Peter suspected he’d just lost his friend. And his brother.
Why are the matrons putting me in this position?
Ota Qwan left the next day, with six men, all seasoned warriors from the summer campaign. The six of them – three chosen from the neighbouring village at Can-da-ga – were considered the finest warriors the People had to offer – all hot-blooded, all highly skilled.
Ota Qwan left the village carrying his best spear, wearing a sword, with a magnificent wolf cloak over his shoulders and a tunic of deerskin carefully decorated along every seam with a stiff border of porcupine quillwork and moose-hair embroidery. He looked like the Alban notion of an Outwaller king, and he walked with pride. He didn’t glance to the right or left, he refused Peter’s embrace, and then he was gone.
As soon as he was gone the matrons gathered in the street. There was a flare of temper from Amij’ha, and her mother spoke sharply to her.
‘You have sent my husband to his death!’ she shouted, and ran into her cabin.
Blue Knife set her face like stone and beckoned to Peter. ‘Nita Qwan,’ she called. He walked to her. Ta-se-ho followed.
He came to a stop. All the matrons were gathered in front of Amij’ha’s house – among the Sossag, the woman owned the house.
‘Nita Qwan, the last week must have been hard for you. But we have chosen your brother for a lesser errand. He will fail. He will go to Thorn, and Thorn will seduce him with the offer of war. This is the way of men.’
The sound of Amij’ha’s sobs echoed in the cabin.
‘We will send you to Mogon. She liked you – she spoke to you. You must leave immediately and travel very fast. Her people are strong, and have strong powers and many allies. Tell her the truth – that Thorn comes for us, and that we are too weak to do anything but blow in the wind.’
Nita Qwan sighed with understanding. ‘It is unfair. My brother—’ He paused. The women’s eyes were deep with understanding, with unspoken knowledge. He lowered his voice, and found that he was angry; in the way that Ota Qwan had never made him angry. ‘If you had sent my brother to Mogon, he would have stood tall for the people. If you had sent me to Thorn, I would have crawled for the people. By sending Ota Qwan to Thorn, you condemn him.’
Blue Knife looked down her nose at him. ‘This is as it must be. War will be his own choice – and that will blind Thorn to our intentions. All the men we sent were warlike, like Ota Qwan.’
‘My brother could have been better than that,’ Nita Qwan spat. ‘Indeed, he had been trying—’
‘We have sent your brother as a sacrifice to Thorn,’ Blue Knife said. ‘He is the husband of my daughter and the father of my granddaughter. Do not imagine that this was not much debated and discussed.’
Nita Qwan breathed in his rage, and breathed out, as his father had taught him five thousand leagues ago. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will go. But you are no different than kings and chiefs and tyrants the world over if you send men to die like this, without giving them a chance.’
Small Hands shook her head. ‘You are angry and your head is big with tears, Nita Qwan. When you are on the trail, smoking your pipe in the darkness with the flames of your campfire before you, think on this: is the life of one man worth the life of all? Or this: we will not be there to choose for Ota Qwan. If he plays the part we told him to play he will return unharmed, and we will apologise and tell him how we used him.’
Blue Knife looked away. ‘But he will not. He will choose Thorn. Of his own free will.’ She turned back and her eyes locked with Nita Qwan’s. ‘Go to Mogon and beg for us. Yesterday, Thorn sent many creatures – some sort of bird or bat or moth – to kill people south of Can-da-ga. He will not end with that.’
Nita Qwan left the next morning, after some passionate lovemaking from his wife and a tearful farewell.
‘Am I being sacrificed like Ota Qwan?’ he asked her. ‘Would you know? Would you tell me?’
She leaned over, breasts brushing his chest, and licked his nose. ‘I might not know, but I’d always tell you. The matrons are all bitches. They don’t like me.’ She licked his nose again. ‘What they did to Ota Qwan, lover, he . . . I’m sorry. He had it coming. He is too much about himself. He wanted to be warlord and he said so. He was not like you. You have become one of us while he was a Southerner pretending to be a Sossag.’
Nita Qwan took the comfort offered and decided not to have a fight with his wife before leaving.
