The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  “We could dismount,” said Tansy, “crawl through the undergrowth and take the Wootah with blowpipes.”

  “We could,” he agreed.

  “Shall I give the order?”

  “No.”

  “We need to—” she started, but he shook his head to silence her.

  Paloma looked over her shoulder. Nobody was following. She stopped.

  “He’s not following,” said Sofi, speaking as if she had a mouthful of berries.

  “Are you all right?” Paloma asked as she laid the Owsla captain on the pine needle-carpeted woodland floor.

  Sofi narrowed the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. Blood trickled from her mouth and several cuts. “Never better,” she said, pushing herself up. “Come on let’s—ahhh,” she fell back down. “Seems I’ll need a hand standing. Then we need to get back.”

  Finn the Deep noticed something amiss, beyond the fact that Sofi had been beaten and Sitsi was about to be killed.

  “Where’s Bodil?” he asked.

  “She went off down the hill a while back,” said Freydis.

  “Why?”

  “I think she was bored up here. I know I am.”

  “Oh, for the love of Loakie …”

  He scanned the slope below them, but couldn’t see Bodil. He was meant to be looking after her. Where had she gone? He hoped she didn’t fuck things up any more than they already were.

  Sitsi fell with her bow drawn, saw Beaver Man leap after her, and shot. The next moment the wind was knocked from her body as Chogolisa caught her. The big woman set her down and Sitsi looked up.

  Beaver Man was pinned through the shoulder to the boulder at the top of the rock tower. Tatinka’s amazing arrow had gone through him and deep into the stone. He waggled his arms and his legs like a baby on its back, then gripped the arrow shaft and pulled.

  Sitsi reached for the final arrow and drew.

  Her bowstring snapped.

  Beaver Man yanked at the arrow.

  Sitsi delved into the spare bowstring pocket on her quiver. It was empty.

  “Where’s my spare string?” She’d had two in there!

  “Wait there! I’ll be down in a moment to kill you!” called Beaver Man from above, with the tone of a man nipping back to the hut to grab his forgotten smock.

  “Give me the arrow,” said Chogolisa.

  Sitsi handed it to her. Chogolisa gripped the shaft with her teeth, leapt onto the rock tower and climbed, big fingers and toes somehow finding holds.

  She reached Beaver Man, ignored a kick to the face, and drove the arrow through his leg. The big woman then climbed round the rock tower and out of Sitsi’s sight. Meanwhile, Beaver Man carried on yanking at the arrow in his shoulder, which would surely come out at any moment.

  Chogolisa appeared above him at the top of the rock tower, plucked the arrow from the Badlander’s shoulder then drove it back in, deep into the rock underneath. He waved his arms up at her but couldn’t reach.

  Then Chogolisa made her mistake.

  She slapped her hand down onto the arrow in his shoulder to drive it deeper into the rock. This she achieved, but she also drove the arrow through her own hand, pinning it to the Badlander.

  She wrenched. Beaver Man grabbed her hand and held it.

  Chogolisa grunted with pain and tried to pull her hand free.

  The perched rock wobbled, then tottered, then fell.

  Sitsi watched open-mouthed as the boulder tumbled away from her off the top of the stack, with Beaver Man and Chogolisa attached to it. She heard stone, man and woman hit the lake with a resounding boom.

  Erik the Angry stood with Wulf on the wooded lakeside. They watched Chogolisa climb over the tower, then saw the top of the tower topple with her and Beaver Man attached to it.

  Erik dropped his club, stripped in a trice, dived in and set off across the lake like a deranged turtle, wet white buttocks flashing in the sunlight.

  Sitsi Kestrel clambered over the boulders, saw that someone was swimming across from the far side of the lake and realised that whoever it was would never make it in time. She took a deep breath and launched herself headfirst into the lake.

  She was no swimmer.

  All was noise. Water rushed up her nose. She had no idea which way was up. She caught a glimpse of movement in the dark and tried to calm herself. Then she could see Chogolisa on the bottom of the lake, her hand trapped under the boulder. Beaver Man, she realised, was under the great rock, squashed into the lake bed.

