Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (29 page)

When I am old enough and big enough and
strong enough, he will pay for this. Then I will take the red cap
and dip it in
his
blood.

He wondered if this was just a boy’s wish or
whether it was a promise.

“A pledge,” he whispered.

Like his father, he did not lie.

Introduction to “Barbarians”

New York Times
bestseller David Farland
keeps busy. In addition to his bestselling Runelords series, Dave
produces a daily newsletter on writing and acts as coordinating
judge for the Writers of the Future contest. He has published more
than fifty books that range from picture books to novels to
anthologies. He holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the
largest book signing. He’s also won a lot of awards for his short
fiction.

About “Barbarians,” he writes, “For several
years, I have thought about writing a prequel to my bestselling
Runelords fantasy series. I’m currently finishing the last book in
the series, and so I thought I might write a little tale set a
thousand years earlier than the current series. As I began it, this
tale just came tumbling out pretty quickly. I guess that happens
when you’ve thought about writing something for ten years.”

Barbarians

David Farland

The smell of dust and guts and horseflesh
told the tale: running steeds at dusk, a tight corner on a narrow
mountain road, a carriage rolling over the cliff.

Dval stepped to the margin of the rutted dirt
road and stood beneath a sprawling live oak. In the gloaming
darkness he spotted wreckage a hundred yards downslope: a fine
black carriage rested on its side without a door, so that it opened
like the nest of a weaver bird. The carriage was of barbaric
make—Mystarrian. They were a clever people, but did not understand
the ways of true humans.

Instantly Dval crouched low, lest any
survivors spot him, and pulled his dagger from its hip sheath. The
handle of his obsidian blade felt good in his hand.

Near the carriage, trunks had tumbled open,
spilling dresses and undergarments, while a pair of mangled horses
lay broken over boulders. One animal struggled to breathe, while
the other had given up the fight.

The driver had been thrown far downhill and
lay wrapped around a tree, preternaturally still. Dval wondered
what treasure they might have left behind. He knew that he should
run and tell his uncle what had happened. His uncle was the leader
of their tribe.

But the lure of treasure called. Dval bounded
down the hillside, his leather moccasins whispering through dry
grasses. The only sounds were the songs of cicadas among the scrub
oak, and the distant screech of a burrow owl. Overhead, stars
glimmered dully in a smoke-filled sky.

The smell of smoke worried him.

On the plains in the distance, crimson flames
burned in a crescent, as if Fire itself had shaped a scythe to
harvest the fields to the Mystarrians. Winds from the sea swept the
scythe steadily westward.

The sight of flames filled Dval with
foreboding. He had not yet heard of the “grey fleet” that had been
sighted near the Courts of Tide. He had not heard of the inhuman
“toth” and their strange ways. Yet all the events that would shape
his destiny had been set in motion.

When he reached the wagon, Dval checked on
the live horse; its cavernous breaths thundered in and out. Its
back was broken, and it could barely lift its head, but it smelled
him and stirred, a whinny that was part scream, then turned enough
to see him. Dval rested one hand on the horse’s chest, to calm the
poor creature. As its breathing eased, he peered about.

Dval studied the fine carriage—black
lacquered wood without any markings. He found a door on the ground.
Silver inlay in the black lacquer outlined a man’s face with a
beard and hair made of oak leaves. He recognized instantly the
symbol of Mystarria.

He found a guardsman near the wreck—a young
knight in fishmail and helm. The fine steel would be worth a
fortune, he knew, and the soldier wore a gold ring. Dval worked the
ring free from the man’s fingers, put it on.

Farther downhill lay another woman, a young
matron, with glazed eyes peering up into the stars, as if to ponder
eternity.

Dval smiled.
Keep pondering,
woman.

The wounded horse cried. Dval loved horses,
so he drew the knight’s bastard sword from its sheath. The blade
was made of strange metal—a dull silver, neither northern steel nor
brass. It was extraordinarily light. Runes inlaid along its length
were like nothing made by men. The strange geometric shapes gleamed
like silver fire in the starlight. This was a duskin blade, at
least four thousand years old. He tested the blade’s edge with a
thumb. It pricked like a wasp sting. Blood throbbed out.

