New World: a Frontier Fantasy Novel

by Steven W. White

  Well -- one foot was on the tree. The other was perched on another tree across the clearing.

  The critter was still settling, flapping its hundred-foot wings. Its head weaved on the end of a flexible black-feathered neck, with a white crest and red eyes high enough to search over the treetops. Its beak, smooth and yellow as egg yolk, could have snipped Bogg in half, easy. The trees it held rocked and shifted, gripped in claws as black and shining as river stones.

  Its beak and talons were falconlike, but it was tall and gangly like a wren.

  Where the devil was the pup?

  The thunderbird sighted on Bogg and stared straight down at him, its yellow beak making a razor-sharp V-point between its red eyes.

  Run? Fight? Bogg had a quick vision of his arms and legs being dropped down the throats of some horse-sized and hungry chicks on some mountaintop a hundred miles away.

  The thunderbird squawked at him, and he went stone deaf.

  It flapped its black wings and took off in a power of wind. The two trees in its talons went with it, scraping along other trees and flinging branches through the air, until the trees came free. The thunderbird lifted up and disappeared.

  Bogg lay on his back for a spell, wondering if Simon was all right. By and by, he could hear birds chirping and a breeze blowing through the trees. Regular birds and regular breeze. He reckoned he was all right. He sat up.

  Simon appeared from behind a six-footer stump. His whole body trembled and wiggled.

  "Pup," Bogg said. "You look just about scared skinny. I thought you might have got et."

  "It took the trees."

  Bogg shrugged. "Must be nesting season."

  Simon giggled and looked dumbfoundedly at his own quivering body. He still held the sling and necklace.

  "Put those down," Bogg said.

  "The world is a goose," Simon replied, shaking a little less.

  Bogg grunted. "I mean it."

  Simon wandered off among the tangle of logs.

  Just as Bogg had himself pulled together, something black waved in the air over the fallen trees. Another one! Bogg hollered with fright.

  Simon giggled and waved the nine-foot thunderbird feather. "And those that do not pluck--"

  Bogg scowled and jutted out his chin. "Nice to see you ain't hurt. Come on." At the far end of the clearing, Bogg spied a soggy Algolan boot print, and reckoned that was the way to go.

  Simon followed, carrying the thunderbird feather by the stalk in one hand. "It's so light!" It bobbed behind him. "If I had two, I could flap them." He gripped it in both hands and swung it down hard, and his feet spent a couple of seconds off the ground.

  Down among the pine needles shone a drop of white. Vivet's blood, out here, on the trail left by the quarry. That didn't bode well.

  After a couple hours of hiking uphill, the pup didn't seem nearly so chipper. The rain started again, drizzily-mizzily, and that seemed to weigh the lad down and make him slump. He huffed and puffed and slogged along. The happiest thing about him, Bogg noticed, was that feather. The rain beaded on it like little gems, and the end of it bobbed above the ground, about as heavy as air.

  Gray clouds peeked through the trees ahead, and Bogg reckoned the hill was about done. They came out of the trees onto a ridge. It was rocky here, and mostly open space. They rested and swallowed a bit of dry rice with gulps of water from their last waterskin.

  "Are we close to Settler's Pass?" Simon asked.

  "Nope. It's all higher than this. Past those clouds." The view down was better. The brown ribbon of Muddy River wove through the green hills to the eost, and swelled into the big brown puddle of Massacre Lake. Cloud cover hid the Slumbering Hills and the ocean. To the sept and hest, great waves of pine trees lifted into the clouds.

  The pup hunched over a spot on the ground, his feather sticking out behind him like he'd sprouted it himself. His fingers touched the mud. "It's a track."

  Bogg checked it. "It's a muddy spot."

  "It's a giant footprint. The rain has disintegrated it."

  Bogg looked again. "Lad, I know tracks big and small, even the ones been rained on."

  Simon pointed. "Heel! Toes!"

  Bogg's jaw worked back and forth. Many years back, he had known a fur trader who had been out in the sticks a long time, and came to think he was a beaver. Bogg gave him a stick to gnaw on, and they had gotten along all right. "Well... it seems to be going our way. Wouldn't you say?"

  Simon's gray eyes fairly lit up with determination. He swallowed. Then he looked to Bogg and nodded.