  She had no idea how, but somehow she managed to swim down to Chogolisa. She gripped her friend’s free wrist, braced her feet against the rock and pulled with all her might. Chogolisa heaved, too, but even her great strength couldn’t free the trapped hand from under the colossal stone.

  Water roared in Sitsi’s ears. Kicked-up silt now obscured her vision entirely. Her strength was failing. Chogolisa’s efforts were slowing. Sitsi had to surface. She pulled at Chogolisa’s arm one last time, squeezed it goodbye and kicked upwards.

  As she rose, something dark sank past her.

  Sitsi surfaced, sucked in air, then trod water and prepared for another dive. The swimmer crossing the lake was still a good way off. She sucked in a lungful and was about to submerge when Chogolisa popped up next to her, followed by someone with dark hair who could only be Beaver Man.

  She grabbed Beaver Man’s head to push him under, but he squeaked and she realised it wasn’t him at all. It was Bodil Gooseface.

  “Hello!” said Bodil when Sitsi had released her head.

  They swam back to the shore that Beaver Man had run from, looking over their shoulders for any sign of the chief of the Badlanders. Erik joined them soon after they’d set off, full of concern for Chogolisa then full of joy when he realised that she was all right.

  As they waded ashore, Sofi Tornado emerged from the trees supported by Paloma Pronghorn. Sitsi was about to shout a greeting when Rappa Hoga appeared at the other end of the clearing on his enormous dagger-toothed beast. His cat cavalry followed.

  “I’d hoped to fight you again,” said Rappa Hoga to Sofi.

  Sofi hacked and spat blood. “I … I’ll just sit down for a while. Then we’ll fight.” She sat.

  Rappa Hoga dismounted.

  “I’ll fight you,” said Erik striding forward, unarmed, dripping wet and naked.

  The captain of the cat cavalry looked him up and down and raised a hand in a “please pause” gesture.

  “Wootah and Calnians in the trees and on the hill!” he shouted. His voice was so deep and strong that Sitsi could feel her skin vibrating. It was not unpleasant. “Come out, come down, come here. You have my word that my cat cavalry will not harm you. I want to talk to you.”

  His dagger-tooth roared as if it disagreed.

  Sitsi looked at Sofi. She nodded.

  “Do as he asks!” Sitsi yelled. “Sofi says so!”

  “And, for the love of all that’s good,” the captain of cat cavalry added, pointing at Erik “bring this man’s clothes to him.”

  Sitsi couldn’t stop staring at his cat. It wasn’t as large as the monstrous dagger-tooth that the Owsla had fought on the way to Hardwork a few weeks and a million years before, but it was still a lovely, magnificent beast.

  “Calnians and Wootah,” said Rappa Hoga when everyone was gathered. “I apologise on behalf of the Badlanders and myself for impeding your quest, for the deaths of four of your number and for the suffering that the rest of you have undergone.”

  Calnians and Wootah looked at each other. This was not expected.

  “Beaver Man’s philosophies made great sense to me and I loved him,” Rappa Hoga continued. “I’m not sure why, perhaps it was your influence, but I’ve recently come to see that we have gone too far. Far too far. It is not up to us to cull human numbers, and we should not have used magic and alchemy for such ill ends. I think Beaver Man had good intentions, but we became a force of evil. Still, I did not dare rise against him and his Owsla. It took people with your co
urage and your strength to—”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, what happens now?” interrupted Keef the Berserker.

  “Sorry about him,” said Wulf.

  Rappa Hoga chuckled. “He’s right. I can be pompous. What happens now is that we go our separate ways. I return to the Badlands, proclaim myself chief and set about dismantling Beaver Man’s systems. I will free all the Calnian captives, help them return to Calnia and choose a new ruler.” He glanced at the lake. There was no sign of the Badlander chief. “You can continue on your journey. Sofi, you are injured and walking will be painful.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “So I will leave you my cat. It will be your mount. Finnbogi—”

  “It’s Finn now.”

