Nameless: Bones of the Earth I-III

by J. C. Hendee

  Karras slashed and stabbed, over and over, struggling to break free and rise.

  6. Tackled

  Fiáh'our was rarely surprised. The sluggïn lunging out of the grass was so small, maybe shorter than Karras, but it did not falter at the sight of him. And then it was too small.

  His swing of Burskâp missed even the tuft of its ear.

  In running on all fours, it dropped lower than he had thought. When it rammed into his shin at full speed, his left boot actually slid on the frozen grass.

  Fiáh'our's eyes widened.

  He did not like to kill; neither did he hesitate at the necessity. Somewhere in the dark, a child had screamed, and his apprentice could not be far from that. Claws rapped speedily around his knee as teeth tried to bite down on his right thigh.

  And that was that.

  Fiáh'our brought Burskâp straight down, butt first, as he dropped his great weight into his right knee. That knee crushed the small pelvis to the ground as Burskâp's spike slammed into its face.

  There was no chance for it to even shriek.

  He jerked the spike out and, in the sudden silence, heard Kaitlin's panicked breathes over the wind and grass. No time for that either, and he barely glanced at her.

  “Move!” he snapped. “Stay ahead where I can see you, but stop if you see or hear anything... so I can meet it first.”

  Kaitlin nodded once. Still clutching one of his battle daggers, she took a few halting steps before picking up her pace.

  Fiáh'our lingered an instant in looking down at the little sluggïn.

  Yes, it was a small female short of breeding age but also thin, almost skeletal. That bothered him, and then another scream across the night plain pulled his eyes up.

  That had not come from any girl child.

  Someone else shouted out as well, far off to his left. He just barely heard more tearing grass. That had to be Gän'gehtin, Jackdaw, or both heading in.

  Fiáh'our charged off after Kaitlin.

  7. Stoned

  Karras slashed blindly and kicked as he rolled. The blade sliced something by an answering yelp and snarl, and he finally struggled up. Tired, torn, and short of breath, he could not shout at his enemy if he wanted to. His scalp burned behind his ear as that thing came at him again.

  He barely ducked another swipe at his face—and it slammed into him again in a frenzy. It tried to tear him and knock him down to get atop him. His feet slid on flattened grass, and though he managed to thrash out of its first grip…

  The other—the first one—tore out of the grass.

  It charged in on all fours behind the one he already faced.

  Fright whipped into something worse, and then became so remote. It rose out of his flesh, hovered like a fog trying to smother him, and everything began darkening. Or was it more like falling into a chasm… with his own fear watching from above upon a precipice?

  Karras hit bottom, feet first.

  His legs shook as if he had felt that impact, and a shudder vibrated through his bones. He stopped sliding across flattened grass—not another inch—though one sluggïn tore at him as the other closed.

  He was going to die here.

  He would never see Skirra again.

  Someone would pay for taking that from him.

  He heard a shriek, but it came before he rammed the knife into his adversary. A separate yelp followed, closer and louder in his ears. Claws raked his blade arm and others tried to strike his face. He jerked the blade out, and the sluggïn beat at him in trying to climb and topple him.

  Karras' feet still did not shift, not even an inch.

  How many times did it strike at him, until it bit down on his shoulder? Did he scream when teeth and fangs began tearing through his hauberk? Or was that someone—something—else?

  Karras rammed the blade upward.

  He only knew it hit home when the sluggïn's snarls choked off. Its teeth tore out of his shoulder as its head whipped upward. He did not see the knife's handle, but he let go for an instant.

  Karras rammed his palm's heel upward, though he barely felt the pain when his palm hit the hilt's hard end. At a muffled crackle of bone, his adversary went limp. Clinging to him, its sagging weight tried to pull him down.

  And still his feet did not shift.

  His legs did buckle, but his muscle hardened, no longer shuddering. He tore out of its limp grip and just stood there, as everything was so quiet for an instant.

  He heard wind and someone panting.

  He looked down, but that second sound did not come from his enemy.

