The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (36 page)

Gas-a-ho nodded sharply. His face became slack, like a person walking in sleep.

Nita Qwan took his bow from its deer hide case, took his best string from inside his shirt. It had been drying there for two days, and it was warm.

Carefully, trying not to display his near-panic and the trembling of his hands, Nita Qwan strung his bow. He rubbed it a little before he bent it, and he listened as he pressed it down.

It didn’t crack. Either the bow was not so very cold, or he had prepared it well.

The string bit into the grooves in the horn tips, and he was armed.

Only then did he give voice to his fears. “What is it?” he said, watching the fog around him.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. “It is only a feeling,” he said.

Gas-a-ho surfaced from inside his mind. “Flying!” he barked.

His right hand shot up, and a flash of lightning left his hand. It was an angry orange white and it left a dazzle on Nita Qwan’s eyes.

There was a detonation that made them all flinch, following Gas-a-ho’s lightning bolt by about one beat of a scared man’s heart.

Just over Nita Qwan’s head, something
screeched.

The old man thrust with his spear—the spear moved faster than sight could fully perceive, and then everything happened at once—Gas-a-ho was down in the snow, blood flowering around him, and there were black feathers in the air around them, and Nita Qwan found himself fitting a broad-headed arrow of irkish steel to his bow. He was conscious that he had already drawn and loosed twice.

“Move!” Ta-se-ho said.

Nita Qwan got Gas-a-ho onto his own toboggan. The younger man was bleeding from a terrible wound right across his back where a talon had sliced through his backpack straps and into the meat of his shoulders. But even as he got the man onto his toboggan and began to pull, the blood flow slowed and then stopped.

Nita Qwan tried not to look up. He got the tumpline and brow band of Gas-a-ho’s ruined pack over the younger man and tied the neatly sliced ends to the thongs that ran the length of the body of the sled.

Ta-se-ho put himself in the straps of the now heavily overloaded toboggan. “I’ll pull,” he said. “You watch the sky.”

Nita Qwan took up his bow.

The old man leaned into the straps and began to run.

Above them, something gave vent to avian rage—a long, slow scream that froze the blood.

“Trees,” Ta-se-ho panted. “We need to reach the trees.”

“How far?” Nita Qwan asked.

The old man put his head down and ran.

It is very difficult to run on snow and ice with a bow in your hand and snow shoes on your feet. Harder to do so and watch the sky above you.

The wind came again—a gust, then a sudden wall of wind, so hard that it seeemed to lift them and move them along the surface of the inland sea. It came from behind them, pushing them forward.

In a hundred heartbeats, the fog began to break for the third time that day. The sun was setting in the west—already, the day had a red tinge.

The tree line of the shore was only half a mile away.

The great bluff towered over the lake, a pinnacle of stone that rose many,
many times the height of a man. Up close, even in a state of fear, Nita Qwan could see that the whole pinnacle of stone was carved—or perhaps moulded. It was fantastically complicated, even from this distance a terrifying, massive evocation of fractal geometry.

But more immediate was the pair of black avian shapes wheeling in the air above and behind them. They were half a mile away, too.

The two men ran on.

The two predators banked and came on again.

Nita Qwan turned, saw their intention, and planted three shafts in the snow beside him.

He loosed his first shaft when the range was too long. His second shaft vanished into the air, and he had no way of judging his aim. His third shaft went into one of the great black monsters.

The fourth shaft…

At this range, he could see that the nearer creature had a great deal of trouble remaining airborne, and had Ta-se-ho’s spear deep in its side and a long burn mark.

The farther creature had a beak full of teeth—an unnatural sight that chilled the blood. It projected a wave-front of fear that caused Nita Qwan to lose the ability to breathe. But he got his fourth arrow on his bow, raised the shaft…

He loosed, the toboggan pulled by the old man seemed to explode, and Ta-se-ho leaped like a salmon.

His shaft vanished, black against black, into the mess of feathers on the farther monster’s breast.

Orange lightning played over it.

Ta-se-ho caught his spear-shaft. He was dragged—he was flying for a hundred paces.

The barbed spearhead ripped free of the great black bird even as it turned its teeth on the old man.

He fell.

Blood vomited on the snow—the bright orange bird blood fell like rain.

