The Shapeshifters (3 page)

‘
Ask it and I
will tell you whether I deem it so or not,’ he said.

I did not know how to
begin. But I said, ‘They say your kind heralds from ancient souls
known as Shapeshifters.’

He watched me but would
not speak.

‘
Is this so?
And if I may, would this be your current form?’

The searing look in his
eye... I expected an angry retort. But he smiled. ‘Rumour has done
us much ill-favour, Arrabel Grean of Raethgar. But it has also
served us well.’ He laughed. ‘You may yet live to see our
secret.’

I had little idea what
that meant. But I did not press him further. Yet, for the first
time in days I felt blooming a renewed sense of hope. That with
Hillod’s aid I might actually escape the tendrils of the
Barony.

10

The first sign of the
mayhem and death that was to follow happened after we had left
finally the wood for the grasslands and the Bone Ravens began
dropping from the sky. The first one smashed through the third
carriage in an explosion of splintered wood. There were gasps and
screams as more whistled to earth, thudding like rocks into the
ground about us. I thought we were under siege by cannons or
catapults until I trailed the eyes of Hillod and saw high above us
large crimson attack falcons.

‘
Barony Red
Birds,’ Hillod grunted angrily, and yet unsurprised did he sound,
and almost as soon as he had spoken there came the pounding of
thunderous paws around the edge of the Dread Forests. When I turned
my head and saw it I froze.

The Barony
Hound.

Charging, howling. And if
that had been all then I would have been left truly terrified for
my life. And with them went my hope.

I expected Hillod to
promptly order his caravan into a gallop, to flee for the hills.
Attempt to lose the Hampton Lancers. But he did not. Instead, and
to my shock, he ordered the caravan to halt.

‘
What are you
doing?
’ I seethed, my skin turning cold.
‘
Get us moving!
’

Yet Hillod simply turned
his face to the heavens. As if praying. Yet, from his pocket he
pulled what looked to be miniature a sun dial. And seemed to
measure the position of the sun.

I struggled
to my foot, standing there awkwardly with my ruined leg suspended
off the deck. ‘
Get us moving damn
you!
’

But the caravan remained
halted as the Lancers bore down on us, surrounding us, their horned
Geloths gnashing fangs as long as sabres, snarling, hissing. The
mighty Barony Hound circled us hungrily, snorting, hacking,
spitting. Hillod watched me from the corner of his eye. ‘Brace
yourself, Arrabel,’ he whispered.

But I was furious with
this capitulation. And terrified.

The captain
of the Lancers laughed when he saw me. He, the despicable Captain
Rolonder, the brute who “borrowed” the young women of Raethgar for
his pleasure on their wedding nights before their newlywed husbands
had had a chance to love them. Calling them
skanks
and
half-trogs
and
slag-homps
when he was done with
them.
All in the name of the Great
Barony
, he would claim,
all in the name of servitude and good
grace
. A fate that would surely have
befallen myself and my dear sisters if our destinies had not veered
along this path. ‘
Ah
ha!
’ he laughed. ‘
The Snake of Raethgar cornered at last!
’

11

I had
Nuukwood in my satchel. (Another plant-based implement devised by
the Crones.) I had provisioned it for such an occasion. All I had
to do was tear its bark, scratch my nail into its porous wood and
it would ignite and incinerate everything, myself included, in a
radius of a hundred feet. It would turn us all into soft mounds of
white ash but at least I would leave this world on
my
terms. And take
Rolonder and his hateful men with me. Yet, what of the Bonekeepers?
I had never expected to make new friends on this journey. They did
not deserve such a fate. Or did they? If Hillod and his nomads
would not fight, if they preferred to give in to such aggressors as
the Lancers of Hampton then perhaps they
all
needed to perish.

‘
Arrabel,’
Hillod murmured to me, ‘stand down. There is nothing you can
do.’

Around us the Lancers
began dragging Bonekeepers from the safety of the caravan, hauling
them into the grass.

‘
We can flee,
is what we can do!
’ I hissed. I made to
leap from the caravan. I would run, I would fight. I would not sit
here and give in. Hillod gripped my arm. ‘There are other ways than
fleeing.’

I frowned at
Hillod’s comment. He had obviously forgotten the hate and tenacity
riding within the blood of the Hampton Lancers. After all, it was
his own darned people who had been ridiculed and banished from
Hampton. Chased out. Hunted down and slaughtered after the
expulsion deadline. His very own
kin
! And by the likes of the great
and feared Captain Rolonder. My father had explained to me that
Bonekeepers were essentially pacifists and I sensed the fool Hillod
trusted Rolonder to take pity on him and his fellow people in light
of this silly ideal.

‘
I guess only
fools die today then
,’ I seethed, reaching
into my satchel, feeling for the Nuukwood wrapped in its bundle of
deer velum.

Lassoes from every
direction snagged about our chests and dragged us heavily into the
dry grass where small lizards scampered every which way. And my
satchel was snatched from me by one of the Barony’s good men,
confiscated, stolen, looted.

Rolonder, laughing, slid
from his steed, his eyes on me. He heaved me against the side of
the caravan, pinning me there. ‘The Baroness’s husband wants your
head, m’dear. Wants it hanging from his pike in the town square for
all to throw their faecal at and spit on.’ His mouth was an inch
from my own, his breath hot and fetid. ‘So shall he have it. But I
am to spoil myself with your body in whatever way I wish.’ He
lifted the hem of my dress. I felt his wrist weasel down the waist
of my woolskin pants, felt his rough hand worm toward my groin,
felt his fingers pushing against the soft flesh of my cunnus,
fingering its tender folds. I snorted and spat in his
face.

