DAY DREAM ELECTRICAL FOOD

Bokk felt the tree shudder as the graveman lost his grip and fell, hitting several thick branches before landing on the heads of the other gravemen and gravewomen. Bokk laughed heartily and leant over to get a better look at the damage inflicted by the falling flesheater. He saw a leg roll away, flapping with shroud bandages, and noticed with glee that some of the mob now had heads sat not so plumb on their shoulders.

"I can sit here stamping on your fingers all day, my lovelies. You won't get near enough to smell my breath. And by the looks of you you'll not last a few more of those heavy falls."

The torn and rotting faces turned his way to listen, and when he had said his piece they returned to fighting their way to the lower branches to attempt the climb again.
They would not be turned away by words or the discouragement of suffering twenty foot falls. Bokk knew enough of them to have no illusions about that. Not that the workings of grave people had been covered in the training he had received from Master Fraddis. In his, at present, short career as a Corpsepicker, Fraddis had not seen fit to illuminate his students on evading the undead. Bokk had spent enough time talking to Old Throat in the tavern after classes to blame council cuts for the uncommonly rushed pace Fraddis had adopted in familiarising his underlings with the ins and outs of collecting body parts from the recently slain. He had learnt the necessary parts to gather-eye lids, nails from the toe, grey hair, noses, navels. The list was not extensive but the requirements complicated things. Times of day, the days of the year, the freshness of the corpse. It went on and on and it had taken him all two weeks of the course for him to store the knowledge in his head.
Fraddis had taught them the bones of the chore and no more. He had no idea what magic a nose snipped at mid-day had business with. Or what potion required a collarbone. At more abundant ages in the empire he would, no doubt, have had a fuller education in the art of corpsepicking. The present war, on which fringes he and his classmates had been despatched, had reached the borders of the Hill Counties and threatened to spill over into his home town of Corrow any day now. He did at least have no great distance to travel to work. Soon, he had joked with Old Throat, he would simply have to step out of bed to find his first eyelid of the day.
The tree shook as another graveman managed the task of pulling himself to the next branch in the ladder towards Bokk.

"I can't wait for you to get up here so I can break your hand. In fact, I'm half inclined to clamber down and meet you half way."

Did they even understand his speech? Their swollen faces held no semblance of comprehending him. But he had heard stories all through his youth about gravepeople. None of it from official sources. The gravepeople liked guts best. Pain was like pleasure to them. They were the children of Soggan The Crypt Whore. None of the alley play stories seemed of use now. The only sane thing he learnt was that gravepeople came when war had gone on too long. The war he could hear right now, but not see beyond the shaggy crest of the hill, was surely a good candidate. It had shrunk the council coffers and taken their slain.
Bokk shifted on his branch, to match the route of the graveman beneath him. His corpse bag slipped from his shoulder and dangled from his wrist. The graveman groaned and stretched a ruined hand up towards it. The smell met Bokk's nose.

"Hurry it up green face. Come on." Bokk waggled his corpse bag to tempt the creature.
"Come on. Lovely noses and moustached lips. All gathered within minutes of death. No guts, I'm afraid. There's no demand for them."

He wound the bag back up and slipped it over his shoulder more securely He had a day's hard work inside it, not to mention his picking blade and gloves.
The undead man wanted him, he figured. It wanted his warm, red meat. His coils of entrails. His screams. It had climbed another rung towards getting them. Bokk slipped down and let his booted feet connect with the green fingers clasped around the lower branch. There was no cry of pain. The last one had not cried either. Some of the childish stories maybe true then.
"You smell like a goblin's outhouse." He spat, landing his foot on the hand again, and again. Bone or wood crackled, split. Bokk ground his heel in and pushed against the higher branch to favour his weight on the claw. At last he heard a snap and felt the tree shake with a collision and then another.

"I can do this all day, guys."

And all night.

