Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  The orcs remained surprisingly busy while they rode, no matter how fast the wyrms went. They hunted birds and small animals, scouted for water and campsites, checked the herds, supervised children, and even performed small tasks such as darning clothes or repairing armor while in the saddle. In the evenings, they set up quick camps and went to bed. Hess said they were moving fast and spending more time traveling every day than normal. As a result of the long days, Danr didn’t have much time to meet his orc hosts, and during the night, the two stars drifted closer and closer, eating away his time.

  He did talk to Talfi while they rode. Talfi was hungry to know who he had been, and he pumped Danr for information. Danr told him everything he remembered about their friendship, how they had met at Orvandel’s house, killed a wyrm on the road back to Alfgeir’s farm, faced down a mob, and encountered the first draugr together. It all seemed so long ago, as if it had happened to different people.

  For completeness’ sake, he also told Talfi what had happened to him and Aisa under the mountain, how they had met the Three, and how Danr was trying to make alliances while finding the Iron Axe. But he avoided saying anything about Talfi being regi. Talfi didn’t ask, and Danr couldn’t bring himself to say the words. It was the strangest thing, knowing something about Talfi that Talfi himself didn’t know, especially something as … as … well, Danr didn’t know how to describe it. When Talfi had lost his leg, Danr suddenly found he didn’t give a dead cat’s whisker whether Talfi was regi or not—he only wanted his friend to live. And when Hess had killed Talfi, Danr’s monstrous half had ripped free with an unexpected and terrifying power. Now, against all laws of nature, he had his friend back. Compared to that, a thing like who Talfi might love seemed as inconsequential as a mosquito to a warhorse. And yet …

  A small bit of understanding crept over him. He was having trouble with this because this was outside the normal rules.

  He snorted to himself. After a lifetime of living on a farm, he had killed a wyrm, visited mystic giants, become an emissary to trolls, argued with an earl, and Twisted halfway across the continent, but this was outside the normal rules?

  Well, yes. It was. All the other things he had heard about in tales and stories. They were distant things that had come suddenly close, but at least he had known what they were. But regi men were only mentioned occasionally, and then with scorn and derision, as if they were monsters worse than the greatest wyrms. In the back of his mind, Danr had always known that trolls and giants and other such things existed, but it had never occurred to him that he might become friends with someone who was regi, let alone one who didn’t actually know it yet. The stories gave you rules about trolls and giants and even humans. But there were no rules for regi, except that you were supposed to hate them, and no matter how shocked he might be, Danr couldn’t hate Talfi. Not ever.

  He found himself studying Talfi, trying to see if there were any signs of it now that Talfi had no memory of himself. But what signs was he looking for? Feminine behavior? A way of speaking? An unexplained desire to sew? Danr had no idea. Maybe, now that Talfi had died and come back to life, his desire for men had disappeared. Or maybe, now that Talfi wasn’t around human men anymore, he wouldn’t notice he was regi. That brought another thought: did Talfi find orcish men desirable? The thought sent a shudder over him. On the other hand, Danr thought Kalessa was attractive. If Danr thought orcs were good-looking, why shouldn’t Talfi think the same thing about humans? He sighed. It was all very confusing. Much easier just to keep his mouth shut and hope Talfi didn’t ask.

  Talfi also often touched Danr’s pouch at his throat, and Danr felt strange every time he did so. The pouch was the only remnant Danr had of his mother, and seeing Talfi wear it was like walking around naked while Talfi wore two cloaks. Trouble was, he didn’t know how—or if—he should ask for it back. The pouch had been a grave gift, and no one ever took a grave gift back.

  He sighed again. Life back in Alfgeir’s stable had been dull and dirty, but at least it had been empty of stupid moral problems.

  “What was it like?” Danr asked one day as the nest rushed across the prairie. The orcs spread out on their wyrms in a great tapestry sliding across the grass ahead and behind them. As he always did, Danr scanned for Aisa from underneath his heavy felt hat, but he didn’t see her, and the lack made his chest tight.

  “What was what like?” Talfi rode his wyrm with an easy skill, as if he were only remembering something he had learned long ago. Maybe he was.

