by Angus Watson
“Welcome, Wootah and Calnians!” she chimed. Her voice was as comforting as her smile, even though it was a bit freaky that she knew who they were. “Chief Meesa Verdy would have come himself, but he had unavoidable business elsewhere and sent me in his stead. I am his daughter, Moolba. On behalf of Meesa Verdy and the rest of the Cloud Tribe, welcome to Bighorn Island.”
She gestured at the steep-sided plateau soaring out of the ground to the south-west.
“Not an island then,” said Thyri.
“It’s an island of cool and calm in the desert,” smiled Moolba.
“How did you know we were coming?” asked Erik.
“Ola Wolvinder told us.”
“How?” asked Thyri.
“Oh, we’re always talking to Ola. Now, follow me, please. You’ve come a long way, but I’m afraid that it’s still something of a hike to Cloud Town.”
And so it was.
They ascended a winding path up the long scarp that led to a high plateau. The world opened around them as they climbed and again Finn could see miles of baking red desert punctured by jagged mountains to the west.
It became greener and greener as they climbed. Soon there were signs of civilisation. They passed fields sewn with neat rows of plants and turkeys strutting about in vast rope pens.
Finn found himself walking in the lead, next to Moolba and Sofi.
“Where are all the bighorns?” he asked the chief’s daughter, hoping to point out how silly it was that there were no bighorn sheep in a place called Bighorn Island.
“There are plenty around,” she smiled, “although probably not as many as when the land was named.”
“Ah,” said Finn, disarmed yet again.
They approached half a dozen field workers. The men and women looked up, then went back to their business without any apparent interest in the newcomers.
Finn felt slightly insulted. Erik and Wulf were both huge compared to your average Scrayling; Sofi, Sassa and Thyri were gorgeous. And Chogolisa was a giant.
“Not that interested in the outside world, your lot?” he asked Moolba.
“They see a lot of refugees.”
“We’re not refugees,” said Sofi.
“I did not say that you were. I’m taking you to Cloud Town. We don’t take refugees to Cloud Town. If you were refugees, you’d be allowed to stay one night. You are all welcome for as long as you like.”
“What do you do to the refugees after one night?” asked Sofi.
“Hundreds come,” said Moolba. “We can feed them for one night. I wish we could do more, but we don’t have the stores.”
“How do you make them go?”
“We tell them that they can stay for one night only. Most accept that.”
“And those that don’t?”
Finn could tell that Sofi was embarrassing their host. “What’s that design on the tree over there?” he asked. He pointed at a dead pinyon pine. There was a line with three triangles above it carved into the trunk. “I saw it on the turkey pens, too.”
Sofi gave Finn a stink eye and dropped back. Moolba put a hand on Finn’s arm and smiled. “Thanks for asking. The triangles represent the three branches of the Cloud Tribe. The Mindful, the Landfolk and the Dead.”
“I see.”
“Hundreds of years ago our ancestors branched off from the Warrior and Warlock tribes. We had no need for a standing army, so the Warriors became the Landfolk, who tend to the land, and live on the mesa top. The Warlocks became the Mindful. We all live in Cloud Town and similar places. The Dead are… well, they’re dead.”
“Got it,” said Finn, glancing back at the men and women working the field. “But why aren’t the Landfolk interested in us? Some of us have blond hair and Chogolisa’s a giant.”
“The Landfolk are not interested in much, but they farm well and they are capable warriors. Have you come across any dangerous creatures on your way here?”
“Only a huge flock of flying bastards with claws that could take a buffalo’s head off.”
“We’ve encountered those as well. All the Landfolk that you see working out here are no more than a few paces from a bow and supply of arrows. Should any monsters come, they will see them off.”
“We saw a flock of wasp men a hundred-strong,” said Finn.
“That’s a worry,” said Moolba, as if it wasn’t a particular worry. “If they do attack in numbers, the Landfolk will retreat to a village.”
