A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  Abhi and Karloof and Fin-tum or whatever they are called look both apologetic and encouraging when we get to the top. Their gestures and words seem to indicate that it’s not far now, and it’s not.

  We arrive in the midst of a mob of people that are either copper-skinned humans like Abhi or pale giants like Karleft—none are like the brown-skinned man Fin-tum. He’s the strange one, apparently. And all of them are setting up a camp, as evidenced by the tents and the new fire pits being laid. This is not a permanent settlement. They are as newly arrived to this place as we are.

  But we are led to a couple of giant women who are apparently in charge and presented to them. One of them is especially tall, red-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in remarkable steel-plated armor and carrying a huge sword. The other, while noticeably shorter, is absolutely terrifying to behold. She’s bald, for one thing, and also appears to have no lips. She wears the skin of some gray scaly creature, which bizarrely seems to reflect shades of red and blue. And she is pierced in many places on her face but most noticeably by a multicolored chain leading from her right earlobe to her right nostril. She carries no weapon, but I think I’m going to have nightmares about her anyway.

  The red-haired one is called Olet Kanek, and I get the idea that she is the leader. The scary one is called La Mastik.

  I like Olet. She squats on her haunches so that she’s maybe only a foot taller than me and I don’t have to crane my neck to look up at her. She gazes into my eyes and says something earnestly, and I signal with my fist that I appreciate whatever it is. Then she says something else to La Mastik, and the scary one moves away to shout something; soon after that, people who look like Abhi are bringing us blankets and dry clothes. They’re women but somehow not as pretty as Abhi is. Do they ever wake up, I wonder, and wish they could be that beautiful? Which one of them is his mate? I don’t see any of them paying him special attention. He appears to have only his animal companions.

  The women give us the clothing and then hold up blankets, forming a screen so that we can change in privacy—or we could if the giants weren’t able to look over the top of the screens so easily. Once Olet understands this problem, she shouts at the other giants to move far enough away upriver that it’s no longer possible for us to be seen. It’s a kindness we all appreciate, and many of my crew weep as they change out of their wet clothing, because it’s tangible proof that we are going to be cared for and we have found safety.

  But just as I think that all might be well—I mean, apart from the fact that we very nearly all died and we’re entirely dependent on strangers for our food and shelter in an alien land with no way to get home—Olet leads the pack of us, now dry and only somewhat cold, in strange clothes bound with our wet dagger belts, to a large fire pit that someone has laid with dry wood. Some of it had clearly been chopped up with axes; many of the giants appeared to be handy with them, and we heard the dull thunks of them all around us.

  Olet smiles at us, squats next to me, and snaps the huge fingers of her right hand. The wood immediately ignites to full flame, and in the next second, every single one of us has drawn the Bora and the Buran. It’s not even an order I need to give: It’s an instinctive reaction born from the stories we were told as children. Olet reacts on instinct as well. She erupts from her squat, leaping backward, drawing that huge sword of hers at the same time. She sets herself in a defensive crouch, just as we have, and the length of her blade blossoms with flame.

  “Fire demon!” Leisuen shouts.

  “Hold!” I cry. “Wait until she makes her intentions clear!”

  “Snuff that flame, Zephyr!” Baejan says.

  That is something I could do. I could snuff her flaming sword by depriving it of air. But it would still be a damn huge sword and dangerous in its own right without the fire along its length. And if I did anything like that now, it would give away my abilities when she didn’t know I had any. Plus, we were ridiculously outnumbered. Thirty sailors against uncounted humans and giants, some of them blessed. One of them could talk to animals and had saved our lives. I wouldn’t want to face him and the force he could bring to bear. Especially since he had been so friendly thus far.

  “Wait! They have not been hostile to this point. If they actually attack, you have my permission to respond. But hold yourselves until they prove to be the aggressors. Do not strike first! Acknowledge!”

  I get a chorus of grunts in reply.

