Called to Darkness

by Richard Lee Byers

  Ganef and a woman who was presumably his wife lay in a bed, a box-like object Kagur had heard tell of but never seen before. A swaddled infant shifted restlessly on the other side of the wife, and, stained red by the glow of the coals, a small, curly-headed boy made do with a pallet of wolf pelts near the fire pit. Maybe not everyone in the family was effete.

  And maybe Kagur had more urgent things to do than reflect on their sleeping arrangements. She cast about for the sword.

  Apparently Ganef believed in keeping a weapon close. He'd draped the baldric over the bedpost nearest his head, where it was too far away for Kagur to simply reach in and grab it, or even hook it with the end of her bow.

  Careful not to bump anything, she tiptoed inside. Deciding it would be easier to step over the boy on the ground than maneuver around him, she hiked up her cloak to make sure it wouldn't brush across him.

  Slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, she lifted the sword and its harness off the conical finial at the top of the bedpost. Grinning at the thought of Ganef's reaction when he woke and realized the valuable weapon was gone, she slung it over her shoulder, turned, and headed back the way she'd come.

  She made it two steps. Then the baby started crying.

  She had no idea why. She hadn't made a sound. Possibly, hunger had woken the infant. Or a bad dream. Of late, she knew all about those.

  Whatever had done it, she prayed the baby's wailing wouldn't rouse the rest of the family immediately. If it did, perhaps she could still make it to the exit. She quickened her stride.

  The little boy sat up from his wolf skins. "Mama," his high voice whined, "the baby's cry—" His head snapped around toward Kagur, and even in the dark, she could see his eyes widen. "Thief!"

  Kagur sprang over him, lunged onward, and burst out into the night. Precarious as her situation was, she had collected her gear. Now she just had to make it to Grumbler on the other side of the camp.

  But as she ran in that direction, a figure came pounding through the snow to intercept her. She assumed it was the man Ganef had assigned to watch her.

  Whoever he was, he had a long, narrow face, with a drooping mustache that accentuated the mournful look of it. He halted when they were still a few steps apart. "You're a guest," he said.

  "Then get out of my way."

  "Can't," he answered, and while he was still articulating the word, she rushed him.

  Alas, the sudden action didn't startle him into immobility. He caught her cut on his shield and riposted by slashing low. She pulled her front leg back, removing it from the path of his blade, and sliced his forearm.

  He managed to come back on guard, but blood streamed from the gash, and the sword in his hand started shaking. She gave him a moment to surrender or run away. Then, when he didn't do either, she advanced with her shield out to the side where it didn't protect her, daring him to attack.

  Bellowing a war cry, he obliged with a head cut. She parried with her sword, not the shield, a defense that many Kellids wouldn't anticipate, and started to step forward for a slash to the throat.

  "Halt!" someone shouted.

  She had no reason to heed the call. Yet it seemed to hang and echo inside her skull. Her lurching, aborted step made her attack awkward, and her opponent avoided it by reeling back out of striking distance.

  She glanced around and saw it was Holg who'd cried out. She bared her teeth at the realization he'd balked her with a spell.

  "If you kill anyone," the shaman shouted, "you're starting a blood feud! The Fivespears will hunt you like you mean to hunt Eovath!"

  Curse him, he was right, and she couldn't have that. It would make her task even more difficult.

  She rushed her opponent, caught his feeble sword stroke on her shield, stepped in close, and hammered the black stone pommel of her blade against his temple. He gave a little grunt and collapsed.

  As soon as she was sure he was finished, she looked around and winced.

  A half-dozen other warriors, some only partly dressed, were converging on her. There'd been too much noise, and they'd scurried out of their tents to investigate.

  Their emergence made Holg's counsel, sensible though it was, impossible to heed. Kagur couldn't fight against such odds if she weren't willing to kill. She'd be lucky to prevail regardless.

  Holg chanted and stabbed the end of his staff at the warrior closest to intercepting Kagur. The man went rigid like he'd frozen solid in an instant. Momentum nearly pitched him forward into the snow.

  "Run to me!" the shaman called to Kagur. "I can help you!"

