Mortal Consequences

Chapter 12

Toch swung his club backhanded and smashed Kab across the snout. Tumbling down the hillside, rolling in dust, the wounded orc sprawled to a halt, clutched a blood-spurting nose, and slobbered, "What that for?"

The larger orc wasn't finished. Toch crabbed down the slope, raised his obsidian-studded club, and thumped Kab repeatedly.

"No noise, I says! Quiet, I says! But you, you burp at wrong time and chase off game!"

Toch vented his anger with more blows. Other orcs squatted on their heels and picked at stones, or scratched lice, careful to avoid catching hell. Kab wailed and howled and screamed, thrashing limbs, as Toch beat and kicked every inch of the orc's gray, warty skin.

Finally Toch's arm tired, and he threw the club down in disgust. With filthy, cracked nails he scaled the slope again, plunked his tusked jaw atop the rise, and glared at the world. The goats had bounded up to higher slopes, out of reach. Toch was so hungry he could eat rocks. Perhaps he should beat Kab more, tenderize the meat, then eat it. It would teach the others to follow orders and maintain silence on the hunt. He hoped a female gave birth soon. Baby orcs made excellent stew, and he could keep it all to himself. That was one good reason for dragging along females. They were always pregnant.

Stomach growling, Toch stood on the hummock under an overcast sky, and tried to guess which way to go next. Like many Icebeast Orcs, he was tall, almost six feet, with long limbs and hands that could break bones. With the approach of winter, gray hair thickened on his hide like a mountain pony's. His head was a rat's nest of lank black hair, but he still wore a steel helmet and a tattered smock of stout gray wool that retained the faded sigil of the One King, a red hand with fingers splayed. The paint had mostly cracked off.

He remembered, vaguely, belonging to the One King's army. How the chief orcs had said they'd be well-fed, have huts and villages instead of wilderness and badlands, how they'd live among humans and share their wealth as long as they didn't kill anyone. Details were fuzzy, but he remembered fine food: fresh-killed beef, apples from orchards, wriggling eels from stocked ponds, even real bread such as orcs could never bake, and whole barrels of wine that made his head spin and his feet crazy. He licked gray lips at the memory. Life had been good under the One King. Lots of food, steel weapons, not much fighting, plenty of naps, fires under roofs at night.

Then it ended. They claimed the One King was dead, burned by a dragon, or overrun by enemies. Or that he'd gone to sleep in the catacombs. Or that he'd shunned the orcs because they didn't work and fight and kill enough to suit his bloodthirsty ways. Or that they were too quarrelsome for his ideas of peace. Memories were muddled in his dim brain, but the One King had been good.

Now he was chief of a troop in the Dementia Range, a hard life even for orcs. The land was difficult to cross, either naked rock or stunted cedars and heather and gorse, impossible tangles that forced the orcs to game trails or open spaces. The troop had done well raiding around Ascore and Sepulcher and Cantus. Too well. Men and dwarves banded together to root the orcs from the forest, even sending hated war dogs. Toch's troop retreated to the foothills of the Dementia, but found little game.

Goats were swift and bouncy, remorhaz and condors inedible, wolves and mammoths wary, humans nonexistent, and cave trolls considered orcs slave-fodder. So, after a frustrating summer in the north, Toch led his band out of the mountains, but the southern forests were infested with elves, and the prairie too open. Now where? West, into unknown lands? Or perhaps he should reduce the force, kill the older orcs and women, dry their meat, and whip the able fighters across the prairie to fat lands in the far south. They had to go somewhere, always roving as orcs had for centuries, wandering over the next hill, scrounging what they could.

He sighed like a bellows, licked Kab's blood off his fingers. It was hard being leader…

"Uh! Look! There!" grunted an orc. "He comes! He comes!"

Toch whirled, and almost fell off the hill.

On a mount behind Toch stood the One King.

The king was human, but his skin had a yellow cast that denoted orcish blood, orcs always believed. The man was tall, black-haired and bearded, with a long, solemn face that was as cold and pitiless as a corpse's. He wore silvery robes with a splayed hand red as blood, and a silver crown studded with gems black as coal. The Hornet, people in Tinnainen had called him, like a black-yellow insect in man's form.

