And that…that wasn’t good.
They stayed in the tent all day and all evening, emerging only after the sun had set. The mages coped the only way they seemed to know how; they got on with things. They lit the evening fires, and Mardak improvised a stew, despite having his earlier efforts ruined.
I was beginning to learn a few things about these people. Specifically, how they acted under pressure.
On the one hand, there was something to be admired. They had survived in this world, in a place where things went to shit faster than you could spit. Not only that, but they put practicality over sentimentality. Back at the lake, they hadn’t tried to retrieve their dead; they had just moved on to stay alive. They had their brief funeral ritual, and that was that. The deceased were forgotten, and all thoughts were on making sure the living didn’t join them.
Then again.
These people had all of this power, yet they barely used it. Pendras could cast spells in a blink, performing his stances in just a blur of motion. Siddel could cast arrows from his palm, and I was sure if he had made the effort, he could have cultivated more power. And Red, what about him? With not one, but two circles on his forehead, surely he was capable of more than just hiding their camp?
But, who was I to question them? Just a guy dumped here, what, three weeks ago? Maybe more? I knew three spells, none of which were particularly powerful.
I felt like I owed the Lonehills some respect for surviving here, but at the same time, I couldn’t see myself staying. Not for long, anyway. If the Lonehills wouldn’t grow more offensive spells, then they were destined to die. Maybe not now, maybe not for years, but some time. It was just the way of the world; the strong ate the weak.
Right now, the Runenmer seemed like it had jaws big enough to do the job.
No, I was going to have to stay for just a little while. Get stronger. Practice my spells, experiment with them, refine them.
Then, when I was ready, I would find others. Stronger people. People who weren’t just looking to carve out a scrap of survival here, but wanted to master this world. That was the only way anyone here would truly flourish.
While the campfires were burning and the mages were sitting around and were busy pretending this was just like any other night, Red’s tent finally opened.
First came two naked humans, straining against chains, scampering forward. Next were their ogre masters. Giant, stone-faced, but with another expression; tired. Yep, they were tired.
The ogres walked out of camp without a word, and the mages gathered around the fire looked in any other direction they could, as if by pretending the ogres weren’t there, they could magic them out of existence.
Siddel and five other mages left the tent next. Pendras didn’t join them, but I knew he slept in that tent. He must have been tired, too.
The lumbering hunter watched the ogres pounding off into the distance. Only when they were way in the distance, almost out of eyeshot, did he go take a place by the fire.
Siddel let out a long sigh and bowed his head. His shoulders were slumped, and he gazed into the fire as though it was whispering secrets to him. Mardak sauntered over and put a ceramic bowl in his hand. Siddel held it, but didn’t eat.
It was only when Roddie sprinted away from me and ran over to Siddel and licked his hand, that the hunter broke from his daze.
I settled down next to him. Before I could speak a word, a bowl appeared in my hand, and there was Mardak. Was this guy some kind of stew-feeding ghost?
I saw that my bowl was fuller than usual.
“Thankie, Isaac,” he said, nodding across the camp and to his tent, where the stew pot from this morning was resting.
Siddel might not have been hungry, but I was ravenous. One thing incessant spell practice does it get you hungry. Not just normal hungry, but I could eat a horse and the rest of the stable hungry.
“Is you, Siddel, okay?” I said, using my Kartum as best I could.
“Alreygofar,” he replied.
Ah, their motto. I am one who sees the world as opportunity. I still wasn’t sure I’d quite translated the meaning properly, but I took it to mean I’ll get on with things. I’ll carry on.
“What did occur?” I said.
Siddel looked at me for a second before speaking. The Lonehills did that a lot. Not because they were particularly contemplative, but because they knew I had the Kartum vocabulary of a four-year-old, and they tried to think of simple ways to phrase things to me.
“Not friend sometimes must friend,” he said. “Sometimes…uh…was worte? Ah. Sometimes, blue circle must fight gold. But not alone. Alone, blue circle die against gold. Azo…blue circle and green and red join strength.”
“You’re joining with big-grey-men-who-pound ground?” I said. And I couldn’t think of the word for ogre, so I’d strung along some of the words Rosi had taught me.
Siddel gave a sad smile. “Not join. Peace, for some suns.”
“To kill the Runenmer.”
“Runenmer. Yap.”
“But now the ogres know camp,” I said.
“Na. Elder spell blinds memories.”
“Ah. So they won’t be able to find this place again?”
“Yap,” said Siddel.
“And Rosi? Where is her standing in world?”
“Rosi has not returned?” said Siddel, looking worried.
“Na.”
He rubbed his hand over his face. “Azo. She is still gone. This face has not the knowledge, Isaac.”
Damn it.
Over the last few weeks, the mages in the clan had warmed to me more and more. Some of the teenagers had taught me a game they played with a dried goat’s bladder. I sucked at it, but it was a welcome twenty-minute diversion between splitting logs and practicing spells.
But Rosi…I had grown closest to her. Sometimes, she’d make me practice my vocabulary comprehension by telling me stories about her childhood and then having me repeat them. She said it was for practice, anyway. Call me vain, but I think she liked talking to me.
