The Bonehunters

  Karsa reversed grip on the huge skinning knife he had been working with, and stabbed it deep into the bhederin carcass. Then he rose to face the kneeling savage.

  'Get up,' he said.

  The man flinched, lowering his head.

  'Karsa, he's offering you a gift.'

  'Then he should do so standing. His people are hiding here in the wilderness because he hasn't done enough of that. Tell him he needs to stand.'

  They had been speaking in the trader tongue, and some­thing in the kneeling warrior's reactions led Samar to suspect that he had understood the exchange... and the demand, for he slowly climbed to his feet. 'Man of the Great Trees,' he now said, his accent harsh and guttural to Samar's ears. 'Deliverer of Destruction, the Anibar offer you this gift, and ask that you give us a gift in return—'

  'Then they are not gifts,' Karsa replied. 'What you seek is to barter.'

  Fear flickered in the warrior's eyes. The others of his tribe — the Anibar — remained silent and motionless between the trees, yet Samar sensed a palpable dismay spreading among them. Their leader tried again: 'This is the language of barter, Deliverer, yes. Poison that we must swallow. It does not suit what we seek.'

  Scowling, Karsa turned to Samar Dev. 'Too many words that lead nowhere, witch. Explain.'

  'This tribe follows an ancient tradition lost among most peoples of Seven Cities,' she said. 'The tradition of gift-giving. The gift itself is a measure of a number of things, with subtle and often confusing ways of attributing value. These Anibar have of necessity learned about trading, but they do not ascribe value the same way as we do, and so they usually lose in the deal. I suspect they generally fare poorly when dealing with canny, unscrupulous merchants from the civilized lands. There is—'

  'Enough,' Karsa interrupted. He gestured towards the leader — who flinched once more — and said, 'Show me this gift. But first, tell me your name.'

  'I am, in the poison tongue, Boatfinder.' He held up the object in his hands. 'The courage brand,' he said, 'of a great father among the bhederin.'

  Samar Dev, brows lifting, regarded Karsa. 'That would be a penis bone, Teblor.'

  'I know what it is,' he answered in a growl. 'Boatfinder, what in turn do you ask of me?'

  'Revenants come into the forest, besetting the Anibar clans north of here. They slaughter all in their path, with­out cause. They do not die, for they command the air itself and so turn aside every spear that seeks them. Thus we hear. We lose many names.'

  'Names?' Samar asked.

  His gaze flicked to her and he nodded. 'Kin. Eight hundred and forty-seven names woven to mine, among the north clans.' He gestured to the silent warriors behind him. 'As many names to lose among these here, each one. We know grief in the loss for ourselves, but more for our children. The names we cannot take back — they go and never come again, and so we diminish.'

  Karsa said, 'You want me to kill revenants,' and he pointed at the gift, 'in exchange for that.'

  'Yes.'

  'How many of these revenants are there?'

  'They come in great ships, grey-winged, and set out into the forest in hunts, each hunt numbering twelve. They are driven by anger, yet nothing we seek to do appeases that anger. We do not know what we do to offend them so.'

  Probably offered them a damned penis bone. But Samar Dev kept that thought to herself.

  'How many hunts?'

  'A score thus far, yet their boats do not depart.'

  Karsa's entire face had darkened. Samar Dev had never seen such raw fury in him before. She suddenly feared he would tear this small cowering man apart. Instead, he said, 'Cast off your shame, all of you. Cast it off! Slayers need no reason to slay. It is what they do. That you exist is offence enough for such creatures.' He stepped forward and snatched the bone from Boatfinder's hands. 'I will kill them all. I will sink their damned ships. This I—'

  'Karsa!' Samar cut in.

  He swung to her, eyes blazing.

  'Before you vow anything so... extreme, you might con­sider something more achievable.' At his expression, she hastened on, 'You could, for example, be content with driving them from the land, back into their ships. Make the forest... unpalatable.'

  After a long, tense moment, the Teblor sighed. 'Yes. That would suffice. Although I am tempted to swim after them.'

  Boatfinder was looking at Karsa with eyes wide with wonder and awe.

  For a moment, Samar thought that the Teblor was — uncharacteristically — attempting humour. But no, the huge warrior had been serious. And, to her dismay, she believed him and so found nothing funny nor absurd in his words. 'The time for that decision can wait, can't it?'

