Mortal Consequences (18 page)

All was vaguely familiar, for the land turned to rolling grasslands dotted with horses, antelope, and deer. In a hollow between hills a mother mammoth and two yearlings lolled away the afternoon heat, their shaggy hair clotted with old mud and manure. More mammoths swayed and sauntered to the south, yanking up whole bushes with clever trunks and cramming them in their mouths. From a hill, a lone saber-toothed tiger crouched, only ear and eyes showing. Even flies settling on its rump couldn’t elicit a twitch.

Sunbright knew this scene from his childhood, for once a year the tundra barbarians crossed the Narrow Sea and met their southern cousins to fish and fight and joke and carouse and flirt. But of these southern folk, the clans of Tortoise and Saber-Tooth and Hellbender, he saw no sign. No one in the tribe knew where they were, another link to the past gone missing.

The phantom raven flapped on. Or perhaps it was a real bird, and Sunbright only saw through its eyes. Gray lumps in the distance rolled higher to form the Barren Mountains, with the dense High Forest at their feet. Yellow grasslands met gray mountains, met green forest. The whole world was laid out like Jannath’s Quilt. The shaman wondered about his destination, if any.

Then the picture turned half over, and he stared straight down. At the crux of three lands, grass, mountains and forest, stood the last mountain, Sanguine Mountain, so called because it bled red rust from a deep crevice in the rainy season. The phantom raven dived straight for the bloody crevice, until red-shot blackness filled his vision.

Faster they flew, and faster, until the world blurred and wind sizzled in the man’s eyes and made them water. Gasping, mewling, pleading, he urged the bird to rise, to bank, to shy away, but the linked visionaries bored through air like an arrow. Soon only black loomed. Sunbright heard wind along a rocky ridge. There was no escape.

They struck, smashing in a bloody gobbet of feathers on granite.

“Unnnhhh …” Sunbright teetered and fell. He banged his shoulder, felt the world roll away, as if swept in an avalanche, then tumbled on his face, tearing skin off his forehead. Frantically, he clawed for a hold, broke fingernails on stone.

Something caught his waist, his leg, his arm. Strong hands like iron, but small, cool, and capable. He stopped falling.

Shivering, sweating, Sunbright opened his eyes, was stabbed by sunlight. Something blocked the sun. A hand. Knucklebones’s.

“Are you all right? You were sitting on that mound, still as death, then you started groaning. I couldn’t catch you before you fell,” she said. “You’re bleeding!”

Gently, the elf-woman eased him onto his back. She ran for a blanket, and wrapped him snugly to stop his shaking. From a canteen she tilted water on his face, wiped away sweat and blood.

Sunbright craned his head to see, to orient himself. Oh, yes. They were six or seven miles south of the village, in the worst of the wasteland. Three days ago Sunbright had drunk his last sip of water, eaten the last scrap of meat, and mounted a low mound that gave a view in all directions. Then he’d lowered his head, and prayed, and waited, while Knucklebones patiently tended camp and potted rats with a sling. Then, after three days of broiling in the sun and shivering by night, a vision had come.

“I know—I know where we’re to go.” Sunbright creaked. He could barely speak, for his tongue was swollen from thirst. Knucklebones cooed and trickled water in his mouth. But his thirst for knowledge was greater. “Sanguine Mountain, with a cleft like blood, where the grasslands end, and rise to mountain and forest.”

“And what will we find there?” she asked, bandaging the scrape on his forehead.

“I’ve no idea,” he rasped, then accepted more water. “It’s the place. A raven showed me. Our fate lies there.”

Knucklebones frowned, blew out her cheeks, combed his hair with her fingers, and said, “I believe you. I just hope you can convince the tribe.”

Rengarth Barbarians were never easily convinced.

They argued for days until the shaky rafters of the common house rang. Smoke from sacred pipes was blown back and forth by shouts, accusations of cowardice and betrayal, threats and challenges, fistfights, scoldings, tears, pleas…. Talk went in circles and off on tangents. Stories were recounted and corrected. Prayers were offered.

Time and again, the argument came down to someone shouting, “We must go because we can’t stay here! To live on foreign soil will be the death of our tribe!”

“All right,” bellowed Magichunger, the loudest, “but why go the path Sunbright suggests? He’s not a real shaman! He knows nothing! The gods wouldn’t speak to him. We might as well follow a blind mole as go his route.”

