You Die When You Die

by Angus Watson

  She realised immediately that she’d have to kill Wulf the Fat and the man in the boat, or at least hurt them enough to hold them. There’d be no excuse if they all saw her letting two of their quarry and their easiest way across the river paddle away.

  She jumped high and flicked her killing stick at Wulf’s head.

  Amazingly, he’d read her move. He ducked and batted her legs out from under her. She fell and rolled away from his likely follow-up blow, but that blow never came because he’d fled for the jetty. No matter, she’d catch him. She sprang to her feet but then felt as much as heard the arrow. She threw herself to one side. She rolled and was back on her feet, but there was another arrow flying, not at her, but at where she needed to be on the jetty in order to catch Wulf the Fat.

  She looked across the river at the blonde woman. There was already one more arrow on the way and she was drawing to shoot yet another. She was no Sitsi Kestrel—the Owsla’s archer would have had six or seven arrows zipping across the river—but she was far from useless.

  The big man jumped into the canoe, managing to not quite sink it and to push it out of her reach in one move. The Mushroom Man already in the boat, a funny looking fellow with a long blond beard, small head and straight, corn-coloured hair all the way down his back, began to paddle furiously.

  “Goodbye,” called Wulf the Fat. “I enjoyed meeting you, but I hope we don’t meet again.”

  “We’ll swim across. I’ll be seeing you again in a couple of minutes.”

  “Don’t swim across, there are—”

  “Swim across!” interrupted the other Mushroom Man. “And take your time. It’s lovely once you’re in!”

  “You watched them cross,” sighed Sofi Tornado.

  “One by one in that little boat. You said not to kill them.”

  “And you didn’t think to run in and hole the boat?”

  “No. There would have been a fight and I’d have had to kill one of them at least. So I’d have been disobeying orders. What’s the problem? This river’s not nearly so fast as that last one. We can swim across.”

  “Oh, Pronghorn,” Sofi sighed. She liked being in charge because she couldn’t stand being ordered about by anyone, but sometimes she wished she was the lowliest warrior, standing around waiting to be told what to do.

  “What?” said the speedy woman.

  “Can you see the creatures in the river?”

  “Big fish. So what?”

  “They’re sharks!” piped up Sitsi Kestrel. “Man-eaters. The Shark Clan used to have a village here but they moved south last year to the mouth of the Water Mother, in search of bigger sharks. They fed live human sacrifices to the sharks, so those fish think people are food. Get in the water and they’ll attack.”

  “Ah. Sorry,” said Paloma, her face flushing.

  “I know how to deal with sharks,” said Sadzi Wolf. “I fought off my first shark when I was five years old. It’s all about punching them in the face.”

  On the far side of the river, the last Hardworker was climbing out of the canoe. The rest of them were gathered on the bank, goggling at their pursuers.

  “These sharks are different from Water Mother Sharks,” said Sitsi.

  Sadzi put her hands on her hips. “I grew up on the Water Mother. I can tell by the fins. These are exactly the same animals.”

  “Same type maybe, different attitude.”

  “They are fish. I am Owsla.” Sadzi unbuckled her jerkin.

  Sofi was torn. If Sadzi came back with the Mushroom Men’s boat, they’d finish their mission within the hour. If she didn’t let her swim, they’d have to build a boat, which would put them a day behind their quarry again. However, if she let her swim and she was killed, nothing would be gained and she’d be down yet another Owsla. And, although she was keen to get back to Calnia, they weren’t actually in a hurry. They could spend three days making a boat and they’d still catch the Mushroom Men before they reached the Water Mother.

  “No, Sadzi, don’t risk it. We’ll—”

  But Sadzi, already naked, jammed her stubby flint knife between her teeth, sprinted to the end of the jetty and dived in.

  Well, that wasn’t what I was going to suggest, but let’s see how it pans out, thought Sofi Tornado.

  Finnbogi the Boggy, standing in the gap between the trees with the others, was gaping at the huge Owsla woman, towering above all the others and wide as the church’s door, when he noticed that another was stripping.

  “One of them’s coming!” he shouted as she dived in.

