Omok sank under the weight of the unused smoke. He and Lili had the only thing the clan could sell to the gators, and now he’d soured even that.
“The fish-brain wanderers, did they have food?” Mamman asked. “What would they pay us for a warning? For a morning fog under which to quick-flee?”
“Oh, no,” said Lili. “I mean yes, they had sacks and barrels in a broken-wheel wagon, but it is death to help them. Fog or fresh air, Grakka’s pod will end these farrow. If they are warned, the end will come under sunlight, and Grakka will know it was us, and I so very not-want what follows that.”
Omok nodded, and then he had a dangerous, clever, silly idea.
“Mamman,” he said, his stomach growling at the thought of a winter foraging through swamp duff for food. “Uncle Tin could easy-switch a new wheel, could do it with closed eyes even. If we leave swift-quick, with our very best sneak, we could take the wagon in the dark, ahead of Grakka-Bokor’s attack.”
Mamman’s frown became a smile, which spread all the way to her flattened ears. “Greedy-dumb Omok thinks like running water now.” She pointed at the heavy tank on his back. “Trade with Lili. You, Omok, take the nozzle, and soft-step as our sneaky first-feet.” She drew a long, oiled knife and spun it deftly in her gnarled hands. “The family will follow.”
A sliver of Calder hung in the sky, plenty of light for Omok and the clan to see but too dim for most other two-legged folk. He twisted the nozzle, teasing the flow forward. In battle there was never this caution, only the full hiss of a rushing cloud. Now, though, the fog needed to spread silently. He swept the nozzle to his left and right, giving it another twist for a longer throw. The nozzle cooled under his hand as the mixing liquids of his family’s secret formula drew in heat and expanded into a heavy fog that slowly rolled toward the farrow camp. It was a dense, yet shallow cloud that would allow in some moonlight from above by which to work but would fully screen the gobbers from the dim-sighted farrow on the ground.
“Too slow,” whispered Lili in a voice so low it might have been wind.
“Haste is noisy,” he whispered back. “We wait.”
He relaxed into the sweeping rhythm and the gentle billowing of the smoke.
After a thousand heartbeats, his hands were numb under the cold nozzle, and fog enveloped the farrow camp.
“Done waiting,” Omok said, cutting the flow and handing the nozzle back to Lili. He padded forward, eyes wide, feet silent. His fog was perfect, shifting in thick patches to further confuse the eyes. It blanketed the sleeping farrow in their bristle-stinky heaps, and it pooled heavily around the wagon, which had a log propped under the axle of the broken front wheel. That would save Uncle Tin some time.
A chuffing sound stopped Omok, and he crouched motionless. Beyond the wagon a large, scarred farrow stood watch, leaning heavily against a tree. His pole-cleaver sat loosely in the crook of his arm, and his hand was tucked into his belt. The dumb-tired fool was standing watch asleep on his feet.
Omok padded back to Lili and the others. “A guard sleep-stands against a tree. The rest are pig-piled on bedrolls. We go.”
The clan followed Omok back to the wagon, their footfalls whisper-quiet on the loam. Uncle Tin rolled a replacement wheel with one hand and carried a pail of heavy grease in the other. He wore his belt of black tools painted in tar for sneaky work. With the grease, Uncle Tin could quiet the wagon when it was repaired.
There was the chuffing sound again. Omok stopped in place, stock-still and silent.
“That’s not a snore-snort,” said Lili, pointing to the guard.
Omok closed his eyes and tugged on his ears. The sound came from below and behind the useless guard. Stupid-hurry dumb-greedy cocky!
“Bristle-boar is awake,” he said. “Staked to drink from the water, that way. No noise, no riling. Fog muddies our scent.” He turned to Uncle Tin. “Silent hurry, still safe.”
Uncle Tin began the repair, making it look even easier than Omok thought it would be. The tarred tools were whisper-silent, except for a single thump as Tin drove the cotter pin into place at the end.
It was one thump too many. The farrow against the tree stirred and then opened his eyes wide against the fog. Blind, surely, but if he raised an alarm they were lost.
