by Sarah Driver
He jumps when he sees me. ‘What are you? What are you doing in my tent? Guards?’ He glances around the empty tent. ‘Guards!’
He don’t even know he’s dead.
‘Chieftain,’ I say, the dream-word slow and long and clumsy. ‘Look at that wound on you – don’t you know you’re dead?’
He jolts, his spirit splintering into a hundred raging fragments before buzzing back together again. ‘Treacherous creature! My guards will have your head on a spike!’
I only realise it as I say the words. ‘I think Stag had you killed,’ I tell him. ‘What happened to gift you that wound?’
His gaping spirit-eyes roam the cold, black space around us. ‘A walrus tusk,’ he admits, hunching low in his seat. ‘I was abandoned on the ice. The fog clouded my vision. Too late I realised the walrus was a mother with cubs. I felt the tusk before I saw it – then that man in brass-buckles came rushing to me, claiming to have lost sight of me in the fog . . .’ He clutches the arms of his chair. Then he fixes me with glaring eyes. ‘What do you want from me, ghoul? Are you here to drag me to the under-realms?’
I float above his head. ‘No. I want to wake you, with your consent, so that you can avenge yourself. Stag comes soon, to lift the Opal from your throat, before your burial.’
‘I stole that stone, so now it belongs to me! I will accept your offer. I will return to life.’
‘Chieftain, I ent certain how long we can bring you back for. I—’
‘Fear not, ghoul. I am strongest among men.’
‘I will help you cross back into the waking world. But if I do, I want the Opal.’
Outrage pins his skin taut. Then he closes his eyes, and nods.
I stretch out my hand. I feel a tingle when our spirit-fingers touch. I help him out of his chair.
‘Follow me!’ We hover over the casket and I show him his body.
He howls and rages, grabbing fistfuls of his cloak and hair.
‘I can help you,’ I tell him. ‘You need to lie down inside your bones and let me do the rest.’
I whisk back to my body.
‘Sparrow,’ my lungs wheeze. ‘Quick, he needs your fire!’
The Chieftain’s body lies still and cold. But I can sense his spirit drifting nearer.
My brother leans over him again and drips gloopy lines of purple lightning onto his chest and neck, singing under his breath as he does it. He presses his fingers to the Chieftain’s ribs. His voice gets husky as his energy slows.
‘Sparrow, that’s enough!’ I pull at his arm, panic pulsing through me.
‘Just needs a bit more,’ he mutters sleepily.
‘No.’ I climb to my feet. ‘You’ll bleed yourself dry!’ I pull him back and he releases a burst of lightning that thumps into the Chieftain’s chest.
At the same beat, the doors bang open. Slow, heavy boots approach the casket. We drop down behind it and squeeze into the shadows. I hold my breath.
We’re too late. I dig my nails into my palms, swallowing a scream of fury.
Stag leans down over the casket. We watch as he lifts the Opal from the Chieftain’s throat and replaces it with a polished lump of amber.
Then he turns around and stalks away, the Opal glowing between his fingers.
It didn’t work, and now he’s going to walk away with the Opal, easy as anything!
I bite my fingertips. Then there’s a tattered gasping sound. I twist around and watch as the Fangtooth Chieftain sits upright in his casket, clutching his chest with one hand and his great sword with the other. The icicles on the Chieftain’s eyebrows melt and run down his face like tears.
Stag halts. His shoulders spring upwards, tensing against his ears. Then, slowly, he turns around.
The Chieftain lets go of his sword and flexes stiff fingers. Then he stands, stumbles, curses thickly. He stares around through eye sockets stuffed with rubies. When he scrubs his eyes with his knuckles, the rubies fall out, and he peers blearily through scratched eyeballs. His chin drops to his chest, and he glares down at us.
Sparrow weeps and squirms, kicking deeper into the shadows. But I point at the shadowy shape of Stag, face frozen in confusion mingled with spreading horror. I force a dry whisper from my lungs. ‘He took the Opal.’
The Chieftain climbs down in a shower of grave jewels, bones clicking.
