Mortal Consequences (20 page)

Five days into the ancient lands, luck brought a rampaging mammoth driven insane by brain worms. Hunters and fighters surrounded and hacked at the thing with spears and swords. At the cost of three broken limbs and one death, they downed the beast and feasted for three days on blood, flesh, and organs. The children made a hidey-hole of the skull, and crawled in and out of eye slots giggling. By night, guards drove off skulking wolves and saber-toothed tigers that cried eerily like lost children.

Knucklebones was intrigued by the interconnected life of the tribe, so different from the complex and diverse life in the city. Once she asked, “What are the clans you speak of?”

“The clans?” Sunbright replied, still dragging the travois, the pole ends hissing in the grass. “Children are assigned to clans on their second birthday. They’re picked randomly so the families are mixed up, so no family is pitted against another in a feud. It gives the children something to cling to as they grow, another circle besides parents and brothers and sisters. We have, let’s see, eight clans: Raven, Elk, Griffon, White Bear, Beluga, Snow Tiger, Thunderbeast, and Gray Wolf. You draw wisdom and strength from your totem animal. In dire straits, I’ve been visited by ravens with advice.”

“What’s a beluga?”

“A big fish with a pointed snout.”

“What’s a thunderbeast?”

“A, uh, big lizard that… belches thunder,” Sunbright improvised. “I don’t really know.”

“What can it teach you?”

Sunbright turned his head as he surged along. “Why so many questions?”

“I just want to know,” Knucklebones said, gazing across the rolling sea of grass. “How does one become a member of the tribe?”

“Marry a member. Be born to it. Ask to join. Or just come in and stay. Some wander in and never leave. After a time, we accept them. Or you can be captured.”

“Wife-stealing must make you unpopular with neighbors.”

“What else can we do? We’re a small tribe, and most related by blood. You can’t marry a cousin, it’s taboo. The elders would disallow it. So, if you need a wife, or husband, the best way is to hunt a stranger.”

“Hunt?”

“Kidnap.”

“How do you do it?”

“Oh … lie in wait by the side of a road or visit a town or marketplace, pick out someone you fancy, follow them home, stuff them in a hide sack, and carry them off. They’re homesick for a while, but get over it eventually. Am I right, mother?”

“You’re right, son.” Monkberry smiled. “I went for a night swim and took off my shift. Your father must have seen something he liked, because he was waiting when I came out. I broke his nose the first night, but grew to like him, for he was kind. After my first child, I was allowed to visit my parents. Sevenhaunt gave them four wild horses. Considering how I plagued my parents with naughtiness, they thought it a bargain. ‘Those horses aren’t half as wild as that girl,’ said my father. ‘Good luck keeping a bridle on her.’ ” She laughed merrily.

Knucklebones drank in the lore. “Do newcomers get clan animals? Totems?” she asked.

“Their partners’,” said Sunbright. “Or they can pick another. Which will you choose? The night owl? The sewer rat? How about the porcupine, because you’re so bristly sometimes?”

Knucklebones hoisted her nose in the air and said, “Your totem beast must be the crocodile, with that big mouth. How are people married?”

Sunbright hitched the straps on his shoulder, squinted at the sun and their backtrail, tasted the wind for rain, all while Knucklebone stewed for an answer. Finally he teased, “Mother can tell you.”

Knucklebones tsked. “Never mind. I don’t care to know,” she lied, nose high, then she veered off to inspect an imaginary gully.

Monkberry teased, “I don’t think you could stuff her in a hide sack. Though she’d make a fine catch.”

“Watch where you step, Mother. You might fall down a hole.”

Monkberry laughed.

The tribe walked on, singing and calling, breaking camp by dawn, snatching a quick breakfast, then packing the travois and swaying off. They halted when the sun was two hands above the horizon to assemble their meager camp, though there were only enough tents and blankets to cover the children and elders. They dug fire pits and gathered dry dung, brewed thin tea, heated what meat or bones they had, stewed groundnuts or artichokes they’d gathered, and soon fell asleep, hungry and exhausted.

But the precious hour between supper and slumber was the one Sunbright loved best, for then stories were told. At first only Sunbright related the old familiar tales. How White Bear Lost His Tail. Why the Sky Burns Gold. How Dima and Nunki Tricked the Frost Giants. How Solenska Won the Heart of Ega. Yellow firelight reflected from the faces of young and old attending stories funny and sad, romantic and courageous. Sunbright was glad, for those tales were more than entertainment. They taught truth and friendship and honor and love. The stories, more than anything else, formed the history of this proud northern race. Without them, the tribe would just be a collection of strangers.

