by Angus Watson
“That hurt,” she said.
“I can see why.”
One side of Xamop’s forehead and an eye were mashed. Her lips were bleeding, her chin was black and misshapen. Innowak knew how many more wounds her clothes were concealing. She was, however, surprisingly chipper.
“Shall we have another go?” she said.
Oh, not again, thought Paloma as the giant grabbed her hair. Paloma kicked the woman’s shin as hard as she could, but she might as well have kicked a boulder.
With two strong fingers, Xamop squeezed Paloma’s jaw to open her mouth. With her other hand she gripped her tongue and yanked it, hard, so that it felt it might rip out at the root. She pulled it much further from her mouth than Paloma had known it could go. She could see it.
This, thought Paloma, is not going well.
Xamop leant in, opening her mouth.
Dog’s cocks, she really is going to bite my tongue off.
The Owsla woman kicked all the harder, bucked and strained to pull her tongue back into her mouth, but the grip was unshakable.
Xamop’s mouth widened. A pointed metal tongue jabbed out of her mouth.
What kind of monster…? Paloma had time to think before the grip on her hair and tongue was released and she whumped down onto the sandy canyon floor.
“Roll away, please,” came Keef the Berserker’s voice, “your friend is heavy.”
Paloma rolled. Keef was standing behind Xamop, holding Arse Splitter’s shaft. The weapon’s spear-like metal tip had pierced the back of Xamop’s head and protruded from her mouth. He twisted to release the blade and the dead woman fell forward.
Sitsi Kestrel walked into the clearing. “Thanks for rescuing us!” she beamed.
Paloma opened her eyes and tried to smile at her friend. “Door delcome,” she managed.
Sitsi Kestrel cleaned, stitched and dressed Paloma Pronghorn’s wound, then she and Keef the Berserker dragged the three sisters’ bodies down the canyon to the main Red River valley. Freydis the Annoying tied their rope around the cooked torso and hauled that down-canyon, too. The skinny girl was stronger than she looked, thought Sitsi. Paloma came, too, even though Sitsi had told her to rest. Sitsi didn’t complain. She could tell Keef was amazed to see someone who’d been speared in the guts get up and walk shortly afterwards, and she’d been concerned that Keef hadn’t fully appreciated yet just how amazing the Owsla were.
“Let’s eat a bit of each of them,” said Paloma, as they watched the women’s corpses burn by the Red River’s rushing waters.
“Yuk, no!” Freydis jumped up and down. “Why would we do that?”
“To kill their souls,” Sitsi answered. “and make sure they don’t have another life after this one.”
“And to give us better next lives,” added Paloma.
“Which bit do we eat?” Keef sounded keen.
“We don’t,” said Sitsi. “We can’t extinguish a soul.”
“I agree,” said Freydis. “I think that they were evil—”
“Exactly!” Keef interrupted.
“But killing a soul is an evil thing to do, isn’t it?” Freydis continued. “So if we do that we’re just as evil as them.”
Keef looked at the girl for a few moments, opening and closing his mouth, then shook his head, spun on his heel and headed off to destroy a barrel cactus with Arse Splitter. Sitsi smiled.
“And, of course,” she said while he was busy, “you only destroy a soul if the fire is started with an Innowak Crystal, and this one wasn’t.”
“Good point.” Paloma nodded.
They left the sisters burning, headed back up the canyon about a mile to the cave and set about making a home where they could wait for the rest of the Wootah.
“Why bother?” asked Paloma. “We’ll only have to wait a day or two.”
Sitsi looked at her. Paloma was serious. She had no concept of how fast other people moved, or how often life got in the way of plans. “We left the others a hundred miles away, setting off to rescue Ottar. Who knows how long or how far that will take them? We could be here for a moon or more.”
“You make a clever point as usual, Sitsi. And if my injury didn’t prevent me from lifting things, I would help you make that camp.” Paloma flashed a healthy smile. “I’ll look after Freydis. That’s much more important work. Children are the future.”