He jerks towards the fright-frozen figure of Stag. His fingers reach out to touch him, but the wretch bats his hand away, eyes popping with dread, veins bulging. ‘What evil trickery is this? You’re – you’re dead !’
‘No longer,’ croaks a voice as old as tree roots.
The Chieftain reaches out and plucks the Opal from Stag’s trembling palm. Then he stalks out of the tent clutching the gem and I curse under my breath. ‘I told him to give it to me !’
We creep out from behind the casket. Stag blunders towards the doors, fiddling at his belt. We hang back, out of sight at the edge of the tent.
Too late, I see the gun as Stag pulls it free. Then he runs, slips through the doors – we chase after, I try to hold Sparrow back – and we get outside in time to see Stag blast a hole in the Chieftain’s chest.
Except folk have started gathering for the burial. There are screams. Hands pressed against mouths.
The Chieftain topples forwards. The Opal lands in the snow. It’s too far away for me to reach. ‘No!’ I hiss. We run and hide behind another tent.
Stag stands over the Chieftain’s body, panting. Then he vomits into the snow and the spew steams in the night. His hands shake as he turns the Chieftain’s body over with his foot. Is he dead again? I will the Chief to stir, but he don’t. And I could scream.
‘Dead things walk,’ booms Stag, voice loosening an icicle that smashes at his feet. He glares around the burial-gathering, into rows of shocked faces.
He shot the Chieftain, flurry the whispers.
‘I saved you from an abomination of nature!’ Stag roars. ‘Why did a dead man walk this night? Who set him to walking?’
‘There is a witch,’ someone answers. ‘Old One. If any will know, it is she.’
The Chieftain-mother barges through the crowd. She stares at the scene, chin quivering. ‘What evil lurks here? Why has my son been disturbed?’
Sparrow strains against my hold. ‘I can get it!’ he whispers. He breaks away and dashes out from our hiding place, grabs the Opal and hurries back to me.
But Stag’s eyes catch a flurry of movement. He rushes after us. Crow blurs through the darkness with a rustle of feathers, straight into Stag’s face. He yells, stumbling and falling in the snow.
We run, as he bellows into the darkness at our backs. He screams for guards. They come blundering between two rows of tents and I squeeze away but one of them grabs Sparrow and he squawks, voice piercing the night. When I turn around, the others are staring at the Chieftain’s body.
‘Don’t look at him – get the thief !’ screams Stag.
I race back the way I came, but the guard is pressing Sparrow’s face down in the snow and ripping the Opal from his palm.
I open my pipes to yell at the guard but then Stag steps up behind us and I swallow my voice back down, terror clanging in my gut until it’s hot and bubbling. ‘So, even slave children are learning of this stone,’ he murmurs, close to my ear. Startlement throbs in my bones. He ent recognised us. The eyes see what they expect to see. That’s how invisible slaves are to powerful people. ‘Chain them and leave them out in the snow.’ He turns and stalks off, not realising that he was inches away from the Sea and the Sky-Opal. But the gems know. The Land-Opal glows in his fist, and inside my pocket the other two burn.
Axe finds us after he’s left. ‘What did you do?’ she barks, wrapping extra cloaks around us to keep us from freezing to death.
‘He woke up,’ says Sparrow.
‘He died again,’ I say.
‘Stag got the stone,’ we say together.
‘What? ’ hisses Axe. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were plott
ing your own executions? I might’ve been able to knock some sense into your skulls!’
‘We had to try something!’ I grip her eyes hard in mine. ‘I’m fretting for Old One. They reckon she’s a witch, that she set the Chieftain walking. You have to protect her!’
Thaw-Wielder bursts through the night and lands on Sparrow’s head, staring at me accusingly. Peace, Thaw! I chatter. I never meant to get caught.
The black crow wheels through the air and lands in the snow in front of us, cocking its head. But then nothing happens.
Two-legs slumped in snow . . . I know? I know?
Yes, you know! I gasp. Your name is Crow and you are a boy, not a bird!
But the crow flies away again without replying. My insides twist, hot and sharp. What’s happening to him?
Thaw, I chatter desperately. Whatever happens, you have to protect that crow! Remember, he’s a two-legs friend, aye?
