by Angus Watson
Ottar shook his head all the more.
“Isn’t my canoe awesome, Sitsi?”
“It is awesome,” Sitsi confirmed.
“How about we go and have a good look at the river, Ottar, then decide?” asked Wulf.
Ottar shook his head all the more, but Wulf announced that they’d go and look at the river.
Wulf shouldn’t have asked a question when he’d already decided the answer, thought Finn. It was maybe a little unlike him, but not quite a sign that he’d become a demon from Hel. More likely he was tired.
They collected the child’s coffin. They’d left it on the route back to the Red River, at what Gaven the warlock had told them was a safe distance from the Great Worm.
Finn wasn’t sure. The coffin felt wrong. He reckoned that the evil, malevolence or whatever it was that had turned rock and plants into monsters came from the coffin.
And by the way everyone stood and stared at the box, they felt the same.
It was plain, dark wood banded with rusted iron. Finn had never seen iron worked like that by any of the Scrayling tribes they’d visited. It looked like something from the old world. Which was odd.
“Shall we open it?” he asked nobody in particular. No one bothered to answer. He hated it when that happened.
“Is it safe?” asked Keef. “I’ll be fine if monsters burst out of the ground again, and Arse Splitter will love it, but some of you might have trouble and it would be a shame if Wulf got killed again. It slows us up.”
Everyone looked at Yoki Choppa.
He shrugged.
“I brought it from the Great Worm,” said Chogolisa, “and it didn’t do anything to me. I’m happy to carry it on my shoulder again.”
“All right for now,” said Sofi. “When we get to the river we’ll lash it to its own raft.”
Paloma Pronghorn ran and ran, towing Freydis. They went under arches, through arches, up onto fins of rock, then back to the arches. She liked this landscape, particularly the arches, and she didn’t like being near the coffin, so she kept running.
They arrived on a high bank over the Red River. It smelled bad. She felt her skin tingling in the same way as it did when she was near the coffin. Or possibly she was being paranoid and the stink was a rotting buffalo corpse stuck under the bank below.
“It’s the river,” said Freydis.
“Smelly water?”
“Smelly poison.”
Paloma walked up the low, rock riverbank a couple of hundred paces, Freydis jogging alongside. The smell was the same. It did seem to be coming from the water itself.
They waited for the others.
Ottar pulled Sofi back from the river and hopped about, yelling “Way! Way!”
“Stay away from the river,” translated Freydis.
“Wash! Wash!” he cried.
“Watch?” asked Sofi.
The girl nodded.
The boy took Erik’s hand and pointed at a thick stand of small-leaved plants.
“He wants you to cut a long stem from one of those tall bushes,” said his sister.
Erik took his obsidian blade from his belt and did as he was asked.
“In ribba! In ribba!” said Ottar.
“Now dip—”
“I get it,” said Erik.
He lay on his front on the rock riverside. Paloma and the others craned to watch. The brown water churned a pace and a half below. The water looked odd. It had a shine that reminded Paloma of Beaver Man’s skin.
Erik dipped the frond. The water bubbled, fizzed and smoked. Erik pulled out the branch. A pace’s length of leafy twigs had become a finger-length, burned point.
Everyone took a step back.
“My canoe!” moaned Keef. He’d left it tied up in the water downstream.
“Have you seen this before?” Sofi asked Yoki Choppa.
“No.”
“Could it just be this part of the river?” she asked.
The warlock pouted back at her, dipping his head a little from side to side to indicate that he didn’t know.
“Woll! Woll!” Ottar tugged at her breechcloth.
Sofi crouched and took his hands.
“All the way to The Meadows?” she asked.
Ottar nodded. “An mar.”
“And more?
The boy nodded again.
“Thank you, Ottar.” Sofi stood. “I guess we’re walking.”
Paloma liked adventuring across the land more than most, but so much further on foot did not appeal. “It’s five hundred miles!” she said.
“We’d better get started then.” Sofi’s tone was flat. “Chief Tarker said there’s a bridge north of here.”