  Maybe he could at that. She sprinted toward him. The other warriors, all but the paralyzed one, closed in on them—but, wary of the old man's magic, they did so more deliberately than before. It gave Ganef himself time to scramble forth from his tent and join them.

  "There's no need for this," the chieftain growled, advancing with a longsword of Kellid manufacture in his fist.

  "I agree," Kagur said. "Just let me go."

  "I explained why you need to stay, for your own sake!"

  "And she," Holg said, "explained why he has to find the giant for everyone's sake, including ours."

  Ganef glared at him. "If I didn't know you're at least half senile, and if I didn't believe poor Droga back there would be all right when your spell wears off, I'd declare you a traitor and kill you here and now. If you don't hold your tongue, I'll do it anyway."

  "Chieftain," Holg replied, "you have my word that no one cares more for the well-being of the Fivespears than I do. Think how diligently I've tended the sick. How I saved your own wife and unborn daughter when you feared you'd lose them both ..."

  As he spoke on, his voice fell and became such a singsong drone that Kagur lost the sense of the words. She jerked, blinked, and realized some power concealed in the recitation had nearly dulled her into somnolence.

  It had done precisely that to most of the Fivespears warriors, who stood listening with slack-jawed fascination. But, with a snarl, Ganef roused an instant after Kagur did. Another warrior slapped his own scarred, square face to clear his head.

  "That was it, old man!" Ganef said. "That was the last time you'll disrespect me!" He started forward, and the other man followed his lead.

  "Stop them," crooned Holg, making the words a part of his recitation. "I can't. I have to hold onto the others."

  "Back away," Kagur replied. The shaman did so, commencing a slow retreat. But it was still going to be tricky to keep both Ganef and the other Fivespears warrior away from him, especially if she couldn't kill or maim anybody.

  She interposed herself between her two opponents and Holg and backed up along with the shaman. Ganef and his ally spread out to flank her or simply swing wide around her to get at the old man. The warriors caught in the snare of Holg's magic shuffled along too, like sleepwalkers.

  Kagur maintained her defensive posture until, she hoped, both her opponents were certain she'd decided to hover close to Holg. Then she rushed Ganef. One of the sleepwalkers stepped obliviously into her path, and, slipping in the snow, she struggled to veer around him. She jostled and bumped him off balance anyway, but without waking him from his daze.

  She attacked Ganef furiously, but with small preparatory movements intended to give a competent warrior just enough warning to defend successfully. Warding himself with his shield, Ganef did so, but the onslaught still provoked a wordless cry of alarm. He didn't know she didn't intend to kill him.

  His comrade, a spearman, scrambled to help him. In the Fivespears warrior's place, Kagur might have opted to catch up with Holg, silence the old man's recitation, and rouse those he'd entranced. But maybe the spearman was afraid Kagur would kill Ganef in the moment that would take.

  Whatever he was thinking, now Kagur could fight the two of them without needing to shield Holg at the same time. Though it was still going to be difficult, she could manage it.

  But not if she let Ganef's ally come up behind her. As his running footsteps thudded in the snow, she dipped her
shield to invite a cut to the head. Ganef obliged.

  She lifted the shield again. Steel rang on steel, and before Ganef could ready his sword for another stroke, she spun past him. She whipped the flat of her blade against his knee.

  He cried out, staggered, but didn't fall. His thick leather breeches had blunted the force of the blow.

  Still, at least both Kagur's adversaries were in front of her again. And when Ganef shifted sideways to flank her anew, he limped.

  She laughed. "I guess I am still a little weak. I meant to cut the tendons. I'll get them next time."

  "Bitch!" He took another hobbling sidestep.

  She launched herself at him, blocked the cut he whirled at her face, and rammed her shield into his. The impact knocked him reeling and dumped him on his backside.

  She spun back around just in time to parry the other Fivespears warrior's spear thrust with a downward sweep of her sword. She shifted in close and bashed him in the face with her shield.

  The spearman gasped. His eyes rolled up, and his legs gave way beneath him. Kagur pivoted and found that, as she'd hoped, Ganef's injured leg had delayed his reentry into the fight. In fact, he was still floundering to regain his feet in the snow.

