by Angus Watson
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make a dent in them. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have attacked three enhanced warriors armed only with a pair of shoes.”
Freydis held up the obsidian moon blade which had belonged to Luby Zephyr. It glinted darkly in the firelight.
“Do you think this will cut them? Perhaps you could slice their tummies open and pull out their guts?”
Paloma smiled at the sweet voice conjuring up such a messy image. “I don’t know.” The blade was as sharp as any and Luby had indeed sliced open many tummies with it. She’d stuck the blade’s pointed ends into plenty of eyes and necks, too.
But Paloma’s hardest blow with hardened wood hadn’t even bruised the women. Would the moon blade trouble them?
Paloma Pronghorn tracked the three captors and the dragged boat through the night. Dark mesas, bluffs and spikes of rock loomed. Moths, bats and owls swished through the calm, cool air. Unseen beasts scurried between bushes.
Freydis the Annoying ran behind, insisting that she was fine every time Paloma asked. The girl had stamina.
Paloma had the rope from the raft wound around a shoulder and Luby’s obsidian moon blade in her hand. She was ready for the fight, but far from sure that she would win it.
She had to win it, she told herself.
If she lost, they’d get Freydis.
It was madness, of course, to bring the girl on a rescue attempt against three foes who might well be invincible, but it would have also been madness to leave her alone in a land busy with monsters and evil arseholes like the ones who’d captured their friends. In an insane world, one had to choose the least insane path.
The track of a canoe dragged across desert was absurdly easy to follow. Keef and Sitsi’s captors knew that, of course. If they’d been the Owsla, they’d have laid the track over open ground. Sitsi would have waited on a rise and shot any foes who followed it.
The trail was crossing open ground now, so Paloma was half expecting an arrow in the chest at any moment. Again, she wasn’t worried for herself. She’d always been so lucky that she was pretty sure she couldn’t actually be killed. She tried to keep in between any likely archer perches and Freydis.
The track plunged down a sandy chute into a dry stream bed. The newly risen moon shone through the slim twigs of dead trees and sliced sharp silver shapes onto the sand.
The stream bed was worse than the open ground. With their stout spears, this would be the place for the sour-faced warriors to ambush them.
They didn’t, though. The trail emerged from the stream and followed a moderately used path to the head of a canyon, then down into the craggy cleft. There was something weird moving about on the ground, just before the track plunged over the canyon head.
Paloma approached slowly. It was a tarantula killing a mouse. She shuddered.
“Gosh,” said Freydis, appearing at her side and peering down. “That’s not very nice.” She rolled the big spider and its victim over with the toe of her leather boot, but the tarantula kept its hairy legs wrapped round its prey and the mouse stopped struggling.
Paloma looked down the canyon. A cloud passed over the moon and she spotted the glow of a fire reflected on the western canyon wall, half a mile down. It had to be their lair.
The warrior’s creeping terror for the child was blown away like autumn leaves in a tornado, replaced by the fizzing in her legs that she always felt before a fight. Her breathing calmed and her shoulders relaxed. She smiled.
Signalling Freydis to follow, she walked swiftly and silently away from the tracks, along the western rim of the canyon.
“What’s that smell?” whispered Freydis after a short while. “Is it roasting pig?”
Paloma didn’t answer. It wasn’t pig.
Soon they could see the sisters’ cave.
It was more of a niche than a cave, sliced into the far wall of the canyon three paces above the steam. It was maybe twenty paces wide and three high with a flat floor. Its interior was lit a flickering red-gold by a large fire. Two of the curly headed captors were sitting and staring into the dancing flames. The other sister was standing by the fire, turning a large spit. Impaled on the spit was a human body, its fat bubbling over the crackling flames.
Chapter 16
An Old Hardworker
Every time they stopped on the first day of the walk to find Ola Wolvinder, Wulf the Fat asked Yoki Choppa to use hair and his alchemy to divine the whereabouts of Keef the Berserker and Sitsi Kestrel. Finn the Deep could see that it was more often than the warlock considered necessary, but he did it anyway. He might not talk much, but Yoki Choppa was a good guy.
