A tale of Earthguard: Hunger

‘You’ll eat anything when you’re hungry,’ her old father used to say, long before he passed.

Osber proved him right by eating the dog soon after Garian’s men burnt the crops, after the soldiers came storming into the countryside and took everything they could find.

She hadn’t liked that dog much anyway. It had been her father’s favourite but to her,it would always be a small, yapping creature with pointed, angry eyes that seemed to be trained on Osber’s ever move. Eating the damned thing didn’t pray on her conscience, not one bit. What prayed on her conscience was eating the cat a few days after. It had done nothing but laze about the house, rub against her leg as she worked. It had done nothing wrong.

Then Osber ate the woodlouse and the small worms she found searching their way through the crevices and cracks in her kitchen table. She had divided them up between her and the child. She called it ‘the child’ because her father had, but the small boy with bright blue eyes, fat cheeks and bawling, hunger-induced screams, was her brother. Her flesh and blood. All she had left.

He died two weeks after they started eating the woodlouse and the worms.

Osber had wrapped her brother in parchments and book pages, her father’s wrinkled old tomes and even a few letters her mother had written to her from The Spires. Then she had dug the hole in the cold, hard earth, her fingers scrambling, her hands bleeding on the icy veins of frozen mud, before lowering her brother down to his final bed. She had said her prayers to The Bookkeeper, hoping he would take the offering of written words and send the boy’s soul away. Then she made the sign of The Guardians.

Some of the villagers had helped her bury him. Their hands in the dirt, boots kicking up turf, loose handfuls of mud falling onto the lifeless form, the paper crackling underneath, each scattering of mud barely covering her brother’s body.

“Can’t cover much more Osber.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she replied with a snarl.

Tiny shrugged, “don’t make a difference Osber, grounds too frozen. We ain’t doing more, we’ve got our own to care for.”

And that was that.

Her brother, small, delicate, dead and alone, was left in the half-frozen earth, his body an outline in the permafrost.

Tiny’s son had died the next day and Osber hadn’t helped him with the burial. She just watched from her door, her eyes empty of emotion, the rain coming down and washing away all her hatred, her fury, her fear, even her sadness. She just felt nothing now. Garian’s men had taken all the food, and with it her entire life had fallen into the grave.

Tiny’s son was buried even worse than her brother.

He was a big man Tiny, hence the name, a funny name if you told bad jokes. He had sunk his hands into the frost, beat his fists on the cold hard ground and wept as he tried to dig up the dirt but it had done him no good. Osber had only seen him in the tavern, and nowhere else, after that. It was funny, they had no food but the ale wasn’t running out anytime soon. You could drink yourself into the grave if you wanted, it was quicker than starving to death.

Osber was starting to think the worst had already happened, when one day, they arrived in the village.

***

Osber woke with a start.

The sound of hooves, grinding hooves, stomping hooves, hooves pawing at the ground, filled her room. No horses ever came to Chorewell. No wagons or carts could make it through the forest and into the village. But perhaps they weren’t carts or wagons. Perhaps they weren’t traders or travellers, perhaps they were-

“Shit.”

She threw off her covers, feeling the cold wood beneath her toes as she padded to the window and peeked out into the streets. The mist was cut by striking figures in armour, the outlines of horses and banners, spears and marching columns, boots thumping, armour clanking.

Men. Soldiers. Dozens of them, perhaps fifty or sixty in total.

Garian’s men, definitely Garian Sutherland’s men, she thought. They wore that gaudy armour with a silver edge and some had purple cloaks that fluttered in the breeze. One held a banner, the golden harp, burnished and bright like the sun, splashed across a purple field.

The men looked as gaunt and hungry as the villagers, as thin as Tiny, as emaciated as Osber. Some could have been skeletons in dress, their faces skull-like, their eyes glinting madly out of the taught skin.

Are they starving too? She wondered. Are the invaders ridding themselves of food as well as us?

A man dismounted, his tall helm plumed with feathers, his eyes sunken, his grazed hands trembling with hunger.

Osber heard his shaky voice, harsh and grating like gravel underfoot.

“Search.”

It was a single word but it was spoken in such a way which suggested that no more words were needed. It had finality about it, a dread about it.

The men dispersed, treading down alleyways and streets, bringing swords and dark eyes into each home, knocking at every door, barging through the open archways like they owned every house. Two sharp raps came against Osber’s door. She looked out of the window, careful to keep her gaze to remain hidden from the street outside.

There were two men stood at her door. Both tall and thin, both as gaunt as their commander, one itching at a face full of sores, the other hefting his drawn sword restlessly, the blade shining in the mid-morning sun.

