Mortal Consequences

Chapter 3

Pinned by a hoof, stunned by a head blow, half-blinded by snow and pain, Sunbright saw the yak-woman's brown eyes roll white as she died. A thin trickle of blood stained her round nostrils-sign of lung puncture- then she slumped onto the snow and collapsed in a heap. Her curved sword landed in the snow without a sound.

Another yak-man cast right and left for danger, whipped his staff through the air, rumbled a gurgling command to his two comrades. A black crossbow bolt slammed into the side of his neck and cut his orders off. His black-nailed hand grabbed the shaft.

Glimpsing this in seconds, Sunbright rolled, scurried on knees and elbows to grab Harvester of Blood lying on the narrow path, its imprint outlined in snow. Keeping low, he shouted, "Knuckle', watch for arrows! Someone's killing them!"

There was no answer, and a spasm of fear clutched his heart. Was she just being silent for the fight? Or had she been killed, or pitched off the mountain? Perhaps she lay bleeding. He must A brawny hand clamped onto his shoulder from behind, and he was hurled flat, so hard his spine rattled. Etched against a white fluttering sky surged figures like short brown bears bristling with weaponry. The bear-beings swept to either side. One leveled a crossbow, let go with a slap and clack of string and bow. Another hoisted a long-faced battle-axe and hollered a cry like a condor making a kill. In a furry wave, the newcomers roared, and fell upon the surviving yak-men.

Half-seen through snow, Sunbright winced at the slaughter. The yak-man with the bolt in his neck turned, one hand still clutching the shaft, and tried to rip free his scimitar. A screaming dwarf-for such were their rescuers-hopped in the air and swung his battle-axe so hard the cow-being's arm was severed at the shoulder. Blood spurted over attacker and attacked. Before the yak-man could take another step, the fur-clad dwarf chopped savagely at a backwards-bent leg. Cut down like a tree, the yak-man tumbled over so fast the dwarf had to fend the shaggy body aside.

Sunbright crawled toward where he'd last seen Knucklebones; he didn't want to rise in front of a crossbow. The other two yak-men were hacked to pieces. Smashing through snowy brush, a dwarf lanced a bolt into a yak-man's jaw, pinning it to his skull. Another stabbed upward with a short spear under broad ribs. Driving the spear deep, the short one shoved so hard the yak-man's horns clacked on the rock wall behind. Again the dwarf shoved, until the shaggy body was slammed full against the stone, then again, so hard the shaft snapped, and the dwarf stumbled against his dying foe. The last yak-man raised his staff over his head sideways, a sign of surrender, but died. Two dwarves with mattock and falchion slammed blades into the beast's bowels, so it doubled with a cry of agony, and a third dwarf smashed down on the broad head with a warhammer square between the horns. Even then their ferocity was unquenched, for other dwarves swarmed around the fallen creatures to hack them limb from limb.

Steering clear of the battle-crazed warriors, Sunbright found Knucklebones lying on her side in her woolens atop smashed brush. The tiny woman was already half-covered by snow, unconscious. The shaman scanned her with his hands, found a crease in her skull and blood matted in her dark hair. Gently for such huge gnarled hands, he lifted her eyelid to peer at her pupil. One way to gauge brain damage was to compare a victim's pupils, check they were the same size, but Knucklebones only had one eye. Then snow settling on her eyeball made it twitch. Relieved, he guessed she'd recover, once he got her warm.

Brushing off snow, Sunbright fetched her shed coat and wrapped her tight, then hung her satchels on his shoulders. He hoisted Knucklebones in his arms, but even her weight, light as a lamb, made him dizzy, for he'd also been head-bashed by a curious staff. He leaned on a rock until his head stopped spinning. Too, a burn alongside his left ear and neck itched and throbbed abominably, and he knew lymph and blood wept from the wound to soak his shirt, chilling him. Gritting his teeth, he wondered what the dwarves had in store for them.

The mountain men were busy. Savage fury abated, they resorted to their usual industrious ways. With an axe they methodically hacked off the four oxen heads, then propped and wedged them amidst stones to dry and collect snow. Continuing, they sliced off the gray rags that passed for the yak-men's clothing, chopped off hands and cloven feet and threw them off the mountain, then hoisted the still-warm bodies to split the bellies and dress out the guts, which they left in a steaming pile along the trail. Finally, dragging the dressed carcasses, booty of satchels and staves and swords, they stamped free of the brush and trooped up the trail with their burdens.

