“Faster than anything we’ll ever ride again,” said Barrick, still boyish. “Gyir says they are raised in great fields called the Meadows of the Moon.”
“Don’t know how they would know of the moon or anything else in the sky,” said Vansen, looking up. “And it’s got worse now, the sky’s so dark with smoke.” Their progress had been slowed to a walk—they led their horses now more often than they rode them. Vansen had hated the eternal twilight but he longed for it now. It seemed, however, that he was fated to realize such things only after it was too late.
Skurn hopped into the road to smash a snail against a stone embedded in the mud. The raven pulled out his meal and swallowed it down, then turned his dark, shiny eye on Vansen. “Shall us ride, then, Master?” Skurn shot an uneasy look at Barrick, who was staring at the raven with his usual disdain. “If us hasn’t spoken out of turn, like.”
“You seem in good cheer,” Vansen said, still not quite accustomed to talking with a bird “Broke us’s fast most lovesomely this morning with a dead frog what had just begun to swell...”
Vansen waved his hand to forestall the description. “Yes, but I thought you were afraid of where we were going. Why have you changed?”
Skurn bobbed his head. “Because we go away, now, not toward, Master. This new road leads us away from Northmarch and Jack Chain’s lands. ’Twas all us ever wanted.”
Vansen felt a little better to hear that. If it had not been for the continual dreary, ashy rain, the lightless sky, and the fact that he knew he’d be spending another day’s thankless journey surrounded by madmen and monsters out of dire legend, finishing with a bed on the cold, lumpy ground and a few bitter roots to gnaw, he might have been cheerful, too.
It was almost impossible to choose Skurn’s single most annoying trait, but certainly high on the pile was the fact that unless something had terrified the bird into silence, he talked incessantly. Relieved by their new direction, the raven yammered on throughout the day, loudly at first, then more quietly after Vansen threatened to drag him on a rope behind the horse, naming trees and bushes and sharing other obscure bits of woodlore, and going on at great length about the wonderful things to eat that could be found on all sides—an urpsome subject that Vansen throttled shortly after being told how lovely it was to guzzle baby birds whole out of a nest.
“Can you not just stop?” he snarled at last. “Close your beak and just sit silently, for the Trigon’s sake, and let me think.”
“But us can’t sit quiet, Master.” Skurn squatted, holding his beak in the air in a way Vansen had learned was meant to suggest he was suffering—either that or he was fouling the saddle, one of his other charming traits. “You see, it is riding on this horse that has us so squirmsome, and when us talks not, us squirms more and the horse takes it ill. You have seen him startle up, have you not?”
Vansen had. Twice today already, Skurn had done something to make the horse balk and almost throw them. Vansen couldn’t blame his mount: Skurn had trouble holding on, and when he lost his balance he sank in his talons, and if he happened to be off the saddle and on the horse’s neck at the time, no matter.
Skyfather Perin, I beg you to save me, Vansen prayed. Save me from everything you have given me. I doubt I am strong enough, great lord. Aloud he said, “Then tell me something more useful than how to catch and eat yon hairy spiders, for I will not be doing that even if starvation has me in its grip.”
“Shall us tell tha one story, then? To make time slip more easy, eh?”
“Tell me about the one you called Crooked, or this Jack Chain you are so frightened of. What is he? And the others, Night Men and suchlike.”
“Ah, no, Master, no. No talk of Jack, not so close still to his lands, nor of Night Men—too shiversome. But us can tell you a little of the one us called Crooked. Those are mighty stories, and all know them—even my folk, from nestlings to high-bough weavers. Shall us speak on that?”
“I suppose so. But not too loudly, and try to sit still. I don’t want to find myself in a ditch with my horse running away into the forest.”
“Well, then.” Skurn nodded his head, closed his tiny eyes, rocked slowly against the saddle horn.
“Here he came,” the raven began in a cracked, crooning voice that seemed half song, “tumble-dum, tumble-dum, crooked as lightning, but slow as the earth rolling over, all restless in her sleep. He limped, do you see? Though just a child then, he came through the great long war fighting at his father’s side, and were struck a great blow near the end of it by the Sky Man, so that ever after, when it healed, one pin he had longer than the other. Was even captured, then, by Stone Man and his brothers, and they took away from him summat which they shouldn’t have, but still he would not tell them where his father’s secret house was hid.
Later on, when his father and his mother was both taken away from him, and all his cousins and brothers and sisters were sent away to the sky lands, still he lived on in the world’s lands because none of the three great brothers feared him. They mocked him, calling him Crooked, and that was his name always after.
Still, here he came through the world, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg the shorter, and everywhere he went was mocked by those that had won, the brothers and their kin, although they were glad enough to have the things he made, the clever things he made.
So clever he was that when he lost his left hand in the forge fire he made another from ivory, more nimble even than the one he’d been born with, and when he touched pizen with his right hand and it withered away he made himself a new one from bronze, strong as any hand could ever be. Still they mocked him, called him not just Crooked but also No-Man because of what they themselves had taken from him, but, aye, they did covet the things he could make. For Sky Man he made a great iron hammer, heavier and grander than even his war hammer of old, and it could smash a mountain flat or knock a hole in the great gates of Stone Man’s house, as it did once when the two brothers quarreled. He also made the great shield of the moon for her what had took his father’s place, and for Night her necklace of stars, Water Man’s spear what could split a mighty whalefish like a knife splits an apple, and a spear for Stone Man, too, and many other wonderful things, swords and cups and mirrors what had the Old Strength in them, the might of the earliest days.
But he did not always know the very greatest secrets, and in fact when first he was become the servant of the brothers whom had vanquished his people, though he was clever beyond saying, still he had much to learn. And this is how he learned some of it.
So here he came on this day, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg shorter, walking like a ship in a rolling sea, wandering far from the city of the brothers because it plagued him and pained him to have to speak always respectfully to his family’s conquerors. As he walked down the road through a narrow, shadowed valley, the which was fenced with high mountains on either side, he came upon a little old woman sitting in the middle of the path, an ancient widow woman such as could be seen in any village of the people, dry and gnarled as a stick. He paused, did Crooked, and then he says to her, “Move, please, old woman. I would pass.” But the old woman did not move and did not reply, neither.
“Move,” he says again, without so much courtesy this time. “I am strong and angry inside myself like a great storm, but I would rather not do you harm.” Still she did not speak, nor even look at him.