by J. C. Hendee
Whatever came “before” was forgotten or at least never spoken of.
The only one Karras now wanted to talk to was the old man; in thinking that, he knew he was not right in the head. Among the bits of this night all fighting to get back into his thoughts, the one he latched onto was his weapon.
Had anyone found it?
He had to have it. Not for what it could do and not for what he could do with it. It meant something more to only him.
“Feeling better?”
Karras looked away from the crystal and, at first, saw only a bulky dark shape beyond the open doorway. He knew that voice, just the same, and Fiáh'our was halfway into the hut before Karras' eyes adjusted. The old man carried something in one big fist, and another moment passed before Karras realized it was not the great axe.
The instant the old man neared, Karras grabbed the ku'ê'bunst and jerked it out of that big grip.
“Easy,” Fiáh'our growled. “You will not need it again tonight, I would guess.”
Karras barely heard a word as he took a shivering breath. With one hand gripped below the five-flanged head, he slid his other down the metal haft in feeling for something else. But when his fingers found it…
“As to throwing it in the dark,” Fiáh'our growled, “never do that again! Not unless certain you will put down your target in one far strike.”
Karras stopped shivering as spite heated him, and then his hand found the old scar on the weapon's haft. In another battle long past, another opponent had struck down on him so fast and hard that all he could do was raise his weapon to block.
That blow nearly broke him—but not the haft. Not until later had he even noticed the fracture in only the outer metal. Within that crack was something more gray at the core.
Skirlan, a Numan name to spite Fiáh'our, had a core of Meá.
Karras wrapped his hand around the scar where Skirra had re-sealed the haft. He held on so tight that his hand began to ache. She had made that weapon for him, though perhaps only at the blustering braggart's insistence. Karras had never dared ask how she had come by that special metal, for if it had not been for that fracture in the haft, he might have never known what she had done.
And how had she had learned to do so?
More than likely from her father, though how a deep smith and his family had come to such a fallen state among their people, generations ago, was another mystery. That was something else he had been stupid enough to ask her once.
He scowled as the grizzled old braggart dropped on the bunk next him. The bunk creaked and groaned under old man's bulk, and Karras stiffened, prepared to hop up before it collapsed.
Fiáh'our leaned back against the hut's log wall.
“Oh, I reasoned why you threw it,” he went on, “but not a good choice. Especially facing more than one adversary. Better to protect yourself than be left unable to protect anyone… including yourself!”
Karras was in no mood for a lecture, no matter how much had been guessed.
“I know,” Fiáh'our whispered, and then sighed in peering blankly across the hut. “It is hard to accept that we cannot save everyone.”
Karras forgot whatever nastiness he would have spit out.
“And many here we could not save,” Fiáh'our added, and only his old eyes turned toward Karras. “But you did save her.”
Karras looked away, uncertain about that.
Terrified little Kaity had run off because of him. So did it count that he had turned the threat from her upon himself by mistake? Did it matter that for foolishness, he abandoned all hope to make his opponent pay for it? He did not like what had happened to him or what he had become in that moment.
“There was…,” he began, “I felt… something like…”
“Stone.”
Karras looked up.
Fiáh'our was watching him in a way that rekindled the sensation of falling into that cold darkness out on the plain.
“So why…” he began, “why… then?”
“Because that is when and where it always happens.”
Karras was too tired and cold for more of the old man's meaningless answers.
“What?” Fiáh'our scoffed at him. “Did you think when—if—it came that you would understand it instantly? Do not be that kind of an immature whelp.”
Karras sat there with his mouth half-open.
“We think we find stone as toddling youngsters,” Fiáh'our grumbled on. “Most do—well, except for you—but what all others of our kind beside you learn young is not the true en'nag, the innate knowing of stone. Even fewer come to that and, well, you started behind by quite a bit.”
Karras waited for something that mattered, and a few less insults, but he saw something in the old man's eyes. In all of Fiáh'our's madness, there seemed nothing the thänæ feared.
Had something scared the braggart tonight? And what was that?
“You glimpsed that en'nag when lost in cold and darkness,” Fiáh'our said. “We rughìr are unique, for only we can know stone, or so we think when we are young. Few ever know it as you do now, a little bit… not even Gän'gehtin. Very few and only in a moment like yours, out there, and perhaps they are better off without that.”
With a great sigh, Fiáh'our looked away again across the little hut. His voice became little more than a sorrowful and angry whisper.
“Courage—or just fury—can make anyone stand and hold… until they break. That is in the heat. None can do so like those of our people who take stone into our very flesh and bone. And some of us think that we are then stone itself in the calm chill that it brings.”
The old man's sudden pause unsettled Karras all the more.
“And even we few can still break… or worse,” Fiáh'our whispered. “And when we do… stone will not care, for it is heartless… and cold.”
Karras had never heard the thänæ so sullen and bitter. Fiáh'our was still here, so he had certainly never broken. Had someone else, someone the old man had once known, who had also found stone?
That left Karras even more frightened.
In that cold moment upon the plain, nothing could have moved him until he died. Whatever he had stumbled into there and then, whatever he knew but did not that few others ever would, he did not want to know anymore.
