Old Scar’s carcass stank and had attracted a cloud of buzzing flies and other vermin. Despite that, and the fact that a number of Dragonflies and Skulltakers had already visited the site to verify the creature’s death, Kagur had assembled the two tribes here. Warriors might feel more inclined to follow her when the proof of her prowess—or at least her luck—was in plain view. And besides, the Black Jungle was neutral ground, avoided by every tribe for as long as the longstrider held sway.
Surveying the assembly, sun-bronzed humans to her left and green-skinned orcs on the right, she could mostly already tell who meant to accompany her, though it wasn’t that those warriors bore more weapons. No warrior of the crags descended into any forest or swamp for any reason without arming herself to the best of her ability. It was the resolve, and in some cases, the eagerness on their faces.
Even knowing it shouldn’t take long, the prospect of addressing the assembled warriors made her feel an unaccustomed twinge of awkwardness. She’d inherited her father’s talent for fighting and hunting, but little of his knack for facile speech. And it didn’t help that she felt strange in her new garment, a crudely stitched sleeveless tunic of reptile hide.
She took a breath. “Well, then. You wanted Old Scar dead, and there he lies. Now, who’s going to help me kill the blue giant?”
“I am,” said Holg, “but you knew that already.”
“I’ll go,” said Vom.
“So will I,” said Ikolch. She gave Kagur and Holg a leer. “I’ve always wondered what the xulgaths get up to in their sacred place.”
“They kill and eat orcs,” Yunal said with a scowl.
Fortunately, as far as Kagur could tell, the Skulltaker shaman’s words didn’t discourage anyone who wasn’t dubious already. More orcs and humans volunteered, until she had over a dozen. Based on the meager information she and Holg had gleaned about the island pyramid, that might be about the right number. Many more would increase the risk of detection.
She was just about to declare she had all she needed when Rho and Nesteruk stepped forward together. From expressions on the faces of the adult Dragonflies and Skulltakers, Kagur gathered they were as surprised as she was.
Even though Kagur had persuaded the two tribes to unite against a common threat, they made it clear through scowls, muttered insults, and spitting on the ground that their longstanding blood feud was merely in abeyance. Still, at some point over the course of the last few days, the two youths must have struck up, if not a friendship, at least an acquaintance.
“We’ll go, too,” said Nesteruk, his voice breaking.
Ikolch scowled. “No, you won’t.”
“Kagur and Holg saved my life,” the orc boy said.
Kagur felt a pang of surprise, and maybe even a tiny hint of guilt. Perhaps she’d done Nesteruk an injustice. Perhaps some orcs were capable of gratitude.
If anything, his words made his mother glare even more venomously, but to Kagur’s surprise, she seemed at a loss for a verbal retort. Maybe, according to Skulltaker tradition, Nesteruk now owed a debt that rendered all other considerations unimportant.
“Kagur saved my life, too,” said Rho.
“I didn’t do it alone,” Kagur said, “or to get you killed a few days later.”
“We heard you talk about the plan,” said Rho. “It’s all about looking like slaves. You’ll look less like a war party if you have a couple boys mixed in with the grownups.”
“He has a point,” Holg murmured. “The xulgaths certainly wouldn’t expect us to bring anyone that young to the ziggurat. To a degree, it would disguise us.”
“I thought that was why we were bringing a blind old man.”
Holg smiled. “I suspect I actually hinder us in that regard. Any xulgath that gets a good look at me is apt to wonder why a thrall so seemingly useless wasn’t eaten before he got old and stringy. We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Frowning, Kagur pondered. Then, addressing the entire gathering, she said, “The boys’ futures are at stake, too. It’s a reason to bring them if they want to go. But only if their elders agree.”
Dalk with his broken nose and missing tooth was one of the Dragonflies who’d volunteered to go on the raid, and now he raised his javelin to draw attention to himself. Kagur, who was still learning all the ties of kinship within the tribe, realized he must be Rho’s father or a guardian of some sort.
“Rho’s been initiated,” he said. “He’s a man in the eyes of those who came before. I won’t shame him by forbidding him to go … unless Vom, who’s been teaching him, tells me I should.”
The big man’s mouth tightened inside its shaggy border of mustache and beard. Plainly, he felt as reluctant to risk being responsible for Rho’s death as Kagur did. But after a moment, he said, “We’ll need to sneak. Rho did that well when we hunted for feathers.”
“Fine!” Ikolch snapped. “If even a useless human child is coming, Nesteruk is, too. No one will say only a Skulltaker was deemed unfit. Now, let’s move out. I want to make it partway down the river before dark.”
