by Angus Watson
Hundreds of wasp men had been killed by the well-prepared Pothole tribe. The surviving creatures, maybe half of them, fled. The sudden silence and calm felt almost as deafening as the attackers’ screams.
Was it over? Sassa dared to hope.
But the flock of wasp men turned and hovered outside even the range of the giant seated bows, watching silently with glowing eyes.
Then, just when Sassa was wondering whether they were going to hover there all night, the wasp men turned and flapped away.
Everybody held their breaths for a few heartbeats.
“They may come back!” someone shouted. “Everybody hold!”
The defenders stood, weapons in hand, peering into the darkness around their illuminated hill.
Sassa Lipchewer massaged her right bicep and forearm. She’d never shot so many arrows so quickly. She would, she resolved, practise more with –
“They’re coming! Fast from on high!” yelled Sofi from the rock platform below them.
“Where are they?” called Chartris.
Sassa looked up. “They’re diving at us!”
The creatures were dropping like hawks onto mice. They were silent this time, but Sassa fancied she could hear the whistle of wind over their wings. She loosed an arrow at them. She may have hit one. There wasn’t time to string another.
The wasp men slowed at the last moment, swung round and landed among the defenders, lower pair of hands acting as feet. They resumed their screaming, slashing and snapping at the defenders with long claws.
Wulf set about them with Thunderbolt, smashing head after head. The monsters were focusing on the chair bows, fighting off the string-pullers and slaying the strapped in and helpless shooters. Wulf headed for the nearest, where at least one of the Pothole tribe was already slain. Sassa dropped her bow, ducked behind him and reached for a spear.
As she stood, she saw Chartris struggling to free her spear from a screaming monster’s chest. The speared wasp man grabbed the weapon’s shaft with two hands, seized Chartris’ shoulders with two more, placed its claw almost gently around her neck and squeezed.
Chartris’ eyes widened, blood gushing over the claw. Their young and patronising guide’s head tumbled from her body. Blood spurted from her severed neck and her arms flapped in a macabre dance.
Sassa yelled and ran at the beast. It released Chartris’ twitching body and swung a claw. Sassa ducked and jabbed her spear at its face. She missed.
The creature grabbed her arms. She struggled but it was impossibly strong. It raised a claw, clamped it over her face and squeezed. You stink of rotting meat, she thought as the beast began to crush her face.
The claw wrenched away and spiralled skywards. Her vile would-be killer’s grip loosened and Sassa pushed it away.
Finn decapitated the beast with Foe Slicer, ducked another wasp man’s attack then cleaved it crown to neck.
He looked about for more to kill, as did Sassa.
Their section of the defences was clear. Twenty paces along the platform, the fighting was thick. Erik the Angry was swinging Turkey Friend, dispatching plenty, but there were too many. One of the beasts grabbed his bicep with a claw.
Erik roared and dropped his club. The beast raised its other claw.
Sassa looked about for her bow, but she couldn’t see it. Wulf and Finn set off at a run.
Erik punched the monster and he swung back for another, but it grabbed his hand. Its claw closed around his neck.
Launching out of the darkness of the rock platform below, like a great leaping fish, came Chogolisa. She landed, clasped the wasp man’s head in a mighty fist and squeezed.
The head exploded. The claws released. The giant woman grabbed the monster by the torso and hurled it off the platform.
Erik smiled, looked at her, then down at the blood pulsing from the horrible gash in his arm, and collapsed.
Sassa found her bow. There were a few wasp men still attacking the southern end of the walkway, but Pothole people were running in and these were swiftly dealt with. Wulf was walking towards her, wiping wasp goo off his hammer.
“Erik’s hurt,” he said. “He’s lost a lot of blood and—” his expression changed to shock. “Your face! What happened?”
She touched her cheek. It was wet. Blood, she guessed.
She turned to Finn. He was panting and scanning the sky, Foe Slicer in one hand, looking, if you didn’t know him, pretty heroic.
“One of them got in close,” she told Wulf, “but Finn dealt with it.”
