Mortal Consequences

Chapter 11

The common hut was empty and cool, and smelled of smoke, ash, and sweat. Sunbright used a chicken wing to sweep the fire pit radially. Knucklebones squatted on her heels and watched. "You're fussy as a nursemaid," she said.

The shaman smoothed dirt, moved tiny stones, and said, "The fire must be laid just so, with the lines matching the compass and the tip pointing to the Sled, our northernmost star. Shamans are fussy. Ask my mother, who lived with one."

The one-eyed thief frowned as he trickled grass in a triangular pattern, and gradually built a cone. "What I mean is, you take this shaman role seriously," she said. "I thought a shaman was just a priest. That you just went through the motions to keep the congregation happy."

"That's a cynical view," he muttered absently. He formed a tiny cone of twigs. "I wish we had blue sweet-grass and not just straw, but it must do."

"I'm not cynical!" she snapped. "Well, perhaps a little. But this mumbo-jumbo-you're just making it up, aren't you? To keep people occupied?"

He stopped, put down his collection of herbs and sticks. "Yes and no," he told her. "Yes, I'm making much of it up. I remember some of my father's invocations, saw a little of what Owldark did, but no, I never had real shaman training. But there's no one to teach me, so I perform as best I can, and improvise the rest. The gods don't mind as long as you're sincere."

Knucklebones cocked one pointed eyebrow, and said, "Isn't it presumptuous to speak for the gods?"

Sunbright sighed, and straightened his tiny fire cone with blunt fingers. "I don't claim to speak for the gods," he said. "If they send me visions and advice, I'll pass it on. I might make mistakes, but someone must be shaman, and I'm chosen by the blood of my forebears and by happenstance. And the gods know our tribe needs help."

"What about me?"

"Hunh?" Sunbright grunted, rocking back on his heels. Sunlight from the open doorway danced with dust motes from his sweeping. Knucklebones's face was hard to see in the shadows, but he knew she was unhappy. "What do you mean? You're my woman, I'm your man. We are together."

"Together with your tribe. I feel like an outsider. I am an outsider! I share no blood with these people, and now you're wrapped up in caring for your tribe, which is a giant family with old jokes and stories and songs I don't know."

Sunbright felt a pang at the hurt in her voice. "It's no different than when you had a tribe in the sewers," he said. "Mother and Ox and Rolon and them."

"They're dead, and the children scattered to the winds. My tribe was destroyed! How would you feel if that happened to you?"

Confused by her feminine switches in logic, Sunbright could only reach out and cuddle her close. He felt a tear on his bare shoulder, patted her back like a child's, and said, "I'd feel alone and sad, as I felt when my tribe was lost, but you were kind and stayed with me, even when I was bitter and afraid and angry."

"Yes, I did," she sniffled. "Because I love you."

"Yes, and I love you. Do you feel alone and afraid?"

"I don't…" She pulled back to see his face, held it in her small, calloused hands with the many scars, and told him, "I'm not lonely when I'm with you, but suddenly you're not with me. You're either arguing with your tribesfolk, or lost in dreamland. I'm alone."

The shaman hugged her, and she squeezed his ribs. "I love you, Knuckle' " he told her softly. "I must help my tribe, but I'll try to keep you close. That's the best I can offer."

"It's enough," she breathed in his ear. "Just don't forget me."

They were quiet a while, until, finally, Sunbright said, "I must start this fire. And I need you to leave."

Her single dark eye flashed at this new betrayal.

Sheepishly, he offered, "I must be alone for the ceremony. There are prayers to Jannath and Amaunator and such. And the fire must be lit at noon, and if the first spark doesn't take I need to wait another day. It's…"

"Fussy," the thief supplied. "Very well. I'll wait with your mother. She'll understand, having been a shaman's wife."

An hour later, Sunbright threw aside the rotted hide over the door, cupped his hands, and warbled an ancient cry: "To council! To council! All adults, to council!"

