by Angus Watson
He looked at Paloma. She looked away.
For the love of Tor… he thought.
His eyes settled on Freydis the Annoying. The girl smiled encouragingly and nodded. Well, thank Loakie someone on my side seems to be on my side, he thought.
Berlaze handed him his sword Foe Slicer, hilt-first. Think what you like about the murderous, human-hating squatch, thought Finn, but they had manners.
He hefted the wonderful weapon and walked towards Krusha, still no nearer working out how in Hel he was going to beat the bugger.
Sassa Lipchewer watched Finn advance on the squatch. The core Wootah philosophy–from when they’d been Hardworkers on the bank of Olaf’s Fresh Sea and in the old world before–had been you die when you die. Recently, however, she was coming to think that the phrase and the entire fatalistic philosophy had been thought up by men, and stupid men to boot. Having thought that, she’d bought into it for a long while. Life was a lot easier when you weren’t scared of dying and didn’t mourn the dead.
Pregnancy had changed everything. She straightened her crest of hair and placed a hand on her growing stomach. Now that her son or daughter would die if she died, she really really didn’t want to die.
You die when you die was based on the idea that the afterlife was awesome. Since they’d left Hardwork they’d seen so much that was amazing–mournful and majestic landscapes, monstrous and beautiful animals, people behaving wonderfully, extraordinarily and awfully–that Sassa wanted her child to see this world first, no matter how great the next one was.
She looked forward to a time when her child was old enough to understand the adventures he or she had lived through in the comfort of the womb, and be inspired to find their own adventures. That was at least part of the reason that she wasn’t interested in dying when she died.
She also wanted to live beyond pregnancy. She looked forward to a time when she felt a little less nauseous, headachy and not forever plagued by the need to pee. At least she wasn’t actually vomiting any more, touch wood, unlike Bodil.
She chewed her lips, gripped Wulf’s hand and prayed to Fraya to help Finnbogi the Boggy, or Finn the Deep as they were meant to call him now. She could feel all of them, Calnians and Wootah alike, holding their breath, as man and beast approached each other.
The squatch lunged.
Finn leapt back, surprisingly sprightly, slashed overhead, and it was the squatch’s turn to dodge. Foe Slicer clanged onto a boulder. Sparks flew.
Erik, Wulf and Keef cheered. Sitsi Kestrel brought her hands together in a little clap and Sassa found herself bouncing on her toes. It was hardly a battle-ending blow, but the fact that the squatch had had to dodge it surely meant that Finn had a chance?
The squatch swung a fist. Finn leapt out of range, parried, thrust and… sliced into the squatch’s wrist!
Krusha roared. Sassa heard herself squeak.
The squatch lifted its hand to inspect the injury, then looked at the human. It looked very, very unhappy. Sassa gulped.
Finn took a few steps back, holding his sword aloft. He did not look threatening. It looked like he was trying to hide behind the blade.
Krusha roared and charged. Finn swung his weapon, but the squatch kicked the sword from Finn’s grip, sending it spinning away.
The young Wootah man looked at his hand as if thinking where’s my sword? The squatch swung an arm and punched him in the chest. Finn flew like a hurled toy, landed on the grass and tumbled over and over. He missed all the boulders but came to rest face up, limbs spread in a star and prone. He looked finished.
Wootah and Calnians groaned.
“Idiot!” shouted Keef. “Get up, get your sword back and shove it up his arse!”
Finn didn’t move.
Sassa longed to run to him, but the nearest squatch captor seemed to read her thoughts and shook his head.
If Finn lost this fight, they’d only get a thousand paces’ head start before the squatch gave chase, which basically meant that the squatch would kill them as near immediately as made no difference. If, by some miracle, Finn won, they’d get half a day. Sassa thought that probably wasn’t nearly enough, but at least it would give them hope.
“Finn!” shouted Thyri Treelegs.
Finn roused. He tried to get up but fell back. His ribs must have been broken by the punch, thought Sassa.
The squatch lumbered over. Finn tried to scrabble away on his back, but the squatch picked him up by one foot, swung him round and round his head, and threw him.
