He wondered how deeply he was buried, and who would find him in the spring. He had no family to miss him. His frozen, mummified body would be pawed up and chewed to pieces by wolves, probably--
"Hey, pup."
It was familiar... but where did it come from? "Bogg?"
"Sit up, there."
Simon didn't understand. "What?"
"I see the toes of your shoes sticking out of the snow at one end of you, and coon fur at t'other. Sit up, before you suffercate."
Simon sat up. He had been buried in only a few inches of snow, and it rolled and sprinkled off his body. He took Bogg's hat off and shook the flakes out of it.
Bogg was buried waist-deep a few feet away, grinning at him. He shoveled at the snow in front of him with his hands.
And Cadogan?
Simon sprung out of the snow, eyes darting, looking for Cadogan to pop up and attack once again.
"Don't fret." Bogg lifted each knee, over and over, working them free. "Our red-headed friend didn't go over. I heard him giggling to hisself, up there." The ridge was perhaps two hundred feet up a slope scraped free of snow. The snow, and they, had settled on a shoulder of the mountain, where pine trees grew. "I do wish he'd come down with us, though. I nearly had him."
Simon remembered Bogg dodging that axe, no cloak, no fang dagger. He swallowed. "Where is he now?"
"Moved on, I reckon." Bogg combed snow out of his beard with his fingers. "There's an oversight that will cost him dearly, time enough." He frowned. "But not today. Today, in the light we have left, we'll dig up our packs. Wherever they are. And find that cloak. Shame to lose that."
Simon's numbness was gradually replaced by a deep cold that crept into him and settled around his bones. "He almost killed you."
"I bet that's how he'd tell it." Bogg laughed. "That ain't my story, though."
Simon stared up the cliff. For a long moment, he didn't breathe. When he spoke, he was surprised at how quiet and sad his voice sounded. "He almost killed you, Bogg. And me. And there are five of him."
Bogg didn't reply. He pulled his feet out of the snow and stood quietly. He sniffed, and his jaw worked back and forth. Finally, he sat down next to Simon.
"Two bits of good news," he said at last.
"Okay," said Simon.
"First, you and I just got left for dead. That gives us the advantage of popping up from the grave later on. Handy thing, that. And second..." Bogg grinned.
Simon frowned. "What?"
Bogg pointed up. In the branch of a pine tree, Bogg's sabertooth dagger had embedded itself so deeply that its white, serrated tip jutted out the other side.
#
After another two days of trekking uphill, Bogg and the pup laid eyes on Settler's Pass.
Bogg had travelled sept of here but twice, and he had done it along the coast. He'd never gotten around to Settler's Pass before.
Weather was fairer. Heavy clouds still boomed along overhead, but they stepped aside to show a little blue sky now and then, though it was otherwise bashful. Not a whit of snow fell, yesterday or today, which cheered him, though it was thick on the ground.
The trees thinned at the pass, and the ground flattened out. Bogg and Simon trudged into an open field of snow as they crossed from the eost slope of Desperation Peak. The pass was a saddle -- they'd cross onto the hest slope of the neighboring mountain before nightfall if they kept up the pace.
Outside the thick of the trees, the snow was disturbed. It was kicked around, piled up, and scraped off the grass in wide stripes. Where the grass showed, there were patches of bare frozen dirt and holes where the grass had been pulled up.
The pup took in the abused earth, too. "Red rhinos?" The words made puffs of fog.
Bogg jumped over a hole where a square yard of grass had been uprooted. "Not even red rhinos eat this much. I'd wager some four-legged hills been through here."
That put a wobble in the pup's step. "Will we see one?"
Bogg wondered if he was interested or nervous. Both, likely. "Trust me, pup. You don't want to see one unless it's from higher ground a mile away."
Simon fidgeted with his hat. "What do we do?"
"Walk softly. But with purpose. Let's get across this clearing."
They started across and kept their gaze down, stepping from heavy snow to frozen grass and holey dirt and back, and trying not to lose footing. Peculiar rustling of brush came from the snowy forest behind them. It was a sound Bogg had heard plenty of times before -- a deer picking its way through the woods.
