Clayton Emery: Mortal Consequences

Then the human monster struck back.

From one fist lanced a long white beam like a sword of moonfire. The blade exploded through the roof of one mouth and pierced the tiny brain and scaly skull so the head snapped back, then hung loose, dangling. From the other fist poured a rain of acid that smoked hydra flesh in a thousand places. Black blood shot in jets to stain the walls and ceiling. From the flint creature's mouth shot a bolt of pure energy like venom. The invisible arrow-shaped jolt sliced through the biggest head, shearing it open like a rotten melon, then plunged deep into the hydra's writhing, hilly shape. The thorny body was torn open, the many-chambered heart sundered.

With a scream from four mouths, the hydra whipped heads and tentacles in a frenzy until suddenly it stopped cold, and collapsed into a heap, stinking like charred garbage.

Spitting out scales and tooth chips, the flint monster arose, mounted the sodden, sundered carcass, climbed over, and moved on. If Prinquis, lord of this hell, had anchored the hydra here, then this passage, "… must be a way out. Outside. Got to be. Chance to get out…" But half a mile on, the flint creature bumped into a rockslide. The roof had collapsed, leaving a cavity of solid stone, and time and heat and pressure had sealed the whole tight. The monster screamed, wailed, pounded with blocky fists that cracked boulders. Yet it could never dig free, never escape this way.

Turning, the monster retraced it steps. Its rage still burned white-hot when it reached the dead hydra. Screaming anew, the monster kicked the carcass so chunks of black flesh rebounded from the walls. Tearing with stone claws, it ripped more hunks loose, bit through them, slammed them down, hurled them away. It raged and ranted and revelled in gore until the hydra was nothing but a black smear studded with teeth and gristle.

Only then did the black-spattered monster continue on, like some misshapen parody of a man or woman smeared with offal. As its great heavy feet scratched along, it muttered anew.

"… Not the way out. There must be. Must get out. Revenge… that's all. Death to everyone I hate.

"But first, must get out…"

Onward they trekked. Winter waned as Sunbright and Knucklebones searched from the Channel Mountains in the east, north past the fork at Two Rivers, then westward along the edge of the High Ice, where even polar bears didn't go. Nothing did they find.

Sunbright patiently explained that his people always followed this route, for as the snow retreated, the reindeer came after, cropping the soft moss of the tundra, until the herd reached the High Ice and turned westward. Yet there was no evidence of any tribe. Disturbingly, Sunbright noted the reindeer herd was thinner, the animals gaunt. The moss was thin, and the tiny purple blossoms he remembered from his youth were sparse.

"The land is weak," he told Knucklebones. "Even the deer's bones are flimsy. All these skulls of infant reindeer means they're stillborn, which means their mothers are sickly. The life of the land is being sapped somehow."

Spring turned to summer, until Knucklebones stripped to leathers by day, though she was never very warm. As the shaman had foretold, the soft earth of the tundra turned to bog. Muddy wallows under the moss formed a gluey trap that pulled Sunbright's boots off, made their legs throb from the weight of mud, slowed them down, and finally stopped them.

So they abandoned the search for the summer. They had reached the edge of the tundra at the west anyway, and faced high cliffs topped by the Cold Forest and the icy mountains of the Dementia Range in the distance. Skirting the Bay of Ascore, Sunbright sought work in Sepulcher and Arctic Rim. He found it easily, for the towns were starved for meat. Even townsfolk saw that the once vast herds had thinned, and few would enter the trackless bogs for food. So Sunbright hunted, and sold venison, wild boar, even bear meat. He gave the money to Knucklebones, for he had no use for it. The thief, with shrewd bets and quick hands, doubled and tripled their coins gambling with sailors and loggers and fishwives.

"I still don't understand," Knucklebones told him one night as she stacked coins by candlelight. They'd rented a small cabin along the water, in sight of the Barren Mountains. Sunbright found this ironic, for there he'd begun his adventures, years ago. "How can the tundra be weak? How can any land so cold and icy and muddy suffer? It's the people who live there who suffer!"

Sunbright rolled over from a doze. Hunting for miles from dawn till dusk, dragging back heavy game, tired him out. "The tundra is a hard country, but a fragile one, though it seems contradictory," he told her. "It only supports a few beasts and birds, so they rely on one another to survive. Reindeer eat the moss and leave droppings. Birds pick out seeds and bugs that live in the droppings. The birds in turn carry the seeds far and wide. That spreads the moss, keeps muddy spots from growing barren. The new growth attracts musk oxen, who churn the soil with their hooves and leave more manure, and so on, in a closed circle. If one part is removed, the circle falls apart. If the weather grows too warm, as happened once, lungworm sprout in the musk oxen. Too many worms kill the calves. Then the soil isn't turned over, barren spots spread, water erodes the wallows so the earth is scarred, the moss grows thinner, the reindeer starve-"

"All right, all right. I believe you," Knucklebones cut him off, tugging up her eye patch to rub sleepy eyes. Revealed was her blind eye, a milky white. At Sunbright's grimace, she hurriedly tugged it down. "I don't want the natural history of the world, but why is just the tundra weakened, or drained of life, or whatever you call it? Why not everywhere?"

"It is happening everywhere," Sunbright yawned, and lay back by the tiny hearth fire. Golden flames reflected on the white skin of his scarred and muscular chest. "It's just the effect shows first in a fragile area like the tundra. Candlemas spent months fighting a blight, a wheat rust, that spread through grain crops. He couldn't find any logical cause. The crops simply couldn't fight off normal diseases. As someone with measles will die if exposed to whooping cough, while a healthy man or woman shakes it off. This mysterious drain-and as a shaman, I sense it more than understand it-affects all life. Eventually, it may cause-"

Nodding at the table, Knucklebones jerked awake at the sudden silence. "Cause what?" she asked.

"Disaster. Famine. Possibly for years. Deaths in the thousands."

"No." The small woman rose, stretched like a cat, unlaced her leather vest and trousers, and said, "I was born in the future, remember? There were no great disasters. Not that I ever heard of, anyway."

"I'm not sure you would have heard," Sunbright said. He sat on their thinnest blanket and stared at the fire. By the hearth, his great longbow and heavy-nosed sword softly gleamed. "The Netherese run this world, and write down history as it suits them. They've never shown compassion for starving peasants. Commoners are fit for farming and mining and hunting-as prey-and nothing else."

Yawning, Knucklebones lay beside him. Fire reflecting on her body showed more scars than the barbarian's. The thief had grappled in knife fights since she was a baby. Lifting a thin arm, she cooed, "Come and lay your head on my shoulder, country mouse. You need to rest, not fret. Summer will end soon, and we'll travel on, won't we?"

But Sunbright didn't listen to her words, only her tone. Laying his big white-blonde head on her shoulder, he murmured, "You sound like Greenwillow."

Knucklebones stiffened, said, "And why her?"

Sunbright closed his eyes. "You called me 'country mouse.' That's what she called me. Curious, isn't it?"

"I suppose," Knucklebones said, her small bosom heaving in a sigh. "It's not mete to mention one woman while lying in the arms of another."