Gods of Earth (6 page)

The Guardian crushed it in his hands. The wings and body cracked noisily, some of it shattering like glass, other parts bending with a creaking metallic protest. He ground it into a rough ball, then dashed it against a boulder on the shore. He climbed into the boat, offering no explanation.

Late in the afternoon they passed the first of a long series of ruins, ancient towns and villages abandoned centuries before. Their roads were vanished into the dense forest that covered the steep hills. But towers, built of strange guild materials, still stood among the encroaching pines and firs and the maples tinted with the first red of autumn. Their windows gaped, empty and bleak. Some of the Trumen said that these oldest buildings had built themselves, and still sometimes rebuilt themselves. Chance thought that blasphemous and impossible, but now wondered when he saw the gleaming towers that fought for space among undaunted maples.

“We’re nearing the Sabremounts,” Chance observed, fearful and surprised by their progress. “We’ll pass along the edge of the
Sabremounts soon.” The tireless rowing of the Guardian had driven them more than fifty miles, if they were near those small mountains.

The Guardian said nothing.

Knots of black vultures wheeled over these lost villages. Neither Trumen nor unmen lived there. Trumen who traveled claimed that soulburdened beasts ruled the Sabremounts, animals made brutal and bitter by their knowledge and by the harm they suffered from the many men who killed their kind. Chance looked warily now into the forest, which grew darker with the waning of the day.

When the sun fell behind the eastern hills, the Guardian paddled hard to a flat expanse of pebbled shore. He stepped into the shallows and dragged the boat high onto the gravel. Chance stepped out slowly, his cramped legs unfolding painfully, with resistance. He hopped a bit on one leg: the other was asleep. They had stopped only once during the day, under an apple tree, after Chance had complained of hunger.

“Up there,” the Guardian said, pointing to the forest above the tall earth bank before them. Chance gathered his last apples from the dirty water in the bottom of the boat. He washed them in the river while the Guardian easily lifted the boat and turned it over, scraping the stones noisily. Chance drank some of the cold river water, then climbed the bank, following the Guardian.

They made camp in a small flat clearing. The last of the afternoon light faded quickly. The Guardian gathered and piled kindling. Then he walked up the hill above and came back carrying a tree trunk of a recently fallen maple, as thick as Chance’s thigh. He broke it over his chest, again and again, the sound explosive, making Chance cringe. The Guardian stacked these logs and then gathered two stones and smashed them together in his kindling pile, making
a burst of sparks that easily caught in the dry leaves and sticks. They crackled and took flame.

“I’m hungry,” Chance said. He sat down on the gnarled root of the oak that loomed over them. “I cannot live on a few apples.”

The Guardian said nothing, his hood drawn down so that the firelight could not seep within. Chance stared at the fire.

Then the Guardian asked, “Do you have a dog?”

Chance started, surprised to hear the unman finally speak after a whole day of silence. “No.”

“Stay here.” The Guardian stood. “You cannot outrun me, so do not try.” He strode past Chance, ascending the hill. Too late, Chance thought of Seth. He turned and looked, ready to speak, but the Guardian had already disappeared into the dark. Chance scanned the hilltop, where a few patches of the sky, darkening pink, were just visible through the black branches of the pines of the crest. In a moment he saw the dark outline of the Guardian there among them, the first stars appearing behind him. Then the Guardian disappeared over the hill.

Without hesitation, Chance ran. I can follow the river, he thought. I’ll know the marsh of The Walking Man when I get there. I need only to follow the river and when I come to the Valley I can head south straight to the vincroft.

It quickly turned dark. Branches cut at his face. One whipped into his eye and he stumbled and cried out, pressing his palm to his socket. Tears welled from the stinging lash. But he found his footing and ran on, blinking and stumbling. He ran until his lungs burned and his breath came in gasps and his spit clung thickly in his mouth. His Sunday shoes, loose and soaked all day in splashed water, slipped on the forest loam and began to split. The sole of the left shoe opened in the front, so that it scraped along the ground, scooping up leaves and sticks and driving them painfully under his foot.

Eventually he could no longer run. Heaving his breath, bent half over, he walked, dragging his tormented feet. He could not
guess how far he had come. Perhaps three miles. The river lay just out of view to his right—he had managed to keep close to it. It was loud here, the water coursing over boulders through a steep rapids.

Uselessly, reflexively, Chance looked over his shoulder to see if the Guardian followed. But he could see nothing now, in the dark. The moon was nearly full but it was over the hill, casting only ghostly light on distant tree tops.

He tripped on a root, and stopped.

Something rustled the leaves ahead of him. Then again to his right. Now behind him—was it circling around? He crouched. The forest revealed nothing. Overhead through the trees he could discern patches of stars, but around him, in the woods, the dark was impenetrable. He began to wonder how he could proceed. The rustling stopped. Still crouching, he walked forward, one hand out before him, catching spider webs in the night.

He heard again the rustling of leaves behind. And then the crack of a stick to his left. There were more sounds now—a third rustling, maybe several things, coming down the hill to his left. He turned toward the river, thinking to run to it—

Something slammed into him, hard. It tossed him back onto the ground. His head hit the earth and his teeth snapped painfully together. The dull, dizzy pain of a concussion spun the forest around him. Chance struck out and grabbed fur. Some animal pressed him into the dirt. Its hot breath blew on his face. A smell of heavy must, like a wet dog, but stronger, filled his mouth. Chance pushed at it, struck it once, and then he cried out as claws scraped across his left arm. He rolled sideways and kicked, and managed to free himself enough to get to his knees.

