by J. C. Hendee
The only time he had ever seen that on her face was when he had asked about whatever old family dishonor held her and her mother here. But now she was looking at his neck. Those claw marks had already scabbed over enough to discard the bandage along the voyage home.
Skirra straightened and looked him all over, and still there was that fright on her face.
“Just the scratches… that is all,” he said dumbly.
Fright faded slowly. With another quick glance at her assistants, she finally looked him in the eyes again. All the sternness suddenly returned to her face… except for a few rapid blinks as she swallowed hard.
Karras could not stop himself any longer. “Did you make… my weapon?” he whispered.
The glare of warning he got answered that question and shut his mouth tight. But that look faded like the last time as she studied him all over again, maybe checking once more for any injury. Or could he possibly believe that was her intent?
“What do you call it?” she asked.
Karras was uncertain what she meant until she lifted the weapon just a little.
“It is… something changed from an old weapon Fiáh’our had in mind,” he answered. “It is… I call it… a ku’ê’bunst.”
Skirra shook her head. “Not what but who. It—your weapon—should have a name.”
Karras was lost… and maybe a little annoyed. Once again, any old world nonsense like Fiáh’our’s got the better of him. Worse, Skirra watched him expectantly; he could not refuse her like he had the old man.
Perhaps thought of the mad thänæ’s axe or the Bäynæ of the temple in which he had trained was what brought something to mind. Of course it mixed with spite for those notions, but it also echoed her name.
“Skirlan,” he said quickly.
Skirra’s expression blanked… and then she shook her head as her smooth brow wrinkled.
Karras knew she spoke some Numanese, as most rughìr did, but he had not expected her to understand where that made up word had come from. One common Numan term for a shield was skirl; it was easy enough to change it a bit to a name like “shielder.”
A Numan name for a rughìr weapon, not quite as traditional as intended, would certainly gall the old man.
“As you say,” Skirra replied, maybe with a hint disapproval.
That also was too much like Fiáh’our.
“I can mend… Skirlan,” she said, finishing a bit sharply, and as she turned away, she added, “Three days, and then you come back.”
As Skirra headed around the forge to the rear bench, Karras again looked about the dark little smithy. There was so much more here than ever before, and suddenly he felt guilty at the notion of interrupting her work.
“I am back at the seatt now,” he said. “There is no hurry, so—”
“Three days,” Skirra repeated with emphasis, barley turning her head enough to look at him. “And then come back.”
Karras fell silent.
Skirra looked away, but her one hand was still wrapped around the rag on the weapon’s haft. Karras was uncertain, considering the noise in the forge room, but had he heard her exhale, as if releasing tension? Taking hold of the ku’ê’bunst with her other hand, she appeared to cling to it and leaned heavily where it lay upon the workbench.
Karras could think of nothing more to say—or anything that he dared ask. He turned slowly, watching Skirra’s back as he left and headed down the dark passage into the mainway.
There was little doubt that all that had changed in the Yêarclág smithy somehow had to do with Fiáh’our. But Karras had no idea how any of this connected to what the old man had sought in all of that bartering some two moons ago. Something to do with… well, whatever word he had overheard the old man utter in the clan réhanâkst.
Was that just another bit of traditional nonsense, an older word for Meá, or was it something else entirely? And how could a little known smith in the seatt’s underside, no matter her skill, know anything about working that metal?
For what little Karras knew, only deep smiths possessed that knowledge, such secrets. They were barely more than legend to some, living out their shortened lives in their work in the earth’s deepest depths.
Karras slowed in the mainway before he even neared Kìnnébuây, the cheag’anâkst where all of this had started.
Skirra’s two brothers had left home long ago, leaving only her and her mother to tend the family forge. Only she practiced the family craft, and for the family’s poverty, she could have only learned that… from a father who he died too young for a rughìr.
The answer to one question was the only one Karras could imagine. It stopped him still and cold.
Skirra’s father had to have been a deep smith.
There was no other way that she could have learned to work Meá… and somehow Fiáh’our had figured that out. Even that made little sense to Karras for the way her family lived. And not for what she had done after spurning him that final time.
She had made a weapon, by her father’s unique knowledge, from a metal not intended for such.
Skirra had made a weapon that had helped save his life.
Karras grew flushed as his heart started pounding.
There was one more thing—or rather two words—but he was afraid to think they meant more than they did. He turned and stared down the underside’s dim mainway, so less lit than others by crystals smaller than in any other level.
Karras was caught in an urge to rush back to the smithy, but he did not.
All the little its and bits he had bartered from her, in the earliest days after first spotting her in the market, had been delivered to his family’s home when finished. But when he had sought to argue about her hurry to repair his weapon, she had not told him when it would be delivered to his home.
No, Skirra had told him to come back.
What did those two words truly mean?
Karras the Nameless
1. Lauging with Death
2. It was a Dark and Stinky Night
3. The Other Monster
4. Hide and Seek
5. Tagged
6. Tackled
7. Stoned
8. Not Like the Others
9. Chilled to the Stone
10. Others' Choices
11. Counted Out
12. Pulled In
13. Heartless
14. Irin's Last Night
15. Small Mercy
16. In Waiting
17. Awake
18. A Wake and a Shard
1. Laughing with Death
“Run, my little cat... like your life... depends on it,” and after panting and a booming laugh, “because it does!”
