The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  “Spread out,” said Sofi.

  The Badlanders’ nudity was distracting and not in a good way. It just made them look all the odder because they were all so freakishly similar, like figures carved by the same carpenter. Sitsi guessed they must be brothers, three sets of triplets perhaps or maybe even all born at the same time. They walked with a swing, smiling confidently. They looked more like cheery strangers about to spark an unwelcome conversation than warriors about to attack.

  Then they sprang; one at Paloma, one at Luby, two at Sofi.

  Sitsi had a millionth of a heartbeat to be offended that they’d ignored her, presumably because she was the smallest, before shock almost brought her to a standstill.

  The two that attacked Sofi took her down. The Badlanders grabbed the arms of the best warrior in the world, hooked their feet under hers, and threw her to the ground.

  Each attacker kept hold of one of Sofi’s wrists with one hand and raised the other in a fist to drive down into her face.

  Sitsi didn’t have time to see how Paloma and Luby were getting on. She leapt at Sofi’s nearest Badlander, iron knife flashing, and stabbed him through the back of his neck.

  He stopped punching Sofi but, instead of falling to the ground and dying like any other reasonable human, he swung his arm across in a blur, grabbed Sitsi by her neck and stood, lifting her off her feet.

  Sitsi flailed uselessly. She couldn’t kick him, she couldn’t hit him with any strength. And she couldn’t breathe.

  The Badlander smiled and tightened his grip.

  Ayanna watched from the back rail of the Plains Sprinter alongside Gunnhild, Bodil and the two children. Yoki Choppa was over to one side, hunched over his smoking alchemical bowl. Below them the row of wolves loped along, seemingly resigned to their fate now, or at least no longer snarling and barking.

  The empress gasped as Sofi was knocked down, held and punched by two Badlanders. That should have been impossible. Sitsi tried to rescue her and was taken out immediately by one of Sofi’s attackers. Ah, thought Ayanna, Sofi will spring up now. But no. Her attacker kept her pinned, punching her face again and again.

  Luby Zephyr was wrestling with one of them on the ground and Paloma was in a running, leaping, fist fight with another.

  The Wootah and Chogolisa Earthquake were faring better. They were in a tight triangle. At the front was Chogolisa, armed with a log. On the left were Erik with his club and Thyri with her blade, and on the right were Wulf with his hammer and Keef with his long axe. The Badlanders were running at them again and again and retreating again and again.

  One of the naked men tried to break the stand-off by leaping over Chogolisa’s swinging log, but Keef caught him in the stomach on his axe’s pointed end, then wrenched the weapon free as the Badlander fell.

  The Badlander landed on his feet and kept coming, but guts flopped out of his opened stomach, tangled with his legs and he went down.

  Ayanna looked back to her women, caught a glimpse of Paloma leaping into a tree followed by a Badlander, but then the Plains Strider rounded a corner and they were out of sight.

  Ayanna looked about herself. Finnbogi was flapping his arms at the prow, playing pigeon. Sassa was next to him, staring ahead and telling him where to go. Bodil and Gunnhild were gawping over the back rail. Ottar and Freydis had returned to the places that Erik had assigned them on either side, halfway up the craft. The boy was fussing over his two racoon cubs. Freydis was leaning over the rail, watching the world go by, playing with her hair and singing.

  Why had she wanted them dead? These were not destroyers of the world, and they certainly weren’t part of some Badlands plot. If she hadn’t sent her Owsla to kill these honourable innocents, then surely Chippaminka wouldn’t have been able to enchant them all? Perhaps the Wootah were loved by the gods, as the Goachica had believed, and all that had gone wrong for Calnia was a punishment from those gods for attacking them? She should have stopped when her lover and Calnian’s father Kimaman had been killed. That should have been sign enough.

  She turned to Yoki Choppa, but Yoki Choppa had gone. Ayanna looked about the Plains Strider. The strange little warlock was nowhere to be seen.

  Sofi dodged and dodged. Innowak knew how they’d taken her down, but she could hear the punches coming and she could avoid them, for now at least. Sitsi ran in, which took one attacker away, but the other had managed to pin Sofi’s arms with his legs, and, annoyingly, he was stronger than she was and much, much heavier than a man his size should have been.