Other than a pause after dawn, the warlock reported that the two of them were heading south-west at an extraordinary pace.
“They’re going faster than canoes are meant to go,” said Chogolisa Earthquake. “They must have left the river and started running.”
“A canoe made by Keef with Keef paddling does go a lot faster than canoes are meant to go,” said Sassa Lipchewer.
“And the river is still in spate from the snowmelt,” added Yoki Choppa in an uncharacteristic blurt of unsolicited information.
That night Keef and Sitsi stopped moving, as one would expect, but then all the next day and the next they stayed in the same place.
“They must have found Paloma and Freydis,” said Sassa Lipchewer at the camp three nights after leaving Taanya’s home, “but why aren’t they coming back?”
“Because they’re waiting for us,” Wulf answered. “They know that’s the general direction we’re planning to head, but don’t know where we are. But they do know that we know where they are.”
“That does make sense,” Sassa nodded uncertainly. “I just hope Freydis is… Do you think she’s all right, Ottar?”
He barked with laughter then hopped from foot to foot, grinning.
That meant precisely nothing, of course. Ottar was Ottar. But Finn the Deep decided to take the boy’s reaction as confirmation that Freydis was alive. It suited his own buoyant mood to do so.
This new mood was entirely the result of Thyri Treelegs’ thawing towards him. It seemed the further she was from Paloma, the happier she became; or perhaps the more she liked Finn.
They’d trained all three days of the journey so far. That evening’s bout had been almost like the old times, when they’d just left Hardwork and been sharing a sleeping sack. Thyri had smiled several times, and when she whacked him with her sparring staff it wasn’t malicious any more. It was more playful, and, dare Finn think it, flirty. He was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining it.
He didn’t risk suggesting that they share a sleeping sack again; he didn’t want to ruin it. And besides, he was Finn the Deep now. If he was to end up with Thyri then he would woo her with words and deeds like a hero of old, rather than getting his jollies rubbing up against her in a sleepsack like Finnbogi the Boggy had.
The following morning the soft brown, folded hills to the east became larger and the green mountains behind were craggier and more looming every time Finn looked.
A little before noon, Taanya, still with Ottar on her shoulders, led them eastwards along a path that penetrated and climbed the sandy hills.
They were lucky to have Taanya, Finn was happy to admit. There were no signs of an actual path, but the squatch confidently avoided the steep gorges and peaks. Lucky to have her, that was, if she wasn’t leading them to their deaths. She seemed genuine and helpful and Ottar liked her, but Beaver Man had been charming one-on-one and he’d been a madman who wanted to destroy the world. And, by the way she acted at night and wouldn’t let anybody else carry him, it seemed like Taanya still thought Ottar was hers.
They emerged from the sandy hills, crossed a dip jammed with lush foliage and buzzing with bees, then began the slog up the mountain. The path zigzagged steeply. It was hot. The view opened up behind them to the west and they saw more of the Desert You Don’t Walk Out Of, so red and smoky that it looked like it was on fire. So far aw
ay that they almost looked pretty, three red-black tornados skimmed slowly along the horizon.
Their destination lay across that baking, threatening land. Could humans even survive somewhere that looked that hot? And somewhere out there, hopefully, Freydis was waiting for them with Sassa, Keef and Sitsi. Finn shuddered. How could Freydis have survived? He promised Oaden that he would never perv at another woman–indeed he would never have another inappropriate thought about any woman… any of his immediately group, anyway–if Oaden kept Freydis alive.
After several false summits–there were always false summits–the way finally flattened out. Taanya led them back west along a well-used path cresting a spur of land between stunted trees thronged with hordes of sniffing, stretching and scurrying squirrels, chipmunks, mice and other little animals. The air was fresh, cool and floral. After a while, the aroma of stew wafted along on the breeze. It smelled just like the ones Gunnhild used to make back in Hardwork.
Odd, thought Finn, with a pang of sorrow that his aunt was no longer with them.
He caught up with the others at a clearing. They were all standing and staring. As well they might.
There, looking out over the Desert You Don’t Walk Out Of, maybe a thousand miles from home, was a mini Hardwork.
