by Angus Watson
“What?”
“Runner said. The Goachica launched some big fucking attack on Calnia, the cunts, so the fucking Swan Empress sent a massive army to do for the Goachica, and the Hardworkers while they were at it. Killed them all, he said.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, man, you’re the last fucking Hardworker. If you want to die too, head east. Otherwise it’s west. You’ll enjoy it. You’re like a caged bear here, it’ll do you good to run free. Look after yourself. I’m going to miss you. Goodbye, Erik the Angry.”
“I’ll miss you too, Kobosh, and thanks for everything. Goodbye.” Erik shook his head, still trying to come to terms with the idea that all of his old tribe were dead.
“Wait a minute,” rasped Kobosh, “I can’t remember. Were you ever Angry?”
“Aye, when I first got here. I was fucking Angry.”
Chapter 14
Sassa’s First Kill
“Ottar, shush!” Freydis whispered. She was clinging to his shirt. He was trying to stand up.
Ottar giggled. It was a funny game, the big man Garth chasing them with the animal hand. It had been fun running, and it had been fun hiding in the long grass. But now the grass was itchy, he was hot and he didn’t like Freydis holding him. He wanted to stand and see where the big man was. He hit Freydis’s arm.
She pressed her face very close to his, eyes wide, and shook her head.
“It’s not a game,” she whispered so he could only just hear. “He wants to hurt us. You must stay quiet.”
Ottar hated being hurt.
“Come out, come out!” shouted the big man, nearby. “I’ve got maple sugar!”
Maple sugar! Ottar tried to stand but Freydis held him. He raised his arm to hit her again, but her eyes were big and he stopped. “He’s lying,” she said, so quietly that he had to watch her lips to hear. “He doesn’t have any maple sugar. If you’re quiet and he doesn’t find us, I will give you some maple sugar. But only if he doesn’t find us. Please stay quiet.”
She was scared, which scared Ottar. He felt his lips curl and wobble and he was going to cry, but Freydis shook her head. He mustn’t cry. He could see Garth through the grass now, wearing his metal shirt and helmet, coming closer and closer. Ottar didn’t want to be hurt. But Garth was right on them. He’d find them any moment.
Sassa Lipchewer ran out of the longhouse with an arrow strung, but the fighting in the yard was over. Scraylings lay dead: skulls smashed, guts spilled.
“Got any booze in there, Sassa?” asked Ogmund the Miller. He was holding his arm, blood seeping through his fingers and eyes narrowed in pain, but he was grinning as always, cheeks ruddy. The other Hird and Bodil Gooseface were unharmed.
“Sassa!” Wulf pointed at a Scrayling fleeing across the big field, then at her bow. He wanted her to shoot him, in the back. She shook her head. No way.
“Sorry, my love, but he mustn’t escape. Give me your bow and I’ll do it.”
Wulf was a terrible shot. Screw a shrew, she thought. She raised her bow and drew the string. She aimed high because of the distance. There was negligible wind, so no need to allow for that. She had shot smaller deer at greater range in harsher conditions. But she’d never hurt a person, let alone killed one. Yet here she was, aiming her bow at a man who had parents, siblings, probably a wife. Probably children.
As she loosed, she knew she’d hit him.
The man fell. She heard the thwunk of her arrow into his back a moment later. He flailed an arm at the sky, then lay still. Thyri was already sprinting towards him, bloodied sax blade aloft, presumably to finish him off. It was turning out to be a very strange day.
“Awesome shot!” said Keef, “You totally—”
“That’ll do, Keef,” said Wulf, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Sassa stood stunned, staring at the crumpled little shape in the field. Thyri reached him and chopped down with her sax. Sassa remembered her dead parents. Killing a man had made her forget for a moment. She walked over to her mother’s body. Somebody had closed her eyes.
Wulf took her arm gently. “We have to go, right now. There’s nothing more we can do here and—”
The Hird trumpet rang out from Hardwork.
“Well, that,” said Wulf. “We have to go.”
“I don’t think I—” Ogmund the Miller stood, wobblingly. “I feel …” His knees crumpled and he went down.
