by Angus Watson
Sitsi Kestrel did not like the look of that cloud. She’d learnt quite a bit about weather, and this sky looked an awful lot like the precursor to a tornado; yes, there we go, the cloud was beginning to spin.
Her uncle had been killed by a tornado. He’d been having a nap against a tree and by the time the roar of the twister had woken him it was too late. Her aunt, who’d been running to warn him, had seen him spiral up and up into the sky. They’d found his battered body three villages away.
Sitsi Kestrel didn’t like weather that got you wet. She hated weather that lifted you high as the summer clouds and dashed you down three villages away. She was so busy gawping at the cloud that she didn’t notice the Big Bone tribe welcoming committee until they were almost on it.
Spread in a line facing them, on the far side of the bridge across the Heartberry River, were four men, one woman and the gigantic bear that had travelled with the Mushroom Men since Lakchan territory. Two of the men were Mushroom Men, including the one who’d finished off Sadzi Wolf, which was good news. It would be satisfying to make him pay for that. Behind them were twenty club-armed warriors, holding big bone clubs, as one might expect from the Big Bone tribe. So far, not too scary.
Sitsi breathed a long sigh of relief and her stomach lightened. Thank Innowak, she thought. It was a lovely feeling when you dreaded something and it turned out to be nothing like as bad as you thought. Sofi Tornado or Chogolisa Earthquake could have dealt with this lot solo—any of the women probably could, including even herself.
She strung an arrow. She’d shoot one of the warriors first, she decided. Chogolisa would want to fight the bear, and Sofi would be keen to kill the leaders, or possibly take her time on the one who’d killed Sadzi.
She raised her bow. The elderly woman in the centre of the Big Bone tribe walked forwards. Did she want to talk? There was nothing to discuss. They were blocking the path of the Calnian Owsla. Even if they crawled away on their faces now in abject apology, the offence had been committed. They had to die.
She changed her aim and drew. None of the others would mind if she killed this crone, and an arrow to the face of the clearly favoured lady would be a pretty start to the battle.
“Here, have a go on that. Careful, though, it’s delicate.” Pipes Libbacap’s voice was the squeak of a man holding his breath to keep that goodness in his lungs. He handed the pipe to Bjarni Chickenhead. Creamy smoke poured over the edge of the pipe’s oversized bowl, too thick and mushroomy to billow up to the hut’s smoke hole like everyday smoke. The rugs and furs that made the domed hut into a warm little nest were infused with years of excellent, pungent, mushroomy smoke.
Bjarni cupped the warm bowl in both hands, breathed out all his breath so that he might breathe in all the more, and placed the narrow pipe stem between his lips.
He inhaled, and inhaled. Lovely. More like drinking than smoking.
Pipes Libbacap grinned at him through the haze. “Mellow, isn’t it? The smoke cools in the long stem. Trick is to make the clay thin as you can. It’s not easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is. It does warm up after a while but by then you don’t care.”
Bjarni nodded. This was the best smoke ever.
“Careful. It’s stronger than it tastes, man. You may want just half a toke to start.”
Bjarni was still nodding. He carried on inhaling.
“You’ve got lungs, man.”
Bjarni filled himself to the soles of his feet with that lovely smoke. After what seemed like a few hours he reached his capacity and handed the pipe back. As Pipes Libbacap reached for it, his neck elongated and his warmly smiling face lifted towards the hut roof, then widened and loomed until his face was the roof.
Good, thought Bjarni. It had looked like rain outside, and skin was one of the most waterproof things around. Sitting under the happy Scrayling’s face, he’d be kept dry and he’d be warmed by that cheery smile.
A banging crackle registered somewhere in his mind, followed by the roars of animals a short while later. It didn’t seem to matter. He sank back on the cushion, looking up at his new friend who was also a roof.
“Did anybody see where Bjarni went?” yelled Wulf the Fat in a lull. Ottar, on his shoulders, poked out his lower lip and spread his arms with palms upwards in a “where’s Bjarni?” gesture.
Freydis, who was holding Sassa’s hand, said, “Ottar doesn’t know.”