The sound of cannons, which had kept sleep shallow and short for the last four months, were now a welcome aid to staying awake. He almost wished the battle would come his way. Perhaps a stray cannon ball could knock some limbs off the hungry dead waiting in the darkness below. He wouldn't have minded a bit of that fire he could see glowing dimly on the hill top. Just enough to keep his hands and feet warm. At least the darkness had confused the gravepeople. They had made several more attempts to pluck him from his perch, and he had fended them off each time. When the night had crept over head their interest seemed to have waned. He fancied that in their simplicity that they needed to see him to have a desire for him. Something he would impart to old Throat -and anyone bored enough to hear his story -once he had found a way home. Sadly, the same darkness that kept him hidden, also prevented the walking corpses from wandering off to bother someone else. With nothing to see they had no impulse, and he could hear them groaning still, squabbling occasionally, as they accidentally bumped into each other. Perhaps they would mistakenly tear each other to pieces before day break. Just in time for his shift to start. He wondered of he had been missed at the college. Samples were always handed in to Fraddis at the end of day, to be pickled, cured, bottled, baked. Ready to be sent on to the battle wizards, so they could keep the war from Corrow's streets. But no one would come looking for him. He would be assumed dead, like Spran; who on his first ever shift had not turned up by night fall. Nor day break, or any time. Until Drippog had found him on the edge of the River Corr, too dead for his eyelids to be of use. His collarbones and knee discs still made it back to the college. Fraddis had betrayed no hint of solemnity as he boiled them clean. The point being that nobody had been sent to look for him. He could see Fraddis now, whistling as he stirred the bubbling pot. White bones bobbing to the surface.

An explosion shook the tree. A pillar of fire, or a bolt of lightning, had erupted on the hill top. Too powerful to be a cannon. Maybe a dozen cannons, or magic. Perhaps Spran had made a contribution to the war effort after all.
More explosions. More light. Then a sound that sent a shiver up his arms. The shiver continued. It had set off his body's need for warmth. Blessed heat.
What makes a noise like that? Something heavy, trampling swiftly through long grass? A Battle-Bull? Free of its harness? It wouldn't be the first time. All sorts of things got loose during the chaos of war. Whatever it was had stopped moving, and close by. Dawn would solve the puzzle.
The branch was about as comfortable to his hind quarters as a dozen whips of the cane, but Bokk imagined that he had managed to nod off at some point. Not for long, but enough that the scraps of a dream -no, a nightmare -still littered his mind. His body felt like a part of the tree, and his circulation had been cut off enough in his legs that he feared he may well be as wooden. It was light, just about. A sunless dawn of white endless cloud. The air felt wet around him. His shirt and coat stuck to him by a sickly dew. At some point he had used the strap of his corpse bag to tie himself tightly to the trunk. He fancied he recalled the moment, but wasn't wholly convinced. The fitful sleep had played with his mind. Juggled his memory. Perhaps he had come up with the idea in his sleep. He felt around for the knot that had saved him from a deadly fall, and picked at it with fingers that felt foreign to him. How long had the pale dawn left him in sight? He peered down the tree and saw bare ground. Something had lured them away. A wounded soldier? A passing cart on the road nearby? The sounds of battle on the hill top? If he could undo his own knot he would be free to climb down and make for town.

"By Khell, this knot is like iron."

He had no doubt pulled it taut to secure himself. Or had made it so with the weight of his sleeping body. Even though he was impatient to be off, he couldn't help but admire the strength of it. No good, he would have to slip under the strap. Getting his arms and his bulky coat sleeves through the proved impossible. He finally had to worm his coat off to give him more slack. At last he was free to adjust his position and let his legs waken like the rest of him.

"Stinking troll pizzle."

