The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  “Because you were ordered to.”

  “That’s as may be, but I want to make amends. If I can help you, let me know.”

  “Can you take these spiders off our necks and kill all the Badlanders?”

  “Sofi’s working on that and, if anyone can do it, it’s her. Come on, let’s turn in. We’ll have a better chance of surviving all this if we’re well rested.”

  Finnbogi had been happy until Tansy Burna had rubbed his groin with her bottom and licked his mouth. Her come-on had discombobulated him, not least because he couldn’t work out why he’d knocked her back. Although his friends were all around, he felt alone. And his friends didn’t help. He tried to dance with Bjarni but Bjarni was too busy dancing with himself and staring into the fire. Wulf and Sassa weren’t interested in him. Erik was talking to Chogolisa, again.

  For a while he lay on the ground near a fire and watched small red spiders, or possibly ticks, running around a mound of earth. He knew he was doing it because he’d heard it was the sort of thing you were meant to do after taking mind-altering drugs. He felt stupid and a bit sick.

  He walked up the hill to the climbing pole, but none of the Cuguai gave him a second glance. He tried to talk to a man, but the guy giggled and ran away.

  He heard a yell. A young man was pushing a bark-stripped twig into his own forearm, halfway between his elbow and hand.

  Finnbogi watched, fascinated and disgusted, as the Cuguai pushed the stick through his arm. When the tip popped through the skin with a little burst of flesh and bright blood, Finnbogi coughed up a small amount of sick into his mouth.

  He swallowed and decided he’d had quite enough of crazy snake. He would sleep and hope the nasty poison had worn off by the time he woke.

  As he padded down the hill, Erik the Angry caught up.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, fine, just a bit … I’m turning in.”

  “Sure you’re all right?”

  “I think my crazy snake has worn off and I don’t feel great, but I’m okay.”

  “I’m sorry, maybe I should have told you not to take it. It would have been quite a dad thing to do, I suppose. But I think you were right to take it. I didn’t have any because I know I hate things that mess your thoughts around and make you see weird shit. But I found that out by trying it, and then trying it again a few more times to make sure I hated it.”

  “Your fatherly advice is to try everything?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Thanks, Dad. See you tomorrow.”

  Finnbogi climbed into his sack. His head was whirling, he couldn’t stop grinding his teeth and he had an unsolicited, raging hard-on but couldn’t do anything about it because Gunnhild and the children were right next to him.

  Finally, mercifully, he fell asleep.

  And he was floating above a breathtakingly beautiful valley. Bare rock red and white mountains, far higher than Finnbogi had guessed even existed, soared out of gleaming woodland. He followed a sparkling river that meandered gently along the widening valley floor to a broad clearing, where a small village of Scraylings and several dozen grazing deer lived in happy harmony.

  He heard a rumble, then a roar. He turned. Erupting from the head of the valley was a deluge of rock, trees and water. He flew upwards and the flood passed below him like a monstrous ravening serpent.

  The torrent subsided and trickled out. The village, the deer and the people were gone. The previously pristine valley floor was mud, rocks and smashed trees.

  The fire died down and the fire animals were too small! Bjarni looked around, still dancing. The world whirled around his head. He stopped dancing. He was the only one left in the dance area and the musicians had gone. There was some kind of commotion going on up the hill—new fires up there, people chanting, a tower reaching into the sky and someone climbing the tower. That was the place to be.

  “Bjarni!” said a voice.

  Bjarni turned. “Who wants to know? I might be Bjarni.” He was pretty sure he was Bjarni, but he didn’t want to commit to anything.

  “You are Bjarni Chickenhead.” Erik the Angry was walking towards him, his beard enormous and crawling with crabs.

  “Hee hee. But what is a Bjarni Chickenhead? Or a Chicken Bjarnihead? A bicken charni … Do you know you have crabs in your beard?”

  “Bjarni. You’ve been dancing for a very long time and it’s time to rest and eat some food.”

  Bjarni closed his eyes and thought. This did make some sense.

  “Have this,” Erik held out a drinking horn.

