The Black Hawks

by David Wragg

  Chel paused. ‘Hyperbole?’

  ‘A touch of old-fashioned exaggeration, if you prefer.’

  ‘You made it up? You’ve never killed a wolf?’

  ‘Oh, fuck off, pal. I’ve smashed in more living things than you’ve eaten, and that’s a fact. Just not, uh, your actual wolf.’ She wiped at her nose, then pulled a short, fat blade from her bag. ‘Fuck-all good these’ll do us, wee bear. By the time friend wolfy is close enough to jam one of these in his guts, he’ll likely be enjoying a good munch on your gullet.’

  She replaced the knife in the bag and went back to rummaging, muttering as she went. ‘To think I left Clyden for this. Eaten by a fucken dog with a hairstyle.’ She paused her delving, looked momentarily wistful. ‘Go out, see the world. Return in triumph at the completion of your tour. Seemed pretty straightforward.’ She shook her head at Chel’s blank look. ‘We have a Clydish word, tourist. You might consider me a tourist. Ancestors, you people know absolutely nothing.’

  ‘We can’t stay here. The fog’s lifting; if we move fast we can find the others’ tracks. We have to assume they’re looking for us already.’

  ‘Aye, if the wolfy bastards didn’t get them first.’

  A little voice at the edge of his mind interjected: Why are you in such a hurry to chase after the mercenaries who kidnapped you? Why not make a run for it with the prince? Break for freedom?

  ‘Shut up,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Nothing. Let’s go.’

  THIRTEEN

  Chel, Lemon and Tarfel slogged along the edge of the woods, searching for tracks. An improvised spear – one of Lemon’s knives lashed to a broken branch – dangled from Chel’s weak hand, the shoulder above it now pulsing with a vengeful ache. It could join the queue, as far as he was concerned. Nearly every part of his body ached or throbbed, each crunching step through the ice-littered snow jolting fresh pain through his body. The exertion kept him warm though, he thought, watching his gasping breaths fogging past his eyes. It might not have quelled the giddy lightness in his ribcage, but it had stopped his hands shaking.

  The mist that had smothered the mountainside was breaking and lifting, and the opposing forests and peaks began to show through the meandering chunks of cloud. The trio followed the churned snow at the wood’s edge, now clearing in the grizzly light, around the curve of the slope and upward. Chel squinted through the trees into the distance, conscious that at any moment the wolves might catch their scent and come for them.

  The wind favoured them. They climbed on.

  ‘I’ll be buggered,’ Lemon said, stumbling to a halt. Tarfel almost went into the back of her. Ahead, visible as the haze dissolved, the wooded slope reached a barren apex at the shoulder of two great peaks. A towering marker stone, snow-shod and strung with woven pennants, marked the junction. ‘The High Passes. One of them, at least.’

  ‘Do you think they made it?’ Chel asked. He realized he was tingling with hope. The only upside to losing the others was not having to worry about Spider shanking him while he slept.

  Lemon shrugged. ‘Let’s go and look.’

  ‘You know,’ said Tarfel, catching his breath. ‘I’m quite offended they didn’t come back to find us. I’m supposed to be ransomed, remember?’

  They wandered out from the drooping canopy toward the pass. The trees split away from the high rocks, leaving the path upward flanked by dark woods, battered and lumped with snow.

  ‘I’m sure they meant to,’ Chel said. ‘Maybe they still do. They might have lost their bearings.’

  ‘Come on, wee flowers,’ Lemon said. ‘Once we’re over the pass it’s downhill all the way.’

  Tarfel made a small, squeaking noise.

  ‘Highness? Are you all right?’

  In the darkness of the woods beyond them, half a dozen pairs of yellow eyes glinted. More eyes lurked within the woods opposite.

  ‘Aye, this is a fucken joke all right. Wolfy bastards have flanked us!’

  Chel gripped his spear in both hands and backed toward the others. Lemon, too, had a knife on a stick. Tarfel merely gibbered.

  Chel risked a look over his shoulder. ‘We’re thirty paces away. We could run for the pass.’

  ‘Aye, then what? There’s no magic gate up there, wee bear. Just more fucken mountain. Stay close, move slow.’

