The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing

by Tara Maya

  All at once, Masher flew off her into the air. He smashed against a nearby tree.

  Umbral, in a towering fury, stomped toward the man he had just thrown like a ragdoll. He grabbed Masher by the front of his jerkin and scraped him up against the tree.

  “I’ve slit a lot of throats today, goat’s ass. It makes no difference to me if I slice open one more. My gloves are already dirty.”

  “Forgive me, Umbral,” whimpered Masher. “It’s just, you’ve never taken one before. Couldn’t see why you would now. I didn’t know she was yours. I mean I knew she was yours, but I didn’t know if she was yours yours.”

  “She’s mine mine,” said Umbral through gritted teeth. “And all mine. Touch her again, and I will give you to Ash.”

  Masher turned white.

  “Let’s not be hasty. I said I was sorry. Didn’t I? I am. Sorry. Ash still has it in for me, ever since that plague-ridden clanhold. You know what Ash is capable of.”

  “I do.” Umbral dropped Masher in the snow. “Better than you. Get back to work.”

  Masher scrambled away.

  “Are you…unhurt?” Umbral asked Dindi.

  “Unhurt,” she repeated flatly. “Asks the man who has sworn to kill me.”

  “Well enough, I take it.”

  “I would have been able to defend myself if your leash had not stopped me.”

  “That’s its purpose,” he said, “To prevent you from defending yourself—from me. But if anyone else tries to touch you, they will answer to me.”

  Chapter Two

  Tracks

  Finnadro

  Other men hunt deer. I hunt wolves.

  My father taught me the heart is a tree that will grow as tall as we allow; but in the roots of every heart lives a beast. The beast cannot be killed, but neither can it be freed. It must live in the heart; and the heart must grow past it, to the sky.

  When I turned seven, my father told me to follow him into the woods. For three days we walked without stopping except for water and sleep. When all I could think of was my hunger, he finally paused in a wild glen. He always wore a belt with a satchel, made from deerskin dyed deep burgundy like a pomegranate. An ancient, musty smell, which brought to mind old men smoking corn pipes, imbued the leather. He never let me touch it, and never opened it.

  That day he opened it. A pile of scalps fell out.

  “Count them,” he told me.

  Forty-seven. Almost higher than I could count at that age.

  “All for her,” he said. “All to protect your ma, and you, for she already carried you. Forty-six men died so you could live, Finnadro. Never forget that.”

  “Were they bad men, pa?”

  “Some were bad men. Some were good men who served a bad man. You know that the Bone Whistler tried to conquer the Hidden Forest. His War Leader, the Skull Stomper, led an army of Rainbow Labyrinth warriors here, a thousand men, the largest army in all of Faearth! But had they been but a quarter that number, they would still have been unstoppable, for they were hungry, hungrier than you are now, hungry for man-meat. Even the Blood Spears warriors are not as crazed as the fanatic cannibals who danced to the Bone Flute.

  “We did not have the strength to fight them, and had to agree to give tribute. They wanted furs, arrow shafts…and women. Each clan had to give up a daughter, chosen by a drawing of tokens. Your ma was one of the maidens whose token was drawn. But she was my betrothed and I would not surrender her to the thugs of Rainbow Labyrinth. We had not been able to marry yet, because we waited on Midwinter, but I knew she already carried my seed. Your ma’s brother, my best friend, Cullo, felt just as strong. He was a wolfling. He’d always resisted his power before, but now he vowed he’d take his wolf form and not change back until we rescued her.

  “With the Singing Bow to guide me and Cullo’s nose to guide him, we hunted the men who took her halfway across Faearth, and we killed them one by one.

  “One man, though, we could not kill. The Skull Stomper. He eluded every arrow of mine. He and the Blood Drinker led the attack on Green Woods tribe, with the Skull Stomper directing the battles and the Blood Drinker slaughtering the prisoners.

  “I was captured, caged and tortured. They tied me to a spit over a fire, like roast pork. Ratho Blood Drinker himself cut off slices of my flesh and ate it in front of me. I’m not ashamed to say I wept. I expected to sing my last song over that fire pit. But that night, a masked man released me from the spit. It was the Maze Zavaedi. He was a Rainbow Labyrinth tribesman, but he hated the Bone Whistler even more than I.”

