by David Welch
“Yeah… Not so different, you and I. They took me and made me fight for them, in their armies. Then, when I was grown, I got tired of it – tired of them – so I ran off. One day, I found a bunch of guys in feathers trying to kill a pretty girl, and now here I am.”
She cracked a half-smile at that, and then she got up to check the pot. Concluding that the meal was done, she filled Gunnar’s single wooden bowl with food, sharing it between them. Kamith ate ravenously, refilling the bowl several times. Gunnar couldn’t imagine she had been fed all that much during her imprisonment. He started to wonder what else had been done to her, but he didn’t dare ask. If she wanted him to know, he would know. When she had finally eaten her fill, she immediately went about cleaning up. There was a desperation to her actions; the desire to focus on the task rather than let herself think. She brought the remaining broth to the rocky summit of the peak and dumped it over the edge, splashing the trees a hundred feet below.
By the time she returned, darkness had begun to creep over the land, casting everything in a blue glow. Gunnar had spread a large buffalo hide across the ground several feet from the fire. He sat on it, staring into the dying flames.
“There’s a blanket in the pack,” he said, pointing to the saddlebag. She retrieved it, bringing it back to the skin.
“It’s not big enough for two,” she said, holding up the light, woolen blanket. Patterns of rich blue and green had been dyed into it.
“Big enough for you,” he replied.
She moved to the buffalo hide, stretching out next to him.
“Besides,” he said, “it might slow me down, should anybody try to sneak up on us.”
He motioned to his sword and a large dagger, which lay on the ground on his side of the hide.
“Get some sleep. Earlier we’re up, quicker we’re away from these butchers.”
She nodded and covered herself in the blanket. Gunnar remained sitting, for her sake, until long after she’d fallen asleep.
***
Not long after he fell asleep, Gunnar began to feel that something wasn’t right. Well, no. Maybe ‘not normal’ was a better way of putting it. Whatever was happening certainly didn’t feel wrong.
His eyes fluttered open, and he expected to see the dark shadows of pine branches above him. Instead, he saw a dark, female form writhing above him. Below, a warmth surrounded him, pushing thoughts of returning to sleep well out of his mind.
“Kamith?” he asked, stunned.
“Shhh,” she replied, kissing him. “You saved my life.”
“You don’t—”
“Shhh,” she repeated, gently pushing his head back. She guided his hands up her sides and then left them to their own devices. They ran over firm breasts, then down, curious.
“Just enjoy this,” she whispered, bending low to kiss him again. “Let me thank you.”
***
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Gunnar said the next day, strapping the saddlebags to Dash.
“You seemed to enjoy it,” she replied.
“And what if a child grows from this? I’m on the move, and you have no family to aid you,” he pointed out.
“I could not bear my husband a child in ten months of trying. You worry for nothing,” she said bitterly.
“Unless it was your husband who could not provide,” he countered, grabbing Dash’s reins. They began their walk along the ridge.
“I was not his first wife,” she explained. “Nor was he childless.”
Gunnar exhaled heavily, both relieved and saddened.
“The last of my people is a woman who cannot even bring them new life,” she said with a bitter laugh.
“There is more to kin than blood,” Gunnar said. “Do not think your life means nothing.”
“You think my life ‘means’ something? Gunnar, I am without people or family. I am no warrior or chief or shaman. The gods have cursed me. I mean nothing to this world.”
“Should I not have saved you?” he asked, stopping the horse and staring deep into her eyes.
“W-what?” she asked, taken aback by the intensity of his glare.
“Should I have bothered saving you, since you feel yourself to be worth so little?” he pressed.
She broke his gaze and walked on ahead. Gunnar sighed and followed. They fell into an easy rhythm as they walked, moving through open forest. Not an hour had passed when Gunnar felt an odd sensation come over him. Odd, but familiar; the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
He paused, bringing his horse to a stop. Still surrounded by the morning cool, he dug around for his chain-mail and pulled it on over his buckskin tunic. The armor fell to mid-thigh, its weight a familiar comfort on his frame.
