The Raven Warrior

by Alice Borchardt

  “The rock started dripping water, then the air temperature warmed. And those . . . I think they’re some kind of lichen . . . began filling with moisture and they didn’t seem to be doing you any harm, so I concentrated on learning the wolf body as fast as I could. By the time the moon came out and the birds left, I could walk. And I went out and gobbled down as much food as I could and brought back as much as I could carry. So shut the fuck up and lie there in the water while I feed you, ’cause if they haven’t eaten you by now, they won’t! Goddamn it! Got that?”

  Black Leg did, and subsided, though he kept watching the water for blood. He didn’t see any, and the sensation never got any worse than that of a scrubbing with a slightly rough sponge. In a short time, he decided she was right, and as his stomach filled up, he began to feel much better. That is, until he looked through the small opening in the rock where the spring originated.

  He nearly bit off some of her fingers.

  “You know,” she told him, sounding dangerous, “I’m getting tired of you.” She was examining her hand.

  “I didn’t hurt you!” He was a little disgusted, because he sounded defensive.

  “No?” she said.

  “No! Besides, you didn’t see what I just saw.”

  She went wolf and bared her teeth—all of them.

  “Look! Look! If you don’t believe me, look!”

  She leaned over him, got a good eyeful, then jerked back.

  “They’re . . . they’re . . . dead!” She was woman again, her face pale. She had freckles now, and they stood out against her skin.

  “Yeah,” Black Leg said. “And did you see that one looking right at us?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere quite so full of nasty surprises.” She spoke thoughtfully.

  He was feeling stronger and sat up, hips and legs still in the moss-filled hollow. “You’re sure they’re dead?”

  “No!” she answered in a dull voice. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. Not after what you just did to me—not after all the things that have happened. What’s wrong with me anyway? I feel so weak.”

  “You’re probably just tired,” he said.

  “Tired! Tired! I’m not the sort of being who gets tired. Yes, I can sleep. It passes the time. But I never get tired. I told you, I’m not the sort of being who gets tired.”

  “You are now,” he said rather grimly.

  He got his arms around her and rested his head on her shoulder. She rested hers on his.

  “I think I’m better now,” he told her. “The food, the water. I feel stronger.”

  “Is this what tired means? I feel worn out, but irritable and alert. God, you saved my life with what you did. And I’ve been acting like a complete bitch ever since.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to take,” he said. “It’s changed you, and I can’t help but think that, in the long run, you won’t be happy with the changes.”

  “No? Well, I’ll learn to be happy with them. If you hadn’t done whatever it was you did, I wouldn’t be here for the long run at all.”

  He was looking past her at the narrow window slits. “The moon’s out, if that is a moon.”

  “I know. The birds won’t come while the light comes into the valley at all. They can’t seem to bear the light of either sun or moon.”

  “We should get some rest,” he said. “But I don’t like sharing this hideout with whatever those things are in the other room.”

  “They’re dead,” she said flatly.

  “We hope. We wish. I just don’t want to find them in . . . say a few hours . . . creeping in here to join us. Like I said, one of them was looking right at me.”

  “Quit it!” she snapped. “You’re messing me up. This isn’t the place to gather round the fire and tell ghost stories. Besides, we got no fire.”

  The room was dim. If either of them had been completely human, they probably wouldn’t have been able to see at all. The strongest light came from the enormous moon outside, but the moss glowed a strange, clear shimmer that reminded Black Leg of massed stars. Because he was wolf and she used to finding her way in the depths of rivers and lakes, their vision was adequate. But neither wanted to confront what they had both seen through the opening in the rock.

  She reached out, lifted a clump of the lichen that had warmed and cleaned the chamber. She blew on it and it glowed more brightly.

  “Not great, but better than nothing,” he said. “Sort of a corpse candle.”

  “Are you working at annoying me?” she told him. “If you are, stop it! Things are tough enough without you sniping at me.”

  They both shifted into wolf form and began to investigate the long, narrow room they were in. She carried the clump of glowing lichen in her mouth. The rock wall on the side opposite the windows appeared impenetrable.

  Yes, there was a lot of the strange lichen on both walls and floors. Now that they knew what it could do, it was noticeable even in its dry, resting state. And yes, the crack that opened to trickle water appeared to have many counterparts. But he could see no door or any other opening wide enough to admit him to the room that must exist on the other side of the rock wall.

  “Well, if we can’t get in there to them, they certainly can’t get in here to us.”

  They were human again and knelt in each other’s arms.

  “You did save my life. I’m not sure how to react,” she said as she kissed him. “Usually mortals don’t give. They just take. At least in my experience that’s all they do.”

  “I never thought about it,” he said, kissing her back with obvious pleasure.

  “That’s one of the problems,” she answered grimly. “You don’t think about much.”

  His hand was twined in her hair, and she was all heat, nipples erect, sinuous curves pressing against his—velvet, sinuous curves. They sank down toward the floor together.