Finn flew twenty paces. All the humans gasped, even Sofi Tornado.
Somehow, he missed the boulders again and landed rolling on the grass. He came to rest near the sword. He clambered up and looked around.
“Your sword’s right there!” called Wulf.
“What?” Finn asked, cupping at ear.
“Foe Slicer’s right next to you, dummy!” shouted Keef.
Finn looked down. “Oh!”
He picked up the blade and held it aloft. “Thanks!” he shouted.
“Now get on with killing the animal!”
All the squatch turned to look at Keef. They did not like being called animals. Keef grinned back at them, his remaining eye twinkling.
Krusha loped up to Finn. Finn slashed, Krusha swung a fist. Finn dodged and jumped back, then back, and back again as Krusha continued to swing punches.
If one blow connected with his head, thought Sassa, the fight’s over.
Krusha punched and punched. Finn jumped further and further back. It was just a matter of time before a hit connected. Sassa felt a sharp pain as she chewed too deep into her lip, but she kept on chewing.
Finn leapt backwards, up onto a broad rock platform. It was surely a fatal error.
What the Wootah and Calnians could see, but Finn couldn’t, was the four-pace drop at the other side of the platform, where he was headed.
“Watch out behind you, Finn!” cried Sitsi.
“Look out!” shouted Wulf.
“Stop jumping backwards, you prick!” advised Keef.
Desperately avoiding Krusha’s blows and jumping backwards towards his doom, Finn didn’t hear.
Sassa put her hands over her face.
“Oh no,” she heard Paloma say. She opened her fingers.
Finn was teetering on the edge of the drop. He waved his arms. Krusha drove a fist. Finn fell.
The humans groaned. Even Sofi put her hands over her face.
Finn landed on his feet, bending his knees to absorb the impact. For a moment Sassa thought he was fine, even though it had been a long drop, but he wobbled, slumped back onto the grass and lay still.
The Wootah and Calnians deflated like holed waterskins. The squatch roared triumph. They would get their thousand paces’ dash, then there would be slaughter.
Krusha roared gleefully and dived headfirst off the rock platform after the doomed Wootah man.
Sassa was never sure how Finn moved so quickly, even managed to move at all after falling such a long way. As the monster dropped, Finn leapt into a crouch, whipped the sword around so that its hilt was braced against the ground, blade pointing at the falling foe.
The squatch warrior saw his fate but could only wave his arms and yell. Foe Slicer pierced the screaming, hairy face like a knife into a snowball and burst from the back of his head with a spray of gore. Finn leapt one way. The dead squatch fell the other.
Sassa whooped and jumped up and down. She couldn’t help it. All around her the Calnians and Wootah were doing the same, shouting, “Woo-tah! Woo-tah!”. Even Sofi Tornado and Yoki Choppa were smiling.
Meanwhile, Finn was trying to heave the squatch’s head over to retrieve his sword, but the beast was too heavy and Finn gave up, flinging up his hands in flouncy resignation.
Good old Finn, thought Sassa. Not many people could manage to look that shit only moments after killing a monster with such a cool and clever move.
Chapter 4
Moon
Ayla, thought Finn th
e Deep to the kindly squatch, your father means to kill you.
No. The gigantic female squatted so that her black eyes were level with Finn’s. She smelled of warm, woolly musk. It blended pleasantly with the fresh scent of the pine, as if the two were meant together. He may seem like a monster, but you must understand that, from the squatch point of view, humans are the monsters. You eat other animals even though –
I’m sorry, Finn interrupted, but I heard him think that he means to kill you. I can hear squatch think.
Yes, Finn, that’s how we talk.
No, I can hear your inner thoughts. It’s how I beat Krusha. You disagreed with Berlaze in public and he means to kill you for it. He arranged to have you captured by the Badlanders the last time you pissed him off.
Inner thoughts? she asked.
When your father agreed to give me the sword, you thought that proved that he has some good in him, right?
Ayla stared at him.
How?
I can hear animals think.
