The Land You Never Leave Read online

  Another of the enemy—a strikingly ugly man with a bandaged head—had dodged their nets, taken down two riders with a long-handled, large-headed axe and was looking for a third. Tansy darted him in the neck.

  The other three, none much smaller than Rappa Hoga, had been netted and subdued. The rest of them—a couple of children and a woman who was clearly not the fighting type—looked useless.

  Tansy looked across at the other group of enemies, the Calnians, and saw a giant woman pluck a rider from his moose and toss him away, pick up the moose by its back legs, swing it around her head and charge the group of dagger-tooth riders who were fighting her sisters-in-arms.

  Tansy was glad she’d taken the right flank.

  Near the giant she saw another woman punch a cat, and almost guffawed at her ballsiness. As if punching a dagger-tooth would achieve anything! But the cat went down. Then the Calnian warrior knocked the rider unconscious with an effortless jab.

  Meanwhile, the third remaining Calnian was leaping and slashing with a knife even longer than the pale woman’s—so long and thin that surely it would break the moment you struck anything with it. It seemed pretty effective in slashing great gashes in cats and riders, however.

  Moose cavalry galloped up with nets and darts. The giant and the puncher went down. The remaining fighter dodged darts and dealt horrible injuries with her long knife. Riders surrounded her. She was doing well, even for a powered warrior, but it would be only a matter of moments before she was taken down.

  The battle was all but over.

  Tansy Burna trotted her cat around the edge of the fighters. She’d done her piece, she’d taken down a power-animal warrior and two more enemies. She’d guard the pale-skinned woman and children until the fighting was done.

  Sofi Tornado leapt and spun, mistimed it again, and took another whack from a staff. She heard a per-choo! and dived to avoid the dart. She sprang onto her hands and over onto her feet and looked for her next target.

  The Badlander leader had dismounted and stood facing her.

  The other dagger-tooth riders were pulling their mounts clear. Chogolisa Earthquake was prone, taken down by several sleep darts. Presumably, because it seemed they were trying to capture and not kill them, they were sleep darts and not death darts. Morningstar was trying to punch her way out of four or five large nets tossed over her by the moose riders. Yoki Choppa had been taken out by a staff blow at the start of the fight.

  “I am Rappa Hoga of the Badlands, chief of the Plains Strider and the Badlands catch squad,” said the huge man.

  “I am Sofi Tornado of Calnia.”

  “You fought well.”

  She narrowed her eyes, thought, Not nearly as well as I should have done, but said, “I haven’t finished yet.”

  Rappa Hoga held a large axe with great obsidian twin blades which shone like a woodland pond on a starry night. She had Finnbogi’s sword.

  They circled, weapons raised.

  He was taller and heavier than Erik, the biggest Mushroom Man, but maybe ten years younger and not fat. His black eyes were deep-set but they sparkled like his axe head. His features were strong and symmetric, his skin darker than most but clear and smooth, his lips full and his jaw strong. He was distractingly beautiful.

  He looked capable, too, but there was more than that. There was confidence in his eyes, and not the unfounded confidence of the idiots she’d destroyed in the Plaza of Innowak. He’d seen what she could do—a long way from her best but superior to any fighter she’d met—and yet he chose to take her on in single combat. He knew something that she didn’t. She preferred the normal situation when it was the other way round. Curse the loss of her power animal!

  She closed her eyes and strained to hear his movements.

  His left foot shifted, then his right. It didn’t help that he was more or less naked, but she heard muscles move against the leather of his breechcloth and knew what was coming.

  He lunged.

  She ducked, spun and swung her sword and … he caught her wrist. She jabbed a punch and he caught her other hand. He smiled. She kicked for his balls. He held her out at arm’s length and her leg swished harmlessly. She felt like a child.

  “Dart,” he ordered calmly, still holding her at arm’s length. She kicked frantically, tried to twist clear. Something struck her lower back. His face rushed away, then back towards her. Then she was gone.

  Finnbogi peered over the grass tips.

  The Hird were down! Thyri was down! He almost leapt up to avenge her, but there were simply too many Badlanders. And he was meant to be protecting the children.