Had to be close by, because a body doesn't hear that noise from any sort of distance away. Bogg's stomach cinched up and gurgled. Oh, he was starved! Roasting up a deer would be powerful good eating.
The critter was a dozen trees back, in the thicket from whence they'd just come. It was a fine big one, an elk really, with more points than Bogg could count --
And a damn greenie on its back!
Bogg touched Simon's shoulder. "Hey, pup..."
The pup turned and got educated as to the situation, just as Bogg picked out three more greenie elk riders beyond the first. The elks themselves were well obscured by snowy pine branches, their riders nothing but shadows behind the great antlers of the animals. There had to be some on foot, too, but Bogg knew he'd never see them.
Bogg and Simon froze, a couple of icicles waiting for spring. The greenies didn't approach. Everybody took a moment to watch everybody else.
"What do they want?" Simon whispered.
"I don't rightly know," Bogg rasped back.
"They've allowed us to see them."
"I reckon that's true."
A sharp keening cut the air and jabbed into Bogg's old wrinkled ears. He winced. "That's a battle cry--"
Twenty green footsoldiers popped up around the four elks. There were flashes of spinning motion in the shadows, and something whizzed past Bogg's ear. Something else skittered along the ground toward them, throwing up puffs of snow and frozen blades of grass.
Sling stones. Golden sling stones.
Bogg was short on plans and shorter on time needed to carry them out. "Run!"
#
Chapter 22
They both turned tail and bolted farther into the clearing. Bogg heard another stone pass his ear, sounding like a bumblebee.
Bogg and Simon scooted past the scraped and trampled snow, and past the grass uprooted by hungry hills. They reached the center of the field, which was flat and bare unbroken snow. It was easier to race like a splintercat on it, but Bogg reckoned he and the pup stood out clearly and might, for all their running, suffer from gold poisoning shortly.
The pup clearly had the fear of death in him and sprinted bit by bit ahead of Bogg. Bogg dropped his pack and saddlebags and poured it on. That whizzing sound came less frequently, but here and there ahead of them, the wide stretch of smooth cottony white burped up explosions of snow where sling stones hit.
The ground underneath them started to moan and creak. Something big down there was waking up. The pup broke his stride and gandered wildly about. "What's under us?"
"Good land!" Bogg said. "What now?" Bogg's boots stomped through six inches of snow, and the ground under that, while hard, shifted in a squealing, rocking way.
"We're on a lake!" Bogg hollered. "A frozen lake!" His feet skittered along and kicked clouds of snow while he tried to stop short and keep running full speed at the same time.
All right, Master Bogg, sage of the ages. What do we do now?
The treeline ahead of them was jagged and dark... and close. They were more than halfway across. "Keep going! Move it, kid!"
If they could disappear into those trees and get under cover, maybe they could slink away on their bellies. Bogg couldn't quite picture that working out, but then, he was mostly running, not thinking. The pup was a few paces ahead of him, and when the pup stopped short, Bogg almost knocked him flat.
Something dark was moving among the trees ahead of them. It weren't no elk. It stood as tall as most of the trees and was too big to squeeze between them, so it just pushed them aside with its tusks and stomped down the slope toward Bogg and the pup.
Simon let out a hopeless soft moan. "Is that a four-legged hill?"
Bogg spied more after the first. "Looks like about five."
At various times in his life, Bogg had seen traces of four-legged hills. Mostly tracks, big and round like tree stumps. Once, in the Chilly Mountains near Hottencold Lake, Bogg had found a herd of them grazing about two miles away, and watched them all afternoon. There had been wee ones, pups, or colts, in that herd, that were not much taller than a man and right adorable, though the adults had lost their cuteness along the way somewheres.
These five that came clear of the trees didn't have any of that peaceful grazing aspect. They were full of piss and vinegar and ready to do some killing. They were big as the two-story brick buildings Bogg had once seen in Fort Inconvenience, and about that color, too -- the same brick brown as a red rhino. They looked less like hills up close, though their shaggy hair looked earthy and the crowns of their heads, with their shoulders right along, looked like the summit of something.
