by Rob Bayliss
Tuan walked from the wreckage of what once was the Hivemother. The huscarls cheered, seeing their enemy seemingly defeated. They chanted “Shard Wielder!” as they saw Tuan emerging unscathed, but the cheers died when they saw the burden he carried. In his arms he carried the body of the lost atheling of the Khanate, through the ranks of the now silent huscarls, their heads bowed in respect, as he walked towards Khan Chenkish.
“Lord Khan, I bring you your son, Lord Kreshan. I regret that I could only return you his body, not his life.”
The Khan took his son from Tuan. His tears flowed like rain. He ran his fingers through his son’s hair, his fingertips over his cold cheeks, unblemished and free of corruption in death. “He can be buried with his ancestors, at least.” The Khan kissed his son’s forehead; his eyes were red and ran freely with tears, but he was Khan still.
A thegn ran up to the Khan from the rear guard. “My Lord, the plague has gone. The enemy shield wall just collapsed. The plague has left us the bodies of the lost column. None carry infection.”
“How is this possible?” the Khan said, “Is there any trace of the plague still here?”
“There is still some …” Tuan said, “The ones you carry in the steel chests. You must release the plague they carry…”
The Khan hesitated, unwilling to comply.
“There will be no more harvesting of spore,” Tuan said sternly, pre-empting the Khan’s reluctance. “These are the terms of peace, my Lord. If you abide by them then the pass is yours and the threat the plague posed to your lands and people will be removed forever. Otherwise ….”
The Khan was taken aback by the Sun Shard wielder’s knowledge, but he was the Watcher; the pass would be clear for the first time, new trade routes, new lands and fresh plunder lay beyond the SkyCrags. The Khanate would be greater. “Open the chests,” he commanded.
Tuan walked toward the carts that carried the steel boxes. The driver, a mask wrapped around his nose and mouth hesitantly opened the box and a cloud of black spore billowed and twisted to disappear on the mountain air. Inside, the bodies showed no sign of infection. The huscarls gathered their dead; the war with the plague was over at last.
Klesh sidled up to Tuan. “You have grown in wisdom, Tuan of the Star Tooth. My brother chose right in you. We are clan, you and I.”
Tuan smiled in reply at Klesh, as Bronic suddenly grabbed him and gave him a rib crushing bear hug. Tamzine smiled, but still appeared to be annoyed and irritated.
“I suppose I should apologise,” she said, folding her arms.
“Not at all. You were right; my mind was taken with thoughts of Karla.” he said sheepishly. “Well, the way is clear now, we can continue with our quest.”
“But has the plague gone, truly?” Tamzine asked.
“It wanted peace and freedom from being exploited,” Tuan replied. “But has it gone? Well not entirely. We have an understanding, but more importantly we have an ally in the coming war. I’m not going to face the Corpse Lord unprepared this time.”
“You have no regrets though, Tuan?” Tamzine probed. “You could be a prince of the Khanate sharing a bed with Karla.”
“Who says such a thing will not yet come to pass?” Tuan smiled sadly. He hoped such a thing could still be. “For now she needs to mourn her brother and we need to find Commander Kaziviere. The worlds beyond the Summerlands are now open to us, and not a moment too soon. Shall we be on our way?”
The companions went to find their kit in the baggage train. They passed a small cleft in the rocks of the ravine where a small cushion of moss soaked up the water that dropped from the high ravine’s sides.
In this tiny world, where mosses towered as trees, a beetle staggered as if drunk. It climbed up on a tall frond of moss, which was odd as it risked the unwelcome attention of predators now it was exposed. Atop the moss it clasped the stem tightly and then moved no more. Bursting through its carapace, behind its head, the tiny fruiting body of a fungus emerged ....
Chapter 26
Exhaling deeply through his broad nostrils, Golta IceEye’s breath steamed in the cold mountain air as the wind-borne snow was thrown past him. Such storms this late in the season were rare but not unknown. He stood at the crevice edge studying the bridge of ice spanning the rift in the glacier. His eyes, one blue and other milky-white, were unblinking under his heavily set brows. He hoisted his two-handed bronze sickle in the air and pounded the ice with the shaft.
