Yet he jerked awake with a cry, making Knucklebones jump. "What's eating you?" she asked, irritated. "You're moony as a hammer-struck calf!"
The barbarian shook his bright-blond head. "Someone's after me, I think. Cursing my name, hounding my dreams. Evil, and mad, and angry."
"Not just imagination?" Knucklebones's voice was hoarse from shouting over the wind. Far below rolled plains with a glint of sea in the north. All were slanted with black shadows, for the sun was setting, ending the long summer day.
"It could be," Sunbright sighed. "When I'm tired, who's to know if I dream or hallucinate? Sorting truth from fancy is hard enough in this world, never mind the next."
"We'll have the world in our laps soon! We must land before the sun drops. We can't land in the dark."
Sunbright hadn't considered that even birds bedded before sundown. He squinted ahead. The Channel Mountains looked larger, tall as his hand. "Land east of the mountains," he advised. "Walking with them at our left hand, we'll find my tribe south of Scourge."
The thief banked east, until the flitter's nose slanted across the mountains. "We'll fly until I think it's too dangerous."
Sunbright felt a familiar looseness in his bowels. Launching, Knucklebones had pointed out, was simple as falling off a cliff. Landing was like diving headfirst into an eagle's nest without cracking any eggs. Sunbright called, "Let's get it over with. If we're hurt, we'll need daylight to patch up."
The small woman didn't argue, simply tipped the bar, and pointed them down. Sunbright gulped, and clamped down on his stomach.
The plains were glossy with summer grass. As they sank, antelope and bison and skulking wolves fanned out before them. Knucklebones slowed the flitter by hauling the wings back while pointing the tail down, though the landscape swept by alarmingly fast. Finally, at spitting height, the thief called, "Hang on!" and shoved the nose down.
Sunbright gritted his teeth as the land leaped up like a tiger. But the clever thief flopped the craft on its belly skids, and they slithered over grass for seeming miles. Sunbright yanked his knees to his chin, felt chaff and grass stalks snap and tickle.
Then it was still. Grass billowed all around, except for the flattened track behind. Knucklebones pried stiff hands off the bars, massaged her scarred forearms, and chuckled, "I could get to like this!"
"You can have it!" Sunbright grabbed bars and hauled himself out of the flying coffin. Unlashing their supplies, he hung his great sword Harvester of Blood across his back. His bow and arrows were lost, but he kept the empty quiver, and hung his food satchel and both blankets around his shoulders, ready to march.
Knucklebones tossed her rucksack over one shoulder. "Shouldn't we scavenge wires and such? You made snares last time," she said.
"I just want to get away," Sunbright began, "but you're right." With their knives they cut away loose wires, lengths of tubing, and fabric from the wings. They never knew what might prove handy.
Looking at the wrecked flitter, Knucklebones asked, "What will the coyotes think of this?"
"A bird skeleton picked clean," he mumbled, then faced north, where a sentence of death awaited. "Let's get this over with, too."
They walked where the evening shadows of the Channel Mountains touched the tall grass, and, gradually, darkness overtook them.
After three days' walk-the last across rock and shale-they breasted a low hill. Sea wind carried salt to their nostrils. Sunbright stopped dead. "That's them!" he cried. "But it can't be them!"
Knucklebones just stared. In the distance winked the Narrow Sea, a silver so bright it shone white. At its shore, and surrounding the toe of the last Channel Mountain, the peak called the Anchor, lay the villainous town whose name had become Scourge. Punished by hard winds off the sea, the town saw any steel mysteriously rust away within weeks. Since industry could not prosper, the town had fished until the fish thinned out. Good people left, the desolate stayed. Them, and plagues of rust monsters. The idle population turned to thieving and infighting, until Scourge gained its name as a place to avoid.
And here, on the outskirts, amidst sand and rocks, where no humans would venture, Sunbright found his tribe.
The camp was lumpy huts of piled stone, or caves cut into hillsides, or mere holes in the ground covered by rotting hides. The only wooden structure was the common house, a ring of rotted aspen trees dragged from the mountainside, the roof thatched crudely with brush. The disordered camp was rife with garbage, droppings, bones, ashes, and trash. The smoke of a few fires trickled into the brassy sky. At midday it was hot here on the rocks, as it would be cold by night. A few women trudged through camp with fagots or bundles of meager food. Men slept in the shade or lay with feet jutting from canted doorways. Dirty children crept at quiet games, or else turned over rocks, hunting salamanders and insects for food. Buzzards picked at garbage, unmolested.
Sunbright stood with his mouth agape. "I had a hint…" he said, his voice heavy with shocked disappointment, "when I glimpsed the village in the scrying table… but how… Where are the reindeer? Where are the dogs? How did this happen?"
Knucklebones only shook her head. She'd grown up in poverty, in the sewers of a mighty city where every scrap was stolen or scavenged. But even she was shocked, having heard time and again of Sunbright's proud people. This motley bunch looked like trolls.
After a long time the barbarian picked up his feet-a mighty effort, as if they were glued to the ground-and descended the slope.
At first there was no sign they'd arrived, as if the pair were ghosts. Children looked up curiously with big eyes, and retreated around rocks. A woman glanced up, for strangers never came from the south, and rubbed her eyes. Without a word she slunk into a hut. A man peeked out and frowned. Other folk noticed the odd couple, one small and one tall, and trailed them. Sunbright kept walking, watching everywhere, but not believing his eyes. His goal was the common house. By the time he reached it, thirty ragged barbarians had trickled from shelter to see him enter.
Sunbright ducked under a reindeer hide so old it was white strings. Knucklebones slipped after, quiet as a cat. Inside hung rotted hides with faded totems, but nothing else: neither animal masks nor enemy scalps nor ancestors' skulls. The old couple seen from afar, Iceborn and Tulipgrace, huddled under thin blankets by a smoky fire. The old man turned blind eyes, demanded, "Who is it?"
His wife, Tulipgrace, woke with a start, peered at them with red eyes, and asked, "You are…"
"Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry," he said flatly. He almost added: of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians, but these were the same folk, or had been.
"Sunbright…" Tulipgrace said, awed. "You fled, were banished in absence. You're sentenced to death."
"Unwrap the wolf masks then, and sing the death song! Kill me if you can! I've yet to see a man or woman in this village bear a sword! By the Teeth of Kozah, what's happened to my people?"