David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  “Speak, David,” Dahkaa gritted through his smile. “I’ll translate, and whatever your words, just make them believe.”

  Garth eyed the faces, the thirty-odd scowls. “But—”

  “Speak!”

  Swallowing into eel residue, a cold cud of congeal, Garth wondered what he could possibly say, what bridge of lies might hold. Then concluded, quite fast, that anything said would be a waste, that some bridges were better off blown.

  “I’m not him!” Garth yelled, and as Dahkaa’s smile ratcheted into clench, the boy Savakerrva abandoned his call. “I’m not a Promise and it’s all a mistake, my name is Garth!”

  Frosted brows all a-furrow, the warriors waited on Dahkaa’s words.

  “So my advice,” Garth continued, “if you want a real Savakerrva?”

  Dahkaa interrupted now, stammered a translation more loose than exact.

  “Then get someone else, because me? I just want to go home!” Garth shouted, and throwing up his arm, he pointed to the stars.

  “Savakerrva!” Dahkaa roared, and mirroring Garth’s heavenly point, he broke into song:

  “Sa vah, Zahlen ek rezah!

  Fellek m’zho, sah sa vah!”

  Pausing, Dahkaa waited for a response. But hearing only the snap of sails, he continued:

  “Vaas ko, Zahlen toh kah!

  Illek r’zho, sa vah!”

  Again Dahkaa halted, an invitation for every loyal warrior to start the next verse. And maybe it was fatigue, perhaps the raid had drained all full-throated resolve, but as Dahkaa waited and Garth stood mute, the verdict was deafening, a silent chorus of unanimous unbelief.

  Or nearly unanimous, but as Dahkaa lit into the next verse alone, first the starboard-side iceboat veered off, then the vessel to port. Then the warriors in Garth’s boat turned away, and as they cleaned their Z-rifles or slurped from the pail, Dahkaa’s song faded, died in the wind.

  Shark rode a gunship landing skid. Exposed to the wind and inches over the ice, he searched, desperately, for the iceboats ahead. A ragged flap of face-wrap blocked the storm’s interference from his right eye, some spherical miracle of optical tech, but his organic left still worked, still discerned faint iceboat tracks. Which now curved, he reckoned, slightly left.

  “Vig!” he yelled. “Ahb vig!”

  Still cradling his ancient rifle, Atta Ra tilted his mesh-gloved hand a few degrees left. The gunship turned, Shark’s troops held on, but G’mach or not, they clung to the ship half dead with cold. Chasing the storm that degraded their sight, they cursed every cosmic flash.

  Fiery lightning flashed Dahkaa’s face. Granite etched with scar, the set of his jaw and slit of his eyes mirrored the storm, explosive vexations above and within.

  “Sorry.” Shivering beside and watching the stars, Garth suspected he’d wrecked Dahkaa’s reputation, maybe even his life; and yet, the truth had been told, it had to be done. “But whatever you wanted, needed me to say? I just couldn’t, I’m not who you hoped.”

  Dahkaa stayed quiet, just stared down the storm.

  “It meant something?” Garth persisted. “That song?”

  Dahkaa exhaled, blew a turbulent swirl. “That ‘song,’” he began, “how loud it’s sung, how long — it means everything. Our Song of the Ice measures a Zahlen warrior’s faith.”

  “In?”

  “In you,” said Dahkaa. “In whoever has been chosen to lead, but—” Reaching over his vaalik, he opened a slot built into the hull. “I have no concern, you weren’t chosen by me.”

  “No?”

  “Not at all; for that, we blame the gods,” he said, and after reaching into the slot, he pulled out a sextant-like device and a leather scroll.

  “Then again,” he continued, now unrolling the scroll, “perhaps the gods sent you to the Great Ice for a reason, perhaps they wanted you to see the J’kel. And now that you have, after twenty-one moons of scrubbing its flanks — tell me, have you discovered its weakness, a way to attack? Does our reluctant Savakerrva at last have a plan?”

  Exasperated by it, by Dahkaa’s singular train of thought, Garth decided to ignore the question, just relax. And he did, until he snapped.

  “Don’t you listen,” Garth railed, “didn’t you hear what I said, what I’ve always been saying? I’m not who you think, it’s not me! And what about this, what if your Savakerrva lived a thousand years back, couldn’t he already have come?”

  “If he had, David, would we now face the end of the world?”

