And he did, as she watched the fire and caressed his thick hair.
* * * * *
Come the first cool day of autumn, when the hills burned red and gold and orange, Knucklebones knotted her sack of cash, Sunbright shouldered his sword and bow and satchels, and they left the summer cabin. Embarking on a small caravel with lateen sails, they were ferried down the Narrow Sea, past Vandal Station, past Northreach, past Frostypaw and Coldfoot, and through the Channel Lock. At Harborage the two asked after the Rengarth Barbarians, but received only blank looks. All summer Sunbright had asked everyone he met, travelers and locals alike, for the whereabouts of his tribe, but none knew. As far as the northwestern reaches of the empire were concerned, the Rengarth had vanished, and their ancestral lands stood empty. Wondering, and growing more fearful all the time, Sunbright had decided to sail into the eastern arm of the Narrow Sea and inquire there. But even at the crossroads of Harborage, they found no trace.
Over time, learning nothing, Sunbright’s face grew longer, his eyes haunted, his demeanor bitter. Even with Knucklebones his answers grew short, until they passed days without speaking. They sailed on, clear to the east, to Janick near the river called The Alley, and found naught. There Sunbright disembarked, and stood on the docks, and stared at the sea and land for hours.
Finally Knucklebones said, “Perhaps we search too hard.” Worn down by constant travel, she perched on a bird-stained bollard. All around the harbor ships and boats tacked and rowed, delivered supplies and people and fish and sails and water. They were the only ones idle, and they felt out of place.
But no place was home now, and Knucklebones, not even of this time, found herself saddled with a gloomy companion, and nowhere to go.
“Eh? What?” Sunbright said, turning from his daydreaming. “How can one search too hard? How else shall we find my people?”
“I don’t know, but wandering blind isn’t working, and you’re unhappy,” she said, desperately trying to think of any alternative. “Perhaps—perhaps if we set another goal, temporarily, we’d have luck. That might lead us in the right direction. When the way of mortals fail, it’s best to trust in the gods.”
Sunbright turned back to the harbor, as if to see over the horizon. “Perhaps you’re correct. Perhaps the gods have other tasks for us.”
Absentminded, the big barbarian rested his hand on the warhammer tucked into his belt. The long head bore a parrot’s beak and crushing face, a tool for war, more a dwarf’s weapon than a man’s. “I’ve carried this a long time, with a pledge,” he said. “I told Dorlas’s brethren in Dalekeva that I would one day return the hammer to his kinfolk. I could return it now.”
“Capital! A wonderful idea!” The thief exclaimed. Encouraged by the change, Knucklebones hopped up and kissed his chin. “We can journey to the south, where we haven’t been before, and learn the news. Perhaps we’ll find word of your tribe. Strange roads often lead to treasure!”
Without further ado, the barbarian walked off the dock and turned his back on the Narrow Sea, stomping down the first muddy street tending south. Shaking her head at his obstinate nature, Knucklebones scampered beside him.
A ghost of a smile creased Sunbright’s face as he told her, “You realize this is just another quest, another foolish need to satisfy honor.”
“I understand, but your honor is all you have. Feed it to keep it strong,” she laughed. “At least, going south, we’ll be warm.”
“Sticky, muggy, buggy, and hot.”
Sunbright tramped steadily past wagons and workers and shops.
“Warm like the sewers of Karsus,” Knucklebones corrected. In celebration, she reached into her pockets and dug out her brass knuckles, slipped them onto knotty fingers.
“Anticipating trouble?” the barbarian asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Wherever you go, there’s trouble,” she chuckled. For the first time in days, Sunbright chuckled with her.
* * * * *
“I knew we wouldn’t be warm for long,” Knucklebones groused.
“It’s not cold.” Sunbright flicked snow from his eyelashes as he said, “It’s … bracing.”
“I need to brace myself, all right.” Knucklebones said. She clutched a cedar bush jutting from the rock face to her left. “Else I’ll be blown clean off this mountain.”
“You could dance on the head of a pin, you’re so nimble,” Sunbright chided. “I’m the one slipping and sliding, taking two steps up and one back.”