"Orcs, hear me," trumpeted the king. He kicked at his long hem, and walked down a trail through waist-high gorse. Two-score orcs fell back in awe and fear. Toch tripped down the slope. Dimly he remembered the etiquette beaten into him by orc chiefs. Picking up his studded club, he swatted the orcs to kneel, then knelt himself

"My children," rolled the king's words. "Umm… My heart lifts at the sight of you again. I have returned to the world. As before, I, uh, come in peace for all the speaking races. Again there will be contentment and, uh, peace throughout the lands-"

"And food?" The words escaped Toch. He trembled, fearing death for interrupting the king.

"Uh, yes, food! Much food! Mead halls full of it. Tables groaning under the weight of golden turkeys stuffed with chestnuts and, uh, crusty brown bread! Wine by the gallon, rich and red as blood! And jam tarts with fluffy pastry, and fruits, such as melons…"

Murky eyes shining, the orcs slavered as the king rambled through a menu. Then he talked more of peace, and the good old times, but returned to food when their attention flagged. Finally, he summed up,"… but before there can be peace-or melons or figs or butter-we must take up arms, spread south, and attack the outposts of the Netherese Empire! As before, the Neth are our enemies! You, uh, what is your name? Toch? Toch, you are to lead your band south, cross the Barren Mountains to the Sanguine that flows red with rust, and punish the tall folk of the prairie! You will know them by their golden horsetails that shine in the sun! Find them, and make them suffer, for one of them assaulted your king in the old days!"

"Tall folk. Horsetails. A-salted." As trained years ago, Toch repeated the commands without fully comprehending them. He did understand that they should ambush blond people in the south. Clear enough. "Steel, majesty. We need steel to kill. They have shining blades…" He offered the obsidian-studded club as evidence.

As kings should, the One King anticipated his subjects' request. Gesturing the orcs to shuffle backward, the tall human sketched a door shape in the air, and a door appeared. Orcs oohed and ahhed. The king pulled the wooden handle. With a clatter and a clang, hand weapons cascaded out of nowhere: war axes, mattocks, cleavers, falchions, stabbing spears, all good steel sharpened and blackened against rust. Orcs scrambled for the treasure, but Toch kicked them aside. Stooping, he grabbed a short-handled war club of two lethal iron spikes shaped like buffalo horns. The tough hickory and heavy steel hefted nicely in his gnarled hand.

"Take them with my blessings, and go!" bellowed the king. "Go south and harry the tall ones with horsetails! You will meet others with my sigil."

Flicking a hand into the phantom closet, the king withdrew a silk roll, a paint brush, and a crock sealed with wax. Toch remembered this from the old days too. He shook out the silk, found it a cut-out pattern for the red hand such as decorated his faded tunic.

"Garb yourselves to show respect," the One King commanded. "Join others bearing my seal, and spread the word to all outcasts to punish our enemies! Do not disobey, else I visit you by night, and cut out your hearts."

Banging shut the magic-shifted cabinet, the king raised both hands in the air. The orcs cowered and whimpered, but the king only crossed his breast and disappeared like a soap bubble.

Orcs muttered and grunted, but with the king gone, their awe soon evaporated, and they squabbled over the weapons. Bloody-nosed Kab took a fancy to a cleaver clutched by a female. He picked up a rock, bashed in her skull, and snatched the weapon. "With this, I kill enemies! I become chief!" he said as he shook it high and cackled to the mountaintops.

From behind, Toch swung, buried an iron spike in Kab's temple. The orc dropped dead, and Toch wrenched loose his weapon, pleased at how well it killed. He kicked Kab's body hard several times, then spat on it.

To the rest of the tribe, he ordered, "Paint yourselves with the red hand like mine! We go south to kill horsetails! But first," he kicked Kab's body again, "build a fire! I hunger!"

Far away, in a cave high in a mountaintop, the flinty Sysquemalyn touched the black glistening top of the scrying table. From this stronghold, out of reach of anyone without magic at his disposal, she smoothed the surface and spied on the world. And occasionally stepped into it disguised as the One King.

Using that legend, she chuckled, was brilliance on her part. As with all messiahs, the One King's death had mattered little, for rumors circulated that one day he'd return to lead his people to greater heights.

Of course, Sysquemalyn knew the original king had been a fake; a lich, a long-dead wizard with dreams of glory. Eventually, as always with such petty despots, the "One King" was exposed and killed, and his army fell apart.

Sysquemalyn herself had served in the king's court as a vagabond bard or freebooter named Ruellana. She forgot the details. She'd been keeping an eye on Sunbright, tweaking odds to win her bet with Candlemas. But she knew the One King's ways, had heard his insipid speeches, and remembered that he'd scared the hell out of the Neth. Memories of his short reign lived on, for scrying in nooks and crannies of forgotten lands, the monster-mage had often seen the faded red hand on the worn tunics of bandits, orcs, and other misfits.