Knucklebones rose from the shade where she'd waited, and smiled at his grin. The shaman gestured with a sooty hand at folks converging from all around.

"Look!" Sunbright beamed. "They've waited all morning to council and talk. To discuss the future and what we should do. It's like zombies rising from their graves to find new life. There's just one thing, though-I need to find us a direction."

The thief squinted at his clouded face, and asked, "Direction for what?"

Sunbright moved aside to let villagers enter the common house. He cast his eyes over the rocky dunes, the brown mountainside, the shabby town in the distance, and the winking sea. "Where we should go," he answered. "No matter what, we can't stay here. I need to seek a vision."

Now the thief frowned. "Isn't that how you lost Whatshisname?" she asked. "Owlfluff?"

"Owldark. Yes. He went into the wasteland to find a new direction, and found only death. Yet I must follow, for we need the truth."

"Fine." Knucklebones shifted her belt on her hips, tugged her silver-wrapped pommel around, and said, "I'll go with you."

"No. A shaman always makes a vision quest alone. Dangerous or not. He needs to escape from distractions to hear the whispers of the gods…"

His vision grew distant as he stared at the Channel Mountains running off to the south. He didn't see Knucklebones reach into a flat pocket, slip on her brass knuckledusters, and ball her fists. She cooed, "Sunbright… If you can change and improvise customs, so can I."

And hauling back knotty arms, she slammed him in the breadbasket hard, four times in four seconds. Sunbright gasped, clasped his stomach, and doubled over retching.

Knucklebones cooed over his wheezing, "New rule. From now on, a shaman making a vision quest may take one companion to see he doesn't fall headfirst into a hole to be eaten by weasels. How's that sound?"

Sunbright couldn't straighten, but gasped, "I suppose… the gods… won't object…"

"Good." She kissed his horsetail and sashayed off, saying, "I'll go pack."

Dreaming, Sunbright flew.

He spiraled upward from the wastelands. Yellow rock and sand merged with green-brown mountains in the west, grasslands in the east and south, the silver-white sea in the north. His tribe's wretched camp was no more than an anthill, a smear of sticks amidst rocks. In a hollow of the Anchor, he saw broken shells in the nest of a bald eagle. Nimble chamois jumped along a sheer slope. A whale spouted in the sea, blew spray onto a boat with slanted sails. A mule train plodded across the plains, a small dog yapped after bounding antelope. Buzzards flapped lazily over Patrician Peak, riding the updrafts.

As he rose higher, he saw into the depths of the fetid Myconid Forest at the foot of the Channel Mountains, where fungusmen with stone spears tracked a lazy giant lizard across a swamp. He heard the dinosaur hoot in disdain. Beyond the mountains, in the Marsh of Simplicity, he saw fishermen spook ducks from the water with slapping sticks so the birds plowed into hidden nets and squawked. A girl caught a salmon from a rotting dock, and it almost yanked her into the water before she landed it. In a shipyard in Zenith, two fire giants caulked a careened boat with thunderous mauls. Orcs left the forest near the Nauseef Flow and crept toward a cabin where peasants tilled turnips. In the Columns of the Sky, two rams butted heads until one tumbled into a snowy crevasse. An elven couple made love in a glade near the head of the Gillan River. On the tundra, gaunt reindeer cropped moss along a glacier while the high sun sparkled on ice.

Sunbright saw all this and wondered. Was it real? Were these things true, and happening right now? Or did he merely imagine them? If all these events were true, then a human family would be slaughtered by marauding orcs along the Nauseef Flow, and that ram would starve to death in the icy crevasse. Yet he could do nothing about either threat. Visions could be a curse, he was learning.

But if the visions were not true, then did this dream mean anything, or were the images as worthless as marsh gas bubbling up in his brain? And why did he fly? Where was he bound?

