Where Gods Fear to Go

by Angus Watson

  Keef looked her in the eye, presumably to see if she was serious. She held his gaze.

  The Wootah man shook his head and smiled, turned away and walked off along the arch.

  Paloma watched him go. She was in Owsla uniform with exposed arms and midriff, one naked thigh and one leg completely bare. Keef hadn’t even glanced at her figure when she’d offered to shag him with no strings attached.

  So he was gay. That explained a lot.

  Chapter 18

  Massacre

  Sassa Lipchewer and the rest of them descended from the range of hills where Olaf Worldfinder and now Bodil Gooseface lived. They passed through a zone of grassy woodland that was just like the forest behind Hardwork. Apart, of course, from the colossal view across a sun-shattered plain towards snowy mountains.

  As they reached the flat land they saw six more hobbling refugees hunched. They hurried away from the Wootah and Calnians, glancing over their shoulders.

  “We are friendly!” Wulf yelled, but the refugees only sped up.

  They headed on southwards, led by Taanya the squatch, towards Bighorn Island and Cloud Town. The land that had looked flat from the hills was in fact undulating and craggy. There were far fewer animals here, and those they saw bolted at their approach. It was hot and the going was hard.

  Olaf had said the journey would take ten days. It was going to be a long ten days.

  As they trudged along the gravel bed of a dry gulch lined with dead trees, Sassa thought she might shed a tear or two about Bodil staying behind with Olaf Worldfinder. She pictured Bodil’s face and thought about all they’d done together. She couldn’t cry, though. She realised something and stopped dead. She was glad her friend was gone.

  “What’s up?” asked Wulf.

  “Just thinking about Bodil.”

  “We’ll see her again.”

  She nodded and carried on. She tried to convince herself that she was pleased because Bodil’s baby would be well looked after, and should be safe. But that wasn’t true. If she’d really thought a baby was going to be that much safer with Olaf, she would have stayed there herself.

  She and Bodil had hung out together since she could remember, but only because they were girls the same age who’d been put together by their parents. Sassa thought about the times she’d spent with Bodil and realised, with a thrill of guilty pleasure bordering on the unacceptable, that she didn’t actually like her.

  It wasn’t because Bodil was so thick. It was because she was so uninterested. She never asked a question, never seemed to notice anything around her. She’d gone through the whole awful Badlands experience–their whole journey so far–as if she were watching it happen to someone else who she didn’t care about.

  Bodil spoke the whole time, but she never said anything insightful, useful or fun. She’d been spouting the same boring crap since she was about ten. No, Sassa was not going to miss Bodil. She was glad to see the back of her best friend and couldn’t muster the slightest remorse at the idea of never seeing her again. Screw a shrew! What kind of person did that make her?

  “We never know how much we love someone until they are lost,” said the ghost of Gunnhild in her mind.

  Very true, Sassa agreed.

  “Wulf,” she asked, “are you going to miss Bodil?”

  “Bodil?” he replied. “Sure. It’s like losing a limb. Wow! Look at that spikey lizard!”

  They caught up to Finn the Deep who was walking dejectedly on his own. Sassa saw that he was crying. “What’s up, Finn?” she asked.

  “I am a bad person.” He sniffed snottily.

  “Bodil and her baby,” said Wulf, “are going to be a lot happier with Olaf. It is a real shame that you couldn’t stay with them, but fact is we need you.”

  “They don’t need me. And you don’t need me. I’m the second worst fighter. The worst one is Ottar. You need him for the prophecy. If we had a vote for who gets killed next, everyone would vote for me. I’d definitely vote for me.”

  “Tell me,” said Wulf. “How many times has Sofi Tornado saved all of us?”

  “She fought Beaver Man by the lake…”

  “And Sitsi shot him and Chogolisa drowned him. She herself has not saved us all once. And neither have I.”

  “You led us from the Owsla and—”

  “Sure, and Sassa, Erik, Thyri, Keef, Bjarni, Gunnhild–Freydis and Ottar, too–have all done useful things. But you’re the only one who’s saved all of us, Finn. And you’ve done it twice.”

