Death March

THE BEAR

It was a fat bird with short wings, all of it the color of the earth. An ugly bird, Saarh thought, but it might be tasty, and there looked to be a good amount of flesh on it. She crawled toward the fat bird through ferns damp from the previous night’s rain. She took in the smells as she went, appreciating the flowers the best. All along that part of the forest floor were ground-hugging, three-leafed plants with tiny white and red blooms. They were beautiful flowers, though they had settled sourly in her mouth when she tasted them. She was quickly learning what was edible and what was not.

The fat bird was the size of her head, and it was poking at something at its feet. Bugs, probably, she thought. Saarh didn’t much care for bugs, but some beetles were all right; the big green and black ones were all right if she was hungry enough.

The bird fluffed its tail, startling her. But Saarh held her position, peering through the fronds and discovering that it wasn’t so ugly after all. Its tail was not like that of other forest birds. It was fan shaped, showing black and white stripes. The bird ruffled the feathers around its neck, those the color of mud and looking soft and contrasting sharply with an orange line she hadn’t noticed before around its eyes. No doubt the bird was alerted to her presence, because it pawed at the ground nervously, yet it hadn’t been spooked so much to make it fly away.

Perhaps what it was nibbling at was too tasty to give up easily, Saarh thought. Or maybe the bird was too fat to spring away and fly. She held her breath and continued to watch the fat bird, marveling at the play of dark colors across its body when a stream of sunlight came through the branches and splashed across it.

A beautiful bird, really, Saarh decided. Pity she was going to have to kill it. The goblin shaman was hungry, but she waited, studying the bird a while longer. It ate a little more of whatever was on the ground in front of it before waddling into a thicket. The light was dim there, the branches directly overhead were tightly woven.

Saarh crawled closer, careful not to make a sound. She held her breath when she caught sight of the bird again. It had settled itself on a patch of tiny twigs and dead leaves, fluffing its feathers and craning its neck around to preen itself. The shaman’s keen eyes noticed thick bands of dark yellow on its breast.

It was a beautiful, beautiful bird, which had conveniently made its nest on the ground.

When she was near enough that she could smell it-a musky scent that pleasantly filled her nostrils-Saarh stuck her thumb in the ground and made a clacking sound. The bird spooked that time, jumping off its nest, wings flapping and head bobbing up and down and beak opening. The bird appeared more comical than menacing, and Saarh even giggled a little as she cast a spell.

The bird skittered back and forth in front of its nest, still flapping but not flying away, being protective, and also being totally unaware that the ground was turning to mud around its feet. A moment more and the mud oozed up over its talons then instantly hardened, trapping it.

Saarh stood and brushed the dirt from her hands and stomach, walking toward the terrified, angry, squawking bird and playing with the beads of one of her necklaces as she went. She stopped directly over the bird, admiring its feathers, then grabbed and wrung its neck, tugging the bird free and starting to pluck its feathers.

She set aside the prettiest feathers as she worked, thinking she might make them into another necklace or give them to Brab as a gift. Brab was the crooked-faced goblin who kept closest company with her. He was among the throng of goblins tearing up small trees to fashion them into tools and torches and firewood. He was occupying the entire clan so she could have that precious time alone.

The bird would taste good after being cooked over some of that firewood, but then she would have to share the food. So Saarh ate it raw, careful to pick out its organs, which she thought tasted too salty. When she’d consumed most of the sweet flesh, she set a few strips aside for Brab, wrapping them in maple leaves and tying the small bundle with long strands of grass. The feathers she stuffed into a pouch that dangled from her newest necklace.

Finished with those tasks, she crept toward the nest. She’d not heard any cheeping sounds, so she knew there were no baby birds. She grinned wide when she saw the eggs-eight of them, each about the size of her thumb-a special treat. She sat with her legs protectively wrapped around the nest, one by one picking up the eggs, registering their warmth, then digging a claw into each one so she could break it and suck out the liquid.

Thoroughly sated, she rose and stretched, declaring it a very good morning indeed. She wasn’t ready to return to the goblins, though she was curious about their progress. She was more curious about the power she’d sensed in the forest, which was the ultimate reason she’d brought them all there.

She walked west. The air was moist, a carryover from the previous day’s deluge. The ground was damp but not muddy. Saarh discovered it was coolest up against the trunk, where the leaves held the summer sun at bay. Between knobby roots, the ground cover was thick with low-growing plants that boasted tiny, teardrop-shaped leaves. They looked so delicate, Saarh hesitated to walk on them.

There were few truly large trees, so Saarh knew the forest was young. But she also knew it could grow into something magnificent; her magic had revealed that to her. She wanted her tribe to grow with the forest. A few trees ahead tilted precariously, nearly blown over in the previous day’s storm. She continued walking, seeing one recently felled, the leaves still vibrant, the broken roots sticking out in all directions. Farther along she spotted a tree growing through a wide crack in a big rock. Curious, she touched its bark, feeling bumps and ridges and finding a sap that smelled rich. A tree nearby had stringy pieces of bark that she could pull off in thin strips.

