Mortal Consequences

Chapter 15

Not wasting words, the old dwarf dropped a hand like a vise on Sunbright's forearm. The shaman was towed as if chained to oxen. More dwarves swarmed, even bulled through blue spruces where Sunbright couldn't pass. The elf attacking Knucklebones was clubbed down with axe and mattock handles. The thief was hoisted bodily over two heads, and toted down the slope like a reindeer carcass in a game dance.

Dragged along, Sunbright tried to quell his amazement. Drigor looked the same: face wrinkled as a winter apple, bushy white beard with six silver rings braided into his mustache, queer leather tunic with shaggy hump, stained goat hide kilt, and rusty, pitchy boots. The dwarf was hung like a peddler with satchels, rope, blanket, axe, warhammer, backpack, pouches, and tools. Seven more dwarves, all younger than Drigor, thudded through the woods in heavy boots. Knucklebones squawked to be set down, but no one listened.

They burst free of the trees and down the slope. The dwarves neither panted nor sweated, but jogged like clockwork engines. Sunbright felt like a child in the iron grip of Drigor, son of Yasur, father of Dorlas, of the Sons of Baltar of the Iron Mountains.

The barbarian attack had been broken. Survivors limped down the slope for the prairie. Some sported black arrows, and several helped wounded companions. Sunbright demanded Drigor let go. Disregarding his own wounds, the shaman sheathed Harvester, and tended the wounded on the slopes. The dead he let lie: over a dozen in sight. Wives and husbands streamed up the slope, wailing and sobbing when they found relatives. Sunbright hoisted Peacefinger, a small red-haired woman, across one shoulder, and with Drigor's help, shouldered Darkname across the other. At Drigor's direction, dwarves carried others. Before long, all the Rengarth Barbarians, living, dead, and in between, retreated from the slope.

"What madness is this?" asked Drigor. He lugged Hammerlove across his backpack. The man's white head lolled, neck broken. "Who ordered such a foolish attack?"

"A fool," Sunbright answered. "We've a tradition of fool-hardiness going back centuries." His bitter irony was lost on the dwarf. Sunbright needed breath to carry, but needed answers more. "Are you real, Drigor, or a dream? I left you half a world away. On the other side of the empire."

"We are real," stated the literal dwarf. "We needed to find you. To warn you… to settle our debt."

Debt? the shaman wondered. Oh, yes, returning Dorlas's warhammer. Dwarves took promises seriously. Sunbright sucked wind as they swished through prairie grass, waist-deep on the dwarves.

"Warn me of what?"

"A monster hunts you. Like nothing I've ever seen. Tall, thin as a sword, with a hide like ice-worn granite. And more spells than fill a grimoire. It followed you and attacked us, crying for revenge."

Sunbright almost dropped two carcasses. "A what? A monster? After me? Arms of Targus!" he swore. "Why?"

The old weaponsmith shrugged under his grisly burden and said, "You made a powerful enemy somewhere. Mighty queer you don't know it, though. I recall enemies better than friends."

Sunbright asked a dozen questions, learned the gory tale of the tentacles of doom and the shrieking fiend, but knew even less when he'd finished. A monster clad in flint? How was that possible? And why hate him? None of it made sense.

Plodding toward camp with morning sun in his eyes, Sunbright asked, "How did you find me?"

Old, crinkly eyes squinted to guard a secret. "Dwarves know the earth," Drigor answered vaguely. "We listened for your tread."

A lie, Sunbright knew, mystic mumbo-jumbo. Many folks had seen the barbarians enter the prairie, bound west. Hundreds of marchers left a wide track. He didn't press. His mind whirled with enough questions.

The sun was fully up, bright in the huge, deep sky. But a chill stained the air, a painful reminder that winter was not far off. Having failed to win a foothold on the forest, Sunbright's tribe might be trapped on the prairie without food or shelter or fuel. Was there no place for them, now that the tundra had died?

Which reminded him. "Thank you for saving our lives," he said to the dwarf. "Our debt must be repaid in spades. Or do I owe you?"

"You owe me doubly," the dwarf calculated. "Cholena, who had been my wife, was killed by your monster, blasted to flinders before my eyes. And three other sons of the mountain. You brought the monster upon us, and now we've saved your life and hers,"-he nodded at Knucklebones, still being carried aloft-"as we once saved you from yak-men in White Owl Pass.

