You Die When You Die

by Angus Watson

  Chogolisa returned to her place in the line, flicking blood and viscera from her arm.

  “Right!” declared Sofi Tornado, looking up and down the Crocodile line. “Who’s next?”

  After the Crocodiles were dispatched—they would not be eaten, as they’d been caught before committing any offences against Calnia so would be allowed an afterlife—a boy ran up, leapt over a couple of corpses and told Sofi Tornado that the Swan Empress wanted to see her.

  “Hey, Sofi!” shouted Malilla Leaper, leaning cockily on her blood-caked kill staff, her voice loud so that all the other Owsla might hear. “Chamberlain Hatho’s pyramid hasn’t been reassigned yet. Tell Ayanna we’ll take it.”

  “Good plan,” agreed Caliska Coyote, the woman who never smiled. “Our quarters are cramped. We deserve Chamberlain Hatho’s.”

  “I will consider it.”

  “Please do,” said Morningstar, “our barracks is disgusting.” She wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something terrible. “I’m not sure I can sleep another night there. I grew up sleeping on a bed. Surely we deserve beds?”

  Sofi Tornado walked off wondering what in the name of Innowak that had been about. As those three women well knew, you didn’t tell an emperor of Calnia anything, not if you liked life. Besides, the quarters they had were perfect for training. Chamberlain Hatho’s pyramid was in a higher-status location, facing the Mountain of the Sun over the Plaza of Innowak, but it simply wouldn’t have worked as a home for the Owsla. And why would they want a status-enhancing home? Their status was already as high as it could possibly be. Morningstar was daughter of the former emperor Zaltan. Although she despised her father—she’d dropped the name he’d given her to be known only by her nickname—you could understand that she might miss her early life of opulence. But the others?

  No, Malilla Leaper had challenged Sofi Tornado with an impossible task. It was an attempt to weaken her in the others’ eyes, an attempt which had the support of Morningstar and Caliska Coyote. It might not seem like much, but she’d keep an eye on those three.

  Sofi Tornado put the potentially mutinous women from her mind as she bounded up the log steps of the Mountain of the Sun. A childhood memory of ascending a larger pyramid, made of stone rather than earth, flashed into her mind. She wasn’t sure if the pyramids of her childhood had really been larger. She’d been five or six when she’d been shipped north to Calnia as a gift to Emperor Zaltan, so had few memories of her first life. Mostly she remembered men with big hats, people jumping off towers, a beautiful woman whom she assumed was her mother, and jaguars. She remembered the jaguars best of all. Gorgeous, fierce and powerful cats, lining the steps up to the emperor’s pyramid, roaring and straining at their bonds, stamping their big paws.

  At the top of the steps, she walked towards the shining gold roofs, past guards, the empress’s sweat lodge and other pristine buildings. Two sickly looking girls sat next to the empress’s bathing pool, chosen for the sensitivity of their skin to monitor its temperature. If Ayanna decreed that the pool was too hot or too cold, the girls might be whipped or even killed, depending on the empress’s mood. Everyone in Calnia had his or her place. The two girls looked down as Sofi walked by. Owsla training might be hard, but she preferred her place to theirs.

  Swan Empress Ayanna was waiting with Yoki Choppa, looking pregnant and unhappy. Yoki Choppa, one of the people who had helped to give the Owsla their preternatural fighting abilities, didn’t look up from poking about in his smoking alchemical bowl.

  “Kimaman was killed this morning,” said Ayanna, as near to tears as Sofi guessed it was possible for the Swan Empress to be.

  You’re certain?” She looked to Yoki Choppa. The warlock nodded, eyes still on his bowl. He would have taken a lock of Kimaman’s hair before he’d headed north. By mixing a hair with Innowak knew what in his alchemical bowl, Yoki Choppa could see where a person was, and whether they were dead or alive.

  “Was it the Goachica?”

  “It happened in the territory of the Mushroom Men.”

  “The little tribe of weird aliens?”

  “The same.” Empress Ayanna told her about her dreams in which the pale-skinned invaders destroyed the world. Sofi had heard of the Mushroom Men and understood that they were useless oddballs. So this was all a little surprising.

  “You are to lead the Owsla and kill them all.” Ayanna’s lips were thin and bloodless. “Do not return until they are all dead. Kill anyone who helped them.”

