by Angus Watson
“I don’t know,” said Sitsi. “There’s something about Yoki Choppa that makes you believe him.”
“Not me.”
“You only believe men when you’ve got their spuff on your hands.”
Morningstar laughed. “Yuck! And, my dear innocent, you ask the questions before you get spuff on your hands. They don’t tell you anything afterwards, they just mumble and scuttle away. And it’s easy not to get any on your hands.”
The young archer pictured the elderly Pakanda and shuddered. “Really? How?”
“You make a firm seal with your lips and swallow it all.”
Sitsi Kestrel’s huge eyes goggled. She turned to look at Morningstar, which she wasn’t meant to do because she was on watch. Morningstar was already looking at her. She didn’t care about rules as much as Sitsi did. She wrinkled her large nose and grinned.
“No … You … Arrgh! Tell me you didn’t!” Sitsi thought she might be sick.
“Of course I didn’t. I’d sooner swallow a diseased porcupine’s diarrhoea. Actually, it is difficult not to get it on your hands. But it’s easy enough to wash off. Not, of course, that you’re in any danger of having any spuff anywhere near you anytime soon.”
Sitsi looked over at Keef. He threw his axe aside as if it had been whacked out of his hands, fell, did a roll and came up punching.
Morningstar followed her gaze then looked back to her. “Innowak’s big balls!” The ex-emperor’s daughter’s eyes were almost as wide as Sitsi Kestrel’s. “You can’t. It’s wrong! It’s disgusting.” She sounded more excited than disgusted, though. Gleeful even. “It’d be like a lioness shagging a pig! When are you going to make a move? He will love it! What a lucky man, getting to root an Owsla. You must tell me all about it. I bet they’ve got curly dicks.”
“I don’t fancy him.”
“You do, you sick little—”
“I just think he’s brave. And funny.”
“I think you’re brave and funny in the head. What if you had a baby with your big eyes and his little round skull? People would think it was a demon owl. You’d better find some blueball if you really are going to shag him and—”
“I am not going to shag him.” Sitsi shook her head, “I think he likes Bodil Gooseface, anyway.”
“Only because he doesn’t know he’s got a chance with you. Show him a sign and he’ll be on you like a starving dog on buffalo liver. Like an old pervert onto a girl with—”
“That’s enough. I don’t like him, okay?”
“You must tell me whether their curly dicks go straight when they’re hard. Might be nice, a curly—”
“That’s enough!” Sitsi shook her head and looked back over the land. Far away, the huge flock of crowd pigeons settling down for the evening.
Finnbogi the Boggy sat down next to Bjarni Chickenhead, who’d been sitting on his own by the fire, opposite Sassa Lipchewer and Wulf the Fat.
“What’s up, Bjarni?” he asked. When Garth Anvilchin had got it on with Thyri Treelegs and Finnbogi had been distraught, Bjarni had promised him tobacco whenever he wanted it, but had so far given him very little.
“I’ve only got a tiny bit of tobacco left. I’d like to save it for times of trouble.”
“That’s not why I sat down here.”
“Right.”
Bjarni had changed of late, Finnbogi thought, and it coincided with when Bjarni and Keef the Berserker had cut their hair off to escape the Owsla. With a big ball of curly black hair, Bjarni had looked clownish and been a relaxed joker. Now he had the hair of a sensible man who thought the best thing to do with hair was keep it short and out of the way, he seemed a lot more sensible. Could hairstyle control character?
The two of them sat in fairly awkward silence watching Wulf and Sassa play. Wulf was holding out an arrow and whipping it away before Sassa could clap her hands on it. Both were laughing like the happiest people in the world.
“Having said that,” said Finnbogi after what he thought was a tasteful gap, “I’m still upset about getting knocked back by Thyri. Do you think we could call unrequited love a time of trouble?”
Bjarni turned to look at him, his eyes red-rimmed. “What the fuck would you know about unrequited love?” He stood and strode away into the darkness.
Finnbogi blinked after him. What the Hel? he thought.
