You Die When You Die

by Angus Watson

  So they should have been ruling Calnia and beyond. They should have been on the Mountain of the Sun, having every need seen to by fit young men, eating mushrooms in the sweat lodge and being fanned with swans’ wings.

  Instead they were lackeys for the Swan Empress.

  It had to change. It would change. But Sofi Tornado, for all her flair and astonishing fighting skills, was a boring line-toer who would sooner smother herself in mouse blood and lie in a pit full of half-starved rattlesnakes than challenge the status quo. Nothing would happen while she was alive.

  So she had to die.

  But how? How do you kill a woman who can see a second into the future?

  When Malilla had realised the answer, she’d actually slapped herself on the forehead. Of course, you kill her in the same way she’d killed the first two of the hundreds she’d slaughtered. You kill her when she’s asleep.

  She’d been waiting for the opportunity for a long while, and tonight it would come. Tonight she was on second watch with Morningstar. All the other women would be sleeping deeply after the day’s run. Nothing would stop them from striking.

  Chapter 6

  Who’s the Dumb One?

  The Hardworkers walked west into the unknown.

  There was more of a breeze today, a westerly in their faces, not so strong that it hindered them, but it was cooling and stiff enough to keep the lighter and bitier insects at bay. The birdsong was louder and more varied than any Sassa Lipchewer had heard, punctuated by the cheery barks of ducks. A robin sang with such gusto that it made Sassa’s chest swell.

  She and Wulf had made love before dawn. Surely this new life would bring them a baby? Fraya favoured the brave, and it didn’t get much braver than walking into an unknown land rumoured to be full of monsters and murderers on the advice of a child with a damaged mind. Brave or possibly stupid. Did Fraya favour the stupid, too?

  On that beautiful morning it was easy to believe that she did, and hard to imagine that there was any danger anywhere nearby or anywhere else in the world. The air was thick with the pungent, sometimes sexual scents of late spring. The tangled forest was busy with gambolling squirrels and a multitude of inquisitive birds. Turkeys ran like armless idiots and hid behind spindly trees a tenth their width. Rabbits hopped to their holes. A spiny-limbed turtle with a pointed face and panicked eyes slid down a mud chute into a path-side pond.

  Every now and then they had to negotiate a tree downed by the recent storms. Every time they did, Gurd Girlchaser would curse the “lazy Scraylings” for not clearing their paths, then go on to list further failings of the Scraylings. Sassa soon tired of his unfounded vitriol and fell back to walk along with Ottar the Moaner and Freydis the Annoying.

  “Can Ottar and I hold your hands please, Sassa Lipchewer?”

  “Sure,” she said. Freydis’s grip was cool and light. Ottar held on with two sweaty little paws. They walked along, breathing in the smells and watching animals scurry and flit. Sassa didn’t think she’d ever felt happier, until Freydis asked:

  “Why don’t you and Wulf the Fat have any children, Sassa Lipchewer?”

  “Because …”

  “Because,” said Wulf, jogging up to join them, “children are trouble. When you have them, you have to stop looking after yourself to look after them. Do you like playing, Freydis?”

  “I do.”

  “So do we, but you have to stop playing when you have children. So we’re going to play for a few years and look after each other, then we’ll think about making some little ones.”

  “I see.”

  “And do you approve?”

  “Yes, I do, Wulf the Fat.”

  “Good to hear.” Wulf ruffled her hair and Freydis giggled.

  “But how do you make the little ones?” she asked.

  “Sassa Lipchewer will tell you that one.” He ran off back to the head of the procession.

  A short time later they were crossing a wide field of waist-high grassland. The swaying vegetation was alive with beetles, myriad hopping insects and the constant rustle of unidentified scurrying mammals and ground-dwelling birds. To the south, increasingly visible as the orange morning mist paled and lifted, were what Sassa Lipchewer thought were large brown erratic rocks. But then one of them moved and another made a deep throaty lowing, like the sound of a giant frog snoring.

