Dipsweet appeared at my side. Overman Crad a moment later.
Dipsweet patted me for wounds. Overman Crad kept opening his mouth to speak but never spoke.
“Gorbin?” I asked.
Overman Crad rushed into the tent and produced a tousled but living Gorbin. Gorbin’s hands were cupped over his ears.
“Are you hale, Ratford?” asked Dipsweet
“Speak up,” I said.
Overman Crad rejoined us. He passed us each a torch. We followed the blood trail to the tree line but not even Dipsweet deigned to venture further.
“To where did they go, Ratford?” Overman Crad had no command left in him. He was holding a skin scrap.
“Give him a moment!” snapped Dipsweet.
“Sure, of course,” said Overman Crad. He tilted his head back and heaved an enormous exhalation. “Now, Ratford my boy, my cleverest tamper, what happened?”
I felt composed enough to make utterance. “Well,” I said.
Both Overman Crad and Dipsweet leaned close.
“Yes?” ordered Overman Crad.
“I reckon Darnimum Eaglesrot’s been taken by a deer,” I said. It sounded completely lame. “A sort of incensed cervid. Or equid.”
Overman Crad spat. “Come here, Ratford. Yeah, right there.” He peeled my eyelids open and peered closely into one eye, then the other. “Dipsweet, drape cool a cloth on his brow. You must not allow him sleep until his pupils proportionate. Ratford, you are ordered to slumber only as Dipsweet recommends.”
“Thank you, but no,” I said.
“Your eyes do have a clownish cast,” said Dipsweet.
“A motley moose, maybe,” I said. “With teeth like an underbit sturgeon. And blurry, as if a pane of rain-struck glass hovered between it and existence.”
Dipsweet pondered. “I’ve never heard of such a beast,” he said. I was ready to squawk when he raised a finger. “But if I held all the things I knew in my right hand, and all the things of which I was unaware in my left, I’d spin constantly widdershins.”
I could always count on good Dipsweet.
“Yes, to be sure,” said Overman Crad, not paying us any attention and instead consulting with a hulking Overman whose rune-stick, pinned to a leather lapel, read ‘Goosepepper, Troupe One.’
“May the Voracious God, Vircesean, tame his errant Creature,” said Overman Goosepepper. He brandished that deity’s ceremonial Brass Fork, shoved the handle down his gullet, and induced a heave that might honor his voided, everingesting God.
Dipsweet was unimpressed. “Spare us, Goosepepper. Someone in your troupe has doubtless used the latrine and thus needs your assistance in consummation of the act.”
Overman Goosepepper fists clenched around his Brass Fork. “Do not neglect the state of your underling’s spirits, Overman Crad, lest in death they enter a plane unknown to the Erothians and known only to the Thanatarians.”
Overman Crad didn’t respond. In the warm whip of torchlight he displayed his own hand, upon which wetly clung the sanguinity of Darnimum Eaglesrot.
For the next week we lived in a nightmare. Rumors of floating corpses and living, silver-tined wind—hence the monster’s moniker. Silvertip usually preyed upon the few but during one holocaustic twilight, it took all of Troupe Seven apart from their Overman who’d been pissing in a cactus patch.
Progress on the road was meager. Overman Crad disappeared for meeting after meeting and when we consulted with Troupe Two and Four on either side of us, it turned out their Overmen were attending meetings as well.
Overman Crad breathed not a word of his absence. And why would he? He had no official prerogative to keep us apprised. We were only workers, weren’t we? Road jockeys? Labor-slayps? Well, you hear enough keening in the night, and you start to think maybe a fat purse and lifetime of renown for taming the wilds of Grubb’s Expanse still wasn’t worth, you know, your life.
What began as sort-of jokes—Dipsweet wondering if the meetings were incentivized by attendance of farmgirls, barmaids, and the Synods of Sungar-Lee—turned into veiled threats: Gorbin remarking that “Anyone who spends that much time licking spittle probably forgot the taste of hard-earned sweat. He might need reminding.”
The growl inside our troupe peaked when Overman Crad was spotted marching to the aviary, where soon after alighted a flock of missive-burdened birds.
