The Messenger
( Icewall Trilogy - 1 )
Douglas Niles
Douglas Niles
The Messenger
1
Hunters on the Blood Coast
I can throw a harpoon as far as any man and hit the target twice as often!” Moreen knew that her voice was getting loud, but right now she didn’t care. How could her father be so Chislev-cursed stubborn? “You know it’s true! So why can’t I take a kayak out with the rest of the hunters?”
“You’re my daughter, and you will stay in the village with your mother!” growled Redfist Bayguard, his swarthy face darkening into the flush of deep anger.
The young woman opened her mouth to speak, but the chieftain trampled over her objections without hesitation. “I have already given you too much freedom! Do you know there are those who speak ill of me because I let you learn how to cast a harpoon, how to track a bear and build a fire on the tundra? They say I cannot control my own child-how can I be expected to manage the affairs of the Arktos?”
Moreen felt her own temper slipping away, knew that she should bite her tongue, but the words spilled out in a voice that reached far beyond the sealskin walls of the little hut. “Maybe people should worry more about their own affairs,” she snapped.
“You will be silent, now!” roared the chieftain, rising to his feet and trembling in such rage that the daughter momentarily feared his clenched fist. She stood up too, glaring, challenging him, all but daring him to strike.
He turned and pushed through the leather door, stomping into the misty dawn.
Striding after him, Moreen caught the flap of door before it closed, then stopped, quivering from her own anger but unwilling to press the fight. She saw the blue-white sky, the flat waters of the bay, and, closer, the villagers going about as if they hadn’t heard the argument. It was early morning, but early morning in the time of the midnight sun. The sky was already fully bright after the short, ghostly interval of midnight.
“I know that you don’t want to humiliate him, but that is what you do.”
Her mother spoke from the shadows beyond the cold firepit. Inga Bayguard sat crosslegged, looking at Moreen with her dark eyes soft and sad.
“How can he be so unfair?” the younger woman demanded, even as a small voice inside of her suggested that it was she who was being unreasonable.
“If you had asked him to take you along when he was going hunting by himself, you know that he would have gladly let you accompany him. How many times has he done just that? Remember, not four years ago, he took you hunting in spring, and the two of you paddled as far as Tall Cedar Bay? But today … this is the great hunt of Highsummer. Every male in the tribe is going along, and, like it or not, your presence would be a huge distraction.”
“Well, how can it be such a humiliation for him when in the end everyone knows I obey his will?”
“Because you shout at him, corner him in arguments. Because you make certain that everyone in the village knows how you feel.”
Letting the door flap drop, which enclosed the hut in a dimness broken only by the whale-oil lamp, Moreen pushed a strand of black hair back from her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. Her mother rose and stepped around the small room to look up into her daughter’s face.
“You have your father’s strength, Moreen Bayguard, and your mother’s-well, I want to believe you have your mother’s heart. But you are your own person. As you enter your eighteenth summer you have been granted unusual respect by the Arktos-even those old hunters who have now worked you into such a rage.”
“What do you mean, ‘respect’? They think I’m a frivolous pest.”
“Sometimes you are a frivolous pest,” retorted Inga. “There are other times when you show skill that cannot fail to impress. The men may complain about you learning manly skills, but they have noted your talent with the harpoon. You were right-you can throw better than any of them. They respect your intelligence, and the force of your words. You are a true heir to your great-grandfather.”
The young woman’s anger softened. She looked at the pelt that stretched across one whole interior wall of the hut, the lush black fur that was far too precious ever to lie upon the ground.
“I want to be worthy of Wallran Bayguard. I really do,” she said.
“I know, child,” Inga replied. “As it was for your father, the legacy of the Black Bear will be a burden and an honor that you carry all your life. Wallran Bayguard hunted and slew the mythic bear as foretold in the prophecy, killed it with a single spear-cast, as had been foretold since the Scattering. That promise for the future, that our people will one day prosper and rise to be masters of Icereach, is embodied in you. It is your legacy and your future.”
“My future?” Moreen replied in disgust. “My future looks like a lifetime of cooking and skinning the prey that the men bring home!”
Her mother’s expression gently chided her, but the younger woman was in no mood to heed it. Instead, she pushed through the door and stomped across the village square. The Arktos hunters there, busy with their preparations, had the good sense to avoid meeting her eyes.
By the time the Arktos hunters had rigged their kayaks and collected their gear Moreen and Bruni, her best friend, had ascended to the rocky crest rising just beyond the shore.
Beyond the mouth of the bay, the White Bear Sea was a dazzling swath of silver, bright with reflected sunlight. The sky overhead was pale blue, which brightened to white closer to the horizon. The summer sun was a shining presence in the northeast, a spot of fire burning through the haze.
The huts of Bayguard nestled across the flat ground between two hills and the sheltered bay that had been the tribe’s home for three generations, since Wallran Bayguard had killed the black bear that had hallowed this spot. Here they weathered the brutal onslaught of Sturmfrost each winter, and emerged each spring to, if not prosper, at least survive. The threescore structures looked neat and snug, clustered around the flat square and ceremonial firepit in the center of the village. Across that plaza rose a shape made of bundled sticks, the half-bird, half-fish image of Chislev Wilder, hunter goddess of the Arktos. Little kayaks were arrayed along the shore. For a time the two women watched the hunters push the boats into the shallows, each scrambling aboard and quickly starting to paddle.