  “Certainly. Although … Kimaman may have died but it doesn’t mean his army has failed.”

  “Does,” mumbled Yoki Choppa. “I took hair from twenty other warriors. All are dead. Odds are the whole army is gone. Most were killed in Goachica territory in the night, the rest in Mushroom Men territory this morning. I underestimated both tribes.” Yoki Choppa reported the error that had cost the lives of four hundred Calnian warriors with all the emotion of a man who hadn’t prepared enough food for a feast.

  “So you are to take the Owsla to the territory of the Mushroom Men and leave no human alive,” said the empress.

  “The survivors may have fled.”

  “You will track them and kill them. All of them.”

  “We will do our best. However, tracking can only do so much. If it rains heavily—”

  “Yoki Choppa will go with you.”

  Sofi raised an eyebrow. This was surely a punishment for Yoki Choppa, for underestimating the Goachica and Mushroom Men’s capability. “He will slow us down.”

  “Won’t,” muttered the warlock.

  “Go.” The Swan Empress pointed northwards. “Do not return until you are certain that they are all dead. And raze their town. When you are done there will be no trace that the Mushroom Men ever existed.”

  Part Two

  Westward Ho

  Chapter 1

  A Bear Cub and an Idiot

  Seventeen survivors set out from Hardwork. Wulf the Fat and Garth Anvilchin led, followed by little Freydis the Annoying and Ottar the Moaner. The rest of them were strung along behind, feeling varying degrees of odd to be leaving the life they’d always known and heading into the reputedly terrifying west on the say-so of a six-year-old girl’s translations of her eight-year-old brother’s unintelligible-to-everyone-else pronouncements. It seemed like the right thing to do to most of them—the boy had predicted the massacre and nobody had a better plan—but that didn’t mean it seemed like a good thing to do.

  Sassa Lipchewer walked towards the tail of the string of refugees, alongside Bodil Gooseface. Sassa had stopped listening to Bodil’s gabbling before they’d left Hardwork’s walls, knowing that Bodil wouldn’t mind or even notice.

  Sassa was trying to focus on the future and not dwell on the horrors of the day before, but it was proving difficult. She didn’t have the slightest idea what the next hour would hold, let alone the coming days, weeks and years, nor had she any experience other than life in Hardwork from which to extrapolate. Images of her dead family kept flashing into her mind and she could feel unshed tears gathering.

  When she reached a rise in a clearing, she turned to say farewell to her home.

  “What’s up?” asked Bodil, interrupting her own verbalised stream of consciousness.

  “I’m going to stand for a second, you go on.”

  Bodil opened her mouth to disagree, but then seemed to change her mind. “Finn, wait for me!” she called, and jogged to catch up with Finnbogi the Boggy.

  The town of Hardwork and the lake of Olaf’s Fresh Sea were obscured by the tangle of trees and undergrowth, so Sassa had to be content with saying farewell to the wheeling gulls and the sky that she’d lived under for the first twenty-two years of her life. Clouds rose in five great columns, like fingers stretching upwards across the vast blue. Was the sky trying to clutch onto her or was it waving her away?

  Would she ever be back? They’d gone perhaps a quarter of a mile. How long was the path ahead? What, for the love of Fraya, was this place The
Meadows that they were looking for? Would they ever reach it? Or, as Frossa had predicted, would they be cut down by wildlife or wild Scraylings as soon as they left Hardwork territory?

  She said a silent farewell to her mother, father and brother. She wondered which god’s hall they’d ended up in. She hoped they were together and hoped that she’d join them when her time came—which would be pretty soon, if Frossa was right. She hoped it was Tor’s Hall. She should really want to be in Fraya’s, since she prayed to Fraya the whole time to give her a child, but Tor’s Hall sounded a lot more fun, plus very few people were as well suited to Tor’s Hall as her husband Wulf, and she wanted to be with him.

  Tears sprang, not for her dead family as she’d expected, but for her unborn, unconceived children, who’d surely never live now. Five years they’d been trying and failing to have a baby, and now it seemed that she’d be mauled by a monster or stabbed by a Scrayling before she had the chance to bring life into the world.