“What do you think then, Golta; what does your eye see?” a voice purred behind him.
Golta turned on hearing the woman. Through the snow Greken walked. She was clad in thick furs, her frizzy hair held in place by her hood. Her eyes shone blue like intense sapphires.
Golta swallowed. Those furs hid a great beauty; under her hood a smooth face below her delightful brow ridges. As handmaiden to the Great Mother, she knew spells and words of power. With just a few softly purred words she could cause a man to spill his seed. Even the thought made Golta aware of a thickening in his britches. He tried to clear his mind, to concentrate on his mission.
“It seems sound, but there is only one way to see.”
He grunted and advanced onto the middle of the bridge in a show of bravado, but nonetheless walking carefully. Down either side of the crevice, the ice cliffs went from blue to the blackest abyss. How deep it went, even Golta could not guess. Reaching the middle, he stopped and crouched down; he ran his hand over the cold hardness. He walked to one edge and peered over, doing the same on the opposite side. He went back to the centre of the bridge. Bracing his legs, he jumped as high as his bronze-panelled armour would allow. On landing he crouched down, running his hand over the ice once more. He muttered to himself, as if asking questions of the ice and placating it, his milky eye imploring. He grunted again and smiled as if he had been granted an answer by the cracks and squeaks of the glacier.
“It will suffice, but we will both need to sing a song of strength. It will have to support many a laden mammoth.”
“Very well, Golta,” she said, walking across the bridge to the far side.
He looked up, shaking his shaggy brown mane, now matted with snow, out of his face and lifting his sickle high, signalling for the rest to follow. He turned and walked over the bridge to where Greken now sat. He crouched down, wrapping his fur cloak around his shoulders as he regarded the ice bridge. Together they sang a song of ice, of ice as hard as steel.
The glacier shook slightly as on the other side of the crevice, through the snow-heavy air, the lumbering bulk of mammoth emerged. The beasts stopped when they saw the crevice, trumpeting their reluctance to proceed, but their drivers encouraged them on. Slowly, the procession crossed the bridge, mammoths pulling sleds and a multitude of men, women and children from different clans on foot, or riding giant elk. With the clans were their herds of mountain goats, their horns rattling against the bones that hung from them. Golta saw Kolok and Weerak Thunderclub walk past as well as others of the Elder circle.
The Mammoth carrying the Great Mother’s wooden shrine passed by, the aged woman herself looking down with ancient eyes through her long matted hair, smiling at her handmaiden. Even Golta, an older warrior, was not immune to the power of the daughters of the Goddess. When she was young she could charm and caress any warrior. She still could in fact, although her hands were now as ancient leather. As the Great Mother’s shrine crossed the bridge, Golta’s and Greken’s voices became louder and more insistent.
Golta found himself enchanted by the soft voice of Greken. He sat uncomfortably as his hardness stood tall, engorged against his leather britches, despite the fact he was seated on the cold glacier. He kept chanting, although his breath grew husky and short. Say the words, say the words. He mentally pleaded with her for release. He thought his balls would surely explode. But she did not say them.
She ceased her chanting and stood. She smiled as she looked down at Golta, seeing the disappointment in his face. She held out her hand to help him up but he wa
ved it away. Rising uncomfortably, the bulge in his britches was obvious.
She half whispered a few words; they came from her lips silkily as she purred. Golta gasped, leaning on his scythe as his legs quaked and trembled with his hot and pent-up release. With a last shudder he was spent. With that, the ice bridge crashed to oblivion behind him. He looked back fearfully. Strange that it only gave way after they had all crossed. There would be no going back this way before next winter. He would need to cleanse himself when he could. He followed the shapely Greken, enjoying his view of her, her shapely buttocks reminding him of the carved statues of the Earth Mother in full fertile bloom.