Much closer than the Owsla or Wootah would have liked across the Ocean of Grass, Tansy Burna patted the flank of her dagger-tooth cat and watched the crowd pigeons settle. Several million beaks pecked through the spider silk threads which tied the birds to the gigantic Plains Strider. They waited until all of them were ready to go, then rose as one and flapped away to forage. Their desire to stay together was greater than their craving for food, even after a long day hauling the Plains Strider across the Ocean of Grass.
All around Tansy, her fellow Badlanders prepared the camp. Dagger-tooth cats were cantering out to hunt, moose were spreading to graze and their riders were walking towards the already smoking cook fires and half-erected conical tents. Buffalo unleashed from the Plains Strider were following the moose and the cats, and other burden-bearing buffalo were standing about as minions unloaded them. The Empty Children were mounted on their bighorn sheep in small groups, overseeing all the animal activity.
Did she feel as strongly about her community of Badlanders as the crowd pigeons felt about each other, Tansy asked herself? No. She wasn’t a Badlander by birth. Like almost all the men and women who comprised the Badlander tribe she’d had the choice of joining the Badland raiders or living meekly in their shadow, keeping out of their way lest they killed her, or worse. It hadn’t been a difficult choice, and, after a couple of miserable years, she’d thrived. Now she wouldn’t have swapped her life as a dagger-tooth squad leader for anything.
Rappa Hoga emerged from behind the Plains Strider on his dagger-tooth cat, tearing along at full gallop. He turned hard and headed for Tansy. She heard herself gasp. He looked splendid, the sun casting wonderful shadows on his dark, muscular frame. He seldom wore more than a breechcloth, whatever the weather, which Tansy approved of. She longed for the day he’d take her into his tent again. From the tips of his strong toes to the ends of his long, shining black hair, he was superb.
She both dreaded him talking to her and was desperate for his attention. It always left her feeling thrilled, but shaky and unable to eat for hours afterwards.
“Tansy,” he said, his deep voice vibrating the hairs that were already standing up on her arms.
“Hi,” she managed.
“We’ll take the Calnians and their friends tomorrow. Make sure your squad are ready and rested.” The scout Nya Muka had reported seventeen walkers a few days before. It seemed they were now in range.
“Is it just my squab taking them? I mean my squad?” asked Tansy, reddening.
“No. All the dagger-tooths and all the moose cavalry will go.”
“Okay …”
Rappa Hoga smiled his big warm smile. “You’re wondering why we’re taking such a large force to tackle so few?”
“I am.”
“From what the Empty Children have reported via Nya Muka, I believe that some of them are Calnian Owsla.”
“Really? Wow.”
“Indeed.”
“Will you fight them?” The idea of Rappa Hoga fighting other alchemically powered warriors was simply too thrilling. Surely they couldn’t be his match? But the things she’d heard …
“I hope to dart them before there’s any fighting.”
“Maybe you should leave one of them undarted and—”
“We’re out here to collect people and animals for Beaver Man, Tansy, not for our entertainment. Make sure your people are ready for tomorrow.”
He pulled on his cat’s rein and was off.
“Sure,” she said, watching his back as he rode away. She’d be lucky to get any sleep. She’d be lying awake, picturing Rappa Hoga fighting Calnian Owsla.
Chapter 3
&nb
sp; An Inconvenient River
The problem with Calnia attacking the Badlanders, observed Luby Zephyr, is that the first thing the mighty army had to do was cross the Water Mother. If there’s anything to make an army look less mighty, it’s crossing a river so old and mighty itself that it’s going to show up any group of humans, no matter the size, as a momentary mess of ants muddling across the magnificent magnitude of the earth.
On the positive side, any other rivers on the journey west would be a doddle in comparison.
It was the second day of crossings. Higher-up people like her were waiting around in Calnia until the army and supplies had crossed. On the first day Luby had been to see her parents. They were surprised and unwelcoming when she appeared and the atmosphere had not improved. She wasn’t upset. They’d disowned her once when she’d needed them most, so she didn’t expect much from them.
