Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (30 page)

Avahn and the boy were vastly outnumbered,
but she determined to show no fear, even though her heart pounded
as if it might break. Perhaps someday, if she grew to become a
powerful runelord, she wouldn’t be so swayed by fear. Today was not
that day.

The boy was bleeding badly. She knew that he
might not be able to protect her much longer. There was nowhere for
her to hide in the carriage.

She studied him. Dval was not huge. Like most
Inkarrans, he was lanky and pale in the starlight. Only his calves
were dark, for they had been tattooed with a tree, one that bore
totems giving the names of his ancestors. He wore little besides
his moccasins—a summer kilt, a necklace of wood beads, earrings
made of dyed cotton.

Another wolf leapt up on the carriage and
peered in; Dval lunged, but it leapt away so fast, it seemed a
creature of mist and dreams.

Once, from her mother’s castle at Coorm,
Avahn had watched a silver fox out in a field on a green morning.
There were mice in the field, and the fox danced about tufts of dry
grass. Any mouse that stuck its head outside its burrow risked
getting eaten.

Their only hope was to stay inside. She
thought about the Master of the Hounds, Sir Gwilliam. When given a
new litter of wolfhound pups, he’d spanked the largest and
explained, “Every pack of dogs has a leader. To control the pack,
you must control their leader.”

She tried to warn the boy: “Val, we must kill
their leader.” She jutted her chin up toward the opening. He shook
his head, not understanding.

We only have to make it until morning,
she thought.
My father will send soldiers to look for
us.

But no one at Castle Coorm knew she was on
her way.

Her right arm and leg were so badly bruised,
they were nearly worthless. She did the only thing she could. She
sang.

***

Five more times that night, wolves attacked,
and Dval managed to strike deeply and drive them away, but with
each hour his strength waned, and Avahn didn’t know how long he
could continue.

Near dawn a crescent moon climbed overhead,
spilling silver light down so that it glistened like a
spiderweb.

Avahn worried. The grey ships had come, and
she’d seen fires in the valley shortly before dark. She did not
know who set them.

All that she could do was keep singing.

When the sky began to brighten and the smell
of morning dew filled the air, the leader of the pack came. It was
a great wolf, larger than the others. It lunged through the
doorframe without preamble, snarling and snapping. So quick was the
attack that Dval struggled to repel it, thrusting his blade
awkwardly.

Avahn was thrown backward, and the wolf made
it halfway into the carriage, shoving Dval to the ground. It
focused on the boy, bit him on the head.

Without thought, Avahn lurched forward and
plunged her blade deep into the wolf’s neck. Its fur was so thick,
she wasn’t sure how deep the wound was, but hot blood spurted from
a vein at its throat, and the wolf yelped and snapped at her, and
Dval scrambled away.

The wolf’s strength was so great, it whipped
its head sideways to bite her and slammed her into the wall of the
carriage. She heard wooden struts crack from the impact, even as
her ears began to ring.

Unconsciousness came so swiftly and
completely, it was like falling into a deep dark bottomless pool.
She struggled to remain conscious, but struggling was no use.

***

Dval stabbed at the monster wolf, though he
was crushed against the floor. The light blade flickered up, and
entered the beast’s torso as cleanly as if it were a sheath.

The wolf growled and twisted its head away
from Avahn, and he struck thrice more, slashing now.

The wolf growled and backed away, leaving the
entrance open to the starlight.

Outside, the creature jumped about and
growled ferociously, like a hart struck by an arrow.

Other wolves yapped at it, and Dval waited
for it to come back, for a wounded wolf was more dangerous than a
bear.

But it raced about erratically, then gave a
lonely howl just outside the carriage, a howl that made the wood
paneling shiver. The beast couldn’t have been ten feet away. Dval
could hear it panting louder and louder, as if it were growing more
fatigued by the moment.

Dval’s head was bleeding now, along with his
shoulder, and he could hardly stand, but he remained on his feet,
fixed his eyes on the opening overhead.

The pack leader is dying,
he thought.
But that seemed too . . . hopeful.

