The Great Rift (3 page)

"It's a long walk home."

Dante stood stunned, watching the norren slog into the trees. At times he believed it was all a game the norren played, these endless spirals of approval-winning and worth-proving, and that when Mourn returned home to tell this story, he'd be met with bearish laughter and grinning shakes of the head: Gullible outlanders! Would probably give their own balls a whack if you told them a man's testicular fortitude was considered an equal sign of the fortitude of ther loyalty.

He shook his head. This business with Mourn and the clan was just the latest fence they'd have to hop. Under Cally's direction, he and Blays had burned two years arranging and bodyguarding shipments to and from the Norren Territories to the south—silver, swords, spears, great wains of grain. He met with village leaders, brokered peace and pacts with the human settlements on the fringes, delivered memorized messages too sensitive to be trusted to a page. Days and weeks and months spent preparing the Territories for something they would never have dreamed possible: independence from the empire of Gask.

Throughout his travels, he began to hear rumors of the Clan of the Nine Pines, who, along with the Dreaming Bear and Three-Part Falls, were widely considered one of the fiercest clans in all norrendom. But—again, according to rumor—they had something else on top of that: the Quivering Bow. When Dante asked what
that
was, the norren had smirked knowingly. Why, it was just a legendary weapon whose arrows sent enemy walls shivering down like the banks of a flash-flooding river.

From that point on, Dante learned all he could about the Nine Pines. Which wasn't much. Like most of the other clans, they were nomads. They traveled on foot, were rarely seen, and almost never spent time among the civilized city-dwelling norren. In the past, the Nine Pines' paintings sold for sums that could have established estates. In present times, they were said to forge swords that never lost their edge.

That in itself was interesting. But what had really snared the bunny was the bow. A bow that maybe—probably—didn't exist. When he first voiced his interest to Blays, Blays had dismissed the whole thing with a broad swipe of logic: If the bow were real, why wasn't the Clan of the Nine Pines picking their teeth with the king's bones right now? To Dante, that didn't prove anything. You couldn't free a people or conquer an empire with a single weapon, no matter how powerful that weapon may be. You needed soldiers. Lots and lots of soldiers. Most clans only had forty or fifty of those. And the fact the clans weren't exactly fond of banding together was perhaps the main reason so many of their people were enslaved across Gask.

Still, in the months since learning about the bow, his hope had cooled. Until he met Mourn, the first member of the Nine Pines he'd seen with his own eyes. Because what if the bow were real?

"It's all bullshit anyway." Blays' virtual mindreading had grown increasingly common—and somewhat unsettling—the more time the two spent with each other. "If it comes to war, our best weapon's going to be stabbing. Lots of stabbing."

"That's your answer to everything."

"That's because it's such a good one. Now can we get out of here already?"

Dante stirred fallen needles with the toe of his boot. "I'm sick of these games. If they'd drop all the ritual and let us do what we're here for, we'd already be hoisting their flags over the ramparts of Setteven."

Blays gave him the sort of frown reserved for the unanticipated expulsion of something that was just in your body. "Then cut through the games, dummy. Follow Mourn back to them."

"The clan would not care for that at all." He scanned the forest floor for anything white. "Hope you've got your chasing shoes on. Now help me find something dead."

"I'm beginning to hate those words."

"If it makes you feel better, it can be alive."

"Until you get your hands on it."

"If the rabbit's family comes seeking satisfaction, I promise to stand as your second." Dante stooped and shuffled through the damp mulch. Finding a spare body, he had long ago learned, was much trickier than common sense tells you. In a world of living things, you would imagine the ground would groan with the fallen dead, that beneath the forest's skin of leaves and needles would lurk a second layer of bones and fur. But animals occupied a small corner of any given space. They were so rare, in fact, that when they dropped dead, their remains tended to get snapped up by any other creatures who shared the area. A nice enough truth when the goal is walking through the woods without plunging ankle-deep into a former muskrat. Not so nice when the goal is to put that muskrat to one last use.

