The wilderlands, p.7
The Wilderlands, page 7
It was hard to tell if anyone had lived or if all were burned and ash-buried.
The Wilderlands are never silent, but there was quiet there.
In that quiet, the tricksy Valforian steel got to singing tunes only Dhorena could hear: “Feed him to the grime and dirt,” it mute-muttered. “A clanless murderer, no soul will mourn or miss the man. Bring justice to your mother by the steel of her people.”
Knalc kneeled before her, not much different than Valforians do when they’ve done wrong and know they’ve done wrong and accept death. She’d raised the sword.
Two good chops and his neck would crack and tumble like a tree trunk.
Her mind had murdered him before her sword did—and her sword didn’t get the chance there-then.
She was a breath from justice when a roar rippled the blood-soft earth.
She gasped and stopped.
Knalc was shook from his stupor, not even knowing he’d nearly been on his last lungful.
All of them looked to the roar, even Red—still dragged behind.
It was a silver tip.
A silver tip—big and brazen—lumbering into that scorch-puckered clearing.
Fear-faced, the boy pointed to the beast, not knowing its name, waiting for an answer from Knalc.
Knalc struggled to his feet, boots blood-chalked and heavy. “Fuck.”
Not even knowing what he’d said in Wildertongue, Dhorena spoke, “Fuck.”
It took only a heartbeat for Knalc to know what the silver tip was scouring for. The scent of his burned clansmen had stained the air with the assurance of food—but the smoke-scent was an ill-made promise, for the fire had gobbled all the meat.
The creature was hungry and angry … and had caught their scent.
The silver tip lifted itself to its hind legs, standing oak-tall. When it fell back to all fours the earth shuddered.
“Run!” Knalc didn’t need to translate for them to understand.
Dhorena scooped her brother up and turned to flee. Knalc gripped Red’s sled and heaved him after. They ran, hard and fast as feet would let.
Their soles were sore from walking.
Every step the silver tip took was thunder.
The earth was sick with blood.
Dhorena slipped and fell. She screamed, and her brother toppled from her arms and rolled away. Trying to grab him again, she crawled back to where he fell.
The silver tip came like a summer storm, loud and lathering.
Knalc noticed Dhorena not keeping pace. He stopped and looked as she slipped. Then he turned away and kept going.
I hear some of you younger listeners gasping, don’t worry. The man didn’t make it more than four steps.
“Shit,” he breathed.
His sword was in his hand then and snicked away the vines that bound him to Red’s sled. He charged back toward the silver tip and toward the children, feet pounding through the blood and ashes of his kin to save a girl who’d kill him.
Dhorena got to her brother and wrapped her arms around him.
And the silver tip was on her soon after.
She started to stand and run again but saw it.
Huge though it was, the silver tip was faster than she’d supposed. She’d only seen it at a distance afore, she hadn’t focused on the monster until it loomed above her. She had it in her head it would be big but this—
Thing about silver tips is, if you’re as close to one as I am to you now, you don’t really see the silver tip. You see morsels.
Eyes as orange as uggerfish venom.
A jaw sized to chomp you whole.
A hunger-hewn chest with room for you and three bosom-brothers.
A paw-claw which could crush a man’s skull—a paw-claw that knocked Dhorena aside like you swat a gnat.
Dhorena felt like she was flying. She hit the ground aching, feast-prone for the silver tip.
As the silver tip loomed over her, meal-ready, she saw why they were called silver tips. The silvery hairs around their chest and shoulders—silver hair is reserved for the old, but silver tips are born battle-wise. They are fearsome and terrible and there ain’t no shame in dying to them. If a silver tip wants to eat you, it has the sense to know whether or not it can, and if it decides it has means, gods help you.
Her kin-sword was at her belt but her arms were still sibling-saddled. Even if they hadn’t been, no one sees a silver tip the first time and doesn’t think that Death has come.
And Death would indeed have been there for Dhorena if Knalc had not been there for Dhorena.