But we’re not—
Okay, sorry, I can hear the minds of creatures that aren’t human. At the same time that you were thinking he was good deep down, your father was thinking that he’d have to kill you, since his arrangement with the Badlanders to kidnap you had been screwed up by you escaping. He doesn’t like you embarrassing him.
What? Her eyes filled with tears.
Finn tried not to listen, he didn’t want to intrude, but he couldn’t help hearing her thinking that an agreement between her father and the Badlanders explained a lot about her capture. But how could he have done it? Her own father? Her earliest memory was laughing with him while they hurled boulders into a lake. Surely he loved her as much as she loved him?
Finn regretted his blunt honesty.
Sorry, he thought.
You’re sure? What am I thinking now? She furrowed her brow and stared at him.
You’re thinking about ripping my leg off and beating me to death with it as punishment for suggesting your father had anything to do with the Badlanders catching you, but only as a test to see if I can hear what you’re thinking. You wouldn’t actually do it. You’re also remembering your big sister saying that your father was evil when she left the tribe.
I see.
Yes. Now you’re wondering if you should head west to join your sister even though she used to annoy you. So do. Come west with us. None of us want to kill you.
I don’t suppose I have much choice.
We’re not that bad.
Sorry, I’m grateful for the offer. It’s just—
I understand. Finn nodded, trying to convey hope. It’ll all be fine. Things generally are in my experience.
Really?
Finn thought about Bjarni Chickenhead dying slowly. He remembered Wulf waking him with the words “Gunnhild is dead”. Well… no. They’re either fine or they’re not. But you can’t do anything about what’s going to happen, so why worry? You die when you die.
“Come on, Finn!” shouted Wulf the Fat. “We’re off!”
Well, asked Finn, coming?
“Snowline’s a mile ahead!” Paloma Pronghorn cheerily reported back to Sofi Tornado when they’d been going half the morning. “It’s thin enough on the ground while there’s tree cover, and there’s a path up the southern side of this valley that’ll suit us. A mile further on, however, the trees stop–I guess it’s too high up for them–and we’re fucked. The snow is hip-deep to begin with. Then it gets deeper.”
Sofi looked back. Sitsi Kestrel, Yoki Choppa and Chogolisa Earthquake were behind her, followed by the Wootah tribe, puffing as they paced up through the trees. Chogolisa had Ottar on her shoulders and Ayla was carrying Freydis, and that was about all that could be done to speed things up. Everyone had two of Erik’s sinew and wood water-running shoes sticking up from their backpacks. He’d insisted that everyone bring them. Sofi hadn’t had the time or inclination to ask why.
The Wootah’s fitness had improved markedly after twenty days’ hard walking from the Black Mountains. However, the path was steep and strewn with boulders and fallen logs, the Wootah were only unenhanced humans and they were not making fast progress. Sofi pictured squatch sprinting up the hill, leaping over the obstacles with ease. Half a day head start was not enough. Not nearly.
“Head back down the hill, Paloma,” she said. “See if the squatch are following, but be careful. Don’t get close enough—”
“They said they’d give us half a day.”
“Did Berlaze strike you as the sort of fellow who keeps his word?”
Don’t trust him, thought Ayla from her place next to Ottar and Freydis at the back of the walkers.
Oh, hello, thought Paloma. How close do you need to be to do that crush thing on our minds?
About three paces.
Your paces or mine?
Squatch paces. So maybe ten of yours.
Great, thanks. Paloma liked this communication by thought business. It left more time for running.
“Okay, I’m off!” she told Sofi.
And off Paloma was, hopping downslope between the Wootah. Keef the Berserker nodded to her. Sassa and Wulf smiled. Finn… she avoided his inevitable moody glare. She regretted kissing him, but she knew she’d probably do it again if they got through this and got drunk again. She liked a snog after a drink or five, and he was the least bad option in the group. And that was that–the sum of her affection for the man. He was the least unappealing of the available males. Why couldn’t he see that, and stop pouting at her like a bullied trout? Most annoyingly, she felt bad about it. She cursed Yoki Choppa for the thousandth time for taking away their rattlesnake. Life had been more fun when they’d been cruel.
