Gutterblood 5 - Delays

The wagons moved slowly through the mud. They had only a half a normal day's travel to the border, but the way was now muddy and dangerous. Several times now they had had to stop and perform the back-breaking work of pulling a wagon out of an unsuspected ditch or hole.
The men were tired and wet, and still scared of what might be coming after them. At this point it was only the fear keeping them awake.
Pierce Farrell was less tired than the men because he had never gotten off his horse to help when they unstuck a wagon. And he was dryer because the quality of his clothes was much better than theirs. But he was annoyed. At this rate it would take them as long as ten more hours to reach the centerlands, and he knew that they could not keep going that long under these conditions.

*IN PROGRESS*

In Great Sadness (Poetry - Non-rhyming)

Why must there be
So much pain?
I know others have asked
In words that speak
So much more than mine,
But still I want to know.
I cannot love
Except with the most guarded phrases
And careful touches
Afraid to place too much
Upon those who are
As sensitive to love as I,
Bare nerves, frayed and worn
From caring so much
And feeling with more than
Simply five senses.
So I love the few
Who feel as much pain as I do
Because I know their limits:
They are equal to my own.
Too much love
And we all break and run
To far corners
Where we can retire, alone
To fill with unshed tears
The hollow that holds what is left of our hearts.
We cannot cry for ourselves-
That feeling of pity
Is long gone,
Leaving only resignation,
And the fear of love
And worse, the fear of not being loved
Again.

You speak to me of your fears
Of not finding love,
And of not being able to accept
What you have found.
I can feel you reaching
To me, wanting to be loved
But not being able
To risk exposing yourself.
I move,
And in a motion we join
Your head coming to rest wearily
On my breast.
I brush your soft hair
From your forehead
Feeling for all the world
Like a mother comforting
A frightened, lonely child.
Tears well in my eyes
For you, that you find yourself
In the pain I have
Been living with,
And would have spared you,
Had I only known how.
I hold you close, and speak softly
And we share a love that neither of us will name
For fear it will turn the same
As all the others.

That Traitor Memory (Prose)

The stillness of the night was broken only by the slow crackle of a cigarette as my lungs expanded, drawing in the smoke that soothed nerves and killed slowly. I looked briefly at my hand and quickly looked away as I saw how it shook, eddying currents of smoke around it where they drifted on the slight breeze. I put my hand on the arm of the chair once more, and again nothing stirred, while in my mind the thoughts went slowly churning. Mercifully the dreams of last night were indistinct and unrecognizable, else I might not even pretend to the pseudocalm that I evinced and instead scream my heart away as I had at waking. The pain was almost under control now. Only the video I had just seen kept my equilibrium at a nervous flutter, the traitor video and the no doubt blameless singer that reminded me so much of her. Even just that sight had kept me rooted, unable to change the channel, with slowly whitening fingertips on the remote, as she danced and sang about heartbreak. Danced like her, too, and mocked me where I sat until I walked to the pantry and upended the bottle of rum till the pain was more distant and I could leave to smoke in silence in the darkness. Every remembrance was met by a studied air of uncaring, ridiculous as it may have been under the circumstances, but allowing me to at least pretend to be sane, to create an illusion of peace without which I would surely die from the hole in my heart. And so I sat, while the alcohol slowly processed through my veins and my conscious mind drifted to the dim past, despite the hurt that awaited, and slowly I thought of her.
It was a Sunday, I think, and the pool water was chill on a spring day. I was a young man still, as I still am in body, but yet I had not seen all that I see today, and felt that which I feel now. She was with me, and energetically we played around the pool until the chill took her. She started to shiver with the cold, and quickly I lifted her easily over the short fence so she would be able to get to a hot shower. I remembered the smile she gave me, and my own crept to my face, out of place in the dark, and shrouded in the smoke that spiraled from my mouth.
On campus on a slow day I waited patiently for the elevator to reach the ground floor, carrying soup mix and a pan in my hands. I was eager to begin, for she waited above, and I remembered just the right way to make this dish exactly how she liked it. How she would be surprised that I had done it right, for my memory was not usually so apt. Some time later I gained my reward as her face was shocked into an open smile and her body a fierce hug. Almost I reached out, to return it, but was stopped by the moon looking down on me and the heat of the filter between my fingers.
It was early morning, and a rarity that I had woken before her. I studied her face as she lay on the bed beside me. She looked so relaxed, so innocent, as indeed she was. I breathed gently as my eyes followed the slight curve of her nose, the bow of her lips, the soft flutter of her eyelashes as she dreamed. I leaned forward slightly to kiss her, and inhaled smoke once more, as the acid tears leaked from my eyes and I sobbed softly into the night.

