The Ancient

SEVEN

Tedium Undone

Every day’s one and the same,” Mcwigik lamented, dipping his paddle silently into the water beside the small craft. “Weren’t for the changes in the damned moon we’d not know that time’s passing.”

“Yach but she’s passin’,” said Bikelbrin, sitting opposite him. “Feeling it in me bones, I be.”

“And meself in me broken nose,” Mcwigik agreed and brought his hand up to touch his flat, wide nose, a bit flatter and wider still from the smash he’d been dealt twenty-eight days earlier. He had put a piece of white, gummy sap from the small, wide-leafed trees common to the islands across the bridge of his nose to secure it while it healed. He hadn’t worn that gum bandage for a few days, but had put it back on just before the scheduled return to Chapel Isle. Pragganag and the others understood the reminder to be for Pragganag’s benefit.

“Are ye to babble all then way, then?” said an irritated Pragganag, who was sitting in the back, testing the balance of his wooden-handled metal-bladed hatchet- one of the very few implements of metal still left intact after a century on the steamy lake. “Ye’re to let the whole o’ Mithranidoon know we’re about, and won’t it be the kitten’s mewl to be chased by a fleet o’ barbarian longboats?”

“All with sense’ve gone to bed,” Bikelbrin replied.

“Which is saying what for ourselves?” asked Mcwigik, and Bikelbrin and three of the others in the small and stout craft laughed, the fourth being Pragganag, who narrowed his eyes so much so that his bushy eyebrows pretty much stole them from view as he glowered at Mcwigik.

Mcwigik took no note of him, and reached up to grab his bandaged snout.

“Yach, but that monk smashed ye good, what?” said Bikelbrin, and he and the others turned to Pragganag.

“Aye, and me nose’s still for hurting when I’m laughing,” Mcwigik said.

“Good thing yerself’s the one what’s telling the jokes then,” Pragganag deadpanned, and the laughter began anew, Mcwigik joining in most heartily. As fierce a race as walked the world, powries typically relished these moments of ribbing, even if the best jabs came at their own personal expense.

The boat quieted then as the powries went back to paddling.

“We should build ourselves a barrelboat,” Mcwigik said after a short pause, referring to the open-sea powrie craft, which resembled huge casks and kept most of their bulk beneath the surface. The interior of a barrelboat consisted of a series of benches set before pedals, and the tireless dwarves propelled their craft by pumping legs, with the pedals geared to turn an aft screw. Many a ship’s captain had blanched white upon spotting a barrelboat, or even flotsam resembling such a craft, whose primary attack mode was, with typical powrie finesse, the ram. “Put her out on the lake, and wouldn’t that make all the men shiver?”

“Ye can’t be thinking it,” Bikelbrin replied. “Ye might be making the trolls happy, but ye’d be startin’ a war for winning, and not just for playing, don’t ye doubt.”

“Aye,” one of the others chimed in, “ye send a barbarian boat to the bottom and give her crew to the trolls, and all the islands’d join against us and come a-calling. Our rock of Red Cap ain’t that big.”

Mcwigik offered an exaggerated nod to show that he wasn’t being serious. He knew as well as any the agreed-upon protocols of the islands, and primary among those was the edict that no combatant, not powrie nor Alpinadoran nor Abellican alike, would be dropped under deep water. For Mithranidoon’s opaque gray waters hid terrible things indeed behind her constant wall of tiny bubbles. Great fish and serpents had been spotted often, and the glacial trolls seemed to know immediately whenever someone went under.

No one survived Mithranidoon’s deep waters for long, and the civilized “warfare” between the islands demanded certain rules of engagement.

“It’d be good to feel the screw beneath me feet again, is all,” Mcwigik replied with a tone of concession.