"My warning of the monster extinguished your debt of returning the hammer. But let's not quibble. You can, perhaps, balance the bargain."

Quibble? thought Sunbright. The old miser attached prices to everything, with Sunbright sinking in debt by the minute. Wearily he asked, "Balance how?"

Drigor stumped along, staring at the horizon, or something inside his head. "Not now," he said. "I'll tell you when 'tis time."

"Fine," the shaman said. "I owe you."

Sunbright let it go. Probably he'd be dead of starvation before spring anyway, providing his tribe didn't stone or burn him to death first…

Sunbright dreamed.

Greenwillow tripped from the night, dainty as a deer. Tall, black-haired, shining green and black like a lizard, ornate silver pommel swaying at her hip. As shadows crept up her frame, her face was revealed. Dour, eyebrows puckered, mouth pursed.

That expression Sunbright recognized. Greenwillow had often been angry at him in life, but never in dreams. He asked, "What is it?" though she'd never spoken in dreams.

"You slay my people!" Her lithe hand fell to her sword pommel.

"They slay mine!" Sunbright protested. "They insist on war! We only seek a home!"

"My people inhabited these woods when yours had tails!"

"We don't seek to usurp them!" Even in a dream, Sunbright's voice whined. "There's no reason-"

"You must not slay my people!" The phantom drew her sword with a hiss. The silver blade winked and flashed in moonlight. "Kill them and you kill me!"

The blade seemed coated with frost, and Sunbright felt its chill. Greenwillow, and her sword, never looked so real. Was it because he lay sleeping near her forest homeland? The keen steel whisked near his neck, seeking blood.

"All right, I shan't harm them!" Sunbright made more promises, more to break. "I wouldn't harm anyone if I could help it! But I can't speak-"

Surprising him, Greenwillow lunged forward, caught his shirt, and kissed him hard. Her lips were icy, but his body stirred at her touch. She was so like Knucklebones, so vital and vibrant, yet so different, as an eagle is from a kingfisher. How were they so alike, yet so different? Who understood women, or dreams?

When Greenwillow pulled back from the chilly kiss, one eye winked, then stayed oddly closed as she retreated. "I'll be seeing you," she said, then she ran into the black forest of death, or limbo, or wherever she dwelt. As she ran, she grew shorter, slighter, smaller.

Clumsy too. No longer silent as a white-tailed deer, her feet pounded the ground. Thumps made his bones thrum. Harder came the blows, until the dream shattered.

Someone kicked him awake. Mightylaugh in big boots laced to his knee. "Wake up!" the big man grunted. "We council!

"About you!"

"… his idea we come here! And he's brought nothing but death to the clans, widows and orphans who weep the night…"

"… befriended an elf, not of our tribe, nor our race. And now we find elves here, hungry to kill us, in the very spot he directed us…"

"… how many have fallen to the Shadow Folk? Yet he goes unharmed amidst the elves! How can this be, unless he works with them…!"

Speaker after speaker took the talking stick and heaped the tribe's woes at Sunbright's feet. Accusations flew, wilder and wilder: he'd led them into the jaws of orcs and elves; pretended visions of these woods; murdered Owldark in the desert to become shaman; consorted with one elf and colluded with more elves to sacrifice his own tribe; practiced magic with cold light and healing; run like a coward from battle, suffering no wounds; opposed plans for the last battle, then informed the elves ahead of time; coveted the position of war chief and so plotted to have Magichunger slain; and on and on.

Sunbright Steelshanks sat like a stone and stared at the council fire as his name was blackened. Some speakers defended him, but not many, nor was he surprised. When a tribe suffered, they needed someone to blame, usually the shaman, who should know the will of the gods and the future. And he had led them here. Monkberry sat beside her son, holding a big hand in her gnarled one. Knucklebones held the other hand, hers cool and strong. Tears silently spilled down both women's cheeks.

Long into the night the council dragged. Finally it was quiet. Mightylaugh offered the stick, saying, "Would anyone else speak? Sunbright Steelshanks, will you?"

The shaman didn't look up from the fire, only shook his head.

"Damn it, I will!" Knucklebones spat, leaped to her feet and, quick as a jackdaw, snatched the baton. "I'll speak!"

She stood defiant, clutching the stick like a fighting knife, as if to kill with it. Objections rang out: "She is not of our tribe!"

"She is an elf!"

"She is Sunbright's friend!"

But croaking Iceborn cut through the tumult.