  Frossa the Deep Minded limp-wobbled out of the trees, accompanied by Hrolf the Painter. Sassa wiped the tears from her face. The injured Hird man was using his spear as a walking stick to keep his ruined jaw from joggling. Behind them were the rearguard of Keef the Berserker and Ogmund the Miller. Ogmund seemed to have recovered from the Scrayling slash to his arm. He was zigzagging a little along the path, but that was more a result of his mead-based breakfast than his injury.

  Frossa was good to help with Hrolf, although Sassa reckoned they’d already gone further than the heavy woman had walked in one day for her whole adult life, so hanging back with Hrolf was possibly more to do with necessity than charity.

  Hrolf looked seriously unwell. The lower half of his head and his neck were bandaged. The visible part of his face was bloodless as the corpses they’d burnt the day before. However, when they caught up to her, his infirmity didn’t prevent him from staring at her chest, as he always, always did. She shuddered and threw her shoulders forward, trying to suck her boobs into her body to escape his oily glare.

  Men looked at her the whole time; they had done for as long as she remembered. Usually it wasn’t a big deal, or even a deal. Most men glanced at her figure and looked away apologetically, as if it was something that had to be done, they were very sorry about it, and for everyone’s sake they were going to do it as quickly as possible and the less said about it the better. They might have to have another quick peek in a while, but they would do their clumsy best to make sure she didn’t notice. She didn’t exactly enjoy their meek perving, but if it was the price for being an attractive woman, she could pay it.

  Hrolf and a few others, however—Jarl Brodir had been one of them—pushed that price far too high. They stared at her unashamedly and proprietorially, as if her body was a spectacle like a carving or a tree in bloom, and they’d ogle just as much as they liked, thank you very much, with whatever drooling expression they chose. Root a coot, it was loathsome, and, although she felt guilty for thinking it, if she had to choose someone to have half his face hacked off by a Scrayling axe it would have been Hrolf the Painter. Judging by Brodir’s flattened skull the day before, the Jarl’s death had been pretty nasty. Sassa found it hard to feel sorry for him either.

  Frossa the Deep Minded was an interesting contrast to the pale lecher Hrolf; she was so red with exertion that she was almost purple. Sassa reckoned the dead-animal smell from her sacrifices had already lessened somewhat, but the sharp stink of her sweat was already rising to take its place.

  Despite Frossa’s smell, Hrolf’s leering and the frustratingly ponderous pace, Sassa stayed back with them. Partly she wanted to help Hrolf—it seemed the right thing to do even if he was disgusting—but mostly she wanted some peace. Frossa was too puffed to talk, Hrolf’s mouth was bandaged and Keef and Ogmund were too fixated on scanning the trees for enemies to chat. So they walked in silence.

  It was a mercy to be away from Bodil’s constant prating. If she was annoying after a quarter of a mile … how far could The Meadows be? Fifty miles? Sixty? She loved Bodil like a sister, but she wished she’d shut up for a few minutes every now and then.

  They plodded on through the morning, treading the path that led to the western edge of Hardwork territory. They walked through woodland and wide clearings, skirted lakes and crossed log bridges.

  They stopped often, whenever Frossa said that Hrolf needed to rest, which was always at the top of one of the gentle rises. Every time they paused, Keef yelped an accurate impersonation of a fox scream to alert Wulf at the head of the walkers, and Wulf fox-screamed back.

  After an hour they were still in Hardwork territory, but they were further from the town than Sassa had been in years, and already it seemed much wilder. They passed through stands of trees twenty or thirty times her height. Herons with insectoid legs lifted off waterways as they approached, the birdsong in the trees was almost unpleasantly loud and geese honked above, flying off to Fraya knew where. In one clearing three young wolves bounded into the open, saw the humans and turned tail for the trees. In almost every other clearing white-tailed deer stared at them from the long grass, ears alarmed but standing their ground, watching them pass.

  “Should I shoot a deer for tonight’s supper?” she asked Keef.

  “Sure, if you want to drag it behind you all day. Or you could wait until we camp when there’ll still be shitloads of deer around and shoot one then.”

  After one of their breaks, Chnob the White joined the gang of backmarkers. As well as a pack, he was carrying Keef’s birch-bark boat on his back.

