*

The Anvil

 

 

     The Anvil fell to one knee, slinging his anvil-hammer from his back into the thick, night-cooled grass. Recovering his breathe he removed his boots, what little leather was left of them. The sight of his feet forced him to look away; sore and swollen things, with boils and blisters bubbling up through burst skin. Burrowing into the grass with his toes he found the soil and there he let them rest a moment. He gazed up at the stars, knowing what they thought of him - he agreed, I’ve never been so worn.

     How long has it been now – he rid the question from his thoughts and shunned the sight of the stars, I need another horse, he insisted for the umpteenth time.

     Penear had given him one in Melia and it had done well in covering the earth. Until two outriders on a slavers hunt had tried to capture The Anvil for their own. But they had misjudged their prize and The Anvil had made light work of them with two swings of his great weapon, but not before his would-be captors had loosed two arrows at his mount’s neck. By the time The Anvil had wrestled out from beneath his fallen horse, his attacker’s steeds were hightailing it back towards Melia. Like all horses of Melian men they galloped to outdo their shadows. The Anvil could only watch, as their hooves turned up the earth in two viscous plumes of brown and any chance of seizing them stretched away from him.

     As the fateful encounter returned to his mind in the dim luminescence of the stars and moon, a memory all the more pernicious crept out and gripped his heart. Penear…

Nausea, dread, wrath – all bubbled up within him at the spectre of the swoardhand named Penear – he fumbled at his chest for the small pouch he had tied about his neck. It was a humble pouch on a simple tether and it had remained with him ever since Penear had presented him with what lay within.

     Still now, The Anvil had no idea how Penear had found him. The Swordhand had sauntered into the brothel and laughed at the drunken, warped reflection of the man who was once the most renowned blacksmith in all of Barlyron, “the famed hero of The Fanatic’s Uprising…The Anvil”, had taunted Penear, loud enough for all in the establishment to hear. That man, that iteration of The Anvil, had first thrown Penear from his house at the demands of the Physician, but the man Penear had come to find was a drunken guard of whores, bound by debt to the Madam Carla for the death of one of her women… Mona…

     Penear bared the same gold toothed grin and lavish triangle of waxed hair he had sported the first time they had met, almost two years ago in The Anvil’s house. But there was no softness to his tone this time, nor any need to tread lightly about his words or his actions. 

     “Salif…what are you doing here, you great drunk idiot”, he goaded, slapping and kicking the drunken guard into the next room.

     “I…I’ll lop you…your head off”, sloshed The Anvil as he slipped and fell.

     Penear crouched down before him, so that their eyes were level, “yea? Maybe before hey? When you were The Anvil…who are you now,         Salif…huh?” Penear kicked him once more. “You look like a lost nomad whose wondered into a whorehouse for a drink and forgot to leave. I heard the girl you killed was only half a fortnight into this work…tut-tut, you didn’t tell her anything about our arrangement, did you now Salif?”

     “She…she was a sweet girl – it was an accident I –.”

     “The arrangement Salif, you did not spill details over the pillow did you! Oh wait…you did didn’t you. That’s why you ended –.”

     “I’ll kill you…you fucking –.”

     Taking hold of Salif’s ragged beard, Penear cut his drunken curses short with a snap of his head against the wall. Salif responded with a sluggish swing in Penear’s direction but the swordhand swatted the vast fist the other way.

     Leaning in close to Salif, the swordhand stroked the long scar that coursed from his left ear and down to his shoulder, then he spat in Salif’s face, “you’re a fucking disgrace. No hero of Barlyron, look at you! I’ve had to cross the sea and come here to this white man’s land to do your work. I’ve found the singer, she is in Gaiatur, but well protected. She has made friends with the Consul there, Alexsis or Alex something. LISTEN!” shouted Penear.

     Salif would not, so Penear grabbed him by the beard and turned his head for him, “we have a contact in Gaiatur, we use him now and again. His name is Fingers. Go and see him and he will forge papers for you to get this singer…Talia.”

