Douglas Niles: The Messenger

Moreen, by contrast, felt like a waif. Her frame was wiry and compact, the top of her scalp reaching just over five feet from the ground. She kept her dark hair cut to shoulder length, usually tied behind her ears, while Bruni favored the typical style of Arktos women, with a lush tail of black hair that, when unrestrained, reached nearly to the ground.

A girl’s shriek rang out from the hillside below them, and they saw a child race into sight, shaking droplets of water from her hair. “I’ll get you for that, Little Mouse!” she cried, reaching down to pick up a fist-sized rock. She hurled the missile into the hillside where it clattered loudly. Grinning broadly, a tall, dark-haired boy dodged out of the way, then stood making faces while the girl cast stone after stone.

“Ouch!” he cried suddenly as one finally glanced off his forehead. “Okay, Feathertail, I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’ll teach you to douse me!” the girl declared and flounced away. In her hand was a basket partially filled with spring blossoms.

The youth’s expression turned sour as he made his way higher onto the hillside. After he had taken a dozen steps he noticed the two women regarding him, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Lucky throw,” he said, rubbing his forehead.

“Not lucky enough,” Moreen retorted, though she smiled enough to take the sting out of her words.

Little Mouse sighed, and his eyes drifted toward the kayaks which were now starting to round the point of the bay. In another few minutes they would be into the swell of the deep gulf waters and would make the turn to head northeastward along the coast.

“You wish you were out there with them, don’t you?” the chieftain’s daughter said sympathetically. “I know how you feel.”

Little Mouse looked at her eagerly, and she was reminded of a puppy, frantically eager to please. He was thirteen summers old, awkwardly torn between boyhood and becoming a man. “But you-they should let you go!” he proclaimed, his voice cracking an octave on the last word. “I’ve seen you throw-why, I bet you’d get the first seal!”

Now it was the woman’s turn to sigh, and she shook her head ruefully. “You’ll be going on the spring hunt before I will,” she said.

“Papa said maybe next year,” Little Mouse admitted. “Normally I’d wait til fifteen, but since I’m the only boy my age in the tribe they might make an exception.”

“I know you’ll be ready,” encouraged Moreen.

“What’s that?” Bruni asked abruptly, pointing into the dazzling brightness of the sea. Something came across the water, distant but moving toward them, trailing a long wake that sparkled in the sun.

The boy quickly looked toward the sun. “A whale? It’s too big!”

“No … no whale.” Moreen felt a peculiar chill, awe that quickly gave way to fear. She squinted, trying to adjust her notions of scale and realized that it was a vessel, a massive hull slicing through the waters of the White Bear Sea. “It’s some kind of boat, but it’s as big as the village!”

As it emerged from the swath of the sun’s brightest glare they could begin to make out more details. The vessel was long and slender like a kayak, with a row of long paddles. It was hard to get a sense of the craft’s size, but it must be huge indeed. This was not a boat of any Arktos tribe.

“Highlanders?” asked Bruni tentatively.

“No.” Moreen was certain. “The only one of them I’ve ever met looked squeamish at the very thought of going on the water.”

“Have the hunters have seen it?” Bruni asked, with a glance toward the kayaks scattered like specks nearing the mouth of the bay. They were much closer than the strange ship but still tiny by comparison.

“Not yet.” Moreen was remembering her many hunting expeditions along the shores beyond the village. “There’s that headland to the east that will block their view-until they come around the point, and that thing will be right on top of them!”

“What is it?” asked Mouse, worriedly. “Are you sure it’s not some kind of whale?”

“No whale. I don’t know what it is, but I’m frightened. Let’s get to the village!” replied the chieftain’s daughter in growing urgency. “We can light a signal fire to call the hunters back.”

Little Mouse was already sprinting down the hill, while Moreen trotted after, and Bruni picked her way more cautiously between the jutting rocks.

What could it be? Little Mouse’s question churned in Moreen’s mind, coming up with the one and only possibility, a dire explanation indeed. A mythic name, imbued with terror and doom, a threat she had never seen but that had been a part of her people’s storytelling and folklore since before her birth.

Ogres.

The great brutes had not raided the Arktos in Moreen’s lifetime or during the lives of her parents. They remained a threat of legends, monstrous figures from stories told by the shaman, crabby old Dinekki, to while away the long, dark months of winter. Always in the back of the tribal consciousness, though, there was the knowledge of this brutal race that also dwelled in the place called Icereach and that might one day renew on the cruel raids that had made ancient life deadly for the Arktos since the time of the Scattering.

It was because of these legendary ogres that every child of Clan Bayguard, from the moment he or she could first walk, learned the path to the Hiding Hole, the narrow-mouthed cave notched into the hill beyond the village. They learned the first rule, as well-never go to the Hiding Hole if an ogre can see you, or you may lead the raiders to the whole tribe.

How did that explain the great boat? Always in the stories the ogres had moved across the land, marching out of the spring mists to lay waste to this village or that town, dragging off slaves, smashing buildings, leaving death and destruction and despair in their wake. Surely the building of a craft like the one they had seen was beyond the cunning of an ogre mind!

Yet who else could it be? Clearly the vessel wasn’t the work of the Highlanders. Moreen had encountered a group of those human hunters on one occasion and had not been impressed. Shaggy, bearded, tall, they seemed like simple-minded savages. One had tried to approach her, but of course she had turned and fled, and he had reacted with almost comical disbelief when she gotten into her kayak and rowed away. She suspected they were frightened of any liquid deeper than the mugs of warqat they reputedly drank continually during the long months of winter.

It was even less likely that the ship carried outlanders, people from beyond Icereach. Though there were tales of lands, of humans and even stranger beings from far across the turbulent ocean, outlanders were like imaginary beings. None of these had ever come to these shores, not in the memories of the oldest elders recalling their own elders’ stories.

The ogres, however, did live across the gulf in a mountain fastness. And if it had been a human’s life span since their last raid, there was no doubt that they really existed-every child had been shown Dinekki’s tusk and given a lesson about the nature of their ancient and brutal enemies. How many times, scolding Moreen for some infraction, had her mother threatened her with, “Behave, or I’ll leave you outside where the ogre king will find you”? Always the warning brought a chill.

By the time Moreen reached the outskirts of the village, barely winded from her long downhill sprint, she had convinced herself that it was ogres coming. Little Mouse had already run between the huts, shouting an alarm, and the chieftain’s daughter was met by a confused rabble of women, children, and elders.

“What is this racket?” crabbed Dinekki, as the skinny old shaman tried to tap Little Mouse on the foot with her staff.