by CW Tickner
Harl pulled his bow from his shoulder, nocked an arrow, and then used all his strength to draw it back before releasing. The arrow hit the cow directly in the head and it toppled over, landing with a thud in the ankle-high moss it had been devouring. He pulled out a small knife and finished the beast, skinned it, and then cut thick slices of warm meat from the body. Wrapping them up in the hide, he slung it over one shoulder and headed back to the cave.
When he returned, Sonora was nowhere to be seen. Worry filled him. Anything could have happened to her. Had the beasts found them? He hadn’t heard anything so he clung to the idea that she was safe.
‘Sonora?‘ he hissed, panic rising. ‘Sonora!’
‘Harl?‘ Her voice came from behind a clump of dense moss that had trailed its way up to the top of the stalks.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked. The rapid tattoo of his heart slowed to its regular beat as she stepped back into the clearing.
‘I just wanted to have a look at some of the plants around here,’ she said, waving a bunch of bright green leaves at him. ‘I found banewart growing at the base of these grasses. It’s the same as it was at home.’
She paused and her eyes dropped to the dirt and grime that had spattered her clothes.
Her face hardened as she clenched her jaw, fighting something.
‘I guess I can’t call it that any more, now it’s gone,’ she said.
He stepped closer to her.
‘Do you think we can survive this?’ she asked.
‘We’ve been given a chance to live, unlike the others back home. So yes, I think that together we can do it. I wish I knew where we go from here, but maybe if we get through this forest we can find a place to call a home.’
He thought about all the dangers out here compared to the safety they had known in the tank. Freedom had risks attached, but he knew there had been no real choice in the matter. Staying in the tanks would’ve been a death sentence.
‘It’s time we moved on,’ he said, stuffing the meat into his bag and slinging the satchel over his shoulder.
They struck a good pace as they wound their way through the grass trunks towards where the tree reached over the forest. It jutted out high above the grasses into the blue beyond, magnificent in the way it swept up and out to tower above them. Harl had never seen anything so immense. It dwarfed even the gods. He could picture one standing underneath it and trying to reach up to touch the branches, but they were beyond even its gargantuan reach. How far down would the tree’s roots reach? He had dug down into the soil so many times to shift the roots of small bushes in the fields and yet their depth always surprised him. But this? How deep would it go? How deep could it go? He shivered at the thought. Too much soil. Too much rock. It was pressing down on him even as he imagined the roots stealing their way down into the lightless depths.
He shook himself and lowered his gaze. He didn’t want to think about it. It was too much like the mines.
A shadow swept over them. It blotted out the sun for a moment and they froze. It passed quickly but left a worry in Harl’s mind. How could something block the sun like that? Things were too big for him in this world.
He walked on and took Sonora’s hand. It felt good to have her close. Everything else was too strange and unreal. Even the air had grown humid and muggy, muffling sounds of danger that lurked on all sides.
He didn’t know whether he liked this alien world.
After a time, the sun was directly above them, as it had been on the previous cycle. He could see a pattern emerging. It seemed to move from one side of the blue abyss above them to the other. But its strength waxed and waned. It was hottest and brightest when high above them, but when it dropped to the sides its heat and light would diminish. And it had a strange effect on the landscape. Shadows seemed to move with the sun’s path. In his world a shadow had always been a static thing, unless an object was moved, but out here in the open space the shadows shifted across the landscape even as the sun rode along far above them. They would even fade away from sight only to creep back into existence once the sun had moved on.
Looking up he saw dark grey, cotton-like objects moving in front of the sun, dimming its potent light. Sonora flinched and let out a small startled noise.
‘What is it?’ he asked, pulling the bow from his shoulder.
‘Water,’ she said. ‘I’m sure some water just landed on my head.’
It was strange as there was no roof above them for it to fall from. He looked up again towards the cotton-like mass and, as he did, a droplet of water hit his own face, then another, and in a few moments water was streaming down on them.
They both laughed at the refreshment as it coursed down their faces and danced around in a moment of odd joy.
Their old land did have rain, but to actually see it was a new experience. Rain would only fall during the dark cycle in the tanks. But out here it felt like life was both giving and oppressive at the same time. Was everything out here so contradictory?
A blinding flash of light forked down on the horizon above the stalks. Harl yelled out in surprise and Sonora’s laughter turned to a piercing scream.
‘What was that?’ she cried.
He wrapped an arm around her and could feel her trembling beneath the cloak.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but we should find cover in case it comes closer.’
Rain lashed the stalks that rose around them and streamed down to soak the thick coating of moss on the floor. There was little shelter to be had among the grass and he felt suddenly exposed.
‘Which way?‘ he asked, drawing his hood up to fight the bitter rain.
A noise louder than the shout of the gods cracked across the world. They both fell to their knees, hands clamped tight over their ears. It was the loudest noise Harl had ever heard and he could feel the vibrations of it pass right through his bones. It was invasive, trembling through his flesh and making his stomach quiver until all he could do was hunch over and hope it passed quickly.
