by Angus Watson
The empress manoeuvred herself into as comfortable a position as she could on the cushions and watched as Chippaminka pounded and mixed ingredients in an alchemical bowl and heated it with the rays from the sun crystal.
“Lift your dress so your stomach is exposed,” the girl ordered.
Ayanna found herself doing as she was told. Chippaminka sat astride the reclining empress’s legs and first stroked, then massaged the gel into her enormous stomach, using her hands at first, then her forearms, then all of her arms in wide sweeping circles.
Ayanna closed her eyes, feeling more comfortable and at peace than she had for months, while the girl caressed the stress from her stomach and her mind.
Chapter 18
Bad Musicians
“So can we go home and let the animals finish our mission?” asked Paloma Pronghorn.
Sofi Tornado smiled.
“But really, a little black bear? One adult getting killed by a black bear might be put down to bad luck, if you’re being generous, but two? We don’t need to chase these people. They’ll all be squeaked apart by chipmunks or wafted over cliffs by butterflies before we catch them.”
Sofi looked at the bones on the smouldering pyre. It might seem like everything was a joke to Paloma Pronghorn, but she took the business of tracking very seriously. By the time the rest of the Owsla had caught up with her, she’d analysed the surroundings and deduced how the two Mushroom Men had been killed. She’d also found when and how the fat woman who’d called herself Frossanka had left the group, where she’d jumped into the lake and where she’d crawled out.
Frossanka’s aquatic exit posed more questions than it answered, but Sofi Tornado didn’t need to answer them. She needed to eradicate the Mushroom Men, not study their oddness. Three down, fourteen to go.
“Don’t worry, Pronghorn. If they carry on at this pace, we’ll catch them tomorrow or the next day at the latest.”
“If they haven’t already been tickled to death by caterpillars or pecked to bits by hummingbirds.”
“Indeed.”
That evening, the Calnian Owsla and Yoki Choppa walked along a broad central road through the Lakchan town. Their immediate surroundings were deserted, but, judging from the cacophony of reed trumpets, pipe flutes, rattles, whistles and drums, all the people in the world who’d ever wanted to try a musical instrument but had been deemed too talentless to be allowed to thus far were gathered just out of sight up ahead, all having a go at the same time.
Morningstar resisted the urge to put her fingers in her ears. The noise was simply awful. It was difficult to produce good music, and they were a long way into the provinces so one couldn’t expect instrumentalists to be as tight as Calnia’s finest ensembles, but, really, there were limits.
The Lakchan artwork was as bad as their music. Dotted between the shabby huts and tents of the town were large representations of Rabbit Girl and Spider Mother, made of corn, buffalo skin, branches and various other materials. They looked like they’d been knocked together in an afternoon by apathetic children. The most inept apprentice artisan in Calnia would have been embarrassed by the best artwork here, and advised to find another calling.
Morningstar’s father, the Emperor Zaltan, had once sent her and an entourage of guards to a village near Calnia to prove to her that her city was much better than everywhere else and that she was blessed to be Calnian. The Lakchan town reminded her of that village.
It was shit.
She knew that people couldn’t change where they were born, and she guessed that people could call a place like this home and be content with it, but she couldn’t help curling a lip. Why couldn’t these people build themselves a proper town with pyramids and a plaza? Surely it wasn’t that hard?
The road turned a corner and the “musicians” came into sight, still scraping, banging and farting out their dreadful din. There were maybe fifty of them, all dressed in rabbit ears and strips of leather which Morningstar took to be an attempt at spider’s legs.
In the centre of the group, an elderly man with the craggy face and turkey neck of someone who preferred tobacco to food was leaping from foot to foot, tooting on a reed trumpet. With larger rabbit ears than the rest and more competently tailored spider legs, Morningstar took him to be the leader. There were a couple of warrior types next to him, but other than that all the people were either old or young. Had there been a war with another tribe that she hadn’t heard about that had killed all the warrior-age adults? Was that why the town was so shit?
The Lakchans carried on playing their cacophonous non-song. The Owsla marched towards them.
