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  The night is younger than you might think, and the tale now lies before us, an enormous log of mysterious origins quick to drink flames from the bed of coals, and the fat sizzles and the circle is drawn tight save the Dantoc who remains, as ever, within her carriage.

  Let us, for convenience, list them once more. Apto Canavalian, newly arrived and perhaps more pallid than salvation would invite. Calap Roud, an artist with a century of mediocrity lifting him to minuscule heights. Avas Didion Flicker, venerable voice of this modest retelling. Purse Snippet, demure in the sultry flare of flames, her eyes haunted as dying candles. Brash Phluster, destined as first to speak in the circle only moments away, sitting like a man on an ant hill, feverish of regard and clammy with sweat. Nifty Gum, redoubtable in his reclination, polished boots gleaming at the ends of his outstretched legs upon which are draped two of his Entourage, Oggle Gush, her lashes brushing in every slow blink the precious bulb of Nifty’s flower, and Sellup, brow awiggle like a caterpillar on a burning twig, whilst Pampera shifts to a new pose artful in breastly impression upon the side of Nifty’s auburn-flowing head and what gurgling promise does that single imprisoned ear detect?

  Tiny and Flea and Midge Chanter command the bulwark upon one side of the circle, a pugnacious wall wildly bristling and smelling like a teenaged boy’s bedding, and close to Tiny’s scabbed hand sits Relish Chanter, lips smeared in grease and casting hooded wanton but unwanted glances my way. Steck Marynd paces off to her right, ghostly in the faded glow of the hearth. Growl might his stomach but damned if he will soothe it in this company of beasts. Well Knight Arpo Relent sits in the shiver of firelit gold glaring at the Chanters while Tulgord Vise picks at his (own) teeth with the point of a dagger, poised as ever for a cutting remark.

  At the last seat is our host, and lest we forget his name, it is suited to muscled sartorial commentary, thus stunning the memory to recollect Sardic Thew, avian in repose, cockerel in assuredness though perhaps somewhat rattled by this point in the proceedings.

  Thus, and so well chewed this introduction not a babe would choke upon it, one tremulously hopes.

  The tale begins with sudden words in the light of the fire, the heat laden with watering aroma, and in the gloom beyond three horses shift and snort and the two mules eye them with envy (they look taller than they really are, and those brushed manes are an affront!). The Great Dry is a frost-sheathed wasteland beyond the fiery island, a scrabble of boulders and rocks and stunted shrubs. The carriage creaks with inner motion and perhaps one rheumy eye is pressed to a crack in the curtains, or an ear perched upon dainty hopes cocked in the folded crenellations of a peep-hole.

  And of the air itself, dread is palpable and diluvean.

  A Recounting of the Twenty-third Night

  “But listen! Whose tale is this?” So demanded Brash Phluster, a man who was of the height that made short men despise him on principle. His hair was natty and recalcitrant, but fulsome. He had teeth aligned in a mostly even row, full lips below a closely trimmed moustache and above a closely trimmed beard. It was a mouth inclined to pout, a face commissioned for self-pity, and of his nose nothing will be said.

  Declamation ringing in the night air, Brash awaited a challenge but none came. We may list the reasons, as they could be of some significance. Firstly, twenty-three days of desperate deprivation and then horror had wearied us all. Secondly, the pullward weight of necessity was proving heavy indeed, at least for the more delicate among us. Thirdly, there was the matter of guilt, a most curious yoke that should probably be examined at length, but then, there is no need. Who, pray tell, is unfamiliar with guilt? In punctuated pointedness, fat snapped upon coals and almost everyone flinched.

  “But I need a rest and besides, it’s time for the critical feasting.”

  Ah, the critical feasting. I nodded and smiled though none noticed.

  Brash wiped his hands on his thighs, shot Purse a glance and then shifted about to make himself more comfortable, before saying, “Ordig’s only claim to artistic genius amounted to a thousand mouldy scrolls and his patron’s cock in hand. Call yourself an artist and you can get away with anything. Of course, as everyone knows, shit’s fertile soil, but for what? That’s the question.”

