Chapter 190: The ghoul 2

He had always liked it silent.

Morning in the forest smelled of wet bark and woodsmoke from some far-off hearth. Fin walked with his hands tucked into his sleeves kicking at the dew-heavy ferns as he went. The sun hadn’t cleared the treetops yet. Everything was gold and grey and very quiet.

The sound of the tournament boomed in the background, but he was thinking about breakfast.

A certain thought got him chuckling softly. He signed and looked up.

It was supposed to be peaceful, until the first arrow took him in the shoulder.

He didn’t understand it. He heard a thin whistle, then felt a hard shove, as if someone had pushed him from behind. He turned to see who it was and found nobody there. Then he looked down at the shaft standing out of his coat, and a warm red wetness spread under his fingers.

"Ow," he said, stupidly.

The second arrow hit his thigh and his leg went out from under him.

He fell into the ferns, and the cold water soaked straight through his shirt. "Hey! Who’s that ..." He tried to push himself up.

They came out of the trees as if they had been standing there all along. Men and women in plain dark leather, with no banners and no crests. A dozen of them, maybe more. None of them hurried. A woman at the back was still lowering her bow.

"Oh...who are you people..."

A boot caught him in the face, slamming him against a tree.

"Urgh!"

The world rang like a bell. He tasted blood and spat a tooth into the leaves, and he stared at it, because it didn’t make sense. It was his. It had been in his mouth that morning.

"Please," he mumbled. "I don’t... Did I do something? I’m sorry, I don’t know what I..."

"Chains," a man said. "He’s the chain user. Watch the chains."

"What did I do?"

"Let me do the honours." One of them stepped forward.

Instinct moved before thought did. The chain links uncoiled from his arms beneath his clothes and lashed out blindly. A few dodged and it got one, wrapping around his neck and tore the skin open.

"Aaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhh!"

Fin was the one who screamed. He scrambled backward on his elbows, sobbing now, swinging the chains in wild, desperate arcs.

"Stay away from me!"

He caught a man across the jaw and heard bone crack. He dragged a woman off her feet and tied her to a tree, while flinching and shouting, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, just stop, please stop!"

"You damn brat!" A spear drove into the meat of his calf and pinned him to the earth like an insect. He shrieked and the chains fell slack. Before he could drag them back, a boot came down on his wrist, then another on his other hand, and someone knelt on his chest and wrenched the iron from his arms link by link.

"No! Wait hmmm—!"

They smacked him so hard he went silent.

"That’s the last of it," the man kneeling on him said. He was broad and grey at the temples, and his voice was almost gentle. "Good lad. Easy now."

"Why?" Fin whispered. Tears and blood ran into his ears. "I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are. Why are you doing this?"

The man looked at him for a moment, almost sadly. Then he took Fin’s left hand and set a short knife against the knuckle of his smallest finger.

"Because it’s what we were told to do."

He pushed down.

Fin’s scream went up through the canopy and sent the birds exploding out of the branches. The finger came away with a wet snap, and the man tossed it aside as if it were a twig.

Someone laughed. A second blade went into his other hand, through the palm, and pinned it to the soft ground.

"Stop, stop, stop, stop... Please stop! STOP! Arrrrrrgggghhhhh!""

"Listen to him squeal."

"Do the other eye first. I want him to see it coming."

The man paused. "Do we have to do this to a child? The order was to kill them."

"The order was to kill them and decapitate this one." Another completed. "Don’t tell me you forgot that order."

Another one spoke. "Follow the order. Nothing else."

The man looked back at the boy, trembling, biting into his lower lip and shaking his head.

The man’s gaze hardened. He continued to cut.

Fin’s scream continued to echo.

They were taking their time, passing him between them like a game, and every time he begged, someone mimicked him in a high, wheedling voice and the others howled.

A boot stamped on his ribs until they broke. A hand pulled his hair back to expose his throat, and a blade traced it lightly, only to show him that it could.

A thought flashed his mind.

’I am going to die. I’m going to die and I don’t even know why.’

His vision was going dark at the edges. The faces above him blurred into one grinning shape.

Someone’s knife was working on his stomach. Someone else was tugging his jaw open, saying, "Let’s see if he’s got any more teeth in there."

He could hear his own voice, thin and cracked and unrecognizable, begging in broken fragments. "Anyone..."

He heard a voice.

"Let’s stuff his remains in a bag and dump him before his father. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled."

At that moment, something snapped inside him.

It wasn’t pain. Pain he had understood, in the end. This was a cold pressure low in his belly, and it was opening like an eye.

For one fleeting instant, the whole forest went silent and he felt something vast and patient turn over in the dark, as if stirring awake.

’What is that?’

The thing spoke without words. It was the loneliest, hungriest feeling he had ever known, and it was very, very close.

’You’re allowed,’ it said. ’Nobody here is innocent. You’re allowed.’

The black in his eye ball spread slowly.

"I....am allowed...no....one is.... innocent...I am...all...owed..."

"What’s he mumbling?" someone laughed.

His back suddenly arched off the ground, throwing the man off. His mouth stretched wider than a mouth should go, and the scream that came out of him was no longer a boy’s.

It shook the trees. It tore leaves from their branches and sent a fine shiver through the iron links scattered on the ground.

They retreated with blood running from their ears. The knife in the grey-haired man’s hand shattered in his grip. Beneath the pinning spear, Fin’s ruined calf split and reknit in a single wet ripple, and the spear slid out of the earth as if the ground itself had spat it free.

All his wounds began to close up.

"I’m allowed to."

Black bled across Fin’s eyes like ink poured into water, drowning the whites, the irises, everything. The chains rose from the ferns, link by link, and merged into his body.

He landed slowly.

His severed finger lay a few feet away in the leaves. He looked at it, then at his hand, where something dark and glistening was already creeping out of the stump, knitting it back. His head tilted. He looked almost curious.

"Oh," he said softly. His voice was calm and small, and it didn’t sound like him. "That hurt."

The grey-haired man stumbled backward, and for the first time the calm had slid off his face.

"Kill it," he said. "Kill it now. Now!*"

Fin smiled at him. It was an embarrassed little smile, the smile of a boy who has made a mess and wants to be forgiven.

"It? Did you just say it?"