The night soil
cart was not a speedy, nor a convenient mode of transport and as it trundled
slowly through the night towards its destination, Valter Kerring had plenty of
time to think about his situation. Like
the muck he lay in, he fumed, breaking down the causes of his misery like fuel
for the furnace of his anger. As
daylight began to illuminate the sky and the shadow of the great arch rose up
above him, those fires had cooled somewhat and it was with a calmer, more
calculating mind that he examined the two names which remained glowing there
amidst the embers: Franck Von Spektr;
Ellis Graves.
He took
advantage of the morning gloom before it grew too bright and climbed his sly,
slippy way out of the night soil and into the street. He had heard the soft babble of one of the streams which gave
this district of the city its name and he plodded around in the half-light,
trying to find it, leaving a stinking, muddy trail behind him as he went. Eventually he found a place where the
culverted stream ran open for a couple of hundred yards. It was not the cleanest water in the world,
but it sufficed to rid his skin and clothing of the worst of the unspeakable
grime, leaving him sodden and with a somewhat fainter odour. He sat there for a while, drying off in the
cool, morning air. Pondering his
revenge.
He was
startled out of his reverie by a loud grunting from behind and, turning , saw
an enormous, bristly Streetboar snuffling towards him. Streetswine were docile creatures, for the
most part, but Kerring's experience of them was limited and he didn't trust the
hefty animal or the three little stained tusks which protruded above and to the
side of its snout.
"'Ey
now," he said, rising slowly to his feet, "you stay back, ya 'ear
me?" He edged sideways, trying to
back away but also trying to avoid falling into the water again, where he would
be at a disadvantage. "Don't you
come this way, beastie, don't you dare."
The Streetboar
stared at him with mild indifference, then began snuffling off to the
right. Kerring stared after it for a
few moments, then heard the sound of a whole chorus of Streetswine and, looking
back the way the boar had come, saw a herd of them rounding a corner,
accompanied by a young man who kept prodding them gently and spurring them on
with such motivational statements as, "Now, now, Blossom, keep
moving," and "you won't get any truffles standing there, Molly."
Kerring was horrified. To have met one Streethog, especially a
boar, was terrifying, but to be faced with an entire herd... He panicked, not really paying attention to
how gentle the creatures were, or the soothing words being uttered by the
swineherd. All he wanted to do was get
out of there. His heart was pounding
like marching drum and his feet were ready to hit the cobbles.
And that's
when he heard the sound of the guardsman he had fled the night before, talking
amiably with his patrol buddy, from somewhere behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed
that the guard hadn't seen him yet, that, indeed, he was engrossed in his
conversation as he tried to explain how heroically he had hunted 'this giant of
a man who ran like lightning'. In a few
moments he was bound to look up and then Kering knew he would be caught. There was only one thing for it, though his
heart near failed at the prospect.
He would have
to brave the pigs.
Carefully -
gingerly, even - moving with a fat man's almost preternatural grace, he made
his way towards and then through the herd of Streetswine towards the cheerful
swineherd.
"Fine
morning, isn't it?" the swineherd called out as he saw Kerring
approaching.
Kerring
attempted a smile, though it turned out more like a sneer, waved and then
narrowly avoided making contact with the snout of a Streetsow, making his heart
stutter like a badly made hypostatick lamp.
"Yeah," he replied, trying to sound nonchalant, "it's
beautiful, ain't it?"
"A fine
morning indeed," the Swineherd agreed, although whether with Kerring or
with himself was not entirely clear, then bent to moved one particularly rotund
Streetsow out f the way of another, clucking, "Now, now, Betsy, play
nice."
"Er, the
truth is," Kerring continued as he drew ever nearer the young man, his
panic mounting as the pigs surrounded him, "I was lookin' for a... eh...
for a job, you might say."
"Oh,"
replied the young man, "Oh, well, I can't really offer you one. These here pigs only really earn me enough
for me and my wife at the moment.
Perhaps you could try elsewhere?"
He carefully pushed a little one aside, adding, "That way, dusty,
there's a good boy."
Kerring
glanced over his shoulder at the approaching guardsmen, who still did not
appear to have noticed him, then he glanced at the pigs, suppressed a shudder
then reached out to pat one, very gingerly, on the back.
"Well, it
weren't really for the money, ya see," he said, resiting the urge to wipe
his hands on his stained trousers, "I just love Streetswine," he said
with another tremulous sneer, "want to be around them all the time."
