by Angus Watson
“Gods?” cried the woman, her voice like a melodramatic mourner at a funeral, “Gods? The gods fled the west a long time ago.”
Chapter 15
Caught
Paloma Pronghorn and Freydis the Annoying drifted on downstream between red rock banks, chatting and looking for somewhere suitable to hole up and wait for the others.
The Owsla warrior enjoyed the day alone with a child more than she would have guessed. It made her feel like an actual adult for once. Talking to the girl, she remembered when she’d thought and spoke like Freydis. She saw how much she had changed since then, how she had become a woman like her own mother. She felt a burgeoning, warm desire to look after the girl, to encourage her to enjoy and explore the world. She wanted to protect the child from… well, everything. She felt a new, keen sense of horror at the danger that surrounded them, not for herself but for Freydis.
It was weird.
Talking to Freydis all day was also, paradoxically, a return to childhood. When they set out on the raft together, Paloma’s approach had been didactic: she tried to tell Freydis about the things they were passing and how they worked. However, perhaps because this bizarre land was as new to her as it was to Freydis, Paloma found herself dropping the instructor role and conversing with Freydis as an equal. As well as the strange world around them, they talked about what they’d been through together since they’d met by the Water Mother.
Paloma listened more than she spoke. That was another surprise. Generally, Paloma found herself thinking about other things when people–usually Sitsi–launched a barrage of opinions at her. Freydis, however, was interesting. She had observed a lot. She explained how Sofi controlled Wulf by letting him make all the minor decisions while making all the important ones herself, and gave examples. Paloma nodded–the girl was spot-on–and wondered how it came to be that this spindly limbed, pale-skinned, six-year-old was a more astute observer of human behaviour that she herself would ever be.
They drifted along, failing to find an appropriate place for a long-term camp. Time went quickly and soon the first bats of the evening were flitting among bankside cacti and scrub.
Paloma angled the pole in to steer around an islet of tangled flotsam, and told the girl not to worry.
“I’m not worried.”
“Maybe you should be.” Paloma glanced skyward.
“Why?” Freydis was wide-eyed.
Paloma sighed. She didn’t want the child to be afraid, but she did, she realised, want her to appreciate that Paloma was her brave and necessary guardian. What was wrong with her?
“There’s no reason to worry. I’m just kidding. We can camp on the bank and carry on tomorrow.”
As if to contradict Paloma, they floated around a bend and into a steep, bank-free gorge. Paloma was confident that the land would flatten out on at least one side soon enough. It always had before.
“But what will happen if the monsters come in the night?” asked the girl as the cliffs loomed high on either side.
Paloma looked at Freydis. She had the strangest sense that the child was humouring her.
“I won’t let them hurt you.”
Freydis nodded, apparently appeased, but Paloma was pretty sure it was her need to be the protector that had been satisfied.
They drifted down the darkening gorge in silence, Paloma looking at the girl. She was the first child Paloma had spent any time with. Maybe all children were like that these days, she thought.
Around the next bend, satisfyingly, there was lowland on both banks.
“Right,” said the speedy Owsla woman, picking up the pole, “I’m hungry and it’s about time we—”
“Look!” Freydis pointed downriver.
A bridge spanned the channel. It was the longest bridge Paloma had ever seen by some margin and also the most complicated–a mass of criss-crossing timber beams and struts. Back east, streams might be bridged, but a river this wide would be crossed by boat.
Paloma scanned the banks. Bridges meant people, and people, in her experience, meant trouble.
She couldn’t see anything amiss, but she didn’t like it.
“Let’s carry on downriver for a while.” She didn’t cease her vigil.
“Yes,” nodded Freydis.
They drifted on.
A noise on the southern bank startled them. A coyote padded into sight from a clump of bushes and strolled along, eyes forward and tongue lolling as if lost in its thoughts. Freydis coughed, the coyote leapt as if it had been hit on the rump with a sling stone, darted a glance at the girl and the woman on the raft then ran for the rocky hillock some hundred paces from the bank. From where three people were running towards them, fast, leaping bushes and rocks.
