Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  Then he’d died. Again. It wasn’t a pleasant memory, but at least it had been fast.

  A bird trilled in the woods, then another. Sarkis did not know even a tenth of the southern birds, but he narrowed his eyes, watching the deer-headed man’s ears move to catch the sound.

  His suspicions were confirmed a moment later when the rune lifted his head. His throat pulsed and Sarkis heard another high, twittering call. It was strangely incongruous compared to the size of the rune.

  Then another, even larger one stepped out of the trees and onto the track ahead of them. He had a massive rack of antlers coated in soft velvet. Another sign that the seasons were running late in these hills, Sarkis thought, assuming that deer in the south were the same as other deer.

  Although I do not believe I would call this gentleman a decadent southern deer. The rune was a good seven feet tall, and that was before counting the antlers. His shoulders were at least as broad as Sarkis’s, although his height made him appear almost delicate, with inhumanly narrow wrists and ankles.

  He held up a hand, palm out. His fingers were stiff and strangely jointed, with thick, hoof-like nails. He whistled a high, imperious note.

  One did not need to be a genius to know what that meant. Brindle stopped the ox.

  They stood in absolute silence for several long moments. The ox got bored, dropped its head, and began to graze. Sarkis glanced at Halla, worried that she might be frightened, to discover her gazing at the rune with her lips parted and an incredulous smile on her face.

  “This is amazing…” she breathed. “What do you think they eat?”

  Well, he should have seen that coming.

  The rune cocked his head and trilled. Zale spread their hands helplessly. “I do not speak your tongue,” they said to the rune. “I am sorry.”

  The tallest rune turned and whistled. Sarkis heard the whistle taken up by the others, then by still others farther back in the woods, until it faded out of his hearing.

  Calling for reinforcements? It seemed strange—there were already far more of the rune than there were of…well, me and Brindle, if we’re being honest about our fighting capacity.

  The rune squatted down on his long legs and settled in to wait.

  “What do we do now?” whispered Halla.

  “I suggest we do absolutely nothing,” said Zale. “And wait to see what he has in mind for us.”

  It did not take long. A hornless figure made her way up the steep hillside, accompanied by a large rune. Before she had crested the hill, it was obvious that she was human.

  The woman pushed back her hood. She had long gray hair and faded blue eyes that stood out against her darkly tanned skin.

  She looked from face to face, then spoke in a language that Sarkis didn’t know.

  “Damn,” muttered Zale. “It’s what they speak in Charlock, but I don’t know it. Halla?”

  “My brother taught me about five words. I can say hello, goodbye, and something very unkind about their goats.”

  “…let’s skip that.” They cleared their throat and said “Do you speak this tongue, lady?”

  The woman frowned, concentrating. After a moment, she said “Yes, but…small.”

  Zale relaxed. “Oh thank the Rat. Can you tell your companions that we mean no harm?”

  She shook her head, not a negative shake but a confused one. “Too fast. Again?”

  Sarkis waited while Zale slowly worked through the words with their new translator. Finally, the old woman turned to the large rune and made a series of noises, like high-pitched trills in the back of her throat. The rune whistled in reply.

  “He says…no fight…unless you bring fight.”

  Zale nodded. “Do you know how we came here?” They gestured to the hills around them.

  She shook her head. “Here…” she gestured to the Hills as well, “want you come. But how…?” She spread her hands and gave an exaggerated shrug.

  “Not even they know how it works,” muttered Sarkis. “Of course not.”

  The rune gave a lengthy twittering speech. The woman nodded. “You,” she said, and pointed at Sarkis.

  “I am Sarkis,” he said, putting his hand over his heart and bowing slightly.

  “You…” She pointed to the sword on Halla’s back. “You are…with sword?” She frowned and shook her head, apparently not content with that. “Sword is…your house?”

  “Yes,” said Sarkis. It was as accurate as any other description. “The sword is my house.”

  The rune whistled. “He says…bad house.”