  "Off we march then," said Bogg. "Like a herd of turtles." He stuck his tongue in his tooth hole.

  The ground was flat enough, and Bogg felt his legs stretch out as he walked, a good feeling after all that hill they had climbed. The trees grew farther apart, and bigger, redwoods among the pines, with plenty of hip-high greenery between them. The trees dripped so much water, Bogg couldn't tell if it was raining or not.

  Simon scampered ahead, dragging his weightless feather, sand in his craw about something. Bogg spotted a boot print now and again, and reckoned all was well. They came to a gully, just a little thing, eight or ten feet deep, with a stream trickling through at the bottom. Since it looked like fresh runoff from the rain, Bogg worked his way down the muddy, crumbling side and filled a waterskin.

  Bogg picked his way down the gully a ways, looking for a simple place to climb out the other side. Simon never set foot in the gully. Bogg watched the pup follow the edge to a deadfall across the gully. It was a fat log and looked fresh and plenty strong - not brittle or cracked. Bogg didn't think it would give the pup any trouble, but how that pup did squirm and squeal when he saw it.

  Bogg considered Simon by that log, and took a moment to give the matter a good think.

  And Bogg had it. The pup recognized that log across the gully. Like he'd seen it before. Bogg didn't see any way how that could be. At least, none that would answer. But there it was.

  The pup climbed up the bark just past where the roots had torn up from the ground. He took a moment to look around, then he teetered his way across. Bogg had never seen him looking this antsy. He was so worked up, in fact, that he plumb dropped his thunderbird feather. It hung in the air.

  "I got it, lad," Bogg said from below.

  But Simon reached for it and lost his balance, swung his arms, collapsed and sort of scrabbled at the bark. Bogg raced to get under him, but didn't make it. Simon rolled off and dropped ten feet to the gulley floor with an unfortunate-sounding hollow thump and crack.

  #

  Chapter 17

  The feather followed the breeze down the gulley.

  Bogg splashed down the stream to Simon and kneeled at his side. The water was gurgling around him, and he was shivering in it, with his legs twisted around under him, one of them crookeder than a barrel of snakes.

  "Great Jupiter, pup! Hold still now. I thought I heard something go."

  "My leg," Simon whimpered.

  "Easy now. Yeah, that leg took a beating. How's the rest of you?"

  The pup held back sobs. "It hurts. Oh, that was stupid."

  "Don't start that. It was a good, honest fall. Hang on, I'm going to unwind you a little." Bogg squeezed the leg that looked okay to see if Simon hollered. When he didn't, Bogg lifted it out of the way. The leg underneath was definitely broken. Bogg probed--

  And he hollered, high-pitched and sing-songy like a dying bird.

  Bogg let go, and Simon breathed in exhausted gasps.

  "Well, now." Bogg wiped his hand down over his beard and thought on it. He had to get the pup out of the brook. It was like icewater, and with that busted leg, it could kill him. Bogg had seen that sort of thing before. But where would Bogg take him? The sides of the gully were too steep to carry him out. And once Bogg got him out, what then? Set the leg -- now that was something the pup would remember for the rest of his life --
and... get him to a town.

  A town? Where?

  Slow down, he told himself. You're getting discombobulated. The quickest way to do many things is to do one thing at a time.

  Bogg lifted Simon from the stream. The wee lad was soaked and freezing, and as Bogg had always suspicioned, hardly weighed a thing. Bogg's boots splashed in the stream, step after step, as he passed under the log and looked for a spot where he could climb up from the gulley with his arms full.

  He walked a quarter mile.

  Simon was pale, limp, and shivery as Bogg fought up the gulley slope and laid him down in the grass. Bogg wiped the sheen from Simon's forehead. "You're sweating."

  "I'm freezing," Simon muttered.

  "You're shocked. Once I was travelling with a feller, and he got thrown by a horse. Broke his arms. It was a week before help arrived, and I thought he'd make it, but he just sweated and talked funny and... and I got no reason to tell you that story."

  "I'm going to die."

  "I don't think so. I can't figure you out, though, laughing off she-bears and thunderbirds just to fall off a damn log."