The great black thing fell onto the ice.

The ice cracked and broke.

Nita Qwan could spare the old man no more attention. The mate of the fallen creature turned for another pass.

Nita Qwan undid his sash, dropping his heavy wool capote in the snow. Then he took four more arrows from his bark quiver and pushed them into the snow.

“I can’t hold the wind,” Gas-a-ho said, as clearly as if they’d been having a conversation.

Nita Qwan registered that without understanding.

His adversary levelled out, wing-tips flexing up and down in the cross-breeze.

As fast as he could, Nita Qwan loosed all four arrows into the oncoming monster’s path.

The second one scored into a wing, and the giant bird seemed to lose fine control over its flight. It screamed, and the third arrow struck its breast—it paused, and the fourth arrow missed.

It passed well to the north of them, low, over the land, and kept flying.

The ice was breaking behind them.

“Save him,” Gas-a-ho said. “I will hold the ice.”

With one last glance at the sky, Nita Qwan threw his bow down atop his friend and took a hemp rope from his toboggan. He ran across the groaning ice towards the black water and the orange blood like fish roe on the snow. The setting sun threw a red pall over the whole ice field.

Ta-se-ho was alive. He wasn’t swimming or floating.

He was walking.

They were deep in the bay, but the black water was only a hand-span deep here, and the old man was slopping along, and cursing.

Again, they built the biggest fire that they could. By luck, or the will of the spirits and gods, Nita Qwan found a whole downed birch tree nearly free of snow. While the wounded Gas-a-ho and the old man curled around Tapio’s pot, Nita Qwan broke and stacked birch as fast as his frozen fingers and exhausted, post-combat muscles would allow. He stamped the snow flat, laid old rotted logs on it, and built a fire.

Ta-se-ho nodded. “That fire will tell every living thing on the inner sea we are here.”

Nita Qwan paused, his tinder box in hand.

Ta-se-ho shrugged. “I’m wet through and he’s lost a lot of blood. We can die right here, in a couple of hours, or risk the fire.” He shrugged.

But even frozen and afraid, they did not lack cunning. Nita Qwan’s hastily chosen campsite was close to the base of the spire of worked rock, in what was virtually a chamber cut into the living rock, closed on three sides. It took him four tries to get his tow to burst into flame, but he did—and he got a beeswax candle lit in the still air, and then put the flame to a scrap of birchbark.

In minutes, he had his companions stretched out under the canopy of a whole tree fire, the heat over their heads too much for a man to bear. The only way to be near it was lying flat, and the stone walls around them reflected the heat.

Nita Qwan bent over Gas-a-ho, but the younger man managed a weak smile. “I’m patching,” he said.

Ta-se-ho nodded. “Leave him, Nita Qwan. He’s deep in his art. Now that he’s warm, he’ll have more spirit.”

“Will the fire bring more foes?” Nita Qwan asked.

Ta-se-ho made a face. “We are at the base of the
Tu-ro-seh
. We will have strange dreams tonight.”

Nita Qwan shifted—his back was actually against the carved monolith. The carving was both bold and minute, and went in long whorls with no symmetry up the sides—but the closer that he focused on it, the more he saw. His eyes began to follow—

“Do not look too closely,” Ta-se-ho said.

“Who made it?” Nita Qwan asked.

“The
Odine
,” replied the hunter.

Nita Qwan shook his head. “I am new to the People, Old Hunter,” he said. “Who are the Odine?”

“Better ask, who were they?” Ta-se-ho said. He got out his pipe and began the lengthy process of filling and lighting it. There was silence punctuated by the exuberant sounds of birch burning. The smell was delicious—the very smell of warmth and comfort.

In the firelight, the shapes on the monolith seemed to move. The illusion was greater than it should have been. The surface of the stone appeared to have a million snakes crawling over it, and each snake to be covered with worms, and each worm with centipedes, and each centipede with some tiny creature—on and on.

“Do not look too much,” Ta-se-ho said again. He leaned back, fumbled for a burning stick, and found, like thousands of men before him, that a large fire is the worst place to light a pipe.

Finally he found a burning twig.

“Do you know how the
People
came here?” he asked.

Nita Qwan knew the legends of his own people. “My people—in Ifriquy’a—say that the black seas were parted and our people were led across the dry sea bed to our new home.”