  I knew this part. “You helped him overthrow the Bone Whistler!”

  “Eventually. Yeah. None of us would have succeeded without the help of the White Lady. You owe her your life. A lifedebt is the most precious debt of all. You must never rest until you have paid it.”

  “Yes, pa!” I knew that too. Something bothered me, though. “Pa, you said forty-six men died so I could be born, but you’ve got forty-seven scalps.”

  Pa nodded. I never saw my father cry, but that day his eyes moistened when he held up one scalp marked with a leather ribbon.

  “The worst thing the Bone Whistler did to us was unleash the beasts inside us. Not everyone in the Green Woods tribe agreed we should have surrendered and paid tribute. The wolflings and other wildlings, in particular, were furious with the decision. They would not abide by it. They hunted the Rainbow Labyrinth warriors on their own—and just as wolves will do with deer, ate their kills. It was no worse than what the Rainbow Labyrinth cannibals did to us. At the time, I thought the wolflings had the right of it, and the tribe elders were cowards.”

  Pa fell silent, and I had to prod him. “So what about the forty-seventh scalp, pa?”

  “Cullo was one who had eaten man-meat,” said Pa. “Acquired a taste for it, I guess. He’d sworn he would stay wolf until his sister was safe, but when we returned from the war, he could not change back. We kept hoping he just needed more time. Then one day, when you were still just a baby, Cullo attacked you, got you in his jaws and tried to eat you. That scar on the back of your neck?”

  I felt it, a tiny ridge of raised flesh in a jagged line between my neck and shoulder, reaching toward my collarbone. I’d never thought much of it, but now a chill ran down my back.

  “I had no choice,” Pa said softly. “I put an arrow through him. I took his scalp to remind me that at the end, it wasn’t really my best friend anymore, nor your ma’s kin. It was the last revenge of the Bone Whistler.”

  Pa handed me the scalp. The hair was like ma’s. Ma sometimes spoke of her brother, fondly and sadly, but she had never told me he was a wolfling, or how he died.

  “Son, sometimes a man has no choice but to wade into a river of blood, if he wants to protect the one he loves,” said Pa. “But always remember, you do it for her sake. Never cross to the far side of that river. You won’t come back.”

  Then he told me it was time to prove myself a man, which I had guessed by now. He took away my clothes and bow, blindfolded me and tied my hands to a branch in a tree so my feet dangled off the ground.

  “Come home by the full moon with a kill, if you can,” he said. “And you’ll have a Shining Name. If you can’t catch a deer, catch a rabbit. If you can’t catch a rabbit, just come home. Time enough to win a Shining Name later. But be careful. Your uncle Cullo wasn’t the only wolfling who went bad during the war, and many of them are still around, still after man-meat. There’s said to be one in this area, that carried off a child not two moons ago.”

  Wiggling free of the binding wasn’t so hard. I flipped my feet up onto the branch and gnawed the knots on the leather straps free with my teeth. Chipped one tooth. Once free, I made a bow and arrows before I made a fire. I’d held a bow in my hand since before I could walk, and made my first kill when I was three (though later I found out my pa had wounded the weasel for me first). My arrows had no flint and no fletch, but they could still take down a bird. After that, my arrows had fletch.

 
; Starting at age four, pa had taken me into the woods and left me alone there, always a little farther away from home, and let me find my own way home. I knew how to track. I hunted small things, to eat and to make myself a few scraps of clothes.

  But I knew what my pa expected.

  I tracked the wolf for many days. The moon was waxing. I despaired I would find it in time to still make the three day walk home by the full moon.

  When I found week-old wolf scat, I realized with dread the wolfling had been sniffing around for quite some time. The whole time I had been hunting it, it had been hunting me. More cunning than any animal, it had been brushing the ground free of prints, which is why I had not found any. After that, I knew to look for a trail of brushed earth.

  Even that trail ended, at a stream. Flummoxed, I had to admit I had been outwitted. I had to give up and make it home before the full moon or fail my Initiation completely.