Karras panted too much to shout anything foul at Fiáh'our's backside.
That big thänæ—so-called “honored” one among their people— jangled as he ran ahead. Worn steel pauldrons flopped on his shoulders, and more armor on his elbows scraped the leather hauberk over his great bulk.
Karras gasped again in terrified flight, expelling puffs of steam into the frigid afternoon air. As a rughìr, Rughìr’thai’âch, “Earth-Born” or what humans called “dwarves,” he was not built to run for his life. Now he had to, along with Gän'gehtin, and it was all Fiáh'our's fault, as usual!
He barely heard Gän'gehtin's rapid bootfalls somewhere behind him. The shirvêsh—mistaken by humans as a mere priest or monk—would have preferred to turn on their pursuers with his studìhallû, a head-high, iron-ribbed war staff.
Karras dared a backward glance. Oh, he should not have done that!
Gän'gehtin was gaining on him, red-faced more in hate for what chased them. The closest, biggest one of them had not caught up yet because it ran on twos instead of fours.
In one black-clawed paw-hand, that huge, bulging, speckle-furred male whirled a scavenged club overhead. And that tree root was as long as the shirvêsh was tall. The male’s half-bestial face and head were a mix of ape, dog, bear, and who-knew-what over something vaguely hu
manoid.
Tufts of darker hairs sprouted from canine-like ears. Yellowed teeth and fangs showed in a short, mashed-in muzzle, and a shrieking, grating howl erupted from its widened maw.
Karras' panting made it impossible to scream.
It was bigger than Fiáh'our, bigger than any human, and more were coming right behind it!
Clods of earth tore up beneath the claws of the sluggïn’ân pack galloping on all fours, or on threes if wielding scavenged weapons. Humans of the Numan nations called them gôb’elazkin—the “little gobblers” or “goblins.”
They were not so little—not most of them.
Karras again looked ahead, and his terror sharpened.
Fiáh'our trundled on between a forested slope and an open, grassy plain—and that old boar was still laughing.
This was not the first, second, or even third time Karras had faced these creatures in the last year. It was the first time that Fiáh'our had done something so stupid to get a pack to chase them. They were about to be run-down and butchered likes goats.
And if that grizzle-haired, braggart kept laughing about it...
Karras faltered as he eyed Fiáh'our's back. Oh, if only he could bash the old man a good one in the head. If only he lived through this, that was. When he glanced back once more, his panting caught in a choke.
The big one closed and swung the root-club at Gän'gehtin's head.
Karras stumbled to a stop and barely screamed out, “Gän—”
Anything more was cut short in shock.
Still at a run, Gän'gehtin rammed his war-staff's heavier top-end into the half-frozen earth.
The shirvêsh buckled low as the staff's rearward butt-spike levered up. That huge sluggïn's club passed just over his head, but the monster could not stop. The butt spike sank between its shoulder and collarbone.
A scream tore out of the big male, deafening Karras' shout for Fiáh'our.
The war-staff's oak bowed under the impact. Just the same, that big monster whipped its club back to strike.
Karras lunged a step in raising his ku’ê’bunst, a two-handed five-flanged mace, but stalled at another sight.
A smaller sluggïn running on all fours closed quickly.
Aiding Gän'gehtin would leave them both exposed.
Karras turned toward this new enemy—and stalled again at the rest of the pack still coming at them. The little one leaped before he second-guessed his choice.
When he swung at it, he forgot to root into the earth, the ally of his people. All rughìr knew without knowing how to do so from the first moment they could stand. All but him in his preference for human ways over those of his own kind.
Karras' ku’ê’bunst struck true.
Everything else happened in a gasp.
The weapon's forward blunt blade cracked the little sluggïn's skull. The creature's head whipped aside. Its bulk collided into him, and he toppled.
Karras' breath rushed out as his back slammed against the hard earth. His head bounced as well, and his iron-banded helmet tumbled off as the sluggïn landed atop him. It clawed at him with blood running from its scalp around one of its yellow eyes. He barely sucked and expelled a breath when its rear feet tried to tear through his leather hauberk's skirt. And he could not throw it off.
Though it was shorter than him and less stout, he gasped under its weight upon his stomach. Fanged jaws widened and snapped for his face, and panic made him ram his war-mace's long haft between its jaws. Teeth and fangs clamped shut with a screech on the weapon's metal haft. Only instinct made him twist sharply with both hands.
The haft’s butt-spike jammed the earth on his right.
Panicked, he thrashed the other way.
Those jaws released with another screech on the haft and came for his face again. He twisted more sharply the other way, and the ku’ê’bunst’s butt-spike tore across the little monster's lower jaw. The sluggïn reared back with a snarling screech.
Karras had no time for a breath and thrust the butt-spike into its sternum.
It lurched back, wobbling atop him, and he pulled one leg from under it and kicked into its belly. It went sprawling, but as he rolled to his feet, finally sucking a full breath, he barely saw it do likewise when something else pulled his attention.
