Sorcery in Shad Read online

  ‘Not bare,’ Tarra shook his head, shuddered. ‘Scythes! Hands like scythes, and feet to match. Don’t ask about her teeth …’

  ‘Seems you’ve your own tale to tell,’ said Stumpy, wide-eyed now and mouth agape.

  ‘Some other time,’ Tarra answered, ‘but not tonight. Night’s the wrong time to be talking of lamias and such. And anyway, I’m more interested in what you’ve got to say.’

  ‘Well, then—’ Stumpy continued, ‘—so there I was with a lass who wanted a man, and only a handful of cut-throats to choose from. So I bided my time until the whole town was drunk one night, then stole a camel and got while the getting was good. It wouldn’t have done to buy a beast, for then they’d wonder where I got the money and come after me. But we were clean away, and we headed for the pass through the Great Eastern Peaks.’

  ‘On your way to Klühn,’ Tarra nodded.

  Stumpy shook his grizzled head. ‘On the route to Klühn,’ he said, ‘but I’ve something of a rep there,’ (he waved his stump) ‘so that wasn’t our destination. I’d set my heart on a little house in one of those white-walled villages at the foot of the Eastern Range, where sweet water comes down off the mountains and there are lots of green things to grow. That was all I wanted: peace and quiet, a house and garden, and a place to watch my grandchildren grow up fat and happy.’

  Tarra picked a scrap of meat from between his strong teeth. ‘Sounds about right,’ he opinioned. ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, not right then. Got through the pass and cut south, eventually found us a village halfway down the Eastern Range, snuggled between twin spurs a mile across. A place with a stream and good, loamy soil in its gardens. An old boy had recently died there, and so we bought his home where it sat right at the edge of the water. I could fish right out of the window, if I wanted to! Women were scarce there and Gulla got courted for the first time in her life – by three of ’em! After a week she knew which one she wanted: the only one of ’em who was bigger than she was!’ He grinned a gummy grin, Tarra smiling with him.

  ‘So the both of you were well fixed up,’ the Hrossak nodded. ‘Now tell me the worst.’

  Stumpy’s grin turned sour. ‘It was a queer thing, that,’ he said. ‘So queer I’m still not sure about it! But this is the way I remember it:

  ‘Gulla and Robos – her lad – had gone off on touch-and-taunt. That’s the local term for it, anyway: when just before marriage a young couple try it out, as it were, to see if all will fit properly and who’s to wear the apron, etcetera. A week spent high up in the hills with only the goats and the clouds for company, where they’d build a shelter for two and do all their fingering and fighting, their oohing! and aahing! and…you know? All of that stuff.

  ‘They’d been gone, oh, a day or two. I woke up early one fine morning and thought: “fish!” It was the sort of morning when you can feel ’em rising – the fish, I mean. So I took line and hooks, a blanket to stretch out on, a slice of stale bread to chew and roll into little balls for bait, and headed upstream. I climbed through the foothills and time lost all meaning to me, climbed till I found a pool in a rocky basin, with the water filling it and trickling over the rim. Perfect! I took a dozen small fish inside an hour, determined to have three for lunch turned on a spit, the rest to take home and smoke for later.

  ‘Now, in that high place I could see for miles. Oh, I’ve only one eye, but it’s a sharp ’un! And the air so clear and all.

  ‘I fancied I could even see the Eastern Ocean, more than two hundred miles away, but that was probably just the flat, shiny horizon, or maybe a mirage. But I was sure I could see the ruins of old Humquass on the plain, which was once a vast fortress city so big its walls had roads built on top of ’em! Now the ruins lie to the south-east, and as I’m looking at ’em – at that far smudge of ancient jumble – I notice a cloud of drifting dust. Coming from that general direction but much closer. I watch and wait, and I keep fishing; though in all truth I’ve started to lose interest in the fish, for this new thing has trapped my attention. Dust, aye, rising up from a long straggly line that inches its way like a troop of ants along the eastern borders of Hrossa.’

  ‘A caravan?’ said Tarra. ‘From Hrossa? Unlikely! Not much on commerce, my lot, and when they do trade it’s usually by sea. No, they keep to themselves, mainly – er, with the odd exception, of course.’