“Well done, Finn,” said Wulf.
“Do you think they’re gone for good?” Sassa asked him.
“I hope so,” he said.
Finn reached to stroke hair from his father’s brow. The brown strands were pasted on with sweat, so it turned into more of a yucky wipe than the sensitive brush he’d intended.
Erik’s eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. He was white-faced and he looked old.
“Is he going to be okay?” Finn asked Chogolisa, who was also squatting next to him, hand clamped around the wound on his arm in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
“Get Yoki Choppa,” she replied. “Quick as you can.”
Finn leapt up, much more worried. Could you die from a cut arm?
“Yoki Choppa!” he shouted, climbing down the ladder. “Yoki Choppa!”
He found Thyri Treelegs first, walking about and stabbing her sax blade into the faces of any wasp men that still had faces.
“How many did you get, Boggy?” she asked, grinning as she spiked another head.
“Erik’s hurt. Where’s Yoki Choppa?”
“Tor’s cock, sorry! He’s over this way, follow me!”
They found Yoki Choppa and all three climbed back up to the platform. Erik’s eyes were open. Finn let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. But then he noticed the lake of blood. Surely that hadn’t all come out of Erik’s arm?
“Will everyone stop fussing? It’s only a scratch,” said Erik, propping himself up on his good elbow. “I… oh, hang on,” he fell back and muttered, “quite a deep scratch” as he passed out again.
Yoki Choppa pressed herbs into the wound, bound it tightly and told Chogolisa where to find a bed for him.
“I’ll sit with him,” said Finn.
“Is there any point in Finn staying with him?” Thyri asked the warlock.
“From Erik’s point of view, no. He’ll either die from loss of blood or he won’t.”
“In that case, Finn, come with me,” said Thyri. “There’s work to be done. There always is after a battle, but they don’t put that bit in the sagas.”
Why does she think she knows more about battles than me? thought Finn. I’ve been in every battle that she’s been in!
But he followed her.
They toiled long into the night, dragging the surprisingly light but still awkward wasp men corpses south of the village and hurling them into a pit. It wasn’t just the awkwardness of the eight-limbed, two-winged horrors that was problematic. They also had to avoid the smoking puddles of venom that spilled from the horrible creatures.
Finn the Deep considered pointing out that they’d been walking all day, and in a way it wasn’t the Wootah and Calnians’ mess, and hadn’t the visitors done plenty to help the Potholers already, so could they perhaps turn in?
But he didn’t.
Along with the other Wootah and the Calnians, he helped to clear the bodies. His only break was every now and then going to the cool chamber where his father was lying. Erik was very still. Every time he visited, Finn placed a hand on his chest to check that he was breathing.
Talking to the Pothole people as he worked, Finn learned that three defenders, including Chartris, had been killed. Five more were badly burned by the wasp men’s venom and many more were cut and bruised. All the injured were expected to recover, apart from, Finn worked out by their embarrassed pauses and pained looks, his father. He went to find Yoki Choppa.
“Erik’s going
to live, isn’t he?”
“Most people would die from that wound,” answered the warlock. “I suspect he is tougher than most people.”
“What can we do?”
“Let him sleep. His body is creating new blood. Either it will make enough or it won’t.”
The sun had risen by the time they finished their nasty work. Finn was finally allowed to slump down onto a really very decent mattress in an excellently cool and clean cave carved into one of the gigantic boulders that formed the Pothole village.
He’d intended to sleep on the floor of Erik’s chamber, but Yoki Choppa caught him and told him not to go in. Somehow he ended up sharing a mattress with Sofi Tornado, but he was too worried about his father and too exhausted to even get the faintest of horns about it.
Five heartbeats later, it seemed, Wulf was waking Finn. There was no sign of Sofi.
“Time to get up,” said Wulf.
“Erik?” asked Finn.
“Is eating breakfast. Go and join him.”
