by Angus Watson
Ayanna took the pole and stared at it.
Until very recently, lackeys had strewn reed mats wherever she walked. Those mats would be given to deserving Calnians who’d treasure them and pass them to their descendants as their most valuable heirloom.
Now, a pale-skinned alien freak, whom she’d ordered killed not long before, was ordering her about and taking her baby from her. She watched Sassa hand her son to Freydis. The girl took him confidently and Calnian didn’t seem to mind. Part of her wanted to grab her baby back and scream at them, but another part knew that the old woman was right. She’d be more use holding a pole than a baby. For now, her only option, and the best choice for Calnian, was to accept their orders and get on with it.
Presumably the boat-shaped construction that they’d mounted could be propelled across the plains by the animals attached to it. The hairy lunk and the curly haired boy were trying to get the animals to move. The rest of them would have to fight the Badlanders until that happened.
Ayanna gripped the pole and readied herself to take on the moose cavalry.
Paloma flowed like a bolt of liquid lightning between the riders, swinging her killing stick to smash blowpipes out of mouths and hands. This, she realised, was what she should have done the first time she’d met the moose cavalry. No matter. That was then and this was now. The Badlanders would not defeat the Owsla twice.
A few Badlanders had bows and she smashed these, too. She dodged and jinked as she ran, avoiding darts, arrows, tossed nets and hurled catch poles. The world rushed around her, but she was fully focused and in control. The moose riders were her playthings. She leapt and twisted among them like a salmon. Her hand still hurt from the beeba spiders’ bite but, she thought as she smashed a rider’s knee, she’d basically become immune to them. Funny how that worked.
Most of the moose riders were looking at her, but none were aiming pipes or bows because they had none left. Good, she thought, mission completed. Now to see how much that grinning prick Chapa Wangwa smiled after she’d smashed his face in with her killing stick.
She landed and accelerated. Her foot slipped on wet rock, she was off her stride for only a tenth of a heartbeat but crack! something whacked into the side of her head.
She was down, tumbling, out of control, rolling under the pounding hooves of the mighty moose and the spears of their murderous riders.
“Sassa, with me, up here!” Sitsi Kestrel grabbed Sassa Lipchewer’s hand and hoicked her up with ease onto a two pace-high, grass-topped and rocky sided platform.
“Shoot them as they come!” Sitsi ordered gleefully. The Owlsa woman certainly liked a fight.
To the east, a finger of Badlands massif stretched southwards into plain, then there was a grassy gap, then there was a broad pyramid of yellow-green rock. Wulf and the others stood in a line, twenty paces before the gap. Sassa and Sitsi were maybe thirty paces back from them.
The first rider appeared. Almost immediately, Sitsi’s arrow struck him in the forehead and sent him tumbling from his mount. Sassa had time to curse that it hadn’t been Chapa Wangwa, before the gap was filled with charging moose riders and she was finding her own targets.
She aimed, loosed … and missed. There were twenty more moose riders through the gap. She aimed and shot. Her arrow zipped into a man’s neck, not his chest where she’d been aiming, and he fell. Emotions rushed her. She’d just killed, or at least horribly wounded, a man who might be a husband and father to children who adored him; a man who’d joined the Badlander army because that’s what men did, just like Wulf had joined the Hird … On the other hand, she’d gone a step further towards saving Ottar and Freydis, Wulf and the rest of them, not to mention her own unborn child.
She told her meddlesome mind to shut up until they were safely away, and looked for another target.
Despite Sitsi shooting a good half-dozen of them, there were at least forty moose riders through the gap.
Screw a shrew. They were in trouble.
Paloma Pronghorn blinked. She’d stumbled clear of the galloping moose and crawled into a niche cleft into a rock dome. By the grubby rug and the lingering odour of body, it was the home of a Badlander minion. She sat on the rug and blinked and finally felt that she could stand. The world swelled, contracted, whirled a little, then righted.
By Innowak’s great big aching bollocks, Paloma hated head injuries.
She probed her wound with tentative fingers. It was bleeding, but not badly. Her skull was intact. It was time to stop fannying around and get back to the battle. If there was a battle to get back to. She had no idea how long she’d been trying to straighten her head.
