His fingers selected a maple seed pod, with its dry, leaflike wing. "This means a rescue. Some other vivet saved Ahm's life." Next on the necklace was a horse chestnut. "Humans around here call these buckeyes, because they're dark and round, just like the eye of a deer. But they're poisonous. Ahm suffered an illness, but he recovered."
Simon counted quietly through the seeds and nuts on the necklace. "This is the history of Ahm's life. All his milestones, all his experiences, are here."
He paused on a walnut. "This is when he met you. That's funny, a little... that for vivets, a walnut symbolizes--"
Ee looked up into his eyes. "Come with me."
#
Tiberius Bogg hadn't eaten all day, and he plumb adored it. His stomach had shrunken to a tight little growling monster, and Bogg boomed along lick-splickety, listening to it whine.
He was on the sept side of Settler's Pass, downhill now, past the icy rotten snow and frozen trees in the shadow of Deadreckoning Peak. He didn't have the trail yet, and he didn't know just where the buggers were up ahead, but if they were anywhere this side of Rastaban, Bogg would catch them, and then, by jings, there'd be thunder to pay.
What a fracas it would be! All the bards would write songs about it.
Course, if they reached Rastaban, Bogg would lose them. That place, old Dragon's Head, was so full of rapscallions and scoundrels and bastards that even Bogg's sons of bitches would blend in -- or else team up with the rest of them -- and Bogg didn't judge that he could butcher the whole town.
Hold on now. No reason to believe they were in Rastaban already. Bogg had been held up (and how!)... so maybe they had been held up too. Hope lifted Bogg's spirits and burned in Bogg's heart, hotter than love in haying time.
Recollecting being held up, naturally, called the pup to mind. Bogg didn't feel at all right about leaving him with the greenies. Bogg didn't know for sure that the greenies wouldn't hurt the boy. Bogg's gut told him it was true, but his gut was heavily swayed by his own intense desire to be where Bogg was right now, ripping and tearing alone after those killers. Maybe it wasn't true at all. Maybe the boy was in danger right now.
His stomach roared painfully and twisted itself up, and the spring in his step sagged a little. His stride petered down until he stood on the mountainside, puffing, watching his breath come out as fog in the chilly air.
Cuss that kid. Even when he wasn't here, he was here.
#
Chapter 29
Ee led Simon down the grassy slope from the dripstone monument. Once they were clear of the stalagmites, Simon could see a camp of vivets in a grove of trees, and elk and four-legged hills grazing in a field beside it.
He followed her through the camp. Vivets around them worked at every task Simon could imagine: tanning skins, mixing sap and plucking leaves for clothes, foraging... even vivets working a gold smelter, tossing measured blobs high in the air so they would cool in a round shape before plopping and hissing in a pond. A small vivet then dove in to retrieve the sling balls.
Simon was curious to see where the smelter's gold came from, but that wasn't why he was here, so he stayed close on Ee's bare green heels instead.
Green face after green face turned up to see Simon pass. He had never seen so many sets of wide, blue, suspicious eyes. All the vivets were smaller than him. He imagined he could spot genders. The males were broader across the shoulders and never had hair, while the females had rounder faces and hair on their heads that might be black, green, white, or some shade in between. There were no children, and the mystery of where vivets came from would have to wait.
At the far side of camp, at a meadow overlooking a bluff, two vivet warriors practiced with slings. Their target was a lonely dead tree that stood at the edge of the bluff like a dry and twisted scarecrow. Its bark was chipped and broken from countless sling hits.
The vivets saw Simon and took slinging stances toward him.
"Wait." Ee approached alone and spoke to them quietly. They looked astounded at first, then bemused. One gave Ee a sidelong glance and handed her his sling and a small sack made of animal skin. They melted away to the edge of the clearing and shot up the trunk of a tree to watch.
Ee motioned Simon over.
"Do humans use slings?" she asked.
"No," Simon said. "That is, yes. But I never have."