“Do you think they will be gone long?” asked Bruni, lifting her voluminous leather skirt enough that she could sit comfortably on a large, flat boulder.
Moreen, who was dressed in sealskin trousers and a woolen shirt, leaned against another outcrop and shook her head. “I don’t care,” she snorted, “if the lot of them are gone until Lastsummer Day!” She watched as the kayaks bobbed through the gentle surf near the shore, each man paddling his little craft through the breakers until the boats gathered a short distance off the beach. Redfist Bayguard, his kayak distinguished by a crimson stripe, stroked into the lead and led the boats toward the mouth of the small, protected bay.
Bruni chuckled, the sound rumbling from her big body with an easy humor that Moreen inevitably found infectious.
Moreen sighed in resignation. “If luck from the past holds, they’ll find seals not too far away. Even if they get after a whale-” the chieftain’s daughter winced inwardly at the thought of missing that thrill-“I would think they’d be able to tow it back here within a week or ten days.”
“Let’s hope for ten days of peace and quiet, then,” Bruni said, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked toward the dazzling sun. She was sitting up straight, a tall and round-shouldered bulk on her flat rock. Bruni’s face was flat and “round as the moon,” as Inga was fond of saying. Her cheekbones were prominent, and when she smiled her face took on a glow all its own. She was tall an
d wide, with thick arms and strong, plump fingers. Her feet were bigger than any man’s in the tribe, and instead of moccasins she encased them in heavy leather boots.
Moreen, by contrast, felt like a waif. Her frame was wiry and compact, the top of her scalp reaching just over five feet from the ground. She kept her dark hair cut to shoulder length, usually tied behind her ears, while Bruni favored the typical style of Arktos women, with a lush tail of black hair that, when unrestrained, reached nearly to the ground.
A girl’s shriek rang out from the hillside below them, and they saw a child race into sight, shaking droplets of water from her hair. “I’ll get you for that, Little Mouse!” she cried, reaching down to pick up a fist-sized rock. She hurled the missile into the hillside where it clattered loudly. Grinning broadly, a tall, dark-haired boy dodged out of the way, then stood making faces while the girl cast stone after stone.
“Ouch!” he cried suddenly as one finally glanced off his forehead. “Okay, Feathertail, I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’ll teach you to douse me!” the girl declared and flounced away. In her hand was a basket partially filled with spring blossoms.
The youth’s expression turned sour as he made his way higher onto the hillside. After he had taken a dozen steps he noticed the two women regarding him, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Lucky throw,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“Not lucky enough,” Moreen retorted, though she smiled enough to take the sting out of her words.
Little Mouse sighed, and his eyes drifted toward the kayaks which were now starting to round the point of the bay. In another few minutes they would be into the swell of the deep gulf waters and would make the turn to head northeastward along the coast.
“You wish you were out there with them, don’t you?” the chieftain’s daughter said sympathetically. “I know how you feel.”
Little Mouse looked at her eagerly, and she was reminded of a puppy, frantically eager to please. He was thirteen summers old, awkwardly torn between boyhood and becoming a man. “But you-they should let you go!” he proclaimed, his voice cracking an octave on the last word. “I’ve seen you throw-why, I bet you’d get the first seal!”
Now it was the woman’s turn to sigh, and she shook her head ruefully. “You’ll be going on the spring hunt before I will,” she said.
“Papa said maybe next year,” Little Mouse admitted. “Normally I’d wait til fifteen, but since I’m the only boy my age in the tribe they might make an exception.”
“I know you’ll be ready,” encouraged Moreen.
“What’s that?” Bruni asked abruptly, pointing into the dazzling brightness of the sea. Something came across the water, distant but moving toward them, trailing a long wake that sparkled in the sun.
The boy quickly looked toward the sun. “A whale? It’s too big!”
“No … no whale.” Moreen felt a peculiar chill, awe that quickly gave way to fear. She squinted, trying to adjust her notions of scale and realized that it was a vessel, a massive hull slicing through the waters of the White Bear Sea. “It’s some kind of boat, but it’s as big as the village!”
As it emerged from the swath of the sun’s brightest glare they could begin to make out more details. The vessel was long and slender like a kayak, with a row of long paddles. It was hard to get a sense of the craft’s size, but it must be huge indeed. This was not a boat of any Arktos tribe.
“Highlanders?” asked Bruni tentatively.
“No.” Moreen was certain. “The only one of them I’ve ever met looked squeamish at the very thought of going on the water.”
“Have the hunters have seen it?” Bruni asked, with a glance toward the kayaks scattered like specks nearing the mouth of the bay. They were much closer than the strange ship but still tiny by comparison.
“Not yet.” Moreen was remembering her many hunting expeditions along the shores beyond the village. “There’s that headland to the east that will block their view-until they come around the point, and that thing will be right on top of them!”
“What is it?” asked Mouse, worriedly. “Are you sure it’s not some kind of whale?”
