by Angus Watson
Sofi Tornado did not like the woods one little bit.
The combination of thousands of animal noises and millions of shifting leaves reflecting all those sounds made her enhanced hearing much less effective.
To make things worse, she was sure they were being shadowed. It wasn’t humans, it wasn’t dagger-tooth cats, but something, some things to be precise, were following them up the valley while managing to stay hidden in the trees. She asked her women to investigate, but Sitsi couldn’t see them and Paloma, tearing noisily about the woods, couldn’t find a thing.
Maybe she was imagining it, she told herself. Maybe Luby’s death had knocked her senses. But she knew that was bollocks. There was something following them through the woods and she wanted to know what it was.
They camped in a clearing a few paces uphill from the river. Sofi and Wulf took first watch, with Paloma and Freydis stationed in a tree way down the valley. The idea was that they’d take it in turns to sleep and, if the Badlanders did come, Paloma would carry Freydis on her shoulders back to the rest of them. Freydis was no wimp, but Sofi was keen to toughen her up because their journey was about to get a whole lot tougher.
After a simple supper of roast prairie dog and berries, everyone apart from Sofi and Wulf, even Yoki Choppa, fell immediately into a deep sleep.
Sofi sat on a log, watching the campfire’s light dancing on the leaves, thinking about life, death and Luby Zephyr. She was still sure that something was watching from the woods, but as the night wore on she became more relaxed about it, because if it was going to attack them it probably would have done already. Could it, she wondered, be Luby’s spirit following them?
Sofi told herself off for such vapid musing and watched Wulf pace around the camp. Ayanna had died for them. So had Luby. But she couldn’t blame the Wootah. All of them had risked their lives in the escape and it was just bad luck that had killed Luby and not one of them. They’d done well. They were not nearly as useless as she’d thought, and, if Yoki Choppa was right and the boy Ottar was going to save the world, then Luby hadn’t died in vain.
Sofi sat and thought about all the times she’d spent with her friend until it was time to wake Sitsi and Keef for the next watch.
Sofi’s dream about Luby Zephyr arguing with Wulf next to a river crossing morphed into reality as she woke and realised she was listening to Paloma Pronghorn talking to a stranger.
She opened one eye. It was a short while before sunrise and the woods were brightening. Paloma and Gunnhild were standing down the hill a little, talking quietly to a man whom Sofi didn’t recognise.
The man was telling them about paths washed away in the recent storms which had been the worst that anyone could remember. “They’ve got it worse out west, though, much, much worse,” he said.
Paloma told him that they’d seen some right old weather on their travels.
“Two of the Wootah survived being picked up by a tornado,” said Gunnhild.
“Wow. Amazing you’ve made it this far.”
“You can’t break a stick in a bundle,” said Gunnhild.
“What?”
Sofi jumped up and walked over.
“Hello. You’re Sofi Tornado,” said the man. It was more or an accusation than a question. He spoke the universal tongue in the accent-free, confident tones of someone who, like Sofi, did no proper work. He was short, dressed in a light-green smock and a dark-green skirt, and his hair was receding from a big, bulbous head.
“I am,” she replied.
“I’ve been sent to meet you. I’m Klippsta. Welcome to the Black Mountains from the Green tribe.” He sounded about as welcoming as a misanthropic hermit receiving the third surprise visitor that day.
“How did you know we were coming? How do you know my name?” Sofi asked.
“Tatinka Buffalo knew you were coming, I don’t know how. I know your name because everyone’s heard of Sofi Tornado of the Calnian Owsla. I was told to come and meet you and I was promised that you wouldn’t kill me. Will you?”
“Let’s see how it goes. Who’s Tatinka Buffalo?”
“Chief of the Green tribe and head warlock. Called Buffalo because she’s even more useful than they are. I can tell you about her on the way if you want. But please do come on now. Wake everyone up. We’ve got to get going.” He looked into the trees.
Sofi followed his gaze.
“What’s in the trees?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“So we can take our time here? Maybe a game or two of lacrosse before we head off?”