  And suddenly he had more pressing problems.

  A Scrayling woman was walking her dagger-tooth cat around the captured Hird and the other riders, heading for him, Bodil and the children.

  She looked aggressively healthy and ready for a fight, a few years older than Finnbogi and dressed in leather battle trousers and a white cotton shirt. It was pretty much the same outfit as he himself was wearing. She was smiling and had what could only be described as a saucy look in her darting, yellow eyes. The look reminded Finnbogi of Hrolf the Girlchaser’s eyes when he’d ogled Sassa or Thyri, but on this woman the effect was appealing rather than vomit-inducing.

  Ottar squeaked, staring at the oncoming beast. Freydis, also looking terrified for once, took his hand. Bodil stood up out of the grass in front of them, her knife held aloft in a shaking hand.

  Finnbogi leapt up and ran at the rider.

  Her mount saw him coming. I’m going to slash you with my claws, it seemed to say to him.

  The cat reared and swiped a paw. Finnbogi dodged, leapt and grabbed the rider around her waist. She whacked at him and he fell back, pulling her off the big cat.

  He whumped onto the ground and her torso crashed onto his head. He considered biting her back, dismissed that as glaringly unheroic, and tried to grapple her so that he might get on top. But she drove a fist into the side of his head and twisted like a snake, so that in a couple of heartbeats it was her sitting on him, pinning him with her legs.

  She smiled, yellow eyes flashing even more saucily than before, and swung her fist into his chin. He blinked stars and she raised her fist again. Was she planning to punch him into unconsciousness? It looked a lot like it. That was not the painless wrapped-in-a-net capture he’d been hoping for.

  He wrenched his left arm free from under her leg, blocked her punch and carried on the movement to jab her on the chin. She dodged, which freed his other arm. He swung it at her, surprised to find that his hand was still clutching Sofi Tornado’s stone axe. The weapon’s head whunked into the Badlander’s temple. Her yellow eyes widened and she fell sideways with a sigh.

  Finnbogi ran to the children and crouched next to them, trying to gather them into his arms for protection.

  Nearby the dagger-tooth riders were trussing Keef, Wulf, Bjarni, Thyri and Erik. They were all either dead or unconscious. Further away other warriors were doing the same to the Owsla. A mighty looking man was holding a lifeless Sofi Tornado aloft by one of her wrists and examining her like a fisherman might examine a fine catch.

  The Owsla were beaten!

  Approaching them were six bald children, riding animals that looked like giant goats. In all the weirdness, these strange little people were the weirdest and the most frightening.

  “It’s okay,” Finnbogi said to Bodil and the children, “it’s going to be fine. We’ve been in worse scrapes than this.”

  One of the dagger-tooth riders spotted them, yelled a command, and a group of six cat cavalry padded in their direction.

  “Have we?” asked Freydis.

  Chapter 5

  Beeba Spiders

  Morningstar woke but kept her eyes shut. She was upright and bound. She tested the constraints. No give whatsoever. Her fault. She should have realised that capture was inevitable, so resisted punching the crap out of that dagger-tooth and showing them how strong she was.

  She could hear and smell
people and beasts—specifically Mushroom Man, dagger-tooth cat, moose, buffalo and … pigeon, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  She tilted her head back and lifted her eyelids just a little, like she’d done when she was a girl and hadn’t wanted the servants to know she was awake.

  What the …?

  She forgot stealth and opened both eyes wide.

  She was strapped upright to a wooden frame. The endless Ocean of Grass stretched around her, golden-green and hazy in the dawn light. Ahead was an area of buffalo-clipped grass, then the conical buffalo skin tents of nomadic people. Badlanders and their beasts busied about. So far, so what she might expect. But looming behind and over the Badlander camp was a vast wooden structure. At first she thought it was a high wall, but then she saw it wasn’t solid; it was made up of beams and struts and what looked like cages—yes, she could see animals in some of them. Was that a white bear?

