A Fray of Furies, page 11
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
No force known could stop the People thronging to see a krin paraded past, though. No one threw anything but, twice, spearmen had to bar brazen children from darting close to touch the beast.
She’d not seen Bellem again.
She had spotted Serus, towering above his burly friends.
Her fear had stood against her fury for only a moment. Long enough to birth disgust. At whom, she could not say. Catching his eye, she’d caressed the fletchings bristling by her knee. She’d weathered his sneer by imagining an arrow between his eyes.
It was an empty act of defiance but she felt better for it.
They’d traveled the snow-fronted forest from first- until last light, eating pemmican in the saddle and walking their mounts often. But not otherwise stopping. The Hunters set a hard pace. As a newly sworn Hunter herself, she found the challenge thrilling. The blisters and saddle sores, less so.
They would make the most of the firm footing and relative cover afforded by the woods. Once they passed beyond People lands, there would be mines, logging camps and far-flung settlements to avoid. Those wooden palisades would be safe from them. They were no raid. Their charge’s survival was – for now – paramount. They would forsake the forest in favor of the windswept tundra when the time came. Away from prying eyes.
She’d not have minded a raid. She’d never been on one. She sat, rapt, listening to the Hunters swap stories around the campfire.
Each tribe – barring Fleetlock and Deepmeadow – had loaned them two seasoned Hunters. The Stag had contributed a leader while the Mole had pled poverty, sending a lone swordsman.
The squat Hunter sat apart. The most noise he’d made all night was the rasping of his whetstone and his spitting as he lubricated it.
The Stag’s choice was lithely charismatic and soon had the party swapping stories while they broke trail bread together.
The two Hillhoppers (a matched pair of hammermen) were spinning an improbable tale about how they’d tried to corner a talking pig in its pen. She was having trouble following it.
It was natural that her attention return, again and again, to the krin. As Herald, the beast was her responsibility. She needed to see it survived long enough to show the city’s chiefs.
It had proved both hardy and docile, stumbling along at the ponies’ pace. It seemed mostly immune to frostbite, something you’d never guess if you saw it shivering in its miserable blanket. The key to its collar weighed heavily around her neck.
And then there was the way it stared.
Ignored, it peered from its mildewed nest, its unblinking eyes skipping from one pair of lips to the next. As though words were something to be hunted. Or understood.
She shivered and the movement drew its gimlet gaze. She caught herself instinctively dropping her eyes and, angrily, raised her chin instead... but it had already refocused on the Hillhoppers.
“...so, I finally get the swine in a headlock,” one of the hammermen was saying. “We’re smeared slick with mud and manure and I can barely see. I’d just about decided to snap the damn thing’s neck – soured meat aside – when the swine says...”
“Kronkas,” the Hillhopper’s companion chimed in plaintively, “you’re killing me!”
The gathered Hunters explode into laughter. All except the obsessed swordsman. And her. Her unease was groundless. The krin was safely chained. Still, that stare bothered her…
Cursing her heart’s headlong gallop, she made a show of settling more comfortably, going so far as a late guffaw. But she continued to watch the krin through her curtain of hair.
As the night wore on, the Hunters went in search of their furs.
“Too excited to sleep?”
Their lithe leader was stuffing his clay pipe across from her.
She nodded. Fear was a kind of excitement, wasn’t it?
“My first Hunt took me like that. Didn’t sleep for almost a week. I was so nervous, I damn near sharpened the belly out of my blade – like our Mole friend was trying to do.”
“You think him afraid?”
“I didn’t say afraid,” he puffed rebuke. “But would that be so bad? This is the most important thing the People have ever done. Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will tell stories of us.”
“And if…” she flinched from sole responsibility, “…we fail?”
“Then the grandchildren of our enemies’ grandchildren will tell stories of us,” he grinned through the pall of smoke.
She smiled despite herself. He was very easy to talk to.
Serus had been, too… Everyone knows!