“No whale. I don’t know what it is, but I’m frightened. Let’s get to the village!” replied the chieftain’s daughter in growing urgency. “We can light a signal fire to call the hunters back.”
Little Mouse was already sprinting down the hill, while Moreen trotted after, and Bruni picked her way more cautiously between the jutting rocks.
What could it be? Little Mouse’s question churned in Moreen’s mind, coming up with the one and only possibility, a dire explanation indeed. A mythic name, imbued with terror and doom, a threat she had never seen but that had been a part of her people’s storytelling and folklore since before her birth.
Ogres.
The great brutes had not raided the Arktos in Moreen’s lifetime or during the lives of her parents. They remained a threat of legends, monstrous figures from stories told by the shaman, crabby old Dinekki, to while away the long, dark months of winter. Always in the back of the tribal consciousness, though, there was the knowledge of this brutal race that also dwelled in the place called Icereach and that might one day renew on the cruel raids that had made ancient life deadly for the Arktos since the time of the Scattering.
It was because of these legendary ogres that every child of Clan Bayguard, from the moment he or she could first walk, learned the path to the Hiding Hole, the narrow-mouthed cave notched into the hill beyond the village. They learned the first rule, as well-never go to the Hiding Hole if an ogre can see you, or you may lead the raiders to the whole tribe.
How did that explain the great boat? Always in the stories the ogres had moved across the land, marching out of the spring mists to lay waste to this village or that town, dragging off slaves, smashing buildings, leaving death and destruction and despair in their wake. Surely the building of a craft like the one they had seen was beyond the cunning of an ogre mind!
Yet who else could it be? Clearly the vessel wasn’t the work of the Highlanders. Moreen had encountered a group of those human hunters on one occasion and had not been impressed. Shaggy, bearded, tall, they seemed like simple-minded savages. One had tried to approach her, but of course she had turned and fled, and he had reacted with almost comical disbelief when she gotten into her kayak and rowed away. She suspected they were frightened of any liquid deeper than the mugs of warqat they reputedly drank continually during the long months of winter.
It was even less likely that the ship carried outlanders, people from beyond Icereach. Though there were tales of lands, of humans and even stranger beings from far across the turbulent ocean, outlanders were like imaginary beings. None of these had ever come to these shores, not in the memories of the oldest elders recalling their own elders’ stories.
The ogres, however, did live across the gulf in a mountain fastness. And if it had been a human’s life span since their last raid, there was no doubt that they really existed-every child had been shown Dinekki’s tusk and given a lesson about the nature of their ancient and brutal enemies. How many times, scolding Moreen for some infraction, had her mother threatened her with, “Behave, or I’ll leave you outside where the ogre king will find you”? Always the warning brought a chill.
By the time Moreen reached the outskirts of the village, barely winded from her long downhill sprint, she had convinced herself that it was ogres coming. Little Mouse had already run between the huts, shouting an alarm, and the chieftain’s daughter was met by a confused rabble of women, children, and elders.
“What is this racket?” crabbed Dinekki, as the skinny old shaman tried to tap Little Mouse on the foot with her staff.
The boy skipped out of the way, pleading earnestly for her ear. “Grandmother Dinekki, it’s true! A great kayak sails the coast, coming this way! Moreen saw it, and Bruni too! We’ve got to light a smoke fire and bring back the hunters!”
“I saw it also!” claimed Feathertail, th
e girl hopping up and down beside Inga Bayguard. “It’s coming toward my papa, toward the kayaks!”
Already another young woman, Tildey, was whipping a coal from her firepit into bright flame. Other women were busy grabbing logs from various woodpiles, dousing some with oil, and casting them into a great pile in the village square. Tildey touched her fire to the kindling, and quickly the bonfire crackled into a smoky conflagration.
“Are you sure it’s ogres? Couldn’t it be a ship of men?” asked matronly Garta with a quaver in her voice, three small children clinging to her gown.
“Not Arktos, and not Highlanders either,” Bruni declared with a shake of her big head. “Can’t be men.”
“This tusk will tell.” Dinekki’s dry, brittle voice somehow cut through the commotion. The shaman held up a curved ivory tooth, one of the many talismans she wore on various strands around her neck. She removed the thong from the hole that had been drilled through the base of the object. Next she blew softly on the ivory, then muttered a rhythmic prayer in the language of the goddess Chislev. Raising the tusk, she held it in her fingertips at the end of her rigidly extended arm.
“Ogre tusk shall show the truth-seek thy owner, lonesome tooth!”
She released her grip on the tusk with a sudden gesture, but instead of falling straight down to the ground, the tooth spun away toward the sea, finally clattering to the stony ground some ten feet distant.
“Yes! There are ogres there,” Dinekki said, pointing along the line of the tusk’s flight.
“That’s the direction to the great boat,” Moreen said, feeling a sickening tightness in her belly.
By now the fire was crackling hungrily through the wood, and a plume of black smoke was rising high above the village. A gentle breeze curved the smoke over the land, but it rose as a clear beacon. The kayaks were beyond the point of the bay, now invisible from the square, but Moreen felt certain they would take immediate note of the time-honored signal and return.
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