The deluge that had looked imminent hadn’t come. After the first few drops, the rain had been sucked back up into the black, black clouds. Sassa didn’t like it at all.
They’d emerged from the gorge onto the scenery they’d become very used to—an undulating plain with the odd lone tree and a few spinneys. It had been blowing a gale and about to piss it down. Now it was a dead calm. All around them were the Big Bone tribe’s maize fields. Patches of the plants were swishing and swirling like waves in an irregularly stormy sea while other patches were still.
Wulf sighed and looked at the sky, clearly wondering whether to head back for Bjarni.
“Either he decided to stay with Erik and Keef, or he found a Scrayling with mushrooms and joined him,” said Sassa. The gale resumed, whipping her hair around her face and she had to shout: “Either way, he’s a big man who made his own decision and can look after himself! Your responsibility lies with this lot! We’ve got to keep going! I do not like this storm!”
Wulf nodded. Sassa could see lighter sky to the south and she wanted to be under it. The gale calmed for a moment and she heard a deeper, thundering, terrifying roar.
She turned. A spinning column was stretching down from the cloud to the east like a probing grey pointy penis on the underside of a cloud beast. It thickened and darkened. Its tip stabbed the ground, immediately sucking up a skirt of dirt and—shag a stag—were those trees spinning up into the sky? They were full-grown trees! That meant the twister was further away than she’d thought, but it was bigger, too. A lot bigger. And it was growing. Was that a bull elk she could see, tumbling through the air, already as high as a hunting eagle and flying higher? That was something you didn’t see every day.
The twister’s tail whipped from side to side as if it was choosing which way to go. Then it decided. Of course, as she’d always known it was going to, it headed straight towards them, ripping the earth apart and swirling it upwards in a vortex of mulched debris, roaring like a billion berserk bears. Lightning flashed inside it and stabbed the ground around. Nature was coming for them, and nature was angry.
Freydis pulled her hand free of Sassa’s and ran west. Chnob the White followed her, overtaking her in a moment.
“No, Chnob! No, Freydis! Not away from it, we’ve got to run clear of its path!”
Freydis changed direction to run southwards but Chnob was already too far away to hear her. He was sprinting west between two rows of maize, directly away from the twister, or, put another way, exactly in the twister’s current path. He stopped for a moment, and Sassa thought he’d heard them or seen sense, but he wrestled Keef’s boat from his shoulders, tossed it aside and ran on.
Everyone else but Sassa, Thyri and Wulf with Ottar on his shoulders was running south, at right angles to the monster’s path, as fast as people could run when the alternative is being mashed to pieces in the maelstrom of a tornado. Gunnhild had shown an especially nifty turn of heel and was outpacing the lot of them, but then she yelped and went down, victim of an unseen hole. She stood, but immediately fell again. Bodil hauled her up, put an arm around her waist and both ran on. Finnbogi, who’d diverted to catch Freydis and lift her onto his shoulders, was bringing up the rear.
“I’ll go after Chnob!” Wulf shouted.
“No, I’ll do it,” yelled Thyri.
Sassa shook her head.
“Wulf, you’ve got to get Ottar out of here. And I’m faster than you, Treelegs. Here, take this.” Sassa glanced up at the approaching twister, handed her bow to her husband, turned and sprinted after Chnob.
She could feel the tornado be
aring down on her. How long would it take to catch her? Minutes? Seconds? By the way the roaring was getting louder and louder, it was seconds. She didn’t dare turn. She was catching Chnob, but she was still a good thirty paces back.
“Chnob!” she shouted. “Chnob!” But the fool kept running.
Sofi Tornado held up a finger to stop Sitsi Kestrel from shooting. Sitsi lowered her bow.
The old woman blinked at them; possibly it was a tic, possibly terror. “Hi, um, hello Calnian Owsla,” she said, her voice high and shaky. The valley was still in bright sunlight but a huge twister had formed under the black clouds in the distance. Sitsi had thought it was tornado weather! By the way it was heading, it wasn’t going to trouble them, but she would keep an eye on it.
“Good afternoon,” said Sofi.
“You must be, er, Sofi Tornado.”
“I am.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be, um, personal, but you are very beautiful. I’d heard you were striking, but I hadn’t expected you to be this, ah, lovely.”