Mamman-Shiha was already behind the waking guard. Omok watched helplessly. Even if she killed him quietly, his body might show signs that the clan had been here, signs Grakka might read.
The guard went limp and collapsed. Mamman-Shiha leapt forward as he fell and caught his polearm as it dropped. She flashed Omok a wide, wicked grin, laid the farrow’s big weapon on the ground, and held up a dart.
“Sleepy guard will wake in time to meet hungry Grakka.”
Omok let out the breath he’d been holding.
“Ugly-clunk wagon,” cursed Tin. “Heavy and stuck. Can’t pull.”
Omok and Mamman-Shiha slipped back to the wagon where the others had gathered. The wagon held a full winter’s worth of food, probably stolen on its way to a war somewhere else. Loaded like this, it was more than the clan could pull.
But not more than a heavy-strong all-fours bristle-boar could pull.
Omok hopped up into the wagon and grabbed a sack of onions.
“Omok,” said Mamman-Shiha, “what silly-smart thing just sprouted between your ears?”
“Fish-brained and clever-silly,” said Omok, holding an onion. “If bristle-boar likes sweet onions, it may pull,” Omok said.
The yoked bristle-boar pulled enthusiastically, ever-chasing, never-catching the onion that Omok dangled in front of it. Lili and Omok’s cousins scrambled back and forth behind the wagon, masking the churned ground of their passing and collecting the bristle-boar’s scat.
As the sky brightened Omok heard the sounds of a noisy fight-meal in the distance—roaring and screaming. No prisoners, not with Grakka’s pod.
“Greedy gatormen won’t miss onions and apples,” said Mamman from her seat next to Omok. “Grakka feasts on farrow.”
“All but our onion-craving, hungry hero,” said Omok, bouncing the onion in front of the massive, yoked bristle-boar.
“Omok, friend-to-animals, can build our hero a house in the village,” said Mamman with a wry smile. “A smoke-house.”
Omok smiled back. He liked the bristle-boar, but he liked bacon better.
A HERO’S END
By Aeryn Rudel
Primus Xicus’ swords had become part of him, extensions of his will made manifest in twin arcs of glittering steel. The Iosans, the toksaa, could not stop him; they could only die, falling in plumes of crimson beneath the scything sweep of his blades. He would not let his own wounds hinder him: a shattered bone in his right leg, a piece of broken blade transfixing a lung, and a gash in his abdomen through which a single loop of pink intestine protruded. Hoksune demanded that he fight until his body simply would not allow him to go on.
The battle had largely moved past him, and he fought the last of his enemies on a field soaked with blood and strewn with skorne and Iosan corpses. He and his brother Praetorians had battled their foes until only he and one final enemy remained. The Iosan leader was splattered with gore, his white armor nearly as red as Xicus’ own. The toksaa officer was skilled and precise, and he had deftly cut down many skorne with a great two-handed sword. He was a worthy opponent, and Xicus stepped forward to face him.
The Iosan brought his sword down in a low guard, hilt at his belly and four feet of steel projecting forward. It was the proper defensive stance against an opponent armed with shorter weapons. Xicus nodded and advanced, gritting his teeth against the pain that suddenly settled into his flesh now that the rush from fighting had ebbed. His body was remembering its wounds, reminding him that death was imminent. He had no time to spar with this Iosan. His strength was waning, and it would fail long before he could penetrate this enemy’s defenses.
/> Xicus charged, throwing a high cut with his right blade and a rising low cut with his left. The Iosan grimaced and took a single step back, just out of reach of the high cut, then flicked his sword out as Xicus quickly shuffle-stepped forward to bring the low strike into range. Their blades came together with the ring of steel on steel, the sound rebounding upon the great wall of the elven fortress behind them—the wall his supreme archdomina had cracked open, the wall that could not hold back the great Army of the Western Reaches.
He and the Iosan were close to one another now, and Xicus saw in his opponent’s eyes grim determination, anger, and, behind it all, fear. The Iosan feared the end; he feared death. In this, Xicus had already defeated him. To die in battle was the very heart of hoksune, the warrior’s code. There was no better death and no other way to cheat the Void awaiting all skorne souls. Xicus had no fear, only the hope he would be deemed worthy to join the exalted and his soul would be preserved.
