Simon was sleepy and had to find his voice. "I read about the wampus. It's a cat with a call that sounds like a human woman."
"Poor lad," Bogg said. The quiet and darkness hushed them both, and Bogg continued in a low tone. "That book ain't worth the powder to blow it to hell. A wampus cat is a woman. She's a witch who wears the skin of a cat, so she can become one."
"Why?"
"I don't have a clue. Maybe to eat up those who cross her."
"You wear the skin of a cat, Bogg."
Bogg grinned, and the gap in his teeth showed. "Then you're lucky I'm not a witch."
"What about the other?"
"A wolf?"
"I know what a wolf is. The other."
"Wendigo?"
"What's that?"
"Well... legend has it that if an only child eats too much fur-bearing trout, that by the light of the next full moon, he will transform into--"
"Bogg!"
Bogg chuckled.
Simon was sorry he yelled. It had disturbed the tranquil feeling in the shelter.
Bogg quieted down, and he was silent for a moment. "A wendigo starts out as a man. But it ain't no man. It's taller and skinnier, with teeth and claws and damned red eyes. It stalks and eats whoever it can find. It's hooked on people, see? That's why you find them up here, where the food is scarce."
Simon tried to put it together, but couldn't. "You can turn into one?"
"Yep."
"Seriously, now."
"As I understand it. If a man is driven to consume the flesh of his fellow men, that does it. I don't know if it's a sickness, or some kind of ghost that comes into you. But you change, and then you start hunting. And you howl something awful. Not really like what we just heard. Nastier."
"You've heard one?"
"Deep, but screechy. Pained. Like a moose with a wolverine hanging on its haunches, bleeding it out, so the moose knows it's the end. I heard one. I didn't know the sound at the time, so I stalked it out of curiosity. I found the seven-foot skeleton of a man in buckskins chawing on another feller."
Simon's eyes went round. "Did you kill it?"
"Naw." Bogg looked somber. "I run away."
"You?"
Bogg shrugged. "I was young. Since then I asked around. It's hungry. In a sweat to eat all it can. You can lop its head off, and it'll just stuff you down its neck hole. They say it has a heart of ice. You got to melt that heart of ice, or the wendigo will just keep coming. I don't take much stock in that. Seems like flapdoodle to me."
A long moment passed, and sleep pulled at Simon's eyes.
Bogg watched him. "You ought to get some shut-eye. You've got a lot of work to do in the morning."
#
Chapter 21
Falling snow clung to Tyrus's long hair in accumulating delicate flakes. Cadogan snarled and shook his head every few minutes, flinging it from his braided beard. Zane scouted ahead, almost out of sight. Uilleam lagged farther and farther behind. Yolaf was with him.
Tyrus cursed the snow. It slowed them, keeping them from Rastaban... and drained their strength with every trudging step in the chilling knee-deep powder. He pushed his men on. They wouldn't freeze to death -- not at this pace. But they would starve all the sooner.
The sky above looked heavy and threatening. Flakes spiraled out of the heavens. The green of the pines seemed drained away, and the forest around them was gray and white. Between the snow-laden branches, Tyrus could see downslope, under the clouds, almost to where they had crossed the snow line.
Wafting up from the trees was a thin ribbon of smoke.
It had been there yesterday, too. Closer, now.
Coincidence, possibly. Other travelers heading the same way. Like the old man they had found -- he had told them that Settler's Pass was the only way though these mountains.
Tyrus returned to the march. The smoke was not worth his concern. But he felt his gut telling him otherwise.
He spotted Zane ahead, his body rigid, his fist in the air. He had seen something. Tyrus froze, anticipating. Behind him, the others stopped and fell silent.
Zane nocked an arrow and drew, aiming low among the trees. The twang of taut string resonated in the heavy, still air. Zane lowered his bow and stood relaxed.
Tyrus could tell by his posture. Zane had struck something! All four rushed to him, saw his satisfied smile, and followed his gaze to the kill. Twenty yards ahead, the bright blue feathers on the arrow's tail marked the spot like a pennant.
Cadogan got there first. He pulled up the arrow, and everyone cheered when they saw the hare empaled on the arrow's head. Its fur was white flecked with brown, a common hare, gloriously fat, and with no damned antlers.
"Well done, Zane," said Tyrus. "Yolaf and Cadogan, gather wood. We eat right now."