Paloma ran to the bridge and amused herself waiting for the others by tossing pads of prickly pear into the water. They fizzled into a foamy piles of green bubbles then dispersed. Warlocks made liquids which melted matter, but an entire river?
The poisoning of the Red River was the worst of the Warlock Queen’s depredations. If this spread–to the Water Mother, for example–it would kill far more people than any number of wasp men. If all streams and rivers became undrinkable, that was pretty much it for all life, human and animal.
Paloma had never considered the seriousness of their quest before. She had never considered the seriousness of anything much. Now she realised how important it was that they reached The Meadows with the coffin. But five hundred miles on foot across an increasingly dangerous land? They’d never make it.
She was amazed that more of the Wootah hadn’t been killed in the attack at the Great Worm. They’d been lucky, then beyond lucky that Nether Barr had given herself for Wulf. Paloma didn’t like that much. She liked Wulf, would have shagged him in a trice if he’d been unattached or she was sure they’d get away with it, but she wasn’t sure about the old lady giving her life for him. He’d died. A second chance was unfair. Luby Zephyr and the rest of the dead Owsla women were still dead. Her sister was still dead.
The others arrived. Freydis skipped ahead and took Paloma’s hand.
“Shall we cross first, Paloma Pronghorn?” she said.
The little girl looked up at her, chin jutting and brow knitted in seriousness, messy blonde hair shining in the sun. Paloma didn’t like serious people as a rule. However, this small person, most sensible of the Wootah, had become about her favourite person in the world.
With Nether Barr gone, Ottar was their guide again.
He led them north-west. They were going this way to avoid deep chasms, he explained with gestures, and they would turn south-west before the day was out. Paloma understood him before Freydis translated. Not every word, but she got the gist.
The day was hot. Their caribou power animal–the only one that Yoki Choppa was also conditioned to–meant that it didn’t affect the Calnians too much, but Paloma could see the Wootah were struggling. They didn’t have much water because they’d been planning to drink from the Red River. Maybe, she mused, the Wootah would all die even sooner than she’d thought.
There were mountains in the distance where there would surely be water. Paloma could have run there and back with water skins, but it would probably have taken a day and she couldn’t carry enough to make a huge difference.
She looked back. Keef was talking to Sitsi. Erik was walking with Chogolisa, the coffin on his shoulder now. By the look on his face, Erik felt the same about the coffin as Paloma did.
Wulf and Sassa seemed unaffected by the casket, and Wulf seemed unaffected by his resurrection. Sassa was affected by it, though. She was grinning like a loon.
All these couples.
Paloma looked at Finn, trudging along.
He wasn’t repulsive, and maybe if he’d been nearer her age she might have considered him. Not that she put a barrier on age. Some nineteen-year-olds were more grown up that Paloma would ever be. And Finn had changed a lot since the day they’d met them on the edge of the Ocean of Grass–improved a lot–but he was still half-baked, more boy than man. So were Wulf and Ke
ef, when you thought about it, but they carried it better. They were the fun, generous-spirited kind of childish, not sulky and solipsistic. So sure, Finn wasn’t that bad any more, but there was no way she was getting together with him.
Behind Finn came Thyri Treelegs, striding along with a scowl on her face and her blade in her hand. She was two years younger than Finn, apparently, but character-wise she was years ahead. She was self-obsessed, too, but in a confident, sexy way. Push came to shove, thought Paloma, she’d kiss Thyri before she kissed Finn again.
Finn the Deep thought he’d been thirsty before. He hadn’t. Approaching sunset, his throat was scratchy and his lips puckered like a cat’s bumhole. He felt sick and light-headed and, perhaps worst of all, his last piss had been viscous orange goo.
The Owsla were fine. Of course they were. Super-warriors didn’t need something so mundane as water.
After they’d eaten, Yoki Choppa handed each of the Wootah a small stone wrapped in leaves. “Suck this,” he said. “It’ll ease the thirst.”