I enjoyed her company, too. She had more of a practical edge than the rest of them. She had a temper that rose quickly, and when she wasn’t helping me, she always liked being on the move. Hunting. Scouting. Training her own spells. She was different than the rest of them.
This place wasn’t a home to me. How could it be after so little time? But it was a place to stay, and she had become a large part of what made it feel warmer.
I hated thinking about her, out there trying to track the Runenmer. At least she wasn’t alone. She’d be okay.
So, a pact with the ogres. Huh. Maybe the Lonehills were more adept at this whole survival thing than I’d thought. I mean, who was I to judge them, really?
They’d seen a threat greater than they could handle, so they’d sought allies. Allies who kept humans on chains, but allies, nonetheless.
How did I feel about that?
I guess that didn’t matter, right now. There comes a time when morals get in the way. They get you killed. Truth was, if I left the Lonehills because they’d sought help from the ogres, I’d have to go out there, alone.
I wasn’t strong enough for that yet.
I needed elementals. I needed lots and lots of them.
If I wanted to be strong enough so that I didn’t have to rely on the safety of a clan to stay alive, I needed better spells. For that, I needed to either find new guidebooks or improve my existing spells.
The more I thought about it, though, the more the two seemed interlinked. The spell books I had already learned, the novice guides for chare, levita, and barrer, had been written by someone.
There had to be a mage who learned those spells for the first time ever, and then he’d passed the knowledge down his family line until someone finally wrote it in a book. How did that first mage discover the spells?
Well, how did the first guy to realize that cows gave milk find that out? He started messing around with stuff.
Udders, in his case. But
anyway.
If there was a framework for spells and magic, I could learn it. It’d take longer doing it by experimentation rather than having books, but it was possible. The only thing was, I’d need elementals for part of my experiments.
That meant going out into the big, wide world. Luckily, I wouldn’t have to go alone.
The morning after the ogres had left camp, I was up earlier than the sun. I even beat Siddel, who rose just as the sky had shocks of pink and orange bleeding through it. Wow, he must have been tired as hell to have got up so late. Late by his standards, anyway.
“Siddel!” I said. “Ged morn. He will go with you, hunt.”
“Na hunt this sun, Isaac. We must prepare.”
“Prepare…what reason?”
“Runenmer. Different hunt. Ogres come.”
“Isaac come too.”
“Na. Pendras says some must stay near camp. Defend.”
So Siddel and the others were joining up with the ogres and going hunting for the Runenmer. It made sense; they had to go hrr-chare his gangly ass before he got strong enough to lay his runes.
I wanted to go with them because I didn’t like the idea of staying behind. I understood the logic of having people stay behind; no sense leaving the camp open to attack. But still.
That meant I was going to have to go hunt for animals alone. If I wanted elementals, there was no choice.
So, I needed to prepare for my trip.
First, the landscape around me had changed, and my brown Lonehill robes stuck out against the snow.
I went to see Nino, the clan’s inventoryman. His tent was on the northern edge of the camp boundaries. It was the second-largest tent after Red’s, and the sides of the fabric were always bulging with all the stuff piled inside.
It seemed that although the mages could create personal bags that held way more than they should, they couldn’t do the same with their tents. Maybe the material for a magic inventory bag was rare, or something.
Nino looked after the clan’s supplies, and he took his job seriously. People often approached his tent and asked for things, only to leave disappointed. Nino would only part with an item if it was going to exactly the right person, for exactly the right task.
If something broke, Nino would spend hours fixing it. It was his goal in life, seemingly, to wrench every last drop of usefulness from the things the clan owned.
“Hai, Isaac,” said Nino, waving his hand. He was always red-faced and cheerful, and he liked to grow his mustache out into long strands while keeping the rest of his face shaved.
“I had a moment of inspiring thoughts, Nino,” I said, struggling to find the word for idea.
“Oh?”
“Why use a tent for the clan’s inventory? Since you can’t seem to cast a spell on tents the way you do with bags, why not create a giant bag?”
His eyes glazed as he listened to me. I’d lapsed into English, which I did quite often when trying to articulate long or complicated thoughts. Learning to live here was tough.
“Never mind. Nino. I have seek for new robes.”
Nino pinched the hood of the brown robes I was wearing. He chewed his lip. “Na, Isaac. Is good. Robes are strong.”
I already knew it would go like this. Nino had something of a reputation around the camp.
One night, taking a break from our lessons, Rosi had told me a little about everyone else who lived here. Nino was renowned for his utter reluctance to part with anything from his tent, despite it being his job as inventoryman. His frugality had gotten the clan through harsh winters, but sometimes it was a problem.
“Isaac walk into the land of white, he will hunt. Brown is sign. Brown robes show him to eyes,” I said.
“Ah, camflagere.”
“Camflagere, yap.” No need for Rosi to translate that word for me; if that wasn’t the word for camouflage, then I was the son of a goat whore.
“Na,” said Nino. “Isaac na camflagere.”
“What if I place favor into scale, that it tips?”
“Ah, favor. Was favor?”