“Aye,” Bikelbrin and one other agreed, for only they and Mcwigik among the six on the boat had ever experienced such a thing, or had ever seen the world beyond the banks of this lake. The bloody caps had been on Mithranidoon for more than a century now, and though their numbers had dwindled a bit, from eighty to seventy-six, they had been fortunate to recover the hearts of almost all of the more than forty who had been killed-fallen to trolls and storms and barbarians-in the early days, before the silently agreed-upon protocols. The heart was key to an untraditional and magical form of powrie reproduction. Using it, an appropriate mass of stone (and the plentiful lava rock of Mithranidoon was perfect for the task), and a month of ancient magic in the form of sacred songs, the powries could create life itself, giving “birth” to the fallen dwarf’s successor. Not often practiced on the Weathered Isles, where female powries were plentiful, Sepulcher, as this magical rebirth was called, had kept the strength of the community of powries on the lake, though they had but three females remaining among the lot of them-for Sepulcher, for some reason that no dwarf had ever figured out, almost always led to a male child, whether the hosting heart had come from a male or female.

Returning from their last trip to Chapel Isle, they had prepared and buried Regwegno’s heart and some rock and begun the process. This very afternoon, right before they had departed, they had felt the first rumblings from the Sepulcher (the term also was used to describe the physical grave-womb). Regwegno’s son would climb free five months hence, and judging from those initial trembles all expected this one would prove a scrapper to make his sire proud.

“I’m hardly for remembering it,” Mcwigik admitted, “for I been a hundred five of me hundred thirty right here on the lake.”

The dwarf behind him, the only one other than Bikelbrin who had come to Mithranidoon beside Mcwigik, gazed wistfully out to the northwest, toward the towering glacier wall, and lamented, “I make me brother Heycalnuck paddle out to the ice, just so I can feel the feel o’ cold water. Never thinked I’d miss the dark chill of the Mirianic, did I.”

“Aye,” Bikelbrin agreed.

“And I’ll be finding it again’s me hope,” said Mcwigik, and even the wistful dwarf behind him stared at him incredulously for that comment!

“Mcwigik the fool,” Pragganag said from the back. “The land’s to be freezing yer blood solid inside ye, ye dope. Ye thinking ye’re a glacier troll, are ye? Well, ye’re thinking’s to get yerself dead.”

“Yach and aye!” said the dwarf behind Mcwigik. “We’re not even for knowing where lies the damned Mirianic. East, say some, but west for others. How many hundreds fell on the march inland, the one the priests called glorious? Weren’t for Mithranidoon and we’d’ve all been killed to death.”

“By the cold, if not the barbarians, if not the monsters,” Bikelbrin agreed, but there was a noticeably different timbre in his voice compared to the consternation of his fellow traveler.

Bikelbrin and Mcwigik exchanged a silent thought, then, a slight nod and resigned grin, for they often mused about leaving Mithranidoon, and of late had openly wondered how much worse death, even death without Sepulcher, could be compared to the tedium of life on the foggy lake.

One of the dwarves behind them began to sing, “When the stars come out to shine.”

“Twenty boys, side-to-side in a line,” another intoned, picking up the solemn chant of an old powrie war song, one that ended, as had the battle it described, badly.

“Yach, but not that one!” another cried. “Tonight’s the night for fun, ye fools. We’re not for war, but for sport!”

“Sport that’s to get Prag’s face broken,” said the first singer, and all the dwarves began to laugh-except for Pragganag, of course. He stared hard at the others and slid his hatchet’s metal head along a sharpening stone, the screech of it lost in their continuing laughter.

The night was dark, so they could hardly see the darker silhouette of Chapel Isle through the mist. They were quite familiar with their approach, though, and few could navigate as well as powries, even when Mithranidoon’s mist was high enough to almost constantly obscure the stars.

“Ha, but it’s lookin’ like the monk’s ready for a fight,” Bikelbrin said after a long period in which only the quiet dipping of paddles in the warm lake water accompanied the ride. The dwarf lifted his paddle and pointed it ahead, where through the drifting mist a single torch could be seen.

“He’s there with fifty o’ his friends in wait, not to doubt,” Pragganag grumbled.