Something between a laugh and a burp slunk through Salif’s lips, “and how will he do that, huh…no…no, why don’t you go and…and do it Penear.”

     Penear struck Salif across the face with the back of his hand, his several ostentatious rings tearing open the skin, “because no one is cutting off my wife’s fingers”, he answered with a sneer, withdrawing a small pouch from his foreign garb of many folds and throwing it down at The Anvil, “I will miss carrying your wife with me. She kept me company on the journey.”

     No…no they wouldn’t….they…

     Salif unfurled the pouch and a finger rolled out, pale and shrivelled, with dried blood, it could have been any finger, if it were not for the ring of jade around it.

     Nia…my love, my heart…

     Salif’s clenched his wife’s finger in his gargantuan hand and made to hurl himself up from the floor, but the swordhand caught his feet with a rapid whip of his rope and sent Salif’s face crashing into the floorboards.   

     “What’s happened to you man! Sober up, remember your wife…then return Talia to the Physician, or it’ll be Nia’s head next.”

     Nia my heart, I have done this to you, thought Salif, staring at the little finger in the palm of his giant hand…what man am I…I have forgot why I am here – Talia! I will get Talia for them. I must.

     The realisation never left Salif’s mind. Even when he had lost his horse and been forced to pound his feet to stumps across the expanse that was the open planes, the image of Talia remained vivid, like a painting hung on a wall before him. But held up in the features of the striking singer he felt not merely his target or his wife’s salvation, but his deepest regrets and shame.

     How long have I hunted you…how long did I wallow in that whorehouse…

     Salif pushed up from the grass with his elbows and took a deep breathe, attempting to rid the images that swirled in his mind like ruined oil paintings. He slung his anvil-hammer over his back once more, recovered his other things and left the remnants of his boots behind him. Each barefoot step through the night-cooled grass was like a kiss from the earth but there was no time to savour it.

     I must get a horse, he told himself once more.

     He didn’t know how far he was from Gaiatur, he believed he was in its outer lands, but he knew he would reach the city far quicker with four legs beneath him. So he pressed on through the rising grass, more black than green in the cloud cloaked moonlight. Everywhere was the bustle of nightlife, calling to one and other, for sex, for food, for war. It was a ceaseless racket that served only to compound Salif’s aching skull. He rubbed at his eyelids, limping a little with every other footstep, all the while looking to every direction but finding only darkness. A voice; sudden, quiet and sure of its self spoke up from somewhere, “meaning no offence but you’re as dark as the night, I almost didn’t see you there.”

     Salif wheeled about, gripping the base of the long pole beside his hip. The pole ran up the length of his back, where at its top sat the heavy anvil-hammer, perched behind his shoulder as if a steel parrot.

     How did I not see him – and a fire – he rubbed at his bleary eyes.

     “Where did you come from, I didn’t see you”, answered Salif, his deep and strained voice consuming the dark.

     “Then you must be tired traveller, or you would have surely seen my fire. Come, share its heat”, replied the sure voice, its owner still but a shimmering silhouette cast upon the flickering flames.

     Salif stayed still, peering at the silhouette-man, hoping that it would take a fleshy form, “I mean you no danger traveller, please, come and share my fire, its large enough for two”, insisted the voice.

     Salif was indeed cold, but he was also hungry, lost, tired and aching…but most of all he was losing time – I need a horse, returned his mantra. The necessity of the thought was becoming like breathing for him – maybe this kind stranger knows where I can get one.

     Salif loosened his hold on his monstrous weapon and approached. The silhouette belonged to an old white man with a wispy beard that flicked to his left in the prevailing wind, a wind that tousled the corridor of grass where he had built his fire. He was not tall or small, nor fat nor thin, and his eyes held no lingering stare. He was an entirely unremarkable man with nothing but a fire and an assortment of ropes, knives and fish laid out before him.

