by Angus Watson
Down on the stone, Nam Cigam danced up to the freed white bear, waving three small inflated bladders on the end of his goading stick. The reverser warlock was naked apart from a large hat made of honeycomb, the type that mothers of the bride wore on their daughter’s wedding day. The animal raised a surly paw but Nam Cigam kissed the bear’s nose and it shambled away, towards the centre of the arena and Sofi Tornado.
Tansy licked her lips. The Calnian Owsla captain looked good. Her mostly exposed limbs and torso shone with health and power and, if anything, she looked even stronger and more vital than she had during her journey across the Ocean of Grass. Tansy hated to admit it, but Sofi would be a great love match for her crush, Rappa Hoga. It would probably happen. The best warriors that the Plains Strider missions captured were always asked to become Badlanders, and, so far, every warrior who’d been asked to join had done so eventually. It made sense, given the horrific alternative.
Down in the arena, the bear reared onto two legs to stand more than twice Sofi’s height, and lunged at her. The Calnian dodged one paw swipe, rolled under another, and chopped her long blade into the back of the beast’s leg. The bear fell, Sofi jumped onto its back, leapt again and swung the blade two-handed to sever its head.
Tansy had expected the noble Owsla captain to spare the bear’s life. She was a little disappointed that she hadn’t.
The Calnian lifted the huge carnivore’s head above her own and turned, showing it to the crowd as blood showered down, splashing off her face and shoulders and running down her body.
Tansy was one of the few who whooped her appreciation. A lot of people clapped politely but most looked on in various expressions of surprised disappointment. They didn’t like to see the captives win. Tansy didn’t mind. She was there to see stylish fighting, not Badland-boosting victories.
Wulf the Fat, the Wootah man, walked towards the middle to take Sofi’s place. This time, Tansy thought, it was a dead cert for the bear, which was a shame. Tansy might like a stylish kill, but she also liked to see the hot men win. The Wootah man, in his weird way, was almost as gorgeous as Rappa Hoga.
The two captives met. Sofi spoke while Wulf nodded. Whatever advice she was giving him, surely it couldn’t help? Sofi tried to hand the big man her extraordinary blade, but he hefted his hammer and shook his head. It, too, was a fascinating weapon, by far the largest lump of iron Tansy had ever seen, but what use could it be against a white bear?
Wulf reached the centre and stood.
The second white bear was released.
This time Nam Cigam followed, tugging at the bear’s tail. The giant animal turned its head a few times to roar at the warlock, but, for reasons that Tansy couldn’t fathom, didn’t maul him to death.
The bear reached Wulf. Nam Cigam danced away.
The bear reared, towering above the comparatively tiny human.
Wulf charged, swinging his hammer for the bear’s knee. A sensible tactic, thought Tansy, but the bear countered by falling forwards and pinning the man under its great weight, one paw on each of his shoulders. It wasn’t the most sophisticated move, but it looked like a winner.
Wulf roared and tried to pull free, but it was no use. The bear sniffed his face, licked it, then opened its mouth wide, dripping saliva onto its victim.
Finnbogi the Boggy and everyone else waited for Sofi and Wulf’s safe return. Everyone else apart from Yoki Choppa, Ottar the Moaner and Freydis the Annoying, that was. The warlock was over by the fire, teaching the children how to cook.
At first Finnbogi snorted dismissively at their lack of respect, doing something so mundane at a time of great worry, but then he realised that diverting one’s mind made a lot more sense than standing around, especially for the children. He wished people would get around to coming up with an escape plan, though. Maybe they already had, and he just wasn’t Hird enough to be part of it?
“Boo!” said a voice. Finnbogi jumped and turned. Erik the Angry was grinning at him.
“Wow!” Finnbogi marvelled. “How did you creep up on me like that?”
“I don’t really know how I do it, to be honest,” said Erik. “I picked it up after spending far too much time hanging out with Red Fox Three.”
“Who?”
“A fox I used to know.”
“Right.” How could such a strange man be his dad, Finnbogi wondered.
