Invardii Series Boxset

by Warwick Gibson

  The second, and largest, barrier was more of a waterway in its own right. Mottled scum covered the surface and there was no way of telling how deep it was. Hudnee and Daneesa worked together to inch the lashed pole across the waterway. They finally got the far end up onto some of the silvery-grey brush, where it wouldn’t sink into the ooze.

  Hudnee lifted his end of the pole to clear the water, and Daneesa edged the two girls along it, all of them half in the water and hauling their weight along it. Kanuk, the boy, held the pole tightly at waist height while Hudnee followed, allowing most of his weight to be supported by the slimy water.

  Then he and Daneesa lifted their end of the pole and backed up, dragging Kanuk through the water toward them. Suddenly Kanuk screamed, and tightened his grip, and the pole dipped lower. Hudnee saw the water boil next to the boy, and lifted the pole as high as he could, hoisting him up. That was when he saw something fastened to Kanuk’s thigh.

  “Drag him toward the bank!” he shouted, and he and Daneesa slipped and scrambled in the grey mud as they dragged Kanuk toward the shore. Dropping the pole, Hudnee felt for his builder’s rod in the sack he had flung on the ground nearby, and scrambled back toward the water. Daneesa had anchored herself, and was hanging on to the pole grimly.

  A green and purple reptilian head looked at Hudnee over Kanuk’s legs, and a long body writhed in the water as it tried to drag the boy into deeper water. Hudnee whirled the rod overhead and put all his strength into the blow. He was rewarded with a satisfying crunch as bone and cartilage splintered. However the attacker hung on, and Hudnee realised it was heavily armoured along its head and back.

  Kanuk had stopped looking terrified, as if he understood this was life and death, and he dug his fingers into the thing’s snout, wrenching it left and right. Hudnee thought desperately, and then slid the rod in between Kanuk’s leg and the head of the beast. Leaning down on Kanuk’s legs he forced the reptilian head up a little, and then thrust the end of the rod into its throat with all his strength.

  The skin was tough there, but not armoured like its head. The rod caught for a moment, then tore a hole through the thick skin and stabbed into the creature’s throat. It arched almost in two, and a great tail thrashed the water to foam. Kanuk screamed again, and then the creature let go. Hudnee felt the rod wrenched from his grasp as the beast churned into deeper water.

  Cradling his son in his arms, Hudnee laid him down on a dense mat of rubbery weed that grew among the silvery-grey brushweed. Taking the last of their water, Daneesa washed away the blood to reveal a number of deep cuts in the boy’s leg.

  None of them was spurting blood, so perhaps they had been lucky and the arteries hadn’t been severed. She wrapped the leg in an old cloth and tied it off tightly. Still, blood began to seep through the dressing a minute later.

  “You folks need any help?” called a loud voice from behind them.

  Hudnee whirled around, and Daneesa looked up from her work on Kanuk’s leg. A strangely-dressed man was hailing them from the edge of the island. His clothing seemed stiff and unyielding, and Hudnee guessed it was made of some sort of hide. A wide belt of similar material around his waist contained a number of pockets and tools.

  “I heard all the noise. You people run into some trouble?” the man enquired again.

  Hudnee looked at Daneesa, and she urged him to reply with a twist of her head in the stranger’s direction.

  “Yes. Yes we could use some help!” he called back, and then, feeling that was not enough, he added, “finding you here is like a mercy from the gods.”

  Hudnee called over again, explaining that his son had been attacked by some sort of water beast.

  “Can you bring the boy over here?” responded the figure on the island. “We need to get that swamp ooze off him, off all of you by the look of it, it’s pretty toxic stuff.”

  Hudnee couldn’t see how the stranger was going to help them clean up, they had already exhausted their own water supplies, but they might as well struggle across the last section to the island. At least then they would be out of this gods-cursed swamp.

  Once they were safely on the island, the stranger introduced himself to Hudnee.

