“I know.”
Bits of errant rock crunched on the ground behind them.
“Hope that stellar brain of yours has worked out some form of plan,” Uther said, climbing a short sloping bluff to join the two men.
“Surely, you jest,” Dexter said, riding Uther’s coattail. “This here’s Riken Snowtear, don’t you know? Why, he’s already formulated a dozen success-laden scenarios, I’d wager. I’d further bet that only a couple of them have us going home with fewer than half our warring party intact. Tell him, Riken.”
“Just thought up one last night that ends well for all involved,” Riken said. “Excepting you, of course. Though, it seems are best bet.”
“There you go,” Dexter said, slapping Riken on the back. “Told you he had us covered. Good old Snowtear, always thinking of others.”
“Young Mon Crase’s breakfast doesn’t seem to be sitting too well with him,” Illter said, joining the group. He held his great sword in his hands. He walked slightly passed the group, pointed the tip of his weapon at one of the lines of smoke, put the hilt to his eye, and stared down the lean blade like a hunter sizing up a fowl he planned on roasting come evening. “He’s behind the tents now, arguing with his gut. Abby’s with him.”
“Just nerves,” Riken said. “He’ll be fine.”
Illter didn’t respond, just went on gazing into the distance in the direction of their unsuspecting foes. Riken wondered how long the man had been waiting for a fight such as was like to be coming their way very soon. Illter Dence was the purest warrior he’d ever known, most at ease when the smell of fresh blood awaited on the air. How taxing that must make the normalcy of everyday life.
“How will we go in?” Uther asked.
“Need to get a lay of the land before I can say for sure,” Riken said. “See what they have to offer us in way of a greeting.”
“You can be sure it’ll be taut,” Uther said.
“We couldn’t see too much by moonlight,” Payton said, “but we did notice a mess of defensive structures – spiked trenches, crude catapults, armed guards.”
“They expecting an assault or what?” Dexter asked. “How many people you know ever even been a hundred miles from here.”
“Not from the outside world, they’re not,” Illter said without looking back. “Other tribes.”
“Don’t see hide nor hair of anyone else out here,” Dexter said.
“They’re around,” Illter said. “Probably in the very canyons we came through.”
The thought was unnerving. Riken let it pass. The rest of the group seemed not as willing to dismiss their amazing luck at coming through the canyons unscathed. Riken, for his part, simply prayed their astounding luck would hold just a little longer.
Uther finally broke the uncomfortable silence by voicing an altogether grimmer reality.
“It’s taken nearly two months to reach this spot. Are we too late?” the big man asked. He bore his worry like a black cloud over his head.
“Depends,” Riken said, brushing a strand of flipping hair behind his ear.
“On?”
“On what the Tribe plans on doing with the girls. Whatever, we find out come dusk.”
“Nay. Nay. Water be good, nay.”
Thrown back into their tiny tent by a pair of guards, Renna was screaming her lungs into a shriveled clod.
Sage’s heart was racing, a decimating chain of cracking thunderbolts expelling inside the small precincts of her chest. Her skin felt as if thousands of livid insects were pricking over every inch. Her mind was a foggy desert, and her breath refused to stabilize. Renna’s manic wailing grated inside her ears like certain annihilation.
“What did they do?” Gabby whined, falling to the ground of the tent and constricting herself into a protective cocoon. She pulled at her ratty hair as she bawled “They didn’t do that. They didn’t. I didn’t see. I didn’t. I swear, I didn’t.”
“I wanna go home,” Tessa screamed, then her voice shattered as her face bled of all color. “Please, I wanna go home. I won’t be bad no more. I won’t sneak bread from the bin, mumma. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Just let me come home.”
Sage’s limbs locked. She couldn’t move. She stood in the center of the tent, shuddering like a man eyeing the guillotine, staring blank at the traumatized girls. Desperately, for fear of losing whatever sanity she still possessed, she tried to sever the abominable images from her mind. Like little Gabby, she strove to tell her mind it hadn’t seen that. It hadn’t witnessed that heinous atrocity. She had to dupe herself into belief, or she’d be reduced to a knobby pile of waste any moment.
