Beasts of Burden

[Aldridge Moor]

Aldridge walked through the entrance of the infirmary, into Hell itself.

The stench of deep wounds, bile, viscera. The whimpers and howls of the beasts who were somehow still alive. Blood everywhere. At least three deliberately-severed limbs on the floor between beds.

Aera stepped back from a delirious beast - a mole, weeping and shuddering. As she swept toward Aldridge, two other beasts moved in. An unknown squirrel, with a bottle of near-black whiskey no doubt chosen to numb the mind and the wound as quickly as possible. Ulrich, with a bonesaw.

?What happened to her??

Adeen's ears flickered.

?Severely beaten. There was broken earthenware all around them wh-?

?Glazed or dull??

?Glazed. On the floor, shards, not dust.?

Aera gestured down. Aldridge kneeled, and the mouse medic began picking through Adeen?s fur around each bleeding spot, looking for pieces of fired crockery. The vole flinched once or twice when Aera came close to her eyes. Aera's claws stopped, and she pulled one shard the size of a small thorn out of Adeen's cheek. She examined that particular wound more closely, gave the last two a quick look, then stepped back and nodded.

?Nothing else there, she?ll be all right. You?ll have to clean and patch, we have five more beasts who?ll reach Dark Forest's gates by sunrise if we don?t tend them now. Remember to check her over for breaks and bruises. Milgram! A patch-kit for Alder, then determine the otter?s wounds and give him a sedative! Alder, take her into the long-term alcove. You?ll be under our feet otherwise. And when you?re done, she?s to stay there overnight.?

Milgram Tevar, the vole with forearms long since bleached in spatters, perked at the sound of his name. He ducked under a bed and came up with a small bundle of folded hessian. As Aera swept to her next patient, the Apprentice Apothecary trotted over to Aldridge, tucked the bundle under his arm, and turned away.

Aldridge pushed aside the dark grey curtain that marked the long-term alcove, stepped inside, and sat Adeen on the edge of the next bed along from the sleeping Cricken. He detached a small metal flask from his belt, and offered it to the vole. "Whiskey? A sip'll take the edge off the pain."

She took the flask, hesitated. "Will it?"

He nodded. "And much more, I suspect."

She unscrewed the lid, took a sniff, took a sip, winced, screwed the lid back on and set it on the table. "I'd rather the pain, thank you."

He nodded and kept eye contact with her, watching for signs of pain as he unfastened her cloak's hasp and pushed it from her shoulders, as he found the buckle on her bandolier and pulled it slowly from her small frame.

Adeen adjusted herself, sitting up against the end of the bed as Aldridge folded her cloak and the bandolier and placed them at the other end, where a taller beast's feet might otherwise be.

He pulled apart the hessian package. A vial of clear liquid, bundles of cotton swabs and bandages, a small ceramic pot of cooling salve. Aera?s usual efficiency.

He unstoppered the vial, tipped it for a moment against a cotton swab, and began cleaning Adeen?s wounds. She hissed at the first touch, but eased into the process. It wasn?t long before she was accustomed enough to speak.

?The mortuary. You came to see them??

Aldridge let his eyes fall closed for a moment, a smile and a breath escaping him. ?Aye. Tanra and Envar.?

?The Crater will remember them. Prowler Envar. Tanra the Terror. Mossflower?s finest. Small places, in the Hall of the Great.?

Aldridge stopped for a moment. Gathered himself, forced his breath back into regiment, but could not quite will his eyes dry.

?Thank you.?

He cleaned the last of her cuts, then helped her out of her vest. She shuffled forward and lay flat carefully as he took a scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal from the small table beside the bed, and jotted the word 'Adeen' at the top.

"I'm going to test each of your ribs in turn. For each one, please say 'sharp', 'blunt', or 'no' depending on whether it hurts, and what the pain feels like." Aldridge recited Medic Aera's usual words with ease.

She nodded.