Zane beamed quietly. Even Uilleam smiled broadly as he cradled his arm, huffing great clouds of mist from his sprint to the hare.
Cadogan's face fell. "Won't Uilleam gather wood?"
Uilleam turned suspiciously.
Tyrus scowled. "Cadogan--"
"Zane, I understand. It was his shot. His eye and arm earned him his rest. But what has Uilleam done?"
"Uilleam was wounded in battle--" Tyrus stopped himself. Was he about to debate with Cadogan the Red? Surely Tyrus was slipping. A sign he was more exhausted than he had estimated. Tyrus had to demand obedience from Cadogan, from all of them--
"Too badly wounded," Cadogan said. "I fear we must bravely face the truth, friends. Uilleam grows weaker. He'll soon drop in his tracks. Shall we waste a portion of this fine catch on a man already dead--"
Tyrus had Cadogan by the throat.
He squeezed, cutting off Cadogan's air, grinning as he saw Cadogan's eyes bug out.
"You task me," Tyrus whispered in his ear.
Cadogan dropped the arrow. The hare fell in the snow.
"You ask what Uilleam has done?" Tyrus's fingers dug still deeper. "What have you done? You speak of a man already dead. I wonder which man that is. You speak of facing the truth. I have a truth for you, Cadogan."
Tyrus felt Cadogan try to swallow, and fail. Saliva oozed from Cadogan's lips, and his skin flushed a bright shade that clashed with his beard. Tyrus pulled at his throat, turning his body so he was facing the distant ribbon of smoke.
Tyrus's lips were still at Cadogan's ear, but his voice grew louder. "Did you notice that we are being followed? No? Then it's time your eye and arm earned you your rest. Sharpen your axe, Cadogan. You will take a share of Zane's catch, to keep your strength up. Then you will double back to where we found the old man. You will wait for them to reach you, kill them, take their food, return to us and report."
#
Snow fell lightly the next morning. Bogg hated snow, but he tried to roll with it as with everything else he had no power over.
You couldn't hardly walk in it, nor set snares in it, nor forage in it, you could freeze yourself in it, and you stood out against it like a beetle in rice. And it covered the track you were following.
That one beat all.
At least the lad was working out, for now. He hadn't caught frostbite nor sunk in snow up to his eyeballs yet.
It was nigh on noon when a shape in the snow caught Bogg's eye. It was a lump of snow up against a tree. Bogg stood and watched the lump for a time, gathering up what his intuition whispered to him.
The pup caught up, and watched him watching the lump.
By and by, Bogg stuck his hands in the snow, grabbed hold and pulled. It was a knapsack, sort of like Bogg's, untied and mostly empty. No food. No waterskin, not even an empty one.
In the snow, where the knapsack had laid, there was a bit of smooth tan, like buckskin. Bogg took a deep breath, grabbed fistfuls of it and pulled. Something big and heavy came up, and snow fluttered off it. It was a body.
Bogg laid it down in the open and brushed off snow. He and Simo
n weren't high enough for there to be year-round snow here, so this feller weren't no fossil. A season he'd been resting here, no more, and Bogg suspicioned a lot less.
He was an old feller, in a beaverskin hat and long white beard, both frozen crackly. Head to toe in buckskins. A fellow traveler, a mountaineer like Bogg. The feller's right arm was missing just short of the elbow, cut clean, and his chest was all a mess with frozen blood. He had held up an arm to ward off his fate, and been run through. The cutting was peculiar enough, but not new to Bogg's eye. It was the same sharp and heavy broadsword that had made that clearing the thunderbird had favored, and that had taken Bogg's brother Ackerley, and the pup's father.
It near churned Bogg's stomach. "Aw, you poor nathead, you gone and got yourself killed."
The pup was rightfully timid and respectful. "Do you know him?"
Bogg sighed. "I know him a little just by looking at him. That's enough to know him as well as anybody who'd ever seen him alive, or known his name, like as not. This is a feller not unlike me."
Bogg didn't think of himself as an especially good man, nor an especially evil one. He had done his share of wrongs and raised his share of ruction. He hadn't planned on ever having to account for himself in summary. But now he was beginning to think that he could balance out any rot or treachery he might have knowingly or unknowingly committed in his life by doing one simple thing. And that was ridding the world of the unspeakable, despicable hound who carried that sword.
