by Angus Watson
This idyllic valley, thought Finnbogi the Boggy, was surely The Meadows. He could see himself being very happy here with the rest of them, especially with Thyri Treelegs …
“Tell me what happened to Garth,” asked his true love to be, catching up.
“He was pushed over a cliff by a Scrayling.”
“How did it happen?”
“There were four of them. He told me to stay out of the way while he took them on. He killed three of them, the third one by chopping his arms off and throwing him off the cliff. He was turning round after doing that when the fourth one hit him at a run. They both went flying over the edge.”
“You’re sure he died?”
“I looked over the edge. He was lying on bare rock at the base of the cliff, arms spread, puddle of blood around his head, dead as can be.”
Thyri leapt in front of him. He stopped. She took both his hands and stared at him as if she was trying to see inside his skull.
Finnbogi congratulated himself. Everything that he’d told her was one hundred per cent true. She wasn’t going to see any lying in his eyes.
“That’s what happened,” he said.
“All right, but Finnbogi—”
“Call me Finn.”
“All right, Finn. If I find out that you killed Garth, Finn, or helped him to his death in any way, then I will kill you, Finn. Is that clear, Finn?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to save him, but you’ve only taught me how to block so far. Can we start with some attacking moves when we train tonight?”
Thyri looked at him as if he was something large and shiny that someone seriously ill had sneezed into her breakfast bowl, then hurried ahead.
Finnbogi had just begun to contemplate the unfairness of it all when Thyri spun around and leapt, her sax flashing down towards him. He dodged the blow and drew his sword. She slashed. He blocked, their weapons met with a shocking clang and he took a step back, Foe Slicer high and ready for her next attack.
“Your blocking still needs work,” she said, “but it has improved. We can look at some attacking moves at the end of tonight’s lesson.” She strode on ahead.
Finnbogi marvelled in her wake. Why was everyone else so much cooler than him?
He walked on to where Freydis had stopped.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Hello, Finnbogi the Boggy,” said Freydis. “Have you see Hugin and Munin?”
He looked about. “Not for a while.”
“They’ve disappeared. Ottar’s not worried, but I don’t like them going off on their own in a place they don’t know.”
“I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thanks!”
He walked on, Freydis beside him. He ruffled her hair and she didn’t seem to mind.
Was this life now, he wondered? Beautiful countryside, no Garth, great company like Freydis, Sassa, Bjarni, Keef, Wulf, and, let’s face it, Erik, practice with Thyri, maybe a real romantic chance with her, and no Owsla pursuing them?
Surely it was too good to be true?
Sitsi Kestrel loosed the bowstring as something small and furry crashed down on her arm, knocking her aim awry. Her arrow soared harmlessly across the valley, high above the Mushroom Men’s heads.
“What the …”
A small racoon scurried into the bushes.
That had been freaky. Were there any more animals waiting to drop on her? Sitsi looked up.
She didn’t think so. And it looked like the Mushroom Men hadn’t seen her shot fly over their heads. They were still walking along like a happy family on a feast day. She took another arrow from her quiver.
“I saw an arrow fly over our heads,” said Bodil Gooseface.
“When?” asked Bjarni Chickenhead.
“Just now, just before I mentioned it.”
“EVERYBODY DOWN! ARCHERS!” shouted Bjarni. He dropped onto the path, pulling Bodil with him.
“Are you sure it was an arrow?” he asked.
“Could have been a very skinny, very fast bird,” she said.
Sitsi Kestrel missed by miles, which was about as unusual as a seven-legged bobcat, and a couple of heartbeats later the Mushroom Men went to ground, putting the long grass between them and Sitsi’s arrows.
No matter, thought Sofi Tornado. They had them now. She strode down the path towards her cowering victims, stone axe in hand. Beyond the prone Mushroom Men, Chogolisa Earthquake appeared from the trees and jogged to meet her. Morningstar and Paloma Pronghorn emerged to the north and Sitsi came from the south.
