Clayton Emery - Sword Play

Hopping, the fiend grabbed Candlemas, one scaly claw on the human's neck, one grasping his wrist. The wizard uttered a curse, a foolish waste of words. For a blast or banish spell was what he needed. Hurriedly he babbled, "Fiend, I name you, and command-"

Too late. The gaping jaws clamped down on his biceps, biting flesh to the bone. Candlemas screamed, then shrilled as the beast ripped down toward his elbow. Horror-stricken, the wizard saw muscle and arteries stripped from his arm bone like a peel wrenched off an orange. The fiend bit again, and he heard its harsh teeth grate on bone-his.

Then the bone snapped, parted, and the fiend fell back with Candlemas's right arm in its mouth. Far behind him, Sysquemalyn laughed and laughed, the sound a rising shriek of hysteria.

The wizard's vision went black, as black as he imagined Sunbright's had gone only minutes ago. Was this what it felt like, he wondered for a second, for the groundling to die?

It hurt!

Then the pain was everything and crowded out all thought, all feeling.

Again, Sunbright dreamed. If a dead man can dream.

He lay on a sheet of steel that ran to the horizon: the tundra turned metal, he supposed, with a steel-gray sky overhead. He tried to rise, but couldn't lift his arms or legs or head, or even roll over, so he must be bound. Then something dark flickered and filled the sky. Soft wisps of blackness brushed his cheeks.

"Sunbright…"

Someone called his name. He should open his eyes and see who. But his eyes were open, the dream insisted, else how could he see the sky?

"Sunbright, wake up."

He didn't want to wake up, despite being half frozen on his sheet of tundra steel. Oh, frozen! That was why he couldn't rise. Some enemy had come in the night and poured water over him, binding him with ice. Shar, perhaps, night goddess, winter goddess, in his land where nights were months long. Lady of loss, mistress of the night and cold. Would she have black hair?

He opened his dream eyes, saw it was indeed a beautiful woman with black hair who hovered over him. A silver circlet bound her hair at the brow, and her clothes were silver, or else shining black. He couldn't see that far down.

"Sunbright, get up!" she demanded.

The young man peered up at her. She seemed petulant for a goddess, he thought, but they were used to getting their way. Her face was longer and narrower than before, her nose almost pointed. Her eyes were now black on black. Human eyes weren't like that. With an icy white finger she jabbed his chest, again and again. "Wake up, fool! You're in danger!"

At this, the helpless, frozen barbarian chuckled softly, then laughed aloud. "No, no," he gasped, "I'm not in danger anymore. I'm dead now. There's no danger worse than that."

The figure continued to poke, poke at his chest, until the jabs hurt. "But there is! Danger not to your body, but to your spirit!"

"Oh, that." Sunbright gave up laughing, groaned instead. "Smolyn's eyes, there's always something! Who said the dead rest easy? Who wants my soul?"

"You do. You're not done with it."

"Eh?" He peered at the woman, but she was shrinking rapidly, to the size of a yearling pup, then a cat, then a-What was that sitting on his chest?

"Awake?" croaked the bird. "Good. Eat this."

The black bird banged his lip with a black beak that had an extra bend at the bridge. Sunbright yipped in pain, and the bird dropped a berry into his mouth. Instantly his mouth and nose flared at the bitter turpentine flavor. He tried to spit the berry out, but glucked and swallowed it instead.

"Juniper berries are poison!" he gargled.

"Nonsense, eat 'em all the time. Stay here." The raven flew away.

Sunbright watched it go, winging high along the canyon walls, then up into the late autumn sky. The sun was slanting long there, warming the cliffs. To be warm would be nice.

"Stay here?" the young man rasped. "Why should I? I'm cold! I-aah!"

Trying to pick up his head, he learned why he couldn't. Hair from his topknot ripped in a hundred places. The sharp pain made him wrench up his arms, but they too were frozen to the ice, and so lost hair and skin when he spasmed. And that made him gasp, which made his cracked ribs screech and his belly wound howl…

"I said to stay put," croaked a cranky voice.

Sunbright lay gasping on his side, hugging his ribs and gut and head with hands and arms rubbed raw and bleeding. It would take all the fat that could be rendered out of one ox to soothe all these frost blisters. Glumly he rolled over, hissing with pain, and heard rattles and crunches from behind him. Most of his tackle was broken and hung in tatters from his body, like porcupine quills. Head spinning, he saw the outline of his arms had stained the ice red, while a patch of golden hair, like misplaced grass, adorned the ice. Glop like thin ice milk coated him, had wet him and glued him to the ice. "What is this stuff-worm snot?"

"Remorhaz blood," rattled the bird, beak full. "The creature leaked all over you."

"I sheared off its legs. A bunch of legs. Oh." Now that his vision had cleared, he saw the legs lying not three feet off. They looked like hollow birch logs. "Uh, where is the-Ouch!" Turning his head too fast, moving anything in fact, hurt.

"Crawled off north, toward the cold lands. It's going pretty slow. Saw it just now, winging back. Open up."

This time, Sunbright dutifully opened his mouth. The bird hopped to his shoulder and dropped in a half dozen blood-red juniper berries. Their tangy sting set the barbarian's nose running, and he coughed, which racked him from sore head to tingling toes.

Careful not to move or cough, Sunbright munched slowly. The bird flew off and returned with more berries. The young man ate those too. Oddly, they made him hungry. A roast, he salivated at the thought, a roast would be mighty good right now. A roast of anything. With a fire to go under it, like the warmth up high.

"Now," pronounced the bird, standing on the ice before him with fat black toes. Built for arctic climates, even the feathers on its legs came down to brush the thick appendages. "Do you feel worthy?"

"Worthy?" the boy gulped. "Worthy of what?"

"My power."

"Your power?" Then, for the first time, the boy realized he was talking to an animal, and what the animal was. "You're a raven!"

"True. But are you worthy?"

"Worthy?" The questions were tiring Sunbright. He should have paid better attention, he knew. A raven was the totem of his clan. Even the name of the tribe, Rengarth, some said was simply a rendering of "raven" from an ancient tongue. So now, if he of the Raven clan in the "raven" tribe saw a raven, that should be triply lucky.

But really, he just wanted to sleep for a while. It would be night soon, and he could sleep the night away, here on the warm ice that had already sucked up so much of his blood.

The raven interrupted his thoughts. "If you're worthy, prove it. Or else lie here, pity yourself, and die." With a flap of wide wings, it took off toward the south.

"Prove what?" Sunbright groaned. "That I'm worthy of a raven's power? Easy for him to say: he can fly. I don't even have any blood left."

But this test is important, a voice urged. Follow the raven. Perhaps it was his mother's voice, off in the east, or perhaps his father's, speaking from the lands of the dead. Or perhaps it was his own. He was stubborn too, and made demands on himself. But could he follow the raven? He doubted he could walk.

Still, he could crawl. Maybe that would do.

Squinting, he located south, one of only two directions he could go in this narrow canyon. The ice worm had gone north, so south was better. He put out a hand, hissing as skinned flesh stuck to the ice. But the wounds continued to weep their salty tears and didn't stick as badly as healthy flesh might. He put down the other hand, grabbed ice…