With one shuddering breath, he started to rise. “I should get on post. There are many gaps in—”
Fiáh'our swung out a thick arm and swept Karras back with no effort. As Karras toppled, and the cot creaked again…
“Rest,” Fiáh'our ordered. “Others see to the stockade gaps. You have done enough—well enough—for tonight, apprentice.”
Karras eyed the old man, half-relieved and half-annoyed. Eventually, he leaned back against the wall and the halves of the blanket around him slid aside.
He saw the marks on his hauberk from claws—and the cracks and the smudges of blood and mud. Was that all there was to his life anymore? He had not had time in so long to oil the thick leather, and it showed even to the belt he now strapped on top of it.
There was the brass buckle, his family's name engraved as a single symbol—or vubrí—of his people, but it was so disfigured that it was now unreadable. Much of the brass had been gouged by that sluggïn he had faced alone.
That symbol—that name—he had wanted to share with her. And she would not have that either. In marrying into his family, she and hers could have escaped whatever hidden, terrible act of some forgotten ancestor had cast them down into the depths.
Skirra would not have him, even for that, and yet…
“A'ye! Even your thoughts are loud,” Fiáh'our grumbled. “Close your eyes and enough!”
Fiáh'our laced his fingers with hands across his chest and closed his eyes where he leaned against the hut's log wall. Shortly, he began to hum some old song that perhaps only he knew.
There had been a time, that such a thing annoyed Karras. With the sage's crystal still bright and Skirra still plaguing his thoughts, at least the old man's no
ise smothered any other sound outside in the dark.
10. Others' Choices
At dawn's first spark on the eighth following day, Fiáh'our walked the interior periphery of the village's broken stockade. They were too few to watch all gaps, so they took shifts during daylight, and those on watch always kept moving along the stockade.
Long cold nights and short days wore on the humans and even 'yan, and the last eight were a fraction of how long they had been here. Of course the children remained in hiding, but water as well as food was now a concern.
The well seemed lower every day. Not enough snow had fallen to melt for all needs. And the nearest stream was a fair walk beyond the northern forested slope.
More attacks had come, though all had been repelled without further losses and limited injuries. What concerned Fiáh'our more were those who came in the dark.
By count, more of the pack was still out there than he had hoped.
By count, those who came, died, or fled were the weakest.
And still, they came every night.
Irin's was now a fallen place and did not know it. Dead and not knowing so, it had slowly filled with specters of desperation and madness on both sides. There would be nothing left to claim for those who remained in any victory. And next autumn, the raids would begin again.
'yan would know this, and likely Urval as well. Both might be waiting for Fiáh'our to say so, though the villagers, including Kaitlin, thought they were winning, finally.
While Fiáh'our did not like admitting defeat, this was not what kept him silent, nor was it shame for what old Effy might have said if he walked away.
Any who fled now could still face the strongest of the pack trying to catch them in the open. That was the greater concern but not the only one.
He paused at a gap in the village's northeast corner, where half a dozen stockade poles—thicker than his own legs—had been ripped out in whole or shattered. A dozen strides outside in plain sight lay something on its back.
The arrow or quarrel that had split its bestial face was gone. Any such within safe reach were retrieved at dawn to refill 'yan's quiver or Urval's case. The longer and deeper split in its chest, from its right shoulder to its abdomen and straight through hardened leather armor and ribs, had been Fiáh'our's doing.
The sluggïn's corpse was covered in its own half-dried, half-frozen blood all the way to its slack jaws. None of its comrades had even tried to drag it off for food—or perhaps had been unable to do so. Its thick tongue lolled motionless across its teeth and fangs.
It was more bone than muscle beneath patchy fur.
Fiáh'our sickened as that sight became clearer in the rising sun. He shut his eyes and trudged away along the stockade. Half-frozen mud crunched beneath his large boots, and that was the only sound of life that he heard.
Why did the packs make the long trek each year out of the Broken Lands? Yet in pushing farther into the west, each time in greater numbers, the ones he had faced looked worse as their threat grew. He would face any opponent in any numbers to defend those who could not defend themselves, but what did that matter if it led to only slaughter on both sides?
This was not his calling. It was the shame of any champion. And it had to end.
Fiáh'our did not notice how far he had tread or that half the stockade's north gate had been opened. When he did notice, and was about to snarl at the fool who had done that, he was caught in 'yan's sidelong glance.
The tall lhoin'na turned his head to once more look out the gate. With bow in hand and a long arrow held to the string, he did not raise that weapon.
Fiáh'our closed quickly to 'yan's side and looked out the gate. All he saw was the forested sloped some fifty yards across the plain. He barely looked up at the elf.
“Slightly left of center,” 'yan said calmly. “In the edge of the trees near the base of a taller pine.”
Fiáh'our strained for a glimpse. Something had goaded the ex-serenitier for a better look than through the gate's peep-slot. And there it was in the shadow of a massive pine.
