by Adam Golden
A great whooshing gasp of breath swept from his lungs as the Red Cloak turned in a flourish of velvet and glided away.
Sabas watched until the crimson specter vanished below deck, then turned stiffly and bent to the next bundle. When this one splashed into the sea he didn’t pray. He sighed longingly. That little bundle had suffered, but now its suffering was over, and him? He pretended that he hadn’t seen what he had as the Cloak receded, pretended he’d never seen the long midnight smear of shadow that trailed behind the sorcerer, never saw how it pulsed, or it’s strange slithering movements. As the red specter vanished below the deck, Sabas shuddered, he could have sworn that unnatural shadow had . . . horns.
Paths Dim and Dangerous
“Wait, there!” The words came in a sharp hiss and Nauja froze. Nuniq was a surly and troublesome old man, but he was also the best seal tracker in the tribe. If he said there was game nearby, there was. Nauja awaited, barely letting himself breath. If the seal they were stalking caught any sign of them it would slip into one of a hundred cracks or breathing holes in the glacier and be gone. It could be hours before they came upon another, if they did at all.
The twilight just before dawn was a good time for hunting, it limited the animal’s sight, but it did the same for the hunters, and Nauja saw nothing but flat featureless ice before him. His eyes were sharp slits, nearly closed against the biting arctic wind on the glacier. The snows were holding off, but that wouldn’t last long. The whole tribe was out scouring the glaciers for the last kills they’d be able to take before the hard freezes and heavy snows trapped them in their tents for weeks. Nauja needed this kill. He’d let the last one slip away and he wouldn’t bare Nuniq’s derisive snort again.
The movement came out of nowhere, as if the elusive creature had manifested out of the ice itself. It was a large bull. A great prize. Excitement made the young hunter’s blood pound in his ears. The caribou mittens he wore made pulling the arrow that was nocked on his bow string tricky, but he’d spent long seasons in practice before the elders gave him the nod to join the hunt. The arrow went back smoothly and he let out a long slow breath to steady himself before he released.
The triangular bone head of the arrow took the big animal in the neck just below its head. A perfect shot! Najua was flush with pride and excitement before the acerbic bark of Nuniq raked over him.
“Get it, fool!” the old man barked.
Najua started.
The animal was still alive. A wave of high panicked barks burst from the bleeding creature as it raced for one of the cracks in the ice.
The boy blundered to his feet, pulling his harpoon after him, and raced toward the struggling animal. The shaft of the weapon slipped on his heavy mittens. The ice seemed to pull at his boots, but finally Najua had his balance and his harpoon settled. He set his body as his father and Naniq had taught him, aimed carefully for the spot beside his arrow on the neck, and thrust.
The animal screamed and flailed, struggling against his hold.
Nanjua almost lost hold of his harpoon. He drove the weapon deeper and set his weight against it. He struggled against the seal’s strength until it began to slow and weaken. The young hunter pulled back his weapon and went to his knees, offering a silent prayer of thanks to the spirit of the animal before he set about working his arrow free of its neck.
“See that, Old One?” he called, laughing. “Not such a fool after all, eh?”
He wiped the blood from his arrow on the creature’s pelt and placed it in the hide quiver at his side. The Tunit elder hadn’t responded.
Probably sour because I actually managed it, the boy thought
“Naniq . . .” he started as he came to his feet and turned.
The old hunter stood at the edge of the glacier, leaning on his harpoon and staring out into the sea. He didn’t move or speak, but there was something troubling in his posture. Something that spoke of tension and alarm.
The boy gathered his harpoon and went toward the elder. Naniq didn’t get alarmed.
Dozens of long narrow boats dotted the black frigid waters below. Not the hide canoes and kyaks of the people, but strange constructions of wood, each with many long oars sticking out the sides. There was more wood in those boats than Najua could credit. He’d never seen enough trees to make that many boats. Who could they be? Another tribe? There were no other tribes here. That was why the Tunit had come here generations ago, to escape the raiding and petty fighting of the tribes to the west.
Najua turned to ask his mentor a question and saw that the old hunter wasn’t looking at the boats still coming toward the shore. He was looking at the other glaciers in the field. The boy followed the older man’s eyes and gasped. The people!
—
The landing boats scraped against the thick frost this damned place seemed to be made of and didn’t even cut ruts. Frost and rock and wind that would shear flesh from bone, so far that was all they’d seen in this monstrous island they’d been herded to. That and a handful of half-frozen savages with bone spears and stone arrows. Two score of the savages stood clustered inside a ring of archers, while the rest of the boat crews surveyed their surroundings. To a man, every one of the raiders felt as desolate as the frozen rock they stood upon.
“Fires!” one of the boat leaders called.
“With what?” one of the other’s scoffed. “You see any trees about? Maybe you got some coal hidden in yer arse?”
That earned a few cheerless chuckles from some of the others, most didn’t even have that much humor left. They just looked on, waiting for the next nightmare to befall the men of Belsnickel’s collegium, or the Red Cloak’s, or whatever it was they were now.