At the far side of the clearing was a heavily built wooden longhouse, the same, as far as Finn could see, as the Jarl’s longhouse they’d left behind. To their right was a replica of a Hardwork storage hut. To the left was a smaller version of the church where Finn had lived. In front of the church was a life-sized (or death-sized, depending on how you looked at it) carved Krist on a wooden cross, although this one had a much bigger, beardier face than the Hardwork Krist and a great carved mane of hair.
Finn gawped. His fellow Wootah and Calnians were gawping, too, apart from Yoki Choppa and Sofi, obviously, and Wulf and Erik, who were looking at the longhouse with wry twists on their lips and a twinkle in their eyes. Finn reset his face into an expression of manly expectation that better fitted Finn the Deep.
But what, in the name of Tor’s big sweaty balls, was going on?
“Ola Wolvinder?” Sofi called out.
A man strode out of the longhouse and stood, hands on hips. His eyes skimmed over the men and the squatch, then lingered on the women as if they were a delivery of livestock. Finn couldn’t help but let his mouth fall open anew. The man was Erik’s height and breadth across the shoulder, but a good deal slimmer in the midriff. Silver and black locks swept majestically back from his temples like metallic waves. His beard jutted from his chin like an aggressively healthy shrub.
He wore a white shirt and faded blue trousers, baggy like Keef’s. His skin was the same colour as the Hardworkers’ sun-bronzed complexions. His eyes were large and incongruously bright; they looked wet with tears. And they were blue. Scraylings–everybody in the new world apart from Hardworkers, in other words–had dark eyes.
This man was a Hardworker. He was one of them.
Finn knew he’d seen him before, then realised it had been very recently. He looked at the cross. Yes, Krist’s face was a well-carved likeness of the guy standing in front of them.
Wulf strolled forward as if it was all just another day, hand held out and open. “Greetings, I’m Wulf the Fat.”
“Salutations travellers! I am Ola Wolvinder.” He smiled and shook Wulf’s hand warmly. His booming voice suited his hairstyle. Was he a god? Or was he simply a Hardworker who lived a thousand miles from home and thought that carving his own face onto a statue of Krist was a reasonable thing to do?
Finn caught Sassa Lipchewer’s eye and lifted his eyebrows to ask What’s going on? She smiled back at him as if she knew and his mind boggled all the more.
Erik, Thyri, Chogolisa and the rest of them walked forward to shake Ola Wolvinder’s hand. He greeted them enthusiastically, then stood back and raised his arms for silence. Finn wasn’t sure why he’d held back from greeting the man, but nobody, including Wolvinder, had noticed.
Not for the first time, Finn wished that Gunnhild Kristlover was still around. He would have loved to have heard what she made of a man carving his own face where Krist’s was meant to be.
“Now,” proclaimed the sonorous stranger, “I’d like you please to rest from the road and ready yourself for a feast! I have been expecting you. You will find that the church and the hut contain everything you need, including the most comfortable beds you’ve encountered for a long while. When you are ready, come into the longhouse and we will eat! More importantly, we will drink!”
“Sounds like a plan,” grinned Wulf.
“Now, Taanya,” Olaf addressed the squatch. “You won’t fit into the longhouse. I have enough stew for you, but I daresay you’ll want to find your own food?”
Taanya plucked Ottar from her shoulders, looked around the rest of them as if to say you’d better not try anything and lolloped away.
Ola Wolvinder treated each woman to another salacious once over, then marched magnificently back into the longhouse.
Finn found himself standing next to Bodil Gooseface. “But who is he?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“Don’t you know?” she looked at him pityingly.
“Um, no.” Surely Bodil didn’t know?
“Ola Wolvinder,” said Sassa, joining them, her lips twisted in a smile. “What does that sound like?”
“A guy’s name?” Finn felt hot. Bodil was looking at Sassa with an eyebrow raised. He was being patronised by Gooseface!
“Why don’t you tell him, Bodil?” Sassa suggested. Erik, Chogolisa and Wulf were watching, enjoying Finn’s discomfort far too much. Thyri, thank Loakie, was talking to Sofi.