     Salif passed in front of the fire and the old man marvelled at his size with undisguised wonder, “you would make a man believe in tales of giants, but I’ve lived too long, seen too much mundanity to believe in such things…do you have a name, stranger?”

     Salif sat down on the other side of the fire, several paces from the old man, “what is yours?” he asked.

     The old man ogled Salif’s giant weapon as he slid it form his baldric and prodded its head into the fire, “my name is Malurin. That is some weapon…needs some healing does it, stranger?”

     Salif beheld Malurin, sure as the night was black he told himself he would not give his name, but the old man waited patiently with no artifice in his gaze. And in the silence Salif suddenly felt, very acutely, the lacquer of shame his past year of desperate deeds and failures had coated him in – the man offers you his fire…and you won’t give your name…

    Salif shook his head and with it he tried to rid some of the darkness that lay over him, “my name…Salif.”

    “Well Salif, I know your name and you mine and with the fire already being shared and our weapons to one side, we can now break bread no?” Malurin offered Salif a fish, “I have no bread but please, take it.”

     Salif turned his attention from the old man to the fish, it took a while but he relented. Shuffling forward he snatched it up out of Malurin’s hands. Before the old man could even offer him a knife he had finished it whole.

     Malurin’s raised his brow, “I take it you have been without food…and shoes…” he muttered, looking down at Salif’s battered black feet.

Salif crossed his legs, tucking his feet away, within his thighs.

     Malurin grumbled and sighed, all in one sound of understanding, “a wanderer’s life is not easy, I know. And it’s almost a curse without shoes”, he added with a smile.

     The old man raised his fingers to his lips, in a fashion that Salif had never seen before, two high whistles filled the air – Salif reached for his anvil-hammer.

     Malurin laughed lightly, so light in fact it was almost like a wheezy cough he was trying to dislodge from his chest, “you aren’t a trusting traveller are you. Maybe that’s wise, but maybe it’s sad”, he concluded, his eyes passing gently over Salif’s dark and bearded features, “ah here he comes, Fastus, over here you old boy.”

     Through the dipping corridor of swaying grass that bent down to a lowly stream, a horse came gently trotting, licking the last of the water from its nose. As Malurin pushed up from the earth to greet his steed, Salif felt his hand tighten about the pole of his weapon, his mind shouting at him again and again – a horse, a horse!

     “Ah Fastus, well quenched?” asked Malurin, rhythmically rubbing his steed’s withers.

     Fastus answered with an affectionate nibble of his master’s ear.

     “Ah you soppy beast, turn around for me, let me get at my satchel”, Fastus did as his master asked.

     Salif was on his feet, his anvil-hammer hidden to his right behind the glow of the fire – a horse, a horse!

     He was within two paces of Malurin, he clenched the pole of his anvil-hammer – “Here, they will not fit well but they’re good shoes, take them. They should last the winter and some”, Malurin held out the shoes.

     Salif would not take them, he could not take them, he could not even move or draw a breath – you were to going to kill him, where he stands! As he offers you his shoes!

     Salif backed away from Malurin, his anvil-hammer fell beside the fire, its fall kicking up amber embers into the gloom. This man is a good man…like the man my Nia used to know – he could see her now; her long brown hair curled around her bowed face, her full green eyes casting their light upon him, as would a lighthouse to a lost sailor. Salif clutched the pouch around his neck and in a desperate plea he asked her image – what else can I do my love? But the light in her eyes was already out. He searched for it still but the harder he tried the fainter her image grew.  The old man was before him once more, his horse neighing, the fire burning, “don’t you want the shoes Salif?”

     Salif could feel the presence of his mighty weapon, the steel glowing in the firelight with terrible intent – no, he thought, I mustn’t be that man now...again.

     Salif felt something hard in his throat and he gulped it down, “your hospitality has been generous, truly the first I have been given in this land”, Salif felt the ball returning in his throat as he saw the glint of unease in Malurin, “but I cannot take your shoes. I must ask you for your horse.”

