The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [119]
The girl gave a squeal, and Awa chanced looking over the wall. Nothing but the snow swirling between the gravestones, and then the squeal came again, from just behind the single large crypt in the center of the churchyard. There was no one else in the cemetery, and Awa realized the girl must have heard her outside the wall and scared herself silly. Still, Awa found herself possessed by a sudden impulse to duck back under the wall and dart to the treeline, to run through the forest and not look back, to—she shook her head, her smiling teeth shining in the dark. Childish—
“Bad.” The girl was crying now, the dying wind bringing her tiny sobs to Awa. “Ba-ba-bad, ba-ba-bad doggie. Gooooooo a-aa-a-way. Ba-ba-bad doggie.”
Awa’s smile faded with the chill breeze, and she jumped the wall. The ibex-handle knife reassured her palm, which reassured the rest of her, and she strode quickly toward the mausoleum and the crying child. She sent her bonebird winging from her shoulder to wait in the trees, lest it frighten the girl. Whatever fit the child was having could—Awa stopped, her breath snatched away by the gust of wind that snapped between the gravestones, her mouth dangling open, her eyes huge.
“Ba-ba-bad, ba-ba-bad doggie.” It walked slowly around the side of the crypt, its yellow eyes shining in the moonlight, its tongue twisting around the child’s voice wafting out of its long muzzle. “Gooooooo a-a-a-a-way. Ba-ba-bad doggie.”
It was much, much larger than a dog, its shaggy coat spotted along its flanks, scrawny legs jutting down under its thick body. No creature could have a head and neck so disproportionately large, thought Awa as it approached, it must be the angle, the perspective. Difficult as thinking had become, moving proved impossible, its eyes locked with hers, eyes that despite the distance smiled in a way its canine maw never could, the sharp teeth and dripping tongue somehow perfectly replicating the sounds of a little girl.
“It’s looking at me,” the creature whined, “looking at me it’s looking at me looking—”
Awa ran, the worst thing for it but there it was, Awa ran and even as her eyes watered from the wind scratching them and the nightmare reflecting in them she saw it run, too. No, it trotted, those legs swinging straight beneath it, legs capable of moving much, much faster if it wished, the monster ambling parallel with her along the uneven rows of the churchyard. No no no, Awa thought, almost turning her back on it completely to jump the wall, but then she caught herself, tightening her hand on her dagger, and she skidded to a stop in the snow, wheeling to face it. It was closer than she had thought, one row over, and it stopped as well.
“I am more dangerous than I look,” she told the creature, and it laughed, not like a child but like the grotesque horror that it was, the cacophony leaving its slavering mouth like a thousand ravens cawing in broken unison. Dogs had to be shown you were not afraid, something her tutor had told her when lecturing on the outside world with its mobs of men and their hounds. This was no natural dog, no dog at all, but the risk of giving it a little more leverage over her was worth it if it showed the monster she was not afraid, and so she addressed it: “I am Awa, a necromancer. I have come here to raise the dead, not be barked at by dogs. Go away.”
The creature cocked its head at her and sat back on its haunches. Awa took this to be a great improvement, until it spoke with her voice. “I am Awa. Awa. Awa.”
“Ohhhh.” Awa could see its spirit now, in the moonlight, but it was buried deep in the creature, bunched up in its rear, and she wondered if she had erred in telling it her profession. The spirit coiled even tighter, as far from her as possible— killing the beast with a touch would be almost impossible; in most things the spirit flowed evenly throughout, and so severing it was as easy as brushing an arm, touching a tail. It was listening, though, and so she added, “I mean you no harm.”
It