  “I am Menon of the Sea People. You’re lucky I was this close to the swamps. I was collecting plants for Habna the medicine woman.” He turned to look at the little group, acknowledging Daneesa with a nod.

  “Let me look at the boy for you. I’m no medicine man, but all Sea People know the basic treatment for bites.”

  Hudnee looked at Daneesa, and she nodded. Right now they could use all the help they could get.

  CHAPTER 6

  ________________

  Kanuk’s body began to shake. At the same time he looked as if he was falling asleep.

  “His colour is not good,” said Menon, and indeed the red tints around the boy’s eyes and mouth had taken on a pale, sickly look. Kanuk and one of the girls had inherited Daneesa’s red-tinted colouring, the other girl had Hudnee’s green tints and larger frame.

  “I’ve seen this before,” said Menon. “It’s a kind of wearing out of the body after too much excitement. I suggest you talk to the boy, wake him up, get him interested in his surroundings.”

  While Daneesa waved Hudnee over, Menon took a soft tube from his belt. Daneesa looked on in fascination. The tube looked like a length of intestine from some animal. Together they unwrapped Kanuk’s wound and began to pack the tears in his flesh with the green jelly that Menon pressed from the tube.

  Daneesa motioned Hudnee toward Kanuk, and he got down beside the boy and lifted his body into a more upright position.

  “Kanuk, boy, can you hear me,” he said. Kanuk mumbled something. Then the jelly must have stung his cuts, and he groaned, and opened his eyes.

  “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Hudnee, patting Kanuk roughly on the side of the face to keep him awake. “You had that swamp devil-creature by the snout and you were going to rip its head off!”

  “Really?” said Kanuk, sitting up a bit straighter, and pushing his father’s hand away from his face.

  “Oh, yes,” said Hudnee. “If you were going to die you were going to take that monster of a thing with you. You have a fiery spirit in you, boy, something that comes out when its needed. It’s something that will always protect you!”

  Kanuk looked very pleased with himself. His mother praised him, but she had to, she was his mother. Words of praise from his father were high praise indeed! Hudnee saw this in the boy, and regretted not saying words of encouragement more often.

  It was not a father’s place to believe in his son like a mother did, but this made him realise a father should always be looking for opportunities to praise his son.

  “That swamp devil is a doogan, an eater of souls,” said Menon.

  “It starts life as a sea snake, but when it gets bigger it develops legs, and comes back into the waterways of the swamp where it was hatched. This was what tried to take you, boy, a young doogan about twice as long as a man. When they get bigger they heave themselves out onto the ooze in the heart of the swamp, and eat the foul things that slither there.”

  He stopped what he was doing and looked at Hudnee.

  “You must have seen some adult doogans in your passage through the swamp?”

  “No,” replied Hudnee, with a suppressed shudder. “This is the first we’ve heard of them.”

  Menon looked at him intently, then went back to helping Daneesa re-bandage Kanuk’s leg.

  “Then you were lucky,” he said. “They scavenge the edges of the swamp at night, and come to the sounds of animals that get trapped in the ooze. If you made it this far, you did so at great peril to you and your family.”

  “Why did you call it an ‘eater of souls’?” asked Kanuk, trying to take his mind off the pain in his leg.

  “We call them eaters of souls because we believe the dead need to lie open to the sky for three days, so the soul can leave the body. The doogan takes you under th
e water and wedges you in the mud, and the soul has to fight its way through the underworld to escape.”

  Hudnee felt faint. The thought of himself and his family sleeping on the ridge while a fully grown doogan in the swamp below sniffed the air for things to kill made him sick to his stomach.

  “All finished, boy,” said Menon.

  “As for the rest of you,” he continued, “I think you need a wash in the Sweetwater.”

  Hudnee looked questioningly at Menon.

  “Over there,” said Menon, waving his arm toward the other side of the island. He was busy packing the things he had used back in his belt.

  Somewhat puzzled, Hudnee took the two girls with him and climbed up the low slope to the centre of the island. The girls clung to him, one to each leg, while he walked along. He patted them gently, and caressed their heads, and told them how good they had been.