“Don’t apologise, I’m used to it.”
“And your figure … amazing. So strong. I think you are probably definitely the most attractive woman I’ve ever, um, seen.”
“I daresay. We’re here for the Mushroom Men.”
“The who?”
“I can see two of them.”
The woman looked round at the two Mushroom Men and started as if seeing them for the first time. “Ah! I see, yes. Yes, you’re right. I am sorry. If you could bear with me just a moment. Bear with me! There’s a bear with him. Ha ha! There we go, nearly got it, just—” she spread her arms.
“Sitsi, shoot her now!” shouted Yoki Choppa. It was so urgent, so out of character, for Yoki Choppa to yell like that that Sitsi Kestrel hesitated. It was a bad moment to hesitate.
What had Finnbogi ever done to Tor to deserve this? Weighed down by Freydis on his shoulders, he was the slowest of the lot.
“The thing about tornados,” his Uncle Poppo Whitetooth had said back in Hardwork on the day they’d watched a waterspout out on the lake, “is that they’re full of rocks, branches, squirrels, bears and whatever else the bugger’s picked up, all whipping around faster than a stone in a sling. Get caught in a tornado and you’ll be killed by a branch through the gut or a squirrel to the face before you can say ‘By Oaden’s great big salty balls, I’m flying.’”
“Surely you’d be going at the same speed and direction as all the debris around you in a twister, so it wouldn’t hit you at all?” Finnbogi had reasoned.
“Good point,” Uncle Poppo had replied, “maybe you’d just fly as high as the moon, then drop and splat onto the ground like a rotten squash hurled at a rock. Either way, you’re dead.”
Finnbogi turned to look at the twister, no easy job while running with a small but increasingly heavy girl on his shoulders. Loakie’s bellend, the tornado was something! A sky-high screaming beast, lightning cracking across its black, swirling body, larger than any monster he’d ever imagined. It was like the whole world had reared up to roar and chase him.
It was going to be close … wasn’t it? Who was he kidding, no it wasn’t, the tornado was going to get him. On the bright side, he was going to find out how they kill you and in next to no time he might well be telling Uncle Poppo about it in a god’s hall. Was that how it worked, he wondered? One moment on the earth about to die, the next chatting to an ancestor with a big horn of wine in your hand? Or was there some kind of orientation period, when you were shown around your afterlife by a goddess or a dead relative?
He felt bad that he’d be dragging little Freydis down with him, or, more accurately, up. He tried to run faster but he simply couldn’t. The wind was stronger every second. A head of maize spun by like a tumbling, barrel-bodied, wingless bird, followed by another and another.
“Ow!” shouted Freydis. “Ow! Stop that!” as maize whacked into her. One advantage of carrying a little girl on one’s shoulders, thought Finnbogi, is that she acts like a sort of helmet, protecting one’s head from the—
“Fuck!” he shouted as a maize head flicked up by a counter-eddy punched into his bollocks.
“Language, Finnbogi the Boggy!” shouted Freydis.
Only for the briefest of moments did he consider throwing the girl to the ground. He might have made it without the burden. But he ran on, Freydis bouncing on his shoulders and shouting encouragement.
“Sitsi, shoot her now!” Sofi Tornado heard Yoki Choppa shout. She had never heard him shout before. Something was seriously amiss.
Sitsi Kestrel raised her bow to take the old woman down. Paloma Pronghorn was running, already halfway to her.
Before arrow or speedy Owsla struck, a huge, cracking bolt of lightning lanced from the sky and struck the old woman square in the back.
She wasn’t knocked down. She stood, lit up as if her insides were ablaze, shaking like a child’s toy between taut strings. She lifted her head and spread her hands. Sofi saw what was going to happen and leapt for cover, but there was no cover. As she dived, lightning struck her midriff like a giant hammer and sent her flying.
Finnbogi the Boggy’s foot jarred into a hole. He stumbled. He managed to keep running, but he was getting farther and farther behind the other fleeing Hardworkers.
“Come on, Finnbogi the Boggy!” shouted Freydis the Annoying, squeezing his head with her legs.
“Squashing my head does not help!”