  Stumpy raised an eyebrow, glanced at the other with old-fashioned expression on his leathery face. ‘The very odd exception, aye …’

  And at last he continued. ‘Anyway, from Grypha or Yhemnis I can’t say, but caravan certainly. At first sight, anyway. I fix a fire, cook my fish and maintain a watch. As I eat, the dust cloud gets bigger and closer all the time; and now, because the wind’s in my direction, I can even hear the distant tinkling of bells, the snorting of beasts, the creaking of leather and clatter of wooden wheels striking pebbles. And I think: why, they’re heading straight for Haven’s Hollow! – that being the name of the village.

  ‘And me perched half-a-mile up, so to speak, I get a bird’s-eye view of it: I can even make out the beasts and their several burdens, and something of the masters who prod ’em along. Ah, but damned strange caravan this, Tarra Khash! Decked out to look like one, aye – but a ship under false colours for all that, be certain! Indeed, a pirate!’

  ‘Not a caravan?’ Tarra gawped. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Raiders!’ Stumpy spat the word out. ‘Slavers!’

  Tarra felt the hairs come erect back of his neck. ‘Blacks?’ he growled. ‘From Yhemni jungles, or Shad across the straits, d’you think? Scourge of Grypha and the southern coast all the way to Thinhla, those lads – but busy with their miserable, bloody work so far north? Unheard of!’

  ‘Blacks there were,’ Stumpy nodded curtly, ‘and their leader a curlyhead, too – but others among ’em more bronze than black …’ He looked accusingly at Tarra.

  ‘Well I wasn’t there!’ the Hrossak protested. ‘I was in Klühn, and beset by problems of my own, believe me!’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Stumpy. ‘No, not you, Tarra, but Hrossaks certain for I saw them with my own eye.’

  Steppemen, slavers? It was hard to swallow. But no reason why Stumpy should lie, so Tarra would have to accept it. And anyway, he’d met outcast Hrossaks before, however small a handful: outlaws, banished for their evil ways.

  ‘Get on with it,’ he growled, somewhat surly now.

  ‘It was their wagons and beasts that sent me scrambling back down the rocks and scree slides,’ said Stumpy. ‘They were no more than a mile or two away by then, and suddenly I was sore afraid – not for myself, but for all the new friends I’d made in that pretty little village down there. Friends and neighbours, farmers most of ’em, whose only iron implements were scythes and ploughshares. And hope against hope, even as I clambered down that too long way, still I prayed I was wrong.’

  ‘Something about their wagons, their beasts? Make sense!’ said Tarra, but he felt something of the sick terror glimpsed in the old lad’s fire-dappled mien.

  Finally Stumpy blinked, scowled and got on with it:

  ‘Well, they had a few ponies, rare enough in these parts,’ he said, ‘and a string of camels and yaks – but their real beasts of burden were great lizards! Hrossak lizards, Tarra Khash, which only steppemen have ever been able to control or master. But even so, the lizards and the camels weren’t the only poor beasts toiling in that caravan. For chained to the long – the too long – wagons were slaves galore, taken I imagine from all the villages farther down the foot of the range. I could hear their moaning and crying now, and the clanking of their chains.

  ‘I was halfway down from the pool by then, and that was when it happened.’ He paused, perhaps for breath.

  ‘Well?’ said Tarra, impatient now.

  Stumpy hung his head. ‘Lad, it was a horrible sight. And nothing I could do about it. The raiders had come in sight of the village, and no longer any need for subterfuge. Now they could stop being
a caravan. Slow-moving to this point, as soon as they saw the village and smelled blood the mask fell away. And then they were like hounds unleashed!

  ‘The long wagons – five of ’em, the longest things on four pairs of wheels each I’ve ever seen – were left behind with a handful of overseers, who worked on the chained slaves with whips to keep ’em quiet. The ponies set off at a gallop, kicking up the dust, throwing a wide half-circle around the village. Camels took on two armed raiders apiece, went trotting into town where their riders quickly dismounted. This much I’ll say: there were no Hrossaks in on the raping and blood-letting. No, for they’d mainly stayed behind to tend the big hauling lizards. But the blacks and a handful of coarse-maned Northmen …’ He broke off, shook his head.

  ‘Northern barbarians, too?’ Tarra could see it all in his mind’s eye, and he knew from personal experience that the reputation of the Northman wasn’t just idle gossip.

  Stumpy nodded. ‘Blacks and Northmen, aye,’ he answered grimly. ‘There were maybe two dozen families in that village. Lots of burly lads, all completely untried in combat, and a few pretty wives and daughters. But mainly the women were old – thank all that’s good! As for heads of families: farmers and greypates, like myself.