The members of the war party shouldered the bundles necessary for the expedition, and humans bade one another farewell while orcs sneered at what they seemingly considered contemptible displays of softness. Then Kagur and her companions set forth.
Hiking through jungle was more comfortable without the weight of her armor, but when she spotted a spearbeak soaring overhead or the spoor of some dangerous beast on the ground, she missed the protection anyway. Unfortunately, she was far from adept at leatherworking, and even a crude repair was beyond her. She was lucky Denda and his young helpers had managed to make her some more arrows.
Maybe she would have enjoyed the cool comfort of her unencumbered condition more if the stain on her bare arms and legs hadn’t to some degree counterbalanced it. A diluted version of the same pigment the Dragonflies used to daub pictures on cave walls, the stuff felt itchy and unpleasant on her skin. But she was willing to put up with the coloring in the hope that it, an additional layer of rubbed-on dirt, and darkness would hide the pallor of her limbs.
It wasn’t long before Nesteruk and Rho advanced up the column to walk along with her and Holg. She discouraged them with a glower, and they fell back again.
“Are you sorry we let them come?” Holg asked.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know if it was the right decision, either,” the old man said. “But I believe we all felt something moving in the moment. A pattern either advancing itself or breaking apart to form a new one.”
She sighed, irritated, yet, she realized, resigned to his cryptic utterances as well. Perhaps weeks or months of them had finally worn her down.
In time, the raiding party reached the river. Reflecting the blue sky and the trees and tree-ferns that made green walls along its banks, the watercourse was considerably wider and clearer than the brown channels Kagur had seen in the swamp. She suspected it flowed faster, too, although nowhere near as fast the frigid streams that hissed down from the Tusks and the Crown of the World. An insect as long as her forearm swooped, skimmed across the surface, and climbed back skyward clutching a little squirming fish.
The Skulltakers kept three canoes hidden under a pile of fallen branches and fronds. Hollowed and carved from sections of log, the boats were long and narrow and had paddles, spears with barbed points of wood and bone, and old fish scales and stains in the bottoms.
As Kagur and her fellow humans soon discovered, one first pushed a canoe into the shallows and then hopped inside while trying not to tip it over. The orcs laughed and jeered at their companions’ lack of facility.
Kagur had still only learned a few words of the speech of the highlands, and Holg’s most recent spell of translation had run its course. So she failed to grasp the substance of most of the taunts. But the orcs’ tone didn’t seem quite as nasty as she might have expected, while the humans tolerated the chaffing reasonably well. No one was raising a hatchet or clenching a fist.
Maybe the simple act of traveling together while contemplating the perilous exploit to come was at least slightly blunting the warriors’ traditional hostility. Kagur hoped so. Before the raid was over, they might need any hint of camaraderie and mutual trust they could muster.
And with that thought came the sudden, surprising realization that perhaps she was growing at least a little accustomed to the Skulltakers as well. The sight of them no longer elicited the same reflexive surge of disgust.
She wondered if she should cling to her animosity. It was, after all, simply what every Kellid felt, and for excellent reason. But if she and the Skulltakers were working to bring down a common foe, what would be the point? Especially when said foe was the creature she truly hated.
She decided that if her old antipathy was drowsing, she might as well let it. She could resume detesting lesser enemies when Eovath lay dead at her feet.
Shortly after she came to that conclusion, it occurred to her that if she actually wanted orcs and humans to regard one another as comrades, such feelings were more likely to flourish if the two groups shared all labors equally, paddling included. So, kneeling toward the front of the lead canoe, she studied how Ikolch dipped her paddle and stroked when she deemed it appropriate.
The Skulltaker didn’t do it constantly, and it was plain that, heading downstream, the orcs weren’t much concerned about pure motive power. The current bore them along at a fair pace. But they needed to steer.
When Ikolch had labored and Kagur had watched for what seemed a reasonable time, she tapped the orc on her grimy, brawny shoulder. Her expression as vicious as usual, Ikolch looked around. Kagur pointed to the paddle and then held her hand palm up to signal, “Give me.”
Ikolch hesitated and then handed the implement over.
Kagur shaded her eyes with her hand and turned her head to mime the act of keeping watch on what lay ahead. Then she pointed to the orc. She hoped that conveyed, “I’ll paddle, but you need to tell me which direction to steer and when.”
Ikolch grunted and gave a nod.
In fact, Kagur didn’t always need the orc to warn her. Some hazards were unmistakable, like floating logs, snakenecks—more beasts that looked much like they had in her nightmare—standing submerged to their bellies, or carnivorous plants dangling spiny two-lobed appendages over the water.