Once it had stopped, he stood up and looked over Sonora. Neither of them was hurt, but for some reason Harl had expected to be. Such a loud noise could only come from a god. He glanced at the horizon, but the grey, smoky sky showed nothing of the giants. He scanned the terrain through the pelting drops.
‘There,’ he said, pointing to cliff face visible through the grass. He could see a dark shadow against the rock that looked like a cave entrance. ‘Could be a place to shelter.’
They ran between the stalks and under the looming edge of the cliff. Harl had been right, the shadow was the edge of a cave entrance and they dashed inside. The entrance narrowed and dropped lower until they were forced to scramble along on their hands and knees. Harl was in the lead and flailed one arm around blindly to feel his way in the darkness.
He sensed the cave opening out, before he felt the rock walls sweep away beside him and stood, reaching up in the darkness to guard against knocking his head on the rock above. Something was crunching under his feet, but he paid it little mind as he guided Sonora further in.
He needed to get a fire going. Sonora was already shaking from the cold; if she became sick he’d struggle to help her. She was the healer, not him.
He dropped to his knees and fumbled through his bags until he found a flask of fire liquid. He poured a small amount onto the ground and used his flint and knife to shower sparks down on it. The cave lit up instantly when it caught.
He whipped his sword out as the light flared and took a quick look around. Nothing leapt out at him, so he laid the sword on the ground and then fed some of the kindling Sonora passed him onto the fire. It hissed and crackled, but the fire was relentless and he soon had a steady blaze going.
Sonora made a noise of disgust and when he looked up he could see that she was studying the cave. He took a better look around himself when she started to frown.
The floor was covered with crumbling white bones. Clearly human, they had been cracked open for their marrow. Harl did a q
uick count of the skulls. At least ten people had died inside the cave.
Other items were scattered across the floor as well. Cooking pots, rotten bits of clothing and other items that were just too rusted away to make out.
Unlike the other cave, there were no markings on the walls other than deep grooves and something like weapon strikes. He found several shallow lines close together that looked like they had been clawed out by some creature.
‘It’s a tomb,’ Sonora said.
Trying to keep clear of the bones, Harl kicked some of the rotten rags onto the dimming fire. When they had caught, the extra light gave him a better view of the rusted items. He recognised a few of them as arrow heads and one was a saw blade, but one of the half-buried skeletons was clutching a rusted knife, much like Gorman’s. He pried the knife loose and turned it over in his fingers.
‘It’s the same blade as Grandpa’s,’ Sonora said.
‘Perhaps they came from the same place?’ Harl said. ‘Or maybe they traded with Gorman’s people? Who knows?’
‘I wonder what happened to them?’ Sonora asked, stooping to pick up one of the skulls.
‘Looks like they were defending themselves,’ Harl said, skimming his foot over a bone that resembled a claw.
‘From something vicious,’ she said as she turned the skull over in her hands to inspect the gruesome find.
One side of the skull had a distinct groove along it, clearly from where something sharp had sliced down to the yellowing bone.
‘Why are there no skulls from the attackers?’ Harl asked.
‘Maybe they were removed by the victors?’ she said. ‘Whatever happened, those inside came off worse.’
They huddled by the fire to wait out the rain. Every so often the entrance would light up and the now familiar deep rumbling sounds would echo into the cave.
‘Will it stop?’ Sonora asked, cringing every time the booming sound rumbled into the cave.
‘If not, we’d better get used to it.’ Harl said.
She laughed, and, for the first time since the illness had struck her homeland, she became her old self.
‘You’ve been touching the scorch marks by the entrance,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said, not understanding.
‘And then you had an itchy nose,’ she said, her grin widening.
‘Probably,’ he said. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘You would look handsome with a moustache.’ She reached out and rubbed the edge of her cloak just below his nose. When she pulled it away and showed him, he could see a black smear across the fabric.
‘Soot!’ she giggled.
A rustle sounded from outside. Harl snatched his bow off the floor and leapt up, nocking an arrow as Sonora scrambled to her feet and drew the sword. He pointed the arrow at the cave mouth. A shadow flashed past, darting from one side of the opening to the other. It was only a silhouette in the gloom, but was it the same creature that had slaughtered the cave’s last inhabitants?
Harl bent to the fire, grabbed one of the bones from beside it, and then used the bone to flick some of the burning rags closer to the entrance.
He tensed, ready to lash out and fight another vicious monster.
Chapter 28
A thousand charges! An outrageous price for medical care. It’s time I let the world know about what I have found.
Sonora burst into laughter. ‘It’s a cow!’
He relaxed and stepped back inside. ‘Good, he said, ‘I’m too tired to keep fighting.’ He glanced up. Darkness was coming again.
Even though the creature had been harmless, Harl was unable to sleep. He kept casting glances at the opening and then turning over to find a position where no stones were digging into him.