Their prey was surrounded. It didn’t stand a chance.
Finnbogi peered through the grass. He didn’t dare get to his feet for fear of an arrow. One of the Owsla was striding down the path towards them, the warlock behind her. More women were coming from either side.
So, they’d finally been caught and here came death. It was strange to think that he’d be in another world within minutes. He hoped Garth wasn’t there. He’d only just got free of the fucker.
Ottar and Freydis lay in front of him, brave little children.
He reached for the hilt of Foe Slicer and pulled the sword from its scabbard. He’d do what he could for the kids. He’d go down blocking.
Then silly, mad little Ottar stood up.
“Get down, Ottar!” Finnbogi squeaked.
“Wootah!” shouted the boy.
The boy stood. Sitsi Kestrel raised her bow. He looked at her. She drew. He had the pale skin and startling blue eyes of a Mushroom Man, but the dark, messy hair of a Calnian child. His cheeks were red and his chin was shining with saliva. By his overwide eyes and the spittle on his chin, she guessed that he had an underdeveloped mind like her brothers.
She lowered her bow. The boy smiled at her.
Sofi Tornado saw the boy stand and saw Sitsi Kestrel not shoot him. It wasn’t a surprise; the little archer had always been the kindest of the Owsla, and, without diamondback rattlesnake and tarantula hawk wasp in her diet, the normal human reluctance to kill children had returned.
No matter. Sofi had a mission and no qualms. She walked to meet the boy, raising her axe.
The big blond man jumped up to stop the boy. Here we go, thought Sitsi Kestrel. I can make amends for letting the boy live. She whipped up her bow, aimed at his face and shot.
Before Sassa saw that Ottar was walking past, Wulf was standing. Sassa knew from grim experience the result of standing up when archers had their bows trained on you.
“No!” she kicked his foot, grabbed his padded leather jerkin and pulled him back down. The arrow that would have impaled his head zipped by.
Sofi Tornado quickened her pace.
The boy grinned at her.
I’ll take that smile off your face, she thought, pulling her weapon back for the death blow.
Something took hold of her arm. And she hadn’t heard it coming.
She turned.
Yoki Choppa was holding her wrist.
Gently but firmly, he pulled her arm back to her side, shaking his head. To her surprise, she let him.
He stepped around her. The boy raised his arms, Yoki Choppa bent down. The boy wrapped his arms around the warlock’s shoulders. Yoki Choppa picked him up and hugged him tight, like a warrior returned from a long mission hugging his son.
“What,” Sofi Tornado took a step back, “by Innowak’s red-hot bollocks, is going on?”
Paloma Pronghorn looked to Morningstar, who looked as confused as she felt, then back to Yoki Choppa hugging the boy.
Wow, was all she could think.
Chogolisa Earthquake was staring like a woman who’s come home to find her husband making love to a buffalo calf. Sitsi Kestrel dropped her bow. Even the Mushroom Men had lifted their heads and were looking on with mouths agape, no wiser than the Calnians.
The only person who reacted with any poise was the little girl. She climbed to her feet and sauntered along to join the boy and the warlock.
Yoki Choppa jinked the boy round in his grasp so
he was holding him on one arm, squatted, picked up the girl with his spare arm and stood. “There will be no killing here today,” he said.
“Unless you tell me why in less than three heartbeats,” said Sofi Tornado. “There will be killing, starting with one treacherous Calnian warlock.”
“I’d be interested to know what’s happening, too,” said Wulf the Fat, looking up from the grass.
“I’ll tell you all,” said Yoki Choppa. “It’s not complicated, but it will take longer than three heartbeats.”
Chapter 12
There and Back Again
Yoki Choppa led Sofi Tornado and Wulf the Fat back towards the Water Mother. The Mushroom Man tried to make conversation but Sofi was a very long way from being in the mood for a chat. She was smouldering with a rage that she couldn’t shift—that she didn’t want to shift. The jovial, freakishly light-haired Mushroom Man was one joke away from being brained by an axe.