“What did they do?” Renna shrieked. “They made us watch. By the Water, they made us watch.”
“She was screaming,” Wilma whimpered to herself. The petrified child repeated the phrase over and over as if it were a lullaby. “She was screaming. Brook was screaming. She told them nay, but they didn’t listen.”
Hideously, Renna caved to a fit of uncontrollable laughter. It was the most macabre intonation that had ever imposed upon Sage’s ears. “They made us watch. How could they make us watch? I tried to turn away. He held my face. How could they do that to her? To us?” The girl’s delirious laughter steeped to an unbearable degree, breaking the ice encasing Sage.
A hand reached out for her leg as she headed for Renna. She kicked it away, causing poor Wilma to shrivel further into her shell. Renna’s eyes were great, white globes when Sage latched onto her shoulders and jerked her to her feet.
“They made us watch,” the girl screamed, inches from Sage’s face.
Sage struck her full-on in the mouth.
Renna laughed again. She reached out and gripped Sage by the collar of her dress, drawing their faces together until Sage could feel their breaths mingle. The expression on Renna’s face was inhuman. Her humanity had been wrenched away back in that huge tent, left to rot and wither at the foot of the Black Earth tribe’s feast table.
“They made us watch,” Renna cackled. “They ripped her open as she screamed. They ripped her open, then they a…”
Sage hit the girl so hard a glob of blood flew from her mouth. Renna slumped within Sage’s stringent grasp, head lulling to the side, her terrifying eyes mercifully hidden behind her lids.
Sage wasn’t done. She shook the helpless child with frantic yearning, hitting her again and again until her tiny face turned a bright pink, thinking, Don’t you dare say ‘ate’, you little snot. I don’t ever want to hear that word again. Not as long as I live on this retched, retched world.
Wholly depleted of anything resembling strength or sanity, Sage Ullimar released the girl, and together they toppled to the hard, dirt floor of their prison tent. Taking cue from Wilma, Sage jerked her convulsing knees tight to her chest, making herself as small as humanly possible, her deranged mind believing that if she could just pull tight enough, she might very well squeeze herself into oblivion.
They can’t follow me there. No matter their gruesome power in this world, those abhorrent beasts will never find me there.
Had she succeeded, she might’ve been correct. As it was, her adherence to this present plane of existence offered little shelter from her tormentors, who didn’t take kindly to the piercing wails from inside the tent.
A pair of Black Earthers barged into the tent and sneered at Tessa, who’d been left shrieking as if in flame after Sage’s break from sanity with Renna. When one of them yanked the little girl up by her hair, Sage ran at him, clenching her jaws onto his thick calf and biting down with all her might.
After that foolish act of defiance, she remembered nothing.
That night Riken went to scout the Black Earth encampment. He took Payton with him, as the man was far superior to Riken in stealth abilities.
The sight he found awed him. This was no ramshackle camp thrown up overnight by a band of plains-roaming nomads. For the Black Earth tribe, this was a permanent residence. Where do they acquire food and water? he wondered, scanning t
he encampment of ten or so large, leather tents. How do they survive here?
It didn’t matter. After spending the better part of an hour investigating the camp, and observing the comings and goings of the tribesmen within, he had all the information he required.
The crew was waiting for him back at his own camp, their faces expectant. They had no fire to sit around, yet they had still positioned their crates in a circle.
“So?” Uther asked.
Riken took a seat on a vacant crate. “This’s how we do it,” he said, then laid out his plan.
The main tent was on the far end of the encampment. Its ceiling was at least forty feet high at its pointed crescendo; the width, roughly two hundred feet across. Many seamstresses had sewn together many hides to fabricate the large dwelling’s three leather walls. The fourth wall – to the west – was the rock face of a high ridge. The massive structure in its entirety reminded Riken of a festival tent he’d visited as a youth in Burden. There, he’d seen animals from all over Cryshal prodded by brave – or simply stupid – men into doing a variety of tricks and stunts. He had no doubt that he would see animals in this tent, too, though of an altogether separate nature.