“When I kill, the meat is in Nino’s name. Elementals come to me.”
Nino stuck his hand out, with his thumb pointed at me. Wise to their custom of sealing an agreement after watching others do it, I pressed my thumb against his.
Nino went into the tent and came out with a robe as white as snow, but with faint black marks on it. I wondered what kind of animal the fur had come from. A polar bear? Some kind of snow wolf?
Either way, I slipped it on and I already felt safer.
I was about to walk away when I heard a voice.
“Isaac,” said Nino.
When I turned around, he was holding a small, folded parcel of cloth.
“For camp. Tent sleeps one only. Might get wet, but work.”
“Thankie, Nino.”
Next, I visited Mardak and got a few parcels of dried meat wrapped in native leaves. These went into my inventory bag, along with two jars of water with resin-sealed lids to stop water sloshing out. They had holes cut into the top, and these were sealed with a wooden stopper.
Finally, I went and joined the teenagers who were splitting logs over on the east of camp. Despite it being a winter morning, three of them had taken off their robes and were working in long johns and shirts, and even then, they still looked hot. After spending many mornings splitting logs, I knew the feeling.
One of them smashed his axe blade into a log so that it stuck, wiped sweat from his green forehead, and faced me.
“Hai, Isaac! Tu ken play goat ball?”
Goat ball. I was sure the sport they played with a dried goat’s bladder had a different name, but it was so long and complex I couldn’t say it. So, whenever I heard it, I just translated that to goat ball. It did the job.
“Na, sori Harrien. Must geh hunt.”
“Na problem. Need wood?”
I nodded. “Yap.”
Harrien and Malin, another good-natured Lonehill boy, carried a bunch of kindling and larger logs over to me. While Nino hoarded his inventory like a greedy dragon, the teenagers were more giving. And why not? If there was one thing the clan would never, ever go short of, it was wood.
I added the wood to my inventory. Together with half a dozen fist-sized pieces of flint that I’d found over the last few weeks, I had the means to make a fire without resorting to using elementals.
Finally, I paid a visit to Red’s tent to tell him and Pendras where I was going. I stood outside, and I gently rapped my knuckles on a gong that was hanging from the frame outside. That was another thing I’d learned – never just walk into Red’s tent.
Today, there was no answer even though I heard many voices from inside.
Oh well.
Ready for some hunting in the nearby wilds, I left camp.
The forest was pure white, not just touched by the hands of winter but fondled by it so that leafless trees were covered in snow, and the fresh coverings of white from the night before crunched underneath my feet. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t tainted by the memory of a poor mage kid crushed by a boulder, and the rune Runenmer had left for us.
Roddie and I hiked a few miles north, to the grounds where Siddel usually led us. He was a seasoned hunter and he knew this area better than he knew his own ass. Then again, most people can’t see their own asses, so maybe that wasn’t a good way to compare it.
Anyway, after a few hours' walk, I reached the denser part of the woods where the trees were grouped tightly together. Since winter had robbed them of their leaves they didn’t give any cover overhead, but that was fine. It wasn’t snowing or raining, and I could use the extra light.
I made a few snares utilizing a method Siddel had taught me on our many hunts, using stringy tree bark, plant fibers, and a bunch of triggers he had given me. These were just little pieces of wood he had made the mage teenagers carve for using in traps, and he always had more than he knew what to do with.
I combed the forest looking for
saplings, and I set the snares under them. After placing a dozen in a two-mile-wide area, I could only wait.
I didn’t expect to get much. It was winter, and Siddel had explained that winter was a harsh mistress. No, not just a harsh mistress. A bitch. Winter was a bitch. Though, the closest Kartum word for this was beatcha.
Still, it beat staying around camp. I figured that I’d spent so many hours splitting logs and carrying water to earn my keep, that I had banked a little hunting time.
While I waited, I explored some of the forest looking for any herbs or fungi untouched by the snow, but pickings were slimmer than a starving sausage dog. I began to see why Nino was so miserly with camp supplies now; in his tent were the provisions that would get the clan through winter.
After a few hours, Roddie and I checked the snares.
Damn it!
They were empty. No game, yet, but at least they were undisturbed. It meant that my snares hadn’t broken.
At midafternoon, I lit a small fire, and Roddie and I sat around it. He snuggled up next to my thigh, and I ate strips of dried bison meat and I tore pieces off and fed them to him.
I was contemplating whether to spend the night near my snares or to go back to camp and check them in the morning. On the one hand, I didn’t want to stay out here alone when the sun fully set. Siddel had explained that wolves would be few and far between out here at this time of year, but there was just something about the forest that worried me. It had the touch of the Runenmar on it, and it made me think about him and his gangly limbs and his demon-spawning runes.
Then again, although there weren’t many wolves, there were some. Loners who had been cast out from their packs. Plus, there were foxes and other animals who would be desperate for an easy meal.
If my snares caught something in the night and I wasn’t here, there was a chance something else would get to my prey before I got back the next morning.
“What do you think, Roddie?”
Before my pup could answer, if indeed he was going to answer at all, I heard movement.
The crunch of snow. A twig breaking.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 16