Paloma ran off down the canyon. She was out of earshot before Sitsi could reply.
So Sitsi and Keef set about making a home. While they scrubbed and tidied, foraged and stored, repaired and re-made, Paloma and Freydis mucked about.
Sitsi let her get away with it, even though Paloma was putting more strain on the wound playing with Freydis than she would have done building the camp. She didn’t mind doing all the work with Keef. He was creative, practical, hardworking and fun. He was the perfect partner. When they took breaks from drudge work, they made arrows and Sitsi taught the Wootah man how to shoot his new bow.
Together they built a low stone and mud wall along the front of the cave. They hung ropes from the top of the canyon down to the cave, so that they might escape a flash flood and set up noise traps all around to alert themselves to anyone approaching.
The stream emerged from a spring not far away at the head of the notched valley, so the water was drinkable. Food was easy enough, too. Sitsi could shoot anything that flew or ran and Keef was improving with the bow. The barrel cactuses were crowned with a tasty yellow fruit which was easy to harvest with a couple of sticks and a modicum of patience, and Paloma proved surprisingly willing and able to prepare and cook the fruit of the beavertail cactus.
By the third day Keef and Sitsi had finished building their home and they had enough food stored in desert willow baskets to last the next winter. The only slight issue was the noise traps going off throughout the night, since large nocturnal creatures used the canyon as a route from higher ground down to the Red River. The first few times they’d sounded, the adults had all run out, weapons ready. Now they were so blasé about the false alarms that one of them went to check while the others went back to sleep.
Paloma and Freydis spent their days haring about in and around the canyon. Keef and Sitsi didn’t see them much and when they did they were usually laughing.
There was only so much archery practice one could do, so Keef and Sitsi spent a good deal of their time like the children of an emperor. i.e. in a state of well-fed idleness. Sitsi wasn’t used to it at all, but Keef was a good instructor and she soon came to appreciate the joys of what Keef called ‘just fucking around’.
At the head of one branch of the canyon was an arch of rock like a high roof over the spring. The arch was split from the cliff behind as if a god had sliced a giant axe through the land. Keef liked to walk across the arch, sparring with imaginary foes. Sitsi hated watching him. She also didn’t much like him jumping between the pinnacles of rock at the head of the canyon, either. When she realised that she’d never stop him, she gave it a go herself. It was actually quite fun, and it felt a lot less dangerous than it had looked.
She also worked out that she could stop Keef leaping about and terrifying her by suggesting another session of archery practice. He was happy to shoot a bow until his fingers were sore, although she had to guess when his fingers were sore because he’d never admit it.
He wasn’t a bad archer, despite his one-eyed inability to perceive depth.
“I reckon I had two eyes for long enough to know how far things are from each other,” he said.
Sitsi’s favourite times were when Keef’s fingers were sore, when he’d leapt enough chasms and slain enough imaginary foes, and they simply sat and talked.
They could chat for hours, about how to improve their camp, about the desert and its animals, and about their lives before the Calnians had come to kill all the Hardworkers. Keef liked to sit somewhere dramatic for these discussions, like the top of a rock tower, but Sitsi preferred the big round boulder near the cave. It overlooked a deep pool behind a
dam built by departed beavers. If they sat still, a chuckwalla would often appear and munch poolside leaves. It pleased Sitsi to see her power animal in its native environment. It was a hefty lizard but it had a gentle docility about it which appealed to Sitsi.
Huge tadpoles held sway in the pool itself, patrolling about with flicks of their tails and munching smaller entities. They were pretty loathsome. Sitsi and Keef spent a good while guessing what the tadpoles might become. Wasp men, Keef had concluded.
Of the wasp men that had attacked them on the river, or any other monsters, there was no sign. Every time she mentioned the monsters to Keef he told her not to worry. They were ever watchful, and he had a bow as well now. So, yes, the monsters might come, and, yes, that was a worry, but, because there was nothing they could do to change that–other than be prepared, which they were–there was no point in worrying about that particular worry.