  ‘Now I’m three-quarters down from the heights and shouting myself hoarse, and people out in the fields looking up to see what all the commotion’s about. The ponies and riders tightening their net and closing in on the village, and in the main street itself – butchery!’

  ‘But why?’ Tarra was aghast at visions conjured. ‘I thought you said slavers? What good are dead slaves?’

  ‘Young ’uns, they wanted,’ Stumpy told him with a groan. ‘Young lads and only the prettiest maids – and of the last there were only two or three in Haven’s Hollow, be sure. As for the rest: death for the aged of both sexes, rape and yet more rape for the girls, until the dogs had had their fill and put an end to it with their swords. Aye, damned few lasses and young wives, Tarra, and two dozen or more blacks and maned barbarians. I’ll not draw you any pictures …’

  The Hrossak ground his teeth, drove a balled fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Slave-taking’s bad enough,’ he finally growled, ‘but what you describe is—’

  ‘Devil’s work!’ Stumpy cut him off. ‘And that’s what they were, those butchers: spawn of the pit!’ And after a moment: ‘Do you want to know the rest?’

  Tarra shook his head at first, then nodded, however reluctantly. ‘Aye, best tell me all and get it out of your system.’

  ‘My house was burning when I got down,’ said Stumpy. ‘The whole village was burning, and blood everywhere! The blacks and barbarians were in the alehouse, smashing barrels and pouring it down. I saw it all: the bodies in the fields, the naked, raped, gutted lasses, the lads bludgeoned senseless and shackled, and the blood and the fire – and I think I went a little daft. I came across a Northman in the shadow of a burning house, still having his way with some poor girl. She was dead – of terror, I suppose, with her eyes all starting out of her head – but he didn’t seem to mind that. I minded it. I picked up his great sword and sliced the dog right down his sweaty, hairy spine!

  ‘And that was it, what I needed! Killing him had given me pleasure, an amazing relief! I was transformed – into a berserker! Me, old Stumpy Adz, roaring in a blood frenzy! I rushed into the alehouse with my bloody sword, and cursed them all in their own heathen tongue – then skewered a frizzy through his gizzard. They’d laughed at me at first, but that stopped ’em. Then someone got up behind me and clonked me hard on the head. For me, that was the end of it. Everything went black and I knew I was going to die, and it didn’t bother me much …’

  ‘And yet they didn’t kill you!’ Tarra shook his head.

  ‘Oh, they did,’ said Stumpy, ‘but only on the inside. Why didn’t they kill me? But I was mad, wasn’t I? A crazy man! The Yhemnis have a thing about madmen: they won’t kill a loony, for if they do they have to care for his needs and carry him on their back for eternity in the afterlife. That’s their belief. No, safer far to maroon him somewhere to die all on his own – which is what they did to me.’

  Tarra marvelled at the old lad’s hardiness. ‘So they dumped you here, where for four or five days you’ve just wandered, eh?’

  Stumpy shrugged. ‘I found a few berries, the wrong sort, and they made me sick. I got a little water from a spiky cactus, and that made me sick, too! Until at last I was sick of everything, not least life. Then I heard your beast coming clip-clop up the pass, and I thought: Stumpy, one way or the other, this misery ends right here.’

  Tarra nodded. ‘Fortunate for you it wasn’t the other!’ he said. He moved about in the glow of dying embers, found more branches and tossed them on the fire. And finally, turning again to Stumpy, he said: ‘Aren’t you tired yet?’

  For answer Stumpy buzzed like a nest of wasps. Tarra saw that his chin was on his chest, noted the steady rise and fall of the blanket. Out like a candle snuffed! That was good …

  Or was it? The night had come in chilly and Stumpy had Tarra’s blanket. He sighed, went to where his beast had gone to its knees, lay down along its flank. And using saddle-bags for a pillow, he quickly fell asleep—

  II

  BLACK CARAVAN, WHITE GOLD!

  —And as quickly came awake!

  Much too quickly, so that his mind was almost left behind as his body sat itself up.

  ‘On your feet, great lump!’ Stumpy shouted again. ‘Come on, man, get a move on!’

  Stumpy? A move on?

  What the hell …?