  Then I saw it. The stream was just another false lead. It was still on my side of the bank, staring at me from behind a bush: Grey and huge and malevolent, with glowing yellow eyes. It leaped out and I let my arrow fly. My aim was erratic. I had no control. The arrow was wild and should have overshot the wolf.

  It didn’t.

  That was the first time I heard the song. Every thing around me burst into music, the trees, the stream, the air itself, hummed, all part of an immense, ancient harmony as vast as Faearth itself. I knew that it was not the song which had just started, but my own ears which had opened for the first time. A green glow flared around the shaft and guided it down a perfect emerald arc, straight into the wolfling’s heart. Silence returned. Again, I knew it was not the song which had ended, but my own ability to hear it. I knew I would hear it again only in those moments of my life when I was most true, and pure and in love with life, and my greatest fear is that I would never again prove worthy of it.

  The wolf changed at death into a hairy, bestial man. I scalped him and took home his hair. I arrived barely in time, on the night of the full moon, to find my whole clan anxiously waiting for me. I tossed the scalp at the feet of my father, Clan Patriarch Obran.

  “Welcome home, Finnadro Wolf Hunter,” he said gravely. I knew I had made him proud. I vowed I would not rest there, but would win a Singing Bow, as had my father before me. I knew had heard a tiny piece of song of the bow, and would do anything to deserve that song again. I vowed I would hunt not just the devourers of man-meat, but the tyrants and war mongers who created their hunger.

  Other men hunt prey. I hunt predators.

  Finnadro

  The trees that had once grown in a circle around the tribehold were gone, but roots remained sticking up like twisted bones from a shallow grave.

  Finnadro and Nann and five other Tavaedi warriors, gathered in the sweat lodge, faceless behind wooden animal heads painted green and white and brown, in fearsome expressions. They fed herbs to the embers in the pit. The smoke curled up around the rafters, releasing a pungent odor that made one dizzy if inhaled too deeply.

  A wooden frame stood at one end of the fire pit. Warriors brought enemy prisoners, one after another, stripped each down to his loincloth, and lashed him to this, spread eagle. Then the interrogation began.

  Nann led the questioning, but Finnadro pulled threads of Vision from the prisoners as they babbled. The herbal smoke loosened most tongues. Those who were still reluctant to speak received blows, or the threat of being laid prone over the hot embers. Fear and pain loosened the tongues of the stubborn ones.

  Finnadro could not hear the thoughts of the captives, but he could sense their emotions, catch images from the Green threads in their aura. He could tell who told the truth and who lied.

  Most of the prisoners were ignorant. They had been told that the Green Woods tribe was planning a sneak attack, so Orange Canyon must attack first. None of them knew their leaders future plans.

  The last captive to be lashed to the frame over the fire was Hawk. His shoulder wound stood out, raw, enflamed, against his pale naked skin.

  “Where will Amdra and Vumo take the White Lady?” demanded Nann.

  Hawk did not reply.

  One of the masked Tavaedies pressed his hand into Hawk’s wounded shoulder, hard enough to make him cry out and try to buck free. The lashings to the wood frame held him firm.

  “Enough.” Finnadro removed his mask. He put his head close to Hawk’s like a confidante. “Hawk, she enslaved you. You owe her nothing.”

  “I’m already dead,” said Hawk.

  “Just tell us where she will take the White Lady. That’s all we want to know.”

  He shook his head.

  Finnadro leaned closer and whispered, “Anayo.”

  Finnadro could taste Hawk’s fear, almost panic. At times, emotion could be as clear as thought: How has the enemy learned my true name? For a wildling a name was a secret thing.

  “Anayo, I see your true self,” said Finnadro. “The man you were meant to be. You don’t have to go back to them. You could fly free, as you once did. As you were born to do.”

  “I’m already dead,” Hawk said thickly. “I failed my task.”

  “What task?”

  “His duty to serve his mistress,” guessed Nann.

  “No, I sense something deeper and stronger than an outside Compulsion. This is something he took on himself…”

  Finnadro pulled harder on the threads of Hawk’s aura. A Vision: a stone room, high in the mountains. A woman on the bed, bleeding terribly. Another woman, a healer wearing yellow and gold, knelt beside her, holding something. A cry, a wail, as of a tiny animal…

  No, not an animal.