She pointed ahead at what Finn had taken to be a rocky outcrop, but which he could now see was a huge, blocky building.
Closer, he could see that it was built from pale, flat stones, regularly sized as if each had been hewn into shape, then painted red, yellow and white. The design of three triangles with a line under it was daubed all over the walls.
What a pain in the arse it must have been to make this, thought Finn, but what a result!
It was as if benevolent giants had constructed dozens of square, stone-built huts then fitted them together up to three levels high, to create a squashed up, on-top-of-itself village. Children chased under drying laundry and between the wooden sheds that had been erected on some of the roofs. Men and women were dotted all about the roofs and around the edges, hanging laundry, hammering, weaving and generally being industrious. The children bounced balls. How did those balls get so bouncy? Finn wondered. There were ladders, notched poles and walkways between the building’s many blocky rooms, but, as far as Finn could see, there was no way in from the outside.
He was about to question Moolba about it, but his father jogged up and asked:
“How do they get into their homes?”
“The doors are on the top of each dwelling. They climb ladders which they can pull onto the roofs.”
“To protect them from attack?”
“Exactly. They are more fortified than you can see from here. Within the walls are underground chambers whose only access is a small hole. A child with a spear in his underground house can hold out against an army.”
“Unless the army filled it with water,” suggested Erik.
“Well, yes,” admitted Moolba, glancing to her left. Finn followed her gaze and saw a circular pond, forty paces across, clearly man-made by the brick wall that surrounded it. They’d been busy up here.
“Or poured a bucket of angry rattlesnakes through the hole,” suggested Finn.
“Okay, a child can hold out against any army that isn’t carrying around vast quantities of water or bucketloads of angry rattlesnakes.”
“Were they built to protect you from the monsters?” Erik asked.
“No. These villages predate the monster attacks by hundreds of years. They were built to defend against the Warrior and Warlock tribe after the split. The Warriors and Warlocks are still by far the larger tribe and rule the land west of here. Or at least they did before it all fell apart.”
“Did the Warriors and Warlocks attack you?”
The chief’s daughter shook her head. “No. Their leaders are invited here every few years, shown hospitably and given a tour of our impregnable defences.”
“I see.”
“Good.” She smiled and Finn was very much on her side against the Warriors and Warlocks.
“Have the wasp men and the huge flying monsters visited you here?” asked Erik.
“We’ve seen wasp men, but so far the only casualties have been animals. But from what refugees tell us, much worse creatures than the wasp men will come.”
“So you’ve been taking in refugees?” Erik looked about him. “Where are they all?”
“They can stay for one night,” said Finn, “they don’t have the supplies to keep them for longer.”
“And then?” asked Erik.
“And they go,” said Moolba. She sped on ahead, out of conversation range.
“She’s a princess,” said Chogolisa, catching up to Erik and Finn.
“She certainly is,” agreed Erik.
“No, I mean a real princess. You saw those shells on
her dress and sandals?”
“Um… yes?”
“You didn’t notice them, did you?”
“Well, no, but I believe you.”
“Wow, men are unobservant.”
“I saw them,” Finn piped up.
They both looked at him, then Chogolisa continued: “It’s the sort of thing Empress Ayanna would wear in Calnia. The shells are from the sea. We’re a long way from the ocean, so those shells are immensely valuable.”
“What can they do?” Erik asked.
“They can’t do anything.”
“Why are they valuable?”
“Because it took a lot of effort to get them here. Even more–much more–than it took to get seashells to Calnia. So it shows that the person wearing them is important enough to merit that effort.”
“It takes more than well-travelled shells to impress me,” said Erik.
They walked along a broad, well-trodden path between the juniper and pinyon pines. Bighorn Island was much larger than Finn had thought. It was late afternoon by the time Moolba stopped.
