Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “The Fae would enjoy that,” Talfi said. “Watching Kin and Stane destroy each other.”

  “Does Hunin have any hope of an alliance with the orcs?” Aisa said. “Or the merfolk?”

  “He sent a lot of gifts, too,” Filo said. “Gold from the mines and silk from northern Balsia and a whole herd of those special warhorses he breeds.”

  Suddenly the objects Danr had pulled from the box seemed a lot less impressive.

  “We’re up a river of shit and paddling with our hands,” Talfi said. “Hunin’s men left days ago. We can’t stop them—or beat them to Xaron.”

  “Beat them to Xaron?” Danr said.

  “Yeah.” Talfi dropped onto the bed. “Orcs live for fighting, right? That’s got to be why Hunin is rushing over there now—the orcs will probably ally themselves with whoever offers first, just for the chance to go to war. If we got there first, we could probably persuade the orcs to side with the Stane. But Hunin has that head start—and they have horses.”

  “How do you know so much about orcs?” Aisa asked narrowly.

  Talfi considered this. “No idea. I just … know.”

  “It would be fascinating to learn what else you know.”

  Danr, meanwhile, stared out the window for a long moment. The two stars that made up Urko were closer together. He looked at them with just his left eye, and instantly he could see how far apart they were. They would touch in less than twenty-six days. And Death had said to start looking for the Axe among the orcs. Danr caught up his sack and strode for the door. Aisa followed him with her eyes. “Where—?” she began.

  “Xaron.” Danr put his hand on the door and sighed. Keep moving forward. Sometimes that was all you could do. “But first we need to ask my grandmother if she can Twist us one more time.”

  *

  “You realize that if Vesha finds out I’m sending you to Xaron, she’ll have my head, sister or not,” Bund groused. “It’ll take a lot of power to Twist you to Xaron, and stealing it will delay opening the doors by three or four more days. She also wants an alliance with the humans here in Skyford, not the orcs east in Xaron.”

  “What can she do to you?” Danr said. “You’re dying.”

  “Well. The truth-teller comes into his power. And it hurts.” Bund rapped her walking stick on the stone wall above the tunnel, the one that had created the shadow pictures before. The fireflies rushed from all over the cavern to land on it, making the runes glow blue and white. Talfi stared in wonder and awe, the smear of Danr’s blood still fresh on his forehead protecting him from the trolls’ hunger.

  “You are a trollwife,” he said. “With magic and everything.”

  “Not everything. I wouldn’t have the space to keep it all.”

  And Danr remembered how Talfi had first visited him in the hopes of meeting a trollwife so he could learn why he had lost his memory. Before Danr could say anything to stop him, Talfi blurted out, “Can you tell me what’s wrong with me?”

  “Of course,” Bund replied. “You’re stupid. You run off at the mouth, and when you fell in love with your foster brother, you told him about it. Stupid.”

  The words thundered through Danr with lightning shock, made all the worse for how unexpectedly they came. He almost staggered. Talfi? Talfi was regi? Danr’s skin tightened. Regi were men who liked to be … touched by other men. The word wasn’t very nice, even as a joke, and rassregi was a deadly insult. Danr’s mind went back to all the times they had walked and talked together. Since they’d met, Talfi had hugged Danr and slept near his hearth in the stable. He had made frank and forthright overtures at friendship when no one else had. Did it mean he thought Danr was interested in him? Did he think Danr himself was … ? The thought made Danr’s stomach clench.

  “Vik!” Talfi turned bright red, a fact that was visible even in the dim mushroom light. “That wasn’t what I—”

  “Did I mention something you wanted to keep hidden, little Kin boy? Tsk.” Bund tapped her stick against the wall again, and the shadows twisted. In the background, the war drums pounded at Danr’s head and body. His head spun and he couldn’t sort out how he felt. The drums made him want to roar and stomp and crunch. Or was that the news that his friend, his only friend, wanted things that only a woman should want?

  “Dear me. We seem to have discombobulated the truth-teller.” Bund waved her cane, and the glowing runes drew at the shadows around the wall like a breeze pushing sand. “Tit for tat, I suppose. A big tit.”

