by Angus Watson
“The Popeye tribe came from Wormsland,” said Wulf. “They were kicked out by invaders. Those invaders probably aren’t the most affable people. Why are we going there?”
“To get a wooden box,” said Sofi. “We’ll tell them why we want it, and hopefully they’ll give it to us. If not…” Sofi shrugged.
Sassa guessed the shrug meant I’ll kill them all. She and Sofi really were very different people.
“What’s in the box?” asked Wulf.
“A long-dead child,” Sofi said, matter-of-factly.
“Right.”
“It’s the child of the Warlock Queen. She wants it back.”
“I see.” Wulf nodded as if it was what he’d expected. “How far is Wormsland?”
“About ten days’ walk to the north-east.”
“Yoki Choppa,” asked Wulf, “where are Sitsi and Keef?”
“About ten days’ walk to the north-east,” said the Warlock.
They spent the evening with the Mindful again. Finn the Deep found it all quite hard work, again. He wanted to talk about their quest, playing up the others’ roles, then to be asked questions that would force him to describe his own heroic deeds. However, the Mindful only wanted to talk about themselves and their town in the cliff.
It might have been easier–let’s face it, would have been easier–if they’d had booze. But they didn’t. The evening before, Erik had asked if they had any mead or wine and they’d looked at him as if he’d suggested a group wank.
“We do not see the point of drinking a poison that decreases our intelligence,” explained one white-clad bellend.
Even worse than the absence of alcohol, for the second evening in a row, Thyri was getting on very well with a fellow who looked like a Scrayling version of Garth Anvilchin. Finn hoped he’d seen the last of Garth when Sassa had shot him through the face to stop him throwing Finn off a cliff, but apart from the darker skin, hair and eyes, this guy was pretty much him.
Finn had spoken to Scrayling Garth the previous evening, before he’d noticed how much he looked like the big-chinned twat. Annoyingly, he was a kind, happy, clever fellow. So, character-wise, he wasn’t a bit like Garth. That was even more of a worry.
Finn had long ago decided that Thyri’s attraction to Garth must have been physical. Anvilchin had been such a tool that it couldn’t have been anything else. And now she’d met someone who looked like him and was also a decent human being. Were they going to lose Thyri like they’d lost Bodil? If would be just Finn’s shitty luck if they did.
Moolba the chief’s daughter came to sit next to him. She handed him a cup of the sweet drink that the Cloud Tribe thought was a substitute for booze.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He told her. Why the Hel not? They were off in the morning, and Moolba was sober, so chances were she was capable of keeping a confidence.
When he’d poured out his troubled history of adoring Thyri, Moolba asked: “Do you know the most important trait in a lover?”
Big tits was the first thing that sprang into Finn’s mind, although he wasn’t that into tits and it certainly wasn’t what he really thought. It was his Loakie side, trying to get him into trouble. He was trying to be a bit more Tor these days. But Tor would probably say “big tits” too then laugh his manly god laugh. So what would Oaden say?
“A keen sense of smell?” he asked. Where did that come from?
Moolba gave him the look he deserved, but she didn’t get up and run away. “That’s not the top of the list, no,” she said carefully, as if talking to someone unhinged. “The most important thing about whoever you fall in love with, above all else, is that they like you, too. Love you, preferably.”
Well, yeah, thought Finn. He was being patronised by a woman who couldn’t be much older than he was, if at all.
“It may seem obvious,” the lecture continued, “but it is possible to spend a lot of one’s life obsessing over people who will never like you. I don’t expect you to take this in–every generation of humans excels at making the same mistakes as the previous one–but please, for your own sake, accept the notion that if someone doesn’t like you, they are not the right person for you. For your own sanity, and everyone’s happiness, quench your feelings and move on.”
“So what should I do?” asked Finn. “Be myself and see who likes me, then go for them?”
“Oh, no. No, no no.” Moolba shook her head as if saying no four times wasn’t enough. “Being yourself is the last thing you want to do. Every culture I’ve ever come across teaches every child not to be themselves from the moment they can listen, and there’s a reason for that. Don’t be yourself. Be the best you can be. Then see who likes you.”
