by Chris Sharp
Practical thought. Sure action. No reluctance or remorse. Agnes’s repetitive nagging came back to him. He had no notion of how far the Rock Wolf Clan was from here, but he had to assume that word of his presence had been delivered. The only option was to cross the river and gain distance from the noses of the wolves that would come. He knew what he had to do. Instead, he closed his eyes and slept.
THREE: Crossing Over
DINGLE WAS MARCHED past the stockade wall of sharpened tree trunks with a hulking guard on each side of him. One of them stood three times his height and carried a great curving scimitar. The other resembled a fat angry toad and fondled a hatchet. The diminutive goblin scout had never been within the inner stockade of the clan, and was fast becoming convinced that he would soon feel the bite of one or both of those weapons.
He’d always been a bad scout and a craven warrior, more interested in the history of the clan than its future; more adept at writing his observations of the wide Rock Wolf territory than relaying it to his superiors on command. Given the choice, he would happily abandon speaking altogether for a thick stack of paper and something to write with. He’d always fantasized about becoming one of the hex doktors with their charms and symbols—they got to use paper, but Dingle lacked the aptitude for magick along with everything else.
The guards led him to the towering double doors of the great hall, and the squat escort banged on the heavy wood with the handle of his hatchet. Dingle could hear the crossbeam unhitch and slide from the other side before the doors creaked open to reveal the vast hall within. The tall guard nudged him forward with an ungentle knee to the back, and Dingle’s little legs started working again. He realized where he was. He hadn’t just been called to report what he’d seen to the Big Boss of the Rock Wolf scouts, as he’d expected, but to the Khan of the clan himself.
There was a wide fire pit in the center of the room, stacked with a pyramid of burning logs and emitting a heavy trail of smoke that climbed toward a hole cut in the roof high above. The two biggest wolves that Dingle had ever seen lifted their heads to watch his approach from the foot of an oversized throne carved into a huge boulder. Stone steps climbed to the towering seat where a broad goblin in a golden wolf pelt lounged with a jug of pine ale. Dingle could feel his bowels threatening to loosen as he walked with a hitch across the length of the hall.
The eyes of guards, warriors, and hex doktors all turned to regard him as he passed, but they turned away with disinterest just as quickly. Dingle had been the last-born runt of a rowdy brood of eight, and even his mother had shown little acknowledgment of his clinging presence. She’d called him Dingle because he was “utterly useless and always hangin’ around.” As he reached the far end of the hall, only the wolves still paid him any heed with an unsettling lick of their panting jaws.
Finally, a goblin not much bigger than himself emerged from behind the throne with an officious sneer and a ledger. He climbed to the first step above the wolves and cleared his throat. “Dingle: wolf rider scout, far territories.”
Dingle was distracted for a moment by the crisp, clean pages of the ledger before he felt the fierce yellow eyes of the Khan upon him. He gulped and bowed, not knowing what else to do.
“Two scouts and two wolves dead, one wolf maimed. Tell us what you saw,” said the impatient Herald.
Dingle struggled to find his words, but they wouldn’t come.
The gruff voice of the Khan himself finally cut the awkward silence. “Do this runtling speak?”
“Mighty Arok Golden Wolf, Chief of the Rock Wolf Clan, King of the Mountain, and Khan of the Goblin Horde is waiting, imp!” shouted the Herald with a nasal whine.
Dingle looked up at the all-powerful Khan once more, but he couldn’t help but notice that as tall as he was atop the massive throne, the beast from the Iron Wood had been taller still. “S-som-som-something big c-ca-came out of the ffforest.” His heart was thundering in his chest, and he could feel the growing promise of violence about the room. He dropped his gaze and closed his eyes, picturing the beast again.
Its face and claws had been stained with blood. Its black beard and hair jutted out in crusty spikes, framing the snarling tusked mouth. For a second, Dingle had glimpsed the black of its eyes—brilliant and feral at the same time. Somehow, remembering it now gave him strength.
“A giant,” he blurted. “M-m-maybe a troll?” Everyone was looking at him. “It-it came from the woods and killed the others in seconds.” His squeaky, grating voice echoed back at him from the vaulted ceiling.