Xicus took a step back, ducking under the Iosan’s return stroke. His blades had become heavy, and he felt cold creeping from the great gash in his belly and spreading to his arms and legs. He staggered backward, and his right leg buckled beneath him. The Iosan, sensing his advantage, lunged, and Xicus lurched forward to meet him. The Iosan’s blade punctured Xicus’ breastplate, and he accepted his enemy’s weapon into his body, trapping it there within the prison of his own flesh and bone. Realizing too late that his skewering thrust would not kill his foe immediately, the Iosan tried to yank the weapon free. Xicus pushed toward his enemy, sliding along the blade that impaled him, riding a final surge of adrenaline that gave him the strength to bring both his swords up, slashing. The Iosan’s head came away from his neck, splashing Xicus’ face with wet, red warmth. Headless, the Iosan toppled to the ground, leaving his blade jutting from Xicus’ chest like a great silver fang.
Xicus sagged to his knees, strength and vitality fleeing his battered flesh. His vision grew cloudy, but he saw Makeda, her banners flapping in the wind, leading hundreds of skorne warriors through the breach in the enemy wall. Tears stung his eyes at the sight of what he had helped create: conquest in a new land.
He fell over backward, and the point of the Iosan’s blade dug into the earth, pinning him to what would be his last battlefield. His vision shrank, the edges of the world hemming in until he looked down a long, narrow tunnel. His mind faded, spiraling toward darkness, and he wondered distantly if the Void was simply a state of not being, an unending nothingness.
The blackness grew, and he realized someone stood over him casting a long shadow across his body. Xicus closed his eyes as he accepted the end, but before the nothingness swallowed him completely, he saw a black sky glittering with a field of crimson stars.
There was no way to measure time within the comfort and peace of a sacral stone. His voice was one of many that existed alongside the great spirit of the ancestral guardian, a skorne hero who had died many centuries earlier and who had been awakened at the behest of the supreme archdomina. There were other voices too, fragments of thoughts and emotions from others like himself, those deemed worthy enough to be rescued from the Void for deeds of martial renown.
Now Xicus was awake, and he could no longer hear the voices of the others. He could hear only the extoller standing before him. The skorne mystic stared at him with one eye of flesh and blood and another of cold stone—the crystal oculus that could see into the spirit world. Behind the extoller were blocks of black stone upon which skorne workers toiled with hammer and chisel. One of the blocks resembled a massive stone warrior.
“You are Xicus of House Zhuron,” the extoller said, his occulus flashing with silver light, “once of the Praetorian caste.”
“I am . . . Xicus.” The sound of his voice was deep, resonant, and alien. The name held no meaning to him; it was simply a word, an echo of something he might once have been.
“Take up your weapon, Xicus,” the extoller said and gestured at a great sword of black stone leaning against an unworked block of the same substance. The mystic’s crystal eye glowed silver again, and Xicus found the radiance oddly compelling.
Xicus took a step. The sound was that of a mallet striking a boulder, and his movements, though slow, felt inexorable and full of purpose. He walked the few short paces and grasped the massive blade by its hilt. He knew it weighed as much as an armored skorne warrior, but to him it was light and well balanced, as a good sword should be.
The extoller moved past him and opened a set of broad double doors. Harsh sunlight streamed in, but it did not blind Xicus. He saw the shining desert beyond and the glaring sun beating down, but all was diffused, muted, as if he were viewing the world through a thin shroud. It looked like his homeland, but Xicus knew it could not be.
“Join your brothers, Xicus,” the extoller said. “Go forth and fight again. Your supreme archdomina has need of you.”
Xicus stepped through the doors and out onto a huge field of baked earth. He glanced around and saw the walls of a great fortress rising behind him. Ahead, rank upon rank of motionless black figures waited, their stone bodies silent and terrible, their hands grasping great swords—like his own, each ready and sharp. As one, the immortals turned to face their newest brother, and Xicus heard their mental voices, the welcoming susurrus of pride, purpose, and strength.