  “Yes,” said Sarkis, sighing. “He’s right. It’s a very bad house.” Brindle snorted.

  She gave him a sympathetic look. He noticed that even when she smiled, she was careful to keep her lips together. Perhaps bared teeth upset the rune.

  “He says…do you want…sword house gone?”

  Sarkis felt his stomach lurch. Could the rune do that? Set him loose from his prison? Let him die for good? Get him off this wretched chain of battle after battle, life after life…

  “Can they do that?” he asked.

  The woman shrugged.

  “Sarkis?” said Halla.

  Reality rushed in. He couldn’t very well leave Halla. She still needed him.

  No, she doesn’t. She’s got Zale and Brindle and once you’re out of the hills, she’s nearly home. She’ll be fine. She doesn’t need you that badly.

  Maybe he just wanted her to need him.

  “If the rune can help you,” said Halla, “then we should find out more. If they can get you out of the sword…”

  She trailed off. Sarkis studied her face, the way her pale eyebrows had drawn down and her water-gray eyes. Could the rune help him? Could a group of strange deer people possibly unmake the zeth woman’s sword?

  “It’s not that I want you to die!” Halla said, clearly misinterpreting his look. “I don’t! I think it’s awful! But if that’s what you want and it’s been hundreds of years and maybe the rune can fix it, then—”

  “No,” said Sarkis. He felt strangely light, as if he had just shed a heavy load of armor. “No, it’s all right. I will see you safely home. And then perhaps, afterward, we can find our way back here. A few weeks is not so long, compared to five hundred years.”

  He did not say what he was thinking, which was that Halla herself might live thirty or forty more years. Thirty or forty years is not so long either, compared to five hundred.

  “We might not be able to find our way back,” said Zale quietly. “The Vagrant Hills are…unpredictable.”

  “You don’t have to give this up for me,” said Halla. She seemed near tears. Sarkis wondered how long it had been since anyone had given anything up for her. Perhaps no one ever had.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Perhaps they could not help me, and perhaps they can only kill me. I find that I would rather wait until our task is done to take the chance.”

  “But—”

  “And perhaps I am not quite ready to die just yet after all.”

  The woman watching them nodded. She had apparently followed enough to keen her translation to the tall stag-man, who flicked his ears. He lifted his spear in front of him, crossed his forearm over the shaft in a gesture that clearly carried the weight of ritual, and then turned and walked away. One by one, the other rune melted away into the woods, until the human translator was the only one left.

  “Will the Hills let us go?” asked Zale.

  She shrugged again. “Here…does what here wants.” She seemed to think for a moment, then added “Now is…easy. Once was…not easy.” She waved her hands, taking in the sky and the ground. “Some day, maybe not easy again.”

  Zale nodded. “Do you wish to come with us?” they asked. “I do not know who your people are, but we can take you with us.”

  “What? No.” She seemed astonished by the suggestion. “These—” she keened a note “—they are my people.” She lapsed briefly into the language of Charlock, without any of the haltin
g effort of translation, then tried again. “I am here. My house. My here. Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Zale, and bowed deeply to her. “Thank you, madam.”

  She nodded and vanished as silently as the rune, and then it was only three humans, a gnole and an ox sitting alone on the hillside.

  “Well,” said Zale slowly. “Well, well, well. I suppose I can vouch for some of the reports of the Vagrant Hills after all.”

  “What did she mean, at the end?” asked Halla softly, as they climbed back onto the wagon.

  “Rat only knows,” said Zale. “But she clearly didn’t want to leave, so it’s none of our business. Now let’s see if the Hills decide to let us go after all.”

  Chapter 34

  The hillside began to dim as twilight settled over the Vagrant Hills. Something whooped and shrieked in the distance, causing Sarkis to jerk upright and set his hand on his sword. Brindle’s ears flicked back, but he did not slow the ox.

  “I don’t like that,” said Zale.

  “You and me both, priest.”

  “A gnole doesn’t like it either.”