  “You know. To die and come back.”

  Talfi touched Danr’s pouch—Danr twinged—and thought a moment. Then he shook his head. “I still don’t remember. My first memory is of opening my eyes and seeing red cloth.”

  “That pouch,” Danr said, trying to be delicate for once, “is special to you.”

  “Yeah.” He lifted it to his nose and inhaled. “It’s strange. When I touch it or smell it, I get … little images. Tiny memories that try to form, but don’t quite. It’s the same when I touch this.” From under his shirt, he fished out the copper chain and the silver amulet with Ashkame on one side and the double-bladed axe on the other and ran his thumb around the perimeter. “Sometimes, when I feel its edges, I get … shadows. A battle. Metal clashing. Screams. Blood. A lot of blood. And water. Like I’m swimming or drowning or both. And sometimes I see a man with red hair and green eyes. He talks to me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

  With a chill, Danr remembered their conversation on the road from Skyford, when Talfi had repeated those exact words.

  “But when I touch this pouch, or smell it”—Talfi did both, and Danr wanted to snatch it from him—“it brings back other shadows. Big hands. A man with white hair. Feathers and arrows. And a stable with a tiny fire and smoked salmon. It’s so close. Last night, I dreamed about them. I swear, I’m on the edge of remembering everything with this, somehow. But I’m not quite there.”

  Danr, who himself had been on the edge of asking for the pouch back, stopped his words. Maybe Talfi could get his memory back if he held on to the pouch. Maybe it smelled like Danr or maybe the pouch had hidden truth in it, or maybe it was something else. Danr guided his wyrm around a hillock, though the creature didn’t really need guiding. “I see,” he said instead.

  “I’m kind of scared,” Talfi confessed. “I don’t know anything about myself except what you’ve told me, and you only knew me a few days. I don’t know who my parents are or where I was born or how I got to … where was it? Skyford? Let alone how I came back to life.”

  Talfi’s own wyrm ran its tongue out. Talfi asked abruptly, “Do you know where I came from?”

  Danr shook his head. “I wish I did, Talfi. Now that Aisa’s … well, you’re the only friend I’ve got.”

  “Have I changed since I came back?”

  “Except for the missing memories, you’re exactly the same Talfi I knew,” Danr said.

  “Huh.” He touched the pouch with his free hand. “Do you know where I got—”

  “Talfi,” Danr interrupted quickly, before he could finish a question Danr didn’t want to answer, “how old are you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s kind of silly to ask. I don’t—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Dead, back to life.” Danr shifted in the saddle and nodded to a pair of younger orcs who slithered past on wyrms of their own. “So, do you think this has happened more than once? When we first met, you told me your first memory was walking into Skyford. What if you died and returned back then, and—”

  “And that’s why I lost my memory,” Talfi breathed. “Wow. Do you think something killed me on the way to Skyford?”

  “I don’t know what to think. But when you came back this time, your leg and your head had regrown.” He thought a moment longer, letting the ideas move together like continents colliding. “What if … ,” he said slowly, “… what if that healing helps with aging? What if you don’t just heal missing heads—”

  “I have more than one?” The joke, how
ever, was a feeble one. Talfi had already seen Danr’s point, but was reluctant to arrive at it himself, like a cat coming to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to cross the river involved a brisk swim.

  “—but what if you also heal aging?” Danr finished. “You could have died and come back a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times, and each time you healed back to your original age. Vik, Talfi—how old are you?”

  The wyrms slithered on, their odd gait both smooth and rocking at the same time. Behind them, a group of women burst into laughter. Talfi’s fingers were white around the amulet and pouch at his throat.

  “Maybe I only died that one time,” he countered, but the argument was halfhearted.

  “Do you really think that’s true?” Danr said, voice low.

  Talfi bit his lip, then shook his head. “I think I must be—”

  “Ho, Talfi!” An orc, perhaps a year younger than Talfi, pulled his tiger-striped wyrm up beside them. His name was Jaxo, and he was Kalessa’s brother. “Race me! If you dare.” He flicked his wyrm’s side with the ends of his reins and his wyrm bolted forward.