It was toward the western wall that Riken and his crew maneuvered.
The majority of the Black Earth tribesmen were within the tent, making the crew’s intrusion relatively simple. Only a handful of guards were about, and they were so easily bypassed that Riken wondered how the tribe had survived as long as it had in this one spot.
Once in position, Riken signaled Uther, Abby, and Dexter to depart. They would climb down to the southern edge of the tent, where earlier, they’d witnessed a group of children being escorted to and from a smaller dwelling. They couldn’t be sure the children they’d seen were the ones they sought, but by the way the armed tribesmen had treated them – poking and kicking at them – it seemed a safe wager.
Riken’s chest had grown tight when he’d seen the line of five children emerge from the small tent. Too far away to see them clearly, he’d hadn’t gotten a good look at their faces – even with Payton’s looking glass – but their clothing was distinct in comparison to the tormenting guards that had led them briefly out of the camp then back. Watching the guards jab at the girls’ little backsides with their spears, it had taken all his willpower not to rain brimstone down on them right then and there. But he’d contained himself. He had a plan he hoped would work.
When Uther, Abby, and Dexter had gone, Riken lowered to his belly and crawled to the end of the ridge. His remaining three companions waited. The ceiling of the tent was fastened to the lip of the ridge with tough rope and stakes, each ten feet apart. Riken reached one of the lightly fluttering flaps, quietly lifted it, then poked his head inside.
Terrible heat met his face. The offending gust smelled of burning wood, charred meat, animal leavings, and the stout bodily odors of the three hundred or so inhabitants within. The badly ventilated smoke from the giant bonfire raging in the center of the tent stung his eyes, filling them with salty tears.
Blinking away the pain, he peered down on the festivities. Directly below, about ten feet, was another ledge on the ridge running the length of the rock wall. In increments of twenty feet, duos of conversing Black Earthers stood watch, brandishing spears or weighty clubs. None were close enough to him for Riken to worry with being seen from his vantage point.
Just beyond the second ledge, a lengthy row of cramped, heavy tables lined the dirt floor. There, men and women alike sat raucously chattering, enjoying what looked like plates of over-charred meats with little regard to proper table manners. Deep flagons of some substance were clutched in every hand, and often a thunderous cheer would erupt from the table, enticing all to slam their flagons together in toast.
In front of the tables, small groups of dancers entertained the diners. They flailed about convulsively as if on fire, stabbing sticks and spears at the ceiling and assaulting the tepid air with loud, hoarse voices in what Riken could only assume was supposed to be song. To him, the acts seemed more like the death throes of dying beasts. The spectators obviously didn’t share his sentiment. They cheered the dancers on with jubilant delight, every so often spraying them with the bounty of their flagons.
The thunder of drums boomed through the tent, spurring on the entertainers. Riken turned his head in the direction of the ear-popping sounds and saw a cluster of giant animal skin drums close to the bonfire. Around each drum, three men slammed continuously against its surface with heavy bones. Intermingled with the drums, a gaggle of performers played on with bone rattles, rain sticks, horns, and a lone three-string that Riken could tell needed a good tuning.
Packs of wiry, half-starved wolves and mangy dogs slunk about the grounds, fearfully snatching bits of food their masters dropped around the tables. Tied to the great support beam in the center of the tent was a huge black bear. Its ragged coat was thinning, with several patches missing all the way to the pale skin. Riken swallowed hard, tasting just a hint of bile, when he saw what the sickly bear was dining on. Clenched between its jaws were the tattered remains of a human leg. The rest, an oozing lump of unrecognizable meat, lay discarded on the ground beside a pile of the bear’s droppings.
Riken didn’t see the girls.
Are we too late?
Slowly, he backed away from the tent.
“See them?” Payton asked, whispering despite the fact that the boisterous music and clamor from within the tent would drown out any sound of his voice.
Riken shook his head.
Payton frowned, then thought it over and said, “They must still be in that tent then.”
“If that was them we saw,” Illter said in a normal tenor.