  “Okay.” Bjarni did as he was told and followed Erik back to the camping area. Going to sleep now would be sensible.

  He joined Finnbogi in the sleeping sack. The younger man was already snoring. Bjarni closed his eyes and a thought came to him.

  “Erik, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing alone by the dance area?”

  “Keeping an eye on you.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Are you all right now? I’m going to hit the sack myself.”

  “Totally fine.”

  “Right.” Erik padded away towards the river.

  Bjarni closed his eyes again. Sparks danced in the corner of his vision, then coalesced to become dancing figures, beckoning. He could hear shouts and laughter from the climbing pole.

  He clambered out of the sack and headed uphill at a jog to rejoin the party.

  By the time he got there, the colours had returned, and now, ever better, here came the animals. They were dancing again, around the pole. A racoon that looked like Wulf climbed the pole and shouted “Wootah!” at the top.

  “Wootah!” shouted Bjarni. A deer that looked like Sassa Lipchewer walked over and asked him if he was okay. He said he was absolutely fine, never better. She told him she had to look after Wulf and walked away.

  Next to the pole some other animals were putting new bones in their body, making themselves stronger.

  Bjarni wanted to be stronger, like Wulf. Maybe Wulf would like him if he was strong.

  “Can I have a go?” he asked.

  “Sure thing,” said a squirrel.

  “How do you do it?”

  “I’ll show you. Here’s a sharp one. Press the point in there, that’s right, in the gap between the bones.”

  Bjarni did as he was told. It was a funny feeling, the new bone going into his flesh.

  “No no,” said the squirrel-man, “you’re pushing it along, that’ll be bad. You’ve got to go through, like this.” He pushed a bone into his own arm, until it was poking right through it at right angles. He held his arm aloft. “See? Then you pull it out.” He did so with a grimace. “And then you give the stick to Cuguai by placing it at the base of the climbing pole.”

  How dumb was that? Poking a bone through your arm and taking it out wouldn’t help anybody. Obviously it had to lie next to the bones that were already there, and the more you put in the stronger you’d get.

  “I know what I’m doing. Leave me alone!” Bjarni hadn’t meant to snap, but this fellow was an idiot.

  “Fine, be a dick. I don’t need people like you right now.” The man-squirrel walked away.

  Bjarni grunted, sat next to a small pile of bones, and set about pushing as many of them as he could into his arm.

  Paloma Pronghorn was galloping in a terror-frothed herd, desperately fleeing the giant orange spiders. It was no good; the spiders were faster. She knew they were getting closer, knew they’d be on them any moment but she didn’t want to turn.

  Something grabbed her shoulder. She tried to raise her arms but couldn’t. She opened her mouth to scream—

  And she was awake, looking up into the face of the squatch. The hairy beast was staring down at her, one hand on her shoulder.

  This isn’t much better than the spider dream, thought Paloma.

  The squatch jinked her head in the direction of the hill with the climbing pole and grunted something that
sounded a lot like “go.” Then it loped off into the darkness.

  Well, thought Paloma, who am I to ignore the semi-coherent orders of a hairy monster who wakes me in the middle of the night? She got up and headed for the climbing pole.

  Had the squatch been part of the dream? Was this her mind’s way of telling her to join the party that Sofi Tornado had told her not to go to? But she wasn’t going to join in, she was going to watch, so it wasn’t like she was disobeying orders. It would have been remiss of her not to check out what the squatch wanted. It could be something that affected the Owsla. She certainly wouldn’t smoke or drink any crazy snake. Not unless she got into a situation when it would be really rude not to.

  She loitered on the edge of the revellers. She couldn’t see anyone she knew and they’d all taken a stimulant that she hadn’t, so it wasn’t a welcoming gang.

  There was man climbing the pole, three-quarters of the way up. He was clearly no expert and a fall from that height would be serious, maybe even fatal.

  There was something wrong with the climber’s arm. It was swollen and dripping. She realised the climber was Bjarni Chickenhead.

  “Wootah!” he shouted, as if to confirm her identification. He leant away from the pole and …

  Paloma sprinted.