  The brown-skinned man—Fin-tum—steps between us and Olet. His hands are spread out, unarmed, and he waves them at us, clearly asking us to stand down. But behind Olet, more giants are gathering. They take in Olet with her sword on fire and our knives out and come to reinforce her. Some of them have long-handled axes and extraordinary beards with gold and silver threads among the braids.

  I point at Olet’s sword with the tip of my Buran. “Tell her to snuff that flame and maybe then we can talk about peace. Even if it’s in different languages.”

  Remarkably, Fin-tum seems to understand this and says something to Olet. She responds and then her sword’s flames extinguish, followed by the flames in the fire pit. She lowers her sword and looks at me expectantly.

  “There. You see?” I call to my crew. “No harm intended. Sheathe your daggers now, all of you.” I go first, and much to my relief, I hear the crew follow my lead.

  Fin-tum nearly wilts in answer. Olet remains alert and so do I and all my crew, but the brown-skinned man moves forward and kneels, brushing aside some evergreen needles on the ground to get to the dirt. He gestures to my crew and then points to his eyes before pointing to Olet. They should watch her. Then he points to me, his eyes, and then at the ground. I should confer with him.

  “First Mate Haesha.”

  “Aye, Zephyr?”

  “Watch the fire demon. If she attacks, respond with fury. Hold until then.”

  “Aye, Zephyr.”

  The entire crew hears that, of course, but Haesha repeats the orders while I move to stare at the ground with Fin-tum. He scrawls with his finger in the dirt. He makes a hash mark, then two next to it, then three, and four. Underneath these numbers he draws images, and I soon recognize them. Fire, wind, earth, water. These were the kennings. Shoawei was the Second Kenning, and he appeared to know this. Fire was the First Kenning and, yes, that was the kenning of the demons. He was merely confirming that Olet was a fire demon. But then, by gestures, he indicated that his is the Third Kenning. He doesn’t look like the people of the Third Kenning to me. Their islands are south of ours and close enough to trade with in the summer months. I shake my head at him, but even as I do this, I realize that we might be on a continent full of different people who have the same kennings as those I already know. And maybe more, as this beautiful Abhi lad seems to represent. Who knows how large this strange land across the ocean might be?

  It’s a risk, but I take it. I circle his sketch of the Second Kenning with my finger and then point to myself. His eyebrows climb up his face. He holds up two fingers and then points at me in question. I nod, and then his face looks so much like what I’m feeling that I break into a smile, and he mirrors it a moment afterward. We have both realized that the world is far larger than our elders ever knew.

  He points at himself. “Fintan.”

  Oh, goddess. I got his name wrong too. Which meant I probably had Korleft or Karloof wrong too. “Fintan,” I repeat, trying to burn it into my memory. “Koesha,” I remind him, pointing at myself.

  “Koesha,” he repeats, nodding. Then he points at all my crew and shrugs at me.

  “Are you serious? Okay.” I get to my feet, checking on Olet. She’s standing still, watching me. The scary giant, La Mastik, lurks in the background, but she doesn’t move any closer. The men with the axes and beards shuffle forward, though, and start talking urgently to Olet. They have one side of their head shaved clean and there’s a tattoo of some ki
nd there, a triangle with a cloud above it. Or maybe it’s an erupting volcano? I’ve seen that body language and heard that tone of voice before. They’re asking Olet why she doesn’t just kill or imprison us right now, and I’m glad they’re not the ones in charge. Though we have been fortunate so far, this could turn violent at any moment. Olet cuts them off with a short word that’s either a negative or a promise to talk later. I recognize that tone too, because I use it myself.

  I point at Haesha and say her name to Fintan. He repeats it. I keep going until I’ve named every member of my surviving crew and he’s said it back to me, and all the while I keep an eye on the giant men. They are still distrustful at the least and murderous at the worst, held in check only by Olet.