“Aye,” Payton agreed dejectedly, “but, if so, this could be a great deal easier than we thought. Uther and them could be getting them right now.”
“Wouldn’t count on that,” Riken said, though he’d entertained the same hope.
“But they could,” Tawny offered. In the dim moonlight, the young man’s face was still a couple shades whiter than normal, but the tremble residing in his voice the last few nights seemed to be receding. Tawny was a good man, helpful on many a job in the past. This one, though, was unlike anything he’d been a part of in his short life. Riken could only pray that he’d be up to executing his part. “Right?”
“Just concentrate on doing your job,” Illter said coolly. “Don’t hang hopes on miracles. They’re like to disappoint.”
Tawny’s eyes drooped and his mouth crooked, downtrodden.
A lamenting wind howled down the plains, chilling Riken’s bones worse than the cold. The black sky above flickered with untold numbers of crystal clear stars. Osysis – an expansive, splendid constellation in the shape of a fatherly old man holding a scepter – was in his haven. According to travelers the world round, when the gentle, aged protector looked down upon you, all was right in the world. Riken wasn’t so sure this time. So far away in his night sky kingdom, it could be that the old gent’s twinkling eyesight had finally begun to fade. From Riken’s vantage point, the world looked anything but right.
He watched Osysis’s starry form gleam for a long moment, wondering if it would be his last time to gaze upon the havens. Finally lowering his eyes, Riken said a quick prayer to a man he’d stopped believing in long ago. What could it hurt?
“Let’s go,” he said, and saw Illter’s dark eyes flicker for the first time ages. He didn’t know whether to be pleased with the prospect or scared witless.
On his first inspection of the tent and the diners below, he’d missed it.
His heart leapt when he viewed a line of girls being led inside from the entrance in the southern wall of the great tent. Their guards ushered them forth with spears until they were standing at attention in front of the long line of tables.
His eyes focused on the captive girls, he caught a glimpse of something so appalling his stomach begged to retch all over the cold ground. But with considerable effor
t, he willed it away. Mentally, he’d been trying to prepare himself for this reality for weeks. He’d failed.
At the center of the tables, at a place of honor, sat a huge man dressed in black furs. His hair was the wild mane of jungle beast, engulfing his head and most of his darkly painted face. His python-like arms were bare and rippling. In his hand, venturing toward his ready mouth, he held the small arm of a child. When the man’s teeth tore into the soft meat of the detached arm and ripped away a large chunk, Riken lost his battle and coated his clenched mouth with an explosion of rancid bile.
He tried to muffle his gagging. The thunderous music aided him, but then it ceased all of a sudden, and he had to wrap his hands around his face. He thanked the Father that Tawny hadn’t been watching.
Beside him, also peeking beneath the flap of the tent, Illter was stoic. Payton put a comforting hand on Riken’s back. Riken shooed it away.
All the commotion inside the tent ended as if something had sucked the wind from it, and a restrained hush fell on the proceedings. The girls, only five of them now, were paraded in front of the wild-haired man, who Riken could only assume was the leader. Their guards minded their little backs with their pointy spears, taking great delight in their goading. Riken recognized Sage from the portrait he’d seen in the Ullimar’s mansion. She was the only girl with blonde hair.
The girls’ hands were bound behind their backs. Riken motioned for Payton to pass him the looking glass. He wanted to see their faces. When he placed the cold eyepiece to his eye and peered through, he wished he hadn’t. Mostly what he saw on their faces were cakes of tear-streaked dirt and a few nicks and bruises, but Sage…
Deep yellow welts and bits of dried blood covered her face. One long cut ran along her jaw line. Her blonde hair, infested with grime, fell past the small of her back in lean strands. She wore a stained, torn, brown dress, frayed almost to nonexistence. The short garment revealed knobby, scabbed legs that had probably held more meat on them two months past. Her small feet were bare and noticeably sore from calluses. She displayed none of this pain on her stiff, pretty face. Her big, knowing eyes regarded the procession before them with distance, as if she were somewhere else.
Snowtear Page 23