The Vorrh

shoved in the streets outside. The noise was colossal. Hurdy-gurdies and pipers roamed the streets, confusing the vast steam organ that played from the heart of the market square. There were fireworks and pistol shots, trumpets and singing, screaming and laughter.
    Suddenly, the gate was open and they were gone. Mutter locked it hard behind them and spat on to the wet cobblestones.
    * * *

    My gentle years are over. A long-forgotten hunger has been rekindled by my unexpected adventure, and I feel its energy course hungrily through my body. The murderer across the water has awoken a coiled reaction – I can taste his blood, even at this distance. Why anyone would find cause to shoot at me remains a mystery. My dealings with other humans are decades past, and all before that is erased. Only my wife keeps the memories in her flesh and moisture, both of which live in my bow. We will find the assassin and dig the answers out of him; my foes in this unfamiliar and treacherous world will not remain hidden.
    I will rest, and make an evening camp. In the coming morning, I will make new arrows, and use them to sign my passage and sweep all enemies aside. The man in the water will be in no hurry to meet me again, and the next time he does, the first shot will be mine.
    * * *

    The cleric knew he would not be alone. He slowly prepared himself behind the kitchen lean-to, at the back of the inn, deep in the animal shadow of its primitive architecture. He moved his large hands around his cane, and adjusted his hat and the side panels of his green-glass spectacles.
    Walking around to the entrance, he stiffly made his way to the bar, seemingly without registering the other occupants and their irritation at his presence. He hissed the name of a drink in a foreign accent, displacing himself even further from the company’s sympathy. His back was insultingly square against the faces of the seated clientele; his eyes could not be seen, but they picked every detail out of the mirror. All movement was measured and assessed in its cracked, murky glass.
    The twins exchanged a twisted look and approached him, breaking a shaft of light at the back of the room as they sauntered towards him, grinning. He stood three heads taller than they, implacable and deadly calm. The twin with the earring was rehearsing a suitably caustic and insulting address, when the cleric’s left hand crawled around from the side of his body to the small of his black back and stopped suddenly, one outstretched finger pointing menacingly towards them, statue-like in accusation. The pair froze, confused by this unpredictable and peculiar gesture. The other twin started to laugh on the strange side of his previous grin. His brother’s mouth was a wobbling slit of anger.
    ‘Who you pointing at, you stick-legged cunt?’ he said as he approached the hand. ‘We’ll cut your lungs out, yoooo!’
    The rest of the wide body slowly turned to confront him, and he swallowed his voice in a gulp. Both hands were now pointing, a digit at each twin, the cane balanced across the stranger’s wrists like a conjuror’s wand. The face above the hands was long, broad, white and totally unnatural, a stretched, boiled egg, with tiny eyes and a flattened, broken nose. It looked unfinished and malleable, as if its shortsighted sculptor had retired midway through its creation. The twins had met and murdered all manner of men and women, but they had never come across an apparition like this before, never stood in the presence of indomitable wrongness.
    With a voice like a paper cut, the cleric hissed, ‘Divided one, you have died!’ He drew the blade slowly from the cane with great deliberation, in the manner of a salesman handling a stock of priceless antiquities. As he brought it to a stop at eye-level, the room was reflected in its polished shine. Words, engraved along its length, shimmered in the light for all to see.
    It was impossible to tell the span of time which had passed since the cleric’s utterance: it might have been a fraction of a second, or a full day. The ear-ringed twin jolted from his torpor, assessed the distance of the blade, and pulled a curved dagger from his coat. His trajectory was certain to maim the stranger before he could turn his blade into a defensive or aggressive posture, and he charged, eyes locked on one of the blade’s shining words: ‘TRUTH’. With all his strength, he lunged onto the blade which clicked out of the wooden cane’s other end and