  She dived and flung her arms around the falling man. They tumbled and came to a rest. She disentangled herself and jumped into a crouch. Bjarni was lying on his back, eyelids flickering. His left forearm was a mess of black blood and white sticks. What had he done? She pulled at one of the sticks—there must have been a dozen of them—but it wouldn’t come free. Blood pulsed thickly from several of the entry points.

  She looked about herself. Some people were dancing, some were pushing sticks through their arms, others were kissing and caressing. You’d think that some of them might have noticed her diving to catch a falling man and come to help. Apparently not.

  “Yoki Choppa!” she shouted as loud as she could, pressing her thumb into Bjarni’s armpit to slow the blood loss. “Yoki Choppa!”

  Sofi Tornado arrived at a sprint, moments later.

  “Yoki Choppa’s coming,” she said, taking in the scene. “What the …?”

  “Don’t know. See the sticks those twats over here are forcing through their arms? He’s got a load of them jammed in his wrist.”

  “Idiot.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” drawled Bjarni.

  “Quiet, you. Keep that arm lifted, Paloma, let me see if I can …”

  Sofi Tornado pulled at one of the sticks.

  “I tried that,” said Paloma. “We’ll do more damage taking them out.”

  Yoki Choppa arrived at a run. He too gave one of the sticks a pull.

  “That doesn’t work,” said Paloma.

  The warlock nodded. “Sofi, where’s your new sword?”

  “Where I was sleeping.”

  “Paloma, run and get it.”

  Chapter 15

  Across the Water Father

  Finnbogi the Boggy couldn’t stop staring at Bjarni Chickenhead. His friend was pale but sleeping soundly, trussed in blankets and lashed in a sitting position to the Plains Strider’s rail. Erik the Angry sat on one side of him, Wulf the Fat on the other. Erik looked about as unhappy as a man can be. At first glance, Wulf seemed as cheery as ever, but even he was uncharacteristically slumped and pale.

  The commotion in the night had woken Finnbogi from his weird dream, but he’d gone back to sleep without noticing that Bjarni wasn’t in the sack with him. He felt terrible about that. He felt terrible in other ways, too. When Chief Clembur had warned them about the dangers of crazy snake, she hadn’t mentioned that the next day you’d feel sick, thick and desolate.

  She had warned that people died after taking crazy snake. Bjarni had nearly proved her right. When Finnbogi had woken, he’d heard Thyri say that Bjarni was dead. Then, as he’d fallen over trying to free himself from the sleeping sack, he heard that Bjarni had lost a leg. As Finnbogi had quizzed everyone trying to find out what had actually happened, Chogolisa Earthquake had carried Bjarni over from the Owsla area where they’d been looking after him.

  She told them that Bjarni had drunk more crazy snake than advised, and gone mad; or, put another way, the large dose of crazy snake had done what it was meant to do. He’d taken the stripped white twigs which the more gung-ho Cuguai warriors pushed through their arms, and, rather than pushing them through, had tried to fit a dozen or so inside his forearm. Then he’d climbed the pole and fallen. Luckily, Paloma Pronghorn had been on hand to catch him.

  To make matters worse, Bjarni had used sticks that had already gone through others’ arms and been lying about bloodied in the dirt for Innowak knew how long. So, knowing that infection was more or less certain, the warlock had cut off his arm at the shoulder. It was still possible, said Chogolisa, that infection might develop in his chest, in which case he would die.

  Finally, she’d looked embarrassed as she’d said: “And Sofi asked me to tell you that if you lot take such a powerful drug again, you should assign people who haven’t taken it to look after those who have.”

  So the mood on the Plains Strider that morning was pretty sour. Finnbogi tried to convince himself that he was interested in the scenery, but he couldn’t. The huge cloud of crowd pigeons pulling them along was just another thing. They crossed a broad river; the Water Father, someone said, not as impressive as the Water Mother but worth a look. Finnbogi couldn’t be bothered even to turn his head.

  His eyes kept returning to pale Bjarni, and to his guilt-ridden father.

  In the end, Finnbogi decided that not doing anything was too awful, so he walked over to where Morningstar was sitting with Sofi Tornado. The Owsla captain had his sword Foe Slicer strapped to her hip.