One sharp, five blunts and sixteen nos later, Aldridge had a good idea of just how hard the vole had been beaten.

He put the scrap of paper back on the table and took the pot of salve from Aera's patch-kit. Returned to Adeen's most damaged ribs, daubed the cool gel on her, working against the flow of her fur and onto her skin proper.

What else, what else...

"Ah. Any loose teeth, or difficulty moving your jaw?"

She moved her mouth a little, then raised a paw to the side she'd been struck on. Of course - a heavy blow, bruising, restricted movement.

It was the work of a few moments to apply a little gel to her jaw. A few more moments, and the patch-kit was in two small piles on the table - used, and unused.

A rasping breath from the next bed. Aldridge turned to greet Cricken, and his heart stopped.

Grey eyes looked at him from a gaunt, wasted face, sitting atop an assemblage of bones covered loosely by a patchwork of fur and bandages. Whether it was deliberate, the way the child?s eyes lanced directly into Aldridge?s, or mere happenstance, he could not be sure.

He reached for the flask and took a bolt of courage as Ulrich?s words roared through his head.

?...and now he?s broken and there?s nothing that any of us can do about it, save Aera.?

?Hello, Alder. They said I was eating myself.? A dry, rough laugh from a throat that had long since screamed itself raw. ?I said, this isn?t a story! I?m not some cannibal, I?m not from Gulo?s Horde!?

His love for books was still there, then.

?No,? Aldridge said, finally mustering the strength to smile. ?You?re no fox, nor ermine.?

?That?s what I said.? The laugh again, like the puff of a broken bellows. This time something caught, and Cricken?s body was wracked with a coughing fit. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and Aldridge had no doubt that the squirrel couldn?t even tell it was there.

?How did it go again??

A low sound from the squirrel?s throat. He was? trying to sing, or to hum at least. Aldridge leaned in and listened, a terrible certainty descending on him as he remembered the song that the beasts of the Barrow had sung on that first feast night, that had told him he would eventually call this place home. The song that railed against a world built on violence.

Aldridge joined in. He did not try to restrain the tears.

?Balm for the graver, balm for the slaver,
Balm for every beast who makes a copper off the trader,
Food on the plate of the beasts who live on hate,
And never any vittles for the beasts with quieter fates.?

And in the space between verses, Cricken?s eyes closed a little further.
And Aldridge bellowed, with voice cracked down the middle. ?Aera! Ulrich! Now!?

?O! Juskabor! Whither do you wander? -                                                        The mice pushed in through the curtain.
Down to the battlefield! Tear them all asunder! -                                             Ulrich let out a sob, Aera rushed to the bed.
O! Juskabor! Do as I command you! -                                                             Aera joined in the song, taking Cricken's paw in her own.
I spoke to you from birth and I will be there when you founder.?

A moment of silence. The child?s death rattle, cutting the room apart.

Aldridge sat back, unable to stop the tears. A paw rested on his left shoulder, and he looked across to Ulrich, who had a few tears of his own. One on his right shoulder, and he looked across to Adeen, who wore something more like saddened outrage.

Aera waited a moment, then folded Cricken?s arms over his chest, folded the white sheets over him, stood back.

?I?m sorry,? She said to them all. ?We don?t have the time to mourn him now. Four beasts left to pull from the brink. Ulrich, there are no more amputations as best as I can tell. Go to bed.? And she stormed out, pawsteps even heavier than usual.

?Alder.? Ulrich, who had fought away the tears. ?This seems like the right time to show you something.?

Aldridge nodded, and turned back to Adeen. ?Will you be all right??

The vole nodded as she settled herself back into the bedsheets. He supposed she had spent long enough around the dead that this would not be all that strange to her.

He gave her a nod, and left with Ulrich.

Tunnels and corners dissipated around them, melting away in memories of the recently-dead.

A left and a straight... and the sound of Young Cricken and Young Aera fighting with sticks in the town square.