The young man
beamed as if Kerring had just said the very words he had been waiting to hear
all his life. "Well," he
said, "who am I to refuse a fellow choirophile? Head to the rear of the herd and make sure the stragglers are
still following and then, when we reach my house, you can help me feed
them."
"It would be a distinct
pleasure," Kerring said, scowling as soon as he turned away to squeeze his
delicate way through the herd of beasts to the rear.
For all their great girth,
Streetswine are not, generally speaking, large enough to hide a human behind
without them crouching, so they make particularly poor cover if you are, like
Valter Kerring, an especially fat man.
Kerring was aware of this, of course, and did not intend to use the
animals as cover at all. It was his
intention to use the work as camouflage, so that he might hide in plain sight
and save himself any further, unnecessary running around. He wasn’t a big fan of exercise at the best
of times, but running from guards was right at the bottom of his list of
preferred past times.
Once he made it to the rear of
the herd, he wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, but he knew it had to at
least look like he was doing something.
He eyed the nearest, most lazy Streetsow, dawdling along at the slowest
imaginable pace with its great belly dragging in the dirt of the street. The creature gave him a look of mild,
innocent curiosity in return and he recoiled, muttering “What do you think
you’re lookin’ at, eh?” The hog gazed a
moment longer then returned to snuffling along the street.
“They just need a little
encouragement, that’s all,” the young man called over to him, “pat them gently
on their backs and they’ll usually pick up the pace a little.”
Kerring stared at his hand for
a moment, then, more cautiously than he really intended, he lowered it onto the
animal’s back. Her skin was warm and
covered in a very fine layer of soft hair, but even so it sent a chill down
Kerring’s spine. He raised his palm
quickly, then slapped it down once and the sow bolted into the middle of the
herd.
“That’s it,” the young man
commented, “just maybe a bit more gentle next time, okay?”
“O’ course.”
Kerring turned, looking for the
next straggler and prepared himself to brave the revulsion once more and, as he
did so, he noticed the two guards passing by the open section of the culverted
stream. They didn’t so much as glance
in his direction and he let a thin sneer spread across his face.
He used the herd of Streetswine
and their swineherd as cover for the rest of the morning, marching them slowly
through the dusty streets of the district towards the base of the arch. Every now and then they would stop as the
swineherd met a friendly face and there would be a period of about fifteen to
twenty minutes during which he would have to attempt polite conversation and
face the tedium of topics ranging from fungal growth cycles to the many and
varied uses of swine manure. If asked
who he was, he would reply that he was from an outlying part of the district,
looking for a bit of work and every time some new job was offered he would tell
them that he would perhaps be back later that day, “after we’ve sorted these
‘ogs.”
“You don’t have to stay with
me, you know,” the swineherd commented once, “I can herd these pigs easily
enough on my own.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of
abandonin’ you at this stage!”
“It really wouldn’t be any
bother,” replied the swineherd, who, if he was quite honest about it, would
have to admit that he was finding Kerring’s presence wearying, not to mention
smelly, even in comparison with the pigs, and rather creepy.
“Oh no, no, no. We’ll see these beauties safely ‘ome first,
then I’ll ‘ead back and pick up one o’ these job offers.”
“Of course,” the swineherd
replied with a sigh, “well, we’re nearly there now.”
And indeed they were. The vast column of rock which the arch
became as it neared ground level lay only about half a mile away and that was
where Kerring hoped to head next, once he had found somewhere to get changed
into something more appropriate for the type of visit he was about to make.
They reached the Swineherd’s
surprisingly cosy little hovel at just about noon, when the slums beneath the
arch were at their darkest during the day.
The pigs were led into the patch of grass and fungi which made up their
plot and then Mr. Swineherd was greeted by Mrs. Swineherd at the back
door. An offer of tea was made, which
Kerring declined and then he was waving and heading back down the street the
way he had come, only to duck into a side alley once he was out of sight and
make his way back towards the arch and the larger, almost palatial buildings
which huddled closer to it. He knew he
would find what he needed there, with a little subterfuge and then it was up,
up, up to the palace on the arch, where he was sure the Khalif would welcome
him with open arms once he warned him of the interlopers running loose in his
district.
He laughed then, a half-mad
cackle which seemed to echo off the arch itself. A face appeared at a window nearby, staring at him with wide eyes
and a disapproving expression, so he slapped a grimy hand over his mouth to
stifle the giggles and hurried off towards a substantial change of fortune.
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