She splutters a beakful of outrage into my face. Thaw remember! Thaw not soft-shell-skull like two-legs girl!
All night, we huddle in the snow. The chains bite my wrists. Axe keeps vigil by our sides, making sure our scarves are tied tight against the skin-flaying wind, until the guards circle back from their patrol and see her off. When the grainy light has thinned as much as it’s going to, preparations are made for the Chieftain’s burial.
Not far from where we’re chained, Tribesfolk saw open a huge hole in the ice. From our left drones a mourning song, and footsteps crunch slowly through the snow. Flaming torches throw flickering light against the sides of the tents. Then a procession marches into view – the casket is being carried on the shoulders of warriors.
When they reach the hole in the ice, they attach the casket to a sled and a pack of four polar dogs. Everyone gathers, blocking our view, but there’s no escaping the unholy crash-smash as the whole dog-sled is tipped through the ice, together with the casket and the dogs, and a piece of polished amber in place of the Opal. Stag watches, puffing on his pipe, shoulders hunched around his ears.
It was worth getting caught just to see him almost piddle his breeches in fear. Teeth knocked out, fright lodged in chest . . . we will keep unravelling you, I swear it. We will unravel you ’til there’s naught left.
The spite in my own thought leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I try to blow it away, remembering that I can’t let the darkness in me swell. It comes from him and I have to fight it.
Sparrow sobs quietly. He tries to talk to me about the polar dogs, but I shush him urgently. No way do I want to draw any attention to us.
The Chieftain’s barely sunk through the hole in the ice when a boom throbs in my chest.
A distant drum.
I was taught the different drum-sounds from a young age, to learn when an attack was near. And this drum belongs to a raider. A horn cleaves the air, and there’s a heavy thudding under the drums – the sound of a creature’s footsteps.
‘Stony Chieftains!’ someone yelps.
‘Silence,’ commands Stag. ‘I called them here. You have nothing to fear. Now that the mourning has passed for your Chieftain, new leadership must be settled.’ A group of warriors detach themselves from the crowd of mourners and step to flank him.
Tribesfolk exclaim in the language of the Moonlands, grasping onto their old ways like spears. They use their bellies like bellows, raking in great baggy breaths and gushing the air out.
‘How many times?’ demands the grandmother viciously. ‘Common trade-tongue only!’
‘You called them?’ challenges Axe-Thrower, rounding on Stag. ‘Grandmother, did he seek your counsel on this?’
The old woman gifts Axe a warning look. ‘I think it is right and good that we ally ourselves with such fine warriors.’
‘But the Stony Chieftains are out of control! Even Father knew that.’ Axe-Thrower points at her grandmother, then at the hole in the ice. ‘And he was your son, and he’s barely cold!’
‘Close your hole,’ warns Stag. ‘Come. Slaves in chains, including that old witch in the hut on the edge of the settlement. She will fetch a decent price if the Stony are as superstitious as the Fanged.’
‘She is our shaman,’ screams Axe-Thrower. ‘You cannot do this!’
‘She is a witch who summons the dead to walking,’ he snarls. ‘Stay out of it!’
A group of Tribesfolk step forwards to stand behind Axe, drawing back their lips to show their fangs. ‘Oh, you side with her, do you?’ purrs Stag. When he pulls his gun from his cloak, they scatter.
I listen, sick-hearted, as Old One is forced from her tent, back crooked and stooped.
When she sees us she clucks forwards, but Stag drags her back by her cloak.
‘I hear tales that the witch has been teaching the slave children spells,’ husks a guard.
Guilt spears me. For helping us, Old One is losing everything. It’s only now that I realise how much she was risking.
They lead us in chains to meet the drums. I keep Sparrow’s tangled copper-dyed hair in sight. Thaw hides in dead trees along the way. Crow does the same. I listen to Old One’s piteous weeping.
When the steeds of the Stony thump into view, my heart crashes. They’re riding great four-legged beasts that lumber along the icy plains, probing with long, wrinkled snouts, sighing and moaning and rolling their eyes back in their heads. They’re gleaming black and armoured like beetles at first glance, but at the next their bodies don’t seem solid – they tower upwards like columns of oily smoke, and every time they stamp their feet forwards, they pull themselves up again with a sucking sound.