“Shut the fuck up,” she advised.
He had the sense to do so.
Whatever Yoki Choppa was going to tell them, whatever the reason that the Mushroom Men weren’t dead and they weren’t on their way home to their power animals and normality, one thing was certain. The warlock had mucked her about and she did not like being mucked about.
She wasn’t so psychotic that she wouldn’t listen to what Yoki Choppa had to say, but it was very hard to imagine any other outcome than her smashing the warlock and Mushroom Man’s skulls then killing the rest of the pale-skinned freaks and eating the lot of them.
Something that kindled her rage even more was that part of her liked these aliens. Look, said an annoying voice in her mind, the same one that had almost made her cry at the Rock River, these people are jolly and brave and kind, and surely the world is a better place with them in it.
But it was their mission to kill them. That was all that mattered. They should be dead and Sofi should be glad of it. All this unwelcome “oh but they’re nice people” stuff was because of the withdrawal of her power animals and it could fuck right off.
They reached the top of the bluff and the warlock found a rock that formed a natural bench overlooking the Water Mother valley. He asked the two leaders to sit.
“Right,” he said, pacing. Behind him the Water Mother flowed sluggishly and the low sun lit the western boundary of Calnia’s territory. The sooner Sofi and the Owsla were back over there, the better.
“Wulf the Fat, you are travelling west because Ottar the Moaner claimed that you will find a home in a place called The Meadows.”
“That’s right. You can call me Wulf.”
“Sofi Tornado, you have been pursuing the Mushroom Men—that’s your tribe, Wulf—because of a prophecy that the Mushroom Men will destroy the world.”
“Do you want me to confirm that? You know I know this.” This had already taken too long. She curled her fingers around her axe handle.
“You both need to know the full position.”
“Get on with it.”
“You can call us the Wootah tribe, not Mushroom Men, if you like,” said the Mushroom Man.
“You shut up. Yoki Choppa, you have five heartbeats to convince me not to kill you both.”
“You have both been misled. Ottar has misled you, Wulf, and I have misled you, Sofi.”
The Owsla captain closed her eyes, opened them and breathed out heavily through her nose. “Four heartbeats.”
“The Wootah tribe and the Calnian Owsla have been united by Ottar the Moaner to travel to The Meadows. The Meadows contains a force which has already begun to destroy the world. The recent freak weather—the huge tornado that killed one of the Wootah tribe, for example—are manifestations of it.”
“So the boy will lead the Owsla to The Meadows and we’ll defeat this force and save the world?”
“No. We’re going to make sure Ottar gets there and he’s going to save the world.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“No.”
“But certain enough to betray Calnia.”
“Yes.”
“So we can kill the rest of the Mushroom Men?”
“No, we need them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. So you expect me to betray Ayanna and follow a child who I have been ordered to kill, alongside the people I’ve been ordered to kill, away from Calnia?”
“Yes.”
“For no reason other than your say-so?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been planning this since we left Calnia.” She’d suspected it. That slimy warlock. “You haven’t fed us any rattlesnake since we left, have you?”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” said Wulf the Fat.
“Quiet, you. Answer me, warlock.”
“You have not eaten diamondback rattlesnake since two nights before we left Calnia.”
“Without asking me, you have changed us. You have taken our ruthlessness—the very essence of what makes us Owsla. It’s why we didn’t kill the Goachica. It’s why we let the Lakchans live. It’s why we didn’t battle the monsters at Heartberry Canyon, it’s why I left Keef alive. The Mushroom Men—”
“Wootah tribe,” said Wulf.
“Interrupt me again and I will kill you, got it?”
“Got it.” He nodded solemnly but with a smile in his eyes. Did the fool take anything seriously?