“Sorry. Is this better?” She yanked his hair.
“No! Stop it! How are we doing?” he shouted. Turning round the last time had slowed them down momentarily. Now every moment counted.
“It’s closer. It will be on us pretty soon if you can’t go any faster.” The strange little girl did not sound overly concerned.
Up ahead, Garth Anvilchin and Wulf the Fat—who was carrying Ottar the Moaner—stopped. After a moment Wulf and Ottar carried on, but Garth came running back.
Wulf had sent him to help with Freydis! That would save them both! Finnbogi found a secret reserve of energy and sped up. He’d rather it wasn’t Garth, of course, but he could deal with being indebted to that arse later. Right now, he just had to reach him …
“Give me the girl, Boggy!” commanded Anvilchin, reaching out for her. The wind whipped his hair about his big, helmeted face and Finnbogi could not help but marvel just a little at how heroic he looked.
The larger man clasped the girl to his mail-clad chest with one hand, looked around as if to see if anyone was watching, then swung back and punched Finnbogi in the side of the head.
“What the …?” thought Finnbogi as he fell.
Erik the Angry wondered why Big Hinto and Chucknor had sent Balinda out to meet the Calnian Owsla. The nervy woman did not seem the ideal choice for facing down a murderous band of magic-charged killers.
He jumped when she was struck by lightning, although not as much as she did. Then he stared agog as, instead of falling to the ground a smoking husk as any normal person would have done, Balinda absorbed the lightning into her slender frame and glowed and grew.
One of the Owsla shot an arrow at her, but her coat of lightning deflected the arrow into the sky. When it seemed Balinda must explode, seven strands of lightning, one for each Owsla and one for their strange little warlock, blasted out of her hands and into each of them.
All of them were knocked flying, apart from the big one, Chogolisa Earthquake. She took two steps back, then strode forward, coming at them. Balinda, still out in front, swayed on her feet as if dazed. Erik had heard plenty about Chogolisa Earthquake and her tricks—like pulling spines out of backs or squashing heads with one hand—but he’d always assumed that tales and the reports of her size had been exaggerated. Now he saw that she was a real giant, at least a head taller than he was himself, and he was the tallest person he’d ever met. She must have been twice his weight, too, and she was not fat. Despite her size, she was fine-featured—pretty even. Erik had expected a girl that large to have a face l
ike a half-melted snowman. He wasn’t sure why.
She was unarmed. He guessed she didn’t need a weapon.
The rest of the Owsla were climbing to their feet. Only their warlock stayed down. The lightning attack had not been a battle ender.
Chucknor ran in to defend Balinda from Chogolisa Earthquake, followed by a yelling, axe-aloft Keef the Berserker and the twenty Big Bone warriors. Big Hinto stayed back, lifted a bone whistle to his lips and blew.
Erik also held his ground. He was no coward, there was simply no point crowding the centre of a battlefield, especially when all your own side apart from you had trained together, so knew how each other was going to fight and what was expected in terms of support and so on. So Keef, although displaying admirable enthusiasm, was probably going to get in the way. Judging by his battle yell, there was no point explaining that to him.
Chogolisa Earthquake reached Balinda and grabbed the old woman by the head. There was a bang and a white light flash and Chogolisa was blown back again. Chucknor leapt like an acrobat, swinging that great bone club into the Calnian giant’s head. The club exploded against her skull as if it was made from dried earth. Chogolisa didn’t seem to notice the blow. She caught Chucknor by the foot in one hand, flipped him upside down, grabbed his other foot and lifted him as if he was a doll.
Smiling, sweet-faced as a happy baby, she pulled his legs apart and kept pulling, ripping him apart from arse to neck. A wash of blood and guts splashed onto the packed earth.
Then brave Keef was in there, prodding at the giant with Arse Splitter. Chogolisa swung the half of Chucknor with the head on like a club, but Keef ducked and stabbed. It looked like he would surely strike a death blow, but the woman was as quick as she was large. She jinked clear and batted him away backhanded. Keef tottered and fell. He jumped back up again, but Big Hinto grabbed his shoulder and shook his head for him to hold. Keef, to Erik’s surprise, nodded and held back.