When sleep finally took him, he dreamt of the terrified people barricading the entrance with bags of equipment as they held pointed spears to it. High-pitched screeches announced the arrival of the same creatures he and Sonora had fought when they had first stepped outside, but this time there were dozens of them. They swarmed towards the entrance and clawed at the men defending the opening, mandibles clacking as they hissed and writhed their way inside. Men fired pistols at the nearest creatures as they scuttled along floor, walls, and ceiling, before pouncing on the terrified people inside.
The screams of the dying threatened to deafen Harl. He was rooted to the blood-soaked ground and could only watch as the monsters slaughtered everyone and tore their flesh away in a feeding frenzy that almost choked the life from him.
But then the creatures screamed and began swarming towards the cave mouth as a dark shadow fell across it. The cave shook and rocks tumbled from the ceiling as one of the god’s hands smashed its way through. It thrashed around, snatching at anything that moved, knocking creatures aside as it clawed its way further and further inside. It grabbed Harl and dragged him along the ground towards the exit, his fingers scrabbling at the earth and rocks as he tried to escape. His screams tore through the darkness around him, but it was too strong. Too deadly.
He was yanked out of the cave and blissfully out of the nightmare.
Sweat ran down his face as he woke from the horror. Sonora was crushing a handful of leaves and carefully inspecting the result. She stopped when she noticed he was awake.
‘Didn’t mean to wake you,’ she said.
Harl smiled at her. The rain had washed the mud and gore from her face and she looked incredibly pretty, even in the gloom. The constant deluge of rain outside had stopped and a faint light streamed in through the mouth of the cave.
‘We slept through the dark cycle,’ Sonora said.
She’d topped up the fire and prepared some steak from the previous cycle’s kill by cooking it over the flame on sticks sharpened into skewers. Stepping around the fire she handed him one of the succulent smelling skewers.
‘What’s our next move?’ she asked, taking a bite of one.
He rubbed a hand across his face to dislodge the last touch of the nightmare and then chewed on the piece of steak while thinking. His mind had been so full of questions last cycle that he didn’t really know what to do now. He didn’t like the thought of staying in the cave any longer after the nightmare. But what else was there?
‘We should make it to the base of the tree this cycle,’ he said, pulling at the juicy meat.
‘Is that where we’re heading then?’ she asked, seemingly unconcerned that they had no final destination.
‘It’s the best I have,’ he said. ‘It’s the largest visible object out there, so perhaps we could look around?‘
‘It’s a thousand strides high, Harl. We can’t climb it.’
‘Then I can carve a way inside the base with the sword and hollow out a house,’ he said, suddenly confident that they had a destination.
As the light grew brighter, they picked up their gear and began the winding journey towards the trunk.
The walk was not difficult. There were less giant grasses under the tree canopy, making passage easier. Sonora explained that the grass stalks needed more light to grow than the canopy provided, so they just withered and died. It was the same as the forest at home, just on a much bigger scale. Small plants didn’t stand a chance in the shade.
Dense clumps of moss seemed to thrive in the shadows, though. They peppered the ground and, just like everything else in this world, they were massive compared to what they knew from the tanks. They formed great bushes and mounds, but rather than the vibrant greens they were used to, these mosses were a tapestry of russet hues.
Giant, decaying leaves blanketed the ground between the moss clumps. Harl picked one up at one point; the size was staggering. He wrapped it round his shoulders like a cloak, much to Sonora’s amusement, and then swept it down onto the ground again so they could sit on it while they ate.
But as the cycle wore on, the breeze brought a chill. The dense canopy blotted out the sun and, without its heat, they were soon shivering. Harl began to feel uneasy. Each step seemed to heighten the feeling un
til, eventually, he stopped and strained to hear any sign of what was troubling him. Then he spotted a tinge of movement beside a thick clump of stalks. Nothing definitive, but he was sure something on two legs had popped out then slipped back again. He peered between the stalks and cursed, as shadows from the canopy tricked him as he tried to see what lay ahead. Leaves swayed and branches reached out across the path, all of it dark and threatening. Half of what he saw was unreal, shadowed figments that danced and teased at the edge of his vision. Whatever it was, it was a natural at remaining undetected among the straight, leafless stalks.
He kept his bow in hand as they pushed on through the cycle, not speaking much for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Eventually, the forest thinned and the stalks came to an abrupt halt. A vast plain stretched away before them. They were much closer to the trunk and it dominated the view now that the forest had fallen away. Thin red lines were visible deep between the crevices of bark. It looked like a second layer underneath, almost like a poisonous creature’s skin, warning that any attempt to harm it would prove fatal. Perhaps cutting into it had been a hasty idea.
He looked left and right at the edge of the vast plain. The ground was bare, sandy soil that stretched around the base of the tree. Small rocks and bones littered the ground between a few weather-beaten boulders.
A shrill piercing noise rang out overhead. With a sinking feeling Harl looked up into the branches of the tree.
They were not alone.