“These stones really work,” Finn said to Thyri a little while later, only because she happened to be the nearest person to him.
“Come with me,” she said, standing.
“We cannot possibly train tonight.”
“Just come.”
He followed her. He had enough energy to think that he should be thinking lascivious thoughts, walking behind her swinging bottom and springy thighs, but not enough to actually think them.
She led him around a dome of rock and between a few clumps of high desert bushes. A coyote skedaddled. It was the first large animal Finn had seen all day, which was somewhat reassuring. First, there was life out here. Second, it didn’t attack them so it wasn’t starving.
“The Owsla have taken against us again,” whispered Thyri, her voice harsh.
“You’re wrong. They wouldn’t. Sitsi’s with Keef, Chogolisa is really into Erik and Paloma… well Paloma is lovely.”
Thyri gave him a look that would have soured a sea of buffalo milk. Finn could have done with a sea of milk right then, now he thought about it. Soured would have been fine.
“They’ll do what Sofi tells them to do and I think she still means to kill us. Maybe when the quest is completed but probably before.”
“Why?”
“The empress ordered them to. Sofi isn’t the sort to ignore an order.”
“No way. We’ve come so far together.”
“She is the sort to use someone until she doesn’t need them any more.”
“You really think she needs us?”
“The Warlock Queen needs Ottar, Fraya knows why, and we’re tied in with that.”
“I think you’re wrong. We’re pretty much the same tribe as the Owsla now.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Be on guard.”
“And how do you guard against women that make Valkyries look like chumps?”
“We have to watch for the signs. We know they can die. We’ll have to get them first. Maybe in their sleep, maybe another way.”
“You’re wrong, Thyri.”
“You’re blinded by lust.”
“Come on, let’s go back.”
It was, Finn mused as he lay on his sleeping bag later, the first time ever that he, rather than Thyri, had ended a period of time alone together. He definitely wasn’t in love with her any more. It was like part of his childhood had gone. Maybe his childhood was over. Finn the kid was gone. He supposed he should be glad, but it felt like someone had died.
Chapter 9
Goblins
Low on water, they set off in the dark to cover some ground before the heat of the day.
Dawn came like a furnace door opening. Soon it was the hottest day they’d encountered on their journey–the hottest Sitsi Kestrel had ever known. It would be the day they’d run low on water, she thought. It was the sort of thing the Wootah god Loakie would have engineered.
She was uncomfortably thirsty with a headache starting behind her eyes, so Innowak knew how the unenhanced Wootah must have been suffering.
She looked back to where Chogolisa was pulling the coffin on a sled. Erik had made the sled the night before, so that nobody had to carry the seemingly tainted coffin next to their heads.
“How are you feeling?” she asked Keef.
“Fine,” he croaked.
The other Wootah wore the light leather hats given to them by the Pothole people, apart from Freydis who wore a huge bonnet made of reeds and Keef, who refused to cover his head. True warriors, he said, considered the head to be the least important part of the body and unworthy of protection.
A couple of moons of exposure to the sun had decreased his pastiness, which had been an improvement, but now it looked like his head had been baked. Add the effects of dehydration, and he didn’t look entirely unlike the mummified corpses that the warlocks had used for practice and education back in Calnia.
The day wore on and heat flowed across the cracked, red land like a liquid.
Chogolisa and Paloma were carrying the children while Erik took a stint towing the coffin. Sitsi worried about pregnant Sassa. She was pink and struggling.
Finn and Thyri were shuffling along unhappily, and Wulf and Keef didn’t seem too much better. Erik was worst of all. The big bearded Wootah was in trouble, stumbling every few steps.
Sitsi skipped back to him.
“My turn with the coffin,” she said.
“You sure?” he gasped.
“I’d like to.” He handed her the ropes. She wouldn’t be as ready with her bow if trouble came, but she was worried Erik might die if he towed it any further.
Their path joined a broader, relatively well-used track, which took them up a short but steep slope to the edge of a broad basin surrounded by a low cliff.
