Mortal Consequences (28 page)

Sunbright went quiet as Hilel, the leader of this horse-trading clan, spoke of meeting “tall men with horsetails like yours.” Stranded on the grasslands, the Rengarth Barbarians had dug sod houses into low hills. They foraged game from the grasslands, ventured into the forests for food and firewood, but many were waylaid by orcs, and the surviving barbarians were a morose lot, Hilel claimed, starving and haunted-eyed. He’d feared a massacre and the theft of their horses, but the barbarians let them pass without even asking the news. Some mothers and fathers had begged food for their children, who shivered with hunger.

Late in the night, Hilel asked for directions northwest. The brooding Sunbright didn’t answer, so Knucklebones explained. “You can’t go on. We’ve explored with the dwarves. This canyon rises too steeply for horses to mount, and cave bears are big as your horses. They’d eat you and your animals like blueberries.

“Nor can you pass south of the mountains, for the elves kill interlopers. Were it spring, I’d recommend you swing around Vandal Station and follow the Bay of Ascore to the Waterbourne River. But in winter, that’ll be frozen. So there really is no way northwest except through the Cold Forest.

“Perhaps they can advise you better at Bandor Village.”

The negative news disheartened the hostlers, who quietly posted guards. Rolling in blankets, Sunbright, Knucklebones, and the dwarves curled by the fire.

But Sunbright didn’t sleep.

In the morning, the hostlers buried their dead. Diota, Hilel’s wounded wife, had not awakened, so they rigged a travois to ferry her. Thoughts of travois and traveling deepened Sunbright’s gloom. With final thanks, the refugees tramped down the canyon. The dwarves, toting hides of horse meat, mounted stone slopes for their base camp. The headquarters was a high, stair-stepping cave that overlooked the High Forest: a place where, by standing on a jutting spire and leaning far out, Sunbright could just see the yellow grasslands where his people huddled in starvation and misery.

While winter closed in, the dwarves had spent weeks exploring the Barren Mountains, which is how they’d stumbled on the orc raid. They crawled into every cave and cleft as if looking to buy the mountains, and indeed, Drigor finally admitted, that’s what he intended. The distant Iron Mountains were played out, food and iron ore exhausted, and the encroaching yak-men were too numerous to withstand. So the old dwarf’s mission had been two-fold: to warn Sunbright of the flint monster (this, the barbarian still didn’t understand), and to seek a new homeland for the Sons of Baltar. With nothing better to do, and safety in numbers, Sunbright and Knucklebones helped, figuring to winter with the dwarves before moving on in spring. They didn’t discuss where to go then, for the subject pained Sunbright too deeply. As did the word “homeland.”

But today’s return offered a surprise. For as they passed the base camp’s guard, she whispered, “Them elves are back.”

“We ask again that you speak to your people about truce.”

The same three elves on the same mission. They stood, not sat, in the lowermost cave.

From a broad ledge outside, a crack in the mountain only waist-high gave entrance to a squat chamber hardly head-high. The floor then slanted upward where dwarves had built ladders of tree branches to access the various splintered caves within the mountain. The damp cleft reeked of brown bears, the former inhabitants, and eye-watering smoke, the method that had evicted them. Outside, winter light glittered on frost.

“I cannot approach my people,” Sunbright explained patiently. With him were Drigor, Knucklebones, and Monkberry. “I am no longer a member of their tribe.”

“They are less a nuisance now,” said the elven woman, “but we must still guard, and shoot those who trespass. We would rather you humans stay out, so we might better repel the orcs who stream over the mountains in hordes.”

Sunbright was aware of the orc problem. Lately, orcs were thick as ants in spring.

“I’m sorry my people forage for food and wood in your forest.” Sunbright said, tired and ironic. “Yet there’s nothing—eh?”

A tug on his belt. Monkberry’s wrinkled face was thoughtful. “Son,” she said. “I must talk to you.”

“Now? Can’t it wait?”

Monkberry caught Sunbright’s ear and towed him toward the cave entrance. Bent almost double, the barbarian hobbled after.

Outside, in glittering cold and bitter wind, Sunbright rubbed his ear while Monkberry clasped arthritic hands and glared up at her son.

“I’ve thought about our troubles, Sunbright. A lot. You’ve been away and busy while I’ve tended the fire, and watching flames always gives one ideas. I have one for you. You must convey this truce offer to our tribe.”

“Not I,” he said, annoyed. “I couldn’t walk within arrow range of the Rengarth.”

