Mortal Consequences

Chapter 2

The gulguthhydra was hungry. It was always hungry. Now it sensed food approaching.

The cavern was black, so its many heads couldn't see. The gulguthhydra was also black, though its dozen eyes would shine dull white in any light. The monster looked like a hill of black thorns that sprouted necks studded with scales like chips of volcanic glass, and atop the necks were fang-studded mouths, pug noses, and short, sharp ears. Too, the beast sported a pair of tentacles. All these writhing organs roved over the walls and floor of the cavern incessantly, scouring the stone so often it was worn smooth as far as the beast could reach. Centuries ago, the black hydra had been captured by the pit fiend Prinquis, and rooted in this corridor by magic. Over decades, it had scraped the walls clean, caught the occasional rat or bat or lesser imp, growing a tiny bit at a time, reaching a little further with tooth and tentacle.

But always it was starving, and here came food.

The creature picking along the corridor came with a heavy tread. The monster was taller than a tall man, naked but for an ugly, lumpy, flinty hide formed of something stronger than stone, for its jagged feet scratched and nicked the polished stone floor. In light, the flinty hide would have glistened slightly, so dense were the minerals that made up its skin. It had hands and feet like a human, but no eyelids, so its blue eyes were round and staring and frightening. No hair, no fingernails or toenails, no marks on its body except the dense flint.

It talked to itself in a gravelly voice like steel on a grindstone. The gulguthhydra perked up, stilled its lashing heads and tentacles to wait until the flint creature was close enough to seize. This being would make a fine meal.

"Out. This must be the way out. Must be. Outside, finally. Out…"

Closer trod the crusty feet of the monster. The hydra lunged.

Three heads struck as one. One dived from the right, one from the left, one straight down, like three fingers snatching a morsel. Toothy mouths clamped onto the flint creature in the same second, biting hard and gnashing fast to rip the prey to flinders, to reduce it to bloody gobbets before it could escape, or even limp away wounded.

The flinty fiend was knocked to its knees under the triple assault. One arm and one shoulder were pinned by mouths, and its head had been sucked into the maw of the largest head. Yet fangs broke on the stony hide, so the gulguthhydra's mouths filled with chips and black blood. Champing furiously didn't tear the stone skin, or even dent it.

Then the human monster struck back.

From one fist lanced a long white beam like a sword of moonfire. The blade exploded through the roof of one mouth and pierced the tiny brain and scaly skull so the head snapped back, then hung loose, dangling. From the other fist poured a rain of acid that smoked hydra flesh in a thousand places. Black blood shot in jets to stain the walls and ceiling. From the flint creature's mouth shot a bolt of pure energy like venom. The invisible arrow-shaped jolt sliced through the biggest head, shearing it open like a rotten melon, then plunged deep into the hydra's writhing, hilly shape. The thorny body was torn open, the many-chambered heart sundered.

With a scream from four mouths, the hydra whipped heads and tentacles in a frenzy until suddenly it stopped cold, and collapsed into a heap, stinking like charred garbage.

Spitting out scales and tooth chips, the flint monster arose, mounted the sodden, sundered carcass, climbed over, and moved on. If Prinquis, lord of this hell, had anchored the hydra here, then this passage, "… must be a way out. Outside. Got to be. Chance to get out…" But half a mile on, the flint creature bumped into a rockslide. The roof had collapsed, leaving a cavity of solid stone, and time and heat and pressure had sealed the whole tight. The monster screamed, wailed, pounded with blocky fists that cracked boulders. Yet it could never dig free, never escape this way.

Turning, the monster retraced it steps. Its rage still burned white-hot when it reached the dead hydra. Screaming anew, the monster kicked the carcass so chunks of black flesh rebounded from the walls. Tearing with stone claws, it ripped more hunks loose, bit through them, slammed them down, hurled them away. It raged and ranted and revelled in gore until the hydra was nothing but a black smear studded with teeth and gristle.

Only then did the black-spattered monster continue on, like some misshapen parody of a man or woman smeared with offal. As its great heavy feet scratched along, it muttered anew.

"… Not the way out. There must be. Must get out. Revenge… that's all. Death to everyone I hate.

"But first, must get out…"

Onward they trekked. Winter waned as Sunbright and Knucklebones searched from the Channel Mountains in the east, north past the fork at Two Rivers, then westward along the edge of the High Ice, where even polar bears didn't go. Nothing did they find.