"Whoever has slain an enemy or born a child may speak in council. There is no custom against an outsider speaking. Long ago, when Heatherhill was chief, a man from the city came-"

"Thank you!" Knucklebones interrupted, stamping her foot. The tribe crowded around the council fire on the open prairie. An early morning wind damp with rain hissed in the grass tops. The fire guttered as if ashamed to see its creator laid low. The thief shook the stick as she spat her words. "You miserable lot of ingrates! If you had the honor of garbage-eating dogs, you'd be ashamed! Sunbright saved all your worthless lives by his actions and sacrifices! He sat three days without food or water in the broiling sun to find the vision of this place! You wallowed in your own dung on a pile of rocks near the ash heaps of a town scorned throughout the empire, but Sunbright made you listen! To make you listen, he challenged the lot of you to combat, when there isn't one man or woman here worth his little finger!

"When he fought, and nearly died, you finally saw sense, and crawled off your rubbish dump to a land and sky clean and free! Sunbright recalled your traditions, promised to carry Iceborn on his own back to keep your pitiful customs alive. He fought beside you against your enemies. Look at his arms, his forehead, his knee: count his wounds! He slaved night and day, fetching water, carrying children, butchering sheep-every dirty task in camp, and never complained once, because he was glad to be home!

"And when you got here, to this verdant land that could be a paradise, he asked only to seek truce with the elves, that no blood be shed, and you might gain a foothold. But you wouldn't listen! And now, you lousy, stinking, pus-eating, maggoty gutter rats, you'd condemn him? Condemn yourselves, for being lazy cowards, hardheaded and hardhearted-"

With an oath, Mightylaugh tore the speaking stick from Knucklebones's hand, and slapped as if to break her neck. Quick as a terrier, she ducked, whipped out a knife, and carved a stripe up his arm from wrist to armpit. Bleeding, the war chief rocked back in shock.

"She draws blood in council! It is forbidden!" shouted an onlooker.

"Mightylaugh tore the stick away! That is forbidden by our most ancient laws!" countered another.

"She had no right to speak! And insult us when we suffer!"

"Sunbright's suffered a hundred times!"

"No truce! No cowardice!"

"No magic!"

Words turned to shouts, to a babble of noise. Fists flew. Men and women tussled, knocked each other down.

Worried, Monkberry yanked on Sunbright's hand and said, "Son, get up! Come quickly!"

Knucklebones hoisted Sunbright by the hand. He seemed half-dead, or frozen, slow as a crippled snake. Standing, he tottered, grabbed his forehead and squeezed. The thief bawled, "Wake up! What's wrong with you?"

"Drag him!" Monkberry yelled. Knucklebones helped, but Sunbright's feet plodded clumsily, as if made of wood. No one helped or came near them. Open prairie beckoned, a slate-black sky overhead, but a red glow lighting the east. The mother repeated, "Hurry!"

"Why? What's-Ow!"

A fist-sized stone bounced off Knucklebones's back. Another stone sailed by and thumped on grass. Risking a glance, Knucklebones saw tribesfolk flocking to a rock pile at the hillock. Men, women, and children hurled rocks. Another struck Knucklebones on the back of the thigh, and she grunted. One knocked Monkberry to her knees. Several hit Sunbright with painful thuds, but though the shaman staggered, he made no sound.

Desperate, the thief yanked Monkberry up, dragged mother and son. Stones whistled. Then one clipped Sunbright's scalp so he crashed like a falling tree, almost trapped Knucklebones under his great frame.

The elf-woman wept for frustration as stones pelted the ground like hail. Monkberry struggled to rise. Clambering, the thief tried to shield both with her small body. More stones hit Sunbright, and one banged Knucklebone's forehead. Woozy, she fought to keep conscious. To collapse was to die. Another stone struck her shoulder, lamed her arm. She cried unashamedly with fury and sorrow.

"Hold!" boomed a voice. "The next to throw dies!"

Like a passing storm, the stones stopped. Feet thudded all around. Meaty hands like bear paws grabbed Knucklebones, Sunbright, and Monkberry, and towed them toward the dawn. The shaman's toes dragged in the grass, marking a double trail from the dappled stones.

Their rescuers were Drigor and his seven dwarves. The old leader leveled a crossbow at the tribe, and loosed a sizzling bolt that shattered on rocks to drive them back. Barbarians jeered, "Coward! Betrayer!" But gradually the taunts and curses died as the dogged dwarves carried all three victims far out of range, then out of sight. Four dwarves carried Sunbright spread-eagled like a sacrifice. Monkberry was toted across two shoulders like a log.