  “My lady,” he whispered before inserting his tongue into her mouth. “As far as thinking is concerned, you are not guiltless in that respect. Let us not throw stones at each other.”

  She said, “Ahhhaaaa,” because they were each exploring each other’s mouth with their tongues, and body with their hands.

  “I hope you don’t have anything radical in mind,” she whispered when at length they both surfaced from the bliss.

  “No. Only pleasure.”

  “There is plenty of that,” she whispered.

  There was.

  The little clump of wet lichen dimmed as though offering them privacy. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  The arrival of the birds at first light woke them.

  His eyes opened first. When he saw her eyelids rise, he laid his finger on his lips.

  The birds remained longer this time. They began to devastate the garden. Screaming the raven call to arms, they attacked the trees, throwing down the fruit whether green or ripe, attacking the vines with a cold-blooded malice by cutting their stems. Attacking the earth around the masses of tender, sweet, bitter, and aromatic greens that filled every crack and cranny between food beds. The life of the valley endured the attack in stoic silence. He knew such attacks must have come before; they had learned to accept them.

  She hadn’t, though. The blue eyes closed and tears began to trickle from under her lids.

  He watched the carnage helplessly until the sun came to the rescue. The ravens rose, a black, swirling mass. The flock churned like a whirlpool over the water, then flowed out of the canyon like a river toward wherever they roosted by day.

  “We caused this, didn’t we?” he asked quietly.

  “They know we’re here. That’s a safe assumption,” she answered. “The garden shelters us, so . . . they took out their frustrations on whatever hapless creatures they could punish.”

  “Think they left us anything to eat?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s too much out there to be destroyed in a few minutes. That is all they had before the sun got to them.”

  He nodded and they walked along, back to t
he entrance, side by side. Suddenly she stopped.

  “Oh, hell. I know how.”

  “How what?”

  She didn’t answer, but dropped down flat and peered under the solid wall.

  “Oh,” he said, then lay down beside her.

  The slit wasn’t very big. Beyond, they could see the other room. It was filled with bones and there was way too much light.

  “Do we have to?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so. There’s an entrance in there somewhere. I can see sun on the walls. We’re damn lucky we woke up at all. If those birds had gotten in with us . . . I’m going to try as a wolf.”

  It worked. She had to lie on her belly and wiggle under, but she got in. He was bigger and lost a lot of hair and some skin, but was able to follow.

  The bones weren’t white but yellowed and black with age. He touched the femur of the nearest one with his nose and it fell to dust. She rose as a woman and began to explore the chamber, peering at the bony fragments, then at the obvious entrance where the birds must have gotten in. Like the other chamber, it was long and narrow; the opening was at one end. It wasn’t large, about the size of a shield boss. Too small for a human but big enough for even a very large raven.

  “How did they break through the stone wall?” she asked, mystified.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “They did.”

  “I don’t know,” she questioned.

  “I didn’t believe you about those lichens but . . .” He paused and stood over a set of bony fragments that looked as though they had been ripped to pieces. The skull was lying in the rib cage; the bones of the leg and arms were jumbled finger bones, scattered everywhere as though something had fed on them. In other cases the torso was separated from the entire spine in fragments as though the individual had been disemboweled and the feeding had begun before it was entirely dead.

  “I know . . . I know one thing,” he said fervently. “I sure as hell don’t ever want to meet those birds again. Let’s get out of here!”

  “No!” She glanced up from the pile of remains she had been inspecting. “Think,” she said. “What I accused you of last night is equally true of me. You were so kind as to point that out. Neither of us is thinking. All we’ve been doing is panicking and reacting to one threat after another.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “This chamber is the first really good clue to what happened here that caused this world to be the way it is. And it’s another world, I’m sure of it. One I’ve never been to. If we hope to survive, we’ve got to work this out. Because if we don’t, sooner or later those birds are going to get us. Last night we were just lucky. But we can’t expect that to last.”

  “No. No, you’re right. In fact, you sound depressingly like my father and Dugald, and they’re the smartest people I’ve ever known. Not the best—my mother was the best—but both of them are smart enough to take on that ugly old Greek. . . .”

  “Socrates?” she asked.

  “That’s his name. Anyway, they could argue him to a standstill and leave him with a lot to think about. Let me go see if I can climb up and see out the hole. Find out if there’s some way to block it.”

  “Try not to disturb anything where you walk. I want to get a good look at them where they are.”

  He nodded, then moved carefully toward the opening in the wall. When he reached it, Black Leg saw it was only a bit higher than his head. He reached up, and though the broken stone was sharp, he was able to find a smooth spot where he could get a grip. Then he settled his toes on a rough knob of rock above the floor and lifted himself high enough to see out.

  He found himself looking down into water. A pothole? Then he realized it wasn’t a natural feature but chiseled out of a shallow depression in the stone. Yes! The water that came in through the cracks in the rock had to be piped in from somewhere. This dwelling was much higher than the river.