They knew, through Paloma Pronghorn’s tracking, that one of the Lakchans and her child had met the Mushroom Men, and that the Mushroom Men, thirteen of them anyway, had continued. They’d found yet another Mushroom Man killed by a gigantic bear—those people really were idiots with animals—and, even though none of the Mushroom Men had come to the Lakchan town, the Owsla had followed the tracks of the woman and the child who’d met them right to it.
So, it was clear that the Lakchans knew that the Mushroom Men had walked across Lakchan lands, and it looked like they hadn’t tried to stop them, in direct contravention of Calnia’s orders. That meant that they needed to be punished. Morningstar shivered in anticipation. She hadn’t killed anyone for nearly a week. And, after a day’s running, she was hungry.
Sofi Tornado signalled for her women to stop and took a few paces towards the waiting Lakchans.
The man with the largest reed trumpet stepped to meet her. “Good evening,” he shouted over the racket. His voice was a wet, raspy rattle which complemented his pallid, going-to-die-soon skin. “I’m Kobosh, chief of the Lakchans. Who the fuck are you and what the fuck can I do for you?”
Sofi nodded. Sitsi Kestrel, had warned her that the Lakchans liked to fit a vulgarity or two into every utterance. “There is a Mushroom Man living here. Where is he?”
“Sorry?”
“Can you quieten your musicians?” she yelled. “I asked where your Mushroom Man is?”
“Can’t stop the musicians, we always play for fucking visitors. Answer my fucking question first. Who the fuck are you?”
Sofi Tornado’s hand twitched on her hand axe, but she suppressed the urge to leap forward and smash the teeth out of the man’s foul mouth. There’d be plenty of time for that.
“I’m Sofi Tornado, captain of the Calnian Owsla,” she shouted. “I am under orders from the Swan Empress Ayanna, my ruler and yours, to find and kill any Mushroom Men, and to kill and eat anyone who has aided their escape.”
“All right, no need for threats. We used to have one of the cunts, living near here. But we got the message to kill him, so we did. I fucking killed him myself, didn’t I?”
“Unfortunately, it seems there is a need for threats. You may have killed your Mushroom Man, maybe not, we’ll find out. What I do know is that fourteen Mushroom Men crossed your land three days ago. One was killed by a bear, thirteen walked on unharmed. You had been ordered by Calnia to kill any Mushroom Men you saw. The penalty of failure is death and consumption after death, which you knew. Your actions, or more accurately your inactions, have brought death to your tribe. We will kill you all now. Do you have any final words?”
“I do. Coooooo—EEEE!”
The musicians stopped. Immediately Sofi Tornado heard the heartbeats and breathing that had been masked by the music. She resisted the urge to slap her own forehead as she realised the trap.
All around them the crappy Rabbit Girl and Spider Mother models fell forward. Each revealed two or more archers, arrows strung and pointed at the Calnians.
Without the music, she’d have heard the waiting ambushers as they walked into the village. But surely Kobosh couldn’t know her skill?
There were at least a hundred of them. If she dived for Kobosh her women would follow and get among the musicians, making it almost impossible for the archers …
“Forty of my archers,” said Kob
osh, “are aiming at you, Sofi Tornado, or near you. Some I’ve told to aim high, some low, some left, some right. You jump at me, or look like you’re going to jump at me, they shoot. No matter which way you dodge, you will be hit. Ten archers are aiming at each of the rest of your women. You are, my dear, fucked.”
“You are more than meets the eye, Kobosh,” she said.
“Always try to be.”
“But you do know that if you kill us, Ayanna will send an army to destroy you?”
“That’s why I’m not going to kill you.”
Surely he wasn’t going to let them go? The idiot. They’d simply return that night and slaughter the lot of them.
“And you won’t just come back and fucking kill us tonight,” continued Kobosh. “You see, I’ve got this.” He reached into a pouch, produced a large sun crystal and tossed it to her. She caught it.
“You’re going to burn your hand with Innowak’s power and swear that you and your women will never harm a Lakchan.”
