A Dangerously Stupid Idea

Death In Harmony: Part Three of Twenty-Nine

Death In Harmony is the fifth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the third chapter.

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This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

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A Dangerously Stupid Idea

The present: somewhere, north of The Pit

Flin did not feel comfortable following the ridgeline. The moon was bright and the sky clear, stars shone through the gaps in the tree cover, everything dusted with silver light and pools of darker moon-shadow. She could not afford to pause and enjoy the beauty, not even for one moment, stopping would be too dangerous, too much risk.

Yet she skidded to a halt.

There had been a sound ahead, eerie, high-pitched and angry.

Without thinking, Flin had her knives in her hands, crouched low, ready to fight.

From the very first day of her apprenticeship, Rharsle had taught her how to defend herself with two small blades, explaining how they were best for the performer, making her spend hours and hours playing her fiddle, her flute and her drum, all the time with the weapons strapped to her forearms. Initially, it had been exhausting, and she had deeply resented the lesson, right up until the moment a drunken teamster had tried to attack her with his empty ale crock, simply because he wanted a different tune and she had carried on playing. She had barely paused in her singing, muscles remembering the training. That had been the first time she had been forced to sink her knife into someone, but not the last. The man had been pulled away by scolding friends, bleeding from his shoulder, all his drunken rage evaporated in the instant it took for her to put a hole in him.

But knives would do nothing against a ghost.

The noise came again, and she sheathed one of the blades, realising this was no spirit out for vengeance. After a few more steps and visual confirmation, she replaced the other, an idea swiftly forming—a dangerously stupid idea, but one that might just work.

The wolf was suspended in the air by its neck, its back legs could still touch the ground, keeping it from immediately suffocating, but only just.

It struggled slightly when Flin first entered its view, but could do little beyond moving around, legs quivering with the unnatural effort of standing upright. It made her think of the old stories of wolfmen who ran like wolves, but could walk and pass as human during the day.

First, she slipped the baby from the harness, still asleep and making small suckling sounds.

‘Stay here,’ she whispered, as though the infant might suddenly learn to crawl or walk away.

Next, she moved to a fallen tree she thought might be a cousin of the ash trees she had climbed and fallen from as a child, selecting a long, seasoned pole. She made a series of shallow cuts around the branch and repeated the movement until she could snap it off. Old habit made her begin to tidy the end, round it off to prevent splitting, before she remembered speed was crucial if she was to survive.

She pulled a length of strong horsehair twine from her pocket and swiftly tied her smallest knife to the wood, making a spear of sorts.

As she worked, Flin realised she had been singing softly, soothing baby, wolf and herself. She continued with the song as she pulled off her left boot, unwrapping the strips of fabric she used in place of stockings. It had been a long time since she had worn hosiery of even the roughest quality.

‘Now I shall approach you wolf,’ she sang the words, feeling slightly foolish communicating with the beast, slowly dying in the trap, lips now pulled back in a snarl, ragged breaths hoarse. ‘That’s fear, isn’t it? You are scared of me. Good. Keep being scared, just please don’t bite me.’

She started to sing a song of the forests, a tale of wild places, with wolves and bears, bees, eagles and Twigs, hunters and trappers, and the Great Witch at the heart of her labyrinth.

‘This had better fucking work,’ she wove the words into the song, seamlessly following the melody, without a missed note.

The wolf had backed away as far as the noose would allow it, the bent willow it was attached to holding its weight, back legs quivering with the effort, eyes wild and wide.

Flin laid the spear on the forest floor as she rubbed her foot bindings on her body: armpits, hair, crotch. Then she slowly crawled towards the wolf, trying to present as little a threat as possible.

She worked fast. The animal was terrified, angry, pulling away, choking itself and urinating all over her in its fear. Fortunately she had always been good with knots and she swiftly bound one of its feet in a tight, makeshift cloth bootee. For all the world like swaddling a baby.

This done, she crawled back to where she had placed the spear. It would have been easier to cut the taut cord suspending the animal, but she knew how creatures ensnared could still die a long and painful death with a noose still attached once they had broken free.

Slipping the blade between the wolf’s neck and the noose was not easy, especially with its struggles, but she managed to get the point in, edge away from the artery.

‘Here we go Wolf, please don’t make me kill you. And don’t bite me.’

She twisted the haft and cut the cord.

The animal fell to the ground, initially barely moving, eyes fixed on her, mouth open, teeth bared, tongue lolling as it panted. Then it stood slowly, shook itself and backed away from Flin, spinning and running into the forest as soon as it judged it was at a safe distance.

‘Well, that was fucking stupid, Flin,’ she sighed, ‘Let’s hope it works.’

She picked up her still sleeping child and carefully tucked him back into the carrying harness. She held on to the spear rather than wasting time dismantling it. One final rubbing of her boots where the wolf had pissed all over and she was off, following the beast along the trail.

Flin knew the foot cover would eventually be chewed off and the urine rubbed from her boots, but she was counting on the wolf running fast, hard, and far before that happened. Fear made creatures run further; by the time the wolf paused, it should have laid a decent false trail.

After a short distance running along the ridgeline, she took a side trail that led higher into the hills, northward rather than east. In this direction, Flin knew, the forest would be thicker, the land wild and cracked with many gullies, sudden drops, cliffs, and caves. The stone was the same as that in Eastsea, a limestone worn by countless years, rain seeping and altering, patterns forming, hidden from view.

No one went there. Not only was the land itself dangerous—rivers would suddenly disappear into the ground, only to reemerge many miles away; vast drops were covered by vegetation, hidden natural traps—but this was where the dead walked, those malevolent ghosts always hungry to steal the warmth from the living.

No one went there, with good reason.

Flin had a better reason to risk it. She raised her free hand to her throat, where a small pouch rested alongside her fire-starting kit, hoping the contents would work if she did meet the dead.

‘No one, dead or alive, is taking you. Not again. No one.’

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