  “But I—”

  “If you hadn’t controlled the pigeons, we’d all have died, for sure. If you hadn’t beaten the squatch, we’d have had no head start up the mountains, and we would have definitely been killed.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re wrong about that vote, Finn. In fact, if I had to vote for one person to stay with us, I’d vote for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really really.”

  “But… You know what I did to Bodil.”

  “You were a shit,” said Sassa.

  Wulf put a hand on her arm.

  “He was,” she persisted. “You asked my advice, Finn. I said you should talk to her after you shagged her. And you didn’t. You let her be miserable.”

  Finn sobbed.

  “No,” Sassa shook her head. “Stop crying. You shouldn’t be feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “It’s Bodil I’m feeling sorry for,” Finn sniffed, “and the baby.”

  “Bollocks,” said Sassa. Wulf touched her arm again and she shook her head. “No, Wulf, I’m not going to let him off. You’ve been a shit, Finn. I’m glad you know it now, but that doesn’t change what happened.”

  She sped up. She was too angry to talk any more.

  “Did you see that spiny lizard back there?” she heard Wulf ask as she accelerated out of earshot.

  They came upon the massacre around noon the following day.

  Sassa was up at the front with Sofi and Wulf. The first thing they found was a severed foot, lying on the path. Sofi kicked it into the scrub.

  “Weird,” said Wulf as they reached the top of a gentle rise. “I wonder what happened to its—”

  He was cut short as the land opened up in front of them and there were dead people–more specifically parts of dead people–everywhere.

  Sassa couldn’t tell how many had been killed because they’d been ripped to pieces and their body parts strewn around. The sandy soil was stained black. The sparse desert scrub was painted black with blood.

  Were there a hundred people here? A few corpses were more or less intact. Many of these were swollen and grotesquely purple, eyes bulging yellow. Others had melted faces. There were insects, rodents, birds and a couple of coyotes feasting on the bodies, but not as many as one might have expected. Perhaps there was a lot of food here and only so many carnivorous animals in the miles around, Sassa found herself crazily musing.

  “Erik,” said Sofi, after jogging back to the others, “there’s a gristly scene over the rise. Please can you grab Ottar, distract him and carry him through?”

  “Sure,” said Erik, walking over to Ottar.

  Leave the boy alone, thought Taanya, loping up from where she’d been shambling along at the back of the group. I’ll take him.

  Okay, thought Erik, glancing at Sofi.

  Taanya scooped up Ottar into her arms and ran. She leapt daintily past the chunks of dismembered humans and disappeared over the next rise. To be fair, thought Sassa, she got Ottar out of there a lot quicker than Erik would have done. But would she stop? She didn’t trust Taanya with the boy. Judging by the way Sofi watched her go, she felt the same.

  “Yoki Choppa, Chogolisa and any willing Wootah, will you help me see if there’s anyone alive?” asked Sofi.

  They looked for survivors. It was a grim job, and there were none. Sassa found she could look at all the body parts impassively, as if it was just so much meat. That worked until she saw a child’s doll lying still gripped by a small arm. The
n she cried.

  “What happened here?” Sassa asked nobody in particular when she’d recovered.

  Sofi straightened up from where she’d been examining a burned patch of rock next to a severed leg. Her eyes were hard and dark as fire-tempered wood.

  “There were about ninety people, heading east,” she said. “They were attacked by flying creatures yesterday, around this time of day. The creatures had claws, hands like humans and an acidic venom. Living versions, I suspect, of the dead wasp man we saw. None escaped, and none of the creatures were killed.”

  Sassa looked about. “Where are the wasp men now?”

  “I can’t tell. They flew in and flew away.”

  Sassa scanned the sky. Erik and Finn, who’d overheard Sofi, were doing the same.

  “Listen, everyone!” Sofi called out. “These people were killed by flying beasts, possibly wasp men. Most of them were unarmed and they were not warriors. With our weapons we will be able to defend ourselves. However, we must keep close and all be ready to fight. Sassa, you have the only bow. You and I will take the lead with Wulf, if Wulf agrees?”

  Wulf nodded.