“What is it?” asked Kamith, scanning the forest. “Somebody there?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
They walked on. Ten yards in, a twig snapped behind them. Gunnar spun, pulling his sword. He was just fast enough to see a leather-clad figure dart behind a tree. The enemy need not have bothered trying to hide. A dozen of his compatriots followed behind, trailed by a man on horseback.
“Get on Dash and go,” Gunnar ordered.
“They’ll kill you!” she exclaimed. “Get on—”
“He can’t support the weight. Take the packs and go!” he snapped.
Kamith reluctantly climbed on the horse, watching as the Tabori advanced through the forest.
“Gunnar, get on—”
He slapped the horse with the flat of his sword, sending it running. He turned back to see two axe-wielding soldiers charging him from the front. He backpedaled until a tree trunk appeared in the corner of his left eye. His attackers surged forwards, and he stepped behind the tree. The nearest enemy’s axe arced through the air, hitting nothing. Gunnar leapt forwards, putting his weight behind his shield. The steel boss smashed into the man’s ribs and forced him back, onto his comrade. The two fell to the piney ground, struggling to get up.
Gunnar stomped on the head of the injured man, bringing himself above the uninjured compatriot. He stabbed down with his sword, thrusting it through the unprotected temple of the other man.
He spun, catching an axe blow on his shield. It struck near the edge, denting the metal rim. Two men had approached from behind, and now the second man swung a ball-ended war hammer, the spherical club hitting his left side. It drove his armor against his side. A crack filled his ears; hopefully his armor shattering, but probably his ribs. His left hand flew across his body, ramming the shield into the man with the hammer. His right shot up, slamming the guard of his sword into the face of the axeman. The foe stumbled back and moved to launch a new attack, only to feel the tip of Gunnar’s sword pierce his windpipe.
Two more men with war clubs swarmed him. Gunnar fell back, blows from three attackers slamming hard into his shield. Painful vibrations ran down his left arm. He arced upwards with his sword, slicing through a wooden club as it came for his head. He reversed the direction of the sword at the top of its arc and brought it down on the attacker’s head. It cleaved four inches into his skull, killing him instantly.
Another hammer blow hit his tender ribs. He fell back on one knee, fighting for breath. The two hammermen, now surrounded by a half-dozen others armed with axes and clubs, leapt on him. Pinned beneath his shield by their weight, he smashed his head into the face of an attacker. The man staggered back, freeing Gunnar’s sword arm for a brief second. His blade shot forward, running the man through. Blood gurgled from the man’s lips; the last thing Gunnar saw before the haft of a war hammer slammed into his head.
***
His first thought was pain, pulsing and inescapable. His mind swirled through it, and he eventually managed to open his eyes. Bright sunlight met him. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them slowly. He sat atop another mountain, his hands bound behind his back. Before him, not ten yards away, the mountain fell away in a steep precipice. As his captors forced him up onto his knees, he saw smears of red streaked down the s
teep rock.
“Ad-Agohin, we bring a warrior worthy of spilling his essence for you!” a pompous voice shouted to the wind.
Gunnar managed to turn his head to the left, seeing yet another man in turkey feathers. They covered every inch of his robe, with one of every twelve smeared with white paint. The priest wore white paint on every inch of his face, giving him the look of an albino. Hard brown eyes focused on Gunnar.
“The heretic awakens. To kill a priest is unforgivable,” the priest declared. “So is stealing a sacrifice to the gods.”
“Strange, I don’t feel too bad about it,” Gunnar replied.
The priest smiled viciously, ignoring the taunt.
“To the four Stone Gods, I bring blood, essence of life, so that they shall one day awaken from their slumber and walk the wilds of this earth. To the greatest, Ad-Agohin, I offer today. Find my submission acceptable, I humbly plea.”
He motioned for his men to bring Gunnar forwards. Two of the men grabbed him and dragged him to the edge of the precipice.