  “You enjoy congress with men?” Aisa said to Talfi. “Why, for Rolk’s sake?”

  “I just do.” Talfi stared at the ground. “So what?”

  Aisa shifted her pack. “You may have my share. I, for one, would be perfectly happy if a man never touched me like a woman again.”

  It took Danr a moment to understand what Aisa had just said. It made a second shock that overshadowed the first. A hot knife and then a cold icicle speared his heart, one after the other, and he forced himself to stay upright. Of course. It wasn’t just him Aisa feared—Aisa didn’t desire men at all. Vik’s balls. Why hadn’t he understood it before? After everything she’d been through, Aisa connected a man’s caress with pain. How could he have hoped that Aisa might one day overcome fear and return his feelings? All the secret fantasies he’d ever had about Aisa, of touching her, kissing her, loving her, came rushing out of the dark corners of his mind to taunt him like cruel children. He’d been a fool. More than a fool—a blockhead. A blockheaded troll with no brain. And to think he had almost told her how he felt on the road to Skyford only this afternoon. His blood chilled at the close call. He had given up everything for her, nearly killed a man, been forced into exile, because of kind, sarcastic, quick-witted Aisa. And she would never, ever feel the same way about him as he did about her. Her own words showed it. Thank Rolk he had kept his mouth shut.

  For a wild moment, he thought about looking at her with his true eye a second time. Almost instantly he shrank away from the idea. The first time had filled him with pain. This time he already knew the truth, and more truth would only make things worse.

  “You look like an ox licked the back of your head,” Talfi said. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Danr couldn’t lie. He sat on a rock. “I’m not.”

  “Shit.” Talfi kicked a stone while Bund continued to twist shadows. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. It’s not something you tell around, you know? It’s true—I fell for Orvandel’s son, Almer. He was … well, I thought I loved him. And I thought maybe he might feel something for me. I was completely wrong. It was bad, but at least he didn’t tell Orvandel.”

  Danr had a hard time finding words. Both admissions were hitting him hard here in the soft darkness. Although it was Aisa’s that had punched him the hardest, Talfi assumed it was his. Danr’s heart dragged. If Aisa didn’t want a man to touch her, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—push the issue. He would have to put all such thoughts aside. How difficult could it be? A sickening lurch in his chest told him it would be difficult as every hell in Vik’s realm. Damn it. Why had he, a monster, let himself even hope?

  And then there was Talfi… .

  The shadows twisted and reeled on the wall. The magic was taking a long time because, Bund had said, they were going all the way to Xaron, and such a powerful spell took time to cast. Apparently it took a great deal of strength. Bund’s massive body was sweating, and her breath was coming short. Danr barely noticed. He clutched his sack to his chest. The stone chest lay heavy within.

  “Are you angry at me?” Talfi asked in a small voice Danr had never heard from him before.

  “I don’t know,” Danr replied shortly. Truthfully. The words spilled out of him. “I don’t know what to say. I never knew a man who liked to be fucked.” And Talfi’s face fell.

  “Hamzu—” Aisa began.

  “Spell’s done,” Bund interrupted. The awful pattern of light and shadow twisted across the wall. Bund was panting and leaning on her stick. “The orcs hav
e no cities, so I’m … sending you to the center of Xaron … near the Great Wyrm River. You should find—”

  “Bund!” Vesha was striding up the stony path toward them in a fury. Three enormous trolls with equally enormous clubs stomped behind her. “By the Nine, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “That’s … your signal … to go,” Bund gasped.

  Her tone startled Danr out of his interior world, and he looked at her for the first time since the spell had begun. Her face was a sickly green in the pale mushroom light, and sweat darkened her ancient dress. Her tongue hung gray and dry from one side of her mouth. A pang went through him, and he closed his right eye.

  Bund’s life force had all but left her. The spell was draining her dry, and she had nothing left to replenish herself with. The moment Danr and the others stepped through the Twist, she would let it close and her body would drop dead. Only her draugr would remain.

  “No!” he whispered.

  “Stop!” Vesha boomed. She and the trolls were only a few yards away.

  “Now!” Bund managed. “Or it’ll be … for nothing. Take my blessing and go!”