  Tarfel broke from his whimpering. ‘They’re not attacking. Maybe they’re afraid of us.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Chel said, but the prince was right. The wolves hadn’t left the cover of the trees. The three humans backed slowly up the slope, weapons extended, watching the wolves. The eyes followed them, tracking their progress from the darkened woods.

  ‘What are they waiting for? A hunting horn?’

  Tarfel was looking up the slope. ‘We’re nearly there! I think I can see—’

  The first wolf broke cover, bounding from the trees over the snow with disturbing speed. Others followed, springing from either side like the jaws of a trap.

  ‘Run!’

  Barks and yips filled the air, rich with excitement and anticipation. The marker stone was fifteen steep paces away, each slogging step a battle in its own right.

  ‘Fuckers have herded us,’ Lemon snarled between gasps. ‘Teased us into the open … for the babies to hunt!’

  Chel heard the soft crunch of animal steps approaching his side and swiped with the spear. A small wolf danced away, keeping its pace, running parallel but out of reach.

  ‘We’re being … used for … training?’

  ‘Aye, bad as the fucken Mawn!’

  The ground flattened as the stone approached. Lemon spun and lashed out with her knife-stick, scoring the muzzle of a wolf who got too close. She was off and running before it could leap.

  Tarfel was a few steps ahead, arms flailing as he ran. ‘There’s wood here! We can use it for … something!’

  A broken pole lay beside the marker, a torn section of boards jutting up from it. A structure must have once stood there, perhaps a hut, but it had been long collapsed with age.

  ‘No time for a fire, princey!’

  The wolves were paces behind, keeping out of reach of the knives. Beyond the marker, the landscape opened out; the peaks fell away either side, and Chel saw the range falling to what he guessed was the south-west. A huge, silver lake lay far beneath them, at the base of a ringing throng of sloping crests.

  ‘We could make shields?’ Tarfel lurched toward the boards, trying to drag them clear of the snow piled against them. ‘Help me! Quickly!’

  Lemon took another swing at a closing wolf, but it bounced away unharmed. It looked like it was grinning. ‘Are you fucken cracked, princey? There’s a dozen of the shites!’

  The wolves were circling, hemming them in around the marker. They hadn’t yet blocked the drop-off that led toward the lake. Chel ran to the prince’s side, yanking at the wood with his good arm. He’d had an idea.

  ‘Good man, Chel! Glad someone agrees.’

  The boards came free in a shower of loosened snow, a torn section of nailed wood a few feet square, the broken post along one edge. Chel slammed it flat with one foot, then swapped his spear to his good hand. It looked solid and square. It was worth a try.

  ‘Lemon! Can you clear a path?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘There!’ He jabbed the spear toward the drop-off, then tossed it to Lemon.

  She caught it with her free hand. ‘Aye, for what it’s worth!’ Darting around them, she made for the lake-side edge, swiping the spear at encroaching wolves. Those behind began to close, snarls locked, growls deepening.

  ‘Chel? What are you doing? I can’t pick up our shield.’

  ‘Help me push, highness.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Push!’

  Good hand outstretched and weak hand flapping at his side, Chel ground the section of boards forward over the snow. The thick post at its prow churned and bounced, carving a wide, shallow furrow as they began to mov
e. Tarfel dropped alongside him, pushing with two hands as they gathered speed toward where Lemon stood.

  ‘What are we doing, Chel?’

  ‘We’re going to ride out of here.’

  ‘Oh, super.’

  Chel gritted his teeth and pushed, feet slipping and scuffing against the yielding snow beneath. He could hear the wolves behind them, gaining in confidence, padding ever closer even as Lemon bawled and slashed at them. He snatched a backward look. The line of wolves was mere paces behind them, their jaws wide.

  ‘Er, Chel?’

  He looked around to see Lemon directly in their path, driving wolves from before her. She turned at the rushing sound of the approaching boards, and her eyes widened. The post whacked into her ankles, knocking her backward onto the board. She thumped down between Chel and Tarfel’s hands, momentarily slowing their progress. Their aggressor down, the wolves came lolloping forward.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘Either push or stab something!’

  ‘Right-o!’

  She righted herself on the board as Chel and Tarfel grunted back up to speed. The ground was beginning to slope downhill, and the movement was becoming easier. Lemon sat up, the improvised spear in one hand and her broken knife-stick in the other. She hurled the half-spear at an onrushing wolf, sending it yowling from their path.

