Returner's Wealth

by Paul Stewart

  ‘Seems like the weather can’t quite make up its mind,’ Micah observed.

  ‘It’s a fickle season, halfwinter,’ Eli nodded. ‘Folks can be deceived, and many have perished, believing winter to be finished before it has even begun. But it’s on its way, fullwinter, Micah, and that’s a fact, and when it does strike, we’d best be in the winter den, not on the trail, or we shall not survive.’

  He raised a shielding hand and surveyed the trail ahead. When he looked back at Micah, his pale-blue eyes looked concerned.

  ‘Halfwinter’s the time for taking stock and preparing for the harshness to come, not undertaking a journey such as ours.’ He shrugged. ‘But it seems it cannot be helped, if them that’s wronged us are to be held to account.’

  The cragclimber hesitated and stared into the distance, and Micah knew that he was thinking of Jura, and the hideous carnage in the cavern behind the waterfall. Now, it seemed, it was Micah’s turn to distract his companion.

  He scanned the bleak landscape and frowned. ‘It’s mighty quiet,’ he ventured. ‘I ain’t seen a single wyrme, Eli, not for a day or more—’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know where to look, greenhorn,’ the cragclimber broke in with a smile.

  A hundred yards or so further on, Eli paused and poked his walking staff towards a disturbance in the snow.

  ‘Squabwyrme’s been here,’ he mentioned casually.

  There were shallow impressions that, now he looked more closely, Micah could see might well be tracks. They were splayed and set increasingly far apart, and adjacent to them were sweeping semi-circular marks, first on one side, then the other.

  ‘Dumpy little critters at the best of times,’ Eli was saying, ‘but with winter approaching, they get so fatted up they can scarce raise theirselves airborne. They take a run up, wings outstretched and flapping, rolling from side to side, before … There. They finally take to the air.’

  Micah saw the crumpled white ridge Eli’s staff was pointing at. Beyond it the surface of the snow was untouched.

  ‘Flying back to their winter dens in the weald caverns. Wyrmes know this halfwinter won’t last long. You’ll learn a lot about surviving just by observing their ways,’ Eli told him.

  Micah nodded, then realigned the heavy backpack on his shoulders and stamped his cold feet.

  ‘Have you got your spyglass to hand?’ Eli asked a little while later as the gulch levelled out onto a tree-scratched plain. Micah tugged it from the inside of his shirt. ‘Train it yonder,’ Eli told him, pointing far to his right.

  Micah did so, and his gaze focused on a cluster of low pines, their dark needles shot with the blush of red berries.

  ‘See them?’

  Micah frowned. Then he did see them; a dozen or more tiny tatterwyrmes, each no bigger than his hand, their ribboned wings flapping as they hopped from branch to branch, plucking at the berries and stuffing them into their snubsnout mouths. Eli had his own spyglass raised.

  ‘Probably their last good feed before fullwinter hits,’ he was saying. ‘They bury themselves beneath the tree roots and wait it out for the thaw, trusting to their body fat to see them through.’

  They tramped on over crunching snow, with Micah growing hot as he struggled to keep up with the cragclimber’s urgent stride. With this talk of winter and all, Eli seemed eager to get to where they were going in short measure. The sun had reached its high point in the sky – which wasn’t that high at all – and was already sinking back down. Their shadows lengthened. The air grew colder still.

  Micah scanned the far horizon. Thrace had told them the gulch would take them most of the way there – to redwater, as she had called it – but the end of the broadcut ravine had come and gone, and the land had opened up, yet Micah could see no sign of the tarn. At last, as the evening chill froze the snow solid and darkness closed in, Eli announced that they should rest up for the night.

  They slept in the open beneath a moonless sky. The stars sparkled bright, as if freshly burnished, and Micah awoke twice thinking dawn must have arrived, and rolled over chilled and disappointed when he found it had not. The third time he woke it was because Eli was shaking him.

  ‘Micah,’ he was whispering, his voice taut with urgency. ‘Micah, get up.’

  Micah’s eyes snapped open and he sprang to his feet, too fast, and his head spun. ‘What? What?’

