The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  Some Badlanders were walking about carrying long spears with knapped quartz heads, shooing animals away and gouging their weapons into the buttocks of the hanging people to let the blood flow. One pair of Badlanders put two ladders up next to a hanging man who looked dead. They hacked with quartz-headed axes at his wrists and he fell, leaving his hands behind.

  Well, that explains all the hands, thought Sitsi Kestrel.

  Aware of her hypocrisy—the Owsla had done things to their victims in the Plaza of the Sun which were, objectively, sickening—Sitsi Kestrel was horrified by the hanging people. She was walking along beside Paloma Pronghorn’s litter, holding the unconscious woman’s hand. Was she dying? Perhaps Paloma’s alchemically enhanced body made her immune to the spider bites? Sitsi could only hope. The spider-bitten Owsla had not regained her normal colour, though her breathing had normalised.

  Sitsi had offered to take over the carrying from Sofi Tornado or Chogolisa Earthquake, but they’d shaken their heads, grim-faced and smouldering.

  Beneath their impressively vengeful demeanours, the wooden boxes on their necks were like decorations reminding the world of their impotence.

  Owsla and Wootah—two unconscious, the rest as surly as captured rebels being led to execution through a jubilant, sneering crowd—followed Chapa Wangwa towards the highest pinnacle of rock.

  Lining the approach was a variety of smart, light-framed huts with woven grass walls and roofs, and a host of dark-doored dwellings carved into the rock walls. Families of Badlanders watched them pass. There were no spider boxes on the spectators’ necks.

  Finally, they came to a large, flat area of bare white rock, stained dark in many places. Seats were cut into the rock ridges all around, and there were tiers of wooden benches filling the gaps. It was a sports arena like the Plaza of the Sun. The stains were blood. There were plenty of them. Towards the centre, the stains joined into one dark patch a couple of dozen paces across.

  Sitsi groaned. It would be poetic for the Owsla to meet their ends surrounded by baying crowds in an arena like the one where they’d slaughtered so many. Objectively poetic, anyway. Subjectively, it would be seriously annoying.

  “And here comes Nam Cigam!” chimed Chapa Wangwa.

  A man was walking on his hands, backwards, towards them. He had a large eye painted on each buttock, and an oversized, hairy shoe on each foot. He was otherwise unadorned and naked.

  He flipped over and stood, panting. He was hairless apart from a strip of beard running along his jawline. His frame was slight but wiry and leanly muscled, with a longish, slender penis and, although Sitsi was no expert in this field, he didn’t seem to have any balls. He was also filthy, as if he’d rubbed himself with dirt. That was normal practice for a reverser, in place of washing.

  “Badbye, goodbastards!” he cried, his voice high-pitched. He danced from foot to foot. “Here is a place where you’ll have a lovely time and definitely not die. I am not Nam Cigam and I am delighted to sing this sad farewell.”

  Sitsi had met a reverser before, in a village the Owsla had been sent to punish. Chogolisa had shut that one up by turning his head so it was facing the wrong way. Even though she was now free from rattlesnake cruelty, Sitsi couldn’t regret that slaying. Sitsi despised reversers. They were contrary for the sake of being contrary and they thought that it made them wonderfully clever. It did not; any idiot could know what was expected of them and do or say the reverse, but whole tribes were sucked in by their backward antics and revered them as hilarious geniuses.

  All the Owsla and Wootah, she was glad to see, were looking at the reverser with the contempt he deserved, apart from Bodil Gooseface who was staring at him in open-mouthed wonder. Ottar the Moaner had turned round and was waggling his arse at the reverser, which Sitsi considered an apposite response.

  Nam Cigam walked around them, sniffing. He squatted next to Bjarni Chickenhead’s litter and addressed the unconscious man.

  “You smell like the clouds on a clear day!” he cried. “You make my nose run like a buffalo with no legs.”

  Utter, utter twat, thought Sitsi.

  “You’re funny!” Bodil laughed.

  Nam Cigam hopped up to her, smiling smugly as if hopping was the inspired antic of a comedic virtuoso. “I see you like a snake with no eyes can see the moon on a moonless night! You are disgustingly ugly and I would hate to make hate to you!”