She emerged from her slot. There was only one moose rider to be seen. He was dismounted, lying on his front and looking over a rocky pinnacle fifty paces away. From the shouts, screams and clashes of stone on stone, the fighting was in full swing on the other side of his hiding place.
The prone Badlander sensed her and looked round.
It was Chapa Wangwa.
Paloma forgot her head wound, grinned almost as broadly as the shithead lying on the rock, and ran at him.
Sitsi Kestrel was impressed with Sassa Lipchewer’s archery, while satisfied that it wasn’t nearly as fast and accurate as her own.
But there were too many moose riders. For every one that she and Sassa took out, five more came galloping through the gap.
Chogolisa grabbed the first beast by the antlers and swung it about her head, taking out the next two. This was why the huge girl didn’t carry a weapon. The world was her weapon.
Keef leapt in, jab-stabbing a rider with the pointy end of his combined axe and spear. A moose rider he hadn’t seen came at the Wootah man, stone axe ready. Sitsi aimed, but Luby Zephyr was suddenly there, leaping and slashing with her moon blades.
Sitsi searched for another target. It was harder now that the fighting was close.
Wulf was wrestling a dismounted rider, then another Badlander and another. He writhed and punched, but more piled in and they managed to hold him. Two more came at him with stone knives.
Sitsi lifted her bow, drew, and the string snapped.
“Sassa! Wulf!” she shouted.
Sassa spun, but Thyri Treelegs had already come to Wulf’s rescue, chopping her sax through the first Badlander’s neck and opening the other’s face with an overhead slash. Wulf shook himself free, backhanded his hammer into one attacker’s head and felled the other with a punch that Morningstar might have been proud of.
Morningstar … Sitsi had been about to ask Sassa for her bow, but thinking about Morningstar changed her mind.
“Sassa, please may I borrow your knife?”
Sassa pulled the long iron blade from its sheath and handed it to the Owsla archer.
Sitsi ran, sprang off their rock platform onto the back of a moose, sliced the rider across the back of one knee with the sharp little blade and pushed him off.
Her mount was headed for the Plains Sprinter, where Yoki Choppa, Bodil, Gunnhild and Ayanna were using poles to fight off moose cavalry. Freydis was standing on the deck, holding Calnian and watching the fight. Ottar, racoons at his heels, was at the prow, looking over the pointy end at the multitude of pigeons, which were all still on the ground and looking as if they were very happy there, thanks very much.
Sitsi’s was one of many mounted moose heading for the Plains Sprinter, which was a problem. If the Badlanders managed to capture or disable Beaver Man’s craft, there’d be no escape from the Badlands.
Rappa Hoga charged, obsidian axe flashing in circles like a child’s wind toy in a stiff breeze. He wasn’t going to muck about this time. This was going to be a quick kill.
Tansy Burna shivered.
Rappa Hoga swung and chopped, dancing like an acrobat, but Sofi Tornado weaved and dodged like an eel. Every blow looked like a finisher, but somehow the Calnian avoided them all.
Sofi wasn’t getting any hits in herself. Tansy wondered if Rappa Hoga would even notice a hit from that tiny ax
e. It was just a matter of time before one of his blows landed.
Swipe, swish, chop. Rappa Hoga’s axe was everywhere. Still he didn’t hit Sofi Tornado. It was extraordinary. To miss by such tiny amounts, so many times, so quickly … it looked like they were dramatic performers who’d been practising for moons. Was she protected by the gods? Was he missing on purpose? He couldn’t be. With such a flurry of blows it would be impossible to miss her on purpose.
So she was dodging. Was this her alchemical power, Tansy wondered? And had it been weakened last time they met?
Back and back Sofi danced, on and on Rappa Hoga pressed. Sofi didn’t know it, but soon she’d back into a pace-high, grass-fringed ridge of rock. She’d be trapped and her dodging days would be over.
They danced, closer and closer to the ridge, Rappa Hoga striking like a possessed ironsmith, Sofi Tornado evading his blows as if her spine and limbs were made of snakes. Neither showed any sign of slowing.