What would be the harm in letting them in? Osber thought dryly. What else can they take that The Guardians haven’t already?

The banging noise came for a second time. A fist thudding into wood, the door rattling in its frame, causing the latch to strain at its iron awnings, begging to be free. Her father had spent so long making that door, not just fitting it, but carving the damn thing, sanding the wood, polishing and varnishing every inch.

‘The last bit of the house, the door. The bit that makes a house a home,’ her father had told her. ‘The part that opens into the heart of the family.’

 “Open up!” one of the men rasped. Osber could hear the hunger in his voice, hear a cloying desperation in the back of the soldier’s throat, hear his want for something.

There was a scream from the street along, followed by the sound of smashing crockery, the splintering of wood and deep, humiliating laughter.

Is that my fate? To be carted away by soldiers? To be…theirs? Osber saw a vision of ugly grins and grasping hands, the dark twisted nightmares closing in on her with acts so vile she could barely face them.

“Break it down, I bet there’s some scared bitch hiding behind the door.”

There was a louder bang, one man throwing his weight at the wood, the frame creaking, the latch squeaking in protest. Suddenly Osber was running. She wasn’t going to let them break that door. Wasn’t going to let them destroy the one thing she had left of her father.

She unlatched the bolt and fell back as the soldier threw his weight at the door, slamming it open and falling unceremoniously into the hall, helmet askew, chainmail twisted about his thin frame. The other levelled his sword at Osber, his eyes gleaming out of a face full of sallow skin and hollow cheeks.

“Give me the food bitch,” he spat, speaking as though a fly had gone down his throat and he’d coughed the thing up, wanted rid of it. She looked back at him, almost dumbstruck by the question.

“She hasn’t got much,” the other soldier got to his feet, straightening his helmet and scratching at his sores.

“She’s as thin as us.”

He pulled her close, hands scrabbling at her dress, his scabbed face smelling like stagnant water, acrid breath and the sickly stench of open wounds. Osber shied away, trying to breathe through her mouth, trying to push back against his chainmail. He swatted her hand away and struck her hard against the cheek, drawing blood from her mouth and sending Osber spinning onto the floorboards.

“Where’s the food?” he repeated.

She spat blood, a string of drool coming with it.

“Got none,” she said, the hint of a laugh creeping into her voice despite the pain.

“When you burn the crops and take the cattle and the sheep,” she shrugged and spat again.

“Tends to leave everyone without food.”

The soldier with open sores had a strange look on his face, an almost puzzled expression, like he half agreed with Osber, half respected her for speaking so plainly. But his friend was not so nice.

With a snarl he grabbed her roughly with one hand and, before she knew it, Osber had been dragged over the rough floor, her knees grazing the door frame and sliding onto the burning cold of the frozen ground outside.

“Come here,” he spat, his grabbing hands scratching at her wrist, pulling at her skirt, making her squirm with fear.

“We might as well have fun with her if we can’t eat.”

“You got a husband?” the other one asked.

When she did not answer he gave her another thump in the mouth. This one damn near caved in her back teeth, she could feel a molar pressing against her tongue as she groaned, sagging, the soldier’s rough grasp keeping her upright.

She saw Tiny, in amongst a sorry crowd of villagers who had been dragged into the square.

“No one else with me,” she said thickly, her mouth filling with blood as quickly as she could spit it out.

“Buried my brother last week,” she pointed lamely to the open graves, the half covered divots filled with cold earth and water, mud and ice packed on top.

The soldiers stopped.

She slumped in their arms, dazed, her mouth bloody. They were looking at her with wide eyed amazement, their rough faces suddenly alive, their expressions dumbfounded. Scabby dropped Osber’s arms, letting her slump down unceremoniously in the mud. Then him and his friend had bolted for the graves, scattering soldiers and villagers alike, sending Tiny reeling onto the floor. They were both on their knees before Osber could realise what they were doing and why.

They had their hands in the mud, like she had done, like Tiny had done. They were digging at the clumps of earth, at the slurry, digging like animals, squirrelling away the wrappings on her brother’s corpse and pulling his lifeless, pale form out into the mist.

She screamed, she screamed and tried to pull herself from the ground but all around her the other soldiers had caught on and they too were pulling the small boy apart, sinking teeth into his face, into his arms, into his bony feet, snapping the limps apart like pulling a head from a flower, snatching at his sallow, rotting flesh like dogs stripping bone.

She clutched at her knees, sobbed into her skirt, clutching at herself as Garian’s men descended on her brother’s body, birds feasting on carrion, her carrion, her flesh and blood.

It was like her father had said: ‘You’ll eat anything when you’re hungry.’