  There was a long silence after the splash and he thought a shark had got her already, but she surfaced and cut across the river towards them with a scything overarm stroke, powerful kicks churning the water white. She didn’t seem affected by the current. But the current wasn’t her problem. Her problem was the five shark fins headed straight for her.

  The smallest of the Owsla produced a bow and shot at the sharks. Two fins disappeared after arrows struck home, but the other three reached their target. Woman and sharks disappeared. Hardworkers held their breaths on one bank; no doubt the Calnians did the same on the other.

  There was an explosion of water and blood.

  All went quiet.

  The swimmer surfaced with a gasp and charged on, now more than halfway across.

  “Shoot her, Sassa.”

  A week before, thought Finnbogi, even a few days before, Sassa would have questioned the command. Now, grim-faced, she raised her bow, drew the string back further than Finnbogi would ever be able to, and shot the swimmer. The swimmer went down. She didn’t come back up.

  “Not a bad shot, for a woman!” said Gurd Girlchaser.

  “I think she’d still coming, underwater.” Wulf turned to Finnbogi. “Take the children west along the track. Chnob, she’ll be after the boat, get it away from here. Bodil, Gunnhild, get clear. Sassa, get back but cover us with your bow. Hird, back from the bank, mad-lion formation. Erik, join the Hird. Remember mad lion?”

  “Yes.”

  “And can you get your bear here?”

  “It’ll be hard to pull her away from the shark she’s eating, but I’ll try.” Rather than hollering as Finnbogi had expected, Erik closed his eyes and lowered his head. Could he talk to the animal with his mind? And if so, were skills like that inherited from father to son?

  Finnbogi began to bundle the children away, but he heard a whoosh of water, forgot about Freydis and Ottar and turned to watch.

  The Owsla woman burst out of the river and landed, feet apart, hands splayed, breathing hard. Blood pulsed from several ragged wounds and there was an arrow sticking out of her shoulder, but she stood strong and ready. And naked. Finnbogi’s jaw fell open.

  She looked, he guessed, like Thyri would look if she hadn’t eaten so much maple sugar and had trained hard every day for a few more years. She was lean but far from thin, her dark skin taut against muscles that slid around each other like fish and eels sewn tightly into the finest leather. Her features were regular and her lips full. Her narrow black eyes, shining with what looked like cruelty mixed with lust, stopped her from being beautiful, but, added to the whole, made her more physically attractive than Finnbogi had thought it possible for a human being or indeed any creature to be. He gulped.

  Wulf charged in, hammer aloft. The Owsla woman slapped the hammer aside, grabbed Wulf two-handed by his jerkin, heaved him over her head and hurled him into the river.

  Keef and, to Finnbogi’s surprise, Gurd, went in next, Keef with his long-handled axe Arse Splitter and Gurd with hand axe and shield. Gurd charged first, turning the woman so that Keef could stab with his weapon’s spear-like end. At the same moment Sassa shot an arrow.

  Somehow the Calnian twisted to avoid Keef’s thrust and Sassa’s arrow, grabbed Gurd’s wrist and snapped it. Gurd yelped and the hand axe fell. Catching the axe, she drove a foot into Gurd’s groin. He folded forwards and she brought the axe upwards in a blur. Gurd fell back, his face cleaved from jaw to forehead.
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br />   Behind them in the river, Wulf surfaced.

  Garth charged, brandishing the Biter Twins, while Keef swung Arse Splitter from behind at knee height. The Calnian leapt, knocked Garth’s axe attack away with one foot and kicked him in the temple with the other. He went down.

  Landing, the Owsla woman immediately jumped again, jinked around Arse Splitter and slammed the side of her foot into Keef’s head. He pirouetted away and collapsed.

  Erik put out a hand to hold Thyri back, but she slipped under it and ran in. Bjarni Chickenhead advanced, too, his beautiful sword Lion Slayer held aloft.

  Wulf, already taken ten paces downriver by the current, struck for shore.

  “Stay back, Bjarni!” said Thyri. “No point rushing in with this one.” She was tossing her slim-bladed sax from hand to hand, her shield on her back.

  Sassa shot another arrow. The Calnian dodged it. She spun Gurd’s axe around on one palm. “You’ll find I’m just as tricky if you take me slow,” she said, “but I will be happy to show you, girl. So know the name of your killer, I am Sadzi Wolf.”