A throat-parching battle yorp screamed from him as he flung himself gut-deep into the silver tip. In that charge, Knalc threw in the heart-bursting sorrow-wrath which was beating fresh within him. His mind was foaming like a rabid boar. His muscles rage-bubbling like fire springs. His scream, root-shaking.
In that assault, he put all his strength, all his fury, every drop of clan-mourning.
The beast was peeved.
Mighty peeved, yes.
But merely peeved.
Know it ain’t impossible to kill a silver tip single-handed. As you heard-told from me, Gor Gamak was story-famed for doing just that. He fought such a beast under the eye of Mamma Moon, and under that orb drew its blood. But a sword is a poor choice for slaying silver tips. Arrows and traps, or spears as Gamak used, are best.
But a sword is what Knalc had in hand.
It was with sword in hand he was knocked down.
Yet Knalc didn’t notice his ribs crack or the bleedin’ cross his chest. He didn’t notice much just then—not Red, not the children, not the blood soaking him—he only noticed the silver tip. ‘Cause Knalc was going berzerk.
It’s something a scant smattering of Wilderfolk could do back then. When their blood got pumping, when their brains were boiled in battle-foam, they’d berzerk. A warrior gets muscle-swollen to near twice his size and he don’t feel pain or fear until he or foe is finished.
It had been a long time since Knalc had last gone berzerk. He’d kept it bottled up inside him, but standing on that field of death, he found that spark again.
He hadn’t even found his feet before he flung himself at the silver tip again—steel flashing.
A storm of roars and blood and claws and it was hard to tell what belonged to Knalc and what was silver tip. Knalc met the beast blow for blow. Until he managed to shove his sticker into its gut.
The silver tip was gushing barrels, but that beast had blood to keep twenty men alive. To silver tips a barrel ain’t but a drop.
“Come on!” Knalc roared, challenging the beast, his sword was still lodged in its side.
The silver tip’s steps left the ground earth-cracked. Gaze set on him. Its maw went wide with breath like rot; sin poured from it—a tree-splintering roar boomed from ‘tween those fangs. It chills my blood even in the telling.
It chilled Knalc’s blood too. As he stared at those dagger teeth, at that death-pit, he felt the berzerk draining from him. Fear started to seep in.
I don’t know how the girl did it.
Maybe it’s ‘cause the monster’s focus was bent to Knalc.
Maybe it’s ‘cause Valforians have some unsung strength ‘gainst silver tips.
Maybe she was just too stupid to be scared.
Dhorena came charging at the silver tip with Red’s sword.
Thank the gods for tricksy Valforian steel. You use wild metals to beat at a silver tip and it takes three mansome thrusts to cut the pelt. But that Valforian blade slipped from one side of its neck out the other; easy as a snake through mud.
Death was already starting to seize the monster, but silver tips don’t roll over easy even for their maker. The beast thrashed, one of its paws shattering the girl’s leg-bone. She fell screaming and clutching.
Knalc took the moment and ran at the beast. Blade still buried in its side, he lunged toward his weapon, using all the might of his run to push the blade further down, widening the wound and letting blood flow from the beast like a red river.
Blood of beast and man mingled, but only beast was felled.
There came a final soul-wheeze from the silver tip as its orange eyes went white and Death left a cold handprint on that monster.
And then there was the living and the dead and, a mite away, Red somewhere between them.
The girl was still screaming over her broken leg.
Knalc was kneeling over the silver tip, breathing like a man near-drowned. He wanted to drive his blade into it many more times—to cut it up—to blame it for all the dead Khar that day. But the silver tip hadn’t killed them. It was sun-clear the Wastefolk were to blame. And to stab the monster without aim would be a waste of good meat.
There was laughter. Dhorena’s shrieks of pain had turned to laughter. Screaming laughter.
Her brother looked scared.
Knalc growled. “What you find humor in?”
“They’re dead!” She proclaimed. “Your kin are dead!” She laughed. The screams of the slain rose up from the earth, but her voice stayed clear above them. “Now you know! Murderer! You kill and you kill and you kill! You dealt death. Suffering! Now all your blood wages have bought you is sanguine remedy! Ha! Ha! HA!”