He waited for it to leap into the carriage
again, but instead heard it get up, panting heavily, and wander
toward the woods.

For many long minutes Dval stood waiting.

He felt he could stand no longer and began to
float in and out of consciousness.

If they come for me,
he thought,
I
will be standing still.

So he held his striking pose, as morning
came. Nuthatches chirruped outside in the forest, and mourning
doves called. Flies began to buzz inside the carriage, spinning,
spinning, in lazy circles, and Dval’s head spun with them.

He waited, a monument.

I am stone.
He told himself.
I am
stone.

***

The final attack came in the later morning.
Dval must have fallen asleep on his feet. He wasn’t aware of a
scuffle on the carriage or even a shadow filling the opening above
him. All he felt was a tug as he was jerked from the carriage by
his topknot.

He swatted with his sword in vain. A giant
had grabbed him, and now held him dangling with one hand, while he
wrested the sword away with the other. . . .

***

The giant hurled Dval to the ground. He
rolled and struggled to rise, but the giant slammed one huge foot
onto him, pinning Dval. “Stinkende theif!” the creature boomed in a
voice more guttural than a bull’s.

It was a hill giant, nearly nine feet tall,
from the land of Toom. He had to weigh a thousand pounds, and no
matter how Dval squirmed, he could not wrest free. Dval squinted up
into the impossible sunlight. The giant’s hair was as blue-black as
ink, and he wore rat skulls braided into his bushy beard. He stank
of rum and sweat and unnamable nastiness.

Dval would rather have faced more wolves. He
closed his eyes, blinded by the sun. Other Mystarrians surrounded
him, men with drawn swords, and runes of brawn and grace branded
onto their necks. Dval smelled of woods and crisp mountain air.
These men stank of ale and grease and cities.

Some shouted at him, and one ripped the
stolen ring from Dval’s finger while another man, with tears in his
eyes, salvaged the damaged sword, taking the relic in both
hands.

Dval did not understand all of the
accusations leveled against him, but one man drew his sword and
strode forward, intent on taking Dval’s head.

Dval gritted his teeth and bared his neck. He
stared into his executioner’s eyes as befitted a man who was no
coward. The soldier raised his tall sword high, brought the blade
down.

“Stobben!” the girl shouted.

The sword veered and bit into the ground near
Dval’s head.

Dval looked up in time to see a knight in
fishmail help the girl come limping from the carriage, while six
others circled him, eager for the kill. They forced Dval to sit on
the ground in the sunlight, where his skin would burn and his eyes
could not see.

They pulled the bodies of the wolves that
he’d slain together, and laid them side-by-side. The pelt of a dire
wolf was valuable. Few men had ever killed five at a time.

***

Avahn found her mother’s body downhill.
Wolves had mauled it and pulled it into the shadows under the oaks.
Only a bit of blue dress identified the corpse.

One of her father’s soldiers covered it with
a forest green cloak and tried to pull Avahn away, but she stayed
rooted, let the tears flow long and hard while flies buzzed
about.

The soldiers kept the Inkarran boy on his
knees, in the sun. In the bright light, she could see his hair like
braided silver, running down his neck. The wool earrings were as
crimson as blood. Many bites and scratches marred his smooth
skin.

She begged them to let him go, but Captain
Adelheim said, “He’s more than Inkarran. He’s Woguld. They’re all
under a death sentence. Only your father can stay the boy’s
execution.”

“He saved my life,” she said.

“He was robbing corpses, and he would have
killed you,” Captain Adelheim said.

“But he didn’t,” she said vehemently.

Just then, one of Adelheim’s men kicked the
boy, knocking him over, and others jeered.

Avahn stared hard at Captain Adelheim. He was
a fair man, with a red beard and piercing blue eyes. His frame and
features were flawless. Silently she begged for compassion, but he
just shrugged. Avahn whirled and slugged Dval’s attacker in the
gut.

The soldiers all roared in laughter. “Careful
there, Pwyrthen, or the princess might drop her aim a bit.”