  With that, he sprang back onto his hands and went back the way he came, shouting, “Hello, hello!”

  “Nice guy,” said Keef the Berserker.

  “He’s a reverser,” explain Sitsi.

  “He’s certainly something,” said Keef.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” cried Chapa Wangwa. “But I brought you here to meet our chief, Beaver Man. I wonder where he is? While we wait for him I will show you a sight. Leave the two on the litters—we’ll be back this way and the Empty Children can watch over them.”

  Finnbogi the Boggy, along with four Owsla warriors, one warlock, nine other Wootah and two racoons followed the grinning Badlander across the arena to a gap in the eastern rock wall.

  “Be careful!” advised Chapa Wangwa, “we wouldn’t want anybody falling.”

  The gap was wide enough for them all with room to spare. Over its lip, the land fell vertiginously a couple of hundred paces into a gully. Beyond, as far as they could see in all directions, was an impassable landscape of gorges, pinnacles, crinkled towers and ridges all carved from yellow, red-striped, crumbly looking rock. The tallest summit was topped with a series of horizontal bands of harder looking rock, between which were small, black caves. Finnbogi had a vision of giant insects returning to the caves with human prey to feed their fat but sharp-toothed maggots. He shuddered.

  Such a place should not exist in the world of men and women. It was breathtaking, undeniably beautiful, but also frightening and oppressively barren. You could see why the place was called the Badlands. Nothing good, thought Finnbogi, could live here. Actually, there were a couple of sprays of grass which didn’t look too evil bursting from crevices, but these only served to highlight how the rest of the landscape was too steep and serious for soil, let alone vegetation.

  He looked back down to the drop at his feet, falling away hundreds of paces to the dry, narrow canyon floor. He was taken back to when Garth had held him above the cliff by the Water Mother. This was higher, and somehow—

  Chapa Wangwa pushed him and he lurched forwards.

  The Badlander grabbed his arms and pulled him back, laughing.

  Finnbogi breathed hard and thanked Tor he’d already voided his bowels that morning. He turned to Chapa Wangwa, panting, blood pulsing in his temples, fists clenched.

  His spiders tickled his neck. He looked back over the huge view and tried to calm his breathing.

  Then he saw them.

  The deepest looking canyon in the spiky, incised landscape meandered sharply towards them from the east, so narrow and steep that he couldn’t begin to see its base.

  Coming along that gorge were the tiny figures of what looked like people, but who couldn’t be people because they were bouncing back and forth across the ravine like insects, gripping onto one steep rock face, then flipping to the other side, holding for a moment, then leaping back across.

  They disappeared out of sight behind a ridge a good fifty paces high, then a moment later they were leaping over it, still coming towards the watching Wootah.

  They leapt down the near side of the ridge, bounded across the tops of crumbling rock towers and Finnbogi saw that they were indeed humans, displaying an inhuman athleticism that perhaps even Paloma Pronghorn couldn’t have matched. As they neared, he saw that they were all men; lean, muscled and naked. Most had long hair which swished dramatically as they leapt from rock to rock.

  “I bet they’re all really thick; terrible conversationalists, I wouldn’t wonder,” he said to Thyri Treelegs. She was standing next to him, gawping with less reserve than might have been elegant at the naked
, god-bodied men. Either she didn’t hear Finnbogi or she ignored him.

  The acrobats reached the twenty-paces-wide gully below the Calnians and Wootah. Finnbogi thought they must stop there, but they leapt across and scrabbled like chipmunks up the sheer wall.

  “Make way!” called Chapa Wangwa.

  Wootah and Calnians stepped aside to let the men flash by. Finnbogi had time only to notice that one had horns like a bighorn sheep, and then they were past, sprinting away, such marvellous examples of slender musculature and small, hard-looking buttocks that Finnbogi felt his jaw hang open.

  One of them skidded to a stop, and walked back towards them. He was a little older than Finnbogi, a little shorter, but a good deal broader across the shoulders and trimmer in the waist. He had short hair, large, dark but shining eyes, a thin beard and a penis and balls that hung heavily like ripe and flawless vegetables. There was something odd about his skin. He was sweaty, but even so he was shinier that he should have been, like a varnished bowl.

