‘Perfect,’ said Besema, returning to where Atisha stood, having positioned women all around the bag. ‘The wind will be stronger up there,’ she pointed straight up, ‘thank the gods. We would not want you to rise and just hover right above us.’
Atisha looked up, swallowed. Poum, perhaps sensing her mother’s disquiet, wriggled in her arms. Or she might have been too hot, despite the chill morning. Atisha was, for both of them were wrapped in many layers. Besema had told her that it got colder the higher you climbed. One of the many things she’d told her, so much advice from a woman who’d been up only once, at night, and while tethered to the ground by a dozen strong ropes.
Still, she spoke like a veteran. ‘Do you remember it all, little one?’
‘All?’ Atisha swallowed. ‘How could I? There is so much.’
‘Not so much, truly. You cannot steer this like a boat. The winds will take you where they will.’
‘And what if they take me to the sea?’
‘They won’t. This time of year all winds blow from the sea. It is why no man fishes in the winter, just stays home and mends his nets. If you were a fisherman’s daughter, like me, you would know that.’
‘Well, I am not. Nor am I a bird, to ride the sky.’ She shook her head. ‘But I can control how I go down, you say?’
Besema took a calming breath. ‘And say now again: I have calculated that the fuel already in the brazier will carry you for a few hours. The extra fuel maybe one more. As the heat diminishes the air in the sack will cool, but slowly. You will drop. And if you feel you would like to drop a little quicker – if you see a suitable open place to land, or people who might help you – you pull one of these ropes. They open vents above and let hot air out.’ She toed one that reached into the basket. ‘The bigger one a lot of air, the smaller one less. But be wary. Open them too high and you will fall too fast.’
Atisha’s shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, Besema! I do not think I can do this.’
‘Atisha, I know you can. You cannot stay. You have said you cannot climb the cliffs like a monkey—’
‘I cannot.’
‘So soar like a condor. Away from the man who would kill your baby.’
Those words did it. Fear left her – not entirely perhaps; but it was overtaken by anger. And that brought determination. She nodded. ‘Let us do this then,’ she said.
Besema smiled. ‘Good,’ she replied, and turned, calling, ‘Make ready!’
The others had been waiting. Positioned all around the sack, which they’d brushed clear of snow, they began shaking it up and down. Air inflated it a little, and Besema, together with Norvara and Yutil, took staves that had been burning fiercely on a pyre and held them to the sack’s open end. It started to expand, just a little. Immediately, other women brought an iron cauldron beneath it, tipped it a little, allowing heat and smoke to pour in, till the wool lining pushed out against the reed webbing that contained it. It filled, spread, tightened, rose straight up. The next moment the basket lifted half Atisha’s height off the ground.
Fant, who’d been quiet and watchful, now started to run around, barking wildly. ‘Come, Fant,’ Atisha called, ‘let’s go.’
‘No, child!’ Norvara cried. ‘We’ll keep him. There’s no room.’
‘There’s always room for Fant,’ Atisha replied, lifting the yelping dog and tipping him over the edge of the basket. ‘Also he can’t climb cliffs – and I’m not leaving him here for Intitepe.’
‘In! In!’ cried Besema, taking Poum, holding her till Atisha had clambered aboard and could take her back. ‘With the dog’s weight, the fuel will burn up faster. You won’t be able to go as far. You sure you won’t leave him?’
She looked down, at Besema, at Norvara, at Yutil. There were tears in all their eyes, a match for those in hers. ‘I’m leaving enough,’ she said. ‘Thank you all.’
‘Thank you, little one. For bringing us hope.’ Besema looked a moment longer, eyes gleaming, then turned. ‘Now,’ she cried, and snatched up an axe. Yutil and Norvara already had one apiece. Each swung and, with single strokes, severed the three ropes tethering the globe to the earth.