We met him as he entered camp.
“Where’d you send those birds, eh chief?” Gorbin’s forearms were so big around he had to cut slits in his sleeves. He leaned on his club.
“You better tell us one thing or another, boss,” said Dipsweet. He sounded apologetic. The sunlight glinted off his inlaid knuckles.
“Surly bunch,” muttered Overman Crad. “If I tell you, you must not reveal your knowledge.” He pointed at the lot of us. “Do you promise?”
“You overstep,” I said. I felt myself aquiver. “Do I promise my thoughts to a person whose request reveals him to be but the frontward face of a company? Do I promise to freely give way the sanctity of my inner life for the sake of your occupation?” I spat. “Fie on that.”
Dipsweet laughed. Gorbin looked between me and Overman Crad. “I echo Ratford,” he said. He poked Overman Crad in the knee with his club and Overman Crad fell over.
“Hey,” said Overman Crad. “Hey, let us talk like men, huh? I’m not just a company man. I’m more than that. I used to be in a road troupe, like you!”
“Company man,” sneered Eglantine. “Man. Man. Man. Is everyone in our crew a man, Overperson Crad?”
“And you don’t reckon yourself in our troupe, eh?” Dipsweet asked.
“I recognize your femininity, Eglantine, and I despise my own slip of the tongue in a moment of such dictional importance.” Overman Crad turned to Dipsweet but appealed to us all. “Well, I’m in the troupe, of course. But I’m also, you know, above the troupe, in a way.”
“Above us?” This, boisterously, from Yukwit.
“Another mistake of diction. Fool am I!” Overman Crad tried to retreat to his tent. Gorbin slipped behind him.
“Why don’t I tell you what I know of the missives. Afterwards, if you are amenable, we can retake this juncture of conversation.” Overman Crad looked like he was going to cry. “Please, Ratford, Dipsweet. Come on, fellows.”
“Let him speak,” I said.
“Let me put in plainly, then, that we may no longer have this tension between us, that we might repair a wound that is serious but not fatal—”
“I will sup upon your eyeballs,” whispered Gorbin. “If you do not expel information forthwith.”
“We sent the birds to hunters of dangerous game,” sputtered Overman Crad. “Carrying messages which combined offers of capital with appeals for goodwill.”
Everyone cheered.
Overman Crad grinned. “You didn’t hear it from me. In fact, you might blame this entire incident on too-much swamp-dew. But most of our missives were sent to one mm… person. The only person who could hope to vanquish this beast.”
Even laid low, Overman Crad could not help but pause for effect:
“Corebet the Pursuant.”
In the week before Corbet the Pursuant’s arrival, while Silvertip snatched a score more troupers from their tents and slew several military platoons dispatched from Bortrediel’s barracks, we discussed the living legend of Corebet. He’d founded his reputation by slaying the Mapwachet Cat, a swamp lion who’d eaten a couple hundred folks in the south of Piri Valley.
“Loneliness is passion for Corebet the Pursuant.” This from Yukwit, generally a raucous fellow. “He lives only for himself. On the wind.”
“He is so lethal with the blowpipe he only carries three darts,” said Dipsweet.
“As well a throwing stick, shepherds sling, and bow. The latter’s arrows are tipped with the same poison finishing the darts,” said Narf. Narf carried several knives too many on his person, despite how their weight imbalanced his pick swing.
“I heard tell Corebet once dueled an infamous poacher,” said Eglantine. “So dark were the poacher’s dealings that she was feared to be magic—perhaps a Practitioner gone viper. No person dared touch her flesh for fear of catching the evil on themselves. Since Corebet had called the duel, the poacher chose weapons. Skinning knives. For hours did she and Corebet scrap. Only Corebet walked away from this fight. The poacher’s skeleton yet stands in the glade. Pinned to the tree with Corebet’s knife.”
Overman Crad watched us sullenly. Whenever someone had to venture for use of the john, he followed to make sure we weren’t slinking off to clandestine, rumor-filled encounters with other troupes. When he tried this on Eglantine, she asked him to ‘bring along a bung, for it is my monthly.’
