by Angus Watson
“No thanks,” said the girl. That was the sum of their conversation. It wasn’t awkward; they simply had nothing to say to one another.
Not long after Erik’s snores had begun to reverberate through the roof, Thyri touched Sitsi’s arm, then her own ear, then pointed along the roofs. There was someone climbing up a ladder a few dwellings down.
It was Pook, the warlock Sitsi had been talking to. He crossed the roof in a crouch and squatted next to the women.
“Sitsi, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” Pook seemed earnest.
“Oh. Thanks.”
“So I have to tell you. Janny is not the good man he seems. We are not good people. We fled the Valley of the Gods to save ourselves. This village wasn’t deserted. We killed everyone. We… we ate them. We still have some of their meat stored.”
“Oh, for the love of Tor,” said Thyri. “Did we—”
“We ate deer,” said Sitsi. She knew the taste of human flesh all too well.
“Janny plans to kill and eat you, too,” Pook continued. “He wants to take the body of the child and use its magic to escape this land.”
“When?” asked Thyri.
“And how?” asked Sitsi.
“The warlocks say they’ll be able to—”
Sitsi put a hand on his arm for silence. Two people were stealing towards them through the night, just outside the torchlight. It was the two warriors with bows. She would have seen them earlier had Pook not distracted her.
“What is it?” Thyri whispered, peering blindly into the night.
“Prepare to drop off the roof when I say,” Sitsi whispered, silently bending and stringing her bow on her lap, “and—”
There were two other figures out there in the night, following the archers. Sofi and Paloma. Sofi had her dagger-tooth knife in one hand and Paloma had borrowed Luby’s obsidian moon blade from Freydis.
Paloma stepped on a twig.
The archers turned. Sofi leapt and slit both their throats, but not before one of them managed to yell.
More shouts rang out. Hatches banged open. Warriors and warlocks emerged into the darkness, the former armed with spears, the latter with blowpipes. Armed so quickly after the alarm, they must have been watching and waiting for the archers to kill Sitsi and Thyri.
“Warlocks first, Sitsi!” shouted Sofi. “Paloma, indoors. Kill them all.”
“Hold Pook, Thyri,” Sitsi commanded, stringing her bow and slotting an arrow as she leapt to her feet.
Sitsi shot and she shot, two arrows every heartbeat, into hearts and necks. As she aimed and loosed, she saw Sofi in her peripheral vision, leaping about the courtyard slaying warriors and warlocks. The sound of killing stick on skull and cut-off yelps came from inside the stone buildings.
By the time Chogolisa emerged from a roof hole to see what the commotion was about, followed by the Wootah, it was over.
All the warriors and warlocks were dead or dying, save Pook, held by Thyri with her sax blade to his throat, and Janny. The leader was kneeling in the village square. Sofi stood behind him holding his short hair, her dagger-tooth knife pressed into his throat.
“What the—” said Wulf, standing on the roof. “Sofi, what is this?”
Sitsi blinked. There were maybe two dozen dead lying about the village square. Blood and brains glinted in the torchlight.
It did look a little shocking. This was the Owsla’s first massacre since they’d stopped eating rattlesnake and gained consciences. Sitsi had reacted to Sofi’s command instinctively, but now she felt a little sick.
“Janny and his people killed and ate the original inhabitants of this village,” said Sofi. “They planned to do the same to us.”
“How do you know?” Wulf asked.
“I heard them plotting. I waited until they attacked to be sure. It’s clear-cut, Wulf.”
“Did you have to kill them all?”
“I haven’t killed Janny yet.” Sofi tilted the hapless headman’s head back.
“Don’t, Sofi.”
“It was Janny’s idea to murder us. They planned to eat us.”
“I don’t know what black sorcery you used,” spat Janny, “but you—”
Sofi punched him hard in the side of the head.
“Don’t kill him,” said Wulf.
“All right.” Sofi drove a knee between Janny’s shoulder blades. The Warrior flew forward and fell to lie like a dropped doll, arms and legs immobile, head rolling around, mouth and eyes silently screaming.