Dval wondered where the blade had come from.
Duskin blades were usually found at least a mile underground, in
ancient tunnels.

He addressed the dead knight. “You’re a lucky
man to have such a fine blade.” Then he saw how the man’s tongue
hung out between his teeth. “Well, not
that
lucky.”

He strode to the horse, plunged the blade in
its neck.

The horse lay down its head wearily, as if in
relief, and the scent of copper filled the woods as it bled
out.

He imagined its spirit galloping away in
fields of dreams.

Hoping for more treasure, Dval went to the
overturned carriage, climbed the axletree, and peered inside.

At the bottom lay a girl, cradling an injured
arm. She looked up and gasped. Deep-red hair framed a heart-shaped
face, cheeks stained with tears. Like some northerners of legend,
she had brown speckles on her face. He’d never seen freckles
before. Her large green eyes engulfed him, pupils wide and black,
filled with terror. She was a daylighter—one who could not see in
the dark. She could not have been more than nine, two years his
junior, perhaps three. Her left leg lay askew, badly bruised,
possibly broken.

“Weir bisth dua?” she asked, trembling. Dval
did not speak the uncouth tongue of Mystarria, but guessed at the
question.

“Dval,” he said, pointing at his chest.

She tried to repeat it, using one of her own
words. “Val?” Close enough. He nodded.

She pointed to her own chest: “Avahn.”

If I crush her skull
, he realized,
they will think she died in the wreck. I can take their
treasure. . . .

He peered around for witnesses. Everyone else
from the wreck seemed to be dead. He did not see any reason why she
shouldn’t die, too. Their people had been at war since before
either of them had been born.

But he felt guilty. He was in their
territory. One of his uncle’s blood mares had been high on the
mountain slopes, grazing in the lush alpine grass, but had
“wandered” down into the hills, as they did to give birth.

When he’d told his uncle that the horse was
gone, he’d said. “Are we not poor enough? Go find the mare, you
fool.” Always that sneer in his voice.

Dval hadn’t expected the horse to wander far
from camp, but moccasin prints suggested that his cousin had
actually driven the mare away as a prank.

He was trespassing in this land; the penalty
for getting caught was death.

A cool wind blew down from the icecaps above,
whispering over him, raising goose pimples on his arms.

A mournful howl arose from the woods
downhill—a low moaning sound that ululated, then tapered off. It
was the hunting cry of a dire wolf. The wolves in the Alcair
Mountains were as large as ponies, each weighing as much as three
hundred pounds. In winter they followed herds of shaggy elephants
that roamed the Kakolar Plains, but in the summers they often
foraged into the hills to hunt for elk.

Sometimes their cries were filled only with
ravening hunger, but this wolf was telling others that it tasted
the scent of blood.

Dval crouched, frozen in indecision. If he
left the girl and kept searching for his uncle’s lost blood mount,
the wolves would finish her. He could simply come back and plunder
the wreck later.

A deep growl sounded nearby in the oak
forest, not more than a hundred yards away. There was no time to
climb a tree.

Dval scrambled for safety into the carriage.
The girl shrieked and shrank away. He was Inkarran after all, with
skin and hair whiter than ice, and green-white eyes that could see
in the night.

He knew few words in her tongue. “Gud,” he
said, pointing at himself. “I gud.”

She nodded, and tried to rise, but startled
at a low growl outside.

They froze, trapped inside the carriage,
while wolves began racing outside, panting, heavy paws mincing dry
grass. A wolf howled, high and eager, inviting others to the
feast.

Dval raised a finger to his lips, begging the
girl to keep silent. She nodded, then gently lay back down on the
floor. Though she stiffened when her arm moved, she did not cry
out.

There was only one entrance into the
carriage—the broken door above. Dval stood with sword raised
upward, prepared to thrust.

