Bryn finally stood and backed away and the battered corpse drifted away. This time it didn’t get up again. Bryn hurled the gore-smeared rock after the floating body.

  Bryn dropped down on the river bank beside Gosling, exhausted. “It’s dead,” he gasped.

  “Only another hundred-and-twenty to go,” Gosling said, “give or take.”

  Bryn scowled at him.

  “At least you’ve washed that dead skin off your shirt,” Gosling said brightly.

  “Killing them is harder than it looks,” Bryn said.

  “At the rate of one a day, we’ll be here for another four or five months,” Gosling said. Seeing the expression on Bryn’s face, he was glad that the rock was gone from his hand.

  “We could try burying them,” Bryn said.

  “Do you really want to dig that many graves?” Gosling asked. “Or even one hole big enough for all of them?”

  “I was thinking of something ready-made – a pit or a mine shaft. Or perhaps a well.”

  “There’s no well, the village’s water comes from the river,” Gosling said, “and I don’t think there’s anything here to mine.”

  “Fire?” Bryn asked.

  “No thanks, I’m warm enough,” Gosling said. “Don’t scowl like that – if the wind changes, you’ll stop like it. Or so my old mum used to say. I never saw it happen to anyone – but why take the risk. And don’t grind your teeth.”

  “We could burn the dead villagers,” Bryn said, biting off each word.

  “If you want to dry your clothes, it would be easier to collect some wood,” Gosling said.

  “I want to get rid of them!”

  “Your clothes?”

  “The villagers!”

  “So do I. There’s no need to shout. We just need a way to get rid of more than one at a time.”

  “Fire!” Bryn said.

  “That’s not a bad idea. But ideally, you’d want to douse them in something that burns. Oil, say, or brandy – though it would be a waste of good brandy.”

  “They only had beer at the tavern,” Bryn said, thinking a mug of ale would go down nicely.

  “I didn’t see any barrels of oil either,” Gosling said, “and there probably isn’t enough lard around to smear them all in that. But you can’t just pile tinder and sticks around them and hope they’ll stand still long enough to burn to death.”

  “If there was a big old hay barn, we could herd them in there, lock the door and set fire to the place,” Bryn said.

  “If you’re going to wish for something, why not wish for a dragon to swoop down and burn them?” Gosling said.

  “I’ve had enough of dragons,” Bryn said. “We would push them off a cliff.”

  “We’d have to get them all up there first.”

  “They’d follow us up there.”

  “We’d have to get ourselves up there,” Gosling said. “And there’s always the risk that one of them could surprise us and push us off. Or pull us down with them.”

  “I’m not keen on falling,” Bryn said. “We could crush them will a falling tree. I have my axe.”

  “How would you get them to line up where the tree was going to fall?”

  Bryn sighed. “You think of something then.”

  “I’ve thought of something,” Gosling said, “but I don’t like it.”

  “How many of them would it kill?”

  “All of them.”

  “Then why don’t you like it?”

  “Because it could kill us too,” Gosling said.

  §

  “It won’t burn,” Bryn said, “it’s built of stone.”

  “We don’t need it to burn,” Gosling said.

  They were looking up at the windmill on the hill.

  “I understand the first part,” Bryn said. “I attract their attention, get them to come after me – then lead them up to the windmill and inside. Then what?”

  “I barricade the door to trap them.”

  “Won’t I be trapped in there with them?” Bryn asked.

  “Only briefly,” Gosling assured him. “You’ll climb out of the window on the other side and down a knotted rope.”

  “All right, once we’ve got them trapped inside, what do we do then?”

  “That’s the bit I don’t like,” Gosling said. The little assassin explained the rest of his plan. “You’re frowning,” he said after he’d finished. “Don’t you like it either?”

  “There are two things I don’t like about this plan,” Bryn said.

  “Only two?”

  “First, I don’t understand it,” Bryn said, “and second, it relies on you shooting an arrow through that tiny window up there on the windmill.”