They swung their heads around as they thundered toward Bogg and Simon, their bone-white tusks slicing the air. Their trunks -- thick as a man and twice as long -- slithered up as they roared and hollered. Their beady black eyes shined out from beneath hairy brows and their little ears, long as Bogg's arm, flapped with rage.
And then, to beat all, to add insult to this injury, a greenie roosted on each monster between the shoulder blades and behind the hairy crowns of their heads, standing out like a mint leaf set on a pile of manure.
It was an ambush. The elk riders had chased them just where they wanted. Now Bogg and Simon were going to end up mushed between the dinner-plate sized toenails of a hill.
"Back!" Bogg called to Simon. "Back on the ice!"
They ran back over their own snow tracks, onto the creaking sheets of the lake. This was too many for Bogg. Get flattened at the foot of the hills? Get punched full of golden holes by the elk riders? Or slide off broken ice and freeze at the bottom of this mountain lake? "Lay flat, kid," Bogg gasped. "Lay flat or we'll break through."
Bogg's instincts fought it -- dropping on his belly in front of an enemy didn't seem at all like fighting or running, which were Bogg's two favorites. But there he lay, Simon sprawled on one side of him and his abandoned pack and saddlebags laying chilly on the other side, right where they skidded to a stop after he dropped them.
Those hills couldn't walk out here, at least. And low like this, Bogg and the pup were wee bitty targets for the slingers with the elks. Maybe this froze-over lake would turn out to be their best friend today.
They could use a friend about now.
The hills waited at the bottom of the slope. They screamed and swung their tusks at the ground, launching snow, grass, and clods of dirt from side to side. By and by, they settled into waiting and just rumbled in their throats now and then. Bogg peered over the snow piled in front of his face. The greenie slingers crept out of the trees, flowing all smooth, passing in and out from between the legs of the elks as they strode down the slope to the lake. Out in the open, walking greenies reminded Bogg of tall grass blowing in the wind. They were slender little fellers, smaller than the pup, frail, dressed in some kind of leaves and vines, their bald egg-shaped heads green as wet moss.
A voice came to them from the direction of the elk riders, high-pitched but sonorous, like the voice of a child. "Galdo hama!"
Bogg tried to see who spoke. The elks stopped at the bottom of the slope and didn't venture on the ice. The greenies on foot did. Bogg reckoned they were so light they wouldn't budge it.
Oh, well. Bogg felt chilled to the core. Lying on ice wasn't the healthiest way to spend an afternoon. The greenies could wait them out if they wanted. By tomorrow morning, Bogg and Simon would be stiff as icicles. A dozen greenies could pick them up by the edges and trot them home.
"Non trofos! Palano samash," said the voice. It was somebody on an elk. When his ride ducked its antlered head to sniff at the hill-torn grass, Bogg got a look. He wore gray-brown coneybuck skins, lashed together with vines into a tunic, and a crown of vines sat on his round head. His eyes sparkled blue, and his teeth showed in his sneer like little pearls. He was inside of four feet tall, and his legs were so short that his bare green feet didn't hang past the flanks of the elk.
He was an impressive-looking feller, Bogg would grant him that, but to be pinned down and bullyragged by such tiny critters seemed an irony that wore on Bogg's patience.
Simon rolled on his back and stared up at the shining blue holes in the clouds. The pup might have had enough, too. But he had a look on his face, not of frozen hopelessness, but of crazed determination, like he was about to cross a rope bridge he didn't trust, or about to jump in a river when he knew he couldn't swim.
The lad cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered at the sky. "Tlal! Wren fonos sam clochos!"
#
Chapter 23
There was a pause that hung in the air after that, like a heavy invisible blanket that made them colder instead of warmer. Then the greenies fore and aft let loose with a power of hooting that echoed from one side of the lake to the other. One of the hills got excited by the foofaraw and trumpeted.
Bogg wasn't sure if he should be impressed. "You speak greenie?"