The Khan leaned forward to look down at him. “What?”
“A wwwitch,” Dingle added. “There wwwas a witch at fffirst. We sp-sp-speared her, or the others did; I m-m-missed.” The room rang with laughter, but Dingle sometimes had trouble stopping once he got started. “Agnes, she said. They speared her, and we burned the house, but she wouldn’t die. She asked me to p-p-push her into the fffire, and then it came.”
Chief Arokkhan took a hard pull of the jug and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “So, house, witch, fire, an’ giant—right?”
Dingle could only avert his eyes and nod. “Y-y-yes, my K-K-Khan.”
Arokkhan had an unpleasant reputation for literally biting the heads off enemies and failed underlings alike. Dingle had seen crudely cleaved heads on spikes beside the outer gates before. His mouth was very dry as he fought to swallow.
“Where’s this house?” the Khan asked with a voice that betrayed nothing.
“Base of the m-m-mountain. Little v-valley in the Iron WWWood we hadn’t seen before. Dark place.”
“Find it again,” said the Khan. It wasn’t a question.
“Y-y-yes?” Dingle answered.
Arokkhan turned to his advisor. “Blades an’ Fangs, tonight. Send Groole’s twenty with… this.” He regarded Dingle a last time and turned away in disgust. “If there ain’t a house, a witch, a fire, an’ a giant at the end—hang him by his wrists from a tree, an’ lower him to the wolves real slow.”
SLUD OPENED HIS eyes to the day when a splat of raven shit found his shoulder. He was still slumped against the tree, with a wet puddle of drool collecting on his already filthy shirt. He couldn’t remember what color it had been when Agnes had first made it for him—now it was gray with liberal stains of dark red turning brown.
His neck protested and popped as he lifted his heavy head to examine the white and green splatter from the sky. The offending bird had flown on, but the jar still hung above him, swinging in a rare breeze for this deep crease of the valley. Somehow its presence reminded him of the disapproving scowl of his aunt, unimpressed with his stupidity.
Chagrined, he braced himself to stand, but his elbow knocked into something with a clatter. A large burlap sack fell over beside him. It had been covered with severed branches, so he’d failed to notice it the night before. Aunt Agnes had planned ahead.
The first things he found inside were the wood ax and his favorite cleaver-bladed sword. Below that were a coil of rope; oil, flint, and steel for a fire; a good knife; and a heavy package of cured meats—including the smoked bog-viper from the night before. Slud was starving, and he gnawed on the snake right then and there. Agnes had sliced it open and removed the guts and poison sacs, but left the scales on, just the way he liked it. He took another ragged bite of his chewy prize and pushed his back against the trunk until he was standing.
That was when he heard the first howl of the returning wolves. A blast of a hunting horn sounded, like the one from the day before, but then two others answered from different directions. Move, fool boy! It was like Agnes was still beside him, yelling in his ear. He reached up and snatched the jar from the tree. A note was attached with a string; a message in Agnes’s scrawling hand:
Drink now, then cross the river.
He ripped away the tight leather covering and downed the sludge in one gulp. It was the most noxious muck he’d ever tasted. The jar smashed on the ground as he buckled over with a hard gag. His eyes watere
d and his stomach did somersaults, but he forced himself upright and retrieved the ax from the sack. No time to whine, lad!
The first whack into the trunk of the tree buried the ax head completely. The second took a thick wedge of blond wood from the base. The yips of the wolves drew closer up the path, and Slud swung harder and faster, woodchips flying in every direction. With each strike, the blade bit deeper into the core of the trunk until the balance began tipping toward the river. He hacked once more for good measure as the tall pine tottered, groaned, and then went over.
Slud jumped to the side, snatched the burlap sack out of the way, and watched, mesmerized for a moment by the size and volume of the crash that followed. Jagged splinters of wood tore out of the base beside him as the tree bounced and then finally settled across the river with a violent shake of the earth. Slud was up and running across just as the wolves and riders came into view atop the cascading falls above.