He saw before him a field of heroes, and he went to stand among them.
FAILURE TO IMPRESS
By Douglas Seacat
Approaching Bottomton, Ordic Coast, 608 AR
Kiel gripped the railing with what little strength remained to him as the deck swayed mercilessly beneath his feet. It was a motion he should have been accustomed to after more than a month at sea, but his body refused to adapt. His eyes swam, his head spun, and he felt his stomach clench as it tried to eject what wasn’t there. He retched and tasted blood. He was weak from hunger and dehydration, and his mouth and throat were raw.
This particular rail had become very familiar to him, something of an old friend—his only friend, it seemed. As the nausea faded somewhat, he became aware of several people talking nearby, not bothering to lower their voices.
“He be the worst maggot we ever brought aboard. A cursed day, the day we found him.”
Kiel glanced behind him and saw several experienced sea dogs glowering in his direction. He was used to stares from passing sailors as he was retching off the rails, but this hostile gathering was new. The current speaker was a particularly large and ornery pirate named Bloodeye, a man prone to the kind of heavy drinking that led to days of angry hangovers. His eyes were as red and inflamed as his name suggested.
“We’re almost to Bottomton,” said Whiskers-Jim, a short, lean pirate with an oiled moustache. “I say push him into the deep before we get there. Save us the trouble of chasing him down after we make landfall.”
Bloodeye grinned in a way Kiel didn’t like at all and said, “Should have thrown him over weeks ago.”
A pudgy sailor called Waddle said, “Now, now. Shae don’t take kindly to drowning lubbers. We can probably get a bit of coin for him somewhere. At least make something for our trouble.”
Whiskers-Jim sucked a tooth. “Too bad we’re not headed to Blackwater. Could sell him for necrotechs’ meat. Not that he’s much more than skin and bone.”
“I heard Doc knows someone in Bottomton might pay for a live body,” said Waddle. “Apothecary up past the Choke needs someone to test his mixtures on, see what’s poison and what’s not. Bet he’d pay a few gold to keep ol’ Waterspout here chained up in the basement.”
Kiel couldn’t tell if they were serious or just trying to scare him, but they didn’t seem to be joking.
“Doc might use him for a bit o’ butchery practice,” Bloodeye said with another fiendish grin. “Course, then he’d wind up in the stew.” He said this last with a grimace.
Bloodeye’s disgust actually hurt Kiel’s feelings�
��now he wasn’t even good enough to be supper? “I didn’t even want to be a sailor!” he protested, but his raspy wail only prompted laughter from the pirates.
It had all started when he made the mistake of getting drunk at a dockside tavern in Clockers Cove, near the warehouse that employed him as a clerk. He’d known the tavern to be a rough establishment, full of dangerous sailors from ports unknown. Locals gave the place a wide berth, but he had been feeling adventurous and in need of diversion. He had woken with a splitting headache on the deck of the pirate ship Talion, already under full steam in open water. Seasickness was to become his constant companion, a brief and unpleasant reprieve from the floggings he received for failing to do the work required of him. He had discovered that many of the veteran sea dogs had gotten their start by being kidnapped and pressed into service, though all had adapted faster and better than he.
Whiskers-Jim stopped laughing. “I was there, you liar!” he said. “You bragged you’d been sailing since you were a lad. Went on about all the ports you’d seen. Even talked Bloodeye into buying you an ale!”
The truth was Kiel couldn’t remember a single thing from that night. “I was drunk!” he protested, still clutching the rail. “I counted boxes at Hornsby Shipping. I’d never even been on a boat that wasn’t docked. I’m no pirate.”
“Well, that’s plain enough now,” Bloodeye said. To his companions he added, “No one’s going to miss him, either way. Let’s put him over the side.”
As Bloodeye stepped toward him, Kiel could do nothing but tremble and hold onto the rail. There was nowhere to run, even if he’d had the strength.
A calm voice spoke up from behind the gathered sea dogs. “Bloodeye, leave him to me.”
Iron Kingdoms Excursions: Season One Collection Page 2