  Talfi gave a mischievous grin. “Watch this!” He vaulted down from the saddle and sped away with the incredible speed Danr remembered from the day they fought the wyrm. Danr watched him go, wishing he could forget so easily.

  *

  Aisa dismounted the emerald wyrm and winced as her muscles protested. Kalessa leaped down beside her, supple as soft leather. Aisa sighed. Even the painkilling tea she brewed for herself every morning had minimal effect on riding a wyrm.

  The elven hunger only made things worse. She had been hoping that the new climate of Xaron might mitigate it somewhat, but to her disappointment, the near-constant gnawing didn’t abate in the slightest. Her first thought on waking every morning was of Lord Vamath’s sweet and terrible touch, and her elven lord’s face hovered over her when she went to sleep at night.

  Alerted by Hess’s fast-slithering scouts, the other nests were already arriving along with the Eighth at the council meeting place. This was at the southern edge of a network of rivers called Many Wyrms, a system of tributaries that twisted up to the warm waters of the northern ocean. Aisa had no idea how the orcs found the place—it all looked the same to her. Water and grass were plentiful for the herds, and the open space gave the wyrms room to stretch. Tents and shelters spread from horizon to horizon.

  In the center of it all lay the one landmark that looked different: a crater large enough to swallow all of Skyford. Kalessa told her that a thousand years ago, the Sundering had flung up a chunk of rock. It had landed here, carving out this crater. The orcs had been using it as a central meeting place for centuries. Aisa had been expecting a dirt-filled hole, but the floor of the crater was as thick with grass and flowers as the rest of the prairie. On the north side of the crater stood an actual grove of ash trees, tall and thick and majestic. Kalessa said their seeds had been carried there by the Sundering, and the trees had sprouted the day the earth split. Far away, at the crater’s very bottom, stood a great slab of a stone table, where, Aisa presumed, the Council of Wyrms actually met.

  “We made good time,” Kalessa said. The rest of the nest dismounted. As the nest who had called the meeting and who had brought with them the Great and Foolish Prince Hamzu, the Eighth Nest was allotted high-status camping space right next to the crater’s edge, though what mechanism had decided this, Aisa could not determine.

  “My legs will ache for years,” Aisa admitted. Her knees were shaking, partly from the ride and partly from cold desire. She worked hard to push it away. It was all in her mind, she told herself. Elves were a horror who stole lives and bodies. But she couldn’t help wanting them as well.

  “Bah!” Kalessa, ignorant of Aisa’s internal struggle, clapped her on the shoulder. “You are a fine rider, my sister. Soon you will command the wyrms without reins, and I will be there when you receive your egg and your saddle.”

  Aisa gave a small smile behind her scarf. Even after seven days together, she found it a little unnerving the way Kalessa so freely gave sisterly affection. During that awful duel, Aisa had nearly lost her water when Kalessa’s sword came at her throat, and she had all but fainted with relief when Kalessa tossed the blade aside. She had taken Kalessa’s offer of blood kinship without a second thought—a former slave’s instinct for self-preservation. Only later in the tent they shared had she wondered if she had done the right thing. Aisa had no females in her family but her dead mother, and she didn’t know how to react to a birth sister, let alone an instant sister. Kalessa, for her part, seemed unfazed.

  “I saw it in your eyes,” Kalessa said one day from wyrm-back. “Your spirit is strong, and we are much alike, even if you are a human. So now we will learn how to be sisters, and our people will become strong together.”

  Aisa narrowed her eyes. “Is that why you did it? Was it some sort of ritual bonding for diplomacy?”

  “Ha!” Kalessa snorted. “You have spent too much time with men. You think like them. Sometimes a woman does something because she knows it is right. Now you will spend time with me and let yourself be a woman again.”

  Aisa had to laugh, and it felt … good.

