David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  “Can’t—?”

  “It’s Law, David; the Law of the Clans.”

  “What law, what — just help him up!” snapped Garth, but when he lunged toward Yellowhair, the fallen warrior’s vaalik snarled, seemed ready to pounce.

  “For Zahlen,” Dahkaa continued, now reclining on the deck, “for us, fate speaks through war. And though we help each other in battle, though in fact I ran to this brave warrior’s aid — if we fall? The Law speaks clear, for what the gods demand, let no man deny.”

  Hearing little, Garth watched Yellowhair go pale. “But he saved us, he—”

  “I know what he did.”

  “Then do something, Dahkaa! You’ll just let him die?”

  “Zahlen never die, David. We just—” Dahkaa yawned. “Just join another Clan.” His eyes closed, and as Dahkaa slipped into sleep, the warriors stopped their bail and reclined as well.

  Astonished by it, by some Law of Inaction demanding Thou shalt not help, Garth found himself despising not just everyone on the barge, but humanity as well, every senseless dullard wired with such ignorant, injurious tripe.

  Yellowhair faded. His vaalik whined. Alone once more amongst the dreamers and snores, Garth concluded life was chaos, a collision of lives haphazardly sprung. Dahkaa had been the best of them, but now, even he made no sense, so losing hope, perhaps his last, Garth closed his eyes.

  Trying to forget Yellowhair, ignore his persistent rasp, he looked for Eylahn, for Dear Mr. Fantasy up in the nets.

  The gunship returned.

  Up on the ice in the great shriek of wind, the hazy cloak and rakish bones rumbled toward the Machine. The wind-skirted mammoth still waited, hadn’t budged since the Zahlen raid, and though the herd huddled outside, none had helped the fallen, the frozen dozens feeding the birds.

  The gunship settled, landed with a hiss of its skids. His blood cold, nearly congealed, Shark staggered off the skid and onto the ice. G’mach troops followed, those who still could, but while two remained frozen in place, the rest returned, stiff-legged, toward the Machine.

  Atta Ra watched. Impervious to cold, to likewise every other discomfort he chose to ignore, the Ninth Progress felt nonetheless tortured, conflicted with doubt. True, he’d leveled that hill over the Zahlen ice drop, and simulations pegged the boy’s chance of survival at nineteen percent. A fine result if he wanted him dead, but did he? Not yet, not till he pried into his mind, yet somehow, for some reason, Atta Ra now just wanted him dead. And whatever he wanted, time favored the G’mach, for if the boy did still live? Soon enough, he’d have to come up.

  Atta Ra exhaled a blue-tinged mist. Further reflection was useless, he had to press on. Nothing would delay the completion of this J’kel, and when it was done, when the river through the stars grew once more, the Quest would resume. Would always resume, would forever continue until the last secret was known, and if the boy held it? Whatever his nature, either mythic fulfillment or mediocre fraud, they’d know soon enough.

  Atta Ra raised his gaze to Shark. Obediently shivering, guarding the herd, he would freeze in place if it pleased the higher progressed. Despising such blind obeisance, yet knowing he, too, had once been similarly possessed, Att Ra ended Shark’s torture with the smallest of nods.

  Instantly revived, Shark lifted his weapon sleeve in salute, then blasted a screech of bullets over the herd. They screamed as one, but that’s as deep as Worm unity went, for as each squirmed behind the next, the weakest and smallest were pushed to the front.

  But instead of a culling, more bullets flying in, the herd flinched from the loudspeaker’s snap. Shark gathered his breath, and when the speakers relayed his clipped, numb-tongue command — Boh kuhl, he rasped — the shrieks of the herd broke into cheers. This frigid unknown over, warm slavery finally restored, the slaggers and haulers fled the cold and their dead for sleep nets and troughs and the J’kel in a trench.

  Furnaces blazing, birthing once more, progress resumed. No need to stay, and since he took no interest in G’mach less progressed, Atta Ra turned back to his ship. But as he moved, he discerned an anomaly, an electrical emission no longer obscured by the fast-fading storm. Weak, the signal, a phenomenon barely there; yet it came, oddly, from somewhere quite close.

  Atta Ra looked back. Tracking the signal, he followed it to an unmoving heap, two bodies on the ice. At least they looked like two, but as a saw-beak bird now took wing, it revealed a third body, someone beneath; which, it seemed, possessed the signal’s faint source.

