You Die When You Die

by Angus Watson

  So the Hird got to prance about pretending to be warrior heroes, leaving Finnbogi and the other minions to carry all the crap and look after the children. Finnbogi’s backpack was massive, weighed down with three sleeping sacks, a load of cooking equipment and about ten tons of dried fish. Why the fish, for the love of Tor! They were going to hunt and forage! They didn’t need to carry food. The only person who might need extra food was him, to give him the energy to carry all the extra food. It was very unfair. It was all Gunnhild’s doing—she just liked to see him carrying things. The only slightly cheering thing was that Chnob the White was weighed down by Keef’s boat, which was even more of a burden than Finnbogi’s backpack.

  Finnbogi had the best sword, so he should have been on guard duty with the Hird. Now he was realising just how heavy Foe Slicer was. What was the point of carrying it if he wasn’t going to use it? It was pointless weight, adding to all the other pointless weight on his back.

  To make matters worse, for about the last million hours, Freydis had been telling Finnbogi things about animals that he either knew already or didn’t want to know. It was as boring as anything had ever been. He did often fantasise about having children with Thyri, but when he thought about it, he didn’t really want children at all. The idea of looking after them the whole time filled him with horror. They were so self-obsessed and selfish. They demanded everything, contributed nothing and had no notion of what other people might find interesting. Why couldn’t Freydis consider for a moment what he wanted to talk about? She seemed to think she was the centre of the world.

  And why weren’t she and Ottar carrying anything?

  “Stop!” the girl shouted, making him jump. She bent down. “Look here, Finnbogi the Boggy, these are deer mouse tracks. It’s a lovely little mouse, the deer mouse. It lives on its own in trees. Ottar likes them, too. There was one time when I was walking with Ottar and—”

  “Shush, Freydis,” said Finnbogi. He’d heard something. A scream?

  “You shush. I’m telling you about—”

  There it was again. A scream, coming from the path behind them.

  Finnbogi slid the straps from his shoulder and lowered his backpack into the greenery on the side of the path. “I’m going back.”

  Freydis rolled her eyes, but said: “We’ll come, too. Come on, Ottar. But you shouldn’t leave your backpack there. Aunty Gunnhild Kristlover said—”

  “Let me stop you there,” said Finnbogi and ran back the way they had come, smiling at how clever he’d been. Foe Slicer slapped against his thigh as he ran. He half hoped they were being attacked and he could use the heavy sword to win the day, rescuing Thyri in the process, of course, and giving weight to the argument that he should be guarding the march, not carrying stuff.

  He hadn’t got far when he heard two fox yips, the signal for trouble.

  There was a booming SPLOSH! behind her, which Sassa guessed was Frossa jumping into the lake. The bear was thirty paces away. She fumbled for an arrow, dropped it and picked it up. The bear was ten paces closer.

  “Run, Sassa!” shouted Keef, sprinting back towards her along the lakeside, his axe aloft. There was no way he’d make it in time. He barked two rapid fox yelps, the signal to bring the other Hird to help. But they were even farther away.

  Sassa couldn’t run because Hrolf couldn’t run and she had to protect him, and Frossa, too; Frossa was in the lake and black bears were better swimmers than people.

  She loosed an arrow, hands trembling, and it flew wide. There was no time to string another.

  “Yah!” shouted Sassa, spreading her arms. “Yah!”

  The bear was ten paces away. Five. And it was on her.

  The bear bumped her aside with its head, lumbered past, reared up, came down, knocking Hrolf flat, then bit down into his long-suffering face and shook.

  Sassa screamed at the animal, beating its furry back with her bow. It kept right on with its savaging, paying her not one jot of attention. Hrolf’s arms and legs flailed as if he was a rice-stuffed doll shaken by a baby.

  “Get AWAY!” shouted Keef, finally arriving.

  The bear looked up, slices of skin hanging from its blood-dripping muzzle.

  “Grrrr-ahhhh!” yelled Keef, lifting his axe above his head and looming over the animal.