  It looked like a giant sledge but it couldn’t be, because you’d need an animal as strong as a thousand buffalo to pull such a weight across the grass, and that animal would have to be tall as the Mountain of the Sun to lift something that height. Although if you combined the strength of a multitude of animals, and if those animals could fly … No, the structure couldn’t be mobile. She’d find out what it was sooner or later.

  To her left and right were two Mushroom Men, bound like she was. The frames they were strapped to were normal-sized sledges, leant against a chest-high pole. So they’d been dragged here on sledges, probably behind the moose. But why were they propped up?

  She tried to crane to see who was beyond the two men. There were more sledges, but she couldn’t see who was on them. Hopefully the rest of the Owsla were there and they’d propped her up between two Mushroom Men just to piss her off.

  “Hello, I was hoping you’d wake up soon. Are you feeling okay?” asked the tall, dark-haired one to her right—Bjarni Cockhead if she remembered correctly.

  To her left was the sulky one. Mercifully he was still out cold, so she only had to listen to one Mushroom Man’s nonsense. She was not going to dignify it with a reply.

  “I’ve been awake since the middle of the night, although I did have a bit of a kip just now,” explained Cockhead, unbidden. “I guess I’ve got a tolerance for whatever they had in those blowpipes. Funny, I woke feeling pretty clean, which you wouldn’t expect after a whack like that. How do you feel?”

  “Can any Owsla hear me?” called Morningstar.

  “I think you’re the first one to wake,” said Bjarni. “Paloma Pronghorn’s on my right and … Paloma Pronghorn? … yup, still asleep. She looks fine, though. Very fine.”

  “Pissflaps …” Morningstar muttered.

  “I don’t suppose you know what these boxes on our necks are for?”

  There was a wooden box attached by a thick leather strap to the Mushroom Man’s neck. The sulky one to her left also had one. She could feel hers now, too. The box was half the size of a clenched fist, with an open side against her neck. She could feel something spiky resting against her skin. It was not pleasant.

  “Whatever’s in mine moved a while back,” said Cockhead. “It was about the most horrible thing I’ve ever felt.”

  So they had animals strapped to their necks. That would explain the two little breathing holes on each box. She narrowed her eyes. Someone had strapped animals to her neck without asking her permission. She did not like being fucked around like this.

  “Can you feel yours?”

  She didn’t answer. A multitude of birds—the pigeons she could smell—rose into the air at the westerly end of the gigantic wooden structure, then fluttered back down.

  Bjarni Cockhead attempted to talk to her and she watched the camp, trying to gather any information that might aid their escape. She saw more pigeons—many more—fly up and down near one end of the colossal structure. Moose riders herded large numbers of buffalo towards the other end.

  Finnbogi the Boggy woke and blinked, then blinked again. The extraordinary scene wouldn’t go away.

  Had the rest survived? he wondered. Had Thyri survived? He could see other frames like the one he was strapped to. He strained to see who was on them, but could spot only Gunnhild and Morningstar.

  “Morningstar,” he asked, “can you see anybody else?”

  She ignored him.

  She actually, straight up, ignored him. So rude!

  “Morningstar, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “I can hear you!” It was Bjarni Chickenhead. “I’m on Morningstar’s other side. She won’t talk to me either. I’m sure she has her reasons. Paloma Pronghorn’s still whacked out beside me and I can’t see anybody else.”

  Bjarni sounded happier than he’d been for a while.

  “Anybody else awake?” he shouted. Silence.

  Finnbogi and Bjarni talked about their predicament, Bjarni’s cheery mood prevailing. It was odd, Finnbogi thought, what cheered people. For example, despite the trouble they were in, he could see by the pulsing veins on Morningstar’s neck and hear by the occasional angry exhalation that their chat was annoying her, so it pleased him to carry on and make it as inane as possible. Ignore us, he thought, and we will retaliate by irritating you to Hel and back.

  Gunnhild woke. Finnbogi asked her if she was okay, didn’t really listen to her reply and carried on chatting to Bjarni, discussing everything they could see.