It rose – so fast! She laid her baby down, risked a look, swayed, gripped the wicker rim and looked again. Already, Besema and the others were small, waving their arms wildly. She looked beyond them, to that different cliff where three days before she’d killed men who’d come to kill her; saw women like spiders spread out over the rock face; saw, the other way, the bridge that was so close to spanning the gorge. On the other side of it, men were staring up, all stunned to silence. She ducked down, only peering out through a small opening Besema had cut in the wicker. She saw a man emerge from a tent and look up. But Intitepe was as shocked and silent as any there, watching as the wind pushed her out of the valley, and beyond sight.
After a while, the gentleness of the flight, the quiet of the skies, made her terror recede, if not disappear entirely, especially when she realised that she was largely helpless. The wind decided where she would go, which was slightly inland and always north. Not entirely helpless, though, for when the globe sank a bit she remembered Besema’s instructions and fed the brazier with the fuel – compact bricks of wood chips and dried llama dung. Heat lifted her. Knowing this, she didn’t add much, letting the globe sink slowly towards the earth. She felt a little safer, closer to the ground, and there was a low ceiling of cloud she didn’t want to enter. She needed to see.
See what, though? she wondered, one hand in Fant’s neck fur to still his whining as she scanned the ground. Escape from the Fire God had been the only thing driving her to such desperation. Neither she nor Besema had given much thought to what would happen next.
It was hard to judge, but she felt she had to be travelling at least twice as fast as any running man. And though Intitepe might guess she was in the basket, he could not know. He would finish his bridge and storm the city first. So the further she got, the more chance she had to find somewhere to hide from him, perhaps with some people who would give a lost stranger and her baby shelter – but not if she descended upon them from the skies. How far she got depended on the fuel – which, she soon realised as the globe dropped and she fed more to the flames, was not going to last much longer.
Lulled by motion and quiet, Poum slept. Fant finally too. Atisha would have liked to have joined them, but she kept looking down, seeking she knew not what. Over this valley the skies had cleared, the snow was left behind; a winter sun reflected off the sea far to her left and glistened on the peaks of the low coastal range below her. The City of Women was built on a crag in that range, directly behind her. To her right was another line of mountains, also running parallel to the coast. The valley was between them, with the inland range much taller. She knew she didn’t want to drift to that, to crash onto those rocky slopes. The globe was starting to sink again, the fuel diminishing fast, and the thought of what would happen when it came down was terrifying enough on flatter ground, let alone among jagged stone.
She looked ahead. A river threaded the centre of the valley, a track of sorts running alongside it. She could see dwellings, scattered farmyards, tilled fields. Land near one of them? Further up the sun shone on a larger body of water, a lake, with huts lining its edge. Perhaps there?
The globe passed over a last peak – and immediately it began to swing as if a rush of air had come from below. Atisha staggered to the side. Poum woke, began to cry, Fant to growl. Now they were being pushed faster towards those other, taller peaks, where disaster lay. There was so little she could do but she knew she had to try that little. So, grasping the thinner of the two ropes that trailed up the outside of the canopy, she pulled. A vent opened, hot air was expelled – but not enough. The globe dropped only a little, kept driving too fast across the valley. So she grasped the thicker rope, pulled it – and the globe lurched down. She let the rope slide, closed the vent; the vessel steadied, swept east agai
n. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she played with the two ropes, letting the hot air go, somehow controlling the descent. But the rocks were getting closer, the remaining valley space diminishing too fast. She was level with the tops of trees now, heading straight for them, the ground coming up towards her. Uncertain which they would hit first, she jerked both vents wide, then flung the ropes away, fell onto Poum and Fant and held them tight.
It was level ground the basket hit; bounced, rose, fell again, tipped onto its side. Things tumbled onto her, some of them burning. They were dragged along at speed, both her and Poum shrieking – until the globe smashed into a tree, there was a loud pop, and a sudden jarring stop. Feeling ground beneath her face, not wicker, Atisha clutched her baby, and rolled herself out of the basket. Fant followed.