  Atta Ra approached, glided on down. Moving his fingers to manipulate the fields, the gravitational webs generated by his chains, he lifted the outer two bodies to uncover the third.

  Frozen to the ice by the right side of her face, a young woman lay still. Her image captured, now processed by the gunship and Machine, Atta Ra saw the scene repeat, the storm-distorted replay of Shark dragging her from the line. And why she’d stood with the boy, he didn’t know, but he did have a notion, a high probability guess, and as he descended in close, he traced the signal to her fist. Nothing remained but to uncurl her fingers, and when he did, he beheld a device as alien as its two glowing words:

  Pink Floyd.

  Not from C’raggh, obviously the boy’s — but had the device been traded or taken, was she a thief? A trivial question, yet somehow not, so Atta Ra accessed the surveillance feed from the Machine. He requested every image with both her and the boy, but in the end, he needed only one. Seeing it now, their embrace in the steam, the Ninth Progress G’mach felt his facial mesh twitch. Likely the result of immersive analysis and weighty what-ifs, yet he also felt some vague sense of loss, a feeling he quickly suppressed.

  An idea flickered. Pondering the future, events that might happen or could, Atta Ra reached toward her eyes, lifted a waxy lid. He saw no reaction, no movement or glint, so he fired a flash, a millisecond pulse from his right optical port into the black of her eye, and like light through a pinhole, it lit a nerve, then millions more. Nearly dead, just not quite, but when she was lifted, her face tore from the ice.

  Eylahn never stirred. Aware of nothing, she rose from the ice in Atta Ra’s arms, rose toward his ship so inconceivably dark.

  Garth huddled in a damp bosom of barge. Far below under the ocean of ice, now his sky overhead, he desperately chased some promise of sleep. But instead of rest, he found only guilt: he failed to save Eylahn, boatloads of warriors were dead — and worse, right now, he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t block out the rasp.

  Garth opened his eyes. Still sprawled where he fell, Yellowhair labored to live, every gasp suggested just a few lungfuls left. Then quite fast, it became a few less, and as the rasp lost its rhythm and a rattle gripped his throat, this man once invincible began to fade. Then with an exhale, a wordless release, he departed the barge with a breath already cold.

  Nothing unusual, some part of Garth knew, people died every day. Yet it wasn’t death itself that vexed, it was how it happened, what didn’t happen, the clammy realization the real dead might be those who ignored.

  Like me?

  Not fair, he countered. Wasn’t this their culture, how things were done? And if so, then who was he to question their ways; wasn’t the rule of the stars ‘don’t intervene?’ So he’d always believed, but then again, who made such a rule; did humanity’s moral code spring from screenwriters, some hack on TV?

  Regardless, Yellowhair was gone, had already left. A victim of his own beliefs, it was likely what he wanted, maybe even deserved. A fine rationalization, maybe even true; and though it should have comforted, laid all guilt to rest, Garth instead found himself moving, crawling toward the corpse.

  “He’s gone,” mumbled Bengal, half-asleep. “Our brother has sailed — for the Clan of the Dead.”

  But whatever Bengal said, Garth heard only dialogue, spurious bits of an old episode of ‘House.’ Watching with Miss Kang, he on the musty rug and she on the broken couch, she was shouting, spilling her tea while berating the starlet-as-nurse for her
limp CPR, for motions more suited to raising dough than the dead. “Push!” Miss Kang had cried, “harder-harder-push!”

  Briefly unable to separate rerun from real, Garth punched Yellowhair’s chest.

  Too stunned to lunge, Bengal just blinked. And though Yellowhair’s vaalik growled, Garth never heard, every sense focused on driving his palms in rhythmic compressions against the dead warrior’s chest.

  “David!” scolded Dahkaa, now roused. “Have you lost all sense?”

  Maybe Garth had, because it wasn’t just guilt now driving him on, his cardio-pulmonary flail was also fueled by failure, by falling short with Eylahn and iceboats and even that blasted horn.

  “Listen to me!” Dahkaa grabbed Garth’s vest. “He fell because he was called, we have no say!”

  “No?” Still compressing, Garth vented whatever came. “Then what about my father, didn’t you try to save him? Isn’t that why you took him to earth?”

  “That’s exactly why, but our gods rule this world, not yours, our laws didn’t apply!”

  “Forget the laws, I’m trying to save his life!”