Chapter 4
Vertigo
“This is the best gear for the desert,” said Amba Yull, dumping a pile of clothes onto the slickrock where they were preparing to leave. “To thank you for your help.” She stood back, looking like she was trying to look happy.
Erik walked over and inspected the pile. There were cotton trousers and shirts plus tough, light bighorn kid leather hats in a variety of sizes.
The Wootah found their sizes and thanked Amba Yull. Chogolisa, Sofi and Yoki Choppa politely declined the gifts, as they’d done with the Green tribe’s wonderful boots.
Erik loved the new hat particularly. He felt surprisingly bouncy after apparently nearly dying the day before. He hadn’t when he’d woken–he’d felt like crap–but Yoki Choppa had made him eat raw minced buffalo meat for breakfast and given him a tea which contained Rabbit Girl knew what, but which left him feeling inappropriately giggly.
“You sure you’re all right to walk?” asked Chogolisa.
“Fine as wine! Geed as mead!”
“What?” She looked a little appalled.
“Sorry, it’s the tea Yoki Choppa gave me.”
“Fine, but try to sound a little less euphoric.” She nodded towards the Pothole people going about their mornings with lowered heads. “These people are grieving.”
“Ah.”
“Will you be able to walk all day?”
“I could dance all day.”
“Erik!”
“Sorry. I’ll be fine as long as we don’t go too fast. Or get attacked.”
Hopefully they wouldn’t be attacked, or at least not by the same lot. Yoki Choppa had taken matter from the severed limbs of several wasp men who’d fled, so he could use alchemy to track them. The flock was dozens of miles to the south and heading further away. Wormsland was north and a little east.
They set off across the slickrock, under the already baking sun.
Nether Barr led with Ottar trotting along beside her. Next was Sofi, striding like a lioness: the battle seemed to have put new vim in her step. The Wootah swished along behind her in their new gear. Erik walked at the rear with Yoki Choppa and Chogolisa. He looked up at the pretty woman walking next to him. She smiled back. He stifled a happy giggle.
The going was easy for about fifty heartbeats, then they headed up a narrow path with a rock wall on one side and an increasingly hair-curling drop on the other. Erik didn’t mind too much. Perhaps, he mused, he was no longer scared of heights?
The path led up to a plateau, which steadily became an ever-narrowing massif with huge drops to either side.
Erik felt his terror of heights returning. He put it down to loss of blood. The peninsula was narrower and narrower, though, and the drops to either side were verging on the crazily huge.
Long-eared jackrabbits, instead of watching them pass as usual, spooked and zoomed back the way the Wootah and Calnians had come. Erik wondered what the panic was for.
He found out and wished he hadn’t.
The promontory came to an end a long, long way above a river snaking along the base of an insanely deep canyon. Was it a mile deep? On the river’s far bank was a high, scree-skirted cliff, rising vertically and vertiginously to the same dizzy height as the headland Erik was gawping out from.
Spanning the chasm, stretching from their promontory to the cliff opposite, was the most frightening thing Erik had ever encountered. And he’d fought thunder lizards. It was a stupidly long, stupidly spindly rope bridge.
The bridge was attached at both ends to what looked like sturdy wooden structures dug into the rock itself and weighted with more rocks. The bridge must have been two hundred paces long, a mile above the ground. Well, maybe not a mile. But certainly sickeningly, insanely high. The lower part of the bridge, which you were meant to walk on, Erik guessed, was made of two ropes each as thick as his calves. The other two ropes, strung higher and presumably intended as hand-holds, were as thick as his wrist. And that was it. Four ropes.
Surely we’re not meant to cross that fucking thing?
“I think that’s the Red River,” said Sofi, standing on the edge of the abyss. Right on the edge, like a madwoman. “The same one we rafted down out of the Shining Mountains.”
“Are we nearer Keef and Sitsi then?” Erik asked, thinking Tor’s sweaty balls, if it broke when you were halfway, you’d be falling for ever.
“A couple of days’ walk away,” Sofi answered.
“You, you and you,” said Nether Barr, pointing at Erik, Wulf and Chogolisa, “wait over there. You’re crossing last.”