Two were lean and one was large. Not Chogolisa large, but big enough. By the pace he was going, he wasn’t fat. All three were, in fact, preternaturally quick, either alchemically enhanced or bolstered by some other magic. Big balls of black curly hair bounced around their faces as they ran. They would have been comical if they hadn’t been terrifying.
They headed for the bridge. They were going to reach it before the raft did.
“Pissflaps,” said Paloma.
“What does that mean?” asked Freydis.
She pointed.
“Oh no! Are they going to jump on us?”
Paloma dropped the pole and handed Freydis her killing stick.
“Whack them with this if you need to.”
“What are you going to—”
Paloma jumped into the water behind the raft, grabbed the backmost log, took a big breath, submerged her face and kicked. It took a few moments to get going, but soon it felt like they were shifting along at a decent clip. Water surged in her ears.
She looked up after a while to take a breath.
“We’re going to make it! Keep kicking!” Freydis was shaking her hands, lips pursed.
When she looked up next, Freydis was beaming. “You did it!”
The three runners were staring at them from the bridge, twenty paces back. They were all women, not men as Paloma had guessed by the way they ran. They wore light brown smocks which left bare, muscled arms; very muscled in the case of the large one. They had narrow eyes and cat-arse mouths, framed by manes of curly black hair. Sisters, Paloma guessed. They did not look kind. Despite their run, they weren’t panting.
The large one held a big bundle and the other two had spears; the stocky, thrusting type and not the throwing type, thank Innowak. They glowered after the raft.
“Bye!” Paloma shouted. “Sorry we’re going to miss the party!”
Freydis giggled.
The women stared hatred.
And then they disappeared.
Paloma blinked.
The trio were still there, but they’d squatted and arranged themselves in the framework of the bridge so they were almost totally invisible. Their cloaks, hair and arms looked like parts of the wooden structure.
“Clever!” Paloma called. “Any other tricks? I have an uncle who can make a rabbit crap gold.”
The women remained motionless. It was sinister, but it was a lot better than if they’d followed along the banks. Paloma looked downriver. Ah, there you go, she thought.
The river cut into a gorge once again and it would be impossible to follow on foot next to the channel. Although, if you could run as fast as those three, it would be a doddle to sprint to the top of the gorge’s cliffs and hurl rocks down on them.
Paloma resumed her kicking. She powered along, enjoying swimming for the first time. Pushing a relatively large raft crewed by a relatively small girl removed all the trying-to-float arse-ache which had so far done its best to elude her.
At her first breath they were nearly at the gorge.
“The women haven’t moved,” said Freydis.
Paloma nodded, dunked her face again and kicked on. After a while she thought she could hear Freydis shouting through the churn of the water. She stopped.
“—ALOMA PRONGHORN, STOP! O
h, thank goodness, you’ve stopped. I’ve been shouting for an age.”
“What is it?” She looked back. The gorge had meandered and she could no longer see the bridge.
“A canoe was coming down the river behind us.”
“Oh no.” Paloma pulled herself onto the raft, snatched up her water shoes and began to strap them on.
“The canoe will be under the bridge by now,” said Freydis. “There’s no point you running into danger, too.”
“Running into danger is what I do,” said Paloma, glancing downriver. “Stop on that next island and wait for me.”
And she was off, slapping across the water.
“It was them!” Sitsi cried.
“Who?” asked Keef.
“Rabbit Girl and Happycheeks the chipmunk. Who do you think?”
“I can’t see anyone.”
“They’ve gone round a corner. Come on, paddle!”
“You’ve seen the big wooden thing across the water?”
Sitsi gave the bridge a quick scan, then checked the banks and the hills on both sides.
