Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

A moment’s pause, and that fist filled with a gleaming blade that plunged down once, with awesome finality.

Karls staggered up to his knees, opened his mouth . . .

As if in some bizarre dream, Ar’tor’s brother toppled over onto his face, the life seeping from his body in a dark tide.

Then the other men gathered around, and their blades rose and fell, rose and fell . . .

Ar’tor started to scream, and then there was no breath. If this is death, I welcome it. . . .

Ar’tor woke slowly. The first impression that pierced his consciousness was a smell. It was a heavy, meat-eater’s aroma, and it swarmed into his mind with hooked tendrils.

But there was no sound to accompany it, and no warmth, and he knew that he was alone.

Ar’tor sat up with a jolt. Even in the cold, sweat was a sticky glacier under his arms, on his browline, in the palms of his hands. His lungs labored in the confined space, made the whisper of his breath a rasping thunder.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had all been a dream.

He crawled to the opening, clawed his way out, pushed himself out into the snow. He blinked and wiped the frost from his eyes, and choked back a cry of grief.

Ar’tor half tumbled, half ran down the mountainside, toward the small, crumpled form of his brother.

Karls lay hideously mangled. Blood had seeped from his body until the snow beneath was tarry with it. Ar’tor’s head whirled, and he fought to control vertigo. This could be no act of men. It had to have been a beast. A hideously depraved beast.

Old Cat.

Ar’tor sank to his knees. What could he do? If he told his tribe what he had seen, Tluman would merely call him a liar. Tluman would demand a test of steel. Syman had formally declared Ar’tor a man, and he would have to undergo the test—only a man can bear witness against a Warchief of the Hilltribes.

He stood no chance against the Lowlander. He would be killed.

Perhaps the Windrunners would try to stand against the Steelteeth and allied tribes alone. And they would be slaughtered. Or he could bring his brother’s body back, and lie, saying he had found it as it was, allowing them to draw their own conclusions. And in two moons, as the last of Syman’s nephews, he would have to face Tluman.

And die.

Karls’s eyes were still open, staring at him with open accusation. With horror Ar’tor saw that the insects had already begun to investigate.

With shaking fingers he closed those eyes. Then he wrapped his arms around his sides and cried until there were no more tears left. And then sobbed without tears.

For his brother, for his uncle, for his lost honor. For the insanity and death that had so suddenly and unexpectedly descended upon the Hollow.

With trembling hands, Ar’tor broke branches and laid them out in a mat. He crisscrossed and wove them, binding with vine and wood fiber until he had a sled that would bear his brother’s weight.

Still crying, he rolled Karls onto it, then set his heels into the snow, beginning the arduous task of dragging his brother’s body back to the village.

Each mile was murderous, a torment that started in his legs and burned his lungs with savage flame. As the cold, white sun rose above the eastern mountains, Ar’tor cursed his cowardice, his damnably small hands, for his inability to be a warrior and fulfill the obligations of his blood.

There was nothing for him now. He had hidden, choosing to play the coward rather than fulfilling his quest. That was the part he had chosen, and he deserved no better role now.

By the Rite of Spring, he had lain next to the dreaded Old Cat, and hadn’t even tried to execute his duty. He had watched his brother die, and had not rushed down to deal death to as many of his killers as possible before they brought him down in turn. In each instance, he had clearly understood his duty. In each instance, he had failed it.

Before Ar’tor crested the hill that led down into the Hollow, the woods shook with a low, groaning wail. Ar’tor dropped the sled, overwhelmed.

The dirge horn. Syman was dead. The mourning call’s message chilled him to the bone.

“Uncle . . .”

His mind numbed with the grief. He felt trapped in a blizzard, lost in an emotional whiteout, blinded and deafened with the shock of loss.

Panting, he pushed the sled up over the hump. He bent, kissing Karls’s bloodstained forehead a final time, remembering all of their good times together. The hunting. The endless hours running in the mountains, their long, economical hillman’s stride eating the endless miles. He thought, as all men do, of the thousand things left unsaid, the deeds left undone.

His mind buzzed with fragments of thought. If he reentered the Hollow, there would be nothing but shame for him. Shame, and confusion. Someone else, a warrior, a fighter, should take over the clan. While he lived that could not happen.

He was even afraid to die honorably. He cursed himself for ever having been bom.

Ar’tor turned and vanished into the woods.

Ar’tor ran, ran faster as the shout of his kinsmen said that they had found his brother’s tom corpse. The cold, barren branches whipped against his face. The pale light of the winter sun glared in his eyes as he ran, and he didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. There was nothing left, no family, no home. And most especially, no honor.