With help, Knucklebones found her feet, though her head throbbed. Laying a small hand on a dwarf's shoulder, she murmured, "Thank you again. Again we owe you our lives."

"Chalk it against the next life. You'll never repay in this one." Drigor's dwarven humor came straight-faced. "Cappi, swing north. We'll circle the camp."

"Where are we bound?" asked Knucklebones, glad someone else took charge.

"Barren Mountains."

Knucklebones swooned at the thought of all that marching, but bit her lip and trudged, supported by a dwarf she realized was female. She hadn't seen the dwarves since they arrived. After the rescue in the forest, Sunbright had told them what little he knew of the surrounding land. Drigor had said, "We shall be back," and the lot marched off. Knucklebones hated to think of the consequences if they hadn't returned.

"What's wrong with Sunbright?" she asked. "Why so slow, as if dead drunk?"

"I have seen it before, in dwarves and humans." Drigor marched at the head, parting grass like a boat. He carried the famous warhammer, stout enough to fell an ox, in his hand. "These barbarians follow hearts as much as heads, and your friend has lost heart. His tribe has cast him out, but kept his soul. He is empty, dead inside. A tree uprooted. Do you understand?"

"I–I think so." Pain and fear and despair made Knucklebones sob, just once, then she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, "Cut off from his people, he loses part of himself."

"Most of himself" Drigor corrected. "So with dwarves."

Knucklebones murmured, "So with all of us…"

Ground down by exhaustion, fear, and worry, Knucklebones collapsed hours later. It mattered little to the dwarves. Drigor draped her across his backpack like a dead deer and marched on. Dusk was near when he called a halt.

A tilted canteen and rough hand gently washed Knucklebones's face. She spluttered awake, grabbed for her knife, but the rough hand pinned hers, and a guttural voice cooed, "Rest…" The dwarven woman stepped back to give the thief room.

Knucklebones was chagrined and disgusted that she'd fainted, then awakened so slowly. Yet moving her head sent a jolt through her whole body, made her groan aloud. A fist-sized lump throbbed above her eye patch. For a second, panic made her stomach flip. Had the stone hit her one eye, she'd be blind. Breathing slowly, she let the fear go, and forgave herself for weakness. Careful with her tender head, she looked about.

They sat high on a mountainside, higher than the tallest elms of the forest. Sinking sun on autumn leaves made a forest-fire glow. To the east the prairie burned gold, but the long shadow of night rushed across it like a storm cloud. She lay on an irregular shelf of rock. Monkberry lay nearby, head pillowed on someone's white leather pack. A fire crackled in a crevice, and meat skewered on sticks sizzled and dripped. Dwarves perched on rocks like gargoyles and stolidly munched their meal. Behind them, an overhang formed a shallow cave. Sunbright sat with his back against rock, eyes closed, unmoving.

Close to tears, the thief took in the wide-sweeping vista, the quiet camp with crackling fire, the stunning sunset. In the time she'd been asleep, the world turned from a violent, self-consumed hell to a haven of peace. Part of her wished to stop the sun, to stay like this forever.

But another part blazed with anger at the barbarians' blind, stubborn stupidity. Fear and despair had bred a cold rage. Crawling to wobbly feet, she clutched her head and croaked to Drigor, "What-Ow! — what are your plans?"

The dwarf bit a bone in half with yellow teeth, and sucked marrow before saying, "We shall explore."

Knucklebones peered at the gathering gloom. The mountain chain rose like stairs to snowy peaks in the distance. "All these mountains?" she asked.

Drigor pitched bones on the fire, nodded.

"What about us?"

A shrug. "You may come with us, if you can keep up," the dwarf said. "Or stay here."

Knucklebones stifled a groan. Here was a lovely spot, but she was no mountain goat. Teetering on her wobbly legs, she staggered to Sunbright, and creaked down beside him. "Sunbright? Are you awake?"

He nodded without opening his eyes. He was pale as a corpse, and as still. A cracked scab marred his neck where a stone had struck. He bore many bruises, but his silence most bothered the thief.

"Are you all right? Open your eyes."

He did, but stared at the twilight without seeing. Knucklebones was reminded of Wulgreth of the Dire Woods, with eyes dead as stone. Staring into those hopeless eyes, she couldn't think what to ask.