A few nights ago we’d tied all our tents together to make one large tent. Dipsweet and I still laid nearest each other. I cradled my spade. Its cold head brought me comfort in the muggy night.
“Hark, Ratford, awaken.”
Twin shadows fell over me. My eyes slitted open. It was Overman Crad. Accompanying him, to my horror, was Associate Zulfitio, that company man who ran the company store. He could only be here on official business.
“Who breaks my slumber?” I grumbled, as if loathe and hardly able to wake. I shifted my position and fell back into sham sleep.
Associate Zulfitio toed my foot with his boot. Overman Crad coughed. “Come on now, Ratford, we aren’t here to discipline you.”
Eglantine’s voice came from deeper in the tent. “You’re lucky we aren’t here to discipline you, Overperson Crad.”
“What does she mean?” asked Associate Zulfitio.
“Nothing.” Overman Crad faked a laugh. “Only a jape. A joke. We jest in this troupe. It keeps the edge. Leave it on the line, you scamps!”
Associate Zulfitio ran a finger across his hairless lip. “Ratford. Come speak with us in the moonlight.”
“You don’t have to go with them, Ratford,” said Eglantine. Her voice sounded like it emanated from a supine position. “You’re on your own time.”
“Will you not reprimand your underling?” Associate Zulfitio couldn’t have sounded more surprised if he’d witnessed a slayp completing arithmetics.
“Klesmar, be silent!” roared Overman Crad. No one in our troupe was called Klesmar. Eglantine had the sense to shut up.
Associate Zulfitio regarded Overman Crad with deep respect. “Your style is unorthodox but your results, relying upon force and fear, are much to be lauded.”
Overman Crad whispered in my ear. “Just come, I’m begging you. Your employment is secure.”
“Beat me not, oh managerial one!” I called out. “Not again. I beg of you!” Going on in this manner I let them lead me out of the tent, down the road, to Associate Zulfitio’s company store. I sat on a pile of netted rice.
A fourth man materialized from the shadows. Before I knew what for he had me by both shoulders: “You’ve seen her? You’ve seen Dawn?”
I had no idea what to make of this. “Every morning,” I said. “Must you lay hands upon me?”
I was released. “My apologies,” he said. His face was gaunt and unevenly shaved. He wore a brown robe with subtle, tigerish stripes that struck discord with my white road-working garb. “But you did see her?” He appealed to Associate Zulfitio. “This is the one who saw her?”
“Ratford, please describe the circumstances in which your troupe mate—” Associate Zulfitio checked his ledger. “—Darnimum Eaglesrot, perished, with special emphasis on the creature known colloquially as ‘Silvertip.’”
“And to whom am I speaking?” I asked.
“Corebet the Pursuant,” said the man in the uncertain robe.
“About time you arrived,” I said.
“A humorous fellow, nay?” Overman Crad clapped me on the back. It hurt.
“Did Ratford know of Corebet’s arrival prior to this congress? Associate Zulfitio studied Overman Crad rapaciously. “For if he did, I’m sure the barons at Tarkville & Coppersun would have interest in replacing an overman who bares company intimacies to his subordinates.”
Overman Crad stroked his chin. “Know you of any overman of that description, Associate Zulfitio? I confess the only one I know who fits that description is Overman Goosepepper, doubtless a man of distorted faith and little discretion.”
Corebet the Pursuant slid toward me like he was made of the river. “Forgive my lateness. But please—Ratford, is it?”
I nodded.
“Ratford, I come to seek my steed, called Dawn of the Delta. She is known to you by the nomen ‘Silvertip.’”
Well, I’m not much to lay oath against the deities, but even I uttered a ‘Starved Vircesean!’ at this revelation.
While I performed Vircesean’s sign of pantomime consumption and subsequent regurgitation so as not to irritate He Who is Hungriest of the Gods, Corebet the Pursuant sat cross-legged on the ground. His eyes were branded with grief and with expectation, too. But how could anyone ride a slick of oil in the water? A rainbow made of lightning?
I joined him down there.
“First thing was, I fell asleep by the fire,” I said.