Saarh intended to bring Brab that way later and show him the amazing plants. She stopped when something chattered at her. An unfamiliar sound, she tipped her head back and searched through the branches.

The creature making the noise was small and looked vaguely ratlike. She’d seen plenty of rats before, but this one was light brown, its tail incredibly bushy. Its small ears were pressed forward against the sides of its head, and it held a nut in its front paws.

Saarh watched it while it chattered loudly and scampered back and forth, putting the nut in its mouth so that one side of its face bulged.

“Scolding.” She realized the creature was angry that she had intruded into its territory. “Maybe tasty.” Saarh enjoyed cooked rats. But she patted her full stomach and moved along.

She came to another fallen tree large enough to sit on. Black bugs the size of her little finger scampered across the rotting wood, and she noted the small footprints of animals that likely lived beneath the log. A small tree had sprouted from the dead one, and Saarh thought that odd; all the other trees she’d seen grew from the earth. She shook her head. No, not all the trees, there had been that tree growing through the rock.

“Trees are amazing,” she said. “Better than the stone of the caves.”

There were thorny plants in that section of the woods and ones with supple stems and white, fist-sized flowers. More flowers, purple ones with yellow centers, grew on vines that hung from high branches. Tall grasses grew everywhere, and Saarh spotted a clump that had been chewed on by some creature. When she returned to the tribe, she intended to tell Brab to gather a party and explore, collecting plants and determining which were edible. And they’d catch insects, too, and learn which were the most tasty.

“A good home,” she pronounced, pleased that she had brought the goblins out of the caverns and to a place so abundant with space and food and good smells. “And a safe one.”

She’d seen no sign of dwarves or umber hulks-both races she was familiar with and hated. In significant numbers, they could threaten her tribe. During previous trips she’d not spotted anything in the woods that might pose a problem. It was a place where apparently even younglings could wander freely.

“A powerful place.” She’d been walking west because the arcane pulse that drew her out of the caverns still emanated from that direction. She hoped to find the source of that pulse that day. If it was too far away, she’d have to return to the tribe and move them in that direction. But she hoped that would not be necessary.

Saarh hadn’t traveled more than another mile before something else drew her attention. She’d never heard such a noise before, a “maaawww” that reverberated throughout the clearing she had entered. It sounded powerful, maybe fierce, but it wasn’t associated with the arcane thing she was seeking.

“What is it? What, what, what?” She headed toward the maaawwwing sound, veering a little to the south. She cursed herself for always being so curious, but she knew she would not be able to go on without finding the source of the sound.

A dozen steps later, and through a gap in some small flowering bushes, Saarh saw the maaawwwing beast.

“A bear.”

She’d seen a few in her younger years in the high caves in the mountain. She figured they were creatures of the range, and she’d not thought to find them in the woods. It was not terribly large, no more than the weight of four grown goblins, so she thought it might be a youngling. It had caught a small deer and had its snout stuck in its belly, feasting.

Saarh thought the young bear was a magnificent creature, with thick fur the color of mud, but silvery on the ends around its neck and hindquarters. It raised its head, blood dripping from its jaws, and made the maaawwwing sound again. It had a short, stubby tail, like the cave bears she’d seen, and a muscular hump on its shoulders. Its legs rippled as it tore into the deer more fiercely.

She’d seen enough, and she’d tell Brab about the sighting. But it was back to business; she promised herself no more distractions. She had started to withdraw when a throaty growl sounded, so loud that she felt the ripples of it against the bottoms of her feet. It was accompanied by a crashing sound and the appearance of a second bear, easily five times the size of the first.

Saarh stood rooted in awe. Terror seized her when she realized the great bear was charging straight at her. The shaman acted instinctively. She raised her right arm toward the clouds while dropping to a crouch and thrusting her fingers into the earth. The sky crackled with energy, and lightning flickered down, a thin bolt striking the large bear and another striking the top of a spindly oak. The ground surged around her fingers and churned outward in a growing ripple that turned to a mound right in front of the bear.

The creature reared in pain from the lightning. Saarh could feel its heart, hammering so wildly, she thought it would burst. She called down another bolt, which whipped its neck. The bear was knocked aside. The stench of burned flesh and fur filled the air, along with the smell of something acrid that the lightning had left behind.

Its claws were nearly as long as Saarh’s forearm, and she knew if the bear took a swipe at her, it would slay her instantly. Its head was round and large, its mouth filled with wicked, white teeth that flashed and sparkled because of the lightning. The creature’s growl had turned into a whimper of pain, however, as it slumped forward on the mound of earth Saarh had summoned.

Behind it, the smaller bear made a mewling sound, looking to its dead parent, then staring at the goblin. It raised its bloodstained lips and thundered forward. Saarh sent out another ripple of earth, that one uprooting a small tree and sending it into the small bear’s path. It only slowed the creature, but that was enough time for her to call down a final bolt of lightning to slay it.