The soldiers backed away then, leaving the
boy to gasp on the ground, like a landed trout.

Avahn got one of her mother’s riding cloaks
and put it over him, then settled next to him, prepared to beg her
father for the boy’s life. She feared that it was in vain. For two
hundred years they’d fought the Woguld.

She asked Captain Adelheim, “Did you see the
men from the gray ships?”

“It wasn’t men on those ships,” Captain
Adelheim said. “They were creatures with black exoskeletons, like
reavers, and philia hanging like worms off of their head plates.
Where they came from, we are not sure. But we think we know. Your
father went searching for new territories. Now, we’ve been
discovered. . . .”

Legend had said that there was a land far
across the Carrol Sea, a vast continent where no man had set foot
and returned. Three years back, her father had sent an expedition
to that land, hoping to learn if men lived there. The expedition
had never returned.

“So they landed? They set the fires?”

“Their ships never beached,” Captain Adelheim
said. “The creatures just stepped off them, into the water, and
walked on the bottom of the sea until they reached the shore. Yes,
they set fires. But none of them will ever return home.” He paused.
“We call them
toths
.”

“Toths,” Avahn repeated.
Fangs.

Avahn had never seen a reaver, only their
skulls. She could not imagine what a toth might look like.

There is a moment in every person’s life
where they recognize that they are going to have to survive through
hard times. The night fighting wolves had seemed terrible, but
Avahn knew in some deep part of her, that it was only the
beginning.

***

At midday, the King of Mystarrians came—a
plump man with sandy brown hair and a dark crown carved from oak,
and robes of royal blue. He rode in with thirty men, circled Dval,
studied him.

In the hills above them, Dval heard a
woodpecker tapping. Peck peck. Peck, peck, peck, peck.

It was Woguld warrior speak, made by tapping
sandstone against a tree. “We are here.”

The king and his men did not seem to
notice.

Instead, the Mystarrians argued.

***

King Harrill was filled with grief at the
death of his wife, and he strode over the field of wreckage like an
angry badger, like a storm in the brewing. His eyes were bloodshot
and glazed from lack of sleep. He’d been fighting all night, and
now he paced restlessly, moving one direction first, changing in an
instant. Until that day, he had been called Harrill the Cunning,
but many argue that on that day he became Harrill the Mad.

For a long time, he knelt above the body of
his dead wife, silently grieving. Everyone fell silent, showing
quiet respect.

Suddenly a growl sounded. Avahn whirled. The
huge leader of the pack stood at the edge of the forest, beneath an
oak, drenched in blood, crimson flowing over black fur. It lowered
its head, peered at the king from yellow eyes, and snarled. It was
making its last stand. By instinct, every man froze in fear.

It gathered its strength and lunged across
the clearing, leapt, its fangs seeking her father’s throat.

A lesser man would have cried out or fled in
terror, but her father was a runelord, with runes of brawn and
grace branded upon his neck. He merely leaned away from the attack,
and brought up a mailed fist.

His blow sounded like a crack of lighting. It
split hide and shattered bones, sent wolf teeth and blood flying in
the air. The blow sounded like finality.

He stood, glaring down at the body of the
wolf for a long minute, gasping, as the wolf’s legs shivered and
spasmed.

Finally he growled and whirled on Dval. “Why
is that . . . creature still alive?” he shouted to his men.

“He saved my life,” Avahn answered
softly.

“More than likely,” her father argued, “he’s
the one who caused the wreck. They do it all the time, spook our
horses at sunset, steal our crops in the night, murder travelers in
their sleep. They’re barbarians, not even human.”

He went to Dval, pulled his own battle axe,
and raised it high.

The boy, dazed and forlorn, did not cry out
in fear. Instead, he spit at the king’s feet.

“No,” Avahn called out to Dval, for she knew
better than to test her father’s wrath. The boy raised his chin and
offered his neck, glaring.

“Oh, this one has spirit,” the king mocked.
“I like him, but I’m still going to kill him.”

Avahn shouted at her father, “Da, I
trust
him. We can trust him.”