After I’d related the story, Corbet asked me to introduce him “along the road.” For such a fearsome hunter he seemed rather a shy man.
Associate Zulfitio said: “Ratford, today you are relieved of all road duties. Instead, I order you to escort Corebet the Pursuant. And I need hardly remind you that to mention the intricacies of this talk, namely Corebet the Pursuant’s unique relationship to this… maneater, are not to be discussed among any of your colleagues.”
“You have no dominion over me with regard to tasks of labor, Associate Zulfitio.” I knew this to be true, as written in the employee handbook.
“Ratford, you’re not to touch shovel nor tamp today. Instead, act as Corebet’s custodian,” said Overman Crad. He mouthed the words ‘Please, I beg you,” when Associate Zulfitio wasn’t looking.
“I shall be your squire, famed hunter,” I said.
We joined Troupe Three. Eglantine tandemed with Dipsweet at the fore. Narf and Yukwit, just behind, were finding slick rhythm.
“Love your work, sir,” said Narf. He peeled back his tunic to reveal a row of knives pressed against his abdomen. “I, too, live a life of the hunt.”
Corebet plucked one of the knives. The movement was as nimble as it was socially dubious. “Erm,” said Narf.
“Steel is heavy,” said Corebet.
“Yeah, man,” said Narf.
“Yet, it is dangerous. Most lethal.” Corebet the Pursuant took pauses between his sentences as if he needed time to come up for air.
“What do you carry?” Narf stabbed his digger’s jaws into the ground. He laid flat his scarf, then placed his weapons upon it. The throwing knives. A dirk. Two clubs. Stone knuckles. A sock filled with coins.
“Behold,” said Narf.
Corebet nodded his appreciation.
The hunter and I could not linger to see if Narf and Yukwit, inspired by celebrity, would edge out Dipsweet and Eglantine. We had a schedule to keep. “Nice guys,” said Corebet, as we walked the road toward Bortrediel.
By supper time, we’d visited troupes Six, Eight, Eleven, Fifteen through Eighteen, and finally Troupe Twenty. In other words, we’d interviewed every single person who’d seen, heard, or smelled a whiff of Silvertip. “Dawn,” corrected Corebet, upon hearing my observation.
Our finale was a discussion with Overman Goosepepper. As I warned the great hunter, Overman Goosepepper would have nothing for us but spiritual platitudes and ambiguous judgements of our character.
“There was no sign of Darnimum Eaglesrot’s body, no sir, possibly due to Hungry Vircesean’s long fingered reach. Yet could not Sweet Superior be the author of our compatriot’s corpse’s absence? A gift from that sleepy God who did not want us to see the sorry state of our fellow?” Overman Goosepepper was working the brass fork down his gullet for Vircesean while also throwing the finger signs for Sweet Superior. He finished by kneeling and bowing his head once to the East and once to the West. When he stood his immense size surprised me all over again.
Corebet had tapped his foot all through Overman Goosepepper’s speech. “Refrain from hypotheses, Overman Goosepepper, and report to me only the facts as you know them.”
“What is fact in the harsh light of divinity?” Overman Goosepepper’s thundercrack voice boomed to uncomfortable proportions. “That night I did not see the phenomena. But I waited, I patrolled, and not three nights past did I become privy to the miracle: dead men floating aloft the earth! I, personally, have witnessed this evidence of seraphic influence!”
“Thank you for your time,” said Corebet.
On the way back to Troupe Three we talked as if we were old friends.
“I would detest your assumption that I complain about this pleasant day, especially held up against a day of labor, but I wonder: have we learned a single fact from these other troupes which I did not already relate to you this morning?” I waxed poetic because Troupe Twenty had brought out bottles of fermented swamp-dew.
“Patterns, my incisive companion. I listen for patterns the same as I watch for patterns on the hunt. Repetition is the hunter’s truest ally.”
Narf and Yukwit, on the furthest edge of our section, overheard this comment. We made a foursome to the cooking fire. Around us were the swamps and hills and swatches of forest. Fleets of tiny birds gave way to fleets of bats shooting out of concealed caves. Ululating moans with no discernible source made our hair stand on end. Eglantine, who’d lived in the wilds longer than any of us, said this was the mating call of the vocslayp.