  “Chogolisa, Thyri and Erik will take the rear. There will be no more than fifteen paces between Chogolisa and me at any time. If one needs to stop, we all stop. We’re also going to increase the pace.”

  They found Taanya and Ottar waiting just over the rise. Taanya, could you stay in the group and carry Ottar from now on please? Sofi asked.

  The squatch lifted an eyebrow. I’ll protect him.

  Finn the Deep didn’t mind that Sofi hadn’t selected him for the lead or the rear guard, even if it was just him and Yoki Choppa who were the presumably incapable middle of the march. It just didn’t matter. Things were more serious now. The sight of the dead had left him nauseous and shaken, but also determined to do his bit to keep his companions alive.

  For the rest of the day he walked with the reliably unchatty warlock, one hand on Foe Slicer’s hilt, ready.

  That night he trained as hard as he ever had with Thyri, perhaps harder. He didn’t look at her legs once, nor did he try to deconstruct everything she said to search for hints of affection.

  Nearby, Sassa pumped arrow after arrow into trees, retrieved them, and started again.

  They went to sleep with no fire, beneath a canopy of trees on the bank of a stream.

  Finn took first watch with Chogolisa and Sassa and afterwards fell asleep to dream of being chased by giant disapproving babies who wanted to rip him apart with their claws. He was woken by a ruckus.

  There was no light in the east, so it was still a good way from dawn.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Ottar and Taanya are gone,” said Sassa.

  “Cocks,” said Finn, hoping it hadn’t happened on his watch, then telling himself off. Concern for Ottar should have been his priority.

  “Get ready to go,” said Wulf. “We’ll all head back and—”

  “No,” said Sofi. “Chogolisa and I will be quicker on our own. The rest of you wait here, under the trees.”

  “Do you want my bow?” asked Sassa. “If you get in range of her mind crush—”

  “No, you’ll need it here in case our flying friends appear.”

  The Wootah and Yoki Choppa waited in the dark. Finn slept. He felt a bit guilty lying down and closing his eyes with Ottar in such danger, but there was nothing else to do and it really would be better for everyone if he was fresh in the morning.

  He woke after dawn. Wulf was where he’d been when Finn had fallen asleep, standing at the edge of the gully, looking back over their path.

  Finn climbed up to join him.

  Wulf greeted him then nodded northwards, hard-faced.

  There were two figures maybe a mile away, one much larger than the other, jogging towards them. No sign of Ottar the Moaner.

  Wulf set off to meet them. Finn followed, pounding along the stony ground.

  “Where’s the boy?”called Wulf when they neared.

  Chogolisa twisted to show them her back, where Ottar was curled in a woollen papoose, asleep.

  “And Taanya?” asked Wulf.

  “Don’t worry about her,” said Sofi.

  Immediately afterwards, Finn questioned what he’d seen. But… he was pretty sure that Chogolisa had shaken her head, as if in disapproval.

  They headed back, Sofi striding ahead. When they’d woken in the night, Finn had thought it was pretty reckless that they’d let Taanya get away with Ottar. But now the problem was dealt with. Taanya was presumably dead, Ottar was back with them and he wasn’t going to be kidnapped again. Had Sofi pushed Taanya into running away with him by talking up the dangers ahead and giving her the task of protecting the boy?

  Taanya had helped them. She might have tried to rip Finn in half, but she’d done that to protect Ottar. And without Taanya’s sister Ayla they’d probably be dead in the Badlands. Sure, killing Taanya was the most efficient way of dealing with her designs on Ottar. But was it the right way? If Sofi was so ready to kill, were any of them safe? What if one of them hurt their leg and was slowing the group?

  “Great. So who’s going to guide us now?” said Thyri when they reached the others.

  “We follow the path south,” said Sofi, “and look out for a mesa with a town on it.”

  “And Ottar knows the way, don’t you, Ottar?” said Erik.

  Ottar nodded. The look on his face reminded Finn of the time back in Hardwork when they’d played hide and seek and Ottar had been unable to find anybody.

  “Taanya?” said the boy.

  Erik and Finn looked at Chogolisa. “He slept through all of it,” she said.