So… employing a quick disguise, a flowery speech, many promises, a fistful of weapons, and threats of death, almost overnight Sysquemalyn had rejuvenated an army and aimed it like a fire arrow at her enemies. Even now, scores of bloodthirsty villains attacked outposts of the empire, especially the fields and orchards that fed Ioulaum and Specie, where Lady Polaris had homes, and the pastures and forests of Castle Delia, her country manor. Now she'd unleashed orcs upon the Rengarth Barbarians, whom she'd seen trekking across the prairie, bound for Sanguine Mountain, which would soon live up to its name.

"Sunbright will suffer when his people suffer. And Polaris will suffer, wounded in the purse. The whole empire-the whole world-will pay for what I've endured! And I, who was Sysquemalyn, will wait until my enemies' lowest ebb. Then shall I strike, and bathe in their blood!"

Cackling, she stroked the tilted black tabletop, located another wandering band of marauders and, donning the disguise of the One King, returned to work.

Having decided to leave the wasteland, the tribe did not depart in two days, or even a week.

In a flurry of activity, people flocked to kill wild game, barter for old cattle and sheep and jerk the meat; to slice hides into straps and pouches and boots; to hunt relatives in town and persuade them to rejoin the tribe; to fashion new weapons and baskets and clothes.

Some were convinced to come, and some dragged. Iceborn, blind and crippled, insisted he was too old to make the journey, wanted only to be left by the fire to die. Tulipgrace had sided with her husband. As shaman, Sunbright argued a whole day that both elders were the lifeblood of the tribe, living history books, indispensable. Sunbright pleaded he would carry both on his back if necessary, but to no avail. The stubborn old folks were tired, and would die soon anyway. So the shaman marched out, climbed a slope, cut down poplar trees with Harvester, dug up spruce roots and sliced rawhide, lashed together an extra-wide travois, and dragged it before the common hut. Entering the dim, round room, he picked up the two bundles of bones that were Iceborn and Tulipgrace and plunked them onto the travois. Standing on tiptoe, he yanked the roof thatch and rotted hides into the council fire so they ignited, and kicked the beams into the pyre. When the common house was consumed by roaring flames, he shouted at Iceborn, "Now will you go with us?"

The old man squinted at the fire, and spat drily, "I suppose, since it's the will of the gods. Or someone."

Finally, after many days, with precious little in hand, but nothing to hold them, the Rengarth Barbarians marched from the wastelands on a bright day in late summer. No one looked back.

By degrees they rounded Anchor Mountain, avoided Scourge and Lachery, and struck west along the Narrow Sea. Pilot whales spouted and leaped high in the water as if encouraging them. Gulls wheeled over their head, and terns flitted after, but finding no food, banked away.

Once, high up in the sky, they spotted a floating city like a man-of-war jellyfish on the clouds. Knucklebones guessed it was Sanctuary. The next morning it drifted south. Sunbright recalled there were pockets in the north so drained of magic that the enclaves could not overpass them, lest they fall. Such was the greed and waste of the Neth.

It took sixteen days to reach the Watercourse, the eastern boundary of the Rengarth's ancestral lands. The tribe camped for nine days to rest and fish, though they caught few. To mark the entrance to their homeland, Sunbright recalled the Victory Dance, which the tribe hadn't danced in years, and stomped the steps clumsily until Forestvictory put him right. The whole tribe rejoiced the night long, laughing for sheer joy even at mistakes.

Packing up, the barbarians marched northwest, never far from the dappled shore of the Narrow Sea, and with every mile, their feet grew lighter, for they walked familiar soil.

By day the tribe sprawled over a mile of grasslands, some four hundred thirty people and a handful of noisy dogs. Their woven baskets of cooking goods and blankets and tools were small, dragged by rawhide shoulder straps on travois, long sticks that striped the grass behind. The poplar poles acted as ridge poles for tents every evening. Rengarth Barbarians usually traveled with much bigger travois hauled by half-wild reindeer, but now they had none. In town they had captured brutish, garbage-eating dogs that they were beating into submission, or eating the untractable ones. Still, even in near-poverty, most of the tribe was glad to be moving again-doing something, anything, instead of rotting.

"So many people!" Knucklebones said once.