  She writhed and convulsed but could not shift his bulk. Behind the man pinning her she could see her other attacker choking Sitsi to death. She had to get free.

  In her frustration, she misjudged one of his punches and it whacked her chin. That shocked her enough to mistime the next dodge, so his punch cracked into her temple. She avoided two more, but she was slowed and out of synch. A blow landed on her forehead. The pain blinded her for a moment and another punch cracked into her chin.

  Then a hand closed around her throat and began to squeeze. Her arms were pinned! She tried to buck but he was too heavy. She tried to hook him with her legs but he was too far forward.

  Sparks danced in her eyes and her thoughts began to cloud. She was in trouble.

  Erik looked at the grinning Badlander with his bighorn horns. How come all these Badlander dicks grin so much? he wondered.

  “Hold the formation!” cried Wulf.

  Keef had gutted one and Chogolisa had broken another’s legs with her log, but there were three more and Erik did not like the look of this bighorn bastard.

  As if to confirm his worries, Bighorn charged, directly at Erik. He swung his club but Bighorn dived under its arc and struck him, headfirst, in the gut.

  The next moment he was lying on the ground. Bighorn had him gripped by the shirt and was pulling his head back for a butt that Erik did not want to receive. Bighorn looked him in the eye as if to savour the moment and, because he was a dreadful Badland bastard, grinned at him.

  There was a crack! Bighorn’s grin melted as his eyes crossed to look at the fissure that had opened up down the centre of his bighorn skull.

  “Bighorn, meet my friend from the age of iron!” cried Wulf the Fat, swinging Thunderbolt for a second blow.

  Luby Zephyr swung her moon blades but the Badlander avoided them, grabbed her arms, and they were down, rolling and wrestling. She drove her palm into his chin, a killer move on anyone else, but he barely noticed it. She gouged his eye but he seemed to enjoy it. He countered every attack. He was stronger and faster and slippery as a greased fish and she was fucked.

  She struggled up. If she could get just a few paces away, to the trees, she’d be able to use her stealth and disappear. But he grabbed one of her feet and she was down again and then he was on her back. He took her head in his hands and there was nothing she could do. Nothing.

  Fuck, she thought.

  He twisted. Her neck broke.

  She could still see. She knew she wasn’t breathing and she knew she was going to die. One good thing about having your spine severed so high up, she thought, was that there was no pain.

  She could see the Badlander punching Sofi, she could see the other one strangling Sitsi.

  Was this the end of the Owsla, the death of her little gang?

  All those times in the Plaza of Innowak when they’d killed other groups of warriors, all of those had seemed like a game, as if only the Owsla were real and the others had all been created purely to entertain the crowd. Never for a second had she considered the possibility that her group might be slaughtered by another.

  But there you go. She guessed it had to happen to everyone eventually.

  As the world slipped peacefully away, she wondered if her parents would ever learn how she died and what they would say to their friends. They’d probably be embarrassed.

  Ayanna was distracted from her vigil at the back rail of the Plains Sprinter by Ottar the Moaner, speaking emphatically but unintelligi
bly to his sister. Freydis the Annoying’s mouth was ever wider, then tears sprang in her eyes and she shook with sobs. Ottar, too, began crying.

  Sassa and Finnbogi were busy controlling the craft and Bodil and Gunnhild, watching over the back rail, hadn’t heard the children.

  Carrying Calnian in one arm, Ayanna walked over to Freydis. It was easier to move about now the craft was travelling more slowly.

  “What’s wrong, little girl?” she asked.

  Freydis sniffed and looked up at her, her blue eyes shining with tears. “Something sad has happened,” she said.

  Ayanna felt a sob rise in her own throat. She squatted and lifted her spare arm. “Come here,” she said, “both of you.”

  Ottar and Freydis ran in and hugged her. They were slight things; she could feel their ribs rising and falling as they sobbed with their hot little bodies pressed against her and Calnian. They weren’t alien world destroyers. They were babies, not much older than her own, and they’d been through such horrors and it was all Ayanna’s fault.