Finn looked into Moolba’s bright eyes, surrounded by that buoyant mane of healthily bouffant hair. They were very strange eyes. Strange and appealing.
“I don’t suppose you’re one of the people who likes me?” he dared, thinking at the same moment that he didn’t need alcohol to make a tit of himself.
She snorted a little burst of laugher. Not exactly the response he was looking for. “No,” she said. “Sorry. You’re a great guy, Finn, but you’re very much not my type.”
“Oh. I guess you prefer the more muscle-bound warrior sort, like him.” Finn nodded at the Garth lookalike who was laughing like a god at something Thyri had said.
“Not quite,” said Moolba. “I prefer the more female type.”
“Oh!” Well, that was different. Finn grinned and looked around. Nobody was in earshot. He leant towards Moolba. “Which of our lot do you fancy most, then?”
The following morning Erik the Angry approached Yoki Choppa as he packed up his alchemical kit.
“Have they moved?” he asked. He was pretty sure the warlock shook his head in reply. “But they are alive?”
A tiny nod.
“Do you think they’re captives of the tribe that invaded Wormsland?”
“Do you?” asked Yoki Choppa
Erik shook his head. “No. They knew we were heading west, and they know we can find them, so the safest thing to do is to wait.”
“But?”
“But what?”
“Would Sitsi and Keef take the safest option?”
Erik thougth for a moment. “No, probably not.”
“So why might they wait?
Erik looked at the warlock, pleased and a little flattered to be having such a long conversation with him, but also frustrated that he was clearly missing something obvious.
“Because they’ve got someone fragile with them,” said Chogolisa, who’d walked up behind him.
“Freydis!” Erik slapped his head. “She’s alive! They’re staying put because they’ve found Freydis. So it means Freydis is alive, doesn’t it, Yoki Choppa?”
The warlock inclined his head in a way that could have meant anything and went back to tidying his things.
The Wootah and Calnians left Cloud Town.
Neither the Landfolk nor the Mindful attempted anything approaching a meaningful goodbye. Erik reckoned that the former were too timid and the latter too haughty to make any real contact with the Wootah or Calnians. Yes, some of them had seemed interested–the chief’s daughter Moolba had had a good chat with Finn and Thyri had hit it off with a young man–but neither Moolba nor Thyri’s young man were there to bid them farewell.
The jerky basket ride back up to the mesa top was horrific–there were a couple of serious lurches–but the notion that Freydis was alive had lifted Erik a good deal and he made it without passing out in terror or yielding to the niggling but powerful urge to leap to his death.
Moolba had assigned Nether Barr, an ancient looking lady, to show them the way to Wormsland. Her bare feet were dark, cracked and curled as dried bark. She wore cotton trousers, a small backpack and, despite the hot sun, a thick woollen jumper like the Wootah wore in winter. She held a long-handled net in one hand and swung an empty bag in the other. Erik couldn’t help thinking she had a face like a coyote
chewing a bee.
He wanted to ask her about Wormsland but, before all the Wootah had even climbed out of their baskets, Nether Barr scuttled away across the mesa top without a word. The Calnians and Wootah looked at each other, shrugged, then followed.
Erik expected the elderly Nether Barr to flag after her rapid start, but whatever the opposite of flagging was, she did that. Whenever they lost sight of her–behind a clump of trees or rocky crag–she always reappeared further ahead than she’d been before. It was as if she was sprinting when they couldn’t see her.
Erik was both embarrassed and overjoyed that the little old woman whom he’d thought would be useless had to stop and wait for them, even though she regularly darted off the path to net a lizard and stash it in her bag.
Not long after they’d set off on the second day’s walking from Bighorn Island, the earth shook. It disturbed the more easily disturbed and made a few pebbles roll down slopes. Wulf the Fat, Sofi Tornado, Yoki Choppa and Nether Barr walked on as if nothing was amiss. It didn’t last long and the others soon forgot it.