Sitsi thought for a flash that the basin was filled with people, varying in size from Ottar height to taller than Chogolisa, but the figures were towers of red-brown rock. Even with her eyesight, she couldn’t immediately tell if they were natural features or long-weathered statues. They were definitely made of rock–soft, muddy Badlands rock mixed with the harder Wormsland rock by the looks of things–but many of them had distinct facial features–eyes, tongues, even teeth. Some looked like they were wearing hats. Others perched in coagulated rows, lumpen bodies topped with two, three or four faces on pointed heads.
“Goblins,” claimed Erik.
“Wartar,” said Ottar, pointing. In the centre of the statue-strewn declivity, next to a little mesa, was a low, regular circular wall around a small pond.
“A crowd of stone goblins with an unlikely pool in the middle,” said Paloma. “There’s no way this is a trap.”
“Sitsi?” asked Sofi.
“Some of the towers are lifelike, but they are rock.”
“There’s no way, given what we’ve come across recently,” said Paloma, “that they’re going to turn into creatures that want to kill us.”
“I hope they do,” rasped Keef. “I like a fight before a drink.”
“Ottar,” Sofi asked, “do you think it’s safe?”
The boy looked at the stone goblins but didn’t say anything.
“Freydis?” asked Sofi.
“He doesn’t know.”
“Everyone quiet.” The Owsla captain listened for a moment. “Paloma, run around the pond and back.”
“So it’s definitely safe for me?”
“Go.”
Pronghorn returned heartbeats later. “All fine. The ground’s weirdly soft, a bit like it was in the Badlands, but there’s nothing dangerous down there.”
Sofi nodded, “Okay. Don’t rush to the water. I’ll try it first. If it’s all right, do not drink too quickly. Have only a few mouthfuls at first. You’ll want to gulp a few skins’ worth in one go. Don’t.”
The advice was good, thought Sitsi, but given brusquely. Sofi was definitely pissed off with the Wootah. Was it because Nether Barr had died for Wulf? Of all of them, Sofi was the only one who’d emphati
cally disagreed when Nether Barr had announced her plan, and she’d made herself scarce when it was carried out. She noticed Thyri glaring at Sofi–the animosity was not all one way. Sitsi didn’t like the tension.
They walked down the track into the goblin world. There wasn’t a plant to be seen, nor a blade of grass, nor any animal. The ground was pliant underfoot but there were no footprints. There were weird snake-like trails, and thousands of pock marks, as if someone had gone around jabbing the ground with forks.
Up close, the rocks were even more bizarre. They looked exactly like limbless, pustule-coated goblins. In places it was like mud creatures had stood on each other’s shoulders and congealed into high walls of grimacing and grinning figures. Sitsi couldn’t help but expect them to come to life and attack. How they’d attack without limbs, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to find out.
They made it to the low walled tank.
“Everybody wait,” said Sofi.
She dipped her hand axe’s head into the water and inspected it, then her little finger. She touched her finger to her lips, then scooped water with her hand and took a big sip.
“It’s good,” she announced.
Sitsi waited while the Wootah drank.
Sofi filled her skin then stood off to one side, listening and drinking. “Fill your skins before you drink much more,” she said, “in case we need to run.”
Sitsi could feel it, too. There was a presence. She found a space at the wall and filled her skin, all the while looking about herself.
She saw something move at the edge of the hollow.
“Sofi, movement two hundred paces north,” she said.
“I heard it. Paloma, scout north and—”
There was a soft rumble followed by the patter of falling stones as a nearby rock demon crumbed.
Oh no, Sitsi strung an arrow. The rock fell away to reveal a writhing knot of black snakes. They were segmented, short and fat–the length and width of a big man’s forearm–and headless. They weren’t snakes. They were huge maggots, or worms. They tumbled to the mud ground, slithered over each other for a couple of heartbeats, then seemed to find purpose. They headed for the horrified humans. Mouths opened to reveal circles of slender white teeth.