I Quit. (Prose)

They pat me on the back, with daggers in hand,
And I smile.
They have no power to hurt. Not anymore,
Now that I am free.
And so I chuckle at their attempts to harm,
And I laugh at their barbed remarks,
For they will have to stay,
And I am free.

Jack Daw Part Eight (Conclusion?)

Madame Brevity’s burned with a jaunty yellow flame, as if the flames were having a good time at their work.
The whores looked less amused.
They had been rousted out of their warm beds in the wee hours of the morning, told to get what they could carry, and hurried out of the building as the first flames started showing on the outside. Now the whole first floor was consumed, and the few people who had roused to help were incapable of stemming the blaze. Fortunately, there were no houses close enough to catch as well, but Madame Brevity’s was doomed.
At the beginning, the man who had rousted them up (an evil-looking one, to be sure) had dug like a madman, throwing pails of dirt to the girls, who had feebly shaken them out on the very edges of the flames. In fact, he had dug so vigorously that there had been a minor collapse near one of the foundations in the back, and he had ceased shortly thereafter.
He had also run inside, to get a few things out for the girls, and they had heard him banging around inside, only running out when the fire got so close to the door that he had to leave or burn. His fierce beard had been steaming when he came out, and the scar on his cheek was livid in the hot firelight. But he had been grinning, and he handed the stuffed doll he carried to a grateful whore with a nod.
And then he had stood and watched, for nearly a half an hour, while the house collapsed with shrill noises that sounded almost like screams…
*******
“That’s all I saw of him, Inspector Bentley. He had a big scar and a bushy black beard, just like I said. You couldn’t miss him. He was about your height, and he looked nice enough, before… before- ”
The whore couldn’t finish the sentence, and Bentley nodded distractedly and waved her out. She clutched a stuffed doll, half-soaked in blood, and it dripped a trail on his clean floor as she left. There it mingled with the mud and blood of 6 other whores and 4 concerned citizens that he had seen before her.
There was no doubt. All of the stories matched, and it had to have been the work of Jack Daw. Bentley smiled a grim little smile inside, but no trace of it showed on his face. Ludovico had taken him in once, but he would catch him, and there would be a reckoning. A reckoning, and then a hanging.
*******
Ludovico ran like he had never run before, but he could never run fast enough to escape his mind, and that was what hunted him now.

Flashes of it kept coming back to him.
Sneaking into Madame Brevity’s to set the fire, he had listened carefully and heard the very soft murmur of voices below. He had hidden bottles of oil in appropriate places, then set fire to the curtains that covered the back windows. There it would take a while to catch the rest of the house, if no one helped it along, but it would look impressive. He ran up to warn the whores and move them out, and on the way out managed to kick a few of the bottles over, towards the back wall.
Outside, he had made first to collapse the entry tunnel, knowing that what dirt he gave to the whores would be ineffectual. Once that was done he ran back inside to cover Sam’s Seaside’s internal exit, sliding a heavy couch over it, then nailing the couch to the door with a few well-placed swings. Then he had knocked over the rest of the oil and beat a hasty retreat as the whole place blazed up.
He knew that there was no way out for those below, and the thought gave him pleasure.

As he ran tree limbs beat at him, whipping him across the face and arms, but they had no more effect than would the punches of an underfed whore.
He ran, but the screams followed him.