She handed him a vivet sling made of about four feet of twisted vine, with a woven green diamond-shaped pouch in the middle. Simon felt the flexible, moist life of the vine. It would dry out and be useless in a day or two. "Why not make these out of leather? You have leather."
Ee thought about it. "We don't like making permanent weapons. It's bad luck. Tlal -- see this loop? Slip it over your middle finger. Wait. Which?" Ee stopped, flummoxed by Simon's extra finger.
Simon slipped the loop over his ring finger and pinched the other end of the vine between his index finger and thumb. He reached for the bag.
"Do you know how?" Ee asked. "You have to let go of the end at exactly the right moment."
"How can I learn if you don't let me try?"
Ee handed him the bag. Simon reached in and withdrew a sling stone.
It was a small, round rock. Not gold.
"These are for practice," Ee said.
"But these are too light. The gold ones would feel different than these. They would fly differently. Do you have gold ones?"
Ee blinked, the gesture for negation. "Vivets practice with stone, not gold."
Simon looked askance at her. "I see. So the gold is too valuable to waste."
"No. These stones are untraceable. They are merely stones. But the gold shows that vivets were here."
Simon looked askance at her again, to show he understood. He held the sling in one hand and the bag in the other, and realized he needed a third hand to place a stone in the sling. "How do you do this?"
"Hang the bag on your belt. Swing the sling around, get a sense of how it moves. A trained warrior can drop a stone in a moving sling."
Simon tucked the bag in his osnaburg coat pocket. He lifted the ends of the vine and tried to set a stone in the sling pouch as it swayed in the soft breeze. It was like trying to thread a hanging needle. By holding very still, Simon was able to set the stone in the sling. If he moved, it would fall out.
"Go ahead." Ee melted into the meadow grass, the vivet equivalent of hitting the deck.
Simon rocked the sling a little. The stone didn't drop out. He swung it in a full circle, just to get a feel for it, and as the pouch came around and lifted into a second circle, he tried to stop the swing and the stone plopped in the grass.
The bag at his belt was full, and Simon was thankful for that. He drew another stone, and with patience, set it in the pouch.
This time, he would kill that old tree.
He worked his wrist and set the sling racing in a loop, over and over.
"Good," said Ee, invisible in the grass. Her slender green arm reached up to point to his elbow. "Here, to start." She pointed to his wrist. "Then here. Faster."
Die, tree, thought Simon.
He whipped the sling around with a final burst of speed and let the vine slip from his fingers. A tree branch rustled behind him. The stone fell rattling from the branch and thumped in the weeds.
The two vivets behind him chittered with laughter. One of them sounded a warning hoot -- Danger, we're under attack! -- and they both chittered louder.
Simon huffed. His arms hung limply at his sides. He hadn't even come close to them. They didn't have to mock!
"Your timing was wrong," Ee said. "And too much power. Let the sling do the work. Once the sling is moving, it just takes a little wrist. You know, a trained warrior can drop a stone into a moving sling and fire that bag empty in a few heartbeats."
Simon hated being mocked. But he needed this weapon and he wouldn't give up. Let the swordsman attack with his shining blade. Si
mon would strike him down before he could get close.
Simon set another stone in the pouch and set it swinging. He relaxed, and the sling spun up to a blur. He kept it racing for a few seconds while he thought about his timing and rather than projecting evil thoughts at the scarecrow tree, he locked his gaze on a particular crooked branch halfway up.
Timing, timing.
He let go, and the crack was so loud it startled him. The old tree gave up a puff of dust, and the branch snapped and tumbled over the ridge.
Simon froze. He didn't think he would hit it!
Victory hoots echoed from the tree behind him. Ee rose from the grass, her eyes wide. "A vivet's shot. Are you sure your blood is red, Simon?"
Simon felt invincible. He really could overtake Bogg and slay the swordsman himself -- somehow. Simon's dear fuzzy uncle would leap out, ready for battle, and find Simon in repose, scrimshandering with that monster's sword. How extraordinary that would be! If Simon could dazzle Bogg, he could dazzle anyone. He would never need anyone's assistance for anything. No one would be able to hold him prisoner, indentured or indebted, again.
