by Angus Watson
Instead of piling into the rest of the warriors and finishing them in a moment, as she surely could have done, Chogolisa Earthquake herself retreated to where the other Owsla stood in a battle line. The women seemed to have recovered from their lightning blasts. Their warlock didn’t look quite so well. He pushed himself onto all fours, scrabbled around as if looking for something, then howled like a bereaved mother.
Order had been restored. Out-and-out battles did happen, but most Scrayling tribes favoured a more orderly form of one-on-one combat, and it looked like the Owsla and Big Bone tribe were no different.
Sofi Tornado said something that Erik didn’t hear and nodded to the woman on her left—a tall, strapping lass—and she jogged forward. Like the others she was dressed in a short jerkin, breechcloth and leggings tied above the knee. Like the others, she had her own weaponry, in her case a short, double-ended club.
“I am Morningstar!” she cried. “Who will fight me?”
Big Hinto held Keef back as a Big Bone warrior walked out to meet her. The Big Bone man’s heavily styled and waxed hair looked like a couple of ravens towards the end of a well-matched fight to the death. By Rabbit Girl’s sweet innocence, thought Erik, the Scraylings had some horrible hairstyles. The warrior was young and fit, though, just a little shorter than Morningstar, armed with two bone clubs, one with a hooked, sharpened end, the other coated with resin and sharp little white spikes that could have been chipmunk’s teeth or, indeed, the teeth of any small, sharp-toothed animal.
The Big Bone warrior flung his clubs about like a performer might swing burning torches at a tribal gathering, swishing them around his waist and over his head.
Morningstar watched him come, then, picking her moment, hurled her own club at him underarm. It flew hard and true into his midriff. He doubled over, winded and perhaps worse. The Owsla woman nipped in while he was occupied trying to breathe, grabbed him by his horrible hair and punched him.
Erik had seen a punch break a nose. This punch broke the man’s face. It pulverised nose, cheeks, eyes sockets and more. He would surely have fallen, but the Owsla woman held him up by the hair to examine her damage and nodded, smiling. She dropped him, raised her leg and stamped, obliterating his already crushed skull.
The Big Bone tribe looked on, slack-jaw stunned, but Keef the Berserker roared and sprinted forward, swinging his broad axe Arse Splitter two-handed around his head, as berserk as his name implied he should be.
Morningstar picked up her double-headed club and waited for the charging man. Keef lunged with the sharp prow of his axe blade, but the woman knocked it aside with one hand and darted in at him.
Erik sighed. Hadn’t Keef had Hird training? One of the first things Erik had learnt about fighting, long before he’d even been old enough to join the Hird, was how to use a short weapon against a weapon with a longer reach, and vice versa. A long weapon has a danger zone, located around its pointy end. Your goal with a short weapon is to get inside that zone. The easiest way to do that is to knock the long weapon aside and step in—exactly as Morningstar had just done. Exactly as Keef had just let her do! Once you’re between the long weapon’s effective zone and your opponent, their long weapon is useless and you can chop or whack away with your short one until they’re dead.
The way to counter this if you’re the long weapon warrior was to make sure that the short weapon holder never got past your danger zone. So Keef, in his Berserk excitement, had done exactly the wrong thing by rushing in like that, and Morningstar had capitalised like a trainer showing the basics to trainees on their first day.
She swung her club for the death blow and Erik clenched everything in anticipation. But Keef dropped to a crouch, swung his axe, hooked her foot and pulled. Her feet flew up and she was down, onto her arse.
Erik and the Big Bone tribe cheered. Keef, the genius, had not been nearly as Berserk as he’d fooled Morningstar and everyone else into thinking he was. With one clever moved he’d proved that the Calnian Owsla were not as invincible as everyone said they were.
Keef swung Arse Splitter for a death strike to her chest, but Morningstar kicked the shaft away and Keef’s blade struck dirt. Morningstar might be down but she was far from out. She convulsed her body like a muscular worm and sprung to her feet. Erik had never seen anything like it. She smiled at Keef and beckoned him to run in again. He circled, wary.