“There’s no danger, it’s just an old bridge. Come on. There’s no way we can go quick enough to catch them by sunset, but—”
The canoe surged as if struck by a fresh flash flood had struck it. Sitsi smiled. You didn’t need to understand much about Keef to make him do what you wanted.
She saw the ambush far too late. Sitsi opened her mouth to shout a warning as two people jumped from the bridge holding a net between them.
They splashed into the river either side. Keef and Sitsi were squashed down into their canoe, trapped like livestock. The mesh was tight, heavy and taut. Sitsi couldn’t even get at the knife at her waist, let alone grab an arrow to chuck at their attackers.
Head bent uncomfortably, Sitsi could see a woman up on the bridge, very large and hard-faced with curly black hair. She was hauling on a rope which Sitsi guessed was going to pull the net tighter and haul them ashore.
She was right.
The big woman heaved the canoe across the channel and up onto the bank. Sitsi prepared herself to attack the moment the net was released. Arse Splitter’s metal head was by her feet. Keef would grab that, so she would leap in the other direction with her bow. Or would her knife be more use?
It was a moot argument, because they didn’t release the net. Instead they tied it around the canoe with twine rope. Sitsi was squashed, head between her knees. She couldn’t move her arms or legs.
“Can you let us out, please?” Keef tried.
Nobody answered.
“We are great warriors,” he continued. Sitsi worried he was about to threaten them, which would not have been clever. “We can help you with whatever catch and rob thing you have going here. I’m sure you’re good–you certainly caught us nicely and you look fantastic–but Sitsi here can shoot the eyebrows off a butterfly a mile away and I’m the most skilled axe man outside Valhalla. She’s Calnian Owsla, I’m Wootah Hird. We are the best.”
“It’s not a catch and rob thing,” said one of the trimmer women. “It’s just a catch thing.” She spoke the universal tongue in a sharp accent that rattled in her throat. Like the other two women, she had a large, pointed nose. They were definitely sisters. “We’re not going to rob you.”
“Oh, good,” said Keef.
“We’re going to kill you.”
“That would be a mistake. We can be useful.”
“You are going to be useful.” The big one began to haul them away from the river. Her accent was similar, but her voice was shriller. “We’re going to eat you.”
“Only reason you’re not dead yet,” said the third, following alongside, “is to keep you fresh.”
“We could help you find others to eat,” suggested Keef.
“You’re great warriors, you say?”
“The greatest.”
“I see. Thanks for letting us know. Usually we let our food go and have a good old chase. We like that.”
“We do,” confirmed the other smaller one.
“But we don’t want to risk that with the greatest warriors. So we’ll keep you tied up in your boat and kill you with spears when we’re hungry.”
“Then I must warn you,” Keef said gravely, “that I intend to soil myself.”
“Go ahead. You’ll crap yourself anyway when we stick a spear in you. You all do. We’ll give you a good wash when we gut you.”
“I have unusually sticky crap.”
“Don’t worry. Soap made from human fat works wonders on shit and we’ve got more of that than we’ll ever need.”
“Hmmm.” Keef was out of arguments.
“Have you heard of the Calnian Owsla?” asked Sitsi.
“Can’t say I have, no. Hang on, though… is it a bird?”
“We are the finest warriors in the world. The rest of the Owsla will come looking for us. If you mistreat us in any—”
“You’re more boring than your friend, even if you do have funny eyes. I don’t want to listen to you. Come on, girls, let’s go.”
“You will listen and—”
“Silence, or I will kill you now.” The woman’s tone was so matter-of-fact that Sitsi believed her. They weren’t going to talk their way out of this one.
The big woman dragged the canoe uphill across the desert, Sitsi and Keef trussed inside. Sitsi could see at first, but soon the canoe twisted upside down and they scraped over rock, sand, spiny-twigged bushes and small cactuses.
Behind her, in between grunts and ooofs, Keef managed to say, “Well, at least we’re still in the same boat.”
“That wasn’t funny the first time,” said Sitsi.