A right and a left... and Tanra's laughter when she brought home her first salmon, caught in the streams on the slopes of the mountain a day's travel to the east.

A straight and a right... and the roughness of Envar's voice as he reported a lone ferret slaver on the edge of Barrow grounds.

Aldridge followed Ulrich through this fog of memories into a room full of cogs and cobwebs. He shuddered, but carried on as Ulrich lifted a hinged workbench section out of the way and walked through another door.

And the dust was gone.

A large square room, almost empty. A low-slung table in one corner, with a few rags and woodworking tools on it.

"The machine in the other room. We're not sure what it was, but we know that it's broken, and that the beasts who kept it working are long since dead. This was a dedicated store room - no other entrances or exits. So we cleaned it out and we hope to use it for ourselves."

The far wall. Five carved patterns so far. Aldridge strode up to them with purpose, placed his paw on Hunter Tanra's Mark. Carved carefully and painted with tar rather than burned into place, but still. This was the Mark Wall. He ran his eye over the others, dotted around the wall in no specific place. Ulrich, Aera, Ennis and Tevar.

Ulrich handed him one of the small chisels from the table, and held the other. "Add Cricken's mark," he said. "I'll take Envar's."

They worked in silence. Cricken's Mark took shape in the wood-plated wall. A crossroad, four squares for buildings, and a dashed line in a circle around them. And then Cricken's own flourish on the standard Patrolbeast's Mark - the canopies of trees, encroaching onto the dashed pawstep-line.

He and Ulrich were done at almost the same time.

Ulrich passed him the pot of tar and a small brush. "I'll leave this for you. My paws are spent for today."

Aldridge carefully applied the tar to all of the fresh-carved lines. Envar's Mark was simpler: no canopies at the edges to ink, only a pair of crossed swords at the centre of the crossroads.

Ulrich sat against the wall, stared into space as Aldridge finished the work.

"You got lucky," he said.

Aldridge paused. "Hmm?"

"Nix, the captain of the slave train. She's requested Droven's company multiple times - even commissioned a harolina, if you can believe it. Gates only know what that's going to sound like in a place with acoustics like this."

"Aye?" The pawstep-lines were the trickiest; Aldridge kept a steady paw as he worked. He trusted Ulrich to get to the point.

"Droven's heard her talking, a few times now. Turns out, the only reason there were six wagons on that train was because they already knew about us."

A wave of ice, down Aldridge's back. "Oh, Hellgates..."

"Aye. You got lucky, Alder. Because if the arrow you stuck in that Jossia were the only reason they'd attacked..."

He tried to apply the last few dashes, but his own paw was shaking too much. He sat beside Ulrich, brush and pot in one paw and flask in the other. He took a bolt to ease himself, and let out a long breath. "One gamble away from all of this being my fault."

"Aye. And that's not the only gamble you've made recently, is it?"

Aldridge flinched, knowing what was coming next.

"Provoking the lynx. Shouting out for your missus when she woke up crying. Aye, not your missus, tell me another. Attacking a trainer, with a damn spoon. What in Hellgates' name were you thinking?"

He let himself sag. "I wasn't."

"No, I don't suppose you were." Ulrich glared at the opposite wall, then at Aldridge. "Did you think we hadn't noticed? Every evening spent in a tankard. Every day spent in a haze. Do I need to remind you of when we first found you?"

"I..." Aldridge stopped himself, tamped down on the irritation, met Ulrich's gaze. "I remember. Trading repairs and fletchwork for the next flagon of ale, living out of a bedroll in a torn tent in the woods. Two whole seasons burned that way, until Aera slapped me out of it."

"Well, Aera's busy. You'll have to settle for me this time."

Despite himself, Aldridge smirked. "Not nearly as frightening."

"That's as maybe," Ulrich said, his glare easing. "But if I see you at the bottom of a tankard again, I'll have your Apprentice hide your pay."

Aldridge placed the flask in Ulrich's outstretched paw. "Understood."