The last pair faced Sunbright, who was fighting fatigue, cold, and dizziness while clutching Knucklebones, who hung limp as a rag doll. The barbarian blinked when he realized the dwarf with the thick, braided hair was female, for she had a thick beard, and her face was craggy and seamed as an old shoe. Sunbright hadn't known there were dwarven women. Legend said dwarves grew from the rocks like golems and ogres.

The frowning, blood-spattered woman paused, a thick falchion at the ready, and said, "Why have you come here?"

"Uh…" Sunbright groaned. The abrupt question flustered the shaman. "I seek the Sons of Baltar. I have-something to give Drigor."

He was never sure if his sincerity or the promise of a gift turned the tide, but the dwarven woman muttered to her companion in a voice like grinding rocks. The other growled back, then the first said, "Follow me."

Blinking against snow and exhaustion, Sunbright nodded gratefully. The two dwarves, no higher than his belt buckle, stumped up the slick path, and the barbarian picked after, hoping he didn't faint and tumble a thousand feet.

The trail got worse for the suffering Sunbright toting Knucklebones, for eventually the dwarves turned from the path and mounted steep steps hacked from stone, then entered a pass no wider than his shoulders. The narrow chasm was dozens of feet high. Silhouetted against falling snow were crouched sentries with crossbows. Stumbling and slipping, Sunbright kept up with the sturdy, sure-footed dwarves, and eventually passed into a black slot where warm air gushed into the barbarian's face.

After that he saw little, for he had to hunch over. The ceiling was so low, and stretches were entirely black, though all the caves were gloriously warm. After a while he saw torchlight, and a faint glow from rough paint splashed here and there on the walls, paint infused with some magic luminosity. The dwarven woman turned once to say, "Go in there and stay put," then marched off after the rest.

Ducking double, Sunbright blundered into a rough-cut room. There was no furniture, just a single iron pipe with a spigot running along the craggy wall and daubed with glowing paint. He thanked the gods he could stand upright. Cradling Knucklebones, he shucked off his heavy coat and made a bed for her on a crude stone shelf. Testing the rusty spigot singed his hand, for it was scalding hot. He guessed all the caves were heated by boiling water springing from the earth. He used his sleeve to turn the spigot, soaked a rag, and cleaned Knucklebones's scalp wound and face and hands. He drank some of the water, flat and reeking of iron, then cleaned and bandaged his neck wound. Sitting, he straightened his tackle, honed his sword back to razor sharpness, and-ordered to stay put-sat beside the sleeping Knucklebones. Lulled by the delicious heat, he nodded off.

He awoke to heavy stamping and jumped off the shelf with sword in hand, quick and lithe as a panther, but groggy in mind. So, weaving and clutching a sword, he greeted his frowning hosts.

The dwarf was old. His wrinkled face was framed by a bushy white beard and eyebrows, with six silver rings braided into his drooping mustache. He wore a tunic of rough-out gray leather with a shaggy hump behind his neck, and Sunbright supposed the hide came from a yak-man. A kilt of goat hide, much stained by rust and pitted by burn marks, hung to battered boots stiff with tar. Somehow, he looked familiar.

"I am Drigor," stated the dwarf. Of course, Dorlas's father resembled him. "What have you to give me?"

"I am Sunbright Steelshanks, of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians." If they still exist, he thought dismally. "I bring you-bring you-"

But the old dwarf's deep brown eyes had already spotted the warhammer holstered on the barbarian's belt. Without words, Sunbright pulled the weapon and handed it over.

With hands marked by crooked fingers, inch-thick callouses, and burn scars, the dwarf cradled the hammer as gently as a baby. The hammer had always looked and felt big enough to slay an ox, but in those hands it looked like a toy. Without any visible emotion, Drigor said, "We heard. But you were there? Tell me how it came to pass."

A little civility would be nice, Sunbright thought, a please and thank you for risking his and Knucklebones's life to visit these mountains to deliver a hammer. But the old man-if dwarves were men-had just been reminded that his son was dead, so Sunbright could stifle his irritation.

