Mortal Consequences (3 page)

“I still don’t understand,” Knucklebones told him one night as she stacked coins by candlelight. They’d rented a small cabin along the water, in sight of the Barren Mountains. Sunbright found this ironic, for there he’d begun his adventures, years ago. “How can the tundra be weak? How can any land so cold and icy and muddy suffer? It’s the people who live there who suffer!”

Sunbright rolled over from a doze. Hunting for miles from dawn till dusk, dragging back heavy game, tired him out. “The tundra is a hard country, but a fragile one, though it seems contradictory,” he told her. “It only supports a few beasts and birds, so they rely on one another to survive. Reindeer eat the moss and leave droppings. Birds pick out seeds and bugs that live in the droppings. The birds in turn carry the seeds far and wide. That spreads the moss, keeps muddy spots from growing barren. The new growth attracts musk oxen, who churn the soil with their hooves and leave more manure, and so on, in a closed circle. If one part is removed, the circle falls apart. If the weather grows too warm, as happened once, lungworm sprout in the musk oxen. Too many worms kill the calves. Then the soil isn’t turned over, barren spots spread, water erodes the wallows so the earth is scarred, the moss grows thinner, the reindeer starve—”

“All right, all right. I believe you,” Knucklebones cut him off, tugging up her eye patch to rub sleepy eyes. Revealed was her blind eye, a milky white. At Sunbright’s grimace, she hurriedly tugged it down. “I don’t want the natural history of the world, but why is just the tundra weakened, or drained of life, or whatever you call it? Why not everywhere?”

“It is happening everywhere,” Sunbright yawned, and lay back by the tiny hearth fire. Golden flames reflected on the white skin of his scarred and muscular chest. “It’s just the effect shows first in a fragile area like the tundra. Candlemas spent months fighting a blight, a wheat rust, that spread through grain crops. He couldn’t find any logical cause. The crops simply couldn’t fight off normal diseases. As someone with measles will die if exposed to whooping cough, while a healthy man or woman shakes it off. This mysterious drain—and as a shaman, I sense it more than understand it—affects all life. Eventually, it may cause—”

Nodding at the table, Knucklebones jerked awake at the sudden silence. “Cause what?” she asked.

“Disaster. Famine. Possibly for years. Deaths in the thousands.”

“No.” The small woman rose, stretched like a cat, unlaced her leather vest and trousers, and said, “I was born in the future, remember? There were no great disasters. Not that I ever heard of, anyway.”

“I’m not sure you would have heard,” Sunbright said. He sat on their thinnest blanket and stared at the fire. By the hearth, his great longbow and heavy-nosed sword softly gleamed. “The Netherese run this world, and write down history as it suits them. They’ve never shown compassion for starving peasants. Commoners are fit for farming and mining and hunting—as prey—and nothing else.”

Yawning, Knucklebones lay beside him. Fire reflecting on her body showed more scars than the barbarian’s. The thief had grappled in knife fights since she was a baby. Lifting a thin arm, she cooed, “Come and lay your head on my shoulder, country mouse. You need to rest, not fret. Summer will end soon, and we’ll travel on, won’t we?”

But Sunbright didn’t listen to her words, only her tone. Laying his big white-blonde head on her shoulder, he murmured, “You sound like Greenwillow.”

Knucklebones stiffened, said, “And why her?”

Sunbright closed his eyes. “You called me ‘country mouse.’ That’s what she called me. Curious, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Knucklebones said, her small bosom heaving in a sigh. “It’s not mete to mention one woman while lying in the arms of another.”

The barbarian opened his eyes, looked straight into her one good one, and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I love you, Knuckle’, and only you now. But Greenwillow was a boon companion, and I loved her once. She died saving my life, and was trapped in a corner of hell as a result. Somehow, some day, I’ll get her loose of it, if her soul survived.”

Again Knucklebones sighed, but wrapped her skinny, scarred arms around his head. “Your life would be easier if you busied yourself with daily tasks,” she told him softly, “and people close by, not insurmountable problems that span the globe.”

“Easier if I had no conscience, or honor.” He kissed her white shoulder, licked her pointed ear as he spoke. “Perhaps you should marry a fishmonger or cobbler. They could give you a home, get you eight or nine children, make you fat and gray. Would that suit you better than tramping the world beside a dream-haunted barbarian?”