She’d tried to see Empress Ayanna twice more, but the warlock Chippaminka had prevented her both times, with plausible reasons for the Swan Empress’s indisposition. Luby liked Chippaminka. She seemed like an intelligent and decent young woman who had the empress’s best interests at heart.
With little else to do, Luby had indulged her new joy for walking. She’d been all around the dwellings of the Low. She’d wandered the avenues of larger huts that housed the middle classes, which was when she’d popped in on her parents. She’d walked around the pyramids that housed the elite, having a good look at the coiffed women, preening men and golden statues. She’d thought about Innowak, by whose design everything happened. Why, she wondered, had he spilt people into these groups? Why did the ones who had the most seem to deserve it the least?
On that second day, she’d ended up on a bluff overlooking the Water Mother, and stood to watch the crossing. Captains and quartermasters were trying to marshal the thousands of troops, workers and beasts of burden into an orderly procession, but the Water Mother had other ideas.
Luby was about to turn back for Calnia when a boat a quarter of the way across the broad river capsized. All the buffalo which had been on board made it back to the bank, and most of the men and women managed to clamber onto other boats, but a few people sank below the muddy churn and didn’t resurface.
Thus was the indiscriminate hand of fate. A few days before those men and women had been living their lives, then they’d heard that they had to go off to war, which was probably frightening and exciting, and then, before they’d even—It was as if the sadness of seeing those people die so randomly ruptured a dam in Luby Zephyr’s head. A tumult of previously constrained thoughts flooded her mind. Why were they going to war? How had the girl Chippaminka risen from nowhere to chief warlock and the empress’s right hand in a matter of days? Who was she?
Luby shook her head. She tried to remember meeting Chippaminka. She’d wanted to see Ayanna and she’d found the girl in the empress’s hot bathing pool. Luby had got in with her. Why had she done that? It was all hazy. The girl had taken her feet and caressed them, and after that … she couldn’t remember a thing. Oh Innowak, what had she done! Had the warlock bewitched her?
It seemed outlandish. She’d seen warlocks influence people’s decisions and fool them, but she’d never heard of them controlling someone’s mind to this degree. But whether it was the herbs or some other alchemy, Chippaminka had definitely done something to convince Luby that all was well; that there was nothing odd about her being kept from Ayanna and that invading the notorious Badlands was a perfectly sensible thing to do. It had been so subtle!
Could Chippaminka have bewitched the empress? Was there any other explanation?
Luby ran back to Calnia, into the citadel and halfway up the log steps of the Pyramid of the Sun. There she stopped.
If Chippaminka had bewitched the empress enough to make her go to war, and Luby ran in there shouting about it, then Chippaminka should find it easy to bewitch Luby again, or convince Ayanna to, at best, ignore her.
No, Luby would have to play this carefully and … what could she do? She’d be able to sneak into the empress’s palace at night, wake her and talk to her … but if Ayanna was bewitched, that would have exactly the same effect as running in there shouting. She’d be able to escape the guards, but she’d have to flee and Calnia would still be marching to war on the Badlands.
Perhaps she could talk to the guards, but she knew none of them well and chances were Chippaminka had got to them, too. There was nobody she could trust.
Luby Zephyr trudged away from the pyramid, sweaty with stress, wracking her brains and wishing that Sofi Tornado was there.
Chapter 4
An Unwelcome Surprise
“Fuck. A. Woodchuck. No way. You eat people?” Sassa Lipchewer stared at Paloma Pronghorn. After a peaceful sleep they’d resumed their walk, following their long early morning shadows westward across the seemingly endless Ocean of Grass.
“We eat bits of bad people. It has a double benefit. It’s punishment for them since it kills their soul, and we’re reborn as something more fun or interesting in the next life. And the right sort of person, cooked well, tastes great. Triple benefit.”
“Right sort of person?”
“Young, fit and a bit plump. You’d be nice.”
Sassa was flattered, disgusted and annoyed to be called plump. She was only plump compared to women who spent all day every day training to be warriors. But there was no point arguing. “What do you mean by next life?” she asked instead.
