by Angus Watson
“Right, everyone,” said Bodil. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this, but Keef thinks I should. I’m pregnant.”
Bodil and Keef had shagged for the first time twelve days before, Sassa calculated. So if Keef had got her pregnant, there was no way she could know it. Unless something had happened that Sassa didn’t know about, and she was certain that it hadn’t, then Bodil had had sex with only one other person, and that person must be the father.
Keef seemed bright, but since he never listened to anybody else, he actually knew very little about anything he wasn’t directly involved in. Sassa wouldn’t put it past him to be totally ignorant about the mechanisms and timescales of child creation. And Bodil was Bodil. If there was a couple who could think that a woman was already showing the signs of a child conceived just a few days before, it was them.
Judging by the heartbeat’s pause before the hearty congratulations, everyone else was doing the same sums as Sassa. And, like Sassa, they were all glancing at Finn the Deep.
“Finn the Deep Red!” she whispered to Wulf.
He raised an admonishing eyebrow at her and it was her turn to blush. To be told off for taking a situation too lightly by the man whose new delight was spotting penis-shaped rocks really was something.
Eagle’s Bluff was a collection of stepped, flat-topped mountains standing stark from the plain. Its slopes were bands of grassy ridge and pale rock, tinged gold by the rising sun. Less smoke than before, but still more than you’d expect from domestic fires, was snaking up into the blue from the nearest bluff.
As soon as the top of the bluff came into view, Sitsi Kestrel saw what she’d been dreading. “It’s all burned,” she said. “The whole town.”
The wood and leather buildings of Eagle’s Bluff were, Sitsi had heard, up to six storeys high, crammed into higgledy-piggledy streets and famed for their complicated designs and intricate carving. Well, they weren’t any more. The only things standing now were jagged, burned timbers.
“There’s a camp on the prairie,” she said a little while later, when the collection of tents around the foot of the bluff came into sight. There was someone heading towards them from it. For a while Sitsi was confused because it looked like two wolves pulling a man along behind them. Then it turned out to be exactly that.
Two large, happy wolves bounded towards them, dragging a triangular sledge. The passenger was sitting high on a frame built up from the base, so that his seated bottom was the height of the wolves’ backs. It meant that he could see much further than the standard sledge rider, and he didn’t have to sit slanting backwards, feet up, bum down, which Sitsi had always thought looked very uncomfortable.
The sledge swung in an arc as it neared, the rider apparently directing the wolves with a rope attached to their leather collars. He wasn’t bumping around as much as he should have been, because the frame was made of bowed, springy wood that absorbed some of the impact from the lumpy ground.
It was, Sitsi had to admit, quite a clever contraption.
“Hello, I am Lesta Heppul,” said the rider, pulling the wolves to a halt using the rope. He was maybe ten years older than Erik. His crown was bald, his face was shaved or plucked, but a curtain of straight, black hair ran from ear to ear around the back of his head. He wore a robe of brightly coloured feathers and oversized leather shoes with pointed ends.
“I’m afraid you’ve come at a terrible time.” He didn’t sound too upset, more like a busy man announcing a vexatious inconvenience.
“What happened?” asked Sofi.
“The town burned down. Every single bit of it. Dozens killed, maybe hundreds. We’ll never know. Probably not hundreds. Maybe not even dozens. I think most people got away. You’ve got to be pretty thick to be killed in a fire, really. Unless you were unlucky enough to be exactly where the bolts of lightning struck. Or in one of those silly towers, I suppose.
“Bolts plural?”
“Strangest thing. A storm hit, two nights ago. There was no rain, only lightning and lots of it, all focused on our proud settlement of keen minds and learned souls. I saw at least five bolts strike and heard many more. Even my little hut is gone. Very annoying.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Sofi, “We are—”
“Oh, I know who you are,” interrupted Lesta. “You five,” he nodded towards Sofi, “are Calnians, part of their Owsla and one warlock. I’m afraid I don’t know who you are, my dear warlock, but you,” he pointed at the women, “are Sofi Tornado, Chogolisa Earthquake, Sitsi Kestrel, and …” he looked at Paloma’s legs “… a runner by your thighs and calves … of course, Paloma Pronghorn. Where are the rest of you? You’re meant to travel as an inseparable ten, a band of sisters whom no force could—”
“It is just us,” said Sofi.