  Finnbogi didn’t like the look of him at all.

  “Hi there,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you. I saw you coming in my alchemical bowl. I’m Beaver Man.” He had a soft lisp, possibly caused by the gap where his two central upper teeth should have been.

  “This is our great chief!” cried Chapa Wangwa, “All of you, get on the ground and …”

  “Easy, Chapa Wangwa, easy. I asked these to be separated from the other guests for a reason. They are not my inferiors. These are the famous Calnian Owsla and the Hardworkers, whose ancestors travelled with Olaf the Worldfinder in ships from the far side of the Wild Salt Sea.”

  “We’re called the Wootah now,” said Wulf, satisfyingly unflustered by Beaver Man’s knowledge.

  “Wootah, Wootah … I like it! Wooooo-tah! Much less smug than Hardworker. And you are the leader?”

  “I am. Wulf the Fat.”

  “But you’re not … oh, I see. Ha ha ha! Overweight as a child, were you?”

  “… yes.” It was the first time Finnbogi had heard Wulf introduce himself without using his “fat cock” joke. Given what the naked Beaver Man was sporting, it would have just been awkward.

  He told himself to stop looking at the man’s genitals, and found himself instead looking at broad chest muscles, thick but well-shaped biceps, extraordinary stomach muscles, tucked like two racks of small loaves above … Eyes, Finnbogi told himself, just look in his eyes.

  “And you,” Beaver Man turned to Sofi Tornado, “are the head of the Calnian Owsla; the unbeatable Sofi Tornado.”

  Sofi held his gaze.

  “But your Owsla is depleted, just four of you. I knew you’d had your troubles, but I thought five were coming?”

  “One was spider bit this morning,” said Chapa Wangwa.

  “No. What a shame.” Beaver Man looked around them all, Calnians and Wootah, his bright eyes bulging with sadness and sincerity. “You must avoid that happening to any more of you. Please, please do what you’re told by Chapa Wangwa and my other excellent people. And, Chapa Wangwa, I’d like you to hold back from goading them into attacking you. I saw what you did to this excellent man as we were approaching,” he indicated Finnbogi with a hand. “That false push trick is frightening. A less relaxed fellow would have hit you and that would have been that for him. I’d hate to lose another Calnian or Wootah to their spiders. We will honour the body of the woman who died.”

  “She didn’t die,” said Sofi Tornado.

  “What?” said Beaver Man, looking as if he’d been told that badgers could fly if they put their minds to it.

  “She’s not dead yet,” grinned Chapa Wangwa.

  “I hope she recovers,” the Badlander chief looked like he meant it. “Do call on any of my healers or warlocks if you need, but I daresay the excellent Yoki Choppa has done everything that can be done. Now, I know who the Owsla are—by your bearing you are Sofi Tornado, your size makes you Chogolisa Earthquake, by your punching clubs you must be Morningstar, and you, with the stunning eyes, must be Sitsi Kestrel the archer—but I don’t know any of the Wootah’s names, other than Wulf the Fat, so let’s remedy that.”

  He walked round all of them, taking each of their hands in turn, asking them their names and saying to each: “I’m Beaver Man, welcome to the Badlands.” He greeted everyone, the children included, with something that looked exactly like warm sincerity and respect.

  Introductions over—and Finnbogi just knew Beaver Man was the sort of arsehole who was going to remember everybody’s name—the Badlander chief leapt onto a small outcrop to address them all again.

  “Before you see where you will be staying and settle in, I’d like to show you something. You will, of course, have wondered why we have people hanging by their hands all over the place, their blood flowing into the rock beneath them. Follow me. I’ll explain on the way, so please don’t stray too far, and, much more importantly, don’t go too far from the Empty Children. I’ll say it again: please don’t get bitten by your beeba spiders. I have other plans for all of you.”

  They followed Beaver Man back across the empty arena, to where Paloma and Bjarni were lying still. The chief examined them, asking questions and looking particularly concerned about Bjarni Chickenhead.

  “Well done, Yoki Choppa,” he said eventually, “you have treated them both exactly as I would have done. Your reputation is not exaggerated. Now, those of you who can, follow me.”