Tears and blood washed her face and mixed down her cheeks onto her tongue as she shrieked. Salt and copper. A sampling of vengeance, a flavor she could take to.
The world of the living—Valforians, Wilderfolk, and Waste—is a world of salt and blood and death and earth anointed in ugly memories.
The girl’s leg was broken. Not a beat after she’d shouted Knalc’s sins heaven-high, she fell into an aching snooze.
Knalc made a camp he could lumber-lug her back to. Then he’d lugged Red. Then a heft-hunk of silver tip meat. All while the mute boy followed at his side.
Knalc didn’t think as he took to toiling. He just did what he needed to live. He always did. When all was done—camp made and fire lit—he found himself shit-tuckered. Night had crept upon them; the boy was asleep, the girl still dreamed of death.
For a pitter, Knalc thought he’d stick them all. Bleed the Valforians in their sleep as he suspected his kin had been bled and burned in their sleep by Wastefolk. And why not? The three had been nothing but mischief and malice since their meeting.
But as I said, that was a pitter-thought. Knalc could swallow much, but he wasn’t hungry for more blood.
“I’m impressed …” the faint voice shook Knalc from thought. If he’d been a mite more wake-weary he’d have already snatched his sword.
There wasn’t no need though. It was just Red, fighting to stay awake—corpse-pale but breathing.
Knalc eyed him, waiting for more words. “Impressed?”
“Maybe it was just a fever vision, but I thought I saw you and Dhorena kill a silver tip.” He nodded to Knalc’s fresh furnished scars. “Seems, at least, that something failed to kill you.”
“You seem slow to die.”
“To my people, I’m already good as dead,” he said. “Even more so now. Their mother is dead, I’ve failed my duty. Even if we get back alive, they’ll kill me outright.”
“I think the same would come to me.” He knew it. He let loose a wormwood laugh as he thought on where they were. “Me, clanless. You, good as dead. The boy without a soul. A girl like to get herself killed. All alone in the Wilderlands.”
Red’s smile was missing teeth. “I’ll admit there are more glamorous ways to die.”
“No. There ain’t.”
“What’s your plan? You could have left us for dead. You could probably find another clan.”
Knalc pitched a stick near him into the fire-heart. “Seen enough death and blood today. I didn’t want more.”
Red nodded solemnly. His eyes flickered like broken moth wings fighting to stay afloat. “So then, come tomorrow, what becomes of us?”
The Wilderlands waited for his answer.
Knalc looked at Dhorena sleeping fitful-like and got his noggin running. Death had hard hounded this girl. She might’ve died in the caravan burning. She might’ve died when she Wilder-wandered. She might have died at the Wastefolks’ hands or the claw of a silver tip. But she was lying yonder, broken yet breathing.
Knalc wasn’t no god-sworn man, but he didn’t care to meddle with whatever kept Dhorena out of Death’s tangled reach. He didn’t want to see what consequences might bubble out of him seeing to her death.
Besides, youth death was a thing he’d learned he couldn’t stomach even when he had to.
And she wasn’t useless. They had been baptized as silver tip slayers together. Not as mighty a feat as doing it single-bladedly, but song-worth enough you’re hearing about it now.
Yes, she was broken legged, but he was broken bodied—Red and the boy weren’t much more than dead-heft for them to shoulder. Knalc had been in the Wilderlands alone before with folks worse than dead-heft, but that’s a small story worth telling later.
“What’s this city you were headed toward?”
“Illmiv,” Red said.
“Know how to get there?”
“Of course.”
“Know how to get there without the Road?”
Red hummed a moment. “Off the Road we’ll die.”
“Like as not,” Knalc said. “Like as not Valforians find you on the Road with me, kill us all without a thought.”
Red closed his eyes. He seemed to have slipped back toward death.
“Hey,” Knalc spat.