  “Yah!” shouted Sassa. In the corner of her eye she saw people emerge from the trees into the clearing and hoped it might be Wulf. She glanced up. It was just Finnbogi and the children. They would not be much help.

  The bear snarled and crouched as if it was going to attack.

  “Grrrr-ahhhh!” shouted Keef again.

  The bear changed its mind. Its expression morphed from bestial rage into that of a woman who’s walked into her hut then forgotten what she’d come inside for. Shaking its head, it turned and lolloped away, back to its cub. The two of them cantered off towards the treeline.

  Keef bent down over Hrolf the Painter. “Shitbags, this is not good.”

  “Let me have a look. You help Frossa out of the lake.” Sassa squatted by Hrolf. The attack had torn his bandages away. His jaw was hanging down by his neck, a mess of white bone, red blood and beard hair. Air bubbled through the gore as he exhaled.

  Pole a mole, thought Sassa. What to do?

  “Give me a shout if the bear changes her mind and comes back!” said Keef, tossing Arse Splitter aside.

  Finnbogi the Boggy emerged from the woods with Ottar and Freydis. He saw a bear menacing Sassa and Keef and was about to run and help, but the bear retreated. Frossa, it amused him to see, didn’t know that the bear had gone and was still swimming off across the lake, brightly coloured hat abandoned and bobbing behind her, fat arms splashing more than propelling.

  “Pouf!” said Ottar.

  “No, Ottar,” cajoled Freydis, “that’s a bad thing. You shouldn’t—”

  Finnbogi ignored their prattling because out in the lake an enormous fish, at least the length of a man, leapt fully out of the water, hung in the air for a moment, fell and landed on Frossa’s head. Fish and woman disappeared with a deep CLONG! which echoed around the lake.

  A moment later, but for the ripples spreading from the centre of the smooth water, all was calm. At the edge of the lake, geese carried on honking and flapping their wings at each other as if they didn’t care at all about the plight of humans.

  “Wow,” said Keef. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

  He peeled his sleeveless hooded smock and padded leather shirt over his head and set to yanking off his baggy trousers.

  “What is it?” asked Sassa, looking up from blood-bubbling Hrolf.

  “A fish jumped on Frossa.”

  “A fish? Is she all right?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, it was a big fish. Very big.”

  “What? How big?”

  “I’m going to swim out. We’ll talk fish size later. Check Ogmund then see what you can do for Hrolf.”

  Ogmund the Miller was very dead. His face was gone along with half his head, and his neck was a mess of cartilage and blood. She ran back to Hrolf, knelt by him and jumped when his eyes opened. At first she thought he was gazing blankly, but his pupils swung downwards and he was staring into the gap between her dress and breasts that gravity had opened as she’d leant over him. Somehow, the mess that was left of his face managed to coalesce into a lascivious grin.

  The bears were gone. Keef was wading into the lake. Finnbogi and the children were two hundred paces away at the edge of the clearing. There was no way anybody would see if she did what she was seriously considering doing.

  Could she?

  The night before, Wulf had attached a scabbard containing a sharp iron knife to her quiver, saying it was bound to come in handy. She reached for that knife now, really thinking that she might be about to prove her husband right.

  Could she?

  How much of a utopia would The Meadows be if it had Hrolf in it, drooling over her and the other women?

  Could she?


  He was slowing them, and would slow them more with these new injuries. Every extra moment they dallied, the more likely the Calnians would catch them up and kill them. The slower they passed hostile tribes, the more likely that they’d be discovered. She wanted a child. She wanted children. This unpleasant letch was endangering her future, Wulf’s future and the future of her unconceived sons and daughters. And if she had daughters, did she want Hrolf anywhere near them?

  She slipped the blade from the sheath, amazed and thrilled by what she was about to do.

  Chapter 2

  Pink Dawn Mist

  The eastern sky was lightening when Sofi Tornado ran out of the citadel’s northern gate, a smile on her face. The joy in setting out on a mission was a less intense but deeper and warmer sensation than the fevered excitement of catching her prey and slaughtering it.