  They had talked of many things while they rode together. Kalessa told of her life on the open plains, of the day she had watched her wyrm hatch, of helping her mother weave her first suit of armor, and Aisa had wondered if they had anything in common at all. But then Kalessa had spoken of the torture of growing up with five brothers and no sisters, of her secret love of swimming, of losing her aunt to coughing sickness, all things Aisa understood intimately. Shyly, Aisa mentioned how she had lost her own mother to the same disease, how she had spent days caring for her, to no avail, and Kalessa reached over from the saddle to hug her while their wyrms moved side by side.

  “It is difficult to lose an elder woman,” she had said, “and even more difficult when you have no other woman to talk about it with. Who else can truly understand how it feels?”

  And here, Aisa had wept. Kalessa had wept with her, unashamed, and for the first time in her life, Aisa felt the release of shared pain. It even seemed to lessen the hunger, just a little.

  It was, she decided, a fine thing to have a sister.

  Several wyrms over, Danr climbed down from his own wyrm and stretched. He looked over in Aisa’s direction, but she was already on the other side of Kalessa’s wyrm, where Danr couldn’t see. Whenever he turned his eyes—his eye—on her, she felt utterly exposed and naked, with Farek’s or Vamath’s cold hands roaming over her body. Worse yet, he didn’t seem to understand what he had done, how badly he had violated her body and her trust. Hamzu had reached inside her with a cold, clawed hand and pawed over her very soul, and for that she couldn’t forgive him. Even if she could forgive him, how did she know he wouldn’t do it again? Any time he liked, he could close one eye and see her true self naked before him, and she wouldn’t even know he had done it.

  But even through the anger and betrayal, she kept expecting to see him next to her, and the loss was as constant as her hunger. He had effortlessly—and thoughtlessly—barged through barriers she had thought impregnable, but she had also done the same to him, hadn’t she? In the privacy behind her scarves, she could admit that forcing him to speak truth had made her feel powerful, and she had done it, yes, to hurt him. As he had hurt her. Did that make it right? She did not know, and the ambiguity made her angry.

  For a moment, she let herself think of living a life of her own, perhaps in a small cottage at the seashore. People would come to her for healing so she could earn her bread, but some days they would find her cottage empty, because on days when Rolk shone high and clear and the wind was light, Aisa would row out onto the light waves to find the merwomen. And swim with them.

  “What is the nature of this argument you are having with Prince Hamzu?” Kalessa asked, and not for the first time. She reached under Slynd to loosen the saddle girth and he expelled a heavy breath.

&nbs
p; “There is no argument,” Aisa replied as she always had before.

  “You humans,” Kalessa said. “You hide behind your words, but your bodies betray you. Why do you bother, when it is obvious what is happening?”

  “We just do,” Aisa replied shortly. “Can I help with that, sister?”

  That evening, a procession formed, and a fight along with it. Two orcs from each of the nine nests, one man and one woman, dressed in glittering rainbow finery—bright feathers and singular scales, supple silks and flashing swords—arrived at the crater’s edge, ready to parade around the camp. But as they lined up, Kalessa’s parents, Hess and Xanda, who represented the Eighth Nest, tried to take a place at the front of the procession. The orc woman who represented the First Nest shouted in outrage while everyone else gathered to watch.

  “The Eighth Nest has no status!” the First Nest orc boomed. “Your herds are thin, your warriors are weak, and your victories are few!”

  Here Kalessa looked both embarrassed and indignant. “He lies,” she snarled, but only so Aisa could hear. “He was born into a Fourth Nest and married a woman of the Third Nest, then built an alliance with the Second, and stole two herds from the First. Before they could retaliate, their chieftain died, and he challenged the new, younger chief to single combat so his nest could become First. Now he acts like he’s First as if he were born to it. Bah!” She spat.

  Aisa shook her head, unable to follow this dizzying path through orcish politics. “Does it matter who goes first in the procession?”

  “Of course! People will talk of this meeting for generations, and every bard will recount who went first to the table.”

  Hess and Xanda both slapped their wicker shields with their hands. Hess shouted, “We have with us the new emissary from the Stane, Prince Hamzu, Nephew of Queen Vesha, Emissary of the Dark Realms, and Confederate of the Kin Who Conquered Death. He has seen our worth and allied himself with our nest, and we demand promotion!”