There were embers caught in her clothes. Atisha staggered up, scanned Poum, set her down, slapped at everywhere she felt a burn. More heat on her face; she looked up and saw that the wicker basket was now afire. Crying out, she ran forward and tried to snatch her bag of food from the flames. But they were too intense, she had to give up, stagger back, pick up Poum and move fast away as the ropes crisped and passed flame into the fabric of the globe. It caught and burned in its turn, sending a column of black smoke coiling into the sky. Fant barked at it but Atisha was too bruised, too stunned to do more than stare. Then, as the last of the globe dissolved, she shook her head to clear it, turned and began to walk away from it, into the valley. There were people there. Farmers. She would just have to hope that they would help her. She was a farmer’s daughter, after all.
She walked a while over rough, undulating ground, before descending to the river she’d seen, and the track alongside it. It was easier going on that, and she headed north, towards that lake. But she hadn’t gone far before she felt a tingling in her feet, a vibration. She looked about her, could see nothing that might cause it; feared it was the first rumblings of an earthquake, like the one that had wrecked her home, and killed many in her village, when she was a child. But the vibration was steady, grew – then changed, bringing sound with it, unlike any she had ever heard before.
There was a thump, a silence, another thump, the gap between them shortening as they grew nearer, ever nearer.
She’d just descended from a rise in the road. The sound was coming from the same direction she had. She stepped to the side of the track, clutched Poum to her chest, turned …
… and watched a monster come over the hill.
Nothing in nightmares, in childhood tales of magical animals came close to what she saw now: a huge beast with four legs – and three heads. The front head had the long nose and ears of a llama but this creature was three times a llama’s size. The two other heads were human, joined to human bodies that were fused into that of the larger animal. This was all she saw, all she had time to see, as the monster crested the hill and began to descend the slope – until all its heads turned to her. Then the beast let out a roar, rose up on its two back legs, its front ones flailing just above Atisha’s head. She shrieked, and fell back onto the ground, just managing to seize a barking Fant by his collar before he attacked.
The monster separated into three parts – and only then did Atisha understand what she was seeing – though the sight brought no less fear. For a huge man and a tall woman now stood beside the creature that, for all that it was monstrous, was just a beast after all, but with so strange an appearance she found it hard to take in. Yet she couldn’t focus on it, not with the man and woman approaching, both as alien as the beast. The man, all in baggy black clothes, with a head shaven around a thick knot of black hair that dangled down his back. The woman, also in black, but her clothes wound tight about her body, and her long hair fair plaited and held by a strap.
They stopped before her. And though Atisha knew that she had escaped what Intitepe had meant to do to her and her child, she now saw that she had only delayed their dooms; swapped his murdering fire for whatever these three monsters intended for them. She also knew she had no strength left to run. It was almost, she realised as she closed her eyes, a kind of relief, now that it was all over.
Nothing happened. She heard noises, monsters moving in for the kill perhaps. Yet nothing and no one touched her. So, taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes.
The giant beast had moved away, to crop grass at the side of the track. The black-garbed humans, the man and the woman, were no longer standing but kneeling three paces away. And as she looked at them, they murmured some words, then stretched their arms out, reaching towards her, before lowering their foreheads to the ground. It was similar to the way some would approach Intitepe. But he was a god. She was just a mortal. They – she and Poum – they were just mortals.
Weren’t they?
13
The Stone Fortress
No one had told the mountain that it was spring.
Deep breath of nothing, one, two, three …
Luck moved. Stopped. Again. Peered up through the falling snow. Again. The summit had to be close, surely? A question he’d asked himself over and over, especially these last three days. He understood now why no one in Midgarth had ever succeeded in climbing Molnalla. There was almost no air up there. He’d take three steps, each one with his legs plunged to the knee in snow. Need to halt and breathe before trying again. Often he wasn’t sure if he was even going up. If thick snowfall wasn’t blocking his vision, icy mists were. And ever since he’d almost drowned in that avalanche, a week before, had been struck by a log or a rock within the white maelstrom, his balance had been off. He’d discovered that when he was this exhausted, healing was slow. Some steps he’d take and end up face down, choking on white.