  ‘Over there,’ said Eli, his voice hushed.

  He was half-stooped, one arm around the boy’s shoulders and the other pointing off across the cracked plateau some hundred yards off. Micah squinted and wiped the sleep from his eyes, and saw that the blur of angular boulders he’d seen were moving. Eli straightened up.

  ‘Greywyrmes,’ he whispered. ‘A whole herd.’

  Micah put the spyglass to his eye. He focused in, and the magnified circle abruptly filled with life.

  There were two dozen of the creatures, or thereabouts, huge and lumbering, their grey bodies edged with black shadow in the dawn light. They looked to be grazing, scratching at the cushions of snow, then dipping their necks gracefully and nibbling at whatever they found beneath. They were slow-moving and calm, yet vigilant, with at least two of their number surveying the surrounding landscape at all times, necks erect and heads turning, while the others fed.

  Micah recognized these wyrmes, he realized, for he had seen one of their kind before. It was back on the plains, the woeful creature sick and dying as it was goaded through the town square on that fateful night. How extraordinary and strange that sickly greywyrme had seemed to Micah back then. It had probably been carried back as a wyrmeling, the returner’s wealth of some desperate kith, and destined for a short life and slow death – a curiosity to be prodded and poked at.

  As the herd ambled slowly across the plateau, Micah brought the spyglass round, and his gaze fell upon a gawky wyrmeling that was trailing some way behind the rest. It was thin and jittery, with raised wings and a head that looked too heavy for its scrawny neck, and when it noticed the others had moved on, it skittered to catch up on spindle legs. The greywyrme he had seen had probably started out just as young and free as this. It ran to a tall female, and the pair of them nuzzled together.

  Suddenly there was a high-pitched screech, and the whole herd raised their heads as one. The next moment, they were stampeding. Some were running, attempting to fly, their legs a blur and wings flapping; some managed to take to the air, and skimmed low over the pink-tinged rock.

  Micah pulled the spyglass from his eye. He saw the cause of the panic at once, a large sleek wyrme with green scales and deep crimson wings that were broad and scalloped and folded back as it dived down out of the sky at the scattering herd.

  The wyrmeling was running as fast as it could, hopping and leaping as it went, struggling in vain to give lift to its infant wings. The female hung back from the rest of the herd, booming encouragement, then snapping and snarling at the predator overhead, causing it to pull out of the dive and soar up into the sky.

  But then it was back, its limbs braced, yellow flame roaring from its parted jaws and its tail back behind it as rigid as a pikestaff. It knocked the female aside, sending her sprawling, and sunk its curved claws into the wyrmeling’s back. It lurched, then righted itself, and with powerful beats of its wings, soared skywards. Dangling beneath it, the small creature struggled for a moment, then fell limp.

  ‘Micah, quick!’ Eli was shouting, and he grabbed his arm, and Micah turned to see the herd was heading straight for them, their wings flapping and their great grey bodies grazing the ground as they churned up snow and shale with their powerful legs. ‘Here. Jump down …’

  ‘My backpack …’

  ‘Leave it!’

  Eli dropped down into a narrow crack between two slabs of rock, and Micah joined him, ducking down just as the first of the greywyrmes thundered overhead. He skitched round, craned his neck, and looked u
p to see the terrified creatures skimming over the gap above him, one after the other, their cries sharp and keening and their terror pungent sour.

  The pair of them emerged when the last one had passed, and Micah watched them hurtle away in a spray of frozen snow. The predator wyrme, along with the hapless wyrmeling, had gone. Micah went to check his backpack, which had been kicked and trampled across the rock. His gourd was punctured, but the pack itself had stood up well.

  ‘Fearsome predators, redwings,’ Eli commented.

  Micah nodded as he hefted the backpack onto his shoulders. ‘Better a life short and free,’ he said, thinking of the greywyrme in the town square, ‘than a longer one of pain and suffering.’

  Eli looked at the boy and nodded thoughtfully. ‘Like I said, Micah, lad, you can learn a lot by observing wyrmes.’