Gradually, other storytellers arose to fill the starry sky with wonder. Forestvictory, so capable a trail chief, related Why Whales Live in the Sea. Crabbranch, quiet and shy, stammered through The One-Eyed King and his Wife. Old Iceborn, blind and half deaf, dredged from memory an ancient tale even he’d forgotten, a rousing saga of barbarians warring over The Magic Spring. Even Magichunger caught the fever, and hemmed and hawed through The Two Brothers.

There were still arguments every day, clashes and squabbles over details from how to hang a strap to how to end a romance, but Sunbright delighted in it, for people discussed, not despaired.

And one night, as Sunbright dozed off from a particularly long day, a voice made his ears perk. A cultured accent from the city. Knucklebones told a story new to the tribe, a long, sad romance about parted lovers who met again in death, a story she called The Red Knight and the Blue Maiden.

A short while later, people yawned and turned in. Lying on a bed of grass, Sunbright felt Knucklebones wriggle her spine against his chest for warmth, for they’d given their blankets away, and the autumn nights were chilly. Chuckling, he kissed her pointed ear, and whispered, “I liked your story.”

“The tribe didn’t.” Hurt marred her voice. “They didn’t understand it. They didn’t get it.”

The shaman nibbled her small ear, but she brushed him off. “I don’t belong, Sunbright. I don’t fit with your people. I never will.”

Her wounded tone pained him, so he hugged her close. “Give it time,” he told her softly. “People will ask for that story again, once they’ve thought about it. You’re different, but you’ll learn our ways—”

“What about my ways?” The woman spun in his arms and poked his chest. “I can’t become a barbarian, not truly! And I like what I am: human and elf combined, and a damned clever thief to boot! I survived in the gutters of Karsus Enclave, but there’s no place for me in this world, or this time. You have your tribe, and every day you grow closer to them. I’m left out in the cold.”

“No, that’s not…” Sunbright was hedging and knew it, so shut up. “You’re right. I’m so worried about keeping the tribe together and reaching our destination safely that I forget you hail from the south. I don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps in a few years, if the tribe is settled, you and I can travel, journey to cities like Ioulaum so you can feel at home.”

“I doubt it.” The part-elf nuzzled against his chest, tears betraying her voice. “You keep saying a shaman is no good without a tribe, and you were so fiercely homesick, you’ll never leave. Not that I blame you. But what’s to become of me?”

Sunbright had no answer, merely held her close, kissed her head, and whispered, “It’ll be fine, Knuckle’. As long as we love each other….”

“Help! Oh, mercy!” wailed a mother. “They’re gone! Taken!”

“Raiders!” shouted a guard. “East! Run east!”

The barbarian camp boiled from under blankets. Fighters grabbed swords, hunters bows and arrows, mothers and fathers their children. Dogs barked in a frenzy. Shouts rang all over.

With no other clues, Sunbright ran east. It was an hour before dawn, prime time for a raid. The tribe was not unprepared, for Magichunger posted guards at night and insisted everyone keep weapons at hand, even under blankets. It paid off as a dozen warriors dashed alongside Sunbright.

The rolling grasslands were broken by a meandering watercourse that sliced ravines jagged as lightning bolts. For days now the tribe had slid into each gully and surmounted the opposite bank. The terrain left them vulnerable, for the ravines were handy avenues for a skulking enemy.

“Where are they?” hollered Strongsea.

“Who are they?” shrilled Kindbloom.

“Just get to the first ravine!” Sunbright yelled. “The guards will tell us!” As if by magic, Knucklebones suddenly pelted alongside, running fleet as a deer despite her short legs and bare feet.

Magichunger had dropped into the first gully and scrambled up the other side. Dashing to the top of a hillock, he scanned, yelled, “It’s orcs! They’ve got two children! Go north! Circle that next bend!”

“Orcs?” gasped Sunbright. That was queer. Orcs avoided the prairie, preferring to strike from forest and scrub with plenty of cover and ways to retreat. Snatching an arrow from his new quiver, he veered right to follow the ravine north. The thief turned with him. Far in the east he heard the signal of a scout spotting prey.

“How’d they steal children from under our noses?” Knucklebones panted.

“The brats snuck off, probably,” Sunbright replied, “for a swim before we strike camp.”

Up ahead, along the ravine, Firstfortune stamped to a halt, aimed her bow, and shot. By the time Sunbright and Knucklebones arrived, her plain arrow was stuck in a sand bank. Knucklebones called, “I’ll follow the bottom!” and bounded down the slope like an antelope.