When the roof started to collapse he knew it was over. There was no escape, and he knew the screams for what they were, coming from the trapped men below. But they were muffled, and he told the crowd that wood made strange snaps and noises when it burned. They soon enough cut off anyway.
After a few minutes more he decided that it would be good to leave before anyone started asking awkward questions, and he started to ease back through the crowd, but he was halted dead by a faint movement in the flames…

He no longer knew where he was, or cared. He couldn’t get the voices out of his head. The shadows around him grew longer and longer, and he stumbled, exhausted, into the deepening night…

The man with the cane stepped from the flames, and Ludovico’s eyes widened. He was untouched by the furnace around him, and his mask gleamed oddly in the light. He paused at the edge of the building, as timbers tumbled behind him and sparks blazed high into the air. His clothing was immaculate, as Ludovico had last seen him, and finally he stalked forward out of the fire… straight towards the part of the crowd where Ludovico stood.
Ludovico started to speak, to deny what was happening before him, he knew not what, but he was interrupted before he even started, as other figures stalked from the inferno. There was the one who had held his arms, there the one who had chuckled at his struggles. The man who had warned them all to the presence of Bentley’s guards held a nasty-looking hook with a bladed inner edge.
“Jack Daw,” they said, and nothing more.
“Jack Daw.”
Jack drew his blade, his short sword that had served him so well in so many fights before, but he could barely raise it against the terror that stalked towards him.
“Jack Daw.” The chant grated at his very being.
They surrounded him, mingling with the crowd, the too-silent crowd.
‘Magic,’ his mind gibbered at him, and then fled, shrieking.
Instinct took over.
He swung, wildly, at the figures around him. They were hazy and indistinct, but he swung nonetheless, and felt his blade bite into flesh.
Finally, there was shouting, and screams, but the chant continued.
“Jack Daw.”
He cut them down, and down, and down, but the chant continued.
“Jack Daw.”
He saw a doll, drenched in its former owner’s arterial blood, and he checked his swing at the last second.
Around him lay bodies, so many bodies. Whores, and civilians. But the criminals he had been trying to kill still stood, untouched... Indistinct. And the chant continued, though no living mouths formed the words.
“Jack Daw.”

He fled, into the dawn.

He fled, into the darkness.

Jack Daw Part Seven

It took four months for Ludovico to fully heal, and each day the inspector (whose name was Bentley) came by and talked to him for a while, about his life, and his plans, and each day he left with the same admonition:
“If you remember anything, anything at all, about the men who tried to hang you, you let me know, you see?”
But Ludovico held his silence. He told the inspector about his young life on the wagons, about the wolves who had attacked the Romany family, and killed most of them, and he told how his mother had swam with him in the frigid water of a river to a small island, with the wolves on the shore until dawn, when they had fled, whimpering. He told of the strange and probably crazy old man who had taught him how to fight, and more importantly, WHY to fight.
And he told an abbreviated version of his capture of Slate Jack Arell, the man who had stolen Clayton Danziger’s pearl-handled Parthian rapier, and his daughter’s virtue at the same time. He told how he had used Jack Daw’s reputation to smoke the man out, and then poisoned him into unconsciousness and brought him to Danziger for the reward.
But he didn’t mention the woman and her boy, and he didn’t say what his plans were once he had recovered.
His dreams were filled with faces, and vengeance.
He saw the other faces, the woman and her son, almost every day now. He would look out the window and they would be looking in, or he would see them in the mirror standing behind him, or just as a glimpse out of the corner of his eye.
At first he had nearly jumped out of his skin, but the faces faded quickly if he noticed them, and he became almost used to it by the time he had recuperated. He knew it was his guilty conscience, but he banished it from his mind. He would have time for regrets when he had dealt with his attackers.
When finally the day came where he could make a full stretch without pain, and he could talk without problem, though his voice was a little huskier than it had been before, the inspector visited for the last time.
“I know there are things you have told me, Tiger,” (the inspector had taken to calling him tiger, for the similarity to his last name, but he disliked it intensely) “and despite my wishes, I can’t hold you any longer in good conscience. So let me just say this.” The inspector braced his back slightly, and a grim expression came over his face. “If I catch you involved in an illegal act, I will have to hang you, and this time for good. Any affection I may have for you will not sway me in my duty.”
Ludovico realized that the inspector actually had a tear in his eye, and started to say something, but he was interrupted.
“No- that is all I will say. Good bye, sir.” And the inspector walked out.