  It was a miracle the girls had not been more marked by the hardships they had endured already on this journey. What were they now, he thought, seven summers, and almost five.

  Then his mind took a philosophical turn. It was funny how the universe worked, he thought, as they wandered along. He had been given his son back, but his builder’s rod had been taken.

  These were both precious things to him. Did the universe keep count? Had it demanded a sacrifice before granting him a wish? He shook his head. The workings of the gods had never made much sense to him. Still, it had been an odd thing to happen.

  He looked down at the two girls, their dresses and leggings covered in grey ooze. It wouldn’t be long before the midday rains came, and maybe that would be enough to wash some of this stinking mess off them. Moments later they reached the highest point on the island and could see what was on the other side.

  A perfect curve of clear water and sandy beach met their gaze, broken only by a small double-hulled craft, the two hulls joined together by a woven platform. It had been pulled up on the sand.

  “A beach!” cried the older girl. “A beach and white sand,” breathed the younger one. “Can we play in the sand, Pada?”

  Hudnee smiled. It must be a river that had made its way from the higher country further inland. It made sense that it would have to run through the swamp on its way to the sea. It was a small river, winding its way through the swamp, but it looked clean. The water was clear, and Hudnee couldn’t get over the shore of glistening white sand.

  Back on the other side of the island Menon had picked up Kanuk, and Daneesa was struggling under the weight of her and Hudnee’s sacks. The two of them toiled to the top of the small rise, and then they could see what Hudnee had seen.

  Daneesa gave a small gasp, and put down the sacks. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful!”

  It was, indeed, the same thing as an oasis in a desert to them.

  “Go ahead,” said Menon. “It’s safe to wash here. There’s no camouflage for predators in clear water like this. Don’t go out more than waist deep though.”

  The two girls were already running down to the edge of the river and into the water, kicking up sprays of it with their feet. Hudnee and Daneesa followed. The cool water felt delicious after the mud and heat they had endured for days now.

  Menon lumbered down the slope carrying Kanuk, and made the boy comfortable at the edge of the river. Then he began to wash him clean, using the cloth Daneesa had already used to clean the area around his wound.

  When Hudnee had waded out into the river, and washed himself thoroughly, clothes and all, he climbed ashore and sat down beside Menon.

  “I didn’t recognise you as one of the Sea People.” he said. “Your clothing is different to what I remember from Shellport.”

  Menon carried on washing Kanuk. Hudnee picked a wooden bowl out of his sack and began to help by sluicing his son down, avoiding the bandage Menon had put around the boy’s leg.

  Eventually Menon shrugged. “The sun hides its face now. The penack, the long-leaved fibre plants, have all died. More and more of our clothing is made of animal skins of some sort.

  “The fish are surviving, but in fewer numbers. The sea forest survives and shelters us. The leviathans still visit our shores, but many have been washed up dead this year. The shirt and breeches I’m wearing are made of leviathan hide.”

  Hudnee nodded. The Sea People seemed to be doing better than the land dwellers.

  “We have to make use of everything if we are to survive,” said Menon. “The leviathan carcasses come ashore a few days travel north of here, where the current from the West Islands brings the bodies around and deposits them. We take as much hide, and as many bones, as we can.

  “The hide can be cured with salt, and the bones stay light and strong if they are oiled with the fat off the hides. Look at the dooplehuel and you will see what I mean.”

  Menon nodded in the direction of the double-hulled water craft.

  “The platform is made of rib bones and woven strips of hide. Lying on it is a hide sail woven in a similar way. Everything has changed since the clouds and the heat came, and the old ways of doing things are gone.”

  He didn’t seem worried about this, or angry. It was more that he had a calm acceptance of his new way of life.

  “Some people couldn’t adapt,” he said, a moment later. “They took the last of the old fibresail boats and went south looking for a place where nothing had changed.”