  “If you say so. Finn, you controlled the crowd pigeons, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “Good. Can you communicate with my cat?”

  Finn closed his eyes. “I can.”

  “Then he will cause no trouble. Set him free when you no longer need him and he will return to me.” He turned back to his troops. “Tansy Burna, may I ride behind you?”

  Tansy reddened and nodded eagerly.

  “Then I will be gone. Farewell and thank you, Wootah and Calnians.”

  The Badlander cat cavalry rode away and disappeared into the trees.

  Chapter 9

  A Kiss and a Monster

  The lakeside was an ideal camping spot, but everyone was keen to put as many paces as possible between themselves and Beaver Man. He couldn’t possibly be alive, down there on the bed of the lake. If he was, there was a rock the size of a hut on top of him and he wasn’t going anywhere. But he’d walked away from an arse to neck sword-spitting, so who knew what else he could survive, and they’d seen him topple a rock not much smaller than the one he was trapped under, so if anybody was going to escape that situation, leap out of the lake and attack them, it was Beaver Man.

  So Calnians and Wootah strode out of the Black Mountains, following the track south and a little east into rolling, wooded grasslands mostly populated by buffalo, turkey and pronghorn. Sofi, Ottar and Freydis led the way atop the magnificent dagger-tooth cat.

  They walked hard, jogging the downhill sections. There was no arseing about and even Bodil hardly spoke. Shortly before sunset they stopped at a place that would just about do as camp. They ate foraged nuts and fruit and a buffalo calf which Yoki Choppa sliced thin, rubbed with herbs and seared on hot stones. After dinner, everybody who wasn’t on guard went to sleep as soon as they lay down.

  Morning came and Beaver Man hadn’t appeared and killed them all, which was a relief. The rolling tree- and buffalo-filled land was gentler but at least as beautiful as the Black Mountains and everything was a great deal happier.

  Following Weeko Fang’s hoarsely whispered directions, they trailed Sofi and the children on the big cat south at a more sensible pace than the previous day’s, and hardly looked over their shoulders at all.

  Erik the Angry had resolved something the moment Chogolisa surfaced in the lake. He found several excuses to put it off, but, as they walked along a wooded valley busy with squirrels all overlooked by a cliff of red rock to the north, and everyone else was obscured by the trees ahead, he said: “I like you very much.”

  Her pace didn’t falter and she didn’t look at him.

  “That’s not how you do it,” said Chogolisa after about twenty heartbeats that felt like an eternity to Erik.

  “What?”

  “You don’t tell me that you like me. You wait until we’re camped. When I walk away from the fire, you follow me and try to kiss me.”

  “I see. You’re right. Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Hang on a moment.” Erik rubbed his bearded chin. “Just so I’m clear.”

  They stopped. She turned and looked down at him. It was still strange to Erik that such a pretty woman was so large, and a tiny voice in his head did suggest that some people might think he liked her because he missed his giant bear, but the fact was, whatever the reason, he did like her. A lot.

  “You’d have to crouch if I was going to kiss you.”

  She shook her head. “I spend my life crouching. I don’t want to be crouching the first time I kiss you. See that boulder?”

  “Yup.”

  “You should stand on something like that.”

  He jumped onto the boulder. “Like this?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Then what would I do?”

  “You’d say something like: I think I’ve got a fly in my eye, can you take a look, please?”

  “Well, that is odd, because I do have a fly in my eye right now.”

  “Oh, really? I’ll take a look.”

  She stood by the boulder, now only a little taller than Erik. He put his hands on her waist, feeling like he might burst. She cupped his face with her uninjured hand and leant forward.

  “I can’t see it yet,” she said. “If I just lean in a little more …”

  They kissed for a long time. At one point, Erik opened his eyes and saw a grey-brown squirrel watching them from a hole in a tree. He winked at it, closed his eyes and carried on kissing Chogolisa.

  Eventually he broke off and said, “It’s going to be a challenge, trying to find a boulder every time we want to do this.”