  ‘Er, Chel, what happens next?’

  Lemon spun on the board, rising to her knees to fish a slim axe from her pack and heave it at the wolves who now followed them at a run. Her target was almost beside Tarfel, jaws apart, ready to snap at his trailing legs. The axe scythed into its flank and it stumbled, tumbling into a grey ball as it lost its pursuit.

  The incline was sharp enough that the board was beginning to pull away from Chel’s grip. He looked up from the broken boards to see the drop-off opening before them. It looked almost vertical, and a moment of numbing doubt struck at his chest.

  Then something snarled at his side, and jaws tore at his boot. Lemon lunged past, jabbing with the spear, and the pressure on his leg was gone before he’d even felt pain. His doubt vanished.

  ‘Highness, get aboard and hold on!’

  He dragged himself forward, scrabbling with burning legs onto the wood beside Lemon. Tarfel did likewise, curling into a ball with a tight grip on the front-post. The board was moving fast now, still accelerating, and with a lurch they slid over the lip of the drop-off and the chill air began to tear at them as their stomachs tried to leave through their mouths.

  The world became a blur of flying snow and rushing air, and Chel had to close his eyes against the torrent. They flew down the mountainside, carving a wide, flat trail as they bounced off humps and sailed over dips. Lone trees flashed past, the occasional black rock peeking through the snowy blanket. Every bump and shudder wrenched at the boards beneath them, every uneven impact threatening to smash their carriage apart and grind them to wolf-paste on the unforgiving terrain.

  At length the incline began to relax, and their impossible pace slowed. The jumps and judders diminished, although the splintering creaks beneath them were ever more ominous. It took Chel a moment to realize that the high-pitched squealing he’d been hearing was Tarfel, not the sound of the air being ripped from their lungs.

  ‘Are they still there?’

  Lemon was facing backward, lying as close to flat on the board as she could as they whooshed over the snow. She peered out from her snow-matted fountain of hair. ‘Looks like the fluffy bastards gave us up. Ha!’

  Chel uncurled, his fingers numb and his entire body smashed and frozen. The wind still whipped at them as they travelled downslope, their speed decreased but still uncomfortably fast. The sparse trees of the drop-off were getting thicker as they approached the silver lake.

  ‘We need to slow,’ he said, grasping around for something to jam into the rushing snow. His spear was gone, his sack was gone. Everything was gone, abandoned or shaken free in their flight.

  ‘Lemon, have you—’ Something caught his eye ahead, before the trees. Was that a person? ‘What’s—’

  The board bucked beneath them as they sailed up and over a half-submerged boulder. For a moment, they floated in space, thrown up from both board and ground, then they crashed to earth. The board flipped and smashed down onto them, splitting on impact, half torn away. The thick post bounced on, pinwheeling and spraying splinters across the snow, before sliding to a final halt some way short of the woods.

  Chel sucked a painful breath into his battered lungs. Brushing away snow and splinters, he pushed himself up to his knees. Broken wood littered the snowscape around where Lemon and the prince had landed.

  Lemon sat up, spitting snow. ‘Fucken hells!’

  Chel moved toward Tarfel. He was alive and unbroken, but a savage gash at his hairline had already begun to pump a steady flow of bright blood down one side of his face. He tried to blink the drops away, eyes shocked and distant.

  ‘That was rather exciting.’

  Chel tried to tend to the wound with handfuls of snow, swiftly calling for Lemon. ‘Down south, when it snows … Sometimes the children slide down hills on wood.’

  ‘How tremendous.’

  A distant howl echoed from the peaks above them. It sounded mournful. Lemon bustled over, lamenting her lost pack and equipment. Everything had been shaken free in the descent, their gear scattered across the deep snow of the mountainside two miles above. ‘Fucken disaster, man. Fucken disaster.’ She looked up at the howl. ‘Oh, fuck off, wolfy. We’d have smashed you little furry bastards to bits if we hadn’t let you get away.’

  Chel wiped a sliver of blood from the re-opened split in his lip. ‘At least we’re alive.’