  “Buffalo!” Sassa cried. She had never seen a living buffalo before, only the butchered carcasses that the Goachica had given them. They were larger than she’d imagined, their giant heads and great furry shoulders emerging colossally from surprisingly dainty rear ends. Even at this distance she could feel strength emanating from their dark bulks.

  “What are those smaller, light brown animals with them?” asked Freydis.

  “Calves, I suppose.”

  “Oh, can we go closer and look, please, Sassa Lipchewer?” The girl tugged on her hand.

  “No, let’s leave them to their business.”

  Ottar the Moaner pulled at her, too.

  “Ottar says we must go and see them.”

  “No, he doesn’t say that we must, he just wants to go.” Sassa leant back against their pulling. “There’s a difference. Now come on, there will be more buffalo. Many more. You’ll be bored of buffalo before long.”

  More low snorts rumbled across the grassland.

  “I will never be bored of buffalo,” declared Freydis.

  “Never say never.” Sassa wagged a finger.

  “You just did. Twice!” Freydis jumped on the spot and giggled.

  A short while later they came upon a new sound: an excited, high-pitched trilling. Three racoon cubs came bowling out of the long grass onto the trampled path and looped about their feet, sniffing shoes and chittering excitedly.

  Here were creatures created by a gentle god, thought Sassa. The children and Sassa crouched down. The young racoons sniffed their hands, licked them and nipped at them harmlessly.

  They had little white ears, shiny, bulbous noses, stripy tails, messy, spikey fur and eyes as expressive and imploring as any human child’s. Sassa thought they were almost tear-inducingly endearing. The children would have stayed with the little animals for ever had Wulf not popped up and asked them to move on.

  The children came, reluctantly, but the racoons followed, across the grassland and into woods.

  Ottar pulled at Sassa’s hand and jabbed a finger at the racoons.

  “He wants to keep them,” Freydis translated.

  “Their mother will be nearby and missing them,” said Sassa.

  “Chances are the mother’s dead, that’s why they’re on their own,” said Wulf.

  Sassa gave him a look. “Perhaps they think Ottar’s their mother now? Let’s keep going and see what happens.”

  They walked on and the racoons followed. Sassa looked about; there was no sign of a mother, only Garth Anvilchin and Thyri Treelegs—today’s rearguard—catching up.

  “I suppose if they want to follow us …”

  “Hello,” said Garth, reaching them. “I see you’ve found lunch.”

  Sassa laughed. She thought Garth was joking, and reaching down to stroke one, but no. He whipped it up and twisted its neck. Crack! The little animal was limp in his hands. He dropped it.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Ottar screamed, ripped free of Sassa’s hand and flung himself at Garth. Garth put a hand on his head and held him. The boy’s fists flailed and he screamed louder and louder as Garth chuckled.

  “Thyri, get the other two will you?” he said.

  Thyri took a step towards the racoons, which were crouched and shaking, staring at their dead sibling.

  “Leave them, Thyri,” said Wulf.

  Thyri shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Do what I told you, Thyri,” said Garth, smiling with about as much warmth as a blizzard.

  “Wulf is head of the Hird. I’ll do what he tells me.”

  “We’re not in Hardwork territory any more. There is no Hird, so there’s no ‘h
ead of the Hird.’ We’re on our own, we need to survive and these animals are meat.”

  “There’s plenty of meat around and these don’t have much on them. You want to kill them so badly, do it yourself.” Thyri stepped away.

  “Fine. I will.” Garth moved Ottar to one side.

  “No. You won’t,” said Wulf.

  “You can’t order me.”

  “I can. These animals are under my protection. I’ll let you off for killing the one because you didn’t know. But you won’t take the other two.”

  “And if I do?”

  “Then we’ll have a problem.” Wulf, smiling all the while, gripped Thunderbolt’s handle.

  Garth’s hands went to his axes, the Biter Twins. Sassa’s heart was beating like a war drum whacked by a hyperactive Scrayling who’d eaten too many mushrooms. She gripped her little iron knife.