  There was a sadness, and wistfulness, in his voice.

  “I would say they’re all dead now.”

  If that was the case, thought Hudnee, there might be room for him and his family in the Sea People village. Hope rose in his chest.

  “I thought the Sea People might have survived the changes,” he said. “I came to Shellport with my father when I was a boy.”

  Then the words rushed out of him. “The hull of the ship we were on had rotted, and it gave way on a trading trip to the West Islands. Your people saved our lives.” He hesitated before going on, but go on he knew he must.

  “I brought my family here to try and save our lives. Crops have failed all across Hud. The Descendants are holding out in some towns, but there is lawlessness and desperation everywhere else.”

  He searched Menon’s eyes for some compassion.

  “People are starving to death.”

  Menon took the bowl off Hudnee and poured the last of the water over Kanuk’s long hair. Hudnee stepped out into the water to refill the bowl.

  “You came all the way through the swamp to join us?” said Menon when he got back.

  Hudnee nodded, and Menon burst out laughing. Hudnee felt his hopes sinking. Was their desperate quest to be a pointless one in the end?

  “Why didn’t you come down the Sweetwater?” said Menon. “You could have built yourself a raft and floated down in style!”

  Hudnee looked abashed. “I think this river is the one we call the Alba,” he said. “It starts on a plateau many days journey from our town, and bypasses us. But you’re right, I didn’t think to find my way to the nearest river, and use it as a road.”

  “Rule number one, if you want to survive on the coast,” said Menon. “The rivers are your roads.”

  He looked at Hudnee sombrely.

  “You will have to put your case to the Sea People in a gathering at Shellport,” he said. “We have accepted some people into our midst who were shipwrecked, in the past, or made it through the swamps in recent times. But we can’t help all the people of Hud.”

  He moved his attention back to Kanuk and carefully got him to move the parts of his body, one at a time. He seemed satisfied with the result.

  “You’re going to be fine, boy,” he said. “If Shellport accepts your family, then one of the medicine people will keep an eye on you.”

  He turned back to Hudnee.

  “We don’t keep outsiders away because the people of Hud cast us out, or cast our fathers or grandfathers out of their villages – often for no reason other than breaking some obscure law
of their damn prophet.”

  He paused. “All of the people are not bad because some of the people are stupid,” he said. “We don’t want to take in outsiders at the moment because we can barely get by ourselves.”

  He seemed to be thinking. “If we take you in, be prepared to work hard!”

  Hudnee nodded vigorously. Neither he nor Daneesa had ever been afraid of hard work.

  CHAPTER 7

  ________________

  Menon prepared a meal for them, just before the midday rains. He cooked it over a small, smoky fire that he started with something from one of his pouches. The mainstay of the meal was boiled fish and dried seaweed, with a little salt and some tangy small fruits in a heavy oil.

  “The smallest bits of driftwood will burn if they’re split finely and started off with some hide soaked in leviathan fat,” he told them, “but it only works just before the rains, when the driftwood has had the morning to dry out a little.”

  He looked at Hudnee and his family more keenly.

  “The Sea People have always helped those in danger,” he said, “and you’re no different to any of the others. You will be welcome at Shellport until the boy has healed enough to travel.

  “Anything else you have in mind will have to arranged with the community while you are there.”

  Then he looked across the island to the east.

  “The rains will be on us soon. The boy can come with me to Shellport if you wish. The sooner he sees Habna the medicine woman the better. I could take one more with me, but the woman had better stay with the other children. You will need to stay with them too, Hudnee, and make sure you all stay away from the swampy side of the island.”

  Hudnee nodded. Swamps meant the chance of a doogan. He knew that now.

  “Apart from which,” said Menon, “you might sink us all if I took you on the boat. You’re a solid man, and there will be some sea swell to deal with before the boy and I make it to Shellport.”

  Hudnee looked a little taken aback, and Menon laughed. He slapped Hudnee on the shoulder, and began to pack away his things in the dooplehuel.