North! Or Be Eaten (40 page)

Before them, between the V of the slopes that cradled the lake, rose Mog-Balgrik. The Witch’s Nose stabbed at the sky and carved the clouds in two. The ridge to the left of the nose bore a depression that looked like a shadowed eye socket, and to the right of the nose lay a cut in the mountain that formed a mouth curved in a jagged frown.

Podo’s note said they were to find a trail that wound around the right shoulder of the peak—right over that jagged mouth. Janner shivered. It was too easy to imagine the great sleeping witch eating them as they passed.

“So that’s where we’re goin’, eh?” said Maraly as she removed her hood.

“Yeah. Somehow we have to get over that mountain. There’s supposed to be a trail. I guess if we keep going that way, we’ll cross it eventually.”

“Aye.” Maraly sighed. “Want to camp here tonight?”

The hollow seemed safe enough. It was the first peaceful spot they had found in the Stony Mountains, and he hated to leave. They gathered enough sticks and scrub for a fire and settled in to cook a meal.

The setting sun broke through the clouds and shot a golden beam at Mog-Balgrik. The light transformed the hideous semblance of a face and showed the peak for the ancient beauty that it was.

“Look!” Maraly said.

Janner pulled his gaze from the bright mountain and saw what appeared to be a cloud of yellow flower petals floating down from the slopes to the lake. Then they heard the flutter of wings and the twitter of birdsong. Thousands of yellow birds alighted on the surface of the lake, so many that it looked like the water itself had turned to gold. They sang and groomed their wings in the twilight and were visible long after night fell.

“Hmph,” was all Maraly said, but Janner noticed that she wiped her eyes.

The children fell asleep to the pleasant play of the birds on the water. Janner woke more than once that night to see the starlit creatures still floating on the lake, and he went back to sleep with wonder in his heart.

In the morning, the lake was glassy and still, and the yellow birds had flown. The Witch’s Nose was grim as ever. Janner crawled out of his blanket of furs and walked a little way along the shore. He drank deep at the edge of the lake before he saw the man with the sword. He stood just a few feet away, leaning against a boulder. His hair was black, and he wore a heavy, fur-lined coat that hung to his ankles.

“The Fangs are coming,” he said.

After so many days alone with Maraly, the man’s presence startled Janner so badly that he staggered backward, tripped over a stone, and nearly fell. Janner couldn’t tell from the man’s smile if he was a friend or an enemy. Could he be one of the rebels? one of Gammon’s men?

Maraly still slept under a pile of furs at the camp, a stone’s throw away. Janner glanced at his pack, where his sword lay.

“Don’t do that, boy. I’m fast. Faster than a bomnubble.”

The man lifted his coat and tossed something big, white, and furry. It thudded to the ground and rolled to Janner’s feet. The grisly head of a bomnubble stared at him with dead eyes.

“It was on your trail,” the man said. “Caught your scent after you and your friend ran off with the pelts.”

From Pembrick’s
Creaturepedia

Janner’s face flushed.

“Don’t feel bad, boy. It was a fine idea, and mighty brave of you two to enter a bomnubble den. But you’re lucky there wasn’t another asleep in the back of the cave.”

“Who are you?” Janner asked.

“Someone who’s been watching you.”

Janner said nothing, but the sea dragon’s warning rang in his mind:
He is near you. Beware
.

“You’re making good progress, if it’s to the Ice Prairies you mean to go. That
is
where you mean to go, isn’t it?” the man asked with another of his mysterious, too-friendly smiles.

“Maybe,” Janner said, and he felt like a fool when the man doubled over with laughter.

“Well,
maybe
you’d like to fall in with me. That’s where I’m headed too, and I’ve made the trip a number of times. Besides, these mountains are crawling with Fangs you probably don’t want to meet.”

“Fangs? You’re lying. They can’t survive the cold,” Janner said.

“That used to be the case,” the man said, growing serious. “Not anymore. These Fangs do just fine in the cold. Too fine. So fine, in fact, that all I’ve worked for is in danger. My army, my weapons, my hopes to defeat the Fangs and banish them from my land—all of it will be lost unless I can find a way to stop the Fangs.”

“Gammon?” Janner asked.

“Aye,” said the man. “And your name is Janner Wingfeather. I’m here to help you get to Kimera. The rest of your family is waiting.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Got word from one of my men that a peglegged pirate, a little girl, her mother, and a round old man with spectacles arrived in Kimera a few days ago. They said their two boys were missing, so I’ve been looking for you. Why don’t you and your brother there come with me? Ordinarily I wouldn’t be in such a rush, but I have an appointment to make.”

Janner’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not my brother. That’s Maraly—she’s a Strander. My brother was taken by the Black Carriage.”

Gammon’s eyes flickered with—something. Janner assumed it was disappointment and hung his head.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Janner,” said Gammon quietly. “Then Gnag the Nameless has caught his prey. Maker only knows what he will do with him.”

“Gnag doesn’t know who he is,” Janner said. “They think he’s just another boy from the Strand.”

Gammon thought for a moment. “Well, there may not be much hope for your brother, but if the Fangs don’t realize who they’ve caught, there may be some hope for the rest of us.” Gammon stepped forward and held out his hand. “You’ve had a hard journey, lad. Why don’t we move on? If we hurry, we’ll be safe in Kimera by sundown, and you can rest in the company of those who love you.”

Janner felt a rush of relief, and all his suspicions about this man in black vanished. He nodded at Gammon and shook his hand.