  The fire spat sparks. The smoke gusted and swung round, stinging new sets of eyes.

  Brash Phluster’s face, all lit orange and flush and lively, floated like a thing disembodied in the hearth’s light; his charcoal cloak with its silver ringlets shrouded him below the neck, which was probably just as well. That head spouting all its words could just as easily be sitting on a stick, and it was still a wonder that it wasn’t.

  “And Aurpan, well, imagine the audacity of his Accusations of a Guilty Man. What a heap of tripe. Guilty? Oh, aye. Guilty of being utterly talentless. It’s important—and I know this better than anyone—it’s important to bear in mind the innate denseness of the common people, and their penchant to forgive everything but genius. Aurpan was mercifully immune to such risks, which was why everyone loved him.”

  Flea Chanter grunted. “Give that leg a turn, someone.”

  Brash was closest to the spit but naturally he made no move. Sighing loudly, Mister Must Ambertroshin leaned forward and took hold of the cloth-wrapped handle. The crackling, sizzling haunch was weighty, inexpertly skewered, but he managed it after a few tries. He sat back, glanced round guiltily, but no one met his eyes.

  Darkness, the flames’ uncertain light and the smoke were all gifts of mercy this night, but still the stomach lowered heavy and truculent. No one was hungry. This cooked meat would serve the morrow, the aching journey through a strangely emptied Great Dry, the twenty-fourth day in which we travelers felt abandoned by the world, the last left alive, and there was the fear that the Indifferent God was no longer indifferent. Were we the forgotten, the sole survivors of righteous judgement? It was possible, but not, I fair decided as I eyed the leg over the flames, likely.

  “So much for Ordig and Aurpan,” said Tulgord Vise. “The question is, who do we eat tomorrow night?”

  Critical feasting being what it is, sated and indeed bloated satisfaction is predicated upon the artist on the table, as it were. More precisely, the artist must be dead. Will be dead. Shall be naught else but dead. Limbs lie still and do not lash back. Mouth resides slack and rarely opens in affronted expostulation (or worse, vicious cut the razor’s wit, hapless corpses strewn all about). The body moves at the nudge only to fall still once more. Prods elicit nothing. Pokes evoke no twitch. Following all these tests, the subject is at last deemed safe to excoriate and rend, de-bone and gut, skin and sunder. Sudden discovery of adoration is permitted, respect acceptable and its proud announcement laudable. Recognition is at last accorded, as in ‘I recognise that this artist is dead and so finally deserving the accolade of ‘genius,’ knowing too that whatever value the artist achieved in life is now aspiring in worth tenfold and more.’ Critical feasting being what it is.

  Well Knight Arpo Relent was the first to speak on the matter (what matter? Why, this one). There had been desultory discussion of horses and mules, satisfaction not forthcoming. Resources had been pooled and found too shallow. Stomachs were clenching.

  “There are too many artists in the world as it is, and that statement is beyond challenge,” and to add veracity to the pronouncement’s sanctity (since the gaggle of artists had each and all shown signs of sudden alertness), Arpo Relent settled a gauntlet-sheathed hand upon the pommel of one of his swords. The moment in which argument was possible thus passed. “And since we among the Nehemothanai, whose cause is most just and whose need is both dire and pure, so as to speak in the one voice of honourable necessity, since we, then, require our brave and loyal mounts; whilst it is equally plain that the Dantoc’s carriage can proceed nowhere without the mules, we are at the last faced with the hard truth of survival.”

  “You mean we need to eat somebody.” So said I at this juncture, not because I was especially dense, but speaking in the interest of pi
th (as one has no doubt already observed in the tale thus far). ‘Say it plain,’ has always been my motto.

  To my crass brevity Arpo Relent frowned as if in disappointment. What artist asks such a thing? What artist lacks the intellectual subtlety to stroke the kitty of euphemism? When the game shall not be played, fun shall not be had. The nature of ‘fun’ in this particular example? Why, the ‘fun’ of sly self-justification for murder, of course, and what could be more fun than that?