“Then it’s open hunting and me beret’s sure to shine all the brighter,” said Mcwigik. “Steady and straight to the beach, in either case, and if there’s a bunch to be found, ye be quick in passing that axe, Prag, so we can open them up wide and fast.”

Cormack never heard the craft’s approach, for the wind was up this night and off the water, and the sound of the lapping waves against the rocky beach filled his ears. He had been out of the chapel for several hours by then; his second torch burned low, and his attention had long since left the unseen water. He sat in the sand, his back against a stone, staring up at the stars, which peeked out every now and then through the gray swirl. He worked two gemstones, a soul stone and a lodestone, through his fingers, tapping them together at intervals. The lodestone’s power lay in magnetism, and Cormack had often come out with it, using its magical properties to look through it at the beach and shallows surrounding Chapel Isle. He had found many coins, and old weapons and tools, for with the lodestone he could sense metal-he could even use the power of the stone to telekinese small metallic objects to his waiting hand.

He hadn’t found anything this night, but he hadn’t really looked, using the lodestone as a pretense for getting out of the chapel without drawing suspicion. Once out here, the sun setting, he lost any interest in even pretending to search, as one question dominated his every thought: Would the powries come?

Even the pressing thought of impending battle had been lost to him soon after that, as the stars began to shine and before the mists climbed high enough to obscure them so greatly. Cormack often lost himself among the celestial lights, letting his mind drift back to his days in Vanguard at Chapel Pellinor and across the gulf in Chapel Abelle, the mother abbey of his Church. Those had been good and heady days those years ago. Full of purpose and meaning, Cormack had charged into Chapel Abelle with his eyes wide and his heart open, soaking in every detail, every premise, every tenet and every hope of Blessed Abelle’s homily.

Did those ravenous and hopeful fires remain? the monk asked himself. He often found himself melancholy these long and arduous days, his love for Chapel Isle and this lake called Mithranidoon long lost. He did not cheer when the next level of the rock abbey had been completed, for it was a place that no one other than the brothers and their servants ever attended. He did not feel joy at the sermons of Brother Giavno or Father De Guilbe, even when they read from his favorite of Blessed Abelle’s teachings. The messengers, he knew, could not inspire him, for while Cormack hated neither man (in fact, he was quite fond of Giavno), he knew in his heart that they had misinterpreted their purpose here in Alpinador. They had been sent to proselytize, to teach and to convert. Out here, the early hopes for their mission had not come to fruition. The barbarians would not hear their words any longer, and the rift would not mend. To Cormack’s thinking, and he knew their neighbors on the lake better than anyone else at Chapel Isle, their failure would never reverse.

The fighting would not stop.

The barbarian souls would not be saved.

“Ah, Milkeila, alas, for you were my last hope,” Cormack whispered, and his voice thinned even more as he moved to toss a pebble out toward the water, for there, coming at him through the uneven mist, loomed the hairy and wrinkled faces of the bloody-cap dwarves.

Cormack scrambled to his feet, brushing the sand from his pants.

“So ye came out,” Mcwigik greeted him. The dwarf stepped closer and glanced all about, and Cormack retreated a step. “Alone?”

Cormack nodded, his eyes scanning the small band, then locking on the one in the back of the bunch, his planned opponent, who stood grinning wickedly and slapping a wooden club across his open palm. For a moment, panic set in, and the monk felt his knees go weak, his brain screaming at him to turn and flee with all speed!

“Alone?” Mcwigik said again, and he slapped the monk on the hip.

Cormack instinctively hopped aside, and all the dwarves bristled, and the man thought he would be overrun immediately. But the attack never came.

“Well?” Mcwigik demanded.

“Yes, alone,” Cormack stammered. “I gave you my word.”

“Ye did no such thing, but ye didn’t argue,” said Mcwigik. “Not that ye could’ve argued and still kept yer blood in yer body.”

That brought laughter from the gathering, and Cormack swallowed hard.

“But that ye thinked it yer word, or counted it as such, says good about ye-for a human, I mean,” said Mcwigik.

“Says ye got honor, or says ye got no wits about ye,” Bikelbrin added, drawing another laugh. “Most with humans, we’re thinking the second.”

