Free The Incompleat Nifft by Michael Shea Page B

ground, following ridgelines, we cut just as readily across the flanks of hills, or dove down the steepest canyon walls and charged through fordings with our great wheels tearing the water to spray.
    And one had no wish to linger down in those gulfs either. From above you saw only forests of branched things that stirred slowly, or the roofs of bizarre dwellings. But within the valleys you could see the victims splayed upon what had looked like trees, feeding their foul, slow appetites—and you could see that those roofs were thatched with bones, and caulked with black blood. I was glad of every hamlet, every thicket of rooted shapes, which we steered clear of. At the same time, it was impossible not to exult—even to rejoice—in the power of our passage through a place of such infinite, endless captivities. To surge through league on league of darkness, where a whole world is doomed to endure forever, and be yourself exempt, on fire with life! I caught Haldar's eye; he smiled and nodded. Drinking the dead air like wine, we rocked and soared behind those dead titans which the viper scourged on.
    But our glorious detachment was not to last. We crested yet another ridge and saw that it broadened to a wide field which ended, far ahead, at a chasm. This field bore a crop of big, tough bramble-vines, and in each of the vines was entangled a man or a woman. The feet of these sufferers merged with the dry roots, while their bodies were pinned and pierced in a hundred places. Little buckets hung from the vines to catch the rivulets of unexhausted blood that twisted through the thorns. Three hags moved among these plants—pruning, or tying the vines, or guzzling from the buckets. As we drew near they sighted us, and dropped their work. They began to race for the chasm, toward the point we seemed to head for ourselves.
    They moved their crooked limbs with ghastly speed, shrieking like daws as they went, and waving. The dogs pounded past the bleeding thousands—our spokes hummed in the dead air. But the hags came before us to our goal: a bridgehead at the chasm's edge.
    They blocked the bridge, bobbing and leering as the hounds were reined up in a scramble of paws. Stooped as these crones were, their height matched the Guide's. They were huge in their stench too, charnel house mixed with the smell of a brothel's slop room. Their eyes were flat and opaque, like glazed snot in the wrinkled cups of their sockets. They all had torn-out patches in their hair, and what showed was not scalp, but yellowed skullbone. Yet their faces were fleshed—wenned and warted. They wore grave-rags cinched with gallows rope at the waist. A glimpse through the robe of one, where a cancered breast showed a tumor-pit you could get your fist into, was enough to tell us that their rags were a mercy to our eyes. The fiercest of the three came forward, grinning. One of the hounds leaped on her with a roar. She gave it a clout to the skull with her fist that sprawled it shivering in the traces.
    "Skin, Guide!" she shrilled. "Manskin with blood in it, living blood. We want a piece or you can't cross. We want a piece now!"
    "Hail, Famine-sisters," the Guide said. "We shall pay your toll." He turned to us. Haldar and I traded a look, and turned to Defalk. He saw our intent to make him pay first. His hopeless expression gave me a twinge of guilt, and so I said:
    "I'll pay it, Lord Guide." I'd have to settle up sooner or later, after all. The Guide nodded, and motioned me to jump down.
    "What piece of this man do you want, starving ones?" he asked. They flew into a raucous discussion. They squawked, hissed, cursed and counter-cursed with a force that sent out gusts of their vampire-breath. They named every part you might think of and there were moments when I blanched and promised myself to draw my sword and be damned. Then at last the chief one came forward again.
    "We want an ear," she shouted. "A nice, fat red ear hot and juicy with blood we want. A left