Ta-se-ho nodded. “Too short to make a good story. But a good idea for a story.” He busied himself inhaling smoke.

“The earliest legends of the Sossag people are about the Odine. The Goddess Tar brought us here to defeat them. And we did. We destroyed them all—every tentacle and every worm.” He nodded. “The north is studded with their monuments and their tunnels.” He leaned back and exhaled smoke. “This is the tallest. The old women say that there is a city under our feet. Many who seek wisdom come here for the dreams of the old ones.” He nodded. “I did.”

“What did you dream about?” Nita Qwan asked.

The old man smoked quietly. “Awful things,” he said eventually. “Nothing from which to take a name, or follow a path.” He shrugged, and lay down. “But most of the Wild fears these places. Only men are too stupid, or too ill-attuned to stay near them. So perhaps the Odine are not dead, but merely sleep.” He grinned.

Nita Qwan took a deep breath. “You are mocking me,” he said.

Ta-se-ho shrugged. “Everything in this world is terror,” the old man said. “If you care to see it that way. We should have died on the ice. We’re not dead. Let that victory steady you. You worry too much.”

“We should have died,” Nita Qwan agreed. “What saved us?”

The old man tamped his pipe, and his eyes glittered across the fire. “Gas-a-ho, first and most. Even when he had his shoulders ripped open, he was casting. He brought the wind and took away the fog.”

Nita Qwan had guessed as much.

“And sheer luck. Or the will of the spirits, if you believe in such things.” The old man took a deep drag on his pipe.

“Do you believe in such things?” Nita Qwan asked.

“I think we shape our own luck,” the old man said. “With work. And practice. And care. A chance for life to a trained man is just another death to an untrained man—yes? Good shooting today.”

Nita Qwan all but blushed. The old man never praised.

“You could have died. Jumping for the spear—the salmon’s leap.” The words spilled out of Nita Qwan. “It was magnificent!”

The old man allowed a slow smile to cross his face. “It was stupid,” he said. “I should have died.” He laughed. “But instead, I flew like a bird!” His high-pitched laugh went out into the night. “I nearly shit myself when my feet left the ground.”

“Why’d you do it?” Nita Qwan asked.

“The spear. I love that spear.” The old man shook his head. “An old woman made a prophecy about it once, and look, she was right. She said one day the spear would fly away without me and I’d have to catch it. I thought she was talking about something deep and symbolic.” He shook his head. “Want some pipe?”

Nita Qwan’s dreams that night were more terrifying than anything he had actually experienced, and his only explanation later was that he had dreamt that he was being digested in the belly of a whale or a snake—his skin slowly flayed away by slime.

He was stunned, on waking, to find himself whole.

He had to pack for the other two, but there was still wood and he built up the fire in the late night darkness until it crackled again. Then he made breakfast. Gas-a-ho was alive, breathing deeply, the wound on his shoulders knitted and dry. Ta-se-ho was snoring, and from time to time he seemed to be fighting something.

Despite days of fatigue, Nita Qwan felt no temptation at all to return to sleep. So, as the light grew outside, he packed the toboggans.

Finally he woke his friends. Gas-a-ho stunned him by getting to his feet.

Ta-se-ho groaned. “Tomorrow will be worse,” he muttered. “Oh, to be young again.”

As the first orange rays of the new sun lit the landscape around them they were headed inland through what seemed like an endless alder thicket. It took them an hour to go a mile. The spire towered behind them.

“When did the People destroy the Odine?” Nita Qwan asked, as they emerged from the alder belt into an open woods of beech and spruce.

Gas-a-ho turned. “Ten thousand winters ago,” he said. The words passed, and echoed among the trees.

Nita Qwan almost stopped in shock. “That is a very large number.”

Gas-a-ho shrugged. “These are the things that the shamans know,” he said. “We defeated the Odine at the behest of the Lady Tar. And now we keep them under their stones.”

“Did you have bad dreams?” Nita Qwan asked.

The snub-nosed youngster gave him an impish smile. “No. For the shaman born, the places of the Odine are places of rest and power. That is why we are taken to them as children.”

Nita Qwan shook his head. “Why did the People kill the Odine?” he asked.