by Angus Watson
“Those are storage chambers,” said Moolba, appearing next to him and following his gaze, “full of supplies in case we get stuck in here.”
“Have you ever needed them?” asked Finn.
“Not yet. However, if you consider the things we’ve seen recently and the stories coming from the west, I have a feeling it may not be long before the Mindful are stuck down here for a long while.”
“What about the Landfolk?” Finn asked.
Moolba looked around her. “There are those,” she said quietly, “who say that they will be safe in their stone villages. Others think we should invite them down here until the emergency has passed.”
“Which side are you on?”
Moolba smiled. “I hope it won’t come to taking sides.”
“Moolba?”
It was Sofi, calling her from the other side of the landing stage.
Moolba strolled off. A squawk made Finn jump. It was a large, crazily red bird with red and blue wings and a vicious looking beak, staring at him. He backed away.
“Don’t worry,” said Chogolisa, ambling up. “It’s only a macaw. They’re from the southern jungles. Loads of people in Calnia had them as pets. They only bite if you goad them.”
“Is Chief Meesa Verdy here?” Sofi asked, although she knew the answer, because she’d heard one of the white-dressed people whisper to Moolba when they’d arrived.
“He isn’t. He’s gone to deal with an irrigation problem on the western island. He won’t be back for a while, so I’m standing in for him. What can I do for you?”
“We need the ingredients for a vision quest. Olaf said you have them.”
“Olaf?”
“Olaf Worldfinder is the Wootah tribe’s name for Ola Wolvinder. He—”
“—led their ancestors across the Great Salt Sea a hundred years ago?” Moolba interrupted.
Sofi raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve spent a while listening to Ola’s stories,” Moolba explained. “And by their yellow hair and blue eyes… it wasn’t a great leap.”
“No,” agreed Sofi, nearly smiling.
“Why don’t you come with me and tell me how you ended up crossing the world with them?” asked Moolba.
“And the vision quest ingredients?”
“You can have them in return for your story.”
“Your warlock will agree?” In Sofi’s experience, warlocks didn’t like giving away their precious materials to anyone, let alone strangers.
“We’re all warlocks here.”
Sofi looked into Moolba’s sparkling eyes. Despite being black rather than blue, they reminded her of Olaf Worldfinder’s. The other Mindful had similar eyes. Wet and shining, like the eyes of much older people.
Moolba watched Sofi work it out and nodded in possibly patronising congratulation.
“Fine,” said Sofi, “I’ll tell you our story in return for the herbs.”
“Done. As long as the person who takes them knows there is about a one in four chance that they will die.”
Sofi nodded.
“It will be you, won’t it?” Moolba asked.
“It will.”
“You’ve never taken an hallucinogenic drug in your life, have you?” she said.
Sofi hadn’t. Why would you? People had told her she should try everything. She’d asked those people if they’d like to try having a barbed fishing spear rammed up their arses.
Moolba looked past her to the others. “You’re their leader,” she said quietly. “They will be lost without you. They will try to persuade you that one of them should take the quest.”
“Do I look persuadable?” Sofi asked.
“I like you,” said Moolba. “Come with me.”
The chief’s daughter led Sofi across the town, along a complicated route of ladders and walkways, then down into a circular underground chamber. Sofi’s eyes adjusted in time to see Moolba crawling through a small opening in one wall. Sofi sighed, and followed her.
The tight tunnel emerged ten paces later inside a narrow, windowless tower, dimly lit by a square hole in the roof. A ladder on one wall led up and through the hole. Sofi climbed the ladder and emerged into a circular room, where she found Moolba. She walked over to the small window and saw the Wootah and Calnians milling about below.
“This is my room, and it’s deemed important,” explained Moolba. “All the important rooms have complicated routes leading to them. They say it’s to confuse invaders. Although I’ve never seen the point. If invaders are wandering about our town then we’ve already lost, and it’s a pain when you forget something and have to nip back for it.”
