Between them, with little care, Yorla and Emul hoisted me up on the fur blanket I was lying on. The movement caused me to hiss in pain. Like a patient on a stretcher, the wastelanders carried me out of the cave and into the cold morning where I saw to my astonishment that Clan Ayros had indeed made a settlement in these mountains.
The greasy aroma of frying meat mingled with the acrid smell of smoke. In a wide encampment sunk into the mountains, where the rocky ground had been smoothed by years of passing feet, scores of warriors sat around fires fuelled by misshapen lumps of coal, waiting for their breakfasts to cook. Beyond the fires, I could make out the entrances to a collection of caves burrowed into the high and sharp walls surrounding and concealing the area. They didn’t notice us emerge into the encampment at first, but one by one, with nudges and pointing, their eyes fell upon the city-dweller in their midst.
How long had this settlement been here?
Despite the situation, my stomach growled at the thick slices of real meat sizzling on stone plates resting over red coals. Juices spat and ignited with bursts of yellow flame as they ran over the sides. I had eaten real fish once and hadn’t liked it, but at that point I’d risk eating meat from the wasteland to abate my hunger pains. My hopes that someone might feed me were dashed, however, when Yorla and Emul carried me away from the cook fires, and the eyes of the many warriors followed me out of the encampment.
We entered a narrower pass. My teeth chattered and I fought to keep from shivering as the freezing air assaulted my torso, still naked except for the bandages of skin. Beneath a lightening pink sky, clear of clouds, I saw thick rows of snow-dusted bushes laden with small red and purple berries among their green leaves. Crooked and leafless trees grew from the walls, roots digging into the rock like the gnarled fingers of giants. I was reminded of the greenhouses back in Old Castle.
Emul led the way, carrying me feet-first on the fur blanket. At the other end, Yorla was limned by a strip of cloudless pink sky. Dressed now in leathers, hair loose, she didn’t look down at me and kept her eyes fixed on the wide armoured back of Emul, her face expressionless.
How long had it been since my capture? How deep had I been taken into these mountains? I decided then that I must be dying; that my body and organs were shutting down and I now straddled the grey line between the land of the living and Aktuaht, just one step away from the other side. Why else could I conjure no emotional response to my predicament? I had gone to war to serve my city. I hadn’t survived. I was an unfortunate statistic.
What was going on here?
Clan Ayros was in possession of at least one communications array. Even if I could get to it, raise a distress signal of my own, Command wouldn’t send a rescue team for one solider – wouldn’t arrive in time to save me if they did. But they would come to wipe out this settlement if they knew it was here. They would come double quick if they thought this clan was sitting on something valuable.
Yorla believed that change was coming to her people, but I couldn’t begin to guess at what the Shepherd of the Dead was offering. Friend, foe or trickster? Why had this magic-wielding spirit allowed Command to hear her signal along with the clansfolk?
Growls and grunts reached my ears. The pass widened and I smelled the unmistakable musty reek of bears. Behind rusty cage doors covering four cave pens they paced and snarled, huge shaggy forms. A few snouts appeared through the gaps in the caging. Long and sharp teeth gnashed, as though the bears could taste my scent on the breeze, perhaps anticipating a meal of fresh city meat.
Were the floors of those pens strewn with the bones of my platoon? Had any of them still been alive when the bears first sank their teeth into them? I couldn’t tell how many beasts were sharing the caves, but I counted eleven handlers standing outside them, watching Yorla and Emul carrying me by.
Berserkers, human bombs, battle sacrifices who were bred and trained to die for the glory of their clan. Their green skin was dirtier, their frames scrawnier than the average wastelander’s. Wearing furs rather than armour, faces scarred with swirling tattoos of the foulest spells, their expressions were somehow distant as if intoxicated or washed vacant by magic – though the dark glares they aimed my way were firmly grounded in hate.
I recalled the force of the shock wave that had smashed me from my tank, the agony of the spirit-matter as it seared and scorched my skin. Berserkers and the sacrifices they gave were honoured among the clans, according to one treatise I had read during training. They belonged to a highly revered caste and found no greater privilege than giving their lives for their people in battle.
I couldn’t see how that worked. Going into war knowing that you weren’t supposed to survive was one thing, but knowing that you were sacrificing your chances of an afterlife, too? By detonating their own spirits, berserkers would never see the other side. As Yorla and Emul carried me away from them, I wondered if there was any true comprehension of their fates in those dark stares and vacant faces. How must it feel to know that this life on this desolate world was all that you got?