  Why give him the opportunity? Kagur charged him, knocked his sword out of line, and kicked the bad knee. Ganef fell back down and clutched at it.

  Kagur backed away and watched him. When she was satisfied he was going to stay down, she turned to catch up with Holg.

  Only to find herself pivoting right into an axe cut that threatened to shear into her guts. As Ganef had predicted, Droga had recovered from the paralysis with which Holg had afflicted him. Then he'd crept up behind her.

  She flung out her shield and blocked—poorly. The full force of the blow jolted her. But the axe hadn't cut her, and that was what mattered.

  Startled, angry, she riposted to the face and only remembered she meant to avoid doing irreparable harm when she saw blood splash. Thank Gorum, Droga was nimble and had tried to leap out of harm's way. As a result, the stroke had merely gashed his cheek from ear to jaw. With luck, he ought to survive.

  For now, though, the shock of the wound robbed him of the will to fight. He lowered the axe and stood with his mouth opening and closing. Blood dribbled through his teeth and down his chin.

  Kagur ran after Holg.

  The blind man was still drawing the warriors he'd entranced along, and they still looked harmless. But new Five Spears were emerging from their tents to see what all the yelling and banging around were about.

  Kagur sheathed the sword of the Blacklions and pulled her longbow off her back. She strung it, nocked an arrow, and drew the string back. Then she pivoted back and forth in the slim hope that the threat of a shot would deter further hostilities.

  Until she had a better idea. She aimed at the nearest of the spellbound shufflers. The fellow didn't even seem to notice, but the Fivespears in their right minds did. They faltered at the threat to a kinsman too close for her to miss and helpless to take any action at all to defend himself.

  "Go back in your tents!" Kagur called. "Otherwise, I'll kill the sleepwalkers one after another!"

  The rest of the Fivespears didn't all scuttle obediently back into the shelters. That would have been too much to hope for. But no one risked a bowshot of his own, and though some warriors tried to steal closer when Kagur was looking the other way, they froze whenever she swung back in their direction.

  That was good enough for her to reach Grumbler. "Lift!" she said, and the mammoth made a ladder of his foreleg. She scrambled onto his back as hastily as possible, so she could quickly re-aim her bow at the addled warriors.

  "Now me," said Holg, still weaving the words into his soporific crooning. The recitation had acquired an underlying wheeze, like the effort was wearing him out.

  "What?" Kagur asked. Meanwhile, she kept her eyes moving, watching for any hotheaded Fivespears who succumbed to the urge to make a move, and never mind the helpless kin in danger.

  "How can I stay here after this?" the old man asked. "You need to take me with you."

  She didn't want to, but she supposed he was right. "Lift!" she repeated.

  Like any Kellid, Holg must have ridden mammoths ever since he was old enough to walk, but he was still clumsy clambering onto Grumbler's back. Kagur had to leave off drawing the bow again to haul him up.

  To her relief, her luck held. Perhaps unable to discern the opportunity quickly enough in the dark, none of Holg's fellow Five Spears sent an arrow streaking in her direction.

  She pointed Grumbler away from the camp and set him running. Snow flew up around his pounding feet.

  Chapter Five

  A Bargain

  As dawn painted the eastern sky gold and red, Kagur headed Grumbler up to the top of an ice mound. Unless a traveler was nearing the Tusk Mountains, such a gentle rise was about as much of a hill as the windswept Ginji Mesa had to offer.

  She halted Grumbler at the top and gazed back the way she'd come, out across the tundra. Here and there, some of the taller shrubs protruded from the snow, and in the distance, the frozen surface of a pond gleamed. Nothing was moving.

  "We'll stop and rest here," she said. "Lift!" Grumbler obeyed the command, and she hopped to his fetlock and then to the ground.

  Dismounting slow and stiffly but without need of assistance, Holg said, "I take it you don't see anyone chasing us. If the tribe's not on our trail by now, it likely means they aren't going to bother."

  "Good," Kagur replied, "Now I just have to find a safe place to leave you."