  'Yes.' He scowled once more at Boatfinder. 'Describe these revenants.'

  'Tall, but not as tall as you. Their flesh is the hue of death. Eyes cold as ice. They bear iron weapons, and among them are shamans whose very breath is sickness — terrible clouds of poisonous vapour — all whom it touches die in great pain.'

  Samar Dev said to Karsa, 'I think their use of the term "revenant" is meant for anything or anyone not from their world. But the foes they speak of come from ships. That seems unlikely were they in truth undead. The breath of shamans sounds like sorcery.'

  'Boatfinder,' Karsa said, 'when I am done here you will lead me to the revenants.'

  The colour drained from the man's face. 'It is many, many days of travel, Deliverer. I think to send word that you are coming — to the clans of the north—'

  'No. You will accompany us.'

  'But — but why?'

  Karsa stepped forward, one hand snapping out to clutch Boatfinder by the neck. He dragged the man close. 'You shall witness, and in witnessing you will become more than what you are now. You shall be prepared — for all that is coming, to you and your miserable people.' He released the man, who staggered back, gasping. 'My own people once believed they could hide,' the Teblor said, baring his teeth. 'They were wrong. This I have learned, and this you will now learn. You believe the revenants are all that shall afflict you? Fool. They are but the first.'

  Samar watched the giant warrior walk back to his butchering.

  Boatfinder stared after him with glistening, terror-filled eyes. Then he spun about, hissed in his own language. Six warriors rushed forward, past their leader, drawing knives as they approached Karsa.

  'Teblor,' Samar warned.

  Boatfinder raised his hands. 'No! No harm is sought you, Deliverer. They now help you with the cutting, that is all. The bounty is prepared for you, so that we need waste no time—'

  'I want the hides cured,' Karsa said.

  'Yes.'

  'And runners to deliver to us those hides and smoked meat from this kill.'

  'Yes.'

  'Then we can leave now.'

  Boatfinder's head bobbed, as if he could not trust his own voice in answer to that final demand.

  Sneering, Karsa retrieved his knife and walked over to a nearby pool of brackish water, where he began washing the blood from the blade, then from his hands and forearms.

  Samar Dev drew close to Boatfinder as the half-dozen warriors fell to butchering the dead bhederin. 'Boatfinder.'

  He glanced at her with skittish eyes. 'You are a witch — so the Deliverer calls you.'

  'I am. Where are your womenfolk? Your children?'

  'Beyond this swamp, west and north,' he replied. 'The land rises, and there are lakes and rivers where we find the black grain, and among the flat-rock, berries. We are done our great hunt in the open lands, and now they return to our many camps with winter's meat. Yet,' he gestured at his warriors, 'we follow you. We witness the Deliverer slaying the bhederin. He rides a bone-horse — we do not see a bone-horse ridden. He carries a sword of birth-stone. The Iron Prophet tells our people of such warriors — the wielders of birth-stone. He says they come.'

  'I have not heard of this Iron Prophet,' Samar Dev said, frowning.

  Boatfinder made a gesture and faced south. 'To speak of this, it is the frozen time.
' He closed his eyes, and his tone suddenly changed. 'In the Time of Great Slaying, which is the frozen time of the past, the Anibar dwelt on the plains, and would travel almost to the East River, where the great walled camps of the Ugari rose from the land, and with the Ugari the Anibar would trade meat and hides for iron tools and weapons. The Great Slaying came to the Ugari, then, and many fled to seek refuge among the Anibar. Yet the Slayers followed, the Mezla they were called by the Ugari, and a terrible battle was fought and all those who had sheltered among the Anibar fell to the Mezla.

  'Fearing retribution for the aid given to the Ugari, the Anibar prepared to flee — deeper into the Odhan — but the leader of the Mezla found them first. With a hundred dark warriors, he came, yet he stayed their iron weapons. The Anibar were not his enemy, he told them, and then he gave warning — others were coming, and they would be without mercy. They would destroy the Anibar. This leader was the Iron Prophet, King Iskar Jarak, and the Anibar heeded his words, and so fled, west and north, until these lands here and the forests and lakes beyond, became their home.' He glanced over to where Karsa, his supplies gathered, sat astride his Jhag horse, and his voice changed once more. 'The Iron Prophet tells us there is a time when, in our greatest peril, wielders of the birth-stone come to defend us. Thus, when we see who travels our land, and the sword in his hands... this time is soon to be a frozen time.'