Sunbright patiently explained that his people always followed this route, for as the snow retreated, the reindeer came after, cropping the soft moss of the tundra, until the herd reached the High Ice and turned westward. Yet there was no evidence of any tribe. Disturbingly, Sunbright noted the reindeer herd was thinner, the animals gaunt. The moss was thin, and the tiny purple blossoms he remembered from his youth were sparse.

"The land is weak," he told Knucklebones. "Even the deer's bones are flimsy. All these skulls of infant reindeer means they're stillborn, which means their mothers are sickly. The life of the land is being sapped somehow."

Spring turned to summer, until Knucklebones stripped to leathers by day, though she was never very warm. As the shaman had foretold, the soft earth of the tundra turned to bog. Muddy wallows under the moss formed a gluey trap that pulled Sunbright's boots off, made their legs throb from the weight of mud, slowed them down, and finally stopped them.

So they abandoned the search for the summer. They had reached the edge of the tundra at the west anyway, and faced high cliffs topped by the Cold Forest and the icy mountains of the Dementia Range in the distance. Skirting the Bay of Ascore, Sunbright sought work in Sepulcher and Arctic Rim. He found it easily, for the towns were starved for meat. Even townsfolk saw that the once vast herds had thinned, and few would enter the trackless bogs for food. So Sunbright hunted, and sold venison, wild boar, even bear meat. He gave the money to Knucklebones, for he had no use for it. The thief, with shrewd bets and quick hands, doubled and tripled their coins gambling with sailors and loggers and fishwives.

"I still don't understand," Knucklebones told him one night as she stacked coins by candlelight. They'd rented a small cabin along the water, in sight of the Barren Mountains. Sunbright found this ironic, for there he'd begun his adventures, years ago. "How can the tundra be weak? How can any land so cold and icy and muddy suffer? It's the people who live there who suffer!"

Sunbright rolled over from a doze. Hunting for miles from dawn till dusk, dragging back heavy game, tired him out. "The tundra is a hard country, but a fragile one, though it seems contradictory," he told her. "It only supports a few beasts and birds, so they rely on one another to survive. Reindeer eat the moss and leave droppings. Birds pick out seeds and bugs that live in the droppings. The birds in turn carry the seeds far and wide. That spreads the moss, keeps muddy spots from growing barren. The new growth attracts musk oxen, who churn the soil with their hooves and leave more manure, and so on, in a closed circle. If one part is removed, the circle falls apart. If the weather grows too warm, as happened once, lungworm sprout in the musk oxen. Too many worms kill the calves. Then the soil isn't turned over, barren spots spread, water erodes the wallows so the earth is scarred, the moss grows thinner, the reindeer starve-"

"All right, all right. I believe you," Knucklebones cut him off, tugging up her eye patch to rub sleepy eyes. Revealed was her blind eye, a milky white. At Sunbright's grimace, she hurriedly tugged it down. "I don't want the natural history of the world, but why is just the tundra weakened, or drained of life, or whatever you call it? Why not everywhere?"

"It is happening everywhere," Sunbright yawned, and lay back by the tiny hearth fire. Golden flames reflected on the white skin of his scarred and muscular chest. "It's just the effect shows first in a fragile area like the tundra. Candlemas spent months fighting a blight, a wheat rust, that spread through grain crops. He couldn't find any logical cause. The crops simply couldn't fight off normal diseases. As someone with measles will die if exposed to whooping cough, while a healthy man or woman shakes it off. This mysterious drain-and as a shaman, I sense it more than understand it-affects all life. Eventually, it may cause-"

Nodding at the table, Knucklebones jerked awake at the sudden silence. "Cause what?" she asked.

"Disaster. Famine. Possibly for years. Deaths in the thousands."

"No." The small woman rose, stretched like a cat, unlaced her leather vest and trousers, and said, "I was born in the future, remember? There were no great disasters. Not that I ever heard of, anyway."

"I'm not sure you would have heard," Sunbright said. He sat on their thinnest blanket and stared at the fire. By the hearth, his great longbow and heavy-nosed sword softly gleamed. "The Netherese run this world, and write down history as it suits them. They've never shown compassion for starving peasants. Commoners are fit for farming and mining and hunting-as prey-and nothing else."

Yawning, Knucklebones lay beside him. Fire reflecting on her body showed more scars than the barbarian's. The thief had grappled in knife fights since she was a baby. Lifting a thin arm, she cooed, "Come and lay your head on my shoulder, country mouse. You need to rest, not fret. Summer will end soon, and we'll travel on, won't we?"