The laughing heightened, but Mcwigik cut it short. “Get it done,” he said, nodding toward Pragganag, who came forward, weapon waving at the ready.

“Ye know the rules?” Mcwigik asked Cormack.

“No.”

“Then ye do,” snickered Mcwigik, and the other dwarves laughed again, except for Pragganag, who wore as fierce a scowl as poor Cormack had ever seen. “Pragganag’s looking to finish ye, so if ye lose, expect to lose a lot o’ yer blood. For yerself, ye beat him down as much as ye’re wanting. Not a one of us’ll get in the way. Kill him or bash his head in, or whatever ye’re thinking to do-once ye’ve won, Prag’s cap is yer own to claim.”

“I ain’t for liking that!” Pragganag grumbled.

“Ye’re meaning to kill him, but we’re just for giving him yer cap,” Mcwigik argued.

“Me cap’s worth more than his life!”

“Well then he can just kill ye and take the damned thing!” Mcwigik shot back.

“Only way the dog’s getting it!”

Mcwigik started to respond, but then just offered a smile to Cormack and stepped out of the way. Cormack was about to ask a question, seeking assurances that he wouldn’t get gang-tackled if he did indeed gain the upper hand, but he didn’t even get the first word out of his mouth before Pragganag roared and charged in, smashing left and right with his club.

Cormack swung to his right, then again farther to the right, and a third time, which put him facing away from the furious powrie. He dove into a headlong roll, coming to his feet and springing forward immediately into a second dive and roll, for he felt the press of the charging dwarf. His third leap put him over some piled stones and gave him time to turn about on the far side, so that when Pragganag came roaring around the tumble, Cormack was ready and waiting.

“Are ye fightin’ or runnin’?” the dwarf just asked before Cormack rushed forward, inside the reach of his club, and smacked him with a left, right combination that abruptly stole his momentum. The monk leaped straight back, and threw his head back farther to avoid a short swipe of the club. He slapped the back of it as it flashed past, driving it out and down, and managed a quick left jab to the powrie’s hairy face before leaping back out of reach of the heavy backhand.

“Three hits for him,” Mcwigik laughed.

But Pragganag just snorted, and if he had even felt any of Cormack’s punches, it didn’t show. He roared ahead, swiping wildly and repeatedly, and Cormack could only dodge and dart back.

“How long can ye run?” Pragganag teased, and came forward in a sudden rush and launched a mighty overhead chop.

Far enough to avoid that strike, the dwarf realized, and his eyes went wide as his club descended past his field of vision, to see that Cormack had already reversed course and was coming straight for him. The man leaped and lay straight out, feet first, and caught Pragganag with a double kick about the face and shoulders that sent the dwarf flying back and to the ground.

Pragganag rolled to his belly and started up, but he had barely made it to his knees before Cormack fell over him, driving a knee hard into the side of his head. Pragganag turned to face that knee directly as Cormack pumped his leg, but it took three smashes before the dwarf managed to bite the man, and even then, Cormack was able to quickly retract his leg so that Pragganag had hardly broken the skin.

Cormack fell over the dwarf and rolled about, looping his hands up under the kneeling powrie’s arms and up behind the dwarf’s neck. Normally this move would ensure victory, for the victim could be rendered helpless from the waist up, but normally Cormack wouldn’t put the double vise hold, as it was called, onto a powrie dwarf.

Pragganag balled his legs under him and with tremendous strength lifted himself to a standing position, driving the human up behind him. Cormack tried to jerk and twist to keep his opponent off-balance, but Pragganag went into a sudden frenzy, spinning about left, then back fast to the right, then back and back again, stomping his heavy boots all the while.