Monkberry ignored his objections. “Our tribe needs help,” she insisted. “They’ll die on the prairie in winter. Already the children hunger, you tell me. They need help, and only you can give it. So you shall.”

“What help?” Warriors were not to be scolded by their mothers, yet he fidgeted like a boy caught stealing apples.

“I don’t know. I’m only an old woman who’s outlived her usefulness. But you’re shaman, because you’re blessed—cursed, too—with imagination. You can’t lounge around a drafty cave and mope.”

“Mother,” the man drawled, “if I go near them, I’ll be killed!”

“So be it,” she said. “Go anyway.”

“Hunh?” Sunbright started as if his mother had pulled a knife.

Monkberry took her son’s calloused hands in her twisted ones. “Son, we mustn’t question the will of the gods. Our job is to endure. Suffer sometimes, but endure. You’ve been selected as shaman by blood and birth, by the gods and the tribe. And by your father and myself. Your destiny was laid before you were born.” Her voice grew softer and she said, “I have only one son. If I lose you, I have nothing. Then would I walk into the first snowstorm and lie down to pass into the next world. But I’ll sacrifice you, and myself if need be, to save the Rengarth. For our people must endure. Do you understand?”

Tears in her eyes spoke louder than words. Sunbright Steelshanks of the Raven Clan hugged his mother, and said thickly, “Yes, mother, I understand. Thank you for reminding me.”

The mother pushed her son away, wiped her wrinkled face, and said, “Now. What shall you propose? Those elves inside might help us. And the dwarves. And what you think up. You’re clever when you don’t mope. What shall we try?”

Sunbright sighed, scratched his head, fiddled with the thongs of his horsetail. “Well…” he said. “I had the germ of an idea, but it’s probably stupid and won’t work. Drigor’s blather about a homeland planted a seed in my brain. And those hostlers we met, with the horses, made me wonder….

“But come inside, Mother. It’s chilly.”

He steered the old woman into the cave. “You know, to claim you’ve outlived your usefulness is foolish talk,” he told her. “Almost as foolish as mine …”

Icy wind howled on the prairie. It bit through Sunbright’s bearskin vest, stung his face so hard that ice particles drew blood, numbed his huge hands, and made his eyes water so he couldn’t see. Dead grass crunched underfoot, frozen solid. Behind him trudged Knucklebones, huddled in her lion skin. She’d insisted on coming, but shivered continuously.

In the long winter night, Sunbright worried they’d miss the barbarian camp, but then he whiffed smoke. Rounding a ridge no higher than his shoulder, he spotted crude sod houses. Only half a dozen, for the tribe had scattered over miles to hug behind ridges, pitiful shelter from man-killing wind.

Sunbright staggered to the biggest sod hut, perhaps twenty feet across and knee-high, put his mouth to the smoke hole, and shouted, “Meet me outside!”

His small party shivered while sods were unpacked from a hole in the hut’s side. Finally, hunched and dirty as moles, a few barbarians crept out with bronze swords in blue fists. They were so filthy, with hair grown in and thick beards on men, it took Sunbright a moment to recognize Forestvictory, no longer fat, and Strongsea, who resembled his long-dead father, Farmyouth.

At sight of the shaman, Strongsea hefted his sword. Sunbright stepped aside to reveal his companions. Three elves in black capes and armor, pale as vampires, not shivering. Two dwarves bundled in bearskin and horsehide.

The shaman warned, “Don’t!”

“What do you want?” asked Forestvictory. The former trail chief’s eyes were pouchy.

“You’re invited to council!” Sunbright had to shout above the wind. “With the elves and dwarves and me. Don’t protest, just shut up and listen. We can hammer out our differences, and get you off this benighted plain, if you’ll listen. Tell the others, the whole tribe, to come to the vale where we camped. You’ll be unharmed if you keep swords in sheathes, and there’ll be food. The elves and dwarves will feed you while we council. Bring the children, if only for that. Tell the rest. Tomorrow!”

“It could be a trap!” Strongsea wheezed.

Forestvictory stared as if her brain were frozen. “What if we refuse?” she asked.

“Then keep your pride and die! It’s nothing to me!” Sunbright lied. “I’m no longer Rengarth. Tell the others. Tomorrow.”

Without waiting for an answer, he let the wind push him and his guards back toward the forest and the mountains.

“They killed Darkname! And Lightrobin! Shall we take blood money, and stain our name?”

“How do we know they won’t kill us in our sleep? Lure us with kind words, and a knife behind their backs!”

“Aye, or poison the food?”