“Bodil, tend to him,” said Wulf. In all their years together, Sassa had never seen him like this. His permanent air of boyish frivolity had dispersed to reveal a calm, commanding and charismatic man. “Find a shirt in the house and use it to bandage the wound, then prop his arm up on something.”
“Which arm?”
“The injured one.”
“Sure thing.” Bodil nodded. “What should I prop it on?”
Wulf picked up a log and placed it next to Ogmund. “That.”
“Okay!”
“Good. Bring him to Hardwork if he can walk any time soon, otherwise we’ll come back for you.”
“I’m to stay here?”
“Yes, with Ogmund. Don’t leave him.”
“Got it.”
“Unless he wakes up and is well enough to make the journey to Hardwork.”
“Sure thing.”
“Right. Come on the rest of you.”
Finnbogi heard a crunch and lumpy spray blatted into his face to join the tangle of silk, caterpillars and moth eggs. The pressure of the blade released from his neck. He opened one eye. The Scrayling was toppling, his head destroyed.
“Buck up, boy!” said Gunnhild, clothes beater in hand. “Man is not born brave, he acquires bravery by acting bravely. Are there more?”
Finnbogi clambered to his feet, scraped the worst of the gunk off his face and stared at his aunt. She was smeared with blood, there were chunks of Loakie knew what stuck to her nightgown and face, but she was apparently unharmed.
“… more?”
“Scraylings.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
His aunt shook her head in her standard “isn’t Finnbogi useless” manner and headed back to the churchyard. He mopped the remaining gore and caterpillars from his face—the caterpillar silk acted like a cloth, which was handy—and followed her. She walked around the dead Scraylings, whacking each of them on the head with her jewelled club.
Finnbogi saw movement out of the corner of his eye and jerked around. It was his uncle Poppo Whitetooth, raising an arm. Finnbogi ran over and knelt next to him.
“Ah, Finnbogi.”
He lay grey-skinned in a pool of blood.
“Uncle Poppo. Where are you hurt? What can I do?” He felt tears spring into his eyes.
“First of all you can stop grieving. You die when you die, and today is my day. Hardworkers do not mourn the dead, not for a moment. Secondly you can listen. We have not made a brilliant job of bringing you up in place of your own parents, and for that I’m sorry, Finnbogi.”
“That’s okay …” Finnbogi could not help the tears.
“As a result, you’ve become what one might call a bit of a twat. You’re a good lad deep down, Finnbogi, but you are judgemental and superior.”
“I’m not, I …” Finnbogi shook his head. His uncle calling him a twat with his dying breaths would make it easier not to grieve for the man.
“Shush. Listen. You are more than you think you are. You are better than you think you—”
“I think I’m all right. I could have stayed in the town but I came running back here to the church and I sped away from Garth when I could have—”
“Finnbogi,” Poppo cut in, shaking his head weakly, “you’re the sort of fellow who interrupts a dying man’s last words.”
He had a point. Finnbogi squashed his lips and widened his eyes into an “I’m sorry, please go on” expression.
“You can change, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I have something important to say about your parents. Your father … your father …
is …”
Poppo’s eyes rolled back into his head and he died.
Crap, thought Finnbogi.
Gunnhild knelt for a moment next to her two daughters and husband, whispering words that Finnbogi couldn’t hear, then stood.
“Right, Finn,” she said, “you and I will go to Hardwork, fetch the Hird and—”
She stopped as Gurd Girlchaser appeared from the townward path, followed by Hrolf the Painter, Fisk Fisheye and Frood the Silent, all brandishing swords and spears.
“You took your time.” Gunnhild pointed her club at them. “Two of you head in that direction, two in the other,” she pointed to either side of the church. “Go slowly, watch for hidden Scraylings. If you come across more than two of the buggers, shout. If you hear a shout, run to help but go carefully. They’re not above a trick or two. That’s how they got Poppo. All right. Gurd and Hrolf, you—”
Where was Garth? Finnbogi wondered. And where were Ottar and Freydis for that matter? He opened his mouth to interrupt Gunnhild’s orders and tell her that the children were missing when there was a wap! sound.