Black flickered at the edge of his imagination. A black with a sheen of purple. A raven's wing. He flew as a raven, totem of his clan. Perhaps this was a true vision! Or perhaps it was just more brain-gas. Either way, he gave in and trusted the totem. He watched, and waited for truth, for falsehood, or for nothing at all.

Wings canted and the world banked from horizon to horizon. Sunbright's stomach lurched. The Channel Mountains passed underneath, then the floating enclave of Quagmire, then a grove of drooping birches along the Watercourse where he'd once stood with Knucklebones. The Watercourse was placid in late summer, still and empty, idly rippling instead of roaring as in spring when the tribes gathered to fish salmon. Then the river fell behind, a silver trickle near Sunbright's raven tail.

All was vaguely familiar, for the land turned to rolling grasslands dotted with horses, antelope, and deer. In a hollow between hills a mother mammoth and two yearlings lolled away the afternoon heat, their shaggy hair clotted with old mud and manure. More mammoths swayed and sauntered to the south, yanking up whole bushes with clever trunks and cramming them in their mouths. From a hill, a lone saber-toothed tiger crouched, only ear and eyes showing. Even flies settling on its rump couldn't elicit a twitch.

Sunbright knew this scene from his childhood, for once a year the tundra barbarians crossed the Narrow Sea and met their southern cousins to fish and fight and joke and carouse and flirt. But of these southern folk, the clans of Tortoise and Saber-Tooth and Hellbender, he saw no sign. No one in the tribe knew where they were, another link to the past gone missing.

The phantom raven flapped on. Or perhaps it was a real bird, and Sunbright only saw through its eyes. Gray lumps in the distance rolled higher to form the Barren Mountains, with the dense High Forest at their feet. Yellow grasslands met gray mountains, met green forest. The whole world was laid out like Jannath's Quilt. The shaman wondered about his destination, if any.

Then the picture turned half over, and he stared straight down. At the crux of three lands, grass, mountains and forest, stood the last mountain, Sanguine Mountain, so called because it bled red rust from a deep crevice in the rainy season. The phantom raven dived straight for the bloody crevice, until red-shot blackness filled his vision.

Faster they flew, and faster, until the world blurred and wind sizzled in the man's eyes and made them water. Gasping, mewling, pleading, he urged the bird to rise, to bank, to shy away, but the linked visionaries bored through air like an arrow. Soon only black loomed. Sunbright heard wind along a rocky ridge. There was no escape.

They struck, smashing in a bloody gobbet of feathers on granite.

"Unnnhhh…" Sunbright teetered and fell. He banged his shoulder, felt the world roll away, as if swept in an avalanche, then tumbled on his face, tearing skin off his forehead. Frantically, he clawed for a hold, broke fingernails on stone.

Something caught his waist, his leg, his arm. Strong hands like iron, but small, cool, and capable. He stopped falling.

Shivering, sweating, Sunbright opened his eyes, was stabbed by sunlight. Something blocked the sun. A hand. Knucklebones's.

"Are you all right? You were sitting on that mound, still as death, then you started groaning. I couldn't catch you before you fell," she said. "You're bleeding!"

Gently, the elf-woman eased him onto his back. She ran for a blanket, and wrapped him snugly to stop his shaking. From a canteen she tilted water on his face, wiped away sweat and blood.

Sunbright craned his head to see, to orient himself. Oh, yes. They were six or seven miles south of the village, in the worst of the wasteland. Three days ago Sunbright had drunk his last sip of water, eaten the last scrap of meat, and mounted a low mound that gave a view in all directions. Then he'd lowered his head, and prayed, and waited, while Knucklebones patiently tended camp and potted rats with a sling. Then, after three days of broiling in the sun and shivering by night, a vision had come.

"I know-I know where we're to go." Sunbright creaked. He could barely speak, for his tongue was swollen from thirst. Knucklebones cooed and trickled water in his mouth. But his thirst for knowledge was greater. "Sanguine Mountain, with a cleft like blood, where the grasslands end, and rise to mountain and forest."