"Vivets have a saying," said Ee. "One success is a blessing afforded all creatures, but no more." Her tiny nose wrinkled mischievously. "Beginners have luck."
Simon nodded. The swordsman had companions. A single hit wouldn't do the job.
There were eight more stones in the bag. Eight more limbs to blast off the scarecrow tree, his surrogate enemy. Eight more chances to prove himself. "We have that saying too," Simon said. "But watch this."
Simon missed eight times.
#
Simon sat alone in the grass. Ee had left to find more practice stones, and the two warriors in the tree had grown bored and melted away quietly, the way vivets did.
What was Simon going to do? Go through with this and be killed like so many others?
He remembered the wild man's message. The swordsman had to be stopped.
But how would Simon keep from being just another one of his victims? Simon pulled at the meadow grass, despondent.
More practice, more practice.
Then, when the moment came -- whenever it came -- and the swordsman was in range... all Simon needed was a lucky shot.
He wished he knew what would happen.
Ee, quiet as a mirage, appeared beside him. She held out the bag to him, heavy and full.
Simon took it. It held so many smooth white riverbed stones that they would spill out if the bag tipped.
"Good. Thanks, Ee."
She smiled and put her hands behind her back. It was a strange gesture for a vivet, and it caught Simon's eye. She brought her three-fingered fists together in front of him, showing him the knuckles of a toddler.
Simon knew this game. He tapped the soft skin on the back of her right hand.
She nodded and opened her right fist. A golden slingstone sat on her palm, the twinkling center of a flower, her fingers the green reaching petals.
Simon plucked up the slingstone. Gold, all right -- so heavy it nearly pulled itself out of his fingers. It was misshapen, more acorn than sphere. He frowned.
"It was rejected," Ee said excitedly. "Because it didn't cool quickly enough and became unround. Sling warriors are stodgy about these things."
"Ee..."
"I was able to steal it before it was returned to the cauldron for melting. It should fly true, I think."
Simon locked the ball in his fist and pressed his fist to his eye. "Ee, you don't understand. One gold slingstone? I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I'm going to need about a hundred of these. Isn't that obvious?"
Ee frowned, deep lines forming over her eyes, the delicate skin between the lines pinched pale. "I had to steal this one. There will be no more."
"Don't you want me to stop the hunters?"
"Yes! But my people don't."
"Why not?"
"They've chased the hunters to the pass, so they are no longer in our territory. They no longer threaten us. The vivets feel that's enough. They mourn Ahm, as I do, but otherwise, they are content."
"One stone? You can't get more?"
"Your presence here is tolerated for now, out of respect for me and a taste for novelty. If you demand more, the vivets will come to believe you are merely a gold-hungry human, and they'll cast you out. They might kill you, if you squawk loudly enough."
One stone.
Simon racked his brains. Beg? Demand? Steal?
Maybe there was another way. He pocketed the stone. "Thank you, Ee. Come on... there's something else you can do for me." Simon reached for the lowest branches in the scarecrow tree and pulled himself up.
Ee didn't follow. She only watched him climb.
"Come on!" When Simon was halfway up, and the brittle old tree was creaking in the breeze, Ee sprinted up to a branch just above him. "Being in this tree is silly and dangerous," she said.
Simon pointed. "Look."
Down the bluff and across a mile of rocky slope, on a stretch of tundra surrounded by evergreen forests, the vivets' herd of four-legged hills dug at the frozen grass.
"I'm going to need one of those," Simon said.
#
Chapter 30
Bogg followed a path of stunted brush that weren't no more than an animal trail. It cut back and forth down the sept slope of Mount Deadreckoning. Bogg hadn't eaten or slept, but he didn't feel tired or hungry -- the passionate need to find the sons of bitches before they reached safe ground fueled his limbs.
He was right sick of the way this trail was sashaying along. He jumped off, into the bushes that grew in between the firs and pines, and boomed along straight down the hill. He'd pick it up again when it switched back.