"More than I guessed," Sunbright agreed. He leaned into the straps of their travois. His mother marched on one side, his lover on the other. "But once we decided to go, they came from hill and dale. And from town, thank Lady Luck."

"Thank Sunbright," Monkberry put in. "Some would still be lost if you hadn't come and set us on the right path. They'd be rooted in town and on farms, cut off from their rightful heritage."

Sunbright smiled, and said, "I just hope we find a rightful home. This is a great mass of people to cross half a world on the dream of a half-baked shaman."

The women were silent, thinking of the burden Sunbright carried on his mind. Knucklebones said, "By the time we strike Sanguine Mountain, folks won't remember why they came, and they'll be too busy to fuss."

"There's always time for fussing," the shaman moaned, but he brushed any gloom aside and simply trudged on. Like everyone else, he was glad to be moving.

Still, he saw the division in the tribe, and hoped it could heal. Scanning the prairie, he saw that most of the barbarians were blond, but many brown and red heads dotted the plain. That was all right, for the tribe always needed new blood. Fighters wore the traditional warrior's roach and horsetail, non-fighters wore their hair tied back or else loose to their shoulders. All wore hide shirts and tall boots.

Except Magichunger's friends. Fifty or more, designated as guards by the new war chief, continued to wear long hair and beards and town-made shirts and breeches of cloth. The new apparel went against barbarian tradition, but Magichunger's crowd sported it proudly, for it set them apart. There wasn't much Sunbright could do about someone's clothing, so, for now, he ignored the division.

Their biggest problem was food. Twentyscore hardworking people could eat a farm valley to the soil. Here on the prairie grew only some roots and insects, minnows in streams, and the rare bird's nest. Everything big and edible outran them. Hunters armed with longbows and daubed with yellow mud crept far ahead of the tribe. When they could, they downed wily pronghorn antelope, skinny mule deer, and shaggy wild horses. The meat was tough and stringy, with hardly any fat so vitally needed, though the barbarians ate everything except the ears and hooves. Still, meat was scarce, and everyone hungered all the time.

Five days into the ancient lands, luck brought a rampaging mammoth driven insane by brain worms. Hunters and fighters surrounded and hacked at the thing with spears and swords. At the cost of three broken limbs and one death, they downed the beast and feasted for three days on blood, flesh, and organs. The children made a hidey-hole of the skull, and crawled in and out of eye slots giggling. By night, guards drove off skulking wolves and saber-toothed tigers that cried eerily like lost children.

Knucklebones was intrigued by the interconnected life of the tribe, so different from the complex and diverse life in the city. Once she asked, "What are the clans you speak of?"

"The clans?" Sunbright replied, still dragging the travois, the pole ends hissing in the grass. "Children are assigned to clans on their second birthday. They're picked randomly so the families are mixed up, so no family is pitted against another in a feud. It gives the children something to cling to as they grow, another circle besides parents and brothers and sisters. We have, let's see, eight clans: Raven, Elk, Griffon, White Bear, Beluga, Snow Tiger, Thunderbeast, and Gray Wolf. You draw wisdom and strength from your totem animal. In dire straits, I've been visited by ravens with advice."

"What's a beluga?"

"A big fish with a pointed snout."

"What's a thunderbeast?"

"A, uh, big lizard that… belches thunder," Sunbright improvised. "I don't really know."

"What can it teach you?"

Sunbright turned his head as he surged along. "Why so many questions?"

"I just want to know," Knucklebones said, gazing across the rolling sea of grass. "How does one become a member of the tribe?"

"Marry a member. Be born to it. Ask to join. Or just come in and stay. Some wander in and never leave. After a time, we accept them. Or you can be captured."

"Wife-stealing must make you unpopular with neighbors."

"What else can we do? We're a small tribe, and most related by blood. You can't marry a cousin, it's taboo. The elders would disallow it. So, if you need a wife, or husband, the best way is to hunt a stranger."

"Hunt?"

"Kidnap."

"How do you do it?"

"Oh… lie in wait by the side of a road or visit a town or marketplace, pick out someone you fancy, follow them home, stuff them in a hide sack, and carry them off. They're homesick for a while, but get over it eventually. Am I right, mother?"

"You're right, son." Monkberry smiled. "I went for a night swim and took off my shift. Your father must have seen something he liked, because he was waiting when I came out. I broke his nose the first night, but grew to like him, for he was kind. After my first child, I was allowed to visit my parents. Sevenhaunt gave them four wild horses. Considering how I plagued my parents with naughtiness, they thought it a bargain. 'Those horses aren't half as wild as that girl,' said my father. 'Good luck keeping a bridle on her.' " She laughed merrily.