  Garth took a step forward. “You’re pathetic. Why are those animals any different from the deer we kill for food every day? Because they’re pretty?”

  Garth did, Sassa had to admit, have something of a point.

  Wulf’s smile broadened and Thunderbolt’s iron head twitched in his grip. “Kill one and we can see how pathetic I am.”

  Garth laughed and held up his hands. “All right, all right, I’ll leave your little pets.”

  Sassa breathed out again.

  “Well done, Garth,” said Wulf. “And you’ll accept that I’m the chief of our little group.”

  Sassa sucked that breath back in.

  “Why?” Garth lifted his big, helmeted head. Had he spent a lifetime being taught how to look arrogant by the most arrogant men who had gone before, he could not have looked more arrogant at that moment.

  Wulf smiled. “Because we need a leader. Because I’m head of the Hird, and most of us are Hird, that leader is me. At the moment I just set watches and guards and choose where and when we stop. However, there will come a time when difficult decisions have to be made and the need for a leader will be more obvious. If you really want to be that leader, then say and we’ll hold a vote. But until then, you’ll do what you’re told. Understood?”

  Garth’s fingers curled round the shafts of his axes, a smile playing on the corners of his lips. Wulf looked relaxed, but his knuckles were whitening on his hammer grip. Could Wulf beat Garth? Sassa felt sick. Both men had spent years practising with their weapons most of the day, every day, both were young and strong, but Garth was taller and he had two axes to Wulf’s one hammer, and metal armour and a helmet to Wulf’s leather jerkin and bare head.

  “What do you think, Thyri?” asked Garth.

  “I don’t give a coyote’s crap about the racoons, but you should do what Wulf tells you. We do need a leader and Wulf is best suited. Call a vote if you want, but everyone will vote for Wulf. So let the racoons be and do what he says, or answer to the rest of us.”

  Sassa could have hugged the stocky young woman. She was only seventeen, but she was the most secure and mature of the lot of them.

  Garth raised his arms again. “Okay, fine, you’re right, I’m wrong. I’m sorry, Wulf, I will obey you from now, and I won’t harm these lovely little animals. Well, apart from this one.” He poked the dead cub with his toe.

  Ottar moaned.

  “Sorry,” said Garth, grinning. “But I will protect the other two as if they were my own gay little pets.”

  Sassa, Wulf, Ottar and Freydis walked onwards through woods and clearings, the two racoons scampering around their feet, zooming off to sniff interesting things every now and then but always returning to Ottar.

  It took a good hour for the adrenaline to drain out of Sassa and for her heart to slow down enough for her to start enjoying the scenery again.

  “You don’t have to be the leader, you know,” she said to her husband.

  “Yeah I do. Anybody else could do all the setting of the guard, deciding where we stop and so on, but they miss one key trait.”

  “Which is?”

  “The ability to match Garth in a fight. That’s the only leadership skill that’ll keep him in line.”

  “So let Garth be leader if he wants it so badly.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve two racoons to think of now.”

  “Ottar says they’re called Munin and Hugin,” piped up Freydis. “Like Oaden’s ravens.”

  “So Ottar’s just like Oaden now, is he?” Sassa asked.

  “Yes,” Freydis nodded.

  Finnbogi the Boggy marched along near the head of the strung-out parade with a smile pasted to his face, thinking about his night with Thyri Treelegs. The air was fresher and the ground springier than the day before and he felt a great, warm love for all the animals. A small fat bird watched him from a branch, and Finnbogi nearly wept at the idea that the little animal might ever know sorrow, cold or pain.

  The day before he’d seen a lone green-headed duck floating along with a dozen or so black and white geese and thought that the duck neatly reflected his own alienation among the Hardwork exiles. Today, he saw two chipmunks chasing each other around a tree stump and then disappearing into the same hole, and thought “that is me and Thyri Treelegs.”

  The cause of his happiness was rearguard with that bellend Garth, so Finnbogi was up front because on the one hand he didn’t want to see them together, and on the other he wanted to make it clear to everyone that he wasn’t head over heels in love with Thyri Treelegs.