At that moment something caught Erik’s eye and suddenly he realised he had his own problems. Sofi Tornado had ordered another warrior forward. This time he was the target. He couldn’t really complain. The Owsla were here to kill the Hardworkers, after all.
A girl—a young woman—was coming at him. Her weapon set was two flattened iron knives, one in each hand. They were short, no longer than daggers, more like tiny canoe paddles than weapons, and did not look as if they could be particularly effective. Erik guessed she’d learnt how to use them pretty effectively, though.
More striking than her weapons, however, were her looks. Erik had always thought that he’d never again meet anyone as beautiful as Astrid (his former lover, not the bear). But this warrior was breathtaking. Her hair was shoulder-length and parted. Her lips were slightly open, revealing white teeth. She had sparkling eyes which seemed to say: “If I weren’t about to butcher you like a deer for a feast, then you would have had a good chance with me, you really would have done.”
“Stay back,” he said to Astrid, and walked to meet his challenger. He hoped he looked brave, because he wasn’t feeling it. He’d learnt many things from animals, but how to fight was not one of them, because animals are crap at fighting. The most inept human is a better fighter than an animal because a human puts thought into it. A bear will lunge with its claws and hope to hit. It beats a human only because its claws and teeth make it better armed and it’s about a thousand times as strong. If Erik tried those tactics against this Owsla woman (who was so attractive it made him want to sing) he’d be dead before he knew it.
He swung his club, intending it as a feint to force her to duck before reversing its direction and driving an arm-disabling blow into her shoulder. But she slipped to one side, then the other, fast as a wasp in a whirlwind, punched him in the stomach and swung a fist into his jaw an instant later. He was winded and pain burst in his mouth as the punch made him bite his tongue.
His vision was blurred to buggery. He shook his head. They never covered this in Hird training, the way pain could totally disable you for a moment, even ignoble pain like biting your own tongue. Sight returned. She was standing five paces away, hand on hip, regarding him coolly. She could have finished him off while he was dazed. She could have used her blades instead of her fists for either of the two blows she had landed and made them killing strikes. She was toying with him. He was in trouble.
“My name is Talisa White-tail,” she said, smiling at him like a mischievous girl who’s recently discovered the effect of a saucy smile on older men. “I am about to kill you.”
“My name—”
“—is unimportant to me.” The smile didn’t falter. “Soon you will be dead, and even more of a lump of useless flesh than you are now.”
Well, that wasn’t very nice, and Astrid felt Erik’s indignation. The bear roared and reared, towering to twice the Calnian’s height.
Talisa dived between Astrid’s legs, her paddle knives flashing. Astrid roared in pain. Red blood shone in brown stomach fur. She fell back into a sitting position, moaning and holding her wounds.
“No!” shouted Erik. The Calnian danced into sight from behind the bear. He hefted his club.
There was a terrible bellowing. Both he and Talisa turned. Both their jaws dropped, and by mutual unspoken consent they paused the fight to stare at the animals wading across the Heartberry River. Astrid took a break from her pained moaning to turn and look, her little bear eyes widening.
There were two types of beast coming towards them. The first were half a dozen very large, short-faced bears, the same kind as Astrid. Three o
f them were quite a bit larger than her, with darker fur. Erik guessed these were males.
The other animals were the cause of their wonder. There were four of them, hairy like the bears, and with faces like the longer-muzzled humped bears, but they were stupidly big, much much larger than even the largest bear. They towered on hind legs to maybe three times Erik’s height. He couldn’t see fangs, but their great, brawny arms were tipped with three curved claws, each as long as a man’s arm.
He realised in a moment what they must be—kraklaws, the monsters that Chucknor had said once enslaved their tribe.
He reached out to them with his mind, but all he could feel was a vast, overwhelming sorrow; not for themselves, but for the brevity of man’s time of earth.
He shook his head. Wow. That had been very depressing. He would not try to communicate with them again.
“Reform!” the captain of the Owsla shouted.