Frood the Silent, a rat-faced man who Finnbogi had hardly ever spoken to, put a hand to his neck and found an arrow in it. He fell, gurgling nastily. Finnbogi stared at him, feeling weak. The rest of them shouted and ran at the Scrayling who’d shot him.
Hrolf got there first. The Scrayling dodged the spear thrust and swung his axe into the Hardworker’s face with a sound like a hammer hitting a sack stuffed with wet fish and dry twigs. Hrolf turned slowly. His jaw was hanging by a strip of skin from his cheek. His spear tumbled to the ground, he gripped his jaw with both hands and looked down goggle-eyed at the ruined mess of teeth and bone. A keening whine sung out from the blood-gushing hole which moments before had been a mouth.
Finnbogi stared at him, his own mouth open.
Hrolf staggered away. Lithe little Fisk and lumbering Gurd circled the Scrayling. The raider lurched at Gurd. Fisk speared him in the side. The Scrayling dropped his axe, grabbed the spear shaft with both hands and pulled the blade from his torso, all the while staring into Fisk’s eyes. The spearhead suck-squelched out of the man and black blood flowed from the wound. The Scrayling ripped the spear from Fisk’s grasp and for an instant Finnbogi thought the Scrayling was some kind of immortal demon who was going to use the spear on its owner, but Gurd whacked his iron axe into the Scrayling’s chest, through skin and ribs and into lungs, and he fell.
“Bunch of idiots,” said Gunnhild. “Hrolf, come over here and I’ll see—”
Finnbogi shook his head. He’d always pictured battle as a lot more glamorous and a lot less disgusting and terrifying. He looked around. Where, by Tor’s tits, were Garth, Ottar and Freydis? Had they been caught by another group of Scraylings?
“Fisk, will you bring your spear and come with me?” he asked.
“Why?” Fisk narrowed his eyes.
“I think Garth and the children might be in danger.”
Fisk looked at the corpses of Finnbogi’s adoptive family and nodded.
Finnbogi ran back into the woods. Fisk pounded along behind him.
“Scraylings! The Scraylings are coming!” yelled Frossa as she jog-wobbled along Hardwork’s main street, huge colourful hat slipping askew on her sweat-slicked head.
“What are you talking about?” shouted Brodir, running from Olaf’s Square, then, when he reached her: “Quieten down, you’re scaring everyone.”
“They need to be scared! They’re coming,” she panted, “in boats. They’ll be here—”
She was interrupted by a yelp from Olaf’s Square. “Arrows!” somebody shouted. Others screamed.
“Follow me!” Jarl Brodir ran towards the square.
Frossa took a step after him, then stopped. If anybody survived this attack, they would need care and spiritual guidance. As the Hird trumpet parped for a second time that day and Hardworkers yelled, Frossa squeezed through the large gap between two houses. She knew a hiding place over on the edge of the town.
The next street was empty, apart from a solitary Scrayling, advancing towards her, stone axe raised.
Jarl Brodir the Gorgeous saw that the Hardworkers in Olaf’s Square were panicking like cooped turkeys who’ve smelled a lion. They needed direction. They needed leadership. They needed a hero. And that hero had arrived. Cometh the hour, cometh Brodir the Gorgeous.
“Everyone take weapons! To me!” he shouted as he drew Foe Slicer, the beautiful, pattern welded sword that Olaf the Worldfinder’s ghost had given him. Scrayling Slicer—that’s what he’d rename his sword after this famous day!
He ran past two Hardworkers lying still and another slithering for cover with an arrow sticking from his back. “Frossa, tend to the wounded! The rest of you, to me!” He didn’t look back, he knew they’d be leaping to obey his orders, caught up in his majesty, in his gorgeousness.
He fizzed with confidence and battle lust. He’d dreamt often that the Scraylings might attack and his Hird might finally be put to the test. This was even better. The Hird were away and he would be the Hird. He had been in the Hird for half of his life, he still had the skills and now he had wisdom, too. He was invincible. He would lead the defence against the inferior natives. What were they thinking? No matter what numbers the Scraylings attacked with, how could they hope to triumph against the old world blood of the Hardworkers?
The first Scrayling attacker ran into Olaf’s Square, dressed in a breechcloth and brandishing a stone axe. Brodir ran to welcome him with steel. Steel always beat stone. He swung Foe Slicer.