The room contained two plain chairs, a table, a low cot with a thick mattress, a few barrel cactus-carved storage pots and some wooden boxes. Other than the ladder emerging on one side of the room, the small window was the only opening. Sofi wondered how they’d got the mattress in there.
“Please, sit down,” Moolba gestured to one of the chairs. She took the other. “Food and drink will come. Please tell me all about your journey with the Wootah, and then we can discuss the vision quest.”
Sofi began with the day she’d been summoned to the Mountain of the Sun and ordered by Ayanna to complete the massacre of the Goachica and the Mushroom Men.
Presently, a boy arrived with deer and squash stew and a delicious cactus syrup drink. Sofi talked as she ate.
Moolba listened, interrupting only now and then to ask Sofi to clarify a point.
Sofi had never spoken for so long before, nor revealed so many of her thoughts. She told Moolba how Malilla Leaper’s mutiny had upset her. She told her that the other women had lost their love of killing after Yoki Choppa removed the rattlesnake from the Owsla’s diet, but that her own love of killing had been reduced only a little, if at all. She probably hadn’t needed to kill Taanya the squatch to get Ottar back. She’d told herself it was the easiest and quickest way, but the fact was she’d wanted to kill the annoying beast and she’d enjoyed doing it.
She noticed it was dark outside and she was still talking. She wondered if she’d been drugged. She didn’t mind. It was a wonderful relief to talk. She told Moolba about the Badlands, the Green tribe and the Shining Mountains. She told her about the loss of Luby Zephyr. She explained how guilty she’d felt when Freydis the Annoying had been swept away, and how ridiculous she’d felt praying to Innowak to keep the girl alive, particularly because she was still planning to slaughter the Wootah after the quest was done. Or at least she was considering it. Yoki Choppa’s theory that there were millions more Mushroom Men over the Great Salt Sea was convincing, but it was just a theory. Empress Ayanna had seen that the Wootah would destroy the world. What if she was right? Surely there was enough risk that it made sense to kill this handful of people?
On the other hand, she was beginning to feel real affection for the Wootah, particularly the idiot Finn, whom she’d loathed initially but now regarded like a brother. Like an annoying little brother who would have benefited from regular beatings, sure, but a brother all the same.
As she talked about killing the Wootah, the room began to swirl and her eyes felt like they were being sucked backwards into her head. She recognised the feeling. She’d fainted many times in the early days of Owsla training, before alchemical warping had hardened her.
She closed her eyes and opened them to find Moolba standing over her.
“I—” she began.
“Shush,” said Moolba, placing her cool hands around Sofi’s neck.
Sofi tried to lift her own hands but she couldn’t.
Moolba smiled, and tightened her fingers.
Sofi couldn’t move at all. Her brain clouded.
“Why?” she managed.
The skin on Moolba’s face greyed and slackened and she became an impossibly ancient, ravaged crone.
But her eyes are the same was Sofi’s final thought.
Chapter 20
Breaking the Rules
Sitsi Kestrel had decreed that none of them sho
uld venture more than a couple of hundred paces from the canyon.
“It’s not just the wasp men, other monsters, flash floods and tornados,” she’d instructed Paloma finger-waggingly. “The Red River runs along the southern border of Wormsland. I don’t know exactly how far we’ve come, but by my estimates Wormsland is directly across the river.”
“So?” Paloma had asked.
“Don’t you remember what the Popeyes said?” Sitsi had replied.
“The Popeyes?”
“Those people with bulging eyes who were on the Plains Strider with us.”
“Oh yeah, I think I remember them. What did they say?” Paloma remembered them very well and knew exactly what they’d said, but she enjoyed goading Sitsi.
“They came from Wormsland! Don’t you pay any attention to anything? They said a murderous tribe had pushed them out of their territory.”
“And we need to hide in case the nasty people frighten us, too?”
