by S. W. Clarke
Veda didn’t answer; she concentrated on the motion she would need to make to grip it from two feet off. She would only get one good chance at this: if she threw her hand out at the wrong angle, or overshot the rope, she would fall. Her climbing was still only at 2, and she didn’t fully trust her eyes yet.
She took a breath, regripped. When she threw her right hand out it landed clean atop Herathor’s rope. “I’ve almost got it.” She breathed fast, split between the outcropping and the rope. She swung the twine around her hand, securing it before she let her left hand go, and then she was airborne, swaying.
Amy’s voice sailed down to her. “It just went taut.”
“Pull me,” Veda said. She clung to it with her entire body, staring up the length into the mist.
“Come on, Horse,” she heard Amy saying. “Back up.”
Nothing happened. “Back up, Agnar,” she called. And after a few moments, she was tugged a foot, and then another foot. Up she went by increments until she came to the cornice and there was Amy, pressing Agnar back nearly to the turn in the path.
“Help me get up,” Veda breathed, setting an elbow over the edge.
Amy turned, scrambled to her knees. She set her hands over Veda’s arms, and with surprising strength, tugged her up onto the path. Veda rolled to the cliff’s side, her breath coming ragged.
Amy’s body clapped to the stone beside her; she breathed fast too. “Well, Herathor was right.”
Veda was too exhausted to raise her eyes or move her head. “About what?”
“Rope comes in handy.”
Veda almost laughed, but she didn’t have the strength. And when she raised her head, set her eyes on the hestur with the rope trailing from his pommel, she knew it was more than that.
When she could stand, she went to him, reached one bloody hand out to press the mane behind his ear. His lashes were dewed with mist that dropped away when he blinked. She leaned forward, set her lips to his velvet nose. His breath was hot on her, and his nicker came soft and familiar.
Their clothing had soaked and matted to their bodies by the time they stepped into the slush at the bottom of the bowl. The hestur’s hooves squelched, left circular divots. Amy appeared from behind, her hair shellacked to her head where she’d swept it back. For a time they stood, staring at the spot where the ice met the pool below, the vapor churning skyward. Veda allowed Agnar to drink for as long as he cared to. It was warm enough here that they both pulled off their gloves.
Veda took hers off careful and slow, wincing the whole way. The fall had cost her 20 health and reopened the wounds on her hands. She had rope-burn along the centers of her bloody palms. If she hadn’t had the gloves, though, she would really have been crowing.
She also noticed that her climbing skill had risen to 3 during her time on the side of the cliff—a faster increase than several of her other skills. What a curious thing, that a blind woman might be an adept at climbing. It also made a certain sense, too: climbing was as much a tactile skill as a visual one, maybe reliant even more on touch than on sight. Going forward, she would keep track of whether she was more likely to level those skills utilizing her four other senses.
Amy sat by the water, inspecting her wound through the shredded pant leg. Veda knelt by her until her nameplate appeared; Amy’s health had fallen to 100/125. She made a face as Veda’s fingers pressed at the claw marks. For some reason, they hadn’t healed properly, and instead seemed to be infected, the skin raised and dripping with puss. “I’m all right.”
“No, you aren’t. Here, I’ve got more mana than I can use.” Veda said, and she cast her heal twice, her hands glowing as she set them over Amy’s leg. Amy’s eyes closed, her lips opening as the heal took effect. It was still so satisfying—intoxicating—to watch rent flesh mend itself under her ministrations.
But afterward, she shook her head, her fingers tracing the spot. The wound hadn’t improved. “Weird—it’s not healing.”
“Something’s different,” Veda said. Her eyes unfocused. Minor Heal fixed wounds, and had taken care of her ankles and hands. Amy’s wound hadn’t come from falling or rope-burn—it had come from a warg. “I think it’s infected. My heal can’t cure infections. Warg wounds might be a different kind.”
“Why did it help by the lake, then?” Amy asked.