  “I am Thyri Treelegs.”

  Sadzi Wolf’s eyes flicked down and settled on the Hardworker’s bare thighs for a moment. “So you are. Well, you mustn’t let it worry you. You’d probably have lost that puppy fat if you’d lived beyond today. I like your weapons by the way. They’ll be a useful addition to our Owsla.”

  The Calnian strode forward, swinging Gurd’s axe with impossible speed. Its head was visible only as a flashing glint in the dull sun. Thyri stepped to meet her, swinging her own blade. Sadzi Wolf, laughing, caught her wrist, turning as she did so to avoid another arrow from Sassa. While she forced Thyri to her knees with her iron grip, she looked up at Sassa. “Keep firing, beauty, because when I’m done here, I’m going to come over there and ram any arrows you’ve got left up your arse.” She smiled. “You might enjoy it.”

  Bjarni charged, but, without turning and still holding Thyri by the wrist, Sadzi Wolf swung her axe backhanded and caught him in the temple. He fell on top of the prone Garth.

  Finnbogi pulled his sword from its scabbard and looked at it. It felt like it was very much the wrong tool for the job, like trying to kill a bear with a feather.

  Sadzi Wolf forced Thyri further towards the ground. Treelegs slammed a hard punch into the Calnian’s kidneys with her free hand, which made the Owsla woman wince. It was the first blow that any of them had landed, but she responded strongly. She switched her grip to the back of Thyri’s head, kneed the girl with a stunning blow to the face, then raised her axe for the kill.

  “That’s enough now,” said Erik, hefting his club. “You kill that one, and I’ll eat your flesh when I’ve killed you. Let her live, and I’ll just kill you.”

  “What are you, her daddy?” Sadzi Wolf held Erik’s eye, tilted Thyri’s head back, pursed her lips and dribbled saliva into the unconscious girl’s open mouth. “Do you like it when I do that, Daddy?”

  Finnbogi crept forward, still wondering what he was going to do. There was a roar and someone thundered past. It was Chnob the White! Sadzi Wolf turned to meet him and slashed her axe across his neck. Somehow Chnob ignored the wound and clasped his arms around her. Blood gushed from his gaping neck up into her face. Erik bounced forward and swung his club into the side of the Calnian’s head. It connected with a noise like a log dropped onto rock from a height.

  She collapsed, Chnob fell away. Erik swung his club twice around his head, up and down and CRUNCH onto Sadzi Wolf’s skull.

  He wiped his weapon clean on the grass.

  “Arrggghh,” Astrid the bear moaned, arriving on the scene in time to be no help whatsoever at all.

  “Do you want me to go across?” asked Chogolisa Earthquake. On the far side of the river a Mushroom Man prodded a prone Sadzi with his toe.

  “No, stay here,” said Sofi Tornado.

  “Shall I shoot them?” Sitsi Kestrel had her bow ready.

  “No.”

  “We’re not letting them go?”

  “For now.” Sofi was suffering from the strangest emotion. She felt sad. She hadn’t felt this emotion before, at least since she’d been a child. She wasn’t sad for Sadzi Wolf. She’d never liked the woman, and she’d told Sadzi not to swim the river. No, it was the Mushroom Men who were getting to her. Last of their tribe, a mixed bunch of men, women and children, and still they fought as if their lives were important. They shouldn’t have beaten Sadzi Wolf, but, instead of fleeing like they should have done as she’d crossed the river, or at least after the first couple had been felled, they’d refused to give up against impossible odds, and somehow triumphed.

  How had they beaten Sadzi? She shook her head.

  “Are you all right?” asked Sitsi Kestrel.

  “Of course I am.”

  “You said we were letting them go for now?”

  “Talisa, go north. Paloma, head south. Look for boats. Come back if you find one, return before dark if you don’t. They rest of us will start building one.”