Yet at first, other perils were far from obvious. But gradually, studying the parts of the river Ikolch indicated even as she paddled to avoid them, Kagur came to recognize shallow places where a canoe could grind against hidden rocks or tangles of sunken deadwood.
Her improved understanding pleased her. Although maybe that was stupid since she doubted she’d ever do this again.
She was going to kill Eovath. Any other outcome was inconceivable. She was less certain she’d survive him by more than a moment, and as long as she avenged the Blacklions, that was all right. But if she did survive, she and Holg would presumably attempt the long climb back to the tundra, where canoeing would be about as worthless a skill as she could imagine.
Still, doing her fair share and knowing herself competent were preferable to being useless and ignorant, and maybe the Dragonflies felt the same way. For in time, they too started offering to spell Skulltaker paddlers.
Eventually, presumably knowing night was nigh thanks to the inner reckoning that still eluded Kagur, Ikolch turned the lead canoe toward a little treeless island in the middle of the river, and the other boats followed. After dragging the vessels onto the muddy shore, the travelers walked from one end of the place to the other swishing spears and javelins through the ferns, reeds, and brush, checking for any dangerous beast that might have swum or flown here since Skulltaker fishermen had last visited the place. They found none and made camp.
Kagur gathered it was rare but not unknown for the xulgaths to venture this far upriver, and so it was a camp without a fire. Still, her companions sat in the usual circle to gobble their rations, and in time, Vom started a joke. Kagur only caught a word or two, but she recognized it for what it was. Just visible in the dark, the burly Dragonfly’s impish smile reminded her of Roga’s.
But Vom’s sense of humor was apparently superior. Other men actually laughed, and after a moment, even some of the orcs gave a grudging chuckle. Then a Skulltaker began a joke of his own.
The moment made Kagur feel strange, like something was hurting and easing her at the same time. Then her insides clenched in a spasm of anger that impelled her to get up and walk to the edge of the black water. She stared out across it at the equally dark forest on the other side.
After a while, not bothering to feel his way with his staff in the murk that was clarity to him, Holg came to join her. “I can cast another charm of speaking,” he murmured. “You don’t have to be left out.”
She scowled. “Somebody needs to stand watch.”
“Somebody else already is. The boys volunteered, remember? You know, I’m fairly certain that allowing yourself to enjoy something won’t weaken your determination to kill Eovath.”
She spat. “Of course it wouldn’t.”
“What’s wrong, then? Do you believe it would be disloyal to your father and the other Blacklions to form new attachments?”
“I don’t want—” Realizing she didn’t truly want to say what she was about to blurt out, she stopped short. “Old man, you and I both come from the same land. And you’re a staunch companion.”
“Thank you.”
She waved the interruption away. It was annoying enough to say such mawkish things without him stretching out the moment. “The point is, you and I are friends. But these others … they’re our comrades for the time being. But they’re not my kin or my friends. They’re a weapon in my hands.”
“If you say so,” Holg replied, and then something made a little splash a stone’s throw away from the shore. “Did I ever tell you that when I was in the southlands, I learned to catch a fish with just my hands?”
“Having to rely on one’s sight may actually be a handicap. Things can look like they’re in the wrong place under the surface of the water. Iacobus, a sage from Absalom, hypothesized that …”
Grateful for the change of subject even though the shaman’s rambling discourse became incomprehensible almost immediately, Kagur watched the night and let him drone.
Even after the sun flared back to life, the travelers lazed on the island. It would be useless if not dangerous to depart prematurely. The xulgath city that stood where the river met the lake was less than a day’s travel away, and they needed to slip past it in the dark.
Though Kagur understood the reason, the delay rekindled the seething impatience that had possessed her at intervals ever since waking in the camp of the Fivespears. She prowled around and around the island until Ikolch finally declared it time to depart.
At one point, the current carried them in front of five canoes heading out of an inlet. Kagur’s companions set down their paddles and took up their javelins. But the strangers, perhaps astonished to see men and orcs journeying together, simply goggled and let them pass by unchallenged.
Eventually, darkness again engulfed the Vault, and, not trusting humans with their inferior night vision to steer clear of hazards, the Skulltakers took possession of all the paddles. Not long after that, clustered towers appeared amid the gloom.
Since she and her comrades were trying to keep well clear of the city, Kagur couldn’t make out much of it except for the vague shapes of the nearer spires, a step pyramid, and a tame spiketail grazing on the shore. But numerous points of firelight shined through windows and atop battlements, and a shrill atonal whining—was it truly supposed to be music?—set her teeth on edge.