  “And I’m trying to save yours, you have no right!” A quick pull on the vest and Dahkaa yanked Garth up. “Because Savakerrva or not, you, David, are not a god.”

  Face-to-face, there they stood, Dahkaa glaring and Garth panting and the warriors, every one, just waiting for the chance to inflict the Clan mercies, seven X-blade lashes to the boy’s Law-breaking back.

  “He’s dead,” Dahkaa sighed. “Our brother—?”

  A cough interrupted, some surfacing gurgle scaring a yelp from the vaalik and dropping every warrior jaw. Hacking and wheezing, Yellowhair shook back to life, and when he looked up, he squinted a moment, wondered why they all gawked.

  “Mo-tahh,” Yellowhair croaked. Then plumping his vaalik like a pillow of fluff, he lay on its fur and wheezed into snores.

  Nobody spoke, no oath was heard, but every head turned, just looked at the boy.

  Garth lowered his eyes. He did sense a change, some overhang of awe, but he knew it was nothing, they just never saw ‘House.’ And though reviving the warrior nearly made him smile, he didn’t show it, all he wanted was to curl up on the planks, the dry deck at his feet.

  So he did. And this time, he slept.

  But not everyone dozed. Stalking through shadows and trees, someone watched the river through a spyglass, and when the barge appeared, magnification doubled with a click.

  Focus slid from fuzzy to clear. Quivering his lens from one warrior to the next, the Stalker steadied, finally, on the boy in the vest.

  Then river mist swirled, coiled all round, and slowly, the boy on the barge vanished into fog.

  Garth slept. Yet where he slept, he wasn’t quite sure, because when Eylahn whispered Dahveed, she sounded so real, he wondered if he was actually back in the nets. So he laid there, didn’t move, just waited on her touch or the scent of her hair.

  “David!” Dahkaa barked.

  Ripped from his sleep, Garth woke not with a girl, but a barge. Then watched, still thick in the head, as Dahkaa played a taut fishing line, reeled something in.

  “Many miles have passed, we’re nearly there. Hungry?”

  Garth wasn’t, not yet, but as dreams of Eylahn started to fade, the void in his stomach seemed the only thing left. “Maybe,” he grunted. “Maybe I am, I haven’t eaten since—?”

  But whenever it was, it no longer mattered, for as river mist rose, Garth saw not just a place, but a fable, an under-ice world of turquoise highlands and teardrop trees with silver-white leaves. Rugged hills swept to either side, a few plots and fields reminded of farms — yet the light was wrong, upside-down. Somehow inverted, the illumination of this land under the frozen ocean came not from above, but the ground, from rocky ridgelines effusing a soft, blue glow.

  “Yes, well—” Still playing his line, Dahkaa leaned over the edge of the barge. “You should be hungry, it must take a lot to wake the dead.” A yank of his line landed his catch, a dark crustacean legged like a centipede and shelled like crab, a creature now skittering toward Garth.

  ‘Hey!” shouted Garth, trying to dodge its claws.

  “Lively, isn’t he,” said Dahkaa, his gaze on the crab. “You think he’s hungry, too?”

  “Off!” Garth protested, a pincer squeezing his boot. “Get him off!”

  “Yes, well, if you insist.” Then swinging his X-blade, Dahkaa sliced it in half.

  Initially relieved, Garth watched, horrified, as both halves demonstrated the ability to live on their own; and though no longer attacked by one centipede crab, he now squealed from two.

  Dahkaa sighed. Perhaps expecting courage, at least a deeper squeal, he drew his second blade, then stabbed both crab-halves to the deck.

  “An adolescent, by the look,” Dahkaa remarked. “They snap a little, but have no fight.” But though he nodded to the crabs, he stared at Garth.

  “Fine!” Garth yanked a claw from his boot. “Then you eat it, I’d rather starve.”

  “In truth, David, you’d rather not. For if you’d ever felt such an agony, such idiocy you’d never speak.” Rising, Dahkaa peered upriver. “But if you don’t eat now, I’m sure you’ll eat soon, we’re close.”

  Nearly afraid to ask, Garth followed his gaze. “To?”

  “To home, of course,” said Dahkaa, nodding to the next river bend. “Ahead lies Rugahn, greatest city under all the Great Ice. This land was the first home of the Clans, the original five — and now it’s our capitol, the seat of our Generals. Who, I suspect, have prepared quite a feast.”