For four days the going was generally downhill and easy, either over partially wooded grassland or stony soil crowded with small-leaved, thorny bushes taller than Chogolisa. If you hadn’t known the path, the bushes would have been impenetrable, or at least a serious pain in the arse to penetrate, but Nether Barr led them unerringly along dry stream beds and through leafy passages.
In the evenings they ate cactus and Nether Barr’s lizards. Grilled to a crisp, the reptiles were tasty. The old lady helped Ottar make his own net and the boy delighted in failing to catch lizards. When he finally did trap a little striped one with a long tail, he studied it carefully then let it go.
They passed several stone-built stores of dried seeds and plants, but Nether Barr said they were not to raid them. That surprised Erik, because up to that point he had thought that she couldn’t speak.
There was no sign of the wasp men, wasp dragons or any other dangerous animals other than the odd lion, but Erik noticed that Nether Barr never led them far from a stand of trees, an overhang or somewhere else they might shelter if they heard the wasp men coming.
The landscape changed on the fifth day. The flat, dry valleys were choked with tall, willowy plants, but the valley sides and higher land were bare rock. The rock was mostly red, but also yellow, white, green, black and purple, and often clumped into rippled hills and columns, or hewn by ancient and mighty gods into towering angular spires.
“Slickrock,” said Nether Barr, surprising Erik by dropping back to walk alongside him and Chogolisa.
“Slickrock?” repeated Chogolisa.
“The bare rock is called slickrock. It’s a bad name, because it’s not slick. It’s very grippy. Walk with confidence and, if you can, grace. If we meet anyone I know, I don’t want them thinking that I’m leading a bunch of dolts.” She sped off again. Ottar followed along happily behind her.
“He always likes the weird ones,” said Erik.
Chogolisa looked down at him, one eyebrow raised. “Which of us would you say was normal? And, talking of normal, have you noticed how Ottar doesn’t need to be carried when he’s enjoying himself?”
“You mean he could have walked—”
“For all the miles that we carried him, yes.”
“The little bugger!”
“On the bright side, it has made me appreciate walking without a child on my shoulders a lot more.”
“There is that.”
Nether Barr was short of neither confidence nor grace. She scaled vertical faces and tripped down precipitous drops like a bighorn. As on the easier ground, it looked like she was moving slowly, but she was always miles ahead. Somehow Ottar kept up with her, skipping happily across clefts and bounding blithely down cliffs that had Erik sweating with terror.
Indeed, for the first days across the slickrock, he was terrified almost all of the time. As soon as he started thinking I’m getting used to it now, it’s not so bad, they’d have to pick their way down a dizzying drop or traverse a crazily narrow ledge three paces above the rock below. Three paces might not have been that high, but anything high enough to hurt you if you’d fallen gave Erik the willies. The narrow ledges a hundred paces above rocky doom made him giggle with pure terror.
Gradually, he became more comfortable. The slickrock was much grippier than it looked. One could actually manage what had seemed like frighteningly steep slopes without too much bother. You just had to believe you could. Moreover, because of the way the rock lay in differently eroded bands, there were always shaded overhangs to shelter from the sun during the rare breaks that Nether Barr allowed.
By the third day on the slickrock, they were all leaping and climbing, if not quite as well as Nether Barr, then certainly like her willing and capable students. Erik became so confident that he tried to find his own route a couple of times. He always ended up backtracking after he came to a terrifying ledge or a vertical face.
How does Nether Barr know the way so well? he wondered.
Chapter 2
Age
The third day on the slickrock, it was hot.
Erik was sweaty as a cheese in the sun on a summer’s day and didn’t smell much better. Nether Barr forbade him from bathing in the black pools hidden in rock pockets or washing in the brave little springs that glugged out of rock in dry valleys then sank into the sand a few paces later. He was very glad she knew the whereabouts of regular water sources in the arid land, because he was even more thirsty than he was smelly.