“Maybe I can teach you. Let’s start with hiding in plain sight. I’ll see if I can work out how I do it.” Erik took a couple of paces away, stood by the tent and seemed to settle into himself, then settle into the scenery.
Finnbogi looked away, then looked back. He could see Erik, but only because he knew he was there. It was extraordinary. He had blended into the background exactly as the coyotes on the Ocean of Grass had done, only visible when they moved.
“You come over here and watch,” said Finnbogi. “I’ll try it.”
Erik nodded and Finnbogi stood by the tent. He pulled his shoulders back and tilted his head, feeling a little silly but somehow knowing it was the right thing to do.
“Can you still see me?” he asked.
“If anything, you’re drawing more attention to yourself by standing like such a wonk,” said Erik.
“Oh. I guess I’ll never get it.”
“We become experts in what we repeatedly do,” said Gunnhild Kristlover, emerging from the tent that Finnbogi had been trying to blend into. “Demonstration is the salt but practice is the—”
“They’re back!” Bodil Gooseface shouted from the other side of the camp.
Gunnhild, Erik and Finn ran over. Sofi and Wulf were walking back along the track from the east, escorted by a solitary Empty Child on a bighorn sheep. Wulf’s face was bloodied, but he seemed unharmed.
“Are you all right?” asked Sassa.
“Never mind that!”cried Keef the Berserker. “What did you fight?”
“White bear,” said Wulf.
“Wootah!” Keef spun around and jabbed his axe, presumably at an imaginary white bear. “How did you beat it?”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
“Sofi killed hers in moments. Then I had to face one alone. Things weren’t going well—it was about to bite my head off—when Nam Cigam saved me.”
“The reverser? Why?”
“Reversers do what they’re not meant to do,” said Sitsi Kestrel.
Everyone seemed to accept this but Finnbogi was sceptical. Why would a Badlander have saved Wulf’s life? Was it out of kindness, or was it to preserve him for some greater horror?
Chapter 5
Rattleconda
“We’re going to join the Badlanders, aren’t we?” asked Morningstar.
It was the day after Sofi’s fight with the white bear. Morningstar had been trying to get her alone ever since. Sofi had been avoiding her because she knew what she was going to ask.
“Not the Wootah, obviously. Us,” Morningstar added.
Sofi could hear two Empty Children on bighorn sheep coming along the track towards the camp, out of sight for now. “We’re not joining anyone,” she said.
“Rappa Hoga asked you when he took you off on your own that first night, didn’t he?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re taking the Wootah to The Meadows.”
“Why?”
“Yoki Choppa says we should.”
Morningstar turned around. The nearest person was Ottar the Moaner, twenty paces away, throwing stones in the air and trying to catch them in his mouth. A pebble bounced off his forehead and he yelped, then threw another stone. His two young racoons were yickering and trying to bite his feet.
“There’s no doubt,” said Morningstar, “that he’s the guy to take on a force that’s destroying the world. He’ll be much more useful than Beaver Man and his Owsla, his cat cavalry, his giant sledges, his vast army and his blood-fuelled monsters, right?”
“Yoki Choppa says the boy is required.”
“And you believe that?”
&n
bsp; “He believes it and that will do.”
“So what are we going to do? Walk out of here?”
“We’ll escape.”
“How?”
Sofi shrugged. The actual method of escape was a serious flaw in her plan. She’d gone over the possibilities again and again, and all seemed to end in failure. Being shipped a few hundred miles nearer their goal by the Plains Strider had been useful, but she didn’t, unfortunately, know how they were going to get away.
Morningstar pointed at the beeba spider box on her neck. “They have us very neatly trapped, Sofi. Paloma may have survived her bites, but she still hasn’t recovered fully and we might not be so resilient. We can join the Badlanders or we can die in their arena. They’ve got things that could kill us, Sofi, even us. What if they’d sent you in against the squatch? Maybe you or Chogolisa could take a squatch, but Paloma, Sitsi or I would be fucked. And they’ve got worse. Yoki Choppa’s meddling has already killed Talisa White-tail. What are you going to do? Wait until another of us dies?”
Sofi shook her head.
