Everyone but Ahlitah lay dazed and unsteady. All cat, the black litah had reacted to the imminent crash by leaping clear of the wagon, twisting his body in midair, and skidding to a stop on all fours. Snarling warningly, it took up a position in front of the overturned wagon bed as the mounted skeletons stumbled down one side of the narrow chasm and up the other.
By the time they reached the site of the crash, the wagon’s occupants had recovered their equilibrium and their weapons. With nothing left to steer, Ehomba had picked up the sky-metal sword. While it might not be time to make use of it to call down pieces of the sky or the wind from between the stars, its blade was still sharp and functional. The overturned wagon lay on its side, one wheel still spinning futilely in the air like the kicking hind leg of a dying lizard. With its solid wooden bed against their backs, they readied themselves to deal with the remaining skeletal warriors arrayed against them.
Instead, the mounted skeletons drew up in a line opposite the toppled vehicle. Weapons at the ready, they sat staring with empty eye sockets at the contentious living. Their mounts pawed with skeletal hooves at the ground, snorting through ragged-edged nostrils of varying length.
“What’s this, bruther?” Not taking his eyes from their hesitating attackers, Simna whispered to his tall companion. “What are they waiting for?”
“I do not know.” Holding the sky-metal sword out in front of him, Ehomba considered the surrounding forest. Though much reduced in density, there were still too many large trees scattered nearby to chance drawing down the wind from the heavens. But if the attackers persisted, he realized that he might have to chance it. Certainly if their assailants were reinforced by others from within the deep woods, he would be left with no choice. Warmed by his hands, the sword quivered expectantly.
The skeleton that dismounted was neither the tallest nor the most stout of those pale white specters that were arrayed against the travelers, but it strode forward with a stiff-jointed dignity none of its demised confederates could match. With plucked feathers streaming from the gilded helmet that rocked atop its bleached skull, it approached the living. Simna’s fingers whitened on the haft of his sword and Hunkapa Aub growled deep in his throat. Ahlitah stood almost motionless, his massive chest heaving slowly in and out with his steady breathing, ready to pounce the instant Ehomba gave the word.
Halting barely a spear length away, the skeleton placed one bony arm across its splayed rib cage—and bowed. Then it straightened, steadying the flamboyant helmet on its naked skull, and began to speak in a voice that was deeper than a whisper but not much stronger.
“You fight well.” The wind carried away the last syllable of every word and the straining travelers had to listen closely to make out the meaning of each. “You put a great many of the dead to sleep, for which they are eternally grateful.”
“Hoy?” Simna smiled tautly. “Come a little closer, Mr. Bones, and I’ll gladly assist you in joining them.”
The white skull swiveled. Empty sockets peered into the swordsman’s living eyes. “That is not to be the way of things, master of a steel tooth.”
“Then what is the way of things? Tell us.” Without lowering his guard for an instant, Ehomba queried the expired but animate mediator.
Simna muttered knowingly. “Always the questioner, Etjole, even when the one replying is Death itself.”
“We are not Death,” the skeletal envoy explained softly. “Only dead. The difference is of significance.” With a sweep of one white-boned arm, it indicated those mounted warriors waiting patiently behind it. “We are the Brotherhood of the Bone. This forest we claim as ours, a place of quietude and darkness in which to linger after life has given us up but before death claims us forever. Here we dwell but do not exist, occasionally taking out the frustration of being neither or either on those mortals foolish or courageous enough to dare the byways that we haunt.” A chalky arm pointed in their direction.
“You are sufficiently brave to pass, but there is a problem.”
“A problem?” Simna laughed humorlessly. “You send dozens of your own to try and slay us where we stand and now you say there is a ‘problem’?” He tossed his sword easily back and forth, swapping it from hand to hand. “Come forward, the lot of you, and we’ll show you how Simna ibn Sind and the great sorcerer Etjole Ehomba deal with their problems!”