Erik was feeling parched again towards the middle of the day when he noticed that they were more exposed than usual. Red slickrock stretched in every direction, with not a bush, overhang nor any other hiding place to be seen. In the distance were towers, pinnacles, snow-capped peaks and great masses of dark red, scree-skirted bluffs.
He slowed down to wait for Sofi and warn her of the potential danger of being so exposed, but she held up a finger for silence.
“Wasp men!” she shouted.
Erik’s breakfast somersaulted in his stomach. Nether Barr shut off like a wasp-stung jackrabbit.
“Follow her!” shouted Sofi. “Moss in!”
Wootah and Calnians sprinted across the baking slickrock, stuffing the moss that Erik had gathered for them into their ears as they went.
All too soon, Erik could hear the screaming of the wasp men. There was still no shelter in sight, and it was far too hot to be running so fast.
Chogolisa steamed past him, Ottar whooping on her shoulders. Finn and Thyri ran by. Soon everyone was ahead of him bar Sofi, who jogged at his shoulder. She always waited for the slowest. With Gunnhild gone, that was Erik. It was depressing. He lowered his head and ran harder. He was buggered if he was going to be slowest. Putting all his effort into running, partially blinded by sweat, he didn’t see the lip of rock that tripped him. He slapped down hard on knees and palms.
Sofi heaved him up by the elbow, as if he was some old man who’d fallen. Which, he realised with resigned misery, he kind of was.
They ran on, further and further behind the others.
“Erik, there’s a drop ahead!” Sofi called over the dread screaming of the wasp men, her voice muffled through the moss in his ears.
He looked up. The others had disappeared, presumably over the upcoming drop.
The wasp men’s wailing intensified. He turned. Two dozen of the creatures were zipping towards them, low over the slickrock, black mouths agape, great wings flapping hard, pincers open and ready. They were a lot closer than Erik would have liked.
“We have to speed up,” said Sofi.
Erik paused for half a heartbeat at the drop. Below them was a flat expanse of bush-choked dry valley. The far side was a rocky bluff like the one he and Sofi were standing on. Nether Barr had almost reached the bluff already. Wulf, Sassa, Finn, Thyri and Yoki Choppa were keeping pace with her, Chogolisa and Ottar not far behind. How had they got so far ahead? How could Yoki Choppa run so fast? Surely h
e was older than Erik?
Sofi took his hand and half helped, half pulled him down the slope. He wanted to say he could do it on his own, but the strong young woman’s support and encouragement did make the descent a lot easier.
They followed the others’ footprints in the red sand. Halfway across the valley, he dared take a look over his shoulder. Wasp men looked back with glowing orange eyes. Most of the airborne monsters were flapping up higher, presumably to gain a better view of the humans fleeing through the bushes. But a pair of them were headed directly for Sofi and Erik.
“Fight?” Erik asked, hefting his club Turkey Friend in his hand.
“Fight,” confirmed Sofi.
The two wasp men flew at them, mouths open and screaming, pincers waving. Their eyes glowed like hot coals.
One went for Sofi, the other for Erik. It sliced a claw at his neck, but he was already swinging Turkey Friend. The weighty club smashed through insectoid arm and burst the creature’s head in a surprisingly liquid explosion. The creature crashed down.
He jumped round to help Sofi, but her attacker was already dead, decapitated by her dagger-tooth knife.
Erik forgot his exhaustion. A thrilling rush nor far off lust fizzed through his limbs. He did like a fight.
The remaining wasp men flew higher and screamed at Sofi and Erik.
“Here they come!” He was itching to kill more.
But they didn’t come. They hovered, heads cocked as if they were studying the humans.
“They saw how easily we dealt with their friends,” said Erik.
Sofi took the moss from one ear. “Or they’re waiting for the others.”
“The others?”
“There are a couple of hundred more a mile away, closing fast.”
“A couple of hundred?”
“Give or take half a dozen.”
“That’s probably too many.”
“Which I guess is why these ones are waiting. Not as dumb as they—” Sofi jumped round, axe raised.