“Think the monster will come tonight?” Gorbin jabbed at the air with his club.
“Not a monster,” said Corebet the Pursuant, untying the several yards of cloth he wore instead of boots. “And yes, Dawn will come tonight.”
“Is it true that Dawn is no elk or horse, as Ratford insists, but actually one of the arthropodals whose molts we constantly clear from this roadway?”
“Dawn is no centipede. She is a child of meat and bone, as are you and I.”
“Which brings me to my next inquiry…”
I drifted over to the other side of the fire where Dipsweet and Yukwit shared a flask of the distillation Yukwit conjured out of lamp oil, two varieties of wild corn, and the grease from a gracip’s backlegs. Dipsweet offered the flask.
When I’d stopped coughing and could see again, I described the taste of Troupe Twenty’s swamp-dew and how it differed from this jarred heat. Overman Goosepepper sat down on a log between me and Dipsweet. Nobody had invited him.
“Good laborers, fine conversationalists” said Overman Goosepepper, by way of greeting.
“Are you lost, Goosepepper? Your Troupe is that way.” Dipsweet pointed in the opposite direction as Troupe One.
“To whit, the wit!” said Overman Goosepepper. He laughed overloud at Dipsweet’s insult. Then he made a big show of looking all around him, as if to check that we were alone.
“Ratford,” he said, “would you not agree Corebet an odd sort?”
Corebet the Pursuant, standing only a few feet away, harkened.
“Nay, he seems usual to me,” I said.
“Usual. Yes. Corebet the Pursuant, only your average fellow,” said Overman Goosepepper. He hulked to his feet and stood so the fire was behind him or in front of him, depending on where you sat. It was very theatrical.
“An average fellow. Yes. Hmm. And if he were not average? If he were, say, one of the Agrestal Riders of Mivin?”
“No way,” said Eglantine.
The rest of them did not react as Overman Goosepepper had apparently hoped.
“The who?” asked Narf.
“The Agrestal Riders of Mivin? Those fell-drivers of rabid beasts who charge from Mivin’s gates with hunt’s hunger on their keen lips?” Overman Goosepepper could not believe it.
“Sounds quite exciting,” said Narf, politely.
“Wait,” said Yukwit. “They feed the enemy to their mounts? My mother told me stories.”
Overman Goosepepper clapped his cymbal-sized hands. He was wreathed in fire. Sweat shone on his hairy hide and the embers from the fire glistened on his woolen clothes like tiny homunculi holding even tinier lanterns. “Right you are, Hyukspit! Which brings me to my—"
“My name is ‘Yukwit’,” said Yukwit. “Not whatever you called me.”
“Do forgive me, Yukwit, though I am sure I have called you ‘Yukwit’ from our first introduction. And yet, I apologize, for I am no dissembler, as is Corebet the Pursuant.” Overman Goosepepper pointed at Corebet. Corebet stiffened.
“Corbet pretends to be a hunter of beasts. He is not. He is a tamer. Silvertip is his revolted steed, a fact evidenced by his diminutive title for that horror. He is not our enemy’s vanquisher, dear fellows, but her accomplice.”
“Stand not before me and attempt to sell your lame gracip,” snarled Yukwit. “You have named me erroneously many times. And while I forgive this blunder an account of your seniority to my position, I do not forgive blatant mendacity. You have not called me by my name. You will do so from now on.”
Rumor had it that before joining the crew Yukwit had made a living playing the carnival games in Aedelsbee’s Cut District. When Yukwit stood to confront Overman Goosepepper the sickle of moon could not have been sharper than his profile and bearing.
“Bright Opherlion,” swore Overman Crad, slipping between them. “Ratford, Dipsweet: on Yukwit.” He grabbed his fellow Overman by the elbow and steered him up the road. Dipsweet and I brushed off Yukwit’s shoulders.
“Dawn will come tonight,” said Corebet. “She will smell me.”.
We waited. Corebet taught us about the beasts and creeper-plants and much else. We roasted cuypos over the fire. The skewers went straight through their asses and out their mouths.