Blays crunched through leaves uphill. Dante smelled fresh mold and wet dirt. Mourn was getting further away by the moment. Dante straightened, relaxing his gaze until his vision blurred. It was perhaps that very rarity of remains that made them stand out so sharply if only you knew how to look. Possibly, it was that corpses still held on to some trace of the nether, the grist of Arawn's flawed mill, that quickens all mortal life. Whatever the reason, within moments a cold, silver light glimmered at the base of a nearby pine, flickering like moonlight on a pool. Dante knelt to brush away the leaves. A faded whiff of decay rose from a scatter of small bones. Hair and sinew clung to ribs and joints. Dante smiled.

Black wisps gathered in his fingers. Needing no more than a dab of blood, he picked a shallow scab on the back of his hand, waited for the small red bubble to rise, then touched his blood to the bones. Like rain on a window, shadowy nether slid from his hands to the body. Claws twitched. As if drawn by a string, a loose femur drew to the hip. The creature stood, swaying. It might have been a rat, once. A squirrel. Now, it was a silent automaton, and if Dante closed his eyes, he could see through its perspective instead. He nodded in the direction Mourn had gone minutes earlier. The creature turned and dashed away in a spray of leaves.

Dante called Blays from down the hill. "We'll stay a mile behind him. He'll never know we're here."

"Next time, I demand a plan with less walking. Like sitting around being fed roast pork."

"I'm not sure how that forwards the cause of norren independence."

Blays shrugged. "They can figure that out for themselves."

The creature raced along the forest floor, skidding through leaves, leaping over roots and dips, unhampered by the need to breathe or rest or slow for treacherous footing. Within minutes, it—and by extension Dante—could hear the norren threading through the brush with surprising grace. He and Blays began their pursuit.

Mist drifted between the hard-barked pines, thinning the further they got from the river. After a couple miles of woods, the forest dissipated in favor of grassy hills, the draws and folds furred by spicy-smelling pines. The light of a half-moon drenched the trailless earth. Dante's breath rolled from his mouth in thin clouds. His nose and ears numbed while sweat dampened his underclothes, which were already a good week in need of a wash.

Mourn didn't take his first break until dawn took its first pink glance at the east. Blays sat, blear-eyed, scowling at the block of bread Dante had taken along in case they didn't wind up returning straight to town after the meet.

"This stuff's hard as a brick," he said, spraying crumbs. "Tastes like one, too."

"Yet you're eating it. Remind me not to invite you to my house."

"What's that hairy jerk doing now?"

Dante closed his eyes. More than a mile away, the creature watched from beneath a bush while Mourn pried the bark from a fallen log and ate the pale grubs beneath. "Enjoying a pan of bacon. I think I can smell it—crisp meat, smoking fat."

"Gods damn it."

Mourn rose, then crouched beside a body of water that was more puddle than pond. "The wine looks good, too."

"At least tell me he looks sleepy." Blays stretched out his leg, massaging his calf with his thumbs. "I've had a few hours to think here. Which, for one thing, is a few hours we're not spending getting swords into the hands of villagers. For another, what's the point of chasing after the world's greatest bow when the whole idea is to
avoid
war?"

"Every day we're down here is a gamble. If the wrong person gets wind that we're arming the norren and brings that to the palace in Setteven, how long before the entire Gaskan Empire is marching on the Norren Territories? Three seconds?" Dante crunched into a bit of bread, chewing thickly. "Now what if we have a bow that can drop their towers as fast as you drop your trousers? Won't that give them second thoughts?"

"And you really think this thing exists?"

"A bow that can win a war by itself? What are you, an idiot?"

Blays threw up his hands. "If this is a joke, then so is the fist I'm about to put through your teeth."

Dante pulled his mind from the creature's, where Mourn was chopping long, straight branches and leaning them against the low crotch of a tree. "I just think it's worth sacrificing a couple days to confirm it doesn't exist. At least we'll have finally seen the Clan of the Nine Pines for ourselves."

"I heard they once killed an entire Setteven troop over the suggestion they start paying taxes."

"Donn told me they give their children knives as soon as they can stand. Accidentally cutting themselves is part of the process of learning to use one."

"Well, we've got to get those guys on board. King Moddegan's army doesn't stand a chance against the knife-babies." Blays blew into his hands. "I'll give it two more days. Past that, and I will begin shrieking until you admit your mistake."