“We’re all reincarnated, unless any of your flesh is cooked in a fire that’s been lit by an Innowak crystal, and someone eats it. Then you’ve smoked your last pipe and it’s soul death for you.”
“Innowak crystal?”
“Innowak’s our chief god. There he is.” Paloma pointed at the sun. “He’s a burning swan.”
“Of course he is. Don’t his feathers—”
“Fireproof wings.”
“And the crystal?”
“He drops crystals that can focus his power and start a fire. People find them the whole time.”
Sassa looked about, half expecting to see shiny stones falling from the sky. All she saw were the various flitting and soaring birds of the plain. It might be nice to be a bird for a lifetime, she thought.
“Can you be reborn as another person?”
“Maybe. It’s basically a points system. When you cut the rope by the Water Mother and saved your tribe, you would have gained points, for example. Unless Innowak wanted us to catch you and kill you, of course, in which case you would have lost points. It’s not always clear what’s deemed as good.” Paloma paused to steer Sassa clear of a heap of fresh buffalo dung, then continued. “If you eat part of someone you get their soul’s points, or a share of them if anybody else eats them, too. I’m Owsla, so I’ve eaten loads of people. I’ll probably come back as a bear or a lion or a warlock, or maybe even Owsla again. Something good. Maybe a pronghorn, but that’s probably too obvious. Innowak likes to be contrary, or at least interesting. Another god accused him of being boring once, since he flies across the sky the same way every day, and ever since he’s been trying to prove that he’s actually complicated and intriguing. That’s why so many odd things happen, like … well, like the events that led me to be talking to you now, for example, rather than wiping your blood off my killing stick.”
Sassa shivered. Sometimes she forgot that the chatty and achingly beautiful Paloma had been alchemically twisted into a monster who could have slaughtered all the Wootah in a heartbeat, and had been intending to do just that until Yoki Choppa had intervened.
“So you must have eaten plenty of people in your previous life to be Owsla in this one?”
“I guess, but it’s not that simple. There’s a chance element, too, so that a lowly person or animal isn’t stuck being shit for ever. Some people can remember their past lives and tell you what they were. When I was small I told people I could remember being a pronghorn—that’s how I got my name—but—”
Paloma looked around.
Sofi Tornado was a good way ahead with Bodil Gooseface tagging along behind her. Erik the Angry and Chogolisa Earthquake and the children were far enough behind. Fifty paces away to the north, as if to embellish her story, a black-nosed pronghorn was watching them, head poking up from the long grass like a voyeur.
“—I was lying. I don’t remember any previous lives. I just liked running and pronghorns are the fastest animal. And they all believed me. Who believes a five-year-old?”
They both laughed.
“So the Wootah don’t eat people?” asked Paloma.
“We don’t need to because we don’t get reincarnated.”
“Your souls die? That’s no fun.”
“No, we go to live with the gods.”
“That sounds better. Which gods?”
“There are loads. My top god is Fraya, because—” it was Sassa’s turn to look around and make sure nobody overheard “—I’m keen, desperate if I’m honest, to have a baby, and Fraya will be more help with that than a god like Tor, who most people follow. He only cares about fighting and shagging.”
“Shagging’ll help.”
“Yes, but Wulf has Tor as his main god, so that covers us. Believe me, my failure to conceive is not through lack of trying.”
“I do believe you. If he were mine I’d be jumping up and down on him morning, noon and night.”
“Why, thank you, what a sweet compliment. But what about the afternoons?”
“You’re very welcome. He’d need to rest in the afternoons. How long have you been trying?”
“Anything between two shakes of a lamb’s tail round the back of my parents’ farm to a couple of hours.”
Paloma Pronghorn laughed melodiously and Sassa smiled. It was a joy to talk to a woman who got her jokes.
“We’ve been trying for five years, since we married. I used to eat blueball before that.”
“You should talk to Yoki Choppa. The empress was having trouble conceiving and—”