“You might yet escape.” The envoy made the confession even as it looked to their overturned wagon. “Yet your vehicle will need time to be put right, something you cannot do while fighting us. Even as we speak, hundreds more of the Brotherhood are riding to our aid, called hither by the sounds of battle and breaking bones. If you flee right now and the wind holds, you might well outdistance them all. But if you are delayed by fighting—” This time it was the envoy’s meaning and not his speech that trailed off.
“It’s a damned bluff!” Simna wanted very badly to rush forward and separate the taunting skeleton’s skull from its shoulders. “Let’s finish them!”
Ehomba ignored him, straining to listen, to pierce the distant woods with hearing that was more acute than that of most men. Strive as he might, he knew that there were among his companions ears far more sensitive than his own.
“Ahlitah?”
The big cat sniffed the air even as it listened intently. After a moment, yellow eyes looked in the herdsman’s direction. “I think I hear something. It might be the wind—or it might be fleshless feet. Hundreds of them.”
“Might be, might not be—what need for speculation?” Simna took a step forward. “By Geewenwan, I say we put an end to this!”
“They are mounted and we are afoot,” Ehomba sensibly pointed out. “It is a doable thing, friend Simna, but as the envoy points out, killing even the dead takes time. All of you have come this far because of me. I will not give up your lives for a cause become yours only by accident.” Lowering his sword, he approached the envoy.
An alarmed Simna looked on uneasily. “Etjole, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but don’t think it!”
Halting several feet from the skeleton, Ehomba met vacant eyes with his own speculative gaze. “You said something about us being brave enough to let pass, except there was a problem.”
The bleached skull nodded slightly. “You have dispatched many from the Brotherhood and sent them on their final path to rest. Those who do so must take the place of at least one who has departed our company. If this is done willingly, then the others may live, and will be allowed to quit our presence still citizens of the world of the living.”
Ehomba nodded understandingly. Behind him, Simna was growing rapidly more agitated. The herdsman continued to ignore him. “I have your word on this?”
“Here is my hand on it.” Skeletal fingers reached toward him. “What remains of it.”
Wrapping his own long, weathered fingers around the bare white bone, Ehomba embraced the warm, smooth grip.
“Which of you will come willingly to the Brotherhood?” The envoy was looking past him. He need not have done so.
“I will.”
“What?” Behind him, Simna took a confrontational step forward. “What’s all this ungodly mumbling about? Etjole, what have you promised this—this fugitive from an unhallowed grave?”
Rejoining his companions, Ehomba put both hands on the swordsman’s shoulders. Inclining his head slightly, he stared hard and evenly into the smaller man’s eyes.
“Simna, do you still believe I am a mighty sorcerer?”
“Yes—but you’ve always denied it. I know your way with words. What trick of sophistry are you playing now?” The swordsman eyed his friend warily.
Dropping his hands from the other man’s arms, Ehomba looked up at the hulking, hirsute form of Hunkapa Aub. “What about you? Do you believe in me, my hairy friend?”
“Hunkapa—believe in Etjole.” The broad figure replied slowly and solemnly, his response tinged with uncertainty over what was to come.
“And you, Ahlitah? What about you?” The he
rdsman gazed affectionately at the big cat.
It yawned. “Do what you will. If you die, I go home. If you live, I continue with you. Only one thing I know for sure: I’m sick of the taste of marrow. So do something.”
“I will.” Turning back to the swordsman, the tall southerner smiled reassuringly. “No matter what happens, no matter what you see here, you must promise to continue the journey westward away from this place. Watch, friend Simna. Watch, and trust me.”
“Trust you? Trust you to do what? Etjole…”
The swordsman reached for his friend but was unable to restrain him. After placing the sky-metal sword in Hunkapa’s hand, a resigned Ehomba walked back to confront the expectant envoy. Halting before the skeletal warrior, the herdsman nodded once. “I am ready.”
The envoy made a gesture and started to raise his sword. Ehomba lifted a hand to forestall the first cut. “Hold! I will save you the trouble.”