  “Sofi Tornado?” he asked, trying not to look at the sword. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Go for it,” she said. “It’s Finnbogi the Boggy, isn’t it?”

  “You can call me Finn.”

  The Owsla captain’s expression didn’t change. Finnbogi launched in.

  “Someone was looking after Bjarni. My dad, Erik the Angry, sat for an age and watched while Bjarni danced on his own, then walked him back, gave him food and water and put him to bed in his sleeping sack with me. Bjarni was lucid and said he was fine but still Erik waited until Bjarni was asleep before leaving him. But Bjarni woke up while Erik was down at the river, got up and went up the hill on his own.”

  Sofi regarded him evenly for a few moments then said, “Understood.” Was there a softening in her expression or was it Finnbogi’s imagination?

  “So it wasn’t Erik’s fault, or Wulf’s. Or anyone’s, really. Apart from Bjarni’s.” Finnbogi bit his lips and squeezed them together to stop himself from crying. Crying probably wouldn’t be good in front of the leader of the toughest group of warriors in the world. “And that’s it. I wanted you to know.” He turned to go.

  “Finn,” said Sofi Tornado.

  “Yes?” He turned back.

  “Ask Yoki Choppa if he’s got anything to make you feel better. When you take drugs, you’ve got to take drugs.”

  Sassa leant on the side of the Plains Strider. The long undulations of the plain had sharpened into hills and it seemed they might finally leave the Ocean of Grass for more interesting topography. The huge vehicle swept around the side of a hill and down to a broad river, by far the broadest since the Water Mother. The Water Mother had been brown and muddy. This river was the deep blue of Olaf’s Fresh Sea on the finest days.

  It was the Water Father, someone shouted. Sassa thought they’d have to stop but they hardly slowed as the great vehicle plunged in.

  A few snorts from the trailing edge of the Plains Strider were the only sign that a few dozen buffalo were swimming them across the river, buoyed by inflated bladders. Six-strong squads of dagger-tooth cats swam either side of the vast craft, each beast carrying a rider.

  Deer and various other animals galloped away up th
e far valley side and into the trees. Two pronghorns watched from a hilltop. Sassa wondered what all the creatures they encountered made of the Plains Strider, and whether they’d remember it later that day when it was long gone.

  Out of the river, they climbed the highest hill Sassa had ever seen, crested it and came to … more Ocean of Grass. The prairie went on and on, green, green and more green and nearly flat as far as she could see. Perhaps it sloped upwards away from her to the west, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Presently, in the distance, she saw outcrops of bare rock dotted about. Well that was something new.

  She was studying the scenery in an effort not to think about Bjarni. She was upset about his accident, but, more, she was annoyed with him for being such a shag a stag dickhead. None of them knew that he’d drunk much more crazy snake than he should have done until they’d quizzed the Cuguai and heard that he’d distracted the woman doling it out and taken a massive gulp. Because of his stupidity they’d lost a warrior, and all the Wootah had been brought low. Wulf was pretending to be upbeat and optimistic, but Sassa knew he was as unhappy as he’d ever been. He thought he’d failed his friend.

  Worst of all, Wulf was right. He had failed them all. They were in a dangerous situation, he was their leader, yet the great arse had knocked back a mind-altering whack of crazy snake. If Wulf had stayed straight, Sassa wouldn’t have had to look after him and they both would have been free to look after the rest of them. One of them could have helped Erik keep an eye on Bjarni.

  If somehow they lived long enough for him to become a father, then Wulf wasn’t going to so much as look at a substance like crazy snake ever again.

  Sassa noticed that the Plains Strider was slowing. There was a smattering of dead buffalo on the plain ahead. They passed over a few, but there were more and more. Eventually, the shout came to stop and the pigeons fluttered down.

  The land ahead was strewn with dead buffalo; some in piles, some on their own, but all together thick enough on the ground that the buffalo supporting the Plains Strider wouldn’t be able to run over them. Where there weren’t buffalo, the land was churned as if it had been ploughed.