“It had just happened. Now the infection has taken hold.”
“Well hell. I’m going to change by the light of the moon now, aren’t I?”
Veda shook her head. She pulled a pinch of the hypericum moss from her tunic, inspecting it again. Cures most infections, the description read. “Not if I can help it.”
After ten minutes and a whole lot of cursing from Amy, Veda had packed the wound with the moss with enough left over for another application. “That should do it.”
Amy grimaced as she turned her leg under the light. “Never realized how tough things were without a healer.”
“You’ve never grouped with a healer?” Veda asked. She was casting her heal on herself now. And when it refreshed, she cast it a second time, pushing her health up to full.
“There was only one before you. You know now how rare you are. Who would have guessed a bunch of gamers would trend toward the flashiest classes?”
“Galen’s not flashy.”
“Wait until you see him use Shield,” Amy said, her eyes glinting as she stooped to the water. She cupped her hands under the surface and just as quickly yanked them out. “Holy hell that’s cold.”
“Amy,” Veda said, watching her, “you and Galen knew each other before this.”
Amy nodded, but she was focused on venturing one hand into the water. She swept it up onto her face, made a shivering noise of displeasure as she scrubbed. “Sure did. I told you that.”
“And was it just by chance you ended up together again this year?”
She opened her eyes, set them on Veda. Icy water dripped from her hair into her cloak. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the way things happened in the first world. You saved me, and then he appeared from nowhere to save me, too. And then we were all just…together.”
“Are you asking me if that was part of a plan?”
Veda nodded. “I am.”
Amy’s eyes traveled over her face. “Veda, you’re smart. You saw what happened last night with the compass.”
“You knew who I thought of,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. That’s the truth.” Amy distracted herself with cleaning bits of mud from the fur on her boots. “And I’m sure Galen’s told you never to talk about it.”
Veda’s heart squelched hard a moment too long, beat out fast as it caught up. “Why can’t we talk about it?”
Amy turned slitted eyes on Veda. “We can’t talk about it in the game. But Galen and I came back for the reason you suspect.”
That wasn’t good enough; she needed specifics. “What is that reason?”
“For now, we just need you to survive.”
Veda pressed her wet hair from her face. “Why are you and Galen so evasive about all this?”
Amy laughed. “Wow, you’re definitely a Powell.” But when Veda’s face remained serious, Amy settled. She breathed in. “You have to trust me. We’ll—”
Behind them, Agnar’s head rose, his bridle jingling. He let a snort, and when Veda’s eyes focused over Amy’s shoulder, she rose to her feet, hands going up. “Whoa,” she said, “whoa, whoa.”
Twenty-One
“Don’t move, giantesses,” the taller man said. His voice bore a slightly different accent to Herathor’s, the words a bit difficult for Veda to understand right off; they had truly entered another part of the world.
The midlands.
Both of these men wore their hair braided to the shoulder, sharp blue eyes on Veda and Amy. Their tunics and pants were hardly more than brown rags, but they held their spears with the kind of deftness that Veda knew was better not to test—especially because they’d gotten the j
ump. The taller one’s nameplate appeared:
The point of the shorter man’s spear sat at Amy’s back before she’d had a chance even to reach to her boot for her dagger. She stood with her hands in the air, mirroring Veda. “Giantesses?”
“Aye. We seen you come down the cliff with the hestur,” the taller one said. “Them are southlands creatures belonging to giants.”
Behind her, Agnar’s hooves squelched in the mud as he let a whinny, and the men flinched. Fear. Veda had heard it in their voices, as well as a certain softness that told her they weren’t as threatening as they wanted to be. The two of them and the hestur might even be able to overpower them, but her intuition told her it might be better to accede. Veda shook her head. “No—”
“Quiet, bewitcher,” he said. He inclined his head toward the other man. “See the red hair? She’ll lure you in with that voice.”
The other nodded. “The gag, then?”