  Garth opened his mouth, but as he groped for retorts, none fell out.

  “But since we do face our end,” Dahkaa resumed, “since the G’mach and the Worms may finish the J’kel in just nineteen moons, then our current Savakerrva must be the one foretold. And if you’re shocked that’s you? Trust me, you’re not alone.” Rebuttal complete, Dahkaa aimed the sextant toward a star.

  “But — it’s crazy!” Garth stammered, his last argument left. “I shouldn’t be here!”

  “And yet, you are, the son of Kel Vek now sails the Great Ice,” said Dahkaa. “Though if you shed another tear, I’ll toss you back to the Worms myself.” He took a sextant fix, then marked the scroll, a frozen ocean map. “But tell me, do they still speak of home, do the Worms still long for Hala?”

  The word jolted, knocked Garth back to the Machine. Had that not been Merlin’s last word, didn’t Eylahn’s parents say the same thing when they held the carving, the very thing he threw?

  “Hala — has cliffs?”

  “Indeed,” Dahkaa answered, now sighting on a second star. “The city of Hala stands in the shade of three, the cliffs — ‘hold their soul,’ or so they believe. But now the cliffs just shade the G’mach, their ravagers and supplies; and, of course, the J’kel. Atta Ra laid its first mile at Hala, and unless we prevail? It’s also where he’ll lay its last, where the serpent’s head will meet its tail. But it won’t, of course, for soon, you’ll stop it. Soon—” He made another mark on the scroll. “Soon, thanks to this wind, we’ll be home.”

  “Your home, not mine.”

  “Your father’s home is yours, David. And so is his fight.”

  “Meaning what, you expect me to attack the G’mach, fight Atta Ra?”

  “Fighting isn’t enough, you’ll have to win.”

  “I’m fourteen, Dahkaa, I ride the bus! What could I possibly do?”

  “You’ll do what’s been foretold, which means you’ll lead with the wisdom and courage of your father the king. And once you have the faith of your men, then—”

  “Then?”

  “Then, of course, you’ll need a plan.”

  Back to where they began, Garth first questioned Dahkaa’s sanity, then his own. “You really believe I can stop the J’kel?”

  “I believe in the Promise, David. The rest is up to you.” Satisfied with his charting, Dahkaa rolled up the scroll. “But if you ask my counsel, I’ll repeat what I’ve already said, namely — we must unite with the Tribes. True, they despise us, have fought us for thousands of years, but allying with the Hot side doubles our strength. And yet—”

  Yawning now, Dahkaa pulled up his pelt to sleep.

  “Yet?” asked Garth.

  “And yet,” Dahkaa continued, “if the Promise is true, then regardless of any alliance or plan, everything may, in the end, just depend on you, on some last, desperate act that forever defines your life. You hear my words?”

  Garth did, but he also heard a growl, a brutish anxiety turning his head toward rippling tentacles and perked ears. Apparently anxious, Dahkaa’s vaalik peered at something behind. But though Dahkaa and Garth looked, they saw only night, just stormy reflections flaring the ice.

  Atta Ra shouldered his long barrel rifle. Still riding his gunship, he crouched in the open airlock while sighting on three shadows a far mile ahead. Their course led straight into the storm, into the radiative frenzy of ionic interference and the river’s quantum noise, but linked to his gunship, the G’mach’s singular vision sampled and sifted un
til shapes and profiles emerged: first the boat silhouettes, then bearded warriors — and apart from the rest, the youthful contours of a boy.

  Which yielded, when compared to Garth, a seventy-six percent match.

  The vaalik snarled, yet Dahkaa and Garth still saw only ice. But when scarlet lightning convulsed overhead, it revealed, just one mile behind, a rakish Y-shape cloaked in haze.

  “G’mach!” Dahkaa cried, and with ingrained reflex, Tusk kicked a hard turn. The iceboat swerved, tilted high up, but Garth knew it was useless, the Wraith had come.

  Confirming the thought, a gun muzzle flash sparked the haze. Too late to duck and too scared to move, Garth never heard the shot, but as the old silver slug hit with kinetic smash, it knocked every boyish pound out of the boat and onto the ice.

  “Roh!” exulted Shark, pointing toward the tumbling mass. Torso and limb a cartwheeling blur, the body slid to a stop before the slowing gunship, an arrival greeted by the phlegm-grated cheers of freeze-dried G’mach.