“I see.” Lesta Heppul nodded. “I’m sorry. Of course it’s just you. And you others … Well, you’re Weeko Fang, you’ve been here before. The rest of you are more difficult, but when you have eliminated the likely … You are Hardworkers.” He said “Hardworkers” as if it was a difficult word to pronounce.
“Wrong!” cried Keef. “We’re the Wooooo-tah!”
Sitsi smiled.
“The Woooootah?” Lesta Heppul’s brow furrowed. “I see. The Woooootah … Are you sure?”
“We used to be called Hardworkers. We’re Wootah now,” said Thyri Treelegs. “How could you know about Hardwork?”
“Oh, thank the gods of rationality. You changed your name! And why not? Wootah … I like it. It’s better than Hardworkers, that’s a horrible name. When did you change?”
“About forty days ago,” said Thyri.
“Ah, good. I couldn’t have known. And now I know before the rest of them do. Jolly good. You must excuse my excitement. Identifying people and collecting information on the tribes is my hobby, as is creating contraptions like the one I’m riding. My main work, however, lies in the movement of stars, specifically its effect on animal migration.”
He looked at the Wootah and Clanians as if expecting someone to ask him more about his work. When nobody did, he carried on. “Now, I daresay you’ve come looking for hospitality. Unfortunately, that will be impossible. Our resources are entirely stretched as it is, as I’m sure you can imagine. So, with great sadness, I have to ask you to carry on your way.”
Sofi shrugged. “Sure.”
And that was that.
Off they walked, towards the Shining Mountains. Sitsi was disappointed that Eagle’s Bluff was gone before she’d seen it, but she was more amazed that Lesta Heppul had taken almost no interest in them whatsoever. Surely someone who professed to be fascinated by people would want to know where such a strange group of people were headed, and travel with them for a while asking questions. It didn’t look like he’d even noticed the dagger-tooth cat, for the love of Innowak, but he’d managed to tell them plenty about himself.
It was, she’d decided, confirmation of what she’d always suspected about Eagle’s Bluff. They said they were interested in the outside world, but really their heads were lodged a long, long way up their own arses.
Finn the Deep didn’t mind missing Eagle’s Bluff. He had his own new worries. How could Bodil not know? It was a few days since Bodil and Keef had hooked up. It was over a moon since they’d been beside the Rock River. He caught Bodil Gooseface’s eye and she smiled at him as gormlessly as she might have done before they’d left Hardwork. He tried to return the gesture.
Could she really not know?
Finn had shagged her by the Rock River; not shagged, that was too disrespectful a word for something that produced life. But it wasn’t as if he’d made love … can you call it making love when it’s from behind, he wondered? Whatever, the baby was his, not Keef’s.
Should he tell Bodil? Or Keef? Or just shut the Hel up? But what if he didn’t say anything and the baby looked exactly like him?
He finally managed to get Sassa Lipchewer on her own shortly after Eagle’s Bluff disappeared into the haze behind t
hem.
“What do I do about Bodil?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“That’s what you did last time, after you promised me you’d speak to her. Why should I try for anything else?”
“Sorry.” Finn looked at his feet.
“You should be. You took the lazy, easy and selfish option. Luckily for you, the situation worked itself out.”
“I’ll talk to her this time. I’ll talk to them.”
“I don’t think you should this time,” said Sassa.
“You do understand that it’s my—”
“Yes, dillard. I know exactly what we’re talking about. However, the child is not yours just because your rutting started him or her off. Do you belong to Erik?”
“No.”
“No. And, more importantly,” Sassa sighed, “the chances are the baby won’t make it.”
“What?”