  Imagining crab halves skittering all ‘round, Garth felt his stomach curl. “A feast? Why, what for.”

  “For you, of course, how else would they greet the son of Kel Vek. But make no mistake, our Generals grow desperate in these last moons, so — I expect they’ll ask how you’ll stop the J’kel.”

  “And just so he’s ready—” Eavesdropping behind, Bengal sliced up his own catch, a river-slicked squirm of one-pound grub. “Let’s ask him now. The boy has a plan?”

  His gaze full of grub, Garth just stared.

  “When the time is right, brother,” said Dahkaa, “his plan will emerge.”

  Mulling Dahkaa’s non-answer, Bengal sliced off some grub. “But until then,” Bengal continued, “our brothers wonder about a boy who not only cried on the Ice, but brought back the dead.” And then, to Garth, “What you did — was a trick?”

  “What I did, anyone can do,” sighed Garth. “The only trick is how you know English.”

  “No trick, I taught him,” said Dahkaa. “I taught them all. And while some know many words, others just a few—” Addressing all the warriors, Dahkaa raised his voice. “Starting now, when in the presence of Savakerrva, we speak only his tongue! Agreed?”

  But the warriors said nothing, Bengal just chewed, and Tusk, writing something, looked up from a red-bordered scroll. “Kahtz,” the captain hissed, then returned to his work.

  Garth glanced at Dahkaa. “Kahtz?”

  “A term of great — affection,” he explained. “Just don’t repeat it, and never to a girl.” Then with a crunch, Dahkaa bit off a twitchy bit of crab.

  Garth’s stomach churned. Slug squirmed to his left, crab crunched on the right, so trying to hold back whatever churned deep down, he turned to the rest of the warriors, to expressions either indifferent to his presence or taut with felonious intent. Cold, this ambience on the barge, so seeking warmth elsewhere, Garth looked toward the sky, to the Great Ice above.

  “He won’t find us?” Garth asked. “Can’t get through?”

  “He’s never tried,” Dahkaa replied, spitting some shell. “No, I’d wager we’re safe.”

  “As safe as we were in the storm?”

  Dahkaa chewed with deliberation. “For the son of a king, David, you possess little faith.”

  “Little would be a lot, at least for me. But as for yours—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, n
o offense, but yours is totally misplaced.”

  Dahkaa considered. Chewed some more. “But in the end, it won’t be my faith that matters, for if that hour ever comes when you face Atta Ra — believe or not, you must prevail.”

  Perturbed by his eyes, by cold gray flints ready to flare, Garth shivered, trembled before a future he hoped would never arrive. So it wouldn’t, he silently declared, and when the time was right, he’d choose his own path, would never yield to legends and myth. And that lifted some weight, even gave hope, but before he could enjoy it, he jumped from the wail of a horn.

  An uvah, by the sound, and it came from ahead, from behind the river’s next bend. Already into the turn, Tusk steered toward a natural river tunnel, a maw of black in a white marble cliff.

  Garth leaned forward. The cliff around the tunnel bore symbols, chiseled slashes with minimal curve reminiscent of letters, old Nordic or Celtic runes. Images also decorated the cliff, pictographs sparkled with metallic blue minerals Garth couldn’t catalogue, had never seen. But as for the pictures themselves — a spiral moon, three liquid drops, an iceboat, X-blades, a skull — he’d seen these before, and as they approached, Garth recalled the roof of the Machine, the smoke through the window and the five sparking chimes.

  “When we arrive—” Dahkaa’s voice startled. “Say nothing, understand?”

  About to ask why, Garth instead watched Dahkaa pull out a cloth, a black square embroidered with a red design. The other warriors produced similar cloths, but whatever the design, he couldn’t tell, for as they entered the tunnel, light became gloom.

  “Say nothing,” Dahkaa repeated, “and show respect. But most of all—” A leaden blue light now outlined the tunnel exit, a stone pier packed with a crowd. “Never smile.”

  Baffled by his command, Garth next questioned the silence, why the crowd ahead withheld all cheer. Not that they lacked interest, yet as women and children and elders craned to look, most stayed sternly, eerily still.

  Tusk killed the motor. All swagger gone, the captain eased the barge into its berth, then pulled out his red-bordered scroll. He drew a long breath, then read aloud: “Vitka — Ozu — Chall—”