Two days later—two long, cold, relentless days of aching feet, stiff fingers, and dwindling bread that didn't taste good even when his belly was empty—and Dante was ready to turn back himself. Mourn's course kept his resolve from dissolving completely: the norren was headed straight into nowhere. An eastern course into grassy hills and patchy woods too removed from the roads to see any signs of people besides the occasional hermit or roving tribe. Desolate and windy. A person could spend weeks combing these lands without finding a trace of the people he was after.

That afternoon, Mourn and his undead pursuit entered a wall of trees whose small green buds were just beginning to displace the stubborn, brittle leaves still hanging from the branches. Deep shadows pooled the ground. Mourn walked noiselessly, hardly stirring the crackly blanket of leaves. After spending a good portion of the last few years learning to do the same, Dante envied the large man's effortless skill.

Yet with the sun a hand's-breadth from the hills, its light fading from the soil like a summer rain, Mourn suddenly began scuffling his feet, tramping through great beds of leaves as if shouting his name to the world. Ahead, a quiet blue lake winked between the trees. Above its shallow, grainy banks, Mourn was greeted by a trio of tall, stone-faced norren.

"Found them," Dante murmured.

"How many?"

"Um." He stopped, ordering the distant skeleton to take a quick jaunt. Men and women sat around fires, hauled wood, reeled in nets from the shore. "Fifty. Maybe more."

"I have a thought," Blays said. "If these people are as brutal as they all say, is it wise for two strangers to burst in on their secret forest lair?"

"Good question," rumbled a voice to the left.

Adrenaline bloomed from Dante's solar plexus. He dropped into a low stance, drawing his sword with his right and the nether with his left. Blays whipped out his blades with a leathery hiss. Twenty feet away, a man stepped from the trees, young enough that his beard only climbed halfway up his cheeks, but still a foot too tall to be mistaken for a human. A cleaver-like blade hung from his hand, the weapon as oversized as his bearish body.

"We're not enemies," Dante said.

"The clan will be here to judge that in a minute."

Dante flicked his eyes closed. At the camp, men and women grabbed up swords and bows and raced into the woods, backtracking Mourn's route. He ordered the creature to follow them back. He reopened his eyes on the lone norren. "How did you alert them?"

"Josun Joh watches out for us all."

"Tell them to bring steak," Blays said. "I'm starving."

He put away his swords, a motion so smooth it was like watching a feat of actual magic. Dante, unable to draw his blade without glancing at the handle first, left his out. He didn't say another word until Mourn arrived in the dusk with a dozen other norren, each dressed in the same supple deer-leather and silver ear piercings. Surprise, confusion, and anger battled for control of Mourn's heavy eyebrows.

"Hi, Mourn," Dante said. "We followed you."

"I would have seen you from a mile away."

"That's why we stayed two miles behind."

The other warriors regarded Dante with blank eyes, thick swords held before them. Dante had guided the dead watcher into some shrubs behind him. He blinked, glimpsing a silent woman stalking straight for him, a knife gleaming in her hand. Without turning, Dante knocked her to the ground with a club of nether, forceful enough to rattle her plate without cracking it.

"I am Dante Galand, council member of the Sealed Citadel of Narashtovik. We're here for the cause of norren independence."

"I'm a guy in the forest," said a middle-aged norren whose left cheek was nearly beardless for all the scars. "And you are a long way from Narashtovik."

"Consider it a sign of our sincerity," Blays said.

"'Sincerity'? You have strange words for 'trespassing,' strangers."

Slowly as a stalking cat, Dante drew his lowered blade across the back of his left hand. The cold metal bit into his skin, replaced by the warmth of a fresh wound and the hot blood dripping from the edge of his palm. Nether flocked to the fluid in swerving twists of darkness.

"You know why we're here," he said. "With that bow, we could guarantee Setteven wouldn't dare set foot in the territories."

"There is a problem," the scarred man said.

"A problem the severity of which depends greatly on your perspective," said a female norren, no shorter than the males yet significantly less hirsute. Her eyes were as orange as a harvest moon. "From your perspective, it is not so auspicious at all."