Knucklebones chuckled and kissed his forehead. “You’re full of odd notions, Sunbright, and silly besides,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

And he did, as she watched the fire and caressed his thick hair.

Come the first cool day of autumn, when the hills burned red and gold and orange, Knucklebones knotted her sack of cash, Sunbright shouldered his sword and bow and satchels, and they left the summer cabin. Embarking on a small caravel with lateen sails, they were ferried down the Narrow Sea, past Vandal Station, past Northreach, past Frostypaw and Coldfoot, and through the Channel Lock. At Harborage the two asked after the Rengarth Barbarians, but received only blank looks. All summer Sunbright had asked everyone he met, travelers and locals alike, for the whereabouts of his tribe, but none knew. As far as the northwestern reaches of the empire were concerned, the Rengarth had vanished, and their ancestral lands stood empty. Wondering, and growing more fearful all the time, Sunbright had decided to sail into the eastern arm of the Narrow Sea and inquire there. But even at the crossroads of Harborage, they found no trace.

Over time, learning nothing, Sunbright’s face grew longer, his eyes haunted, his demeanor bitter. Even with Knucklebones his answers grew short, until they passed days without speaking. They sailed on, clear to the east, to Janick near the river called The Alley, and found naught. There Sunbright disembarked, and stood on the docks, and stared at the sea and land for hours.

Finally Knucklebones said, “Perhaps we search too hard.” Worn down by constant travel, she perched on a bird-stained bollard. All around the harbor ships and boats tacked and rowed, delivered supplies and people and fish and sails and water. They were the only ones idle, and they felt out of place.

But no place was home now, and Knucklebones, not even of this time, found herself saddled with a gloomy companion, and nowhere to go.

“Eh? What?” Sunbright said, turning from his daydreaming. “How can one search too hard? How else shall we find my people?”

“I don’t know, but wandering blind isn’t working, and you’re unhappy,” she said, desperately trying to think of any alternative. “Perhaps—perhaps if we set another goal, temporarily, we’d have luck. That might lead us in the right direction. When the way of mortals fail, it’s best to trust in the gods.”

Sunbright turned back to the harbor, as if to see over the horizon. “Perhaps you’re correct. Perhaps the gods have other tasks for us.”

Absentminded, the big barbarian rested his hand on the warhammer tucked into his belt. The long head bore a parrot’s beak and crushing face, a tool for war, more a dwarf’s weapon than a man’s. “I’ve carried this a long time, with a pledge,” he said. “I told Dorlas’s brethren in Dalekeva that I would one day return the hammer to his kinfolk. I could return it now.”

“Capital! A wonderful idea!” The thief exclaimed. Encouraged by the change, Knucklebones hopped up and kissed his chin. “We can journey to the south, where we haven’t been before, and learn the news. Perhaps we’ll find word of your tribe. Strange roads often lead to treasure!”

Without further ado, the barbarian walked off the dock and turned his back on the Narrow Sea, stomping down the first muddy street tending south. Shaking her head at his obstinate nature, Knucklebones scampered beside him.

A ghost of a smile creased Sunbright’s face as he told her, “You realize this is just another quest, another foolish need to satisfy honor.”

“I understand, but your honor is all you have. Feed it to keep it strong,” she laughed. “At least, going south, we’ll be warm.”

“Sticky, muggy, buggy, and hot.”

Sunbright tramped steadily past wagons and workers and shops.

“Warm like the sewers of Karsus,” Knucklebones corrected. In celebration, she reached into her pockets and dug out her brass knuckles, slipped them onto knotty fingers.

“Anticipating trouble?” the barbarian asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Wherever you go, there’s trouble,” she chuckled. For the first time in days, Sunbright chuckled with her.

“I knew we wouldn’t be warm for long,” Knucklebones groused.

“It’s not cold.” Sunbright flicked snow from his eyelashes as he said, “It’s … bracing.”

“I need to brace myself, all right.” Knucklebones said. She clutched a cedar bush jutting from the rock face to her left. “Else I’ll be blown clean off this mountain.”

“You could dance on the head of a pin, you’re so nimble,” Sunbright chided. “I’m the one slipping and sliding, taking two steps up and one back.”

The two were again wrapped in sheepskin coats and mantles, tall boots, and wool leggings. Their boots slipped often, and Sunbright needed to catch rocks and roots to climb the steep mountain path. They’d climbed for three days, leaving the steppes and the last village far below. The vista to their right had yawned wider with every step, miles of wintry valley dark with pines and sheltered meadows dotted with sheep. A storm rushing over the Iron Mountains pelted them with snow and blotted out all vision except their path.