  The sluggïn lay sprawled on its back with its head up. The underside of its jaw was black in the dark, and the blackness spread like fluid running down and around its thick throat. When he could not see the butt of the knife's handle in that mess, he raised his eyes.

  The other one—the first—lay facedown on the flattened grass.

  Barely three strides away, two arrows stood upright in its back and a third at the base of its skull. Beyond it stood the long-haired lhoin'na, his bow fitted with another arrow.

  'yan was frozen in place and staring at Karras as if uncertain who he saw.

  Karras' throat and chest began to burn. And the panting he now heard was his own as he looked around.

  Fiáh'our stood in a half crouch just inside the ring of matted grass. His great axe was raised up and back, as if about to strike,; he was frozen like the lhoin'na and looked… frightened?

  That shook Karras into awareness. He had never seen the old man like that before. Well, except once when utterly helpless on Karras' family ship as it rammed into another vessel.

  Karras' terror returned in looking into Fiáh'our's dark old eyes. His legs trembled, threatened to collapse, and suddenly, all of his strange strength began to drain. There was something else he half-remembered, and he looked every which way as his legs did buckle.

  “The girl!” Karras tried to shout, though he only croaked.

  8. Not Like The Others

  “No!” Fiáh'our ordered as he rushed in, dropping Burskâp in the grass. “Get on your feet, now, you hear me?”

  He grabbed Karras under the arms as young one's knees hit the ground. Surviving was not the end of danger after a first fight to the death. Too many succumbed and not just physically.

  Karras was slipping into shock.

  Fiáh'our heaved up his little cat as 'yan bounded in, and bless the Bäynæ that the wayward serenitier had come in time. 'yan had just fired the third shot into other sluggïn when Fiáh'our had arrived, fearing he was too late.

  Everything changed in that instant by what he saw.

  Even under the onslaught of a full-sized sluggïn, Karras had not given way.

  The young one had finally found stone in the true way that so few ever did.

  Fiáh'our was sickened by his own blink of hesitation in that moment, when he had hung there with Burskâp raised and ready to strike. Now, what the young one did not know in his shock was that what he had fallen into was almost always the way it happened.

  Many never did find it and died. Among those who did find it when so desperately needed, most still died. It was not the same as what his people found in childhood, so full of joy and wonder. That kind of stone that all of his people knew was a shadow compared to what Karras had found.

  And all of this would have to wait.

  “What about a girl?” he half-shouted.

  Dazed and sagging, Karras did not look up.

  Fiáh'our looked to 'yan, but the tall lhoin'na shook his head, spun away, and scanned everywhere in the dark.

  “It's little Kaitlin,” someone else shouted. “She was… she ran off.”

  “Where's my sister?” a smaller voice cried out.

  Lieutenant Urval appeared in dragging an unwilling William and Jeron. Little Jeron broke free and ran in before Urval could snatch him. The boy went straight at and hammered his small fists against Karras' back.

  “You did this!” he screamed. “Where i
s she?”

  Fiáh'our tried to hold the little one off but almost dropped Karras. Fortunately, Kaitlin the “elder” rushed in to scoop up the boy. Jeron thrashed in her arms, and Fiáh'our was about to snap someone, everyone, to tell him what this was about.

  “We have her.”

  He quickly jerked Karras upright as he looked. The first one he saw was Gän'gehtin jogging out of the dark—and the shirvêsh held Karras' ku'ê'bunst.

  Fiáh'our found that deeply upsetting.

  Amid panic upon arrival, he had not noticed it was missing. And how had it gone missing? Before he demanded an answer, Jackdaw appeared, quarterstaff in one hand and the other arm wrapped around the girl. Little Kaitlin—Kaity—clung to the one-time bandit with her face buried in his bearded neck.

  Fiáh'our sighed once in relief. As long as everyone was accounted for, all else could wait.

  “Back to the village,” Fiáh'our ordered and, when Gän'gehtin neared, “Keep Karras on his feet. Slap him if you have to, make him angry or whatever, but do not let him drop.”

