PULL ME UNDER - Leaf And Stream - Ten
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Ten
Halfway to Kaddusk, and whenever Tanner closed his eyes he saw Lauren standing in the woods over the buck, so real he thought he could grab her and pull her back, but it was dust. If his vision was true, which the others believed—because they believed unwaveringly in visions and magic and the supernatural at large—they would find her soon. If it was wrong, or if she was gone from the capital… He didn’t want to think about that.
The closer they got, the more crowded the route became. Accents changed, Ddun became Thun and most egregiously Tsun, and Tanner could see the red in Ddun’s face whenever someone made a jab at him afterwards. Antoll was particularly merciless. Rutsa didn’t bother Rudda at all, no matter how hard they gargled the R, so no one bothered to tease him about it.
Ddun and the others kept their masks on whenever the sun was up, nodding greetings as they passed through travelling camps on their way back out to the prairie, ones that might be kin, but sharing roadside fires and talking with such different folks lightened Tanner’s spirit. There was so much about this place to learn, he felt like an insatiable sponge. New instruments and sports and jokes, foods and drinks he never thought he’d try. The dull looks in the eyes of his travel mates, all the droll topics, and he wondered how he’d look to them if everything was flipped. Yeah, that’s a phone, yeah that’s a car. Who cares? They’d be floored and he’d be yawning. Or would he be more like Antoll, eager to see their reactions to the quirks of his world? Sometimes he really felt like a dope, asking so many questions and still not understanding the Dvarri. Antoll was always the quickest to answer, Ddun more often than not was telling Tanner to shut up.
Clans went out in every direction, their paths a spiderweb through the grass—how many clans, how many miles did they spread out? The landscape was huge and open and harrowing, a savage place for savage people—a wholesome place for wholesome people—exaggerated severity as the prairie grasses turned to mossy tundra with splashes of gravelly desert sand. Being out riding, rather than travelling on carts under canvas roofs, it made him especially aware of the vastness of the place—the overwhelming, empowering, crushing, freeing nature.
One final well for a few days travel, they told him, and they all filled as many skins of water as they had brought. Merchants and whores all peddled their wares at the little oasis and there were even bureaucrats there to collect tolls. Not from them, of course, they were Dvarri warriors—though the toll keepers gave Tanner a judging glance before Ddun told them, in polite words, to fuck off. Tanner didn’t think the Dvarri had any sort of central system, but that was the innerlands for you, Antoll moaned. “Fucking Peiransi.”
Tanner couldn’t tell them apart.
“When we found you at the sacred spring, I thought we’d be done with the innerlands until next year,” Ddun said, half complaint and half regret.
Antoll cracked his back with a stretch. “On the bright side, the capital is in the midst of shifting south. Should be less crowded.”
“Shifting?” Tanner asked.
“In winter it’s in Kisku, in summer it’s in Kaddusk.”
“Even your capital won’t stay put.”
“Makes life more interesting!” Antoll had been chewing that bark for a stomach ache and his teeth were turning yellow.
“Give me a bite of that.”
“Headache again?”
“Sure.”
“Buy me some wine.”
So there was more to that bark. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Antoll slapped a piece into Tanner's hand and he wedged it to the back of his mouth, that welcome cotton stomach as he swallowed his spit. Without pain to treat, it went right for his senses, pleasant but different to his old habits. The longer he chewed, the brighter and softer his thoughts got. Antoll had a stomach ache as much as he had a headache.
By nightfall all four were chewing the bark for the pain in their backs and thighs, to keep hunger and cold at bay, to ride longer and get through the stretch of sand. Bandits could sprout up out of it, he was told, and they all kept their weapons ready. Every blurry sparkle of moonlight off the ground snagged his attention, millions of diamonds beneath him, scratching at his eyes if he didn’t blink, every little insect that disturbed the surface was worth interest. At one point he thought he saw a bear, though he wasn’t sure if bears existed like he knew them, but it was only a toppled cart with tattered carpet billowing in the wind.