Talisa White-tail smiled at him and bowed. “Another time.”
“My name is Erik the Angry!” he shouted after her as she ran. Then he turned to Astrid.
The bear had her paws clasped across her wounded stomach. She moaned, streaming eyes staring at him accusingly.
Finnbogi the Boggy rolled over then over again. He pushed himself onto his knees and elbows. The wind was so strong he didn’t dare rise higher. He tried to look around but the tempest was as much soil and stones as air, and it felt like the skin was being flayed from his face. He buried his face between his shoulders. The roar was agony in his ears. He managed to angle his head away from the onslaught and open his eyes. All was dark, all was rushing away, as if he were looking down a well shaft at night as a mountain of soil was poured over his head.
He staggered to his feet and was immediately shunted along by the incredible gale. He had to run to stop himself from falling. He tried to angle his flight away from where he guessed the twister’s core must be, trying and failing to find purchase on the shifting ground. He lurched on, falling and pushing himself back up, willing his feet to stay earthbound but knowing that his crazy sideways stampede was only the beginning. Soon he’d be off his feet and up, up, up.
A clod of earth whacked into his head.
The wind toppled him, rolled him and he was back on his feet. He felt a new force in the wind monster, hoicking at his legs, trying to pull him upwards, away from the ground. He threw himself down, clawing at the soil, desperate to stay in touch with the ground that had been such an underappreciated but steadfast friend for his nineteen years alive.
His legs lifted. He was cartwheeling along, still in contact with the ground but no longer attached to it. Something, a rock probably, thumped into his head. Well, there’s that question answered, he thought as consciousness slipped away.
Chnob the White, the idiot, was not going to turn. Sassa Lipchewer shouted, but he was drawing away and she could hardly hear herself. She tried to speed up, but the crosswind was so strong that she was running sideways as much as forwards. The twister must be almost on her. Pole a mole, if she’d had to choose a way to die it wouldn’t have been death by tornado while trying and failing to rescue Chnob the White from his own stupidity.
She might as well see the thing that killed her, she thought. She stopped and turned.
“I knew I was faster than you!” shouted a grinning Thyri, holding Keef’s boat. Behind Treelegs all was a mad whirl of earth, rock and maize. Why by Fraya’s tits did she have Keef’s canoe?
Thyri stooped and pressed the boat onto the ground. “Here! Wrap one arm around me and one arm around the boat bench and hold tighter than you’ve ever held anything!”
Sassa did as she was told. She didn’t see why, but she wasn’t blessed with time to argue.
“Okay!” shouted Thyri in her ear, “we’re going to lift the boat and run north! The boat will act like a kite, lifting us off our feet! Hold on for your life! When I shout ‘now,’ let go and roll into a ball! If I get it right, we’ll be flung clear!”
Sassa nodded. It made some sense in theory. In practice? When they were both children, Wulf had broken his leg jumping from Olaf’s Tree holding his mother’s cape, having convinced himself that the cape would act like birds’ wings and that he’d surely fly at least as far as Olaf’s Fresh Sea. In a ranking of dumbest ideas ever, Thyri’s boat idea was probably just a little ahead of that me.
Bjarni Chickenhead wobbled out of Pipes Libbacap’s hut, crouching under the low door. He stayed bent over for a good few extra strides to be sure he didn’t hit his head. That was the thing about getting messed up on mushrooms. The world was more dangerous than usual and you had to be careful. Very careful. When he was one hundred per cent, totally confident that he wasn’t going to whack his head on the doorframe, he straightened.
He looked around.
There were a few unusual things going on, none of which surprised him. That was the other thing about getting messed up on mushrooms. You saw some strange things. There was no point being surprised.
Least strange of the strange things, he was a good twenty paces from Eats Too Many Mushroom’s hut, or so he reckoned—all these huts looked the same. How had he got so far? He’d only just walked out of it. Maybe he’d kept his head down for longer than he’d thought? That was a good thing, better than hitting his head. You had to be careful when you were on mushrooms. Very careful.