     “My horse! I cannot! This horse is my livelihood, as it is for any traveller”, insisted Malurin, his aged wheezy tone finding its long lost grit.

     Salif bowed his head and nodded, “of course. But my cause is one of life and death. How many days walk is it to the citadel of Gaiatur?”

     Malurin’s lined eyes thinned to a slither and he answered slowly, “from here, on the edge of the free fields, three, maybe four days on those feet of yours.”

     “Your horse would have me there by daybreak, and maybe save my wife’s life, believe me, every hour I waste is already too much.”

     Malurin still held the shoes he had offered in his right hand, whilst his left sat gently on Fastus’ spine. The wind grew angry and blew the fire to the left before flinging it back the other way, the hum of the insect underworld answered with a flurry of calls and then all died down again, leaving the two men to stare at one another.

     “Your wife’s life…argh, you do need my horse then…” Malurin sighed and to Salif’s surprise he approached the fire, sitting down before its heat and warming his hands, “I am an old man Salif. If you take my horse you take my life, Fastus takes me from food to water and away from most perils. I have nothing else to sustain me. And his friendship sustains me still more.”

     Salif sat across from Malurin and laid an intense gaze upon on him – please old man, yield.

     “I see a fierceness in your eyes now. Like you would take my horse from me”, stated Malurin.

     “I do not want to, truly. I have done enough terrible things on this journey…I fear my wife would not recognise me if I did another.”

     “You mean if you were to kill this old man before you and take his horse”, asserted Malurin.

     Salif looked away from Malurin and into the fire, but even as he sat so close, its flames could not purge the foul deed he considered.

     Another death…how many would that be?

     Salif untied the pouch around his neck and offered it to Malurin. With an insistent dip of is head Salif urged him to untie it. Malurin did so, gasping as the finger rolled out into his waiting hand.

     “That is my wife’s marriage finger…and…they will send more of her…if I don’t get to Gaiatur and do what they ask of me. Do you see now, I have no choice!” proclaimed Salif, his eyes gathering tears.

     Malurin gently returned the finger to the pouch and with equal care tied it and placed it in Salif’s hand. The old man clasped his hands around Salif’s and spoke with a sincerity born from a true heart, “I lament the course life has bound you in, I would not wish it on any man, but we all have choices, even between terrible ones. In this choice you consider your wife’s life to be of more value than mine. So much so that you would kill me to save her, I understand that, I do. But still it is one life at the expanse of another. Which has greater merit to be saved or spared?”

     Both men pondered that a while. Malurin continued, “The answer of course is both and neither. You think only of your wife’s life, and I of my own”, Malurin shifted to face Salif, there was a steadiness in his every move, “I’m not afraid to die, I have not been for some time, as I have aged I have become more concerned with why I must die.”

     “But you don’t have to die, just give me your horse”, pleaded Salif, “or ride with me, yes! Ride with me to Gaiatur.”

Malurin smiled in a wistful sort of way, “If you chanced upon me a decade ago, maybe. But now, no. Fastus is too grey in the coat, he cannot bare us both, believe me. He will struggle to bare your weight alone.”

     “Then what?”

     “We both know what. You would take him and I would scrabble about without him, soon to die a little after that. No, I prefer to die now, in defence of my life.”

     Salif ran his hands over his face, “but you cannot hope to defend your life against me. I am half you age, four times your size and ten times your power.”

     “Yes, but that is my choice. Now you must make yours”, Malurin was settled, much like the streams of the free fields that had wound their way into the land through a millennia.

     Salif knew it, the insects knew it. The Anvil bowed his head to the grass, finding his anvil-hammer lying in wait, ready to dispatch another innocent person from his path – Nia, my heart, forgive me…just this once more.

     “I only hope my wife will be able to look upon me as she used to.”

     Malurin took up one of his knives from beside his gutted fishes, “That will be her choice.”