Sofi backed into the ridge. Tansy bit her lips. Now, surely, it was just moments until Rappa Hoga struck her down.
Finnbogi’s eyes were closed. He could hear the fighting ever closer, but he trusted the others to keep the moose riders away from him and his father. He was getting somewhere. Not nearly as far as he wanted to, but he really felt like he was becoming less human and more crowd pigeon. He was beginning to understand their minds. They wanted company; not so much wanted it, they needed it. It wasn’t about quality, it was all about quantity. More more more. There weren’t enough pigeons around, there couldn’t be enough. The sky should be full, the land should be full. Why was sky visible? There should be nothing but pigeons. It was like the desire to breathe. Finnbogi remembered that time Garth Anvilchin, the massive shit, had held him under Olaf’s Fresh Sea and he’d realised just how important breathing was, and how much he craved it when it was denied.
More more more! More pigeons!
Galloping hooves were very close now, so close that he could smell moose. He lost focus and struggled to regain it.
Then he heard a yell. His father’s yell.
He opened his eyes. Erik the Angry was snared in a net, on his back, struggling like an upended beetle and yowling at the pair of moose riders who were pulling him away.
The Plains Sprinter was besieged by a swarm of Badlanders. Thyri was standing on its rail, slashing her sax at the enemy.
Finnbogi drew Foe Slicer.
“No!” shouted Erik from his net. “They want to find more pigeons! They have to find more! You know where those pigeons are!”
I know what? thought Finnbogi. Then he realised what his father meant. He closed his eyes.
“Hello, Chapa Wangwa,” said Paloma.
While she’d covered the fifty paces from where she’d seen him, the Badlander had only had time to roll onto his back. Grinning like a loon, he scrabbled away.
Paloma danced in, flicked her killing stick and shattered his knee.
He screamed. She smashed his jaw with a backhand. He put his hands to his face and his scream became a bubbling moan.
She cracked an elbow.
He managed to roll over and shook as if he was trying to burrow into the soft yellow rock.
“You deserve this,” she told the back of his head. He couldn’t hear. It was to convince herself. The man deserved the most violent death, but, thanks to her rattlesnake-free diet, she wasn’t enjoying the torture. Curse Yoki Choppa! Life was more fun for the cruel.
She told herself to buck up and knuckle down to the torment. She planted a foot on her victim’s arse. He writhed, but she held him in place with alchemically enhanced ease and drove one end of the killing stick into the bone between his shoulder blades.
There was a half-pleasing, half-sickening crunch. Chapa Wangwa’s undamaged arm flapped on, but the rest of his body went limp.
Paloma Pronghorn broke Chapa Wangwa’s next vertebra, then the next.
When his was spine was satisfyingly pulverised, she grabbed his foot and flipped him over.
He was still smiling, even with a smashed jaw. But, if eyes could scream, his would have been.
“You’ve watched your spiders kill a load of people just like this,” she said. “I bet you never thought it would happen to you. What was it you said: We can’t imagine your agonies, but your eyes tell the story?”
A piercing scream rang out near by and the battle was suddenly louder. She had to go.
She ran, leaving Chapa Wangwa to die or to live on with his body destroyed. And she stopped. If he did live, she had no doubt that the vile man would be paralysed for life. However, with the support of a tribe, a person could live a long and happy life without the use of their limbs. It was also just possible that the Badland warlocks, obviously an advanced lot, might be able to heal his wounds.
She ran back, leapt as high as she could, saw his eyes widen most pleasingly, then came down and stamped on his face with all her alchemically enhanced might.
His head burst like a pot of porridge dropped from a high tree.
“That should do it,” she said to herself.
She ran back to the ridge.
The Plains Sprinter hadn’t moved, which was a disappointment. The Wootah and Owsla were pressed from all sides by the moose riders and there was no sign of Sofi Tornado. None of her friends had been killed yet that she could see, but the moose riders were pressing hard.
Paloma looked back to the road down from the Badlands massif. No more enemies were coming, but surely it wouldn’t be long. The moose riders were serious foes, but they were nothing compared to the Badland Owsla, the dagger-tooth riders, or, worst of all, the lizard kings.