  Holg snorted. "No, Blacklion, you don't. Haven't you wondered how I showed up just when all those warriors were closing in on you, fully dressed and with a bag slung over my back?"

  Feeling foolish, Kagur scowled. "I had other things to think about."

  "From the moment you woke, I tried to explain that I'm coming with you. You were just too preoccupied to hear. But I'd guessed you'd try to slip away in the night, so I decided to meet you when you went to retrieve your mammoth. I hoped finding me there would persuade you I'm clever enough to be useful. If not, I'd threaten to raise an alarm unless you took me along."

  "Only Ganef's son raised it first."

  "Is that who it was? At any rate, when the yelling started, I surmised you might need help and came as quickly as I could."

  "Thank you. But I can't take you with me."

  "Why not?"

  "A blind old man will slow me down."

  "Like I slowed you down when Ganef and the others came after you?"

  Kagur frowned. "What you did was useful. But I suspect things went as well as they did because you knew the layout of the camp. How would you fare on a battlefield where nothing is familiar?"

  "Throughout my life, I've acquitted myself well on a number of them. There's more than one kind of sight."

  "Maybe. That still leaves the question of your age."

  "Does it? I rode Grumbler here mile after mile through the cold without complaint." Holg reached out and scratched in the wool on the mammoth's flank.

  The shaman had an answer for everything. Kagur found it annoying, like they were practicing swordplay and she couldn't penetrate his guard. "Curse it, old man, I don't understand why you want to accompany me."

  "Then you really didn't listen to a thing I told you. I take Eovath's threats seriously."

  "But why? You admitted the spirits didn't tell you."

  "Not in a clear, unmistakable way, certainly. Nor recently, nor in words. But the ancient powers don't always communicate by speaking."

  "What do they do, then—send visions?"

  "In this case, more of a feeling."

  Kagur snorted. Grumbler nuzzled her, and she stroked his trunk. "A feeling."

  Holg surprised her by chuckling. "I know how dubious that sounds. But at least it's a feeling of long standing.

  "When I was younger than you are now," the shaman continued, "I left the tundra to see the southlands. In Vari
sia, I fell in with a band of self-proclaimed ‘adventurers,' fools who made it their business to go places sensible people shun and meddle with things better left alone. Somehow, I knew I belonged among them, and I shared their fortunes for many years."

  Despite her impatience, Kagur felt slightly intrigued. "But not forever, plainly."

  "No. In time, my hair fell out, and my joints started to ache and creak. The company endured, but that was thanks to new, young warriors replenishing the ranks. One by one, my old comrades retired or died."

  "And you came home."

  "Yes. I missed my tribe and all that I'd known as a boy, but that wasn't the whole of it, even though I thought so at first. Years before, I'd sensed I belonged with my southern friends, and on my journey back north, I finally realized why. My time among them prepared me for a task I would one day have to undertake to help my own people."

  "And you thought that when I showed up, that was the task beginning?"

  "Yes, and I still do."

  Kagur hesitated. "If I were an old warrior and had done mighty deeds in my youth, age might weigh on me. I might yearn for one more great battle, and even persuade myself the gods meant for me to have it."

  Holg nodded. "That's a reasonable thing to think, especially in a time when the weave of things has come undone, and omens and portents of any sort are scarce and unreliable. Even I wondered whether I'd simply deluded myself, as the years passed and nothing extraordinary happened."

  "It still hasn't," Kagur said. "I'm not extraordinary." A chilly breeze gusted, fluttering her mantle and Holg's.

  "You are now," the old man said. "By rights, you should never have reached me alive with Eovath's knife in your stomach. You should never even have made it to Grumbler or managed to haul yourself onto his back."

  Kagur frowned at the implication that she herself had become somehow uncanny. "I couldn't die. I have a score to settle."

  "At times, mortal stubbornness and the will of the spirits act in concert."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Then maybe this will make more sense: When Eovath spoke of the Earthnavel, you may have assumed he was babbling about something imaginary. Most people would. But, bleeding out, freezing, you nonetheless found your way to one of the few people on the mesa who knows differently. In this land and everywhere I wandered, I've spent my days collecting lore the way other men seek—"