They sat, until Aldridge's paws had calmed down. He put the last few touches on Envar's Mark, returned the pot and brush to the table, helped Ulrich to his feet.

"I'll bring Young Aera tomorrow. We'll carve our Marks then."

Ulrich nodded, and then companionable silence.

They parted ways at the entrance to the Drag. Ulrich to bed, and Aldridge to his workshop.

Sleep had been difficult enough, recently. After tonight's events, he knew he wouldn't see it for a while yet.

There was a shape in the shadows, opposite the workshop. It was... snoring?

Aldridge looked more closely. The bat Kali, leaning against the wall, holding her broken lute close. No collar, he realised, and all of a sudden the existence of his own was much harder to ignore.

He leaned in, placed his paw on her shoulder, and shook her gently.

She let out a little huff, tightened her wings around the lute. "Mine."

He shook her a little harder. Her eyes opened blearily. She looked up at him, squeaked in surprise and lurched backward, thumping her head into the wall.

"Ow ow owww..."

"I'll say. Are you all right? What brings you here at this time of night?"

She raised a wing to the back of her head, rubbed gently, looked up at him. "Hi Aldy! We got interrupted, huh?"

"We did, aye. The Culling." He helped her upright.

"Yes... yes, that. Um, I realised that I still had hold of this. And, I did hear you as I was running away! But I was late, and you know how it is. So I was hoping that you could take it, and speak to the Droven beastie you mentioned, and maybe get it fixed for me?" She gave him what looked like her attempt at a winning smile.

"I think I can do that, yes." Aldridge opened his workshop door, and held it open for Kali. "Luthier Droven usually stops by here on her way to the woodshop. I'll not be sleeping tonight, I wager, so I'll have her take a look tomorrow morning. How's that for you?"

"Sounds good to me!"

Aldridge gave her a smile, but couldn't force it to reach his eyes.

"Um... Are you all right?" Kali looked worried, embarrassed. "I just... I'm trying to notice these things more. And you... look pretty beat up, ifyoudon'ttmindmesayingso..."

"Thank you." Another beast, concerned for him. His eyes prickled again. He disguised it with a chuckle, and by raising head as though he were looking at the sky. "Kali. Would you sing for me?"

She squeaked. "I... what?"

"You sang for me, when we faced that creature. And just then, it was exactly what I needed. So I wonder if you know any songs about happier places. The kinds of happier places that beasts go to, when they die."

"I, um... are you sure?"

He did not know the look on her face; his face was upturned and his eyes were closed. But he could imagine the doubt. "I am sure."

"Well then. A death song, a happy death song... Ah!"

A moment of quiet.

Her voice, a chaos of sound biting into his ears. And yet, between the unearthly harmonics, it was the voice of a beast speaking a truth, telling a story, comforting a lost soul.

"The day I die, when on my way
toward the grave, don't weep. Don't say,

She's gone! She's gone. Dead is not gone.
Sun and moon set but both come home.

The tomb door is the gate, you see
Whether you are trapped or free

I could tell you; you would not heed.
For now I've died I am a seed

Mouth closed in dust and opened, see
In new-grown unimagined beauty."

"Thank you." His voice came out hoarse, rough. He didn't much care. "Three of my friends have died in the last couple of hours. I helped one sing his way, but the other two..." He finally opened his eyes and looked at her, smiling as he shed more tears.

"I get it. I don't know why you asked me... but I get it. And I suppose it's just lucky that you didn't lose a fourth!"

Aldridge blinked, wiped the tears from his eyes. "Beg pardon?"

"Oh, the, um... the escape attempt? Everyone's talking about it. They said it was a stoat, a female one. And I thought you must know her! But that's just me assuming that all the sla - er, prisoners know each other." Kali looked worried again.

Aldridge shook his head. "Not to worry. I think I do know her. And if she tried to escape, then I suppose I'm off to see her right now." He stowed the lute away on a low shelf, threw a scrap of canvas over it, then left the workshop, chivvying the bat out too.