  She wondered what the sad thing was. She didn’t want to know just yet. She held the children and let her own tears fall onto Freydis’s golden head.

  Sofi shook her head and opened her eyes. The naked Badlander was smiling at her, one fist raised. She struggled, but to no avail. The man looked down his torso, then back to her with an even bigger smile, waggling his eyebrows as if to say take a look at that. Sofi looked down and saw that he had a large, twitching erection.

  Oh, that was too much.

  She put all her strength into bucking him off, but he only smiled all the wider. He pulled his fist back.

  A shadow flashed over them. She heard a pouf! noise. The Badlander flailed and then he was off her, screaming and tearing bloodily at his own face.

  Sofi leapt up to see Yoki Choppa reloading a blowpipe with something from his alchemical bowl, eyes and pout focused on his task like a man who’s stopped in the street to refasten the fiddly clasp of a bracelet.

  A Badlander came at him from behind. Sofi ran but she wasn’t going to make it in time.

  The warlock ducked the punch without turning or changing his expression, raised his pipe and blew powder into his attacker’s face. The Badlander yelped and fell. Yoki Choppa headed for where one of Sofi’s original attackers was sitting on Sitsi.

  “Sofi! I’m going to do the dive and trip!” Paloma Pronghorn was running towards her, pursued by a Badlander. The speedy Owsla fell to the ground. The pursuing Badlander tripped over her and stumbled. Sofi swung her axe into his temple and he toppled.

  “Make sure he’s dead, Paloma!” Sofi had to check on the others.

  The man who’d been on Sitsi was screaming and clawing at his face after Yoki Choppa’s attentions. Sitsi was climbing to her feet.

  Ten paces away, Wulf the Fat was hammering the life out of what looked like the last of the Badlander Owsla.

  The Badlander who’d been on her was lying prone, still alive, judging by the bubbles coming up through the mess, but he’d clawed his own eyes out and torn off his nose.

  Where was Luby Zephyr?

  Sofi found her, face down in a bed of yellow and blue flowers.

  “Luby?” she called softly, “Luby?”

  She couldn’t hear breathing or a beating heart. She gripped her friend by the shoulders and gently turned her over. Luby’s head flopped to the side. Her neck was broken. Her eyes were shining but she was smiling, as if she’d died contented.

  The captain of the Owsla felt a great ball of grief welling in her gut. She shook her head, pushed her grief back down, closed her friend’s eyes and jumped up.

  “Sitsi?” she called.

  “I’m okay,” the wide-eyed archer said hoarsely. “He could have killed me, but he was taking his time … It was really horrible, but I’m okay. Thank you, Yoki Choppa.”

  The warlock shrugged.

  Sofi owed her life to him, too, but she’d thank him later. “Is anyone badly injured? Is there anyone who can’t run?”

  “We’re fine over here,” called Wulf.

  “Chogolisa, carry Luby. Paloma, help the slowest. The rest of you, run after the Plains Sprinter, fast as you can but do pace yourselves.” She listened for a moment, “We’ll need to run for about two miles. If you become exhausted—”

  She was interrupted by the screaming roar of a lizard king ripping through the air. There was another, then another. They were much closer than she would have liked.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  Lizard Kings

  Two miles later, Sofi Tornado sat at the side of the Plains Strider with the dead Luby Zephyr’s head on her lap, listening to the lizard kings gallop ever closer.

  “We’re coming for you!” It was Beaver Man, riding one of the monsters. The bastard knew she could hear him. “I was seriously considering letting all of you live. You amuse me, and so few things do these days. But you killed my boys. Why couldn’t you just stop and surrender? Now my pets are going to eat you. Apart from you, Sofi. I’m going to keep you.”

  His goading didn’t affect Sofi, other than to inform her that he was too badly injured to keep up with his monsters on foot. He wasn’t the type of man who’d ride when he could run heroically out in front, and, had he been able to, he certainly would have fought with his Owsla.

  Good. She looked down at Luby, beautiful and pale. Sofi was going to kill Beaver Man or die trying. His injuries should make it easier. She was not going to be noble about it.