He ran until the legs beneath him trembled and failed. Ran until he was blind with sweat, and his feet turned beneath him. He fell, caught himself, stumbled on a few more paces. He just let himself go, let his body fall sweetly down the side of a hill, tumbling toward the stream, the blue sky and green earth and blinding white sun tumbling and tumbling together in a mosaic, until he struck the bottom, and lay there.

For a time his only sensation was that of water rushing over the side of his face, cascading, foaming up and then over. Nothing more. And again he cried. So much loss. So much . . .

Your brother. My cubs. My mate.

Ar’tor snapped his head around, sat up in the water, and looked directly into the liquid, golden eyes of the Old Cat.

Old Cat’s fur was dark brown shading to black, and it was, most certainly, an ancient beast. Gray dusted its whiskers, and a patch of hair was tom from the left shoulder, leaving a ragged scar. Yet as Ar’tor watched it, as it moved ever so slightly, wagged its head from side to side and examined him, he had the impression of immense, controlled power. If the fury of a summer storm were touched with winter’s chill and fleshed as a living beast, that beast would be Old Cat.

It looked at him, and Ar’tor read sadness in its eyes.

For long moments he said nothing. Ar’tor found his voice.

“Did you . . . speak to me?”

Old Cat cocked its head sideways and took a step out into the water, gingerly, as if testing with its paw.

Ar’tor backed up, scrambled backward on all fours. This was the end. This was death. In a bare moment the creature would spring, would tear the life from Ar’tor's body, finishing the job that his own terror and cowardice had begun.

He backed until his head hit the roots of a tree and he could go no farther. Old Cat followed him one rhythmic step at a time. Ar’tor found the presence of mind to steady his breathing.

Good. GOOD.

“W—what is good?”

Ar’tor noticed that Old Cat hadn’t come any closer. Perhaps, just perhaps it did not intend to make a meal of him just yet. He tried to catch a peek at its belly. Did it look full? Or like other cats, did Old Cat enjoy playing with its food? “Good for what?”

My cubs. My mate. Your littermate. It cocked its head sideways. Your mother’s littermate.

Ar’tor blinked. “What are you saying?” Hearing words without hearing, seeing this creature speak without speaking, was giving him a headache. “What is happening to me?”

Mindspeak. Not all of your people have the talent for it. You do. I, felt it in you. Feel what I feel now.

Ar’tor felt his head open, a sensation frighteningly similar to what he had felt in Tluman’s presence. This was even stronger, seered him as if with white-hot irons. Never had he felt such blazing hatred. Hatred for all living things, for life itself. For a concept of fate more primal than anything that could have been birthed in the mind of a man. It was as if the creature before him hated him too much to kill him.

For the first time Ar’tor felt true fear, not the paralysis, or the self-pity that had shaped his actions, but a devouring awareness of death that went beyond concern for flesh, that threatened his very soul.

Why didn’t Old Cat kill? Ar’tor fought to steady himself, to understand what was happening.

There.

There was another figure, one that stood out from the generalized burst of loathing for all things human.

Tluman Carpter. As Ar’tor watched, Tluman went through an amazing, impossible metamorphosis. He saw Tluman’s skin clawed away a strip at a time, and then saw the raw, wet flesh beneath grow puffy with corruption.

He whipped his head away from the stench as the maggots began to swarm.

I hate you. All of you. But this one most.

“He . . . killed your cubs?”

We will not speak of it again. You can mindspeak. I can use you, if you have the courage. Otherwise, I kill you now. Your answer!

Ar’tor looked into those eyes, and his terror numbed. There was something that the Old Cat’s incredible mind could not conceal from him. Grief.

Do not pity me. I will kill you!

Ar’tor drew back against the tree. “All right. I. . . have no choice.”

Neither of us has a choice. We have no time. Old Cat looked Ar’tor up and down. You are a poor cub, even for your kind. You will probably die.

“I’ll live long enough,” he said, not even knowing what it was he was saying.

Old Cat’s massive old head nodded in approval. Perhaps you will. Come. Come with me. Do not try to run away, or I will kill you.

Ar’tor set off, and looked over his shoulder just to be sure that he wasn’t dreaming. No, he wasn’t. The enormous black creature followed just behind him, stalking him, as he walked upstream, pushed through the thicker brush, heading into . . . what?

II

By the time that Ar’tor reached the plateau, he was utterly exhausted. He had crawled through ice-crusted bushes and climbed over treetrunks and finally climbed the side of the mountain his people called Misttop until every muscle in his body screamed for mercy.