  Once through my roster, Fintan returns to Haesha, and from there he says the name of every member of my crew flawlessly. We clap twice and bow our heads to him afterward, delighted at the honor he has done us. Memory is supposed to be a blessing of the Third Kenning, and our traders have remarked upon it in their dealings with our neighbors to the south, but we have never seen it demonstrated personally until now.

  We stand there smiling at one another for a time, not sure how to proceed and all of us wary of making a mistake that might end in violence. I am especially suspicious of the tattooed giants. Fintan eventually kneels before me again and starts circling kennings.

  He circles fire and points at Olet. He circles wind and points at me. He circles earth and points at himself. Then he draws two more kennings, five and six. He circles six and points at Abhi, and that’s our confirmation of his abilities.

  I nod at Fintan and clutch my hands in front of my heart in thanks. I understand now.

  I rise to my feet before the giant Olet and slowly draw my Bora and Buran, dropping them immediately to the ground, keeping my hands wide and far away from my sides. I approach her thus, in full view of my crew, smiling up at her. She frowns but sheathes her enormous sword. I keep coming, which causes the giants behind her to growl and bark at me, gripping their axes. I stop.

  Olet turns on them and says something through clenched teeth, and they argue with her, which makes me question how much control she really has. Was I mistaken? Is she the actual leader?

  That is cast into further doubt when the scary giant begins to scold the giant men and they back off in response. Perhaps the bald woman with no hair and no lips is the true leader, her status marked by her different appearance, and Olet the fire demon is something like her honor guard or a chamberlain? I remain frozen in place, arms wide, while this goes on. When it’s settled and the men have subsided, Olet—not the bald woman—smiles and beckons me forward. I close the distance between us and embrace her awkwardly around her hips, because that’s pretty much all I can reach. She goes very still and I hear nervous gasps all around us, but then her huge left hand falls gently to my right shoulder, followed shortly thereafter by her right hand on my left shoulder. It is the only way I could think to demonstrate our desire for peace without words and without kneeling and begging for our lives. And it is the right thing to do. I hear a rising chorus of cheers from all around us, more from Olet’s people than from mine, because they are, in fact, far more numerous than us. It makes me quake and weep as I hold on to this enormous being, because I know I’ve just acted to save some lives. Despite Haesha’s reassurances, I feel I should have done so earlier.

  Two-thirds of my crew died because I wanted nothing more than to find my sister. Now they will be sisters and daughters no more, nor mothers either. But that, I vow to myself, is done. Maesi is found or, rather, permanently and definitively lost. Now I will not let a single member of my crew die before I die first. Let the fire demon strike me down if she wishes. Or let her prove not to be a demon at all. I embrace it either way. I am a leaf on the wind of Shoawei, and I will rest wherever and whenever she finds it fit.

  * * *

  —

  Fintan switched from Koesha to the armored version of himself that he used whenever he was going to tell his own tale.

  The very nature of my kenning means that every single day of my life is a historical event. I’m incapable of forgetting my personal history even if I desperately want to. All too often I want to, very much. But I have no qualms about remembering that particular day in every detail, for it was one of the few days that should live on forever. It was the day that the people of Joabei met the six nations of Teldwen, even if we were not all present at the meeting.

  It was a bit scary at first, because they reacted badly to Olet’s use of the First Kenning, and I was nearly caught between their long knives—not quite long enough to be called swords but longer than your typical daggers—and the Hathrim axes and Olet’s flaming sword.

  Koesha had indicated to me that she possessed the Second Kenning, but I didn’t know if she was a tempest or something lesser, like a cyclone. If she was either of those, she might have given Olet a challenge, using her mastery of air to snuff out the flames and perhaps even bring Olet to her knees by robbing her of breath. Luckily, neither she nor Olet wanted a fight, and Koesha did exactly what she needed to do to de-escalate the situation.

