Excerpt

[author's note: this is an excerpt from a short story I started writing for no particular reason, which we'll call "spiders" - you'll notice the touches of vampiric folklore here but it was more of a Dungeons & Dragons type thing, involving... well, spiders, in what way you may yet find out. Stay tuned.]

"Evil work this is," Willem muttered, signing himself. His words made and destroyed shapes, turning to snow in the cold and floating around his head. "All this to say I've a mind-"

"Have a bloody mind all you like, Will, what little mind you do have, that is-" Corrum barked, pulling meaty weather-worked fingers through the thick mess of his beard, which was rusted brown but going iron grey all over these days. "What choice we 'ave, like we 'ave choices and ever did, you bloody macker." His blood was pounding inside the walls of his skull and the bitter cold was gnashing the tip of his nose and squeezing tears out his eyes and the bones in his hands ached with it, with what little feeling he had left in them anyway. And Will wouldn't shut his fucking gob, his flapping, stupid gob and the shovel kept bouncing off the frozen dirt, chipping a handful of turf with every thrust and his arms felt like lead -

"A necessary evil's still an evil s'all I'm saying, Corrum, what part of this 'ere bussiness doesn't cast a shadow on your bones is all I'm askin-" And at that Corrum stood up straight (gods, but his lower back was so tired from the digging it felt all his bones had smelted together into a lumpy mess) and blew out his lips and nose and wreathed himself with his white breath and eyed the gangly, gaunt-fleshed man with something cousin to hate. Watery-eyed big-mouthed fuck. He pulled back the heavy wool hood from his head and let his hair out (as big a mess as his beard), and stepped up from the hole.

"Tha's it, Will, you fucking dig 'afore I put you in the hole." And he threw the shovel (not amicably) so Will's mitted hands caught before it smacked him square in the face. He pouted, and Corrum thought he looked stupid when he did (but at the moment there was nothing Will could do that wouldn't of made him look stupid) but the lad kept on and the thunk of the iron fetching into the cold earth drifted up and was lost in the ageless boom of the wind.

The older digger sat down on a stump and using his cloak thrown over his head as a kind of shield he packed and worked his tobacco out and rolled it, and made his fire and lit up and sat back and let it ease out the knots and twists of his thoughts. The sky was a mirthless grey, coloured only by the hard stratii of passing clouds. It wasn't snowing, not in the proper sense of the word, not really - the flakes were like indifferent chips of ice, never landing, only rising and settling and floating about and getting in your eyes. And it was a hard kind of cold that came out of it, the kind that let you know on unpleasant terms that winter was here and soon the real trouble would begin. Corrum kicked his boots against the ground to flush his blood into motion, worked his hands to massage out the bite of numbness, and watched Will dig. He exhaled his anger with the smoke with every heartbeat until it had deflated, and then the dread set in. Every thunk of the shovel seemed to punctuate it, even as light began to flush out of the sky and shades of purple began to saturate everything to a sombre greyness.

He turned his head east, to the city walls. it would be good and dark before they got back now.

He jumped - the snapping of wood struck him and set his gut alight with cold fluttering and his lip trembled until he gnashed it with his teeth. He had squeezed his eyes shut without knowing and opened them to Will climbing out of the hole, flushed and breathing hard and throwing something out with him.

"Thing's gone 'an broke, Corrum. It's all fucken rock and craig down there, spine just shattered - damn it, it's deep enough i'n't it? Tell me it's deep enough-" He went on, as Corrum told his heart to slow its drumming, and got to his feet. The cold seem to suck out whatever fire was left in him and he was shaking, from the cold, mind you.

"Aye, Will, aye - shut up, Will. It's good. It's as good as can get, I imagine. We'll make do."

"And if not?"

Corrum rolled his words around the inside of his mouth for a good bit.

"Well, try and sleep anyway, Will." who laughed out loud, a little higher in pitch than he would've liked. Corrum wrung his hands and stepped over the shrouded figure, reaching down to grasp at one end -

"C-Corrum..." It was the edge to the voice that stopped him cold, the abbandonment in it, the restraint. And he sighed besides himself. Will was right, he'd almost forgotten (but that's a lie, isn't it? You never forgot, but you certainly were hoping Will had, then maybe, just maybe) but he hadn't so he got up again and walked over to the axe. Will whined a little when he took it in his hand. "Corrum, by all the Words do we 'ave to?" The old digger straightened his back. Yes, let him think you have more iron in you than he, let him remember it this way.

"You saw the wounds, Will. And where they found her." His tone was grim and authorative. He would never have thought it, but then the digger spoke like a king. "Think of the last one, the babe - eh? - they couldn't do it, and by God remember what happened? Remember the nights, until they found... Yes, Will, evil work it is." And his shadow fell over the woman's shroud. "And sometimes evil is what must be done." Will turned away. He didn't know whether to damn him for that, but he let it go, he was thinkin too hard - squeezing the handle too hard with his hands - tasting his spit. Later on, he would be thankful. It took eight swings, eight even for a man of his size, and when he twisted the head around he was glad Will never saw the way his hands shook.

They buried her like that, the snow falling on their shoulders, and even in silence their breath hung about them as light went out of the day into night. The shovel was broken, they did what they could with the spade and their hands and when they were done they stamped the earth - which seemed so much less than they'd removed - down until the cold had but sucked all the breath from their lungs. There was no moon, and God say it was a dark night.

-fin-