  “I’ll be closer than this,” Gosling said. “And I’ll be wearing my eyeglasses.”

  “Why don’t I shoot the arrow and you get the dead people to chase you up into the windmill?” Bryn said.

  “They might catch me,” Gosling said.

  “They might catch me,” Bryn said.

  “I’m less worried about that.”

  “I want to see you do it first,” Bryn said.

  “Get caught?”

  “Fire the arrow.”

  “We’ll have to open the window first,” Gosling said.

  “Come on then,” Bryn said and set off towards the door of the windmill. He stopped and turned when he realised that Gosling wasn’t following. “What’s wrong? Your face is all pale.”

  “It’s that bath you made me have.” Gosling was standing by the pile of items they had brought up from the village and staring up at the windmill.

  “Aren’t we going inside?” Bryn asked.

  “I’m working up to it,” Gosling said, his voice doom-laden. “You need to take the rope.”

  Bryn walked back and began rummaging in the pile – he held up the knotted rope.

  Gosling nodded approval. “Bring that and bring this.” He handed a broom to Bryn.

  Bryn looked at the straw bristles and frowned. “We’re going to clean the windmill before we destroy it?”

  Gosling shook his head. “We’re just going to rearrange the dust.” A wistful look crossed his face. “That’s what my old mum used to call it. I’m just rearranging the dust, my little goose. That’s what she used to call me, little goose, on account of my long slender neck.” He pulled on his collar and stretched a neck of average proportion.

  Bryn was looking up at the windmill. “Were you still talking?” he asked, turning back to his companion.

  Gosling scowled. “Come on.” He set off up towards the windmill. “And leave your axe outside the door.”

  §

  The ceiling was so low that Bryn had to duck even when he was through the door. “They make these things for people your size,” he said. Gosling ignored him.

  Gosling had reset the brake and the sails were still again but the windmill was not silent. There was a creaking and groaning of wood, something like the sound of a ship. Or like a great beast straining to break free from its bonds.

  Bryn looked around the ground floor room, confused. He had expected to see something more than this. Sacks of flour were piled against the wall on one side of the circular room and there was a sort of wooden spout sticking down through the ceiling. He guessed that you held an empty sack under the spout so that it could be filled with flour – but he could see no evidence of how the flour was produced. “Is the wheat ground by magical forces?” he asked.

  Gosling shook his head. “It is done on the floor above. Big stone wheels grind it.”

  Bryn looked up doubtfully. “Can I see?”

  “I suppose we have to go up there,” Gosling said. He still seemed reluctant. “You will make your escape from the floor above. With any luck. Take the rope with you.”

  Bryn moved towards the narrow ladder-like staircase. Gosling hung back. “I’ll follow you in a minute,” he said.

  “This the stone floor,” Gosling said, coming up behind his companion.

  Bryn looked down at the wooden planks under his feet. “But...”

  “It is called the stone floor because this is where the two stones that grind the flour lie,” Gosling said quickly. He pointed towards a piece of the mill’s mechanism that was surrounded by a casing that seemed to have been made from staves like a barrel. “Look in there and you can see the gritstone wheels.”

  Bryn peered into the heart of the contraption.

  “Grain comes from the floor above,” Gosling said, “down through the spout into the hopper. Then it is fed slowly into the hole in the centre of the stone. The rotating stone grinds it.” He held his hands out horizontally and pressed his palms together, making a circular motion with the top one, mimicking the runner rotating over the bed stone. “The flour is forced outwards and ends up going down the spout we saw downstairs.”

  Bryn looked downwards then at the millstones and then up at the ceiling. “The grain is taken all the way up there?” he asked. “The miller has to carry each sack up two flights of stairs?” Bryn, like his father before him, shunned hard labour whenever he could.

  “He doesn’t carry the sacks,” Gosling said, “the windmill takes them up for him.”