Cormack felt as if he were riding a bull. His feet were off the ground more than on, and so he could do little to interrupt Pragganag when the dwarf took up a sudden run. Cormack fell lower on the dwarf’s back, letting his legs drag, trying to halt the growing momentum, but Pragganag roared ahead, then bent low at the waist, lifting Cormack back up. At the last instant, Cormack understood the intent, and saw the cluster of large rocks fast approaching, but Pragganag slapped his arms in a cross up high on his chest, reaching back behind his shoulders to grab Cormack’s wrists and hold him fast. Then with sheer powrie power, Pragganag ducked again and launched himself into a somersault, bringing poor Cormack right over the top.

Cormack hit the side of the largest rock, and Pragganag sandwiched into Cormack. They hung there for a moment, like a splattered tomato, before both rolled down to the sand.

“Get up,” Cormack told himself, trying to untwist, trying to get air back into his lungs. He hardly knew where he was, with bloody-cap dwarves howling all about him, but he kept his wits just enough to realize that it wasn’t a good place, and that if he didn’t get up soon, he’d be murdered where he lay.

He just started to his knees when the club flashed in. Purely on instinct, purely through the long hours of training he had received in the arts martial, Cormack snapped his left forearm up vertically to intercept that blow. The crack sent a wave of nauseating agony ripping through him, but his trained muscles continued the practiced move. He dropped his arm straight down, catching the shaft of the club in his left hand as he twisted about sidelong to his attacker, his right hand knifing up to catch the club right at the powrie’s hand. Tugging down with his left and shoving upward with his right, Cormack gained the angle and tore the club from the dwarf’s grasp. He kept the club turning, bringing his right hand right over his left; then he let go with his left as the club came back to horizontal, now directly across his chest.

Cormack gave a grunt and drove his right hand back, stabbing the fat end of the club right into Pragganag’s eye with a thunderous crack. The dwarf’s head snapped back and he stumbled several steps.

Cormack pursued, spinning the club out far to his right and then driving it hard against the side of the stunned dwarf. Still backpedaling, Pragganag tried to twist and block the blows, but wound up falling right over-to the appreciative howls of Mcwigik and the others.

Cormack went in for the win, thinking to drive the dwarf prostrate and pin him helplessly until he surrendered. Pragganag rolled his shoulder in tight, then burst back out, launching a backhand, and one that Cormack would willingly accept. The man curled only a little, bringing his left arm up to again absorb most of the blow, thinking to come in right behind it with another smash of the club.

But he didn’t absorb it.

An explosion of fire ripped through Cormack’s arm. He staggered backward, dropping the club and grabbing at his torn skin. He hardly understood what had happened until the dwarf leaped to his feet and faced him directly, the bloody axe swinging easily at the end of his left arm.

“What?” Cormack said, still backing until he fell to his bum in the sand.

Pragganag laughed at him and approached, and Cormack dropped his hands and all pretense of defense-for how with his flesh might he stop the swing of a metal-bladed axe?

“I’m wetting me own cap first!” Pragganag insisted to his fellows, closing the last few steps. He brought his axe up high and stepped in behind the descending blow, driving it down with enough force to sever the man’s arm if he had lifted it to block.

And indeed, Cormack did lift his right hand, for when he had dropped his arms down beside him, he had brushed against his small belt pouch. Now he held the lodestone, and he saw the metallic axe head through its magic as clearly as if he were looking at the noontime sun on a cloudless and mistless day. Desperation drove the monk more than any actual thought, and he sent his energy into the gemstone, bringing its magic to an immediate crescendo.

He thought to call the axe head down toward the stone, but instead, again purely on instinct, he let the stone go to its target again. When Cormack opened his hand, the charged lodestone bulleted out with tremendous speed, firing true to the call of the metal axe head.

The sharp report echoed off the stones of Chapel Isle and rolled out to all corners of Mithranidoon. Good fortune was with Cormack, for the gemstone hit the axe as it descended past Pragganag’s head, and the force of the blow broke the head from the handle so cleanly that it flew back into the dwarf’s ugly face.

The stone flew away-far, far away-and Pragganag staggered back, a crease of blood showing about his cheeks and nose. He tried to stand straighter, growled against the pain and the numbness that was spreading across his stout form.

He was kneeling and didn’t know it.