“No! I … I’d like to get home before dark, that’s all. The path goes along cliffs, it’s uneven in parts and my wife doesn’t like it when I leave her alone with the children for one night, let alone two. She’s managed to alienate both her and my parents, so we can’t get anyone else … well, I won’t bother you with my worries.”
Sofi held his gaze. “And there’s nothing else? Nothing in the woods?”
“Nothing that will trouble us in the day.”
“But you must have come here in the dark,” said Paloma.
“No. I travelled yesterday and slept nearby.”
“What are you afraid of in the dark?” asked Sofi.
Klippsta looked at his feet, but said, “Nothing. Look, it’s a beautiful journey, especially as we get higher. We should see some wonderful animals. I saw several bears with cubs on the way here. It makes sense to do it in the light.”
Sassa Lipchewer was woken by Gunnhild Kristlover poking her shoulder. “Quick, quick. We’re going now.”
“Are the Badlanders coming?” Sassa asked.
“No. Apparently there’s lots of lovely scenery to fit in before sunset.”
Sassa smiled. “Finally, a good reason to be in a hurry.”
“Constant worry is crippling but complacency is cretinous.”
When Wulf returned from his trip to the river, Sofi Tornado walked over, looking several degrees more immaculate than anyone who’d slept in the woods had any right to look.
“Wulf?” she said.
“Yup?”
“Klippsta is from the Green tribe,” she nodded her head at the stranger. The man in green was hopping about like someone who’s been ready to leave for quite some time. “They’re the tribe around here. Sitsi knows no reason to fear them. There is something that might be dangerous in the woods, however. Klippsta knows what it is, but he won’t tell me.”
“Any idea what it might be?” Wulf yawned. Sassa knew the yawn was to show how little the prospect of danger concerned him.
Sofi shook her head. “Klippsta wants us to walk to his tribe’s main settlement, a day’s walk to the north-west. He’s keen to get there before nightfall to avoid whatever it is in the woods. I think we should go with him. What do you think?”
Sassa thought her husband dealt very well with the surprise of Sofi Tornado asking his opinion. Once his eyebrows had returned to their usual level, he said:
“What are our options?”
“Stay here for ever, return to the Badlands, cross the Black Mountains without visiting the Green tribe or go to the Green tribe.”
“Let’s go to the Green tribe. I’d like to hang my hammer somewhere friendly for a couple of days and I’m sure I’m not the only one.”
“And we need to find a home for Calnian,” said Sassa.
Sofi nodded. “Right.”
“Wootah! What could go wrong?” Wulf smiled as Sassa shivered.
Chapter 6
A Chill
Walking uphill was a lot less knackering than flapping like a pigeon. Judging by the spring in the others’ steps, everyone else also felt a great deal zippier than they had the previous evening.
Finnbogi the Boggy was walking in the middle of the group, behind Bodil Gooseface and Keef the Berserker. Waterfalls splashed across the trail, stands of silver-barked trees shone in the morning sun and there were, if anything, more cheery and unafraid little birds and mammals fluttering and hopping about than ev
er before.
Despite the loveliness, a gnawing ball of unease was turning and growing in Finnbogi’s gut. There simply weren’t enough people around him. Not nearly. Who was missing? He counted everyone. They were all there, apart from Paloma Pronghorn who was off scouting. But surely there should be more; many, many more of them? He wasn’t far from panicking. There should be more of us! his mind wailed at him.
He focused on Bodil and Keef up ahead, in an attempt to calm himself. He felt a bit bad about Bodil. He’d never had that post-shag chat with her that Sassa had made him promise to have. Having thought that, his policy of avoiding the subject of their liaison by the Rock River seemed to have worked just as well, if not better, and certainly with a lot less embarrassment for everyone. Bodil had stopped hassling Finnbogi and turned her attentions to Keef. Maybe Sassa wasn’t as wise as she thought she was.
Could Bodil want to be more than friends with Keef, he wondered? Surely not. Finnbogi couldn’t imagine that she found the one-eyed, one-eared, small-headed man attractive. But what if they did get together and had a child and it had his looks and her brains?