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” Bryn protested.

  “You are an idiot,” Gosling said. “But I’m not lying to you. When the windmill is turning, you attach sacks of grain to this chain – it goes down through the trapdoor to the floor below. Throw a lever and the sack is hoisted up through that trap door in the floor and then that one in the ceiling and ends up on the floor above. The bin floor.”

  Bryn followed the path of the chain, seeing how it passed through a hole in the middle of the two sets of trap doors. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

  Gosling looked away. “I told you. I had a – er – friend who worked in a mill when I was a boy.”

  “This was before you were a cabin boy on a pirate ship?” Bryn asked.

  “Immediately before,” Gosling said. “And it wasn’t a pirate ship – we were privateers.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Privateers don’t get hanged if they’re caught. Open that window and then find something to tie the rope to. That’s your escape route.”

  Bryn pulled the little window open. Gosling wondered for a moment if the big man would manage to get his shoulders through the narrow opening, but Bryn managed it and leaned out.

  “You can see the whole village from up here,” Bryn said.

  “Anything happening down there?”

  “I can see two girls kissing. No, wait, they’re trying to eat each other’s faces.”

  “Get back in here and tie the rope,” Gosling said.

  Bryn drew himself back inside, banging his head on the stone lintel. He reached up and tied the rope to one of the ceiling beams, pulling on it to test if it would support his weight. Then he threw the other end of the knotted rope out of the window.

  “As soon as all the villagers are in here, climb out of the window and run away as fast as you can. I have no idea how high it will go or how far it will spread.

  “The fire?”

  “The windmill.”

  “What happens if one of them climbs down after me?” Bryn asked. “Or jumps?”

  “We’ll pick off the stragglers afterwards,” Gosling said, “there shouldn’t be many.”

  Bryn dusted off his hands. “What now?”

  Gosling slowly looked towards the ceiling, not moving his head. “We go up there?”

  “There’s another floor?”

  Gosling nodded. “The dust floor.”

  “Why is it called the dust floor?” Bryn asked.

  “Guess.”

  The diameter of each floor decreased as you climbed the tapering tower of the windmill. The top floor, beneath the dome of the cap, was the smallest space of all. And there was even less headroom due to the stout beams and braces that supported the cap. In the middle was the stout oak main spindle that went through the bin floor and on down into the stone floor where it gave power to the spindle that turned the runner stone. Here there was a massive toothed wheel fastened around the main spindle and at right angles to it was another toothed wheel that was connected to a shaft that went out through the wall to the hub that held the four giant sails. There was also a smaller set of wheels and a shaft that seemed to control the sack hoist.

  “I feel as though I am standing inside a giant clock,” Bryn said.

  “It’s the opposite of a clock,” Gosling said, “here the hands drive the mechanism.”

  Bryn frowned but decided against querying this. To him, the fact that an invisible wind could turn anything of this size and weight and then rotate that massive stone below was as good as magic. “It’s not that dusty up here,” he said, viewing the surroundings with the eyes of a bachelor.

  “It’s meant to stop the dust from the mechanism falling to the floor below,” Gosling said. “Open that window by your ear. That’s my target.”

  Bryn tried to open the tiny square window but it had obviously remained shut for many years. He pushed against it – then harder, until he heard a cracking sound from the glass and eased off. “It’s stuck,” he said.

  “It opens inwards,” Gosling said.

  “So it does,” Bryn said. “You’ll never fit through there.” The window opening was less than a foot square.

  “I don’t need to,” Gosling said. “I’m going to fire an arrow through it. From outside.”

  Bryn looked from Gosling to the little window and back. “Are those eyeglasses really as good as you think they are?”

  “I will prove it to you,” Gosling said.

  Part V

  “That was better than I expected,” Bryn said.

  “It was?”

  Gosling had fired six arrows up at the window. The first had bounced off the stone wall and landed in the grass. Five of them were embedded in the wooden frame around the little window. None of them had gone in through it.