"No," Simon cried over the racket.
That answer unhinged Bogg a bit. "Then what did you say?"
"I don't know."
Bogg pressed a cold palm to his forehead. "Then that might not have been too smart, mightn't it?" he hollered. "Did you read that in a book somewheres?"
"No. I dreamt it."
"You what?" His hand slipped over his eyes and he pressed his face in the snow.
The hooting died down to eerie silence.
"Kolomo," said the greenie chief on the elk. "Hal mani trofos."
"He's asking if we really speak vivet," Simon whispered.
Bogg lifted his head. "How do you know?"
"I don't. But it's obvious." The pup cupped his hands to his mouth. "Wren fonos sam clochos!"
Bogg frowned. "Didn't you just say that?"
"I don't remember any more of it."
The boss on the elk waved a green three-fingered hand. Slingers on foot flowed onto the flat white plain of the lake.
"Here they come, to do for us. Good try, pup. You bought us a few seconds. You think if we rush the four-legged hills, we might slip between them? Maybe they'll tangle up with each other."
"Wait," the pup said. "I remember..." He pressed his hand to his heart and hollered, "Sloros Ahm!"
The greenies on the ice stopped. They looked back to the boss on the elk.
"Ahm!" said a new voice, even higher and more birdlike than the others. Another elk strode to the edge of the lake, and with its rack of points, Bogg couldn't see the greenie riding it. "Ahm! Humu lalo feldus. Non sam clochos."
The two elk riders approached each other and palavered.
"They're deciding what to do with us," said the pup.
"I can tell that," snapped Bogg.
"Grolock lo sath," said the chief, and that must have been the final decision, because the twenty foot greenies raced over the ice and made a circle around Bogg and Simon. Their slings each held a golden marble in the pouch, and swung at the ready, the two straps held loosely in green fingers. Bogg and Simon gently got to their feet, wary of the slings and the shifting ice.
The greenies paid the ice no mind, and well they shouldn't. It didn't seem like they weighed hardly anything, the way they skipped and hopped around. The circle of them opened toward the four-legged hills.
Simon pressed his hand to his heart again, like he had a pain there.
Bogg found his shou
lder. "You all right, lad?"
Simon didn't answer. His hand cradled something lumpy in the front pocket of his cotton shirt. His fingers reached in, and Bogg saw a string of acorns and seed pods.
Good land! He kept that thing? And he chose this moment to return it? He should have left it in that mess of hewn trees where he found it. The poor lad was clearly scared plumb out of his gourd and not thinking straight. His wits had snapped their moorings and gone adrift.
Bogg's fingers tightened on the boy's shoulder. Maybe the whelp had a nice gesture in mind, returning the dead's belongings to his people -- but Bogg judged it would only get them both branded as thieves. What the tree people did to thieves he could not hazard.
Simon quietly tucked the bangle necklace back in his pocket. Bogg rested easier, happy that the boy's common sense had revived.
They reached the edge of the lake, man and boy with their wreath of greenies, and one of the hills rocked and hunched down with its belly on the upturned grass. The pup seemed resigned to whatever the greenies had in mind, but Bogg decided he wasn't so tame. "I ain't getting on that thing."
"We can't fight them," Simon whispered. "And I don't think they plan to hurt us."
"Shows what you know. Four-legged hills ain't meant to be ridden by people. It ain't natural. They can reach their backs with their trunks, lad. One moment you're high as the treetops, the next moment that trunk's got you and your head is getting chomped -- don't touch it!"
The pup reached out and put his hands to the shaggy red hair on the hill's side. "It's warm."
"So's hell."
The pup grabbed fistfuls of hair and pulled himself up, while the greenie up there watched him with an ornery look. Simon settled in on the hump of the back, six feet behind the greenie. "Come on up, Bogg."
Bogg wished he had time for a think. But with a hill in front of him and twenty greenies all around, he didn't see much freedom of choice. Maybe he'd get a chance to turn the tables later... hopefully before they wound up staked in the greenie's barbeque pit.
New World: a Frontier Fantasy Novel Page 13