  Atta Ra looked on. The cheers brought warmth, vestigial memories of a more-alive time, but his goal was the secret, the path around death; and for that, he needed the Savakerrva alive. So curling his hand, he stopped his ship just short of the heap, the twisted splay of arms and legs.

  Shark leapt from his strut. Nearly falling on his cold-soaked legs, he stumbled to the body — “Vahk!” barked the voice in his ear — but stopped just short at his master’s command.

  Disdaining the usual motion, his anti-gravity glide, Atta Ra jumped to the ice; and like lesser mortals, actually walked. Reveling in the ancient sensations, in the kick of a gun and now, the balls of his feet in thousand-year boots, he strode to the sprawl, the boy face-down.

  Grim, the result. Yet the Ninth Progress G’mach had revived many others more damaged than this, so with confidence high, he flipped the boy onto his back.

  But as Shark watched, as he noted Atta Ra’s metal mesh hands creak into fists, he knew he stood in the presence of aberration, a most uncommon event. For though the Ninth Progress G’mach had shot with good odds, a seventy-six percent chance, the only certainty now?

  He missed.

  Yellowhair roared. Wild with rage, he slapped his shoulder, and as his vaalik coiled on and bit his neck, the warrior never even winced, just drew his X-blades and prepared to jump.

  “Hote!” ordered Dahkaa, gesturing stop! And barely, Yellowhair did. But not without protest, and waving both blades, he raged first at Dahkaa, then at the ice behind.

  “What’s happening!” Garth yelled. “What’s he want!”

  “Revenge!” shouted Dahkaa. “That boy was his brother!”

  Garth glanced at the horn of antlers, now unattended, then back at Dahkaa; who now, for some reason, whipped open the scroll and eyed the map.

  “Yev!” Dahkaa shouted, pointing right. “Y’vek!”

  Tusk followed his point and so did Garth, and when the sky flashed again, it lit a clutter of miles-away shapes, forms jagged and dark.

  Shooting erupted behind. Weapon sleeves blinking from two-thousand yards back, the G’mach on the gunship shattered the ice just sailed by the boats.

  Answering with a curse, then a deft touch, Tusk cajoled his iceboat into a steep right turn, a knife-edge prayer between controlled and crashed. But there was method to his tilted madness, and after carving the ice to starboard, he slashed back to port. Then repeating the swerves, some longer, some not, he zigged toward the shapes, the jagged mysteries still minutes ahead.

  “The drop!” yelled Dahkaa. Crouching near Garth, he measured the distance to a symbol on the map. “If we make it, we might have a chance; get the uvah.”

  “Uvah?”

  “The horn!” Dahkaa snapped, nodding to the splay of antlers once held by the boy.

  Ridiculous, risking his life for that, but by Dahkaa’s tone, it wasn’t a request.

  Garth threw off his pelt and scrambled fast, tried to hold on during shaky excursions of turn. But the warriors refused to budge, just laid low with their guns while vaaliks hackled and growled. Finally within reach, Garth grabbed the horn, yet it felt strange, was somehow wet. Then he remembered the shot, the bullet to the boy once younger than him.

  Reeling a moment, feeling the blood meant to be his, Garth ducked when shooting missed close on the right. He stole a quick breath, then scooped up the horn, but before he started back, he peeked ahead.

  Now much closer, the rising shapes resembled stone teeth, great jagged fangs; and as the iceboats swerved in, collisions looked imminent, none would survive the hurtling pass.

  “Turn!” Garth cried. “We’re going to hit!”

  Tusk slammed two levers, the iceboat folded its side-sail wings, and with inches to spare, they missed the first rock, then dodged the next.

  Marveling at the maneuver, at Tusk’s be-damned abandon and high-wire touch, Garth found himself unable to haul the uvah horn, he just pitched and lurched with every kamikaze turn. But he also glimpsed, now and again, an occasional mark, some man-made stripe of various length and slant chiseled into each near-missing rock.

  “The uvah!” Dahkaa yelled.

  Garth dragged the horn back through the vaaliks and men. But before he could ask the point of his useless task, Dahkaa grabbed the bloody splay and, referencing some jots on the map, twisted and tweaked the brass caps on the prongs.

  “You’ve done this before?” asked Dahkaa. “You know how it works?”

  Garth stared with a squint. “Huh?”

  “Your grades spoke of a horn, was it not like this?”