“Don’t get shot!” her lover cried, and sped to catch the other archers.

Rounding a lazy bend in the stream, he glimpsed Magichunger in the ravine on a sandy bank. Trapping an orc in a pocket, the war chief flicked his heavy broadsword over his shoulder and cleaved the enemy’s arm from its shoulder. He ran on before the orc fell. Spying Sunbright, he flung a blood-spattered arm and called out, “Here they come! Stand your ground and kill them!”

Sunbright and five others crouched in tall yellow grass, nocked arrows to longbows, and waited. Suddenly, like flushed quail, four gray-skinned orcs with war clubs and cleavers appeared above the grass, spun their heads to orient themselves, and died.

Arrows fletched with turkey feathers and pointed with iron skimmed the grass tops and slammed into their foes. Sunbright’s arrow banged an orc’s breastbone and knocked him flat.

“Go right! Get after the rest! Run!” Magichunger bellowed from the next ridge, waving a brawny arm. He tore over the landscape like a jackrabbit.

Ripping through waist-high grass, howling like banshees, Sunbright and Knucklebones and Crabbranch and Kindbloom and Strongsea boiled around the ridge, jumped into a sandy gully, and splashed in the rippling stream. Half a dozen orcs looked up in surprise, surrounded by a score of berserk barbarians. They gabbled and bawled and whipped up swords and war clubs and stabbing spears. In their midst crouched two blond, crying children, a boy and a girl.

The orcs died before they could kill their captives.

Knucklebones, clad in leathers and bare feet, poised at another edge of the ravine, took aim with her dark elven blade, snapped it hard, and pierced an orc in the kidney. The orc yelped and reached to grab the pommel. The thief landed behind it, light as a sand crane. Punching from below her waist, using the full power of her body, she slammed the orc’s skull twice with her brass knuckledusters. Broken-necked, the orc pitched into the stream.

Sunbright dropped his bow and jerked Harvester over his shoulder. The hooked blade sizzled a glittering arc, bashed aside an arm and a club, then slammed into an orc’s neck to the spine. The creature’s beady eyes bugged as blood shot in an arc to stain the silver blade. The orc collapsed like a pile of leaves. The shaman wrenched his sword from the carcass, and whirled for another.

There were none. The orcs were bloody, smashed heaps on sand and water. Shining ripples carried away ribbons of blood that attracted minnows. Fighters raised gory weapons, cheered and hooted and huzzahed, except for Strongsea who bellowed, “The beggar’s given me fleas!”

A chorus of laughs resounded, but was interrupted by?

“Look there! One’s getting away!”

A thrum of unshod hooves shook the air. From a bend down the gully there exploded up a sandy slope a brown horse with a gray orc astride. A piebald pony, riderless, squealed and pelted alongside. The orc, clinging desperately, whipped the horse with a club, topped the slope, and bolted into the grass. Barbarians yelled and grabbed for bows. Strongsea flicked up his, shot, hit the riderless horse, and dropped it, but, whipped by the frantic orc, the other horse was gone.

“Bastards!” grumbled Kindbloom. “No one told us they rode horses!” Sunbright agreed it was news to him. He’d thought horses shied from orcs, if only from their stink.

A sniffling arrested Sunbright, and quickly he dodged to the children. Crabbranch already hugged the little boy close, and Sunbright wrapped his arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You’re safe,” he cooed, “you’re safe.”

“I know,” the girl sniffed, trying to rub her eyes without showing it. “I wanted to kill them too!”

“Then we’ll get you a real sword, not a wooden one,” said Sunbright. The child’s smeared face lit up, terror forgotten. Patting her head, the shaman walked for the stream to swish blood off his blade—

—then stopped cold. He walked to a dead orc, and flipped it over with a boot toe. Slope-skulled and gray, hairy and knobby, the orc was clad in a faded smock gray with filth and campfire smoke. But the breast sported a bright sigil, a large red hand with fingers splayed. Freshly painted.

“Ugly as a rat’s rump,” spat Knucklebones, then noticed his face. “What?”

“This sigil,” Sunbright mused, “brings back memories. The red hand is—or was—the blazon of the One King. A messiah king from the east, they said, who’d bring peace and prosperity, promote goodwill among the speaking races. We once met a party of orcs who invited us to tea! Their starry-eyed leader rambled all night of how wonderful the world would be once the One King ruled it. But when I was hauled before the king I, uh, lost my temper and tried to swipe his head off. I only dented his skin. He was a lich in disguise, an undead lord with big plans.”