Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story) Read Free Page A

hand. Like Zophiel, she was barely eating.
    The night was a dark one, without so much as the glimmer of a star, and the glow of the fire lit up the faces of the outlaws from below, the scarlet flames reflected in their eyes, dancing like imps from hell. Pecker had unwound the tail of his hood from his face to eat, and I saw the reason for the strange whistling when he breathed. His nose had been sliced in two straight down the middle so that he had a dark hole in the middle of his face, with two puckered lumps of flesh hanging on either side. Looking at his tight cap, I suspected his ears had been lopped off too. He’d been mutilated in the pillory. What for? Coin clipping? Sodomy? It was certainly not a question I was about to ask. I always took great care to conceal my own past. The present is all you can truly know of any man, and even of that you can glimpse only a fragment, however long you remain in his company.
    The dead branches of the trees clattered in the cold, damp breeze. At least the rain had stopped, but judging by the thick clouds, it would not be for long. Were Rodrigo and Osmond and the others looking for us? They must surely have realised something was wrong by now. I only prayed they would not try to follow our steps along the track. In the dark it would be only too easy to stumble on to more of the caltrops. I had managed to warn Adela and Zophiel to say nothing about the rest of our company. Our only hope of escaping without any of us being killed was if the outlaws were unaware that someone was out there searching for us.
    I shuffled closer to the warmth of the fire. The wound on my shoulder had stiffened, but Dye’s ointment had stopped the bleeding and the pain had eased a good deal. I shivered and Dye tossed another lump of wood on the fire.
    I nodded gratefully, holding my hands out over the blaze.
    ‘Aren’t you afraid the fire’ll be seen?’
    ‘Not out here. Besides, who’d be travelling through the forest at night? They’d not dare. Be too afeared of outlaws cutting their throats,’ Dye said.
    Pecker and Weasel chuckled. Adela flinched and, shuddering, glanced behind her. I knew only too well why she and Zophiel had lost their appetites. For just a few yards away, the bloodstained bodies of two monks lay heaped one on top of the other, their habits pulled up to their waists as if they’d been killed in the act of making love. It had amused Holy Jack to arrange them so.
    Their throats had been sliced across just as soon as they’d been dragged into the camp. As Pecker casually explained, they never let monks go free. They’d be squealing robbery the moment they reached the nearest town. He had considered blinding them and cutting out their tongues, but everyone knew monks were used to signing to obtain whatever they wanted during their periods of silence, and, he said, it’d be plain cruel to cut off their hands as well. Kinder to dispatch them at once, like putting a wounded dog out of its misery.
    Pecker dragged a snail out of the edge of the fire, where it had been roasting in the embers, and, digging the point of his blade into the shell, hooked out the body and popped it in his mouth.
    ‘Don’t you mind them monks. There’s a gullet 1 over yonder. Deep it is, would swallow a church. Men dug it years back when they was mining the ironstone. Fair drop of water there is at the bottom now. Lads’ll throw the monks down there when they’ve had their supper. Gullet’s so big, you could drop a whole army of corpses down there and not fill it.’
    ‘Just as well, considering how many we’ve sent down there,’ Weasel chuckled. ‘Not all of them dead either. But sides are too steep, can’t clamber out, you see. Have to hand it to ’em, mind. Some give it a fair go, even though we’ve broken their arms and legs for ’em. Can hear ’em shrieking for days after, but death always quietens them down in the end. But ’cause of all this rain, they drown now. Don’t last an