Gän'gehtin whipped his long war-staff around but not before that first big sluggïn swung as well. Both impacts came in the same instant.
The big male's left leg buckled with a muffled crack under the staff's strike. Gän'gehtin cried out as the club's large end slammed his shoulder instead of his head. The shirvêsh skidded two strides across the frozen earth.
A human would have broken under that blow, but not a rughìr.
In Karras' distraction, the smaller one rushed him again, but it faltered as something whizzed past him and he flinched.
A small boulder hit the little sluggïn square in the face.
Its head lashed back, its rear feet left the ground, and it flopped and rolled limply as that head-sized rock tumbled onward, raising thunder in the ground.
Oh no, too much thunder for that, and Karras looked up.
They were everywhere and closing fast.
Someone snatched his hauberk's collar and wrenched him around.
“Stop gawking!” Fiáh'our snapped, cocking back his great axe as he ran past toward Gän'gehtin. “To the trees, as planned, blast you!”
Karras did not stall this time.
He raced on in aching gasps, veering toward the forested slope, but it was not long before he heard pounding footfalls behind. Even then, he only knew it was the old man and the shirvêsh because of the more distant, raging howls of the pack. He had not even reached the needed pair of trees upslope when he heard Fiáh'our again.
“Faster!” Fiáh'our shouted somewhere downslope. “Move it, temple-boy.”
“Look to yourself, old man!” Gän'gehtin snarled back.
Fiáh'our started laughing again.
As Karras climbed even faster, he did not know which scared him more—the old boar's insanity or being torn apart by the pack.
Certainly one led to the other.
He spotted the paired trees above that he had to reach. A hemp rope was lashed head-height about a huge fir tree, which was so old that lower branches were gone up to head height. It would have taken two of him to wrap arms around it.
He struggled upward and saw the additional lashings coiled around the trunk down to the sloped earth. Fifteen strides leftward across the slope was an even bigger one, and brush had thickened and piled between the pair.
Karras was so faint and exhausted that he almost fell against the nearer fir's trunk. He righted himself, raised his ku'ê'bunst, and then saw Fiáh'our and Gän'gehtin down-slope.
They were still more than a dozen strides below.
“Strike!” Fiáh'our shouted at him. “Now!”
Karras hesitated as he saw Gän'gehtin's eyes pop wide. Even farther below, sluggïn'ân darted among the trees in scampering upward.
“Blessed Bäynæ, now!” Fiáh'our shouted in halting.
He whipped the great double-bladed axe over his head with both hands.
Karras was still staring when Fiáh'our flung that axe. It went spinning upslope toward the other of the paired trees. Karras quickly twisted his ku'ê'bunst a half turn and struck at the nearer tree with his full weight.
One flange of his ku'ê'bunst had been crudely sharpened that morning. It bit straight through the rope, and bark chips scattered. Rope coils snaked away with a lashing hiss, and brush between the paired trees shivered and crackled.
Karras never saw or heard if Fiáh'our's axe struck true. He scrambled up above the fir as brush between the paired trees tore apart. A cascade of small boulders rumbled out of the brush and tumbled down-slope. They slammed, bounced, and careened off the earth and other trees along the way.
Fiáh'our and Gän'gehtin lunged behind one lower fir tree as Karras saw sluggïn'ân scattering farther down. And this not so little trap w
as not the end of it all.
“Stop gawking and get running!”
Karras started at Fiáh'our's command.
The old man and the shirvêsh had already reached the far tree as he turned and fled for the slope's upper crest. When he came out of the trees on top, Gän'gehtin and Fiáh'our were already skidding down the barren back slope far to his left.
The noise of the pack began to grow again behind him.
Karras did not look back as he jump off the top.
He landed and went sliding downward on a wave of broken earth and stones. At the ravine's bottom, all that kept him on his feet was that this would be the last run—of this battle or of his life.
The shirvêsh and thänæ outdistanced him off to the left. He tore straight through any brush along the ravine's floor. Twice he got snagged, tangled, and stalled and had to rip free. Barely halfway across, the pack's noise echoed into the ravine behind him, and the other forested slope looked far away.
Karras saw the old man and shirvêsh swerve ahead into his path. Beyond them was a giant downed pine at the ravine's far side. Its roots stuck up over twice the height of a man, and he ran for it, his throat dry and his chest burning.
The sounds of tearing and crackling brush in the ravine followed him.
Someone rose ahead beyond the giant toppled pine, raised and drew a bow, and aimed right at him. Fiáh'our and Gän'gehtin swerved to either side as Karras spotted the glint of the arrow's tip and the shimmer in the long hair of that archer. As despair chased him with the noise of the pack, he could only think one thing.
For pity's sake, do not miss!
He never heard the bowstring's thrum or saw the arrow, even as it half-whistled past his head.
Karras flinched at a guttural shriek somewhere behind him. He ran on his last breaths as more arrows came again and again… and again.
Fiáh'our and Gän'gehtin almost reached the downed pine when the bright-haired archer drew yet another arrow.
“Left and right!” Fiáh'our shouted. “Do not let them get around us.”
Someone else rose to the archer's left beyond the downed tree.