If they couldn’t get the Plains Sprinter moving, they were dead. Well, the rest of them were. Paloma could always run away.
She could help out there, or she could go and get Sofi Tornado, who’d be a lot more help than she would. She headed back to where they’d slid down from the massif.
Sitsi Kestrel was beginning to regret leaving her archer’s perch. She’d slid off the moose when it had reached the fight at the Plains Strider and was taking out plenty of Badlander moose riders with Sassa’s knife, but not enough. There were so many of them! Hooves thundered all around. For every beast and rider that Sitsi disabled, ten more appeared through the gap.
She made her way towards the Plains Strider. The Wootah and Calnians aboard were defending valiantly. Chogolisa had a pole in each hand and was whacking back Badlanders with aplomb.
However, Chogolisa couldn’t do everything. The riders were right up against the side rail in several places. More and more were leaping off their mounts onto the wooden deck. They were being dealt with for now, but it was just a matter of time before the craft was overrun. One managed to get through to attack Freydis and the baby—what kind of dick would do that, Sitsi wondered—but Freydis danced clear and led him back to the others, where Wulf brained him.
Wulf stepping back to help Freydis opened a gap in the defences and riders leapt in to fill it. Was it the beginning of the end? She decided to run back to the rock where she’d left Sassa and her bow. She’d be more help there.
A fearsome animal roar stopped her mid-turn. The creature, or whatever it was, roared on, sending shivers through her limbs.
What now?
A huge furry figure—the squatch that had been on the Plains Strider—appeared in the gap. Chogolisa-style, it picked up a moose by the back legs and swung it left and right, batting riders from their mounts. Sitsi felt a little disloyal for thinking this, but the beast was even more effective than Chogolisa had been. It marched through the Badlanders like a thresher through corn, leaving a jumbled trail of injured moose and riders in its wake.
The Badlanders by the Plains Sprinter turned to meet the squatch. Keef, Wulf, Luby and the rest counter-attacked with renewed vigour.
The battle was far from over but it no longer looked like they were about to lose it.
Finnbogi felt himself being lifted. It was Chogolisa. She stuck him under
one arm and ran for the Plains Sprinter, bashing moose riders out of the way as she ran. Something caught his eye, zooming by at the speed of a shooting star. It was Paloma Pronghorn, streaking past the battle. Where was she off to?
The rest of them were all on the Plains Sprinter, including Erik. It was great to see that his dad had escaped the net, but they were in serious trouble. Dozens of moose riders were pressing in from all sides, trying to climb aboard.
Thyri and Luby jumped apart and Chogolisa leapt between them. She plonked Finnbogi next to Ottar at the prow of the Sprinter, said “Get those pigeons in the air!” and left him. He turned to his father.
“They want to find more pigeons!” shouted Erik, clubbing a rider who’d leapt from his moose onto the Sprinter’s deck. “I’m needed here! Go on, you can do it! Take them to look for more pigeons!”
Finnbogi closed his eyes.
He was on the ground, in among the pigeons. There was an ant! What a treat … but no, there was something more important, something much more important. He flapped up and looked around.
There weren’t nearly enough of them! He felt empty and scared to be among so few. His brothers and sister pigeons were empty and scared, too. But he could help, he would help, he knew where there were more pigeons, many many more.
Follow me! Follow me! I know a flock, a much bigger flock! We can join it, we can fly into the middle of it and fly for days seeing nothing but pigeons! Come, come, let us go! Follow my lead!
The surge of hope from his fellows made him swell with joy as, along with the rest of them, he flapped his wings and took to the air.
The weight of the flock was in his mind. They wanted to go with him, they wanted to be shown the way. He didn’t need to get to the front to lead them, he could share the knowledge in his mind. Fly, he told his fellows, let us all fly!
Out feet are tied! Our feet are tied! a million birds yelled at him as they reached the end of their tethers. We will peck the tethers!
No! Leave the tethers! Finnbogi cooed. We can still fly, can we not? We can still find the others! Pull the tethers with your feet! You see, we can still fly! Remember the flock! Focus on the flock that we will find! Forget the tethers. Let us fly!