Suddenly, Ikolch stopped paddling, and the other orcs in the lead canoe did the same. For a moment, Kagur couldn’t see what had made them cease, but she could hear it. Up ahead, something else was swishing through the water in the same rhythmic fashion.
Its high prow carved with some sort of image, a larger boat emerged from the blackness. Much longer paddles—she thought they must be what Holg, in one of his many reminiscences, had called “oars” or “sweeps”—stuck out of the sides to push it along.
Ikolch made a fierce slapping motion at the bottom of the canoe. Kagur crouched low, and her companions did the same. She assumed the men and orcs in the other dugouts were taking the same precaution.
But even if so, someone aboard the patrol boat still noticed something amiss. Inhuman voices hissed back and forth, and then one rasped a command. The oars on one side of the craft stroked while those on the other lifted out of the water, turning it in the raiders’ direction.
Kagur scowled. She had no idea if she and her comrades could contend with the bigger boat while fighting from canoes. Even if it was possible, could they manage it quickly and quietly enough to keep anyone on the shore from noticing the skirmish?
Hoping for a magical solution, she glanced back at Holg. Unfortunately, the old man was simply bending low like everybody else. He evidently didn’t have a prayer for the occasion.
But then, from somewhere behind the lead canoe, something made a sound midway between a growl and a cough. After a pause, the noise repeated.
The xulgaths on the patrol boat did more hissing back and forth, and then the leader snarled another command. The rowers maneuvered again and headed straight upriver, between the drifting canoes and the towers on the shore.
Ikolch waited until Kagur couldn’t hear the splash of the oars anymore. Then the orc straightened up, and everyone else in the lead canoe did the same.
Ikolch pointed at the next canoe in line. “Nesteruk,” she whispered.
Kagur guessed the boy, perhaps merely for his own amusement, had taught himself to imitate the call of some river beast with a long, low shape, and he’d just done so. Duped into believing they were peering at such creatures, the xulgaths had decided they didn’t need a closer look.
Kagur nodded to show she understood. “Good trick.”
The acknowledgment seemed to remind Ikolch that even a hint of maternal pride was at odds with her customary surliness. She scowled, spat in the river, and took up her paddle once again.
Once they reached the lake, the orcs paddled hard. They needed to reach the xulgaths’ holy site with most of the night still before them.
Motionless as its sun, the Vault’s stars silvered the water falling from upraised paddles, while enormous beasts periodically rose to the surface of the lake. The breaching only made a little noise, but for the most part, Kagur could still hear the creatures better than she could make out their shadowy forms.
Once, just a stone’s throw to the right, a relatively small head reared high above her, and she wondered if a snakeneck had waded or swum this far offshore. Maybe not, for after the head plunged back under the surface, it stayed there as the canoes sped onward.
Gradually, at first visible only because of the fire that burned atop it, the dark pyramid came into view, and then took longer to reach than Kagur expected. It was bigger than she would ever have imagined, and, like a mountain, kept looming larger and larger.
A lengthy approach gave sentries plenty of time to spot the raiders drawing near, but as far as she could tell, nobody did. Maybe she had the darkness to thank, or maybe she’d guessed right that the xulgaths had grown complacent in the assumption that their foes could never assault them here.
The canoes glided parallel to one face of the ziggurat as their occupants looked for a likely place to put in. Holg spotted it first, a row of small boats perched on the edge of the bottom tier. With luck, their canoes would sit unnoticed beside the others.
The ledge was about waist high above the water, and though it was impossible to be certain in the dark, Kagur had the impression the pyramid simply continued stair-stepping into the depths. She wondered if it did so all the way to the bottom of the lake, and just how far down that was.
The raiders tried to lift the canoes out of the water quietly, but the bottom of one still scraped on the wet, dark stone. Kagur gritted her teeth, and Rho’s wince confessed that he was to blame.
Fortunately, no one came rushing to investigate the noise. Kagur took another glance around, and then she and Holg pulled off their boots and stashed them in their canoe. The humans and orcs of the Vault didn’t wear anything on their feet, so their new allies couldn’t, either.
Nor could folk who were supposedly slaves openly carry weapons. The raiders stowed theirs in the bundles that, they hoped, looked like innocuous burdens for thralls to haul around. Holg stowed his staff as well. But he needed to keep his fetishes ready to hand for magic.
First, whispering, he restored the gift of universal speech to Kagur and himself. Then, murmuring another incantation she’d come to recognize, he set three talismans on the stone.
The one pointing straight ahead at the core of the ziggurat was the one that crawled.