  Eyeing the antlers, some fantasy of spring-fevered doe, Garth nearly screamed at the anti-French horn. But suddenly distracted, all thoughts of horns gave way to the view, to the fast-passing rocks yielding to an albino oblivion of trees.

  Out here? Impossible, yet there the wood stood, every snow white trunk and branch glinted as if glassed in ice. More astonishing, every high flash sparked refractions of color, shards of rainbow fired the forest as if ablaze.

  G’mach bullets raked from behind. Trees shattered like glass, a shrapnel of ice pelted Garth’s neck and head, and though he ducked, Tusk stayed his course. Aiming for the tree line, for two massive trunks, he tilted his boat to its minimal fit and shot the gap.

  Shark howled. Thrilled by the chase, the G’mach clung to the gunship skid while yanking a reload clip from his greatcoat. His living eye stung, clouded with tears from the cold, dry wind, but scanning ahead, he glimpsed the third iceboat swerving toward the forest.

  “Shtoh!” he yelled, and slamming the clip into his sleeve, he railed at his subordinates, the other G’mach who barely held on. Stop the iceboats or get dropped in the trees, his ultimatum, so when Shark aimed ahead and fired a long burst, so did the rest.

  Shot-off bits of ice, trunk, and branch pummeled the warriors and vaaliks and Garth. Too frazzled to think, he could only hold on, just watch Tusk weave through the lethal white blur.

  But not every iceboat captain had the same risk threshold as Tusk. Spooked by the near-collisions, suspecting death-by-tree held little sway over dying-by-G’mach, the young captain of the second iceboat looked for an alternate path. Difficult, when following Tusk’s every weave, but when a clearing opened on the left, he swerved for the safety of the two acre flat. Objective achieved, everyone aboard could once again breathe, but though the clearing provided momentary relief, it also left them horribly exposed.

  G’mach gunfire scoured the clearing with a hot metal rain. The rounds went wide, then intersected his path, so without a choice, the young captain swerved hard right, veered back toward the forest and straight for Garth.

  Peering over the rail, he watched the second iceboat reenter the woods and slice his way. Not happening, his hopeful default, but reality had little respect for hope, even less for iceboats in forests, and as the young captain and Garth locked stares and two boatloads of men stared aghast, everyone braced for their last-ever crash. Everyone, but Tusk.

  Adjusti
ng his course with intangible touch, the ivory-jawed master steered just enough to both miss the trees and limit the smash to a superficial scrape. But though Garth and his boat warriors survived, they heard, just behind, the noise of death, a paroxysm of smash, crack, and tossed vaalik squeal.

  Shark heard the noise a half-mile back, then brayed in triumph. Reveling in the mayhem, the shatter of planks and men, he laughed at the primitives, the pitiful un-progressed.

  “Get ready, David!” Glimpsing the haze, Dahkaa watched the rakish overcast skim the trees. “You might have to move.”

  Garth puzzled on the metaphor, then glanced at the bow. “Move — to the front?”

  “Move to the forest, you’re going to jump.”

  Speechless, Garth winnowed possible meanings of ‘jump.’

  “Between the storm above and these reflections all ‘round, they see as if through fog, so return to the crash and blend with the dead, I’ll retrieve you as soon as I can, understand? You’ll jump on three!” Dahkaa yelled, hoisting Garth up.

  “Dahkaa, what—”

  “One!”

  “No!” shrieked Garth. “Let me go, let—”

  “Two!”

  “I’m not going to jump!”

  But yelling “Mo-tahh!” someone else did, and leaping over Garth, Yellowhair grabbed an icy tree limb. Momentum propelled him up and around, and with the alacrity of a gymnast plus his vaalik’s assist, he monkey’d up into birch-white branches and alabaster leaves.

  “You’ll jump if you must,” said Dahkaa, his gaze on Yellowhair’s climb. “But if he succeeds — for now, you’ll stay. You tried the horn?”

  “It’s not a horn! I mean, it is, but—”

  “Make it speak or jump, David, your choice!”

  Up on the gunship and skimming the trees, two G’mach crouched behind Shark. Squinting for the two iceboats, they battled both stormy interference and eye-watering cold; and that, perhaps, explains how they missed it, the blur leaping up from below.

  Yellowhair grabbed the landing skid. Dangling a moment, he secured his grip. Then kicking his legs, he swung up behind the unaware G’mach, and wasting no time, he stabbed the first with his straight X-blade and the second with the curved, and then he fought for his life.