He took only Ta-se-ho who knew the way, and the shaman’s boy, Gas-a-ho. They took bows and pemmican and little else. Nita Qwan declined to carry the elaborate fur robe of an ambassador, and he rolled the quillwork belt that the shaman prepared for the matrons in his Alban snapsack with a blanket, and the three of them, having bowed to the matrons and kissed their women, left the village at a run, like hunters or warriors, and not at a walk like ambassadors.
For the first three days on the trail, it rained. The wind blew harder and harder, the temperature dropped, and the three men built big fires and huddled close under their brush shelters and were cold and wet most of the time. They ran almost all day – faster on the third day, as Gas-a-ho’s muscles hardened. He was young and not as strong as other boys, mostly because he’d chosen the way of the shaman and didn’t spend as much time hunting and fighting.
They passed south of the beaver country, right to the shore of the Inner Sea, and they spent a fruitless morning – their fourth on the trail – looking for a canoe.
‘We always sink them in this pool,’ Ta-se-ho said. He prodded the bottom of a deep pool in a feeder stream for an hour while the other two sat in the water sun and enjoyed being only a little damp. He didn’t find a canoe.
He didn’t find a canoe sunk in the deep bay of the Inner Sea, either. He shook his head. ‘Now we have to make a boat,’ he said.
Nita Qwan had not truly absorbed that this was alternative, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t even know how to make a boat.’
The other two men looked at him and laughed.
The boy gathered spruce root. Nita Qwan watched him for a little while, and all the boy did was wander from spruce to spruce, dig down to the wispy surface roots, and pull. When he had a good length, he’d cut the roots with his neck knife, and go to the next. He didn’t strip a single tree – not even a scrubby little tree at the edge of a meadow. He simply took one length of root from each tree.
Ta-se-ho watched him for a while, too. ‘He’s good. The Horned One is a fine teacher. Let’s go find a tree.’
Finding a tree led to hours of walking in the deep woods. It was hard to make sense of this – they were in a hurry, rushing to take a message to the powerful wardens, and yet they were wandering from tree to tree in the woods. Peter was overwhelmed with frustration for several hours, until Nita Qwan decided that this was a matter for careful deliberation.
Ta-se-ho confirmed this view. ‘If the bark opens like a flower while we are on the sea, we die,’ he said. ‘It is worth the time to choose a good tree.’
They hadn’t found it yet, but they found other things – a pair of twisted spruces that years of wind had bent almost over. Ta-se-ho cut both of them down with a light axe – a fine tool, dark steel with a white edge, from Alba.
He tapped many trees with the butt of the same axe – yellow birch, white birch, paper birch – and pulled at the bark on elm and pine and birch alike. As he walked among them, he sang.
‘White birch is best,’ he said.
Nita Qwan felt entirely useless, but somehow, as the day progressed, he learned – almost wordlessly, because Ta-se-ho was a silent teacher – what it was they wanted. They searched for a dead tree – recently dead – with the bark ready to peel away. They found several, all together in the afternoon. They were all a little too small, but the way that his silent companion handled them, and peeled the elm bark back from the trunks, told Nita Qwan most of what he needed to know.
The sun had come out quite strong, and the day was more like late summer
than autumn. The two men were stripped to their breechclouts by afternoon, and walking through the magnificent trees was more beautiful than anything Nita Qwan had done – except perhaps make love – for many days. He savoured the smell of the leaves, and the magnificent royal dazzle of red and gold.
As the sun began to sink, he saw a pond, and along the pond a dozen enormous birch trees like white maidens standing over a forest pool. He walked that way, confident that he could find Ta-se-ho, or that the older man could find him, and he reached the first tree – already excited to see that the crown was dead. The bark had the loose feel he thought might be correct, and he turned to raise his voice and saw the doe standing, head turned to watch him, within easy bowshot.
He thought that she was small enough to carry, and he took his bow from its sheath and strung it while she drank warily and watched him.
Then she turned her head, ignoring him. Her ears swivelled like a horse’s ears.
