Retribution

‘Of all the miserable places. .’

‘Of all the miserable places you have taken me,’ Leana mumbled, ‘this has to be the worst.’

‘Which is indeed saying something,’ I replied cheerfully.

In the dead of night, after the worst of the rain, we found ourselves trudging up a festering heap of Polla-knows-what that had been left behind by Kotonese society. With one hand I held a sack that contained a severed head, and with my other I pressed a handkerchief to my nose and mouth to cope with the odour. This was a gentle slope, though the terrain was soft and therefore hard going; occasionally things would crack and splinter, and I could only speculate as to what had been crushed under my feet.

The heap was about the area of the forum in Tryum. Built — if that was the right word — on the edge of the river, it was surrounded by high, thick wooden fences on the other three sides to stop it spreading.

All I could learn from our guide, the half-clothed man, was that this place had grown from an unofficial heap to something later accepted by the authorities — and then used for dumping by those living in the Sorghatan Prefecture. The poorer, Kuvash Prefecture, he claimed, was too thrifty to waste so much. Now the site possessed a culture of its own: there were numerous figures loitering around the perimeter of the site, but even more up on the heap, scouring the waste for anything they could use and storing their finds in sacks similar to the one I carried. They wore little in the way of clothing and had allowed the rain to wash them, leaving grimy streaks down their bodies. Like ghouls from another realm they looked up silently as we passed them.

My theory for such a place as this was simple. A civilization that once moved on regularly had no need to deal with its waste; it could simply leave its detritus and move on. A settled nation or growing empire, however, had long evolved projects to cope with the amount of rubbish that its population produced. But the once-nomadic people of Koton had only settled relatively recently. Despite having had their own territory for two hundred years, they had not yet found a productive way to deal with it all.

Leana was not at all interested in my ideas at this point.

‘At least the view is good,’ I offered facetiously, indicating all the lanterns of the city that could be seen in the middle and far distance. It was probably a good thing it was dark out here, as I could not observe the expression on her face as she muttered something about me in her native Atrewen tongue. She had never taught me the fouler words.

Our bone-hoarder friend scampered up ahead with a newfound enthusiasm. He was more talkative now we were out and about, away from the confines of his home. Even so, his conversation seemed to be largely between himself and some other, more distant region of his mind — it would have been a lie to say we were part of that discussion.

Eventually we arrived at a point near to the water’s edge.

‘Is my patch,’ the man declared proudly.

The river glistened in the moonlight; it curved through the nooks and crannies of the city. There were little wooden shacks at the edge that blended in with the boats that had been crammed in along the banks. Further out, the river opened up considerably, carving up the rolling landscape. As for the man’s ‘patch’, it was difficult to discern what exactly marked the boundary of this particular area — this was the same kind of refuse to be found elsewhere in the heap.

‘Is still here,’ the man said, before entering a coughing fit.

Pressing my handkerchief to my mouth a little firmer, I looked on as he scurried to a point nearest one of the wooden boards. There he crouched down, pulling some of the surface detritus away. The way he moved around this heap, with a slick agility, revealed his intimate knowledge of it.

A gust of wind groaned as it moved past us. Sharp flecks of rain came and went once again.

Presently he waved us over and pointed out what looked like a torso emerging from the refuse. Lowering myself to get a better look, I noted that it was missing both its arms and its head.

‘What happened to the other arm?’ Leana asked. ‘Only one arm in two pieces has been found.’

‘It might be here, somewhere.’ I gestured to the detritus surrounding the torso.

What little clothing remained was sodden, smeared with grime. In this light and without a head it was difficult to tell who it might have been. The body’s boots had been removed, too, though that could have been done by anyone. Anything that could be learned from this corpse was going to be highly dubious due to the nature of the scavenging culture here.

‘If you think I am carrying this thing back, you can think again,’ Leana said. ‘Give your friend here another coin to do the hard work.’

‘That might not be a bad idea,’ I replied.

I didn’t want to ruin the body as so much had been lost already through natural decay. So we wrapped the body up carefully, in several layers of hessian, which we’d bought from a woman who made her living scavenging the site. We never did find the other arm.

Our scavenger friend didn’t seem to mind helping to drag back the remains of the bishop. In fact, the chore appeared to relax him somewhat, and he began to sing a surprisingly tuneful melody.

When I asked him how he had found out about the corpse in the first place, he replied only: ‘People say his body here.’

‘Which people?’

‘Everyone. Tavern talk. They say someone left the body here, yes, so I follow, I follow. Always follow the talk. Some other find it first, but I fight, fight good. Got myself good offering for the shrine, yes. The best kind. A bishop himself!’

‘There were people who got to the body before you?’

‘Yes, but who wants a body? Some too scared to touch it, but I know I make a fine job of my shrine.’

‘Was his head attached to the body when you found it?’

‘No. Already separated. Clean cut. Relieved ’bout it. Heads very hard to remove. Very hard. Had to search nearby — nearly made its way into the river!’

The man, still half-clothed, exhibited surprising strength. He held the torso in front of him, like an offering, as we headed towards the gates to the Sorghatan Prefecture.

He laid down the sack and knelt next to it for a moment, an imploring expression upon his face. I paid him more than was strictly required, because he had been incredibly useful, and it was obvious he had tried to overcome his lack of conversational skills in order to help. Though they were not much to me, he was awed at the coins I placed in his palm. He continued stroking them and looking back and forth at the sack as he rose to his feet.

Soon he scurried away into the darkness.

Leana liaised with the guards through a hatch in the gate and, within a moment, the immense doors opened. Lantern light shone our way. The guards stepped forward and said, with great uncertainty, ‘You were the two who left earlier, right?’

‘Excellent observation,’ I said, kneeling down and beckoning them closer. ‘Now, can either of you help me out? Do you know who this fellow is?’

I opened the bag and let them see the severed head. One of the guards immediately turned to the wall and vomited against it. The other looked across at me and gave me the answer I was looking for.

‘That’s the bishop, aye,’ he groaned. ‘The missing one.’

‘Well, there you go,’ I said to Leana. ‘A bit of perseverance does wonders.’

I turned to the guards, one of whom was still leaning against the wall. He realized suddenly what he’d done and a look of deep shame came over his face.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘which of you brave fellows would like to give me a hand with this corpse?’