“I think we need to avoid recklessness leading to the death of a small girl.”
“Hmmm.”
“Go on, answer. Would it make sense to avoid encounters with any monsters or monstrous people until the rest of the group get here, for the sake of Freydis’s safety?”
“I suppose.”
“So, do you promise you won’t take Freydis more than a hundred paces from our canyon?”
“Can I think about it?”
“Paloma!”
“Okay, fine, we’ll stay near the canyon.”
Several days after that conversation, Paloma was tired of spying on two should-be lovers who were never going to do anything beyond endless archery practice. She was itching for adventure. She’d also never been great with rules. Here there was only one and she wanted to break it. She needed to break it.
Freydis looked bored, too. Surely it was bad for a child to be stifled like this? If children have no risk in their lives, how can they learn to avoid it?
So, about half a moon after they had arrived in the canyon, Paloma told Freydis she believed that it was important for the group’s safety to know what lay in the vicinity of their canyon. The girl nodded agreement and smiled in complicit naughtiness.
The following dawn they dressed silently and prepared to leave.
“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Sitsi from her bedding on the opposite side of the cave from Keef’s.
“To the canyon mouth,” said Paloma, “to throw stones into the Red River.”
“Have fun!” yelled Keef.
“Be careful,” said Sitsi.
Paloma strode down the canyon with Freydis skipping along behind her, humming a cheery little tune. It was, of course, mused Paloma, Freydis’s wilfulness in staying on the raft that had caused Paloma to be speared in the stomach, tongue-stretched by an ogre and stuck here with the world’s most frustrating non-lovers. But this was different. They weren’t going to get into trouble this time.
“Which way?” asked Freydis when they emerged from the narrow opening of their gulch into the wide Red River canyon. They could have climbed the crumbling red rock cliff on the far side, but if Sitsi was right then that would take them into Wormsland, the area populated by the tribe who’d forced the Popeye people from their land and into extinction. It was probably, on balance, not the best idea to take Freydis up there.
“We came from upriver. Let’s try downriver,” she said.
Since they’d arrived, the current had reduced from sprayful charging to a sluggish brown roll. Perfect for water-running. Would it work with a child on her back? Only one way to find out. She unstrung her water shoes from her little backpack.
“Will I go on your shoulders?” Freydis was bouncing on her toes.
“You can swim, right?
“I’m a good swimmer.”
“Excellent. You can rescue me if it doesn’t work. Let’s go!”
It did work. Paloma slapped along the river like a giant duck on an extended take-off run, with Freydis whooping on her shoulders. They meandered between high red and black cliffs, then burst out into a wide, lush area of lower land. Paloma slowed and ran onto a shingle beach, pleased that she managed it without falling. If she had, Freydis would have flown face-first into the stones. The less cut and bruised the girl was when they returned, the less Sitsi would be able to complain.
“Aw,” said Freydis as Paloma swung the girl down from her shoulders.
“We can be seen for miles running down the river here,” said Paloma. “If anything or anybody means us harm, I want to see them first.” She might not be overly cautious like Sitsi, but she wasn’t an idiot.
They picked their way along the boulder-strewn bank. It was hard going for Freydis until they discovered a path a dozen paces from the river. They walked along in the shade of whispering trees and long-fronded bushes. Chipmunks sniffed at them and ran for cover. A long-limbed lizard on a nearby rock looked them in the eye as it pumped its forelegs up and down in a motion that looked exactly like press-ups.
“Hey, look at me, girls!’” said Paloma, pointing at the lizard. Freydis giggled.
“We should have done this days ago,” said Paloma. “There’s no dang—”
An angry, guttural roar sounded from somewhere nearby.
“—ger” finished Paloma, widening her eyes at Freydis.
They stopped. The hair-raising roar rang out again. It was coming from a little way downstream, on the far side of the river.
“That’s a squatch,” said Paloma.
They crept up a low scarp of rock that protruded over the channel.