Hugging herself, she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be away from this handsome man with the engaging manner.
“I think I’ll try to get some sleep after all,” she rose stiffly.
It felt like flight.
She needed to get this under control, she thought, breathing heavily. Before the wind and snow forced them all into the same tent. These Hunters already didn’t have a high opinion of her, who’d been raised to the title in haste. If she started spitting and clawing, they’d think her no better than a cat in a sack.
Safe in her bedroll, she eventually brought her panic to heel. Sleep, however, eluded her.
It was a relief to rise for her watch.
She shaded her eyes against the brightness bouncing off the snow. The forest was a fond memory. This high up, the air was thin. All but the Highburrow and Hillhopper Hunters were gasping.
They made a slow go of the slope, with the riders breaking trail for their mounts. If a hidden crevasse claimed a Hunter’s ankle, his pony could carry him out. The reverse, sadly, was not true.
So far, none of her companions had done anything song-worthy. Not unless the two Hillhoppers’ very vocal straining at their morning constitutionals counted. They routinely returned from these sojourns, flush with advice for the previous evening’s cook.
It was strange. These dozen men were, undoubtedly, some of the deadliest ever to depart the mountains. And yet, they joked and jeered, waxing irreverent as they darned their stockings.
Which was not to say there was no conflict. The Hunters gamed at getting each other’s goat. The Huntmaster could usually curb excesses with a well-spoken word. But sometimes someone overstepped. In a particularly vicious brawl, she’d counted half a dozen daggers, two hatchets, a shortsword and (for some reason) a fishing pole. Yet, the contestants had pitted naught but brute strength and searing insults against one another.
No blood-grudges were born, no revenge pacts sworn.
What must it be like, she’d marveled, to have honor in such abundance that no amount of insult could assail it?
Stranger still: they made efforts to include her.
“You’re gonna freeze your udders off, wearing that up here...”
Fighting irrational fright, she’d forced herself to meet Kronkas’s eyes… His lazy concern had held on her new hauberk and helm. It was well known metal attracted frostbite.
“I’m doubly wrapped,” she’d denied. The Huntmaster had turned in his saddle. Under his encouraging gaze, she’d stammered on: “Not all of us grow natural pelt, you h… hairy moose!”
As insults went, it was relatively tame. It had garnered a snort of derision and a gust of good humor from Kronkas. Polkin, who did excellent bird calls, had even ventured a moose’s bugle–
An alien note drifted on the breeze.
She might have dismissed it as a trick of memory, had not the other Hunters raised their wrapped faces to the mountain.
Thing stilled, cocking stubby ears.
The cry came again, faint yet unmistakable.
“Early for a bulkbear to be up,” the Hunter beside her opined.
“Must have gone through its winter stores too quickly.”
“Which means this one’s hungry...”
“One? Ha! Listen…”
The eerie clarion came again.
“There,” the axeman nodded. “I hear three voices.”
No one asked whether he was certain. Most Hunters worth their salt made their bones hunting bulkbears before taking on krin. She’d only ever seen one in the flesh and that had been cooling at the time. Even dead, it had exuded a sense of mass and madness.
“Are we at risk?” the Huntmaster demanded.
“A pack might stalk us – if they cross our trail.”
“Then let’s make sure they don’t. We’ll head toward the–”
The howl was distorted, warbling from a human throat. She stared in shock at the krin, its head raised to the wind.
“Quiet it!”
Coming to herself, she sawed her reins, wheeling Thing. The chain cut into her thigh but the krin was yanked off its feet.
Too late.
Three enraged roars rang a challenge from the mountain.
“Guess we’re having bulkbear tonight,” someone chuckled.
From its knees, the krin raised another caterwaul.
“Shut it up! Shut it up!”
She thought the damage done.
A far-off crack! disagreed. She almost missed it but the ponies did not. They shied and tossed, as they had not at evidence of bulkbears. Understanding came in a rush.
So did a skyline’s worth of snow and debris.
