Horde (Razorland #3)(47)

We were all riveted, even the bitter, silent men from Winterville. I bet they wished they’d had this secret before Dr. Wilson infected the town and made their families go crazy, so they had to be penned up away from everyone else. But what else would you expect from a fellow who kept a Freak as a pet? Smart as he was, the man wasn’t right.

“About six months ago, the Muties called a meeting. Instead of attacking, they sent one of theirs that could talk.”

A rumble of disbelief echoed through our small group, followed by some creative cursing. I took note of a few. Even Morrow looked skeptical—and he specialized in stories. But I wasn’t so quick to dismiss the claim. I remembered the Freak addressing me in a raspy voice. When the fighting was fiercest outside Salvation’s gates, I’d stabbed a Freak’s slashing hand, and it had pulled back, screaming its pain. Its murky, almost-human eyes had glared at me in shock, I’d thought.

Did you think I’d just let you eat me? I had demanded.

Eat me, it growled back.

I’d dismissed its words as a beast’s trick, an act of mimicry. Now, given what the Otterburn fellow claimed, I wondered if I had been wrong. Maybe that was the start of the monsters’ evolutionary stabilization, as Dr. Wilson put it. I wasn’t altogether sure what that meant, but nothing good for us; that was sure.

“The Mutie spoke to you?” Thornton clarified in a tone usually reserved for fools.

“That’s right. And it offered us a bargain.”

“What kind?” Fade asked.

“We stay inside our town limits. We don’t hunt Muties in the wilderness. And we provide a regular tithe to show our good faith.”

Oh, I had a bad feeling about this. “What do you mean?”

Fade’s hand slipped into mine, whether as a caution or a comfort I didn’t know, but it was both. The counterman narrowed his eyes as if he could feel the weight of my judgment. “It was for the best. And things have been so much easier since the deal was struck.”

“Just finish your story,” Morrow said. “So I can tell mine.”

“The tithe is simple. We offer food to the Muties and leave it in a certain spot, once a month.”

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared. In the enclave, we gave them our dead to appease them, so they took less interest in trying to breach our barricades. A similar practice in Otterburn would be smart and practical, though I imagined most Topsiders would find the idea repugnant. As I glanced around, the rest of my men looked quietly horrified, so I didn’t volunteer that information.

“Exactly what’re we talking about, here?” Tully spoke for the first time.

The man cleared his throat. “Anybody who dies naturally, they receive the bodies.”

“And if there are no deaths?” I asked.

Things were better on the surface, so I imagined that in good times, people probably didn’t pass on that often. And the Freaks wouldn’t understand failure to honor the agreed-upon terms. I was shocked to hear they had proposed any kind of deal at all, instead of mindlessly attacking. That development was … beyond worrisome.

The lout hunched his shoulders. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said, low. “But to pay the tithe, we draw lots. And the loser goes out to the meeting place.”

“That sounds an awful lot like human sacrifice,” Spence snapped.

The man flattened big hands on the counter, both angry and defensive. “We don’t kill anybody.”

Thornton leaned in. “The Muties do that for you. How long do you reckon you can maintain your population, paying in that coin?”

“It’s not a permanent solution, and you don’t understand how frightened everybody was after the attacks accelerated, how tired we were of hiding. You never knew when the Muties would strike or who would get to shelter. At least this way the deaths are predictable and you get a chance to say good-bye.”


It was horrible, but true. That didn’t mean I could see myself accepting such a deal.

The counterman went on, “And that’s why I won’t let you speak your piece in here. Nobody wants to anger the Muties by encouraging folk who mean to kill them.”

“Then I’ll honor my part of the bargain,” Morrow said. “If you’ll keep yours.”

“Certainly,” the man replied.

He was obviously relieved as we put a couple of tables together, then Morrow leapt up on one. At first the Otterburn men yelled at him to get down, stop making a clown of himself, but he played a few bars on his pipe, and they took an interest. The tale that followed was wild and improbable—about a boy wizard who lived in a cupboard, then a giant came to fetch him to a magical school, thus commencing a bunch of adventures. We were all hanging on Morrow’s words when he wrapped up:

“And that’s the end … for now.”

To my astonishment, I had cold soup and a lukewarm drink before me. If I had anything of value, I’d pay him to keep talking. Sadly I didn’t and Morrow must be parched. I ate my meal quickly, sad for the folks of Otterburn and sorry for myself. There were no warriors here, so I’d failed on our first leg of the journey. I couldn’t defeat the horde without more men.

Then I put such self-pity aside because I did have a small troop and I had to provide for them. So I signaled the counterman and asked him, “Sir, if I promise to be gone in the morning, would you consent to let us bunk on the floor by the fire? It would be nice to pass the night under a warm roof before we go back into the wild.”