Savages by K. J. Parker

Author:K. J. Parker [Parker, K. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fantasy
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2015-07-04T22:00:00+00:00

He stood in front of the blackened ruin of the barn and looked towards where he knew the well must be, hidden under a waist-high growth of nettles. He wanted to ask if anyone had thought to bury the bodies; but asking would constitute a level of involvement for which he wasn’t quite sure he was ready. There’s that story, where the prince is abducted by the Queen of the Dead, and she lays out a banquet, all his favourite things to eat and drink, and he’s so hungry and thirsty; but one mouthful of anything would mean he’d never be able to go back. Lately a little voice in his head had kept urging him, never accept. He wasn’t sure if it was particularly good advice, but he’d been following it anyway.

“I want all this cleared away,” he said. “Level it off flat and plant trees or something. We’ll build the new hall over there, where the pear orchard—”

He tailed off. His father had felled the pear orchard twenty-seven years ago.

“Over there,” Cari said. “Right, we’ll do that. It’s a good location, as a matter of fact. Good communications with all four districts.”

“That’s why I chose it,” Raffen replied. He’d chosen it simply because he didn’t think it was fair to build his new house on someone else’s land. “Tell Sighvat I’ll pay for it. You’ll need a jury of seven neighbours to decide a fair price. That’s how it’s always been done around here.”

Cari knew that, of course. “Are you absolutely sure about Sighvat?” he said. “In your shoes—”

Raffen laughed. “Private joke,” he explained. “And yes, I have no quarrel with Sighvat. I want everybody to know that. Nothing bad is going to happen to him, is that clear?”

The seven neighbours weren’t told who the purchaser was, in case it clouded their judgement. In the event, Raffen insisted on paying four marks more than the price they decided on. Anything less, he said, would be a slight on his late father’s husbandry.

It took a hundred and twenty men six days to build the house; forty-one cartloads of lumber, nine cartloads each of clay and cow-dung just to lay the floor, another six of each to make daub for the walls; an acre of turf for the roof. Eighty men in heavy boots jumped up and down for a day to get the floor compacted and level. They brought the royal roof-boards seventy miles over the hills, packed in a ton of straw so the carvings wouldn’t get chipped or split. Regrettably, the wall-hangings from the old king’s hall had been looted during the fighting, and nobody had owned up to having them; Cari, Torcetil and Sitry lent him their own hangings while new ones were being woven. The carpenters made him tables and benches, and Eyvind of Gulsness sent him a chair; it was Mezentine, some very heavy black wood, carved in the shape of a hand—you sat on the palm, and the curled fingers made up a back and arms.

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