“You open yer mouth to me again and we’ll use yer broken corpse fer kindling!” the boat leader snarled.
The heckler’s cloth wrapped hands held knives before the boat leader had taken two steps toward him. Those men around them with enough life left to relish a fight crowded in, calling encouragement or abuse and shoving at each other. Once, not all that long ago, violence among the crew had been all but unheard of. Now tensions were high, tempers were short, and murder was the end result of many a sharp word or an imagined slight.
“Burn the boats.”
The words were calm, even soft, yet they echoed in a sudden stillness that even the howling of the wind had fallen away before.
The Red Cloak stood a bare step above the waterline, completely dry, without sign of a boat or any hint of how he had come to be there. His fur-rimmed hood was thrown back about his shoulders for the first time any of them had seen. Most averted their eyes without thinking, but those few who didn’t saw that he never even glanced at them. His head was turned to face the cringing knot of prisoners, his brow creased with something like confusion.
Some of the men looked to the man who’d been their leader, hoping for some sign of the man’s old spirit. The looked in vain. Belsnickel stood a half pace behind the Red Cloak, calf deep in the frigid water, and seemingly immune to the biting cold. His face was the same pale mask of frozen emptiness it always had been in the weeks since the Red Cloak’s curse had fallen upon them all.
“Choose out three boats,” the crimson devil commanded, never turning his gaze from whatever it was he was seeing. “Break them down and build fires. Light the torches we’ve brought, spread them out and post sentries. It seems we’re not alone here.”
The boat leaders began barking instructions and, fired by their fear of the sorcerer and their desire to be doing anything but looking at him, the boat crews set to their tasks with a will.
“Beggin’ yer pardon sir,” one of the boat leaders asked once his men were about their tasks, “but what ya want us to do with that lot?” he gestured to the group of skin-clad natives inside their pen of archers.
The Red Cloak’s eyes swept over the pirate and the man cringed backward. “I’ll see to them.”
The pirate officer nodded hurriedly as he all but scurried away to find some task, any t
ask, to do.
—
Najua staggered through snow and frost, gulping air as fast as his lungs would take it. His movements were jerky and stiff. The sweat that poured out of his exhausted body soaked into his clothing and froze instantly, making the hide garments hard as armor and just as difficult to move in. His harpoon and bow were gone. Everything was gone . . .
Naniq.
The boy tried not to see the old man’s face again. The stern mask that had been there his whole life gone, replaced by worry for him and something he didn’t know the old man was capable of . . . fear. “Go, get to the people, warn them!” He’d shoved Najua into the skin kayak and pushed the small boat off from the glacier before the younger man could say a thing.
Najua wished that had been the end of it, wished he hadn’t looked back to see the old hunter accosted by a pair of the pale strangers from the wooden boats. Naniq’s challenge was a bellow worthy of a polar bear. Najua felt hot tears of pride as his teacher’s harpoon lanced out at one of the invaders. Those tears turned to anguish as the foreigners batted the weapon aside with long knives of gleaming metal and cut the old man down. The boy could do nothing but watch, sobbing as they kicked his old friend’s headless corpse off the side of the glacier.
Najua forced the memory away. The old man had died so he could get away, so that the people could be warned. Naniq had said it had to be him that went, him that lived. He’d been right. Najua knew it and hated the truth of it. The people needed to be warned, needed to flee, and they would need him.
Najua was an average hunter at best, a poor fisherman, and had no hand at all with the making of tools or the stretching of hide for kayak, but he had a gift more valuable than any of those. Najua was Angakok, the intermediary between his people and the spirit world, or he would be once his apprenticeship was ended. His ties to the spirits were strong, all of the elders said so. He felt the weather more strongly than any other, his predictions about the movement of caribou herds were always correct, and his amulets always drew away troublesome spirits. These strange invaders would mean trouble for the people, and they would need his skills.
He searched the grey murk of the late morning sky for any hint of the sun’s pale orb to orient himself. The tents had to be close now. Any moment the orderly sprawl of low hide roofs, and walls reinforced with thick berms of hard packed snow would come into view. His ears would find the chaotic bustle of the thousand tasks of the village any moment: women gossiping as they melted snow for the day’s water or singing softly as they scraped hides to turn into clothing, children screaming their shrill joy as they ran among the tents with sticks or bits of bone playing at being mighty hunters, or any of the thousand other sounds of life among the tents. He even tested the air for the thick smoky scent of the drying racks where old men and young boys would be curing meat for the coming winter.
Najua didn’t understand. He’d been walking for what must have been an hour after leaving his kayak. His direction was correct. He was sure. He must be close, and yet he couldn’t detect any sign of the village. It should be here!
Perhaps the invader . . .
But no, that made no sense. Even if they’d beaten him to the village and destroyed it there would be wreckage, some sign would have to remain, wouldn’t it? Just as unlikely was the idea that his tribe had somehow received news of the invasion and fled. The people hadn’t moved any significant distance in generations, the village could not be uprooted easily or quickly, and to do so without a trace? No. This made no sense.