“What are you thinking about?” asked Thyri, appearing at his side.
“Um …” He looked about. Paloma Pronghorn was leaping down some boulders up ahead. With her honey smell, beautiful, inquisitive face, wasp waist and limbs that glowed with power as if cast from dark, magic gold, Paloma was the only woman in the world more attractive than Thyri. Finnbogi wasn’t in love with her in the same way, of course, because a woman like Paloma would never look at a boy like him once, let alone twice, but that didn’t stop him from thinking … He checked himself. He couldn’t tell Thyri about his confusing lust for Paloma. He tried to clear his mind and think up something that he could tell her he was thinking about, but the terrible loneliness rushed back in. Why are there so few of us?
“Still a bit freaked after yesterday, are you?” Thyri asked kindly, rather than barking at him to answer her question.
“It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad it’s over.” Phew he thought. Maybe you get a new level of respect when you’re the life-saving, hero type and you don’t have to answer questions? Sofi Tornado answered only about one question in five that any Wootah asked her, and everyone thought she was amazing.
Yes, he thought, saving them all had ushered in a new phase. Goodbye Finnbogi the boy, hello Finn the man.
“Do you know that you’re walking like a pigeon?” asked Thyri.
“I am?”
“Yes. Like this.” Thyri puffed her chest forward, stuck her bottom out and walked heavily on her toes, poking her chin in and out as she went along. Finnbogi welcomed the invitation to look her up and down—Tor’s bollocks, Paloma might be amazing but Thyri was still breathtakingly hot—but he wasn’t sure that she should be taking the piss out of the man who’d saved them all.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will pass,” she smiled. It was the first time she’d smiled at him since they’d crossed the Water Mother. “We’re grateful for what you did, Finn. I’m grateful.”
Finn! Not Finnbogi or Boggy, she’d called him Finn!
“I only pretended to be a bird for a bit.”
Thyri laughed. “Agreed, you didn’t exactly battle an ice giant, but you did something that nobody else could have done, and we would have all been killed or caught if you hadn’t.”
“I didn’t save everyone.” Finnbogi pictured Sofi’s face at Luby’s funeral pyre the day before.
“Well, yes. Ayanna and Luby made great sacrifices and we should remember them, but you played a great part, Finn, and it will not be forgotten.”
“Thanks.”
They walked on, listening to the sounds of the wind, the animals, and Bodil, yabbering away to Keef.
Previously, Finnbogi realised, he’d seen every moment with Thyri as a desperate opportunity to impress her with his wit and opinions. But he didn’t feel the need any more. The difference was, he guessed, that he’d actually done something heroic. It wasn’t just controlling the pigeons. They all knew that he’d chosen to take on two rattlecondas unarmed to save Freydis.
He no longer needed to explain what a hero he was going to be one day. He’d shown them. He wasn’t smug. He was relieved. He felt like he’d been carrying a dozen logs for his whole life without knowing it and had just put them down. You are what you do, not what you say you’re going to do was one of a few of Gunnhild’s phrases that had always niggled at him.
They walked on, up the sun-dappled path. It was the coolest day since they’d left Hardwork. Red bluffs reared from green woods like benevolent defenders. Bighorn sheep, normal ones without Empty Children on them, picked their way across the crags. Larger birds soared lazily overhead and little plump ones fluttered among the trees.
And Thyri Treelegs was walking next to him as if it was the most normal thing in the world. His ball of fear dissolved and he felt about as happy as he could remember feeling.
They came to a rare downhill section, where the thick, overarching branches turned the path into a softly lit tunnel.
“Finn,” said Thyri.
“Um-hum?” He turned to smile at the beautiful young woman at his side.
“You’re still walking like a pigeon,” she said.
The walk was lovely, but it was also long and Sassa Lipchewer was just beginning to get footsore and a little tired of endless, idyllic wildlife-stuffed woodland when they arrived in the Green tribe’s main settlement. It happened suddenly. One moment they were trudging downhill along a wide wooded track having seen no signs of other human life all day, the next they were walking along the broad central road of the largest and busiest village that Sassa had seen.