  The shrieking came again and was joined by another one, a series of high sounds like someone laughing.

  “Some animal you have here in the south?” asked Sarkis.

  Halla shook her head. “I suppose it could be a coyote,” she said, a bit doubtfully, but then the whooping modulated until it sounded almost like words. It trailed off into silence.

  “Not a coyote,” said Zale, their dark eyes wide.

  “There are hyenas that sound almost like that in the Sunlost Plains,” said Sarkis. “Do you have hyenas here?”

  “Not that I know of, but in these Hills…” Zale spread their hands helplessly.

  Brindle pushed the ox on for two or three hundred yards more, then stopped. “Here,” said the gnole, sliding down from the wagon seat. “An ox can bed down between a wagon and those trees.”

  “Will it be safe there?” asked Halla. “Can anything get through the trees?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know how wide a thing in the woods is.”

  This was the sort of statement that made a little space in the air around it, as everyone’s imaginations bent to the task.

  None of them slept well that night. The wagon walls did not keep out the sounds of alien laughter. They discussed the merits of a fire warding things off vs. attracting attention, and finally Brindle simply lit one, and said, “Hills already know.”

  The ox slept practically under the wagon. Brindle and Sarkis sat by the fire, half wakeful, waiting.

  It was after midnight, by Sarkis’s reckoning, when Brindle murmured, “Things in the sky, sword-man.”

  Sarkis looked up. For a few moments, all he saw was stars, and then something passed overhead, not solid but transparent, so that the stars swam in his vision, as if seen through a coat of oil.

  “I don’t like that,” Sarkis said.

  “A gnole isn’t fond of it either.”

  The whooping sounds stopped. The fire had died down to embers and Sarkis wished that it would die even lower.

  The oily sky-swimmer passed overhead again. Sarkis was reminded of the manta rays that swam in the Bay of Sandweight, the same undulating motion. Those had been harmless. This…

  “Did your relative ever mention this?” asked Sarkis softly. Brindle shook his head.

  “Nyaaaaa-aaa-ah-ah-ah!” shrieked something, practically in Sarkis’s ear.

  He dove to one side, rolling and grabbing for his sword. The ox awoke with a snort. Brindle dropped to all fours, mouth open and enormous teeth bared.

  “Nyaa-ah-ah!”

  “Where is it?” hissed Sarkis, looking around wildly.

  Brindle looked past him, then burst into snickering gnole laughter. He pointed.

  An animal about the size of a squirrel clung to a tree near where Sarkis had been sitting. It had huge eyes and short, fluffy fur and vast, ridiculous ears.

  “Nya-ah?”

  “Think we can probably take him, sword-man.”

  Sarkis groaned. “How is an animal that small making that much noise?”

  “Nyaha-aaa-aaa-aa!”

  Another one of the little squirrel-beasts answered from the woods. The ox made a sullen noise and dropped its head.

  The wagon door creaked open. Halla and Zale stood framed in the opening. Halla had Sarkis’s sword held in front of her, fully drawn, and Zale had the frying pan.

  “Sarkis?” hissed Halla. “Are they here? Are you alive?”

  “He wasn’t alive before,” said Zale. “I mean, technically. Not to be insensitive.”

  “Yes, they’re here,” said Sarkis, pointing. “They’re a strange little animal. I don’t think it’s going to be a—” and then the oily thing dropped out of the sky and landed on him.

  He didn’t see it coming. It made no sound. All Sarkis knew was that something gelatinous and disgusting fell over him like a blanket. It was rather like walking through an incredibly thick spiderweb. He pawed at his eyes in disgust, spitting out slime.

  Then it started to move.

  Sarkis had the horrifying sensation of the slime on his skin squirming and trying to get under his clothes, and then the infinitely more horrifying sensation of the bit still in his mouth trying to crawl between his teeth.

  “Gaaaah!” He pawed at his armor, spitting furiously. “Get it off! Get it off! Get it—” and then blue fire filled his vision.