The young shaman felt panic welling inside him. The people had to be warned, and beyond that he couldn’t wander the frozen wilds aimlessly forever. He had no food, no water, and the season of storms was upon them. No hunter in the tribe could survive without supplies or tools in the teeth of winter.
But you’re not just a hunter, you are Angakok.
The thought was as overly prideful as it was pointless, a spiritwalker was no better equipped to survive a storm than any other man. Najua gasped, a smile bloomed across his wide, plain face. He was a spiritwalker! Perhaps he could not find the village in the solid world, but he knew he’d be able to find spirits of the people in the unseen world. He would not be limited by his body there. If any of the people still lived, their spirits would glow like signal fires to him on the ethereal plain.
The young shaman trekked on until he found a low hillock, and painstakingly dug himself into the frozen ground. It wasn’t much of a shield from the wind, but it would do. Slowly he began the exercises he’d been taught to calm his mind and allow passage into the sky kingdom. The conditions were far from ideal, but much of his training had been devoted to creating the right mental conditions under any number of scenarios. At least this time he wasn’t hanging upside down or sitting in the freezing sea.
Najua pulled in a deep breath and let it bleed out as he started chanting the secret tongue of the spiritwalkers. It could take some time to find the right energy.
Najua opened his eyes on the spirit world with some surprise. He’d never achieved what his tutors called ‘stillness’ so quickly. The sky kingdom spread itself around him with its waves of brilliant color. A thousand cascading hues of purple, orange, rose, blue, and crimson shimmered and rolled everywhere he looked. He’d often seen people looking on the aurora that rolled across the winter sky with awe. He wondered if they’d believe that those wondrous lights were but a weak reflection, a pale bleed-through of the unseen world. Probably not.
The young spiritwalker cut the thought off with some irritation at himself. There was important work afoot, and his body was out in the elements without even a fire to warm it. He needed to be about his task. The eyes of his spirit form closed as he willed himself toward the spirits of his people. There was no sense of movement exactly, but there was a sort of jerk as he settled or as the sky kingdom settled around him. He wasn’t sure which, and the elders just smiled when he asked. He supposed they didn’t know either. He opened his spirit eyes and started backward. He wasn’t among the spirits of the people. He wasn’t anywhere he knew. The light airy freedom of the sky kingdom, with its brilliant fans of ever-changing color, were gone. Wherever he was now was different. It was thick and heavy. This was not any of the spirit domains he’d been taught about. The substance of the place was a mottled black and putrid green that clung to Najua’s spirit form like tree sap. He felt dirty, polluted by it.
“Unpleasant, isn’t it?”
The voice would have made the young Shaman jump out of his skin, if he’d had skin in this place. As it was, his ethereal form leapt like a doused cat. He didn’t exactly land, since there wasn’t any ground to speak of in this strange place, but he did seem to settle. Once he had, Najua found himself faced by a white haired bearded elder in the finest crimson red cloak he’d ever seen.
“Did I startle you?” the old man asked.
His face mimed concern, but there was no hint of apology in his voice, in fact, there was something snarling, almost predatory behind it. Wolfish. Could this strange man be Tuurngait? The elders said the animal guides, often adopted, human-like forms when they appeared. Najua had never been visited before, but somehow, he’d expected the animal spirits of his people to be . . .different.
“Greetings, tuurngaq,” he said in a voice that sounded pompous even to him. “I am Najua, Angakok of the Tunit. I come seeking the guidance of the spirits in locating my people. I would be grateful of your assistance.”
The man-wolf, if that was truly what he was, smiled a smile that seemed too wide, too full of teeth, and not the slightest bit friendly.
“It is possible,” the strange, ominous man-creature said in a light, offhand way, “that we might be able to help each other. I too seek something in this place, and I’m sure a powerful . . . Angakok such as yourself would be able to help me find it.”
Najua was uneasy, all of his instruction said that the ways of the tuurngait were strange to men, but that they were to be trusted and heeded, that was the Ang
akok’s path to power and wisdom. Yet every instinct in him said this creature was false and dark. Perhaps . . . perhaps this was not a tuurngaq? The old stories told of the trickster, the wolf god Amaguq, who led the foolish to their doom. Could this be he? Najua didn’t know how long could he afford to doubt and debate. That strange tribe could be on their way to The People now.
“I will help you as I may, tuurngaq,” he said after a pause. “Please, guide me to the people, danger threatens and time is short.”
The spirit guide studied him with that condescending, amused look again and then nodded lazily.
“Very well, little shaman,” he finally said, “we will speak as we travel. Come.”
Without any warning, the portly figure streaked away at incredible speed. Zigzagging through the thick mottled sludge of this strange world like a lightning bolt. Njaua gaped, stunned for a moment, and then willed himself to move. Moving through the whatever-this-was of this place was like dragging a boulder underwater, but he found he could make himself race like the tuurngaq so long as he kept his concentration firm and absolute on the task.
“Good!” the voice of the tuurngaq exclaimed with a sort of jovial teasing jab. “You are a strong one, aren’t you? But are you attentive to your studies, young magician? What can you tell me of the lore of the lands to the north?”