He followed the trampled snow and trail of dung, as the clan continued descending the great glacier from the Hailthorns. The cloud gradually thinned as the glacier sloped downward to a high valley. Out of the moraine of ice-shattered rocks a cold stream flowed, gathering speed as it tumbled down. The grey clouds gave way to clear blue as up ahead the column had halted at Fork Pass, where the Hailthorns met the SkyCrags, the mountain range that marched southward. Golta hurried to see what the delay could be. The Elder circle had gathered and was in deep discussion. As the clan took their ease, raised voices could be heard. Golta grumbled at those in his way, his face grim. Those who barred his passage quickly made way for him. The charmed voice of Greken was just a sweet memory to him now. He hoped he was not too late to avoid bloodshed.
When he drew closer it was clear that there were two camps developing, as the Elder circle was split between those that followed Kolok and those who harkened to the bellicose voice of Weerak Thunderclub.
“Have we not discussed this already, Weerak?” Kolok’s frustration was clear. “This matter is already settled.”
“But look, brothers and sisters, now we can actually see the choice before us,” Weerak implored, gesturing westward. “Behold your ancient home, our true home. How many here have seen it before? Too few, alas; yet in our dreams we know the sweet grass trails around the Cheama. There lies pasture and plunder.”
Many pairs of eyes followed Weerak’s pointing hand as the clouds split. Gazing down the right fork of the valley, the green of the Summerlands was revealed. Men and women gasped at the sight of their ancestral lands. Forests and grasslands seemed to extend forever, as far as the eye could see. Looking southwards even this early in the year the air shimmered; they were verdant steppes, warm and inviting. Those lands had once been theirs and they should be again.
Kolok spoke, shattering the dream. “We would never know peace.” His voice sounded niggardly to those seeing a long-held desire stretching before them. “Those lands are not empty, yet Weerak would take all he could. He would make war on our allies of old, uniting them with the legions of Taleel.”
“The old alliances are broken; we owe them nothing, but they owe us everything. Even the very lands they now call their own,” Weerak reasoned, to nods and murmurings of agreement among those gathered around. “Instead of sweet pastures, Kolok would lead you and your herds to death over there.” Weerak gestured eastwards.
Following his gesture the lands east of the SkyCrags could be seen. The lands in the shadow of the mountain chain were visibly drier. Scrub and sparse forest on the uplands gradually petered out into the distance. For those with sharp eyes the orange of distant deserts quivered in the heat on the horizon. Voices were raised in protest: What would their animals eat? How far into the desert were they required to go? Would they survive? Weerak smiled as the clamouring of protest grew.
Kolok answered, fighting to make himself heard above the protestations. “We will fill our skins with this water here and keep to the uplands travelling south, where we can find water, game and grazing, until we strike east.”
“No! Why go east? We are armed for war; let Weerak lead us! West, we must go west!” the voices cried.
Kolok and those in the Elder circle tried to answer, but the vocal few drowned their voices out. The tumult caused those at rest to gather round to see what the heated discussion was about; some fists were thrown between different factions as clan eyed clan suspiciously. “Kolok means to lead us to our deaths!” was heard.
A loud trumpeting echoed around the pass. Those who previously had shouted and argued fell quiet, looking around as the blast of the mammoth bounced off the rock walls. Other mammoths joined in excitedly, their handlers unable to quieten them down. The massive shape of a bull mammoth, the Great Mother’s shrine carried on its back, stormed towards those gathered, its massive tusks adorned with lethal bronze spikes. The crowd parted as the daughters of the Goddess preceded the shrine, twirling long flint spears above their heads, making a whirling sound like a hive of monstrous, angry bees. The daughters had taken off their thick furs and were stripped down to supple deerskin clouts. Their bodies, limbs and faces had been adorned with blue and red repeating patterns. They looked as crazed creatures from the otherworld, beautiful yet deadly. Their vivid blue eyes shone from under their brow ridges, showing their trance state, as they performed the ritualized dance of the Goddess, seemingly immune to the mountain cold.
Some of the Elder circle clutched their Sun Shards and Weerak’s hand strayed to his club. The Great Mother was arriving in anger, and as all women, and the Earth Goddess herself, she could be wild and unpredictable. Only Kolok smiled. He fell to his knees in supplication.