  Gän'gehtin frowned, but that was wiped away by one looked at Karras. The shirvêsh nodded in herding off the stumbling little cat, but not before Fiáh'our grabbed the young one's ku'ê'bunst out of the shirvêsh's hand. As the others made to leave as well, Gän'gehtin looked back.

  “You are coming?” he asked.

  “Something to see first,” Fiáh'our answered.

  He stepped beyond the zone of flattened grass to grab up Burskâp in his other hand. Everyone else hurried to leave, but Fiáh'our went to the bodies in the matted grass. Darkness could not hide much from his experience.

  These two were much like the one that he had put down, though both were male and bigger. Still, they were smaller than most. None of the three had possessed much if any scavenged armor and no weapons. All of this was very unlike the packs he had faced in previous years, though perhaps the truly big ones had become scarcer.

  They were all starved to bones showing through their skin. They were manic in battle, as if living another day meant less than something else… or nothing at all.

  In facing that, how had Karras lost his weapon?

  Fiáh'our hefted the cat's ku'ê'bunst before his eyes.

  Fashioned after a traditional weapon of his people, the bunsa’hoyksí or “eight-ways,” it was called that for the eight directions of the world by Rughìr tradition. Unlike it, Karras' weapon had five blades, and Fiáh'our called it a ku'ê'bunst after five elements of existence and the world.

  Lighter, and with a hand-and-a-half haft, it was more suited to the little cat's stature. Most humans would see it as a flanged mace, but it was heavy of head and unwieldy for most of them. Not so for a rughìr, and… what had the young one named it?

  Oh, yes… Skirlan.

  Fiáh'our grimaced.

  That was not a proper rughìr name for a great ally that lived in one's hand. It might sound to some like a rughìr term, but “skirl” was old Numanese for a common shield, hence the name meant “Shielder.” All right, so it was acceptable, for Skirlan had shielded Karras more than once. But a name was not all there was to it for a weapon such as this one, and at least Karras had kept that secret to himself.

  Fiáh'our had planned that something else, almost unique, in the making of Karras' weapon. He had had Skirra forge it by the secret teachings of her father, Hôisan'bän, one of the “deep smiths.”

  Also miners, lived their lives in the deepest depths, exposing themselves to intense heat, noxious fumes, and other hidden dangers. And all of this to hunt the most treasured of metals little known to the world.

  Meá—the Ore.

  It was not truly just an ore from what little Fiáh'our could get from Hôisan'bän, who had more often called it “stone-marrow.” It was a metal made from something only deep smiths could find, smelt, and forge. Meá was sacred to the Rughìr and used only for the people's greatest needs, like the chains of their mountain lifts. It might flex or even bend, but like a rughìr who truly found stone, it would never yield. And in this was another secret which neither Karras nor even Skirra knew.

  Skirlan was not quite unique.

  Fiáh'our hefted up Burskâp next to it. His old friend and ally had been in his hand for so many years, since the nights in which Skirra's father had secretly forged it. Even she did not know Fiáh'our's connection to her father. He had played coy with her in feigning ignorance of what he had asked of her concerning the making of a Karras' weapon to match Burskâp's secret.

  That weapon of his was the last creation of the good but downfallen father who died young for his kind, like all deep smiths. In Fiáh'our's hands, by whatever names and to his knowledge, he now held the only two weapons with pure, unbreakable hearts.

  So why and how had Karras lost Skirlan?

  The answer to that he should ferret out, but there was something else that might elude him forever. He looked down upon those two emaciated bodies in the matted grass.

  “Only the weakest… this time.”

  At those soft words, Fiáh'our looked up and found 'yan had either lingered or turned back.

  “You have fought sluggïn'ân before?” he asked. “Before here, that is.”

  'yan stepped nearer, his gaze upon the bodies. “Who has not in the north… in these times?”

  “And elsewhere?”

  Perhaps the aging lhoin'na shrugged; if so, it was slight.

  “Fewer and less often than you,” 'yan answered, “though not as far gone as these… not as now and here.”