"What should we do?" asked the pup. "Bury him?"
Bogg stuck out his chin. "That's a nice thought, but there's too many strikes against it. His killer would benefit too much by it, for one, with us being slowed down. For two, his type don't ever expect to be buried, so I don't think we're doing him much injustice if we don't." He searched through the knapsack for anything written down, letters or whatnot, that the pup could read so they could ferret up his name and try to get to his family. Bogg found no such thing.
He pulled the beaverskin cap off the feller's white hair and worked it in his fingers to soften and thaw it. "You need a hat, pup."
The boy's adam's apple bobbed and he leaned a wee bit back. "I don't want a dead man's hat."
"Don't insult him, lad. Take it."
"I'd rather be cold."
"We're going up farther, before we go down. It'll be colder before it gets… All right, we'll do it like this." Bogg pulled off his raccoon hat and tossed it to Simon, and pressed the icy beaverskin cap down on his head. It chilled his scalp, but he reckoned his head would warm it up and it would start working soon.
The pup held the coon hat, uncertain. Then he flicked the ringtail with a finger, stuck it on and struck a noble pose like he was dressed in the king's finest.
"Now, that's fitting," Bogg said. "It's the handsomest you've ever been, pup. You look a foot taller. Like you could stare down a cougar."
Bogg could see the boy holding back a grin on account of respect for the dead. "Enough. Snow will bury this poor feller until spring. By then, our fates -- and the swordsman's -- will have worked themselves out, one way or t'other. Onward."
#
Simon found that he could keep up with Bogg, who was slowing down. It had to be the climb. The path had steepened and steepened, until they crept along a ridge on the very side of Desperation Peak. The ridge was only ten feet wide, narrower in places, and blocked with boulder after snow-topped boulder that must have tumbled down the mountainside and come to rest here. Great drifts of snow buried the ridge in places, and he and Bogg had to dig through. In other places, masses of snow clung to the rock wall above them, piled higher than they could see, ready to break loose and bury them or blast them over the cliff.
No trees could grow here. On the left, a cold granite wall. On the right, a drop down hundreds of feet to white-topped forests. And between, man and boy, shivering and marching on.
It had been hours since they had left the body of the white-haired man, and Simon worried that soon they'd have to make camp on the mountainside. Not here, he hoped. It was too cold, too exposed, and there was no wood for a fire.
At least there was no wind. The air was still and heavy, and fog sank down the cliff above them in billowing white puffs. It splashed on the ridge and flowed over the edge to drop out of sight. It was a steady, translucent waterfall of fog. Simon had never seen or heard of anything like it.
There was no life here. No birds nor squirrels nor insects... and yet he could feel a presence, an eerie sense of being watched. He had read plenty of ghost stories, but didn't find them convincing. Just words on a page, nothing to put ice to his heart.
But now, the ice was there. It made him wish they had buried the old man.
The only sound was the crunch of Bogg's boots.
Simon squeezed past a boulder and walked on, watching the fog fall.
He was right on Bogg's heels. That creepy presence was making him scamper along, so close to Bogg that he could see the thousand dewdrops the mist had laid on the black velvet of Bogg's cloak.
Bogg stopped. Simon nearly bumped into him.
Bogg turned, and his blue eyes gazed into the distance over Simon's head. His broad nostrils sniffed noisily. His eyes focused... and locked grimly on something. Simon spun and saw a tall gray shape behind them. Fog poured down the cliff and washed over it.
Simon's throat was suddenly dry. He shivered.
"Thought I smelled something," Bogg grumbled. He set his saddlebags gently down.
The misty shape loomed closer. Panic roared through Simon's limbs. Bogg's hands came down firmly on his shoulders and pushed him to the side, away from the drop off.
Out of the fog came a man in plate armor and green heraldry. His grinning face was white and freckled, his hair bright red, his beard twisted into a dozen braids. His teeth were crooked and yellow, and he held, almost lovingly, a heavy-looking war axe.
Fear pulsed even stronger in Simon, and his legs went numb. He had seen that axe take Yohann's head off and spray blood across the street in Fort Sanctuary. He had felt this man's iron grip when his father's house had been invaded.
Cadogan.