"We were bodyguarding a caravan, and almost to Dalekeva, when the Hunt caught us…" Still groggy, and hungry, Sunbright sat on the stone shelf beside a sleeping Knucklebones and told the tale. How within sight of the city walls, a hunting party of decadent Neth on golden mechanical dragons and birds swooped down. How Dorlas discharged his duty by sending the caravan's merchants ahead while the bodyguards fought from the woods. How, eventually, the forest was ignited, so they ran for the city gates. How Dorlas, wounded, fell behind, and insisted they run on. How a huntsman pierced the dwarf with a golden lance through the belly but, incredibly, Dorlas hung onto the lance, jerked himself up it, yanking the shaft through his own guts, to crush the metal wolf mask of the huntsman and kill him first, before the dwarf died himself. How Sunbright and Greenwillow were saved by Dorlas's sacrifice.

Though he was an excellent storyteller, like all tundra dwellers, Sunbright didn't embellish the story, for Dorlas's deeds needed no exaggeration. All through the tale, the eyes of Drigor never left the shaman's face, and Sunbright felt burned anew, as if he'd been pierced to the guts himself, cut open to expose any untruth.

"A good death, and brave…" The old dwarf talked mostly to himself. "We own little here in the Iron Mountains, we Sons of Baltar. Scanty food, iron used up, little coal to burn. So, for generations now, our children are our resource. We train our sons and daughters to war, and send them into the world of men to fight as soldiers and bodyguards. Many never return to this, our ancestral home. So with Dorlas."

Sunbright was quiet at this epitaph, feeling that, rather than floating a coffin down a river, he'd finally helped bury Dorlas, who'd been a friend in the short time the barbarian had known him. He murmured, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry is nothing," pronounced the dwarf, obviously an old mountain adage. Then surprised him with, "I owe you, Sunbright Steelshanks. I, Drigor, son of Yasur, owe you a favor." He tipped the warhammer, then left the stone room.

Sunbright sat on the shelf and stared at the empty doorway, wondering what next? A quiet stir made him turn.

"A dwarf owes you a favor. Better than money in the bank."

Sunbright looked into Knucklebones's single eye and asked, "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough. As a child, I learned to wake silently. You make powerful and lasting friends, country mouse."

"I meet a lot of people, true, though some I must kill. How's your head?"

"It hurts. What are you looking at?" she murmured, almost against his chin as he loomed above her.

"It's a shame you've only the one, because it's a pretty eye," he whispered, then he planted a big juicy kiss on her eyelid.

"Yick! That's not where they go!"

He kissed her small, firm mouth.

"Better?"

"Much better," she murmured.

Sunbright and Knucklebones spent the night huddled under two blankets and the glowing iron pipe. The stone was hard, but the warmth wonderful. In dry clothing and with breakfast (their own rations) under their belts, they felt better, if sore.

Drigor walked into the room shouting, "Are you better?"

Noise made Sunbright's head throb, but he answered civilly, "Yes, we're better, thank you. This is my friend, Knucklebones, by the way."

The dwarf only puffed a wisp of ring-braided mustache from his mouth. "It's well you can travel," he said, "for you must leave."

"Leave?" The word was jerked from Sunbright.

By the glow of luminous paint the dwarf's face looked like old parchment. He nodded glumly, brooking no argument, and said, "We have nothing to offer you, and you nothing to offer us. Your mission is accomplished and you may go. We conserve food and fighters because of yak-men. What you saw yesterday was another scout party. The yak-men covet our mountains. They push in from the east, and we are busy killing them. This takes food, and we have barely enough to feed ourselves."

"More folk on the move…" Sunbright pondered aloud. "Tell me, do you find the animals fewer, and sickly, even plants not thriving?"

Drigor frowned, and said, "Yes, perhaps. The elk and goats did not climb as high this autumn, and even the high-dwelling chamois have moved to lower meadows to scratch moss. Scouts tell us the lichen and gorse is thin on the highest peaks, and not recovering from their graze. Why ask?"

"The high mountains are another harsh territory, but fragile, like my tundra. I sought my people in traditional lands for months and never found them. They've moved into new territories, unless they're all dead, which I don't believe. Now you tell me yak-men press in from the east, outside the empire. I wonder if they too find their land can't support them."