“It’s not far now,” Sunbright called. “It can’t be.”

“How can you know?” Knucklebones sniffed. Her furred hood was rimmed with white flakes that set off her shadowed face like a halo. “We could step to the moon.”

“They said in the village the dwarves live below the treeline. We’ve climbed almost to where the green stops and the rocks are bare. And this is the only path, ignoring a few forks, so we can’t be lost. Any minute now we’ll probably smell smoke, or spook a sentry—whoa!”

The travelers stopped in shock. Around a bend, looming through the hissing snow, a trio of black-eyed cow skulls stared at them.

Knucklebones whispered a charm, Sunbright grunted. The skulls were huge, from oxen he supposed, bleached white and heaped with snow that trickled down the muzzles, one of which bore deep axe marks.

“What are they?” Knucklebones asked. “Warnings, or just markers?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Yet without thinking, he drew Harvester from the back scabbard with a low moan.

“Is it wise to bear your sword? Won’t the dwarves, these sentries you speak off, take that amiss and shoot first?”

“It is foolish to bear a sword when coming in peace …” Sunbright pulled the scarf clear of his ears and nose to track sounds and smells. “But something else is up here. I feel it.”

Knucklebones tugged off her hood to free her elven ears, keener than the human’s. “Besides dwarves,” she started to say, “what would—Hark!”

“What?”

The small thief grabbed the warrior’s arm, and tugged him into a niche crammed with snow-laced bracken. She whispered, “I heard a jingle of harness, or a leper’s bell.”

“Bell? How—look out!”

Both whirled as an avalanche crashed down. Sunbright and Knucklebones had a vision of huge hoofs, gray, hairy muzzles, thick horns, and gray rags wrapped around tremendously wide shoulders. Carved wooden staves pointed like nocked arrows, then they were attacked by magic, staff, and fist.

Crowded, Sunbright hollered a warning to Knucklebones. There were three or four enemies, but he could see little with snow in his eyes. Rising within arm’s reach, they must have crouched in the rocky niche, lying in ambush. For them, or for dwarves?

No matter. The barbarian slapped his free hand onto Harvester’s pommel and stabbed straight. The long sword was unlike any other seen in the Rengarth tribe, won by his father decades ago in the southlands. The blade curved slightly from the pommel, then widened so the nose was fatter than the shank. Yet metal had been cut from the tip’s back to form a wicked barbed hook. Thus the sword could stab, chop, or tear on the back draw. Sunbright tried all three attacks now.

But so close loomed these gray, shaggy foes, and so hindered was Sunbright by waist-high bushes, that the blade was batted aside. Before the shaman could recover, a wooden staff smacked him alongside the head. White lights exploded behind his eyes. He staggered at the knees, and dimly saw the shaft rise. To do what? Stab him? Knock him onto the snow-slick path and lever him off the mountain? Either way, his stunned brain couldn’t focus.

Then the end of the staff erupted with red light. Sunbright felt a burn sear his neck, then he fell or was tripped. He crashed in snow.

To one side, slick as an eel, Knucklebones shed her coat and satchels, scrunched low as a hare and leaped high. She popped up almost in the face of the huge enemies. To her astonishment, they proved to be shaggy beasts like upright cattle. Horns jutted from the sides of their heads, and from some dangled tiny bells on leather thongs that jingled. These cow-beings possessed the bleached skulls along the trail, then. Their long hands bore blunt, black nails, and all carried curved wooden staves.

Surprised by her rush, a yak-man shrank back to aim the end of his staff. Knucklebones gave him no chance. Doubling her fist of brass knuckledusters, she slammed the yak-man hard on the nose. The cow face jerked, and bright blood spurted, so Knucklebones knew he or she was hurt. She smacked the same spot, and saw blood erupt from twin nostrils. Good, their noses were vulnerable.

A blistering red light erupted at her. She heard Sunbright grunt and fall. Another yak-man aimed a staff at her.

She ducked just in time, for a blast of alien wind blew leaves off the tough cedars that ringed them. Knucklebones was shielded from the tiny tornado by the hulking yak-man in front of her. Deciding to stay put and keep his protection, she closed again. She couldn’t defeat them all, but could pound hell out of one, and hope for the best.