He locked the door, then stopped. "Where did you say they put her?"

"I, ah... I didn't." Kali chuckled. "But I heard them say Punishment Cages a lot. I'm guessing that's not a good thing?"

Aldridge tilted his head. "Maybe, maybe not. The solitary cells are down that way, but the tunnel went on a lot further. Now, where are you going?"

"Oh, I'll be going to bed now. But thank you!"

"That's quite all right." An exchange of smiles, and then the bat flapped off in a puff of dust.

The tunnels disappeared behind him as they always did. He kept track of his heartbeats, remembered pounding the streets of Madder Barrow, compared the times. The entryway to the left - that would have been the bakery, Maudry covered in flour and grinning as she offered out scones in her thick molespeech. The slightly wider tunnel between the Underbelly proper and the Cages, that would have been the Trade Road. On most days, the Trade Road had been nothing more than a few food stalls for the population to feed themselves - but Caravan Days were when it shone. The whole road, abustle with the beasts of the village and beasts in to trade from afar. Herbs, spices, foodstuffs, construction materials big and small, pottery, woodwork, instruments, all changing paw in barter or in exchange for the new metal coins that were spreading across the land.

But that wasn't here.

Stale air wafted up from the tunnel that housed the Punishment Cages, and a pair of guards eyed him balefully.

He reached for his flask, remembered it was gone. Gathered himself, and threw on a grin. "Evening, gents. I heard about the escape attempt and I have the horrible feeling that my missus has gone and done something... foolish. I wondered if I might see her."

"Another stoa', aye?" The shorter guard, a heavyset rat with very little gut, rumbled out. He looked at Aldridge for a moment, then nodded. "She's 'ere. What d'yew wan' wiv'er?"

"We charge more for conjugal visits." A shrill voice escaped the second rat's throat as he stared fixedly over Aldridge's shoulder into the middle distance.

Ah, so that was the way of things. Aldridge made a show of reaching for his coin-pouch.

The bigger rat grinned. "Aye. Now see, yew's a slave outta quarters after dark. An'afore yew says 'Ah, but the Culling has just happened and the medics are allowed out'," A passable impression, Aldridge conceded, "Well, yew ain't got no medic's mark on yer collar."

"Indeed. And if you've no medic's mark, then curfew still very much applies to you." Nasal, but well-spoken.

"So 'ere's the breaks. Yew gives us nuffin', an' we takes yew an' chucks yew in th'firs' open cell. A couple'a coppers each an'we doesn't repor' yew 'til shif' changes in th'witchin'our. Five, an' we doesn't repor' yew a'all. A silver, an' Teggy 'ere takes 'is keys an' gives yew ten minutes in yer cell o'choice. An' if yew does go conjergaw-"

"Conjugal, Alf. Conjugal."

"Aye. Tha'. If yew does tha', all rate's're doubled."

It didn't take much deliberation.

"Deal," Aldridge said, and held out a silver piece for each of them. They were his last two, but no matter. Nire either didn't understand budgeting or was very deliberately paying Aldridge enough to keep him in drink, because the actual cost of resupplying the workshop when needed was far less than the money he'd actually been given.

The burly rat snatched his coin with a grin; the tall, nasal one took his with more care.

"There's a good lad, knows woss good fer 'im. Now off y'go, I ain't seen nuffin'." He winked, or tried to, and Aldridge gave him a nod as 'Teggy' pushed himself away from the wall.

"Come along, then." A piercing voice, but not entirely unwelcome right now. It reminded him of Kali's singing, and how she had shown no fear at all in the eyes of the abomination in the dark.

"I do apologise for Alf - he simply refuses to take the elocution lessons I keep recommending to him."

"Not to worry," Aldridge chuckled. "An accent matters nothing when the racket is good. Ask any mole."

'Teggy' sniffed. "We're rats, sir. The rules of woodlanders don't apply."