But Sunbright didn't listen to her words, only her tone. Laying his big white-blonde head on her shoulder, he murmured, "You sound like Greenwillow."

Knucklebones stiffened, said, "And why her?"

Sunbright closed his eyes. "You called me 'country mouse.' That's what she called me. Curious, isn't it?"

"I suppose," Knucklebones said, her small bosom heaving in a sigh. "It's not mete to mention one woman while lying in the arms of another."

The barbarian opened his eyes, looked straight into her one good one, and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't think. I love you, Knuckle', and only you now. But Greenwillow was a boon companion, and I loved her once. She died saving my life, and was trapped in a corner of hell as a result. Somehow, some day, I'll get her loose of it, if her soul survived."

Again Knucklebones sighed, but wrapped her skinny, scarred arms around his head. "Your life would be easier if you busied yourself with daily tasks," she told him softly, "and people close by, not insurmountable problems that span the globe."

"Easier if I had no conscience, or honor." He kissed her white shoulder, licked her pointed ear as he spoke. "Perhaps you should marry a fishmonger or cobbler. They could give you a home, get you eight or nine children, make you fat and gray. Would that suit you better than tramping the world beside a dream-haunted barbarian?"

Knucklebones chuckled and kissed his forehead. "You're full of odd notions, Sunbright, and silly besides," she said. "Go to sleep."

And he did, as she watched the fire and caressed his thick hair.

Come the first cool day of autumn, when the hills burned red and gold and orange, Knucklebones knotted her sack of cash, Sunbright shouldered his sword and bow and satchels, and they left the summer cabin. Embarking on a small caravel with lateen sails, they were ferried down the Narrow Sea, past Vandal Station, past Northreach, past Frostypaw and Coldfoot, and through the Channel Lock. At Harborage the two asked after the Rengarth Barbarians, but received only blank looks. All summer Sunbright had asked everyone he met, travelers and locals alike, for the whereabouts of his tribe, but none knew. As far as the northwestern reaches of the empire were concerned, the Rengarth had vanished, and their ancestral lands stood empty. Wondering, and growing more fearful all the time, Sunbright had decided to sail into the eastern arm of the Narrow Sea and inquire there. But even at the crossroads of Harborage, they found no trace.

Over time, learning nothing, Sunbright's face grew longer, his eyes haunted, his demeanor bitter. Even with Knucklebones his answers grew short, until they passed days without speaking. They sailed on, clear to the east, to Janick near the river called The Alley, and found naught. There Sunbright disembarked, and stood on the docks, and stared at the sea and land for hours.

Finally Knucklebones said, "Perhaps we search too hard." Worn down by constant travel, she perched on a bird-stained bollard. All around the harbor ships and boats tacked and rowed, delivered supplies and people and fish and sails and water. They were the only ones idle, and they felt out of place.

But no place was home now, and Knucklebones, not even of this time, found herself saddled with a gloomy companion, and nowhere to go.

"Eh? What?" Sunbright said, turning from his daydreaming. "How can one search too hard? How else shall we find my people?"

"I don't know, but wandering blind isn't working, and you're unhappy," she said, desperately trying to think of any alternative. "Perhaps-perhaps if we set another goal, temporarily, we'd have luck. That might lead us in the right direction. When the way of mortals fail, it's best to trust in the gods."

Sunbright turned back to the harbor, as if to see over the horizon. "Perhaps you're correct. Perhaps the gods have other tasks for us."

Absentminded, the big barbarian rested his hand on the warhammer tucked into his belt. The long head bore a parrot's beak and crushing face, a tool for war, more a dwarf's weapon than a man's. "I've carried this a long time, with a pledge," he said. "I told Dorlas's brethren in Dalekeva that I would one day return the hammer to his kinfolk. I could return it now."

"Capital! A wonderful idea!" The thief exclaimed. Encouraged by the change, Knucklebones hopped up and kissed his chin. "We can journey to the south, where we haven't been before, and learn the news. Perhaps we'll find word of your tribe. Strange roads often lead to treasure!"

Without further ado, the barbarian walked off the dock and turned his back on the Narrow Sea, stomping down the first muddy street tending south. Shaking her head at his obstinate nature, Knucklebones scampered beside him.

A ghost of a smile creased Sunbright's face as he told her, "You realize this is just another quest, another foolish need to satisfy honor."