On the far side, on stony ground busy with low bushes, were three men, a woman and a one-armed squatch. Two of the men and the woman were holding ropes tied around the squatch’s neck, pulling in opposite directions, presumably to keep the beast out of mind-crush range.
The squatch had one arrow sticking out of its remaining bicep, and another in its back. The archer shot a third into its thigh. The squatch roared again, sounding more angry than hurt.
“You have to rescue him, Paloma Pronghorn,” said Freydis.
“Do I? The squatch tried to kill us.”
“The Badlanders tried to kill us, too. Are all humans bad?”
“Hmmm.” Paloma had killed enough people herself, and did think that most adult humans were inherently bad, but the girl sort of had a point.
The three men were dressed in leather breechcloths, the woman wore the same with a jerkin. They were young and strong, and the woman was very tall, but they didn’t move like they’d been alchemically enhanced. Unless she was missing something, it should be a doddle to put an end to the torment. But then what?
They had the squatch at rope’s length for a reason. If she rescued it, it would probably get close enough to crush her mind. And who knew what the creature had done? Maybe it deserved a bit of torture.
“He’s only got one arm!” said Freydis. “Please, Paloma Pronghorn?”
“Shoot it in the head!” shouted one of the rope-holding men.
“Let’s not hurry,” said the woman.
The other rope-holder laughed. “Yeah! Kill the fucker slowly.”
That did it. Paloma did not like people swearing near Freydis.
“Stay here, Freydis. Stay low. Scream if anything attacks you.”
The fastest person in the world zipped back down to the river, strapped her water shoes to her feet, ran across, unstrapped her shoes, leapt up the bank and landed with her killing stick in her hand.
“Hi,” she said brightly.
The archer swung his aim from the squatch to Paloma and back. The other two looked from Paloma to the tall woman, mouths open. So she was the boss. She had straight, unadorned black hair, round, plump cheeks and exposed upper teeth. She looked quite a lot like a prairie dog.
“Who are you and what do you want?” asked prairie dog.
“Why are you tormenting the squatch?”
“I asked first.”
She had asked first. There was
no need to be overly antagonistic. “I’m Paloma Pronghorn. I’d like you to convince me that this squatch deserves what you’re doing to—” she glanced at the squatch, it looked like a male, “—him. Or free him.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll free him. You and your men will probably be hurt, but I’ll try not to kill you. Unless you really annoy me.”
“Shoot her.”
The archer switched his aim, drew the bowstring and loosed.
Paloma stepped aside, flashed out a hand and caught the arrow.
Phew, she thought. She only managed that trick about one out of three times and she would have looked like an idiot if it had gone through her hand–which had happened before.
She twirled the arrow in her fingers. “Let him go and run away.”
And you, she thought at the squatch, don’t chase them.
I’ll do as you ask.
The tall woman regarded Paloma calmly. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go, you three.”
“But, Chief Tarker, she’s just one woman and we—”
“Can you catch an arrow?”
“Not one that’s been shot from a bow, no, certainly not at that range, but—”
“But nothing. She’s not just one woman, she’s something else. Keep an arrow on the beast as we leave.”
“But, Chief Tarker…”
“If she really wants the squatch she’s welcome to it. Drop the ropes and run on three. One, two, three.”
They dropped the ropes and ran off to the north. The archer left last, jogging backwards, arrow trained on the squatch.
The beast sat and pried the nooses from its neck with a claw, one eye on Paloma. She waited for thoughts of gratitude but none came.
What do you know of the land west of here? she asked in the end.
I’m the only survivor from a squad of twelve. You wouldn’t last a heartbeat.
When she’d first seen them, Paloma had thought all squatch looked alike. However, after a few hours as their captive, she’d seen that their faces were as varied as human faces, and their voices, although internal, just as diverse. This one had the sort of pinched expression you might find on a bitter human and a whiney tone to match. She began to regret freeing him.