The two were again wrapped in sheepskin coats and mantles, tall boots, and wool leggings. Their boots slipped often, and Sunbright needed to catch rocks and roots to climb the steep mountain path. They’d climbed for three days, leaving the steppes and the last village far below. The vista to their right had yawned wider with every step, miles of wintry valley dark with pines and sheltered meadows dotted with sheep. A storm rushing over the Iron Mountains pelted them with snow and blotted out all vision except their path.
“It’s not far now,” Sunbright called. “It can’t be.”
“How can you know?” Knucklebones sniffed. Her furred hood was rimmed with white flakes that set off her shadowed face like a halo. “We could step to the moon.”
“They said in the village the dwarves live below the treeline. We’ve climbed almost to where the green stops and the rocks are bare. And this is the only path, ignoring a few forks, so we can’t be lost. Any minute now we’ll probably smell smoke, or spook a sentry—whoa!”
The travelers stopped in shock. Around a bend, looming through the hissing snow, a trio of black-eyed cow skulls stared at them.
Knucklebones whispered a charm, Sunbright grunted. The skulls were huge, from oxen he supposed, bleached white and heaped with snow that trickled down the muzzles, one of which bore deep axe marks.
“What are they?” Knucklebones asked. “Warnings, or just markers?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Yet without thinking, he drew Harvester from the back scabbard with a low moan.
“Is it wise to bear your sword? Won’t the dwarves, these sentries you speak off, take that amiss and shoot first?”
“It is foolish to bear a sword when coming in peace …” Sunbright pulled the scarf clear of his ears and nose to track sounds and smells. “But something else is up here. I feel it.”
Knucklebones tugged off her hood to free her elven ears, keener than the human’s. “Besides dwarves,” she started to say, “what would—Hark!”
“What?”
The small thief grabbed the warrior’s arm, and tugged him into a niche crammed with snow-laced bracken. She whispered, “I heard a jingle of harness, or a leper’s bell.”
“Bell? How—look out!”
Both whirled as an avalanche crashed down. Sunbright and Knucklebones had a vision of huge hoofs, gray, hairy muzzles, thick horns, and gray rags wrapped around tremendously wide shoulders. Carved wooden staves pointed like nocked arrows, then they were attacked by magic, staff, and fist.
Crowded, Sunbright hollered a warning to Knucklebones. There were three or four enemies, but he could see little with snow in his eyes. Rising within arm’s reach, they must have crouched in the rocky niche, lying in ambush. For them, or for dwarves?
No matter. The barbarian slapped his free hand onto Harvester’s pommel and stabbed straight. The long sword was unlike any other seen in the Rengarth tribe, won by his father decades ago in the southlands. The blade curved slightly from the pommel, then widened so the nose was fatter than the shank. Yet metal had been cut from the tip’s back to form a wicked barbed hook. Thus the sword could stab, chop, or tear on the back draw. Sunbright tried all three attacks now.
But so close loomed these gray, shaggy foes, and so hindered was Sunbright by waist-high bushes, that the blade was batted aside. Before the shaman could recover, a wooden staff smacked him alongside the head. White lights exploded behind his eyes. He staggered at the knees, and dimly saw the shaft rise. To do what? Stab him? Knock him onto the snow-slick path and
lever him off the mountain? Either way, his stunned brain couldn’t focus.
Then the end of the staff erupted with red light. Sunbright felt a burn sear his neck, then he fell or was tripped. He crashed in snow.
To one side, slick as an eel, Knucklebones shed her coat and satchels, scrunched low as a hare and leaped high. She popped up almost in the face of the huge enemies. To her astonishment, they proved to be shaggy beasts like upright cattle. Horns jutted from the sides of their heads, and from some dangled tiny bells on leather thongs that jingled. These cow-beings possessed the bleached skulls along the trail, then. Their long hands bore blunt, black nails, and all carried curved wooden staves.
Surprised by her rush, a yak-man shrank back to aim the end of his staff. Knucklebones gave him no chance. Doubling her fist of brass knuckledusters, she slammed the yak-man hard on the nose. The cow face jerked, and bright blood spurted, so Knucklebones knew he or she was hurt. She smacked the same spot, and saw blood erupt from twin nostrils. Good, their noses were vulnerable.
A blistering red light erupted at her. She heard Sunbright grunt and fall. Another yak-man aimed a staff at her.