"And what will we find there?" she asked, bandaging the scrape on his forehead.

"I've no idea," he rasped, then accepted more water. "It's the place. A raven showed me. Our fate lies there."

Knucklebones frowned, blew out her cheeks, combed his hair with her fingers, and said, "I believe you. I just hope you can convince the tribe."

Rengarth Barbarians were never easily convinced.

They argued for days until the shaky rafters of the common house rang. Smoke from sacred pipes was blown back and forth by shouts, accusations of cowardice and betrayal, threats and challenges, fistfights, scoldings, tears, pleas… Talk went in circles and off on tangents. Stories were recounted and corrected. Prayers were offered.

Time and again, the argument came down to someone shouting, "We must go because we can't stay here! To live on foreign soil will be the death of our tribe!"

"All right," bellowed Magichunger, the loudest, "but why go the path Sunbright suggests? He's not a real shaman! He knows nothing! The gods wouldn't speak to him. We might as well follow a blind mole as go his route."

An angry chorus shouted him down while others agreed. More shouting went on outside where the walls of the common house had been removed. Anyone who'd killed an enemy or born a child could speak in council, and over three hundred barbarians gathered every night. Someone snatched the speaking stick from Magichunger and thrust it into Sunbright's hands.

"Tell them again!"

Reluctantly, Sunbright held up the speaking stick, just a plain stick with a skunk's skull atop. Yet when raised, only the wielder could speak. As if by magic, the council hushed. Sunbright suppressed a sigh. "I don't claim special knowledge," hie said evenly, "but I made a vision quest, asking the gods for a destination. I was rewarded with a dream of Sanguine Mountain. The message-from the gods, not me-is clear. We should go there." He lowered the stick as if it were suddenly too heavy.

Someone amended, "And we can't stay here!"

"But how do we know?" someone hollered, and the wrangling ran around the circle again.

Sunbright slumped on the floor of the hut. Cross-legged, his knees toasted at the council fire, yet toes dug his kidneys. The room was packed, and steamy as a sauna with charged bodies. Knucklebones, who'd been silent for days, took his hand to rest on her knee. "How much longer will this go on?" she asked quietly.

"Forever, I fear," sighed the shaman. "You can't believe how hardheaded barbarians can be. My people don't remove rock slides from a trail, they just lower their heads and bash through."

"I believe it, but tell me…" the thief said, more loudly now because of the noise. "… that blood oath that Thornwing started that night. Most of the tribe swore with her, right? But what did they swear to do?"

"Hunh?" Sunbright grunted, rubbed his burning eyes, and cudgeled his brain. "Umm… They swore to… follow me if I were driven from the tribe."

"Then go."

Sunbright peered at her stupidly, as if she'd spoken a foreign tongue.

"Go." Her hand made a pushing motion. "Say you're packing and leaving tomorrow, and going to Sanguine Mountain. The ones who swore the oath must follow, mustn't they?"

The shaman juggled the new idea in his head: he had as much trouble accepting new customs as anyone. "They only swore that if I were driven out…"

"Driven out, walk out, there's little difference," Knucklebones said as she nudged him to his feet. "Just say it. Anything to stop this blather! We'll be rotted to skeletons before this bunch agrees on whether snow falls down or up!"

Sunbright untangled his legs to rise, mumbling, "On the tundra, it sometimes blows sideways-Ouch!" Knucklebones slapped his leg to keep his attention focussed.

The shaman stood a long time with his hand out, indicating he wished the speaking stick, but many people were heard before he got it. Finally grasping it high, he stated, "Come dawn I begin packing. The next dawn I leave for Sanguine Mountain. I ask those who took the blood oath to follow me to… follow me." He handed the stick to someone, and plunked down.

If Knucklebones expected that thunderclap to still the audience, she was disappointed. Shouting erupted louder than before. A dozen hands grabbed for the stick. Tears flowed. At some taunt, Magichunger whirled and punched a man. A brawl erupted among the hotheads. Folks cheered and booed.

