Blood River Down

by Lionel Fenn

  A light breeze came up as they finished their hasty meal, and when he looked he could see the slopes of the Scarred Mountains turning red in the setting sun; he could also see why they had been called that—great gouges of bare rock marked the western face, as though quarrying had been begun there and abandoned without thought of the consequences. In contrast to what lay in the bowl, the slopes were depressingly ugly, and the shadows that darkened them further gave them a curious air of angered sorrow.

  He shuddered.

  Tag asked if he were cold and assured him they would have shelter by nightfall. Well, perhaps not tonight's nightfall, but most certainly tomorrow's. Gideon smiled, and smiled more broadly when he saw the alacrity with which the young man climbed onto Red's back for the trip's continuation. Whatever fear he had of the lorra was gone, and any remnants had been scattered when the animal nudged him playfully for a portion of his meal, which he gave at first fearfully, then gladly, laughing silently and scratching the beast hard behind the ears.

  Nice, Gideon thought, not at all sure that the lorra's gesture hadn't been deliberate.

  —|—

  Once more on the road, Tag exclaimed admiration over the cut of Gideon's clothes, and though he professed never to have seen their like before, he was at the same time oddly knowledgeable about denim, cotton, and the hard leather boots. Another question, but one Gideon decided to postpone in favor of finding out more about what Glorian had been up to when she'd caused the Bridge to appear.

  "She's always going off," Tag said evasively. "You never know what's on her mind one day to the next."

  "I think you already told me that."

  "Well, I've told you all I know, then."

  Gideon doubted it, but as long as the Kori wasn't about to put a knife in his back or feed him to the pacch, he supposed he could wait another day. But in the morning, he resolved, he was going to dig in his heels. Tag had accepted him without reservation once Glorian's connection was known, and he was puzzled about such an extension of instant trust. It didn't make sense. Unless, he amended, there was something about the Kori and other families that had no analogy to the world he was used to.

  Which immediately brought to mind still another query.

  "Where are we?"

  "The Sallamin."

  "No, I mean where are we? Where is here? All this," and he gestured to include everything he could see. "You know, and I know, this isn't my world. And I doubt we're talking about instantaneous corporeal transmissions to another planet. Which means I'm not in outer space, and I'm not in my house, so where the hell am I?"

  Tag shrugged. "Here."

  He decided to try another tack. "The Bridges. Glorian said they come when they're needed, and sometimes, when you cross them, you come back with something you need for what you needed in the first place."

  He could sense Tag frowning through the syntax, then nodding as he finally understood. "The Bridges."

  "Right."

  "You want to know about them."

  "Right."

  "I don't know. Sometimes you get them, and sometimes you don't. I don't know how they started or who discovered them or why they're there. They just are."

  This, he thought, is getting me nowhere.

  "Okay," he said, "then tell me about Kori. You said that's where your family makes its home, but there wasn't anyone there when I arrived. The houses were empty, I didn't see anything growing that looked like crops, and except for those dumb pits in the grass, it could have been a false village for all I know."

  "The pits?"

  "Right. I kept falling into them."

  Tag stretched his face over Gideon's shoulder and gaped at him. "And you got out?"

  "Well, sure. Jesus, they're only about six feet deep, give or take an inch. Not much deeper than a grave." Tag withdrew and muttered to himself, and Gideon twisted around. "You know, you seem awfully sure of yourself about a lot of things that concern me, and awfully surprised about a lot of other things. Like those pits, like those berries, like my getting out of that valley in one piece." He lifted an eyebrow, a polite but firm invitation for an explanation.

  Tag ducked his head away from a sudden gust of wind and muttered something Gideon couldn't quite hear.

  "What?"

  "I said, they're all dead but you."

  "Who are?"

  "The Kori."

  "But you're a Kori. And Glorian is."

  "Right. But the rest of them... we, Glorian and me, we're the only ones left."

  "Because of the pits?"

  "No."