She ducked just in time, for a blast of alien wind blew leaves off the tough cedars that ringed them. Knucklebones was shielded from the tiny tornado by the hulking yak-man in front of her. Deciding to stay put and keep his protection, she closed again. She couldn’t defeat them all, but could pound hell out of one, and hope for the best.
The yak-man grabbed his nose so blood ran between black-nailed fingers. Crowding her luck, Knucklebones stooped and aimed a savage uppercut at his long chin. Brass knuckles batted his snowy goat’s beard, bashed thin bones underneath. A loud crack announced a broken jawbone. She wanted to yell for joy, for the sheer thrill of battle. Instead, she slid even closer as the yak-man tumbled backward.
Meanwhile, Sunbright had fallen below the brush, and so saved his life. The yak-man wielding the magic staff blasted again, but the searing flame only blasted snow into steam. Ignoring the throbbing burn on his chin and neck, Sunbright bulled aside brush, glimpsed a hairy, crooked leg ending in a rough hoof worn from mountain climbing. That small target was all he needed.
Gritting his teeth against pain, he snaked Harvester past tough roots and hooked the barb behind the yak-man’s hock. A savage yank severed the tendon, and the creature was ham-strung. He toppled into a compatriot with a bawl like a slaughtered ox.
Knucklebones heard the cry and took heart. Together they might subdue these queer people and escape. Pressing one hand against the bloody-nosed yak, she slithered around his wide ribs after another foe. She found one shorter and slimmer than the others, probably a female, but the cow saw her at the same time, and whipped up a staff topped by a tiny hourglass. Knucklebones had only a second to wonder what it was—
—then she was standing in the village in the valley. Beside her, Sunbright asked a milkmaid where lay the path to the dwarves’ high caves. The milkmaid had blue eyes, and rubbed the tip of her nose. Knucklebones saw freckles on her hand, smelled manure, and bread baking in a cottage, and heard milk sloshing in the pail.
But how could this image be real? What happened to the mountain and yak-men and snow? The sun was warm on her neck. The maid’s dog snuffled her hand, and she felt its warm tongue on her fingers. How had she been transported three days into the past, and many miles distant?
The staff bore an hourglass, she recalled. Some magic time spell? Had it sent her mind into the past?
Images and thoughts tumbled in her mind, then a staff smacked the top of her head with a fierce crunch. The milkmaid’s farm winked into blackness.
* * * * *
Sunbright saw his lover struck down, saw her drop as if lifeless. Rage overcame sense, and he reared upright with a roar. Bushes and snow flew as he hoisted Harvester in the air, slung it far behind to shear at the bull neck of the nearest of the four yak-men, but was undone again. All four turned on him. The tornado-spewing staff aimed, puffed like a dragon, and the barbarian was blown backward to sprawl on the snow-slick path.
His head slammed stone, his burned neck sent jolts of lightning coursing through his frame. Before he could rise, the yak-woman stamped forward with her staff, and knocked Harvester from his numbed hands. A tremendous hoof stamped on his chest, and drove out his wind. Through a gray fog loomed the calm, deadly face of an otherworldly executioner. The yak-woman drew a curved scimitar, and coolly aimed to split his throat.
Sunbright bucked against the hoof, got nowhere, gasped, and drew no breath into his squashed chest. He flailed his arms uselessly. He’d die now, and Knucklebones next. So ended all his mad quests.
Obscured by snow, the curved blade topped its arch, came whistling around—
—and three crossbow bolts buried themselves to their feathers in the yak-woman’s breast.
Chapter 3
Pinned by a hoof, stunned by a head blow, half-blinded by snow and pain, Sunbright saw the yak-woman’s brown eyes roll white as she died. A thin trickle of blood stained her round nostrils—sign of lung puncture—then she slumped onto the snow and collapsed in a heap. Her curved sword landed in the snow without a sound.
Another yak-man cast right and left for danger, whipped his staff through the air, rumbled a gurgling command to his two comrades. A black crossbow bolt slammed into the side of his neck and cut his orders off. His black-nailed hand grabbed the shaft.
Glimpsing this in seconds, Sunbright rolled, scurried on knees and elbows to grab Harvester of Blood lying on the narrow path, its imprint outlined in snow. Keeping low, he shouted, “Knuckle’, watch for arrows! Someone’s killing them!”