Slanting sunlight exposed only the crouching form's bottom half. At a guess, it was the smallest sluggïn he had seen here so far. Fully naked, only its fur shielded it from the cold, and Fiáh'our quickly scanned the treeline both ways.
“It is alone,” 'yan said, “as always.”
Fiáh'our looked up again. “You have seen it before?”
'yan nodded once. “A few times, after all others are gone. Perhaps it is not welcome among them… for what it is.”
What did that mean?
Fiáh'our frowned and looked again to the trees.
The little one still squatted beneath the pine, and he saw nothing special about it. Well, other than being no taller than his chest, at a guess, but that was likely just its age. Then it turned to scamper away into the shadows.
Fiáh'our took a quick step as his breaths stopped.
It ambled more than scampered, favoring one rear leg in an odd fashion, as if that limb would not fully answer its need. It was hard to tell from a distance, but it seemed that leg was both slightly thicker and weaker than the other. And as to its front limbs, it held one folded to its chest and only used the other in slowly loping on threes instead all fours.
Fiáh'our knew it, for he had seen it before, over a year ago.
When he had taken Karras—along with Gän'gehtin—on a first venture into good service, they had gone to the northern frontier. The inland-most settlements of the Maksœ’ín Veallaksê—the “People of the Bear” or Northlanders—had been plagued by a smaller pack of sluggïn'ân. That pack had been led by a huge female, and in its company was…
Fiáh'our watched the small one—not so small as before—and there and then it halted. It was hidden in shadow now, so he was uncertain if it looked his way in sensing he watched.
Had it stayed or been left behind in the west after he had killed its mother? He had had no choice, but there and then, that did not sit well on him.
“Is it in range?”
Fiáh'our turned quickly at that sharp, angry question. There was Urval behind him, following the elder lhoin'na's gaze.
“Yes, except—” 'yan began.
“Then why haven't you killed it?” Urval demanded.
The lieutenant looked no better than the others—worn, rings around his eyes, and unshaven since they had returned after Karras' rescue of little Kaity. His jaw and face were thereby more shadowed than his gray eyes.
“I saw no need,” 'yan answered quietly. “And since it saw me, it could easily evaded my shot over the distance.”
The lieutenant inched another step, and Fiáh'our tensed.
Urval held his place, taking deep, long breaths, and his hard gray eyes turned from the tall lhoin'na to glare out the village's gate.
“What's the bother now?”
'yan turned first at Jackdaw trotting in along the stockade from the other way. The former bandit was supposed to be circling the same as Fiáh'our while the others slept. He went straight to the open gate's far edge, peered out, and then looked around at everyone.
“Nothing,” Urval hissed spitefully in answer, watching 'yan.
“Doesn't seem like nothin' to me,” Jackdaw grumbled, his beard now thickened and unruly like that of a black crow's nest of hair.
“Get back to your circuit,” Fiáh'our ordered.
This earned him a look as sharp as the lieutenant's for 'yan.
“And how much longer for all this?” Jackdaw demanded.
“Until I think of something better!” Fiáh'our shot back.
Jackdaw did not move, and Fiáh'our was in no mood for a challenge.
“He is correct.”
Fiáh'our looked up at 'yan's soft words, and the lhoin'na appeared as weary as the others. “This cannot continue, and simply holding ground gains us nothing. We can only lose… eventually… or have already lost.”
Fiáh'our had not wanted to make this choice, to face that the only answer was to
end this conflict once and for all, one way or another. Now that the others made the choice for him, at least there would certainty for them. As to Gän'gehtin and especially Karras…
“Rouse everyone,” he told Urval. “We do this while the sun lasts.”
As the lieutenant nodded and ran off, and 'yan and Jackdaw again peered out toward the trees, Fiáh'our stood silent with head bowed.
Few champions, thänæ or otherwise, ever died of old age, but he could not live or die in peace if he lost another apprentice in one lifetime.
11. Counted Out
“Kêd-fê… kêd-fê-nân… kêd-fê-jês…”
At the whispered count reaching only one hundred and twenty-two, Karras' nerves were strained even more. He clenched where he crouched inside the half-open gate with the remaining villagers, and Gän'gehtin kept counting in staring out of the gate. Karras peeked out as well.
The plain was empty all the way to the trees. Fiáh'our and the others were already beyond sight.
“…kêd-jei-fê… kêd-jei-jês… kêd-jâ-kyar…”
Karras bit down against snapping, slumped against the gate's inside, and the back of his helmet thumped the timbers. How was he to bear that whispered count to a thousand by the old man's order? He rolled his head the other way and found Kaitlin crouched close by.
Tense and rigid, she looked as strained as himself by the counting. Right beside her rested a burlap sack with some of what little food they had scavenged that did not have to be cooked. She still clutched one of Fiáh'our's daggers like a short-short sword, and beyond her huddled the others against the stockade wall.
Most were children, a few them were just shy of adults, and all were worn, filthy, and frightened. Looking into their wide unblinking eyes did not help his own fears. Should nothing more be heard from the old man, he and Gän'gehtin were supposed to sneak the villagers into hiding in the ravine, the same one where they had sprung their trap for the pack some nine days ago.
