Mortal Consequences (21 page)

“And?” Knucklebones said. “Did you kill him, for Mystryl’s sake?”

“Hunh? Oh, no. A red dragon tore down the wall and crisped him. Weren’t even ashes left. I thought the king’s crusade would die out, but later I met fools flocking to his banner. They wouldn’t believe he was dead. And here’s an orc with the symbol fresh-painted. And they carry steel weapons, and ride ahorse. Odd behavior for orcs …” The shaman shook his head and squeezed Knucklebones’s shoulder. “Good fighting.”

The part-elf beat her knuckledusters as if testing them. “I must be getting soft,” she complained. “I had to hit him twice.”

The war party picked up the steel tools, left the orcs for the wolves and foxes, boosted one another up the sandy bank, and swished through tall grass, the rescued children in their midst. Someone ragged Magichunger about the two slipping past the guards to swim. “Pick guards who aren’t blind this time!”

The war chief gestured obscenely, but grinned back, “Barbarian brats can slide under snakes! But we’ll put you on point, Blackblossom.” Laughter answered.

The tribe cheered the rescued and rescuers. The war party hooted back. Sunbright turned from the group to descend a defile. “They can have the glory. We’ll take the dirty work.”

Scrambling up the opposite bank, they helped Strongsea and Crabbranch skin the dead horse. It was a brown and white piebald growing a thick winter coat. Sunbright plied his belt knife to slice the mask from the long skull.

Knucklebones felt the coarse mane, clucked, “I’m glad for the meat, but this seems such a waste. You can ride horses, you know. I’ve never done it, but it would make more sense to work these beasts than just chop them up. From horseback, you could round up wild cattle and deer, even attack a mammoth, I should think.”

“Naw,” Strongsea said as he sliced raw liver, offered everyone a piece, and chewed bloodily. “Riding’s a soft southern custom, for sissies. Barbarians walk. We only harness reindeer, and we ain’t got none.”

“We kayak,” put in Crabbranch. “This hide would make a fine boat.”

Sunbright agreed. “I’ve been ahorse a few times bodyguarding pack trains. I bumped like a gutted deer and walked like a duck for days.”

“I know it’s an art,” Knucklebones insisted, “and takes time to learn, but in Karsus we had parades with cavalry brought up from the ground, and those men and women rode like centaurs. The horses obeyed their every whim. Their helmets shone like the sun, and the horses wore blue coats with bells around the hem. They’re such pretty animals.” She sliced the tail intact from the rear of the hide, stroked it absently. “You’d never seen an orc ahorse before. Why not a barbarian?”

Strongsea and Crabbranch exchanged glances at this heresy, a break with tradition. Sunbright offered, “We get along fine walking.” But inwardly, a germ of an idea took root. Something he’d have to think about….

Returning to the war party with meat bundled in the piebald hide, Sunbright squeezed Knucklebones and steered for his mother’s travois. Monkberry sat on their bundle like a round lump, smiled crinkly at her son and his tiny, exotic lover, but winced as she rose. “How much further must we go, son?” she asked.

The shaman stared at the western horizon, calculating, then said, “I’m not sure. The distance is almost double that from the Horn at the Channel Mountains to Oxbow Lake along the tundra. We’ve been out, uh, thirty-two days. Perhaps another twenty? Why ask, mother?”

“Oh,” she puffed, “walking the world over is fine for young folks, but my poor feet are worn to the knee. It’ll be good to find a rock to sit on.”

Sunbright laughed, “You’ll have rocks, mother, if I have to trudge to Northreach to fetch one.”

“If we had horses,” Knucklebones cooed, “we could build a bigger travois and you could ride.”

Monkberry shook her head, and stated, “Barbarians walk. It’s always been that way. I’m good for a few more leagues yet.”

Shouldering the harness, now piled with thirty pounds of raw horse meat and hide, Sunbright leaned far forward to get started. “Come on, then. The sooner we walk, the sooner we arrive. I need to find my mother a rock.”

The band passed deeper into the prairie, which now began to rise steadily, several feet in every mile. They saw no more ancient animals, mammoths or saber-tooths, and twice passed stands of poplar trees. Several times the tribe skirted ridges too steep to scale with leather soles. The mountains and forest were not far off.

With the good news came bad. Orc raids came more frequently. A woman gathering water was shot in the back by a crude arrow. The Rengarth beat the brush but never found the killer. One night three southmen, half-starved, bearing swords and scraps of armor, were caught rifling the food and were immediately cut down. Hunters found game clumsily butchered, so they paired up for protection. Once, at dawn, a pack of thirty or more orcs howled a battle challenge, hoping to stampede the tribe. When near two hundred fighters screamed back, the orcs melted into gullies. Two hunters were bushwhacked later, with only their heads recovered.