An angry chorus shouted him down while others agreed. More shouting went on outside where the walls of the common house had been removed. Anyone who’d killed an enemy or born a child could speak in council, and over three hundred barbarians gathered every night. Someone snatched the speaking stick from Magichunger and thrust it into Sunbright’s hands.

“Tell them again!”

Reluctantly, Sunbright held up the speaking stick, just a plain stick with a skunk’s skull atop. Yet when raised, only the wielder could speak. As if by magic, the council hushed. Sunbright suppressed a sigh. “I don’t claim special knowledge,” hie said evenly, “but I made a vision quest, asking the gods for a destination. I was rewarded with a dream of Sanguine Mountain. The message—from the gods, not me—is clear. We should go there.” He lowered the stick as if it were suddenly too heavy.

Someone amended, “And we can’t stay here!”

“But how do we know?” someone hollered, and the wrangling ran around the circle again.

Sunbright slumped on the floor of the hut. Cross-legged, his knees toasted at the council fire, yet toes dug his kidneys. The room was packed, and steamy as a sauna with charged bodies. Knucklebones, who’d been silent for days, took his hand to rest on her knee. “How much longer will this go on?” she asked quietly.

“Forever, I fear,” sighed the shaman. “You can’t believe how hardheaded barbarians can be. My people don’t remove rock slides from a trail, they just lower their heads and bash through.”

“I believe it, but tell me …” the thief said, more loudly now because of the noise. “… that blood oath that Thornwing started that night. Most of the tribe swore with her, right? But what did they swear to do?”

“Hunh?” Sunbright grunted, rubbed his burning eyes, and cudgeled his brain. “Umm … They swore to … follow me if I were driven from the tribe.”

“Then go.”

Sunbright peered at her stupidly, as if she’d spoken a foreign tongue.

“Go.” Her hand made a pushing motion. “Say you’re packing and leaving tomorrow, and going to Sanguine Mountain. The ones who swore the oath must follow, mustn’t they?”

The shaman juggled the new idea in his head: he had as much trouble accepting new customs as anyone. “They only swore that if I were driven out…”

“Driven out, walk out, there’s little difference,” Knucklebones said as she nudged him to his feet. “Just say it. Anything to stop this blather! We’ll be rotted to skeletons before this bunch agrees on whether snow falls down or up!”

Sunbright untangled his legs to rise, mumbling, “On the tundra, it sometimes blows sideways—Ouch!” Knucklebones slapped his leg to keep his attention focussed.

The shaman stood a long time with his hand out, indicating he wished the speaking stick, but many people were heard before he got it. Finally grasping it high, he stated, “Come dawn I begin packing. The next dawn I leave for Sanguine Mountain. I ask those who took the blood oath to follow me to … follow me.” He handed the stick to someone, and plunked down.

If Knucklebones expected that thunderclap to still the audience, she was disappointed. Shouting erupted louder than before. A dozen hands grabbed for the stick. Tears flowed. At some taunt, Magichunger whirled and punched a man. A brawl erupted among the hotheads. Folks cheered and booed.

Crawling around the fire, Sunbright spoke in Forestvictory’s ear. The woman, big all over with forearms like hams, requested the speaking stick and got it. She held it high and shouted, and gradually the brawl subsided. Men and women untangled, rubbed bloody noses with skinned knuckles. In the hush, Forestvictory proclaimed, “Sunbright has suggested we need a trail chief to oversee the journey. I volunteer unless someone else wants the chore. No? Then I too will pack at dawn, and leave the next dawn. Anyone who goes with us must be ready.”

She relinquished the speaking stick, and more people spoke, some passionately, some with anger, some calmly. There was wrangling whether the blood oath applied, but as more tribesfolk said their piece, it seemed the oath was enough to move them. Many agreed to go. A handful, led by Magichunger, held out, but when asked what they intended to do instead, gave no answer.

“Is the tribe to split then? Such a thing must not be!” a woman began to wail.

Sunbright gestured, took the stick, waited for silence. Finally he said, “So some will go, and some will stay. It makes my heart heavy to think the tribe may split, for together we are strong, singly we are weak. Yet I would ask one thing. The path we travel will be dangerous. We might meet orcs, renegade soldiers, bandits, marauding animals, monsters—anything. I think we should elect a war chief to oversee our defense. And for that task, a hard and thankless one, I suggest Magichunger.”

For the first time, silence followed a proclamation. Big, broad Magichunger rubbed his nose, scratched blood from his red beard, glared at Sunbright across the smoky hut, and spat, “You don’t fool me. It’s a trick so I’ll go along.”