Ayla was a furry blur flashing by and Paloma was on her own again, bouncing down the wooded mountainside with huge springing leaps. Elk, chipmunk, a couple of humped bears and other animals heard her coming but didn’t have time to flee until she’d flown by.
The tight gorge became a valley, then widened out into meadow. A family of yellow-bellied marmots was looping about next to a splashing stream. Paloma paused to watch them.
The moment she stopped running, she heard squatch thundering across the meadow below. So they hadn’t even waited a quarter of a day before beginning their pursuit, the cheating fuckers.
Paloma zipped into the treeline on the valley’s northern flank and sprinted between trees until she could see them.
Some three dozen squatch were loping along the valley floor at a serious pace, following the Calnians and Wootah’s tracks.
She ran back to the others. Actually, she ran a little past and uphill of them, then bounded down the slope towards them like a bighorn in spring, because she knew it would look better.
“They’re coming,” she told Sofi.
“How far behind?”
Paloma looked at the sky. “They’ll catch up by noon.”
Sofi nodded, then yelled: “The squatch are after us already. We have to speed up, a lot. Sitsi, take the lead. Keep the pace as fast as you can. I’ll take the rear. Keef, you’re with me. Paloma, run back and keep an eye on the squatch. If you can slow them down or lead them off-track, do, but you are not to go within twenty paces of them.”
“Ayla said their mind crush only works from three paces.”
“You’ll stay twenty paces clear. It’s not a request.”
Paloma opened her mouth to complain, but saw the look in Sofi’s eye and closed it again.
The Wootah, Calnians and Ayla the squatch headed off. Were they going any faster? If so, Paloma couldn’t tell, and it certainly wasn’t nearly fast enough. They were definitely going to be caught, probably before lunchtime.
Yoki Choppa, bringing up the rear, stopped and gave Paloma a meaningful look. She knew what he meant, but she said: “What?”
“Don’t go near the squatch.” He held eye contact until she had to look away.
“Okay!” A heartbeat later she was a hundred paces away.
Paloma P
ronghorn stood on a rock high up on the valley side, legs wide, hands on hips. Her long, loose, dark hair wafted in the refreshing wind flowing down from the snowcaps above. Way below, clouds rolled like smoke over silhouetted, tree-fringed ridges. She’d been in the clouds a few times, but never before had she been above them. It pleased her.
She pressed the balls of her bare feet into the rock and stretched her calves. Half a mile below elk scattered as the squatch galloped across a clearing.
Paloma reckoned her friends might make it to the deep snow before the squatch caught up. Then it would depend on how good squatch were on deep snow. Probably much better than humans. As things were, the Wootah were all going to die, the Owsla too if they tried to save them.
Their quest was to get Ottar the Moaner to The Meadows, so if all else went to shit Sofi would make Paloma take him on her own. The idea of crossing the mountains and then the Desert You Don’t Walk Out Of and facing more and more monsters and natural disasters was unappealing enough, but the notion of doing it with a snotty boy for company was unacceptable. So she had to slow the squatch. But how?
A chipmunk scurried onto a nearby juniper log, perched with a pine cone in its paws and looked at her. Paloma wrinkled her nose at it. It dropped the cone, ran in a circle, picked up the nut and resumed its vigil. A rotund little bird with a black and white head watched her from another branch, chirping out a plaintive ditty as if it had something important to say. Below, the leading squatch reached the trees and disappeared.
Sofi had told her to stay twenty paces clear. However, given the element of surprise and a run-up, Paloma reckoned she could sprint in, crack a squatch or two over the head with her killing stick and be twenty paces away before any of the others realised what had happened. A couple of deaths, or serious injuries, would surely make the charging beasts more cautious through the trees and buy a little time?
Of course, last time she’d tried to attack a squatch it had flattened her with a thought before she’d landed a blow. If this lot knocked her out and caught her, they’d rip her apart like a wet leaf.
But this time would be different, she told herself, because she’d surprise them… At least she hoped she would. Point was, she had to do it.