“I think that’s best,” the taller said, bending to retrieve Amy’s dagger from her boot. “These ones seem particular deadly.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Veda started to say, but the shorter’s spear tip came to sit at her throat. He held up a sickening length of cloth; she could smell the acridity even before he set it over her face and through her lips.
That was when Amy spun, knocking the shorter’s spear tip away. Her fists moved faster than Veda could follow—this was a scrapper’s specialty, Veda realized—and she’d nearly pummeled the man into the mud before the taller one caught her in the wingblade with his spear, driving the tip in just enough to elicit a yell. Amy’s hands went back up. “Uncle. Uncle, damn it.” And finally the spear was removed, the spot red where he’d pierced her cloak and tunic beneath.
They came into the village at spear point, their hands bound before them with a thin and frayed rope. And because Agnar wouldn’t come close to the men who tried to capture him, Veda held the reins in her hands, the hestur trailing behind. They followed the river through grass and slush, and every few minutes Veda felt the midlander’s spear touch her back—a reminder. Amy grimaced the whole way, but Veda could tell her wound had been more show than injury; her health had only dropped by 7 points.
After twenty minutes they came to the settlement on the banks; the village sat as little more than a set of hovels pressed up to the water. Beyond, she spied an east-west road run to mud by wagon wheels, and the villagers who walked on it sunk into the mud to the ankle.
Those who lived in the place had gathered, stared from eyes made heavy by sun and labor. Instead of furs, they wore roughspun shirts and pants and Veda understood right away that the midlanders who’d taken them as captives were the “defense” assembled by these men and women who otherwise eked their lives from the land.
This was not the midlands Veda had imagined. A castle, maybe, or at least a sprawling and verdant settlement. This place was little more than where they’d come from.
“No way,” Amy said, stopping. She started up again as the spear pressed into her back. “Eli?”
A waifish blonde had emerged from one of the hovels, the rich blue of her robes a stunning contrast with the dirt coating everything, everyone. She wore an amulet at her neck, and her face brimmed with the keen interest that Veda had come to recognize as one of her traits. “Amy?”
It was definitely her. Veda’s eyes closed in gratitude; two down, one to go.
“Gunnar—Harald,” Eli called, lifting her robes as she picked her way through the slush, “they’re my companions.”
“Giant women, these are,” the one she’d called Gunnar said, indicating Agnar. “Must be they come from the south with a hestur such as this.”
Agnar stood massive amongst the hovels, his great hoof stamping into the mud as he waited behind Veda. Eli looked at her, one eyebrow gone up. She came forward, lowered the gag from Veda’s mouth.
“I regret to say I’m not a giant woman, as you can see,” Veda said, easing herself away from the spear to turn her eyes to the one Eli had called Gunnar.
“Don’t let her speak,” Gunnar said, half turning his head away. “Replace the gag.”
“She’s not a bewitcher,” Eli said, and the pause that followed told Veda that she should tell her story fast.
“The hestur was a gift from a northman called Herathor Strongarm, who married a giant woman,” she said. “We don’t intend you any harm.”
“You come armed,” the other man said, lifting Veda’s staff and Amy’s knife and the two bows, all of which had been confiscated back at the waterfall.
“The staff I use for healing,” Veda said, “and defense, if need be.”
Around her, the villagers murmured, and Gunnar and Harald leaned close to one another, exchanging low words. “You know the healing magics?” Gunnar said.
Veda nodded, and Eli stepped forward. “If you lower your spears, this one can help your child far better than I could.”
As soon as she’d said it, Gunnar’s spear lowered. His expression had shifted into something like paternal desperation. “You can cure warg wounds, girl?”
“I can help,” Veda said. She indicated Amy’s leg. “My friend was clawed by a warg yesterday, and I’ve treated her infection.”
Gunnar stepped forward, stooping to inspect the wound where her pants had been shredded. “A warg done this?”
Amy nodded. “It’s not completely healed, but it’s a far sight better than it was.”
Gunnar’s face went up to Veda. “Come, please. Now.”