“We’ve been lucky. We’ve only lost Bjarni and Gunnhild since we crossed the Water Mother. You should have been killed by the snakes, we should all have been killed by the tornado, by the giant lizards, by the dagger-tooth-cat riding warriors, by Beaver Man, by the moose lot, by the Badlander Owsla—by the Calnian Owsla—and by any other number of animals and accidents that have plagued us.”
“So we’re survivors. We prevail.”
“It takes only a moment to be killed by the horrors out here. Look at Luby Zephyr, or Gunnhild. And who knows what we still have to face before The Meadows, let alone when we get there. If we get there. You heard what Weeko Fang said.”
“Maybe he was exaggerating?”
“You saw the monster. How can you think that?”
“Because I’m an optimist?” Even as he said the words, he regretted it. He might be Finn the Deep now, but he still couldn’t talk to a beautiful woman without saying dickish things that weren’t anything like what he actually thought.
“Because you’re an idiot.” Sassa shook her head. “More of us will die before we reach The Meadows. Maybe all of us.”
“Now you’re being pessimistic. I hardly think—”
“Pole a mother-fucking vole! If you didn’t realise that most of us are going to die, you’re more of an idiot than I thought.”
That was a bit much, even if he was saying dickish things.
“I’m sorry,” Sassa said, deflating a little. “You’re not an idiot. The point is if you die and Keef and Bodil live, then they never need know that the baby is yours.”
“You said it wasn’t mine!”
“Finnbogi.”
“Sorry. I can’t believe they haven’t worked it out, though.”
“Some people have different talents.”
“Some people don’t have minds that work properly …”
“And some people are shits who get women pregnant as part of a failed scheme to make other women jealous. I’ll repeat this, Finnbogi, because you really have to understand. They do not need to know that the baby is a result of you boning Bodil.”
“Okay, sorry, got it. But … if it’s so dangerous where we’re going, why doesn’t Bodil go back to the Green tribe? Surely it’s reckless to carry a growing baby into a world of monsters.”
“Stop, Finn.”
He did. She walked round in front of him, put her hands on his shoulders and fixed him with her light-blue eyes. For perhaps the first time ever in all the years he’d been studying her to an arguably unhealthy degree, she wasn’t chewing her lips.
“Can you not feel it, Finn?” she asked.
“Um …?” She wasn’t going to come on to him, was she? Not her as well.
“We are on a quest,” she said. “All of us. Hardworkers may have sat idle for a hundred years but this sort of shit is in our blood. This is our adventure, our story. And the Calnians’,’ too. We’re all in it, all the way. None of us can turn back. Do you understand? We are on a quest. That’s it, beginning and end. You finish the quest or you die trying. Don’t you get that?”
He did. He hadn’t thought about it specifically, but the journey to The Meadows was all that he had, and all that he wanted. Well, he wanted Thyri and Paloma, together if the gods were feeling unprecedentedly magnanimous, but that was superficial. He needed the quest like he needed air.
He nodded. The realisation of his life’s purpose was a relief. And if he died in service of that quest? Well, you know what they said about death.
Chapter 11
Overhanging Cliffs
They travelled south, east of a range of hills that stretched out from Eagle’s Bluff, then turned south-west. Weeko Fang, complaining of exhaustion, rode the dagger-tooth, accompanied some of the time by Freydis and Ottar. There was one brief scare when a large pack of wolves closed in on them shortly after dawn one day, but the dagger-tooth cat roared, Sitsi and Sassa shot a few, Paloma spirited around and brained a couple with her killing stick, and the surviving predators dispersed.
They passed a couple of hills and the odd flat-topped outcrop of rock sticking out of the plain like a monster’s molar, but mostly it was short grass and stands of scrubby trees. There were fewer animals here than there’d been in the long-grass prairie back east, but there was always a pronghorn, a deer, a lion, several hundred buffalo or some other animal watching them pass, and the sky was busy with flitting birds, hovering hawks and gliding eagles. It was hot in a weird way, as if the sun was weaker but closer, like a fighter who’s about to collapse making one last effort to win the battle.