  “Quickly!” Aisa tightened her grip on her pack and dove through the pattern. Talfi licked his lips and followed. Both of them vanished. The trolls rushed forward, brandishing their clubs. Danr locked his gaze with the dying Bund.

  “Good-bye, Grandmother,” he said hoarsely. “I wish—”

  “Why die in bed when I can die with a Twist?” she snapped. “Go, you fool!”

  Danr jumped backward into the Twist just as the first troll swung his club.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Twist was by far the worst Danr had encountered. He was a minnow in a whirlpool, a twig in a hurricane, a pebble in an avalanche. Every direction was up; all directions were down. He touched the entire world, felt his roots and branches ripping, tearing, snapping. White-hot pain sliced through him, and he smelled burning flesh. A scream tore itself from his throat. He reached out for something—anything—and landed hard on solid ground. The smell of dry hay tickled his nose, and stiff stalks crunched beneath him. He was lying faceup on a grassy plain, though an enormous circle of it had been scorched to bare earth around him. Sunlight from a diamond sky slammed painfully into his eyes. Somehow he’d kept hold of his sack. He groaned, partly from the pain and partly from new sorrow.

  Grandmother Bund was dead. He had seen it coming seconds before he fled the cavern. The Twisting that had sent him here—to Xaron?—had killed her. The sorrow intensified, clotting like bad milk. Two hot tears came to his eyes. He had only known her for a day, but he had felt a kinship with her. She was his grandmother. For the first time, he’d actually had a grandmother. Now she had left him.

  Anger made him dig fingers into the ashy ground. Anger. That was it, wasn’t it? She had left him, and he was angry at her for it. She had given up her life to Twist him here ahead of Hunin’s men without telling him it would happen. If she had said something, he would have looked for another way. Yes, she was already near death, but how could she—

  Talfi’s scream yanked him upright. It was a dreadful, high-pitched sound. Danr scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his head and his joints. The grassy plain, rumpled with low hills covered in green grass and multicolored flowers, spread in all directions. Some distance behind him, a stony river cut through the plain. All this Danr took in with a glance. His main attention went to Talfi. He lay curled around himself several paces away inside the scorched circle. His scream was the most frightening thing Danr had ever heard. Danr bolted toward him and dropped to the ground.

  “What’s wrong, Talfi?” he gasped.

  Talfi didn’t answer. He just screamed and screamed. Then Danr saw his leg. The right one was just … gone. Severed neatly halfway above his knee. Fleshy smoke curled up from the meat, and Danr saw the yellow bone with a pink center. Blood gushed over the grass. Danr stared in helpless horror. He had no idea what to—

  And then Aisa was there. Her pack was already off her back, and she had a leather thong in her hands. Swiftly she used a twig to knot it around Talfi’s leg just above the wound. The bleeding slowed. Talfi stopped screaming, but he was panting like a frightened dog.

  “There is a bowl in my pack,” she snapped at Danr. “Get me water. And wood for a fire. Now!”

  Danr scrambled to the river. When he returned with the dripping bowl and several pieces of driftwood, Aisa had laid out a number of small clay jars and bundles of dried herbs. The bottom of Talfi’s leg was covered in rags that seeped red.

  “Build a fire,” Aisa told him. “He will need the heat. Talfi, concentrate on my voice. You will not die here. I will not let you.”

  Talfi groaned. The silver amulet gleamed at his throat. “My leg. What happened to my leg?”

  “You lost it in the Twist. The wound was partly cauterized, which prevented you from bleeding to death before I could tie you off. However, your skin is clammy, your heartbeat has weakened, and you are not breathing properly,” Aisa said. “This puts you in more danger. You must take deep breaths and try to remain calm. Hamzu, where is that fire?”

  Danr had already built a small fire. The grass gave him plenty of tinder. He struck iron on flint and blew the sparks to life. For once something went right, and flames blazed up quickly.

  “My leg,” Talfi whispered. “I can’t feel it, but everything hurts.”

  “Drink this.” Aisa opened a jar and sprinkled powder into the bowl. “It will ease the pain and help you regain the water you lost.”

  She helped him sit up to drink while Danr clenched his hands helplessly. “More water,” Aisa said, handing him the bowl. “I need to heat it this time.”