  Tiny Chanter was the first to play, with a tiny grin and a piggy regard for the poor artists who now stood miserable as sheep in a pen watching the axeman cometh. “But which one first, Relent? Fat to skinny? Obnoxious to useless? Ugly to pretty? We need a system of selection is what we need. Flea?”

  “Aye,” Flea agreed.

  “Midge?”

  “Aye,” Midge agreed.

  “Relish?”

  “I like the one with the shaved head.”

  “To eat first?”

  “What?”

  Tiny glared at me. “I warned you earlier, Flicker.”

  At some juncture in discourse with a thug, one comes to the point where any uttered word shall obtain as sole justification for violence. It is not the word itself that matters. It is not even the speaking thereof. Indeed, nothing of the world outside the thick skull and murky matter it contains is at all relevant. There is no cause and no effect. No, what has occurred is the clicking of a gear wheel, a winding down to the moment of release. The duration is fixed. The process is irreversible.

  Resigned, I waited for Tiny Chanter’s pique to detonate.

  Instead, Relish said, “They should tell stories.”

  Steck Marynd took this moment to snort, and it was an exquisite snort in that it clearly counted as the first vote on the matter.

  Tiny blinked, and blinked again. One could see the tumult of confusion whisk clouds over his brutal visage, and then his grin broadened, frightening away all the clouds. “Flea?”

  “Aye.”

  “Midge?”

  “Aye.”

  “Knight Relent, you happy with that?”

  “I am ‘Sir’ to you.”

  “Was that a ‘yes’?”

  “I think it was,” said Flea. “Midge?”

  “Oh aye, that was a ‘yes’ all right.”

  At this moment Tulgord Vise, Mortal Sword to the Sisters, stepped into the understandable gap between the Nehemothanai and the limpid artists (of which, at this juncture, I blithely count myself). He blew out his cheeks (his upper ones) and stretched a measured regard upon all those gathered, including the host whose name momentarily escapes me, Mister Must, Purse Snippet and the Entourage (poor Apto was yet to arrive). One presumes this was meant to establish Tulgord’s pre-eminence as the final arbiter in the matter (yes, this matter), but of course he too possessed but a single vote, and so the issue was perhaps, for him, one of moral compass. Clearly, he saw in this moment the necessity of justification, and upon ethical concerns who else but Tulgord Vise to dispense adjudication?

  Well, how about the victims?

  But the retort is equally quick, to be found in the puerile weaponry all within easy reach of those with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Since when do ethics triumph power? So uneven was this debate no one bothered to troop it out for trampling. Accordingly, Tulgord’s posturing was met with all the indifference it deserved, a detail entirely lost on him.

  The nightly procession was thus determined, as we artists would have to sing not to be supper. Ironically, alas, the very first victim had no tale to attempt at all, for his crime at this moment was to object, with all the terror of a lifetime being picked last in every children’s game he ever played, and some memories, as we all know, stay sharp across a lifetime. “Just eat the damned horses!”

  But Arpo Relent shook his head. “There is no question of any more votes,” he said. “As any one of proper worth would agree, a knight’s horse is of far greater value than any poet, bard or sculptor. It’s settled. The horses don’t get eaten.” And he glowered as was his wont following everything he said.

  “But that’s just—”

  It is safe to say that the word this nameless artist intended was ‘stupid’ or ‘insane’ or some other equally delectable and wholly reasonable descriptive. And as added proof when his severed head rolled almost to my feet following the savage slash of Tulgord Vise’s blessed sword, the mouth struggled to form its thoughtful completion. Ah, thus did the memory stay sharp.

  The first poet, having been killed so succinctly, was butchered and eaten on the eleventh night upon the Great Dry. The sixteenth night saw another follow, as did the twentieth night. Upon the twenty-second night the vote was taken following Arpo’s raising of the notion of mid-day meals to keep up one’s strength and morale, and so a second artist was sacrificed that night. At that time the ritual of critical feasting began, instigated by a shaky Brash Phluster.

  Two more hapless poets, both bards of middling talents, gave the performance of their lives on that night.

