The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [12]
Omorose did not say anything. Awa did not say anything. Halim swallowed, and picked up his bowl of stew.
“I am, as you see, a simple hermit.” The man leaned forward and leered at them, exposing a set of uneven yellow teeth. “A lonely goatherd, I lack enough stock to feed every beggar who crosses my border, and so you will have to earn your keep by doing as I say. I live a sparse life, as you see, and have little room under my roof. I therefore suggest you work together to build a shelter before the next storm. Winter comes quickly up here, and you don’t want to be caught without something substantial when the snow falls.”
Unaware if her companions’ silence meant lack of manners or a surfeit of terror, Omorose shakily stood and managed a quavering “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing, nothing.” The man waved his hand dismissively. “I always need more hands, more backs.”
“No.” Omorose closed her eyes, swallowed, then opened them again. “Thank you, but no. We … we have to go. Now. We have—”
“Pressing business?” The man widened his grin. “Loving parents? No no, I don’t think so. You’re mine now, just like my other little helpers. You will help me, won’t you? You’ll do what I ask, without my having to order?”
“I—” Omorose could not stop shaking, even when Awa’s fingers found her hand. “I—”
“Run!” Halim hurled his stew in the man’s face and leaped on top of the table, his heart pounding harder than his feet as he took one, two, three steps across the granite and fell upon the hermit. Awa and Omorose were both knocked to the ground by their stools as the skeletons shook themselves back into their old shapes and followed Halim over the table.
The eunuch landed atop the old man and brought them both to the floor. Halim punched in the hermit’s long nose, blood splashing hot against his cheeks, but to the eunuch’s horror the ancient man howled with laughter instead of pain, putting his hands to his hollow cheeks and hooting as the boy’s fist fell again. Halim’s second punch made a wet slapping noise and he felt the man’s jaw shift in his face, but then bone fingers were tightening around both of the youth’s wrists and his neck and his legs and Halim was yanked off of the old man by the three skeletons, who held him aloft as the hermit shakily got to his feet, his face a giggling red smear.
Awa threw open the door and was confronted by another walking corpse, this one carrying a bundle over its shoulder. She darted past it into the night but stumbled as she heard Omorose scream behind her. The girl had frozen in the doorway, and before Awa decided whether to run or go back another boneman came around the side of the hut and seized her by the shoulders.
“Hold them still and make them watch,” the hermit commanded, and as Awa was dragged back inside she saw that Omorose had her arms pinned behind her back by the new arrival, a shriveled husk of a corpse that had deposited its bundle on the table. The bundle moved, and as her skeletal captor hoisted her up Awa saw it was the bandit chief who had originally captured them, jagged splinters of bone jutting out of his broken arms and legs. Only Halim tried to avert his gaze, but the skeletons holding him got their fingers under his eyelids and made sure he saw through his tears, the sensation of gritty bone pressing against exposed eyeballs arresting his struggles. The eunuch knew he would never escape if they blinded him.
“Have a look, children,” the hermit said, blood bubbling in the center of his swollen, mashed face as he drew a dagger from under his cloak. “Look close, now!”
The blade cut into the bandit chief’s face and he began to scream. Omorose and Halim joined him, but Awa managed to keep her jaw set even when the man’s nose came off, the hermit popping the glistening lump into his mouth and chewing it with a serene expression