She was standing on a cliff edge. Finn joined her, looked down and gasped. They’d walked along a promontory of the plateau and were looking back at the main massif. A hundred paces below the top of the cliff, hewn into the rock, was a gaping alcove a couple of hundred paces long and fifty high. They couldn’t see how deep it was because, crammed into it like an overindulged child’s toy collection, were towers, courtyards and other buildings, combining to create a town far larger than any Finn had seen anywhere before, let along squashed into a cleft in a cliff.
There were tall towers with straight walls, towers with curved walls and a host of terraced, circular platforms. Like the village they were painted red, yellow and white, and the line with three triangles design adorned most of the walls.
Linking the buildings were heavy wooden ladders, notched poles and walkways, all teeming with two distinct groups of humans. People dressed in white swanned around sedately, sat in groups and walked in and out of the buildings. Others, dressed in uncoloured leather, swarmed about carrying things, sweeping with brooms and generally doing the kind of drudge work that Gunnhild had forced Finn to do back in Hardwork. It wasn’t a great stretch to distinguish the Landfolk from the Mindful.
Above and below the town in the cliff were Landfolk climbing and descending the vertical rock on a network of foot- and handholds.
The whole thing–the town in the cliff, the swarming people, the death-defying climbers–was like something from a dream.
“Welcome to Cloud Town,” announced Moolba.
Finn gulped. All of them, even Yoki Choppa and Sofi, stood and stared. Finn thought of how much Gunnhild and Bjarni would have loved it. He thought that one day he’d love to show something like this to his own children. Like the child that he’d left behind with Olaf and Bodil who would never know him… He blinked back tears. Luckily everyone was too busy staring at Cloud Town to notice.
“Wow,” said Erik.
“Does this impress you more than well-travelled shells?” Moolba asked him.
Erik coloured. “When I said the shells don’t impress me—”
“I wasn’t meant to hear. You should know that sound travels more clearly up here than in the lands below. You should also know that I would prefer a plain dress, but I dress as the daughter of the chief is expected to. I believe that one should choose one’s wars and I don’t believe that the war of what I wear is worth waging. Do you agree?”
“I do. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, that’s the point.”
“I see. Sorry.”
“Okay, apology accepted. Please don’t apologise again.”
“Are we going down there?” Erik pointed to the town.
“We are.”
“Can I wait here? I’m not a great climber and—”
“Don’t worry,” Moolba smiled. “We’ll be going down in baskets.”
“Baskets?” Erik balked.
They followed Moolba to four sturdy wooden frames built on the edge of their promontory. Four taut, thick hawsers and a load of thinner, droopier cords ran up from the cliff town to the frames. Squads of the plainly dressed people were pulling at the cords, drawing four baskets jerkily from the town. It was several hundred paces’ drop from the baskets to the woodland that fringed the mesa below.
“Some of us climb the cliffs for amusement or if we’re in a hurry,” said Moolba, “but generally we prefer to be carried up and down.”
“But there are loads of people climbing,” said Thyri, watching the baskets’ jolting progress towards them. Finn guessed that she’d rather climb down. He wasn’t sure which he’d rather do. Both options looked simply awful.
“The climbers are Landfolk. Mindful travel in the baskets, Landfolk climb. All guests are given Mindful status, unless they prove they don’t deserve it.”
“And how would they do that?” Thyri asked.
“By being rude.”
“I see,” said Thyri.
“Good!” Moolba smiled at her. “Let’s sort ourselves into baskets. There are nine of you and one of me, so you four…”
Finn was put into a group with Yoki Choppa, Sassa and Moolba.
The Landfolk hauled the baskets to the top. They were wicker-made, perhaps a pace square, with sides that came up to Finn’s navel. Moolba untied a couple of leather cords and opened a door in one side. The door’s hinges were six more leather cords.
If Finn had been designing something to transport people over a chasm, he would have made something sturdier. A lot sturdier.
“In we go then!” said Moolba. “Don’t hold onto the rope above.”