He loosed an arrow, and missed entirely in his hurry. The fall of his spent shaft startled her, and she whirled, white tail shooting up, and he realised that there was another animal, a small buck, even closer to him that he hadn’t seen. He got a second shaft onto his string – the buck turned, and then looked back, and then leaped along the edge of the pond.
He loosed at point-blank range and his shaft went home to the feathers. The deer fell in a tangle of its own hooves, life extinguished almost instantly, and the doe swerved and ran on, ignoring him as she bounded away.
He stood there, flush with deer fever, and realised that the fading hoof beats of the doe were not the only large animal sounds he was hearing.
The hastenoch came down to the edge of the pool along the same path the doe had taken, its long obscene head and enormous antler rack sending a sharp jolt through his body as he realised what had actually panicked the deer.
He found that his fingers had put an arrow on his string.
A horn blew – raucous and long. The four-hoofed monster raised its snout and looked east, towards the other end of the pond – and charged. There was no warning; it went from standing still to full gallop and it screamed its uncanny cry.
Nita Qwan loosed and missed – it was too fast. He had time to loose three more shafts as the great thing raced along the far shore, and his third shaft hit it squarely just behind the armoured plates of its head and upper neck, and the shaft went deep.
Ta-se-ho shot it twice, but both shafts glanced off the bony plates of its head.
Then he seemed to disappear. It was like magic. He was there – and then he was gone.
The horned thing slammed, head first, into the tree next to which Ta-se-ho had been standing. The crash echoed off the trees standing by the pond, and again off the rock face that rose in granite splendour into the afternoon sunlight.
The great beast reared, backed, and slammed into the tree again. Now the monster had an arrow standing upright between his shoulders, like a crest, and then another.
Nita Qwan loosed again. He was shooting the length of the pond, now.
It was too far to see cause and effect, but the monster suddenly sat. It trumpeted its rage, and got its back feet under it.
It sprouted three more arrows – tick, tick, tick.
Nita Qwan’s hands were shaking so hard he had to pause and breathe. But the thing seemed to be down, and he got another arrow – the one he thought of as his best, with a heavy steel head and a heavy shaft and a deep nock he’d carved himself – on the string and then ran at the monster. It was struggling to rise again.
Tick. It now had seven shafts in it.
Ta-se-ho dropped from the tree that the monster had rushed. He landed lightly, bounced to his feet and drew his long knife – and the hastenoch rolled to its feet, antlers lowered.
It rushed him – an explosion of sinew and antler – its rack caught him and he was tossed as Nita Qwan stepped in close, drew his bow to the ear, and put his heaviest shaft through its withers from so close that its carrion smell was like death incarnate in his nostrils.
It whirled on him and he fed it his bow, right into the tentacled mouth. The horn tip of the bow bit deep and then the bow bent and snapped and it was on him and he was on the ground amidst the cold leaves – a great weight on his chest – a sense of slipping – away, away—
It was dark, and he was cold.
He opened his eyes, and the stars were cold and very far, and he was small and very cold himself.
He opened his mouth and a grunt escaped – and suddenly there was movement.
Gas-a-ho had a canteen to his lips. ‘Drink!’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’
It seemed a foolish question. Until you spoke, I thought I was dead, Nita Qwan thought. He took a deep breath, and smelled only wet fur and carrion. His hand touched something cold and very slimy – a tentacle – and he flinched. And his feet moved.
‘I can’t get it off you,’ Gas-a-ho said. The boy was fighting panic.
‘Where’s Ta-se-ho?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘I thought he was with you,’ said the boy. ‘When dark was coming, I gave up that you two were coming back. I stashed my roots and followed your tracks. This thing was still twitching when I came.’
Nita Qwan could feel the marks of the tentacles on his face and arms. ‘Trying to eat me,’ he said aloud. ‘Even while it was dying.’ His memory of the last moments of the fight was skewed, and he tried as best he could to piece it together. ‘Ta-se-ho was here – he got tossed by the beast.’
The boy had a fire. He could see it, and the promise of its warmth trickled through his injured spirit. He dug into the ground with his elbows – there was a shallow puddle under the small of his back – and he pushed, wriggling his feet.