  The same could not be said for Halsten Durik or Lanner Burgan, the two former houndsmen of Gorin Mogen who had tattoos of Mount Thayil on their heads. While I was smiling and learning the names of the Joabeian crew, they were insisting that the shipwrecked crew be told to move on, because they were not welcome. They thought they had the authority to determine that, since during the journey here they’d managed to get elected to the nine-member city council, along with one other of their ilk with the same tattoo. I was beginning to think of them as Thayilists, not just because of the tattoos but because their politics were tied to a way of life that had exploded. They represented a mindset among a block of Mogen’s people that was forged elsewhere in wildly different circumstances, and they were not adapting to the new situation well. In Harthrad—as elsewhere in Hathrir—resources were scarce and rationed, and the population was strictly controlled because giants required a lot of resources to keep going. That meant that every new mouth to feed was taking food from the rest of the population, and it’s why Mogen’s people knew they wouldn’t be welcome in other Hathrim cities. And we were in a situation where we probably had a severe winter ahead of us, with limited resources and no way to trade until the summer.

  I understood where they were coming from, but I was disappointed that they didn’t have more empathy for the shipwrecked sailors. The Joabeian situation, after all, was little different from the eruption of Mount Thayil—worse, in fact, since Koesha and company were cast ashore without any resources at all apart from their knives. Plus, they didn’t choose to come here, unlike the Hathrim, who chose to invade Ghurana Nent.

  Yet the Thayilists behaved as if the Joabeians had come here expressly to steal their food and their rights and that, furthermore, we were here first—by, like, a half hour, perhaps—and so the shipwrecked people didn’t have the right to be here, and I nearly tore my hair out listening to that. After the Joabeians were settled with fires and spare tents and some food for the night, the council discussed—or, rather, argued—what to do, since it was rather unexpected and our resources were limited. Abhi, thankfully, spoke up in response to Halsten Durik’s motion that the Joabeians be given a week’s provisions and told to move on. It would be best for everyone, Halsten said, because a week’s food for thirty extra people we could absorb, but not a winter’s worth. Abhi wasn’t on the council and hadn’t deigned to speak before, but no one objected to the plaguebringer making a comment.

  “Thanks,” he said, nodding to the council members seated nearby. “Very quickly: I find it remarkable that the same people who purposely came to Ghurana Nent to take advantage of its resources in a supposed life-or-death situation are now objecting to someone else accidentally coming to Ghurana Nent in a truly life-or-death situation. I think it’s unkind and would
urge those people to discard the hypocrisy they’re wearing and cover themselves with a scrap of generosity and goodwill instead. That is all.”

  Not a single Nentian could have been persuaded to vote against the Joabeians after that, and the Hathrim on the council knew it. They howled a bit about how that was an unfair characterization and he’d misrepresented their position, but when it came time for them to vote, they didn’t want to go on record voting against basic decency. The council voted to do the obvious thing and welcome the crew to join us, and Olet, the elected steward, heartily approved.

  But I could tell the Thayilists weren’t done. They weren’t chastened by Abhi’s speech or the vote so much as aware that they had made a tactical error. They still wanted to hoard everything and share nothing but realized they’d have to achieve their goals some other way. I asked Olet if I might have a word.

  “Is this council business?” she asked, her voice tired. It had been an exhausting day and it seemed like everyone wanted a word.

  “It’s about security,” I replied, which was more Olet’s purview as steward. She sighed.

  “All right, come on to my tent, but let’s be quick. La Mastik, will you stand outside and handle what you can?”

  “Of course.”

  Olet’s tent was a huge thing, like all the Hathrim tents were. She had to duck to get inside, but for me it had a high ceiling and I could walk in upright.

  “What is it?” she asked, once she’d crashed to the ground, folded her long legs in front of her, and taken a swig from a drinking horn.

  “If the Thayilist faction is still determined to get the shipwrecked crew out of here, they’ll try picking a fight next. Regardless of how it plays out, they’ll paint the newcomers as violent and dangerous and unable to live among civilized people. They’ll do it over and over and try to sway public opinion over time if they can’t do it all at once. So I just wanted to mention that, in case you hadn’t already thought of it.”