  But the thin rock wall between the reservoir and the cave had been the weak spot. He pulled himself in a little higher, so he could see down into the water. Yes, the boulders that broke the wall were in the bottom.

  He dropped down to the floor and reported on what he had seen. She was standing near him, looking at the room toward the other wall.

  “They came in here.” He gestured toward the opening. “My guess is this was some sort of hospital. Reason I think so is the Romans had doctors who traveled with the army, and that was all they did, take care of the sick and wounded. There’s lots of that lichen, the kind that took care of me last night, in here. The wounded were in these pools.”

  She nodded yes. Except for those massed at the other end, the bone piles were scattered rather evenly, each either in or close to a depression in the floor, like the one he’d awakened in last night.

  “The walking wounded, or maybe the attendants, tried to make a stand at the other end. That’s why there is so much bone piled up there. But the birds were too much for them.”

  “Think any of them got away?” he asked her.

  She looked for a moment reluctant to answer. She had an unpleasant expression on her face.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. The reason is the skeletons at the other end are pretty much intact, but the wounded were . . . helpless. The birds, when they finished off the defenders, came back and had some . . . fun. Maybe they stopped and ate.”

  Yes, the skeletons occupying the depressions were jumbled almost beyond recognition. Sickeningly, Black Leg considered the fact that some arms, legs, fingers, and hands were still articulated, suggesting the wounded had been dismembered while still alive.

  “Dismembered,” she said. “Disemboweled and eaten alive.”

  Black Leg, remembering the almost unbelievable malice in the first raven’s voice when it spoke to him, decided she was probably right.

  “They were shape-strong, too,” she said.

  “Shape-strong? No!” Black Leg said.

  “Ummmmm. Look at the bones, Doubting Thomas,” she said.

  Black Leg began to walk along, studying the remains in each depression until he reached one that was more or less intact but horribly spread-eagled. The distinction was clear—the head and arms were catlike. Most of the torso was missing, but the hips, legs, and feet were definitely human.

  “Didn’t help them much,” he said at length.

  “No, didn’t help us much either. The only thing that did help was our ability to hide in the river.”

  Then they both walked slowly toward the back of the cave where the last stand had taken place. A drift of black feathers covered the floor between the skeletons.

  “Looks like they were able to put up a pretty good fight. Even accounted for a fair number of those birds,” he said as he reached down to pick up a feather.

  “No!” She grabbed his wrist. “Aren’t you sick of sticking your hand down holes to see if there’s snakes in them?”

  He was about to get angry, but decided she was probably right. And, he reflected, he was a little sick of the ugly surprises he’d stumbled across exploring this world.

  “Anything connected with those birds is probably dangerous,” she said.

  “We should take a look,” he said.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. “I can still turn to water if I want to. I believe . . . let me see.”

  He waited.

  “Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “I can.” Then she reached down and picked up one of the dark feathers.

  The result was anticlimactic. Nothing happened.

  “Looks like an ordinary feather,” he said.

  “Feels like an ordinary feather,” she said, brushing the tip on the palm of her left hand. Then she lifted the feather into the sun to examine it in the bright light.

  He had time to shout a warning as he saw the edge change, flow, then glitter like a razor. The feather twisted free of her fingers and slashed down at her face.

  She got her arm up in time, but the feather opened a five-inch gash in her forearm, one so dee
p Black Leg briefly saw the white tendons that move the fingers. But then the feather fell out of the sunlight. She concentrated and the gash in her arm vanished as the feather—only a feather again—drifted harmlessly to the floor.

  For a brief moment, Black Leg leaned on the wall. She stood, eyes closed, still clutching her arm.

  “God Almighty!” she whispered. And Black Leg was sure it was no curse.

  When he felt steady again, he said, “Let’s get out of this cursed place and find something to eat.”

  He turned and began to walk along the wall, checking for a place to roll under and get out. He kicked something, looked down, and saw a skeletal arm. He realized that all the dark things scattered among the bones weren’t feathers.

  He crouched down and saw that the skull was the one he’d glimpsed through the wall crack last night, the sight that led to the discovery of this chamber. The dark shapes covering the bony arm looked as if they might have belonged to some sort of armor.

  He glanced at the skull again. He found he couldn’t imagine what sort of creature it had been. The bones of the arms, legs, and torso were human enough, but oddly those of the hands, feet, and skull weren’t.

  “They were caught,” Black Leg said, “during the change. Not just the ones in the moss pools, but every one of them. How those birds couldn’t catch us, we were both too fast for them.”

  “It didn’t help you much,” she said.

  “No, but you were able to get away. I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand. Let me tell you. Don’t feel rained on. Nothing about this cursed place makes any—”

  She broke off because he was reaching for one of the dark objects circling the skeleton’s arm. She drew in a sharp, startled breath but didn’t warn him.

  “We have to try to find out,” he said as his hand closed around the object. The only thing that happened was that the bones powdered and fell immediately to dust. Black Leg started slightly, but then, seeing that he came to no harm, continued to collect the dark scraps until he held them all in his hands.