  Samar Dev studied Boatfinder for a long moment, then she faced Karsa. 'I don't think you will be able to ride Havok,' she said. 'We are about to head into difficult terrain.'

  'Until such time comes, I will ride,' the Teblor replied. 'You are free to lead your own horse. Indeed, you are free to carry it over all terrain you deem difficult.'

  Irritated, she headed towards her own horse. 'Fine, for now I will ride behind you, Karsa Orlong. At the very least I will not have to worry about being whipped by branches, since you'll be knocking down all those trees in your path.'

  Boatfinder waited until both were ready, then he set out, along the north edge of the boggy glade, until he reached its end and promptly turned to vanish into the forest.

  Karsa halted Havok and glared at the thick, snarled undergrowth and the crowded black spruce.

  Samar Dev laughed, earning her a savage look from the Teblor.

  Then he slipped down from his stallion's back.

  They found Boatfinder waiting for them, an apologetic look on his grey-painted face. 'Game trails, Deliverer. In these forests there are deer, bear, wolf and elk — even the bhederin do not delve deep beyond the glades. Moose and caribou are further north. These game trails, as you see, are low. Even Anibar stoop in swift passage. In the unfound time ahead of which scant can be said, we find more flat-rock and the way is easier.'

  Both interminable and monotonous, the low forest was a journey tangled and snarled, rife with frustration, as if it lived with the sole purpose of denying passage. The bedrock was close to the surface, a battered purple and black rock, shot through in places with long veins of quartzite, yet its surface was bent, tilted and folded, forming high-walled basins, sinkholes and ravines filled with ex­foliated slabs sheathed in slick, emerald-green moss. Tree-falls crowded these depressions, the black spruce's bark rough as sharkskin and the needleless, web-thick branches harsh as claws and unyielding.

  Spears of sunlight reached down here and there, throw­ing motes of intense colour into an otherwise gloomy, cavernous world.

  Towards dusk, Boatfinder led them to a treacherous scree, up which he scrambled. Karsa and Samar Dev, leading their horses, found the climb perilous, every foothold less certain than the last — moss giving way like rotted skin to expose sharp-edged angular rock and deep-holes, any one of which could have snapped a horse-leg.

  Sodden with grimy sweat, scratched and scraped, Samar Dev finally reached the summit, turning to guide her horse the last few steps. Before them wound more or less flat bedrock, grey with the skin of lichen. From modest depressions here and there rose white and jack pines, the occasional straggly oak, fringed in juniper and swaths of blueberry and wintergreen bushes. Sparrow-sized dragon-flies darted through spinning clouds of smaller insects in the fading sunlight.

  Boatfinder gestured northward. 'This path leads to a lake. We camp there.'

  They set off.

  No higher ground was visible in any direction, and as the elongated basolith twisted and turned, flanked every now and then by slightly lower platforms and snags, Samar Dev quickly realized how easy it would be to get lost in this wild land. The path bifurcated ahead and, approaching the junction, Boatfinder strode along the east edge, looking down for a time, then chose the ridge on the right.

  Matching his route, Samar Dev glanced over the edge and saw what he had been searching for, a sinuous line of smallish boulders lying on a shelf of stone slightly below them, the pattern creating something like a snake, the head consisting of a wedge-shaped, flattened rock, while at the other end the last stone of the tail was no bigger than her thumbnail. Lichen covered the stones, bunching round each one to suggest that the trail-marker was very old. There was nothing obvious in the petroform that would make the choice of routes clear, although the snake's head was aligned in the direction they were walking.

  'Boatfinder,' she called out, 'how is it that you read this serpent of boulders?'

  He glanced back at her. 'A snake is away from the heart. A turtle is the heart's path.'

  'All right, then why aren't they on this higher ground, so you don't have to look for them?'

  'When the black grain is carried south, we are burdened — neither turtle nor snake must lose shape or pattern. We run these stone roads. Burdened.'