He was lying in the sand and didn’t know it.

Cormack grasped his torn arm again and stumbled over to straddle the dwarf. He reached down and pulled the dwarf’s beret free, then grabbed a clump of Pragganag’s hair and tugged his head up out of the dirt.

“I’m not for knowin’ what just happened,” Mcwigik said, and he and the others crowded in a bit and seemed none too happy with the sudden reversal of fortune.

“You said I knew the rules,” Cormack reminded.

Mcwigik thought it over for a moment, then turned to his fellows and gave a hearty laugh, one that echoed through the dwarf ranks.

And still Pragganag showed no signs of resistance or consciousness, prompting Mcwigik to say in all seriousness, “Do ye mean to kill him to death, then?”

Cormack looked down at the mass of hair and blood, then simply let go, Pragganag’s face thumping back into the sand. The man stepped away and a pair of powries went to their fallen comrade, unceremoniously hoisting him to his feet. They gave him a couple of rough shakes and one spat in his face.

“Yach, but what in the dark waters…?” Pragganag sputtered, his words hardly decipherable through his fast-swelling lips.

“What, what?” said Mcwigik. “He popped ye good in the head, ye dope. Put ye down good.”

“I’ll be paying him back.”

“Nah, ye’ll be shutting yer mouth and”-Mcwigik paused and moved to the side, scooping Pragganag’s beret from the sand-“making yerself another cap.”

Pragganag yanked one arm free from the dwarf holding him, and when that fellow tried to grab him again, Pragganag slammed the back of his fist into the dwarf’s eye. “No, ye don’t!” Pragganag yelled at Mcwigik as the dwarf moved toward Cormack, cap in hand.

“Ye got yer bum beat, and yer cap’s the price,” said Mcwigik.

“It is all right.” Cormack tried to intervene, for what was he to do with a powrie’s bloody cap anyway? But Mcwigik wasn’t listening.

“The dactyl demon it is!” Pragganag protested, and he tore himself free of the other dwarf holding him, then held that one back with a hateful scowl before advancing on Mcwigik.

“The human keeped his word in coming out, but yerself’s not got that honor?” Mcwigik asked.

“Ye ain’t to give him me cap!”

“It is all right,” said Cormack, but no one was listening.

Mcwigik turned sidelong to the advancing Pragganag and lifted his right arm up high and back, holding the cap away. He brought his left arm in against his torso, defensively, it seemed.

“Ye give it!” Pragganag demanded, and when Mcwigik kept the cap away from his reach, he slugged the dwarf in the face.

His mistake.

For Mcwigik had retrieved something else when he had grabbed up the cap, and his left arm shot across, neck height to Pragganag.

Pragganag started to shout something, but all that came out was a bubbling bloody gurgle, for that sharpened axe head, quietly retrieved by Mcwigik as he walked over, had cut a neat line indeed across poor Prag’s throat.

Mcwigik stepped back and calmly presented the beret to Cormack, while Pragganag slumped down to his knees, choking and grasping at his torn windpipe and artery, his blood spraying high.

Cormack went for his pouch and his remaining stone. “I can heal him,” he declared, rushing past Mcwigik-or trying to, for the powerful powrie stopped him dead in his tracks with an outstretched arm.

“No, ye can’t. Ye can take yer damned cap and dip it in his blood. Then ye can put it on yer head and get ye gone from here. We’re done playing, boy, and the next blood what’s spilling’ll be yer own.” He thrust the beret into Cormack’s hand. “Dip it!” he ordered in a voice that brooked no argument.

As he stumbled off the beach a few thumping heartbeats later, wet cap in hand, Cormack heard Mcwigik instruct the others-to their relief, apparently, judging from their responses-to take Pragganag’s heart.

By the time he reached the small stone archway that led to the main door of the chapel, Cormack heard the now-familiar powrie burial song carried up by the breeze, its strange and somehow gentle intonations and harmony (given the gravelly voices of the singers) mingling with the sound of the waves so that Cormack would not even have known it to be a song had he not heard it before.