The Scrayling ducked. Something flashed at the Jarl’s face and struck his chin. Light flared, narrowed into a point and disappeared.
He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Above him was the bare sole of a raised foot. The foot slammed down. Brodir the Gorgeous’s head cracked to the side.
He could see the other Hardworkers, the ones who’d stood back when he charged. They were gawping at their felled leader.
So his fight had started with something of a setback, but he’d soon show his people what happened when a Scrayling messed with a Jarl.
His hands didn’t respond. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t move! That wasn’t good. Something thudded into his ear, hard. That foot! What foot? Everything was cloudy. Why was everyone watching him? Oh yes, the Scrayling’s foot. He was about to defeat the Scrayling to show his people how easy it was. But what kind of underhand fighter stamps on your ear? He’d show him, just as soon as he could get up.
The foot thudded down again. Yes, I’ll show him, thought Jarl Brodir the Gorgeous.
The foot stamped again and Jarl Brodir the Gorgeous felt the side of his skull collapse.
“Welcome,” said Frossa to the lone Scrayling, “I am a great warlock—therefore above the fighting. If you head that way,” she pointed towards the square, “you’ll find the normal people, the ones you’re looking for. If you’re planning to kill them all, then some of you are sure to be wounded. I can tend to those wounds.”
“Sorry,” said the Scrayling. He was dressed in a breechcloth and was distractingly good-looking—beautiful, even. A slim, muscled waist rose from his breechcloth into bulgingly defined pectoral muscles. He had great rounded shoulders, and his chin and cheeks could have been carved from the most wonderful brown-blue marble by Heimdall himself. His nose was large but well-shaped and powerful, like a whitecap eagle’s beak. His eyes were narrow, twinkling with a knee-weakening mix of manly strength and boyish good humour. “Quite good-looking, for a Scrayling” was a phrase she might have used before, but this man was another level, better looking than any man or woman she’d seen before, Scrayling or Hardworker. Could he be a god?
She gathered herself. He might be a god, but with the Vanir blood in her veins, so was she. “You’re sorry? Why are you doing this?” She closed her fingers around her ivory-hilted sacrifice knife. No, his beauty didn’t faze one as wise as her.
“It’s your fault. The Swan Empress Ayanna h
erself has seen the Mushroom Men destroy the world and warlock Yoki Choppa has endorsed the prophecy, so you all have to die before you kill the rest of us. I am leader of the army commanded to carry out the sad but necessary deed. It’s all of you, I’m afraid. We can’t make exceptions. I can’t especially, since I’m in charge. Leading by example, and all that.”
Men, thought Frossa. This chap, lovely though he was, could not help telling her that he was in charge, three times. He spoke the shared Scrayling tongue with a lilting accent that she’d never heard before.
“What’s your name?” she asked, as he advanced.
“Kimaman.”
“Well, Kimaman, I am Frossa the Deep Minded. I have met the Duck Empress several times and we are close personal friends. Take me back to Calnia with you, and she can decide whether I should die with the rest of them. If you agree, I’ll show you the hiding places where some of them might have fled and you can be sure that you’ve killed them all—apart from me. Then you can kill me later if the Duck Empress commands it.”
He laughed. Why was he laughing? This was far from funny. “No, sorry.” He was right on her. “Hang on, what’s that smell? Oh, by Innowak’s rays, that’s vile! Is that you?”
“No.”
It was her. It was the smell of the rotting sacrifices that she kept in her house. Some days it carried with her more resiliently than others. She looked over his shoulder. “It’s the town bear. Here he comes.” She pointed behind him.
He turned.
Frossa drove her dagger between his ribs, into his heart. He collapsed and sighed as he died.
Built like Tor and just as dumb, thought Frossa. If Kimaman had been a god, he’d definitely been brutish Aesir, not enlightened Vanir like her.
She picked up his stone axe and headed between the next row of thatched houses. There were more screams from Olaf’s Square. A few people were running towards the centre of town, weapons in hand. They didn’t notice her as she hurried towards the unused blacksmith. There was a cellar there, with a hatch that was all but invisible.