Above, the sky darkened and lightning flickered in the thick clouds. Saarh’s magic had touched off another storm. As the wet drops started to fall, she shook out her hands, stood, and turned east.

Finding the source of the arcane pulse would have to wait. She needed to return to her tribe and direct them there. No use letting the bear carcasses go to waste; they would feed plenty of her people.

Mudwort sat in the sand, the waves surging in to cover her legs, then the water retreating and taking some of the beach with it. Her hands were thrust down at her sides, fingers buried and senses far from the shore of the New Sea, observing Saarh.

She was upset that Saarh had not found the arcane something that was drawing her westward. But at the same time, she was captivated by the shaman’s ability to pull lightning out of the clouds. Had the shaman not tarried and found the bears, Mudwort might not have learned about such wonderful magic.

Mudwort released the image and tugged her hands free of the sand. The seeing was no longer interesting. She had no inclination to watch Saarh retrieve the goblin tribe and watch them all devour the bears. But she would look in on the shaman later.

Mudwort looked up at the sky. There were thick white clouds up there, just as there had been over the Qualinesti Forest in her vision. Some had gray bellies full of water. She concentrated, her brow wrinkling in a painful-looking expression. She could send her senses so easily into the earth and across time. Could she, she wondered for the first time, also send her senses skyward?

Mudwort had never been taught magic, as she knew the Dark Knight wizard had. She accidentally learned of her arcane ability years earlier, shortly after being captured by the ogres and sold to work in Steel Town. During long hours in the mines, she started imagining that the stone was talking to her. At first she thought she was going mad. The goblins around her thought so too, telling everyone she had a sour mind. But eventually Mudwort discovered that the stone really was speaking, not exactly in the way one goblin talks to another, but conveying emotions and impressions.

She steadily and secretly honed her skills, learning to sense where the richest veins of ore were, discovering places where the stone was either weak or especially strong, and finally discovering how to send her senses through the stone to scry on other places and creatures. Mingling her magic with others, such as Boliver, came later, as did moving the earth to dig holes.

Could she work with the sky the way she worked with the earth?

Finally she felt the cloud swirl around her, though she still sat firmly on the sand. Her head throbbed from the effort; it felt like needles were stabbing at her eyes. New magic always affected her that way. However, there was always pain before the reward. Her spine tightened and her arms locked, and for an instant she couldn’t breathe. But in the same instant, she felt an odd energy, and she wrapped her thoughts around that energy and tugged.

The cloud directly overhead flickered with silvery threads of light.

She tugged harder, grinding her teeth together and straining as if she were chained and trying to break free. She tugged again and again and watched the silvery threads thicken and flash.

Mudwort couldn’t say how long her mind played with the energy in the cloud-hours maybe, as the clouds shifted to the east and she grew increasingly fatigued and achy. Goblins milled around her, curious about she was doing. Some asked her questions, but she couldn’t take time to answer them and risk losing her hold on the new magic. They eventually ambled away, muttering to themselves, some returning later only to leave again.

One of the bolts flashed strongly as it arced down and stopped just short of the water. A boom of thunder followed, and Mudwort fell back, her energy sapped and breath returning. An acridness assailed her nostrils, the same scent she’d registered in her seeing spell after Saarh pulled down a bolt.

It was the scent that had hung in the air in Steel Town when the clouds overhead danced with lightning but failed to follow with rain.

The surf swirled over Mudwort’s legs and chest and retreated. She listened to the surf shushing, the splashing noises of younglings playing in the water, goblin conversations both in the sea and up on the bank, and human words that she couldn’t wholly understand. The latter were being uttered by the priest, who was praying to his insipid god again.

Mudwort pushed herself back into a sitting position just as the surf rushed in again. Her shoulders and upper arms itched, and she saw a white powder on her dry skin and on the little of her tunic that was dry-salt from the sea. Maybe, indeed, the sea was chasing away the last bit of the deathly sickness.

Mudwort stood and waded out to her waist, bracing herself when a small wave came in and tried to knock her over. She was tired of being wet and suspected all the goblins still in the sea were tired of it, save the younglings. But more than her dislike of the sea, she didn’t want to catch the plague. She had too many other things to do, such as learning better how to pull the lightning from the clouds.

It was midafternoon, and there had been no sign of the wizard since he left. She remembered him saying he hoped to be back in the evening, after arranging a way to sail them across the New Sea. She knew Direfang was a little skeptical the wizard would return. But she knew he craved her magic too desperately, so he would come back. He was taking a long time.

She sloshed her way farther out, spotting Direfang standing alone, the water up to his chest. She wouldn’t go out that far, but she’d get closer to him and attract his attention. She’d show him that she could tug lightning from the clouds. She would practice her new spell until either the wizard returned or she became too exhausted.

Then she would learn how to use the wizard’s fire.

Earth magic first. Sky magic soon. Next, fire magic. Her eyes glimmered darkly with the promise of gaining more magic.

No, she decided at the last moment, turning back toward shore; she wouldn’t show Direfang her new magic. That would be her secret and her surprise. Perhaps she would show him later.