  Halla lowered the sheathed sword in her hands. The oily swimmer fell through suddenly empty air and landed on the ground, thrashing.

  Brindle hissed like a furious cat, and snatched up a burning branch from the fire. He jabbed at the jelly-like beast and it recoiled, rising in the air. Whatever he said was all in gnolespeech, but Halla got the gist anyway—”Get back! Get away!”

  The thing obeyed. Whatever it had been expecting, it wasn’t prey that vanished and then stabbed it with fire. It rose heavily, moving more like a sea creature than a bird, and vanished into the trees.

  “Naha-aha-haaaa!” cried one of the small creatures.

  “It’s an alarm call they’re making,” said Zale grimly. “Isn’t it?”

  “Think so, rat-priest.” Brindle looked over at the ox, who was snorting and trembling, but unhurt.

  “Do you think Sarkis is all right?” asked Halla, clutching the sheathed sword tightly. “I didn’t know if it was hurting him, but it looked bad.”

  “I think you did the right thing,” said Zale, touching her sleeve. “Draw the sword again and ask, I suppose.”

  Halla nodded. She felt a whisper of unease as she closed her hand over the sheath, in case it didn’t draw and that meant he was hurt or worse, but the blade slid out like silk.

  Sarkis reformed beside her. He lifted his hands to his neck involuntarily, shuddering. She could see the hair on his arms standing on end.

  “That was incredibly unpleasant,” he said. “Is it gone?”

  “Flew away,” said Zale. “What did it feel like?”

  “It was trying to get under my clothes and into my mouth. I don’t think it had very good intentions.” He looked around, still rubbing at his arms. “Gaaah, that’s not a sensation that goes away quickly.”

  “Didn’t like fire,” said Brindle.

  “Good to know.”

  He and the gnole built up the fire while Halla and Zale watched the sky from the door of the wagon. Halla tried to step out to help and Sarkis very nearly picked her up and put her back inside.

  “I can collect firewood as well as you can.”

  “And if one of those things lands on you, then what? I’ll be trying to defend you from a pile of jelly.”

  Halla scowled, but had to admit he had a point. “Do you think it would have done something bad?”

  “I think when a pile of flying slime lands on you and tries to crawl inside your mouth, it probably doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

  Brindle’s fur stood up in spikes. “Better not touch an ox,
” he muttered.

  “Let’s hope the fire keeps it away.”

  Chapter 35

  Either the fire kept it away, or the slimy creature warned off its fellows. They heard no more alarm calls from the squirrel-beasts, and they were on their way at dawn, not even bothering with breakfast.

  A little before noon, they saw what Sarkis had narrowly avoided.

  A gaunt deer came out of the trees onto the roadway. It didn’t seem to see them. It moved slowly, not so much limping as picking each leg up like a bag of stones and dropping it again.

  “Whoa,” said Brindle, but the ox had already stopped.

  A clear coat of jelly-like slime clung to its back and head, over an inch thick. The deer’s eyes, wide and rolling, stared out from under the glaze. Ribs heaved under the coating as it breathed.

  “Oh sweet Rat,” breathed Zale. “It’s got one of those things on it.”

  They watched the deer stumble across the road. If it was even aware of them, it gave no sign.

  Brindle reached under the wagon seat, and took out the crossbow. The sound of the string being cranked back was very loud, but the deer’s ears were glued flat against its neck. The ox blew nervously.

  The gnole sighted down the crossbow. The three humans sat in utter silence, watching. No one moved to stop him. Halla’s only thought, through the blind, screaming horror of it all, was that the poor beast should be put out of its misery as fast as possible, and she was glad that Brindle knew how to do it.

  The bolt took the deer in the side, just behind the shoulder. The deer staggered sideways, fell, and did not rise again.

  They waited.

  The slime shuddered and pulled away from the damp hide. A long moment passed, then the oily sky-swimmer rose off the deer’s body and flew ponderously to the trees. It draped itself over a branch, almost like a wet towel put out to dry.