  She sat back on the snow and sighed. ‘Aye, right. We need food, water and shelter, boys, or we’re nine kinds of buggered come nightfall. Assuming friend wolfy doesn’t decide it’s worth the effort to come down here after us, seeing as we seem to have lost all our FUCKEN WEAPONS.’

  ‘You never know,’ Tarfel said brightly, blood streaming down his pallid face. ‘Maybe we’ll find someone.’

  Chel looked around, the hair pricking at the back of his neck. A lone figure stood at the edge of the woods, unmoving, exactly where he’d seen it before the crash. He scanned the fringe of trunks, and at once he saw the rest, another five or six figures, lurking at the wood’s edge.

  ‘Or maybe someone has found us,’ he said, his tone leaden.

  ***

  The woman before them was of indeterminate age, her walnut skin as creased as her features, her steel-grey hair tightly braided, woven with the same small animal bones that decorated the simple tunic beneath her furs. The spear she was waving in their faces, however, seemed anything but friendly. The other figures shuffled over the snow behind her, moving easily on wide rings of bone bound with straps of hide. They carried spears and bows of horn, and their faces betrayed nothing.

  ‘Oh, shitty ball-cakes,’ Lemon said. ‘It’s the fucken Nanaki.’

  ‘And we were having such a pleasant day,’ Chel sighed.

  The woman jerked her spear again, making it clear she wanted them to stand. Lemon clambered up, then turned to pull Tarfel to his feet. ‘Keep your fucken face out of sight, princey,’ she hissed. ‘Golden boys like you don’t go down well in these parts, remember?’

  Tarfel looked up at her, his face crusted with thick streaks of darkening blood. ‘How?’

  Lemon grinned. ‘Perfect, princey, perfect. Never change. And don’t, for the love of mercy, wash.’

  Tarfel gave her a blank look, then slowly returned her smile. ‘All right.’

  They began to wade through the biting snow again, prodded by Nanaki spears. Chel plodded beside Lemon, shielding Tarfel. He glanced at the spears that lingered at their elbows, keeping them slogging forward through the thick snow, and kept his voice low.

  ‘They don’t look too friendly. How much trouble are we in?’

  ‘Ah, well, that depends. If they’re devoted follo
wers of tradition, we’ll be dandy. Nanaki custom demands that they take in strangers and show great hospitality – enemies of the people notwithstanding.’

  ‘And if they’re non-traditional?’

  ‘Then they will probably eat us.’

  ‘What?’

  The woman with the spear grunted, and they fell silent. Moments later the dark forest swallowed them. Even the birdsong seemed lost in the wood’s oppressive muffling, nothing left to hear but the crunch of their footsteps and the sound of rasping breath.

  ‘They’re cannibals?’ Chel whispered.

  ‘Aye, well, rumours abound.’

  ‘What sort of rumours?’

  ‘The sort that abound.’

  ‘Sometimes, Lemon, I don’t think you know as much as you maintain.’

  ‘Aye, well. Don’t come running to me if one of these fuckers chews your legs off.’

  They slogged through the frigid gloom, encircled by the sure-footed Nanaki, until cold light glimmered through the trunks, and, with great reluctance, the woods opened onto the lake shore. Encircled by leaden shingle, the watery expanse gleamed silver beneath the grey sky, its placid surface occasionally rippled by distant gusts. Dull tongues of ice already lurked at its fringes.

  A cluster of huts perched at the lake’s edge, small dwellings huddled around a larger, central structure with a conical roof, a handful of wooden piers jutting from the clump into the lake on blackened legs; the water beneath was thick with murky ice. A narrow ribbon of smoke rose from the open roof of the central building and into the pale sky.

  A tall figure, if a little hunched, his bald head uncovered despite the thick furs cloaking his torso, stood before the hut ring, ankle-deep in churned snow. His earrings glinted in the pearly light.

  ‘Ah, Spider, you bollocks!’ Lemon cried on seeing him, but Chel felt only the mountain’s cold sting.

  ‘Five hells,’ he whispered, stopping short. Spider had betrayed them again, this time to a bunch of bone-covered cannibals no less. Tarfel stumbled into the back of him and the two collapsed into the snow, to the irritated shouts of the Nanaki around them. Unfriendly hands hauled them upright, Lemon’s among them, and they were shunted onward without ceremony.