"I care not." Drigor waved a craggy hand as he said, "These mountains can't support them either, and we kill all they send. But our best fighters are away soldiering, and the yak-men are many. Sometimes I think…"

The pause arrested Sunbright and Knucklebones, but the dwarf never finished, only changed tack. "Never mind. You must go. Gird yourselves. A guide will lead you out." He spun on his heels and stamped away.

"The rotten bastards!" Knucklebones snapped. "The lousy cheapskates! Pitched out into the storm without so much as a by-your-leave! Why not just hurl us off the mountain, for Shar's sake?"

"Or charge us for the room and hot water," Sunbright sighed. "It would be kind to give us some of the yak-men's rations. They had food satchels."

"I'd like one of those carved staves." Knucklebones groused. She rammed clothes into her ox hide pack, yanked the straps tight, and slammed her blanket roll atop. "They're probably worth a fortune! And we earned them, for we engaged the enemy first."

"We would have died if the dwarves hadn't attacked," Sunbright reminded her.

"They still stink, the penny-pinching shrimps. I hope their mountain collapses around their ears."

She shut up as a dwarven woman, the same who'd led them here, clomped through the doorway. Crossing her arms, the dwarf waited impatiently for them to strap on their tackle. Silently, the humans complied. Without a word, they followed her through corridors black or illuminated, searing hot or just warm. Knucklebones craned her head around, for she'd seen nothing when carried in. They heard bursts of coarse laughter, smelled cookfires and food, glimpsed rooms where dwarves repaired gear or stoked charcoal fires for forging. Once she heard a snatch of lonesome song like a coyote's cry. Deliberately she dragged her feet to slow them.

For Knucklebones found this mountain enclave enticing. The winding dark tunnels with jots of light, so warm, reminded her of home, the sewers and tunnels of the floating enclave of Karsus. And too, the hustle and bustle and busyness reminded her of the thieves' community with its quiet secrets and bold camaraderie. Visiting the dwarven warrens made the city-born orphan feel homesick, and yet at home.

But they were ejected. A wave of cold air gushed, and made Knucklebones draw her sheepskin coat close to her neck. Her breath fogged, misting the picture of the outdoors, though she knew it was sunny. By the time her one eye had squinted open, they stood alone at the mouth of the pass, the dwarven woman having turned back.

Sunbright huffed in the clear mountain air. After last night's storm, fair weather brought blinding sun reflected from a million icicles and knobs and patches on gray, naked rocks. Far in the distance, beyond lesser peaks, lay some blue-gray and green land to the south.

Knucklebones sipped chilly air and waited for the barbarian to begin the trek down, but he stood stock-still. His lover realized he seethed inside, furious, the insult of being thrown out finally fanned to a white-hot rage. Yet he breathed deep, swallowed his anger, and finally summed up, "A hard life makes a hard people. But still, they could have… But never mind. Let's go." He tramped off, going too fast on the icy slope.

That was a contrast between them, Knucklebones thought. While her anger flared quickly, and quickly died, Sunbright took a long time to anger, smoldering low but hot, perhaps for days, then exploding.

Meekly, Knucklebones picked after him. She reflected that Sunbright too was hard, for the tundra had made him so. And being driven from his tribe, surviving on his own, had hardened him more, until he was tough as tempered steel. But even steel could shatter under tension, and the constant disappointments galled him, she knew. Seeing Dorlas die, losing Greenwillow, being dragged to the future against his will to be chased and abused, failing to find his tribe, being refused hospitality by dwarves he'd pledged to visit…

"Hard lands and hard people, yes," she murmured, "just please don't turn bitter on me, Sunbright. Don't harden your heart…"

The casura hung in the air, dozens of mouths working; scores of eyes glaring; spidery hands threatening, pitching rocks, sticks, bones, and shafts and blades of broken weapons. The ghost argued with itself, for it was composed of many, many creatures thrown together by violent death, and they hated one another.

Yet the sound of scratching feet stilled it. The casura turned to the noise, for that meant life, and more than anything the collective ghost hated anything that lived.