  “All of what?” asked Finn.

  Chogolisa shook her head and strode away.

  “Taanya’s gone back to her home,” said Erik.

  “Why?” asked Ottar.

  “She has to look after the rabbits,” said Finn.

  “Oh.” Ottar pouted and looked at the ground and began to cry silently.

  “It’s okay, Ottar,” Erik squatted next to him. “The rabbits need her and she’s happy with them.”

  Ottar sniffed.

  “How about you go on my shoulders?” said Erik. “I’ll be a thunder lizard and you can be Beaver Man.”

  A hint of a smile played on Ottar’s lips as he raised his arms up to the big bearded man.

  They’d been going a short while when Sofi called out, “To the trees! Fast as you can.”

  Finn and the rest of them ran full tilt towards the fir woodland a few hundred paces up the valley side.

  He was still running when he heard a noise like nothing else he could imagine, apart, possibly, from a large herd of pigs with breathing problems screaming as they were slowly mashed in a gigantic butter churner.

  The screaming grew louder and louder. Finn looked about, sure that whatever was coming must be upon them.

  “Get down. Stay silent,” whispered Sofi.

  Finn lay in the scrub on the edge of the trees next to Thyri and tried to pant noiselessly.

  By the loudness of the screams he expected to see the beasts immediately, but it was a good thirty heartbeats before they came flying up the valley.

  It was a flock of wasp men, dozens of them, and one much larger animal–a giant, six-winged, spike-legged beast with a disgustingly bulbous bladder-like body, like the one that Sitsi and Sassa had shot down on the far side of the Shining Mountains. The cacophony was so awful that he pressed his hands tight over his ears.

  Finn understood why there’d been no dead creatures among the dead people the day before. The noise was so terrible that it must have been near impossible to fight back.

  Suddenly they stopped shrieking. They hovered in the valley, over the spot that the Owsla and Calnians had fled from. They’d see their tracks into the trees. They had to. Any idiot could have found and followed their trail through the grass.

  The monsters hung in the sky. Finn could hear the low, loud thrum ma
de by the slapping of leathery wings. Each of the man-sized wasp men had six human-like hands. Among the giant stings, the claws and the huge grey sac body on the giant flier, it was those hands that freaked him out the most. He imagined one of the creatures pinning his arms with one pair of hands, strangling him with another and tearing at his genitals with the other. And then it might use its claws…

  He was very close to leaping up and sprinting deeper into the trees. Very close. Then the screaming resumed and the monsters flew on.

  “Fowl an owl,” breathed Sassa when they’d disappeared.

  “Good of them to warn us they were coming,” said Wulf.

  “Yes,” said Sofi.

  “Moss,” said Erik. “Come on, Finn, help me find moss. We can use it for earplugs if they catch us in the open.”

  The monsters didn’t catch them in the open. They didn’t hear them again, or see any other monsters all the way to Bighorn Island. It was a slog, but the going was easier than Olaf had said it would be. The mountains they had to cross were snow-capped, but they were only above the snowline for a morning. It would have been longer, but for Erik’s snow shoes. There had been landslides, leaving loose debris of rock, earth and broken trees in parts, but they tied a rope between themselves and clambered across.

  On the morning of the sixth day of travelling, a great, flat-topped mass rose out of the south-east.

  “Is that Bighorn Island?” Thyri called up to Ottar, who was high on Chogolisa’s shoulders.

  “Yop!” said Ottar.

  As if to prove him right, a woman appeared on the track ahead, walking towards them.

  “Stop,” said Sofi. “Weapons ready.”

  Chapter 19

  Cloud Town

  The woman was about Finn’s age–short, with long hair teased into a cascading mass. Her white dress was decorated with pink, blue and yellow shells arranged in animal shapes, and her sandals were adorned with black shells. Bright eyes sparkled in a way that reminded Finn of Olaf Worldfinder’s and her smile was literally disarming. As she walked towards them, beaming away like a happy mother trying to reassure a worried two-year-old, Finn found himself sliding Foe Slicer back into its scabbard. All the others lowered their weapons and relaxed.