"I understand, but your honor is all you have. Feed it to keep it strong," she laughed. "At least, going south, we'll be warm."

"Sticky, muggy, buggy, and hot."

Sunbright tramped steadily past wagons and workers and shops.

"Warm like the sewers of Karsus," Knucklebones corrected. In celebration, she reached into her pockets and dug out her brass knuckles, slipped them onto knotty fingers.

"Anticipating trouble?" the barbarian asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Wherever you go, there's trouble," she chuckled. For the first time in days, Sunbright chuckled with her.

"I knew we wouldn't be warm for long," Knucklebones groused.

"It's not cold." Sunbright flicked snow from his eyelashes as he said, "It's… bracing."

"I need to brace myself, all right." Knucklebones said. She clutched a cedar bush jutting from the rock face to her left. "Else I'll be blown clean off this mountain."

"You could dance on the head of a pin, you're so nimble," Sunbright chided. "I'm the one slipping and sliding, taking two steps up and one back."

The two were again wrapped in sheepskin coats and mantles, tall boots, and wool leggings. Their boots slipped often, and Sunbright needed to catch rocks and roots to climb the steep mountain path. They'd climbed for three days, leaving the steppes and the last village far below. The vista to their right had yawned wider with every step, miles of wintry valley dark with pines and sheltered meadows dotted with sheep. A storm rushing over the Iron Mountains pelted them with snow and blotted out all vision except their path.

"It's not far now," Sunbright called. "It can't be."

"How can you know?" Knucklebones sniffed. Her furred hood was rimmed with white flakes that set off her shadowed face like a halo. "We could step to the moon."

"They said in the village the dwarves live below the treeline. We've climbed almost to where the green stops and the rocks are bare. And this is the only path, ignoring a few forks, so we can't be lost. Any minute now we'll probably smell smoke, or spook a sentry-whoa!"

The travelers stopped in shock. Around a bend, looming through the hissing snow, a trio of black-eyed cow skulls stared at them.

Knucklebones whispered a charm, Sunbright grunted. The skulls were huge, from oxen he supposed, bleached white and heaped with snow that trickled down the muzzles, one of which bore deep axe marks.

"What are they?" Knucklebones asked. "Warnings, or just markers?"

"I don't know," he said. Yet without thinking, he drew Harvester from the back scabbard with a low moan.

"Is it wise to bear your sword? Won't the dwarves, these sentries you speak off, take that amiss and shoot first?"

"It is foolish to bear a sword when coming in peace…" Sunbright pulled the scarf clear of his ears and nose to track sounds and smells. "But something else is up here. I feel it."

Knucklebones tugged off her hood to free her elven ears, keener than the human's. "Besides dwarves," she started to say, "what would-Hark!"

"What?"

The small thief grabbed the warrior's arm, and tugged him into a niche crammed with snow-laced bracken. She whispered, "I heard a jingle of harness, or a leper's bell."

"Bell? How-look out!"

Both whirled as an avalanche crashed down. Sunbright and Knucklebones had a vision of huge hoofs, gray, hairy muzzles, thick horns, and gray rags wrapped around tremendously wide shoulders. Carved wooden staves pointed like nocked arrows, then they were attacked by magic, staff, and fist.

Crowded, Sunbright hollered a warning to Knucklebones. There were three or four enemies, but he could see little with snow in his eyes. Rising within arm's reach, they must have crouched in the rocky niche, lying in ambush. For them, or for dwarves?

No matter. The barbarian slapped his free hand onto Harvester's pommel and stabbed straight. The long sword was unlike any other seen in the Rengarth tribe, won by his father decades ago in the southlands. The blade curved slightly from the pommel, then widened so the nose was fatter than the shank. Yet metal had been cut from the tip's back to form a wicked barbed hook. Thus the sword could stab, chop, or tear on the back draw. Sunbright tried all three attacks now.

But so close loomed these gray, shaggy foes, and so hindered was Sunbright by waist-high bushes, that the blade was batted aside. Before the shaman could recover, a wooden staff smacked him alongside the head. White lights exploded behind his eyes. He staggered at the knees, and dimly saw the shaft rise. To do what? Stab him? Knock him onto the snow-slick path and lever him off the mountain? Either way, his stunned brain couldn't focus.

Then the end of the staff erupted with red light. Sunbright felt a burn sear his neck, then he fell or was tripped. He crashed in snow.