None of the sights bothered him. He was all cotton, and he wanted to fuck. More bark. They all had teeth that were borderline fluorescent, and his gums were swollen as he ran his half-numb tongue along them and laughed. Then Antoll laughed because Tanner was laughing, and Rudda and Ddun joined in, a pack of hyenas. But no bandits came, and none of them slept.
At dawn, everyone feeling their limbs again, they rested, all taking sticks and flaying them into little brushes to dip into salt and scrub the colour off their teeth. They each emptied a skin of water in one sitting but as Tanner chewed the dried meat from their packs—it was agony. Renewed awareness of the cracking scar at his jaw as he flexed his face, but they were almost through the sand, the punishment was worth the freeness of his thoughts through the night.
Then the bandits sprouted out of the sand, quiet and cold. The four of them hadn’t gotten back on their horses yet, still sitting prone, their backs to the unknown number.
“Hands up, boys,” one said, Tanner’s skin chilled at the surprise. The bandit had that accent the others had mocked at Ddun.
“We’ve got warriors here. They might put up a fight,” another said, voice dripping with taunting sarcasm.
“And I’ll be happy to take all their noisy beads and coins when they try. Stay there,” the command was directed at Antoll, who had shifted how he sat as if getting ready to pounce, but instead he froze. Tanner could sense the weapons pointed at their backs, but he had no distinct thoughts, just a buzz in his fingertips.
Ddun was the next to move, slowly turning, flicking his eyes at Tanner and the AK under his arm. They had no idea what he held was a weapon.
“A-ah, stay facing that way.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen bandits so incredibly foolish as you lot,” Ddun spat, still tinged yellow. Tanner held his breath to see other heads peak out over low rocky dunes on either side of them, wrapped in taupe gauze.
“And what the hell are four westland warriors doing away from their clans? Shouldn’t you be out getting fucked by the Stenya? Did you leave your women to them instead?”
Sand hissed and stung against Tanner’s cheek, the sky was a wash of pastels and cloudless, stars still refusing to relent to the brightness of the sun. It was beautiful. He spat blood from his swollen gums and lifted the rifle up in one swift movement, holding the trigger down until the four men to his left were dusted, puffs of sand where he missed, the dissonant pop of bullets with the echoes cracking back and men screaming in surprise all ear-shattering and vulgar, breaking the peaceful illusion of the desert. He turned to the bandits behind them, let loose another volley and they all dropped. The least fortunate man, pressing the gaping holes where his insides spilled out, blubbered: “You—you’re a sorcerer, a sorcerer! Get away, away!” Ddun was kind enough to dispatch the prick with a hacking stroke of his sabre to the neck. The other bandits that could, ran off.
Antoll and Rudda both held their hands to their heads, elbows down in the sand. Rudda had seen the deer, but it was nothing like this. No art to it, pure slaughter, and it was so fast, they had no time to process any of it. Tanner’s lungs heaved, he had been holding his breath too long. Legs like jelly as he stood, but that might have been from riding through the night, he didn’t know. He didn’t feel anything for what he did, the lasting effects of the bark kept him from being nauseous, though he knew he should be. A strange dull heat from his stomach, that was all. Ddun stood over the bodies and held a hand to his mouth. “That’s some devilish magic, I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Not magic. Just lead.”
Antoll groaned—the bandits had time to get him in the chest with something thrown, a heavy dart. A lucky shot in the chaos. The worst was coming, they had to pull the thing out.
“It’s barbed,” Antoll said through clenched teeth in threat, as Rudda knelt to examine it.
“I’ll be gentle,” Rudda said, might have lied. “Luckily there’s no pitch for your blood to loosen. Solid metal. I won’t have to do any fishing.”
“Oh, just do it, you cunt.”
“Look up.”
Antoll let out a rough growl while Rudda pulled the thing out of his rib, a man to each arm. Antoll’s veins in his neck bulged as he cursed them out. Not much blood lost, but he’d be miserable. The three men who had the scars to prove it all assured Tanner arrows were much worse.
“Lets see what the pricks left for us,” Rudda said, volunteering to break the long silence after they dealt with Antoll’s chest. Antoll was given more bark to chew, some of which was spat into the bandage to make a poultice over the hole, and the remainder of their wine went quickly down his throat.
Each of them were heavier after plucking the dead men clean.