  ***

  It was late in the afternoon, the sun hidden behind slatecolour clouds, when they topped the second ridge of low hills. The land dropped sharply on the far side, then rose again in a slope of undulating terraces. Wind blew in their faces and Micah grimaced as the rank choking odour of blood and offal filled his nostrils.

  He glanced at Eli, but the cragclimber seemed oblivious to the stench. He was staring into the distance, where black shapes circled slowly in the icy upcurrents of the halfwinter sky, hundreds of them.

  ‘Something’s wrong, lad,’ he said, rubbing his jaw as he surveyed the carrionwyrmes. ‘Sorely wrong.’

  Forty-Four

  The gutting tarn lay still and eerie quiet. High above, the squalling shrieks of the circling carrionwyrmes were lost on the snow-flecked wind, the sulphurous wyrmebreath that hung heavy over the sheltering bowl of the tarn keeping them temporarily at bay. The heavy slabs of rock that blocked the entrances to the fortified rock barrows at the water’s edge stood ajar, the dark interiors of the low stone buildings flame-blasted and soot-blackened.

  The body of a man, gaunt and grey-grizzled, lay a little way off, a gutting knife in one hand and a half-sliced wyrme gizzard in the other. Death had caught him by surprise, the expression on his upturned face a strange mixture of fear and something approaching disappointment. His thick leather coat was stained with his own blood – at the chest and at the shoulder – where the kinlance had run him through.

  Beside him, his companion, his head slumped forward into a crudely carved bowl of gleaming kidneys, was wearing a thick apron patterned with plashed blood. The angle of the neat black wound through his throat suggested that the kinlance had skewered both gutsmen in a single thrust.

  Outside the rock barrows lay four more gutsmen, each turned to silhouettes of cinder as they fled towards the safety of the low stone buildings. They lay awkwardly in death, their bodies bent into unnatural angles.

  At the entrance to the first barrow, the body of a tall man with a tangle of red hair was sprawled halfway across the scorched threshold, a charred crossbow in his hands, the bolt cranked and ready to fly. At his side, a woman with thick grey plaits, wearing a stiff gutter’s skirt and heavy boots, was draped over the slab of rock she’d been attempting to pull across the doorway when sharp talons had ripped her midriff apart.

  On the slate roof of the neighbouring barrow lay the smashed body of a hefty-looking gutsman, seized by the same talons and then dropped from a great height.

  Outside the scorched stone buildings, a pile of wyrmeskins had been turned to a pyre and reduced to a mound of ash; splintered crates of offal smouldered, giving off twists of oily smoke. Tools and nets and gutting paraphernalia had been smashed, shattered and burned.

  Along a ways, on the other side of the blood-red lake, and reflected in its stagnant waters, was a tall gutting rack. Jesse was spreadeagled across the rack, his hands and feet nailed to the diagonal crossbeams of blood-seasoned pine by rock-spikes.

  He was leaning forward, as though in the act of diving, his downturned face reflected back at him in the tarn’s red waters. They mirrored the dried blood at the lips and chin, and the mouth, from which the tongue had been torn away at the roots, the way kith cut out the tongues of kin who will not speak, and a filthy rag had been balled and thrust into the bloody hole, a corner protruding from between rotten teeth.

  Skewered to the front of Jesse’s chest, with his own knife, was the large heart of a great whitewyrme.

  The waters of the lake rippled as a sudden snow flurry penetrated the dip of the bowl, and the smoke thinned to reveal the figures of a cragclimber and a boy standing on the lip of the tarn. Overhead, the cries of the circling carrionwyrmes grew more insistent.

  ‘Thrace,’ Micah said numbly, and lowered his spyglass. ‘Thrace did this.’

  Forty-Five

  The wind rose and the air cleared, and the carrionwyrmes spiralled down out of the sky to gorge noisily upon the dead. The two kith walked side by side, their heads lowered, and this time neither of them objected to the other’s silence.