Red didn’t open his eyes. “I’m thinking.” He drew a long breath. “You’re right. Road and Wilderlands are just as bad, except they’ll probably be looking for our caravan—looking for people to blame. To kill. They see a Wildman, me, and a boy without a voice, they’ll probably kill us all. At least the Wilderlands won’t be trying to kill us.”
“Wilderlands are always trying to kill.”
Red opened his eyes; doing so seemed almost to hurt him. “Maybe so. But the Road is long and narrow and only goes two ways. The Wilderlands are huge, if we get deep in, there are paths that aren’t just forward and back, left and right, up and down.”
“I know,” Knalc growled. “But if we wander Wilder-ward, you need to know: everything will be trying to kill you.”
“I understand.”
“So?”
“What?”
Knalc leaned back. “You never answered. Do you know how to get back without the Road?”
Red closed his eyes again. For near a moon shift he stayed mouth shut, eyes closed.
His voice cracked when he spoke. “Maybe.” He nodded. “Probably. Back when I had a name and wore a different color, I was part of a hunting party that—”
“Fuck,” Knalc groaned, word-sick. “Can you lead us there or not?”
“… it’s south by southwest. I should be able to. Yes.”
“Good.”
That seemed to satisfy them both and each left the other to his thoughts.
But one thing was still wriggling in Knalc’s mind. The whole reason they were out here. He kept circling to the fact that the one reason he wasn’t in a nasty scrap that well as not would have been his end was that he’d chased after the Valforians. Not because he was noble or had some hero-swagger, but because of guilt wriggling.
“That woman I killed. Who was she?” Knalc asked, a question so soft he hoped Red wouldn’t hear or be roused.
But Red heard and answered. “Gloria. Once married to the Mayn of Illmiv—and briefly Mayness herself—her family’s had some wall-blasted luck of late. Her husband died and her son was born with no voice. She was the last of her family blood, the last of any old blood in the five cities, and all she has is a daughter to carry on the name. But that’s to say nothing of what she was like—discontent, fair, angry, with a soul crafted by Aprheus himself. I loved that woman.
“And make no mistake,”—he opened his eyes and by some magic they were Dhorena’s eyes in that moment. Pit-cold, unabating anger swelled and burned there, wanting to burst forth and strangle the Wildman. “I understand why you did what you did. You didn’t know better. But if I were less sound of mind, if the girl and boy didn’t need you—I’d eat your heart myself.”
No more words drifted from that camp.
He woke her up by snapping her bones back into place.
Her screaming would have sent a flutter-scatter of birds from the Wilderlands if he hadn’t also cloth-clogged her mouth. For a mite, she kept trying to scream, trying to pull the cloth from her maw, but dropped back into a pain-shock sleep again. While she slept, Knalc made a splint of deadwood and vines and wound it round her broken leg. Then he minded the boy, fed him so he’d have strength to walk, and offered water so he wouldn’t cry himself dry.
Then he set to cutting the silver tip into jerky and, when the boy took interest, he showed the child how to cut the meat—not too thick or too shallow—and how to treat it so it turned to jerky and not worm-rot. Eventually, he set him to it on his own. The child was slow, but it let Knalc go about the business of making bags and clothes fit for Wilderlands from the fur. Knalc had to chase off a few laughing-cats and stray coywolves who’d sniffed out blood and meat, but the Wilderlands didn’t summon anything more horridsome.
Red and Dhorena slept most of the day. Red woke twice to get something in his belly. Dhorena woke many times, mostly to curse and spit, but she nibbled some and took her share of hearty sips.
Knalc worked through the night on cumber-craft clothes and bags, the boy tried to match him, but Knalc found the child drowsing not long after night fell.
By morning he’d managed to hamper together clothing for Dhorena and the boy and a bit of shoulder-wear for Red as well as some ill-made bags to carry what meat they’d managed to jerky-dry. There was still a mountain of silver tip meat left and Knalc was sad to see it go to rot, but knew he couldn’t hope to jerky-dry it all—even if he could, they wouldn’t be able to lug it all with them.