“Avalanche!”
They were exposed, on the shoulder of a mountain about to shrug them off. A lethal wave front rumbled down toward them.
“Ride for the trees!” the Huntmaster ordered.
Expressions grim, the Hunters wheeled their mounts downhill. She dug her heels into Thing’s flanks and the mare bounded down the mountain, spraying snow. Chain barked as the krin was snatched along. Bucking in the saddle, she gritted her teeth.
To her eyes, the timberline bobbed, impossibly distant. Rolling thunder drowned out the Hunters’ yips and whoops as they spurred their mounts. On her periphery, one of the ponies misstepped, spilling its rider and ploughing into the snow at breakneck speed.
She risked a glance over her shoulder. A wall of white boiled after them, bellowing fit to shake the sky. She threw herself flat in the saddle, face taut with terror. The two pack horses collided and went tumbling, hooves and pots scything the air.
The avalanche’s breath rolled over them, reducing the world to a muted rush. Around her, the snow came alive, undulating as though she rode a canoe. Ahead, a Hunter was thrown and tumbled soundlessly toward her. She threw her weight to the side… and Thing’s hooves punched all the way through the permafrost.
For the space of an indrawn breath, she was weightless. Then the mountain plucked her free and ploughed her under.
Clamor. Confusion. Chaos.
She jerked awake into calm, frozen blood cleaving her cheek to chapped wood.
Wood? Ah, the Ancestral Bridge...
Curious, she looked around. Or tried to. Pain left her gasping, helmless head cradled against rough bark. When the colors ceased careening behind her lids, she tried again.
She sat, packed into a pocket cave of compacted snow.
Not dead. Just buried alive...
Weak light filtered through the uneven crust, held aloft by battered boughs. By rights, these uprooted saplings should have pulped her. Instead, they’d collapsed in a canopy around her.
The young pine pillowing her head was thick as her thigh, its bark scored and every branch sharpened to a vicious stake. One of these had torn a line across her scaled belly, almost skewering her even as it saved her from the mountain’s ire.
As she tried to scoot away, it bit down on her ankle. Pain tossed her head back. She was pinned, the balk bearing down on her buried shin. Wheezing through her nose, she started digging. Midway, the structure shifted, shedding snow. She nervously eyed her pine prison. It seemed disinclined to collapse, so she resumed. When no more snow remained and the rocks refused to move for her, she braced her other foot against the timber and heaved…
When she came to again, the quality of light had changed. Night had fallen, softening the white walls to dirty smears. But she was free. Stains on her moccasin said she’d broken skin but no bone. She breathed a sigh of relief. The air felt close, stale. The unlikely insulation had saved her from exposure but was slowly starving her of air. She’d have suffocated long since if not for its size. She couldn’t reach the ceiling, so she scrounged among the debris. The sprig she found was neither as slim nor as straight as she would have liked. An arrow would have been perfect for this, she thought, carefully piercing the ceiling. But her arrows had been lost with…
For a moment, grief threatened her steady hand and the integrity of the roof. There would be time to mourn for Thing. Later.
The pale vault above her held together. Sighing relief, she took stock. The avalanche had stolen her helm from her head and her axe from its loop. But her longknife sat secure in its sheath and her belt pouch bulged with necessities. It was pitifully little. Not nearly enough to see to her survival, alone in these mountains.
Alone.
She stared at the uneven walls, imagining her Hunt, ingloriously entombed all around her. She shivered.
It was said Deepmeadow buried their young alive, on the eve of adulthood, to better commune with the ancestors. She believed it. She could feel the closeness of death all around. Her own forebears must have spent a colossal effort to see to her survival.
She’d not been aware of her legs’ trembling until they gave out. She sat down heavily, breathing hard. Her mittens trembled at her face, unable to make sense of her expression. She slumped awhile, letting the desolation set in. Even it could not long muffle more immediate concerns. Such as the stone stabbing her rump. Irritated at the mundane’s intrusion, she tried to shift it. And it clinked.
