I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the thinking part of the bandit until it rang against his bottom jaw. The phantom sword stuck and when he fell backward, I followed. I was mildly embarrassed again to find I could not find the strength to stand.
          I heard the guardsmen surround me…I heard the woman whimpering…I smelled her perfume, a scent of vanilla and lace…I felt the pain get very far away, as if racing off on a fast horse…I heard a clear voice that my mind couldn’t be bothered to translate into words…I felt my breath leaving me, bubbling up from within to scrape past the bile in my throat.
          “I’m not dead.” I said. Then I passed beyond pain.
          The Fog was still with me, though. A great bear of a man reached out of it and grabbed a younger me, shaking him like a dog with a rat. “ ‘eros die, boy! You’ve got ta be betta!”
          Then even that was swept away by the sound of beating wings.
     

 
    3   
     
    Superstitions
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    I awoke, again.
          I should have been grateful, really, but I was still “The Walking Bruise”, my head felt as if it had been split open several times by a particularly agitated woodcutter, my back ached between the shoulders as if someone had placed a live coal there, and finally there was a little ball of fangs and claws tearing at my insides that virtually guaranteed that I was going to die.
          So, no, I was not that grateful.
          In fact it would have been much more kind should I not have opened my eyes ever again. Belly wounds do that to a man. The stomach fluids begin seeping into less resilient organs and dissolve them into pudding and it is neither a quick, nor painless death. Lastly, no chiurgeon in the world can save you.
          I felt an intense desire to open my eyes and savor my last few hours of life, though something in the Fog told me to wait. People will speak the truth when they think you can’t hear. Then something alive shifted of my chest and my eyes clicked open like a pair of shutters.
          He was large and black; his glossy wings folded behind him like a gentleman’s cloak. His head turned to spear me with one, bottomless ebony eye. He was a raven.
          I heard a cat voice his distress. With a titanic act of will I shifted my head—bringing new heights to the ringing inside my skull—and saw a gray cat with a golden collar cowering in the corner. He watched the raven with eyes that were wide, a tail flared to the width of his own body curled in front like a hedgerow. His head twitched left and right, fruitlessly seeking a more secure hiding place, but always returned to watch the black bird perched on my chest.
          Peasants believe that death itself watches the world though his princes, the ravens. He tallies all the good and evils of life and renders judgment in the end. Then the birds come and eat the sins left behind in the body. If there is only corruption in a man, the ravens will devour him all. Of course the legends are silent on how he favors rooks or crows. Perhaps they are simply vassals, or even milkmaids. Or perhaps it is just a worthless superstition of the gullible created to explain why it’s useless to throw rocks at carrion birds. I moved my hand up weakly to shoo the bird away.
          Death’s Messenger shifted to look at me with his left eye, freezing me in mid motion. True and honest fear reached inside of me with calm, marble hands, and plucked from me my pride and disbelief. In its depthless black orb I saw myself captured, twisted and distorted by the curvature of the reflection. Or maybe it was myself that was twisted. I saw him reflected in my eyes, and myself reflected in his, and him reflected in mine, an infinite number of bent simulacrums spiraling into infinity. That is when the tent flap opened.
          I had not mentioned the tent?
          Well if you had been grievously wounded, then woken with the living symbol of Death