She turned back to Yoki Choppa. “When we got closer you had to reduce our powers further to stop us catching the Mushroom Men. The lightning from the Big Bone warlock was no coincidence. You colluded with them to remove our powers.”
“No. I saw the opportunity and I took it. I am not the shaper of events here. The Wootah boy is. I believe he persuaded the Big Bone tribe to hinder us. I believe he put the idea of destroying my alchemy bag into my mind and gave me the chance.”
“And you couldn’t just stop feeding us our power animals, because your predecessor Pakanda told Morningstar about them. If we’d weakened she’d have realised what was happening and confronted you or told me.”
He nodded.
Sofi looked at her feet. Anyone else, anyone other than Yoki Choppa and she would have ripped his head off, beaten the Mushroom Man to death with it and thrown them both off the cliff. But the warlock was neither a liar nor a fantasist. He would not have done all this for the fun of it. And there was something else …
“So Empress Ayanna’s prophecy is wrong?” she asked.
“It’s not. Mushroom Men will destroy nature and kill us all, including themselves. But not, I believe, these Mushroom Men. As Paloma Pronghorn pointed out, there are millions more. There are eleven remaining of Wulf’s Wootah tribe. Killing them to prevent Ayanna’s prophecy from coming true would be like trying to stop a plague of ants by killing eleven ants.”
Sofi nodded. She could accept that. But orders were orders and she was still far from convinced that she wouldn’t carry them out, and kill Yoki Choppa for his treachery.
“Where are The Meadows?” she asked.
“Only Ottar knows. From what I’ve heard, they are on the far side of the Shining Mountains.”
“The Shining Mountains! They are, what, a thousand miles from here?”
“A thousand miles?” asked Wulf.
“Shut up.”
“It is about a thousand miles to the Shining Mountains, mostly through Badlander territory. The Meadows are perhaps another thousand miles beyond the Shining Mountains, through the Desert That You Don’t Walk Out Of.”
Sofi Tornado was not easily gobsmacked, but now she actually gasped. “It’s an impossible journey. No—through Badlander territory, over the mountains, across the desert—it’s three impossible journeys, each one worse than the one before. Hang on, we’ve got to come back! It’s six impossible journeys. For the love of Innowak …”
“It will not be easy. Hence the boy needing the powers of the Owsla.”
“Powers which you’ve thrown away.”
“Powers which
will be regained.”
“So, my women and I are to betray Ayanna and escort the Mushroom Men on a journey that might take years and is likely to kill us all?”
“Yes.”
“All on your say-so?”
“On more than my say-so. Think about it. I know that you know it’s the right thing to do.”
The tubby little bastard was right, of course. Not because she could feel it or because the boy’s magic was speaking to her or any crap like that. It was simply because she trusted Yoki Choppa more than she trusted anyone. If he said it was the right course of action, then it was. Still, she was far from happy about how he’d gone about it. His scheming had killed Talisa, and she wasn’t going to forgive him for that.
Wulf came walking back with Sofi Tornado and the warlock, through grassland lit golden by the setting sun. Sassa breathed a sigh of relief that her husband was alive, but, by the looks on their faces, all was far from settled.
Wulf bade farewell to the Calnians. The warlock reciprocated, but the captain of the Owsla strode on stony-faced, without acknowledging any of them.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Everybody sit down,” said Wulf. “I have quite a lot to tell you.”
They gathered around. Sassa watched Keef try to sit next to Bodil, who tried to sit next to Finnbogi, who tried to sit next to Thyri. It was reassuring to see that the Hardwork men’s affections hadn’t been too affected by the startling beauty of the Owsla women.
“First up, we are no longer the Hardworkers. We are now the Wootah tribe. I’m sorry, I know we were going to vote, but I told the Calnians that’s what we’re called and we’re stuck with it now.”
“Can you get to the part of why they didn’t kill us, and why it should matter to us what the Calnians call us, please?” asked Sassa.
“Sure.”