Next on his agenda of unusual things to deal with was an enormous tornado, sucking the land up into the sky to the south of the white cliff. Wow, he thought, staring at its swirling majesty. Then he remembered that there’d been a third even more unusual thing going on that he really ought to check out. How could there be anything stranger than a giant twister?
Oh yes, there you go. Weirdest of the lot were the giant animals clambering out of the river, great sheets of water sloughing off enough fur to keep everyone in Hardwork warm for a millennium. Six of the beasts were Erik’s big bear. He couldn’t remember there being six of her, so that was confusing. Did animals multiply like that? Maybe. One had to keep an open mind—that was probably rule two when on mushrooms, after being careful. Perhaps that trickster god Loakie had been involved. Grrrrr, that Loakie. Still, no point worrying about the multiplying bears right now, because the other four animals were more amazing. They were giant, upright bears with claws like swords.
Bjarni felt a surge of warm love for the super-bears. They’d make good friends. He walked towards them.
“Hold up! Hold up!” he said out loud. What was rule one about being as messed up as he was? To be careful. Very careful. Would it be very careful to try and befriend monsters three times his height with claws like swords? It would not. He would not try to make friends with them. Nope. He giggled. “Well done me,” he said, and giggled some more.
The safest thing to do, given all the weird stuff out here, would be to go back to Pipes Libbacap’s hut and smoke more of his mushroom mix. Now, which one was it? No idea. They were all the bloody same, as if Loakie had built the whole village purely to flummox him. That Loakie!
A solution. He’d look in all of the huts until he found the right one. The simple ideas were the best ones. That should be rule three. Rule three of what? He couldn’t remember, but it was something important. He put on his serious face, blurted a giggled, then forced his features back into a sensible expression.
He crouched—you had to be careful of those doorframes, very careful—and he hopped like a rabbit towards the nearest dwelling. The skin that served as a door lifted before he got there. A small girl who wasn’t Pipes Libbacap looked at him as if he was the oddest thing around. The girl needed to get some perspective.
“Run!” shouted Thyri.
Sassa Lipchewer and Thyri Treelegs sprinted, holding each other and Keef’s boat. Flying maize stalks whipped into them and Sassa’s hair thrashed around her face as if it was trying to beat her to death. The extraordinary gale so nearly wrenched the boat from their grip but they held on. It was a good thing the canoe was so well constructed,
thought Sassa. Keef’s lecture on exactly how he’d made the boat began pouring from her memory. She beat it back, trying to cram the dreary splurge of information into the recesses of her mind and close a door on it. She did not want her final thoughts on this world to be Keef’s detailed description of the superiority of birch bark over all other forms of bark and the necessity of making the paddles out of—
“Jump!” shouted Thyri.
They jumped, flew a good ten paces with their feet skimming the wildly whirling maize stalks, then landed running.
“Again, on three!” Treelegs yelled. “One. Two. THREE!”
They leapt. This time Sassa’s legs kicked in space. Her stomach, she was fairly sure, stayed on the ground. Her arms screamed with the effort of holding onto Keef’s stupid little boat.
“Now!” shouted Thyri. They let go. She was falling, the ground rushing to meet her. Time slowed. How should she land, she wondered? Arms out to break her fall and she’d surely break her arms? But she hardly wanted to cushion her fall with her head. She spread her arms out in front of her. The ground came, faster and faster. What was it Thyri had said? Oh yes, roll into a ball. She wrapped her arms over her head and tucked her knees up to her chest.
WHUMP! The air whacked out of her and she was rolling in a mess of earth. Finally she crumpled to a stop, then flopped out so she was lying on her back, earth in her ears and mouth, something pulling at her arm.
The something was Thyri Treelegs. “Come on!” she shouted.
Crouching, holding each other up, the two women stumbled through the maize, clear of the twister.
“Did you see what happened to Chnob?” shouted Sassa above the roar once they were safe.
Thyri pointed back at the twister. High, high above the ground a tiny spread-limbed figure was whooshing upwards. He was visible for a good few seconds before he disappeared in the maelstrom.