“Quiet, you two,” said the smaller women who’d done most of the talking, “or I’ll put a spear through—”
The canoe turned on its side and Sitsi saw what had interrupted the woman.
Paloma Pronghorn was sprinting up the hill towards them like an avenging whirlwind, brandishing a water shoe in each hand.
Sitsi smiled. Erik had gone to a lot of trouble sharpening and fire-hardening the heavy wood on the shoes’ oval heads. It would be nice to see his efforts pay off.
The three curly haired women stepped to meet their attacker.
“What’s happening?” asked Keef.
“Paloma’s coming.”
“She looking mean?”
She wasn’t. She was smiling like a loon. Paloma loved a fight.
“Formidable more than mean. You would not want to be in our captors’ sandals,” Sitsi replied.
“Good.”
Ten paces out, Paloma leapt and spun and flew towards the women, legs and arms a blur. It was one of her standard moves from the Plaza of Innowak. The crowd loved it and it worked every time.
The largest captor stepped to meet her. Paloma’s water shoe flashed out of the flurry of limbs and cracked into the big woman’s forehead. Sitsi didn’t see quite what happened next, a cactus was briefly in the way, but a moment later the large woman was holding Paloma’s ankle with one hand and swinging her around her head, like a child with a doll. Paloma was not light. This was a Chogolisa-level display of strength.
“Rip her leg off,” said one of the slighter sisters.
The large woman grunted assent, gripped the ankle two-handed and swung round all the harder.
Paloma managed to twist and deliver an almighty whack to her spinner’s head with a water shoe. The blow would have killed any normal person.
The curly headed giant didn’t seem to notice. She spun faster, leaning back and putting all her weight into it.
“Stop!” Sitsi heard herself shout.
Faster and faster the woman danced in her circle. Sitsi thought she could hear the sinews in Paloma’s knee and hip snapping.
“No!” she shouted.
Paloma lashed out with the water shoe again. This time she went for her own leg, slamming the hardened wooden blade into the twine which held her leather legging above the knee. The knot popped.
The gi
ant had been gripping Paloma by the legging. When it came loose, she tumbled backwards. Paloma flew in the other direction. She landed hard, but was up in the blink of an eye. The other two enemies charged and Paloma fled up the hill, limping badly.
One of the attackers was faster than the other. She was also faster–Sitsi couldn’t believe her big eyes–than Paloma. Her friend was injured, she told herself.
Two hundred paces up the hill, Paloma stopped and ran back at her pursuers, much faster than she’d being going moments before.
Ha! thought Sitsi. She wasn’t injured, she’d been drawing them away and spreading them out!
Paloma smashed her water shoe across one face, then the other, sprinting on before either woman could strike back.
The desert dwellers turned and resumed their chase, as unaffected by the blows as their big sister. There was no way they were going to catch Paloma unless she messed up again, but nor did there seem any way for Paloma to hurt them.
Sitsi slumped with disappointment, which made her bonds slacken a little. She tried again to get her knife, but it was no use.
The large woman returned to guard the canoe.
Paloma stopped and stood, ten paces away. She looked mean now.
“Come on then, little one,” said the big woman in her strangely high voice. “Attack me. I’ll rip your pretty leg off and beat you to death with it.”
“Her sisters are coming!” Sitsi shouted. It would be only moments before they were on Paloma.
“Shut up!” A kick rolled the canoe and Sitsi could see no more.
Moments later they started shifting along the ground again.
“Was that one of your Owsla?” said the deepest of the throaty voices. “I’m not sure about greatest warriors in the world. But they are very good at running away.”
It was dark by the time Paloma found Freydis. She’d lit a merry little fire on an island and was roasting a fish on a stick.
“Where are Sitsi Kestrel and Keef the Berserker?” asked Freydis.
“We’re going to have to rescue them a different way.”
“What happened?”
Paloma told her.
“So you can’t hurt them? Like Beaver Man?” Freydis turned the charring fish. She sounded interested more than worried.