  They decided that the huge wooden structure was a fortification of some kind, possibly around a town. The millions of pigeons—which had to be crowd pigeons grouped in such a large number—could be there as pets, perhaps as a display, or maybe as a labour-intensive sacrifice. And what were the buffalo up to? And those bizarre bald children riding big goats? And the boxes on their necks? They discussed it all, their explanations becoming zanier and zanier while, by her pulsing veins and stifled snorting, Morningstar became angier and angrier between them.

  After a while, Gunnhild ruined it. “The bore is the man who says everything,” she said.

  “We’re doing it to annoy Morningstar,” whispered Finnbogi out of the corner of his mouth, “because she won’t talk to us.”

  “You’re annoying her and proving yourself a bore. Who’s the winner?”

  Finnbogi carried on his chat with Bjarni for a while, but the joy had gone. Thanks, Aunt Gunnhild, he thought.

  Paloma and Sitsi woke, then the Badlanders came, led by a smiley fellow. So broad was the Badlander’s grin that Finnbogi thought he was some kindly chap come to untie them, explain that it had all been a big mistake and lead them to a delicious breakfast.

  He was about as wrong as he’d ever been about anyone.

  Morningstar was so keen for the Mushroom Men’s ignorant, inane chatter to end, and to find out what was going on, that she was pleased when a Badlander marched towards them purposefully, flanked by a group of warriors and other people who she guessed were captives by their lack of armament, meek demeanour and the wooden boxes strapped to their necks. The captives weren’t bound, but they seemed totally compliant. She didn’t like that.

  Behind the lot of them came a bald, big-headed child riding a bighorn sheep.

  The warrior’s face was split by a huge grin, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was the grin of a demon who’d crawled out of the ground with plans to eviscerate every man, woman and child and bathe in their guts.

  “Hello!” said the grinner, looking up and down the line with small, black eyes. The cold-blooded smile stretched across a broad, acne-scarred jaw. “I am Chapa Wangwa. Do sit down all of you. Oh, you can’t. Ha ha ha!”

  “How many times have you made that pathetic joke?” asked Morningstar.

  Chapa Wangwa’s smile broadened all the more as he walked over to her. He peered into her eyes, his own flashing murderously, then looked her up and down. He trailed his fingers across her bare stomach, smiling and nodding. She strained at her bonds, willing them to break. She wanted to punch that smile into a pulp.

  “This one is a
masochist!” he cried, standing back. “Good! She will enjoy what is to come. For those of you who didn’t hear, this fine woman suggested that I have made that quip about sitting down before. And she’s right, I have, every time I talk to new captives. Every time! I always find it funny.” He laughed.

  “Do you want to hear what I find even funnier? Barring our most recent haul on the Plains Strider behind me, all the people who have heard that joke before—hundreds, maybe thousands of people—all are dead. All of them! Isn’t that amazing! And there’s more. None of them died well. Not one. Their last days were oh, so bad,” he shook his head but the grin remained. “They died in agony. I killed many of them myself. One man, I slit open his legs and let him watch for days as insects, worms and other small beasts ate his feet, calves, thighs and further up, too. Quite often I will break spines so that people can watch without interfering as I torture their friends and their families. The fun I have had!”

  Morningstar shivered. She hadn’t felt fear since she was a child, but here it came, nudging its way back into her brain. Curse Yoki Choppa for losing the tarantula hawk wasp that made them unafraid.

  “Now I’d chat and joke with you all day,” the vile man continued, “but you’ll be itching to know about your new necklaces. Your new itchy necklaces. Ha ha ha! That joke too, I have made many times!”

  As if on command, the creatures in the box on Morningstar’s neck moved. She couldn’t stop herself shouting out. By the noise around her, the same thing had happened to everyone else.

  Chapa Wangwa’s grin widened even further. “You think the animals feel bad on your neck? You should see them! Oh no, they are not nice looking. We call them beeba spiders. Think of the nastiest, ugliest spider you know, give it bigger teeth and make it orange, and you might be getting close.”

  Behind him the largest group of pigeons yet rose into the air at the westward end of the huge wooden structure, then settled. Morningstar was certain that the whole vast frame had lifted that time. Chapa Wangwa had mentioned a “Plains Strider.” Surely, that vast wooden structure couldn’t move.