A flickering flame cast dim light into the clearing. Something carried a torch toward them. Chance could see now. A brown bear—its distended head revealing that it was soulburdened—crouched before him, ready to spring again. It leaned back and roared.

Before Chance could stand, a harsh growl sounded to his left. “Leave! Leave!” A brown blur leapt onto the head of the bear—it was Seth!

The bear snarled and fell back, swatting the coyote down.

Chance stood. Seth backed up to him, facing the bear and snarling. The brown bear crouched again, ready to spring. Another bear, black, bore the torch that Chance had seen, with a single bright flame. It limped uneasily toward the brown bear. And there were other animals there, all soulburdened. Three wolves, tall and wide, with gray fur. Their heads did not have the exaggerated round shape of most soulburdened beasts, but were long and flat, making them appear huge. A badger, its lip curled in a bitter sneer, paced quickly before him. A third bear, gray and old, with a long scar closing one dead eye, stood behind Chance, smelling the air with a twisting snout.

“Coyote, we kill the man,” the bear with the torch growled.

“No, no, no,” Seth barked back. “A ga-good man.”

“We kill all men as all men kill us.”

The bears showed their teeth. The badger mewed angrily. The wolves watched without comment.

“No,” Seth repeated.

The bears fell to all fours, even the one with the torch, which it dropped unheeded in the dirt. The bright flame continued to burn. Then they ambled forward, spreading out, circling. Chance gripped the four deep scratches on his forearm. Blood dripped from his fingers. He crouched, turning, watching for the first attack, his heart pounding.

A thunderous crack sounded out, and the Guardian stood before them. Leaves exploded at his feet, kicked up at a speed no one could perceive. A gust of wind followed in the Guardian’s wake, snapping his cloak. He hulked over them all, standing between Chance and the soulburdened bears.

The bears leapt back, then stopped, eyeing the tall figure fearfully and sniffing hard at the air around them. They turned their heads from side to side, bent their noses in circles, trying to determine if there were others about like this one. The wolves lowered their snouts but did not otherwise move.

“Old, old thing,” the Badger snarled. It backed away.

The Guardian spoke in a language Chance did not understand.

“Wodweardas, gemuniæth ge eowre modru ond eowr fædras ond eowr weorc.”

His hood lay over his head still, and the soulburdened looked up at it now, wondering what talked in the dark beneath.

To Chance’s surprise, Seth answered in the same tongue. “Hie ne-ne-ne-ne sprecan nawiht thæt ealdgereord.”

“Ura sum sprecath thæt ealdgereord,” one wolf said. She had her front paws up on a fallen log, the massive gray toes splayed out on the wood. Her green eyes looked at the Guardian coolly. She added, “But speak Common to them.”

The Guardian spoke again, in Common. “Woodwardens, recall your mothers and your fathers and your task.”

“Our mothers and our fathers are dead,” growled the brown bear that had felled Chance. Chance realized it was young, still not fully grown in size. “Killed by men.”

“Not by this man,” the Guardian said.

“The men kill all of us. We will kill all the men.”

“Go,” the Guardian said. His voice did not seem loud, but it shook the low green plants around them.

After a heartbeat pause, the young bear charged. It slammed into the Guardian, who set one foot deep behind himself to brace, but otherwise did not move. The bear roared, opened its mouth gaping wide, and then bit the Guardian’s shoulder. Its teeth clicked against the Guardian’s flesh, the mouth unable to close, as if it were trying to puncture and compress a stone.

The Guardian bent his knees so that he could seize the bear with one hand gripping a forearm under the armpit and the other hand clamping onto its knee. As he stood he tipped the bear to the side. Then he lifted the bear straight over his head. There was a pause, a moment of silence, as the soulburdened animals stared in disbelief. Even the bear held aloft was silent, its eyes wide with fear and surprise.

The Guardian threw the bear over the heads of the wolves, into the shadows of the dark forest.

Branches cracked, and then came the hard thud of the bear falling to the Earth.

The two other bears whimpered and ran toward the sound. The badger slipped silently away, looking over its shoulder with an expression of mixed hate and terror. The wolves, implacable, turned slowly, and began gracefully to fade into the dark. But the lead female, her front feet still on the log, spoke to the Guardian.

“There is growling of a thing like you. A mangodthing. Promising the Woodwardens that it will purge the world of the remnants of man. If we serve it.”

The Guardian said nothing. His cloak’s dark hood was another pool of night in the final dark.

The wolf slipped away behind her pack.

The Guardian turned to Chance.

“Come.”

Chance fell to his knees, and sat back on his heels. “No,” he said. Tears started down his face. “No. I will face death. I will face the soulburdened again, and face even that… rotting thing. Let me go.”

The Guardian was silent. His black hood did not move. Chance looked up at him, imploring, his eyes streaming.

“If I don’t go, who will bury my father and mother? Who will speak the last words for them?”

Chance clutched dirty handfuls of rotting leaves, and lifted them before himself. “Who will write my father’s tombstone? Who will pray for him at church?”

He sobbed now. “Who will feed our horses? Who will harvest my father’s last crop, and make his last wine of it? Who will tend our vines? Who will save Paul and Sarah? Who? Will she die because of me?