***
“Leave me alone, you bitch!”
Lauren was sopping wet, fighting against strong hands. She had been pulled through a disc in the air and stumbled onto a pier, only to slip on the edge as she struggled, plunging into frigid black water. Too sudden, and too confused to swim, she took in a painful gulp—again, pulled onto the weather-beaten wood. Coughing and sputtering, she saw two broad-shouldered men and a thin, cat-like woman staring down at her. It was too dark to make out distinct features.
No one else was there to watch as they lifted her upright and dragged her down the pier. “Leave me alone! Tanner!”
“He can’t hear you.”
Lauren looked over her shoulder, and it was the same as before. The way back was gone. All her things—the knife—left on the other side.
And this strange woman didn’t dress like a local.
“Where are we?” Lauren asked through chattering teeth.
“In the same place, don’t worry.”
“What?”
“Just a little ways away.”
Lauren’s muscles tensed at the lilt of the woman’s voice. “My brother is going to find me, and you’re fucking dead.” The grip on her arms tightened as she struggled again.
The woman shrugged.
Hanging lamps and moonlight, all the buildings strange, shadows hiding their shapes. The air was thick with the smell of salt fish and smoke from uncountable hearthfires, sweat and piss and dung. There were still some low voices murmuring through the night air from nearby buildings but otherwise everything was still, while she was trembling with the fear her boast about Tanner finding her was a lie.
A man in the shadows locked eyes with her, a streak of light through wood slats the only proof he existed.
***
They passed a great open field, painted white rocks in a huge oval, stone stairs in rows. The sight was a relief to Ddun, it meant they were getting close.
“A coliseum?” Tanner asked.
Antoll answered him. “This is the games complex. You’ll see more fields like this as we get closer.” All four of them looked haggard and any of them would kill for a bath and a solid rest, sick of each other’s company and the stink of each other’s belches and farts in their shared tent. Ddun wanted desperately for Tanner to stop asking questions and wished he stole more wine to keep his mouth clamped shut over the end of the jug for a while. If Lauren wasn’t there when they arrived, with fanfare and smiles, Ddun was ready to burn the place.
“How will we know where to look?” Tanner had asked days ago. Ddun figured they’d just tear the place apart, at this point his mind was so exhausted and his horse had been so worn that still seemed like the best idea.
They could see Lake Kadd from the games complex, and the foggy mountains blue in the distance. The lake was enormous, the lifeblood of the region. If it were salty, it would be a sea. Fat rivers and mountain streams fed into it and brought commerce. Brought armies, too, though it had been many years since anyone was foolish enough to try. Graveyards of invaders littered the landscape, and sometimes Ddun wished he had been alive to see it. The Ilsu mountains across the lake might still have dried up corpses from the last attempt through, a hundred years ago, no one able or willing to claim their dead from the heights.
“What are you thinking about?” Tanner asked.
“Strangling you.”
Tanner only chuckled. Sometimes his eyes glinted and he really did take after his sister. They both dared anyone to follow through with their threats, just with their eyes.
A steamhouse. No hesitation, they stabled the horses. Beautiful, lithe girls stripped them down and scrubbed them, washed and oiled their hair, and the healing steam opened their lungs and noses to clear out the days of grit collected. The girls all the while were swatting down wandering hands as if they were consummate virgins. Tanner managed to con a kiss out of one of them, the flirtatious whelp.
For a coin the girls gave them tea and smoked fish and the men were off again, rejuvenated.
At the edge of Kaddusk the only evidence of clan camps were the midden heaps, abandoned hearths and cobb walls of the animal pens. Weeks ago there would have been thousands of people milling about. Marriages arranged, bartering and competition, on the fields and off. Dancing and fighting. Now it was skeletal fences and dropped clan banners, all the way through to the outer quarters of Kaddusk, where Stenya traded and ran businesses and Peiransi shuffled through scrolls and books and complained that the Dvarri were hard to chase after for tax collection. A sandstone castle, wide and flat, hundreds of years old, took up the far edge of the city, housing the tall steel tower the legends claimed would light the sky but he had never seen it done. The Grandfather Chief lived there, and that’s where any taxes went. Ddun never cared for visiting the castle, but as a Dvarri warrior it was a necessity. The sight of the ancient place up close always made him forlorn.