"Um, the dwarves… Do you have any hope of… where to go?"

The shaman only shook his head, like a scarecrow in the wind.

Suddenly chilled, Knucklebones shuddered, and drew her leather vest tight across her bosom. They'd been driven from camp with nothing but her elven blade and Harvester of Blood. High overhead, stars sparkled, forecasting a chilly night.

"We can't… I… Sunbright, what can we do?"

The shaman reached a dirty, blood-stained hand to rub his temple, but had no answer. When she repeated her request, he sighed, "I don't know, Knuckle'. I've nothing behind me, and nothing ahead. I'm worthless."

"You're worth something to me!" she yelled. The thief's cold anger sought an outlet, but blaming Sunbright for their troubles would make her no better than the fickle tribesfolk. Swallowing her fury, she growled, "We can't just sit in a crack in a mountainside."

Sunbright waved at half a world. "Pick a direction," he said, then closed his eyes again.

His heart was truly gone, Knucklebones saw. His tribe held it hostage down there on the prairie. Bitterly she recalled how sad and lonely and homesick he'd sought his tribe, how happy he'd been to find them, even when abused and accused and harried and carped at. And now, with that link broken, he was broken too. Perhaps, in time, he'd recover, find another goal in life, but perhaps not. What was that legendary bird, she wondered, that when captured and caged always died? Could Sunbright survive being cut off forever from his tribe, any more than a finger could survive being severed from the hand?

"Hallooooo!"

The caroling call rose from below like a lark's warble. The sound perked up the dwarves, who dropped food to grab crossbows and axes. Whispering, skidding on hobnail boots, they scuttled into corners and crevices as if melting into the rock. In seconds, the shelf was bare except for Knucklebones and Sunbright, and the sleeping Monkberry.

Creeping forward on bare feet, the thief scattered the meager fire with a stick. Darkness enfolded them. The call came again, a singing, like a babbling brook. "Hallooo! We wish to talk!"

No dwarves answered, or even poked up their noses. Unsure, Knucklebones minced to the edge of the shelf. Her cat's-eye vision made out broken rocks, scrub and gorse in cracks, and a line of black, stunted trees a long stone's throw down. No people. For lack of a better plan, she went along. "Come ahead! Empty-handed!"

Something left the tree line. Three white blobs. Faces. A few paces later, Knucklebones made out dark, slim forms, a smooth, high-stepping walk like deer, black, curved lines behind heads of black hair.

Why, she marveled, did they come?

When the trio closed to scale the last slope to the shelf, Knucklebones barked, "I said empty-handed! Two dozen crossbows can sweep this rock!"

In answer, six white palms rose. Still, the surefooted trio scaled the rock. So graceful and strong, they made Knucklebones feel crippled and clumsy. She backed from the edge and almost turned her ankle in the fire pit.

Standing on gray-white rock, framed against black sky, three elves waited patiently with hands in the air. Knucklebones imagined that they were the same elves who'd tried to kill her many times these past days. Wild black hair banded with headbands, smooth faces without war paint, boiled black armor and green shirts, and small slippers. Ornate swords swung at their hips. At their back hung quivers of black arrows and short, curved bows.

Hoping the dwarves were still present, not slipped over the next mountain, Knucklebones demanded, "What do you wish?"

"We come in peace," said the middle, an elf woman, one of two. They were all the same height, within inches. "We sue for peace."

"Peace? With whom?"

"You. The dwarves. The horse-tailed clan on the grasslands," the elf said. "We know their shaman is here."

"How do you know-Oh!" Knucklebones jumped as Sunbright stepped up. Absorbed in the terrible beauty of the elves, the music of their voices, their aura of ancient dignity, she'd failed to hear him.

His voice was flat as he said, "Sunbright Steelshanks am I, but no longer shaman of the Rengarth."

The elves looked at one another. The middle one said, "We need you to negotiate a truce with your people. Orcs swarm into our forest from north and east, more every day, vast hordes. We cannot fight barbarians and orcs too. You must tell them-"

"I can tell them nothing," Sunbright interrupted. "They will not listen."

Again the elves exchanged glances, and Knucklebones thought a sigh of exasperation escaped the spokesperson, as if dealing with thick-witted humans were a chore.

"They must listen," the elf woman said. "You must talk to them. Failure to talk will have dire consequences for all our peoples. Mortal consequences."