  Despite the brightness of the sky, the air was harsh with the cut of winterchill. Their shadows were long and gangling. They crested the jagged ridge to the west of the tarn, and made their way down the long shallow slope toward the vast lake in the distance. As they came closer, Micah saw that the surface of the lake was covered in a latticework of pale-grey crackle-ice, all apart from the far side, where wisps of mist rose from a bubbling pool that looked deep and was fringed by grey rocky outcrops. He caught the whiff of sulphur.

  ‘It’s a hot spring,’ Eli told him, and a scowl spread across his leathery features. ‘The gutsmen from the tarn bathe there …’

  Micah nodded. He felt grimy and footsore, and the idea of soaking in the hot spring was certainly inviting, despite the eerie miasma of steam that hung over it.

  Eli seemed to have read his thoughts, for he shrugged. ‘You go ahead if you have a notion to, boy,’ he told him. ‘I’m gonna get a fire started before the light fails. Catch us some fish.’ He turned his head along the shore and thrust his jaw forward. ‘There’s a favourable place in the lee of those rocks up yonder.’

  ‘You don’t mind … ?’ Micah began.

  ‘Why should I mind?’ said Eli. ‘Just don’t ask me to join you.’

  He had already started striding purposefully down the pitted slope towards his chosen camping place, his staff clacking at his side. Micah watched him for a moment, then turned and made his way round the frozen lake to the far side, where the pool bubbled and steamed.

  He approached cautiously. The wind had dropped, the clouds had closed in and the hot spring was engulfed in shadow. He reached the water’s edge, fine sandy gravel and broken shells crunching beneath his boots, and stepped up onto one of the grey outcrops of rock that jutted over the steaming water. A backdrop of dark craggy cliffs rose in a curving wall around the pool, with the moss and fern that clung to the cracks and crevices dripping sonorously into the water below. He walked to the end of the outcrop, and was enveloped by clammy warmth. He looked down.

  Filaments of green weed fuzzed the steep sides of the pool. Down at the bottom of the clear water, he saw bubbles rising from the depths and shimmering up to the surface in shoals, before turning to belching twists of mist, white against the dark rock, like the wraiths of dead gutsmen.

  Despite the warmth, Micah shivered. He took a deep breath and tore his gaze away from the writhing mist, then crouched down and dangled a hand loosely in the water. It was hotter than he’d imagined and silken soft. He sat back on the rock and tugged off his boots. He pulled off his jacket, his shirt, his breeches and underclothes, and set them aside, then climbed back to his feet.

  His skin smarted in the air that was, by turns, moistwarm and bladesharp cold. He splashed down from the rock onto the sloping sandy bed, and the hot water gripped his toes and ankles and rose up his legs to his waist as he took another step.

  He squatted slowly down, and sighed deep with contentment as the hot sulphur-laced water hugged his chest a
nd encircled his neck. It felt pure, cleansing, and he was about to dip his head beneath the bubbling surface when he saw the girl.

  She was hunched by the water’s edge, knees raised and clasped by her slender yet muscular arms. A hood hung down over her lowered head. There was blood on her interlocking fingers; there was blood on the pale wyrmeskin that clad her slim body.

  Abruptly she looked up, and Micah saw that her face was streaked in blood also. It was smeared across her forehead, daubed down both cheeks and smudged thick around her mouth. She stared at him dully from beneath her hood, and Micah was unsure whether she recognized him or not. He opened his mouth to speak, but when he did so, the old familiar ache in his chest rose to his throat and turned his voice to a strangulated whisper.

  ‘Thrace?’

  Aseel wheeled round high above the clear lake and came in to land. Thrace was rigid and heavy as stone. She clung to his neck, stiff and unyielding. And she remained stiff and unyielding as Aseel shrugged her from his back.

  He stooped down and nuzzled the motionless body of his kin gently, but she did not respond. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  At the tarn, they’d been as one, effortlessly graceful and finely attuned to every deadly movement as they had killed the gutsmen. Then they had caught the kith with the straggly hair and the one eye; the one with the wyrmeheart in his pack. She had paid special attention to that one, while he had set about cleansing those stinking barrows with bursts of fire. When he’d returned and she’d climbed onto his back, everything had changed.

  She was still and silent, and he could not rouse her. He’d thought the clear lake spring might help, but it had not.