Wulf stared. “You’ve broken his back. It would have been better to have killed him.”
“As you wish.” Sofi walked over, lifted her bare foot and stamped. Janny’s skull burst like an egg hit with a hammer. “Now for the one on the roof. Hand him over, Thyri.”
“Pook came to warn us,” said Thyri.
Sofi looked up at the busy roof. Keef, Erik, Finn and Sassa had climbed up the ladder and were standing behind Sitsi.
“He’s complicit in murder and cannibalism and his warning was too late,” said Sofi. “He has to die.”
“No,” said Thyri. “To kill Pook, you come through me.”
“And me,” said Erik the Angry.
“And me,” said Sassa Lipchewer.
“And me,” said Wulf the Fat.
“And me,” said Finn the Deep, sounding less than convinced.
“I’m okay with it,” said Keef the Berserker. “I’ll do it for you if you want.”
“Please don’t kill me!” whined Pook. “I didn’t kill the villagers. The warriors did it.”
“The warlocks didn’t intercede and they reaped the rewards of murder.” Sitsi hadn’t heard Sofi sound like this since before they’d met the Wootah.
“It’s true!” wailed Pook. “I deserve to die! But I did warn you.”
“You warned us too late,” said Sitsi. “In fact you distracted me so I didn’t see the attackers.” Sofi was right. If they hadn’t been alchemically enhanced, they’d have been killed despite his warning. He had done less than nothing to help them.
“I will make amends! I will travel the land and do what I can to help people who have been attacked by the weather and the monsters.”
“You won’t last a day,” said Wulf.
“It’s a chance I’ll take. Please let me live. I’ll atone for everything I did–for everything Janny and the others did, too!”
“Did you eat the flesh of the villagers?” asked Sofi.
Pook looked at his feet.
“Did you?”
“Yes,” said Pook quietly.
There was only one thing to do, and the sooner it was done the better. Sitsi pulled her bowstring halfway so the arrow wouldn’t go through and hit anybody else, then shot Pook in the back of the head. He fell forward off the roof and whumped onto the packed earth of the courtyard.
“Sitsi!” shouted Wulf. Everyone else gasped and took a step back.
She bent her bow to remove the string, then leapt down into the yard to retrieve her arrow.
She could feel the eyes of the Wootah burning into her back as she worked.
Chapter 13
Firenado
Wulf insisted that they burn the bodies and not eat them. Erik was relieved when Sofi agreed.
“That was merciful of Sofi,” he whispered to Chogolisa when they finally lay down together.
“If you want to destroy a soul,” said Chogolisa, “you need to do it by cooking them on a fire lit by an Innowak crystal. Yoki Choppa had ours and it disappeared with him.”
“So Janny and his gang didn’t destroy the villagers’ souls?”
“Not unless they had an Innowak crystal.”
“But Sitsi still killed Pook.”
“They still ate people. That’s one of the unforgivables. As is murdering people so you can take their shelter and supplies.”
“Hmmm.”
“Unless an empress tells you to do it, of course,”
Erik felt yet again that this younger woman had
seen an awful lot more than he had.
By dawn the pyre was dying down.
“Where are all the warlocks and warriors?” asked Freydis. She and Ottar hadn’t woken in the night.
“On a mission,” said Erik, “and we’re leaving any moment, too. It’s breakfast on the hoof this morning.”
“And what’s that fire? And that smell? What are they cooking?”
“They’ve left buffalo cooking for when they get back.”
“It doesn’t smell like buffalo. It’s like the smell in the canyon. It’s a person!”
“Buffalo smells different over here, and they have different cooking methods.”
Freydis shook her head. “What happened, Erik?”
Erik couldn’t hold her gaze and found himself instead looking over to where Sofi, Paloma and Sitsi were waiting. They held his gaze, too.
“Come here, Freydis. I’ll explain,” said Paloma.
The girl skipped away.