  Gideon took a deep breath and let Red take him a hundred yards before he decided to take it one step at a time. "Listen, Tag, I gather that eating those berries, or fruits, or whatever, is something your people don't do. Probably because they are lethal to you in some way."

  "All ways," Tag insisted with a shudder. "It's horrible. I wonder why they didn't kill you? And the thorns—didn't you cut yourself trying to feed?"

  Gideon held up a hand; the back was clear. "A couple of times, I guess, but nothing serious. Why? Don't tell me the thorns carry poison, too."

  Tag nodded.

  "There ought to be signs."

  Tag agreed, though he was apparently still perplexed by Gideon's survival.

  "The pits," he said, ignoring the speculation by moving on to the next step. "Why should I have died there when the other stuff didn't kill me?"

  "The pacch." Tag glanced over his shoulder. "Those pits are part of their burrows."

  "But there weren't any of them there!"

  "There was, once."

  Gideon opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, then closed it when the obvious answer came to him, and, at the same time, he saw the expression that clouded the boy's face.

  "I didn't think they could move that fast," he said quietly.

  "They can. At night."

  "But there was no damage to the houses."

  "We weren't in the houses. We were outside."

  "Why?"

  But Tag was done talking. He stared at the passing landscape with a finality in his posture that made Gideon turn around again. He could see no profit in even pursuing the subject himself since he had only fragments of information, and most of that was incomplete; yet he could not help thinking that the impression Tag had left him with was that someone, or something, had lured the Kori from their houses in order to slaughter them. For what reason he couldn't begin to guess; that would have to wait until the morning, or considerably later from the weight of the silence he felt behind him.

  By dusk they had reached another one of the clay-like crescents, and with Red grazing contentedly nearby and Tag assuring him they were in no danger from nighttime attacks this far from the mountains, he stretched out on a strand of thick grass and watched as the Kori perched on a rock and stared at the stars. Gideon had no idea how old he was, but sitting there with his face upturned and his hands clutched around his shins, he seemed quite a young lad indeed, perhaps still a boy, or a young man who was still close enough to boyhood to make almost no difference.

  It was clear he missed Glorian.

  Gideon wondered, suddenly and with an unwanted, abrupt burning at the corners of his eyes, if there was anyone back home who missed him. There were no parents, no wife or currently active girlfriend, and his sister didn't count because she was already dead. She would have missed him were she alive, though she probably would have had a few choice words for him on his return. He only wished there had been a grave to go to, someplace other than the memorial marker that rested coldly in the cemetery in the town where they'd been born.

  He sighed and brushed an angry hand over his face. Dead she was, but he'd thought he had long ago expunged the grief that had caused him to weep. It must, he decided, be the situation and the place—the one person he had ever cared about was the one person who wasn't able to know he was gone.

  It was a long time before he was able to sleep.

  Long after Red nestled down beside
him and gave him his flank for a pillow.

  Long after Tag had curled up on the rock, his head tucked in his arms, his knees drawn to his chest.

  Long after the moon had dropped below the horizon.

  And definitely long after he could have sworn he had seen those red eyes again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They retook the road shortly after dawn, and Gideon was not in the best of moods. Unused to knowing what the sun looked like until it was already a goodly and decent way up into the sky, he and his system were embroiled in minor skirmishes over habit and his internal clock; he was never at his best anyway upon awakening, and doing so before the day even had a chance to take a deep breath bordered on the ludicrous. In addition, while the foodstuffs Tag provided from the Sallamin's abundant fields were nutritious enough and did the job of settling his stomach's rebellion, by the time the road began to rise and fall over a gentle series of low knolls, he would have killed for the taste of a good greasy hamburger or a steak-and-onions dinner or even a bag of overpriced buttered and salted popcorn. Scavenging in the wild was not his idea of a civilized life.