Standing between the living and the dead, the herdsman parted his jaws to form a wide oval—an oval that grew large, and then larger still. It was impossible for any human mouth to open so wide. Even among the mounted skeletons there was a stirring at the sight. Among all the onlookers only Simna ibn Sind and the black litah were not shocked by the gape of the herdsman’s expanding maw, for they had seen Ehomba do something similar before.
No human could part its jaws so wide—but Etjole Ehomba was more than human. He was also eromakasi. There was no darkness to eat here, no threatening eromakadi to consume. But that did not prevent him from making use of his remarkable oral abilities. Wider still stretched his jaws and lips.
Then, with a delicacy of step and perfect aplomb, his skeleton emerged from the container of his body, stepping out from within through the accommodating aperture of the herdsman’s unnaturally distended mouth.
X
Like a prosperous merchant discarding a favorite dressing gown, Etjole Ehomba’s skeleton continued to slip free of his clothing and skin until it stood, white and glistening, before the silent, approving envoy. When the last lingering flesh had been sloughed off, the mounted warriors vented a cadaverous cheer, waving their weapons in the air and reining their assorted skeletal mounts up on their hind legs in celebration.
“No!” Sword upraised, a horrified Simna rushed forward—only to fall hard as something tripped him. Looking down, he saw, staring back at him from amid the pile of attire and skin and muscle that had moments before cloaked his companion in the garb of life, the face of his good friend. Though unnaturally flaccid and flattened in the absence of its usual sturdy frame, it was smiling reassuringly.
“Calm yourself, Simna. Did I not tell you to trust me?”
Shocked, the swordsman scrabbled back on hands and knees. “Etjole, is it you? Are you alive?”
“Alive but limp. As a wet rag, like the saying goes. Lift me up, my friend. I want to see what is happening.”
Placing a hesitant arm beneath the flattened head, Simna fought down the queasiness in his gut as he raised the soft, slightly rubbery remnant of his friend and held it where it could face their former assailants. Having turned away from the living, Ehomba’s expelled skeleton was following the envoy to the line of waiting skeletal mounts. There the envoy swung himself up onto the bare-boned back of a once noble but now wholly desiccated steed and reached down. Taking the proffered hand, the tall, slim skeleton that had just walked away from its owner leaped up onto the exposed spine.
With a final salute, the grisly members of the Brotherhood turned and, passing in review in double file, trotted away, leaving the living to their own devices. Slack as a sack of beans, Ehomba watched them and a part of him go.
“I hope it can hang on for a while. The Naumkib are not known for their horsemanship.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway, bruther.” Simna followed the line of mounted skeletons as they disappeared into the trees. “No amount of practice could prepare one for riding saddleless astride bare bone.” He looked down at his friend. “Why have you done this?”
“To put them off.” The eyes that stared back up at him sank deeply into the limp, unsupported flesh. “Ahlitah was right. I could hear the approaching hundreds also.”
“But the sky-metal sword! You could have tried to use it.”
“Not in a place like this. We would have died of it,” the herdsman replied simply.
“So we would have died.” Simna’s frustration came pouring out. “Anything’s better than living like this!” He ran an open palm down the length of his freshly pliant friend.
The fold of flesh that was Ehomba’s mouth smiled. “Did I not ask you to trust me?”
“Hoy, so you did, but to what end? Do you expect us to cross the remaining unknown country that lies between here and Ehl-Larimar with you in this condition? And what if we were to do so, and succeed? How will you fight this Hymneth the Possessed? Am I supposed to stand behind you and work your legs and sword arm like some kind of mad puppeteer? I’ll have none of it, I tell you! I consider myself a brave man, but not a fool.” His tone turned bitter. “If there is good magic in this, I don’t see it.”
“You will, my good friend. Lay me down easy. Take up the tiller and lines and sail us out of here.”
“Hunkapa!” Simna exclaimed. “Give me a hand and let’s right this wagon.” As soon as their transport was once again resting upright on all four wheels, the swordsman proceeded to check the axles and undercarriage. Despite the jolt it had received during the hard landing, everything appeared intact. “Here, hold him up so he can see. I have to steer.”