Erik shuddered, his mind going back to the far side of the Water Mother when the Owsla had been hunting them. He’d more or less forgotten that the women were bred, trained and warped by alchemy to kill. He thought they had forgotten it too, but the women seemed somehow larger, healthier and stronger this morning. The night of slaying had done them a power of good.
It was still cold, with a few snowflakes drifting down from a grey sky. They wrapped up in leathers and furs and headed off towards the Valley of the Gods, where Janny had said they would find the rest of the Warrior and Warlock tribe. Sitsi Kestrel led the way, following Janny and the others’ trail back to where they’d come from a couple of moons before.
They were, Erik couldn’t help but realise, walking towards where they’d seen the tornados the day before. Danger behind them, danger ahead of them, and, it seemed, danger in their ranks.
He shuddered. Sofi was right, but it was the way she’d done it. She’d enjoyed it. So had sassy Paloma and sweet Sitsi. Then Chogolisa had humped the dead bodies onto the fire as if it was an everyday chore. He knew there was a time when it had been.
Each of the Owsla was two people. A fascinating, capable woman and a murder-loving magic-powered monster. He looked up at the beautiful girl walking next to him, pulling the heavy sled and coffin uphill as if it weighed nothing.
What would happen if they had a serious disagreement? What if he wanted to leave her? Would she kill him?
They crunched along on gravel in dry valleys, along the foot of layered red cliffs, then headed up over slickrock, past yellow-pink domes of rock.
Erik tried to tell himself that the slayings had been reassuring. The Owsla was still tough and ruthless as Hel. Their approach would be vital as they moved towards The Meadows. But the way Sofi had paralysed the man even as Wulf asked for clemency… Was she on their side?
“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Chogolisa after a while, shaking Erik from his musings.
The sky ahead looked like it was mustering for a once-in-a-century tantrum. Clouds the size of mountains whirled magnificently in a churn of blues, purples and blacks. The sky above and below was dark as the depths of a cave.
The odd seemingly lost snowflake drifted by as they climbed a high ridge then plunged down into a canyon, to a path worn into the rock alongside a churning river.
They crossed the river over a long-deserted, precarious beaver dam and headed uphill again.
Then the weather hit.
One moment there were snowflakes the size of bumblebees, the next a blast of blizzard nearly knocked Erik off his feet. Wind whistled around bluffs and slammed into his face.
“Erik!” shouted Paloma over the storm.
He looked up. She was waiting for him in the shelter of a tree, holding Freydis’s hand.
“I’ve got to scout. Can you take her?”
Erik nodded and picked her up.
He headed on, Freydis’s legs wrapped around his waist, her face buried in his chest. He tramped behind Chogolisa, who was carrying the coffin-sled on one shoulder.
His exposed, blizzard-blasted right ear was agony, then it was numb. He should have worn a hat, or at least wound something around his head, but carrying Freydis meant he couldn’t use his arms. He was glad for the boots the Green tribe had given them. It was too windy for the snow to settle so there was no need for snow shoes, but the boots kept his feet dry and gripped the slippy surface. Chogolisa was barefoot, as were the rest of the Owsla.
Not that he could see them. Every time he lifted his face, he was rewarded with an eyeful of ice shards.
Oaden knew how long he’d been tramping blind when the weather, already as shitty as he’d thought weather could be, got a good deal worse.
Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled then boomed above their heads as if it were trying to blast them off the slickrock. The wind strengthened into such a gale that walking was near impossible.
Erik jumped when a loud crack rang out, followed by a loud sizzle.
He managed to lift his head to see that a stand of scrubby pines was blazing fiercely.
Sofi appeared, a rope in her hand. “I’m going to run this through your belt!” she shouted into his ear.
“Why?” he shouted back, looking up and seeing that the rope led from Chogolisa ahead of him. He felt foolish; it was obvious what the rope was for.
“Stop you escaping!” shouted Sofi as she rammed the rope through his belt. She was still wearing Owsla gear–breechcloth, jerkin and leggings to the knee–and nothing else, apart from moss in her ears, presumably as protection against the thunder. She was warm; the snowflakes were melting as they hit her.
