The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Nita Qwan took a deep breath. “You are mocking me,” he said.

  Ta-se-ho shrugged. “Everything in this world is terror,” the old man said. “If you care to see it that way. We should have died on the ice. We’re not dead. Let that victory steady you. You worry too much.”

  “We should have died,” Nita Qwan agreed. “What saved us?”

  The old man tamped his pipe, and his eyes glittered across the fire. “Gas-a-ho, first and most. Even when he had his shoulders ripped open, he was casting. He brought the wind and took away the fog.”

  Nita Qwan had guessed as much.

  “And sheer luck. Or the will of the spirits, if you believe in such things.” The old man took a deep drag on his pipe.

  “Do you believe in such things?” Nita Qwan asked.

  “I think we shape our own luck,” the old man said. “With work. And practice. And care. A chance for life to a trained man is just another death to an untrained man—yes? Good shooting today.”

  Nita Qwan all but blushed. The old man never praised.

  “You could have died. Jumping for the spear—the salmon’s leap.” The words spilled out of Nita Qwan. “It was magnificent!”

  The old man allowed a slow smile to cross his face. “It was stupid,” he said. “I should have died.” He laughed. “But instead, I flew like a bird!” His high-pitched laugh went out into the night. “I nearly shit myself when my feet left the ground.”

  “Why’d you do it?” Nita Qwan asked.

  “The spear. I love that spear.” The old man shook his head. “An old woman made a prophecy about it once, and look, she was right. She said one day the spear would fly away without me and I’d have to catch it. I thought she was talking about something deep and symbolic.” He shook his head. “Want some pipe?”

  Nita Qwan’s dreams that night were more terrifying than anything he had actually experienced, and his only explanation later was that he had dreamt that he was being digested in the belly of a whale or a snake—his skin slowly flayed away by slime.

  He was stunned, on waking, to find himself whole.

  He had to pack for the other two, but there was still wood and he built up the fire in the late night darkness until it crackled again. Then he made breakfast. Gas-a-ho was alive, breathing deeply, the wound on his shoulders knitted and dry. Ta-se-ho was snoring, and from time to time he seemed to be fighting something.

  Despite days of fatigue, Nita Qwan felt no temptation at all to return to sleep. So, as the light grew outside, he packed the toboggans.

  Finally he woke his friends. Gas-a-ho stunned him by getting to his feet.

  Ta-se-ho groaned. “Tomorrow will be worse,” he muttered. “Oh, to be young again.”

  As the first orange rays of the new sun lit the landscape around them they were headed inland through what seemed like an endless alder thicket. It took them an hour to go a mile. The spire towered behind them.

  “When did the People destroy the Odine?” Nita Qwan asked, as they emerged from the alder belt into an open woods of beech and spruce.

  Gas-a-ho turned. “Ten thousand winters ago,” he said. The words passed, and echoed among the trees.

  Nita Qwan almost stopped in shock. “That is a very large number.”

  Gas-a-ho shrugged. “These are the things that the shamans know,” he said. “We defeated the Odine at the behest of the Lady Tar. And now we keep them under their stones.”

  “Did you have bad dreams?” Nita Qwan asked.

  The snub-nosed youngster gave him an impish smile. “No. For the shaman born, the places of the Odine are places of rest and power. That is why we are taken to them as children.”

  Nita Qwan shook his head. “Why did the People kill the Odine?” he asked.

  Gas-a-ho looked at Ta-se-ho. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  The old man was sniffing the wind like a coyote. He turned. “Why does anything in the Wild kill anything else? Mating, food, territory.” He shrugged. “The way of the world. This world, anyway.”

  Nita Qwan laughed. “You have just reduced all the glorious legends of every people in this world to mere greed. And conquest. Like animals,” he said.

  Ta-se-ho grunted. “Ask me when my joints ache less and I’ll tell a better story,” he said. “Now let’s go.”

  Forty hours later they stumbled into their own village. It now had a tall palisade, big saplings driven deep into the earth and briars and raspberry brambles woven about them to make a barrier impassable by men or most animals. The palisade was tall enough to tower above the snow.