  Tarra brushed sleep from his eyes, remembered where he was and who with, and Stumpy’s story of – how many hours past? Quite a few, for Gleeth was gone from the sky, and the stars fast-fading – and he scrambled stiffly, stumblingly to his feet even as his beast snorted and spat and reared aloft on spindly legs.

  ‘Here, my hand,’ yelled Stumpy from camel’s back, his voice shrill with urgency. ‘Quick man, take hold!’

  ‘Take hold?’ Tarra stumbled this way and that. Yesterday he’d come many, many miles, and he’d been very deep asleep. And now all of this motion and commotion; shadows moving in the dusk of pre-dawn; camel hissing and rearing, and the old idiot on its back screaming and beckoning. A nightmare, maybe?

  No maybe about it! A crossbow bolt zipped past Tarra’s ear, sliced a groove in beast’s rump. Now the Hrossak was wide awake, and now too he leaped for Stumpy’s outstretched hand – too late!

  The camel was off like a shot from a sling, impelled by the pain in its rear. It toppled Tarra aside in its panic flight, threw him down in dead embers from last night’s fire. Then camel and Stumpy too a single wild silhouette against the grey of dawn, sinking out of sight over the brow of the hill.

  Spitting curses and ashes both, Tarra came upright – and a pony ploughed right into him. But he saw its rider, a Northman wild and woolly, and he felt a hand grip the hilt of the sword on his back even as he fell. With a whisper of steel the weapon was taken from him, and now all he had was his knife. He crashed through brittle bushes, rolled in dust, yanked out the knife from its sheath on his calf – and froze right there.

  A frizzy stood over him, loaded crossbow pointed straight at his heart. Goodbye, everything, thought Tarra. Then—

  ‘Don’t kill him!’ a low voice growled. ‘He’s a live one, this buck steppeman, and a good thing for all of us if he stays that way. Aye, for Yoppaloth will be pleased to have him in his arena of death. What? Just look at those eyes: black as night and no flicker of fear in ’em, just fury. I’d say he’s probably the meanest buck we’ve taken!’

  Close by, a pony whinnied and there came sounds of a rider dismounting. Then a snorting and clattering of camels, and their humped outlines and smoulder-eyed riders hemming the grounded Hrossak in. Finally that low voice of authority again, but closer, saying: ‘You, Gys Ankh, outcast of your race no less than this one, get after that old madman. It was you urged me to let you kill him, so there’d be no
witnesses. Well, now he’s riding like the wind! So get after him and finish it. But by your hand, not mine. I’m not having that old bag of bones riding my back in the afterlife!’

  There came a curse and the sound of hooves drumming, and the fading, ‘Yee, yee, yee-hiii!’ of a Hrossak hot in pursuit. Hrossak, aye: Stumpy Adz hadn’t been mistaken about the make-up of these polyglot raiders. And at last the owner of that doomful voice stepped into view: a tall, wiry Yhemni in rich red robe, his skull-like head topped with cockscomb of stiff-lacquered hair, painted red along its crest. Of mixed blood, Tarra could see, he was thin-lipped, slant-eyed, gaunt and hollow-faced. And black as any black man Tarra had ever seen. The Hrossak guessed it wasn’t just the colour of his skin but also that of his life.

  Away in the east the rim of the world grew milky with soft light as the sun escaped Cthon’s nets and strove to rise again for the new day. Misty light glinted on Tarra’s knife; and still the black underling stood over him, his deadly weapon steady on his heart.

  ‘Well?’ said the tall Yhemni chief of these cut-throats. ‘If you’re going to throw that knife, throw it. Likely you’ll nick Um-bunda, there, and maybe even kill him – but even dying he’ll be sure to put his bolt in you.’

  Tarra found his voice. ‘So maybe I should toss the knife your way instead?’ he growled.

  Before he could redirect his aim, the spindly half-breed stepped quickly back into shadows. And now his voice came brittle as thin ice. ‘I’ll count just five, Hrossak,’ he said, ‘and that’s your—’

  ‘Save your numbers,’ said Tarra, letting the knife fall with a clatter. ‘I can’t beat all of you. One at a time, maybe, but not in a bunch.’

  With that he would have climbed to his feet, but half-a-dozen blacks fell on him at once, binding him securely. While this was happening their leader came close again and stood watching, his skull-face split in a grin. ‘So you’re a fighter, eh? Well, you’ll get your share of that, steppeman – in Shad!’