Any other god, she’d make the vow and break it. But Innowak was Calnia’s chief god almost to the point of monotheism. She’d never break an oath to him. It wasn’t a massive surprise that Kobosh knew this, the Calnians made no secret of their religion.
What was a surprise, and a serious worry, was that the nature of the trap meant that he must know about her hearing. She couldn’t think of another explanation. Three people knew about her super-hearing—herself, Yoki Choppa and the exiled warlock Pakanda. Could Pakanda have passed through here and shared her secrets? Maybe he was still here? It was possible. Either that, or Kobosh had watched her fighting in the Plaza of Innowak and worked it out himself. She did sometimes wonder why everyone just accepted that she could see into the future without seeking a more likely explanation.
“And if I don’t make the vow?” she asked.
“My warriors will shoot you where you stand.”
Sofi shrugged. Leaving the Lakchans alive was annoying, but it wasn’t actually that massive a deal, especially if it saved their lives, because their mission was to kill the Mushroom Men.
She angled the stone to focus the sun’s rays and burn the skin on the back of her hand, while vowing that the Calnian Owsla would not harm a single Lakchan.
Shortly after they’d left the Lakchan village, Paloma Pronghorn ran back from her scout ahead and cheerfully reported that the Lakchans had been lying more than they knew about their encounters with the Mushroom Men. A large number of Lakchans had ambushed their quarry and let them go. Just to make things more confusing, the big man and the colossal bear whose tracks she’d found earlier had put in an appearance, then left with the Mushroom Men.
“He’s the same size as the biggest Mushroom Man from Goachica lands. Got to be the exile who lived with the Lakchans,” smiled Paloma Pronghorn. “On the bright side, they’re all together so we should be able to kill ’em in one go!”
“Thanks, Pronghorn.”
Chapter 19
Ak Oo
The world was sodden.
Water dripped from everything that water could drip from and the very air was so wet that the Hardworkers knew what it was to be crayfish walking across a lakebed.
At least the rain had stopped, but Finnbogi the Boggy’s skin was still puffed and white with dampness, his leather battle trousers had chafed his inner thighs raw and caked mud had bulked up his light leather shoes into weighty clogs. The wet straps of Foe Slicer’s thick leather baldric were digging into one shoulder and his backpack, waterlogged and three times as heavy, was digging into the other.
Up ahead, Sassa Lipchewer didn’t seem to be affected by the same dank encumbrance. She seemed affected by something else. In Hardwork she’d always been verbally feisty but deported herself with a languid grace that Finnbogi had intermittently found hot as Hel. Now she was prowling along silently, bow in one hand, arrow in the other, head flicking from side to side to scrutinise every rustle and squeak. When she spotted a squirrel or some other unfortunate beast, she strung, drew and let an arrow fly. Nine out of ten times she missed, but she had three squirrels hanging from her belt and two of them had been skewered by her last two shots.
Finnbogi didn’t know where she got the energy. They’d built another shelter the previous night, but Wulf had woken them what seemed like a few minutes after they’d gone to sleep. They’d breakfasted and left before the sun had even thought about beginning to lighten the eastern sky.
Finnbogi had never known hardship like it.
Ottar and Freydis were traipsing along behind him. Ottar was gabbling away, even whinier than usual.
“Just put them down, they’ll be fine!” squeaked Freydis.
Ottar wailed.
“What’s up with him?” Finnbogi asked.
“He’s too tired to carry Hugin and Munin any further, but he won’t put them down because he thinks they’ll drown in the mud.”
“Here, Ottar, I’ll take them.” Finnbogi held out his hands.
The boy looked from Finnbogi to Freydis and back, mouth open. He tilted his head back and moaned.
“What?”
“He thinks you’ll hurt them.”
“I won’t, Ottar. I really won’t.”
Ottar peered at him suspiciously and Finnbogi nodded and smiled. The boy held his gaze, then shrugged and handed over the cubs. Finnbogi clasped them to his chest. They poked their noses up at him with expressions of offended enquiry, seemed to deem him an acceptable method of carriage and settled into his grasp.