Gunnar stood atop a massive stone head. No stone horse lay beneath this one, but three other heads sat beside it, their features worn with time. Dried blood streaked the faces of the Stone Gods, and, at the base of the heads, there lay piles of corpses, some still clad in steel or leather. Below them was another talus slope, and at the bottom of that were littered the bones and rotting remains of hundreds; the less worthy sacrifices.
The priest grabbed the back of Gunnar’s armor.
“Do not fear this honor,” he said, his tone strangely reassuring. “Despite your sacrilege, you have proven yourself a man of ability. The gods crave this above all else. You will live eternally within Ad-Agohin and fuel his reign, and your sins will be forgotten —”
The priest pitched forwards, the sentence dying on his lips. He fell over the precipice, an arrow sticking out from his back. A whistling sound filled the air as another arrow flew, striking a warrior in his sternum. The man fell, yelping in pain.
The five remaining warriors turned. Behind them, perched on a large shelf of rock, Kamith sat astride Dash. She furiously nocked another arrow and drew aim.
Gunnar leapt to his feet and ran, sprinting away from the edge. The warriors ignored him, charging towards Kamith, who let fly with her arrow. It flew straight into the guts of an axeman, sending him howling to the ground. Gunnar, away from the edge, sprinted towards him.
Kamith spurred the horse on, disappearing down the ridge. The warriors moved to follow, but one man turned, seeing Gunnar. Gunnar approached the dying man and yanked the axe from his hands. He ran the ropes on his wrists along the edge of the blade, severing them. As his hands came free, the new attacker swung at him with his war club. Gunnar leapt to the side, landing hard on tender ribs. The clubman took a second to arrest his momentum then turned to face his enemy. Gunnar didn’t have time to reach for the axe. He sprang up, pain lancing through his midsection, and caught the clubman’s hands as they brought the weapon down. The man’s swing jerked to a stop, and Gunnar lashed out with his knee, slamming it into the clubman’s groin. The man went down, groaning in pain. Gunnar grabbed the axe and swung wildly, bringing it down on his foe’s neck.
Three, he thought, looking up. He couldn’t see the remaining men or Kamith. He could see the priest’s horse, and his own weapons in its side pack. For the first time, Gunnar looked down and realized he still wore his armor. He dashed for the horse, mounted it, and pulled his sword from its sheath. His ankles clapped in on the horse’s flanks as he grabbed the reins, driving the animal into a sprint. He turned it from the cliff and took off down the bare rock of the summit ridge.
He passed a warrior, shot through the chest with an arrow, barely alive. Then he passed another, struck in the neck. Blood pooled around the dead man’s head. Finally, he came upon the last of the warriors, who was still very much alive. The man tried to hide behind a small dome of rock. It rose, just large enough to block a shot from Kamith. She and Dash waited on the other side of the dome, an arrow ready.
Gunnar winked at her as he rode, and she relaxed her bow. The last warrior stared at her quizzically, then heard the thunder of hooves to his left. Spotting Gunnar, he turned and ran. Gunnar caught up to him in a handful of seconds and slashed down with his sword. It caught the man’s back, digging into the muscle as it cut up towards his shoulder. The warrior stumbled forwards, crying out frantically, losing his war hammer as he fell. He squirmed on the rock, crawling forward to get away. The wound cut deep, but it wasn’t mortal.
Gunnar pulled his horse in front of the man. The warrior looked up, eyes pleading for mercy. Behind him, Kamith rode up, an arrow drawn and ready. Gunnar stared down at the man, who, lying helpless on the rock, held his hands up in surrender.
“How far are you from your towns?” Gunnar asked.
The man breathed heavily, voice quivering with fear.
“Th-three days walk!” he spluttered. “Please.”
Gunnar looked up to Kamith and shrugged.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She raised the bow and fired an arrow into the back of the man’s neck. Gunnar stared at the man for a second as he died. When he looked back to Kamith, she looked defiant.
“His people killed my entire village!” she snarled.
“Okay,” Gunnar said, shrugging again, then spurring his horse on. “He probably wouldn’t have made it out alive anyway, with that wound.”