“The land does not relish a road built down its back,” Corebet was saying, when out in the dark I watched a flash of burning rainbow break from the tree cover. It was heading straight for us.
Dawn’s keening accompanied her charge. I braced for impact—except Corebet launched before us with the speed of a bird taking flight if that bird was made of leopards and autumn leaves. He fluted his hands around his mouth and made ululation. Dawn’s keening stopped. So did she; a shuddering swirl of crystalized aether waiting at the camp’s edge.
Corebet unfurled a length of cloth from his waist and tied it over his eyes. He hissed at us over his shoulder. “To tents, lads. If anyone bears weapon during the Dance, she’ll kill us all.”
I dove for the tent. Dipsweet a moment later. We peered between the tent flaps. Dawn glissaded to the furthest edge of the bonfire’s throw. If not for the bits of road troupers hanging from her wide antlers like last season’s velvet, her form would be nothing but the suggestion of apotheosis on stilts written in lines of prismatic ice.
The very air crackled with black electricity. There came a rumbling of the land below and the sky above. The fire cooled in an instant. Birds flew backwards. Slayps and vocslayps reared on their forelegs and danced out-of-season. Later, a trouper from Two told me that their tom gracip had eaten the jake.
Corebet the Pursuant, face wrapped with silk, stood only ten feet away from Dawn.
She rushed him. She was so fast I could not even scream. How would the great hunter look hanging from silver tines?
Corebet didn’t move until the last instance, when he widened his arms, so Silvertip’s tines slid smoothly into the spaces between limb and trunk. Corebet clamped his pits and soared upwards with Dawn, hanging perilously over a distant earth. Dawn’s purring was so contented it shook my back teeth.
Any lingering sense of ‘Silvertip’ gave way after this bizarre tandemic moment: imagine watching a man shake hands with a tiger. Dawn set Corebet down and both ran in a small circle, opposite each other. When their courses met again, Dawn was slightly more solid. Or at least, more there. I could see the top edge of her back. I could almost count her hooves. Six, so far.
With terrible speed Dawn lunged again for Corebet. But Corebet only sidestepped the tines and interlocked his right arm with Dawn’s left foreleg. His head nestled in the ruff sprouting from her wide chest, her muscles furred and gorgeous and bulging and his body small and almost childlike in comparison. Then she was slicing down to lop off his head.
Corebet the Pursuant ducked to the right. Her antlers whisked above. Corebet drove his left arm beneath Dawn’s right foreleg. Again, he embraced her. Again, she tried to decapitate him.
This went on for some time. Despite Dawn’s wicked speed and snarling immensity, she could never land a blow. It occurred to me this was the Dance of Beast and Man, itself: a legendary martial art employed by the Agrestal Riders of Mivin to yoke their savage mounts. And which Dawn had evidently been attempting to perform with every single trouper she’d run through.
All at once both Corebet and Dawn halted. Dawn appeared nearly as solid as the rest of us. She was no less majestic for it. Her tines glowed silver-gold as chandeliers and her fur swam in all the shades of the ocean beneath a kaleidoscope moon. She nuzzled Corebet’s masked face. Her tongue slipped free. Long and dull, lined with tiny clasping digits that unfurled her rider’s wrapping.
She tossed the silk aside. Exposed, he stared into her liquid eyes. Her elegant tongue- fingers tented against his temples.
Corebet the Pursuant swung atop Dawn; an Agrestal Rider of Mivin had no need for saddle and halter. He untied the loops of his cloth sandals. His bare feet gripped Dawn’s flanks.
He whooped. They were off. The headwrap and his sandal-cloth streamed out behind them as kites, appearing nearly as colorful, nearly as substantial, as Dawn of the Delta herself.
Darkness swallowed both rider and mare. Dipsweet and I unclasped hands. I wiped a few tears from my cheeks. Yukwit openly bawled. “I need to send a message to my mother,” he said.
Overman Goosepepper staggered from Overman Crad’s tent. I think Overman Goosepepper would’ve fallen into the fire if there weren’t shovel handles to hold onto. He was in the grip of something powerful. He reached for the sky, upon which the stars were etched.