“They’ve got us. There’s no shame. We’ve been beaten. It happens. We have to make the most of the stones that we’ve thrown. We have to join them.”
“We don’t have to.”
“It’s that or death. Please just promise me you’ll think about it.”
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Finnbogi the Boggy asked Erik the Angry.
With Chapa Wangwa’s burn on his hand still smarting as a reminder not to communicate with any animals, Erik was still trying to teach animal stealth to his son. Finnbogi was not getting it, at all. Either he was a bad pupil or Erik was a bad teacher, or both. All they’d managed to do so far was irritate each other.
“They’re probably building up the courage to ask you for a threesome,” said Erik.
Finnbogi was torn between laughing and thinking that that was disgusting, coming from his dad. “Look at how they’re looking at Ottar,” he said, trying not to picture a threesome with Sofi and Morningstar, for the moment anyway. “They’re going to desert us.”
“They’ve come this far. Morningstar tried to step in for you at the waterfall.”
“She explained that. She said I wasn’t to think for a second that she cared about me. She was looking for a chance to escape.”
“They act meaner than they are. And, anyway, Morningstar isn’t in charge. Sofi would never leave us.”
“They’d be much better off without us. Surely they know that?”
“We’re not completely useless,” said Erik. “We’ll contribute to the escape and we’ll all go together.”
“Really, how? How’s Bjarni going to get away?”
Both men looked over to where Bjarni was lying in the sun. Finnbogi still believed he was going to get better, but Yoki Choppa had said he should already be dead.
“I haven’t quite got that part sorted out yet, son. You’re meant to be clever, Finnbogi, why don’t you think about it and see if you can come up with something?”
Finnbogi thought and thought about defeating the beeba spiders and escaping the Badlands. He kept thinking he’d got it, but then always realised that his plans had fatal flaws; literally fatal.
He was mulling over the problem the following morning over a breakfast of buffalo and duck eggs when Chapa Wangwa reappeared with his warrior and Empty Child retinue.
“Finnbogi the Boggy and Freydis the Annoying! Follow me,” he said.
“You can call me Finn …” was all that Finnbogi could think of saying as a sudden tornado in his gut threatened to return his buffalo and eggs to the outside world. Him and Freydis?
“Where are you taking them?” demanded Wulf the Fat.
“Back to the arena, where they will fight for their lives. They are unlikely to be as lucky as you because Nam Cigam won’t be there this time.”
Now Finnbogi was certain it was a dream. He looked round. Sassa looked stunned, Gunnhild was aghast. The Wootah men plus Thyri and most of the Owsla were advancing on Chapa Wangwa. Only Morningstar seemed unconcerned, perched on a rock spur, daintily eating a roast bird’s leg and watching calmly.
“Keep back everyone,” Finnbogi heard himself say, “I’m sure we’ll be fine. Don’t get yourselves killed.”
“The boy is right. Stand back or the beeba spiders will bite,” threatened Chapa Wangwa.
“Why don’t you take warriors?” asked Sofi Tornado.
“You and Wulf were interesting in the arena. However, Badlanders like a Badlander victory, so that is what they will see today.”
“You will not take them,” Gunnhild Kristlover stepped up.
“It’s okay, Gunnhild,” Finnbogi had no idea where this bravery was coming from. “Don’t get yourself bitten. Where there’s life there’s hope. I’ll look after Freydis and we’ll be fine. Thyri’s trained me.”
“Don’t tell them that, you dope,” said Thyri. “And don’t die.”
“We’re going now,” said Chapa Wangwa, but he waited—smiling as though the entertainment had already begun—while Finnbogi and Freydis hugged all the Wootah, plus Sitsi Kestrel, Paloma Pronghorn and Chogolisa Earthquake. When he hugged Thyri, Finnbogi went in too hard, their neck boxes banged and the two spiders in Finnbogi’s went wild. Thyri’s must have done the same because she jumped away as if she’d been stung.
It wasn’t the perfect final parting from the girl who should have been his true love.
Morningstar paused between bites of bird and looked at them. Finnbogi thought she might bid them well in the fight to come, but he was wrong. She looked away and got on with her breakfast.