  “They’re saying up ahead that the Calnians might use alchemy to track us. Is that possible, Frossa?” he asked.

  “They won’t need alchemy.” Keef pointed at the footprints on the earth path.

  “As long as it rains like a bastard at some point, we’ll be all right,” said Ogmund, smiling broadly. He let out a boozy burp to emphasise his point.

  “The Scrayling warlocks believe that … they can see which path a person has taken,” panted Frossa, “if they mix the right … herbs and other ingredients with part of a person … Hair is the obvious part to use since … it can be collected more easily than … other body parts.”

  “Do you think they can do that?”

  Frossa shook her head. “No, I don’t … I can’t do it … and I’m more powerfully connected to magic … then anyone I’ve known or heard of …”

  “More so than Ottar?” asked Keef.

  “Yes.”

  “Even though he predicted the massacre?”

  “That was coincidence, not magic … The boy lacks the wit to speak … how can you think he has the wisdom needed … to use magic?”

  “Right.” Keef raised his eyebrows, spun around, swung Arse Splitter and chopped a make-believe attacker in half.

  Towards the middle of the day Sassa and the others bringing up the rear were skirting the north shore of a lake. On their right was grassland pocked with low bushes and surrounded by woodland. For once, there were no white-tailed deer around, but there were strange swells and swirls on the surface of the lake. Sassa was trying to work out whether they were from a current or an unusually large fish, when Ogmund the Miller shouted:

  “Lookie there! A bear cub!” His voice was swollen with drunken wonder.

  But he was right. There was a small black bear’s head poking above the long grass fifty paces away, watching them. With ears erect above a black face and a light brown muzzle, it was an appealing little animal. However, where there was a cub there was probably a mother. Smaller and shyer than a humped bear, a black bear still weighed more than a big man and was quite capable of killing one, especially if that man messed with her cubs.

  “It must be orphaned, like us!” Ogmund cried. “It wants to be our friend!”

  “Leave it.” Keef put a hand on Ogmund’s shoulder. “Every bear attack story begins with a bear cub and an idiot.”

  “Humped bears maybe. But black bears are pussies. I’m going to ask it if it wants to come
with us. Alarmed Calf will protect me if mummy’s nearby.” He waggled his spear with its metal ears.

  “Stop, you foo—” began Keef. But Ogmund was already jogging towards the bear.

  “Ogmund!” shouted Sassa, but he wasn’t stopping for anyone. She had a bad feeling about this. She strung her bow and pulled an arrow from her hip quiver. Frossa leant over, hands sinking into her big thighs, and puffed, no doubt glad of the break. Hrolf stared at Sassa as she drew her bowstring—a manoeuvre with the unavoidable side effect of puffing out her chest. Hrolf’s eyes bulged. She considered shooting him. She could always say it was a Scrayling …

  “You’re a dick, Ogmund!” yelled Keef, walking on ahead.

  “Hello, bear,” said Ogmund, reaching out to touch it. The cub wasn’t afraid of him. It lifted its twitching nose to investigate the new scent. “Are you all alone? Do you want to—”

  Mummy was nearer than any of them had guessed. Ogmund didn’t have time even to raise Alarmed Calf. The mother black bear launched out the grass like a creature from the deep, and, with one swipe of her paw, ripped his throat to shreds. Ogmund fell.

  The bear leapt onto him. Sassa couldn’t see because of the long grass, but from the positioning and the way the bear’s shoulders were shaking, she guessed the beast had Ogmund’s face in her mouth and was trying to rip it off. She’d heard they did that.

  She fumbled the arrow onto the string. “Frossa, Hrolf, get behind me.”

  The bear looked up. Dangling on a stalk from her bloodied muzzle was one of Ogmund’s eyes.

  Frossa screamed.

  The bear glanced at her cub, then started to gallop towards Frossa, Sassa and Hrolf.

  Sassa shot, but the arrow went high, over the bear’s shoulder.

  The bear hurtled towards them and Frossa screamed again.

  Finnbogi the Boggy was walking with Ottar the Moaner and Freydis the Annoying. He’d rather have been walking with Thyri—or Keef, or Bjarni or Wulf for that matter, but the Hird were on guard duty. Thyri had been paired off with Garth, annoyingly, and the two of them were “scouting the south flank,” whatever that meant.