“He’s Olaf Worldfinder,” explained Bodil. “Founder of Hardwork.”
Finn looked from Bodil to the longhouse, gibbered briefly, shook his head, then blushed and looked at Bodil, amazed and suspicious.
Sassa Lipchewer was enjoying Finn’s confusion. Wulf had told her his suspicions about the name Ola Wolvinder as soon as they’d left Taanya’s home, and she’d told Bodil. So it wasn’t entirely fair that Finn was feeling foolish, but she wasn’t about to help him out.
Olaf the Worldfinder was meant to be in a burial mound a thousand miles away, but here he was. He must have been a hundred and fifty years old, yet he looked like a sixty-year-old, and a superbly fit one at that.
Sassa wasn’t that surprised. They’d been led there by a twelve-foot-tall beast who communicated with her mind. Not long ago she’d seen a giant hurl an empress into the mouth of a monster to save them all. Amazing just wasn’t surprising any more.
Wootah and Calnians washed and rested. Everyone seemed too weary to discuss Olaf, but they perked up as they filed into the longhouse at sunset.
Sassa was almost rattled by the interior of the building. As far as she could work out, it was exactly the same as Jarl Brodir’s longhouse back in Hardwork. Same size, same furniture, same torches in the same sconces on the same walls, same sleeping alcoves for the Hird. The bowls of stew steaming on the table, the wooden jugs, the birch and horn mugs–it could have been directly transported from their old life on the shores of Olaf’s Fresh Sea.
Olaf the Worldfinder had built the Hardwork longhouse, so maybe it wasn’t odd that he should build another similar one. The mind-knottingly weird thing was that the carvings that covered every interior surface–walls, chairs, bed alcoves, table legs and so on–looked very similar to the Hardwork version. Most of the ones in Hardwork had been carved long after Olaf’s supposed death, many during Sassa’s own lifetime. So how could they be here?
She looked for an animal that she had carved herself. It was meant to be a horse, an animal that she knew only from its description in sagas from the old world.
She found it. Sort of. It was in the same place, but it was different, with longer legs and a shorter neck. She was pretty certain that Olaf’s carving was a much better representation of a horse than hers.
“Sit down, please, all of you, whe
rever you like,” called Olaf Worldfinder, standing at the head of a rectangular table with room for one at each end and six or seven down each side. “Apart from Sofi Tornado and Wulf the Fat, who I’d like up here on either side of me, please. Oh, and Chogolisa Earthquake, I made a stool for you.” He pointed halfway down the table, where a sturdy stool broad enough to accommodate Chogolisa’s mightily muscled arse took the place of two chairs.
Olaf watched them take their seats, pouring mead into a birch wood cup from a jug identical to the ones they’d used in Hardwork. By the mild slurring in the old man’s voice, Sassa guessed it wasn’t his first refill.
She sat next to Wulf and Yoki Choppa sat opposite, next to Sofi. Each place had been set with a steaming bowl of stew and a mug of mead. Olaf sat, took a long draught from his cup and looked up. Everyone was watching him expectantly. At meals with the Jarl, one didn’t start eating until he said so, and their Oaden-faced host had a lot more of the Jarl about him than any of the Hardwork Jarls Sassa had known.
He blinked. His pale blue, wet eyes were the only part of him that looked a century and a half old.
“You will all be wondering how I am here, not devoured by worms thirteen hundred miles to the east.”
All the Wootah plus Chogolisa nodded. Had they really travelled thirteen hundred miles, Sassa wondered? Olaf did seem like he’d know.
“I’m more interested to hear what you know about The Meadows,” said Sofi.
Olaf smiled, his eyes lingering on Sofi long enough to make Sassa a little uncomfortable. “Of course. The tale of my life is extraordinary, but I shall tell you only how I came to be here, as I know you must be keen to eat. After we’ve eaten, I’ll tell you what I know about The Meadows. Does this satisfy you, Sofi?”
The way he said satisfy made Sassa feel like spiders were running up her arms.
“It does,” said Sofi, giving him a look that might have melted rock.
“So,” said Olaf, “I’m sure all you Hardworkers—”