“I’d take orcs over these soulless monsters! An enemy you know is better than an unknown!”

“Elves eat babies! And suck the goodness out of food so there’s nothing left to sustain a body!”

“I say we turn back for Scourge! We were happy there!”

Wrangling rang round the amphitheater. The barbarians had come, of course, lured by food. Sunbright and his protective elves and dwarves met them on the ill-fated camp between the sheltering highlands, then led the straggling band into the dark forest for nearly three miles. Here the barbarians found a natural amphitheater sunk into the ground below trees and wind. Ancient stones covered with moss ringed the circle, and at the bottom, a blazing bonfire consumed entire trees. Shivering, starved, dirty barbarians crept into the bowl so close to the fire their eyebrows singed. Set on stones were elven winter rations and fresh game: oat cakes with salt and maple syrup, dried herring, hunks of deer and bear and bison, even barrels of ale and a trough of spring water. The hungry barbarians fell on the meat barehanded and ate it raw.

During this orgy of warmth and food, Sunbright sat with his personal bodyguard: Knucklebones and Monkberry, three elven archers named Gladejoy, Deerspirit, and Lionmoon, and the two dwarves, Cappi and Pullor. They occupied a stone midway between the barbarians, the chief elven negotiators, and Drigor’s band in shaggy winter hides.

The elven contingent was a vision from a dream. Thirty of them were led by a tall elven woman with cascading white hair. They were mostly dressed alike, in soft green shirts and fine boots and armor, with some differences in rank. The leader, Pleasantwalk, wore no boiled breastplate, instead a pair of black epaulets on a harness, gem-studded black gloves, and a black helmet adorned with black leaves. She sat on a throne of blond wood ornately carved with birds and animals, worn smooth by ages of monarchs. The throne had been toted through the forest on the shoulders of courtiers, who were armed with curved black bows and sheaves of slim, black arrows. Sunbright had not spoken to this elven queen (if such she was), but only to Tamechild, her chancellor, who conveyed the shaman’s messages to the queen only twelve feet away.

For the first time in a long time, Sunbright wore no sword. Harvester’s baldric and scabbard hung from a peg on a tree above the amphitheater. The barbarians had also left all weapons at the upper rim, while protesting they were being rounded up for slaughter. But the elves’ calm poise, and the lure of heat and meat had finally spilled them over the edge like lemmings.

Now, with hunger and thirst and cold sated, the Rengarth Barbarians counseled—for Sunbright had added prayers and offerings to the elves’ bonfire. As barbarian bodies warmed, so did tempers and grudges. Some humans hurled accusations and threats, hinted darkly of treachery and collusion between Sunbright and the Shadow Walkers. But most barbarians recognized that the elves were their hosts, had fed and warmed them, and so held their tongues. Sunbright was proud of them, but his heart was stricken as he counted their numbers. Just under three hundred arrived, while they’d enter the ancestral grasslands with over four hundred thirty. Still, Tamechild murmured, it showed the barbarians’ toughness to survive this long on winter prairie.

Finally, after the stupid and stubborn aired their empty heads, Sunbright dusted his seat and walked to a small dais that each ring of the theater sported. He raised both hands and waited for silence, which meant from the barbarians, for the elves were quiet as graveyard ghouls.

“Rengarth!” Sunbright called. “You know who I am. Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry of the Raven Clan.”—Someone booed, yelled, “Not any more!” but was slapped quiet—”Know that I did not invite you! ‘Twas our gracious hosts, the Moon Elves of the Far Forest, cousins to the High Elves of Cormanthyr in the west. They wished to council, not I. I am merely the mouthpiece between you.”

The barbarians stirred, watched the silent elves with new interest, and listened.

“I don’t need to tell you,” Sunbright went on, “how harsh the world has grown. All lands suffer, their magic drained by forces unknown. Thin crops and scarcer game drive many peoples to move, including ourselves. In addition, the One King again leads armies to ravage both cities and hinterlands. So it proves here, for orcs and other vermin flow over the Barren Mountains like rats fleeing a fire. The elves doubled and tripled their efforts to keep the orcs out, and then we, the Rengarth, arrived. Since we invaded their forest, they worked to keep us out too.”

Over shouts, he continued, “Now, I could talk all night, and we shall, but I’ll lay out a simple plan to consider. Simply this. That Moon Elves, the Sons of Baltar, and the Rengarth Barbarians forget grudges, and declare peace! That the dwarves fortify the Barren Mountains. That the Moon Elves guard the Far Forest. And the Rengarth guard the prairie—”