  Paloma Pronghorn and Luby Zephyr tripped along easily beside her. The seven other Owsla followed, with chief warlock Yoki Choppa bringing up the rear.

  They had packs strapped tight to their backs and, other than Yoki Choppa, who wore only a breechcloth, they were in standard battle gear of leggings, breechcloth and short-belted jerkin, greased with deer fat to prevent chafing. They carried their weapons in their hands.

  The ten women and one man pounded across the wooded bridge over the stream that ran along the city’s northern border, and out into the dew-sodden wilds. Sofi nodded to Paloma Pronghorn and the super-fast woman zipped away up the track like an arrow from a bow. There were no dangers between Calnia and Goachica lands that any of her warriors couldn’t have taken care of on their own—other than the very unlikely exceptions of large groups of well-trained and disciplined troops and a few, rare animals—but Paloma did love to scout ahead and Sofi wasn’t going to stop her.

  Waking waterfowl honked mournfully and flapped swirls into pink dawn mist as the Owsla skimmed past lakes. They ran beneath branches draped with dew-spangled spiders’ webs, serenaded by sweet singing birds. Rabbits, racoons, foxes and other mammals saw them coming and skittered for cover. A pack of wolves watched warily from the far side of one flower-filled meadow and a skunk ignored them in another. Sofi saw and heard all these things and searched for patterns, or more specifically changes in patterns that might signify problems. She found none, or at least none up ahead.

  There was one behind her, though. She knew the footfall of each of her Owsla. They had no official running formation, but they usually fell into the same positions. By the noise their feet made as they hit the ground, Sofi could tell not only who was where, but who was flagging, who was developing an injury, even who was hungry, excited and so on.

  Right now, Malilla Leaper was further forward in the formation than usual and her footfall was more heavily on her toes, as if she had urgent business. Caliska Coyote and Morningstar were out of place, too, at Malilla’s shoulders. It probably meant nothing, but after their solidarity against her in the Plaza, she was watching for any signs of dissent from those three. The best leaders and warriors—the best living leaders and warriors—never ignored things that probably meant nothing.

  Yoki Choppa was following closely behind the women, his pace steady. She’d told him they wouldn’t wait for him and that they were going to run seventy miles a day, every day. He’d nodded, unruffled, and, sure enough, here he was, plodding along and keeping up. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Many of the warriors in the Calnian army were all mouth and no breechcloth. The warlock was the opposite.

  They stopped after around twenty miles. While the women drank from a stream and ate berries, dried meat and maple sugar, Yoki Choppa started a little fire in his alchemical bowl and hunched over it, stirring the embers with a bone.

  They ran for the rest of the day, breaking several more times before halting for the night after around seventy miles. The women were weary but far from exhausted. Yoki Choppa looked tired, but he always looked tired, and he set about preparing their evening meal without a murmur of complaint. Paloma Pronghorn chased down a white-tail deer while others gathered edible plants.

  Chapter 3

  Age Is Just a Number

  Frossa the Deep Minded woke after Fraya knew how long. A dozen red-faced vultures hopped away and flew up lazily into the dark branches of a dead tree. She opened her mouth to shout at them, but her throat was too dry to form the words. She looked about. It was evening, but was it the same day?

  A pair of geese with a gaggle of goslings sailed by on the lake. She hoisted herself onto her elbows. There was no sign of the rest of the Hardworkers. They’d left her! The selfish, selfish bastards.

  What had happened? She’d been swimming, then she was underwater, being dragged along at a frightening speed, then she’d surfaced in a river and drifted and finally crawled out … This was a different lake from the one she’d jumped into when the bear attacked. No wonder they hadn’t found her … No, not no wonder. They should have looked harder. They had abandoned her.

  Assuming it was the same day, she thought she’d be able to find their tracks and catch them up. But she wasn’t going to do that. They’d left her, and now she was going to leave them. She’d head back to Hardwork and wait for the Calnians. Kimaman had been a fool. Whoever the Calnians sent next was sure to see her value as a warlock. Especially when she used her magic to tell them exactly where all the other Hardworkers were heading.