“You would’ve let your enemy go?” Kamith demanded, pulling up next to him astride Dash.
“Well, we are on horseback now, and he would have been on foot. There was little chance of him getting back before we were out of these mountains,” he explained
“I don’t care,” she said forcefully. “They deserve death. For what they would’ve done to me, to you.”
“No argument there,” he said. “And you were wrong, you know.”
“About what?” she demanded.
“You clearly are a warrior, shooting from horseback that well,” he said.
She laughed.
“Any ten-year-old of my people can do that!”
“Yeah, well, you’ll have to teach me, sometime.”
“You expect me to be with you for that long?” she asked.
“You got somewhere else to be?” he asked.
She sighed and shook her head, staring down the stone ridge. Another day of riding and they would be clear of the cursed mountains, into the Great Grasslands below.
“No,” she finally replied. “So, where are we going?”
He shrugged.
“Not really sure,” he replied. “Strange thing about wandering; you’re rarely in a hurry, but you’ve always got somewhere to go.”
“So that’s your life? You wander? With no destination in mind?” she asked.
“Always wanted to see beyond the next ridge, even when I was a boy,” he replied. “My village is gone, my father’s people would kill me on sight, so I got no place to go back to. Wandering has always seemed the best option left to me.”
Kamith frowned and looked at the ground in thought.
“And to me, it would seem,” she said forlornly.
Gunnar didn’t have to be a wise man to see the parallels in their situations.
“It could work,” Gunnar said, rubbing the neck of his mount. “With two horses, now, that makes travel easier. And two sets of eyes are better than one.”
“Is that to be my life? One of exile, drifting aimlessly with another?” she asked, half to him and half to the winds.
“It’s not all bad,” Gunnar replied. “Lots of freedom, wandering out here. No lords or magi or husbands who love other women.”
She raised an eyebrow curiously.
“Freedom?” she asked.
“And plenty of it,” he said. “Has its costs, but once you got it, it grows on you. Gets hard to do without it.”
“Is that why you’re really out here? Alone and living like a vagabond?” she asked.
She nodded in agreement.
“There certainly are.”
“Shall we go, then? If we’re to be vagabonds together?” asked Gunnar.
Kamith smiled.
“Go? Go where?” she asked. “You said you don’t know where we’re going.”
“True, very true,” Gunnar laughed. “But I’ve got this urge to head east, see what’s out that way. And I really want to give this new horse a good run, see what he can do.”
“Lead the way, then,” she said with a sweep of her hand.
“Yah!” he cried, spurring the horse on. He tore off to the east, Kamith following at a more measured pace.
Masks in the Tall Grass
Kamith collapsed onto his chest, her breath heavy, exhausted. Gunnar felt her head against his neck, a flurry of her long, tangled hair covering his face. Gently, he moved it away. Shining with sweat, he pulled the buffalo hide tighter around them.
“So… I guess this make me your woman,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Amongst my people, the first time is an exploration. But if a man or woman goes back to a partner, they are bound and expected to marry,” she explained.
“We’ve only known each other for a week,” Gunnar replied, trailing his fingers up and down her naked back.
“And my people are all dead…” she muttered, resigned.
Gunnar knew the feeling. After leaving the Kingdom of Harmon and disappearing into the wilderness, he’d found all sorts of customs falling by the wayside, replaced by the freedom of isolation and wilderness. It was both liberating and unnerving, an odd combination, but one he knew she would work through in time.
“But you’re not dead,” he said.
“No,” she said, eyes drooping with fatigue. As she drifted off, he looked out into the night. They camped beside a boulder, surrounded by grass almost as tall as a man. They’d hobbled the horses then tramped down a circle of grass and started a small fire, burning buffalo chips and some dead scrub he’d found by a creak a hundred yards away. It had burned down to embers, glowing red in the bright night of a full moon. The brilliant, silver disk blotted out many of the stars, leaving only several dozen of the biggest visible. Gentle wind rustled the grass around the camp in subtle waves.