  “I could probably stand a bit closer,” Gosling said. He didn’t sound very keen.

  “We’ll get you more arrows,” Bryn said, “a dozen of them. One of them is bound to go through the open window.”

  “Of course it is,” Gosling said flatly.

  “What do we do next?” Bryn asked.

  “We need to get some sacks of flour up onto the other floors,” Gosling said. “Two on the top and three on the floor below.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the plan.”

  “Can we use the sack hoist?” Bryn asked.

  “No,” Gosling said quickly. “I’m not starting this thing going again just because you’re too lazy to lug a few sacks upstairs.”

  “You’re afraid of it, aren’t you?” Bryn said.

  “You would be too if you’d nearly died in one.”

  “Are you sure it will catch light?” Bryn asked.

  “I think you’ll be surprised how well it goes up.”

  “I still don’t understand the plan.”

  “That’s why you’re the apprentice and I’m the master.”

  Bryn took the sacks of flour upstairs two at a time and would have had the job done in half the time if he hadn’t kept banging his head on the oak beams. Gosling sat on the pile of sacks on the ground floor, shaking his head and waiting.

  Bryn slid down the handrail back to ground level. “Why don’t we just drop the villagers into that hopper and let the windmill grind them up?” he asked.

  “Those millstones are for dry stuff,” Gosling said. “Try and grind meaty bloody things and you’d soon gum up the works.”

  Bryn picked up one of the brooms and began sweeping the floor. He pushed the flour dust and chaff into a little pile and then looked around him. Gosling watched him open-mouthed. 

  “What are you doing?” Gosling asked. He picked up the other broom.

  “Looking for a dustpan.”

  Gosling’s brush shot out, knocking Bryn’s neat mound of dust up into the air.

  “What did you do that for?” Bryn asked.

  Gosling sneezed.

  “Serves you right,” Bryn said. He began sweeping again.

  “Leave that to me,” Gosling said, knocking the broom out of Bryn’s hands. “You go and round them up, lead them up here. I’ll finish the sweeping.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gosling sneezed at him. Bryn took this as a yes and disappeared out of the door. He returned a few moments later.

  “How do I get them to follow me?” he asked.

  “Take your shirt off,” Gosling said.

  “What?”

  “You need to look edible,” Gosling said. “And try this.” He reached down and pulled out the small dagger he kept in his boot.

  “I don’t think that will be much good against them,” Bryn said, pulling his shirt off, folding it and tucking it under his belt.

  “It’s not for them,” Gosling said. He slashed the knife across Bryn’s bare chest.

  “Ow!” Bryn looked down as blood trickled from the wound. “Why did you do that?”

  “Spread it around a bit, they’ll be drawn by the smell of it,” Gosling said.

  Bryn hesitated then smeared the blood with the palm of his hand. “Can you smell it?”

  Gosling sneezed.

  “Never mind,” Bryn said. He exited again.

  Gosling closed the door after him. He didn’t want any of the cursed villagers wandering in before he was ready for them. He picked up the broom again. “Not your typical weapon, but an assassin has to be able to improvise,” he said. “Let’s just hope I don’t sneeze myself unconscious before I’m done.”

  §

  Gosling’s eyes snapped open. What was that sound? He was lying in the grass near the windmill, just resting his eyes for a moment. Every inch of him, including the lenses of his eyeglasses, were coated with a fine layer of whitish dust. Cowbells, he realised, and it sounded like the herd was heading his way. To a man of Gosling’s meagre stature, a cow was a massive beast and something best avoided, even before you considered the horns. And then there was all that unpleasantness coming out of their rear ends – he didn’t want to be needing another bath so soon if he could avoid it. He would just see where the cows were and then make sure he was somewhere else. He wiped the flour dust off his eyeglasses and set them on his nose – just as the lead cow began bellowing at him.

 

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