He had been lucky to find the killer’s boat again, for the force of the avalanche had snapped the towing rope. It was miraculously undamaged, which hadn’t made him happy. To have an excuse to lose its weight, even if it didn’t weigh that much? He’d abandoned it twice already, yet gone back for it each time – for the vessel itself was light, and the little he possessed sat as well within it as in the pack on his back. Besides, he still felt he might need it. The black-toothed murderer had brought it to their land. He was going to return it.
Time to go.
Deep breath of nothing, one, two, three.
He stopped, breathed as well as he could, listened for movement. Did any creature live this high? What could? When he’d left Bjorn to hold off Peki Asarko’s warriors, he’d run fast up the lower slopes in the guise of the she-bear. But the creature he’d possessed was weak from a winter’s hibernation, and he had been forced to let it go within a day, continue as himself. Since then, he’d only possessed one beast, a weasel. At least that had allowed him to hunt, kill three snow hares. He’d roasted one, consumed it as himself, smoked the others to eat later. But since then – two weeks ago? – nothing fresh. All he had left now was one strip of the dried venison he’d set out with. He’d promised himself that as a reward when he reached the summit.
Which was where? Perhaps it was better to eat it now? The summit could still be two days away – more! – and he might starve before he got there. He had found another way an immortal could die, one that was obvious, yet even so he’d never heard of it before. An immortal could die from starvation. Finally die, because how could the body be reborn if it had no strength to be born again?
Three more, he thought. Three times three steps.
Deep breath of nothing. One, two …
He stopped, foot raised over the ground. Was that a cry? he wondered, sinking down. All his senses had brought him things that were not there. Men and beasts moving through the grey. Women crying his name. The stench of hibernating bear, that he also tasted on his tongue. So what was this?
There! He heard it again, the hunting shriek of some bird, a hawk, he thought. If it was hunting, there was something to hunt. Possess the bird? Or its prey? Also, if it was hunting then surely it had flown up fr
om the other side of the mountain? Which meant …
Go! Deep breath of nothing, one, two, three.
Deep breath of nothing, one, two, three.
Deep breath of nothing, one …
Luck fell, sliding into thick-banked snow. For a terrible moment he thought that another avalanche had got him, that he was going to drown again. Until he realised that he had fallen forward. Down. Then, when he sat up and wiped his eyes clear he also realised that he could see. Not the arm’s length of white or grey that had been so long in front of his eyes. All mist had been whipped away by the strong, gusting northerly wind he now felt. Suddenly he could see a world before him – the other side of Molnalla. Far below, at the base of it, was a vast plain that stretched to the limits of his sight.
He had found another world.
Luck began to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had – yes, he could, when Gytta his wife had died, forty years before. He reached into his pack, pulled out that last stringy piece of cured deer. He thought it was the greatest food he’d ever tasted and at that thought he began to laugh.
His mind was dulled, by hunger and thin air, he knew. Because only after sitting and chewing for an age did he fully realise what he was looking at.
‘Another world, Luck,’ he said to himself, but aloud, a form of conversation he’d never indulged in before he’d come to this mountain. ‘Well done, Luck. You were right all along.’
Another world! Most of the beings he knew, gods or mortals, believed that only Midgarth existed. That the world was flat, which the unclimbable mountains and the unsailable seas proved. That there could be nothing beyond those. He had believed it too, for his first two hundred years. But soon he began to doubt. It simply didn’t make sense. There had to be something … beyond. Then the changing weather – long, colder winters, longer, drier summers, short springs and falls – had brought other changes. A type of whale appeared that had never been seen before. A different bird. His mortal parents had also believed in a world beyond and had set out to prove it – only to drown on their voyage north. One thing he knew, though – no one had climbed this mountain before him.
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