‘Phantoms!’ gasps a voice.
On each phantom’s back is strapped a wooden box, and faces peer from seats inside them.
At the narrowest part of the frozen Wildersea, a Chieftain stands atop her phantom’s head. A man stands beside her, gripping a black staff. ‘Far sight!’ he cries, and a light like a beast’s eyeshine blooms atop the black staff.
The phantom kneels, and the woman climbs from its back.
‘There treads Storm-Bringer,’ mutters Axe-Thrower. ‘She with a face as stony as the walls of her stronghold. Devils shudder each time she rises from her bed. What has he done?’
Storm-Bringer lifts her helm from her head, revealing a wildness of red hair. Her neck is heavy with blood-crusted jewels and her belly is heavy with bab, but two great scramasaxes – two-foot-long iron swords, inscribed with runes and inlaid with amethysts – swing from her hands, and her steely eyes glitter with warmongering. She holds a scramasax aloft, and it’s crusted with a rusty stain – she ent bothered cleaning the old blood from her blade.
‘Where prowls the man called Stag?’ she bellows.
Stag steps towards her. ‘Stony Chieftain!’ His bow is so deep that his chin almost scrapes the ice. ‘Welcome.’
She steps forwards, claps him on the back, then stares around her at the settlement. ‘Our Tribes made laws here, long ago,’ she declares, failing to fend off a grin. ‘Now, we break them.’
Stag returns her grin.
Her warriors lurk close behind her and beat their shields. The air is danger-scented so sharply that the polar dogs burst into an endless frighted jangle of barking and straining and jumping.
She eyes the dogs, swinging her swords in spirals. When a dog snarls, she snarls right back, into its face.
Behind her, miserable faces peer from the boxes on the backs of the phantoms. There are so many of them, all packed close together and not moving or talking, that I know they must be slaves. Shipping slaves in plain sight, and she ent fretting about it a stitch.
If I live to grow up, storms a voice in my head, I will stop at nothing to protect folks’ freedom. Nothing!
She whistles, and the phantom kneels again, and the young man who stood beside her steps onto the ice, wielding weapons like hers. ‘Meet my eldest son – your soon-to-be Chieftain.’
‘What? ’ blurts Axe. ‘Only a Moonlander can rule here!
The Stony Raider fixes the cr
owd with glittering black eyes. Even her unborn bab must be fiercing us. ‘Axe-Thrower?’ She laughs, cruelly. ‘You are barely a woman grown! Keep your lips sealed in the presence of your elders. And if I hear that old name again, I will question whether you have need of a tongue.’
Old One turns to look at me. Her weary eyes speak her fright for the loss of her old Tribe-ways.
‘Come,’ says Stag, extending an arm to Storm-Bringer and her son. ‘We have prepared a feast in your honour, Chieftain.’
They leave us and the rest of the slaves chained to the hissing phantoms, loading us aboard one of the wooden boxes along with chests full of walrus tusks – we’re as much the cargo as they are. When the phantoms fall asleep they grunt bone-shaking snores through their snouts.
I jolt awake half a hundred times, listening to the laughter echoing from the tent across the ice, as they feast and make merry. Each time, when I check on Sparrow, he answers me with shuddering sobs. But if he can answer me, that means his blood ent frozen, and he’s alive.
Old One fidgets and shifts in her seat. Her cloak slips from her shoulder, revealing a jutting curve of dark brown wood. She’s hooked my longbow over her shoulder and hidden it under her furs. Awe lights me up inside.
When the merrymaking quietens, and the winds get to howling, Axe treks out onto the ice. She approaches the phantoms warily, eyes searching the boxes on their backs. I wave down at her.
‘I can’t get you free!’ she calls, wincing and glancing over her shoulder. ‘She has the keys to your chains!’
My heart sinks. We failed to get the Opal, or find Leo. And now we’re being shipped like herring.
‘I’m sorry,’ calls Axe, between cupped hands. ‘But here is one thing I can give you: the thing you search for – he will bring it to the city of Nightfall.’
The Opal?