“Sweet Superior!” cried Overman Goosepepper. He went to his knees. Words burbled from his frothing lips, but I couldn’t understand them. He fished Vircesean’s Brass Fork from his waist and cast it into the bushes. “To You alone, Sweet Superior,” he blubbered. “To You.”
Overman Crad emerged and began to massage his colleague’s shoulders. “Let’s get you inside,” said Overman Crad.
The next day it was business as usual. We tied our boot strings and covered our skin against the sun.
As we finished touchups in the afternoon, and with no keening preamble at all, thank Superior, Corebet the Pursuant rode up toward the gracip stables. Dawn reared on her hind legs. Corebet’s scarf made silk waves against the blue.
Overman Crad could not stop our immediate exodus to the gracip stables.
Because of our location as Troupe Three, we were far back in the line from the stable gates by the time we arrived. Some troupers napped in the undergrowth, in the crooks of trees. Others rolled dice or cast lots on leg wrestling. Overman Goosepepper led a contingent of marching precants who uttered strange and nascent invocations.
Corebet found and led us directly to the fore of the line. “She’s in the paddock,” he explained. “That she might sniff the air and acclimate herself to this habitat.”
“You wear well your sanguinity,” I said.
“Once,” said Eglantine, “I lost my cat. Its return provided a relief beyond words.”
“And what was this noble creature’s honorific?” asked Corebet. He locked the gates behind us against the calls of the crowd. We walked through the stables. A tent served as the roof, but the walls were yaoka board. I pitied the building troupes: every few days they disassembled the lot and hauled the pieces to wherever the road had gotten off to.
“The White Cat,” said Eglantine.
I pitied the gracips, too, who were doing all the hauling. They clicked and chirped from the stalls on either side of us. One of the jakes played his backlegs. Low, sad, tones that another jake duetted before the tom on the end twanged ruthlessly on his forelegs to block the upstarts.
“A stout, simple name for a corresponding owner,” said Overman Goosepepper. I jumped at his voice: he must have managed to slip inside on our tail end. His head nearly brushed the tent roof. None of his acolytes were in attendance.
Corebet unlocked the paddock door. Dawn roamed freely. We recoiled into the paddock’s fence, which was in-turn surrounded by a ten-foot tent wall. I couldn’t see the line of supplicants outside, but I could hear them: a preparatory burr, like a field of grasshoppers bringing in the dark.
“Hey girl,” said Corebet. He stepped lightly, ready to dance at any moment. She stirred and her bank of eyes glittered open. Her tongue flickered out.
And before Corebet could take another step, Overman Goosepepper dodged in front of him. Dawn raised her neck high. Overman Goosepepper bowed.
“You who are Sweet Superior’s representative on our physical plane, who contains within you a partition of the Godhead, grant me your approval writ by contact. Praise me, select me!”
Corebet the Pursuant edged away. He murmured at his steed: “Hey now, baby, hey now, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s got no idea, girl, so let’s calm down. Hey now…”
Corebet tried to grab the back of Overman Goosepepper’s suspenders but at that moment the Overman dropped to his knees, bending his face to Dawn of the Delta’s crystal hooves.
Dawn lowered her antlers. Overman Goosepepper’s size was rendered impotent in a split second. Those glistening, frozen-flame tines slipped beneath Overman Goosepepper’s arms. She drew him to his feet.
“Oh, no,” said Corebet the Pursuant.
“Yes, my Sweet Superior, yes—”
Dawn pushed one antler tine through the meat of Overman Goosepepper’s chest. Overman Goosepepper sucked in a wet, awful breath.
“Please,” said Corebet the Pursuant.
But the great beast shook her head. Overman Goosepepper’s giant body lifted ten feet into the air and slapped the wall. Something solid cracked. Hanging there, one foot kicking, Overman Goosepepper tried to get his hands around the tine. He failed. Instead, he passed out, woke up, and wailed to wake the dead.
“Oooooooooh,” said Overman Goosepepper.