An hour later they came to a river lined with tall, whispery-leaved trees. Two deer drinking at the crossing point ran off along the bank, embellishing their flight with high back leg-kicking leaps for no reason that Finnbogi could see, other than to show how good they were at leaping. An otter with a fish in its mouth watched them from the opposite bank, a couple of orange-eyed, yellow striped turtles stared at them from a log, and a thrillingly green frog sat on a submerged stone smiling at the sky and croaking his incongruously deep and loud croak, apparently oblivious to the arrival of fourteen humans and two racoon cubs.
The river was only ten paces across, but it was treacherous after the recent rain.
“Chnob, boat!” hollered Keef.
“We’ve got this larger boat,” said Erik, pointing at a buffalo-skin boat resting high on the bank, “and there’s one on the other side, too, thanks to some excellent man who’s left them like this.”
“Mine is better! And quicker!”
“By all means use it, but the other two are bigger, and—”
“Come on, Chnob!” Keef pulled his boat from Chnob’s back, pushed Chnob into it, jumped aboard and ferried the bearded man across the river, paddling like a frenzied elf. By the time Garth, Sassa and Erik had squeezed into the larger buffalo-skin boat, Keef was on his way back, shouting: “Who’s next? Come on!”
While Finnbogi crossed—in the larger boat, since Keef was taking only the lighter people, he saw Erik’s bear lumber into the river a hundred paces downstream. It went up on two legs and waded across, forelegs in the air like a bather walking into Olaf’s Fresh Sea in winter. The water, at least as deep as Finnbogi was tall, reached the animal’s midriff. It really was a very large bear.
In the end, half of them crossed one at a time in Keef’s boat, and half crossed in the larger boat. Keef’s little boat had indeed proved to be a lot faster, but it wasn’t clear how much of that was down to the boat’s construction and how much was a result of Keef paddling like Fenrir the Wolf was after him.
“Wait, wait,” said Erik when they’d crossed. “Who’ll help me take this boat back across? We’ve got to leave it so there’s a boat on either side.”
“No we don’t,” said Garth.
Erik shook his head. “It’s attitudes like that, young man, that lead to tribes being massacred. The boat was here for us because some supremely decent fellow went to the bother of assuring it would be. We have a duty to make sure there’s a boat on both sides for the next traveller.
It’s the code of the wild, something you need to learn now you’ve left Hardwork’s cosy little walls.”
“I totally understand you, Erik,” said Wulf, “and I’d help you back with the boat—”
“Grand, let’s—”
“If it weren’t for the goddess warriors on our tail. Perhaps we could make an exception this once, and all promise to stick to the ‘boat on either side’ rule when we’re not running for our lives?”
Erik sighed. “Fine, as long as Garth stays here manning the boats in case anybody who’s not trying to kill us wants to cross the river.”
“What?” said Garth.
On the other side of the river it was soggy as a fish’s arse for a quarter of a mile, then they headed up a gentle hill and the path, which had a secondary role as a stream during the heaviest downpours, became stony rather than muddy. Finnbogi turned to Ottar, who’d been at his heels ever since he’d started carrying the racoons.
“I think they’ll be fine to walk now.”
Ottar looked at the ground, back up at Finnbogi and nodded. Finnbogi crouched and detached the animals from his chest. They were confused for a moment—both had been asleep—then they ran to Ottar, yickering.
The boy bent to stroke them, then looked up to Finnbogi. His eyes were a little askew, his cheeks ruddy. “Ak oo,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you want me to carry them again.”
Ottar nodded.
Finnbogi smiled, and suddenly felt that it was time to talk to Erik the Angry. Or “dad,” as he couldn’t imagine ever calling him. It was the joke Erik had made about Garth staying behind to wait for any river crossers that had swung it—the joke that Finnbogi wished he had made himself and that Garth hadn’t got.
He caught up with Erik, who was leading with Wulf.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello there,” said Erik, his eyes flaring like a startled deer’s then narrowing again.
“Hello, Finnbogi,” said Wulf. “Would you mind taking the lead with Erik for a while? I’d like to go back and check on everyone.”