  “Watching Wulf wash?” asked Finnbogi the Boggy.

  Bjarni Chickenhead jumped. “Doing what? No! Ha ha! No. I’m waiting for him. We caught a couple of trout.” He gestured at two dead fish lying on the grass. “I wasn’t watching him.”

  Bjarni was sitting on the hard-earthed bank of a creek, a couple of hundred paces from the camp. Kneeling in the shallow stream was a naked Wulf the Fat, using a handful of grass to rub fat and ash soap lather over his muscular torso.

  They’d stopped well before sunset, on the edge of the ten-mile zone in which the Hardworkers had been contained for a century. Wulf had said they’d tackle the new world on a new day. Nobody had disagreed. It would be weeks before news of their survival got back to Calnia, so they were in no hurry.

  Wulf and a few others had gone scouting while the rest, Finnbogi included, had washed and made camp. Now the light was beginning to soften, glinting lazily on the stream.

  Finnbogi sat. “Bit crap, isn’t it? We’re not even out of our own territory and three of us are dead.”

  “Yeah. How many left?”

  “Fourteen, I think. At this rate we won’t last a week.”

  “You’re right, and it’s a real shame about Ogmund the Miller. But what an idiot. You don’t hassle bear cubs.”

  “Yeah. And I suppose Hrolf was more or less dead anyway. But Frossa?”

  “I think she would have struggled with more than a few miles a day.”

  “Sure. But killed by a fish?” Finnbogi shook his head.

  Bjarni breathed a laugh through his nose. “If you’d told me this morning that Frossa was going to die today and asked me to guess how, I’d have been guessing until Ragnarok before I said she’d have her neck broken by a fish! Poor woman. Still, it was quick, Sassa tells me.”

  “I saw it too.”

  “Did you? Tell me about it, man.”

  Finnbogi told him what he’d seen, then said: “Listen, Bjarni, I don’t like to ask, but after the tough time we’ve all had … Have you got any … you know?”

  “Mushrooms? Are you sure? They don’t agree with some people. After what happened to you last time, I’m pretty sure you’re some people.”

  The first and only time that Finnbogi had tried Bjarni’s mushrooms he’d become trapped in a net made of light on the beach, been chased all the way home through the woods by a giant crayfish made of smoke and only relaxed when his mother’s ghost had appeared at his bedside to soothe him.

  “I know I asked you to never give me your mushrooms again, even if I begged, but that was old me in the old place. Maybe I’ll be okay and, you know, it’s be
en a weird time. Man.”

  “Fair enough but sorry, I left all that behind. I’ve got nothing, not even a bit of baccy. New life, new journey and it’s a new, clear me, too.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I’m regretting it already. Do you fancy going back to Hardwork with me to fetch my stash?”

  “What, tonight?”

  “Yeah, man. If we head now, keep up a good pace, we’ll be back here by dawn.”

  “All right.” Finnbogi liked the idea of going on an adventure with someone as cool as Bjarni Chickenhead. And maybe after that, he and Thyri could do mushrooms together. Then, when they got into their sleeping sack … “Let’s go now,” he said.

  Bjarni chuckled. “I’m joking, you idiot. I wouldn’t mind a shroom or two, but not so much that I’m going to miss my sleep to run a twenty-mile round trip.”

  “Oh … can we pick them as we go? They must grow somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to look or which ones to pick. The shrooms that kill you look a lot like the ones that get you high. I got all mine ready-dried and diced from this Goachica guy.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Um, err … nothing. He just gave them to me.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “He was.”

  Bjarni helped Wulf dry off by rubbing him with clumps of grass and the three of them returned to camp, where, in a short time, Finnbogi would share a sleeping sack with Thyri. As they walked, Finnbogi asked Wulf the Fat if he was going to address the group.

  “A sort of leader’s pep talk?” asked Wulf.

  “I suppose. That and remind people of the dangers, talk about food supplies, that sort of thing.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not? You’re head of the Hird and that makes you in charge of us.”