Onto the littered floor of the cavern trod the flint monster. Its horny feet, sharp-edged as granite, crunched underfoot a hundred bones, hooves, horns, jawbones full of fangs, rib cages, segments of tails without flesh. That hundreds had died here meant nothing to the monster, for it was obsessed with its own goal.

"… This way out. Must be the way out. Must be. Need to get free, and kill my enemies…"

The monster glanced around, sniffed through nostrils that were mere slits in its stony face. With the stirring of the high ghost came a graveyard reek, dead flesh and turned earth. Too, the dark air of the cavern resounded with sinister rattling, knocking, scratchings, and skittery, uneven footsteps. Yet none of these warnings deterred the flint monster, for it sought only a way out of the endless, winding caves.

Suddenly, in the darkness, loomed a host of eyes, all sizes and shapes and colors, all flaming with hatred. Their baleful glare was so intense the cavern was bathed in yellow-white light that flickered along the broken walls like firefly glow. The casura was nothing but eyes and mouths and rootlike, spidery hands, the whole flung together like chopped grasshoppers caught in a threshing basket. The gathered ghost stretched thin in spots, held together as if by fish glue, while other parts were clumps of eyes and hands and mouths. The fiend was a sticky web dancing in the air, clinging to the walls, touching the floor in spots. An awful and impassible barrier.

The casura's burning glare sparkled on the monster's flinty hide, yet the monster's round, staring eyes showed no fear. The flint monster hated with a deeper passion than even the ghost, for it hated all souls: living, dead, or in between. Without eyelids, the exposed eyeballs were a shocking blue in its dark carapace.

Yet there was recognition here. Ages ago, it seemed, the casura's many dead creatures had been an unholy army: imps, ghouls, ghasts, blind giants, barbed fiends, things without names. Together they'd battled the enemies of Prinquis, arch-fiend of these pits. Until treachery brought down the balor of the Abyss, ancient, deadly enemies who'd descended with joy and crackling whips to slay everything moving in this vast throne room.

And the flint monster had been one of those enemies. And still was.

A howl echoed from the casura's hundred gibbering mouths. Writhing hands snatched rocks, skulls, and broken blades, and flung the lethal lot at the flint monster. Yet nothing harmed it, not the missiles, nor the stench, nor the screaming noise, nor the rolling waves of hatred. The flint monster had lived with pain for so long, nothing outside could hurt it.

Raising two long, misshapen arms, curling fingers like shards of glass, the monster retaliated. From one hand exploded bolts of pure darkness, shafts blacker than moonless night, that stabbed amidst the spider-web ghost. Eyes popped into jots of gore, twisted hands were splintered to fragments, mouths had teeth smashed out and knocked to the four winds. From the monster's other hand spun a whirlwind of blades sharper than steel. Propellers of dweomer sliced through ectoplasm like water, ricocheted from stone walls, and went on spinning. Phantom blades ripped through the undying spirits of fiends and imps and giants, who screeched in protest as they were killed yet again. They howled too because they knew they would heal again, slowly, in agony, never dying, never cured, again hanging in this chamber to die anew. For such was the nature of this pocket hell, that all the denizens suffered, died, and were resurrected to suffer forever.

Before long, darkbolts and whirlwinds of steel ripped the casura into shreds like a sundered cobweb. Ichor and blood and snot and ectoplasm dripped in a ghastly rain onto the antique bones and weapons of the dead below. Ghostly beings shriveled, died, retreated, shouted, hated one another and themselves, almost forgetting the flint monster in their midst.

For the monster passed on. Down another long tunnel it scuffled, searching. Its dark-bred senses were attuned to the air, the rock, the dust and decay, constantly seeking any sign of outside life.

And far down, where rocks had collapsed the tunnel to a hand's height, the monster sniffed a trace. Rusty water, far off. The merest trickle, yet a hopeful sign, for nowhere in this corner of hell was there any standing water, for thirst was another form of suffering, and the arch-fiend who ruled here liked his subjects to suffer.

Any water, no matter how foul, came from outside.

"My enemy, she sealed us in. But not all. Sloppy work, sloppy. I shall be free, outside, at last. Free to wreak vengeance. To kill…"

Scrabbling with hands hard as diamonds, the flinty beast dug at crumbled rock.