  Fiáh'our sighed and, though the obvious question was not asked, “Too short a life in too big a world for all of the knowing.”

  Still, it bothered him.

  “I think this is the last of it for tonight,” he added.

  He turned away with 'yan. As they followed the others, he tried to put aside his fears. This night, he had almost lost another apprentice. The last time was nearly fifty years ago.

  Fiáh'our had chosen then to never again take an apprentice. The Bäynæ had chosen otherwise in thrusting the little cat, back then a kitten, into his path. Karras had come through this day and night almost like a true rughìr, Rughìr’thai’âch, one of the “Earth-Born.”

  There was hope in that and perhaps as well for Karras' own fallen hopes.

  Fiáh'our did not catch up with the others. He and 'yan hung back but remained close enough to hear them. For anything that might come, the two of them would see or hear and could close when needed. They watched all ways, but nothing more appeared on the way to Irin's Village.

  9. Chilled to the Stone

  Karras sat on a rickety bunk, which creaked if he shifted, within a small dirt-floored hut that belonged to Kaitlin. The place was filled with little baskets, shelves, and a rough table and stools. Most were overburdened with clay jars, partitioned wooden trays, and other containers of herbs and whatnot. All of this was only visible because of one out-of-place oddity.

  A crystal no bigger than the end of his thumb glowed brightly where it lay upon the rough table's nearer corner.

  Karras watched only the hut's open door as Kaitlin picked up after tending his wounds. The blanket she had wrapped around him did nothing for his deep chill. It wormed so deeply into his bones after that frightening moment, like falling into the dark, that he was beyond even shivering. He heard the slightest sounds outside from anywhere within the village's broken stockade. Each distant noise seemed too loud, except—strangely—whenever the old man barked at someone about something.

  Kaitlin had claimed all of this was “survivor's shock.” The villagers here called it “death's chill” or “death's nudge.” Karras did not know what that truly meant. He did not want to, for it might make him think about…

  “I'm sorry I couldn't do more.”

  He stiffened, looked up, and blinked.

  Kaitlin smiled at him while rolling up remains of the cotton cloth she had used to bandage his head.

  “Without clean thread for stitches,�
� she went on, “those wounds will probably leave notable scars.” She paused and glanced at him, or rather at the bandages around his head. “You can let your hair grow again to cover them up… unless you prefer to let them show.”

  She smiled again. Was she teasing him?

  He still felt those claws tearing into his scalp, though her salve was supposed to have numbed the wounds. She had sheared off his hair to clean and dress those, but they still burned from above his left ear to the back of his head.

  That was the only heat he felt.

  Those would not be his first scars in the last moon—the last year.

  They were the ones he did not want to think about.

  Kaitlin stepped quickly in on him. He flinched and again when she reached down and pressed her hand against his cheek. Her touch felt too hot, though it distracted him when she leaned over to kiss him where the bandage wrapped across his forehead.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then more sternly, “now rest, even if you cannot sleep. I'll return in a while.”

  Kaitlin turned away, picked up her satchel and other needed things, and strode out the hut's door, perhaps to tend to others. She never looked back, though she left the crystal on the table.

  Karras watched until she disappeared in the dark; she was strange even to him, and he preferred Numan ways, the humans of the nearby nations. Unlike his own people, they did not smother themselves with so many traditions, but she was even odder than that.

  Kaitlin had once been a “sage.” Perhaps a ranking one, hence the glowing crystal on the table. Though its light burned his eyes, he was thankful for it.

  Some villagers claimed she would have become a “domin,” offered that position in her guild's founding branch in Malourné. No one knew what happened, and she never talked about it. Eleven years back, she showed up on foot in Fieldhaven, about half a day's fast walk from Irin's, after having left the Guild of Sagecraft forever.

  She did not stay in that frontier fort-town for long and had been in this village ever since. The Alders named their second born Kaitlin the “younger”—Kaity—after the former sage. A few said it had been a harsh birth, but Kaitlin the “elder” said nothing about it. That was—or had been—the way of things in Irin's for those who came to it late and alone.