DINGLE HADN’T BEEN sure that he’d be able to find the witch’s house again; he’d realized with a growing sense of dread that he’d forgotten to pay attention to the journey in either direction the day before. When he finally saw the mangled bodies of his companions, he let out a loud yelp of joy that brought some hard stares from the pack of seasoned killers around him.
The house had been completely leveled by the fire, now little more than a smoldering pile of ash on blackened rock. There was no sign of the witch or giant anywhere, until the sharp whacks against a tree echoed from farther down the valley. Dingle followed the others along the well-worn path on his borrowed wolf with a surge of hope that he might live through another day.
Though he couldn’t explain it, when he saw the beast again, sprinting across the newly felled tree in all of its hulking authority, he secretly hoped that the arrows and spears of his fellows would miss. The giant, or whatever it was, leapt to the other bank with the grace of a big cat, and immediately started hacking at the protruding branches with the biggest ax that Dingle had ever seen. It moved so assuredly that the projectiles of the goblins always seemed to target the place where it had just been. In mere moments, as the first wolf and rider mounted the fallen trunk and began to cross, the giant began to heave its bulk against the upper branches, and the huge tree, impossibly, started to move.
As the trunk lurched, the wolf lost its footing and fell into the fast-moving river with a yip and a splash. The other nineteen riders crowded the edge of the bank for a better shot, but none braved the crossing as the giant continued to push. In all his years, Dingle had never seen the proud warriors of the Rock Wolf Clan afraid before, but they could not hide their fear now as the giant ducked an arrow and snarled in their direction.
Dingle spurred his wolf down the rocky ledge as well, though not to be closer to the action. As his fellows continued to volley missiles and insults across the water, Dingle knelt beside the shattered base of the tree and plucked a little piece of fine paper from the roiled earth. He read the note, then slipped the prize into his pocket with care. If he wrote with very small letters, he would, at least for a little while, be able to scribe his thoughts in style rather than on the backside of stripped pieces of bark as was his custom. Then his beady little eyes swung back to the ceramic shards that the note had accompanied. Remnants of a thick sludge were visible on the inside of the shattered jar’s base; it was mud brown with leaf pulp and fungus and heavily speckled with tiny bits of gold throughout.
The giant hacked at the bracing branches again as another wolf rider leapt to the tree to attempt a crossing, but Dingle kept his focus on the jar. He scraped his finger along the inside and gathered what remained. The muck smelled like rotting death with a lump of shit on top, but still, for some reason, he put it on his tongue and swallowed. A violent shudder shot through him and he immediately buckled over, heaving. His eyes felt like they might pop out of his head as he frantically grabbed at leaves, dirt, and anything else he could shovel into his mouth to erase the taste.
His gagging was so loud that some of the other goblins turned around to look, while the giant rammed the crown of the tree with his shoulder. It dislodged from the far bank and tumbled into the river, and in seconds the current dragged the trunk’s cleaved base in after it. More goblins and wolves were caught unmindful of the danger, crushed by the shifting log or knocked from the shore into the water.
Dingle looked up with an odd warming sensation shooting through him—just as the giant made eye contact from the other side. It seemed to be looking right at him with those black, piercing eyes below a heavy shelf of a brow. After years of being ignored by all, it was as if a god had stopped to notice his presence. Dingle knew in that instant that he would follow it anywhere.
As the goblins of the Rock Wolf Clan screamed and flailed, the giant of the Iron Wood disappeared into the gloom of the trees.
THE STRANGE BREEZE continued throughout that day, carried down from the mountain. A delicate rain of dried pine needles fell over the Iron Wood. By the time the light waned, the first real wind in a decade was blowing across the forgotten valley, carrying ashes from Agnes’s hut all the way to the river. The goblins and wolves had long since moved downstream toward the crossing, hoping to intercept the troll’s path on the far side. None saw the shiny, black mound where the cook fire had been—uncovered by the wind, naked and quivering.
Two arms articulated from the mass and stretched out with hooked obsidian claws at the ends of long fingers. The skin, the color of a starless night, was smooth and taut over lean muscle. The head rose next, with long jet-black hair draped across the face as a stretched hook of a nose poked through and sniffed. A group of mountain wolves and goblins, come and gone. Others, dead and rotting at hand.