He had reacted before realising what he was seeing. Even after a minute or so of scrutiny, as his legs remembered themselves, he still puzzled over the scene on the hill side. The gravepeople were not as far as he wished them to be. In fact, if he wasn't more careful with his oaths, they might well be distracted from their work to try and shake him from the tree again.
The green figures, barley half dressed in rags and shrouds, were directing their attention on something that appeared -to Bokk-to be a large boulder, painted in thick layers of blood.
They swarmed around it, fighting each other as they had done at the base of his tree, grasping at the shape. Some clawed, others gnawed -most attempted both. Bokk watched through the almost leafless branches, unsure of how to feel about the situation. He had not seen a large boulder when he was running from the battle edge, avoiding the staggering forms of the gravepeople. Why would they mutilate themselves in such a way? Was it part of the horrors of being grave-disturbed? Is this what the agonising hungers of decay brought you to, when the mind no longer could discern what was fit for the belly? He had to get a closer look. He could not take back with him another childish myth. No matter how many eyes would widen to its telling. If he was careful he could slip down unseen, keeping to the branches on the blind side of the tree. Then he could creep up. It wasn't the easiest descent, in places his legs almost gave out. His fingers twice held him alone, filling his nails with bark and mould. Finding solid ground underfoot cheered him more than he could have guessed. Black slime streaked his clothes he now noticed. Sliding down the last six foot of trunk had been the culprit. That and the hunger of the decaying gravepeople, breaking themselves on his perch. The grumble in his belly had to be a pale reflection of the hungers hey suffered. No large breakfast at the tavern could satisfy what tore at their innards. A hunger that forced them to spoil themselves on hard rock? He peered around the trunk. The mob were a stone's throw away, on the edge of a gathering mist. None had been alerted to his escape so far. No doubt the insanity, the pure mindless urge to eat confined them enough that he could get near enough to be sure of what he thought was happening. He crouched in the grass and stalked forth, darting his eyes from his steady footfalls back to the bloody scene. He could hear them now, moaning in angst when one of their brothers flung them aside to steal their place, softly groaning when the red, jagged surface was free for them to attack. Blood and ruined flesh sat everywhere around the horror. The grass dark tipped with it. Some of the crowd had pulled away parts of the boulder to devour it away from the mass. Such was their eagerness that their bones and teeth had beaten the rock.

The one of them had crawled atop the thing like a green spider, slipping on the red juices as it buried its face into a cavity...and disappeared completely. So sudden and odd was the action that Bokk almost turned and fled. He caught himself and again urged himself closer.
He would never mind snipping lips from a dead man, he realised, now he had seen this. And now he knew what he was seeing. It was not rock they fed on, no, it was a gigantic head. The blood was not that of the feeders. They were not mindless after all. Simply opportunistic.
One of the gang roared with delight as it pulled away a large chunk. Something white with a flash of blue. Bokk watched in disgust as the giant eyeball was held aloft in bone hands and lowered to the mould covered jaws of the graveman. Another had pulled free a giant pink flap from the gaping mouth of the giant. It was large enough to make a cape from. That's how he would tell it later, as fine detail to refill his tankard.

Giants in battle? It had never been heard of, as far as he knew. They were forbidden from any battle activity due to the unfairness of their power and size. It did not bode well for Carrow, unless the lofty ones had sided with them to begin with. Giants never fought other giants. They were of one mind, so Old Throat had mentioned once, or twice. An allegiance brought about by their scarcity, he wondered?
Bokk had seen enough. As the battle on the hill top began to rouse again, now the generals had breakfasted, he quickly made back for town, keeping an eye out for more oversized body parts.
Carrow was lighting its fires and filling its chimneys with breakfast smoke. The morning guard -old women armed with ancient weapons – scrutinised him as he trotted the quickest route to the college. The gate guard recognised him with one sleepy eye and waved him through as if swiping at a fly. Bokk almost stopped to pass his story on but kept his tongue for later. He had work to do yet.

"Open the door, Master Fraddis. Open the door."

"Stop banging, will you? Who is that?"

Bokk pushed though the door once it was unbarred. His hungry eyes picked out the pot of something bubbling on a small stove by the fire. The he thought better of taking a spoonful, given his Master's profession.

"Bokk? You missed last bell. I'll have to reprimand you..."

"Giants." Bokk interjected, locking eyes with Fraddis.

"What?"

"What magical properties stem from the corpses of giants?"

"Well, Why do you ask? Your training is not extensive enough to cover that, unless you can pay the graduation fees. Can you?"

Bokk quickly judged his Master's words.

"I think-if we can come to an arrangement -that I may well do, Master Fraddis. But I'll need a bigger corpse bag."