by Angus Watson
The baby. His baby.
“But…”
“Why don’t you go and talk to her?” Erik picked up his snow shoes and began to strap them to his pack.
“Do I have to?”
“Yup.”
Squirrelcocks, thought Finn. He was hungover as Hel and finding the world difficult enough. It wasn’t the perfect time to have a deep talk about deserting his unborn child.
He sighed, then walked on over.
“Bodil, can I have a word, please?”
“Sure!” She looked a little surprised. “Go for it.”
“In private?”
Bodil looked at Olaf as if she needed his permission and Finn found himself, annoyingly, doing the same.
“Take all the time you need,” Olaf waved a magnanimous hand.
They walked behind the longhouse and found a sandy path leading among juniper and pinyon trees to the tip of the promontory.
Finn was going to leave his child. In exactly the same way that his own father had left him before he was even born.
No, Finn was worse. Erik hadn’t known he had a child on the way. Finn was wilfully abandoning his unborn son. Or maybe daughter. He imagined a little girl, a mini Freydis, sunlight in her blonde hair, asking where her daddy was. He blinked back tears.
At the end of the promontory the land dropped six hundred paces into the black canyon below.
There was no time to piss about.
Finn looked Bodil in the eye. “Bodil, I am the father of your baby.”
“You’re not.”
“It’s not Keef.”
“I know.”
“So it must be me.”
“No.”
“Bodil, the timing. When we—”
“Olaf will be the father of my baby.”
“Oh… I see.” Finn felt massive relief at the same time as a growing ball of guilt threatened to burst his stomach. It was an odd sensation. “But—” he said.
Bodil smiled simply. “I don’t want you to be my child’s dad.”
“Why?”
“I think you’re a bad person.”
“I’m… I’m really not. I…”
“After we got together by the river, you stopped talking to me. That wasn’t nice.”
“Sorry.”
“What does sorry mean? I don’t need sorry, I needed you to be nice to me then. I was very upset.”
“I was embarrassed and I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“But then you did know.”
Finn looked at his boots.
“And still you ignored me. You let Keef pretend it was his, but you knew it was yours. Why did you do that?”
“I… don’t know.”
“I do. It’s because you’re a bad person.”
He couldn’t hold her eye. He felt hot and sick. She was right. He’d been an utter shit. He’d saved them all from the Badlands but that paled into nothingness when you considered how he’d treated Bodil.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll change. I’ll stay here too and—”
“Please don’t. I don’t like you. I don’t want you here.”
“I’ll come back.”
“Why?”
“To see my—”
“No. Not yours. Mine.”
“But I—”
“Just go, Finn. I’m going to stay here. Tell the others farewell.”
“But the others—”
“Just go.”
Chapter 17
Paloma loses a fight
Freydis the Annoying and Paloma Pronghorn looked down at the corpse roasting on the sisters’ fire. They didn’t need to say it. The blackening body was too small to be Keef the Berserker. It was Sitsi Kestrel-size.
“It isn’t Sitsi,” said Paloma. “She doesn’t have much fat on her. Her flesh wouldn’t bubble and pop so much.”
“Are you sure?”
No. Even the skinniest people bubble like that when they’re roasted.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready?” Paloma checked the straps on her remaining leather leg piece. She’d been wearing an Owsla outfit every day for the best part of a decade, so she felt a bit naked without the legging that the biggest sister had ripped off.
Freydis nodded and blinked, looking, for once, like a scared six-year-old.
Paloma resisted the urge to hug her. “Good. It might even work, you never know.”
She pranced down the side of the gorge with a pace and grace that would have made any bighorn sheep feel a lot less smug about its own cliff-hopping skills.
She paused at the bottom to allow her eyes to adjust to the gloom. The sky was lightening, but the narrow canyon was dark. Full daylight would have suited her better, but every moment was a moment that Keef and Sitsi could be killed. If Sitsi wasn’t already dead and roasting.
She stole along the west side of the stream in the dark, expecting a thick spear in the guts at any moment and cursing Yoki Choppa, yet again, for denying her the daily dose of rattlesnake that had made dangerous escapades like these seem enjoyable. The aroma of cooking human flesh did nothing to ease her nerves.
She reached the cave without being killed and stood across the stream from it, gripping the obsidian moon blade in one hand and her killing stick in the other.
The three captors were sitting by the fire in the lofted alcove. The roasted human had been moved from the fire to rest after cooking. It was still impossible to tell whether it was Sitsi. It was someone, though. The three sisters were definitely on the cuntier end of the personality spectrum and that steeled Paloma’s rattlesnake-free resolve somewhat.
She headed on down the canyon and found the place to set her trap. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but it was good to have a fallback if everything went to shit. If it all went to shit, of course, chances of her being able to use the fallback were about zero, but it was still reassuring.
She gripped her weapons and walked back. She could put it off no longer.
It was attack time.
From this new approach she could see the canoe on the far side of the cave, but its opening was turned away and she couldn’t see if Keef and Sitsi were still trapped in it.
She readied herself.
The canoe rocked.
“I told you!” cried the largest of the captors, standing up. “You move once more, I said, and I’ll put a spear through that canoe. So here you go. One of you is about to get a spear in your guts.”