Sofi Tornado wasn’t much more effusive.
“Good luck,” she said.
Finally, he and Freydis approached Bjarni Chickenhead.
“Goodbye, Bjarni.”
Finnbogi thought for a moment that he had died, but, without opening his eyes, he said, “Kick their arses until their arses fall off. Then stamp on their arses.” It was the most he’d said since their arrival.
The last person they tried to bid farewell to was Ottar the Moaner. He was sitting on a patch of bare rock, using a stick to annoy a colony of ants trotting in and out of a hole.
The boy looked up blankly, then looked down and didn’t look up again, even though Freydis said his name a dozen times.
Finnbogi took Freydis’s hand and they followed the Badlanders east, towards the arena. Finnbogi turned to wave goodbye, but their people were already out of sight.
The path led along the main rock wall that comprised the edge of the Badlands massif. They walked up tight gullies and through narrow gaps in the rock wall itself and across open grassland. Animals, as usual, abounded. From one yellow outcrop a pair of coyotes watched them pass.
They reached the zone where unfortunates hung from red-banded, blood-stained rock faces, bleeding into the ground. There were more of them than before. He recognised the three men and one woman from the Popeye tribe who’d been on the Plains Strider. They were hung in a row. Finnbogi wondered if it was better to be with your friends in such a situation. The woman, Sandea, moaned and moved as they approached. Freydis hadn’t noticed them. Finnbogi thought about drawing her attention to them, and considered yelling hello. But what would that achieve? He walked on. He had his own problems.
Finnbogi had expected this, he’d known it was coming, but he really, really had not expected it to be him. He was, however, ready. He’d been training regularly, he felt leaner and stronger, and he’d bested a warrior when the Badlanders had snatched them. Okay, so she’d been winning and maybe he’d been lucky with that axe blow, but maybe he’d be lucky again? Was it possible that he’d been chosen because they’d seen him fight and liked his skills?
Although that didn’t explain Freydis. He certainly hadn’t expected her to be chosen. He guessed it didn’t matter. It would have happened sooner or later and, of course, you died when you died …
“Do you think I should ask for a weapon?” a
sked Freydis, as if she was asking whether there might be maple sugar for tea. It was the first time she’d ever asked Finnbogi for advice. “Only if I don’t have one I’ll go into a children’s Hall, but if I do, I might go to Valhalla or another Hall.”
“I think you should ask for a weapon. Then we’ll end up in the same place.”
“I’d like that, Finnbogi the Boggy, but how will Ottar know we’re there?”
“You know him. He’ll find us.”
“Yes. I suppose he will.”
Finnbogi had imagined a cheering crowd of thousands, perhaps with a large gang of attractive women in the front row who would jeer him at first, then cheer maniacally as he began to win against the odds, perhaps ripping their clothes off in a lustful frenzy of hero-worship when he finally triumphed.
Instead, there were nine warrior types at the far end of the arena sitting next to Beaver Man, and perhaps thirty other men and women dotted about the arena seats, talking among themselves and paying very little attention to the two Wootah.
When Finnbogi had been about ten, Gunnhild had forced him to join the younger children in a play about Tor and Loakie’s journey to the land of the giants. She’d wanted someone larger than the rest of the cast to play the main giant. They’d learned all the words and practised for weeks. On the night of the performance, they’d expected every Hardworker to come and watch, so they’d filled half of Olaf’s Square with benches, seats and even logs from all over Hardwork. Finnbogi had been terrified that he would fluff the whole thing, but also excited that he might be sensational, seen in a new exotic and heroic light by everyone. In the end, though, only the parents of the children involved had turned up, half filling the front two rows of fifteen rows of seats.
This felt like that. He’d been nervous that there would be lots of people watching, and now he was disappointed that there weren’t. If he was going to fight to the death in front of a crowd—or be tortured to death or whatever the Hel was going to happen—then Finnbogi wanted a capacity crowd of baying enthusiasts, plus the hot women, not a smattering of people who looked like they wanted to be somewhere else.