The dead monster was soft and hard, and the armour plates of its head were resting just below his groin. He couldn’t feel his legs, but he seemed to be able to make them move.
He fought down panic. ‘Get my spear, Gas-a-ho. Is it here?’ he asked.
‘I have it!’ the boy said proudly. He went out of Nita Qwan’s field of vision and then came back.
Wolves howled. They were right across the pond devouring the buck he’d shot.
The boy came back. ‘I’ve cast a working on my arms to make them stronger,’ he said. And then, ‘I hope.’
‘Put the spear under the head. Put a log under the spear, and use it as a lever – no, under the head – good. Careful – don’t break the spear . . . there, it moved!’
In a moment, he dragged his right leg free. He had to use his hands, but his legs were bare, and that made them slippery and, although he lost his moccasin, he got the leg out.
The wolves howled. They sounded closer.
‘Hurry,’ he said. There was no pain in his right leg, but neither was there any feeling in it. He wriggled, getting his back out of the pool of water, and set his hands. The boy dug the spearhead into the earth, and pulled.
The wolves bayed, shockingly close, and provided them both with an additional incentive. He got his left foot to move – an inch, another, and then a third. They were sticky, slimy inches, but once it started to move, he wouldn’t stop – not to wait for the wave of pain, the crippling sick ache of a broken bone or ripped muscle. Instead, he felt nothing but a vague slipping, as if the limb was not his but the dead beast’s.
And then he was free.
He crawled fifty feet to the fire, and lay full length in its warmth, heedless of the slavering wolves.
Before the warmth could lull him, the return of life to his lower limbs struck like ice and fire and the pangs of love and being eaten alive all together. He grunted, rolled, thrashed, and grunted again.
The boy looked terrified, and Nita Qwan tried to force a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered, sounding foolish. ‘No – really – very lucky – ah!’ he said.
But shortly after, when he had some control of his feet, he listened to the wolves and turned to the boy. Gas-a-ho had gathered all their kit and made a small shelter, built a fire
– even butchered part of the deer he’d shot, and cooked a haunch of the meat. Nita Qwan got his short sword from his pack and hobbled to the fire.
Gas-a-ho was by him like a swift arrow. ‘I made torches,’ he said proudly. ‘I was going to try and get you out if the wolves came – or at least fight them off.’
‘I think the whole pack fed on deer meat, and now they will sleep,’ Nita Qwan said. ‘But we must find Ta-se-ho if we can. He may be dead. But if he is not, a night this cool could kill him.’ He took a torch and went back to the corpse of the monster, which in flickering torchlight looked almost as terrifying as it had alive.
There was something to the glistening pile of its tentacles that made his stomach turn.
He forced himself to breathe, in and out, and walked past the massive rack of antlers that had miraculously not fallen on his face and killed him.
As usual, everything was bigger at night. He couldn’t find the tree that Ta-se-ho had been in – he had no moccasins and his feet were being crucified by the sharp gravel and sticks.
He stepped on the older hunter in the dark – a soft resistance, a yielding—
Something grabbed his leg and threw him to the ground – he rolled on his shoulder and turned, torch lost. He must have shouted out as he fell.
Ta-se-ho sat up. ‘You almost killed me,’ he said, and managed a weak laugh.
They took turns keeping the hunter warm. He had a badly broken collarbone, and he couldn’t use his left arm at all. He was also in shock, and despite his attempts to fend off their help, he needed every hot cup of tea, and every blanket they had. As the feeling returned to Nita Qwan’s feet, he became more mobile, and he and the boy scrounged for firewood in the damp dark.
But in the morning, the sun rose. Nita Qwan had feared rain, but it was a beautiful day. Until the effort of downing a standing dead tree in the dawn light showed that he had cracked ribs.
He returned to camp to find Ta-se-ho coaching the boy on extracting all the best parts of the deadly hastenoch. By daylight the monster was smaller and less terrifying than Nita Qwan could have imagined, and as the boy meticulously removed its head plates and its tendons for sinew, it became first pitiful and then merely meat.