W
hen Maraly woke to find a man in her company, she shrieked, leapt to her feet, and would have flung her dagger at him if he hadn’t sprung forward and seized her wrist. Only after Janner assured her that he was a friend did her snarling cease and Gammon release her.

“You’re strong for a girl,” said Gammon.

“Girl or boy makes no difference to a Strander,” she said gruffly as she snapped her dagger into its sheath. But it was clear the compliment made her proud.

“We could use more like you in Kimera. Strong and quick and willing to fight when the time comes. That’s why all of Skree is in this mess, after all.”

“Because no one fought when the Fangs came?” Janner asked.

“Aye. My countrymen scattered like hens in a coop.” He winked at Janner. “But in a few days’ time, we’ll see another kind of scattering. I’ve a plan that just might save us all.”

“What plan?” Janner asked.

Gammon paused, and Janner again thought he saw a shadow pass over his face.

“I can’t exactly say. Nine years of slipping in and out of lower Skree, dodging Fangs and trolls at every turn, makes a man keep his secrets in his own head. Migg Landers is a fine example of that. He was loyal to me for years, but men have a way of wearing down. Betrayed you, Ronchy, and me too. Got himself a Fang bite for his trouble. Don’t look so surprised. I know all about what happens in Dugtown, boy. Hardly a troll burps that I don’t find out about it from one of my men. Whatever plan I have, I aim to keep it to myself. But you can trust me—this goes for you too, lass,” he said with a nod to Maraly, whose distrust was plain on her face. “You won’t find another fella more eager to get these Fangs out of Skree, nor a man more loyal to his land.”

Janner was convinced, and even had he not been, he still would have fallen in with Gammon just to make it safely through the mountains to his family.

“I can see from the way you two are eying each other that you need to have a talk,”
Gammon said. “I’ll move on to the north side of the lake and wait for you there. But don’t take too long. The far slope of the Witch’s Nose is a bad place to be after dark.”

Gammon strode away until the furs on his back gave him the look of a bear moving along the water line.

“Are you worried?” Janner asked. He trusted Gammon, but he cared a great deal what Maraly thought. She was shrewd and had far more experience around crooked men.

“Aye. I’m worried,” she said as she kicked dirt over the embers. “Question is, which is more dangerous, the mountains or the man?”

Janner looked across the lake at Gammon, visible as a small brown patch amidst the rocks. Beyond, in the distance, towered white-toothed Mog-Balgrik. The mountain looked much more dangerous than the man.

“I just want to get to the Ice Prairies,” Janner said. “Let’s go with him, all right?”

Maraly sighed. “Aye. But I’ll have me dagger handy.”

“Good,” Gammon said when they approached a few minutes later, their packs on their backs, furs draped over every inch of their bodies.

The three of them left the lake and walked into the bitter wind. All that remained of their camp was the bomnubble’s head, upon which a little yellow bird perched and sang.

The day was clear and cold.

Janner’s heart fluttered with the thought that he might see his mother as soon as that evening, that he might embrace Leeli and feel Podo’s whiskers against his cheek. But between him and his family lay what seemed an eternal expanse of stone and snow and wind.

After they pushed through the pass, the ground fell away to reveal a magnificent hollow in the earth. They stood for a few minutes, agape at the airy nothingness before them. Far, far below, a greenish river snaked through the canyon, as narrow as a thread from this height. The walls of the canyon were so steep and smooth that not even snow found purchase. To the left and right, the Stony Mountains parted so that Janner felt he was looking out at the edge of the universe. On the far side of the canyon the mountains continued, and Mog-Balgrik was their champion. Though the sky was unbearably blue and free of a single wisp of cloud, the peak of the Witch’s Nose pinned a swath of ghostly mist to the heavens.

“I stop here every time,” said Gammon. The wind whipped locks of black hair across his face, and he held one gloved hand up to shield his eyes from the light. Janner had the feeling he had seen this man before, but he couldn’t place where. Something about his jaw line or the tone of his voice tickled at Janner’s memory. “Grand, isn’t it?”

Janner and Maraly were speechless.

Gammon pointed at Mog-Balgrik and grinned. “That’s where we’re headed. I know it looks like we’ll never arrive, but the going is easy until we get to her foot. Then it’s up around her shoulder and down into the Ice Prairies.”

Janner smiled, but Maraly did not.

“You all right?” he asked her, then immediately regretted it. Of course she wasn’t all right. With every step, Janner was closer to those who loved him, but Maraly was farther from her only family. The fact that they wanted her dead only made it worse.

Maraly shrugged. “Well, are we goin’ or not?” she said, then spat. The wind took it, and the three of them watched the little ball of spittle float down into the canyon.

Gammon led the children along a trail that was barely visible but simple enough to follow, and the company walked eastward around the canyon rim to the north side. Always the drop was to their left, and Janner thought many times of the cliffs at Glipwood and the Glipper Trail just behind the Igiby cottage.

If someone had told Janner earlier that summer that he would have seen the things he had seen, he would have scoffed. He had braved Fingap Falls, felled Fangs (though not very many) with his bow and arrows, survived the Fork Factory, torn through the empty streets of Dugtown by the light of the torch towers, and now he was deep in the Stony Mountains, covered in wolf skins. Mog-Balgrik was a terrible sight but no more so than many of the things his young eyes had seen. More than ever, though, he ached not for faraway lands or wild adventure but for a fire in the hearth and the sound of laughter—or a bed!
Even just a bed would be fine
, Janner thought. Something to lay his head on besides a smelly wolf skin and the cold ground.