“No trick,” said Sunbright. “You’re our best fighter, after Blinddrum and Thornwing, and by tradition neither of them can be war chief. I know we’ve never been friends, and you resent my barging into the tribe, but most of us will leave. It would be a great boon if you helped. Certainly we can use your scrapping smarts and good right arm, and those of your friends.”

The burly man looked for a trap, or some way to rebut the gentle request. “As war chief,” he grumbled, “I lead the fighters in skirmishes? And when attacked, everyone must do as I say until the enemy is beaten off?”

Sunbright nodded, as did older folks recalling times of war. Magichunger turned, and muttered to his friends. They grumbled, fretted, and argued while the rest of the tribe waited. Finally Magichunger turned, rubbed his nose again as if embarrassed. “We’ll go,” he growled.

Walking hand-in-hand under desert-bright stars, Knucklebones said, “You were very clever in there, Sunbright.”

“Not so clever,” he said. “Just desperate to get my tribe off this ash heap. It reminds me of the worst corners of the hell I almost didn’t escape, but at least then I left my enemies behind.”

“What?” The part-elf looked up, but his hawk’s face was only a silhouette against stars. “What do you mean, enemies?” she asked.

“Barbarians hold grudges forever, Knucklebones. From before birth even, for we’re born into feuds going back to the day New Man rose from the ice. Some spend their lives plotting revenge, and will throw their lives away getting it. With us wild folk, the heart often overrules the head.

“Magichunger will always be my enemy. And his friends and family too. I must beware his knife in my back, awake and asleep. Many others don’t like my new customs, or new twists to old ones, and for us to survive will take magic, I fear.”

“Why fear?”

“Magic is taboo. A fear of magic runs strong.”

“But you purified their drinking water! Everyone saw it, and appreciated it.”

“I ‘blessed’ the water, I did not bewitch it. Not for my own gain, mocking the gods’ power, but acting for the good of the people. That’s why I said a shaman’s no good without a tribe to work for.

“And now I’d have us cross our ancestral lands. I don’t know … the grasslands—prairie—is stronger than the tundra, but the life drain happens there too. We may need magic to survive, and … I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You’ll return to your mother’s hut and sleep,” the thief said, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Then we rise and pack to embark on a new adventure!”

Chuckling, Sunbright hugged her off the ground and kissed her soundly.

Toch swung his club backhanded and smashed Kab across the snout. Tumbling down the hillside, rolling in dust, the wounded orc sprawled to a halt, clutched a blood-spurting nose, and slobbered, “What that for?”

The larger orc wasn’t finished. Toch crabbed down the slope, raised his obsidian-studded club, and thumped Kab repeatedly.

“No noise, I says! Quiet, I says! But you, you burp at wrong time and chase off game!”

Toch vented his anger with more blows. Other orcs squatted on their heels and picked at stones, or scratched lice, careful to avoid catching hell. Kab wailed and howled and screamed, thrashing limbs, as Toch beat and kicked every inch of the orc’s gray, warty skin.

Finally Toch’s arm tired, and he threw the club down in disgust. With filthy, cracked nails he scaled the slope again, plunked his tusked jaw atop the rise, and glared at the world. The goats had bounded up to higher slopes, out of reach. Toch was so hungry he could eat rocks. Perhaps he should beat Kab more, tenderize the meat, then eat it. It would teach the others to follow orders and maintain silence on the hunt. He hoped a female gave birth soon. Baby orcs made excellent stew, and he could keep it all to himself. That was one good reason for dragging along females. They were always pregnant.

Stomach growling, Toch stood on the hummock under an overcast sky, and tried to guess which way to go next. Like many Icebeast Orcs, he was tall, almost six feet, with long limbs and hands that could break bones. With the approach of winter, gray hair thickened on his hide like a mountain pony’s. His head was a rat’s nest of lank black hair, but he still wore a steel helmet and a tattered smock of stout gray wool that retained the faded sigil of the One King, a red hand with fingers splayed. The paint had mostly cracked off.

He remembered, vaguely, belonging to the One King’s army. How the chief orcs had said they’d be well-fed, have huts and villages instead of wilderness and badlands, how they’d live among humans and share their wealth as long as they didn’t kill anyone. Details were fuzzy, but he remembered fine food: fresh-killed beef, apples from orchards, wriggling eels from stocked ponds, even real bread such as orcs could never bake, and whole barrels of wine that made his head spin and his feet crazy. He licked gray lips at the memory. Life had been good under the One King. Lots of food, steel weapons, not much fighting, plenty of naps, fires under roofs at night.