Knucklebones drank in the lore. "Do newcomers get clan animals? Totems?" she asked.

"Their partners'," said Sunbright. "Or they can pick another. Which will you choose? The night owl? The sewer rat? How about the porcupine, because you're so bristly sometimes?"

Knucklebones hoisted her nose in the air and said, "Your totem beast must be the crocodile, with that big mouth. How are people married?"

Sunbright hitched the straps on his shoulder, squinted at the sun and their backtrail, tasted the wind for rain, all while Knucklebone stewed for an answer. Finally he teased, "Mother can tell you."

Knucklebones tsked. "Never mind. I don't care to know," she lied, nose high, then she veered off to inspect an imaginary gully.

Monkberry teased, "I don't think you could stuff her in a hide sack. Though she'd make a fine catch."

"Watch where you step, Mother. You might fall down a hole."

Monkberry laughed.

The tribe walked on, singing and calling, breaking camp by dawn, snatching a quick breakfast, then packing the travois and swaying off. They halted when the sun was two hands above the horizon to assemble their meager camp, though there were only enough tents and blankets to cover the children and elders. They dug fire pits and gathered dry dung, brewed thin tea, heated what meat or bones they had, stewed groundnuts or artichokes they'd gathered, and soon fell asleep, hungry and exhausted.

But the precious hour between supper and slumber was the one Sunbright loved best, for then stories were told. At first only Sunbright related the old familiar tales. How White Bear Lost His Tail. Why the Sky Burns Gold. How Dima and Nunki Tricked the Frost Giants. How Solenska Won the Heart of Ega. Yellow firelight reflected from the faces of young and old attending stories funny and sad, romantic and courageous. Sunbright was glad, for those tales were more than entertainment. They taught truth and friendship and honor and love. The stories, more than anything else, formed the history of this proud northern race. Without them, the tribe would just be a collection of strangers.

Gradually, other storytellers arose to fill the starry sky with wonder. Forestvictory, so capable a trail chief, related Why Whales Live in the Sea. Crabbranch, quiet and shy, stammered through The One-Eyed King and his Wife. Old Iceborn, blind and half deaf, dredged from memory an ancient tale even he'd forgotten, a rousing saga of barbarians warring over The Magic Spring. Even Magichunger caught the fever, and hemmed and hawed through The Two Brothers.

There were still arguments every day, clashes and squabbles over details from how to hang a strap to how to end a romance, but Sunbright delighted in it, for people discussed, not despaired.

And one night, as Sunbright dozed off from a particularly long day, a voice made his ears perk. A cultured accent from the city. Knucklebones told a story new to the tribe, a long, sad romance about parted lovers who met again in death, a story she called The Red Knight and the Blue Maiden.

A short while later, people yawned and turned in. Lying on a bed of grass, Sunbright felt Knucklebones wriggle her spine against his chest for warmth, for they'd given their blankets away, and the autumn nights were chilly. Chuckling, he kissed her pointed ear, and whispered, "I liked your story."

"The tribe didn't." Hurt marred her voice. "They didn't understand it. They didn't get it."

The shaman nibbled her small ear, but she brushed him off. "I don't belong, Sunbright. I don't fit with your people. I never will."

Her wounded tone pained him, so he hugged her close. "Give it time," he told her softly. "People will ask for that story again, once they've thought about it. You're different, but you'll learn our ways-"

"What about my ways?" The woman spun in his arms and poked his chest. "I can't become a barbarian, not truly! And I like what I am: human and elf combined, and a damned clever thief to boot! I survived in the gutters of Karsus Enclave, but there's no place for me in this world, or this time. You have your tribe, and every day you grow closer to them. I'm left out in the cold."

"No, that's not…" Sunbright was hedging and knew it, so shut up. "You're right. I'm so worried about keeping the tribe together and reaching our destination safely that I forget you hail from the south. I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps in a few years, if the tribe is settled, you and I can travel, journey to cities like Ioulaum so you can feel at home."

"I doubt it." The part-elf nuzzled against his chest, tears betraying her voice. "You keep saying a shaman is no good without a tribe, and you were so fiercely homesick, you'll never leave. Not that I blame you. But what's to become of me?"

Sunbright had no answer, merely held her close, kissed her head, and whispered, "It'll be fine, Knuckle'. As long as we love each other…"