  Nita Qwan had feared that the village would be abandoned—that everyone would be dead, frozen corpses in the snow, surrounded by blood kept fresh by the cold. He’d dreamed of it since leaving the tall Odine spire. But they were met by flesh-and-blood men and women.

  Nita Qwan’s wife embraced him, her tummy so round that he had trouble reaching past it to kiss her. Kissing in public was seldom seen among the People, and she—once the purest of vixens—was scandalized.

  But he was still the ambassador. He left her to go to Blue Knife, the paramount matron, and her circle. Together they went into a long house that smelled of juniper and birch and fifty people who didn’t wash enough. Good winter smells, for the Sossag.

  “Tell us,” Blue Knife said without preamble.

  “We have an alliance with Mogon,” Nita Qwan said.

  All six women smiled in immediate relief.

  Nita Qwan held up his hand for silence. Ta-se-ho pushed into the long house with Gas-a-ho at his heels.

  “We did not go to Mogon’s caves. Instead, we went to N’gara.” He tried to look impassive.

  Blue Knife nodded. “Please explain,” she said carefully.

  Nita Qwan nodded. “Ta-se-ho found evidence that Mogon was ahead of us—that the great duchess herself was en route to N’gara. We followed her there.”

  Blue Knife exchanged a glance with Amij’ha and Small Hands. “Tapio Haltija is an ancient enemy of the Sossag people,” she said.

  “Yet you included him in the names, when I was sent,” Nita Qwan said.

  “We did,” Blue Knife conceded.

  “We wintered in his hold. There we found healing, and allies.” Nita Qwan reached into the quilled bag made of the whole skin of a badger that he had worn slung around his body for months. From it, he withdrew the pipe he had been sent to take to Mogon, Duchess of the Western Swamps.

  “I took this pipe to Mogon. And she has accepted it. I took this pipe to Tapio, our foe, and he has also accepted it.” He reached into the badger skin pouch again, and withdrew a belt. It was as wide as a man’s head, and as long as a man’s arms spread wide—thirty-three rows of wampum beads, each bead the size of a pea. It glimmered like pearl and mother of pearl in the soft light of the long house.

  The matrons all sighed softly.

  “Tapio and Mogon and the Jack of Jacks and a witch-boglin creature from the west have all made this belt with us,” he said. “And so have the Bear people of the Eastern Adnacrags.”

  For each people as he named them, there was a diamond in glittering white wampum set in the darkness of the purple, which seemed black in the long house.

  “If you take this belt, we will be six nations of free peoples against Thorn,” he said. “Tapio charged me to say the name.”

  Blue Knife nodded. “And you have not said the name until now?”

  He shook his head.

  “So now Tapio knows the belt has reached us. And indeed, we have also said his name three times.” She looked at Nita Qwan. “My son, you have done well—whatever comes to pass, you have performed the charge that was laid on you. I take the pipe from you.” She reached out and took it.

  He bowed.

  “Ta-se-ho, what think you?” she asked.

  The old hunter grunted and sat crosslegged. “I think it is cold and wet out there, and I am too old for it,” he said. “And I think he has done well. All three of us did well to get here alive. I saw Rukh sign
in the snow.”

  “The Crannog people are moving against us already,” Blue Knife acknowledged. “But the Horned One and Black Heron’s warriors led two of them to their deaths in the snow just four nights ago.”

  Ta-se-ho nodded. “Mogon said, come to me. I have more trees and fields than my warriors need or want, and we are far from the sorcerer.”

  Nita Qwan nodded. “Tapio said we should travel now, because none of the sorcerer’s monsters love the early spring.”

  Blue Knife paled. “Nor do the Sossag people love the early spring. I teach my babies to stay inside and wait for the sun and the dry ground.”

  Ta-se-ho nodded. “There are many wisdoms. But if we leave tonight—”

  Every woman’s head came up.