In case it breaks under our weight, thought Erik, because it’s built for Scraylings and both Wulf and I are twice as heavy as the heaviest Scrayling and Chogolisa is at least as heavy as both of us put together. And everything decays eventually, so it’s not a case of if these ropes will snap, it’s when, and –
“We’re the Heavies!” cried Wulf, slapping Chogolisa and Erik on the shoulders, apparently delighted by the turn of events. “Or should we call ourselves the Big Ones?”
“How about the Bridge Breakers?” offered Chogolisa.
“Please be quiet,” said Erik.
Nether Barr announced that Finn and Thyri would go first, then Yoki Choppa and Ottar, then Sofi, Sassa and the elderly guide herself.
“You heavy lot come afterwards, one by one.”
“If it’s going to take that long,” suggested Erik, “perhaps it would be quicker if we heavy three climbed down the cliff and up the other side?”
“That would take much longer,” smiled Wulf, “and I can’t see a bridge down there. That river doesn’t look swimmable, either.”
“I’m a good swimmer,” Erik muttered.
Nether Barr explained how the first two should walk out of step with each other to reduce strain on the rope, and then it was time to go.
Erik felt faint.
Finn and Thyri set off cheerily counting “One, one, two, two” as they paced along the ropes. Erik was slightly annoyed that Finn seemed to have forgotten his own fear of heights, or at least was good at faking bravery. It made him ill seeing his son so high off the ground, so he tried looking over the edge of the cliff and contemplating the rock strata and soaring birds. That made it worse. He walked over to Sofi.
“How would you fight a man armed like me?” he asked, hefting Turkey Friend.
“Are you taking me on?”
Was there a smile in her eyes? Possibly.
“No, no. No. Just in case we come across anybody trying to kill us who’s armed with a hand axe and a dagger, I want to know how they might attack me.”
She showed him how she’d kill him in half a heartbeat without him being able to do a thing about it, which was a little unnerving. Then they discussed possible counter-moves that could work against unenhanced warriors with hand axes.
As they sparred and talked, Yoki Choppa and Ottar followed Finn and Thyri. The boy sang as he went, his warbling, nonsense words echoing up from the impossib
le depths, fainter and fainter until it was Sofi’s turn to cross with Nether Barr and Sassa.
Finn, Thyri, Ottar and the warlock were tiny figures on the far side. Erik wished that he was over there.
He asked Chogolisa and Wulf to play a game in which everyone concealed one, two, three or no stones in their hands and each had to guess the total amount of stones. The winner would cross first. Erik was desperate to be first, but he knew he would lose. And he was right. Chogolisa won the first game and Wulf won against Erik.
“See you on the other side!” called Chogolisa. If she was scared, it wasn’t showing. She gripped the runners and placed a big bare foot on one of the lower ropes.
For her first couple of paces the rope was on the rock, then she stepped out, over the abyss.
The ropes thrummed tight. The heavy struts of the wooden support groaned. Erik gasped.
Everything held. Chogolisa loped confidently across the divide. The bridge sagged much more than with the others, so Erik had to stand nearer the edge than he would have liked to see her.
She was about a third of the way across when there was a swish like a loosed bowstring behind him. There was another swish, then another.
Erik and Wulf spun round. A foot rope was springing apart where it was attached to the wooded support structure. Another strand went, then another. In a couple of heartbeats, cords were unravelling like intertwined worms which had suddenly decided they hated touching each other.
“Help me!” Erik called to Wulf, squatting and grabbing the rope, thinking as he did so that their strength was nothing compared to the rope’s anchor. It wasn’t just Chogolisa’s weight they’d need to hold, but the weight of the rope itself.
“Chogolisa-lisa-lisa-lisa!” Erik’s shout echoed across the deep canyon. “Get off the left foot rope! It’s coming apart!”
“My left or your left?” Chogolisa shouted.
The rope snapped and yanked Erik off his feet. Surprised to be flying a foot off the ground, it took him a moment to let go.