Soon, we came to an area much larger than the warriors’ encampment. Awash with chattering voices, reminding me of a busy street in Old Castle – or maybe the shanties – this must have been the main body of Clan Ayros’s settlement. So many wastelanders, not only warriors but also the elderly and children: families dwelling in the heart of the mountains. Most of them, I suspected, had survived their time fighting on the wasteland or were warriors in training; but whether young or old, each would make a fierce opponent.
Again, coal fires were burning, and the smell of smoke and cooking meat encouraged growls from my stomach. There were cave dwellings but also pointed tents covered in furs and skins. Yorla and Emul didn’t slow their pace. The encampment grew in size the further we moved through it – easily matching the size of a district in a city – and the number of occupants increased to match. There were hundreds of them.
I began to wonder if this settlement would continue to grow and finally reveal that it was as big, or bigger, than Old Castle itself. It didn’t seem to end. Still more and more clansfolk appeared, gathering like the congregation for a procession. A baby was crying somewhere. Strange; I’d never seen a wastelander baby, let alone heard one cry.
In my eerily detached state, I noticed that there was something off about this place. It felt established, the wastelanders at home and comfortable and maybe it had been this way for years, decades, but I gained the impression that it was also temporary, as though there was nothing here that these people wouldn’t walk away from the instant an enemy too large to fight came calling. But that would have to be a force of immense size.
How big was Clan Ayros, how many clansmen and -women? A thousand? Two thousand? Commander Childs had believed the Ayros Mountains were empty save for hibernating monsters, but somehow this clan had established a home without the Scientists noticing.
The Shepherd of the Dead is the guardian of a great secret.
Someone shouted, ‘Tell Kurlo to slit his throat,’ to which another added, ‘We should be feeding him to the bears.’ A few murmurs of agreement followed these statements, along with uncertain mutterings, but no one tried to impede Yorla and Emul’s progress. Most were preferring to keep their distance from me. Except one young clansman.
He was fetching water from a well. Attracted by my presence, he left his pail on the ground and came for a closer look. By his height and the length of his tusks, he must have been close to coming of age. He walked alongside the fur stretcher for a while, studying me as though sizing up the enemy he would soon be fighting. He didn’t look much impressed. Yorla growled at him in Salabese, telling him to go away and not interfere with elder business. The young warrior snorted. He hawked then spat in my face before leaving. All things considered, it could have been worse.
I wiped the spittle away with a weak hand and closed my eyes to the clansfolk around me, the clear sky above me. I heard whispers from behind, which grew to a buzz of mutterings, curious and agitated, as more and more voices joined in. I realised that my procession had picked up a train of followers, and they stayed with Yorla and Emul all the way to our destination.
Kurlo was waiting for us at Clan Ayros’s meeting place. Eyes calculating, the old and grizzled chieftain stood with his hands on his hips in a small circular depression, less worn than the rest of the settlement. Like a pockmark in the mountain, I thought.
Behind Kurlo, sitting on a low shelf in the wall, were three wastelanders I presumed to be the clan elders. One was dressed in furs, an aging clansman, older than his chieftain. To his left sat a warrior in bone-and-metal armour, of an age with Kurlo, his face twice as scarred; to his right sat a small woman, body drowned by leather robes, face concealed within a deep hood. Withered hands and bent fingers protruded from the ends of sleeves, and they were covered in swirling magical script.
A civilian, a warrior and a priest, I reasoned – a voice for each caste of Clan Ayros.
My bearers laid me down on the ground. The fur blanket did little to cushion the rough mountain rock digging into my back and agitating my wounds. The procession flowed past me in a stream of green-skinned faces, humourless and fierce. They climbed up to sit on uneven shelves of rock, staggered at varying heights on the wall that swept around and left a hole of sky as though I lay looking up from the bottom of a reduction-house chimney.
Emul spared me a derisive glance before heading off to take his seat among the audience. Yorla crouched down beside me in pretence of checking my wounds. Her brown eyes locked on to mine and in a whisper, she hissed, ‘The Shepherd of the Dead will not be kind to you, city-dweller. I only regret that you won’t live long enough to see Clan Ayros rise.’ She then took her place for the meeting, leaving me under the scrutiny of the clansfolk.
A hundred of them at least had followed me. Their silence was disturbing.
‘My clan!’ Kurlo shouted, his voice cracking like a whip, full of pride; and then, softer, ‘My friends.’ He turned full circle, taking in his people gathered above him before finally coming to face the three elders. ‘A decision must be made on this day, a decision that could change the fate of Clan Ayros for ever. But let no man or woman present be in doubt of why we have come to this meeting place. The Shepherd of the Dead has called to us, and the elders have heard what she has to offer …’