  “—we can travel at least two days on the ice,” he said. “And when the ice breaks up…” He shrugged. “The Rukh will never find us, much less catch us. Let the sorcerer chase us if he wishes. If his hate for the Sossag is that strong…” He moved his hand. His hand implied that they were already doomed, if this thing was the case.

  “Tonight?” Blue Knife asked.

  Ta-se-ho spoke with authority. “Tonight, or never,” he said. “My left knee says we will have three cold nights. And then the thaw. Does anyone deny this?”

  Blue Knife shook her head. She turned to the other matrons. “It is now,” she said. “Take only what can be taken.” She turned back to the old man. “Children and old people will die.”

  Ta-se-ho nodded. “I know. But otherwise, the People will die.”

  When the other matrons were gone, Blue Knife leaned to Nita Qwan. “There is something you are not telling me,” she said.

  Nita Qwan nodded. He looked into the air above him for moths.

  Blue Knife understood. She sent a young girl with stark red hair—a new captive, or an escaped slave—for the Horned One, and he came.

  “We are to leave tonight? Across the ice?” he asked.

  “You foresaw it,” Blue Knife said.

  “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off,” the shaman said. He grinned like a false-face mask at Nita Qwan. “My wife says you’ve done brilliantly. My apprentice seems to be stronger than I’ve ever been. Perhaps I should go and spend a summer ramming all the Dulwar girls at N’gara.”

  Blue Knife smiled. “I’m sure your wife will say yes if you put it that way,” she said. “Nita Qwan is hesitant to tell me something. He looks for moths.”

  The shaman nodded. He pulled out a little drum and began to beat it a-rhythmically. Then he began to sing—tunelessly.

  Even then, Nita Qwan bent over and whispered into Blue Knife’s ear like a lover.

  Three times he whispered. Each time she asked him a question. Finally, she sat back.

  “He asks much, our people’s most ancient enemy.” She looked into the long house fire.

  “But it is right at many levels,” Nita Qwan said. “And now—tell me what of my brother, Ota Qwan?”

  She met his eye. “He is dead.”

  Nita Qwan blinked. “The sorcerer killed him?”

  She shook her head. “He calls himself Kevin Orley now. He has taken many towns in the south and east. He has sent us his command—that we give him men and food.”

  Nita Qwan sighed. He sighed for Ota Qwan—so many men in one skin. The name Kevin Orley meant nothing to him, but he thought that he understood. Ota Qwan had been lost to the sorcerer—as the matrons had intended.

  “So,” Nita Qwan said. “We must provide men. How many warriors?”

  “Kevin Orley demanded one hundred from the eight towns of the People,” Blue Knife said. “He demanded you.”

  Nita Qwan set his face. “It is as Tapio said,” he admitted.

  Blue Knife nodded. “So—we will send our best young men to the sorcerer while we run, naked, to the west. This could be a plan for Tapio to have his revenge on us.”

  Nita Qwan shrugged. “I speak with caution, as I am young and new to the Sossag people. But Tapio has no need of revenge, as my understanding is that he defeated us soundly and drove us from our homes. And much time has passed since then. And the Lady Mogon guarantees our survival.”

  “Yes,” Blue Knife said. “Yes, I agree that all these things are likely. And yet—and yet, younger brother, what I would not give, right now, to have the hardest decision of my summer be the choice of day to pluck the corn.” She sighed. “Go and pack. Be careful. Your wife will deliver in the snow if she is unlucky.”

  “I fear I have burned too much luck in the last week,” Nita Qwan said. “You will send me with the warriors to the sorcerer?” he asked.

  “When we reach the carrying place where the Great River flows into the inland sea—then I will send you away. You will lead the warriors who go. You will tell Kevin Orley of the terrible winter we have had, and the whole villages we lost to the Rukh.” She smiled grimly. “I am sorry, Nita Qwan. But we will work hard to save your son’s life.”

  His son—the matrons thought he would have a son!

  And they would work hard to preserve the boy—

  —because his father would be dead.

  He rose. “I understand,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Blue Knife said. “My only goal is to preserve the People.”

