The Dead God Series Collection

Chapter 2-1

The track that led between Master Amos’ farmstead and Bywater followed the line of the hillside for a mile before veering off at a right angle and leading towards the village. Indeed, the track took the walker very much out of their way and there didn’t seem to be any reason why the makers of the track hadn’t created a more direct line between Amos’ farm and Bywater.

The farmstead had been on the hill overlooking the village for almost as long as Bywater had been in existence. Amos always used to boast that one of his very distant relatives was on the first village council, close to three hundred years ago. It was unlikely, therefore, that the field system lying between Bywater and Torben had been long established when the Master Amos of yesteryear had chosen to homestead on the hillside.

If it had been daytime, Torben would have cut across the fields and taken a more direct route but, in the dim moonlight, he knew it was safer to stick to the track, even though it led him almost a mile out of his way. The fields that lay between Bywater and Amos’ farm were ill maintained and boggy, and Torben had no desire to get muddy or to break an ankle in a rabbit hole. In fact, no one in the village could actually remember a time when any crop had been cultivated, or any animals grazed on the fields; they were of the general opinion that the fields were the subject of a long-forgotten land dispute that no one wished to breathe life into again.

Not that any dispute in Bywater would have been particularly ferocious. The most exciting thing that had happened in living memory was when the village cooper had gotten into a fistfight with a travelling salesman outside the tavern who, he claimed, had cheated him on the price of a shipment of barrels. The story was still told by the old folks that propped up the bar in the Rusty Sickle, even though the event had taken place over thirty years ago and the fist-fighting cooper was long dead.

The dirt crunched softly under Torben’s boots as he made his way. The sound of his footsteps seemed intrusive in the still night air. There wasn’t much life in this part of Burndale. Behind Amos’ farm, the land sloped up to the Burn Downs, a desolate and infertile area of rolling chalk hills that almost completely surrounded Burndale, and where only gorse, heather, and the occasional pine tree could scrape a living. No one in the valley knew what lay beyond the Downs, nor indeed how large the Downs even were. A consensus had been collectively reached that they weren’t worth thinking about and, as a result, no one strayed far to the north, east or west of Bywater. Having said that, even if one had wanted to explore the Downs, the lack of paths or tracks, the treacherous carpet of bracken and heather, and the rolling mass of ditches and hillsides made it nigh impossible to make much progress. Occasionally, some of the village’s young men attempted to cross the Downs, but they inevitably returned a few hours after they’d set off, muddy and dejected.

hadBeyond the fields that stretched in a rough circle around Bywater was a sprawling mass of woodlands that made up the majority of Burndale. The woods were cut only by the course of the river and the road that hugged its banks, which meandered to the end of the valley and into the rest of the Kingdom of Dazscor and Aramore, to which Burndale belonged. The path that Torben was travelling took him to the very borders of the woodland before veering back towards Bywater, which stood as the only beacon of civilisation in Burndale.

As he approached the bend in the road and the edge of the woodland, darkness loomed oppressively and trees began to block out moonlight. Subconsciously, he held his breath and slowed, trying to minimise the noise made by his footsteps. There was no particular reason for him to be worried and he knew it, but there was something about being in, or near, woods at night that filled him with a strange sense of unease. You never knew who, or what, might be lurking in the darkness, peering from behind trees and waiting for an unsuspecting passerby.

The woods remained still and empty of robbers or cutthroats as Torben skirted the edge and turned down a bend in the road towards the village. He was almost disappointed; an attempted robbery would certainly have livened up his night and, in a heartbeat, would probably have made him the most interesting figure in the dale. However, it was not to be, which was probably for the best.

Now that Torben was nearing the village, more signs of life emerged from the gloom. He passed the fields and farmhouse that belonged to the Ketch family, a surly farmer with two bullish sons and a downtrodden daughter. Everyone in Bywater avoided the Ketch family; indeed, the only people to venture close to their land were Torben, Master and Mrs Amos, and the few folks who made the journey to Amos’ farm on business. The Ketches had long been marked as ‘outsiders’. Even though the family had been resident in Burndale for over four generations, people still viewed them with suspicion. It was probably this collective suspicion that made Mr Ketch so irritable, but there was nothing to be done about it. The Ketch family card was marked and ‘once marked, never erased’, or so ran the saying in Bywater Village.

There was no sign of life as he strolled past the Ketch farm. All the windows were dark and the majority of shutters were closed. There was one window, he noticed, whose shutters were still open, and he suspected that this was the room that Mr Ketch’s sons shared. The two of them were notorious for sneaking out to the tavern in the dead of night, and they were often seen drinking themselves into a stupor in a corner of the Rusty Sickle. No doubt his sons’ constant disobedience was another reason Mr Ketch was so crotchety. That being said, he was a saint compared to Mrs Amos.