"Ah, I suppose not. My apologies."

He met Teggy's gaze with sincerity, and the rat nodded. "No matter, no matter. Now, if I remember correctly, your stoat lady-friend is in the first of the more novel cells, just about... here."

And there she was, sitting in the middle of the cage, eyes piercing Aldridge and the rat, a chain leading from one of her footpaws to a grille in the wall.

Aldridge nodded. "Thank you, Teggy."

"Ah. No, I'm afraid that's Alfie's dislike of syllables showing though. The name's Tegue." And he unlocked the gate. "In you go sir, and remember - ten minutes, no more."

Aldridge ducked in under the rat's arm and was promptly skewered on Komi's hard stare.

He sat in front of her.

"Hello", he said.

She stewed for a moment, and then "Hello."

Aldridge chuckled. "I didn't quite believe it when I found out. Who would have thought, you'd be the first of us to try and run?"

She bristled. "I've been running since Redwall. Everything was dashed away on those walls."

"But I'm here now, Komi." Time and memory and everything they'd seen together, flowing through his thoughts like water returning to an abandoned riverbed.

"...stop talking like that. She'll hear." Komi looked down the length of the chain. Aldridge leaned forward, and saw the Monster of Mossflower Woods at the other end of it.

"...I couldn't care what you two vermin've got t' say t'each other. Just keep it down so I kin bloody sleep."

He nodded, and Komi scowled.

"Three Barrow beasts died today. It would have been more, had most of them not been more useful to Nire elsewhere. And you... you were nearly lost as well."

"So?" The scowl remained. "That was my choice."

"But would it have been the case, if you were at peace?"

Silence.

"It's clear to me now that this place will take everything we have to survive. We have to be at peace, no matter what, and do whatever it takes to make it through this. We can't afford to lose time and thought on what happened, all those seasons ago."

And her voice cracked. That same furious, half-whispered scream from the slave pits, so many nights ago. "You don't know the half of what happened 'all those seasons ago'! You weren't there!"

He let out a breath. "No. I wasn't, was I? But what I do know is this. You were the hordemaster's favourite, and I wasn't. You saw an old friend on course for greatness, a beast who might one day make the world right. I saw a beast who had nothing to stop him from reaching too far and burning himself, and taking every other with him. And I... I tried to leave three times, you know? Three times I was ready, and I came to your tent and you weren't there. Twice, I went back to the armory tent and unpacked everything and woke up the next morning pretending that everything was normal. The third time... I couldn't. I'm sorry. But... this has all been and gone, and here we are, and this is a chance to get everything out of our systems, to work out all the kinks and devote ourselves at least to surviving this hellhole instead of living all knotted-up in the past, and being destroyed for it!"

Her breath had stopped at some point. Her eyes shimmered in the torchlight, masked inexpertly with another scowl. She had never been very good at hiding how she felt.

"Damn you," she said. "You expect me to behave like nothing happened?"

"Not at all." Old teachings sprung up again in his mind. "Just... imagine thirty seasons' time, when we're too old to walk straight any more and we spend all our time in comfortable chairs by a fire and all of this is the concern of who you used to be. Imagine that you could get up and walk away and all of this was just a story you were telling to a child, the way oldsters do."

"Well I can't get up and walk away, can I? Or had you forgotten about this blasted otter I'm chained to?"

The Monster's voice, irate. "Aye? I'll give ye 'blasted otter', ye blasted stoat."

Komi jolted as the otter yanked on the chain, hard.

"Time, sir." Tegue's voice. Aldridge had nearly forgotten about him.

He allowed himself an impulse. As he rose, he leaned forward and placed his muzzle to Komi's forehead. "Just think about what I've said, all right? And when you can... tell me everything. Please."

He left, but couldn't help looking back into the cell at Komi Banton. She hadn't moved.

Tegue locked the gate, walked him back up to mouth of the tunnel, and sent him on his way.