One of you. So they were both alive and Sitsi wasn’t cooked. But she was about to be speared.
Tits, thought Paloma, so much for planning.
She sprang over the stream and bounced into the cave.
The two smaller women sitting by the fire turned. Paloma slammed the point of Sitsi’s moon blade into the nearest one’s eye. It sliced in right up to Paloma’s gripping hand, which was satisfying. She withdrew and the woman fell forwards into the fire.
The other two looked from their eye-stabbed sibling to Paloma and back again.
Paloma looked at them, blood and aqueous humour dripping from her moon blade.
There was a surprisingly awkward moment.
“Oh dear oh dear,” said the slighter women eventually, standing and hefting her stocky stone-headed spear in two hands. “You killed our sister. You’ll die slow for that.”
The smaller remaining sister advanced around the fire. The large woman came around the other side.
Paloma wouldn’t have chosen to fight in the tight cave, but she couldn’t risk trying to draw them out in case they paused on the way to spear Keef and Sitsi.
“Stay back, Xamop,” said the smaller woman. “I’m going to take this one apart myself.”
“Go for it,” said Xamop. “But I want the breast meat.”
“Done.” The spearwoman attacked.
Paloma dodged the first thrust and whacked away the second with her killing stick. She lunged a slice at the woman’s midriff, but spear shaft blocked moon blade. The parry was followed by
a lightning-fast counter, and the sharp stone spearhead opened a gash in Paloma’s thigh.
Paloma jumped back, leg throbbing with hot pain. This was not going to plan. The woman was much faster than she should be, definitely enhanced. The spear’s reach was far greater than the moon blade’s, so Paloma should have got in close, but that was the opposite of her normal “run in, whack ’em, and run away” style of fighting. Keef’s spear Arse Splitter was lying by his canoe, but to get that she’d have to go through both sisters.
Her attacker advanced, thrusting and thrusting. Paloma twisted like an eel, but her opponent seemed to read Paloma’s every move.
Three thrusts in a row cut Paloma on her other leg and both arms. Another knocked the killing stick from her hands.
The Owsla had drawn out enough people’s deaths as long as possible for the crowd’s and their own amusement for Paloma to realise that it was now happening to her. She didn’t like it one bit.
Within moments she was pressed against the back of the cave, twisting side to side as the thrusting stone spear flashed sparks off the rock wall. She was in trouble. That was the problem with Owsla powers and training. It was entirely based on fighting unenhanced foes. As soon they met someone nearer their level they didn’t know what to do.
Through it all she heard a weird, guttural coughing. She realised it was her attacker, laughing.
“Stop, wait!” she held up a hand.
To her surprise, her attacker stood off but kept the spear point hovering around Paloma’s midriff.
“What do you want?”
“Do you know,” Paloma asked, “that there are herbs that will soothe that throat of yours? Stop you being so raspy.”
“Finish her!” called the large woman from over by the canoe.
Paloma’s attacker narrowed her already narrow eyes so that they looked like they were closed. “You think you’re beautiful, don’t you?” she spat.
“Nope. I know I am.”
“I love killing people like you,” the pinch-faced woman continued. “People who’ve had an easy time of it because they’ve lovely limbs and a face the right shape. Well, let me tell you, your day is over. It’s different now. The times when people like you could just swan about and—”
“Do you know you spit when you talk?” Paloma interrupted. “I don’t know if you can do anything about it, but you ought to try because if you are worried about your looks, it doesn’t help at all.”
The narrow-eyed woman’s jaw dropped and rose again as her mouth widened into a raging scream of hatred.
The moment when she thought she’d goaded her opponent just enough to make her drop her guard and was about to swing for her neck with the moon blade, Paloma felt a hot, weird thrust in her guts.
She looked down. The spear was in her stomach. Blood pulsed out around the stone head. Ah, she thought, it seems I may have lost a fight.
She looked back up at the curly headed woman.
“Not so clever now, are you?” Her adversary leant in and spat in her face. “Beautiful ones like you taste better, did you know that?”
“You missed,” said Paloma.
“What?”
“You missed my stomach.”
Curly Hair looked down. Paloma swung the obsidian blade into her neck.
The woman let go of the spear, her eyes flashing almost wide in surprise.
“Glurk,” she coughed blood.
Paloma twisted her blade with one hand and grabbed the spear shaft with the other. She wrenched. The stone head came free with a gouting suck. The pain wasn’t too bad–one advantage of being an enhanced Owsla warrior–but she felt blood wash over her hand. Too much blood. She pushed her attacker.
The dying woman staggered back, tripped over her friend in the fire and lay on the rock.
“You’ve killed my sisters,” the large woman hissed, advancing across the cave. Paloma pressed a palm over her wound. Blood seeped around the sides and between her fingers. Yup, she thought, that’s far too much blood. It was probably a life-ending injury. It was also going to make it difficult to rescue her friends.
“You’re sisters!” managed Paloma. “Of course. I can see the resemblance now you mention it. How long have you been living here?”