There was no answer, and a spasm of fear clutched his heart. Was she just being silent for the fight? Or had she been killed, or pitched off the mountain? Perhaps she lay bleeding. He must—
A brawny hand clamped onto his shoulder from behind, and he was hurled flat, so hard his spine rattled. Etched against a white fluttering sky surged figures like short brown bears bristling with weaponry. The bear-beings swept to either side. One leveled a crossbow, let go with a slap and clack of string and bow. Another hoisted a long-faced battle-axe and hollered a cry like a condor making a kill. In a furry wave, the newcomers roared, and fell upon the surviving yak-men.
Half-seen through snow, Sunbright winced at the slaughter. The yak-man with the bolt in his neck turned, one hand still clutching the shaft, and tried to rip free his scimitar. A screaming dwarf—for such were their rescuers—hopped in the air and swung his battle-axe so hard the cow-being’s arm was severed at the shoulder. Blood spurted over attacker and attacked. Before the yak-man could take another step, the fur-clad dwarf chopped savagely at a backwards-bent leg. Cut down like a tree, the yak-man tumbled over so fast the dwarf had to fend the shaggy body aside.
Sunbright crawled toward where he’d last seen Knucklebones; he didn’t want to rise in front of a crossbow. The other two yak-men were hacked to pieces. Smashing through snowy brush, a dwarf lanced a bolt into a yak-man’s jaw, pinning it to his skull. Another stabbed upward with a short spear under broad ribs. Driving the spear deep, the short one shoved so hard the yak-man’s horns clacked on the rock wall behind. Again the dwarf shoved, until the shaggy body was slammed full against the stone, then again, so hard the shaft snapped, and the dwarf stumbled against his dying foe. The last yak-man raised his staff over his head sideways, a sign of surrender, but died. Two dwarves with mattock and falchion slammed blades into the beast’s bowels, so it doubled with a cry of agony, and a third dwarf smashed down on the broad head with a warhammer square between the horns. Even then their ferocity was unquenched, for other dwarves swarmed around the fallen creatures to hack them limb from limb.
Steering clear of the battle-crazed warriors, Sunbright found Knucklebones lying on her side in her woolens atop smashed brush. The tiny woman was already half-covered by snow, unconscious. The shaman scanned her with his hands, found a crease in her skull and blood matted in her dark hair. Gen
tly for such huge gnarled hands, he lifted her eyelid to peer at her pupil. One way to gauge brain damage was to compare a victim’s pupils, check they were the same size, but Knucklebones only had one eye. Then snow settling on her eyeball made it twitch. Relieved, he guessed she’d recover, once he got her warm.
Brushing off snow, Sunbright fetched her shed coat and wrapped her tight, then hung her satchels on his shoulders. He hoisted Knucklebones in his arms, but even her weight, light as a lamb, made him dizzy, for he’d also been head-bashed by a curious staff. He leaned on a rock until his head stopped spinning. Too, a burn alongside his left ear and neck itched and throbbed abominably, and he knew lymph and blood wept from the wound to soak his shirt, chilling him. Gritting his teeth, he wondered what the dwarves had in store for them.
The mountain men were busy. Savage fury abated, they resorted to their usual industrious ways. With an axe they methodically hacked off the four oxen heads, then propped and wedged them amidst stones to dry and collect snow. Continuing, they sliced off the gray rags that passed for the yak-men’s clothing, chopped off hands and cloven feet and threw them off the mountain, then hoisted the still-warm bodies to split the bellies and dress out the guts, which they left in a steaming pile along the trail. Finally, dragging the dressed carcasses, booty of satchels and staves and swords, they stamped free of the brush and trooped up the trail with their burdens.
The last pair faced Sunbright, who was fighting fatigue, cold, and dizziness while clutching Knucklebones, who hung limp as a rag doll. The barbarian blinked when he realized the dwarf with the thick, braided hair was female, for she had a thick beard, and her face was craggy and seamed as an old shoe. Sunbright hadn’t known there were dwarven women. Legend said dwarves grew from the rocks like golems and ogres.
The frowning, blood-spattered woman paused, a thick falchion at the ready, and said, “Why have you come here?”
“Uh …” Sunbright groaned. The abrupt question flustered the shaman. “I seek the Sons of Baltar. I have—something to give Drigor.”
Mortal Consequences Page 3