Crawling around the fire, Sunbright spoke in Forestvictory's ear. The woman, big all over with forearms like hams, requested the speaking stick and got it. She held it high and shouted, and gradually the brawl subsided. Men and women untangled, rubbed bloody noses with skinned knuckles. In the hush, Forestvictory proclaimed, "Sunbright has suggested we need a trail chief to oversee the journey. I volunteer unless someone else wants the chore. No? Then I too will pack at dawn, and leave the next dawn. Anyone who goes with us must be ready."

She relinquished the speaking stick, and more people spoke, some passionately, some with anger, some calmly. There was wrangling whether the blood oath applied, but as more tribesfolk said their piece, it seemed the oath was enough to move them. Many agreed to go. A handful, led by Magichunger, held out, but when asked what they intended to do instead, gave no answer.

"Is the tribe to split then? Such a thing must not be!" a woman began to wail.

Sunbright gestured, took the stick, waited for silence. Finally he said, "So some will go, and some will stay. It makes my heart heavy to think the tribe may split, for together we are strong, singly we are weak. Yet I would ask one thing. The path we travel will be dangerous. We might meet orcs, renegade soldiers, bandits, marauding animals, monsters-anything. I think we should elect a war chief to oversee our defense. And for that task, a hard and thankless one, I suggest Magichunger."

For the first time, silence followed a proclamation. Big, broad Magichunger rubbed his nose, scratched blood from his red beard, glared at Sunbright across the smoky hut, and spat, "You don't fool me. It's a trick so I'll go along."

"No trick," said Sunbright. "You're our best fighter, after Blinddrum and Thornwing, and by tradition neither of them can be war chief. I know we've never been friends, and you resent my barging into the tribe, but most of us will leave. It would be a great boon if you helped. Certainly we can use your scrapping smarts and good right arm, and those of your friends."

The burly man looked for a trap, or some way to rebut the gentle request. "As war chief," he grumbled, "I lead the fighters in skirmishes? And when attacked, everyone must do as I say until the enemy is beaten off?"

Sunbright nodded, as did older folks recalling times of war. Magichunger turned, and muttered to his friends. They grumbled, fretted, and argued while the rest of the tribe waited. Finally Magichunger turned, rubbed his nose again as if embarrassed. "We'll go," he growled.

Walking hand-in-hand under desert-bright stars, Knucklebones said, "You were very clever in there, Sunbright."

"Not so clever," he said. "Just desperate to get my tribe off this ash heap. It reminds me of the worst corners of the hell I almost didn't escape, but at least then I left my enemies behind."

"What?" The part-elf looked up, but his hawk's face was only a silhouette against stars. "What do you mean, enemies?" she asked.

"Barbarians hold grudges forever, Knucklebones. From before birth even, for we're born into feuds going back to the day New Man rose from the ice. Some spend their lives plotting revenge, and will throw their lives away getting it. With us wild folk, the heart often overrules the head.

"Magichunger will always be my enemy. And his friends and family too. I must beware his knife in my back, awake and asleep. Many others don't like my new customs, or new twists to old ones, and for us to survive will take magic, I fear."

"Why fear?"

"Magic is taboo. A fear of magic runs strong."

"But you purified their drinking water! Everyone saw it, and appreciated it."

"I 'blessed' the water, I did not bewitch it. Not for my own gain, mocking the gods' power, but acting for the good of the people. That's why I said a shaman's no good without a tribe to work for.

"And now I'd have us cross our ancestral lands. I don't know… the grasslands-prairie-is stronger than the tundra, but the life drain happens there too. We may need magic to survive, and… I don't know what I'll do."

"You'll return to your mother's hut and sleep," the thief said, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "Then we rise and pack to embark on a new adventure!"

Chuckling, Sunbright hugged her off the ground and kissed her soundly.