  At this point, listeners among you, perhaps even you, might raise an objecting hand (not the first one you say? I wasn’t paying attention). Thirty-nine days upon the Great Dry? Surely by now, with only a few days away from the ferry landing below the plateau, the need for eating people was past? And of course you would be right, but you see, a certain level of comfort had been achieved. In for a pinch in for a pound, as some sated bastard once said. More relevantly, thirty-nine days was the optimum crossing, and we were far from optimum, at least to begin with. Does this suffice? No, of course it doesn’t, but whose tale is this?

  Ordig now resided in bellies with a weighty profundity he never achieved in life, while Aurpan’s last narrative was technically disconnected and stylistically disjointed, being both raw and overdone. The critical feasting was complete and the artists numbered four, Purse Snippet being given unanimous dispensation, and by the host’s judgement sixteen nights remained upon the Great Dry.

  While talent with numbers could rarely be counted among the artist’s gifts, it was nonetheless clear to all of us sad singers that our time upon this world was fast drawing to a close. Yet with the arrival of dusk this made no less desperate our contests.

  Brash Phluster licked his lips and eyed Apto Canavalian for a long moment, before drawing a deep breath.

  “I was saving this original dramatic oratory for the last night in Farrog, but then, could I have a more challenging audience than this one here?” And he laughed, rather badly.

  Apto rubbed at his face as if needing to convince himself that this was not a fevered nightmare (as might haunt all professional critics), and I do imagine that, given the option, he would have fled into the wastes at the first opportunity, not that such an opportunity was forthcoming given Steck Marynd and his perpetually cocked crossbow which even now rested lightly on his lap (he’d done with his pacing by this time).

  In turn, Brash withdrew his own weapon, a three-string lyre, which he set to tuning, head bent over the instrument and face twisted in concentration. He plucked experimentally, then with flourish, and then experimentally again. Sweat glistened in the furrows of his brow, each bead reflecting the hearth’s flames. When those seated began growing restless he nudged one wooden peg one last time, and then setded back.

  “This is drawn from the Eschologos sequence of Nemil’s Redbloom Poets of the Third Century.” He licked his lips again.

  “Not to say I stole anything. Inspired, is what I mean, by those famous poets.”

  “Who were they again?” Apto asked.

  “Famous,” Brash retorted, “that’s who they were.”

  “I mean, what were their names?”

  “What difference would that make? They sang famous poems!”

  “Which ones?”

  “It doesn’t matter! They were the Redbloom Poets of Nemil! They were famous! They were from the time when bards and poets were actually valued by everyone! Not pushed aside and forgotten!”


  “But you’ve forgotten their names, haven’t you?” Apto asked.

  “If you never heard of them how would you know if I knew their names or not? I could make up any old names and you’d just nod, being a scholar and all! I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Calap Roud was shaking his head but there was a delighted glimmer in his eyes. “Young Brash, it serves you ill to berate one of the Mantle’s judges, don’t you think?”

  Brash rounded on him. “You don’t know their names either!”

  “That’s true, I don’t, but then, I’m not pretending to be inspired by them, am I?”

  “Well, you’re about to hear inspiration of the finest kind!”

  “What was inspiring you again?” Tiny Chanter asked.

  Flea and Midge snorted.

  Our host was waving his hands about, and it was finally understood that this manic gesturing was intended to capture our collective attentions. “Gentlemen, please now! The Poet wishes to begin, and each must have his or her turn—”

  “What ‘her’?” demanded Brash. “All the women here got dispensations! Why is that? Is it, perhaps, because everyone eligible to vote happened to be men? Imagine how succulent—”

  “Enough of that!” barked Tulgord Vise. “That’s disgusting!”

  Arpo Relent added, “What it is, is proof of the immoral decrepitude of artists. Everyone knows it’s the women who do the eating.”

  Moments later, in the ensuing silence, the Well Knight frowned. “What?”

  “Best begin, Poet,” said Steck Marynd in a hunter’s growl (and don’t they all?).

  A wayward ember spun towards Nifty Gum and all three of his Entourage fought to fling themselves heroically into its path, but it went out before it could reach any of them. They settled back, glowering at each other.

  Brash strummed the three strings, and began singing in a flat falsetto.

  “In ages long past

  A long time ago

  Before any of us were alive