With a deep rumbling and a stamping of feet that shook the earth, the mammoth approached. High above, sat on the beast’s neck, was the handler, a large woman with a cloak of fur around her. The muscles in her arms bulged as she brought the beast to a halt, hauling on the beast’s halter. Behind the driver the shrine was constructed of leather and wood, decorated with painted images of hands, eyes, geometric shapes and spirals. With a clicking command the mammoth’s rear quarters squatted down, followed by its front legs.
One of the daughters approached the side of the shrine. She fell to all fours, side by side with the mammoth. Golta saw that it was Greken herself. He felt a pulse of sweet remembrance in his britches at the sight of her in such a position. But that thought was quickly dispelled, as the aged Great Mother emerged from inside the shrine, in reverence. She stepped onto Greken’s back, using her as a step.
The ancient woman carried a staff, which she used as a prop to steady herself. It made a curious noise. The staff was decorated with the spinal columns of the previous Great Mothers. The vertebrae was clicking as she walked. There was already a space set aside for her own backbone, ready for when she passed from this world. Her back was bent with age. Her hair was white, matted and long, hanging down to her knees. Her face was pale and lined with deep wrinkles. Greken rose, offering to help her, but was shooed away. The fury made her walk speedily to where Kolok knelt and Weerak stood. The daughters of the Goddess accompanied her.
“Great Mother, you honour us,” Kolok said, barely raising his eyes.
Weerak’s eyes, despite his best efforts, were drawn to the daughters. He was enchanted by their brazen near nakedness. “Yes, you do us great honour, Great Mother. You should not have troubled yourself.
“Do not assume to give me your advice, Weerak Thunderclub!” the old woman said, her voice sounding like waves on shingle. “I remember testing your virility when you were barely a man grown, your balls in my palm. It took some time for you to affirm it … if I remember.”
Weerak’s face twisted in fury and his Sun Shard glowed red. He was about to answer when he felt a searing pain in the back of his knees, as one of the daughters swung her spear shaft to strike them. He collapsed onto the ground.
“Show respect to the Great Mother; remember you are a mere man!” the daughter hissed, the flint blade of her spear held against his throat.
“Weerak meant you no disrespect, Great Mother,” Kolok implored, not looking up. “He is a warrior who wishes to blood his blades.”
The Great Mother looked at Kolok impassively. “You will speak when addressed, Kolok. I am fully aware of what Weerak wants. He wants plunder, he wan
ts steel, he wants revenge.”
Weerak spoke, the flint blade inches from his throat. “Yes, of course I want revenge! Why should I not? The defeat at the Tusk is a shameful, ever-weeping sore for the Flint folk.”
“You were not there, Weerak,” the Great Mother said sternly, “the pain and loss was not borne by you, and now you would inflict vengeful pain on others because of a misguided sense of shame? It has already been decided; our path lies east. We face a greater battle with an age-old enemy, and for a far nobler cause than revenge.” The Great Mother’s anger began to ease.
The fire in Weerak’s eyes began to subside, but in his words, he tried to retain a grip on his fury. “What of our brother Kress though? He was killed by an agent of the Empire. The loss of a member of our circle still cuts deeply. His Sun Shard was lost to a Flatface.”
Kolok shot Weerak a glance. “Why speak ill of the Bloodshadow, Weerak? He is a brother of the circle now, he helped to rescue Klesh from captivity.”
The Great Mother laughed. Her laughter was like the shattering of rock high in the mountains. From such tiny fall of stones are deadly avalanches born. “Weerak, have you not seen the same unfolding events, as your brother Kolok here? Kress knew what he was doing; he listened to his heart. He knew the dangers he faced, yet undertook them anyway. We now have the secrets of steel. We now have black powder alchemy, all because Kress sought out the Bloodshadow, this Tuan of the Gewichas. Do not shame or belittle your brother’s sacrifice; he gave his life willingly.”
All around, those gathered were listening intently. They began to nod, agreeing with the Great Mother. She was the wisest of the wise, the mother of their people. She had not taken the warpath lightly and certainly not for plunder.