  “Nobody said love was easy, and we can always lie down.”

  The following morning, Erik the Angry sauntered along smiling like a fat man after a large lunch. They followed a buffalo road south through undulating grassland and woods. Where there weren’t buffalo, there were pronghorn and other deer. Turkeys ran amok in the woods and the plains were carpeted with prairie dog mounds and busy with the appealing little animals.

  It seemed to be a predator-free zone until mid-afternoon, when a pack of sly-faced grey wolves trotted towards some buffalo calves. A few enormous bulls chased them away. The wolves slunk off, looking over their shoulders with expressions ranging from “we were going anyway” to “we’ll be back.”

  Well before it was time for their first rest, the cat carrying Sofi and the children stopped. The others caught up and Erik saw a figure a good mile ahead, standing on a mound and watching them approach.

  “It’s a girl,” said Sitsi, “maybe ten years old. High forehead, big lips. Looking this way.”

  “Anyone else about?” asked Wulf the Fat.

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Are you alone?” asked Sofi Tornado when they reached the child. She was wearing a simple brown dress and had white feathers in her hair. Erik had known that Sitsi Kestrel had good eyesight, but he was still surprised to see that the girl really did have a high forehead and lips like a river fish. He’d been able to see that from about forty paces. Sitsi had seen it from a mile.

  “I’m Chitsa,” said the girl, unfazed at being questioned by a woman riding a dagger-tooth cat. “Dead Nanda said you were coming so they’re all hiding in a valley to the east. I can show you if you like?”

  “Who’s Dead Nanda?” asked Sofi.

  “Our warlock, and my aunt. She’s dead, but she still walks around and talks.”

  “Why did they hide?”

  “Dead Nanda said magic people were coming south with a dagger-tooth cat.”

  “Why aren’t you hiding?”

  “I wanted to see the dagger-tooth cat. Can I stroke his face?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Sofi.

  “Do you want me to show you where the others are?”

  “No thanks. You should be getting back to them.”

  The girl shook her head. “They don’t like me. Do you want me to show you something really amazing instead? It’s just down in that valley over there.” She pointed to the south-west.

  They followed the girl to where the land curved down into a shallow canyon busy with rabbits, rocky on one side with a steep grass verge on the other.

  A heavily trodden path ran along the valley floor, but there was no other sign of activity.<
br />
  “Sitsi, Paloma, up on the valley sides, eyes skinned.”

  “Come on, it’s this way!” said the girl heading along the path as the two women leapt nimbly out of the gully.

  “No. We wait here while they check it’s safe.”

  “I wish it wasn’t so safe around here,” Chitsa pouted. “This valley is the most interesting bit of the most boring place in the whole world.”

  “Is this your homeland?” Weeko asked.

  “No. We came over the mountains.”

  “You came from the Desert You Don’t Walk Out Of?”

  “Yup.”

  “How long ago?” asked Wulf. “How did you make it over the Shining Mountains?”

  “It’s a boring story and it’s sad. I’ll take you to my people and they can tell you, but you have to look at what I want to show you first.”

  “Tell us who you are, now,” said Weeko Fang.

  The girl looked scared.

  Wulf put a hand on Weeko’s arm. “Thanks, Weeko, but it’s fine. It can wait until we get to her people.”

  Weeko shrugged.

  Paloma and Sitsi reported that all was clear but stayed up on the valley sides keeping watch while the rest of them rode and walked down into the canyon.

  “Here you go!” said the girl after a while, pointing to a hole in the rocky northern wall. The small cave was oval, wider at the top than the base, about a third Erik’s height.

  “A hole,” said Keef. “Wow.”

  “Watch this.” Chitsa plucked a feather from her hair and dropped it. It shot down the hole as if someone had pulled it on a string.

  “You try.” She handed Keef a feather. He let go and jumped as the feather whooshed down the hole.

  “Wow,” he said, in a very different tone from the previous wow. He scooped up some soil and poured it out of his hand. It flew down the hole. “You can feel it,” he waved his hand. “Wind is rushing down the hole.”