  'Where do you take the harvest?'

  'To our gather camps on the plains. Each band. We gather the harvest. Into one. And divide it, so that each band has sufficient grain. Lakes and rivers and their shores cannot be trusted. Some harvest yields true: Other harvest yields weak. As water rises and as water falls. It is not the same. The flat-rock seeks to be level, across all the world, but it cannot, and so water rises and water falls. We do not kneel before inequity, else we ourselves discard fairness and knife finds knife.'

  'Old rules to deal with famine,' Samar said, nodding.

  'Rules in the frozen time.'

  Karsa Orlong looked at Samar Dev. 'What is this frozen time, witch?'

  'The past, Teblor.'

  She watched his eyes narrow thoughtfully, then he grunted and said, 'And the unfound time is the future, meaning that now is the flowing time—'

  'Yes!' Boatfinder cried. 'You speak life's very secret!'

  Samar Dev pulled herself into the saddle — on this ridge they could ride their horses — carefully. She watched Karsa Orlong follow suit, as a strange stillness filled her being. Born, she realized, of Boatfinder's words. 'Life's very secret.' This flowing time not yet frozen and only now found out of the unfound. 'Boatfinder, the Iron Prophet came to you long ago — in the frozen time — yet he spoke to you of the unfound time.'

  'Yes, you understand, witch. Iskar Jarak speaks but one language, yet within it is each and all. He is the Iron Prophet. The King.'

  'Your king, Boatfinder?'

  'No. We are his shadows.'

  'Because you exist only in the flowing time.'

  The man turned and made a reverent bow that stirred something within Samar Dev. 'Your wisdom honours us, witch,' he said.

  'Where,' she asked, 'is Iskar Jarak's kingdom?'

  Sudden tears in the man's eyes. 'An answer we yearn to find. It is lost—'

  'In the unfound time.'

  'Yes.'

  'Iskar Jarak was a Mezla.'

  'Yes.'

  Samar Dev opened her mouth for one more question, then realized that it wasn't necessary. She knew its answer. Instead, she said, 'Boatfinder, tell me, from the frozen time into the flowing time, is there a bridge?'

  His smile was wistful, filled with longing. 'There is.'

  'But you cannot cross it.'

  'No.' br />
  'Because it's burning.'

  'Yes, witch, the bridge burns.'

  King Iskar Jarak, and the unfound kingdom...

  ****

  Descending like massive, raw steps, the shelves of rock marched down into crashing foam and spume. A fierce wind raked the northern sea's dark waves to the very horizon, where storm-clouds commanded the sky, the colour of blackened armour. At their backs and stretching the western length of coastline, rose a bent-back forest of pines, firs and cedars, their branches torn and made ragged by the battering winds.

  Shivering, Taralack Veed drew the furs closer, then turned his back on the raging seas. 'We now travel west­ward,' he said, speaking loud enough to be heard above the gale. 'Follow this coast until it curls north. Then we strike inland, directly west, into the land of stone and lakes. Difficult, for there is little game to be found there, although we will be able to fish. Worse, there are bloodthirsty savages, too cowardly to attack by day. Always at night. We must be ready for them. We must deliver slaughter.'

  Icarium said nothing, his unhuman gaze still fixed on that closing storm.

  Scowling, Taralack moved back into the rock-walled camp they had made, crouching in the blessed lee and holding his red, cold-chafed hands over the driftwood fire. Few glimmers of the Jhag's legendary, near mythical equanimity remained. Dark and dour, now. A refashioning of Icarium, by Taralack Veed's own hands, although he but followed the precise instructions given him by the Nameless Ones. The blade has grown dull. You shall be the whetstone, Gral.

  But whetstones were insensate, indifferent to the blade and to the hand that held it. For a warrior fuelled by passion, such immunity was difficult to achieve, much less maintain. He could feel the weight now, ever building, and knew he would, one day, grow to envy the merciful death that had come to Mappo Runt.

  They had made good time thus far. Icarium was tireless. Once given direction. And Taralack, for all his prowess and endurance, was exhausted. I

  I am no Trell, and this is not simple wandering. Not any more, and never again for Icarium.

  Nor, it seemed, for Taralack Veed. He looked up when he heard scrabbling, and watched Icarium descend.