For long minutes dire wolves growled and
ripped at the dead outside, sometimes snarling at one another. He
could hear padded feet circling the carriage. Dozens of them.

Let there be enough to feed them all,
Dval silently prayed to his ancestors.

He gripped the hilt of the unfamiliar sword
so tightly that it felt as if his muscles melded with it. Long
after he ached with fatigue, he stood peering up.

To relax vigilance is to die,
he heard
his uncle’s warning.

The girl hardly breathed.

Suddenly heavy paws scrabbled against the
frame of the carriage above, and Dval was unprepared for the wolf
that leapt through—a large black one, with grizzled hair turned to
mist by starlight.

Dval stabbed upward blindly.

The girl shrieked. The dire wolf yelped in
pain, scrabbled backward, and blood rained down. The girl kept
screaming.

Did I kill it?
he wondered. But the
blow had not been deep. The beast would probably only be
wounded.

An injured dire wolf will attack again, he
knew, if only to prove its fierceness.

Outside, other wolves growled and yipped
excitedly. Some sniffed at the carriage while others raced around
it.

A second wolf put its paws up on the carriage
and whined, sniffing at the opening. Dval jumped and stabbed hard,
taking it beneath the throat. It leapt away.

Wolves danced about the carriage and snarled
in a frenzy. The girl shrieked some more.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “Fear draws them!” But
the girl did not understand.

He slapped her face, shocking her into
silence. “A rabbit screams like that when it wants to die.” He
explained, but she did not know the ways of the forest.

Sometimes, when one faces a bear, the best
thing to do is to sing. It confuses the animal and shows that one
is not afraid. So Dval shoved the girl and sang now, an old battle
dirge.

“I was born to blood and war,

Like my fathers were a thousand years
before.

Sound the horn. Strike a blow.

Down to death or glory go!”

Wolves whimpered. One barked at the
carriage.

Faster than a serpent, a wolf leapt up into
the doorframe. Dval lunged with his blade; the wolf bit it. Blood
spattered, but the blade twisted in Dval’s hand. He lunged, struck
the wolf’s shoulder, but the beast growled and snapped. Fangs sank
into Dval’s shoulder, close to the neck, crushing more than
piercing.

Dval shoved the blade up with all his might,
driving the creature away. His vision blanked; he stood blinking,
blood in his eyes.

At his side, the little girl began to sing in
her own crude tongue. Her voice caught with fear at first. It was
not a battle song, but a lullaby, such as a mother might sing to a
child to frighten away imaginary wights, and as she sang, her voice
grew in strength.

Sometimes, a song does not just show
courage, it lends it,
Dval realized.

He wiped spatter from his eyes. His shoulder
was running thick with blood. He feared that it would only attract
wolves, or that he would pass out.

The girl continued to sing, and struggled to
her feet. She put her right hand around his, as if to hold
hands.

In his land, when a woman took a man’s hand,
it was a proposal of marriage. Was it the same among her
people?

They were both too young, only children.

There was terror in her eyes still, and
fierce intelligence. Her lower jaw quivered with determination.

She only seeks comfort,
he
thought.

She pulled up her skirt, drew an ornate
dagger, its silver hilt crusted in gems. It was a pretty weapon,
such as a wealthy merchant might carry. She peered up at the roof,
as if to do battle.

***

Avahn waited for the wolves and wondered at
her situation.

On sighting the gray fleet, her father had
sent Avahn and her mother to safety in the mountains. But safety is
an illusion.

Avahn’s mother had been thrown out the door
during the wreck, and the silence of the woods spoke eloquently of
her fate. Avahn didn’t want to look outside, see the inevitable.
Avahn’s grief was a tremendous weight.

She didn’t know where she was, how to get
home.

She wished that she were a runelord, that she
had an endowment of strength. Her father had suggested that she get
one.

Avahn knew little about wolves. The Wizard
Goren said that a dire wolf is not afraid of a man. A lone man
makes good prey. But he’d once said, “The smell of metal frightens
them, especially if more than one man is near.”