The rest happened so quickly that it almost makes me wonder if it happened at all. Have you ever seen a gracip trample a fox? When Dawn finally calmed down, before anybody could so much as speak, Corebet the Pursuant was astride her and they were bounding over the paddock fence. Another jump and they tore through the tent-wall, exposing our cabal and scattering a band of gambling troupers, then took off toward the plain.
I felt the weight of a hundred eyes.
Above the blood, above the sputtering, still-dying Goosepepper, the moon hung like a ghost in the daytime sky. I looked out: over Dipsweet’s broad shoulder, over Grubb’s Expanse, to a spot on the horizon where I figured Spradalingustort waited. I thought about this road stretching all the way there. About the years and miles passing slowly and inexorably.
And just then Corebet and Dawn of the Delta slid back around toward us. Her legs galloped with the nimbleness of a wildfire spreading and the calmness of a billow of smoke above the water. He whooped. We waved our hats, and he waved back. The crowd cheered. Then Corebet and Dawn stepped into another speed. They drove south, down the future-phantom of our road, breaking ground with crystal hooves.
Associate Zulfitio stood uncertainly above Overman Goosepepper’s corpse. “Someone haul him off to the side,” he ordered.
Associate Zulfitio had arrived half an hour after the incident. Accompanying him were two other Tarkville & Coppersuns men. Hired goons, judging by their cauliflower ears.
Our troupe milled around in the paddock since that was where Overman Crad said they’d want us, for questions. One by one Associate Zulfitio had taken us aside. The goons took notes. I don’t suppose anyone had reason to lie. Afterwards, Associate Zulfitio wrote a missive against the side of the barn. He heated his seal, marked his rune, and gave the message to his goons, who disappeared posthaste.
Now goonless, Associate Zulfitio was no less confident in his command.
“Move him!” Associate Zulfitio barked.
“Have you lamed yourself, good sir?” I asked.
“Lend us a hand, Ratford,” said Dipsweet. He and Overman Crad and Gorbin each held one of Overman Goosepepper’s flaccid limbs. Yukwit and Narf grasped the abdomen of the giant. Eglantine supported the Overman’s lolling head.
“Sure,” I said. But I scowled at Associate Zulfitio, who despite our acquiescence to his orders did not look comfortable, exactly, as if he’d finally scented what was on the wind.
“What do you observe upon me, trouper? Is my button unfixed?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I grabbed onto the wreck of Overman Goosepepper’s back. With many grunts and gasps we carried his body through the stable, outside, and dropped him upon a waiting cart. All that was left of the crowd was a troupe of fellows in black habits. They pushed the cart away. Associate Zulfitio went with them.
“Death troupe,” said Dipsweet.
“I hear they eat the eyes,” said Gorbin.
“Where do you hear this stuff?” asked Dipsweet. He seemed genuinely angry. “They eat the tongues, you absolute buffoon.”
I tried to ignore them. I leaned on a shovel and regarded the daytime moon.
Dipsweet cast his rangy arm around me. “I need a drink to wash away Gorbin’s inanity. What say you and I jaunt to Troupe Twenty that I might have a taste of their so-called ‘swamp dew.’”
“Sure,” I said. I closed my eyes and sniffed Dipsweet’s arm. It smelled a lot like my own arm, after a day of work. We started walking and I kept my eyes closed. We were headed toward the road’s source, toward Bortrediel, and so the road beneath my feet grew more cultivated with each stride.
“Who do you think they’ll put over Troupe One?” asked Dipsweet. “Say what you will about the deceased Goosepepper, but do not say he was poor at roadwork.”
I found that I hardly cared. Instead, I was thinking how we’d made quite the dent in this land.
Then, I thought how maybe I should cast my shovel down. Turn on my heel and start walking. Walk my way out of Grubb’s Expanse. Walk across Piri Valley until I arrived at the fabled city-state of Mivin where ran the savage beasts. Where, maybe, Corebet and Dawn were destined to return.
J. M. J. Brewer (he/him) is a staunch supporter of nature conservation. He teaches at Tarleton State University. You can find more of his short fiction at jmjbrewer.com.
Read J.M.J.'s story in Propagule 3 here.