  Seven hours later, as the sun set in a spray of red fire in the west, the whole of the Sossag people, all six surviving villages, almost two thousand men and women and children, headed west into the setting sun. They had sledges and toboggans and a few had big travois, and they moved in a chaotic way that belied great discipline, each family leaving a few minutes apart from the next, all taking slightly different routes out to the inner sea—some families travelled a whole day inland, and some went straight downstream to the ice.

  The People fled. As they fled, they formed not a column but a wave front, because like animals migrating, they took courses that meant that despite any disaster they could imagine—the Rukh, a sudden thaw, the end of the ice—some of them would survive.

  They moved as quickly as they could. And every warrior on every route but one stopped and cracked any ice sheet he could after he’d crossed it.

  Ta-se-ho stood in what had been the town’s central space with Nita Qwan and Gas-a-ho. They were the last to depart—Small Hands and her family were already well along to the west.

  “Now you have power,” Ta-se-ho said.

  “Not for long,” Nita Qwan said.

  Gas-a-ho snorted.

  Ta-se-ho shrugged. “You have it. The People have given it to you and you wear it well.” He turned his face away. “Babies and old people will die.”

  Nita Qwan nodded. “I know.”

  Ta-se-ho grunted and lit his pipe. They passed it back and forth for a long time.

  “Never forget,” Ta-se-ho said. “And you will never become Kevin Orley.” He put his pipe away. “I’m too old for this.”

  And then the three men began to walk west.

  Ticondaga—Ghause Muriens

  Ghause wriggled into her shift, her haunches cold from working naked in her casting chamber exposed to the chilly mountain air. Outside, snow was drifted six feet high or more against the fortress’s impregnable walls and filled its ditches.

  Her husband watched her. He was fully dressed, sitting comfortably in a low armchair that folded for easy stowage. Most of the castle’s furniture was one form of camp furniture or another. The Muriens were a military family.

  “I thank God on my knees every day,” the Earl of Westwall said, “that my wife had the sense to sell her soul to Satan for beauty. Christ crucified, woman. How do you keep yourself so?”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said, but she didn’t purr or wiggle her hips. It was too damned cold. “Do you know that when I rode south to Albinkirk, there were flowers?”

  The earl shrugged. “It was one hell of a winter, and I use the term hell advisedly. Cold as a witch’s tits.”

  He moved so fast, and he was so quiet, that despite the
straight line, she was surprised to feel his warm hands on her breasts.

  But the surprise was a pleasant one. She turned and raised her mouth to his, slid a hand down into his braes with the expertise that comes of knowing another person’s body as intimately as you know your own.

  Not that the earl’s body was particularly challenging…

  She made him work for her pleasure and then returned the favour—an hour that left her pleasantly tired and filled with unworked potentia. She drank hot wine and stared out into the first blue sky she’d seen in many weeks.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” murmured her husband, his hand running over her stomach.

  “Stop that,” she said. “Be gentle or be firm.”

  He hated it when she told him how to touch her—had hated it for thirty years. He swung his bare feet off her bed and cursed the cold floor.

  “I’m thinking of the King,” she said pensively.

  “Your brother,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Do you have any news?”

  “Beyond that he’s gone mad, let the fucking Galles into his court and attacked his own nobles?” The earl shook his head. “Galles in the south and this sorcerer as a neighbour. How bad is this summer going to be, wife?”

  She stretched. “Bad,” she said.

  “This sorcerer…” he began.

  She shook her head slightly.

  “You think he’ll come for us,” the earl said. He was getting into his braes.

  “I do. And Gabriel does.”

  “That milksop. I don’t care what you claim he’s done—he’s hiding behind Gavin. He could no more lead an army than fight with a poleaxe.”

  She smiled. “You are seldom a fool, husband. But in this—I saw him fight with a poleaxe.”

  “Huh,” he muttered. “He’s late to it, then,” the earl said.

  She shrugged.

  “Anyway, what does he know of the summer?”

  Ghause sank back onto the goose feather bed. “I told you. All of them wanted him to be captain of the north.”