  Simon smiled, and Bogg reckoned it was a decent sign. "Lay still. I'll build a shelter over you and start a fire." He glanced at the gray sky. "Cuss this drizzle. It's getting colder. Hey..." Bogg swung the saddlebags off his shoulder and rummaged through them until he found the pint of rum. "Here. Drink this."

  "What is it?"

  "A tragedy. I've been carrying that for four days, and now you're the one who gets to drink it. But you need it, because I'm going to set that leg as soon as you're warm."

  Simon sniffed it and his face twisted up. He sipped and coughed.

  "Good land!" Bogg said. "Don't spray it everywhere. Here!" Bogg snatched it and sipped. He swished it in his mouth -- fiery! -- and handed the bottle back. "It's fine. Go on."

  Maybe he should check it again.

  Instead he built a lean-to, and when it was done, Bogg set Simon inside as carefully as he could and wrapped the boy in his black cloak. Then he built a fire. With all the damp wood about, getting a fire lit took a lot of his tinder. By then, fog had sunk from the trees and sat on the ground in ghostly pools, and the day's light slipped away.

  Simon pulled the cloak to his chin. "This old thing."

  "Drink."

  "It's warm."

  "Drink." Branches crackled, hissed, and puffed out white smoke as the fire dried them.

  "But not impervious." The lad's voice came slow and easy, on account of the rum, or the shock, or most likely both. "That's crazy. Hell, it's probably just a regular panther skin."

  "It's a regular splintercat skin. Panthers... now, they're the ones irregular in these parts."

  "How did you kill it? Did you strangle it with your bare hands, mighty Bogg?" Simon smiled.

  Bogg frowned and jutted his chin out. "I'll tolerate that sass, on account of your weakened state. I'll even share the story."

  "Oh? Lovely."

  "They ain't the brightest of creatures, truth be told." Bogg crawled to Simon's feet and hunkered down with his backside past the end of the lean-to. Once he was in place, Bogg's fingertips probed along Simon's broken leg. "I was hiking along Sore Thumb, and it came whipping out of the trees and knocked me in the water. It was going so fast we both went in. I just held it down."

  "That's it?"

  Bogg sat down and stuck his legs out, fitting his bare feet into Simon's armpits. "That's it." He found a firm grip on Simon's ankle. "Any rum left?"

  "No. It's gone."

  "Good." Bogg yanked.

  Simon put up a power of hollering, and Bogg's ears rang such that he thought of the thunderbird squawking at him earlier that day. In his mind, Bogg tried to misplace his ears and concentrate on what his fingers told him.

  The bone felt about like it slipped home. Bogg let go.

  The pup couldn't do anything but sob and gasp. Bogg listened respectfully for a while, then decided his being there wasn't no good, so he stepped outside and stood in the come-and-go drizzle and blinked.

  The clouds up there were dark and angry and nowhere near done yet. He felt the rain on his face and blinked some more.

  When Bogg was ready, he ducked under again, cinched a splint on Simon's leg and covered him up properly. "There." Bogg boiled the last of the rice in water from the stream, and fed spoonfuls of it to the pup, who got sleepier and sleepier, chewing slower and slower.

  Soon enough it was completely dark, and there was nothing else Bogg could do but stretch out beside the boy and try to sleep.

  #

  The pain in Simon's leg woke him up.

  He had fuzzy memories of the evening before. Drinking rum. Bogg yanking on his leg. Before that, the feather drifting away from him over the log, like it was made of smoke.

  The splint was tight. His head hurt. And he was hungry. And Bogg was not beside him.

  There was misty gray light outside, and the fire crackled and glowed. "Bogg?"

  Boots crunched in the grass, and Bogg's head appeared. "You look right fit this morning."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I'm going to scare up some victuals."

  Simon swallowed, and it hurt his head. "You're leaving me?"

  "Great horny toads, pup. You're still shocked." Bogg reached in with a long stick and prodded Simon's chest with it. The end branched into a natural trident, and Bogg had sharpened all three points, even whittling the knots into barbs. "I figure the stream in that gulley will end in a pond sooner or later. Going fishing."

  Simon closed his eyes. "Bogg... I'm sorry. I lost them. I let them get away. It's over."