  Part Three

  To the Water Mother

  Chapter 1

  Romance in the Mud

  “I didn’t think. I acted. For a moment I wasn’t Chnob the White, philosopher and lover, I was Tor himself, driven by instinct and, although this word is used too easily these days, I think you’ll all agree it applies here—heroism.” Chnob spoke quietly, one hand on his bandaged throat, drawing attention to the wound he’d sustained saving them all. “Did I consider my safety for a moment? I did not. Did I have a lifetime of battle training like all the Hird who’d attacked Sadzi Wolf and fallen before me? I did not. Did I know that my action might save the day and save us all? I did not. Did I dare suspect that I, Chnob the Thinker, would slay one of the famed Owsla? I did not.”

  Bjarni listened to Chnob, his eyes closed because the light from the campfire was a bit much. His head felt like it had been whacked by Tor’s hammer. Gunnhild had given him a herby drink which might have helped a little, it was hard to tell. What he needed was a bucketful of mushrooms to take him to another world. Fat chance of that round here, miles from home and stuck on the banks of a river across from a gang of murderous superwomen who wanted to kill them all.

  There was a funny mood in the camp, now that they knew they were certain to die soon. The Owsla had come all the way from Calnia and found them in a matter of days. It wouldn’t be long before they crossed the river and caught up with them again. Once they did, given how one of them, naked and unarmed, had taken them apart, they didn’t stand a straw man’s chance in a tornado against the remaining six. It was a miracle that Sadzi Wolf had killed only Gurd Girlchaser.

  With nothing else to do, since so many of them were injured and needed rest, Chnob had suggested that they try out the custom from the old world sagas of each describing their roles in the day’s battle. Wulf had thought it was a great idea and gone first. He’d told and shown them how he’d been bested in a trice and thrown into the river, where he’d been terrified of the sharks. His description and antics were so funny that despite their predicament they’d all laughed, which had made Bjarni’s head hurt all the more.

  Now it was Chnob sounding off, ignoring the old world custom that you never exaggerated your role in a battle. There was another custom from the sagas that if anyone did exaggerate then everyone else was supposed to take the piss mercilessly, but nobody was bothering with that. Had it been anyone else but Chnob, they would have done. But you only take the piss out of people you like.

  Bjarni closed his eyes, stopped listening to Chnob and thought about Wulf the Fat. That was the best pain reliever he knew.

  “I saw the foe and knew what I had to do,” Chnob continued. “I pushed past Finnbogi the Boggy, who was dithering on the periphery like an ugly girl at a Thing dance, and I charged.”

  An ugly girl. You’d think that someone with no mates in the world would try and befriend someone who was also on the social periphery, but no. One of the many reasons why Finnbogi h
ated Chnob was that he tried to curry favour with the inner clique that he’d never be in by attacking others who weren’t in that clique. It was a wanker tactic, alienating the people most likely to be your friends, but Chnob was king of the wankers.

  Annoyingly, because there was no fairness in the world and the gods hated Finnbogi, Chnob had won the fight against Sadzi Wolf. He’d done it by blinding her with his own blood so that another could deliver the death blow, which wasn’t exactly a classic. How many heroes in the sagas used that manoeuvre? However, they all knew the victory was his and he had made it all the more noble by almost dying in the process. If Erik—helped by Finnbogi—hadn’t treated his horrible gash immediately, then they would have built a funeral pyre for Chnob alongside the two for Gurd Girlchaser and Sadzi Wolf that were burning away merrily down by the river. Finnbogi hadn’t been a fan of Gurd, but he would have swapped him for Chnob in a trice. He would have swapped Sadzi Wolf for Chnob. She’d certainly looked about forty thousand times better.

  “Who knows why some men act and others don’t?” Chnob droned on. “Perhaps Boggy was gawping and gulping like a fish and waiting for an invitation to attack Sadzi Wolf, when I simply saw a job to be done and got on with it?”

  Oh the cock. That was enough. Finnbogi stood up.

  “Chickening out of the tale of the fight like you chickened out of the fight, are you, Boggy?” crowed Chnob.

  Finnbogi patted the sword at his hip. “I was about to take her down with Foe Slicer here when a silly little traitor skipped past, got whipped but was lucky enough to spurt blood in the right direction. It was my father who stepped in to do the hero’s job of attacking her with a weapon rather than his own bodily fluids. That’s my tale of the fight.”

  Several people laughed. Wulf even rocked forward and slapped his thighs with mirth.