  He was also having a difficult time ridding himself of the melancholy that had come upon him the night before. No one likes to think he can abruptly leave the world he knows and not leave some sort of vacuum; but he added to his ration of self-pity the belief that the only notice he would probably get would be a squib in some sports column in some small-town paper that needed a filler under the joke of the day.

  It bothered him.

  It bothered him so much that he became annoyed with himself for acting like a child and took it out on Tag, snapping at his good humor, refusing to see the beauty of the day, and snarling at Red whenever the lorra wanted to waste a few minutes tasting the local fodder cuisine.

  By midday, Red was sulking and Tag had fallen into a pout he found worse than the constant bright prattling that had preceded it.

  You're an idiot, he told himself; the kid only wants to help, and wants your help, and all you can do is bite off his arm. Why don't you stick your head in a bucket and take a deep breath?

  On the other hand, he argued back, he had taken a large part of all this on blind faith, assuming that everything would be explained sooner or later. But the more he asked for explanations, the more questions he had, and they were giving him a headache. It was getting to the point where he knew he would either have to scream or just float along as he had on the river, pulling together as much as he could until he could build himself a raft large enough to give him support. Once that was done, he could make up his mind what to do next.

  The trouble was, by that time he might not be in a position to make any decisions at all.

  Tag poked him in the small of his back.

  "What?" he said, making an effort to sound friendly.

  A hand snaked over his shoulder and pointed.

  The Sallamin, he had noticed over the last few miles, was not as unbroken as it had been near the Blades. There were stands of trees now, and whenever they reached the high point of a rise, he could see that the wildflowers were decreasing in number, that the grass was lower, and that the road itself was considerably more worn. There were also side paths worn across the plain, though he could see no immediate destination should he take one.

  Now, ahead as they came over the crest of a knoll, on the far side of a stream that cut across the cobbles, he could see a collection of houses. They were smaller than those of the Kori and appeared to be made of wood rather than stone. They stood facing the road, and there were others behind them—rows and files and low fences between them.

  "What is it?" he asked, feeling a swift chill of excitement.

  "Pholler," he was told. "They're one of the largest families on the Sallamin."

  "Friendly folk, I hope."

  "We all are."

  "Of course," he said.

  At the stream they stopped and dismounted, drank, cleansed their faces, and waited until Red had polished off a clump of grass whose blades had faintly scarlet edges. Meanwhile, Gideon walked to the bank and shook his head. The water was twenty feet across, chillingly clear, and probably knee deep.

  "Tag," he said, "don't you people believe in bridges?"

  "What are you talking about? Didn't you get here across a Bridge?"

  "No," he said. "Not a Bridge, a bridge. Like you put across water so you don't get your feet wet."

  "Across water?" Tag looked at him, bewildered. "Why? Can't you swim?"

  "Not well," he admitted after a glare that turned the boy's head, "but that's beside the point. Wouldn't it make traveling easier, not to say quicker, if you didn't have to ford every river and puddle you came across?"

  "On a bridge?"

  "What else?"

  "Bridges are for holes, not water. You can't swim across a hole."

  "A hole?"

  "Sure. Don't you have holes? Big holes?" And he swung his arm at the stream as if the water would vanish and the bottom would suddenly be thirty feet down. "Holes."

  "Oh." He reminded himself to be patient; after all, he was the stranger, not this infuriating kid. "Like chasms, canyons, gullies, things like that."

  "Yeah. Holes."

  "Damned big holes, if you ask me."

  "Sure they are. That's why we have bridges."

  I will not strangle him, he thought, because then I will probably regret it. Not for long, but I will regret it.

  They remounted Red and forded the stream, the lorra's rich hair floating on the surface, their feet submerged to the ankles before the bottom rose and they were on the other side. Then Tag jumped to the ground and walked beside him, one hand lightly touching his right leg.

  "What's up?"

  "I should walk," Tag said. "I don't want to scare them."

  "And I won't?"

  "Of course you will. That's important."

  "I don't get it."

  "You will."