  “It’s clear to everyone that you’re head over heels in love with Thyri Treelegs,” said Gunnhild, catching up.

  “With who?” asked Finnbogi.

  Gunnhild said nothing. Finnbogi could feel her smug little smirk without turning to see it.

  “Do you think I’m an idiot to like her?”

  “Never question another’s love; the wise may find beauty where the foolish do not.”

  “You don’t think she’s beautiful?”

  “You do, and that’s all that matters. But there is one thing you must try to remember.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t listen to this, because you’re young, so in your mind you are different from everyone who’s ever lived before—more intelligent, with much deeper emotions.”

  There was no way Gunnhild had ever had an emotion a quarter as deep as the turmoil that plagued Finnbogi every waking minute, but he said: “No, no, I don’t think that at all. I’m sure you and Poppo …”

  “Don’t bother. The important point is that you don’t love Thyri as much as you think you do. I know you don’t believe me, but I’m telling you because it would make the future a great deal easier for you if you could believe me. If you devote all your thoughts to her, as I suspect you are doing, and she rejects you, you will be devastated. I also know that the more besotted you are, the less appealing she is likely to find you. I had my heart broken when I was young because I loved somebody who was never going to love me back, and I’d like you to avoid treading the same path.”

  “Before Poppo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “You … don’t know him.”

  “I know everyone.”

  “Not this man.”

  That was weird, but Finnbogi didn’t care enough to probe any further. As if the Krist-loving crone could ever have felt about anyone the way that he felt about Thyri! But why was Gunnhild saying all this? She’d never spoken to him like this before. Did she know something that he didn’t?

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  Gunnhild didn’t answer.

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry, Finnbogi, but I think Thyri may be in love with someone else.”

  “Who? Not Garth?”

  Gunnhild’s silence confirmed his suspicion. Stupid old woman, poking her nose in. Did she know what had happened the night before in their sleeping sack? She did not. He didn’t want to tell her, but neither did he want her thinking that Thyri was after Garth.

  “There ar
e things that Thyri and me have done that you don’t know about.”

  “Thyri and I.”

  “What?”

  “You say ‘that Thyri and I have done,’ not ‘Thyri and me.’ It’s easy to work out. Say it in your head before you say it out loud and remove the word ‘Thyri.’You get ‘things that me have done.’ Sounds wrong, but ‘things that I have done’ sounds right. So you say ‘things that Thyri and I have done.’ Easy, is it not? We really should have put more effort into bringing you up.”

  What by Loakie’s shiny helmet had this got to do with anything? Gunnhild was managing to be boring, heavy and insulting all at the same time.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes! Look, there are things about Thyri and me—I mean Thyri and I—”

  “No, you were right that time. Try the trick. Remove Thyri. Does ‘things about I’ work?”

  Loakie’s tits! “Right. There are things about me and Thyri, things we’ve done that you don’t know, that nobody knows but us. I’m sure you’re trying to protect me, and you think you’re doing the right thing” (she wasn’t, she was just trying to poke her nose in and stop him being happy and she knew it) “but I am okay and I’m going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. You’ll see.”

  “All right,” said Gunnhild, in the same tone of voice that Finnbogi might use with Freydis when he couldn’t be bothered to argue any more about whether or not she’d seen a purple dragon eating a goblin earlier.

  “Never question another’s folly; desire makes fools of the wise,” she added.

  Well exactly, thought Finnbogi, then thought about it some more and became confused.

  They walked on in silence until a white-tailed deer leapt on the path a few paces ahead. The deer stood square for a good couple of seconds with a surprised look in its shining eyes, then leapt away again and crashed off through the undergrowth.

  “How did a creature that dumb get to be that big?” asked Finnbogi.

  “What do you mean, dumb?”

  “We could have easily put an arrow in it, or jumped on it if we were wolves or lions and it just stood there.”

  “Did you put an arrow in it or jump on it?”