Colourfully dressed people nodded, smiled and bade them welcome as if they were used to strangers. Indeed, the inhabitants themselves looked like an amalgamation of tribes, with skin hues ranging from darkest brown to almost as pale as Sassa herself.
“Everybody’s very brightly dressed,” said Sassa to Klippsta. “I thought because you were in green, and you’re called the Green tribe …”
Their guide laughed, a lot more cheerful it seemed now that he was out of the woods. “We wear what we want. I wear green to blend into the forest and observe animals more easily, but most do the colourful thing. About ten years ago some people moved here from an island to the south. One of them was a tailor who based his designs on the brightly coloured fish that fill the sea there. It caught on. People dressed drably when I was a boy. I prefer this.”
“But you don’t do it yourself?”
“Oh, I do, just not when I’m in the woods.”
The village, or town as Klippsta had called it, was sprawling and sparse, with skin tents and light huts dotted here and there a good way up steep valley sides. The central road ran next to a river, spanned by regular wooden bridges as richly decorated with animal carvings as the furniture back in Hardwork. Workers’ sheds were spaced along the road, and flamboyantly clad craftspeople and artisans looked up to nod at the newcomers.
Keef jogged up to join the lead group, leaving Bodil’s side for the first time that day. “Doesn’t it get cold here in winter?” he asked Klippsta.
“Very,” said Klippsta. “We’re often snowed in for a moon or two.”
“You must freeze.”
“We cover the huts in buffalo skins before it snows.”
“I suspected as much. But how do you prevent—”
“Hello!” Sassa looked down. A girl not much more than half her height was walking next to her. She wore a white hat and an orange dress with a broad white stripe across its middle.
“Where are you lot from then?” the girl asked. Like Klippsta she was dark-skinned, and spoke slowly, drawing out the words.
“We’re from two tribes far to the east,” said Sassa, “the Wootah and the Calnians.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sassa Lipchewer.”
The girl peered at her mouth. Sassa realised that she was chewing her lip
s, as ever, and stopped.
“Great name!” she smiled. “I’m Tatinka.”
“Hello, Tatinka.”
“So why have you come such a long way west?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It’s half a mile to Manchinga’s Plaza. Why don’t you tell me as much as you can before we get there?” Tatinka beamed up at her girlishly. Despite her size and her merry smile, there was an authority about her. Sassa felt agreeably compelled to tell Tatinka everything.
“All right. It began early one morning back in Hardwork I suppose, with two columns of smoke …”
Sitsi Kestrel liked the Green tribe town. It was more spaced out and less planned than Calnia and there were no walls. That suggested both a less dictatorial ruling class and a freedom from fear of attack, which tallied satisfyingly with what Klippsta had told her earlier.
She’d quizzed Klippsta for a long while on the walk up into the Black Mountains and felt that she knew, if not as much about the town and the tribe as was possible, then certainly as much as Klippsta was happy to tell her. She’d been glad to hear that Tatinka Buffalo was still chief. Tales of the woman’s intelligence and kindness had reached Calnia.
They walked up to an area a little way from any huts or tents that Sitsi guessed must be Manchinga’s Plaza. Manchinga was the Green tribe’s chief god, a man who’d been deified after exterminating the giant dogs that preyed on the tribe back in the mists of time. (Sitsi felt briefly guilty about the huge pack of wolves they’d unleashed on the area.) One half of the arena’s boundary was wooded, the other was a grass bank, where Sitsi assumed the spectators would sit. It was intimate and peaceful, very different from the enormous, open Plaza of Innowak where the Owsla had killed so many.
The only decoration was a carving of a giant dog with a large, plain but well-made chair at its base. It was a chief’s seat, if Sitsi had ever seen one, but there was no chief to be seen.
She looked around, suddenly nervous. Why had they been brought to an arena? She pictured Beaver Man walking from the trees, clapping sarcastically. Sofi was assessing the surroundings, too. Judging by her narrow eyes and tight lips, she was as wary as Sitsi.