“I’ve never heard of orcs on the prairie, and suddenly they’re thick as fleas,” Sunbright mused. “Iceborn and Tulipgrace only recall it once, ages ago, when drought burned the highlands. What’s got them on the prod?”

“The One King?” asked Knucklebones. “You saw the red hand on that big war party.”

“The king’s dead, and not coming back. I saw him blasted by dragon fire. Flagstones under his feet melted. Still…” Guessing got them nowhere, and they had to continue at any cost.

Then one afternoon a hunter pelted through the grass. From her empty hands, they concluded she’d routed an enemy. Magichunger hollered, “To arms! To arms!”

But this news was good. Panting, Firstfortune pointed wildly northwest, and gasped, “I-I’ve seen it! F-From a ridge top! Sanguine Mountain! Red as blood down a black cleft! Two days’ walk. We’re almost there—”

Cheering drowned out the rest. Sunbright grabbed Knucklebones and his creaky mother, and spun them both till they gasped. The tribe pushed on till dusk, threw up a hasty camp, then convened to discuss plans. Sunbright had little to say, instead listened to notions both fantastic and practical, glad his people had new ideas to share.

The next afternoon, the peak of Sanguine Mountain topped the grass. Two days later, they saw the whole mountain, and others beyond it, gray and solemn marching to the sky, while a counterpane of green shot with orange and gold and red cloaked their stony feet.

In the last mile, someone hollered and streaked forward. A child ran after, soon outstripped by two more youngsters. “A tree! First to touch a tree!” A flock of runners broke and ran headlong. The stragglers behind cheered the race.

The forest spilled from the hillside in long ragged arms of color to trickle amidst the yellow grass. Having reached the trees, someone shouted anew, and a race back to the tribe began. This time the runners carried leaves they’d snatched as proof of their triumph. Sharing their treasures, they were grabbed and kissed and jostled. Songs went up, and prayers of thanks.

Far at the rear of the wandering train, Sunbright stopped dragging their travois. Monkberry caught his wrist on one side, and Knucklebones the other. The small thief said, “You did it, Sunbright! You’ve brought them to safety! You pushed and pleaded and nagged, but they’ve arrived!”

“All the tribe,” Monkberry added. “Every one.”

Sunbright was quiet, for this place carried memories. It had been here, to the southern slopes of the Barren Mountains, that he’d first retreated when driven from the tribe years back. The mountains had proved bitter and barren, but the forest had sustained him.

“I hope it’s safe,” he sighed. “I hope this new soil receives my uprooted people….”

The hillside swarmed with barbarians busy as beavers, each with a hundred tasks to do and each happy, for this new land promised great things.

While hunters slipped into the forest, men cut saplings with bronze and iron swords, dug holes to receive them, bent and lashed them with spruce roots, then moved on while women and children layered leafy branches to finish the wigwams. Days ago, Forestvictory had declared her task as trail chief ended with the trail, so Goodbell was appointed camp chief. Now the young woman, with twins slung on her back and a third swelling her belly, directed the laying out of wigwams and slit trenches for latrines, the packing with sticks and mud for a small dam to widen an errant stream, the digging of fire pits, and other tasks.

The tribe had chosen a wide vale with only a slight slope embraced on two sides by highlands of trees. Sanguine Mountain reared above the forest to the north like an orange-black beacon built by gods. The forest itself was edged by green-black spruces whose petticoats brushed the ground. Rising behind were bursts of yellow, orange, and red; tall, vase-shaped elms, round sugar maples, and thin, graceful birches. Sheltered on three sides, sloping to prairie, their camp looked like a harbor town verging on a yellow sea, and it was as busy as any seaport.

Sunbright left Monkberry and Knucklebones to house construction, and busied himself laying out a council ring. Sharpening a stick, he scraped away moss and grass and levered up rocks. He rolled them in a ring, careful that each touched its neighbors, then scraped off dirt for a seat. He whistled as he worked, happy, for they’d finished one odious chore, crossing the plains, and embarked on a new and promising one. Even the air was sweeter, rich with loam and pine and sparkling water, unlike the grainy dust smell of the prairie.

As he fiddled with stones, a tall barbarian named Wreathhonor approached, asked, “Goodbell asks how deep shall we dig the trenches? How long will we stay here?”