  Danr hustled back to the river. Water rushed over large stones and made white foam. This was a shallow place, probably a good ford. He dipped up more water. The image of Talfi’s awful wound crowded his mind, and his gorge rose. Before he could stop it, he vomited into the river. Bile burned his throat. Quickly he rinsed his mouth and refilled the bowl. It occurred to him that it was daytime. When they had left Skyford, it was coming close to night. Bund’s Twisting must have played with time as well as space, as Death’s had. He remembered how Aisa had lost the end of her scarf that time. The same thing must have happened to Talfi’s leg.

  Talfi. Help Talfi. Grik’s tits, he couldn’t let Talfi die. Aisa couldn’t let Talfi die. But how would he get on with a missing leg?

  That was a worry for later. Right now Aisa needed more water. Danr turned—

  —and found himself face-to-face with a wyrm.

  Icy fear washed over Danr, and water from the bowl slopped over his hands. The wyrm wasn’t quite as large as the one he had killed outside Skyford, but it was big enough. Emerald scales glittered in the sun. It ran out a long tongue that lapped the air inches from Danr’s face, and he smelled a strange, heavy scent. Danr saw his own reflection in the wyrm’s golden eyes. His feet were frozen to the ground.

  “What are you doing here, Stane?”

  For a moment, Danr thought the wyrm had spoken. The wyrm shifted then, and Danr saw that the creature had saddle and rider. It was a woman, tall and lean. Her smooth skin had a faintly green cast to it, and her eyes were the same gold as her wyrm’s. She wore both armor and boots that looked woven out of long strips of leather. Her auburn hair was bound in braids and wrapped around her head. The reins to a strange bridle that controlled the wyrm hung loosely in the woman’s left hand. In her right, she held a long, wicked spear. It made a striking picture.

  Danr gaped, trying to recover. He had heard of orcs; he had encountered wyrms. Never had he thought of the two together. Until a few days ago, he had never gone farther than Skyford, where he himself had been the most exotic creature. Now he walked among giants, trolls, dwarves, and, apparently, wyrms with orc riders. While his friend lay dying. Urgency propelled him forward.

  “Talfi!” he said. “I have to help my friend.”

  He started to move around the orc
and the wyrm, but the orc’s spear pricked his chest and the wyrm turned its head to follow him. “How did you come here, Stane?”

  Now Danr began to get angry. Talfi was half-dead, and this woman was standing in his way. Danr, who had more than a head of height on the orc and only had to raise his head a little to look her in the eye even from her vantage point on the wyrm’s back, nearly snatched the spear, intending to break it like Alfgeir’s pitchfork. One punch and the orc would go down. Now that anger had overtaken surprise, he realized how much smaller the wyrm was than the one Danr had killed, and Danr was fairly certain he could fight it. But Talfi was hurt, and Danr couldn’t see Aisa. For all he knew, she was a prisoner of another orc, or a dozen. He closed his right eye and looked at the orc. Her muscles were relaxed, but she was ready to move in an instant. She was only a year or two older than Danr, but a number of scars crawled over her arms and legs. She was used to fighting but wasn’t ready to fight at the moment. Her questions came out of curiosity than fear or anger.

  “I traveled here by magic,” Danr said levelly, ignoring the spear. “My friend was hurt. I need to help him. Do you have medicine or a water bucket?”

  The orc moved the spear aside. “I do not. But my nest mates are with your friend. Help him, and then we will talk.”

  Nest mates? Danr put that aside for later and hurried around the wyrm, which stretched out more than the length of four horses. In the scorched area stood or knelt eight other orcs. They had apparently dismounted from their own wyrms, which formed an enormous crowd several paces away. Their armor matched the first orc’s, and like the first orc, they were tall and lean, though half of them were male. Some were dark-haired; some were fair. One had red hair. The women all wore sets of tight braids coiled around their heads. All of them had golden eyes like their wyrms. Danr chewed his lip, nervous all over again. How had he not heard them coming? He arrived at the circle, where Aisa continued to tend Talfi. She seemed to be ignoring the orcs, but Danr could see the tension in her movements. The fire was already dying down. It needed tending.