Tanner’s eyes were wide and stupid as always, trying to take it all in.
“We should buy more horses while we’re here,” Rudda said. They had enough coin from the dead men alone to buy a few, but that’s not why they came. They needed to look for Lauren.
“We should go to the docks,” Ddun said. “See if it really was what Tanner saw in his vision.”
They wove through the streets, avoiding the filth in the channels that flowed down to the lake.
Tanner was pale to see the beach. “That’s what I saw. Those mountains. She stood right there,” he hopped off his horse and pushed between two fishermen hauling nets, “right here.”
He knelt on the water-worn pebbles and discarded shells and looked out to the east, finally silent.
***
They lounged on the ground with plush woven mats under them just like in camp, after enquiring about Lauren at all the meadhalls and alehouses and anywhere else in the city that would allow them in, when an old man with thin grey hair and missing teeth psst for their attention. Tanner figured the guy was Peiransi, no scientific reason for his assessment, only a hunch. Tanner looked up from his beer, hopeful, and nodded his permission for the man to speak.
“She looked like you.” The old man sat on the mat next to Tanner, breath foul like fermented fish. “Same eyes.”
“You saw her?” Tanner just about dropped his cup, his heart so lifted.
Ddun leaned forward, and the others pricked their ears to listen to the man’s dry whisper.
“I was at the docks when she appeared. I’m invisible to them, but she saw me. She fell in the water and they picked her out and took her.”
“Who’s ‘they?’”
He held out a filthy, trembling hand, and Tanner slipped a copper piece into his palm. He kept it extended, and a second coin clicked down, then a third. With that the old Peiransi was happy. “The witch at the castle. But you didn’t hear it from me.” He winked, whistling through the wide gap between his teeth. “I bet she’d pay handsomely for that thing on your back.”
“Oh?”
The old man stood and hobbled off, no more information from him.
“I thought you people killed kings.” Tanner bit his nails as he spoke, ready to jump up and bolt to the sandstone walls. “So who’s the castle for?”
“No king lives there,” Antoll said. “The Dvarri crown is cursed. Besides, he knows we’d kill him if he declared himself king.”
“Who’s ‘he?’”
“Grandfather. Our elected Chief. When all the clans get together he makes sure we don’t kill each other. If someone tries bringing an army over our lands he gathers up all the warriors to meet them. But he’s not there for life if we don’t let him, his sons don’t get the title. We have a moot when he’s dead. Not a king.”
“Not technically.”
“Kingship implies the Gods chose him. That’s very arrogant, isn’t it?” Antoll laughed into his mug. The wound on his chest was a distracting shade of purple without the gauze to cover it.
“Can we see him?”
“He’s probably already in Kisku.”
“So it’s just the witch then?”
It was Ddun’s turn to speak. “I’ve never heard of any witch living there. That old beggar is full of shit.”
“I’m willing to try any lead and so far that’s the only one we’ve got.” Tanner spat his fingernail out onto the mat. “You three can stay here eating greasy mystery meat if you want, I’m going to the castle.” He gulped the last of his beer, chewing the soft bready bits floating in it, and stood. Ddun grabbed Tanner’s arm, catching the denim to hold him in place. He didn’t want to be held in place and wrenched the jacket sleeve free, his face twisted in a scowl of sheer disappointment.
“Don’t be so foolhardy. Let’s sleep first. Maybe the old man was only after your coins.” Antoll was the last of them that Tanner would think being foolhardy was a bad idea.
All three pairs of brown eyes pleaded with him to stay put—well, maybe not Rudda, but he was always hard to read. Tanner’s muscles twitched, but they outranked and outnumbered him.
“We need to get the horses looked over.” Ddun picked his teeth as he spoke.
“Where do you do that?”
“At the castle.” Bracing himself for the punch Tanner threw at him had Ddun laughing as it landed hard on his arm, thumb still in his mouth like a toddler.
“You bunch of cocksuckers—”
“But we really should—”
“Get the horses looked at?”
“Of course.”