Sunbright scraped an imaginary crack. He’d dreaded and avoided this question for weeks, and had no answer now. Or rather, had an answer no one would like. “I think we’ll be here a while. All winter, perhaps.”

“All winter?” Wreathhonor scratched his head, and went away muttering, “Deep trenches.”

It wasn’t long before others came calling. Goodbell herself, with Wreathhonor trailing, and Magichunger and Mightylaugh, and even hobbling old Tulipgrace. Goodbell asked, “What’s this about we’re wintering over? I thought this was a temporary camp. Won’t we return to the tundra after the first snowfall? We’ll need to build dog sleds for seal season….”

Weary in mind, Sunbright plumped on a rock. Gently, he offered, “The tundra can’t support us over the winter. The land is sick …” He listed the bad signs, hoping they’d understand.

They didn’t. Goodbell frowned. “But if we don’t cross the tundra….” she said. “Do you mean to stay through winter and into spring? What of the salmon run—”

“To arms!” From up the slope, the alarm-giver’s voice broke, “To arms!”

Whirling, the impromptu council saw Firstfortune stumble down the slope. She dragged Lightrobin, an arrow jutting from her back. Not a barbarian arrow of plain wood, but a long, black arrow fletched with white. Firstfortune gave one more alarm, then was knocked sprawling by another arrow that slammed into her hip.

Magichunger howled to grab bows, parents shrieked for children, Goodbell yelled for non-fighters to take cover and ready bandages, Sunbright shouted for Knucklebones and his mother to duck behind trees. Even as they bolted in different directions, slow-thinking Wreathhonor caught an arrow in his lower belly. He collapsed, holding the shaft and crying like a child.

Sunbright left Goodbell to tend the wounded, and dodged from tree to tree up the slope to fetch his longbow and quiver. He already wore Harvester on his back, indeed took it off only to sleep or bathe. By the time he reached the pocket they’d selected, Knucklebones had shoved Monkberry flat and flipped the flimsy travois over her. The thief had shucked to her leathers, loosened her dagger in its sheath, and hunted a dozen round rocks for her sling. Between two trunks with one eye she studied dark spruces thick as walls of thorns.

Sunbright grabbed his tackle and flopped on his belly beside her. As he hauled an arrow around to check the fletching he asked, “See anything?”

“Movement, very low, like rabbits creeping. Whoever they are, they’re good. Silent, too.”

“I’m not surprised. That was an elven arrow.”

“Elven?” piped the woman with pointed ears.

“Very long, thin shaft, black. More a bird arrow than a war arrow.” The shaman craned to see his tribe, most out of sight. Fighters with nocked bows crept up the slope. Sunbright touched his mother’s shoulder, and said, “I’ll cover you. Get down the slope toward the middle.” Wasting no words, Monkberry scurried to the next tree.

In that instant, the attack broke.

Two spruces parted six feet in the air before Sunbright’s eyes. Like a black panther, an elven warrior burst screaming from the green cover. The shaman glimpsed gleaming black armor, a shimmering green shirt, long, wild black hair and pointed ears, a black headband studded with white feathers, a curved bow and quiver. And swinging to meet the shaman, a sword with an ornate handle and a deadly, slim blade.

Before he was even sure of his target, Sunbright jumped to his feet and loosed. His broad arrowhead punched through the elf-woman’s boiled-leather cuirass. Her screech cut off as her lung collapsed and her heart stopped. She’d bounded so close her dead body cannoned into the shaman’s. He smelled wood smoke and sage, a painfully familiar perfume. The dying elf slumped, and Sunbright kicked her away with sudden, savage fury.

As he untangled his bow, another black ball exploded from high between trees. Knucklebones shrieked her own cry—oddly, “Kar-sus!”—and slashed the air with her long knife. An elven warrior slapped his feet in a fighting stance, and grabbed his sword in two hands to swing and chop the thief in half. But Sunbright hopped over the dead elf, lurched in a long reach, and banged his bow against the warrior’s sword to spoil his aim. The bowstring parted with a twunk!, the elf hesitated, and Knucklebones lunged. Sliding her dark dagger under the warrior’s shirt, she slashed him behind the knee. Hamstrung, the leg collapsed, but he still slashed sidelong and almost parted Knucklebones’s hair. As he fell, she twirled the blade and severed an artery. Bright, frothy blood skyrocketed. The elf dropped his sword to grab at the wound. Sunbright kicked his weapon away, kicking the elf’s head to stun him. Lost blood and the blow laid him out, and he died in a pool of blood.