"Well, dog my cats," Bogg muttered under his breath. Then, louder, "Hello, stranger." His hand slipped to the handle of his sabertooth knife. He was grinning, too, and Simon could see the gap of his missing tooth.
"Greetings," hissed the man, "and salutations."
Bogg's eyes narrowed. "You're Algolan."
Cadogan straightened with pride. "I am."
Bogg edged past Simon, closer to Cadogan. "I can always tell. The smell, mostly. And nobody in Mira wears sissy armor like that."
Cadogan's grin twisted to a sneer. He stepped closer, and the fog seemed to slip from him, revealing him in nightmarish detail.
"Say..." began Bogg. "You're not out here with four of your friends, are you?"
"Those louts? Curse them. They sent me to dispatch you. But Tyrus will be pleased to know that you are, indeed, following us." Cadogan sucked in a breath, and in a sudden motion, lunged and swung his axe at Bogg's head.
Bogg dropped, and the axe streaked over him. He drew his fang dagger and slashed at Cadogan's throat. But he wasn't close enough. A single red braid fell to the gravel at their feet.
Cadogan snarled. The two men faced each other, tense, ready to strike.
"Nice axe," Bogg said.
"You cut my beard!"
"I was hoping for a sword, though. I owe a feller who carries a sword."
"I know the blade you speak of. It is legend. It has spilled an ocean of blood." Cadogan sidestepped and pushed closer, threatening. Bogg slipped out of range, holding his dagger high.
"But you'll never see it," Cadogan said. "Instead, mark well my axe. It is your fortune teller, and speaks of your fate. Which is to be lopped to pieces." Cadogan swung again. The sabertooth fang clashed with the steel shaft of the axe and threw sparks that
burned green images in Simon's vision.
Bogg chuckled. "I just put a nick in my fate."
Cadogan roared. Simon, blinking and shivering, edged back, trying to stay clear. But his motion caught Cadogan's eye.
"And you, little one!" Cadogan screamed. "Did you think I didn't see you? I remember your father's firelocks, ready to put holes in me. And here you are again, a small and clinging pest. A chigger! A tick!"
Cadogan whipped his axe in a broad arc and swung it down on Simon's head. Simon didn't even have time to scream before everything went black and crushing pain exploded through his skull.
The agony pulsed through the rest of his body. He couldn't see, and wondered dizzily where he was. Time stretched blindly out. If he was dead, why did it hurt so bad? And why could he still hear Cadogan's snarling and Bogg's taunts?
Simon's fingers clutched at velvety splintercat skin and pulled it from his face. Bogg had thrown his cloak over him, so Cadogan's blade only knocked him senseless instead of splitting his brain like a melon.
Bogg and Cadogan came back into focus. Cadogan raised his axe and howled an awful cry that echoed off the cliffs above them. Bogg readied his dagger to parry. But Cadogan, eyes glinting, kicked high rather than swing, and his boot knocked Bogg's dagger from his hand.
It spun into the mist and dropped to the snowy trees below.
Cadogan laughed and swung.
Bogg stepped out of range as the axe sliced the air under his beard. He darted back a few more steps, but Cadogan closed the distance.
Simon knew he couldn't cower under this cloak while Bogg was gutted. He dropped the skin and scraped snow off a boulder. Cadogan's axe was poised over his shoulder, ready to hack at Bogg, when Simon's snowball blew itself to bits on his forehead.
Cadogan roared. Bogg leapt in and followed the snowball with a right fist that snapped Cadogan's head back and caught his howl in his throat.
In the instant of silence that followed, Simon heard the effect of all of Cadogan's hollering. From above them came the sounds of cracking ice and sliding snow, a hiss quickly building to a rumble.
"Bogg!" Simon cried.
Bogg and Cadogan both turned to the noise and gazed up the cliff face.
Bogg reacted first, sprinting to Simon and scooping him up, cloak and all. That was all he could do before the snow hit them and pushed them over the cliff.
#
Simon lay in the freezing darkness. All was still. He was grateful for the stillness. It had come at last, after sliding and tumbling in a screaming panic down the mountainside for entirely too long a time. Now he could quietly die of hypothermia, numb and peaceful. He didn't even hurt, really. No broken bones. Just his head, where Cadogan had tried to cleave his skull through the splintercat skin.
New World: a Frontier Fantasy Novel Page 12