The pain in her gut was increasing towards a debilitating level. She needed to keep this one talking until… well, in a perfect world, until Keef and Sitsi freed themselves and rescued her. She wanted to shout at them to get on with it, but the giant was between her and the canoe and could still easily put her spear through it.
“My name is Xamop,” she said. “You can use it to beg me for mercy while I kill you slowly. I am going to make you very, very unhappy.”
“You won’t have to try. I’m already unhappy. I’ve never actually been happy. I think I was last happy when I was a child. Did you have an enjoyable childhood? I’m guessing not.”
“You think this is all a big joke, don’t you?”
“And you don’t?” She was feeling fainter by the moment. She was going to have to wrap this up one way or another.
“I hate the way you speak. First thing I’m going to do is bite your tongue out.”
“Bite it out? How will that work?”
“I’ll show you.” Xamop charged.
Paloma swung her blade, but Xamop was even quicker than her smaller sister. She chopped the edge of her hand into Paloma’s wrist. Her whole arm thrilled with pain, her fingers sprang open and the blade fell.
She saw the punch coming but couldn’t avoid it. It struck her chest like a charging bison and sent her flying clean out of the cave.
She whumped onto packed earth. She touched her stomach. The wound was wider. She could feel a bit of gut poking out.
Fuck, she thought.
She had to get up. She had to run.
She lifted her head and pressed her hands into the ground. Xamop landed on her. She grabbed Paloma’s arms, forced them above her head and held them there with one hand. The Owsla woman tried to pull free but it was as if her wrists were encased in rock.
“Time to die, beauty.”
Xamop slid her free hand down Paloma’s torso, found the gash in her stomach and slid her fingers into it. She smiled at Paloma.
Owsla were almost impervious to pain. Paloma was glad of it because this was seriously painful. Innowak knew what it would have been like had she been unenhanced.
She gasped, trying not to scream.
“Now,” said Xamop, her voice softening as Paloma could feel her fingers probing deeper inside her. “What shall we pull out first? Maybe your spine.”
She thrust her hand deeper. Paloma could feel fingers touching her backbone. She passed out for half a heartbeat, but managed to force herself back into consciousness.
“I thought you were going to bite my tongue out first?” she managed.
“Oh, that’s right, isn’t it? Thank you, I’d quite forgotten.”
The fingers withdrew from her abdomen. It was such a relief that Paloma almost said thank you.
Xamop rearranged herself to get a better angle at her mouth, sliding her seat from on top of Paloma’s hips to her thighs.
Paloma Pronghorn was the fastest runner the world had ever known and she had very strong legs. She put all her might into those alchemically enhanced muscles and thrust upwards.
Xamop bucked but kept hold.
“Oh!” she said as she landed. “There’s still strength in—”
She thrust again, harder. Xamop flew a foot into the air. Paloma powered a knee into her groin with everything she had.
Xamop yelled and fell sideways.
The speedy Owsla jumped up and set off down the canyon, through the trees. Blood was flowing from her stomach. She was horribly injured–sure to die, annoyingly–but she could still outrun the big woman. Until the wound got the better of her, anyway.
“Stop!” Xamop yelled behind her. “Come back here and fight me, or I’ll go back and kill your friends!”
“How about
I… stop here… and wait for you?” called Paloma. She was trying to sound more incapacitated than she was, but it wasn’t much of a stretch. “I can’t… make it back.”
“Oh, you poor thing, I’ll come to you then. Never let it be said I’m not kind.”
Paloma staggered on to where the stream had carved a shingle clearing between shrubs and trees, where she’d laid the rope. She grabbed one end and ducked behind a tree.
Xamop limped into sight. The knee to the groin had injured her. It was good to know she could be hurt. She stepped into the loop and Paloma flicked and yanked the rope tight around the woman’s ankles. She pulled, and Xamop keeled over like a felled oak.
“Now!” Paloma shouted with all the air in her lungs.
There was a rumbling, then a roar. Freydis’s job had been to collect a pile of rocks, find a lever and be ready to drop the rocks into the canyon at a moment’s notice. It was a big ask for a six-year-old, but Paloma had reckoned that Freydis was equal to it. By the sound of it, she was right.
Xamop sat and grappled at the rope. Paloma yanked again. She felt her stomach wound tear further, but there was no time to worry about that.
The big woman floundered on her back as the first rock plopped into the stream. Paloma ran clear as what sounded like half the canyon side tumbled into the valley.
How had Freydis made such a large rockfall?
Paloma dropped the rope and pulled the edges of her gash together. The wound would need washing and sewing up, soon, if there was to be any hope for her. She was feeling very faint. She needed a rest.
The last few pebbles clattered down the side of the gorge, then all was quiet. Paloma walked back, gripping her wound. The clearing was thick with dust.
The down-canyon breeze quickly cleared the air, revealing a pile of broken rocks. The sky was now blue overhead, but it was still quite dark in the shaded canyon. Even in the dim light, however, Paloma expected to see at least a hand or a foot poking out of the rubble.
Maybe she was completely buried? she was thinking when the rope loop dropped around her shoulders and tightened.
She tried to pull away, but the towering Xamop grabbed her by the hair, wound the rope round and round her arms, then stood back and looked at the trussed Owsla woman, her chest heaving.