Crashing through the brush was more fun anyway. It shot a load of polleny bits right up his sniffer, though, and time enough he was ripping and tearing with sneezes.
His nose filled right up. He grinned at the thought of young Simon in this predicament. He might have asked Bogg for a kerchief or some other dainty mark of civilization.
Bogg pressed his thumb against his right nostril, took a big bellows of a breath through his mouth, and blew his left nostril clear. A stream of watery snot splatted on the leaves.
He did likewise with the right nostril, then decided that it was wasteful of water to blow snot on the ground like that. He resolved to snort and swaller it from now on, at least as much as he could stand.
Boulders seemed to spring up in his path down the mountainside. He hiked up them and jumped off their edges, crashing into the bushes below or thumping onto the next boulder.
Straight down -- that was the way to get off a mountain. Bogg didn't see any way those five bastards could be moving this fast.
As he clipped along, the side of the mountain slowly changed. There was less and less scrub, more and more crags, and the few pines that grew looked scrawny, twisted and downright poorly.
No birds, nor any other happy forest sounds, nuther. Something unhealthy about the land here. And a stink in the air, too, like rotten eggs.
Bogg was just wondering why, when he jumped off a boulder and found there was nothing for his feet beyond it. He slipped into a gap in the rocks. He scraped and bounced and slid on the gravel into the dark, and kept on scraping and sliding, until he was having some serious doubts about his future.
By and by, he came to rest in a place that wasn't a cave so much as a skinny pit.
His deerskin trousers were torn and his knees were bloody enough that he could feel it drip down his calves, even if the pit was too dark to see it. The heel of each palm stung but good. He picked gravel out of them. His splintercat cloak didn't have a scratch, naturally, but it had been pushed up around his head by all the sliding and didn't do a thing for his hands or knees, not to mention his hips or elbows.
He reckoned it had kept his noggin safe, though, and he was fine with that. Bogg stood on achy legs and unfurled t
he cloak so as to find his salvaged beaver hat in it. With bloody hands, Bogg fit the hat back on his head and pulled it snug. He spent some time catching his breath and getting used to the dark, and came to notice two things.
First, he wasn't going to get out of this pit the same way he got in. It was thirty feet or more up steep and crumbling rock to that lonely little patch of cold blue sky.
Second, down here in the dark, it was a fair sight roomier than he originally suspicioned. In fact, he couldn't quite see it all.
He could sure smell it though. Rotten eggs and then some -- it stank worse than a tanning house, and gave him a powerful prodding to find another way out.
Bogg opened his pack and rummaged until he found the long-neglected candles from Fort Sanctuary. They were down at the bottom of the pack and melted so they stuck together. He snapped one off and, after a dozen tries in the dark, lit some tinder with his flint and stuck the candle wick in it. The wick flared and caught, tossing shaky yellow light around the hole.
Candles had been the pup's suggestion. Smart. Bogg had been awfully hard on that boy. He saw rocks and gravel, along with dead leaves and twigs that had blown down the hole over the years. About an average log cabin's worth of space. Right cozy. Warm, too. If it weren't for the stench, and if he could have clumb free, this place would make a dandy hideout.
Shadows jiggled on the rocks as Bogg moved the candle back and forth to see... except for one spot on the floor where the shadows didn't budge. Bogg crept to the spot and -- sure enough - clumb on down the hole.
#
Chapter 31
Simon strolled nonchalantly across the field to within a quarter mile of the herd with Ee behind him. After that, his will ran out.
He was in the open. If the four-legged hills charged, there was no cover to reach. They could trample him easily -- they could mash his bones into the grass.
The cold wind that chilled him sent waves over the field and their deep auburn fur. For now, they ignored him. Their trunks worked endlessly, looping around tufts of grass and stuffing them -- roots, dirt and all -- into their mouths. Their tusks, large as curved white trees, swayed as they walked. Occasionally they snorted or rumbled.
Sheer terror prevented Simon from taking a step closer. Determination prevented him from retreating. He stood still and watched them, trying to notice their habits. He could smell them from here. Like horses, but more pungent.
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