In the distance, Torben saw village lights winking and flickering in the night, and soon sounds of habitation were heard. It was as if he could hear the collective breathing of the community drifting through the night. The village was home to less than two-hundred people, but as the track started to wind between outlying houses, it felt as if he were walking into a metropolis. After all, he’d never been to a place larger than Bywater, and the majority of his time was spent either in the fields or amongst the three buildings that made up Amos’ farm.

Most of the village structures were clustered along the road that ran through the community. The road widened at the northern end to form a rough square, before continuing further up the valley and petering out three miles from Bywater, where it met woods. The village square marked the northern extremity of the settlement, where the majority of life was focused. Gathered around the edges, was a tavern, the blacksmith’s and cooper’s workshops and the single odds and ends shop that provided the scarcity of luxuries that made their way from larger towns to the south. The only focal point in the square was a well that had long ceased to function; the village folk had to draw all their water from the river.

Torben emerged from the track onto the main road and headed towards the epicentre of the village. There were a surprising number of people out and about, which made him suspect that there’d been a meeting of some kind in the tavern or out in the square. Not that he was particularly concerned with village politics. When Torben had turned sixteen, and been eligible to attend council meetings, he’d trekked to the village every week so that he could be present. He soon learned, however, that nothing was ever done at these meetings … but, then again, nothing needed doing in Bywater. The council meetings were merely a sounding board for the old men to complain about poor harvests, lack of rain, or a fall in the number of livestock—nothing that they could do anything about.

As Torben stepped into the village square, the tavern stood out clearly against the other buildings. Light spilled out of un-shuttered windows, and muttering and laughter flowed from within. Swinging gently in the breeze above the door was an old sickle, once lime-washed white, but now with orange rust clearly visible on the blade. The malty tang of ale wafted through the door as Torben stooped to enter.

The interior of The Rusty Sickle was dimly lit and vaguely obscured by the fog of wood smoke that drifted from a blazing fire and congregated in the beams of the low ceiling. The makeshift bar rested to one side, consisting of a large wooden table with stools in front of it; behind were stacked ale barrels on their sides, taps driven through their lids. There was a dirty sheet of an undetermined hue draped over the bar, covered in a multitude of stains. Above the beer barrels ran a wide shelf covered in wooden tankards, horn mugs, and occasional dusty glassware. The middle of the room was dominated by a fire pit, sunk slightly below the flagstone floor. It held a roaring blaze, which provided most of the light. Gathered around the fire and the walls were a motley collection of chairs and tables, a surprising number of which were occupied. Torben had expected the tavern to be fairly empty—not that he minded it being full of patrons, because the buzz of so many people was enlivening.

As he negotiated his way towards the bar, he saw Johnny, the proprietor, a youngish man with a wispy, scruffy beard that barely clung onto his chin, tending to the punters. Johnny was almost as tall as Torben, which meant that he was stuck in a stooping posture, thanks to the low ceiling. Indeed, Johnny walked with a permanent hunch when not in the Rusty Sickle but, inside the establishment, it was barely noticeable, given that the majority of patrons were too tall to stand up straight in the low room anyway.

Johnny raised a hand in greeting as he caught sight of Torben. ‘Long time since I’ve seen you in here. Let you out again, did they?’ He didn’t need to ask whether Torben wanted a drink and half turned to fill a tankard from one of the barrels.

‘Aye, the old man finally relented, and I got away before that wife of his could stop me,’ Torben replied with a wry smile.

‘I don’t see why you stick around up there. There’s nowt there for you but misery and hardship. You’re giving that man the best years of your life—for what, eh? One night off every three months? That’s no way to live if you ask me.’

‘Well what else have I to do? Anyway, I couldn’t leave Amos up there alone with only his godawful wife for company. She’d probably kill him and, if not, then they’d starve to death. He can’t run the farm by himself.’

‘Aye, aye, you’ve said so before.’ Johnny placed the tankard on the bar. ‘Are you eating tonight and all?’ He gestured to a cauldron suspended from a tripod over one end of the fire pit. ‘The stew’s good tonight. I’ll vouch for it myself.’

‘That’d be grand,’ Torben replied.

‘No bother lad. That’ll be three fishes.’

Reaching a hand into a trouser pocket, Torben produced his money pouch and pulled out three copper coins, so dull with age that the mark on one side was obliterated, whilst the leaping fish on the other could barely be detected.