To one side, slick as an eel, Knucklebones shed her coat and satchels, scrunched low as a hare and leaped high. She popped up almost in the face of the huge enemies. To her astonishment, they proved to be shaggy beasts like upright cattle. Horns jutted from the sides of their heads, and from some dangled tiny bells on leather thongs that jingled. These cow-beings possessed the bleached skulls along the trail, then. Their long hands bore blunt, black nails, and all carried curved wooden staves.

Surprised by her rush, a yak-man shrank back to aim the end of his staff. Knucklebones gave him no chance. Doubling her fist of brass knuckledusters, she slammed the yak-man hard on the nose. The cow face jerked, and bright blood spurted, so Knucklebones knew he or she was hurt. She smacked the same spot, and saw blood erupt from twin nostrils. Good, their noses were vulnerable.

A blistering red light erupted at her. She heard Sunbright grunt and fall. Another yak-man aimed a staff at her.

She ducked just in time, for a blast of alien wind blew leaves off the tough cedars that ringed them. Knucklebones was shielded from the tiny tornado by the hulking yak-man in front of her. Deciding to stay put and keep his protection, she closed again. She couldn't defeat them all, but could pound hell out of one, and hope for the best.

The yak-man grabbed his nose so blood ran between black-nailed fingers. Crowding her luck, Knucklebones stooped and aimed a savage uppercut at his long chin. Brass knuckles batted his snowy goat's beard, bashed thin bones underneath. A loud crack announced a broken jawbone. She wanted to yell for joy, for the sheer thrill of battle. Instead, she slid even closer as the yak-man tumbled backward.

Meanwhile, Sunbright had fallen below the brush, and so saved his life. The yak-man wielding the magic staff blasted again, but the searing flame only blasted snow into steam. Ignoring the throbbing burn on his chin and neck, Sunbright bulled aside brush, glimpsed a hairy, crooked leg ending in a rough hoof worn from mountain climbing. That small target was all he needed.

Gritting his teeth against pain, he snaked Harvester past tough roots and hooked the barb behind the yak-man's hock. A savage yank severed the tendon, and the creature was ham-strung. He toppled into a compatriot with a bawl like a slaughtered ox.

Knucklebones heard the cry and took heart. Together they might subdue these queer people and escape. Pressing one hand against the bloody-nosed yak, she slithered around his wide ribs after another foe. She found one shorter and slimmer than the others, probably a female, but the cow saw her at the same time, and whipped up a staff topped by a tiny hourglass. Knucklebones had only a second to wonder what it was — then she was standing in the village in the valley. Beside her, Sunbright asked a milkmaid where lay the path to the dwarves' high caves. The milkmaid had blue eyes, and rubbed the tip of her nose. Knucklebones saw freckles on her hand, smelled manure, and bread baking in a cottage, and heard milk sloshing in the pail.

But how could this image be real? What happened to the mountain and yak-men and snow? The sun was warm on her neck. The maid's dog snuffled her hand, and she felt its warm tongue on her fingers. How had she been transported three days into the past, and many miles distant?

The staff bore an hourglass, she recalled. Some magic time spell? Had it sent her mind into the past?

Images and thoughts tumbled in her mind, then a staff smacked the top of her head with a fierce crunch. The milkmaid's farm winked into blackness.

Sunbright saw his lover struck down, saw her drop as if lifeless. Rage overcame sense, and he reared upright with a roar. Bushes and snow flew as he hoisted Harvester in the air, slung it far behind to shear at the bull neck of the nearest of the four yak-men, but was undone again. All four turned on him. The tornado-spewing staff aimed, puffed like a dragon, and the barbarian was blown backward to sprawl on the snow-slick path.

His head slammed stone, his burned neck sent jolts of lightning coursing through his frame. Before he could rise, the yak-woman stamped forward with her staff, and knocked Harvester from his numbed hands. A tremendous hoof stamped on his chest, and drove out his wind. Through a gray fog loomed the calm, deadly face of an otherworldly executioner. The yak-woman drew a curved scimitar, and coolly aimed to split his throat.

Sunbright bucked against the hoof, got nowhere, gasped, and drew no breath into his squashed chest. He flailed his arms uselessly. He'd die now, and Knucklebones next. So ended all his mad quests.

Obscured by snow, the curved blade topped its arch, came whistling around — and three crossbow bolts buried themselves to their feathers in the yak-woman's breast.