  Bogg shook his head. "Easy does it now. When you eat, you'll feel better. An empty wagon rattles the most. I reckon we'll be here a while, so I set my three sticks under a log over yonder, and a couple more snares as well." Bogg grinned, and the gap in his teeth showed. "So stay put."

  "I wanted to make it. To prove I could do it. But I didn't."

  Bogg seemed to consider that. "Hmph. I'll be back before dark."

  #

  Chapter 18

  Once it was clear that the penal colonies on Mira were thriving, opinions of that distant land among the nations of Algolus began to change. Mira became an option for exiles and refugees. Within a century, several communities had established themselves on Miran coasts. Naturally, efforts by Algolan royal houses to administer these colonies met with difficulty. Many of these new colonies have paid taxes late or not at all, or have ousted royal governors. Some have abandoned their Algolan benefactors altogether.

  Soon, the generations of children that grow up on Mira will be wholly ignorant of their rich Algolan cultural heritage. They will be a people without history and without tradition. Even now, sailors returning from Mira report that the local tongue is changing, as are names of people and places. They are becoming difficult to understand, and unless something is done, perhaps soon they will be lost to us forever.

  Excerpt from the Introduction to Survival in the Miran Wilds

  by Dugan Wisefoot

  #

  Simon endured a slow, painful day. The rain was icy and dripped inside the lean-to. Around noon, he heard the thud of something heavy hitting the ground, but he couldn't turn himself to see. He hoped it was one of Bogg's snares.

  He wondered about how well his leg would heal, and where Bogg would drop him off. Some coastal town on the peninsula, maybe. Simon didn't want to go back to Fort Sanctuary, and he doubted Bogg would take him that far. And what would Bogg do after that?

  From where he lay, he tipped another log into the fire. Then he wiped off his magnifying lens and searched Survival in the Miran Wilds again for any reference to a creature like the wild man he had seen in his dream. He found...

  Grassman.

  Old Yellowtop.

  Skunk Ape.

  Tainted Keitre.

  He found n
othing. The memory of the dream itself seemed to slip into the distance, and he had to struggle to recall it.

  He flipped through the book, reading chapter after chapter. Most of it was nonsense.

  Finally, he pushed the book aside and gazed sadly at the magnifying lens, turning it over and over in his hands.

  It didn't matter now.

  And then, almost with resignation, his memory gave up what had happened on that awful morning in Fort Sanctuary. It came slowly at first, quiet and unbidden, then fast and vivid as a wildfire.

  #

  Simon ran down the alley, hoping that his pumping arms and pounding feet would drive the image of Yohann Gordon's death from his mind. It didn't work. That awful spray of blood -- who were these monsters? When the red-headed man had pointed that wet axe at Simon, Simon's heart nearly stopped from terror.

  Simon ran to the only place he could think of going -- home, to where his father was. He burst through the heavy oak front door, slammed it behind him, and slid the iron bolt in place. "Father?"

  He wiped sweat from his forehead and pressed his back to the door, panting. The one-room house was empty. Just the stone wall and hearth with two firelocks crossed over the mantle, a bookshelf, some printing equipment, and the desk in the corner where his father wrote. Near the pantry sat a stack of damp paper under a lead plate. Paper held ink better that way, wetted and pressed. Those sheets must be due at the printing house tomorrow.

  Simon was alone. He swallowed hard. This door wouldn't hold off those raiders. What could he do? Where was his father?

  The screams of women rang through the stout door. Then the distant blast of a firelock, the clang of steel on steel, and the screams of men, desperate, dying. Simon trembled and leaned against the door. The sliding bolt dug into his shoulder.

  But the room before him was quiet. A tea kettle, old and scorched, hung in the fireplace. Two beds in the corner, large and small. Their linens looked worn and comfortable. He would give anything to sip that tea, to recline in that bed, to wish away the horror outside.

  A fierce pounding on the door shook through him. Simon's breath caught in his throat. That had to be them -- this was the end.

  "Simon!" his father hissed, his voice sounding as if his lips were close to the door jamb. "Open this door!"

  Simon's shaking hands pulled back the bolt and Oliver Jones burst in. He slammed and rebolted the door, and they watched each other for a moment, father and son hovering -- Simon nearly threw his arms around him, but didn't. The moment ended.