“Steer where?” Gently, the shaggy hulk took the limp body of the herdsman in his massive arms, cradling the empty but animate human envelope as easily as he would a child.
“West. Where else?” Settling himself in position, the swordsman tore into ropes and lines, adjusting the sail to catch the wind that, fortuitously, continued to blow from the east. Almost immediately, the wagon began to move. It creaked and groaned in places that previously had been silent, but nothing fell off. Very soon, they were scooting along the increasingly bumpy track at a respectable rate of speed.
They made good progress with no more interruptions. Ahlitah hunted, bringing back rabbits and small antelope to feed not only himself but his companions. For Ehomba there were mashed-up berries and chopped fish. His mouth and teeth still worked, but the lack of any bony support left him unable to chew all but the softest foods. Much to Simna’s continued surprise, the herdsman seemed content. He could not walk, but he could pull himself along the ground with his long, lean-muscled arms and kick out with his legs. So long as he did not try to raise up any higher than his arms could push him, he did not appear to be suffering greatly.
The swordsman marveled at his friend’s stoicism. Anyone else he had ever known, upon sacrificing their skeleton, would have lapsed into melancholy. Not Ehomba. He was positively buoyant, commending Simna on his steering, Ahlitah on his hunting, and Hunkapa for his help and perpetual good spirits.
“By Gierbourne if I don’t think you’re a happier man without it,” the swordsman finally commented on the fifth day after the fateful final encounter with the representatives of the Brotherhood.
“A skeleton has many uses.” Lying in Hunkapa Aub’s trunklike arms, Ehomba twisted himself slightly to meet his friend’s gaze. “But traveling upright is not always the best way to live. It exposes one to the wind, and to the spears and arrows of enemies. There are advantages, too, to a low profile. Ask any snake.”
“I agreed to help a man, not a snake.” Grumbling, Simna concentrated on his steering. “Looks like a river up ahead. Big one.”
Ehomba had Hunkapa hold him high. “I think the wagon track stops before it reaches the bank. But there are not as many trees on the other side, and the land is more level than what we have just come through. We should be able to make use of this vehicle for a while longer yet.”
“Good,” the swordsman snapped. “I’m starting to wonder if maybe I haven’t done to
o much walking for too little reward these past several months.”
“Why Simna, are you starting to have second thoughts? What about the treasure?” From within sagging pleats of flesh the herdsman smiled at him.
“Hoy, what about the treasure?” The swordsman trimmed a line. “In all this time I’ve heard nothing about it from you, except when you chose to deny its existence. Now that things have turned troublesome, you tease me with it.” He stared hard at the flaccid figure. “When I wax enthusiastic on the subject, you claim it doesn’t exist. But if I express skepticism, you lose no opportunity to remind me of it.” His expression tightened.
“Don’t think to play me the fool, long bruther. If I decide that’s what you’re about, I’ll drop you like a year-old egg and vanish into the bush.”
Ehomba managed to shrug, a ripple that ran through his right shoulder like a small wave lapping repeatedly at a sand beach. “You are right, friend Simna. There is no treasure. It is only a trick to keep you with me, to buy your aid. I am ashamed before the elders of my village.” A limber, boneless hand fluttered in the swordsman’s direction. “Go now. Leave with your dignity still intact. I release you from your vows.”
“Don’t tempt me, bruther! Don’t think that I won’t. I’ll stop this gut-churning box on wheels right here and get out, and leave you in the care of one too stupid to know better and another who’d as soon eat you for supper as help you!”
“Do it, then. Stop now, Simna, and take your leave while there’s still time.” Ehomba rarely grew angry, or raised his voice. “Forget about the treasure. It does not exist. It is only a phantom you have raised up in your own mind to justify your continued journeying in my company. Free yourself of it! Abandon the wagon and make your way back to the coast and its welcoming towns. I will not think ill of you for doing so. Only a fool risks his life for an illusion.”