They came to one of the hovels, this one a little larger than the rest; Gunnar’s family was perhaps of higher standing in the village. He swept aside the rag that served as a curtain, and Veda stepped into a space of rot and smoke. The floor was dirt and mud, the walls hard-packed up to a thatched roof. They stood in a single room with a pit in the corner where a young woman knelt by a fire whose smoke issued up a small chimney and out into the room. She stood, appraising Veda. “This girl knows healing magics,” Gunnar said, crossing to the woman. He set his hands on her arms and brought her forward. “She’s here for Freydis.”
Veda didn’t have to ask; the woman’s face, which had held worry and pain, took on a wonder, a gratitude. She was clearly the mother. “You’ll heal our girl?”
At this, the quest appeared in Veda’s interface:
QUEST AVAILABLE: A Warg’s Bite. Gunnar and his wife have asked you to save their daughter, Freydis, who was bitten by a warg two days ago. If you save her, they will be forever in your debt.
REWARD: Increased standing with the villagers, who may decide to set you free.
ACCEPT? Y/N
Veda accepted, taking the woman’s hands in hers. “Where is she?”
The two turned their faces to the far corner, where a bundle of skins served as a bed on which—as she came closer—she spotted the child wrapped inside. Veda knelt to the girl, who looked about five or six, and a prompt appeared in her interface:
“Hello, Freydis,” she whispered. “My name is Veda. My friend was hurt by a warg, too, and I healed her. I’d like to help you, too.”
The girl, whose brown hair had fallen into her pale cheeks, returned Veda’s gaze with dim, hazel eyes. After a moment, she offered a nod so small it was nearly imperceptible.
Veda turned to Gunnar and his wife. “Where was she bitten?”
Gunnar knelt by her, swept the skins back to reveal a once-slender arm now ballooned with infection, the bicep wrapped in dirty rough-spun. The scent came to Veda with such intensity she had to breathe through her mouth as she lifted the arm to unwrap the cloth. The girl let a soft whine, which seemed as much as she could muster. On meeting light, the maggots in the wound started into a nervous motion. Veda put one hand to her mouth as the girl’s muscl
e—bitten and then eaten into, suppurating and green—lay exposed in her hand.
Amy’s wound had been a scratch next to this. Freydis, her arm carved like a bitten apple, was clearly on her way to death.
This was beyond Veda’s ability. But when her eyes lifted to Gunnar and his wife, she knew that “beyond her” wasn’t acceptable; nothing would do except life. More of it, that was all, just more. She returned her eyes to Freydis. “I need to touch the wound in order to heal it. It may hurt at first, but you should feel better.”
Freydis offered another tiny nod.
“Do you have a clean length of cloth and boiled water?” Veda said to the mother. The woman, hands cupped together, nodded, left and returned with a child’s shirt spun from the same rough material they all wore. She also presented a small pot, the water in it letting steam.
Veda nodded. She leaned to Freydis, fully unbinding the arm. “I have to clean your wound,” she said. “It may hurt, but I’ll heal you afterward and make the pain go away for a little bit.”
Freydis nodded; she seemed unafraid. As she cleaned the maggots away, the child’s whine turned to sobs, her face contorted and wet with the pain. Veda worked as fast as she was able, and at the end she pressed every bit of the hypericum moss she had acquired in the compass world into the wound, held it there with the wrap of cloth. The child continued to cry, and Veda cast her heal once more. The girl’s eyes came open, her eyebrows lifting with this small comfort, and when Veda had finished, Freydis looked down at her arm. “What did you put on it?”
“Healing moss from very far away,” Veda said. “It will make the swelling go down faster.”
“It feels cool like the wind,” she said.
“Good,” she said, setting her hand on the girl’s cheek. “That’s good.” That meant the moss must be having an effect, but as she stared, Freydis’s health didn’t budge in her nameplate. She waited five and then ten minutes, but the girl still remained at 2/10.