Banging shut the magic-shifted cabinet, the king raised both hands in the air. The orcs cowered and whimpered, but the king only crossed his breast and disappeared like a soap bubble.
Orcs muttered and grunted, but with the king gone, their awe soon evaporated, and they squabbled over the weapons. Bloody-nosed Kab took a fancy to a cleaver clutched by a female. He picked up a rock, bashed in her skull, and snatched the weapon. "With this, I kill enemies! I become chief!" he said as he shook it high and cackled to the mountaintops.
From behind, Toch swung, buried an iron spike in Kab's temple. The orc dropped dead, and Toch wrenched loose his weapon, pleased at how well it killed. He kicked Kab's body hard several times, then spat on it.
To the rest of the tribe, he ordered, "Paint yourselves with the red hand like mine! We go south to kill horsetails! But first," he kicked Kab's body again, "build a fire! I hunger!"
Far away, in a cave high in a mountaintop, the flinty Sysquemalyn touched the black glistening top of the scrying table. From this stronghold, out of reach of anyone without magic at his disposal, she smoothed the surface and spied on the world. And occasionally stepped into it disguised as the One King.
Using that legend, she chuckled, was brilliance on her part. As with all messiahs, the One King's death had mattered little, for rumors circulated that one day he'd return to lead his people to greater heights.
Of course, Sysquemalyn knew the original king had been a fake; a lich, a long-dead wizard with dreams of glory. Eventually, as always with such petty despots, the "One King" was exposed and killed, and his army fell apart.
Sysquemalyn herself had served in the king's court as a vagabond bard or freebooter named Ruellana. She forgot the details. She'd been keeping an eye on Sunbright, tweaking odds to win her bet with Candlemas. But she knew the One King's ways, had heard his insipid speeches, and remembered that he'd scared the hell out of the Neth. Memories of his short reign lived on, for scrying in nooks and crannies of forgotten lands, the monster-mage had often seen the faded red hand on the worn tunics of bandits, orcs, and other misfits.
So… employing a quick disguise, a flowery speech, many promises, a fistful of weapons, and threats of death, almost overnight Sysquemalyn had rejuvenated an army and aimed it like a fire arrow at her enemies. Even now, scores of bloodthirsty villains attacked outposts of the empire, especially the fields and orchards that fed Ioulaum and Specie, where Lady Polaris had homes, and the pastures and forests of Castle Delia, her country manor. Now she'd unleashed orcs upon the Rengarth Barbarians, whom she'd seen trekking across the prairie, bound for Sanguine Mountain, which would soon live up to its name.
"Sunbright will suffer when his people suffer. And Polaris will suffer, wounded in the purse. The whole empire-the whole world-will pay for what I've endured! And I, who was Sysquemalyn, will wait until my enemies' lowest ebb. Then shall I strike, and bathe in their blood!"
Cackling, she stroked the tilted black tabletop, located another wandering band of marauders and, donning the disguise of the One King, returned to work.
Having decided to leave the wasteland, the tribe did not depart in two days, or even a week.
In a flurry of activity, people flocked to kill wild game, barter for old cattle and sheep and jerk the meat; to slice hides into straps and pouches and boots; to hunt relatives in town and persuade them to rejoin the tribe; to fashion new weapons and baskets and clothes.
Some were convinced to come, and some dragged. Iceborn, blind and crippled, insisted he was too old to make the journey, wanted only to be left by the fire to die. Tulipgrace had sided with her husband. As shaman, Sunbright argued a whole day that both elders were the lifeblood of the tribe, living history books, indispensable. Sunbright pleaded he would carry both on his back if necessary, but to no avail. The stubborn old folks were tired, and would die soon anyway. So the shaman marched out, climbed a slope, cut down poplar trees with Harvester, dug up spruce roots and sliced rawhide, lashed together an extra-wide travois, and dragged it before the common hut. Entering the dim, round room, he picked up the two bundles of bones that were Iceborn and Tulipgrace and plunked them onto the travois. Standing on tiptoe, he yanked the roof thatch and rotted hides into the council fire so they ignited, and kicked the beams into the pyre. When the common house was consumed by roaring flames, he shouted at Iceborn, "Now will you go with us?"
The old man squinted at the fire, and spat drily, "I suppose, since it's the will of the gods. Or someone."
Finally, after many days, with precious little in hand, but nothing to hold them, the Rengarth Barbarians marched from the wastelands on a bright day in late summer. No one looked back.
By degrees they rounded Anchor Mountain, avoided Scourge and Lachery, and struck west along the Narrow Sea. Pilot whales spouted and leaped high in the water as if encouraging them. Gulls wheeled over their head, and terns flitted after, but finding no food, banked away.
Once, high up in the sky, they spotted a floating city like a man-of-war jellyfish on the clouds. Knucklebones guessed it was Sanctuary. The next morning it drifted south. Sunbright recalled there were pockets in the north so drained of magic that the enclaves could not overpass them, lest they fall. Such was the greed and waste of the Neth.
It took sixteen days to reach the Watercourse, the eastern boundary of the Rengarth's ancestral lands. The tribe camped for nine days to rest and fish, though they caught few. To mark the entrance to their homeland, Sunbright recalled the Victory Dance, which the tribe hadn't danced in years, and stomped the steps clumsily until Forestvictory put him right. The whole tribe rejoiced the night long, laughing for sheer joy even at mistakes.
Packing up, the barbarians marched northwest, never far from the dappled shore of the Narrow Sea, and with every mile, their feet grew lighter, for they walked familiar soil.
By day the tribe sprawled over a mile of grasslands, some four hundred thirty people and a handful of noisy dogs. Their woven baskets of cooking goods and blankets and tools were small, dragged by rawhide shoulder straps on travois, long sticks that striped the grass behind. The poplar poles acted as ridge poles for tents every evening. Rengarth Barbarians usually traveled with much bigger travois hauled by half-wild reindeer, but now they had none. In town they had captured brutish, garbage-eating dogs that they were beating into submission, or eating the untractable ones. Still, even in near-poverty, most of the tribe was glad to be moving again-doing something, anything, instead of rotting.
"So many people!" Knucklebones said once.
"More than I guessed," Sunbright agreed. He leaned into the straps of their travois. His mother marched on one side, his lover on the other. "But once we decided to go, they came from hill and dale. And from town, thank Lady Luck."
"Thank Sunbright," Monkberry put in. "Some would still be lost if you hadn't come and set us on the right path. They'd be rooted in town and on farms, cut off from their rightful heritage."
Sunbright smiled, and said, "I just hope we find a rightful home. This is a great mass of people to cross half a world on the dream of a half-baked shaman."
The women were silent, thinking of the burden Sunbright carried on his mind. Knucklebones said, "By the time we strike Sanguine Mountain, folks won't remember why they came, and they'll be too busy to fuss."