Sitsi, who couldn’t stop worrying at will like Keef apparently could, was also concerned that the others might not find them.
“Yoki Choppa tracked us through a storm and a tornado with that hair trick,” Keef said. “There’s no reason to think he’ll fail now.”
“I suppose.”
“And, even more than that, Ottar would never leave Freydis behind. Don’t you worry. They’re coming.”
Paloma Pronghorn’s new best friend was a six-year-old girl called Freydis the Annoying. She wouldn’t have called that one a few moons before, when she’d spent her days raiding enemies and braining captives for the amusement of the crowd.
She knew that Sitsi thought she was pissing about with the child to escape the boring chores, and that was true, but someone had to keep an eye on the girl all of the time–there were monsters around after all, as well as the usual lions, bears and wolves that might kill a child–and she knew that Sitsi would rather be mooning about with Keef.
Paloma also told Sitsi that her stomach wound prevented her helping. They both knew that was bollocks. It did slow her down a bit, but it was more or less healed by the second day. The scar would last a moon perhaps. It was good to be Owsla.
She was also enjoying herself a great deal, and she really was teaching the child a useful thing or two which might benefit them all one day.
“You’re not very annoying,” Paloma told Freydis on the first full day in the canyon.
“Everyone else says I am.”
“Everyone else? Pah. Part of growing up is realising that everyone else is an idiot. You’re meant to work it out yourself, but I’ll give you that one.”
“So if I’m not annoying, do you think I need a new name? You’re not meant to get one until you’re older, like Finn the Deep.”
“I think we can bend the rules, given the situation. What would you like to be called?”
“How about Freydis Pronghorn?”
“No. That would be weird.”
They tried to think of a name until Freydis got bored and wanted to go on Paloma’s shoulders while she ran.
“We’ll just call you Freydis for now,” Paloma decided.
A few days later, Paloma and Freydis lay looking over the canyon side, spying on Keef and Sitsi who were sitting on the big rock above the pool. Paloma knew that Sitsi knew they were there, but she didn’t care and neither did Sitsi, or at least she knew she couldn’t do anything about it.
After a while Keef and Sitsi climbed down to the pool, stripped facing away from each other and leapt into the water. They splashed each other for a bit, which was as erotic as their stalkers had ever seen them get, then climbed out chastely on their individual sides to dress, facing away from each other again.
“Are they going to get married?” asked Freydis.
“Not at this rate.”
It made Paloma’s palms itch. She’d never seen two people so in love. She was determined to sort it out. For a while she planned to shag Keef to spur Sitsi into a jealous rage that would show her true feelings. However, while thinking about it lying on her bedding that night, she realised that the plan was driven almost entirely by her own desire for some action and Keef being the only bloke she was aware of for hundreds of miles. And besides, they didn’t have any booze. Not booze for Keef; Paloma was gorgeous and knew that Keef would shag her at the drop of a feather, no matter how much he was in love with Sitsi. The booze was for her.
Her chance to play love warlock came a few days later. Paloma and Freydis were spying on their companions from the top of the canyon, as usual. Sitsi was cooking a special bighorn stew and there was much preparation to do, so Keef ran off up-canyon to spar with imaginary foes.
They followed Keef. Paloma was pleased that Freydis was silent behind her. She’d been teaching the girl how to run faster while making as little noise as possible.
Keef climbed up the head of the valley, sprang onto the rock arch and posed manfully. Paloma was pleased to see that he acted like that even when he didn’t know anyone was watching.
“Stay here and stay hidden,” she told Freydis.
She leapt onto the other end of the arch, killing stick in one hand. The arch was about eighty paces long and its relatively flat top was around two paces wide. But it was two paces of flaky, crumbling sandstone. Most people would be terrified even crawling across it.
Hird man and Owsla woman strode confidently towards each other. There was no need to say it, they knew what was about to happen.
Keef glanced down the valley. He was checking that Sitsi wasn’t watching.
“Let’s go,” he said.