Murderer or not, Erik really was very glad that she was on his side.
They carried on, through the torturous cold, wet and wind. Holding the rope, Erik could close his eyes and simply trudge. It would be over, he told himself. Just keep walking, and you’ll be through it. Every few heartbeats thunder rang out. No matter how much he tried not to, he jumped like a rabbit every time.
“Don’t worry, Erik the Angry!” shouted Freydis into his ear. “It’s just the gods farting!” She giggled. It was unlike her to be crude. The girl had spent too much time with Paloma.
But she was right, it was just noise and the cold was just discomfort. It wasn’t so bad –
“Run!” he thought he heard someone shout. There was a tug on the rope. “Run!” he heard again–Chogolisa’s voice.
“You’ve got to run, Erik!” yelled Freydis.
Big dogs’ cocks! What now?
When Owsla told him to run it usually meant “or die”, so he ran. He looked up. He could just make out Chogolisa running ahead. The woman, the squat pine trees and the slickrock ahead were lit up a flickering orange. Almost as if…
He turned.
The was a column of fire chasing them. A raging, twisting, motherfucking column of fire. Steam burst in geysers as it charged across the rock. Great blazing stars swirled around its flaming trunk, up and up. They were full-grown trees, Erik realised, uprooted by the awesome wind, set alight and hurled skyward.
He’d been wondering what a firenado looked like.
He ran.
He could feel the heat pressing. They crested a rise and accelerated downhill. He widened his steps, desperate not to fall, one hand clutching Freydis to his chest, the other gripping the rope. All the land around was orange, like the most glorious sunset and heating up like a baker’s oven. The snow became warm rain. The hair on the back of his head was curling, his neck was starting to burn.
Were they running in front of it? he asked himself. Surely the trick with a tornado was to run at right angles, out of its path. He hoped that whoever was leading their flight grasped that.
Mercifully, they turned ninety degrees, off the slickrock dome and into a gully. They crashed through trees. A sapling, trodden down by Chogolisa, whipped back and whacked him in the bollocks. He roared but ran on.
“Watch out!” he heard Sofi shout. “There’s a drop.”
A drop! he
thought. Always a drop. He was carrying an increasingly heavy girl, running for his life and not far off exhausted. So of course there had to be a drop.
Then Sofi was there, her face lit up bright orange. The firenado must be right on them.
“Give me the girl!” she shouted.
He handed Freydis to Sofi and she leapt over the lip of rock.
Erik bent his knees to follow, but something made him turn.
It was right on him.
And there was a fiery face, lunging out of the spinning column. It was grinning, no, leering and laughing it seemed, with the love of murder.
It was the Warlock Queen.
Well, at least I got to see her face, he thought, even if it is the last face I ever see.
He turned and jumped.
He ran. He fell for far too long and landed with a whump. His legs absorbed most of the fall, but he slammed down hard onto his side. He lay panting, sucking in breath and sure his heart would burst. His breath was hot and suddenly all was bright and burning and roaring.
“Paloma, help!” he heard Sofi yell.
Both his arms yanked–almost out of their sockets, it seemed–and he was flying backwards across the ground as if his hands were roped to half a dozen stampeding buffalo.
He felt his jerkin being stripped away, then he was falling back, panting and spent, so tired that spinning up into the sky as a burning ball of bubbling blubber didn’t seem such a terrible option.
The heat pressed. He could see bright light through his tightly shut eyelids, he could hear the crackling roar of the Warlock Queen. He tried to suck in air but there was only heat.
Then, suddenly, it was cooler. He could breathe. He opened his eyes.
They were in a wet cave, lit bright by the flickering light of burning woodland.
“Are you all right?” It was Finn.
“I think so. What…?”
“You came in with your back on fire. Sofi and Paloma stripped the fur off you.” He pointed to a sad, smouldering lump on the stony ground outside the cave.