The Last Reckoning. Paul Durham

      

      RYE SAT ON the grass outside the old bog hopper’s shack as the sun began to dip low in the sky. She heard the door creak over her shoulder, and Harmless hobbled outside to join her. He let out a low whistle as he carefully eased himself down on to the ground beside her.

      “I may need to find a walking stick like yours until I get my legs back under me,” he said with a tight-lipped grin, eyeing the cudgel across her back.

      Rye returned a smile and gazed at the clouds overhead, tinted purple in the late afternoon light.

      “I wasn’t acting, you know,” she said.

      “Come again?” Harmless asked.

      “At Miser’s End,” she said, turning to him. “I wasn’t acting. I was sad. Seeing that headstone there – just waiting for you.” Rye clenched her jaw in silence for a moment. “When Leatherleaf pulled you from the bogs, I was sure it was too late.”

      Harmless nodded grimly. “After all these years of close shaves and near misses, I thought it was finally my turn to hop the fence.”

      “But you lasted for so long under there. You never gave up.”

      “Yes, well, that’s not entirely true,” Harmless said with a sigh. “In fact, in the darkness, with the pressure of the bogs closing around me, you might say that I accepted my situation. I wasn’t waiting for some miraculous rescue – the unlikely arrival of you and your red-bearded friend was entirely unexpected. The reason I held on was so I might savour my fondest memories for as long as possible.” His grey eyes met her own, and he placed his palm on her cheek. “I clung to my visions of your mother … your sister … and of you. For even in the most hopeless depths, your faces make me smile. And whenever my time is finally up, I plan to go with a smile on my face.” He flashed her a smirk. “Not that I’m planning on going anywhere soon.”

      But Rye didn’t find his words to be particularly reassuring. “What was it like – being buried under there?” she asked. She pinched her eyes tight and shook her head. “Sometimes I shut my eyes and try to imagine how awful it must have been.”

      “Don’t,” Harmless said firmly, but kindly. “It’s not something you’ll ever have to discover.”

      Rye reopened her eyes. “Slinister called it the Descent,” she said, remembering his ominous words. “Is that the punishment for violating the Luck Uglies’ code?”

      Harmless nodded. “It’s a cruel fate, but an effective deterrent.”

      “Have you ever sent someone to the Descent?” Rye asked hesitantly, then wished she hadn’t.

      Harmless just cocked his head towards her sadly, then narrowed his eyes and stared out at the bogs in the distance. Rye supposed that was answer enough.

      “Have you seen Leatherleaf in recent days?” Harmless asked, studying the shadows falling across the mire. “Of everyone who has ever done me a favour, he is the most unexpected of all.”

      Rye shook her head. “I think Shady chased him off. Maybe for good this time. I haven’t seen either of them since Leatherleaf burrowed in after you.”

      Rye reached into her pocket and retrieved Harmless’s broken necklace.

      “He gave me this,” she said, and handed Harmless the loose runestones and torn leather band. “I didn’t know how he came by it, but I feared the worst. It seems our own chokers no longer glow either,” she added, fingering the band round her neck.

      Harmless examined the stones in his hand. For the first time, Rye noticed how closely the circular pattern tattooed on his palm matched the runes on the stones.

      “This was torn from my throat when I lost my struggle with several Fork-Tongued Charmers,” Harmless said. “Leatherleaf must have found it. I sensed that a Bog Noblin was following me in recent weeks. I had assumed it was another one of the Dreadwater, but was puzzled that it didn’t attack.”

      Harmless furrowed his brow. “The destruction of my choker explains why yours no longer glows. But that matters little now.” Rye was stunned to see him cock his arm and cast the handful of loose stones out into the brush. “Whatever power the runestones once had to protect has faded anyway.”

      Rye shook her head quizzically. Harmless spoke slowly while his eyes stared ahead, as if observing a scene far in the distance.

      “Many years ago, when the Luck Uglies drove the Bog Noblins from the Shale, I led that charge. I was merciless. I unleashed the Gloaming Beasts on them – Shady and others – and when they fled and hid, disappearing in the bogs, I kept hunting. I surprised them while they were helpless and hibernating for winter. I dug them from their burrows while they slept, dragging them out one by one.”

      Harmless paused. He opened one fist, then the other weakened one.

      “They had a name for me. The Painsmith – the greatest monster their kind had ever known.” Harmless stared down at the faded pattern of runes etched into his palms. “The ink that stains these hands was spilled from the Bog Noblins themselves.”

      Harmless’s matter-of-fact tone could not hide a hint of remorse.

      “I have many regrets,” he added finally. “But I’ve long since learned that regret is an emotion with few uses.”

      Rye blinked with a sudden realisation. She’d often puzzled over how the extinct Bog Noblins could have returned, but sometimes the right answer was also the simplest one.

      “You didn’t honour your bargain with the House of Longchance,” she whispered aloud. “You never finished the job. That’s why the Bog Noblins have come back.”

      Harmless looked up from his hands.

      “At the very end, when their numbers had been decimated and I could have made the Bog Noblins no more than fossils in a history book, I hesitated.”