  He led them through a gap in the northern arena wall. The bizarre land split into two narrow, grassy valleys, each flanked by bare rock walls and pinnacles. There were more hapless victims attached to the rock by their hands, and many more animals, particularly chipmunks, rabbits, riderless bighorn sheep and a variety of small, brightly coloured birds. Many of the animals were feeding on the hanging people.

  “We’re headed up this other way.” He pointed along the rightmost track and they followed a pale rock path through the grass past a couple of squat, dark-leaved fir trees.

  It was very different from the wooded glades that Finnbogi had known back east, and not just because of the moaning, bleeding, animal-nibbled captives and pairs of ownerless hands. Above the hanging captives, the higher parts of the rock towers had been hollowed into homes with wooden walkways between them. Badlanders, mostly children and the old, looked down.

  As Beaver Man walked, he talked.

  “Are you horrified by our captives?”

  Nobody answered.

  “You, Finn, are you horrified?”

  Finnbogi was flattered to be picked out by the young chief. “Um … I don’t think it’s great?” was all he could think of to say on the subject of the hundreds of tortured unfortunates.

  “Most people, I know, don’t like it much. I get that. However, all of you eat animals, right? You ate buffalo on the way here. We Badlanders know the great truth that humans are no better—or worse, mark you—than animals. All living creatures have equal value. Bear that in mind, then consider that most tribes kill as many animals as they want, and this”—he waved his fingers to indicate the surrounding misery—“is all fine.”

  “I don’t think it’s fine,” said Gunnhild, “on the buffalo drive on the way here—”

  “You thought too many buffalo were killed because they were not eaten or used in any way?” Beaver Man interrupted.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do about it?”

  “I had spiders attached—”

  “Without the spiders you wouldn’t have acted. You might have complained a little, but you wouldn’t have acted. You would have been hampered by hypocrisy, because the Goachica gave you two buffalo for your Things four times a year. You didn’t need to eat those animals, but you were happy to have them killed for you.”

  Gunnhild grunted, but had no clever reply.

  How does he know this stuff? thought Finnbogi.

  “We kill animals as we want,” explained Beaver Man, “and humans are animals. With most of the predators killed off by our an
cestors, there are too many humans. They need to be culled for the good of the world.”

  Up ahead, in a departure from the normal hanging from hands, a man was pinned by his hands and feet to a large boulder, which was in turn balanced precariously on a tower of crumbly rock five paces above the valley floor. He was watching their approach, eyes wide and neck sinews taut.

  “So,” said Beaver Man, “there is nothing wrong with doing this.”

  The Badlander chief ran up the side of the rock tower and powered a two-footed kick into the boulder that held the captive. He came down headfirst, and Finnbogi thought for a thrilling moment that he might be seriously hurt, but he sprang on his hands, launched himself back onto his feet and leapt nimbly away as the rock with the man attached to it wobbled then tottered over and rolled off the tower onto the valley floor with a crunching bang.

  The man screamed and screamed some more, as well he might. The rock had come to rest so that he was uppermost, but while rolling from its perch, the weighty boulder had mulched one arm and shoulder into a flapping pulp. Beaver Man danced up to the boulder and looked into the screaming man’s eyes with all the interest and compassion of a child investigating a hole in a log. Then, with a strength that matched Chogolisa Earthquake’s, he rolled the large stone over to crush the hapless captive’s head.

  The screaming stopped.

  “The point being,” Beaver Man continued, walking on as if he’d paused to sniff a flower, “is that we don’t just do the world a service by killing people. We do ourselves a service, in two ways. The first, as with that fellow just now, is entertainment. Humans have always enjoyed killing each other in a variety of horrible ways, haven’t we, Sofi Tornado?”

  The Owsla captain said nothing.

  “Do you agree, Sofi Tornado?” said Chapa Wangwa, following along behind. “Answer, or spider.”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. So. In Calnia and the Badlands, people like killing people and we’re unashamed about it. We’re going to kill most or all of you for our entertainment, for example, because you’re so interesting. Our less interesting guests don’t get to die in a fun way. They die slowly. That brings us to the second service we’re doing for ourselves, although this one benefits the greater world, too. You’ll see it soon.”