Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [38]
The Rose was forcing her horse through the people, shouting at them for their lack of concern, trying to reach the boy whose dying movements were burying him deeper in the filth. As Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose arrived it was clear that he was dead. Elric reached towards the corpse—and another black-fletched arrow came from above to bury itself squarely in the child’s heart.
Elric looked back, enraged, and only Wheldrake and the Rose together stopped him from drawing his sword and seeking the source of the arrow.
“Foul cowardice! Foul cowardice!”
“Perhaps he committed a fouler crime,” cautioned the Rose. She took hold of Elric’s hand, leaning from her saddle to do so. “Be patient, albino. We are here to learn what these people can tell us, not challenge their customs.”
Elric accepted her wisdom. He had witnessed far crueler actions amongst his own people and knew well enough how an outrageous deed of torture could seem like simple justice to some. So he controlled himself, but looked with even more wariness upon the crowd as the Rose led them on towards the next rank of moving villages, creaking with infinite slowness, no faster than an old man’s pace, along the flesh-coloured highway, their long leather skirts brushing the ground as they advanced like so many massive dowagers out for an evening stroll.
“What sorcery powers those settlements,” murmured the Rose as they moved, at last, through the stragglers, “and how can we get aboard one? These people won’t chat. There is something they fear …”
“Clearly, madam.” Elric looked back to where the boy had died, his sprawled corpse still visible upon the piled garbage.
“A free society such as this must pay no taxes, therefore can pay no-one to police it—therefore the family and the blood-feud become the chief instruments of justice and the law,” said Wheldrake, still very distressed. “They are the only recourse. I would guess the boy paid for some relative’s misdemeanour, if not his own. ‘Blood for blood! groaned the Desert King, And an eye, I swear, for an eye. ’Ere this day’s sun sets on Omdurman, the Nazarene must die!’ Not mine! Not mine!” he said hastily, “but a great favourite amongst the residents of Putney. M.C. O’Crook, the popular pantomime artist, wrote it I was told …”
Believing the little poet merely babbled to comfort himself, Elric and the Rose paid him little attention, and now the Rose was hailing the nearest gigantic platform which approached, its skirts scraping and hissing, and from which, through a gap in the leather curtains, there strolled a man in bright green velvet with purple trimmings, a gold ring through his earlobe, more gold about his wrists and throat, a gold chain about his waist. His dark eyes looked them over, then he shook his head curtly and returned through the curtain. Wheldrake made to follow him, but hesitated. “For what, I wonder, are we being auditioned?”
“Let’s discover that by trial,” said the Rose, pushing her hair back from her face and flexing a strong hand as she rode towards the next slow-moving mass, to find a head poked out at her and a red-capped woman glancing at them without much curiosity before turning back in. Another and another followed. A fellow in a painted leather jerkin and a brass helmet was more interested in their horses than themselves, but eventually jerked his thumb to dismiss them, making Elric murmur that he would have no more to do with these barbarians but would find some other path and fulfill his quest that way.
The next village sent out a well-to-do old gypsy in a headscarf and embroidered waistcoat, his black velvet breeches tucked into white stockings. “We need the horses,” he said, “but you seem like intellectuals to me. The last thing this village requires are trouble-makers of that sort. So I’ll bid thee fare-thee-well.”
“We are valued neither for our