  Again, the explanation he needed was forestalled, this time by large and small groups of people hurriedly filtering out of the houses and gathering at the roadside. They were dressed well, in cloth—loose-fitting blouses, long baggy trousers, high boots of varicolored hide thick as leather. The women were dressed the same, except that their blouses had more splashes of embroidered color and many of them wore their hair tied back with bright ribbons.

  They were silent.

  They stared as he rode past, and he smiled at them, nodded, winked at a child, who instantly ducked behind his father's legs. Tag was right; they were afraid of them, and he had no doubt part of it was because he rode the lorra.

  Red seemed to sense it, too. He kept his head high to show off his massive horns, picked up his hooves to sound them loudly on the cobbles. Tag grinned and patted the animal's neck, and someone in the crowd was unable to stifle a gasp.

  Gideon, feeling like a last-ditch politician riding into the enemy party's territory, kept the smile at his lips while he looked more closely at the buildings and saw they weren't made entirely of wood—the frames around the squared windows and heavy doors were blocks of stone that strongly resembled marble, and the roofs were sharply pitched and broken at least twice by chimney pots. Some of the houses had flower gardens in the front yard, some of the yards were cluttered with what could only be children's toys, and all had a small pennant flying over the lintel, each one, as far as he could tell, different in design and combinations of color.

  Seven houses down, the road branched into a square, in the center of which was a long, low building festooned with the same pennants he had seen over the doors. There were faces in the several windows that flanked blond-wood double doors, and standing in front of the doors were three men and a woman.

  Tag tugged on his leg. Gideon leaned forward and whispered, and Red came to a halt, snorting and blowing until he leaned forward again and told him to stop showing off. Then he waited while Tag ran up to the quartet and began speaking with them earnestly. The larger of the three men—as tall as the doors a
nd nearly as wide—appeared unimpressed by whatever the lad was saying, though the others, the woman included, kept stealing glances in his direction, measuring him, he supposed, for whatever guise Tag was putting on him.

  Since it seemed he wasn't going to be invited to join the discussions, he took the opportunity to look around, seeing to his left, at the north end of the square, a pair of small buildings fronted by wooden overhangs, under which women and men were passing and returning with baskets and cartons of what he guessed was food; on the south was a similar arrangement, though there was no customer traffic. There was, however, a large sign over one of the shops whose name was in a language he didn't know, but the stylized picture of crossed sword-and-cudgel gave him a fair idea of its wares.

  Red shifted and growled impatiently. The three men backed away with scowls, and Tag hurried over.

  "What's the matter?"

  "The critter is bored," Gideon said. "So am I. What's going on?"

  "I'll tell you later."

  "I've heard that before."

  Tag shook his head. "Look, there's nothing you can do, not now, anyway. Why don't you look around?"

  "Will they let me?"

  "They'll tell you if they won't."

  Before he could respond, the young man had run off again, and with a shrug he slipped off the lorra's back. He stretched and noted that the people who had watched him arrive had returned to their homes. I guess I'm just a fad, he thought with a lopsided smile, and, taking an easy handful of Red's neck hair, he headed off toward the armory. Red followed docilely and bobbed his head when Gideon asked him to please wait outside while he took a look around.

  —|—

  Batwing doors eased aside when he entered, feeling foolishly like a gunslinger stalking the local saloon. But when his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, he stopped, blinked several times, and checked over his shoulder to be sure the lorra was still there, just so he would know where he was.

  There was enough weaponry on the walls, on the square posts supporting the ceiling, in glass-fronted display cases, and on fierce-visaged mannequins, to supply a fair-sized army out for one hell of a good time. He remembered Tag's denial of war situations and made a note to ask the lad what they thought war was around here. He also puzzled over the selection of arms—the lefthand side of the large room was devoted to a selection of very modern-looking rifles, while the right gave itself to swords, greatswords, broadswords, claymores, and virtually everything else that had a blade except a straight razor.