Jack Daw Part Six

The inspector nearly fell forward over Jack’s shoulder as he finished his sentence, but caught himself and spluttered indignantly at the idea. “Preposterous! Here you stand before me, and no tricks will get you out of a trial, sir! Furthermore-, ” but he stopped and stared as ‘Jack’ slowly pulled the beard away from his chin. There was a kind of tacky substance holding it on, he saw, and its fierce bushiness had concealed the edges, where it might have been easier to spot as a fake.
Despite realizing that ‘Jack’ was a disguise, he jumped again when the man in the bed began to pull at his scar, which came off as well. It peeled up, leaving a red mark where the skin had been runneled up in a faux scar tissue ridge. When beard and scar were gone, and the former ‘Jack’ had rubbed the rawness out of his face, the inspector seemed to see a totally different person. Whereas the criminal Jack Daw was an obvious rogue, with an ill-omened look about him, as if he might suddenly knife you at any turn, the face now revealed showed only deep caring, hidden sadness, and obvious pain from his injuries.
“Good god, man… Ahhh, so who, I mean why would those posters be there…?” The inspector looked from the discarded beard and scar-glue to the face of the wounded stranger.
May I ask first how it is that I am still alive? I still remember… up to the hanging. And a knife coming out of me.
The stranger smiled his grim smile again, and for a second he looked more roguish… almost like Jack Daw.
“Ahh, yes, well, the men who had hung and stabbed you fled when we approached… We were out on one of the lord’s patrols, you see, and we heard the laughter from the road. But the blackguards heard us coming and took to their heels. One of them like to have stabbed you, though, and did a right job of it. Lucky for you we keep a healer along, and he was able to patch you up, else you’d have been dead for sure.”
The inspector looked discomfited for a second, then continued, somewhat slower and in a lower voice. “The fact is, sir, we’d probably not have done for your wounds, if a lad hadn’t recognized you and brought up there might be a reward.”
The stranger started to laugh and immediately stopped, his face white and pained. The inspector quickly grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back flat.
“Mustn’t exert yourself too much, you know, what with that wound in your chest, you see. And stay straight as much as possible, the more you bend the worse you’ll feel.”
The stranger looked around hopelessly for a way to write in that position until the inspector went and grabbed the guard’s shield and held it at an angle for him.
Thank you. So what now?
“First I’d like to ask what your name is. Your real name.” The inspector watched his face while he wrote, but he displayed no emotion.
Ludovico Taigur, of the Rom.
When the inspector glanced down at the parchment he almost dropped the guard’s shield. “Romany! But you’re not… But you’re disguised, aren’t you? So, maybe…” He looked closely at Ludovico’s face, “Yes, the bone structure, if you look closely… and your nose, now that I’m not looking at the scar and the beard.
“Well, being a Rom isn’t a crime, I suppose, though some might say otherwise.”
There is good and bad amongst my people, but I have committed no crimes here other than putting up some posters.
As he wrote, two faces swam in Ludovico’s vision, but he blinked them away.
“Well, if you’re telling it true, we don’t have anything to hold you on. We’ll check with his lordship, of course. But your disguise was pretty convincing, it was. Ahhh, and of course we’ll keep you here long enough to heal, you see. But after that you’ll be free to go.”
Thank you again. For now I think sleep will help me best.
“Ahh, yes, quite right.” The inspector gave a last nod to Ludovico, handed the shield back to the guard, and left, but Ludovico was asleep before the door had closed.