The Shining Mountains were a dark mass initially, but soon they could see that they were capped with snow. The mountains didn’t look too high, but it did seem odd that they should have snow on them when it was sweltering on the plains.
Some people seemed happy: Keef and Bodil, Wulf and Sassa, Erik and Chogolisa, Ottar and Freydis. The rest of them got on with walking.
Finn still failed to talk to Paloma and Thyri. If anything, they seemed to like him a little less every day. Paloma gave up on subtlety and just ran whenever he approached. Thyri carried on training with him in the evenings, but with a permanent scowl, and she never talked to him during the day. What had he done? Could Thyri really be that angry that he’d got it on with Paloma? And could Paloma really be that embarrassed that they’d kissed? She’d been very drunk … In the Hardwork tales it was men who got shitfaced, did dumb things then regretted their actions.
On the tenth day after leaving Eagle’s Bluff, the valley narrowed into a canyon with a sparkling, brilliantly clear river tumbling out of the mountains along its rocky notch. There was a path up the valley side, but it was very rough. It soon petered out. They clambered on up, over boulders the size of longhouses.
The dagger-tooth cat roared and moaned. The children and Weeko Fang dismounted when it began to struggle, but soon the animal wouldn’t go any further.
“Send it home, Finn,” said Sofi.
Finn reached out, but, before he’d made a connection, the dagger-tooth cat leapt round as if it had been stung and sped away, a lot more capable over the rocks than it had been on the way up. Finn was left with the sensation that the cat was desperate to get away from something that wasn’t very far ahead at all.
The going was difficult, dangerous and slow. Sometimes they scrambled over boulders, sometimes they had to walk up the cold, rushing river. Every now and then they had clear views of the snow-covered mountains that, according to Weeko, they would need to climb.
The gorge narrowed so that both sides were bare, near-vertical rock, and the river passing between was a torrent. At one narrow section, Keef and Wulf tried and failed to carry a rope upstream four times, so they backtracked until they could climb out of the gorge and find a way along the valley side. It turned out to be a serendipitous move, since they found a new, easier path a couple of hundred paces above the river.
The first night in the Shining Mountains they camped in a man-made or possibly squatch-made clearing, where a ring of charred rocks was evidence of previous campfires. Finn s
lept in his sack alone, as usual. He hadn’t been in a sack with anyone else since Bjarni had been alive.
The following day their good path descended to the valley floor and more boulder scrambling and wading. Later, however, the valley opened up into a high prairie.
Wootah and Calnians stopped to marvel. The prairie contained more elk than Finn had thought there could possibly be in the world. They were like the crowd pigeons in deer form. Even more amazing were the snowy mountains, hunkered over the prairie like ogres around a table. The lower slopes were forested but, above a line so neat that it had to be the work of the gods, tree-free bright white snow and dark rock soared skywards.
“Had you expected to see squatches by now?” Sofi Tornado asked Weeko Fang. They were ahead of Finn and Erik, following the riverside path westward. On the far side of the narrow river several dozen fat, furry marmots watched them pass with interest and no apparent fear.
“They’ve seen us. I’m sure they’ll make contact soo—”
Weeko Fang stopped mid-word and fell face first onto the path.
Erik dashed forward and helped Sofi turn him over. He didn’t react. A rivulet of blood trickled from his nose.
Yoki Choppa jogged up, crouched, pressed his fingers into Weeko’s neck and pried his good eye open.
“What’s happened?” asked Wulf, running up with Sassa.
“He’s dead,” said Yoki Choppa.
“How?” asked Wulf.
The warlock shrugged.
“He said he was exhausted,” said Sassa. “Maybe it was just his time and—”
He did not die a natural death, said a wispy, weird voice in Finn’s head. I crushed his mind. I can do it to any of you in an instant. Everyone looked at each other. They could all hear the voice, too.
“There’s a voice in my head!” squeaked Bodil.
“Everyone’s hearing it,” said Erik. “It’s a squatch. Just stay calm and—”
Stay silent. Stay where you are, the voice continued. Run, and die. Advance, and die. Move at all, in fact, and die.