These Demented Lands Read Online Free Page B

landward to the Hinterlands. Today we’ve taken them over the Mist Anvils, skirted the Woodland Edges, now we’re headed for The Far Places and we’ll swim them over the Sound.’
    â€˜Never. Can cows swim?’
    â€˜They can swim
miles
,’ the girl one with the video camera bawled.
    â€˜Long as you have a good lead beast the others follow,’ says stubbly guy.
    â€˜You don’t have an Ordnance Survey do you?’ says the bearded, ‘We’re using this fifteenth-century one and it’s loaded with inaccuracies.’
    The girl one went, ‘We’re following the old black cattle-drove roads, come a hundred mile across Mainland.’
    I held out my shaking arms, ‘Whats all this for?’
    â€˜University project.’
    â€˜Some of the financial backing’s EEC.’
    â€˜And a bit from the Arts Council . . .’ the bearded one added.
    â€˜Keeping them all together at night’s a hassle but we wanted to prove it could still be done,’ girl one goes.
    â€˜Got anything to eat?’ I came straight out with.
    â€˜Well, we’ve been doing hunting and fishing, trying to do the fifteenth-century thing with Gore-Tex and a video camera thrown in!’
    The stubbly leader guy goes, ‘We’re just about to make camp down by the river though; we’ll try a spot of night-fishing, bound to come up with something good.’

Second Night
    IN THE SHEER pitch dark over there I could hear the lead beast meandering, crunching out grass with those side-head jerks. The herd was tethered in black beyond where the bearded one was hunting with his fold-out crossbow. My bottom was saturated wet-through on the sodden grass by the campfire; suddenly old Last of the Mohicans stepped back into the wobbling shadows of the cast light. You noticed how he was smoking a joint, holding the crossbow by his thigh.
    â€˜How can you hunt at night?’
    â€˜Instinct,’ he goes, then blethers on, ‘In the Middle Ages they think all folk were permanently stoned from lysergic growths of roots in cereals:
everyone
wasted, dressing up animals in clothes and putting them on trial.’
    Out of the darkness from the night-fishing came the stubbly Leader guy and the girl one with video camera. They had a coiled-up eel and a leaky bucket full of tadpoles. I wouldn’t try the eel but the bearded one goes that it tasted a little like chicken. When they boiled the tadpoles each floated to the top of the bucket. The bearded one ate some then his face allcurled up in the firelight. He picked up his crossbow then marched off till we couldn’t hear him. When he returned he had a dead goose with an arrow in it. They chucked it all on the flames without even plucking, but it just went on fire, then exploded.
    â€˜Where’s the lavvy?’ I goes. Really meaning if they had any lavvy paper.
    â€˜Just go anywhere,’ goes the girl one.
    I gave her a look – her ladyship there – but she didn’t have the gumption to cotton on. I walked and walked trying to get out of sight of the three of them round the campfire but you just couldn’t tell at what bit they didn’t see you any more. I cooried down and jobbied; the grass so wet it reflected the smeary line of campfire, the big blades of grass that I clutched and ripped out again and again to heave upward using both hands then toss away aside. It was the way life humiliated on top of everything: having to take a shit when you’d eaten nothing for forty-eight hours.
    As I walked back towards the campfire you could see them, their pitch-black stick shapes, and I fell massively forward right over a black thing that rose up under rolling me to the side where my breath got knocked out and I swore in fright and clamped my arms over tum-tum; I curled, twisted head and looked into the face of the Devil, ‘Brotherhood,’ I whispered, then laughed out as I jamp to my feet so the