She stared at the coil of chain nestling in her palm. An experimental tug freed more of it from the wall. For a moment, she hesitated. Then she attacked the snow with numb hands.
Even if the krin’s odd insensitivity could stave off the cold, it still needed to breathe. Perhaps the ancestors had provided it an air pocket as they had her? Or perhaps its head had been ripped through its iron collar. Krin or not, that would’ve killed it. She didn’t quite know which to hope for.
White powder gave way to black hair beneath her hands. Her blindly clutching grasp found its shoulders and she hauled it out.
Over the seasons, she’d assisted in many a foaling. She knew immediately what the grey tinged skin meant. Snow, after all, was just water too difficult to swim in but easy enough to drown in.
She brushed filthy fronds from the krin’s sightless eyes.
A breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding left her.
The krin was dead.
I am the Herald of nothing, she realized. She saw herself, stumbling back into Blackwater, her Hunt devastated, her charge lost – even her pony gone. Her honor in tatters. Oh, they would sing of her: the People’s quickest and most complete failure.
Sudden anger snuck up from downwind.
She slapped the krin’s face, hard. Even knowing it was dead, its lack of reaction enraged her. She slapped it again, the thump of her mitten an unsatisfying goad. Screaming her tears, she brought her fists down to pummel at its still chest, venting all her frustrations.
The first skin-swathed krin in living memory. The first Herald ever. A Hunt such as the assembled tribes had never seen! And she’d not even made it out of the mountains.
“Aaagh!”
Between one blow and the next, the krin bucked, gasping like a landed trout. Fright threw her from her knees. The krin scrambled, eyes dulled by death’s departure. Its frantic flailing found the nearest wall. The shelter reverberated at the impact.
“Stop…” she breathed, as snow cascaded from fresh cracks.
It could probably survive being buried twice. She wouldn’t.
“Stop!” she yelled, shooting to her feet.
Even chilled to near immobility, the beast was strong. A blind swipe slammed her head askew and a solid shoulder sent her stumbling. She wouldn’t dissuade it by force. Growling, she bit the mittens from her hands. Daring its wild proximity, she made a grab for its attention. Her fingernails parted its hair and cupped the back of its head. Straining, she held its panicked eyes.
“Hey! Hush! You’re alright! Hush! That’s it. Shhh…”
Their tangled limbs stilled, taut with tension.
“Hush now. That’s it. Good horse…”
It couldn’t comprehend her words, but it was soothed by her tone. Slowly, its muscles slackened, its flaring nostrils slowed.
“You’re alive,” she managed, relieved. “We’re alive.”
Ancestors! I’m still the Herald! There’s still hope!
“You’re alive,” she enthused.
She was trapped, in a hole, with a krin.
“Shit,” she muttered apprehensively. “You’re alive...”
She watched as brown eclipsed the dun from its gaze. She could feel its body heat blooming. She stepped away as though burned. Too fast. Sudden tension rekindled in its shoulders.
She stilled.
Calm. She needed to keep them both calm. Staring at it wasn’t helping. What would she have done if it were a horse?
She fumbled at her belt pouch one handed. The krin sniffed in her direction, eyeing her askance through its dirty mane. Its entire body orientated toward the morsel of pemmican she offered up on her palm. But it didn’t move and she didn’t dare approach. Bending at the knees, she lay it on the trampled snow.
“There you go,” she encouraged, retreating. “All yours.”
It copied her as she crouched, sidling up to the fatty cake of dried fruit and elk flesh. But it did not pounce on the tidbit. A tentative hand hovered near it, as though gauging her reaction.
“That’s it,” she encouraged. “That’s for you. You eat that…”
It cocked its other ear, as though that might have better luck. Suddenly it was all she could do to keep her voice steady: the krin passed over the pemmican, slinking slowly toward her on all fours.
Their enclosure seemed to shrink to ridiculous proportions.