He stood back
and punched me square in the jaw. I slumped to the earth, my head
ringing, numb, my dark hair tumbling across my face. He stood back
again and booted me in the ribs. All breath expelled from my lungs.
I gagged and spluttered for air. But braced myself. For there would
be more. I had observed him and his kind. There would be a boot to
my face, another to my head, another to my womb. He would stomp my
skull to scrape off my scalp. He would crush my nose, pulverise my
jaw, my cheeks, he would crunch his heals into my spine to crack
vertebrae. He would flop out his todger and gush me in hot piss,
stinging my wounds. He would tear off my woolskin pants, rip off my
underwear, pull my legs open wide and jam himself into whatever
port he found first. The whole contingent of Lancers would go
through me. I would become their ‘jizz-jug’ as they fondly liked to
call the whores and wenches that they raped, become their
skank
, their
half-trog
, their
slag-homps
.

But then...
‘
Ahrg! Get this slut away from me! Look at
her, dirty slag!
’ Someone hefted me from
the ground and groggily I watched the heel of my remaining foot
scuff through the grass as I was dragged away, watched the stump of
my bad leg bounce in the tussocks. ‘
Skank’s got the Wasting in her she has! Look at her leg.
She’s got the cursed Wasting, borne of Garkhorst! Dirty stinking
trog!
’ Wiping the fingers he had used to
touch me, on his pants.

I felt myself being
hoisted from the ground then and thrown. Landing face-first on hard
steel. Watched bars close around me, my head still ringing. I
struggled but a voice were at my ear: ‘Arrabel, sit fine, you do
well, now sit fine.’

Hillod there, leaning
over me, holding me. I acknowledged now where I was. Trapped in the
hold of his prison cart. All of us. Myself and every last
Bonekeeper. The door was rammed shut, and distantly I acknowledged
the metallic click of the hefty padlock close us in. Hillod held me
and once more he peered at the sky. The sun was directly overhead,
our shadows mere puddles beneath us.

‘
Remember
what I said. You may yet witness the truth of our Shape-shifting.
Brace yourself.’

‘
You shut
your trap before I lop it off yer stinking abominable
face!
’ yelled Rolonder.
‘
You cunted! Harbourer of
murderers!
’

I sat there against the
bars, stealing my breath back, my face and belly throbbing with
pain. I eyed Hillod wondering if the years drifting to and fro in
the wilderness had left his brain ragged. We were trapped, caged,
hemmed in. Now we would ferried back to the Barony and
tortured.

I watched
through the bars as the Lancers raided the caravans, laughing
victoriously, derisively, as they hurled out the treasured
possessions of the Bonekeepers. Scattering them across the grass as
if detritus, as if trash from a rat den. ‘
A fine execution awaits you stinking Drifters,’
Rolonder yelled. ‘
All of
you. Garrotted, beheaded, faecal stuffed in your bellies. Apt
punishment for the dastardly crime of harbouring this trog and
murderer!
’

And that is when it
happened.

Firstly there came a
bizarre screech. Like a squealing pig.

Alarmed, I clawed my way
off the steel floor, propped myself on my foot. Yet, all the
Bonekeepers sat there, unmoved. Looking grave but unmoved. Some in
strange poses, as if praying. As if they knew of this sound. Knew
of its coming. Hillod simply kept his eye on me.

Rolonder and his men
suddenly stopped their ransacking. All eyes directed now toward the
front of the caravan. Mystified eyes. Confused eyes. Cautious
eyes...

…
all trained
upon the horses.

12

I watched,
disbelieving...

The horses, every one of
them, began to shift, to change. Stretching growing, howling like
animals in terrible pain. Jaws began to elongate, skin turned black
and bristled with fur, and there grew horns and fangs and razored
claws where only moments before there had been hooves and smooth
snouts. Limbs stretched, lifting those beasts to double their
original height, perhaps triple.

The Geloths, the cat
steeds of the barony, mewled and whined. The Barony Red Birds
stopped circling, suddenly fleeing, soaring off into the
skies.

And suddenly these new
beasts, these altered horses, tore free of their harnesses and
Rolonder and his men, screaming now, ran blind for their
steeds.

But they had not a
chance. They were ripped to shreds in their efforts and Rolonder
himself swiped almost clean in half, his belly gushed open, ropey
intestines flung into the blue sky; his last sight was me watching
him die.

13

I knew then
why we had been left alone in the Dread Forests, why the Greeps and
the Gookas, the Troolies and Wraithbies, the Gingerbreads and the
Joo Joons had afforded us easy passage:
fear
. They must have known,
sensed
, that some of
their kin, their brethren,
monsters
like them, (monsters of far greater evil and
strength than themselves) were passing through. And had thus
slinked back into the shadows, hidden themselves in the dark
wardrobes of the thick tangled foliage, and remained ever so still
and silent, content to simply watch us roll by.

The massacre of Rolonder
and his men was over in a matter of minutes. But after the
mysterious shape changing horses had done what they hungered for,
chewing and tearing every last Barony Lancer and their steeds to
shreds, they chased down and tore up the Geloths and then the
Barony Hound. Then charged into the Dread Forests to run their
curse out rampant. The howls, squeals, the hidden terror went on in
there for the most part of an hour. Hundreds of birds, bats,
flying-wolves swarmed for the safety of the skies. We watched
Sixlegs, and Bearlings and Joo Joons run clear of the woods, into
glaring sunlight that singed them to charcoal. And once the hour of
mid-day had swung past, the region again fell to
silence.

14

Hillod used a
bone key pressed flat and camouflaged against his skin to unlock
the padlock that Rolonder had used to bolt us inside the prison
cart. I gazed back toward the Forests. ‘What
are
they then?’ I asked. ‘Your
horses. How have they come to be such as what I just witnessed?
For, were they not originally beasts of Strangeworld? No such magic
exists there they say.’