Well, obviously, thought Finn.
Sassa gestured for him to go in first. She didn’t look much happier than he felt.
Erik was paired with Ottar and Thyri, both of whom were already in the basket. Ottar was bouncing on the wicker to some happy tune only he could hear. Thyri was staring into the middle distance, jaw set. A few hairs had escaped from her ponytail and were blowing lightly about her rosy cheeks.
Finn’s father was standing next to the basket, wide-legged, hands griping the wicker side, looking from basket to chasm and back again and blowing hard.
Let others’ terror lend bravery to the fearful, said Gunnhild in his mind.
Thanks, dead Aunt Gunnhild! he thought back. His father’s panicked funk did make him feel a lot better. He stepped into the basket. Thick wicker creaked and shifted and creaked some more. The sides came up as far as his hip bones.
The wobbly, wicker sides. It was bad enough making people travel in creaky baskets. But surely they could have build the sides a bit higher! It was like they wanted to fall out.
There was a stomach-churning lurch as Landfolk swung the basket out over the fearful drop. Finn considered vomiting in horror. Before he could even cough, however, they were zooming down towards the town, much faster–and more smoothly, thank Oaden–than the baskets had ascended.
He gripped the low sides. He bent his knees and stuck his bottom out, where it bumped into Sassa. They turned to look at each other, wicker creaking underneath. Sassa’s mouth was in more of a twist than usual, her neck sinews were tightly exposed and her eyes were wide.
“Shag a stag,” she whispered.
Yoki Choppa and Moolba were standing in the basket as if they were in the middle of a grassland admiring the view. They weren’t even holding the sides, for the love of Loakie.
“Woooo-tah!” yelled Wulf from somewhere.
Finn tried to look for him, but the world whirled crazily so he closed his eyes, gripped the sides all the harder and squatted all the lower.
His Aunt Gunnhild had once told him that he was scared when people like Wulf weren’t not because he was more of a coward, but because he had a better imagination and so was more able to imagine what could go wrong. Basically, because he was cleverer. He liked that take on things.
The basket lurched sickeningly. Finn thought, thi
s is it! We’re falling! But they bumped onto something solid. Finn opened his eyes. The cliff top was four hundred paces away and a hundred paces above. They were on the edge of the notch town.
Yoki Choppa, Moolba and Sassa were already out of the basket. A toothy young man offered Finn a hand, but he raised his own to indicate that he didn’t need help.
“Not many people enjoy their first go!” chirped the man. “But you look even paler than most!”
“This,” announced Finn, “is my natural skin tone.”
“Oh, sorry.” The man backed away looking seriously abashed. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
Finn felt bad.
He stepped from wicker onto stone. It was a welcome transition, but he was already dreading the return journey.
They were on a broad landing platform on the edge of the town, at its lowest level. The amazing settlement looked even larger from here, with buildings towering four, five, even six levels above them.
The Landfolk cleared away and a couple of dozen white-clad Mindful approached.
They said you couldn’t judge people by their appearance, but Finn had always disagreed with them. By looking at Jarl Brodir and Garth Anvilchin, for example, you could tell that they were, respectively, an oily shit and a thug. By that token, these Mindful were an intelligent but haughty bunch. Even the children had an air of oh dear, who are these dreadful outsiders? about them.
It seemed that he was right. The Mindful looked at the newcomers, one of them had a quick word with Moolba, and then they walked away as if the whole thing was just a bit embarrassing.
Finn chose to ignore them and gawp at the town instead.
The whole place was under a roof of yellow-white rock. If you’d looked over the top of the mesa directly above, you wouldn’t have known there was a large town tucked into the cliff a hundred paces below. The rock roof was stained black in several places, presumably by fires. Right at the top of the town–it was strange to think of a town as a vertical thing, but this one was–were a set of square stone rooms jammed against the rock roof, overlooking it all. That was where Finn would like to live, he decided.