Toll the Hounds

Jula finally sighed, announcing his defeat, and looked over at Amby. ‘I can’t be-lieve I saved you.’

‘I can’t neither. I wouldn’t of.’

‘That’s why I can’t believe that’s what I did. But then she’s seen how brave I am, how generous and selfless. She’s seen I’m better because she knows you wouldn’t have done it.’

‘Maybe I would’ve, and maybe she knows that, Jula. Besides, one of them sick smelly ones was trying to open the doors, and if it wasn’t for me he’d of got in and that’s what she really saw.’

‘You didn’t scrape that one off on purpose.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because you butted him with your face, Amby.’

Amby tested his nose again and winced, and then he sneered. ‘She saw what she saw, and what she saw wasn’t you.’

‘She saw my hands, reaching down to drag you back up. She saw that.’

‘She didn’t. I made sure by covering them with, er, with my shirt.’

‘You lie.’

‘You lie.’

‘No, you.’

‘You!’

You can say what you like , Amby, whatever you like. It was me saving you,’

‘Pulling off my moccasin, you mean,’

‘That was an accident .’

‘Yeah , then where is it?’

Fell off the side.’

‘No it didn’t. I checked your bag, Jula. You wasn’t trying to save me at all , you was stealing my moccasin because it’s your favourite moccasin. I want it back.’

‘It’s against the law to look in someone else’s bag.’

‘Swamp law. Does this look like a swamp?’

‘That doesn’t matter. You broke the law. Anyway, what you found was my spare moccasin.’

‘Your one spare moccasin?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then why was it full of my love notes?’

‘What love notes?’

‘The ones me and her been writing back and forth. The ones I hid in my moccasin . Those ones, Jula.’

‘What’s obvious now is just how many times you been breaking the law. Be-cause you been hiding your love notes-which you write to yourself and nobody else-you been hiding them in my spare moccasin!’

‘Not that you’d ever look.’

‘But I might, if I knew about it.’

‘You didn’t though, did you? Besides, you don’t have a spare moccasin, because 1 stole it.’

‘And that’s why I stole it back!’

‘You can’t steal back what you didn’t know was stolen in the first place. That’s just stealing. And stealing’s against the law.’.

‘Swamp law.’

‘Your bag is a swamp.’

‘Hahahahaha-’

And Amby grinned at his own joke, and then he too laughed. ‘Hahahahaha-’

Faint tugged the stopper free and took a swig, then handed the skin to Sweetest Sufferance. ‘Listen to those idiots,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to,’ Sweetest Sufferance replied. And then she shivered. ‘That was the first time, you know, them trying to get in my trousers like that.’

‘Cursed with rigor mortis, maybe.’

She snorted. ‘You kidding me? Whatever they had down there wasn’t even real, like maybe sticks tied on or something.’ She drank down some wine, then sighed and looked round. ‘Pretty.’

‘Our tiny piece of paradise.’

‘We can watch the sun come up, at least. That will be nice.’ She was quiet for a moment, before resuming, ‘When Reccanto showed up, I thought he was helping. But now I think he was just using the situation to get a few handfuls of his own.’

‘Are you surprised, Sweetie? He’s a man.’

‘With had eyes.’

‘Had eyes and bad hands.’

‘1 might have to murder him.’

‘Hold on,’ said Faint, taking the skin back. ‘He did save you, cutting off arms and hands-’

‘Eliminating the competition.’

‘Defending your honour, Sweetie.’

‘If you say so.’

Faint replaced the stopper. ‘Gods below, Sweetie, what do you think we ran into back there?’

Sweetest Sufferance pursed her plump lips, long-lashed lids settling down over her eyes. ‘Back in One Eye Cat, when I was a child, I was taken to a Dawn of Flies-you know, those ceremonies from the Temple of Hood, when all the priests paint themselves in honey-’