The nose angled higher and sniffed again, long and slow. The troll was here as well. A ripe male . . . But he went down toward the river, and crossed.
The sloped curve of the mound became a back, with the shoulder blades and ribs visible beneath the skin. A slow exhale blew the hair from her face as she rose. Long, lean legs emerged, and she stood to her new full height. She’d forgotten how good it felt to be young—how tall and powerful her body could be. She wanted to run, and fuck, and kill.
But then her stomach kicked, and she bent back to her former hunch and gritted teeth like needles. She’d also forgotten how hungry her younger self had been, and she opened her black-on-black eyes and swiveled her gaze to the corpses on her charred doorstep. The fur of the wolves would be a problem, but the tenderized goblin would do nicely. Before she knew it, she’d pounced down to the scorched earth at the base of the ruined stairs and taken a big bite out of the split-open head—equal parts bugs and brains. She found that she liked the crunchy bits mingled with the squish and took another bite.
She’d get her strength up first, and then she’d track down Slud like she’d planned. Aunt Agnes was dead, but Black Agnes was born from the flame.
FOUR: Neither-Nor
WHEN SLUD WAS SMALL, Aunt Agnes had told him a story of a bridge being built by the elves to span the river in the foothills at the base of the mountain. In that tale, the elves had finished the structure and bound it against the elements—just before a band of Nine-Claws’ trolls set upon them and killed them to the last. The trolls tried to destroy the bridge, but their flames and axes failed, and they had none of their troll-hags with them to counter the elf charms. Ten thousand elves crossed that bridge soon after to flank the Blood Claw resistance and seal the doom of the troll race.
Everything Slud knew about the world came from that batty hag’s stories. Sometimes he wondered if she’d just made the whole thing up because she was lonely and bored.
What fuckin’ choice do Slud got now? If the bridge was real, the Rock Wolf riders would probably head there to cross. So he’d spent half the morning following the river downhill, and only after the riders had spurred ahead to cut him off had he drifted out of sight and doubled back. He’d been steadily picking up the pace ever since, leaving the howls of the wolves and t
he roar of the river behind.
Now, as Slud bounded up the increasingly steep and rocky terrain, he was surrounded by the noises of a healthy forest—which, after so long in the Iron Wood, seemed to rage with a mad cacophony of life. It was both exhilarating and unsettling.
He was amazed by how vibrant everything seemed. Squirrels skittered away as he approached, and a myriad of different birdcalls sounded above. Once he’d spied the retreating flutter of a troop of sprites through the branches, and, though his stomach rumbled at the sight, he tore another bite of the chewy snake and kept going.
Agnes’s last potion had clearly been laced with a heavy dose of much needed stimulant. Six hours into the climb, Slud approached the first cliff face with his eyes on the top and energy to spare. Without pausing, he latched onto the rock, dug his toe claws into a foothold, and started up. The burlap bag slapped against his back as his other foot found a crack that ran up the wall, and he pushed himself higher. He’d completely forgotten about the shape his feet had been in when he’d woken that morning. At a glance, the red and blistering of the burns seemed to be completely gone, and even the fang holes of the viper had closed up nicely.
Dis potion’s got real kick to it! If only it had come wit’ a betta plan to boot. The mountain was vast, and Slud didn’t know where he was headed aside from up.
He figured, however, that the wolves and most of the goblins wouldn’t be able to scale the cliff, and their taking the long way around would buy him more time . . . That was about as far as his plan went. He couldn’t stay ahead of a pack of mountain wolves for long; at a quick lope, such a wolf could go for days without stopping, and he doubted Agnes’s brew would offer him the same longevity. Once he gained some distance, he’d need to mask his stink, but he hadn’t seen anything so far that would hide his unique funk. These goblins would have some pretty good trackers as well, and Slud didn’t step lightly across the earth. Taking the high ground, sticking to the rocks, and seeing what happened next was pretty much his best option. So he kept climbing.
