Carpe Jugulum

be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either…
    Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies. There was a pear-shaped rock beside it.
    Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn’t want to obey.
    “Dinna scanna’ whista,” said the rock.
    It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men really looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he’d had when he was a child.
    “The Kelda says,” said a cracked voice by his ear, “that ye…must get…ready.”
    Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks.
    “Ready? For what?”
    “Good.” The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. “Craik’n shaden ach, Feegle!”
    The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical.
    A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him.
    “Er…I say…” Verence murmured.
    The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames.
    “Yin!” said the old pixie.
    “I say…that’s aimed right at my…”
    “Yin!” shouted the Nac mac Feegle.
    “…ton!”
    “Ton!”
    “Um, it’s, er, right…”
    “Tetra!”
    The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked.
    When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear.
    The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again.
    “Now ye must walk awa’. Noo!”
    The Feegle let Verence go. He took a few tottering steps and collapsed on the floor, but the pixies weren’t watching him.
    He looked up.
    His shadow twisted on the wall where it had been pinned. It writhed for a moment, trying to clutch at the arrow with insubstantial hands, and then faded.
    Verence raised his hand. There seemed to be a shadow there, too, but at least this one looked as if it was the regular kind.
    The old pixie hobbled over to him.
    “All fine now,” he said.
    “You shot my shadow?” said Verence.
    “Aye, ye could call it a shade,” said the pixie. “It’s the ’fluence they put on ye. But ye’ll be up and aboot in no time.”
    “A boot?”
    “Aboot the place,” said the pixie evenly. “All hail, your kingy. I’m Big Aggie’s Man. Ye’d call me the prime minister, I’m hazardin’. Will ye no’ have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waitin’?”
    Verence rubbed his face. He did feel better already. The fog was drifting away.
    “How can I ever repay you?” he said.
    The pixie’s eyes gleamed happily.
    “Oh, there’s a wee bitty thing the carlin’ Ogg said you could be givin’ us, hardly important at all,” he said.
    “Anything,” said Verence.
    A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a quill pen.
    “It’s called a signature,” he said, as Verence stared at the tiny handwriting. “An’ make sure ye initial all the sub-clauses and codicils. We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk,” he added, “but we write verra comp-lic-ated documents.”

Mightily Oats blinked at Granny over the top of his praying hands. She saw his gaze slide sideways to the ax, and then back to her.
    “You wouldn’t reach it in time,” said Granny, without moving. “Should’ve got hold of it already if you were goin’ to use it. Prayer’s all very well. I can see where it can help you get your mind right. But an ax is an ax no matter what you believes.”
    Oats relaxed a little. He’d expected a leap for the throat.
    “If Hodgesaargh’s made any tea, I’m parched,”