  Finnadro’s eyes widened. He darted a shocked glance at Hawk, who only curled his lip in response.

  “Let me help you, Hawk,” Finnadro urged. “The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Let us help each other.”

  “You cannot even help yourself. You cannot help me. It was my burden, and I failed.” Hawk laughed unsteadily. “The Black Well will soon swallow all of us anyway, what does it matter?”

  “Lower him over the fire,” ordered War Chief Nann. “The pain will loosen the strands of his aura, and make it easier for you to pick out truths.”

  “No.” Finnadro straightened. “It’s useless. He will never betray her. Take him back to the other prisoners to await the Chase.”

  Umbral

  Umbral cleaned his hands in the snow. The snow turned pink, but his flesh and gloves retained the stain. He would have to bathe. But not here, not near the menhirs.

  Relatives of the dead outfitted the corpses for burial with the finest clothes and weapons they could spare. Wealthy corpses might have a whole extra jar of clothing, pottery, weaponry and food packed with them. The Deathsworn took for themselves what treasures they wished, as their due. Umbral chose a few items himself, which he added to his packs.

  He whistled for Shadow. The dark creature trotted up in the shape of a horse. Umbral itched to fly again, but it would not be prudent while still so close to the Green Woods tribehold, where so many archers still had arrows to spare and a loathing for winged things against their skyline.

  He lifted the girl onto the horse in front of him.

  “Umbral!” Ash stomped over to him. “Where are you going?”

  “I have important business elsewhere. Camp here with the others for a few more days. There will be more dead as the disease fae gnaw down the wounded. Once you are done, if you can catch up with me, do so, otherwise meet me back at Obsidian Mountain.”

  “What are you talking about? What about the White Lady? Didn’t you hear anything I told you? Orange Canyon has taken her!”

  “I’m well aware of that, Ash. Do as you are told.”

  He tapped hoop and heel to spur his horse. Tree and hill and snow-topped rock whizzed past. He did not hoop in his horse until they came to a dell walled in by thicket. A brook ran through the dell over tumbled boulders, forming picturesque little cataracts and pools. In the spring it would have been a f
eathery bower of ferns and flowers and moss covered rocks, but in winter it was rather icy and grim.

  “We will not be disturbed here,” he said, dismounting with the girl still in his arms. He set her on the ground and released her. She stumbled back a few steps. She glanced down at her clothes, caught sight of the blood smeared all over them, and began to hyperventilate. He stepped up to her and caressed her aura to soothe her.

  “Breathe slowly,” he urged.

  She flinched away. “Don’t do that.”

  Umbral built a fire from driftwood on the bank with an ember saved from his last fire in a bone box. He peeled off his blood-soaked gloves and rinsed them in the stream. Then he unlaced his legwals.

  “Take off your clothes,” he ordered the girl.

  He heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “Is that why you spared my life?”

  He paused. It was an understandable fear, closer to his impossible fantasies than he liked. He wrung out his gloves and scarlet water dribbled onto the snow. He felt unclean in more ways than one.

  “You saw what I do. You know what I am.”

  “Yes.” She tucked contempt and terror into one word.

  His nostrils flared. He slapped his gloves onto the rocks on the bank, leaped to his feet and advanced on her. For the past year, he had lived among the old, the diseased, the scarred, the withered and decayed. The only non-Deathsworn women he had seen had been from afar, held apart by an impossible gulf of physical and social distance. And now here was this exquisite swan, fresh and young, with pearl skin and eyes tumultuous like the sea. Her hair had been dyed like flame, bright enough to lure moths to their deaths. Even the bloody, ragged cape couldn’t hide her slender waist and long legs. He wanted her and hated her for it.

  “I look like your man, don’t I? The one you loved. I look like the man they all loved. I look like a living man; I have the desires of a living man. All illusion, delusion and deception. I am already dead. I will never find a pretty girl, move onto her farm, tend rows of corn and kraals of aurochsen. It is taboo for me to marry, or sire heirs. It is taboo for me to take a woman.”