It was a reasonable spar. No, thought Paloma, let’s be generous. It was a good spar; the best she’d had with someone who wasn’t Owsla.
At the end the two of them sat on the arch, looking down the valley, Keef shining with sweat. The gorge was choked with trees and bushes. Further upslope was red sand dotted with shrubs and cactuses, all overlooked by orange domes of rock. They were a long way from the woods, lakes and fields of Calnia.
“Do you think the giant screaming insects will come back?” asked Paloma.
“I guess,” Keef nodded. “They seem to like warning people they’re coming, so hopefully it won’t be a problem and Sitsi will shoot them out of the sky.”
They didn’t speak for a while. Paloma guessed they were thinking about the same thing. She wanted to be talking about it, but couldn’t think of a subtle, tactful way of bringing it up.
“Why don’t you get it on with Sitsi Kestrel?” she said in the end.
Keef looked at the sky.
There was a long pause
Eventually, Keef sighed and said, “They’re not insects, you know.”
“What?”
“The wasp men. They’ve got eight legs. Insects have six. So the wasp men aren’t insects.”
“You’re spending too much time with Sitsi. Which brings me back to my question.”
“I can’t get it on with her.”
“Because of Bodil Gooseface?”
“Because of Bodil Gooseface.”
Paloma shook her head. “You’re an adult. You have no duty to Bodil.”
“I have.”
Paloma took a deep breath. The things she did for others. “You know it’s not your baby, don’t you?”
Keef fixed her with his one eye. “Just how dumb do you think I am?”
“I had wondered.”
Keef breathed a little laugh through his nose. “Yeah, I do know that it takes more than a couple of days after a shag for a woman to know she’s pregnant. And I know when she and Finnbogi…”
“You mean Finn?”
“He was Finnbogi when he shagged her.”
“Fair enough. Point is you know the baby’s his.”
“Yup.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“When we got together in the Black Mountains, Bodil asked me to be the father. She wanted someone strong to help her look after the child.”
“Okay, I understand why that wouldn’t be Finn, but what about Wulf and Sassa and the rest of you
lot? Can’t you all muck in?”
Keef hurled a stone off the arch. They watched it sail down and hit a barrel cactus.
“A child is best brought up by a united man and woman. It’s why we have marriage.”
“There are loads of tribes where the whole village rears a child. They reckon the best parenting comes from every adult the kid knows.”
“Yeah? Well, first I think that’s bollocks, and second we don’t have a whole village. This kid will need a dad. A good dad.”
“Some of the best people I know are orphans.”
Keef nodded. “Yup, me too. So a child doesn’t need a father, but it helps a lot, both the child and the mother. That’s double, triple, a hundred times the case out here or wherever the Hel we’re going to be when it’s born.”
“Let me get this straight. You like Sitsi, she likes you, but you’re not going to do anything about it because of a promise to a woman who you slept with once when she was pregnant with another man’s baby.”
“I didn’t promise. She asked and I said I would.”
“And that’s the same as a promise for you?”
Keef shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“Couldn’t you hook up with Sitsi and look after Bodil’s baby as well?”
“Would that work?”
Paloma picked a slice of rock loose from the arch and tossed it off the edge. It slapped down on the mud surrounding the spring below.
“No.”
“No.”
“Are you in love with Sitsi Kestrel?”
Keef looked at his knees.
Paloma grinned. One of the things she liked about the Wootah was the way their skin changed colour so much. Keef had become the colour of a boiled pig.
They sat in silence for a while, throwing stones off the arch.
“You are a good man, Keef,” Paloma said eventually.
“The best,” he agreed. “Which reminds me. I better be getting back down to the cave. Sitsi wanted some things for her stew.”
“Okay,” she said as they stood to go. “So you’re not going to get together with Sitsi. But if you do fancy something casual while we’re here, I am up for it. We could go for a hunt, quick bang, nobody need ever know and you won’t owe me anything. Come on, it’d be fun. We can do it now if you want? You won’t take long and the herbs can wait.”