  Sitsi reckoned they were twenty miles from the Black Mountains. The lizard kings were half a mile behind, gaining, and would be on them well before they reached safety. Sofi couldn’t hear the cat cavalry coming, which probably meant Rappa Hoga had kept his word. But the lizard kings were enough. She had a few plans. She hadn’t decided which one to use. They all involved sacrifice.

  She sighed, lowered Luby’s head gently onto the deck, and stood.

  The buffalo road that led towards the Black Mountains was crossing a broad valley towards a notch in a low but steep bluff. A herd of buffalo which had been following the road was galloping away southwards. To the north, dozens of geese were flying away in arrowhead formations and more pronghorns than Sofi had ever seen in one place before were bounding off up the valley.

  The valley floor itself was flat, grassy and marshy in places, a break from the lumpy and wooded landscape that they’d been passing through. Fingers of low white cloud reached across the blue sky. They were past the Ocean of Grass. Despite the situation, Sofi was relieved. She’d seen enough prairie to last ten lifetimes.

  Still, she’d prefer any amount of soul-sucking savannah to the sight of the six super-lizards cresting the ridge behind them. On the upside, Beaver Man had brought only six of the twelve lizards. On the downside, from what Luby had told her about their imperviousness, he’d need only one.

  She walked to the prow. Erik, at the back rail now, turned and opened his mouth to say something—presumably about staying where she was to keep the trim perfect and maintain optimum speed—but he saw the look on her face and stayed quiet.

  Sassa Lipchewer was still directing Finnbogi and doing a good job of it. Up ahead, the flock of pigeons flapped on. The constant thin rain of crap tumbling to the ground made them look like a low, vibrating cloud. How, Sofi wondered, did the lower birds avoid being shat on by the birds above? Maybe they didn’t.

  “How’s he doing?” she asked Sassa.

  “He’s tired but I think he’ll make it. I can’t be sure. I don’t have much experience of young men controlling millions of pigeons.”

  “He’s doing well.”

  “He is. And …?” The Wootah woman’s hand was on her stomach, her eyes wide. Sofi could hear the growing child’s heartbeat, so fast that it would have been alarming if she hadn’t heard exactly the same rapid beat in women every day in the city of Calnia. This one sounded no different. It was another life for Sofi to save.

  She shook her
head. How had she gone in such a short time from a taker of lives to a saver of lives? It was a lot more difficult and not nearly as much fun.

  “What’s wrong?” Sassa asked.

  “All is fine with you. I’ll tell you if that changes, but, like I said, it won’t. Assuming you’re not eaten by a lizard king.”

  “I’m sorry about Luby.” The Wootah woman sounded sincere.

  “So am I.”

  Sofi walked back down the Plains Strider, preparing herself. The plan she had which was most certain to take down the lizard kings involved all of the Owsla dying. Other, shakier plans might kill only two of three of them. Every single plan she could come up with was likely to kill herself. It was annoying. Interested as she was to see what happened in the next life, she was keen to make more of this one first.

  She stood above the lolloping wolves. The animals weren’t tired, according to Erik. Like everything else in the Badlands, it seemed, they’d been messed with alchemically and had unnatural stamina.

  “Sofi,” said Erik.

  “I’ll stop walking around now.”

  “It’s not that. I’ve managed to communicate with the spiders in the barrels. It’s easier now they’re away from the Empty Children.”

  Erik was trying to look serious, but Sofi could see he was struggling to hide a smile. He clearly thought he’d come up with something fantastic, and wanted to draw it out as long as possible.

  “They’re a lot like the bees I trained back in Lakchan territory,” he continued. “You just have to—”

  “Get to the point, Erik.” She was not in the mood for apiary.

  “Sorry. Point is, I’ve been talking to them for a while and I can be quite persuasive. You would not believe how much the spiders hate giant lizards now. They already know they’re unnatural. They say the lizard kings had their time, and now it’s over.”

  She’d hoped for something more than this. Of course, she’d considered hurling the spiders at the monsters. But even if the spiders didn’t just disperse without biting anything, which they would, the lizard kings had skin that a big man couldn’t pierce with a spear when his life depended on it. The spiders couldn’t bite through thin slices of wood.